bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Theorbo
Authors: Spring Matthew
Published: November 2023

The type of large lute with an extended neck, known in England in the seventeenth century as the theorbo, originated in Italy in the final decades of the sixteenth century. In Italy the word ‘tiorba’ was synonymous with ‘chitarrone’, the name popularly used for the same instrument in the first three decades of the seventeenth century. The name chitarrone, from the Greek ‘kithara’, reflects the idea, strong in the minds of the instrument’s inventors, that the instrument was the modern counterpart of the kithara used by the self-accompanying poets of classical antiquity. The chitarrone is first referred to in the six intermezzi that were part of the theatrical entertainment entitled La Pellegrina, performed in Florence in May 1589. According to one account the singer/composer Jacopo Peri accompanied himself on a chitarrone in a solo madrigal in the fifth intermezzo. Peri was one of the earliest of all opera composers, and the connection between opera and the theorbo remained strong throughout the seventeenth century, the instrument being thought to be especially suitable for the accompaniment of recitative.
Scottish Lute Music
Authors: Spring Matthew
Published: November 2023

Was but the sound of laughter heard Or tinckling of the lute Would Knox with unction tell The vengeance that in days of old Had fallen on Jezebel Robert Aytoun (1569-1638), Both,Pell Lutenists were fully established at the Scottish royal court by the late fifteenth century, though the instrument is occasionally mentioned in Scots literature before this time.1 Sir John Graham Dalyell in his Musical Memoirs of”Scotland (1849) mentions a number of lutenists belonging to the royal household, the earliest reference being in 1474.2 Dalyell lists extracts taken from the Household Accounts of the Lords High Treasurers of Scotland showing frequent payments to lutenists during the reign of James III (1460-88) and James IV (1488-1513). Payments were made to a certain Jacob, but also to his fellow lutenists: John Wardlaw, Rankine, Robert Rudman, Adam Dikeson, Robert Hay, John Ledebetar, Craig, ‘Lindores’, and ‘Gray Steil’.3 The unfortunate James IV married Margaret Tudor in 1503. During the celebrations he entertained his bride by playing the ‘clarychordes’ and ‘lute’.+ 1\fargaret had been taught the lute as a child. Kenner or Krennar, her ‘lutar’, is mentioned in English accounts prior to her departure, and “as probably English.
Slavery in Portuguese and Spanish America in the 18th Century
Authors: Klein Herbert S , Ben Vinson III
Published: November 2023

The growth of the West Indies plantation system in the 17th century and the early 18th century did not put an end either to the Brazilian sugar industry or to the thriving slave system upon which the Brazilian economy rested. The Dutch occupation and the subsequent growth of the West Indies sugar industry did, however, seriously affect the colonial economy. Not only was a large part of the Pernambuco sugar industry destroyed, taking a long time to recover, but also Brazilian export markets were reduced and production stagnated for most of the late 17th and early 18th century. Bahia did continue to grow, but the golden age of pro>tability had passed. Competition from the West Indies sent sugar prices into a decline relative to the >rst half of the century, and West Indian demand for slaves meant rising African slave prices, thus squeezing planter pro>ts. By the last two decades of the century the Brazilian economy was in a depressed state, and an anxious Crown was seeking new markets and products to revive the colonial economy.
Freedmen in a Slave Society
Authors: Klein Herbert S , Ben Vinson III
Published: November 2023

Every slave society in Latin America permitted slaves to be manumitted from the very beginning. All such regimes accepted the legitimacy of manumission, since it was the norm in Roman law and was deeply embedded in Christian piety and practice. A free colored class thus developed in every American slave society virtually from the >rst days of colonization. All such populations grew slowly in the 16th and 17th centuries, and all faced some type of restriction on their freedom. These restrictions were uniquely applied to them because of their origin and color. From the early 18th century onward, however, certain slave regimes began to distinguish themselves from others on the basis of their changing attitudes toward the manumission process, which in turn caused major changes in the growth, number, and ratio of freedmen in the respective societies.
Besieged
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

From ancient times to the present, great sieges have had an enormous impact on the shaping of world history. Now, in this spectacular, fully-illustrated volume, one hundred of the world’s most monumental and mind-boggling sieges are laid out in detail. Besieged covers the most important sieges from around the world throughout history–from Joshua’s assault on Jericho in the fifteenth century B.C. to the Russian attack on the Chechen capital of Grozny at the end of the twentieth. Each entry provides the name and date of the siege, its exact location in terms of today’s world, the number of forces engaged, when known, the names of the commanders on each side, and the overall importance of the siege in its historical context. Thoroughly examining the actions of both the attackers and the defenders, the book explores the motivations of both, and strategically surveys the technical and tactical innovations and conditions both inside besieged positions and in the besiegers’ ranks. The entries detail the historical setting, the particular circumstances of the event itself, and the long-term results of the siege. These riveting accounts are enhanced by illustrations, over seventy maps, and references for further reading. A glossary and a comprehensive index complete the book. Global in scope, and with stirring accounts of familiar sieges as well as many lesser known conflicts, Besieged is essential reading for military buffs and everyone interested in how the modern world came to be. Includes the sieges of: * Jericho (1405 B.C.) * Troy (1250 B.C.) * Acre (1189–1191) * Constantinople (1453) * Tenochtitlan (1521 * La Rochelle (1627–1628) * Leningrad (1941–1944) * Malta (1940–1942) * Dien Bien Phu (1954) * Khe Sanh (1968) * Beirut (1982) * Sarajevo (1991–1995)
Troy
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

This siege is one of the most difficult to write about, for so much of the action lies deep in Greek mythology. Indeed, the entire war between the Greeks and Trojans is possibly nothing more than a literary exercise rather than an historical event. Still, the excavations begun in the late nineteenth century by Heinrich Schliemann give some basis for a real siege at a town on Asia Minor’s Aegean coast sometime in the fourteenth to twelfth century B.C. The main source for the action at Troy comes from Homer’s epic work The Iliad, so-called because the Greek word for the object of their attack was not Troy, but Ilion. It is possible the Trojans were inhabitants of a region rather than merely a city. As Homer is believed to have recorded oral tradition handed down over some four centuries, exact details of the actions of the siege can only be taken on faith. Other works, such as the Kypria and the Aeneid, offer details not included in Homer’s account, making the facts even more elusive.
Numantia
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The Roman Republic first showed an interest in Iberia in the wake of the First Punic War. Iberia had long been the major source of mercenaries for the Carthaginian army, as well as a source of natural resources. For a time Carthage controlled the southern part of the peninsula and Rome the upper part near the Pyrennees. The Second Punic War began over a border dispute in Iberia, and in the wake of Rome’s victory at Zama all of Iberia fell under Roman sway. Unfortunately, the inhabitants, a mixture of Celts and local populations, were fiercely independent and resisted Roman rule at every turn. The First Celitiberian War was fought in the years 181-178 B.C. Roman forces under the leadership of Tiberius Gracchus subdued many of the tribes, and he developed a reputation for fairness in dealing with his defeated enemies. Until 155 the region remained fairly peaceful, as the Romans consolidated their hold on the coastal regions and the interior tribes recovered from the war. In 154 the Lusitani (of modern Portugal) attacked Roman territory but in 151 they were defeated by the Roman Sulipicius Galba. He offered them terms of surrender that they accepted; he then slaughtered 8,000 men who had given up their weapons. This act of treachery was unfortunately not uncommon, for most officials sent to Spain had little desire to be there and faithlessness in their dealing with the Celtiberians was a regular practice.
Aquileia
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The Huns were one of the myriad of tribes that rode out of central Asia, but little can be determined of their origin. Probably they were the Huing-nu, who failed in wars against the Chinese and turned (or were forced) westward. Occasional early sources opine that they were the Nebroi mentioned by Herodotus as a semi-mythical people living on the fringes of territory controlled by the Scythians. Some of the earliest direct references come from clashes with the Goths around the area north of the Black Sea in the mid-fourth century A.O. The first Hun conquest was of the Alans, who were then used in the vanguard of Hun attacks against the Goths or emigrated into the Roman Empire. The Huns settled into Pannonia (roughly modern Slovenia) along the Adriatic coast. By 432 the Huns were well established and a force to be reckoned with. Emperor Theodosius II paid tribute to the Hun leader Ruas and gave him a general’s commission. Ruas’ sons Bleda and Attila renewed the treaty and fought for Constantinople in campaigns against Persia. Attila grew tired of doing another’s fighting and made war against the Eastern Romans. Between 441 and 443 he rampaged through the Balkans and defeated a Roman army out-side Constantinople, but could not capture the city. He finally stopped upon receiving an increase in tribute. Attila killed his brother and, in 447, reopened his war against the Romans. Although turned back from Constantinople again, Attila did manage to gain a threefold increase in tribute and cession of the eastern bank of the Danube. Theodosius’ successor stopped paying the tribute in 450, by which time the Huns were looking westward.
Pavia
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The relationship between the pope and the kingdom of the Franks started in 756. Pepin III, known variously as “the Short” and “the Great,” responded to a call from Pope Stephen II to save Rome from depredations by the Lombards, the population that dominated the northern Italian peninsula. The amity on which this response was based rested on Stephen’s support and blessing of Pepin’s deposition of the last king of the Merovingian dynasty, Childeric III, in 751. That initiated dose ties between politics and religion in the Frankish lands, for Pepin and his heirs were to hold the title of patricius Romanus and protect the Catholic Church from spiritual and temporal threats. Thus, in 755 Pepin marched his army into Italy to capture the city of Pavia and stop the aggressive actions of the Lombard King Aistul£ As soon as he returned to France, however, Aistulf again threatened Rome. Pepin returned in 756, defeated Aistulf again, and is reported to have promised the pope possession of a large portion of the Italian peninsula. When Aistulf died shortly thereafter, he was replaced by Desiderius, who promised to respect papal authority and possessions. That he did not do.
Constantinople
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Constantine the Great established the city oJ Constantinople as his capital in 323. In doing so, he occupied the former city of Byzantium, which for centuries had controlled the straits separating Asia and Europe. The Sea oJ Marmara is flanked northeast and southwest by the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, two narrow straits linking the Mediterranean and the Black seas. Unless one goes completely around the Black Sea, the passage from Europe into Asia Minor is across one of those straits. Therefore, Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul has been an extremely strategic possession for both land and naval warfare, as well as overland and maritime trade. As Rome faded and Constantinople rose in power, it became the seat of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire.
St. Augustine
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

After Christopher Columbus’ voyage of 1492, Spain began establishing control over the islands of the Caribbean Sea. When their reach extended to Central and South America, the wealth of the Aztec and Inca empires began flowing across the Atlantic to Spanish coffers. As early as 1522, other European nations saw the potential of profiting from Spain’s work by attacking Spanish ships laden with treasure. Spain responded by landing men on the peninsula of Florida, hoping to establish naval bases which (coupled with those of Cuba) would deter pirates from entering the Caribbean. When the French attempted to start a colony in northern Florida in 1564, Spain hurriedly began settling men at St. Augustine to both remove the French threat and begin the pacification and conversion of the local Indians to Christianity. A series of nine wooden forts were constructed over the course of the next century to protect the settlement, all of them destroyed by commanded a sortie be launched against the English while their forces were divided and that paralyzed the English attack. They proceeded to bombard the fort with naval gunfire for twenty-seven days, but inflicted little damage and few casualties. With hurricane season approaching, the force finally retreated to Georgia.
Quebec
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

When the American Revolution began in April 1775, the Continental Congress that directed the fledgling war effort realized the importance of Canada. From there, the British could send wounded in the leg in the process. He was evacuated and Colonel Daniel Morgan assumed command. He led the men over the barricade and captured a number of defenders, then pressed on. Unfortunately, his command was becoming disorganized owing to the bad weather and the fighting; his prisoners out-numbered his own force. At a second barricade they halted, for this was their rendezvous point with Montgomery. Little did they know that Montgomery lay dead just past Point Diamond and his command had retreated in confusion. There was to be no reinforcement. At dawn the defenders sallied past the barricade but were turned back after Morgan led a counterattack. Unfortunately, behind the second barricade stood a double rank of fusiliers whose fire decimated Morgan’s men. An attempt to outflank them failed, and Morgan’s men began to retreat. Carleton, however, had sent a force behind them to block their withdrawal. After a brief stand in some of the houses, the Americans were forced to surrender.
Genoa
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Napoleon burst onto the military scene in 1796-1797 with his brilliant campaign against the Austrian forces occupying northern Italy. His use of quick attacks on separated enemy forces was so speedy in its execution that the Austrians found themselves not only repeatedly defeated but thrown out of Italy in the spring of 1797. Napoleon soon after this campaign diverted his attention to Egypt, where his fortunes were not so bright. While he was engaged in his Middle East campaign, the Austrians seized the opportunity to reestablish their control in northern Italy. Through 1799 a combined Austro-Russian force ably commanded by General A. V Suvarov swept French forces from northern Italy and threatened to invade France. Suvarov was transferred to the Thine, leaving command of the Austrian army in northwestern Italy to General Baron Michael von Melas. On 7 November 1799, he defeated the last French field force outside Genoa.
Cartagena
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The French Revolution, Napoleon’s rise in Europe, and the enthronement of his brother Joseph Bonaparte in Spain had far-reaching effects in Spain’s western hemisphere colonies. First, the principles of the French Revolution, following closely on the American Revolution, established in Central and South America a movement to break away from the power of Spain’s monarchy. Unfortunately, the goals of the colonial population differed depending on socioeconomic status. The lower classes and slaves looked forward to liberty, equality, and fraternity as preached by the French Revolution, but the upper class creoles (ethnic Spaniards born in the Americas) desired only the removal of royal power without a major social upheaval. When Joseph Bonaparte ascended the Spanish throne in 1808 and the reigning monarch Ferdinand VII was imprisoned, the resulting revolution in Spain against the foreign ruler was soon duplicated in Spain’s colonies. While some of the Latin American cities and provinces maintained their loyalty to Spain, many of the others only gave lip service to restoring Ferdinand to the throne. They were more intent on declaring independence from all of Europe, not just from the usurper Bonaparte.
The Alamo
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

After Mexico finally acquired its independence from Spain in 1821, a rapid succession of governments sat in Mexico City. Unsure for a time just what government the country wanted, the rulers called themselves emperor, president, or dictator. In 1823, Emperor Iturbide agreed to commission an American, Moses Austin, to bring settlers from the United States into the northern Mexican province of Texas. Three hundred years of Spanish rule in Mexico had made barely a dent on the Texas landscape, for the Comanche Indians were masters of the southern Great Plains and any attempt to settle immigrants or establish missions in land under their sway proved futile. Thus, Moses Austin’s Americans were seen as a tool, a population that could serve as a buffer to the 4,000 Mexican citizens of the province of Texas. Little did Iturbide realize that in Moses Austin’s project lay the foundation of events that would deprive Mexico of half its land within a generation. The only two settlements of any size that existed in Texas in 1823 were San Antonio and Nacogdoches. Rather than place the 300 families that he brought to Texas in the path of the Comanches, Moses Austin’s son Stephen F. Austin (who took up his father’s tide of empresario upon the former’s untimely death in 1823) instead chose a point midway between the two Mexican towns to establish his colony between the Colorado and Brazos rivers. The “Old 300” were carefully chosen to be thrifty, hard-working farmers and ranchers whose dedication to property would guarantee their passivity, for Iturbide knew that no man of property willingly risked it by engaging in anti-government activities. He did not have to worry about it in the long run, however, for he was soon removed from office and replaced by a government dedicated to more liberal views. That government adopted a constitution in 1824 closely based on that of the United States, and the new immigrants gladly swore to uphold it as the price of the free 4,400 acres granted them for settling in Mexico. Uphold the constitution and become Catholics: those were the two conditions asked of them, with a tacit understanding that the latter would not be enforced.
Sevastopol
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The Russians’ morale. The war produced a return to power politics in Europe, ending a sustained period of peace. The horrific experience of the British, however, led to some reforms, especially in the realm of medical care, but the lessons were lost by the time of World War I. In that war, British forces in Mesopotamia would find themselves too far from home with too few supplies, resulting in disaster at Kut-al-Amara and a change of government in London, just as similar conditions around Sevastopol provoked in 1855.
Paris
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The dominant state of Germany in the mid-1800s was Prussia, which had risen to prominence mainly through its military. Ever since their defeat at the hands of Napoleon in 1806-1807 the Prussian military had dedicated itself to becoming the best in the world, both to return to the glory days of Frederick the Great and to assure that no such embarrassment as that at the hands of the French was ever repeated. They developed the world’s first General Staff, promoting excellence in all phases of military activiry. The system proved itself in 1866, when Prussia easily defeated Austria in a border dispute; that war seemed almost a tune-up for a return match with France. Under the leadership of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Prussia gathered the lesser German states around her in a North German Confederation and aimed toward the unification of all Germanic principalities into one state. A war with France would serve as a focus for German nationalism. In France, Napoleon III had reigned as head of state since the Revolution of 1848. The Second Empire was a shadow of the First Empire established by Napoleon Bonaparte, but France hoped to maintain a major role in world affairs, even if she could not reach the heights of grandeur of the start of the nineteenth century. During the war between Prussia and Austria, Napoleon had given Prussia tacit support in return for generalized promises of reward. France had hoped to gain border lands along the western Thine after that war, but Bismarck refused to cede any such territory to non-Germans. He then stood in the way of a proposed French purchase of Luxembourg from Holland. When Napoleon hoped to expand at Belgium’s expense via heavy French investment in that country’s rail system, Bismarck reminded England of possible French control of the Channel coast and English opposition halted French aims. An argument over which country should provide a new monarch for the Spanish throne proved the last straw. Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck manipulated negotiations between the French ambassador and Prussia’s King Wilhelm I in such a way that the king appeared to have insulted France. That provoked French public opinion to the point of war and Napoleon, frustrated by Prussia at every turn, complied.
Plevna
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

When Abdulhamit II acceded to the Ottoman throne in 1876, he was faced immediately with a crisis in the northwestern portion of the empire, the Balkan provinces of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. With a large Christian population, the Slavs of the region had been agitating for independence from the weakening Ottoman Empire for some time, looking to Russia as the champion of a pan-Slavic movement. When Turkish troops put down a Serbian uprising in the town of Alexinatz, Russia began threatening intervention. Such a possibility, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); Stanford Shaw and Ezel Kura! Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); L. S. Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1963).
Khartoum
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

In the 1870s Egypt was a possession of the Ottoman Empire and under the direction of Ismail, an official known as the khedive. He was a particularly corrupt individual who spent the country into such debt that the French and British sent in financial experts to take over the government and straighten out its tax-collecting and bill-paying. In order to support this action in 1880, the Europeans were obliged to send in troops as well, with the British providing the lion’s share. Foreigners in their government and patrolling their streets did not sit well with the Egyptians, and the British found it necessary to put down a revolt by an Egyptian officer named Arabi. Shortly afterward in the Sudan, the desert countryside south of Egypt, a religious leader rose to power to lead his followers against the infidels. This was Mohammed Ahmed, who called himself the Mahdi, or Messiah. The idea of a Muslim messiah had been fore-told for centuries and occasionally a leader arose to gather the faithful against non-Muslim enemies. Thus, Mohammed Ahmed was one in a series of Mahdis who came to power through either self-promotion or true religious fervor. In the Sudan the Mahdi started with a small group of followers and expanded his power through intimidation or by success against the British. The British called his followers dervishes. Properly, this is a term describing collections of Muslim Sufi mystics who often perform amazing feats while in a trance or the throes of religious ecstasy. The term seemed fitting to the British, for the Mahdi’s followers fought with a fanatical courage and no fear of death.
Singapore
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The Soviets praised the defenders, trying to gain a moral victory from the disaster. A “Defense of Sevastopol” medal was struck for the survivors and thirty-seven defenders were named Hero of the Soviet Union, the nation’s highest honor. It was hollow, for the Germans denied the Soviets their primary Black Sea naval base and placed themselves in a position to render amphibious support to the 1942 Caucasus offensive. In the end possession of the Crimea gained the Nazis little. Hitler’s obsession with it, however, caused him to commit too many important forces to the peninsula for its defense in 1944 when the Soviets returned. Still, holding the Crimea was vital for controlling the Black Sea, and Soviet possession of it would put them in range of Rumanian oil refineries vital to the German war effort. By May 1944, however, American bombers had already began attacking Rumania from Italy and Soviet advances farther north toward Odessa put them just as close to the oil fields as possession of the Crimea would have done. When the Russians returned, their capture of the peninsula proceeded much more quickly than the German operation did two years earlier.
Stalingrad
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

On 22 June 1941, three German army groups stormed across the Polish-Soviet border. Soviet Premier Josef Stalin had ignored warnings from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that the Nazis were about to violate the nonaggression treaty that they had negotiated with the Soviets in August 1939. Using the blitzkrieg tactics so effective in their conquests of Poland and France, the Nazis encircled and destroyed one Soviet army after another, killing thousands and taking tens of thousands prisoner. Like the Russian army facing Napoleon in 1812, they could stand and die or retreat and burn, hoping to slow the onslaught sufficiently to allow them to regroup later and make a stand. German Army Group North drove for Leningrad in order to secure the Baltic coast. Army Group Center directed its attack toward Moscow in order to deny the Soviets a central base of command. Army Group South pointed toward the Caucasus with the intent of seizing the Soviet oil fields. Possessing those fields to feed their own machines while denying supplies to the Soviet armies would be a virtual guarantee of victory.
Beirut
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

In the late 1960s the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was expelled from its base of operations in Jordan owing to a disagreement with the ruling party. The PLO’s leader, Yasir Arafat, moved his headquarters to Beirut, Lebanon, from which terrorist attacks were launched. As the Lebanese government and army were too weak to stop the PLO’s activities, Egyptian leader Gama! Abdel Nasser hosted a meeting in November 1969, which resulted in the Cairo Agreement. This pact basically gave the PLO free rein to operate from Lebanon while giving the Lebanese little guarantee of protection from Israeli reprisals to terrorism. In 1975-1976, a Christian-Muslim civil war in Lebanon resulted in the imposition of30,000 peacekeeping troops from Syria, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, North and South Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates. Two-thirds of the force was Syrian. Over time, the Syrian military and PLO came to exercise primary control in Lebanon. In the southern part of the country, PLO artillery and rocket batteries shelled northern Israeli settlements and raided across the border.
Basra
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Israel did not find itself free from terrorist attacks in the wake of their invasion, so the main goal of the operation was a failure. Although the Israeli government of the early 1980s fought tenaciously against recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization as a legitimate political entity, by the late 1990s both sides had reached the point that direct negotiations over the right of political existence and nationhood were not only openly discussed, but (as of this writing) showing a glimmer of hope for success.
On Breathing
Authors: Smith W Stephen , Chipman Michael
Published: November 2023

Breath is the essence of life. Images of breath as a life force permeate language, religion, poetry, philosophy, and science. The book of Genesis says that when God created man He breathed into him the “breath of life,” and man became a living soul. Many religions use a form of meditation in which a person focuses simply on breathing to find the center or essence of the soul on the path to enlightenment. To scream at birth, a baby must first take a breath. Breath is much more than just bringing air into the lungs and letting it out again—the breath of air is specifically and inextricably connected to our bodies. Breath links us to the source of life itself.
After the Ball (Gerry Mulligan / Maria Schneider)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Big bands were so closely associated with dancing during the Swing Era that their revival in the 1950s—by which time bop had produced a more meditative jazz listener and rock and roll had parted dancers from swing rhythms and each other—required something new in the way of justification, e.g., music qua music. Motivation no longer came from dancefloor customers or smiling baton-wielding bandleaders who couldn’t read music, but from the needs of orchestrators and musicians bred in modern jazz yet ardent in their belief that big is better. The transitional period was perhaps symbolized by the firing of Count Basie from the Camel Rock and Roll Party because, in Alan Freed’s immortal words, “musically [Count] has the greatest band in the country, but it isn’t a dance band.” Basie, Ellington, and Woody Herman achieved new musical plateaus as the ‘60s dawned, but dancers who stubbornly clung to each other in the face of twists and frugs still found safe haven in their plush ensembles. Although Herman openly disdained dancers, all three courted them, and generally offered the same “book,” or repertory, whether or not the audience was seated. Ellington had been composing listenerintensive music all along, and by 1940 many people were disinclined to dance even to his dance music for fear of missing something. Two decades later, the difference between Ellington’s dance and concert music was often illusory. I attended a 4-H Club show at which he played almost the same set for the concert half as for the dance half; the only difference was they removed the rows of folding chairs for the latter.
Redefining Dizzy (The Carnegie Hall Jazz Band / Lalo Schifrin)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Jazz repertory without messianic passion will be nothing more than the recycling of hits for monied subscribers—cf. the New York Philharmonic. But the movement is so new, the repertory so ambiguous, and the audience so impressionable that we’re unlikely to step into that bear trap any time soon. Almost everyone in the movement has a case to make, however much at odds it may be with commerce. When the ensemble that evolved into the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra performed Ellington’s long neglected Anatomy of a Murder, it proved a point: the audience came, heard, and was conquered, and the piece’s place in jazz discourse was redefined. Other examples abound. The Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra has been circumspect about the past, making its primary contribution in the commission of new works, including revisions of classic arrangements that needed no such help. Its “Trumpet Tribute” on February 23, however, made a compelling case for reconsideration of Gillespiana Suite, the five-movement concerto grosso Lalo Schifrin wrote for Dizzy Gillespie in 1960, and, by extension, of their entire collaboration. Schifrin conducted; music director Jon Faddis played the Gillespie role; and Frank Wess (flute) and Dick Oatts (alto) shared the responsibilities of Leo Wright, the only woodwind in the original performances. The orchestra’s reading of a difficult score was crisp and aggressive, at times sensationally evocative.
The Swinging Cowboy (Herb Jeffries)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

As the imposing six-foot-plus frame of Herb Jeffries emerged from the stairwell of the Village Vanguard shortly before his first set on Sunday night, the audience began to applaud, murmuring, “Eighty-three? Is that what 83 looks like?” With luck, yes: His wife Regina confirmed his birth date as September 24, 1911. Resplendent in a white dinner jacket and embroidered shirt, Jeffries acknowledged the reception, embraced numerous friends, parried remarks on the order of, “Remember when we met in the Sherman Hotel in 1939?” and took a seat to listen to his pickup quartet open the set with “In a Mellow Tone.” Reluctant to leave the audience for the stage, he finally sauntered to the mike, by which time the Vanguard was no longer a nightclub. It was proprietress Lorraine Gordon’s jazz salon. Even the paying customers—if there were any— must have felt they had lucked into a private party.
Beyond the Rudiments (The Best Jazz Records of 1995)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Now that the holiday cheer has dissipated, we may return to glum reality—a juncture I reach via a belated compulsion to conjure a 10-best list. This year I was surprised to discover that when I casually ticked off my favorite records, 10 or 12 seemed about right. Still, as I jostled my memory, the number of contenders doubled. Poring through the still segregated CDs of ‘95, I doubled the lot again—musing foggily, for example, over Peter Kowald’s solo bass album (Was Da Ist, FMP). Let’s give it a second spin. Just fine, though 70 minutes is a lot of bass. Try something new. Ahh, Dave Holland. Solo bass (Ones All, Intuition). Maybe a beer would help. No, it’s 10 A.M. All right then, just how lusty is Hamiet Bluiett’s Young Warrior, Old Warrior? Yet when it was over and the pile was down to about 25 discs, the pleasures of rediscovery were stifled by despair. The state of jazz, to coin a phrase, reminded me once again of those ‘70s ruminations that proclaimed a renaissance in short fiction on the grounds that so many could do it well. Jazz today boasts too many adequate players—a general level of musicianship good enough to impress academicians—and only a handful who promise a worthy future. Mid-decade has always been a peculiarly telling moment in jazz history: Armstrong landed in ‘25, swing in ‘35, bop in ‘45, hard bop in ‘55, new thing in ‘65, loft jazz in ‘75, and the neocons in ‘85. I’m not sure what ‘95 delivered beyond a none too subtle rebuke to those who would fetter this improvisational music with formal conventions.
The King (Benny Carter)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

In the early ‘90s, a woman from the Kennedy Center Honors called to pick my brain. The committee, she said, had decided that a jazz artist should be among the next group of honorees. At that time, Washington’s awards for lifetime achievement in the performing arts had only recently become the dull joke they remain today. Good intentions had been subverted by TV, so that genius itself was insufficient to warrant recognition. Additional criteria included popularity and/or tokenism: The winners’ circle required a woman, a black, a Jew or other ethnic, an unthreatening high-brow, a pop or film star. Everyone knew that. Yet I could hardly believe this woman’s candor. Peggy Lee had been suggested, she said. Was that a good idea? I told her Peggy Lee deserved all kinds of awards, but pointed out that she was a tangential figure in jazz and that genuinely great jazz figures ought to have priority. Such as? The obvious choice, I told her, was Benny Carter—a patriarchal but still vigorously active figure in his 80s whose achievement was beyond dispute.
On Their Own (Gerry Gibbs / Ravi Coltrane)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

In the early ‘60s, a young pianist named Alice McLeod worked with Terry Gibbs—she made her recorded debut on his 1963 album, Jewish Melodies in Jazztime (Verve). Gibbs introduced her to John Coltrane, whom she married. The Gibbses later produced a son, Gerry, who was followed a year later by the Coltranes’ second son, Ravi. The boys became fast friends, and when Gerry relocated from the West Coast to Queens in 1988, he found a nearby place for Ravi. Since that time, they have scratched at the New York scene, alone and together. Initially, each exploited familial ties: Gerry, a drummer, played with the Terry Gibbs– Buddy DeFranco Quintet; Ravi, a saxophonist, toured with Elvin Jones; both worked with Alice Coltrane. But they have long since made their own connections—Gibbs with John Campbell, Joe Henderson, and Joe Lovano; Coltrane with David Murray, Joanne Brackeen, Pete LaRoca, and Ryan Kisor. Now Coltrane is the featured guest on The Thrasher (Qwest), an impressive, at times almost giddily entertaining debut by the Gerry Gibbs Sextet.
The Original Dixieland One-Step (New Orleans Jazz)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

The train hurtled from Texas to New Orleans through the steamiest night I’d ever experienced. The windows were sealed for some reason and nothing would alleviate the heat, not even stepping out on the platform and getting whipped by muggy breezes. The view, a few cabins and cows and horses on a flat expanse, was bleak and dull and fearsome. It was July 1963, and all that I and the other kids—a dozen 15-year-old New Yorkers touring the perimeters of the United States—knew of the deep South was fire hoses, attack dogs, and politicians who spoke, as Louis Armstrong said of Orval Faubus, like uneducated ploughboys. Sometime before morning I finally slept and was groggy when we pulled into New Orleans and were transferred to the bus that took us to our motel. Half-dozing as we pulled into the motel court, I peered out the window and saw a wall with three doors designated Men, Women, and Colored Men. On the train, I had read John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie, which described Southern racism, and in New York I had watched news reports, but still—seeing this manifestation in person was chilling. I poked a friend, waking him to see the three doors, and we stared in disbelief.
Carterology (James Carter)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Atlantic’s simultaneous release of James Carter’s Chasin’ the Gypsy, a tribute to Django Reinhardt, and Layin’ in the Cut, an exercise in jazz funk, reminds me of a moment from my childhood when the same label released two LPs by Bobby Darin, At the Copa and For Teenagers Only. Darin was trying to cross over to a grown-up, moneyed audience while keeping the allowanced one in line. Carter, as he notes in a press release, wants, “in light of the millennium thing, to have one foot in the past, in a musical sense, and another moving forward in time.” So which is which? The way I hear it, the noisily diverting Layin’ in the Cut takes the limited idea of virtuoso noodling over an electric backbeat as far as it can go, while the creamy homage opens new vistas in the realm of reinterpretation. Admittedly, this realm is no longer a princely one. The jazz landscape is littered with pointless tributes and reinterpretations. What a relief to hack through all the Monk and Ellington salutes to get back to Monk and Ellington. Still, I don’t think Chasin’ the Gypsy will fade so quickly. It will make you want to hear the great Django—the better you know the originals, the more you can savor Carter’s heady adaptations. But loving the Romany legend, many of whose best sides have now been issued by Mosaic as The Complete Django Reinhardt and Quintet of the Hot Club of France Swing/HMV Sessions 1936–1948, will not satisfy the anticipation Carter creates for his own faithfully intense, high-calorie vision. Carter’s approach to the past, demonstrated less pointedly on earlier records, is not to turn backward on bended knee, but to go after it like a benevolent Ahab. He makes Django a 21st-century man.
Mood Swings (Tom Harrell)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Tom Harrell’s unevenness as an improviser and composer has generated one of jazz’s most consistent dramas over the past 25 years. When the planets come into alignment in a Harrell solo; when all is focused and driven and he knows where he is headed but takes his time getting there, diverting himself with melodic fragments and oddly accented color notes; when his tone is warm, moist, supple, and sure, despite an attack that can be downright fierce, it is tempting to throw caution to the winds and proclaim him the finest trumpet player of his generation. But then there are those other moments, when he struggles to find the target, when his influences predominate or he succumbs to a drab, almost sentimental lilt, underscored by his affection for samba and other placating Latin beats. Both Harrells are on display on his new album, Paradise (RCA Victor), and they vied for attention last week at the Village Vanguard.
Long Roads (Harry Belafonte)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

You won’t find Harry Belafonte’s name on the cover of the handsome, oversized box that houses The Long Road to Freedom, or on the title page of the 140-page book that accompanies its five CDs. Take that as an example of the modesty and restraint that led him to create this astonishing treasure in the first place. In the late 1950s, when he first proposed documenting a history of African American music from the early days of slavery to the close of the 19th century, only Elvis Presley rivaled Belafonte as RCA’s top seller. The company president, George Marek, a genuinely musical executive (they existed in those days) who later wrote several accomplished biographies, committed the label to the project. Many recording sessions took place, beginning in 1961 and continuing over the next decade. Yet after Marek died, the work died as well, abandoned and apparently forgotten for nearly 30 years. Its belated release now by the RCA/BMG affiliate Buddha Records is a major event, perhaps the most important of several major releases in the fall of 2001, for it will influence the way we hear, understand, and write about African American music.
The Microtonal Man (Joe Maneri)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

One of the infrequent pleasures of ethnic weddings and bar or bat mitzvahs in the era before DJs began contributing to musical unemployment was the chance encounter with jazz players working anonymously in the bands. I can recall coming across sidemen once associated with Fats Navarro, Woody Herman, Thad and Mel, and Cecil Taylor. Musicians call those gigs socials, and often play them for the same reason many critics write liner notes and press releases: It’s a living. As a rule, they bring their jazz expertise to the gig and take little if anything away. Joe Maneri suspended that rule. The saxophonist and clarinetist, who celebrated his 75th birthday with a full house at Tonic on February 9, took to heart the pitch variations in Greek, Israeli, Middle Eastern, and other party musics he mastered in the line of duty, noting their affinity with scalar particularities in the music of West Africa and India as well as jazz, and made his way into the alternate universe of microtonality.
Singing Cool and Hot (Cassandra Wilson / Dee Dee Bridgewater)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Can it be that little more than a decade ago, jazz singing was widely written off as a dead art? No one had come along to take the stages abandoned by Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Carmen McRae, though Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln had survived the wilderness years to reassert their own claims as supreme individualists in an uncrowded field. They in turn influenced many young singers, which was a great relief from that strange period in the ‘70s when all black woman singers tried to sound like Aretha and all white woman singers tried to sound like Annie Ross—a trite landscape of unholy melisma and runaway hipsterism. Yet the most gifted singer of the boomer generation, who might have changed all that, Dee Dee Bridgewater, relocated to Paris after a fleeting try at disco and was rarely heard here while the most promising singer of the next generation, Cassandra Wilson, was mired in M-Base science fiction and seemed to consider it a matter of artistic integrity not to connect with her audience.
Our Chopin (Cecil Taylor)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Some people decry Cecil Taylor as a composer because he rarely revisits pieces and doesn’t provide song-form themes for others to play, just as some people decry Thelonious Monk as a composer because he was constantly revisiting pieces and worked almost exclusively with song-form themes that are played to distraction. Consistency is the hobgoblin of jazzcrit. What can be said with certainty is that Taylor, like Monk, has invented his own compositional method and his own approach to the keyboard and that they are indivisible. In the 45 years since he recorded Jazz Advance, he has shaped an original vocabulary, a thesaurus of leaps, runs, skitters, eruptions, pauses, rhythms, melodies, thrusts, and counterthrusts. In this, he is nothing unique, merely a member in a very exclusive club of self-invented pianist-composers. You want Chopin melodies, there’s only one place to go. Same with Taylor, though melody probably isn’t what you’re seeking from him. I have no interest in whether Taylor’s music will survive the next century as handsomely as Chopin’s did the last, but I do suggest that in the realm of uncontained piano ecstasy, he is the modern analogue— fittingly, one more likely to nuke romance than dwell upon it. Consequently, his every appearance is a gift, especially those rare American forays into concert halls, where the formality virtually guarantees as much attention to solo piano as to whatever unit he is leading. His February 28 performance at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, presented by the World Music Institute and Thomas Buckner, was typical, which is to say stunning. After only a minute or so of off-stage guttural yowls and, I think, maracas, he hastened (black skullcap and pants; white, black, and gold blouse; rainbow socks) to the keyboard and began a characteristic buildup with blocked chords—some consonant, others dissonant, but all richly foursquare and spelled by sly rests. “Measurement of sound is its silences,” he wrote a long time ago.