Book Excerpt from Designed for Dancing: How Midcentury Records Taught America to Dance, by Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder

June 22nd, 2022

.

.

 

.

.

…..In Designed for Dancing: How Midcentury Records Taught America to Dance, vinyl record aficionados Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder celebrate dance records of the 1950s and 1960s as expressions of midcentury identity, fantasy, and desire. The stories begin with the memorable and striking album covers which were central to the way records were produced and promoted.

…..The authors write that “dancing allowed people to sample aspirational lifestyles, whether at the Plaza or in a smoky Parisian café, and to affirm ancestral identities with Irish, Polish, or Greek folk dancing. Dance records invited consumers to dance in the footsteps of the Other with ‘hot’ Latin music, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and Hawaiian hulas.

…..“Bought at a local supermarket, department store, or record shop, and listened to in the privacy of home, midcentury dance records offered instruction in how to dance, how to dress, how to date, and how to discover cool new music—lessons for harmonizing with the rest of postwar America.”

…..In this excerpt, the authors write about influential midcentury Latin-themed dance albums.

.

.

___

.

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder are a creative team – writing, teaching, and collecting vinyl records together for over 25 years. They are co-authors of Designed for Dancing: How Midcentury Records Taught America to Dance and Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America, which was named a best book of 2017 by the Financial Times and a best music book of 2017 by Vinyl Factory.

.

.

Praise for the book

.

“What an extraordinary accomplishment — this is a game changer for our understanding of mid-century America.”

Penny Von Eschen, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American Studies, University of Virginia

.

“An intriguing look at social dance culture through a material lens. For scholars and aficionados of mid-20th-century popular culture.”

Library Journal

.

“From hula to rock and roll, belly dance to square dance, tango to Polish polka, Borgerson and Schroeder provide a treasure trove of information, research, and warm memories!”

Anthony Shay, Professor of Dance and Cultural Studies, Pomona College, California

.

.

 

The authors have created a Spotify playlist – “Designed for Dancing – Latin” –  featuring much of the music discussed in this excerpt, and can be accessed at the conclusion of this excerpt.

A selection of album covers featured in the book can be found at their website by clicking here

.

.

 

Excerpted from Designed for Dancing: How Midcentury Records Taught America to Dance, by Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder is used by permission of the authors, and MIT Press.

.

.

___

.

.

 

 

 

…..Anyone who spends time exploring the “Latin” sections of used record bins may be surprised by the seemingly endless variety of midcentury Latin albums: dance, pre-Castro Cuba, travel promotion, and music all over the map from Caribbean, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Latin American, and South American performers. Mainstream American singers were encouraged to “go Latin,” helping explain the scores of Latin-themed LPs such as Nat King Cole’s Cole Español, Dino Latino (from Dean Martin), and Doris Day’s Latin for Lovers.

…..On the classic and collectible cover of The Dancing Beat of the Latin Bands, her Bata Cubana regalia pulled open to reveal her fishnet tights, the dancing model’s head rises just above the names of six Latin American bandleaders, a trio of percussionists just out of focus in the background. With her ruffled skirt and sleeves, she bears some similarity to a female dancing emoji. With music from Perez Prado, Xavier Cugat, Tito Puente, Juan Garciá Esquivel, Luis Arcaraz, and Russ Garcia, the LP offers a stereo sampler some of the biggest names of 1950s Latin music. Arcaraz, a leading composer and bandleader in his home country of Mexico, brings his lush, big band sound; Garcia, from the US, was a versatile arranger and composer for stage and screen whose work his whimsical Fantastica: The Music from Outer Space. Prado and Arcaraz had both appeared Cha-Cha-Cha-Boom, one of Hollywood’s first Cha Cha Cha films.

…..Esquivel, the Mexican bandleader and music impresario, anticipated the dispersal and later developments of Latin music. The Dancing Beat of the Latin Bands also includes Prado’s hit “Guaglione,” and Garcia’s samba “Carioca.” On his memorable tunes “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Adios,” the prince of exotic Latin pop includes echoes, groovy voices zu-zu-ing behind the beat, with sound zooming from left to right, dramatically demonstrating the still new stereo dimension. The sound of this early stereo LP is magnificent.

…..In Designed for Dancing: How Midcentury Records Taught America to Dance, we reflect on the role of dance records and their covers in the midcentury imagination and their significance in the story of American identity. By dance records we mean records for social dancing, intended to accompany, celebrate, and teach popular dances of the day. Dance records provided listeners with dance lessons, as well as lessons in how to dress, date, and discover diverse musical styles, opening spaces for fashion, romance, and cultural understanding. They also helped introduce a postwar public to the hip sways and horizons of dancing, including new ways of engaging friends and family, as well as wider communities in one’s home town and in countries around the globe.

…..In our previous book, Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America, we argued that midcentury record album covers from the 1950s and 1960s offered postwar America alluring lessons and modernist visions for achieving contemporary lifestyles, fueled by an economy of abundance, choice, and consumer sovereignty. The ideal home, the ideal living room, the ideal romance, honeymoon, and family, not to mention the Cold War victories in the kitchen and in outer space, all were visible, tangible, achievable, in the fantastical frame of the record cover.

…..But, what of the fun and colorful Twist and Hula records, nostalgic folk dance albums, and suggestive Cha Cha Cha and Mambo LPs from this era? Would these vintage dance records, filled with dancing bodies in motion, reflect similar themes? What would they tell us about the convergence of dancing, music, and midcentury identity? We set out to investigate.

…..We assembled a wide variety of illustrative examples, turning again to a large vinyl archive, which we have collected over thirty years. We discuss record cover design and photography, as well as liner notes and music, to illuminate how dance records encouraged cultural confidence and greater ease with cosmopolitan identities, leading the US postwar population onto the dance floor and out into the wider world.

.

Latin Dance Records from the 1950s and 1960s

.

…..Dance records offered connections to sophisticated, fantasy lifestyles and a look into distant lands and exotic cultures, but homegrown, hometown, more local virtues and values also made earnest appearances. More than minor artifacts of material culture, dance records from the 1950s and 1960s were a leading entertainment and information distribution format – a central aspect of midcentury media. “Dancing Latin” implied moving bodies expressing desire, emotion, and physical prowess. Popular versions of “Latin” dancing often obsessed about how the hips moved. When taught by the American ballroom dance industry, Latin dances, beyond the typical emphasis on posture and reproducing particular steps, focused on hip movements. Hips were “hot.”

…..Latin dance helped shape American identity. The term Latin refers to a wide range of music and dance, loosely relating to the scope of Spanish colonization. Liner notes mention, but are just as likely to shade, the presence of slavery and colonialism at the roots of racial and Latin musical mixing. The African diaspora – particularly in the context of four hundred years of slavery – represents the core of Latin American popular music history. According to cultural historian John Chasteen, “African lineage-based social organization” and affiliations formed around language groups that birthed “neo-African nations,” for example in Rio and Havana. These “nations” created the foundations of social groups that often included dance in their celebrations and other gatherings, and are important for understanding Latin dance, as it developed in the 20th century.

…..Fun – but, fun fraught with the freight of history – midcentury Latin LPs encompass imagery that takes inspiration from South America, Spain, and the Caribbean, often in clichéd, exoticized forms. Visions of “hot” Latin dance fire up stereotypes of Latin Americans as passionate and impulsive. Drawing on the power of this exotic figure whose passionate hips offered dance floor mania, Latin dancing in midcentury America represented a vaguely dangerous escape from mainstream manners.

…..Further, “fun” frequently meant female: many Latin album covers feature glamourous, “native” dancers, celebrating the music, demonstrating the dance, and often soliciting a sexist gaze. The focus of many Latin dance LPs, the Morena, described as a “dark” woman, partly African or indigenous, familiar, yet attractively alien, reflects a long colonial history.

…..For some, dancing Latin could be an arena for bodily experimentation. Following the lead of the album cover Morena by dancing Latin could mean embodying the hot Latin dancer, assuming a different identity – at least during the dance. Indeed, Latin dance pulses with an underlying beat of transgression, as Chasteen points out: “Desire that crosses lines of race and class has always been transgressive in Latin America, and in most societies the world over. Those who benefit from a given social order makes rules designed to maintain it, and these rules make line-crossing transgressive.” The passion and erotic potential expressed through so many Latin dance record covers may be as due to the transgression of line-crossing as to the dance movements themselves.

…..As Latin dances migrated from nightclubs and street celebrations into American ballrooms and dance studios, and became a staple of television dance programs and Hollywood films, they were often “tamed” in transition. Latin dances were incorporated into the standard repertoire of social dance. Not surprisingly, commercial concerns influenced the rise of Latin dancing in the 1950s, including the potential to sell Latin dance lessons. Midcentury Latin records, which helped market Latin dance, often simplified the dances, but many offered sincere attempts to teach the steps, along with detailed, if at times, deluded, efforts to explain their origins.

…..Three musicians loomed large on the US Latin dance music scene during its 1950s glory years: Perez Prado, Tito Puente, and Tito Rodriguez. Along with celebrated figures such as Desi Arnaz and Xavier Cugat, they embodied a popular, and at times caricatured, Latin identity. Puente, who performed with the groundbreaking Afro-Cuban band of Machito, and Rodriguez, a veteran of Xavier Cugat’s orchestra, held court at the Palladium nightclub in New York City. Prado grew famous for his film appearances. These successful musicians personified Latin music, for whites and Latinos alike, throughout the US.

…..Tito Puente’s Dancing Under Latin Skies offers a set of instrumental dance music, set to a travel theme, with tunes “Acapulco,” “Brazil,” “and “Port-au-Pleasure” – wherever that is. The notes reinforce the tour motif: “Imagine yourself on a pleasure cruise through the blue waters of the Caribbean. The night is warm and so are the rhythms, while the atmosphere is joyfully alive with the spirit of good living just for the fun of it. On deck under the brilliant stars, playing for your enjoyment, is the great band of Tito Puente. This album is like that.” The cover might be a scene from the nightly cabaret show, with dancers in bolero jackets and gold lamé bustiers demonstrating the latest Latin moves.

…..From Puerto Rico, but associated with Cuban music throughout his career, Puente leads his orchestra through Latin classics, including boleros, mambos, and sambas, done in easy, cruise-worthy, Cha Cha Cha style. Puente produced over a hundred albums, and was consistently innovating; he introduced the marimba to Cuban music, and broke new ground with Afro-Cuban drumming. The notes concur: “Wherever you are, Latin skies are overhead when you dance to the brilliant music of Tito Puente and his orchestra.”

…..The notes for Take Me Dancing! introduce the record with: “This is not just another Latin-American dance set. It is something much more. This collection introduces the American public to rare musicians whose imagination and explorations open new vistas in rhythm and sound.” With music from Astor Piazzolla (the record misspells his name), the album offers a “program of total dance rhythm to present both American popular standards as well as new compositions.” Piazzolla was celebrated for introducing and enthusiastically promoting nuevo tango, which mixes aspects of classical music, jazz, and traditional tango. In the words of historian Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Piazzolla “used the format to introduce dissonance and chromatic harmony and to use a much wider range of rhythm than traditional tango allowed. And while retaining tango’s essential romanticism, he stretched and eventually abandoned traditional tango song forms.”

…..Piazzolla grew up in New York City and spent much of his life in his Argentinian homeland. He became synonymous with tango for many Americans, as indicated in the album’s liner notes: “paradoxically, Piazzolla, who from the beginnings with the tango scorned the dancers, composing and playing a tango only for listeners, couldn’t avoid the fact that his music was used by dancers around the world.” On Take Me Dancing!, he fuses jazz with tango, anchored with his virtuoso bandoneon (a key tango instrumental ingredient, similar to an accordion), adding the distinctive vibraphone of Eddie Costa and electric guitar by Al Caiola, along with Chet Amsterdam on contrabass.

…..The cover was shot by Raymond Jacobs, who regularly photographed for Esquire, Fortune, Glamour, and Harper’s Bazaar and became noted for celebrity photographs of musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and Eartha Kitt. Jacobs contributed to the well-known “Family of Man” exhibition, and his work is in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection. Take Me Dancing! shows a dancing couple, his dark suit accessorized with a red vest that matches her bright, high-cowled dress and heels, locked in a Tango embrace, against a brilliant scarlet background, their faces inches apart, eyes locked in congenial concentration. The songs include several compositions by Piazzolla, including “Contratiempo” and “Boricua,” as well as jazz standards “Lullaby of Birdland” and “Sophisticated Lady.”

…..That’s Mary Tyler Moore on the cover of Latin Favorites, dressed the part, with her bright pink and orange dancing costume adorned with gold sequins. In Moore’s first television appearance, she played Happy Hotpoint, an elf-like dancer for Hotpoint appliance ads. Her dancer’s figure, dark eyes, and dark hair, seemed to make her an appropriate model for “going Latin,” despite her Northern European heritage. Moore appears in the same outfit on several other LPs, including Miguelito Valdez! – Playing His World Famous Latin Rhythms and Cha Cha Cha by Raoul Martinez.

…..Like most of Craftsmen’s covers, Latin Favorites used a circle within a square design, so the photograph mimics the shape of the record within. The brief notes warn: “In America, – the springboard for Latin music’s world conquest – you better be up on your samba, mambo and cha-cha-cha, or stay off the dance floor.” But Latin Favorites offers a solution – “By the way, how are you at Latin steps? If you’re a bit rusty, then here’s an album of excellent dance music ideally suited to helping you brush up.”

…..Latin Favorites provides no information about the musicians, but by closely listening one can discern that the package included previously released recordings of “Mambo Jambo,” by Terry Snyder and the All Stars, “Mira Como Los Pollos,” by Jack Costanzo (from his LP Mr. Bongo Plays In Hi-Fi Cha Cha Cha), and “Mambo #5,” by none other than Tito Rodriquez and his Orchestra. With these well-known musicians furnishing the tunes, Latin Rhythms makes a respectable introductory Latin sampler.

…..Tito Rodriguez and his Orchestra’s West Side Beat, taps into the success of West Side Story, the modern updating of Shakespeare’s tale of doomed romance, Romeo and Juliet. With lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, music by Leonard Bernstein, and choreography (and co-direction) by Jerome Robbins, West Side Story utilized the Mambo to showcase the Latin vs. White conflicts at the heart of the story, as well as providing that fatal moment when star-crossed love blooms when Maria spots Tony.

…..The cover includes four still photographs from the pivotal “Mambo” scene in the West Side Story film, one of Rodriguez and his longtime dancer Martha Correa doing that year’s big dance, the Twist, by Maurice Seymour studio. West Side Beat includes “West Side Story’s “Maria,” and “Tonight,” a selection of Spanish languages numbers, as well as “Voulez Vou Cha Cha.”

…..Today, Latin music is bigger than ever, although many of the Latin dances were swallowed up by salsa. Midcentury Latin dance albums capture the heyday of Latin music, when Prado, Puente, and Rodriguez ruled dancefloors and dominated record shops.

.

.

___

.

.

Excerpt from Designed for Dancing: How Midcentury Records Taught America to Dance, by Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder is used by permission of the authors, and MIT Press.

 

Click here to view a selection of album covers featured in the book.

 

The authors have created this Spotify playlist – “Designed for Dancing – Latin” –  featuring much of the music discussed in this excerpt.

 

.

.

.

 

 

Share this:

Comment on this article:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

A Letter From the Publisher

An appeal for contributions to support the ongoing publishing efforts of Jerry Jazz Musician

In This Issue

The Modern Jazz Quintet by Everett Spruill
A Collection of Jazz Poetry — Summer, 2023 Edition

A wide range of topics are found in this collection. Tributes are paid to Tony Bennett and Ahmad Jamal and to the abstract worlds of musicians like Ornette Coleman and Pharoah Sanders; the complex lives of Chet Baker and Nina Simone are considered; devotions to Ellington and Basie are revealed; and personal solace is found in the music of Tommy Flanagan and Quartet West. These are poems of peace, reflection, time, venue and humor – all with jazz at their core. (Featuring the art of Everett Spruill)

The Sunday Poem

“Mirabella,” by Samuel Lind
“Queen” by Emily Jon Tobias

Poetry

The poet Connie Johnson in 1981
In a Place of Dreams: Connie Johnson’s album of jazz poetry, music, and life stories...A collection of the remarkable poet's work is woven among her audio readings, a personal narrative of her journey and music she considers significant to it, providing readers the chance to experience the full value of her gifts.

Community

Nominations for the Pushcart Prize XLVIII

Interview

photo courtesy of Henry Threadgill
Interview with Brent Hayes Edwards, co-author (with Henry Threadgill) of Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Music...The author discusses his work co-written with Threadgill, the composer and multi-instrumentalist widely recognized as one of the most original and innovative voices in contemporary music, and the winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Poetry

"Jazz Diva" by Marsha Hammel
A brief collection of poetry devoted to jazz…and love...Seven poets combine the music of jazz with an act of love…

Poetry

photo of Bill Evans by Veryl Oakland
Six poets, six poems on Bill Evans...A poetic appreciation for the work of the legendary pianist

Feature

Joel Lewis
True Jazz Stories: “Well You Needn’t: My Life as a Jazz Fan” by Joel Lewis...The journalist and poet Joel Lewis shares his immensely colorful story of falling in love with jazz, and living with it and reporting on it during his younger days in New Jersey and New York

Poetry

"The Dancer" by Elaine Croce Happnie
“The Dancer” – a poem by Zoya Gargova

Playlist

photo by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress
“A Baker’s Dozen Playlist of Ella Fitzgerald Specialties from Five Decades,” as selected by Ella biographer Judith Tick...Chosen from Ella’s entire repertoire, Ms. Tick’s intriguing playlist (with brief commentary) is a mix of studio recordings, live dates, and video, all available for listening here.

Poetry

painting by Henry Denander
A collection of jazz haiku...This collection, featuring 22 poets, is an example of how much love, humor, sentimentality, reverence, joy and sorrow poets can fit into their haiku devoted to jazz.

Community

Nominations for the Pushcart Prize XLVIII...Announcing the six writers nominated for the Pushcart Prize v. XLVIII, whose work was published in Jerry Jazz Musician during 2023.

Poetry

photo of Sarah Vaughan by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress
”Sarah” – a poem by Connie Johnson

Short Fiction

photo vi Wallpaper Flare
Short Fiction Contest-winning story #63 — “Company” by Anastasia Jill...Twenty-year-old Priscilla Habel lives with her wannabe flapper mother who remains stuck in the jazz age 40 years later. Life is monotonous and sad until Cil meets Willie Flasterstain, a beatnik lesbian who offers an escape from her mother's ever-imposing shadow.

Photography

photo of Anthony Braxton by Giovanni Piesco
The Photographs of Giovanni Piesco: Anthony Braxton...Beginning in 1990, the noted photographer Giovanni Piesco began taking backstage photographs of many of the great musicians who played in Amsterdam’s Bimhuis, that city’s main jazz venue which is considered one of the finest in the world. Jerry Jazz Musician will occasionally publish portraits of jazz musicians that Giovanni has taken over the years. This edition is of the saxophonist Anthony Braxton, taken in January, 2015.

Interview

Chick Webb/photographer unknown
Interview with Stephanie Stein Crease, author of Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat That Changed America...The author talks about her book and Chick Webb, once at the center of America’s popular music, and among the most influential musicians in jazz history.

Poetry

photo by Ric Brooks Knoxville, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
“Four Sides Live” – a poem by Justin Hare

Community

FOTO:FORTEPAN / Kölcsey Ferenc Dunakeszi Városi Könyvtár / Petanovics fényképek, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
.“Community Bookshelf, #1"...a twice-yearly space where writers who have been published on Jerry Jazz Musician can share news about their recently authored books. This edition includes information about books published within the last six months or so…

Poetry

photo of Cab Calloway by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress
“Zoot Suit Times (Rhythms From the Past)” – a poem by Oliver Lake

Poetry

Trading Fours, with Douglas Cole, No. 17: “All I know about music is not many people ever really hear it”

Short Fiction

photo via joogleberry.com
“A Song and Dance Proposition” – a short story by Richard Moore...Because of his childhood experiences, the story’s narrator loses his singing voice and as an adult neither sings nor dances. But when his marriage falls apart he meets a ‘song and dance man’ who turns out to be Iris, a woman with multiple sclerosis. With her help, he comes to grip with his inhibitions.

Playlist

photo by Bob Hecht
This 28-song Spotify playlist, curated by Jerry Jazz Musician contributing writer Bob Hecht, features great tunes performed by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Lester Young, Stan Getz, and…well, you get the idea.

Jazz History Quiz #168

photo of Coleman Hawkins by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress
Jazz History Quiz #168...In addition to being a top bassist between 1945 – 1960, he was the first major jazz soloist on the cello. He also played on Coleman Hawkins’ 1943 recording of “The Man I Love,” and appeared with Hawkins and Howard McGhee in the film The Crimson Canary. Who is he?

Short Fiction

Tents at Nuseirat, southern Palestine, UNRRA's biggest camp for Greek refugees/via United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
“Remember to Forget” – a short story by Amadea Tanner...Ms. Tanner's story, a finalist in the recently concluded 63rd Short Fiction Contest, is about a war correspondent's haunting revelations after she comes across musicians in a refugee camp.

Interview

photo by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress
Interview with Alyn Shipton, author of The Gerry Mulligan 1950’s Quartets...Long regarded as jazz music’s most eminent baritone saxophonist, Gerry Mulligan was a central figure in “cool” jazz whose contributions to it also included his important work as a composer and arranger. Noted jazz scholar Alyn Shipton, author of The Gerry Mulligan 1950s Quartets, and Jerry Jazz Musician contributing writer Bob Hecht discuss Mulligan’s unique contributions to modern jazz.

Photography

photo by Giovanni Piesco
Giovanni Piesco’s photographs of Tristan Honsinger

Short Fiction

Mary Pickford, 1918/trialsanderrors, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
“Bashert” – a short story by Diane Lederman...This story, a finalist in the 63rd Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest, looks at the hopes one man has that a woman he meets the night before he leaves for Camp Devens will keep him alive during World War I so he can return and take her out for dinner

Book Excerpt

“Chick” Webb was one of the first virtuoso drummers in jazz and an innovative bandleader dubbed the “Savoy King,” who reigned at Harlem’s world-famous Savoy Ballroom. Stephanie Stein Crease is the first to fully tell Webb’s story in her biography, Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat that Changed America…The book’s entire introduction is excerpted here.

Feature

Hans Christian Hagedorn, professor for German and Comparative Literature at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Ciudad Real (Spain) reveals the remarkable presence of Miguel de Cervantes’ classic Don Quixote in the history of jazz.

Short Fiction

“In the Church Library” – a short story by Zary Fekete

Book Excerpt

Book excerpt from Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Music, by Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards

Contributing Writers

Click the image to view the writers, poets and artists whose work has been published on Jerry Jazz Musician, and find links to their work

Interview

photo of Sonny Rollins by Brian McMillen
Interview with Aidan Levy, author of Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins...The author discusses his book about the iconic tenor saxophonist who is one of the greatest jazz improvisers of all time – a lasting link to the golden age of jazz

Art

Designed for Dancing: How Midcentury Records Taught America to Dance: “Outtakes” — Vol. 2...In this edition, the authors Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder share examples of Cha Cha Cha record album covers that didn't make the final cut in their book

Pressed for All Time

“Pressed For All Time,” Vol. 17 — producer Joel Dorn on Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s 1967 album, The Inflated Tear

Coming Soon

An interview with Judith Tick, author of Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song;...An interview with Gary Carner, author of Pepper Adams: Saxophone Trailblazer; A new collection of jazz poetry; a collection of jazz haiku; a new Jazz History Quiz; short fiction; poetry; photography; interviews; playlists; and lots more in the works…

Interview Archive

Eubie Blake
Click to view the complete 22 year archive of Jerry Jazz Musician interviews, including those recently published with Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom on Eubie Blake (pictured); Richard Brent Turner on jazz and Islam; Alyn Shipton on the art of jazz; Shawn Levy on the original queens of standup comedy; Travis Atria on the expatriate trumpeter Arthur Briggs; Kitt Shapiro on her life with her mother, Eartha Kitt; Will Friedwald on Nat King Cole; Wayne Enstice on the drummer Dottie Dodgion; the drummer Joe La Barbera on Bill Evans; Philip Clark on Dave Brubeck; Nicholas Buccola on James Baldwin and William F. Buckley; Ricky Riccardi on Louis Armstrong; Dan Morgenstern and Christian Sands on Erroll Garner; Maria Golia on Ornette Coleman.

Site Archive