Published at the author’s request, this is Randy Sandke’s full and unedited response to Howard Mandel’s review of his book, Where the Dark and the Light Folks Meet: Race and the Mythology, Politics, and Business of Jazz.
Why Dr. Pangloss Panned My Book
By Randy Sandke
The subject of race inflames passions on all sides, which makes it all the more imperative to handle such a sensitive subject with extreme care. So when Howard Mandel barges into this emotional china shop, his critical ax swinging recklessly, we are all liable to end up bloody. The main thrust of his attack is his own misconception of my motive in writing the book; not what the book actually says. In doing so he violates the first principle of responsible journalism: to report the facts. In order to bolster his position statements are misrepresented, major issues neglected, and history rewritten. Judging by some of Mandel’s remarks I doubt he read the book (or large portions of it) at all.
Let’s start with what the book is about. It recounts how several jazz writers from the late 1930s (the dawn of jazz writing) to the present day have attempted to impose extra-musical agendas on the music. The book meticulously documents the many ways jazz history and criticism have been distorted to serve ideological ends. The book is neither pro-white nor pro-black; rather it is pro-musician and pro-music.
According to Mandel, the book “insists that white jazz composers, players, bandleaders and business men — even the famous ones who have made fortunes — have consistently been denied appropriate status in the music.” I defy Mandel to find a single quote in the book that supports this thesis. I’m not even sure what he means by “appropriate status”: money, recognition, work opportunities? I never made any such claim, nor would I. I can think of many black musicians who are underrated, as well as many white musicians I consider overrated, and vice versa. But that’s not what my book is about.
Mandel maintains that “I shrug off the obvious: that popularizers from Paul Whiteman through Kenny G have been rewarded with promotion, acceptance and wealth disproportionate to the value of many other musicians’ creativity.” Mandel is pitching a red herring here: (and forgive me for mixing metaphors) a classic apples vs. oranges argument. Whiteman and Kenny G play(ed) popular music, so it’s a truism to say that they entertain(ed) a wide audience and profit(ed) accordingly. What does my book say on Whiteman? That “they [the first-generation jazz writers] sought to distinguish commercial jazz (exemplified by Paul Whiteman in the twenties and many swing bands in the thirties) from ‘real’ jazz. The term ‘jazz’ would refer exclusively to that variety of ‘hot’ music characterized by improvisation. Many subsequent jazz commentators have stumbled over the conundrum that Whiteman and others did not ‘co-opt’ a black style so much as these writers co-opted the term jazz. Up to that time, ‘jazz’ had a broad generic meaning referring to any type of syncopated music.” So even after this prudent warning, Mandel insists on stumbling yet again.
Mandel also claims that, “Without the efforts of white writers who Sandke accuses of having been overly laudatory to black musicians — and also the enthusiasm of listeners of all stripes — the music of Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and the other greats may never have been heard by the majority of white America at all.” Like so many statements I examine in the book, there is such an overload of factual errors crammed into this one sentence that it’s hard to know where to begin. First of all, nowhere in the book do I accuse anyone of being “overly laudatory to black musicians.” On the contrary, the book plainly states that jazz was created by African-Americans and that:
the vast majority of its greatest exponents have been black. This amazing profusion of world-class talent has no historical parallel, except perhaps the Italian Renaissance. I would not argue that these artists have received too much attention; if anything they have not received enough. The point I wish to make is that the leading figures of jazz, regardless of color, have created music that can stand on its own terms next to the best art of any epoch. Their work doesn’t need to be propped up with the aid of socio-political theorizing. (Pages 11 and 12)
Mandel thinks that the fame of such greats as Morton, Oliver, Armstrong, and Ellington depended on the work of white writers, but the fact is that all were well known to white audiences over a decade before there were any real jazz writers. The reputations of these seminal musicians were established via recordings and live performances, not reviews in the press. I must say it is rather arrogant for Mandel to maintain that Ellington et al would have failed to make an impact without the efforts of white writers. And no matter what was later written about Morton and Oliver, their music was never “heard by the majority of white America.” The world did come to revere the music of Ellington and Armstrong, but frequently despite condemnations from a variety of jazz journalists. Ricky Riccardi’s upcoming book will detail the slings and arrows targeting Armstrong throughout the entire second half of his career, and my book cites a few as well. John Hammond wrote that “Armstrong’s deterioration began when he chose to think of himself as a soloist”; and “Ellington’s music has become vapid and without the slightest semblance of guts” since “he has added slick, un-Negroid musicians to his band and because he himself is aping Tin Pan Alley composers for commercial reasons.”
In the case of Basie, Hammond was responsible for bringing the band to national prominence, and for that he deserves credit. But this fact is well known and my book was never intended to be a recitation of information widely available in other sources. The truth is that, despite his considerable accomplishments, much of Hammond’s writing is divisive and wrong-headed. For Mandel to object to my pointing out what Otis Ferguson referred to as Hammond’s “complete lack of temperance and caution” as a jazz critic is to show utter disregard for the historic record.
Mandel accuses me of creating a “false binary” by asking whether jazz “represents the expression of a distinct and independent African-American culture, isolated by its long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination. Or, even when produced by African-Americans (or anyone else for that matter) is it more properly understood as the juncture of a wide variety of influences under the broader umbrella of American and indeed world culture?” Mandel attempts to correct me by saying “it’s not too difficult to entertain both depictions.” However my very next paragraph plainly states: “This is a question that ultimately doesn’t require an either/or answer, as there is truth in both positions. But the degree to which one accepts one or the other of these contrasting orientations can produce startlingly different results.”
Mandel claims I naively hearken back to a “Golden Age” (his term) in which musicians routinely expressed respect and admiration for their colleagues across the color line. Many such citations exist in a plethora of oral histories, but apparently this truth doesn’t fit into Mandel’s clichéd narrative so he chooses to ignore it. He goes on to say that “circumstances during at least the first half-century of jazz favored musicians with white skins who appealed often exclusively to white audiences.” Here’s where I question whether Mandel actually read my book. I wouldn’t for a minute deny that African-Americans experienced untold hardships throughout this period, though it’s also true that Armstrong was a home-owner by his mid-twenties, and Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington found comfortable accommodations on Striver’s Row and Edgecombe Avenue respectively. Even their sidemen earned nearly double the average wage for that time in the United States.
In the realm of syncopated music and what we now know as jazz, black musicians reigned supreme from the late 1890s through the mid-30s. In many cases they out-earned white bands, and had a near total monopoly on jazz work in the ‘20s. The phenomenon of great black musicians hired by wealthy and sophisticated white audiences helped drive and develop the music. All of this is thoroughly documented in my book. At the same time, and through most of the twentieth century, white musicians were relegated to playing popular music for a living, with jazz perhaps added as a spice, but almost never the main course. By the mid-twenties, white musicians began to outpace black musicians in earnings, but still had little, if any, chance to play jazz. Benny Goodman and the so-called “swing era” changed this formula significantly, but only briefly. By the late thirties, most white bands were again consigned to commercial fare to stay afloat.
The history of the business of jazz is a complex and ever-changing affair, and it has seldom been systematically examined, which is what my book attempts to do. But Mandel clings desperately to the conventional wisdom of old, which I refute time and again with well-documented evidence.
Mandel argues that I cite as “villains who demonize white jazzers” such illustrious and important figures as Langston Hughes, Milt Gabler, Norman Granz, Barney Josephson and Max Gordon. What I do say is that they were all affiliated with the Popular Front of the 1930s (an indisputable fact). Even of this I explain how:
The Popular Front was an international movement that arose in response to the Great Depression and the threat of fascism. In the United States, the movement centered around union advocacy, various anti-fascist causes, and the fight for racial equality. For a variety of social issues, the “old left” was indeed a vanguard for positive and necessary change in America. Many of their once-radical views have since become enshrined in law, taking the country several steps closer to its founding principles. (Page 16)
As for Langston Hughes, I quote Benny Carter saying that “he was a man who had much respect for and understanding of this music.” I make a point of stating that Gabler and Josephson were among the first to insist on interracial seating in their clubs and often featured mixed bands. Norman Granz was “by most accounts, one of the good guys who strove to improve working conditions as well as the bank accounts of those in his care.” How can any of this be construed as vilifying these people?
It appears inevitable that an author who criticizes the agendas of others is destined to be accused of harboring an agenda of his own. I anticipated this in the book and explicitly stated mine: “I want to see music judged on its own terms, free of external considerations. Of course jazz is an immense subject that touches on many others areas of human experience. But I feel strongly that any examination of jazz must be grounded in a knowledge of — and hopefully love and respect for — jazz as music first and foremost.” Mandel’s revealing answer to this simple and heartfelt request is to deny its validity and poke fun at it. “Well isn’t that a nice thought,” he writes. “Dream on, pilgrim, dream on.” In other words, here we have the president of the JJA insisting it ain’t about the music, stupid. No wonder so many musicians can’t get a fair hearing from Mandel and his ilk: those beholden not to the music, but the industry surrounding it through selling books, articles, liner notes, and pandering to the dinosaurs of the jazz print and recording business.
Mandel further makes the dubious claim that “jazz journalists, scholars and listeners who’ve emerged over the past forty years seem to generally have more nuanced views of who’s black, who’s white, who’s great, who’s not than previous generations did.” Later he lists musicians with “highly diverse ethnic/racial backgrounds,” and asks: “Where do they fit on a color line? Who cares?”
Well, Amiri Baraka for one. And Stanley Crouch, who is a nominee for a lifetime achievement award from the JJA. Add to this list the cultural and ethnic studies departments in universities all across this country, as well as many in Canada and Europe, who have produced much of the jazz literature over the past thirty years. This radical wing of academia threatens to dominate the jazz discourse, and is intent on hyper-politicizing it. What’s Mandel’s position on this attempt to de-musicalize jazz? Evidently he’s in favor of it, because he cites Jon Panish’s book, The Color of Jazz (itself a product of this ideologically-driven movement), as a much worthier book than mine. In this book, Panish’s writes of “the white male’s continued, unapologetic privileging of the dominant culture’s individualistic ethic, from which he more than anyone else benefited.” In other words: the group ethic is good and the individualistic ethic bad. I doubt whether such iconoclastic individuals as Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane would have agreed with such a contention.
But this and so many critical issues I raise in my book are totally sidestepped in Mandel’s review. Among them are: what are the dangers of combining history with social activism? How have both black and white musicians been negatively impacted by stereotypes? Are the rhythmic approaches of African music and jazz fundamentally the same, as so many authors insist? Why have so many African-American musicians disputed this concept? Was the notion that music performed in Congo Square decisively influenced early jazz a sham? How, if at all, did Jim Crow laws affect the creation of jazz? What was Buddy Bolden’s real contribution to the music? When did white musicians begin playing jazz in New Orleans and why? How did pop tunes of the ‘30s influence the emergence of bebop? How does avant-garde jazz relate to the modernist movement? How did the riots of the ‘60s shape race relations in America? Why did the ideals of separatism win out over integration? How did jazz go from a self-proclaimed art form to an icon of black achievement? How have jazz writers been complicit in de-valuing the importance of innovation, meaning a fundamental change in the language of jazz? (Strangely enough, the New York Times maintains that innovation can occur in restaurants, boardrooms, and even on fashion runways, but not in jazz venues – according to Ben Ratliff). Is Wynton Marsalis the equal of Charlie Parker or Louis Armstrong given the fact that they were innovators and he is not? Has an emphasis on group identity over individualism contributed to a lack of overall creativity within the jazz scene? How did big business dominate the jazz world for twenty years starting in the 1980s? And I’m just up to chapter 7 (out of 12).
Subsequent chapters deal with business aspects of jazz: audiences and presenters, recording, studio and staff work, agents and managers, and copyrights. I also examine the changing racial dynamic in the United States over the last century, and look at the state of jazz today since the decline of the major labels and the rise of the Internet.
Instead of addressing any of these matters, Mandel recycles tired and threadbare arguments about jazz and race. He casts my book into a generic “sour grapes” category while saying almost nothing about its contents. For instance, does the use of ideology to twist facts bother Mandel at all? Apparently not in the slightest. After all, we live in the best of all possible jazz worlds thanks to the diligent work of jazz writers like himself. “I find little in his selective evidence and muddled analysis,” says Mandel, “to convince me that past perspectives have been overwhelmingly unfair.” Really? Once again Mandel, AKA Dr. Pangloss, is content to gloss over facts, as well as the complicity of his fellow writers in distorting them.
The only thing that bothers Mandel, and irks him to no end, is the prospect of a musician who dares criticize critics. Such insolence, such blasphemy, must be stopped dead in its tracks. To which I say: Dream on, Pangloss, dream on.
It seems that my site has been down for a couple of weeks without my noticing. My hosting service suspended my account because of a giant spike in activity. Turns out, some Italian soccer forum had inundated my blog with unwanted activity that exceeded what I’m allowed. It’s fixed now. Yay to Allen Lowe for giving me a heads-up.
In Terry Teachout’s bio of Louis Armstrong, he tells a story about how Louis responded to the suggestion that the sidemen he used at a certain point in his career were not up to his standard. Louis said something to the effect: “Sometimes I play with the band on stage, sometimes I play with the band in my head.”
