Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce [Hardcover]

Alfred Appel Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2002

How does the jazz of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, and Charlie Parker fit into the great tradition of the modern arts between 1920 and 1950? In Jazz Modernism, one of our finest cultural historians provides the answer.

Alfred Appel, author of The Annotated Lolita ("superb . . . full of vigor, gems, and stratagems"--Vladimir Nabokov), compares the layering of sex, vitality, and the vernacular in jazz with the paper collages of Picasso, and the vital mix of high and low culture found in Joyce. He shows how the musical construct of jazz was pared down by the masters as sculpture was in Calder's hands or prose in Hemingway's. He makes clear how Armstrong and Waller tore apart and rebuilt Tin Pan Alley material in the way that modernists in the visual arts arrived at wood assemblage and scrap-metal sculpture. He enables us to see that Ellington's "jungle" style was as un-primitive as Brancusi's self-conscious Africanesque sculpture. And along the way, he "recalls" live jazz perform-ances during the 1950s by Armstrong and John Coltrane, among others, and the night Charlie Parker played to a visibly thrilled Igor Stravinsky at Birdland.

Making connections as illuminating as they are unexpected, Alfred Appel gives us a brilliant new way of understanding jazz.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What do Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington have to do with James Joyce and Pablo Picasso? A lot, if you buy Appel's argument in this erudite but misguided analysis of the classical jazz era (1920-1950). Appel's goal, he states up front, is to locate jazz "in the great modernist tradition in the arts." He traces jazz influences through dozens of famous masterpieces, from the colorful rhythms of Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie to the "rat-a-tat-tat" dialogue of Hemingway's short story "The Killers." Appel's most intriguing analysis comes when he breaks down the "syncopated prose" of Molly Bloom's famous soliloquy in Ulysses to find that it clocks in at a jazz-like 86 beats per minute (doubling in tempo at the end, in true bebop fashion). These are interesting if familiar examples of white artists borrowing from their black jazz counterparts. But Appel (Signs of Life) is less successful in showing that these influences ran the other way in some cases, he resorts to somewhat dubious connections. How helpful is it, for example, to say that Armstrong's scat vocalizations evoke "grotesquely sprung eyeballs in Picasso's preliminary drawings for Guernica"? Or that Fats Waller and his band embodied the "black flame" in an obscure Matisse painting? Appel is generally more persuasive when his evidence is specific, as in one extended passage where he meticulously documents how Waller undermined the black minstrel songs white audiences expected him to perform. Despite Appel's tendency to stretch material to fit his thesis, his book is an illuminating tour through some of the 20th century's great artistic achievements. Illus.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Appel (English, emeritus, Northwestern Univ.) takes the reader on a dizzying spin through the music of Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, and (not quite enough of) Duke Ellington, along with a few others. His thoughts alternately flow and then snap off abruptly in new, unexpected directions sort of a jazz-based, interdisciplinary course on the aesthetics of modernism on speed. While the occasional puns and sudden shifts in imagery might teeter on the edge of favoring style over in-depth analysis, there is enough musical meat to satisfy casual jazz fans and jazz fanatics alike. Appel's near-improvisatory writing will not be every reader's cup of "Tea for Two," but the chapter on Waller's modernistic approach as a singer particularly in his send-ups of inane pop tunes is dead on. The uncharacteristically straight-to-the-point comparisons of boogie woogie with the later paintings of Piet Mondrian and Appel's tasty deconstruction of Louis Armstrong's vocal stylings also pull the listener into hearing (and seeing and appreciating) in new ways. Highly recommended for academic libraries having a strong focus on music and/or aesthetics, this would also make a nice, although perhaps not essential, addition to public libraries. James E. Perone, Mount Union Coll., Alliance, OH
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (September 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394533933
• ISBN-13: 978-0394533933
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,561,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riffs., November 17, 2004

By 

George H. Soule (Edwardsville, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce (Hardcover)

In 1964 while I was an undergraduate student at Stanford University, I had the privilege of taking a course called Modern American Novel taught by Alfred Appel, Jr.. This seems like ancient history, but the highlights of the class were lectures on Nabokov's Lolita, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Nathaniel West's novels, Eudora Welty's collection of linked stories called Golden Apples. Perhaps what impressed me most about the lectures-and what has stayed with me through my life, was Appel's conviction that great literature is infused with love of music, to interplay of ideas, to woven themes, and that artistic expression is unified by the interactions of music, words, and art. At that time Professor Appel peripherally connected Eudora Welty's story "Powerhouse" and Fats Waller-rhythms, riffs, variations, improvisations--jazz and prose, rhythm and wit. These recollections of mine are reflected in the subjects and the method of Jazz Modernism. In this book we have something akin to Nabokov's multicultural, multidimensional universe as viewed through musicians--Armstrong, Ellington, Waller, Joe Jones, Bird, Coltrane--artists (Picasso, Matisse, Miro, Leger)- writers (Hemingway, Joyce, Welty)--songwriters (Gershwin, Arlen)-and photographers (Leonard, Calder, Blancard, Walker-Evans). The focus is jazz and the musicians, but the range is modern art and the book is full of pictures of all manner of cultural artifacts--paintings, record labels, portraits, posters, sculpture. Appel analyzes cultural riffs, counterpoint, variations, puns, perspectives. This is a spectacular performance--but don't take my word for it--read it for yourself.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'll Be Glad When You're Read (You Rascal You), January 24, 2003

By 

Robert W. Getz (Glenside, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce (Hardcover)

It's an extremely rare thing for me to buy a book after only a few minutes perusal, but that's what I did with this one. It didn't seem to matter what page I turned to: I was met with such an abundance of ambitious and adventurous observations, not only on Jazz, but on The Arts in general, that I could scarcely believe my luck. I felt like I was getting a bargain!

I can only compare Mr. Appel's lively and perceptive book to two other favorites of mine: "Mystery Train" by Greil Marcus, and "Trickster Makes This World" by Lewis Hyde. In fact, you could say that Appel does for Jazz here what "Train" did for Rock and Roll. He even goes Marcus one better by deconstructing actual record labels and, like Marcus, he wears his loves on his sleeve. I don't think you'll read a better informed or more affectionate analysis of the career and art of Louis Armstrong, who strides through this book as Elvis and the Sex Pistols did through Marcus' "Train" and "Lipstick Traces", respectively. If you were to read this book only for what he has to say about Armstrong, you'd get more than your money's worth. And he's not afraid to challenge some long established notions, either: Are Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings really the high water mark of his art? To read any other critic, you'd think so. One of this book's many refreshing accomplishments is its defense of Armstrong's lesser known work and his struggle to appeal to his jazz base while having to court a pop audience.

The remarkable thing about this wonderful book is that this is only one aspect of it. One page of Appel's book seems to throw out more light on the connections between disparate aspects of 20th Century culture than other people's entire books. The puns and seeming improvisation in the writing are well suited to the subject at hand and allow Mr. Appel to bring together topics that normally wouldn't share the same page. Tex Avery? Armstrong? Picasso? What's going on here? We may live in an age far more accepting of blurring the line between "high" and "low" culture, but we've still got a long way to go, and Mr. Appel's book successfully demonstrates that Art is not created in a vacuum.

This doesn't really begin to hint at the riches of this book. I haven't even mentioned the stories of Mr. Appel's first-hand experiences. This confirmed Stravinsky addict, with a shelf's worth of books on the subject, had never read the story related here of the time Stravinsky met Charlie Parker (a meeting that's sort of emblematic of the whole book). And the rabid Joycean in me was delighted by the analysis of "Ulysses", not an easy accomplishment after years of tired repitition in journal after academic journal.

Anyone with even a passing interest in Jazz, Art, or 20th Century culture in general, and who enjoys adventurous cultural commentary, needs to read this book. Profusely illustrated with photographs and reproductions that help him make his points, "Jazz Modernism" is, like its subject, breathtakingly alive and ready to show you a good time.

4.0 out of 5 stars more focused than you might suppose at first..., May 1, 2011

By 

Bruce Merrill (Cambridge, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce (Paperback)

This book is truly all over the place... and especially that first chapter. But it is more focused than you might suppose at first. Chapter 2 is essentially about Fats Waller, chap 3 (the largest and most important, see who is on the cover!) is about Armstrong, and chap 4 is on Ellington, but then at p. 226 moves to focus on Joyce. It's consistently enjoyable and stimulating, even if you don't find Appel's global thesis (re the interpenetration of jazz and 20C modernism) plausible.