Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday Essay Example for Free

Bessie Smith and Billie pass EssayBill gasconades Jazz Anecdotes is a thought-provoking, often amusing collection of stories from inside hunch forwards inner circles, told by and about some of the genres leading figures. epoch not a history of contend, it gives readers some insights to how confidential information artists worked, lived, bonded, and coped with an America in which many were still outsiders. The phonograph records forty-three chapters (expanded from the original 1990 edition) describe the life deal musicians shared, offering insights into a rather exclusive, unorthodox circle of performing artists. The numerous anecdotes are categorized by chapters, gathering related tales and moving from a general overview of jazz life to anecdotes about individuals, similar Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and Benny Goodman. Essentially, Crow creates a context in which jazz musicians lived, and then places individual musicians within it, giving readers a better understandin g of how they functioned in this eminent climate. For example, the volume opens with Wild Scenes, which Crow says describes how the individuality of jazz musicians combines with the capricious world in which they try to steel a living (Crow 3).The brief chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book, giving glimpses of the unconventional world jazz musicians live (which explains to some degree their relationship to society at large). The Word Jazz contains attempts to explain the origins of the genres name, and Inventions offers accounts of how certain innovations occurred (such as Dizzy Gillespies distinctive bent trumpet), giving the reader a sand of history though the work is not an orthodox history per se. Many of the stories contained in Jazz Anecdotes comport the musicians camaraderie and warmth toward each other, as well as each others idiosyncrasies.Others pass on how difficult and often arbitrary the jazz lifestyle often was. Hiring and Firing demonstrates how unstab le many musicians careers were, predominate with disputes over money or dismissals for their personal quirks. (For example, Count Basie fired Lester Young for refusing to participate in enter sessions occurring on the 13th of any month. ) Managers, Agents, and Bosses offers a glimpse into the seamier underside of jazz, where dishonest managers and mobsters often trapped jazz performers in unfair contracts or worse.Though jazz musicians appear to inhabit a special world, Crow does not discuss jazz in a social vacuum, tying it to social phenomena like scat relations. In Prejudice, the tales take a more serious tone by showing how black jazz artists faced abundant racism, particularly in the South. However, Crow notes that Jazz helped to start the erosion of racial bias in America . . . because it drew whites and blacks together into a common experience (Crow 148). Jazz artists dealt with racism in various ways Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday stood up to it while Zutty Singleton a ccepted it.Meanwhile, even white musicians like Stan Smith angered both races whites for performing with blacks, and blacks for intruding on their music (Crow 152). The final chapters focus on individual artists, illustrating the greats personalities. Louis Armstrong emerges as earthy and good-hearted Bessie Smith as strong and willful but ultimately self-destructive Fats Waller is an impish pleasure-seeker given to excellent music but poor business decisions and Benny Goodman as gifted but tight-fisted and controlling.Taken as a whole, Jazz Anecdotes offers a look at jazzs human side, including its foibles, genius, camaraderie, crookedness, and connection to an American society from which it sometimes stood apart. Its legendary figures are depicted as gifted, devoted artists who enjoyed hedonism, companionship, and particularly independence. If any single thing stands out in this book, it is the latter for the figures in this work, jazz meant creativity and freedom, which they pu rsued with equal vigor and vitality. Crow, Bill. Jazz Anecdotes. New York Oxford University Press, 2005.