Jazz Places: How Performance Spaces Shape Jazz History

219 Pages·2021·1.343 MB·English

by  Kimberly Hannon Teal

Jazz Places
The publisher and the University of California Press
Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support
of the Ben and A. Jess Shenson Endowment Fund in Visual
and Performing Arts, established by a major gift from Fred
M. Levin and Nancy Livingston, The Shenson Foundation.
The publisher also gratefully acknowledges the generous
support of the AMS 75 PAYS Fund of the American
Musicological Society, supported in part by the National
Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, in making this book possible.
Jazz Places
How Performance Spaces Shape
Jazz History
Kimberly Hannon Teal
university of california press
University of California Press
Oakland, California
© 2021 by Kimberly Hannon Teal
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hannon Teal, Kimberly, 1983– author.
Title: Jazz places : how performance spaces shape
jazz history / Kimberly Hannon Teal.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020046903 (print) | LCCN
2020046904 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520303706
(cloth) | ISBN 9780520303713 (paperback) | ISBN
9780520972841 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Jazz—History and criticism. |
Jazz—Social aspects—United States—History. | Jazz—
Instruction and study—United States—History. | Village
Vanguard (Nightclub) | Jazz at Lincoln Center (Organiza-
tion) | SFJAZZ (Organization) | Preservation Hall (New
Orleans, La.)
Classification: LCC ML3508 .H35 2021 (print) |
LCC ML3508 (ebook) | DDC 781.650973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/202004
6903
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/20
20046904
Manufactured in the United States of America
29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Jazz, Place, and Heritage 1
1. Jazz Heritage Live at the Village Vanguard 15
2. Phantom Partners: Large-Scale Venues on a National Scene 51
3. Schools on the Scene 92
4. Unearthing The Stone: From Underground to The New School 120
5. Reinventing the Recorded at Preservation Hall 146
Epilogue 173
Notes 175
Bibliography 193
Index 201

Acknowledgments
The amount of help I’ve had from wonderful people throughout the
process of writing this book has been heartwarming, humbling, and
inspiring. There may be too many to thank, but I’d like to make a start
on it here. First of all, there are the musicians and listeners who shared
their expertise and their time in interviews at various stages in this proj-
ect: Judy Carmichael, Mickey Collier, Sylvie Courvoisier, Tim Craig,
Bill Dobbins, Dave Douglas, Kate Duncan, Katie Ernst, Beverly Frank,
Bill Frank, Nick Finzer, Fred Hersh, Dick Hyman, Ethan Iverson, Cal-
vin Johnson, Richard Kessler, Robert Livingston, Pete Madsen, Tommy
Poole, Dave Sturmer, and Michael Van Bebber. Without your generosity
and insights, this book would not have been possible, and speaking with
and writing to you was an enormous pleasure.
This project began as a dissertation at the Eastman School of Music
and was shaped in countless ways by the wisdom and support of my
advisor, Melina Esse. I would also like to thank Ellen Koskoff, Dari-
usz Terefenko, Ralph Locke, Clay Jenkins, and the other faculty mem-
bers in both the Musicology and the Jazz and Contemporary Media
Departments who were so helpful in guiding my research process and
growth as a scholar. My fellow students in musicology, including Tyler
Cassidy-Heacock, Cristina Fava, Naomi Gregory, Lauron Kehrer, Cindy
Kim, Amy Kintner, Emily Mills Woodruff, Matt Morrow, and Tanya
Sermer, among many others, taught me just as much. I was also for-
tunate enough to meet Kira Thurman during my first semester of grad
viii Acknowledgments
school, and I have been benefitting from her unsurpassed skills as a
scholar, friend, and academic life coach ever since.
Many people read drafts and parts of this book along the way and
helped to make it better. I am grateful to Raina Polivka and Madison
Wetzell at the University of California Press and the anonymous review-
ers who offered guidance on the project. I would also like to thank my
fantastic colleagues at the University of Arkansas, including Micaela
Baranello, Alan Gosman, Melody Herr, Justin Hunter, Wing Lau, Lisa
Margulis, Matt Mihalka, and Joon Park. Andrew Berish, Darren Muel-
ler, Nate Sloan, Alex Stewart, Emma Tepfer, and my grandfather Donald
Ulmer all offered helpful writing advice, as well.
Travelling to the various venues described in this project was some
of the best “work” I’ve ever had the privilege of doing, and the financial
support of the Glenn Watkins Fellowship, Elsa T. Johnson Fellowship,
and University of Arkansas Humanities Program made it possible. The
hospitality of friends, friends of friends, and even strangers who greeted
me in New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco was extremely help-
ful, so thanks are due to Freya Bellin, Rueben Blundell, Jeannie Evers,
Charlie Halloran, Chloë Liotta-Jones, and Josh Reed, among others. Fi-
nally, Chris Teal, I imagine you know that I would and could have done
none of this without you—from your help in choosing the venues for
my dissertation proposal at the very beginning to your taking the girls
out of the house for long walks to the tree so that I could make final
edits—and all the conversations along the way. At risk of adding to my
record of mediocre gift-giving, this book is for you.
Introduction
Jazz, Place, and Heritage
Famous stages from historical jazz venues appeared in MacArthur Fel-
low Jason Moran’s multimedia exhibit for the 2015 Venice Biennale as
works of art in themselves. STAGED, a project that involves both new
music by the pianist and sculptures recreating stages from now-closed
New York jazz spaces, has since turned up in several art exhibitions
and museums in both Europe and the United States, placing audiences
in situations that encourage them to engage aurally not only with the
music they hear but also with the ideas evoked by the physical space
from which the music is played. One sculpture represents an eighteen-
foot-wide slice of Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom as it might have looked
behind the likes of Chick Webb and Ella Fitzgerald while throngs of
Lindy Hoppers moved on the dance floor. Part recreation drawn from
old photographs and part Moran’s imagination, the stage wraps per-
formers from behind and above with brilliantly reflective golden scal-
lops and rich, intricately patterned fabric, giving an air of opulence to
this depression-era escape into music and dancing once accessed via
Lenox Avenue for as little as thirty cents. Yet undercutting that feeling
of ease and relief are the recordings, piped through speakers built into
the sculpture, of the sounds of a chain gang working outside a Louisi-
ana prison—Moran seems to insist that we see the stage as belonging to
a more complex story in a broader world. Another sculpture surrounds
musicians with two walls and a ceiling representing the close quarters
of the Three Deuces, a bebop-era venue on Manhattan’s 52nd-Street
scene. The small stage pressed in a corner between padded walls mimics
1