West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz In California 1945-1960

by Ted Gioia

Over the last half-century, New York's pre-eminence in the world of jazz has been challenged only once--during the 1950s--when California emerged with a splash on the jazz scene. "West Coast jazz," as it soon became known, was a fresh new sound which stirred both controversy and excitement in equal measure. One thing, however, was never before (or since) had so many jazz musicians from the Coast made such an impact on jazz. Dave Brubeck, Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, Chet Baker, Eric Dolphy, Paul Desmond, Ornette Coleman, Cal Tjader, Shelly Manne, and numerous others—these figures shaped the jazz of their time and are still powerful influences today.

In West Coast Jazz
West Coast jazz gradually declined as the 1950s gave way to the rock-dominated '60s, but this decade-long renaissance remains one of the great stories of jazz history, and nobody has told it as well as Ted Gioia does here. His love of this music shines on every page.

Genres: Music, Jazz, History, Nonfiction

404 pages, Hardcover

First published May 14, 1992

About the author

Ted Gioia (1957) is an American jazz critic and music historian.

Reviews

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read, great resource for finding little heard of (lately) giants of jazz. I personally love this time period for jazz 1945-1960's.
Pick this up and read while listening to Conte Condoli, Russ Freeman, Art Pepper and so many more.

If you have Spotify or another similar path to music, you can just pop on the albums as they're covered.
a very pleasurable exercise.

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb documentation on Central Avenue life in the 1940s, as well as the personalities and sounds that came out of West Coast Jazz. Often regarded as "cool jazz," this was a remarkable period of California culture - as it produced brilliant music by such people as Chet Baker, Art Pepper, Charles Mingus, Shelley Manne and many others. Also the greats Miles Davis and Charlie Parker also made a dent in the Californian landscape as well.

Ted Gioia's nerdy and obsessive research is an entertaining read. One is consistently, while reading the book, made to check out the music on a daily reading basis. A win-win situation. Clearly a jazz literature classic, with great bios on the musicians and nice analytical insight in specific albums made at that time. Great reference, and "West Coast Jazz" captures a beautiful series of moments in the sunshine land.

[Sarah Paolantonio · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started 2020 off with Ted Gioia’s The History of Jazz, Second Edition and here I am finishing the year with his volume West Coast Jazz. The History Of Jazz was originally published in 1997 but West Coast Jazz came out in 1992.

West Coast Jazz is more focused and keeps to the 1940s and 1950s. While other artists and their influences are discussed in West Coast Jazz, Gioia found his structure that would shape The History Of Jazz. Focusing on one sound and the major players of it, each chapter delivers tidy biographies of the players: where they were born, their inspirations, how they got their chops, who they played with, etc. Both volumes rely on geography to explain and explore each player’s sound, methods, and recordings. It’s always location location location.

If you’re looking to start out reading about jazz, The History of Jazz is more inclusive and covers all the subgenres within jazz. I’m glad I started there to get a detailed primer on the genre and it’s players big and small. West Coast Jazz called to me because I wanted to know what the difference was, or if there really was one, between “jazz” and “west coast jazz.” And there is. West Coast Jazz is defined by composition and arrangement, instead of the running free atmosphere of the most popular and well known genre of bebop (think Charlie Parker). But this book is so much more than that.

Who I thought would be large players, the west coast jazz musicians I was most familiar with (Guaraldi, Tjader, and Mingus), only popped up briefly. The list of major west coast jazz players is long and delivered me a lot of music to explore: Chet Baker, Art Pepper, Dexter Gordon, Shorty Rogers, Hampton Hawes, Sonny Criss, Gerry Mulligan, Shelly Mann, and so many others.

The chapter on Dave Brubeck, who I knew before I knew him because of "Take Five," illustrates the west coast jazz sound and style in one player. Brubeck was a trained pianist and used his composing and arrangements to popularize weird time signatures in jazz. Brubeck's Quartet made the infamous 1959 record Time Out (featuring "Take Five") that combined cool jazz and west coast jazz. But before the quartet, there was the Brubeck octet that toured colleges around the country. Brubeck's popularity grew because of these tours until "Take Five" cemented him as a big name in jazz to those unfamiliar with the genre. (Perhaps the biggest jazz crossover?) In addition to composition and arrangement, west coast jazz was famous for large bands (unrelated to swing and big band) playing bop, hard bop, and cool jazz. Many a nonet, octet, and so on define the sound of west coast jazz.

I started a playlist to chronicle all the players mentioned in West Coast Jazz. It’s an ongoing project: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2Va.... But I’ve found myself focusing on a few records and a few artists. My favorite so far is Shorty Rogers and His Giants' 1956 LP, Martians, Come Back! So much of jazz is who played with who, when. The genre is a never ending Pandora's box of changing personnel and guest appearances. In addition to composition and arrangement being key to west coast jazz, the sound itself is more diverse with different instruments being accepted into play, like the clarinet and oboe, way past their heyday of big band and swing. Martians, Come Back! really exemplifies this featuring a large variety--french horn, tuba, flugelhorn, clarinet, valve trombone--among the regular suspects of trumpet, bass, guitar, piano, and alto sax.

The jazz that happened out on the west coast was alienated from the nucleus of the jazz world in New York City. Bird and Miles went out west and inspired a lot of players (if not all of them). The big west coast players who “made it” (like Mingus and Chet Baker) went east specifically to get noticed. Even though the distance kept west coast jazz musicians hidden in a number of ways, it also allowed it to exist in its own sort of vacuum. Like being away at an artist’s retreat, the physical separation of the west coast in the 1940s and ‘50s let these players all find their own path as musicians. They even had their own labels (Fantasy and Contemporary among others). It made the west coast jazz players and their records more coveted and (almost) more secretive (not that they wanted it that way). You have to go looking for these records, within the jazz crate digging or you might not find them.

I’ve been studying and reading about music for more than half my life. First as a fan, then as a radio DJ and music programmer, then as a student and writer, and now just for obsessive fun. I thought I had found everything there was about music. I knew jazz, or at least I thought I did. Ted Gioia’s books opened me up to musical discovery I didn’t know was still possible. Exploring a new genre in such depth brought me a lot of joy in this foul year of our lord, 2020. I almost exclusively listen to jazz and find myself in a never ending period of discovery. I’m nowhere near being able to recognize an artist by ear (except for the ones I started with: Parker, Miles, Mingus, Monk) but I have a whole lifetime ahead of me to figure out how to even do that.

Reading West Coast Jazz taught me just how large the world of jazz is. I’m not sure rock has as many subgenres as jazz does. This gives me something new to contemplate. There are so many eras and decades of jazz that are all so different from each other. The same is true for rock and roll but now I will have to go on arguing this with myself. I read Gioia’s The History of Jazz around the same time I watched Ken Burns’ Country Music documentary series and it got me thinking--what came first? Jazz or Country? Both influenced each other greatly. Both started around the same time, in the same part of the country, by immigrants and by slaves. But now I have a second, larger question to contemplate whenever my mind isn’t buzzing about 'jazz or country?': could rock and roll possibly be as big as jazz?

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading and really liking three books on Southern California and Southern California jazz ("Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles," "The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles," and "Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties"), I thought that I would try one more, particularly since I found it on the library shelf next to "Central Avenue Sounds."

By the end, I liked this book, although along the way I had doubts.

The good: 1. I’ve discovered lots of musicians I’ve known little about (Hampton Hawes, Wardell Grey, Sonny Criss, Harold Land), and I was able to listen to their music on Spotify while I read about them. And I could listen to them on Spotify, because there were quite a few west coast record labels (Contemporary, Fantasy, Pacific Jazz) that documented all the amazing talent. 2. I also learned much more about a few well known figures–Dave Brubeck, Chet Baker, and Gerry Mulligan–than I had known before. For Chet Baker, I’ve always known him primarily for his drug use, which Gioia speaks to but then develops a full analysis and interpretation of his music. 3. Gioia reinforced the other three books portrayal of South Central LA as a fertile hot-spot for jazz from the 1930s to the 1960s. Jazz on the west coast developed not only through local talent, but because talented musicians came west from across the country. 4. West coast musicians were highly educated, attending high schools with excellent music programs, music conservatories, or colleges. 5. West coast jazz musicians and composers were often influenced by contemporary classical composers like Darius Milhaus, Igor Stravinsky, and Arnold Schoenberg. 6. Besides the “cool” jazz the west coast was known for, “hot” jazz (bebop, hard bop) was also represented, a kind of chamber jazz grounded in counterpoint, and elements of free jazz (Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Don Cherry, Jimmy Giuffre) all developed on the west coast.

The bad: 1. For all of its vitality, openness, and talented musicians, with only a few exceptions–most notably Dave Brubeck–jazz musicians on the west coast who stayed on the west coast did not achieve national or international fame. 2. Conversely, talented musicians who left the west coast for the east coast (for example, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Don Cherry) often found the national and international fame they sought. In other words, west coast jazz was treated as a regional scene rather than as a national source for jazz. 3. West coast musicians more often than not seemed to come to bad ends in Gioia’s telling: drugs, addiction, early death, alcoholism, suicide, car accidents, and more. Too many west coast jazz musicians seemed to die young or had much shorter life spans than normal. 4. So while the book celebrates all the amazing talent that blossomed on the west coast, Gioia also tells sad stories of missed opportunities and loss.

I wish that there hadn’t been the drum beat about drugs throughout the book, for it came to dominate my perception of "West Coast Jazz." In the first couple of chapters, which were on South Central LA, that beat was strong, and although the drug theme quiets a bit in the rest of the book it remains a prominent, structural element of Gioia’s narrative: west coast jazz musicians→drugs/addictions→lost opportunities/death. Still, if Gioia is going to address drugs and addiction, he needed to do more than write sadly about the individuals’ poor decisions and tragic losses. He needed to explore how and why the communities in which these musicians lived and worked were susceptible to–or targeted for?--the spread of illegal drugs. Perhaps that is too much to ask a jazz critic to handle, but I still would have liked a broader historical background to help contextualize all the drug use and addictions Gioia notes. In the first chapter, Gioia describes walking down Central Avenue in LA (I’m going to guess some time in the 1980s, given the 1992 publication date of "West Coast Jazz"), and all he sees is desolation and economic ruin. He needed to contextualize what he saw: the post WWII racism, police harassment and brutality, the defunding of schools in South Central LA, the rerouting of economic opportunities (jobs) away from South Central, the Watts rebellion/riots. As is, Gioia’s perspective seems prurient and voyeuristic, that of a comfortable bourgeois outsider. Reminds me of Don Cheadle’s movie about Miles Davis, "Miles Ahead," which spends more time on Miles’ drug use (and its dramatic consequences) than on Miles as musician, composer, and creative artist. Perhaps this is a genre convention: when media(writing, film, etc.) focuses on jazz musicians, it is expected to develop the drug narrative. There is much that is good about "West Coast Jazz," but also much that I find distracting.

And where is Horace Tapscott? Tapscott was one of the most important forces in jazz and South Central LA in the second half of the 20th century. He deserves a mention and a lot more.

[Jon Patten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book as part of my research on a biography on guitarist Joe Pass, who was part of the Pacific Jazz heyday in the early 1960s. I was disappointed in the brief mention of Richard Bock and his Pacific Jazz label. Pacific Jazz contributed some excellent additions to the "West Coast jazz" oeuvre but the book seems more focused on providing biographical overviews of selected players and mentions of others.
Past this quibble, however, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the history of jazz music. Gioia is a knowledgeable and skillful writer and the book is as full and complete as a Mingus composition.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the best books on the subject I have ever read. It wasn't like "Cookin" by Mathieson in that it wasn't simply a litany of dates. I had previously read Gioia's Delta Blues and was impressed and I must say that Gioia has done it again. The book is not only full of facts but is actually read like a sort of story, a linear kind of narrative where each major group gets the royal treatment and each individual member of each group is highlighted and discussed within the context of that story.

[Eric Hines · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good and much needed look at the West Coast scene of the 50s and early 60s. My one big objection is the way Gioia consistently avoids talking about the distinctiveness and commonalities between of some of the West Coast sounds in favor of an artist by artist concentration. Perhaps a needed corrective to years of common neglect, but there does seem to be something we ought to talk about as a "West Coast" approach to jazz.

[Robert Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important FYI: Only the Univ Calif edition has the photographs: West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960

...but a great book even without them.

[Patricia Roberts-Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's almost too detailed to read like a normal book--it's essentially a series of enyclopedia entries. So, I enjoyed reading it, and I'll keep it as a reference, but it is not a book you read quickly.

Gioia is skilled at explaining things in ways that even people with little musical knowledge can understand.

[Paul Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've always loved the cooler jazz sounds that came out of California. Here's a solid overview of the major players and movements: Dave Brubeck, Chet Baker et al.

[Volkher Hofmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only decent account of the west coast jazz scene that I'm aware of.

[Tamsen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretty dry and long list of what what recorded when by whom.