Reviews for Command performance, USA!

The average rating for Command performance, USA! based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-08 00:00:00 Gabriel Guzman Jazz By Rex Harris (4th Edition 1956) This book is subtitled "an account of its origin and growth from the early drum rhythms of Africa to the highly developed Western music of the present day. The author gives careful guidance in the choice of good recordings." This vintage book was one of my dads books that I recently collected from Mum before she moved. The book has handwritten on the cover "This book was stolen from Ray Weinstein" No idea when dad did the crime but the book is pretty dog eared and has been read more than a few times before I got my mitts on it 50 odd years down the line! My how Jazz has changed in those 50 years, I'm sure if Rex Harris was still around he would be mortified at some of the music that has been described as Jazz, but equally he would be happy that some of the artists he features in the book are still working and that most of the material he reccomends is available to buy online. Rex tells the story from the view of the real Trad Jazz purist and Student of Jazz. It is surprising some of the acts that I learnt are not Jazz musicians people like Fletcher Henderon and Duke Ellingotn are not Jazz according to this books viewpoint. and Whatever you do if you think a Saxaphone is a suitable instrument to play Jazz on according to Rex you are sadly mistaken!! So what kept me gripped to this book was his descriptions of the music he loved and the lengths of his research into its roots in the Gambia and Liberia and the Niger Delta in his eyes the first Jazz age started around 1480's!!! with the first of the slave ships, he explores the musical links from that time through to the America of the 19th century and into the recorded age and the early wax cylinders of things that American Columbia reissued as The Chain Gang Album (C-22) yes this book has lots of albums and 78's to find for the collectors. Obviously he links the slave songs to the likes of Leadbelly and the Golden Gate Quartet. We then get a good history of Jazz in New Orleans and Chicago and the classic street bands and people like Rudy Besh and WC Handy who he points out as a classic song thief in making sure he published every song he found as his own!! There is lots of stuff on people I have never heard of from Jack Laine to Batiste Delisle and onto better known musicians like Buddy Bolden. Then as the music increases in popularity there are the splits into awful commercial music that is known as Swing and Big Band neither of which should be confused for real jazz of course, especially anything that features people playing from Sheet music as Jazz can only be played without sheet music. Still thankfully Louis Armstrong rarely crossed those lines to the other side and the descriptions of his hot fives and sevens that were ideal jazz bands are great to read. When he goets onto destroying Duke Ellingtons music after a good list of Ellington records you should listen to he comes out with this priceless quote that reminds me of many latter music styles being decribed by bewildered old fogeys. "All these records and hundreds more like them have the Ellington mark stamped indelibly on them. Were it not for the skill of the orchestration and the individual ispiration of the fine jazz musicians employed by Ellington they might well be dismissed on the grounds that 'once you've heard one or two, you've heard the lot'. I'd love to think someone writing a history of Jazz today would have the balls to make a claim like that But I doubt they would want to make that big a fool of themselves. He certainly makes me want to get some Bunk Johnson records though. there is also a good section on the international Jazz scene with a good look at the british scene where most of the leading lights careers continued for decades, so he picked the right musicians from George Melly to Humphrey Littleton. I really enjoyed this as it shows how little has changed in musical criticism over the years while making me want to hear lots more Trad Jazz as we can't have any of that bop or be bop stuff, well at least he says it's Jazz just too modern for this cat.....

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-21 00:00:00 Lionso Sandoval This is the 1950s Penguin edition and shows its age in some places. Rex Harris has decided opinions on what counts as real Jazz, but as long as you treat this as a representative of conventional attitudes of the period it is an interesting and informative history of Jazz music from 1880s to early post-war period.