Jazz writ large

Interview, Dec, 1996 by Ingrid Sischy

INGRID SISCHY: Bob, what motivated you to start this project?

ROBERT GOTTLIEB: [laughs] Well, I'd never really been that interested in jazz - I grew up on classical and pop music. But six or seven years ago, I drifted into Tower Records with some friends, and Mel Torme's name came up, as did another famous jazz singer whose work I didn't know at all, Lee Wiley. So I bought a couple of records, and you know what happens when you buy a couple of records: You buy a few more. And the couples became scores, and the scores became hundreds, and in my obsessive way, I became fascinated by jazz singing. I practically used truffle hounds to unearth every record ever made by anybody who ever sang a note of jazz. And that includes people like Frank Sinatra, who is a jazz singer, except when he isn't. Which is true with a lot of people.

IS: And how did this obsession begin to take shape as the book we have now?

RG: I was working at The New Yorker at the time, and our great jazz writer, Whitney Balliett, suggested other places to find information. So I started reading and reading, and I realized that a great deal of what had been written [about jazz] just wasn't available anymore. So, I began thinking, Somebody should put all of this together in a great big book. I mentioned the idea to Sonny Mehta, the head of [the publishing company] Alfred A. Knopf, and he said, "Well, why don't you do it?" Which gave me the excuse to seek out more books and talk to more experts. About two-and-a-half years later, I had readjust about everything I could find. And what I found was remarkable. Almost no authentic writing by a prominent jazz figure is without real energy, charm, and something to say. So I decided the first part of the anthology would be these [autobiographical] voices, everyone from Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, to Sidney Bechet and Miles Davis. And then there was a lot of criticism and reportage [that had been] published in obscure places. When I was done, it was eighteen hundred large-size book pages. [both laugh] Even I, in my madness, knew I had to cut seven to eight hundred pages.

IS: There are still over one thousand pages.

RG: A mere anecdote. [In creating an anthology of this size,] I was trying to achieve two things: to give an overview of jazz, one in which just about anybody who had ever said anything worth listening to would be well represented; and also to provide an overview of jazz writing. Every conceivable literary style is in the book, from the hopelessly hokey journalism of the '40s, to very brilliant criticism, to all these distinctive voices [of the artists themselves]. For instance, one of the jazz magazines, Metronome, would blindfold people and get their guests to comment on and rate new records. I happened to find the issue [February 1950] where Billie Holiday is the guest. A lot of people will have read her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, or seen the movie version with Diana Ross, but nobody has really heard her authentic voice. And here in this little piece, where she's talking about eight or ten new records, you really get a sense of her authority and her wit and her ruthless telling of the way she saw it.

IS: As a foreigner, I've always thought of jazz as an American thing.

RG: It is. Jazz historically began in the later part of the nineteenth century in places like New Orleans and Mississippi. Eventually, it made its way up the Mississippi to Kansas City and Chicago and then, very quickly, it spread abroad. In fact, the first critical piece in my book, "Bechet and Jazz Visit Europe," was written in 1919 by [conductor] Ernst-Alexandre Ansermet. France has always had formidable jazz critics - still does. And England too.

IS: And jazz performers, as well.

RG: Yes. In part because of their fury at racism here [in the U.S.], a lot of performers chose to live in Europe and stayed there for many years. Bechet became a great figure in France, particularly after the war. Also, at the height of rock 'n' roll - in the late '50s and '60s, and into the '70s - when jazz was almost dead in America, it became very popular in Japan. Musicians could go over there and make good livings. Even today, many jazz performances are only available on extraordinarily obscure Japanese recordings. [laughs] Japan kept jazz alive.

IS: Why do you think Americans lost Interest In Jazz?

RG: It started getting self-conscious and serious, and grew more and more complicated. The musicians became perhaps more interested in expressing themselves and their theories than in having, and giving, a good time. And young people were no longer interested in it, because it was no longer a simple, joyous, amusing dance music. It was now something much more cerebral and complicated. But remember - I'm not an historian of jazz, I'm a custodian of jazz writing. The point of this venture is to reveal the wonderful writing about jazz in all its variety and interest and fun.

IS: Rather than the great variety of jazz music.

RG: Exactly. But back to your original question. Many young people - like Wynton Marsalis, for example - have begun to reexamine and honor the older jazz that had been dismissed by the avant-gardists. Then there was the invention of the CD, which changed many music habits, not only jazz ones. Suddenly older stuff could be rediscovered, repackaged, and resold. And also, like the movies, jazz is now taught at universities and there are great jazz archives, like the one at Rutgers [University]. It's all gettable and studiable.