Cats Of Any Color: Jazz, Black And White [Paperback]

Gene Lees (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2001

In a series of candid interviews with jazz players, composers, and critics, Gene Lees explores racism in the past and present of jazz—both the white racism that for decades ghettoized black musicians and their music, and the prejudice that Lees documents of some black musicians against their white counterparts. With subjects ranging from Horace Silver to Dave Brubeck to Red Rodney, and a new introduction analyzing recent developments, Cats of Any Color chronicles jazz as a multiethnic art.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lees, former editor of Down Beat, presents a collection of essays, most of which are based on interviews originally published in Jazzletter. He talks with ethnomusicologist Dominique de Lerma, pianist and composer Dave Brubeck, singer Ernie Andrews, pianist and composer Horace Silver, trumpeter Red Rodney, saxophonist and composer Benny Golson, bassist Red Mitchell, pianist and composer Cedar Walton, drummer Kenny Washington and pianist and drummer Jack DeJohnette. In discussing their careers, most are restrained about the issue of racism and jazz. Only in his final piece does Lees, a white, Canadian-born writer who deplores attempts by black musicians to claim jazz as a purely black art form, get to the meat of his book, an attack on what he considers the antiwhite bias about jazz currently fostered by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and writers like Herb Boyd and Stanley Crouch. This, in addition to the interview with de Lerma, a black who challenges simplistic myths concerning the origins of jazz, provides a thought-provoking look at the contemporary jazz world.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Growing up in a hard-working, left-leaning Canadian family in the 1940s and 1950s, Lees loved everything American, from movie stars to cartoons to music. And what could be more American than jazz? Since moving to the States in the mid-Fifties, he has written on jazz for the New York Times, was an editor at the respected Down Beat, and now publishes JazzLetter. After several books on the music and the artists (Waiting for Dizzy, LJ 4/15/91), Lees now turns to an often underplayed aspect of the industry: racism. Yet this is anything but a dry sociopolitical treatise. Through interviews with musicians, composers, and critics, Lees describes the varying ways that racism has always been a part of the jazz scene. Still, the blacks and whites, Jews and Native Americans who share their views here sound one common theme: love of music transcends race. Written by a real authority who also happens to be a gifted writer, this book is recommended for all music libraries.
Dan Bogey, Clearfield Cty. P.L. Federation, Curwensville, Pa.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (January 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306809508
• ISBN-13: 978-0306809507
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,592,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some unflinching truths about the world of jazz..., September 27, 1998

By 

John Grabowski (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cats of Any Color: Jazz Black and White (Paperback)

Gene Lees strikes me as one of the more level-headed individuals in jazz. Like it or not, the hard-core jazz word is these days filled with elitists, racists (mostly reverse these days), and people protecting their "territory." When I see the doings and hear the rantings of the likes of Stanley Crouch and other pretentious writers and "social critics," I am reminded of the character of Max Mercy from Bernard Malamud's novel (and the movie) The Natural...Mercy isn't interested in baseball and has never played a game, but stirring up controversy using baseball as his medium keeps him in the spotlight and makes him rich. Crouch is much the same way--would any of us have heard of him, would he have a tenth of his current income and notoriety were he not clutching the coattails of a currently well-known jazz musician? Lees' discussion of Crouch, of other figures in jazz history, and his inside stories about the jazz world and the psyches within it are like a bucket of cold water to most of what passes for jazz scholarship today. But don't get the impression this is a kiss-and-tell book, or something scandalous. Mr. Lees is actually a rather level headed individual. A must read for anyone not in any "camp" or defending any "turf" but who just loves music and musicians and realizes that jazz, like any art, is a mixture and mixing that quickly becomes so intricate it's impossible for any one group to claim they "own" it. Too bad there are only two other reviews of this book on Amazon's page as of this writing. I can see people would rather believe the hypola histories instead. Too bad...

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Meditation of Jazz and Race, July 30, 2003

By 

Michael J Edelman (Huntington Woods, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cats Of Any Color: Jazz, Black And White (Paperback)

Gene Lees' bok had its genesis as a series of articles nominally written around a common theme, that of race and jazz. The're no real narrative structure here; some of the pieces are narratives, some more essays and some are just rememberances that sort of meander here and there.

They're very readable, although I do get a little annoyed at times by Lees' short, punchy newspaper style, with two and three word sentances and one-sentance paragraphs. It's a technique that is best used very sparingly. Lees does do a superb job of recreating conversations, showing that he has a marvelous ear for the rhythms and conventions of spoken English.

The unifying theme through all these pieces is Gene Lees' concern with the role race played in jazz, whether the early racism that kept Black jazz musicians out of the limelight, or the contemporary racism of people like Stanley Crouch who proclaim jazz to be Black music. What puts Lees' essays a cut above others who have written on this topic is that he goes beyond the simple enumerating of players and their opinions; he has a real musicologist's interest in the history of jazz and popular music.

One piece, an extended profile and interview Dominique d Lerma is devoted to breaking the stereotypes of the earliest jazz music. If you watched Ken Burns' history of jazz you could be forgiven for thinking that jazz came from ill-educated, poor Southern blacks. de Lerma emphasizes, for example, the role of conservatory-trained Black musicians who integrated the harmonies of the European composers they studied into the popular music of the times, and the role of the great Black music publisher W. C. Handy in popularizing this music.

The last essay is specifically devoted to Wynton Marsalis, a man with marvelous technique and shallow opinions, who refuses to admit that any white musician has contributed anything to jazz, thus bringing the debate full circle. Marsalis is a trumpter with a brilliant classical technique who unfortunately has been elevated in recent years to the position of being the modern savior of jazz by the efforts of Burns and Stanley Crouch despite his not having much of anything original since his early days as an up-and-comer with Art Blakey's band. Unfortunately he has come to be viewed as a major figure and authority in jazz by outsiders, despite being generally ignired as disparaged by most jazzers.

The real pity of attitudes like Marsalis' is that they lose sight of the fact that while Jazz certainly had its origins in Black musicians, it has always been as much an American music form as a Black form, and that today it is an international form that transcends boundries of either race or color. The greatest musicians have always ignored artificial boundries, and many of the great bands of the post WW-II always included musicians of all races. It takes nothing away from Ray Brown to say he was influenced by Scott LaFaro, or that Miles Davis was strongly influenced by his close association with Gil Evans. (Miles, responding to a comment by Marsalis that Miles was never Marsalis' idol, reportedly told him "without me, you'd be all 'Flight of the Bumblebee'")

For that matter, in the end it becomes ridiculous to talk about race. Horace Silver, as Lees notes in one interview, Black, Native American, and Portuguese ancestors; his father spoke Portuguese. Does that make him a white musician? A Black one? A European? Charles Mingus had a similarly mixed ancestry. Does the fact the he was perhaps a quarter African make him less Black in the eyes of Marsalis, and thus less of a musician?

There's a lot in this book to think about long after you put it down. As you might be able to tell from reading the above, I'm still thinking about it.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intelligent and thoughtful book, marvelously written., September 19, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Cats of Any Color: Jazz Black and White (Paperback)

Gene Lees has steadily built a reputation as one of the finest of all writers on jazz. This intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful look at current attitudes on the part of jazz musicians towards race and racial bias is firmly grounded in historical research without being pedantic. Part of the success of this book comes from its organization -- many of the chapters are profiles of musicians and musical scholars which are incidentally used to illustrate the issues under consideration. Whether or not one finally agrees with Lees' premise -- that we have reentered a period of "reverse racism" in jazz -- the quality of the interviews and interviewees makes this an important book, and a wonderful read in the process.