Alyn Shipton - The Art of Jazz: A Visual History

The look of jazz.

How does jazz look? The answer is difficult to pinpoint, as few writers have addressed this question comprehensively.

Jazz appeals most directly to the ear, but also engages the eye. Yet the visual dimension of jazz is often overlooked. There are books about jazz photography, specific record labels, album cover design, and museum exhibitions, but almost nothing has been published taking on the overall picture of the music.

This is the first book to offer a 360-degree lookin the literal meaning of that wordat the history of jazz, from its nineteenth-century roots to its twenty-first-century eclecticism. Paintings and drawings. Portrait, studio, and documentary photography. Sheet music covers, record albums, posters, and advertisements. Imagery of musicians clothing, hair, eyeglasses, and facial expressions. Visualizations of the musicians, their milieu, and their music as metaphor.

This pioneering book links the art together in a narrative, contextualizes each element in the broader history of jazz, and names and explores some of the lesser-known illustrators, designers, and artists who shaped our perception of the music in an almost subconscious way. The artists were products of their times, and the author points to several instances of stereotyping, underscoring the fact that not all the artwork depicting African American musicians was flattering or racially sensitive.

Just as jazz has influenced poetry, fiction, dance, fashion, and vernacular language, so has the music affected the visual arts. And jazz can be strikingly visual, creating unforgettable and vivid sonic paintings such as Ellingtons eerie The Mooche, Miles Davis and Gil Evanss piercing Saeta, or Charles Minguss raucous Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting.

From the realm of jazz came some of the eras leading creative artists, pursuing instantaneous, high-level communication and expression. The brilliance of these artists affirms some of the most admirable values of our time: originality, individuality, risk-taking, cultural diversity, creative collaboration, and innovation.

All were basking in the freedom that jazz affords and encourages. If jazz means anything, wrote Duke Ellington, it is freedom of expression.

That leeway to experiment, to find and put forward ones personal voice and style, bursts from the pages of this book, whether implied by the music and musicians or evident in the illustrations that adorn this volume.

I first met Alyn Shipton in 1987, when he was producing an annual symposium at the Festa New Orleans Music in Ascona, Switzerland. He invited me to present a talk on ragtime, the subject of my book Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music, which he had published in the UK. I immediately admired his eloquence, breadth of knowledge, versatility, and musical chops. I realized that Alyn Shipton is a polymath of music: writer, historian, editor, publisher, radio host, and bassist. It was with keen pleasure I renewed his acquaintance in person in London, and again in 1989, in Ascona, where, at his invitation, I delivered a lecture on Duke Ellington, later the topic of my Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington. I came to regard Alyns New History of Jazz, his books with Danny Barker, and his biographies of such figures as Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, and Dizzy Gillespie as essential jazz reading.

As do I, Alyn has a deep curiosity about jazz and a profound passion to share his learning with the public. All of us are fortunate to benefit from his erudition and insights, in his work to date and in this new book, The Art of Jazz.

John Edward Hasse

Curator Emeritus of American Music

Smithsonian Institution

Washington, DC

Recalling 1930s New York, critic Stanley Dance wrote, Charles Petersons photographs capture the spirit of those days better than any others. Artful monochrome shots like this, from a 1939 party, bring the swing era vividly to life. Here we see (left to right) Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Duke Ellington (playing her guitar), cornetist Rex Stewart, Cab Calloway, an anonymous French jazz fan, and singer Ivie Anderson.