DC Jazz: Stories of Jazz Music in Washington, DC

by Maurice Jackson (Editor), Blair A. Ruble (Editor)

The conventional history of jazz music in the United States begins in New Orleans, moves upstream along the Mississippi River to Chicago, then by rail into New York before exploding across the globe. But in fact the nation's capital has been a fertile city for jazz for a century. Some of the most important clubs in the jazz world have opened and closed their doors in Washington, DC; some of its greatest players and promoters were born there and continue to reside in the area; and some of the local institutions so critical to supporting this uniquely American form of music--including Congress and the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress and the Historical Society of Washington, DC--remain vigorous advocates. Edited by noted historians Maurice Jackson and Blair Ruble, this book is a collection of original and fascinating stories about the DC jazz scene, from the cultural hotbed of Seventh and U Streets to the role of jazz in desegregating the city to the great Edward "Duke" Ellington to women in jazz to seminal contributions of the University of District of Columbia and Howard University. The book also includes three poems by Washington, DC poet E. Ethelbert Miller. A copublishing initiative with the Historical Society of Washington, DC, the book includes over thirty museum-quality photographs and a guide to resources for learning more about Washington, DC jazz.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Jill Bash is Maurice's first published book. His books are fiction and are based around his relationships with his many annoying older siblings (I hope they don't read this) and his love for his nieces and nephews. Maurice's injects humor and science fiction into his writings, which appeals to adults and teenagers.

Reviews

[Fernando Pestana da Costa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand it is certainly a serious and very through scholarly work about jazz in the US capital city, but on the other hand Washington, DC, is, essentially, an American provincial town as far as autochthonous jazz is concerned (notwithstanding Duke Ellington, Billy Taylor, Shirley Horn, and a few others). What this means is that the book has some extremely interesting chapters, like the one about racial issues in Washington, DC, (in relation to music), or about Duke Ellington in Washington, or legislating jazz, and then has others of a rather more local significance which, by this reason, turn out to be rather dull to this non-washingtonian reader.

[Robert Otto · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a fantastic overview of DC Jazz. I would have preferred that essay's collected in this account had more of a chronological flow, but it was still effective in informing the reader about yet another unique contribution from the District.