bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Prontosil
Authors: Lesch John E
Published: November 2023

On Christmas Day 1932, I.G. Farben applied for a German patent on procedures to prepare a red crystalline powder with the formidable chemical name of 4-sulfonamido-2,4-diaminoazobenzene. Little was said of the compound’s properties, little hint given of the momentous consequences for medicine that might follow from its introduction. Jealously guarded by a small circle within the company, the compound’s secrets would not be proclaimed to the world for more than two years. In February 1935, less than two months after the patent was granted, Gerhard Domagk announced the new compound, now called by the trade name Prontosil, in a short communication to a German medical periodical. From that time on, the fate of Prontosil was inextricably bound up with its reception, particularly by the international medical, scientific, and industrial worlds. Before February 1935, however, its history is largely enclosed within the company.
At War
Authors: Lesch John E
Published: November 2023

On December 3, 1941, New York surgeon John J. Moorhead arrived in Honolulu to give a series of lectures on traumatic surgery. His first lecture, delivered on the evening of December 5, was titled “Treatment of Wounds, Civil and Military.” Many of the some 300 people in the audience were Army or Navy doctors. Moorhead’s second lecture was scheduled for 9:00 Sunday morning. As he finished his breakfast that day, he heard gunfire in the distance and was told that Pearl Harbor was under attack. When he reached the lecture hall, he found an audience of fifty, with no Navy or Army personnel. Moorhead had barely begun to speak before a local physician rushed in to say that twelve surgeons were needed immediately at the Army’s Tripler Hospital. He spent the next eleven hours in the operating room, as a member of one of eight operating teams treating a flood of casualties of the attack. In the midst of this marathon session, Moorhead, who had served with the U.S. Army Medical Corps in World War I, was restored to temporary active duty with the rank of Colonel.
Trial by Fire
Authors: Lesch John E
Published: November 2023

As the Merck ad at the end of chapter 9 suggests, the millions of pounds of sulfa drugs pouring from U.S. production lines in each year of World War II were quickly taken up by military and civilian supply networks, and ultimately made their way to doctors and patients at home and in all the military theaters. How were the sulfa drugs used? How effective did practitioners believe them to be, and what problems were associated with their use? Did wartime research on sulfa drugs influence practice, and if so, in what ways? Finally, what effect did the appearance of penicillin on the therapeutic scene have on the place of the sulfa drugs in medical practice?
The Sulfa Drugs and Twentieth-Century Medicine
Authors: Lesch John E
Published: November 2023

The sulfa drugs stand at the center of a major transformation of medicine in the twentieth century. They initiated a revolution in the therapeutics and management of bacterial infections. They gave a powerful impetus to the expansion of the pharmaceutical industry, and to its research and development component in particular. They contributed heavily to the opening of an era of miracle drugs, with its attendant optimism, increased rate of appearance of new medicines, regulatory dilemmas, and unanticipated therapeutic problems. Finally, the sulfa drugs, apart from their place in the treatment of bacterial infections, also had numerous and often unanticipated ramifying effects on the development of different medicinal drugs or compounds with other practical uses.
More Syntax
Authors: Macaulay Ronald
Published: November 2023

Languages are fairly economical communication systems. One of the ways in which they achieve this economy is by using the same forms for different purposes, as we have seen with homophones such as right, write, rite, and so on, or with expressions such as a handsome millionaire. Another is by avoiding unnecessary repetitions. For example, suppose I tell you I saw an elderly man with a long grey beard, a squint, and a limp carrying a tattered umbrella yesterday and I wish to inform you of something this individual did, I do not need to say and the elderly man with a long grey beard, a squint, and a limp carrying a tattered umbrella suddenly began shouting obscenities. In fact, you would think it odd if I said that instead of and he suddenly began shouting obscenities. The word he can be used to replace a long phrase such as an elderly man with a long grey beard, a squint, and a limp carrying a tattered umbrella. Words of the type of he are called pronouns, although this is really a misnomer since what the pronoun replaces is not simply the noun man but the whole noun phrase of which it is a part. The crucial point here is that, in order to use and understand what the pronoun he refers to, both the speaker and the hearer have to recognize that an elderly man with a long grey beard, a squint, and a limp carrying a tattered umbrella is a single unit, of a particular kind. Utterances do not consist simply of sequences of words; the words are grouped into phrases and it is these phrases that are the units of syntax.
Semantics
Authors: Macaulay Ronald
Published: November 2023

The most important aspect of language is meaning, which is mainly studied under the heading semantics. It is the most important because all linguistic communication depends upon some common understanding of what is being said. For the most part we take it for granted that other people who speak the language understand an utterance in the way we do. This assumption is most dangerous in talking with children. Just because a child uses a word adults can identify as one in their own vocabulary, it does not follow that the word has the same meaning for both adult and child. In fact, it would be truer to say that words never have exactly the same meaning for adults and for young children, because words take part of their meaning from their relationship to other words, and when the child knows only a few, those words are likely to have a wider meaning than they do for adults. One girl used the word papa to refer not only to her father but also to her grandfather and her mother, and later to any man. Children often use the word doggie to refer to a wide range of animals. Partly this is because children usually begin by learning words that are neither very specific nor very general. For example, a child is much more likely to learn the word dog than the more specific poodle or the more general term animal, even though dog may be used with the general sense of animal and the only dog that the child knows is a poodle. As children learn more words, they become able to distinguish verbally between dogs and cats or horses and thus show that they know the difference between them.
Variety
Authors: Macaulay Ronald
Published: November 2023

Imagine a distant horizon against which can be seen as yet unidentifiable moving objects. As one gets closer it becomes possible to see that the objects are indeed human beings but other than that they are indistinguishable. Getting closer still, it is possible to draw certain conclusions about the age, sex, race, and even perhaps the nationality and relative social status of the individuals. Finally, through such attributes as facial features and fingerprints, it is possible to determine that each individual is unique. Such identifications are made visually, but we can also draw similar inferences from what we hear. At one extreme we may simply realize that the sounds we hear belong to human language; at the other we may recognize that it is a friend speaking. Between the universal and the unique, a number of categories can be identified from speech. In this chapter we shall examine some of the group characteristics of speech, but first it is necessary to recapitulate some of the basic features of language.
Regional Dialects
Authors: Macaulay Ronald
Published: November 2023

It is impossible to think back to a time when any language was homogeneous. Even when, if it was the case, there were very small groups speaking the same language, there must have been some variety. Language is heterogeneous by its very nature and the existence of differences creates the possibility of combining certain features into new groupings. To take a parallel from another field, there are now several hundred recognized breeds of dog but all dogs have as their common ancestor the wolf. Through centuries of selective breeding, the wolf has evolved into such different creatures as the Great Dane, the dachshund, the poodle, and the Lakeland terrier. Certain features of size, color, temperament, and so on have been selectively reinforced or suppressed. So it is with language. Although we have no idea what the ur-language was, or even whether there was only one, we know enough about language diversification to know that languages can change dramatically with changing circumstances. Most European languages can be traced back to a hypothetical single ancestor (see chapter 27), yet speakers of Russian, Greek, Welsh, French, and English do not consider themselves as speaking the same language, though they will find occasional resemblances among the words of the different languages.
Written Language
Authors: Macaulay Ronald
Published: November 2023

There is no way to determine when human beings first began to use language as we know it. The origins of language are lost in the prehistoric past and can never be recovered. Archaeological evidence is no help because bones are not the critical parts of the speech apparatus. Estimates of how long people have been using language vary from fifty to a hundred thousand years. We do know, however, that languages have been written down for widespread uses only during the past three thousand years. The earliest writing systems used pictures to represent aspects of the world. Later these pictures became more stylized and could be used more flexibly. Later still, the symbols came to represent language rather than refer to the world directly. There are three major kinds of writing system at present. A logographic system has symbols that represent whole words (or at least morphemes), as does the Chinese writing system. A syllabic writing system has a symbol for each syllable but not for each sound. Thus the Japanese Katakana system has symbols for [pa], [ta], [ka], and so on but no separate symbols for [p], [t], and [k]. Finally, there is an alphabetic writing system where each symbol represents a single sound.
Style
Authors: Macaulay Ronald
Published: November 2023

Choice always implies meaning. Even if we choose to say nothing, our silence may be meaningful. What meaning that silence has depends not only upon the situation but also on what people expect. Among the Western Apache, for example, it is normal to greet strangers and those who have been absent for a long time with silence. Talking begins only when the pants feel at ease with each other. In most Western societies, the way to reach the stage of feeling comfortable is through talking. Many people feel awkward in the presence of strangers if the silence goes on too long. There is a tendency to make remarks about the weather, sports, or other uncontroversial subjects just to be friendly. Again, such feelings are culturally determined. V. S. Pritchett once described how a young man in Ireland had contributed to a lengthy and lively session merely by “breathing sociably.” Where there is no choice, the use of a form does not in itself signify a special meaning. For example, the use of the word banana to refer to a banana does not convey any special emphasis since there is no other word that would do. Similarly, in English the choice between an infinitive and a gerund is often restricted. For example, we must say he wants to sing (not *he wants singing) and he enjoys singing (not *he enjoys to sing). However, when both alternatives are possible there may also be a difference in meaning, as in he tried to sing (but couldn’t) versus he tried singing (but nobody paid any attention). In the first case he did not succeed in singing and in the second he did. This is a considerable difference of meaning. In some cases, however, it is much harder to bring out a clear meaning between two alternatives, as in he likes to sing versus he likes singing.
The Magic of Words
Authors: Macaulay Ronald
Published: November 2023

We are all familiar with fairy stories in which someone utters certain words and something wonderful (or terrible) happens. We also have heard in such stories of people who can cast spells that have a binding effect on other people. We may even have read accounts of societies in which such things are said actually to occur. We mostly think of such things as absent from our own use of language, but this is not so. To take one of the commonest but also one of the most perilous utterances, the words I love you may have far-reaching consequences for both speaker and the person addressed. Although the words alone without confirming behavior might not be very effective, the behavior without the words somehow will never be convincing. Of course, the words are often uttered insincerely or casually but, if they are taken seriously, then they will have serious consequences.
Rhetoric
Authors: Macaulay Ronald
Published: November 2023

The English philosopher Paul Grice claimed that in everyday conversational exchanges there operates a cooperative principle according to which interlocutors try to make life easy for each other by neither exaggerating nor understating the truth and by judging just what it is, the hearer needs to be told in order to understand the message. We often violate this principle in joking, teasing, dissembling, apologizing, and especially in arguing. In order to convince an antagonist, we do not feel obliged to reveal everything we know or to admit ignorance. In particular, we are often happy to say something we hope will be misinterpreted so that we cannot be accused of lying. This happens in many forms of writing and speaking. It is normal in advertising, political speeches, and other polemical uses of language. It can even happen in scholarly presentations. Someone translated into plainer English various expressions that commonly occur in reports of research: It is believed that . . . (“I think”); It is generally believed that . . . (“My friends think so too”); It has long been known that ... (“I didn’t look up the original references”); Three of the samples were chosen for detailed study (“The others made no sense”); and so on. Most people will be able to supply examples from their own reading. This kind of writing was savagely attacked by George Orwell, who particularly disliked the use of the passive voice, since it leaves unstated who is responsible.
Narratives
Authors: Macaulay Ronald
Published: November 2023

People tell stories for a variety of purposes: to amuse, to inform, to impress, to ask for sympathy, to illustrate a point, and so on. In particular people often enjoy telling stories about their own experiences whether recent or from their past. Telling stories, however, like many other forms of speech behavior is not as straightforward as it might seem. Stories must have a point and the point must become obvious to the hearer. Children often take quite a long time to learn how to tell a story effectively, and it is clear that some adults are better storytellers than others. There are certain features that contribute to a successful story told in a conversation.
Language and Thought
Authors: Macaulay Ronald
Published: November 2023

One of the most frequently cited passages on the relationship between language and thought is the following by the pioneering American linguist Edward Sapir: Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means for solving specific problems of communication and reflection. The fact of the matter is that the “real world” is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. Sapir and his pupil Benjamin Lee Whorf investigated various aspects of the relationship between thought and language and developed what is sometimes called the Linguistic Relativity Theory and sometimes the Sapir/Whorf Hypothesis. The claim, as the quotation from Sapir suggests, is that the way people perceive objects and conceive of the world around them is affected or even determined by the language that they speak. This theory or hypothesis has been the subject of much debate. The main point at issue is the question whether thinking is rigidly determined by language or strongly or weakly affected by it. This in turn revolves around the question of which aspects of language could influence thought.
The Golden Age, Part I: 1580-1603
Authors: Spring Matthew
Published: November 2023

for the play that is now, and the lessons (that are now a daies) are so curiouslie set, that we of the olde mine, are smoakt up like to seacole, and this age, hath the golden ore, and sparkling diamondes of divine Musitions, that for mine owne part, I am content, to give place both to youth, and the time, onelie content to be an auditore, and lover of the best. Knight to Timotheus, in Thomas Robinson, The Schoole of Musicke (1603), sig. B Ovid, in his first book of the Metamorphoses, describes the four ages of man, of which ‘The Golden Age was first; which uncompelled, And without rule, in faith and truth exceelled’. Under the reign of Saturn this age experienced no wars, no laws, no seasons, and there was no work to be done. Peace, justice, and equality were universal. Virgil in his fourth Eclogue spoke of the dawning of a new golden age for Rome under Augustus, when civilization and the arts would flourish. This poem was later reinterpreted by Constantine, with the virgin goddess Astraea, who ushers in the new golden age, identified as the Virgin Mary. John Foxe, in his Book of Martyrs, the most influential and popular book of Elizabethan times after the Bible, drew a parallel between Constantine’s ending of religious persecutions, and the accession of Elizabeth after the repression and burnings of the Marian period.2 The new Astraea was personified by Elizabeth I, whose favourite personal device was the phoenix. Like Augustus in the early days of Imperial Rome, she was seen to have re-established justice, and to have provided a rule under which peace and the arts could flourish. This point was made by Sir John Davies in his Hymnes of Astraea (1599), referring to Elizabeth as she who: ‘Hath brought againe the golden dayes, And all the world amended.
The Sterilization Movement and Global Fertility in the Twentieth Century
Authors: Dowbiggin Ian
Published: November 2023

Many would be surprised to learn that the preferred method of birth control in the United States today is actually surgical sterilization. This book takes an historical look at the sterilization movement in post-World War II America, a revolution in modern contraceptive behaviour. Focusing on leaders of the sterilization movement from the 1930’s through the turn of the century, this book explores the historic linkages between environment, civil liberties, eugenics, population control, sex education, marriage counselling, and birth control movements in the 20th-century United States. Sterilization has been variously advocated as a medical procedure for defusing the “population bomb,” expanding individual rights, liberating women from the fear of pregnancy, strengthening marriage, improving the quality of life of the mentally disabled, or reducing the incidence of hereditary disorders. From an historical standpoint, support for free and unfettered access to sterilization services has aroused opposition in some circles, and was considered a “liberal cause” in post-World War II America. This story demonstrates how a small group of reformers helped to alter traditional notions of gender and sexuality.
A Great Wave
Authors: Dowbiggin Ian
Published: November 2023

On the evening of October 1, 1969, Hugh Moore, president of the Association for Voluntary Sterilization (AVS), was in a buoyant mood. As he approached the microphone at New York City’s Carnegie Endowment Center, he gazed at the overflow audience, which included television host Ed Sullivan; entertainer Arthur Godfrey; feminist author Betty Friedan; and Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of the 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb. Moore could n’t resist gloating; only ‘‘a few years ago,’’ he reminisced, meetings of the board were held ‘‘quietly’’ in a West 58th Street apartment in Manhattan, when we were known as the Human Betterment Association, believe it or not. Before that the name had been ‘Birth Right!’ [sic] These ambiguous terms were adopted because of our not daring to use sterilization, lest we be chased out of town.
Going Global
Authors: Dowbiggin Ian
Published: November 2023

As the 1980s dawned, the sterilization movement reached another crossroads in its ongoing struggle to alter global reproductive behavior and fertility rates. After the Association for Voluntary Sterilization (AVS) rebranded itself, in 1984, as the Association for Voluntary Surgical Contraception (AVSC), sterilization advocates for the balance of the twentieth century shifted their official focus away from population and birth control as ends in themselves to women’s reproductive health in general, and gradually muted their traditional emphasis on sterilization alone in favor of a broader approach to reproductive health that included post-abortion care, maternal and child health care, HIV=AIDS services, and greater male involvement in family planning.
Textbook of International Health: Global Health in a Dynamic World
Authors: Birn Anne-Emanuelle , Pillay Yogan , Holtz Timothy H
Published: November 2023

This classic text, formerly known as the "Basch" textbook, now completely revised in an updated new edition, brings together information that students and professionals working in the wide variety of disciplines concerned with international health will find in no other single source. It synthesizes historical, cultural, environmental, economic and political considerations to provide a comprehensive global overview of the many factors that determine the health of individuals and populations. The major determinants of health status in all regions of the world are discussed, and interventions undertaken at community, national, and international levels are described. The new edition features a renowned new authorship committed to updating and expanding the entire content while retaining the core elements of Basch's excellent text.
A Wholistic Approach to Singing
Authors: Smith W Stephen , Chipman Michael
Published: November 2023

Wholism is a philosophy that considers all the various aspects of the human experience—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and so forth. I will explain how my approach to singing falls into a wholistic category later in this chapter. First, I would like to discuss the title of Part I of this book: Basic Instincts. What are our most basic instincts? When we strip away all our complicated layers of cultural conditioning and neurosis, what is left? Our most basic instincts are the first two things we do in life: breathing and speaking. Breathing is the first life—giving activity after birth. Before making any sound, we breathe. Speaking is the first creative activity after birth. (We actually begin with phonation—the vibration of the vocal cords—which later evolves into speech.) When we come out wailing, we affirm that we are alive, and that wailing itself is a creative activity—the pure expression of fear or discomfort in our new surroundings. Those two foundational elements enable us to express ourselves through-out life.
The Third Invention: A Balancing Act
Authors: Smith W Stephen , Chipman Michael
Published: November 2023

Singing, like life, is a struggle to find balance. Just as a pendulum swings back and forth to the extreme sides, its natural course is to finally settle in the balanced middle. For singers to find balance, they sometimes must go to the extreme opposite of what they are doing wrong. This is what I call “overcorrecting,” and we often overcorrect so that ultimately we arrive in a balanced place. Singers who always sing with a bright, clear sound by squeezing the cords together have to be opened up for a while to focus on the darker, warmer back space that is the exact opposite of what they are accustomed to. The reason we overcorrect is to give singers the entire spectrum of possibilities so that they can find the balance in the middle of those extremes.
Miles Ahead (JVC 1991, Part Two)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

The recent banner on the Voice cover that read “Best JVC in Memory” took me aback. The salute to Doc Cheatham was one of the best concerts in memory (anyway, the best since Sonny Rollins barnstormed Carnegie Hall with Roy Hargrove and Jim Hall in April), but I wrote that review when the festival was still in full swing, just before it took a nosedive in the much abused name of bebop, first in a staid set by the under-40s and then in a misguided tribute to Dexter Gordon. Yet there was a buzz this year, heightened by low expectations. Why, I can’t say. Most of the performers were familiar, sound problems and rude latecomers were omnipresent, among them an unusual number of camera-jockey tourists. Maybe, it’s this simple: For good and bad, and notwithstanding its conservative leanings, it was a jazz festival, largely unpretentious and guileless. The lesson of this particular generation of under-40s is not that they exist, but that they feel no compulsion to seek commercial prestige in the trappings of rock.
Swing to Black (Doc Severinsen)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

When the siege of Johnny Carson sentimentality began to burgeon, my usually circumspect bride suggested we tape some of the final shows. Astonished, I asked her how many times she estimated we had watched The Tonight Show in the nine years we’d known each other. Neither of us had to hesitate before supplying the answer: never. We had never watched the entire show, not once. We had seen hundreds of Carson’s monologues, of course, usually with pleasure and no little admiration (while noting that nothing dates more irrevocably than Carson’s headline-scanning humor), but then switched off, assuming—after plenty of experience with his first 20 years—that the rest of the hour would be a procession of fading stars and hopeful starlets, pedestrian musicians and desperate comics, all selling something, usually non sequitur film clips. Sure, exceptions come to mind, nights I kept the sound off and read, awaiting Sonny Rollins or Sarah Vaughan or Stan Getz. But they were rare. Carson, the ardent jazz fan, preferred Pete Fountain. So as much as I will miss Carson’s reassuring professionalism, and as much as I loathe Jay Leno’s tit-for-tat political humor, logorrheic addons to ill-timed jokes, and brothel-inspired decor, I can’t say I’ve experienced the changing of the guard with any emotional upheaval. Carson’s primary innovation, ignored amid all the crocodile hype, is that he took a live and loose-limbed, spontaneous talk show, in which the increasing number of guests bolstered the conviviality of the evening’s chat, and replaced it with a militantly fastidious 44-minute comedy hour with occasional music, in which the guests on the Siberian wing of the couch sat quietly while the latest addition peddled his/her wares unmolested by impulsive wit or possible skirmish. Carson’s less imaginative heirs assume that his way is the only way; most arrive at work with a stentorian announcer, raucously grateful audience, second-banana bandleader, and a lineup of Hollywood hucksters.
Always True in Her Fashion (Peggy Lee)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

The first time I really listened to Peggy Lee was accidental. I’d bought a Benny Goodman set on Harmony, an old subsidiary of Columbia, got it back to the dorm late, put it on and soon fell asleep. The last thing I recalled hearing was “Why Don’t You Do Right,” and I dozed off happily surprised because I didn’t expect to hear any Billie Holiday on the album. I thought about it in class the next morning, and that evening some friends came by to hear this performance I raved about. We all agreed: Definitely an ace record—primo Lady Day. Only after they left and I looked at the small print did I discover that the singer was Peggy Lee: the platinum blonde with the mole on her right cheek to whom I had never tumbled and was now ready to dismiss as yet another Billie imitator, another minstrel. Live and learn. Probably it was the two-note bubble on the word “ri-ight” that girded my ignorant assumption, that and the thin voice and the legato time and the knowledge that Billie had sung early on with Goodman. Because Lee, though admittedly influenced by Holiday’s sense of economy, swing, and ability to make the most of a small range, never sounded that much like her. They did share something profound, however, a candid vulnerability that draws you into the drama of what they sing and how they sing it. They slur notes, but their slurs have different pedigrees, even if they had monstrous childhoods in common. Read either of their lives and you may wonder if the slurs aren’t a kind of musical recoiling, wounded sighs. The former Norma Deloris Egstrom of North Dakota, who started singing on radio at 14 in part to escape the ministrations of a wicked stepmother, sings in the clipped cadences of the cold country, the vowels rarely indulged, the timbre cool and coy, icily sexy, giving way to an intimate vibrato as she attains high notes she only pretends to find daunting. A noted perfectionist, Lee gets it right or she doesn’t go for it. Yet you feel she’s at constant risk.
PG-13 (Rosemary Clooney)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

It’s amusing, in a dismaying sort of way, to watch the occasional pop critic of the ‘90s recapitulate the contempt for received wisdom that made much ‘60s criticism seem arrogantly self-satisfied. You know, the solemn young writers who have no intention of aging themselves, and who treat Dylan, Jagger, McCartney, and Fat Elvis (the one who lost the stamp election) as grizzled hacks who should have retired gracefully or died with the glow of flaming youth. After glimpsing Jagger, never a favorite of mine, on Saturday Night Live, I admit to sharing in the ridicule: why did he appear ludicrous, while Jimmy Witherspoon, his senior by two decades, was riveting at Fat Tuesday’s last week, singing blues that were venerable when Jagger was born? Wasn’t Jagger once touted as a kind of white bluesman? Did he forget everything he ever knew, or has he come to accept his own limitations? Witherspoon mentioned Jagger as playing a role in his receiving a Lifetime Achievement award from the Rhythm-and-Blues Foundation this week, an event certified with a ceremonial performance of his signature tune, “Ain’t Nobody’s Business.”
Jaki Byard, 1922–1999
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Lea was two months old the first time we took her to a concert—Jaki Byard’s 1989 recital at Weill Hall. He sat at the piano and played a 10note discord. She whimpered and looked distressed. But he followed instantly with a lambent stride passage. She raised her head, smiled, then fell into an hour’s sleep. I knew the feeling. Jaki never put me to sleep, but he always made me smile and frequently knocked me out. Listening to him was like turning on a tap in which all the strains of modern piano, from James P. Johnson to Cecil Taylor, flowed in one luscious rush. Yet having described the most obvious aspect of his playing, I feel obliged to backpedal from the old saw that his music stood for no more than a promethean eclecticism. His style was his own and unmistakable, by turns hard, percussive, witty, sentimental, sardonic, whimsical, subversive, ebullient, anguished. Like Sonny Rollins, he could fake you out— making you think, for example, that those corny arpeggios were a joke, so that you didn’t know whether to feel embarrassed or grateful at the emotions he extracted from them.
Prisoners of the Past (JVC 1999)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Midway through the week, the JVC Jazz Festival kicked into life at a sedate homage to Charlie Parker’s romance with strings, when the featured soloist, James Moody, bounded into an exultant “Cherokee,” shaking off the ensemble like a great swan beating the wet from its wings. He soared, dove, and crested. The rhythm section floated him on the song’s hammered harmonies, inspiring him on his tear while the resting chamber players looked slightly glazed with wonder. When he finally looped the last loop into a mocking shave-and-a-haircut finish, the crowd levitated. We talk about bop as though every postwar jazzman who plays changes with a beat enjoys equal access to its mysteries, but in fact few can essay the music’s curvy melodic purity and drive of 50 years ago, when it was mint, daring, and not a little unbelievable. Though Moody was one of the first to augment and even parody the style, he never lost the knack—he just doesn’t go for broke that often. Moody was also one of the first to record with strings, two years after Parker; the subject in 1951 was “Cherokee” and he didn’t do much with the piece that Parker had made his personal anthem. When Moody finally put his mark on the song in the 1960s, he adapted it as a virtuoso shimmered with warmth and seemed to shave 30 years off Brubeck, most of whose best music was achieved in company with saxophonists of Moody’s stature.
Here’s the Melody (John Lewis)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Melody is the rarest of musical talents and the most treasured, which is one reason only a handful of 19th-century composers continue to speak to us. Those who do are true melodists as opposed to generic ones: preachers who hear a kind of songfulness no one else has heard rather than parishioners who elaborate on that approach, reducing inspiration to style. True melodists may be few, yet they seem to arrive in groups, carrying the ball for a paternal titan, as though waiting for a properly melodious climate—thus Mozart kicked off for Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann; Verdi for Bizet, Tchaikovsky, and Puccini; Berlin for Kern, Rodgers, and Porter. This schema is simplistic but helps pass the time as we wait and wait and wait for melody’s return. In the hip-hop era, its stock has fallen in direct proportion to rhythm’s rise. Jazz has been abundant in melody, or should I say improvisational lyricism. It produces far fewer Jelly Roll Mortons, Duke Ellingtons, and Thelonious Monks than Louis Armstrongs, Lester Youngs, and Charlie Parkers. A more melodious musician than Young never lived, but his genius is to be found in ad-lib solos, not in his handful of copywrited tunes. Stan Getz was immensely lyrical, yet never wrote a single important tune. On the other hand, some players are more adept at melodious themes than at sustaining them in variations, most notably John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. At the present time, jazz is, inevitably, caught up in the same antimelodic vice as the rest of the musical landscape. So when we hear the real thing, it can be overwhelming.
Over the Transom (Arnie Carruthers / Larry Vuckovich / Nicholas Hoffman / Gold Sparkle)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

The first time I met John Hammond he regaled me by playing reel-to-reel tapes of unissued Artie Shaw and Joe Turner. This was back in 1969, and much of his desk, the top of the radiator, and just about every other flat surface in his office was stacked with white reel-to-reel boxes. Did they all contain such gems? Oh, God, no, he explained with a shudder; they were mostly over-the-transom or under-the-table offerings from unknown musicians and managers hoping to grab the attention of American music’s most fabled talent scout. He claimed he listened to them all and he probably did (Springsteen and Stevie Ray were in his future), but he seemed perfectly content if not transported as Joe Turner rumbled through “Roll ‘Em, Pete” for the millionth rip-roaring time. I am reminded of those stacks whenever someone slips me, as though it were contraband, a homegrown cassette or CD. A certain amount of mutual embarrassment invariably colors the transaction, which is instigated with a remark like, “I’m sure you get these all the time, but . . .” or “Do you mind if . . .” or the increasingly popular “A friend asked me to . . .” Critics are not talent scouts, nor do they wish to be; we come later in the process, evaluating professionals, not amateurs looking for help or a kind word. I never know what to do with these gifts, though my silent response is usually, “Damn, now I’ve got to carry this stuff around all night,” because I am too cowardly to throw it out. An angel sits on my right shoulder, warning, “It could be the next Bird,” while the devil on my left mocks, “Don’t be a chump.” The devil’s been around.
Weird and Forgotten Dreams (Charles Mingus / Helen Carr / Herb Jeffries / LH&R / Sarah Vaughan)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Reissues usually get their due at year’s end, when they come giftwrapped in cloth or steel boxes with fancy prices and hyped-up art direction, but record companies stay alive and keep their distributors happy by recycling old records all year long. Many classic LPs remain unissued after 20 years of digitalization and a trunkful of 78s that never even made it to LP waste away like Edmond Dantés in the vaults, awaiting their second acts. Yet now that most of the better-known product has returned in two, three, and more CD incarnations, labels are burrowing deeper, proving that wondrous unearthings are still possible. The year’s most remarkable recovery has produced Charles ‘Baron’ Mingus, West Coast, 1945–49 (Uptown), 23 sides made under Mingus’s leadership for five fly-by-night labels that couldn’t distribute farther than their car trunks. The names alone smack of Central Avenue postwar optimism and desperation: Excelsior, Four Star, Dolphins of Hollywood, Fentone, Rex Hollywood. Some of these platters were so hard to come by that the Smithsonian abandoned an attempt to create such a collection in the 1980s; they are cited with errors or not at all in Mingus discographies and biographies. Research by co-producers Robert E. Sunenblick, whose blindingly detailed notes make up the bulk of a 96-page booklet, and Chuck Nessa correct a number of long-held assumptions. For one thing, Mingus is not the cellist on “He’s Gone”; it’s Jean McGuire, one of many people Uptown interviewed. For another, the long-sought mystery record, “God’s Portrait,” made for Fentone, was never issued. Ralph
Found and Lost (Terence Blanchard)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Terence Blanchard’s reach and tone have broadened just about equally in the 15 years since he graduated from Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. He has tested his skills as trumpeter, composer, and bandleader in a variety of overlapping projects: the quintet with Donald Harrison, formalized during a sabbatical from Blakey and continued through 1989; several film scores, most for Spike Lee; on-and-off-again groups, in recent years framed around his collaboration with pianist Edward Simon; and 11 Columbia or Sony Classical discs, each a defined project, lending a meticulous drama to his recordings. His latest, Let’s Get Lost, differs from the rest yet remains true to a cycle that alternates originals (as on its predecessor, Wandering Moon) with classic songs—this time a salute to Jimmy McHugh, abetted by the three most fashionable under-50 jazz singers (Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, and Diana Krall) and one who wants to join them (Jane Monheit). It should be more fun than it is. McHugh is an ideal choice for a jazz survey.
Out of the Territories (Steven Bernstein)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Steven Bernstein has been so much a part of the downtown cultural exchange, through which the usual suspects are transmitted from one band to another in an endless game of musical chairs where the last man standing has to get a real job, it was surprising to learn that his earlyJanuary appearance at the Jazz Standard was his first in an upscale joint midtown—that is, north of Houston. Leading his nine-piece Millennial Territory Orchestra, he noted, repeatedly, what a novelty it was to work in a place with heat. Sporting earrings, a loopy smile, and lavender trousers, he relished the role of refugee at the ball, mocking midtown manners. Management made its customary request for minimal conversation, to which Bernstein remonstrated that conversation was encouraged: “If you’re on a date it could be important; if you’re married, talk loud, ‘cause she isn’t listening.” Funnier was the way he used boho irascibility to sell an honorable dose of jazz repertory.
Flee as a Bird (Weather Bird)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

As Groucho Marx used to sing, “Hello, I must be going.” It’s time to move on when you begin to calculate a job’s duration the way children do their ages. Whereas I used to think in round numbers, lately I found myself muttering, “29 and a half years,” “30 years, two months,” “30 years, seven months, two weeks, five days”—which is correct as of today. Or am I confusing children with convicts? This was the hardest decision I’ve ever made, and like Artie Shaw, who has a different answer every time he’s asked about quitting clarinet, I’m not sure why—except that I want to focus on books, I dislike writing short to suit a new layout, and it is time. In jazz, time is all. Shortly after I joined the Voice, Martin Williams swore off criticism for a long spell (and produced a series of albums for the Smithsonian that forever altered jazz education). When I asked him why, he answered, “I’ve said everything I had to say.” Tough-minded fellow. I don’t feel that way at all. I’m as besotted with jazz as ever and expect to write about it till last call, albeit in other formats. Indeed, much in the way being hanged is said to focus attention, this finale makes me conscious of the columns I never wrote.
How Come Jazz Isn’t Dead? (Music’s Four Stations)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

The question is facetious, though not entirely. At times even dedicated boosters like me begin to wonder if jazz isn’t edging into the museum’s marble tomb. In a 1968 recording, “Jazz Death?” the then-little-known Lester Bowie posed effetely as a Jism magazine critic to inquire, “Isn’t jazz, as we know it, dead yet?” After an unaccompanied trumpet solo, he answered, in his own mocking voice, “Well, that all depends on what you know.” Bowie was responding to debates that were rife during the summer and winter of love. Miles Davis had said that calling him a jazz musician was no different than calling him “nigger”; jazz journals were filled with barbarians-at-the-gates prognoses. One authority confidently proclaimed that so long as Louis Armstrong lived, jazz lived, settling the matter in his mind until July 6, 1971, by which time—or shortly after— the arrival of dozens of gifted musicians like Bowie made it irrelevant. Today, “Jazz Death?” is more frequently accessed for backup than music—a smirking rejoinder to those who believe that jazz is moribund, and an inadvertent example of the defensiveness that is a certain sign of bad times. We do well to remember that jazz coroners have been hanging crepe since the 1930s.
Black Culture and Black Consciousness
Authors: Levine Lawrence W
Published: November 2023

When Black Culture and Black Consciousness first appeared thirty years ago, it marked a revolution in our understanding of African American history. Contrary to prevailing ideas at the time, which held that African culture disappeared quickly under slavery and that black Americans had little group pride, history, or cohesiveness, Levine uncovered a cultural treasure trove, illuminating a rich and complex African American oral tradition, including songs, proverbs, jokes, folktales, and long narrative poems called toasts--work that dated from before and after emancipation. The fact that these ideas and sources seem so commonplace now is in large part due this book and the scholarship that followed in its wake. A landmark work that was part of the "cultural turn" in American history, Black Culture and Black Consciousness profoundly influenced an entire generation of historians and continues to be read and taught. For this anniversary reissue, Levine wrote a new preface reflecting on the writing of the book and its place within intellectual trends in African American and American cultural history.
Arcady Revisited: Americans In Italy
Authors: Novak Barbara
Published: November 2023

After he had returned to Rome for the third time, in December 1856, William Wetmore Story wrote: “To whatever the hand of man builds, the hand of Time adds a grace, and nothing is so prosaic as the rawly new” (fig. 9.1). Later his biographer, Henry James, wondered: “How can one hope to find the right word for the sense of rest and leisure that must in olden summers have awaited here the consenting victims of Italy, among ancient things all made sweet by their age, and with Nature helping Time very much as a tender, unwearied, ingenious sister waits upon a brother, heavy of limb and dim of sight, who sits with his back against a sun-warmed wall.”

In William Wetmore Story and His Friends James found the proper words to retrieve for the reader the sense of “irrecoverable presences and aspects, the conscious, shiny, mocking void, sad somehow with excess of serenity” that concerned him. For James himself had breathed “the golden air” of Italy soon enough after Story to share and understand his experience.“There was,” he wrote, “half a century ago, in the American world in general, much less to give up, for ‘Europe,’ than there is today, but, such as it was, Story gave it up all.
America And Europe: Influence and Affinity
Authors: Novak Barbara
Published: November 2023

When Worthington Whittredge returned from Europe in 1859 he succinctly posed the problem of the American artist. European models were in his mind’s eye; if emulated, they would stamp his landscapes with the imprimatur of the great traditions. But only something “new,” inspired by “home surroundings,” would meet his needs and those of his American colleagues: “We are looking and hoping for something distinctive to the art of our country, something which shall receive a new tinge from our peculiar form of Government, from our position on the globe, or something peculiar to our people, to distinguish it from the art of the other nations and to enable us to pronounce without shame the oft repeated phrase, ‘American Art.’”

At this crucial moment in the formation of American culture, the art of Europe—of the Western world of which America was a distant but integral part—exerted its authoritative pull. The dilemma was there from the outset. Provincialism was tempted to call on Europe for its artistic credentials. And yet, as Henry James pointed out: “The apple of ‘America’ is a totally different apple. . . . The American who had bitten deep into the apple of Europe had to reconcile himself to a different taste.