The further I've gotten into the Jean Boyd "Southwestern Jazz" book, the
more the attitude of the thing has made it unpleasant....sometimes it does
look simply like a "sticking to my thesis no matter what" problem, which
was what I'd called it being charitable, but by the 38th time she praises
musicians for wanting not to play "screechy" country fiddle or being "that"
sort of musician but playing "real jazz, " you kind of have to get the
prejudice!
She even routinely and matter-of-factly refers to complex jazz chords as
"better chords" than those played in country music.. ..and relegates
country to a pure folk status; i.e., western swing can't be country music,
because the term "country" has no meaning, she says, if it just becomes
some sort of commercially defined category! (Well, we've been down that
road on P2 lots of times, and have yet to find a moment in the past century
when country wasn't commerciay defined and impacted--or in which jsuciains
were in some forgotten holler unaffected by, uh, city music trends at al.
In fact, Ms. Boyd is unstoppable; let Johnn Gimble, say, win a Grammy,
obviously in a country category by the decscription, and she'll not name
the category...and the more obviously country or even country-impacted the
musician is (including Bob Wills BTW), the more likely she is to deem said
western swinger unoriginal and not quite jazzzy enough...Wills gets credit
for demanding his musicians be able to improvise, and not much
else--because it was kind of understandable that sophisticated jazz
musicians didn't want to hang around long with such a rural kind of guy.
Better to work for Spade Cooley! (She actually says this stuff.)
Well, I'm finishing it for the oral history interviews with Cliff Bruner,
etc...It has its points until the author begins to speak!
Barry
"The Jazz >of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing" by
>Jean A. Boyd, ......was panned for doing just tha (being negative about
>country) by some western swing expert (Kevin Coffey? Cary Ginell?) in a
>recent issue of the Journal
>O fCountry Music.--don
.. slammed to pieces for getting facts wrong, belittling
>country, etc. etc. Slammed hard, in fact.
>CK
>
