1961 Poll Winners

[ListeningToPrestige]

Is there anyone out there who has old Down Beats within easy reach, and could send me scans of the 1961 jazz poll results (the whole poll results, not just the winners)? I usually count on the amazing folks at the NY Public Library music division, but they are on skeleton staff for the duration of the pandemic. And once again, as I do every year, I bemoan the fact that the Down Beat archives have not been digitized. This is a national treasure. What's wrong with the Smithsonian?

[JSngry]

4 hours ago, ListeningToPrestige said:

I bemoan the fact that the Down Beat archives have not been digitized. This is a national treasure. What's wrong with the Smithsonian?

What's wrong with Down Beat?

 

[clifford_thornton]

Yeah, I wish there was a searchable OCR'ed image database containing each issue of Down Beat. But, as an archivist by trade, I can tell you that that would be extremely expensive and garner almost no profits, and such initiatives are wholly married to the powers that be -- so while a company or institution may support it for a while, as soon as they don't, the whole thing goes kaput.

[ListeningToPrestige]

What's wrong with Down Beat?

Agreed. No reason why they shouldn't be doing it. They've actually gotten worse, Their website used to have a page with all the poll results from past years, and they took it down.

[JSngry]

My college library had copies going back to the middle 40s. The magazine was mostly a joke then, to be honest. Not that there weren't articles of interest, but there was so much blather about show business/popular music/entertainment. Not at all a dedicated jazz magazine.

 

Not really sure but that in the overall life of the magazine that it's got all of that much worth saving, to be honest. Some, to be sure.

 

 

 

[ListeningToPrestige]

I would disagree. It's a chronicle of jazz over a long period of the music's history, and of great value to researchers (even casual ones like me).

[JSngry]

Yeah...have you looked at those issues from the 1940s in their entirety?

They did up the game there for a while, but the last decade or two, it's mostly content driven by who's got good PR reps working for them. Nothing wrong with that, of course,, but I haven't taken them seriously as a journal of "serious criticism" for a good while now.

There will be some value there, of course, how could there not be? But...

[ListeningToPrestige]

Here's a comparison. Poetry Magazine was founded in 1912, and it was revolutionary and groundbreaking for its time. It published Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams. It shaped modernism in poetry. And it is now completely digitized, and every issue from 1912 on, is online. But if you go back and read those early issues, they're mostly crap. For every poem by Pound, there are five forgettable neo-Georgian sonnets about nature. And yet it's still invaluable to a researcher, or anyone interested.

What's so important about the DownBeats is not that everything in them was worth reading, but that they were there, and they give an insight into the time. One example -- in the mid-1950s, Miles Davis was in the process of jumping from Prestige to Columbia, and before he could leave Prestige he had to give them seven albums, which he did in the Contractual Marathon sessions. At the same time, he recorded Round About Midnight for Columbia - he was allowed by contract to record for Columbia, but Columbia couldn't release anything until he'd finished his obligation to Prestige.

Today, Round About Midnight is considered one of his masterpieces, and the Prestige albums are often, especially by younger critics, not exactly dismissed, but a little devalued as sloppy, careless, hurried. But it's interesting to read the critiques of the time. Round About Midnight is faulted for being too fussy, too contrived, and the Prestige albums are rated higher. 

Who's right, the critics of that era or this era? There's no right or wrong. But it's interesting to see how values have changed. Today, perfection is valued. Back then, spontaneity had the upper hand. 

Or another way that periodicals of the time give one an insight -- certainly gave me an insight. It's generally known that Esquire caused a sensation in jazz criticism in the mid-1940s when for the first time they included African-American critics in their jazz poll, and suddenly black artists were polling a lot higher. And instead of this provoking a realization that jazz writing had been pretty racist, it provoked a backlash by people like Stan Kenton, who accused Esquire of anti-white bias.

But what I hadn't thought about, till perusing the DownBeat polls of the late 1950s, was how pervasive another kind of ethnic bias was. In an era when the mambo and the cha-cha were the hottest thing around, there is a total absence of any Latino names on the DownBeat reader's polls. Even their dance band category has Ray Anthony, Les Brown, even Lawrence Welk -- but no Machito, no Tito Puente. These are among the greatest artists in American music history, and they were completely ignored. This sort of argues in favor of your point that DownBeat wasn't so hot, but it also argues in favor mine that it's an important resource for a student of the era.

[JSngry]

Can't argue with that. I would not stop with DB though...unless you want to look at what they were doing at the time with the time, in which case, yes, straight to the source. But for musical insight...not so much until maybe early 60s-middle 80s, probably narrower than that. When Dan Morgenstern was editor, they were very good, imo.

[Chuck Nessa]

28 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Can't argue with that. I would not stop with DB though...unless you want to look at what they were doing at the time with the time, in which case, yes, straight to the source. But for musical insight...not so much until maybe early 60s-middle 80s, probably narrower than that. When Dan Morgenstern was editor, they were very good, imo.

Dan's predecessor Don DeMichael did a great job and was a mentor of sorts for me.

[ListeningToPrestige]

I agree completely. I would like to see DB digitized, but I don't want to stop there. For a start, Martin Williams' short-lived Jazz Review. But I'd like to see all of Billboard digitized. They had some very good coverage of jazz, even though it only represented a small portion of their total output, and just looking at the ads in Billboard by the jazz labels is an educational experience.

[JSngry]

38 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Dan's predecessor Don DeMichael did a great job and was a mentor of sorts for me.

Just before my time, but in retrospect, no doubt...when did he take over?

to the point about research value - If you want to see how truly deplorable Leonard Feather was, go find his "roundtable" about Crow Jim. Max Roach, maybe Migus(?) was a participant, i forget who else, but it was a mess. Feather refuses to listen and poor Frank Strozier gets held up as an example of Racist Negro Jazz Musicians In Action.

The equally egregious "anti-jazz" interview with Coltrane has been reprinted often enough, but this one, maybe not so much?

[clifford_thornton]

yeah, I've read that roundtable. Ugh.

[JSngry]

25 minutes ago, ListeningToPrestige said:

 For a start, Martin Williams' short-lived Jazz Review.

Mike Fitzgerald had that at one time, didn't he?

 

[Mark Stryker]

46 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Just before my time, but in retrospect, no doubt...when did he take over?

to the point about research value - If you want to see how truly deplorable Leonard Feather was, go find his "roundtable" about Crow Jim. Max Roach, maybe Migus(?) was a participant, i forget who else, but it was a mess. Feather refuses to listen and poor Frank Strozier gets held up as an example of Racist Negro Jazz Musicians In Action.

The equally egregious "anti-jazz" interview with Coltrane has been reprinted often enough, but this one, maybe not so much?

I haven't seen this piece, but confused by the Strozier reference. Fairly certain Frank was black -- VERY light-skinned but still identified as black. Went to the same segregated high school in Memphis as the other greats of that era like Phineas Newborn, George Coleman, Booker Little etc. 

Edited October 29, 2020 by Mark Stryker

[JSngry]

12 minutes ago, Mark Stryker said:

I haven't seen this piece, but confused by the Strozier reference. Fairly certain Frank was black -- VERY light-skinned but still identified as black. Went to the same segregated high school in Memphis as the other greats of that era like Phineas Newborn, George Coleman, Booker Little etc. 

Oh, but Leonard Feather thought he was white, and pushed him as such. And none of the musicians pushed back otherwise.

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Mike Fitzgerald had that at one time, didn't he?

 

Used to have a link to all the issues of The Jazz Review online, and I've visited it many times. But when I just tried to go there  -- at Jazz Studies Online -- I got a warning that it was a place that might try to steal my private information.

[clifford_thornton]

weird. I thought Rutgers hosted it.

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Just before my time, but in retrospect, no doubt...when did he take over?

to the point about research value - If you want to see how truly deplorable Leonard Feather was, go find his "roundtable" about Crow Jim. Max Roach, maybe Migus(?) was a participant, i forget who else, but it was a mess. Feather refuses to listen and poor Frank Strozier gets held up as an example of Racist Negro Jazz Musicians In Action.

The equally egregious "anti-jazz" interview with Coltrane has been reprinted often enough, but this one, maybe not so much?

I hold no brief for Leonard Feather, but I don't follow the Strozier reference here. If Feather thought Strozier was white and said so in this roundtable, what aspect of Strozier's life/music/treatment by colleagues could then be held up by Feather "as an example of Racist Negro Jazz Musicians In Action"? Or is it all so obvious/in plain sight that I'm missing it?Strozier was a widely respected player who was hired by leaders both black and white.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JSngry]

Feather's point was that the Racist Negro Jazz Musicians In Action would say, oh, it's really all about who can play, not race and then Feather would say, well, what about Frank Strozier? and the Racist Negro Jazz Musicians In Action would say, well, he's an exception, he can play, but there's a social element here as well, and then Leonard Feather would say, oh, so it IS about race and then the Racist Negro Jazz Musicians In Action would say, no, it's not racial, it's social, and on and on it went with NOBODY talking about Pepper Adams and such, it was just one big hot mess of Leonard Feather Leonard Feathering, interested in controversy and readers and pandering rather than any kind of a serious nuanced discussion. Don't know if Mingus was on the panel, but Max sure was, and this was just after We insist & Straight Ahead, and, you know, what the hell did you THINK Max was coming with?

Leonard Feather is in hell, and I for one am not coming to get him out any time soon.

[Larry Kart]

Gotcha. In Hell indeed.

[JSngry]

I had only heard Frank Strozier on a Don Ellis record and an Oliver Nelson record when I read this article and had NO idea about too much of anything about him, but I remember even then thinking, ow wow, this poor guy...

[Larry Kart]

MJT + 3
Studio album by  MJT + 3
Released	1961
Recorded	May 12, 1960 Universal Recorders, Chicago
Genre	Jazz
Length	35:41
Label	Vee-Jay VJLP 3014
Producer	Sid McCoy

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]

I first encountered Strozier as a member of this tasty Chicago group. The previous version of the band, which also made an album for Vee-Jay,  included trumpeter Paul Serrano, tenorman Nicky Hill, and pianist Richard Abrams. 

 

MJT + 3 is an album by MJT + 3, recorded in 1960 for Vee-Jay Records.^[2]

Track listing[edit]

1. "Branching Out" (Mabern) - 6:57
2. "Lil' Abner" (Willie Thomas) - 4:10
3. "Don't Ever Throw My Love Away" (Strozier) - 9:08
4. "Raggity Man" (Thomas) - 6:29
5. "To Sheila" (Strozier) - 4:57
6. "Love for Sale" (Porter) - 4:00

Personnel[edit]

• Frank Strozier - alto sax, flute
• Willie Thomas - trumpet
• Harold Mabern - piano
• Bob Cranshaw - bass
• Walter Perkins - drums

[Mark Stryker]

Not to derail the thread, but I’m the president of the Frank Strozier fan club. 

 

Carry on ...

[Chuck Nessa]

27 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

I first encountered Strozier as a member of this tasty Chicago group. The previous version of the band, which also made an album for Vee-Jay,  included trumpeter Paul Serrano, tenorman Nicky Hill, and pianist Richard Abrams. 

 

the earlier record was for Argo.