Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce

Description

pp. 284, b/w and color photographs, “…takes the reader on a dizzying spin through the music of Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, and (not quite enough of) Duke Ellington, along with a few others. His thoughts alternately flow and then snap off abruptly in new, unexpected directions sort of a jazz-based, interdisciplinary course on the aesthetics of modernism on speed. While the occasional puns and sudden shifts in imagery might teeter on the edge of favoring style over in-depth analysis, there is enough musical meat to satisfy casual jazz fans and jazz fanatics alike. Appel’s near-improvisatory writing will not be every reader’s cup of “Tea for Two,” but the chapter on Waller’s modernistic approach as a singer particularly in his send-ups of inane pop tunes is dead on. The uncharacteristically straight-to-the-point comparisons of boogie woogie with the later paintings of Piet Mondrian and Appel’s tasty deconstruction of Louis Armstrong’s vocal stylings also pull the listener into hearing (and seeing and appreciating) in new ways.”