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Joshua Berrett, author of Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman: Two Kings of Jazz _____________________________________ Joshua Berrett's Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman: Two Kings of Jazz is a dual biography of two great innovators in the history of jazz.  One was black, one was white -- one is now legendary, the other nearly forgotten.  Berrett offers a provocative revision of the history of early jazz by focusing on two of its most notable practioners -- Whiteman, legendary in his day, and Armstrong, a legend ever since. Whiteman's fame was unmatched throughout the twenties.  Bix Beiderbecke, Bing Crosby, and Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey honed their craft on his bandstand.  Celebrated as the "King of Jazz" in 1930 in a Universal Studios feature film, Whiteman's imperium has declined considerably since.  The legend of Armstrong, in contrast, grows ever more lustrous:  for decades it has been Armstrong, not Whiteman, who has worn the king's crown. Berrett's book explores these diverging legacies in the context of race, commerce, and the history of early jazz.  Early jazz, Berrett argues, was not a story of black innovators and white usurpers.  Berrett presents a more compicated story -- a story of cross-influences, sidemen, and sundry movers and shakers who, he argues, were all part of a collective experience that transcended the category of race.  In the world of early jazz, he contends, kingdoms had no borders.# Berrett joins us in an October 4, 2004 conversation. Interview Topics The author's goal The use of the word "jazz" in the twenties The intermingling of black and white worlds Armstrong and Whiteman moving in intersecting orbits America's fascination with the "exotic" Making a "lady" out of jazz Whiteman's vision for jazz on the concert stage Whiteman's response to the limitations of symphonic jazz The author's uncommon view of jazz history Duke Ellington comments on Whiteman The complexity of Louis Armstrong The reaction from the jazz community to the book Wynton Marsalis as grand synthesis of Armstrong and Whiteman About Joshua Berrett * Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman "Armstrong's supreme position in the jazz pantheon as the first great soloist has never been in doubt.  As Dan Morgenstern has put it:  'Though he was never billed as the King of Jazz, Armstrong is the only legitimate claimant to that title.  Without him there would of course have been the music called jazz, but how it might have developed is guesswork.  This extraordinary trumpeter and singer was the key creator of the mature working language of jazz.'  That regal title was at one time bestowed on Whiteman, first as part of an advertising campaign for brass instruments and later in a 1930 movie.  Yet his role as an outstanding pioneer has generally been far more problematic, especially starting in the 1930s; more often than not he has been condemned in jazz history as a usurper or else been expunged from the record altogether." - Joshua Berrett * Rhapsody in Blue, by Paul Whiteman ___________________________________________________ JJM Your book revisits the world of early jazz and examines, compares and contrasts the work of Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman, who the cultural critic Gerald Early refers to as "the twin father figures of American popular music…both heavy and both popular as personalities as much as for their musical abilities…two fathers, one black and one white." What did you set out to accomplish with your book? JB What I am trying to show is that there is a give and take between the so-called black and white areas of music. The book is really a cultural history of jazz during the twentieth century -- the American century -- which was clearly and decisively shaped by jazz and modernism. The whole point I am trying to make in the book is that jazz is not the legacy, entirely, of African Americans, and I am trying to restore a balance to our view of jazz. Also, to be very clear in pointing out that the word itself, "jazz," is extremely slippery, and has been subject to enormous change. If you look at its history, it was very much a function of the political agenda of the time, and who was writing about it. That's a big part of what I try to address, how commerce and various political agendas helped shape the writing of jazz. JJM  How was the word "jazz" used in, let's say, the twenties? JB  It was a very loose term for pop music, and used for anything that was lively or that people could dance to. There was always the fascination with syncopation, animal dances and a certain earthiness, but there was no real iron clad definition for "jazz" that you can come up with. Most people just wanted to go out and have a good time, and dance to the strains of ensembles like Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra. So, while it was very much a part of the whole headlong rush of the twenties, I don't think there was any clear textbook definition for it. What is really astounding, if you ever watch King of Jazz, the movie featuring Whiteman, you will notice there is virtually no jazz in it. The jazziest number is Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Most of it is made up of what we would today call popular music or salon music. The movie is really like a variety show, in many ways. Library of Congress Art representative of "The Jazz Age" _____ Everybody Step, by The Paul Whiteman Orchestra Paul Whiteman "Armstrong had little use for the minutiae of money and managing a band. He was perfectly happy to blow his horn peacefully and not have to deal with 'too much quarreling over petty money matters.' By contrast, Whiteman's was a corporate mentality. In his focus on the ensemble and arrangements he epitomized the savvy dance band or orchestra leader as well as the entrepreneur and promoter par excellence. It was as if he were taking his cue from Calvin Coolidge, who in a 1925 speech before the Society of American Newspaper Editors originated the dictum, 'The business of America is business.'" - Joshua Berrett * Louis Armstrong "As a human being with a rare generosity of spirit, Armstrong transcended the barriers of religion, category, and race." - Joshua Berrett JJM  Is Whiteman's recording of Rhapsody in Blue an example of how black and white musical worlds intermingled during that era? JB  Well, I believe there is something to that -- it was the way it was marketed -- and it was an effort to give jazz more mass appeal. It is complicated, obviously, by the fact that it was the era of Jim Crow laws and prohibition, therefore people would go "slumming" on Chicago's South Side or in Harlem. But I am thinking of the mass media and the different ways the music could be heard -- on the radio, in film, and on the records themselves. The era was obviously segregated, and there were these very discrete populations to whom the recordings were distributed. What would be fascinating to determine is how many of the same people who bought a recording by or listened to Paul Whiteman also bought "race records," which would have included the earliest recordings of King Oliver and Louis Armstrong. It is very hard to reconstruct that kind of history, and to get a really definitive answer. JJM  When did Armstrong and Whiteman begin to move in intersecting orbits? JB  I think it begins in the thirties, when, in a way, Armstrong is packaged more as a big band leader. That is something people often ignore. They focus on his "Hot Five" or "Hot Seven" recordings, which represents a rather limited phase of his whole career. But for much of his life, he was fronting a big band and promoting popular songs. I see a big intersection there, and it continues, pretty much, until 1947, when Armstrong's All Stars are formed. Of course, by this time, Whiteman was effectively out of the picture. It is very difficult to pinpoint certain moments where their careers may have intersected. They had two individual, parallel careers that in different ways embraced jazz and pop music while straddling the racial and national divide. They became international icons at different times -- by 1923, Whiteman was known in Europe, while Armstrong made it big in Europe in the late twenties and early thirties. JJM  One of the things that I was reminded of while reading your book was America's fascination of the exotic at the time… JB  The fascination with the exotic goes back to the teens, with the fascination of the animal dances, the Barbary Coast, and the fox trot. This fascination starts then and continues very clearly with Armstrong in the United States, but also in France. I write about how he was received at Salle Pleyel by Hugues Panassie in the early thirties, when Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt just wanted to hear Armstrong's deep, gravelly voice. They hardly knew a word of English but there was something exotic and quite out of their world about Armstrong that really grabbed them. JJM  What did Whiteman mean when he said he wanted to make a "lady" out of jazz? JB  That is generally code for saying that he wanted to make it acceptable to a white, middle class audience, and also to apply certain practices of classical music to it. While Whiteman was fascinated by orchestration, he was very acutely aware of the need for an earthy, gutsy, bluesy sound. When Bill Challis joined him as arranger, that really took hold. So, making a "lady" out of jazz was the idea of creating some kind of a controlled ensemble sound lacking in the so-called "hot" jazz of Armstrrong, yet would also capture its earthiness. This was a much more complicated thing than people realize because the Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles really did rehearse quite carefully, and planned what they played. This naïve notion that they just made it up as they went along is totally untrue. Armstrong was very conscious of the balance between the soloist and the ensemble. "Fox Trot," by Noble MacClure _____ Whispering , by Paul Whiteman West End Blues , by Louis Armstrong Bing Crosby Song Of The Dawn * Bix Beiderbecke Mississippi Mud * "The ‘New Orleans groove’ was the kind of hot jazz that was in Armstrong’s blood – a mode of music making that stood in sharp contrast to the norm for Paul Whiteman and symphonic jazz. What it meant for Armstrong was goin’ to town…cuttin’ loose and takin’ the music with you, whatever the score may call for…[to] break through the set rhythms and melody and toss them around…play away from the score." – Joshua Berrett JJM  Talk a little about Whiteman's vision for jazz on the concert stage? JB  He was trying to invigorate the whole language of modern music, using jazz idioms -- some of the syncopation, some of the saxophone sonorities, the blues sounds -- to energize the world, and I think that largely he succeeded. From the dance band stage, he believed he could incorporate European classical elements with what he felt to be jazz elements, especially standard blues qualities, syncopation, and certain kinds of instrumentation. One of the things I develop in the book is that this whole strain of symphonic jazz can be traced all the way from Whiteman's Rhapsody in Blue to the latest music of Wynton Marsalis. This is clearly traceable to Paul Whiteman, although there are precedents to Rhapsody in Blue you are perhaps familiar with -- La creation du monde , by Darius Milhaud, Stravinsky's Ragtime, as well as efforts by James Reese Europe in the teens. But Whiteman's Rhapsody in Blue struck gold and became the basis for a whole tradition of symphonic jazz. JJM  What do you suggest we listen to that exemplifies Whiteman's transformation of his sound into something that could be categorized as "hot"? JB  I would say virtually everything that he recorded while Bix Beiderbecke and Bing Crosby were with the band  -- as well as some of the recordings with Mildred Bailey. "Mississippi Mud" would be a good example. If you listen closely, there is a real effort to raise the temperature of the music, and when he hired Bill Challis, he did so for that purpose. JJM  When did he begin to sense that there were limitations to symphonic jazz, and how did he respond to it? JB  The limitations really persisted with him all the way through the early forties. He premiered Rhapsody in Blue in 1924 as part of his eight experiments in modern music, and his mission carried through to the early forties when he did that rather fascinating West Coast session with Billie Holiday, which was like the last gasp of his pop sound. But clearly, the eight experiments in modern music were very conscious efforts to achieve a synthesis of European music and jazz -- that was his express purpose. That is subsumed by the word "modern." The whole idea is that jazz is what made American music modern, and without jazz, music would not be modern. JJM  You write, "…the process of how Armstrong came to be written into jazz history as one of its very greatest icons and a symbol of proletarian 'people's' music, even as Whiteman was relegated to the sidelines, is very much part of our story. Whiteman was a casualty of a socialist agenda coupled with the heightened black consciousness emerging during and directly after World War II. And it was a political process which effectively denied or ignored much of what he had achieved to foster the careers of such African American musicians as Don Redman, Earl Hines, William Grant Still, Duke Ellington, and others." This isn't a view commonly held by other historians, is it? JB   I don't think so, and it is why I felt I had a certain mission in writing this book. To be honest, if you open a typical jazz reference book, there are two things Whiteman will be mentioned for; one is that he commissioned Gershwin to write Rhapsody in Blue, and the other is that Bix Beiderbecke played with him, essentially nurtured him, and offered him his chair back while he was dealing with his alcoholism. It is quite interesting, because I have some very well informed friends and members of the family who were very surprised when I even told them that Paul Whiteman had commissioned Gershwin to write Rhapsody in Blue. So, what I tried to do in the book is put Whiteman in a much larger context, and to show that he really went out on a limb. For example, in 1931 he wrote an affidavit in support of Armstrong when he was being threatened by the mob, saved Earl Hines from losing his job at the Terrace in Chicago, and got William Grant Still an important job as an arranger, commissioned Duke Ellington, and on and on. But then what happens is, starting in 1928 with the Communist International, and accelerating with the Scottsboro trial of 1931, a polarization sets in. The idea of blacks being a victimized race and the Communist Party rallying to their cause was very radicalizing for some. The Scottsboro trial radicalized John Hammond -- who described himself as a "New York social dissident" -- and it changed his perception of the world, and of blacks, and he felt that he somehow had to serve them to the virtual exclusion of whites. Paul Whiteman "As one of the most eruditite and articulate voices of the Harlem Renaissance, Alain Locke argued for a jazz style that would rid itself of 'shoddy superficiality and…repetitious vulgar gymnastics,' a music performed by academically trained musicians who preserve the African American folk idiom. For Locke, only William Grant Still and Duke Ellington were equal to the challenge of creating works worthy of the genre of symphonic jazz." - Joshua Berrett _____ Symphony No. 1, "Afro-American" , by William Grant Still "Black and White Unite To Free the Scottsboro Boys," from The Labor Defender, April, 1934 * "Drugged with the poison of popular music and with the virulent poison of the capitalist propaganda machine, prejudices are imposed upon the massess…That which is in reality shallow, cheap and sensational -- symphonic jazz, so-called semi-classical music -- is often-times mistaken for the real thing." - Communist Party member Charles Edward Smith, in a 1929 Daily Worker column _____ Whiteman Stomp, a c. 1928 Paul Whiteman recording Black And Blue , a 1929 Louis Armstrong recording JJM  You quote Hammond as writing in his autobiography John Hammond on Record, "The strongest motivation for my dissent was jazz. I heard no color line in the music. While my early favorites were white players, the recorded and live performances of Negroes excited me more. The fact that the best jazz players barely made a living, were barred from all well-paying jobs in radio and in most nightclubs enraged me…To bring recognition to the Negro's supremacy in jazz was the most effective and constructive form of social protest I could think of." JB  Yes. I am not disputing the value of what he did, it is just that in the process, these earlier contributions of Whiteman were completely ignored. As I was saying, the real lightening rod was the Scottsboro trial, which led people like Hammond to the larger issue of black music, specifically, jazz. It was also clearly accelerated by Armstrong's growing reputation as an international superstar, which effectively starts around this same time. I would say that was a force that was just overwhelming, and of course picks up during the forties, when blacks gradually gained more mobility, found employment in defense industries and, as everybody knows, Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. Add to that the growth of bebop and how it forced the audience to listen to music. I suppose one could challenge this, but I think it is generally true to say that bebop was the first kind of jazz that was meant primarily for listening, not dancing. So, you have this whole seismic shift that takes place. I do argue, and I hope that it is fairly persuasive, that it was a process initiated with the Communist International in 1928, and was accelerated by the events surrounding the Scottsboro trial. Out of this, a whole group of Ivy League Marxists were writing about jazz -- many of whom set the tone for jazz historiography, in this country in particular. JJM  You quote Sidney Finkelstein, who wrote Jazz, A People's Music as saying, "Jazz is the living embodiment of the creative powers of the people. It is especially the product, and gift to America, of the most poverty-stricken, hounded and exploited of the country, the Negro people…" JB  Yes, and the writer Rudi Blesh talks about how the corrupting influence of capitalism idealizes the proletarian ideal, and so on. These people tended to think in extremes, and I am trying to give a more nuanced view, and show that there is a give and take going on. Yes, Louis Armstrong is a stellar soloist who without question is in the pantheon called "jazz," but he was primarily a soloist, whereas Whiteman was more of a corporate executive who knew how to facilitate all kinds of developments in jazz as he knew it. In addition to that, I believe he was successful in many ways in developing something we today call "symphonic jazz," which is now realized in this great synthesis I call Wynton Marsalis -- who actually has brought together in a remarkable way the legacies of both Armstrong and Whiteman. Although he himself might disagree, the truth is that he has written music that is clearly within the symphonic jazz tradition. JJM  In 1939, Duke Ellington paid a high compliment to Whiteman, saying "Mr. Whiteman deserves credit for discovering and recognizing ability or genius in composers whose works would not normally be acceptable to dance bands. Whiteman makes it possible to commercialize these works. We confess he has maintained a 'higher level' for many years, and we think there is no doubt but that he has carried jazz to the highest position it ever has enjoyed. He put it in the ears of the serious audience and they liked it. He is still Mr. Whiteman." Are there subsequent quotes by Ellington on Whiteman that would have contradicted this viewpoint, causing those who revere Ellington to doubt the importance of Whiteman's work? JB  To be honest, I have not come across any. There might be such statements, but none that I have found. Often, these quotations have to be understood in context. Where was it initially published? Who was interviewing him? I find that Ellington himself is somewhat elusive. The real Duke Ellington is very hard to define, somewhat like the "Will o' the Wisp," and in his own way he could be a con artist of the highest order. At times he would say things that he thought people wanted to hear. In his book on Billy Strayhorn, Something to Live For, the author Walter van de Leur brings up the whole question of who wrote what for the Ellington orchestra. It is a very complex question. Who was Ellington, and what was he as a musician? That is only now starting to be understood by the real scholars. One might say that he is a very complex man to deconstruct. JJM  Did Whiteman's association with Al Jolson affect his standing with the way the jazz community viewed the seriousness of his work? JB  They collaborated on the Kraft Music Hall radio series during 1933. How their working together impacted Whiteman's standing with the jazz community as a result of it is not a subject I have really looked at in any great detail. When I mentioned their collaboration in the book, I was really trying to show how Whiteman wanted to make his music sound hot and earthy, which was part of the general mass media syndrome of radio. I believe one would have to go check out whatever "fanzines" were published at the time to really answer that question. Yes, you could say Whiteman working with Jolson was patronizing and racist from the persepctive of 2004, but at the time, a lot of this stuff was taken as the thing to do. It was the way people communicated. JJM  You spend a good deal of time in the book on Hollywood, and how that served to ratify the roles of Whiteman and Armstrong within the culture. JB  Absolutely. It was quite fascinating to see what went on. I wrote about High Society and Atlantic City and movies of that sort, and there is no question they served to market them. It would be fascinating to resurrect the information to correlate movie-goers with those who collected their records and those who danced to their music or just listened to this stuff. Duke Ellington "...no one could fault Whiteman for his generosity of spirit. In 1924, after finishing his evening at New York's Palais Royal, he would stop by around the corner at the Kentucky Club to soak up the sounds of Duke Ellington and his Club Serenaders. Ellington himself later recalled: 'Whiteman came often as a genuine enthusiast, listened respectfully, said his words of encouragement, very discreetly slipped the piano player a fifty-dollar bill, and very loudly proclaimed our musical merit.'   "Some two years later, in a piece of advance publicity for Ellington's summer tour of New England, he was hailed as 'The Paul Whiteman of Colored Orchestras.' Then in his August 27, 1927, column for the leading black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, Dave Peyton reported on a previous article describing Whiteman's reaction to Ellington's band of the day: 'One eveing in particular this writer sat in the night club and saw Paul Whiteman offer the Washingtonians $100 to play I Love You in their inimitable way. When Paul Whiteman recognizes another orchestra's superiority they must be very good. It is very unusual for Paul to seek musical information. He usually gives it.'" - Joshua Berrett _____ Black And Tan Fantasy , a 1927 recording by Duke Ellington Louis Armstrong "Armstrong clearly saw jazz as a totally inclusive music and himself as a vital force in the cause of a mass populism promoting a 'social democratic culture.' In an interview with Richard Hadlock, Armstrong says, 'Anything you can express to the public is jazz.'" - Joshua Berrett _____ Potato Head Blues, by Louis Armstrong JJM  Both of these men were so complex. We have talked a lot about Whiteman, but concerning Armstrong's complexities, when I was a kid, two lasting impressions of Armstrong beyond his being a larger-than-life musician stood out for me. One was his strong stand against racial discrimination -- in particular relating to the events in Little Rock, Arkansas -- and the other is this quite opposite impression of him displaying the type of personality referred to as an "Uncle Tom." JB  Yes, I understand. I write about this, as does a colleague of mine, Krin Gabbard, in his book on jazz and film, Jamming at the Margins. The fact is that yes, Louis could smile and mug and seem like an "Uncle Tom," but while he was smiling, he would drop poison in your coffee. He used humor to make his point, and I think that is part of his genius. There is no question that superficially he could seem to be an "Uncle Tom," but there was no other black American of that generation -- and specifically in the times of 1957 -- who could challenge Dwight Eisenhower the way he did, even canceling a State Department sponsored tour of the Soviet Union in protest. I think his actions speak louder than his smile, and that is what counts. We tend to hone in on superficialities and on things that are not particularly relevant, or maybe that are not really communicating the message that is being communicated. We misread the signals. I think part of the challenge with any complex personality like Whiteman or Armstrong is that they are giving out multiple signals, and that is part of their complex nature. Coming from such different backgrounds, they operated in different contexts. As somebody who grew up in poverty and who knew what Jim Crow was all about, there is no question that Armstrong used his humor as a means of survival. The idea that he was an "Uncle Tom" is somewhat simplistic, because it ignores all the other factors. JJM  How do you expect the jazz community will receive your work? JB  I hope favorably. There are those who will say that I am giving too much importance to Whiteman, but what is very fascinating are the actions of people from the era. For example, Fletcher Henderson at one time was called the "Paul Whiteman" of his race. Some of the early managers of Duke Ellington would market him as a "Paul Whiteman," and there is this whole idea of how Whiteman was used as a role model for African Americans. JJM  Along these lines, you quote Earl Hines as having boasted, "Paul Whiteman loved my playing, and he would have liked me to join him, but he always had to qualify his admiration by saying, 'If you were only white…'" JB  Yes, so that is the point I was trying to make here. It is quite fascinating if you go look at the early history. JJM  Yet if you look at what some of the black intellectuals of the era were saying, particularly those within the Harlem Renaissance… JB  Absolutely. If you look at the Chicago Defender and read the commentaries by Dave Peyton, Whiteman was viewed as a real role model, because being able to read music and play from a written score was perceived as a real ideal to strive for. So, this issue is clearly complex, and what I would like to add is that I am arguing for a mutual give and take. It is clearly a case of reciprocity that defines the history of jazz, and I try to make it very clear in my concluding chapter that Wynton Marsalis is like a grand synthesis of Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman in just about everything he has done over the past few years. If you look at his career, it is very obvious that he has combined his two worlds. JJM  What Marsalis recordings would you point to that best demonstrate that? JB  The concluding work I write about is All Rise, from 1999, which is a commission from the New York Philharmonic and involves the performing forces of Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Philharmonic itself. In fact, Marsalis also performed it on the West Coast with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Then there are various pieces he has written for the Orion String Quartet, as well as Blood on the Fields. These are all works that you might label "Third Stream," but they can clearly be traced to this whole symphonic stream starting with Rhapsody in Blue. JJM  Would Marsalis agree with you that these works are a grand synthesis of Armstrong and Whiteman? JB   I have not had the privilege of interviewing Marsalis, but the fact is that much of his recent writing has, without question, been in the symphonic jazz tradition. You don't require the forces of the New York Philharmonic and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra -- to the point of having them on the same stage at the same time -- without the work being in that tradition. It is a very clear effort on his part to create a kind of synthesis that is as inclusive as possible. I don't think you can avoid coming to that conclusion when listening to the music. "The twentieth has been the century of communication.  The twenty-first will be the century of integration.  Now there's more talk than ever about the global community.  The search is on, and when we finally find each other, the head of recognition will cause souls to rise.  We will truly be at home in the world.  All Rise celebrates togetherness and ascendance.  It has dance movements, introspective sections, and other portions that aim to demonstrate basic units of music like the blues that speak of a common human heritage." - Wynton Marsalis _____ All Rise/Movement 3: Go Slow (But Don't Stop), from All Rise The Market Place , from Blood on the Fields JJM  So are you saying that, like Whiteman, Marsalis is attempting to make a "lady" out of jazz? JB  In his own way, yes. As we all well know, there is a resplendent jazz facility opening in New York with unprecedented space dedicated to it. Much of that is as a result of his having access to money and power in much the same way that Paul Whiteman did a few decades ago. There is no question that he has a golden touch. JJM  Do you want to add anything else? JB  Only that I am very encouraged by the reception for the book so far. I like to think that it gets people thinking, and I am all for fostering more tolerance and understanding in this world. I guess that is part of my larger agenda. ______________________________________________ "We have already seen how the centennials of Whiteman and Armstrong's years of birth and their respective legacies were celebrated in utterly different fashion.  And the relative neglect of Whiteman has not simply been a symptom of a predominantly African-American jazz perspective shaped by the ideologies of the late 1930s or the changes wrought by the civil rights movement of the 1950s and beyond.  It has also been the casualty of a failure to acknowledge Whiteman as the father of an often-overlooked tradition -- that of symphonic jazz." * - Joshua Berrett _____ Wistful and Blue , by Paul Whiteman Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman: Two Kings of Jazz by Joshua Berrett About Joshua Berrett JJM  Who was your childhood hero? JB  My childhood hero? Wow. I suppose this is a time for honored confessions. I would say that it might have been Beethoven. I was born in South Africa, and was very much nurtured by the "dead white European male's" tradition. When I began teaching in this country, and woke up to the realities of a more global, cosmopolitan world, I embraced jazz in many ways. Also, I grew up during the waning years of apartheid in South Africa, and I was very beholden to the United Party -- which was the diametric opposite of the Nationalist Party. One of the United Party figures who affected my very early life was Jan Christian Smuts. * Joshua Berrett is the author of The Louis Armstrong Companion: Eight Decades of Commentary and co-author of The Musical World of J.J. Johnson. His articles have been published in Journal of Jazz Studies, The Musical Quarterly, American Music and The Black Perspective in Music. He is professor of music at Mercy College. Paul Whiteman products at Amazon.com Louis Armstrong products at Amazon.com Joshua Berrett products at Amazon.com _______________________________ This interview took place on October 4, 2004 * If you enjoyed this interview, you may want to read our interview with Jazz Modernism author Alfred Appel. _______________________________ Other Jerry Jazz Musician interviews # Text from publisher.

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