Hot Jazz and Jazz Dance: Roger Pryor Dodge: Collected Writings 1929-1964
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About this book
Long before Martin Williams Gene Lees or Gunther Schuller Roger Pryor Dodge was writing seriously about jazz. A ballet vaudeville and jazz dancer Dodge turned his critical attention to the music in the 1920s helping to build the respect jazz has long since achieved. Now for the first time the essays and reviews of one of Americas first great jazz critics has been collected in one volume. Hot Jazz and Jazz Dance gathers thirty years of Dodges writing from 1929 to 1958 offering a remarkable chronicle of the changing music and one writers ever-growing appreciation of it. The classically trained Dodge came to jazz in the early 1920s; he quickly developed a love for the authentic non-commercial sounds of Louis Armstrong Duke Ellington Jelly Roll Morton and scores of now-forgotten musicians. In these essays we share a highly personal yet professional encounter with the music--in a moving profile for instance of Bubber Miley ("the greatest trumpeter in jazz history--in fact the greatest musician of them all") who died of tuberculosis at age thirty. He ranges across the musical spectrum from the Cuban sexteto to the blues of Lead Belly. Dodge was alsoa professional dancer however and this collection contains many of his articles on everything from mambo to Nijinsky (the author owned one of the largest and most important collections of photographs of the great dancers work and donated it to the New York Public Library) to a short essay on the young Elvis Presley ("without his having all the necessary elements that combine to make a great dancing talent he does have the stance of a very great performer"). In addition this volume offers Dodges significant writing on classical music including a piece on Baroque playing styles. Almost forgotten today Roger Pryor Dodge was an essential force in making Americas music critics take hot jazz and jazz dance seriously. A must for any jazz fan or student of modern culture this collection deftly captures Dodges excitement and critical insight.
