WHO CAN AFFORD TO IMPROVISE?: james baldwin and black music, the lyric and the listeners PDF
Preview WHO CAN AFFORD TO IMPROVISE?: james baldwin and black music, the lyric and the listeners
WHO CAN AFFORD TO IMPROVISE? This page intentionally left blank WHO CAN AFFORD TO IMPROVISE? JAMES BALDWIN AND BLACK MUSIC, THE LYRIC AND THE LISTENERS ED PAVLIĆ Fordham University Press New York 2016 Copyright © 2016 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third- party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Visit us online at www .fordhampress .com. Library of Congress Control Number: 2015943137 Printed in the United States of America 18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1 First edition (Copyright page continued on page 342.) For Stacey Cecile in the Echo Café This page intentionally left blank Contents Introduction 1 BOOK I The Uses of the Blues: James Baldwin’s Lyrical Quest 1 “Not the country we’re sitting in now”: Amputation/Gangrene Past and Present 23 2 Blues Constants, Jazz Changes: Toward a Writing Immune to Bullshit 36 3 “Making words do something”: Retracing James Baldwin’s Career 42 BOOK II The Uses of the Lyric: Billie’s Quest, Dinah’s Blues, Jimmy’s Amen, and Brother Ray’s Hallelujah 4 Billie Holiday: Radical Lyricist 131 5 Dinah Washington’s Blues and the Trans- Digressive Ocean 149 6 “But Amen is the price”: James Baldwin and Ray Charles in “The Hallelujah Chorus” 162 viii Contents BOOK III “For you I was a flame”: Baldwin’s Lyrical Lens on Contemporary Culture 7 On Camden Row: Amy Winehouse’s Lyric Lines in a Living Inheritance 193 8 Speechless in San Francisco. “A somewhat better place to lie about”: An Inter-View 215 9 “In a way they must . . .”: Turf Feinz and Black Style in an Age of Sights for the Speechless 241 10 “Shades cannot be fixed”: On Privilege, Blindness, and Second Sight 252 Conclusion: The Brilliance of Children, the Duty of Citizens 277 Acknowledgments 295 Notes 297 Bibliography 323 Index 329 Go back to Miles, Max, Dizzy, Yardbird, Billie, Coltrane: who were not, as the striking—not to say quaint—European phrase would have it, “im- provising”: who can afford to improvise, at those prices? —James Baldwin, “Of the Sorrow Songs: The Cross of Redemption” (1979)
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