All that jazz, in a single concise volume

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Ellington at the piano and Armstrong on trumpet during a session at the RCA Victor recording studio in New York, Jan. 12, 1946. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES)

Q. Why listen to jazz?

A. It's fun to listen to. Everything else follows.

Jazz writer and broadcaster Kevin Whitehead captures the essence of jazz in that first entry in his new book Why Jazz?, A Concise Guide (Oxford, $20), written in a question and answer format.

The answers are indeed concise, and Whitehead has written for novice and more experienced fan alike. It doesn't pretend to be a definitive account of jazz, but it is a good, broad view of a genre of music that prompts much debate -- some rancorous, some friendly -- much devotion and has spawned enough sub-genres to keep a genealogist busy.

Whitehead covers the main types of jazz, all periods from jazz's origin, and main players like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, all the usual suspects. For example:

Q. Why do jazz people go on so about Louis Armstrong?

A. He influenced everybody.

There's more, of course, but Whitehead's answers do cut to the chase.

The book can be read from cover to cover, or you can pick sections at random; Whitehead has included a glossary of common jazz terms for the novice.

Whitehead's last question tackles the proverbial issue:

Q. What is the future of jazz?

A. Nobody knows. Critics' predictions of where jazz is going as usually well off the mark, because we don't know what -- or who -- may be just around the corner.

Go figure, a music critic who admits he doesn't know everything.

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Hi-De-Ho: British jazz critic, author, BBC Radio presenter and bassist Alyn Shipton's latest biography captures the life and long career of singer, dancer, band leader and actor Cab Calloway, whose musical life spanned the famed Cotton Club in New York City to a role in The Blues Brothers movie in 1980.

His most famous number, Minnie the Moocher, first recorded in 1931, introduced his trademark Hi-Di-Ho line and became the first million-selling recording by an African-American artist.

The catchy, amusing tune celebrates drug culture with lines such as "kicking the gong around" despite Calloway's refusal to partake in it, Shipton writes in Hi-De-Ho, The Life of Cab Calloway (Oxford, $33). However, if Calloway didn't take drugs, he drank a lot of alcohol but always managed to shake off the hangover before hitting the stage.

His career began in 1927 when he was 19 and ended in 1994, when he died a month before his 87th birthday. He took over the Cotton Club residency vacated by Duke Ellington and toured around the United States with a big band for nearly two decades as one of the most popular band leaders of the 1930s and '40s.

Calloway's popularity came from his singing, dancing and hipster persona, not from his musicianship, which wasn't top level. He did get some top-flight musicians in his band to boost its jazz chops -- Cozy Cole, Chu Berry, Ben Webster, Dizzy Gillespie -- and while it made the band sound much better, it emphasized Calloway's deficiencies as a musician in the eyes of his band members.

Calloway had good years as a big-band leader, earning six-figure annual incomes when that was a small fortune, and bad years when he had to take to the road with small bands to make a living when jazz orchestras fell out of favour.

Winnipeg rates a couple of mentions in the book: A reference to a 1949 newspaper interview when Calloway and a small band hit the stage here; and a reference to performing here in the mid-'50s with a renewed night club revue based on the Cotton Club.

Calloway performed in films, usually lower-budget affairs with just enough story to warrant musicians. He appeared in Stormy Weather, the movie that gave young singer Lena Horne her big break.

Late in life, Calloway found young audiences singing the Hi-De-Ho call and response when he performed Minnie. The Blues Brothers appearance helped introduce him to a new following.

Shipton, the author of other jazz books including Groovin' High: The Life of Dizzy Gillespie, may broaden that audience with this book. If you haven't heard Minnie, look it up. If you have, play it again.

chris.smith@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 24, 2011 D3