Full Description
The most successful bandleader of the 1920s, Paul Whiteman was an entertainment icon who played a major role in the mainstreaming of jazz. Whiteman and his band premiered Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Duke Ellington acknowledged his achievements. His astonishing ear for talent vaulted a who's who of artists toward prominence. But Whiteman's oversized presence eclipsed Black jazz musicians while his middlebrow music prompted later generations to jettison him from jazz history.
W. Anthony Sheppard's collection of essays confronts the racial implications of Whiteman's career. The contributors explore Whiteman's broad impact on popular culture, tracking his work and influence in American marketing, animated films, the Black press, Hollywood, and the music publication industry, and following him behind the scenes with arrangers, into grand concert halls, across the Atlantic, into the courtroom, and on television.
Multifaceted and cutting-edge, Beyond the Bandstand explores the racial politics and artistic questions surrounding a controversial figure in popular music.
Contributors: Ryan Raul BaÑagale, Stephanie Doktor, John Howland, Katherine M. Leo, Sarah Caissie Provost, W. Anthony Sheppard, Catherine Tackley, Elijah Wald, and Christi Jay Wells
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Paul Whiteman Collection at Williams College Lisa Conathan
Introduction: Naming and Placing Whiteman W. Anthony Sheppard
Black Music, White Bodies, Paul Whiteman's Body Stephanie Doktor
Paul Whiteman, Cultural Ownership, and Jazz Historiography in Dave Peyton's "The Musical Bunch" Christi Jay Wells
Paul Whiteman and Modern Metropolitan Music, 1927-1940 John Howland
Arranging Orientalism for Whiteman Ryan Raul BaÑagale
Concertized Jazz: The Divergent Motives of Whiteman (1924) and Goodman (1938) Sarah Caissie Provost
"Symphonised Syncopation": Paul Whiteman in the United Kingdom and Europe in the 1920s Catherine Tackley
RCA v. Whiteman and the Case for Radio Broadcast Rights Katherine M. Leo
Integration and Segregation in Whiteman's Music Television, 1948-1955 W. Anthony Sheppard
Afterword Elijah Wald
Contributors
Bibliography
Index
