Customer Reviews

Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles (Roth Family Foundation Books in American Music)

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Central Avenue Sounds is one the most informative and interesting books on jazz, providing the reader with a 'you are there' experience of the Los Angeles music scene. I found the interviews with the surviving musicians to be outstanding. My only regret is that many of the Central Avenue and Watts musicians are no longer with us to add their perspective of the West Coast origins of jazz.

As a lifelong Los Angeles-area resident, I was amazed when I read these stories of the Central Avenue jazz scene of the 1920s through 1950s. There is literally nothing left today, and if it weren't for books like this, an entire vibrant chapter of Los Angeles history (to say nothing of jazz history) would be mostly forgotten. Published in 1998, Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles is a project of the UCLA Oral History Program. Nineteen musicians who lived through the times and worked/played on Central Avenue are given a chance to share their stories for posterity. This book was compiled just in time, as a number of those who were interviewed died before publication, and most (if not all) are no longer with us today.

Cynics will no doubt dismiss these efforts as the ramblings of senior citizens, dropping names and repeating the same stories over and over with embellishments. Others will disparage this book as merely a local history project, with Los Angeles not being considered as crucial to jazz as New York, Chicago, New Orleans, St.Louis, Kansas City, et al. Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy are perhaps the two most famous jazz musicians to start out in Los Angeles before arising to national prominence, and those who remember them tell their stories within. Everybody who was anybody in jazz played on Central Avenue when passing through town, and the memories elicited are almost always positive, in spite of the inevitable struggles and setbacks that had to be endured in those days. Regardless of the reader's background, the down-to-earth, simple humanity of each musician, with all the attendant aspirations and regrets, is readily apparent in each chapter. Even when there are widely-diverging viewpoints, a very clear, yet fascinating picture of long-ago life in Los Angeles is painted. The editors have stayed far out of the way, and allow each subject to tell their story in their own words.

Everybody shares opinions in answer to the question, "Whatever happened to the Central Avenue jazz scene?" There is probably no one correct answer, but a combination of many (all recounted within) would be closer to the truth. Even today, in a city as large as Los Angeles, jazz has dwindled so far from the spotlight of public interest that there is no one major jazz concert hall that everybody performs at. There are annual festivals, a few small clubs and college venues, but that's it. The cityscape has truly changed over the years, both for better and for worse, so we can be thankful we have Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles to remember the performers and places that have passed on. For those who don't want Los Angeles history (especially Los Angeles jazz history) to disappear like sandcastles on the beach, this book is definitely recommended.

so I could go back and hang out some on Central Avenue. Fortunately white people were much better tolerated there than black people were in most of the rest of the city. But there is a more important story here than the history of racism in SoCal: it is how music transcended racism. Even as an L.A. boy who was lucky enough to be a student of Bill Green and a fan of Gerald Wilson while in high school, I didn't realize how much important jazz history took place here. Many of the great jazz musicians appear in the stories in this book. I found it about as easy to put down as a Clancy novel.