GiovanniMariaRuggiero

Actually I was interested in the topic. I must confess that in pictures Mclean (above all when he was young) looked "white" or "caucasian" (we do not use this term in Italy). I do not know how I understood he was black. In time, I felt that he had a fiery and "black" sound, different not only from the polite and etereal white sound of Konitz and Getz, but also from the bebop-but-clean sound of Phil Woods. In addition, he never was in the Tristano or Kenton or Herman groups or environments. This is why I started thinking I did not see himself as a white. Of course, this is another risky generalization. For example Allen Eager and Al Haig and Red Rodney played almost only in "black" bebop groups and they were white people. Anyway I have discovered that McLean had black and white parents and relatives and I sense that he chose a "black" identity without too much concern. This is strange because I am just reading a book about black american people who transformed themselves in "white" people. In addition, I learn saxophone here in Milano with the old/historical Italian saxophonist Paolo Tomelleri who played with people like Webster, Mulligan, Konitz, and Bill Holman in the fifties when they spent time in Milano. Sometimes Tomelleri tells me how relationships between black and white jazzmen who met in Milano wasn't that easy. Ciao Gioovanni Actually I was interested in the topic. I must confess that in pictures Mclean (above all when he was young) looked "white" or "caucasian" (we do not use this term in Italy). I do not know how I understood he was black. In time, I felt that he had a fiery and "black" sound, different not only from the polite and etereal white sound of Konitz and Getz, but also from the bebop-but-clean sound of Phil Woods. In addition, he never was in the Tristano or Kenton or Herman groups or environments. This is why I started thinking I did not see himself as a white. Of course, this is another risky generalization. For example Allen Eager and Al Haig and Red Rodney played almost only in "black" bebop groups and they were white people. Anyway I have discovered that McLean had black and white parents and relatives and I sense that he chose a "black" identity without too much concern. This is strange because I am just reading a book about black american people who transformed themselves in "white" people. In addition, I learn saxophone here in Milano with the old/historical Italian saxophonist Paolo Tomelleri who played with people like Webster, Mulligan, Konitz, and Bill Holman in the fifties when they spent time in Milano. Sometimes Tomelleri tells me how relationships between black and white jazzmen who met in Milano wasn't that easy. Ciao Gioovanni

it is not racism. It's like asking "was the classical pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni Italian or German?" actually his mother was half German and Busoni as culturally very germanized, notwithstanding the italian family name. Given that Italian and German approach to classical music are very different so it is intriguing and not meaningless (or racist) to know the personal relatioship of Busoni to German and Italian culture also with respect to his mixed ethnicity. Given that it is indeniable that also black and white approach to jazz is partially different, it is interesting to know the racial ascendacy of mclean, but above all how he defined himself: black or white?