ESSAYS

This section includes essays on various jazz subjects, written by a number of writers. Contributions are welcome. Writers interested in contributing are welcome to contact the editor by filling out the form in the CONTACT tab. Photographs to illustrate those essays are welcome. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of articles in this folder.

THE JAZZ SCENE: INTRODUCTION TO THE 1959 EDITION

by Eric Hobsbawm (Francis Newton)

MacGibbon and Kee 1959

This book is about one of the most remarkable cultural phenomena of our century. It is not merely about a certain type of music, but about an extraordinary conquest and a remarkable aspect of the society in which we live. The world of jazz consists not only of the noises which emerge from particular combinations of instruments played in a characteristic way. It consists also of the musicians who play them, coloured and white, American and non-American. The fact that British working-class boys in Newcastle play it is at least as interesting as and rather more surprising than the fact that it progressed through the frontier saloons of the Mississippi valley…

THE JAZZ SCENE: INTRODUCTION TO THE 1989 EDITION

by Eric Hobsbawm (Francis Newton)

Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1989

This book was first published almost thirty years ago, under the pseudonym Francis Newton (based on Frankie Newton, the trumpeter), which was then intended to keep the author's writings as an historian apart from his writings as a jazz journalist. The attempt did not succeed, so it is now republished under my own name. To reprint a work of 1959-61 may seem like reprinting an old telephone directory. Three decades are a large enough chunk of the life of a human being, but they are a much larger fraction of the history of so rapidly evolving, so constantly changing a music as jazz. However, The Jazz Scene may be a reminder of the days when Armstrong and Ellington were still alive, when it was possible to listen within a few days or weeks to the living Bechet and Basie, to Ella Fitzgerald, the dying Billie Holiday and the glorious Mahalia Jackson, to Gillespie, Miles Davis, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, to Mingus, Monk, Pee Wee Russell, Jack Teagarden, Hodges and Webster. It was a golden age for jazz, and we knew it…

TEN PART INVENTION & BERNIE MCGANN QUARTET TOURS 2004

by John Pochée

Jazz Action Society of New South Wales newsletter, December, 2004

Now that I am back from touring, I thought I might add a little on Ten Part Invention's trip to the USA. Of course the Chicago Jazz Festival was wonderful to perform at and we also gave a performance in small groups with everyone featuring their compositions, which were very enthusiastically received. We then went on to play at a wonderful club The Hothouse which is a non-profit association that presents two bands a night. Some of the Festival Committee came to hear how we sounded in a club setting and went away suitably impressed. I was very proud of the band, with everyone playing at their absolute best…