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Book Reviews
Published online: 12 Jan 2007.

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 Jazz Perspectives
Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2007, pp. 89–97

Book Reviews

Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop, a History. By Frank Driggs and Chuck
Haddix. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN: 0195307127 (paperback).
Pp. 320. $17.95.
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One O’Clock Jump: The Unforgettable History of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils. By
Douglas Henry Daniels. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. ISBN: 0807071366 (cloth).
Pp. 288. $27.95.

When scholars study the jazz of a particular city or region, a lifetime is hardly long
enough. The only reasonable comparison for Kansas City Jazz is the work done by Bill
Russell on the music of New Orleans, which was begun at the latest in the mid-1930s,
but was only assembled in book form posthumously under the title New Orleans Style
(1994). As explained in the introduction to Kansas City Jazz, Frank Driggs has been
involved in his subject since the 1950s, publishing early interviews towards the end of
that decade in both Jazz Review and the British Jazz Monthly and summarizing the
state of his knowledge in an anthology chapter commissioned by the Review’s co-
editor Nat Hentoff and Monthly editor Albert McCarthy for Jazz (1959). Further
installments of Driggs’s research appeared in liner notes for the reissues he compiled
on Epic, Coral, and Bluebird, and in the text of his (and Harris Lewine’s)
photographic collection, Black Beauty, White Heat (1982)1.
In the long interval before the present publication, he has done more research and
there have been other contributions in the same field. In his 1962 book, Bird: The
Legend of Charlie Parker, Robert Reisner also conducted some of his own interviews
with Kansas City figures (as well as reproduced early Driggs material unacknow-
ledged!). Ross Russell’s 1971 Jazz Style in Kansas City and the Southwest actually
attempted a whole book on Kansas City and the ‘‘territory bands.’’ Though Russell is
truly superseded by the present effort, he not only drew on Driggs’s research (with
the necessary acknowledgement) but also on information from the author’s own
interviews and correspondence. Russell’s 1973 Charlie Parker biography, Bird Lives!,
used the same material, and also relied heavily on Reisner, while other Parker books
by Gary Giddins (his 1987 Celebrating Bird) and Carl Woideck (his 1996 Charlie
Parker: His Music and Life) have added other nuggets of information about the glory
days of Kansas City. So too have the interviews of Stanley Dance in his The World of

1
Bill Russell, New Orleans Style (New Orleans: Jazzology Books, 1994). Nat Hentoff and Albert
McCarthy, eds., Jazz (New York: Rinehart, 1959). Frank Driggs and Harris Lewine, Black Beauty,
White Heat (New York: William Morrow, 1982).

ISSN 1749-4060 print/1749-4079 online # 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/17494060601061055
 90 Book Reviews
Count Basie (1980) and Nathan Pearson’s Going to Kansas City (1987), the ghosted
writings of Basie in the Good Morning Blues (1985), Andy Kirk’s Twenty Years on
Wheels (1989), and the Mary Lou Williams biography, Morning Glory, by Linda Dahl
(1999).2
All of this is now grist to the mill, and yet one gets the impression that Driggs’s
research might never have found its way into book form without the input of Chuck
Haddix. Haddix became interested in the same subject matter in the late 1970s. He
has worked in public radio in Kansas City, and, since 1987, he has been director of
the Marr Sound Archive at University of Missouri-Kansas City. As well as being in an
excellent position to conduct further interviews with historic figures, Haddix has
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achieved the inestimable task of firmly rooting the oral history materials in the
compost of local press coverage. He went as far back as the early 1920s for an item on
the white Coon-Sanders Nighthawks dance-band, who made their reputation with
late-night broadcasts from the Hotel Muehlebach (22). He has also located a church
organization’s report that the prostitution business in Kansas City turned over
$1.5 million a year, and this in 1913 currency values (12).
The way in which Kansas City’s long history of officially sanctioned vice enabled it
to become the 1930s equivalent of 1920s Chicago is well-rehearsed, but its energizing
effect on the local music scene can hardly be overestimated. While this aspect of the
story is a constant background factor, what is in the foreground is an enormously
detailed picture of the comings and goings of venues and musicians, their activities
interlocking with the gradual development of an identifiable regional style—arguably,
a more influential one in the long term than New Orleans jazz was. In this book, his
writing is not above the occasional cliché, with 1920s Kansas City music characterized
far too often as ‘‘stomp-down style’’ without further qualification. Moreover, it is
surprising to find Vic Dickenson described in his mid-twenties as being a ‘‘veteran
trombonist’’ (110). Even a foreign reviewer (and sports agnostic) can spot a slip of
the word-processor in the reference to a ‘‘Harlem Renaissance basketball team’’
(131). Similarly, it would take a lot to convince me that ‘‘alto saxophonist John
Jackson replaced Parker … on Parker’s composition ‘The Jumpin’ Blues,’’’ unless this
alludes to the later airshot recording, but the assertion, unlike almost everything else
in the book, is not sourced (213).
While on the subject of Parker, it is gratifying to find the resolution of a couple of
knotty points in this musician’s chronology. As such, I could wish that this book had
appeared several months earlier, before I finished work on my own Parker biography,

2
Robert Reisner, Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker (New York: Citadel Press, 1962). Ross Russell, Jazz
Style in Kansas City and the Southwest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), and Bird Lives!
(New York: Charter House, 1973). Gary Giddins, Celebrating Bird (New York: Beech Tree Books,
1987). Carl Woideck, Charlie Parker: His Music and Life (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press,
1996). Stanley Dance, The World of Count Basie (New York: Scribners, 1980). Nathan W. Pearson, Jr.,
Going To Kansas City (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987). Count Basie, Good Morning Blues
(New York: Random House, 1985). Andy Kirk, Twenty Years on Wheels (Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan Press, 1989). Linda Dahl, Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams (New York:
Pantheon, 1999).
 Jazz Perspectives 91

Chasin’ the Bird (2005).3 The only seemingly new information to give me pause was
the authors’ rather arbitrary assumption that when Jay McShann said in various
interviews that Parker worked in the Ozarks with singer-bandleader George E. Lee, he
was really referring to Parker’s work with George Wilkerson (163). This point is not
only not discussed (and merely inserted by means of a parenthetical ‘‘correction’’),
but it flies in the face of the received version, established as long ago as 1955 by bassist
Gene Ramey’s recollection (reprinted in Woideck’s Charlie Parker Companion from
1998) that Parker was indeed with Lee.4 Since Ramey also noted that Parker carried
with him to the Ozarks the first records of Lester Young with Count Basie (releases
that were only issued in 1937),5 and since George Wilkerson died in fall 1936 (166),
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there is every reason to accept the conventional wisdom on this point. As noted in
Daniels’s new book, One O’Clock Jump: The Unforgettable History of the Oklahoma
City Blue Devils, Parker’s mentor Buster Smith was working for George E. Lee at the
same Ozark resort in the spring of 1937 (183). This evidence makes it likely that
Parker followed him rather than preceded him.
Driggs/Haddix have clearly decided to omit—presumably on grounds of space—
any detailed discussion of bands from the ‘‘territories,’’ except in so far as their
histories feed into or overlap with those of Kansas City-based bands. To that
extent, one welcomes the new work of Daniels, whose earlier research into Lester
Young—published in 2003 as Lester Leaps In—obviously garnered much non-Young-
related information about the approximately twelve-year career of the band
commonly known as the Blue Devils.6 Concerning their rather obscure start, this
latter author too seems to have suffered from the dilatory appearance of Kansas City
Jazz. Having relied on Driggs’s 1950s interview with Walter Page to date the
inception of the Blue Devils to their work with comedian Billy King in January 1923
(24), Daniels has to add an endnote concerning Driggs/Haddix’s citation of Kansas
City press reports about the band’s appearances with King in November 1922 (231).
His own copious research into the press, however, appears not to cover Kansas City
until the early 1930s, thus placing more emphasis on the contributions of Oklahoma
and Dallas.
Daniels’s characterization of jazz history’s regional model of ‘‘New Orleans-
Chicago-New York-Kansas City’’ as an over-simplification is one of the potential
strengths of his book. Another is his awareness that the black big bands of the 1920s
and 1930s—and perhaps especially the territory bands—not only entertained their
communities, but were solidly embedded in the community. Along the way, he finds
new birthdates for Jimmy Rushing (49) and possibly Eddie Durham (68), although
his endnote on the latter is so garbled that it is unclear what Daniels really thinks
(243, n. 2). Daniels also spells the forename of the trombonist and first bandleader of

3
Brian Priestley, Chasin’ the Bird: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker (London: Equinox, 2005; and
New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
4
Carl Woideck, ed., The Charlie Parker Companion (New York: Schirmer, 1998), 138.
5
Reisner, Bird, 188.
6
Douglas Henry Daniels, Lester Leaps In (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003).
 92 Book Reviews
the Blue Devils as Ermal Coleman (21 passim), contradicting the variants found in
Driggs/Haddix and in Russell’s 1971 work. Despite these noteworthy points, there is a
sense that the discontinuous history of the band’s several manifestations, and a total
discography of two 78 r.p.m. sides, are responsible for an unsatisfactory and slim
book. There is much needless repetition of facts and opinions. Yet, incredibly (under
these circumstances), valuable information about Lester Young’s time in the band is
not incorporated from Daniels’s previous work. Perhaps one is expected to have read
Lester Leaps In first, since, for instance, references to the ‘‘National Orchestra Service’’
(identified in the earlier work as an Omaha-based booking agency) remain
unexplained here.
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There are other disadvantages that counterbalance Daniels’s laudable research.

These include a failure to corroborate press sources, as when mentioning ‘‘the
European tour in 1946’’ by Count Basie with the implication that such an event
actually took place (173). Similarly, the statement that ‘‘some of the ways in which
Basie supported political causes are surprising’’ (171) is naı̈ve, given the reference is
to the 1930s when the pianist’s self-appointed adviser was the politically active John
Hammond. Hammond’s role in the Basie story is reduced here to a record company
representative; in Lester Leaps In, however, he was described even more incorrectly as
an employee of MCA. Daniels’s assertion of inaccuracy in a report about Hot Lips
Page being denied the best bookings (93–94) seems to ignore other sources which
suggest that manager Joe Glaser wished to control the exposure of a potential rival to
his star, Louis Armstrong. Daniels’s attempt to credit Page with writing the Frank
Loesser words to ‘‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’’ is bizarre (105), but he also believes Page’s
‘‘life on the city streets as a youngster is evident in ‘Small Fry,’’’ and proceeds to
quote without acknowledgement the entire lyric of the latter, which is also usually
attributed to Loesser (108). Earlier, he apparently relies on the transcript of a Buster
Smith interview (39) to the effect that Smith was influenced by the early records of
Bechet, Woodie Walder, and ‘‘Tommy Dorsey,’’ rather than Jimmy Dorsey. When he
quotes a Dallas newspaper on Smith’s death, saying ‘‘James Clay observed …’’ (42),
one feels entitled to ask not only for clarification as to who James Clay is, but for
reassurance that Daniels knows.
Returning to Driggs/Haddix, in a work of such vast scope, it is obviously
essential to have a comprehensive index. But, for instance, the index to this book
leaves an earlier reference to George Wilkerson uncited (93), though he is listed
for the two early Charlie Parker mentions cited above. Drummer Edward ‘‘Little
Phil’’ Phillips appears four times (two of them in the endnotes), but only makes
the index once. Similarly, the mention of Blue Devils trombonist Coleman (77) is
not noted. Among other Driggs/Haddix indexing errors, probably the most serious is
the conflation of singer Walter Brown and the legendary club-manager
Walter ‘‘Piney’’ Brown, a howler matched only by Daniels’s indexer listing
Thomas A. Dorsey and Tommy Dorsey as one person (yet omitting the latter’s
‘‘deputization’’ for his brother). Likewise, Daniels has several references to Eugene
Coy’s (Happy) Black Aces, a band with whom future Blue Devils such as Eddie
 Jazz Perspectives 93

Durham and Ben Webster worked, though none of these latter references make it to
the index; neither do some of the book’s references to Buster Smith, or Billy King, or
the National Orchestra Service. The obvious moral that authors must learn is that
they should do, and should be paid to do, their own indexing. (By the way, I have
always understood that the early Bennie Moten banjoist George Tall only acquired
the forename ‘‘Sam’’ when it was invented at deadline time by a hard-pressed English
periodical editor, Sinclair Traill, whose own name is consistently misspelled in
Daniels’s end-notes.)
It is sad to see that editing and proofreading too are only 95-percent satisfactory in
Driggs/Haddix. Gene Ramey’s reference to Parker ‘‘starting from a chord in B
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natural’’ against a B-flat tonic (202) is scrambled, exactly as in Reisner (however,

Woideck’s Parker Companion has it correctly). Eddie Durham’s comment about
bassists playing ‘‘on the fifth and tonic’’—which made sense in Dance’s Basie book—
appears without the word ‘‘and’’ (109). Similarly, describing Julia Lee as a ‘‘left-
handed pianist’’ (42) is almost as nonsensical as the idea that 1920s saxophonist
Loren McMurray popularized ‘‘the A-flat alto’’ (16), which would certainly be a first.
The statement that the early Kansas City-based pianist Blind Boone’s ‘‘walking bass
line provided the rhythmic foundation for boogie-woogie piano’’ (32) is already a
considerable exaggeration of a Paul Oliver statement quoted in the New Grove
Dictionary of Jazz.7 But to continue in the very same breath that this development
‘‘ultimately enabled Kansas City bands to move from traditional 2/4 … to a more
fluid 4/4 rhythm’’ appears to give Boone an unwarranted importance.
Daniels too has something to say on the rhythmic question, or two rather different
things. He quotes Jimmy Rushing to the effect that, in the early Moten band, the
‘‘accent was on the first and the third [beats],’’ whereas in Oklahoma City ‘‘the beat
was more even. And New Orleans was more or less even when they used a four.’’ But
then he adds Rushing’s comment (from another interview) that ‘‘it’s the same beat
that Basie has today’’ (132). This conflation is confusing, to say the least. In a
different chapter, however, we read that ‘‘Bennie Moten played one and three. Walter
Page played on two and four; but when they wedded together you had one, two,
three, four’’ (176–177). This is the crisp and authoritative comment of Jo Jones, but if
you expect Daniels to compare and contrast these remarks, you will look in vain. One
could go on, but these problems are doubtless the result of a legacy of earlier times
when non-musician authors (in other words, all three reviewed here) were unwilling
to have their manuscripts scrutinized by those more musically literate. Perhaps that
task ought to be financed by publishers too.
It would be a mistake to end this review on a critical note. Driggs/Haddix’s
successful condensation a huge volume of material into a readable narrative is a
mirror image of Daniels’s efforts to stretch limited amounts of information to book
length. For all its occasional frustrations, Kansas City Jazz is the publication we have

7
Paul Oliver, ‘‘Boogie-woogie,’’ in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2d ed., ed. Barry Kernfeld
(London: Macmillan, 2002), 268.
 94 Book Reviews
been waiting for from Driggs, and Haddix’s contribution has made it even more
valuable than might have been expected.

Brian Priestley
London, United Kingdom

Earl ‘‘Fatha’’ Hines: Selected Piano Solos, 1928–1941. Edited by Jeffrey Taylor. Music
of the United States of America Series, MUSA 15. Middleton, Wisconsin: A-R
Editions, Inc., 2006. ISBN: 0-89579-580-9 (paperback). Pp. 133. $96.00.
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The music of jazz has had an unusual history in print. From publications of ‘‘breaks’’
by such players as Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong in the 1920s to the volume
under discussion, such books or folios have always been part of the marketplace. In
many cases, the original artists had little to do with these books, and many were
arrangements playable by the amateur based on a musician’s style. Even in cases
where music was transcribed, the results were often wildly inaccurate. In today’s
digital world, there are many techniques and computer aids to ‘‘get the notes’’ but the
transcriber still must make quite a number of musical decisions in preparing these
documents. When I was doing such work, the chief editor and I often argued over
one chord for over an hour; with regard to the music of Gil Evans and Thelonious
Monk, I have seen people defend their work so heatedly that friendships are often
strained as a result.
A volume of Earl Hines transcriptions has been needed for a long time;
although there was at least one Hines piano book issued in the 1940s, the solos
appear to be ‘‘in the style of Hines’’ rather than actual transcriptions. Thanks to the
American Musicological Society and A-R Editions, an authoritative Hines volume
now exists. Jeffrey Taylor has done an excellent job of preparing and documenting
the music in this book. The twelve transcriptions include Hines’s first solo piano
recordings of December 1928 for the short-lived QRS label, up to solos for Victor
Records from 3 April 1941. The next group of Hines piano-solo recordings date from
1949, and Mr. Taylor tells us that Hines’s style had changed substantially by this time,
incorporating bebop and other modern elements, so the cutoff of 1941 in this volume
is logical.
As Mr. Taylor comments, Hines’s style was clearly informed by James P. Johnson
and Fats Waller, but it is also drenched in classical music, novelty piano, stride,
popular music, and blues. In the late 1920s through the 1940s, Hines subsequently
led one of the finest big bands in the country with a steady gig at the Grand
Terrace Ballroom in Chicago. Such artists as Budd Johnson, Billy Eckstine, Charlie
Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, and Wardell Gray were members of
his ensemble at one time or another. After disbanding in 1948, Hines played with
Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars (although the two didn’t get along) and subsequently
free-lanced around California. His comeback concert in New York’s Little Theatre in
 Jazz Perspectives 95

1964 resulted in his performing all over the world until his death from Parkinson’s
disease in 1983.
What makes Hines’s solos so interesting is their unpredictability. Mr. Taylor
explains his fascination with Hines’s work in the introduction to the book where
he notes that the artist’s playing was ‘‘a maze of twists and turns.’’ While the man
had an ‘‘unassailable command of his instrument, … [he] repeatedly dashed my
expectations with an abrupt change in texture, a tearing chromatic run, or a string
of jolting cross-accents.’’ It is this daredevil approach to the instrument that makes
the work of Hines interesting to study and reproduce, and challenging to
transcribe. Because these solos are so well-known, I will only comment casually on
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the pieces themselves. No doubt most readers already have them in their recording
libraries.
While most recording artists were essentially told what to record by labels and
music publishers, Hines’s first solo recording date for QRS is quite remarkable, as
these seem to be off-the-cuff, structurally loose performances of original material
with little melody to speak of. ‘‘Blues in Thirds’’ and ‘‘Stowaway’’ represent this date,
which was not very well recorded, and poorly distributed. When Hines set down
more solos in the Chicago studio of OKeh a few days later, ‘‘Blues in Thirds’’ was
recorded again, with different results. The first two choruses are similar to the QRS
recording, but the third chorus changes key and goes off in a totally different
direction. ‘‘A Monday Date (My Monday Date)’’ had been recorded three times, once
as a solo and twice in a small band settings with Jimmy Noone and Louis Armstrong.
This transcription is from the second solo version, the only recording which includes
a verse—a passage that notably does not appear in the lead sheet deposited for
copyright, nor on any other recording.
12 December 1928 was a busy day for Hines in the studio. On this date, he
accompanied Lillie Delk Christian, Red McKenzie, and Louis Armstrong. In between
playing for these artists, Hines made two more solos, both of which appear here. Mr.
Taylor calls Hines’s solo on ‘‘I Ain’t Got Nobody’’ ‘‘one of the most rhythmically
audacious in early jazz piano.’’ Hines plays the tune slowly, with frequent use of
double-time. Although Hines later said ‘‘Fifty-Seven Varieties’’ (a reference to Heinz
Ketchup, and play on the sound of Hines) was extemporaneous fooling around, Mr.
Taylor calls this ‘‘the most tightly knit and coherent of all the 1928 solos.’’ Played at a
very fast tempo, this solo shows off Hines’s bag of tricks as he travels the cycle of
fourths from C to F to Bb to Eb to Ab for each chorus.
From a 25 February 1929 recording date comes ‘‘Glad Rag Doll’’ (two takes were
issued long after they were recorded; take one is transcribed for this volume). Mr.
Taylor suggests that Hines was improvising while reading a sheet music copy of the
song, since page turning is heard in the recording. Regardless, the solo’s third
chorus features some ‘‘contrapuntal passagework’’ which is ‘‘highly advanced for its
time.’’
The next two solos were recorded for Brunswick on 14 July 1932, at the conclusion
of a session with his orchestra. Both selections have interesting moments. ‘‘Love Me
 96 Book Reviews
Tonight’’ was a pop song of the period (take B is transcribed here; three were
eventually issued). In chorus two, Hines ‘‘creates one of the most unsettling moments
in all his solos, when he seems to telescope the end of the preceding chorus into the
beginning of [the second].’’ Take A of ‘‘Down Among the Sheltering Palms’’ has an
error in the verse, suggesting that Hines did not know the tune very well. But one of
the most interesting things about Hines is how he is able to maneuver and get back
on track, perhaps one of the reasons this solo was included.
‘‘Rosetta’’, of course, is Hines’s most famous composition, and this number has
long been considered a standard. Takes 3 and 4 of Hines ‘‘Rosetta’’ from 6 October
1939 are to be found here. Take 3 is more straightforward than 4, which is a bit more
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florid.
The final solo in the folio is the 3 April 1941 version of ‘‘On the Sunny Side of the
Street.’’ By this time, Hines’s fortunes were beginning to change: the Grand Terrace
Ballroom had closed in December 1940, and the band was forced to tour. Victor
squeezed a few more piano solos in with the big-band recordings. Mr. Taylor notes
that this solo is ‘‘restrained and melodic’’ and ‘‘displays a warmth that is largely
absent from Hines’s earlier work.’’
Based on Mr. Taylor’s notes and commentary, it appears that in many cases he had
quite a few problems in both deciding what Hines played, and then translating the
results into notation. Transcribers agree that the piano is the hardest instrument to
transcribe, as the recording horn or microphone often adds harmonics that are
clearly heard, but are not actually played. In some cases, chords played by Hines are
clusters that suggest harmony, but these voicings serve as color and are often unclear.
Mr. Taylor extensively documents his choices in the publication’s detailed critical
notes.
The volumes in the MUSA series are beautifully engraved and easy to read. This
new volume is no exception, yet I must comment on one or two issues. While the
notation is uniformly excellent, I need to point out an engraving practice that should
be corrected—i.e., three eighth notes beamed together, called a ‘‘false triplet.’’
Although this figure is found from the very beginning of written and printed
mensural notation, it is often misread by the player. There have been instances where
an eighth rest beginning or following the figure is left out by accident, and the figure
is played as a triplet, hence the figure’s name. As a test, I once gave my college
students a piece with both the false triplet and the same figure broken, with one note
written with a flag. The false triplet was misread by some students, while the broken
figure was played perfectly each time. I do not know whether this was Mr. Taylor’s
notational choice or that of A-R Editions, but I would ask publishers and educators
to strongly consider re-writing this figure. (False triplets appear in other MUSA
volumes, although they are hardly the only publishers that continue to use this
figure.)
I also find it a pity that the pricing of the volume takes it out of the range of many
musicians who would want to play and study the music. The price of $96.00 is quite
high for twelve pieces of music, and many musicians will be tempted to photocopy
 Jazz Perspectives 97

them so that they can be played. This is the proverbial ‘‘Catch-22’’ of the ambitious
mission of the MUSA series in general; this is a wonderful volume that only libraries
and hard-core fans and pianists can afford.
Outside these two important issues, this volume is a triumph and a much-needed
piece of documentation of the work of a unique, creative artist. The MUSA series is a
jewel in documenting American music, and I await future volumes in the months to
come.

Jeff Sultanof
Paterson, New Jersey
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