Full Description
Jazz is one of America's greatest gifts to the arts, and native Texas musicians have played a major role in the development of jazz from its birth in ragtime, blues, and boogie-woogie to its most contemporary manifestation in free jazz. Dave Oliphant began the fascinating story of Texans and jazz in his acclaimed book Texan Jazz, published in 1996. Continuing his riff on this intriguing musical theme, Oliphant uncovers in this new volume more of the prolific connections between Texas musicians and jazz.
Jazz Mavericks of the Lone Star State presents sixteen published and previously unpublished essays on Texans and jazz. Oliphant celebrates the contributions of such vital figures as Eddie Durham, Kenny Dorham, Leo Wright, and Ornette Coleman. He also takes a fuller look at Western Swing through Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies and a review of Duncan McLean's Lone Star Swing. In addition, he traces the relationship between British jazz criticism and Texas jazz and defends the reputation of Texas folklorist Alan Lomax as the first biographer of legendary jazz pianist-composer Jelly Roll Morton. In other essays, Oliphant examines the links between jazz and literature, including fiction and poetry by Texas writers, and reveals the seemingly unlikely connection between Texas and Wisconsin in jazz annals. All the essays in this book underscore the important parts played by Texas musicians in jazz history and the significance of Texas to jazz, as also demonstrated by Oliphant's reviews of the Ken Burns PBS series on jazz and Alfred Appel Jr.'s Jazz Modernism.
Contents
Tuning Up with a Few Introductory Notes
Jazz Mavericks of the Lone Star State
The Roots of Texan Jazz
From Bebop to Hard Bop and Beyond: The Texas Connections
Texas Bebop Messengers to the World: Kenny Dorham and Leo Wright
British Acolytes of Jazz and Its Texas Contingent
The Wisconsin-Texas Jazz Nexus
Jazz in Literature
The Alchemy of Jazz
Ornette Coleman's Harmolodic Life
A Jazz Master's Diamond Jubilee
A Texas Take on Ken Burns's Jazz
Swinging Through Texas on a Scottish Air
The Birth of Western Swing
The Inventor of Jazz Revisited: Untangling the Legacy of Jelly Roll Morton and Alan Lomax
Discographies and Texan Jazz
San Marcos in Jazz History
Notes
Bibliography
Index
