Kitsch in jazz (also Stan Kenton S/D)

Here's the exact Giddins quote:

Gary Giddins, Visions of Jazz, 327-8:

"Among the peculiarities of jazz, considering its central role in American culture, high and low, over the course of a century, is the relative dearth of kitsch. There are numberless bad, inept, meretricious, vulgar, and fatuous performances, but the kind of campy awfulness that is so readily found in every other aspect of the culture is curiously lacking. Where is the jazz equivalent of Jeff Koons sculptures, Norman Mailer novels, and Edward D. Wood, Jr. movies? Candidates can be found, from the vocals of Putney Dandridge or Chick Bullock to the riper conceits of Paul Whiteman and Jimmie Lunceford to the disco phase of Miles Davis, but in practically every case the kitschy elements are tangential to jazz - we listen to the records in spite of them, not because of them. Other possibilities, for example Cab Calloway's Yiddish flavorings and Harry the Hipster's carryings-on, belong to the realm of hokum. True kitsch must be exquisitely, deliciously, and conceitedly bad; we must be drawn to it as a guilty pleasure, confident that the artist produced precisely the effect desired."

Christ almighty can someone just take the stupid old cunt out the back of the barn and painlessly put him out of our misery?

That quote is so fucking wrongheaded he should have been in Face Off.

I'd like someone to do a serious overview of Kenton's work but suspect it will not happen in my lifetime.

http://www.myspace.com/hansgroinerplaysmonk
http://www.myspace.com/johnnybowtiebarstow

I'm no jazz expert so I'm honestly asking: what's so wrongheaded about the quote?

I'm just sick and tired of dead old men clogging up valuable newsprint and webspace with arguments which they lost a fucking generation ago. Miles' "disco phase"? Did you ever drag yourself away from your fucking King Oliver cylinders and go and see him play and develop and EVOLVE and EXPLODE that stuff live?

Idiot remarks about Harry the Hipster etc. also demonstrate that Greil Marcus should keep him in for nightly detention until he learns his fucking folk history.

Also has he ever LISTENED to Whiteman's large-scale works? Direct precursors in scope and ambition to everyone from Carla Bley to Vienna Art Orchestra but no he watched King Of Jazz aged six and bases his judgement on that.

And anyone who uses the term "g**lty pl**s*r*s" should frankly be sentenced to a public disembowelling.

Also - isn't the very idea of 'kitsch' pointless, unhelpful and meaningless?

I mean, the way Giddins talks abt it here, it amounts to nothing more than the old "so bad it's good" trope

intentionally campy "so bad it's good" jazz = cabaret bullshit, no?

no guilt in todays new obsession over the Stan Kenton Today album.
and its certainly not kitsch

kitch impulse in jazz siphoned off into and contained in corny song titles.

and quotations of "pop goes the weasel" etc. during live performance

lost me splitting hairs between kitsch and hokum....

anyway playing kitchsy tunes in a way that makes them interesting & cool = jazz

i've only got plays for today and i think it does exactly that, jordan. version on there of "it was a very good year" is particularly rad

The way I read the Giddens passage, out of context, is that he's taking some pride that his chosen genre of fandom has escaped the "campy awfulness" of other genres. What a fine choice he made in listening! But really, he's just thinking about jazz in it's received form, after it's time in the popular spotlight, stripped of Glenn Miller or Butterbeans and Suzie or whatever has been thrown out as not-jazz. "That's not jazz, that's pop. That's not jazz, that's early R&B." MC Hammer is not Rap. Hermin's Hermits are not rock.

And Miles Davis' "disco phase." I'm assuming he means the 1980s here.

Actually, 1970s Miles is closer spiritually to disco.

he watched King Of Jazz aged six and bases his judgement on that.

I don't think Giddins was writing off Whiteman entirely. Just noting he had riper conceits. King of Jazz = fantastic flick, though.

As for Lunceford, I have this album. But I'm not sure if any of those riper conceits made it on there.

I recently saw/heard Lunceford and His Orchestra in the finally-released-on-DVD Blues in the Night where Snooky Young blows hot for Jack Carson. Not much kitsch there but tons on the Lunceford Vitaphone short included in the extras.

I've never heard of Putney Dandridge and Chick Bullock. S/D?

Setting aside kitsch, I think Jordan answered the question "Where is the jazz equivalent of Jeff Koons sculptures, Norman Mailer novels, and Edward D. Wood, Jr. movies?" quite well above. Johnny "Bowtie" Barstow - whew! That'll clear out your nostrils. Reminds me of Darlene Edwards.

And no Stan Kenton love? Or hate?

"True kitsch must be exquisitely, deliciously, and conceitedly bad; we must be drawn to it as a guilty pleasure, confident that the artist produced precisely the effect desired."

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000002GA9.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I think with Lunceford, there were coordinated stage moves and routines, so it wasn't the music per se, as much as the showmanship which might be "suspect." Or that the "ripe" stuff doesn't make it on to the reissues.

Miles played on the Sun City song right? It's doesn't get more kitsch than 80s all-star conscience-raising singles.

Well the Vitaphone short on the Blues in the Night disc begins with Satan calling out "Hot rhythm - where are you?" and ends with a scat about Little Miss Muffet (and fried chicken??), Coca-Colas, and fur coats on sale at Macy's. So at least here the ripeness was evident in both showmanship and music.

Yeah, "how dare black people dress up, have fun and be disciplined instead of suffering and starving in sharecropper shacks" is the general feeling I get from this.

On the other and more interesting hand, hello hip hop...

"Sun City" still sounds dynamite and totally PWNS Band Aid.

Don't know much about SK, but I heard he had some good girl singers and is credited by no less an authority than John Storm Roberts as playing an important role in the beginnings of Latin Jazz.

Indeed. Anita O'Day and, esp. June Christy are all over the Mosaic box I have.

and Chris Connor, I believe.

i think hes confused the way people currently write and talk about jazz w/ the way it actually sounded.

also sun ra has lots of campy traxx, his disney covers, 'we travel the spaceways', etc

but yeah musicians were doing covers of old standards, that was camp ... frequently quoting songs in solos ... just bcuz the reverence of writers for the 'spiritual genius' of late period coltrane is so predominant now doesnt mean its the primary narrative of the actual music itself

also, love 'cuban fire'

my heroes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87bIc6Vls1c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mExpGyauWGc

perez prado's voodoo suite kicks so much ass:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGoLa3zDIRk

i always forget that kitsch is supposed to equal bad. it always equals corny in my head.

oh, and i like stan kenton. i have to. i grew up listening to so much of his music. it's in my blood.

i guess another ex. of 'kitchsy' jazz might be a lot of the music that got accused of being just 'cartoon music' (although some of it was made for cartoons) - stuff like raymond chandler. this album is really good btw:

http://www.raptorial.com/Zine/Pics/BugMusic.jpeg

lol i mean raymond scott

tune in next week for the wacky adventures of phillip marlowe and his emperor penguin sidekick Lord Byron!

just bcuz the reverence of writers for the 'spiritual genius' of late period coltrane is so predominant now doesnt mean its the primary narrative of the actual music itself

Giddins is pretty careful in that book about avoiding one solid narrative theory. He has plenty of time for Spike Jones, for instance.

This is fucked up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Glass_(Stan_Kenton_album)

But in an awesome way, esp. the Complete version on CD: I referred to "skyscrapers ov phosphorescence" on some other thread--no surprise to read that Robert Stone, Ken Kesey etc tripped to original LP in late 50s Perry Lane.

just having a listen and FP-ing og threadstarter for using "Kitsch" in the title!

lol just scrolled up to see this matter has been comprehensively sorted on this thread!

Oh yeah its definitely awesome (I am listening to it as part of the list in The Wire's 100 records that set the world on Fire) Robert Graettinger needs a write-up (from the wiki he's interesting), and well...if Stan Kenton made a bunch of 'kitschy' jazz albums and then made this then...what's the story?

I don't know. My local jazz station occasionally plays things from other Kenton albums, and they sound pretty wild too, but I've never heard a whole album other than the 16-track City sessions on Blue Note CD. My guess is that he always had to go for big band glory, the bigger and more complicated the better, as long as it was exciting---so the sort of extremist who could and maybe meant to inspire love and hate, no middle ground (although hate could just mean quick exit the first time, automatic avoidance ever after). No idea if he just got lucky with Robert G., and never found a compatible collaborator or source again. Those random excerpts on my local jazz station sound pretty good, or pretty upside my head--certainly rather hear those than "Maiden Voyage" or "All Blues" for the xxxxth time, which is much more likely---so he and G. are def suitable for further study---and always have been...maybe I'll get to it someday.

Yeah I think what's kinda bugging me about glass is the extreme stuff isn't anchored in anything I recognise v well? Idk..

Downloaded this and New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm, from 1952, last night after reading this thread. Liked the little bit of City of Glass I listened to; will check the rest out this weekend.