Customer Reviews

West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960

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Finally, a book that takes the West Coast jazz movement seriously, instead of as a footnote to the New York Cool school. Gioia has compiled a wealth of information destined to be forgotten about a style that is considered unworthy of being taken seriously by the East Coast-centric, anti-white jazz critics. Mostly white people playing jazz by the beaches of California made no sense to them and still doesn't. Open any history of jazz. Try finding any mention of Bud Shank, Pete Jolly, Jack Sheldon, etc. One of the great movements in jazz was rejected because it did not fit into the steroetype of gritty, dark, and Black-made (compare Blue Note album covers with Contemporary Records album covers). The only one given any attention was Chet Baker, and this was due to his romantic James Dean-like image rather than his brilliant trumpet playing. Don't get me wrong, there were many excellent black participants in the movement, such as Hampton Hawes and Buddy Collette but I do truly believe that there is a racial bias against West Coast jazz. Okay, I am stepping down off my soapbox. This book belongs in the cannon of great jazz history books. It is a well-researched, fascinating journey through the jazz world of Los Angeles primarily, but also the San Francisco Bay Area, starting with a wonderful foray into the the life of Central Avenue, Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray (who probably would have been ignored too had they not left LA). Any fan of the music needs to own it and every jazz critic should be tied to a chair and have it read to him. Then he should be untied and played Art Pepper records all night. Should also be required reading in whatever California public school music and arts programs are left as an essential expresion of the distinct California aesthetic, as important as the architecture of Frank Gehry and the photography of Ansel Adams.

This is a highly distinguished book on the history of West Coast jazz, a phenomenon that existed from the mid-40's until about 1960--at least in terms of it being a special brand of jazz distinct from other styles (East Coast, Traditional, etc.).
It developed in the black section of Los Angeles along Central Avenue where clubs abound, and mainly followed the flowering of bebop as created by Bird and Diz and Bud Powell, among others. The Cool School, led by Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan, is dealt with fully, and there are chapters on important West Coast highlights such as the Lighthouse groups, Shorty Rogers, Art Pepper, and Shelly Manne. There are even a couple of chapters on the San Francisco scene, especially Dave Brubeck. Gioia's writing is excellent, scholarly but lively and interesting. A must-have jazz book.

The best book on jazz (or any other topic!) I've read in the past few years. The author manages to sustain a wonderful balance among scholarship, human interest, and serious criticism. I thought I knew something about this topic -- found out I knew very little. The section on Brubeck's early years is, by itself, well worth the price of the book.

I have a rather large selection of albums from this era and this book covered many of them. I could seem to hear them in my mind as I read the book. This book not only explores the music well, but the people who played it. Would like another copy for a friend.

I recently read West Coast Jazz for a history of jazz class I was teaching. Excellent, it is now going around the band I play in and others have recently bought it. His comparisons of different musical compositions is great and I am now in the process of listening to many of the examples he uses again. I grew up with this music and it is a real pleasure to go back and reread my youth.

Ted Gioia is an excellent writer and provides a wealth of information on jazz in post WWII California. I really appreciated the detailed information and anecdotes regarding some of the musicians with whose music I'd had a positive but passing acquaintance, such as Jimmy Giuffre and Bob Cooper. But I ended up feeling like Gioia's strong opinions left me with the feeling that he'd damned west coast jazz with faint praise. One certainly doesn't expect a historian or critic to pull any punches but a lot of Gioia's opinions seemed at odds with what I view as major contributions to the evolution of jazz. I may just be one of those dullards that "likes it all" but I don't see enjoying Bob Cooper and Bud Shank's oboe and flute work as mutually exclusive to enjoying Art Blakey or Albert Ayler. In particular Gioia's attack on the flute as a viable jazz instrument really stuck under my craw and his account of Bud Shank in his later years as even virtually repenting for having used it (and implying that saxophone is the only legitimate woodwind for use in jazz) doesn't seem consistent with what I know about Shank (though he may well have made some passing remark to Gioia that inspired that passage). Also his attack on the Chico Hamilton's quintet recordings seemed geared to find, in my opinion, an undeserved scapegoat for the criticisms of west coast jazz. It just seems outright wrong to imply that a group containing Chico, Buddy Collette and Jim Hall didn't swing because they used a more chamber music oriented approach than the hard boppers. This seems more an intellectual construct than actually having listened very carefully to the music. And in fact it seemed to contradict other sections of the book that implied that Shelly Manne could swing hard despite using a subtler approach than many of his contemporaries (which I agree with). I realize that I'm betraying very personal feelings here, but as a kid, Chico's quintets and some of Cooper and Shank's work, e.g. their flute and oboe version of Sweet Georgia Brown had a serious and lasting influence on me. And to hint that Giuffre was one of the fathers of new age music really seemed to come out of left field. If anyone can name a new age musician who has anything remotely close to the compositional or improvisational abilities of Giuffre, I'm all ears. That seemed a classic case of damning with faint praise.

It seems that Gioia had a strong agenda, i.e. to make a clear separation between what was good about west coast jazz (in his somewhat idiosyncratic view) from that that deserved to be criticized and ignored, e.g. uses of flute and cello, Giuffre's more radical works,... thereby saving it's place in history while at the same time placating it's more closed minded critics.

Overall I found the book valuable but felt that many of the targets of Gioia's scorn were undeserved and a product of what I perceived as his agenda. E.g. as much as I love saxophone I think there's an important place in jazz for instruments like the flute and I think one would be hard pressed to listen to, e.g., some of Frank Wess's solos and say that the instrument isn't a legitimate vehicle for jazz (not to mention the great work by a number of more contemporary players). While jazz certainly has clear and distinct roots that are important to acknowledge I think it has opened up into a much wider tent than Gioia allows. To judge the value of works based on whether they're in or out of one's version of the tent seems to me misplaced. I prefer Duke's 2 categories of music (exercise for the reader - not too unreasonable in the Google age - if this reference doesn't make sense find the appropriate quote by Duke).