Whistle Stop: Kenny Dorham, Jazz, and the Journey of a Texas Family

[Dan Gould]

I have read a bit more than 1/2 of this now ... I don't know about others but I was definitely unimpressed that one of the writers refers to himself as "LatinX" and the other is apparently a poli-sci professor who even did a presentation at the APSA from this material, which I find mind-boggling especially as a one-time grad student in American Politics who was very nearly "ABD (all but dissertation)" a lifetime ago.

I definitely skipped over/scanned a lot of their family background chapters and tend to skip ahead whenever "white supremacy" starts appearing in the text.  I don't deny that race is a part of the story given where and when Kenny Dorham was born and performed but its also the sort of sociological academic crap that ruins narratives in this day and age.

This is best when Kenny and his colleagues are telling the story and I will keep reading it for those insights.

[Dan Gould]

Something to add:

 Page 52, "... the band also did Cab Calloway's "Fat Foot Flewzy".

I can't find any such tune, isn't it properly "Flat Foot Floogie"?

 

And in the context of the Abby Lincoln LPs that KD was on ... page 97:

"According to Joel Durham, singer Billie Holiday could not bear to hear Kenny play ballads because it made her too sad. Had she been alive to hear his accompaniment (on "Don't Explain") ... it likely would have broken her heart."

According to the google machine, Lincoln's recording was in 1957 and the album with the recording was issued in 1958.  Billie Holiday died in July 1959.  It is entirely possible that she heard KD's performance and undoubtedly not true that she couldn't have heard it because she had already died.

A simple question that took me less than 5 minutes to figure out. Why not just say "It's not known if Billie Holiday heard KD's solo on Don't Explain but if she had it surely would have broken her heart."

 

 

[Niko]

Let's hope that solo didn't kill her... Maybe the authors were trying to shield KD... 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

17 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

I have read a bit more than 1/2 of this now ... I don't know about others but I was definitely unimpressed that one of the writers refers to himself as "LatinX" and the other is apparently a poli-sci professor who even did a presentation at the APSA from this material, which I find mind-boggling especially as a one-time grad student in American Politics who was very nearly "ABD (all but dissertation)" a lifetime ago.

I definitely skipped over/scanned a lot of their family background chapters and tend to skip ahead whenever "white supremacy" starts appearing in the text.  I don't deny that race is a part of the story given where and when Kenny Dorham was born and performed but its also the sort of sociological academic crap that ruins narratives in this day and age.

This is best when Kenny and his colleagues are telling the story and I will keep reading it for those insights.

Maybe you didn't mean it this way, but since when is white supremacy "sociological academic crap"? I suppose if you or your family member isn't the one swinging from a noose, it's easy to think that, but to be so dismissive of what was a terrible time for black Americans is literally "whitewashing" history.

I get it if that upsets you to read but I think we need to read about this aspect of our Jazz heroes' lives. It's important to never ignore the past. Those who learn from the past create a better future.

[Dan Gould]

5 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

Maybe you didn't mean it this way, but since when is white supremacy "sociological academic crap"? I suppose if you or your family member isn't the one swinging from a noose, it's easy to think that, but to be so dismissive of what was a terrible time for black Americans is literally "whitewashing" history.

I get it if that upsets you to read but I think we need to read about this aspect of our Jazz heroes' lives. It's important to never ignore the past. Those who learn from the past create a better future.

The application of race/racialism/segregation/white supremacy to every issue in the book is not illuminating. Kenny Dorham didn't rise to the level supported by his skills for the sole reason that he was black.  But the authors fit it into everything in this book.

That is what I mean by sociological academic crap.  

Accusing me of "whitewashing" is completely uncalled for. The problem with people of a certain ideological bent is that if you say "enough already - it wasn't all race all the time, you are "whitewashing history".

Here's an example of forcing race into the narrative: Page 146, the first full paragraph.  They have to bring in that Bix was a white musician but is there any basis for it from what KD actually SAYS in the description?  No, they put race into the narrative because race is all they have.  KD was supposed to take offense but he didn't get the memo from the future.

Was it race that had KD scuffling for gigs in the 60s?  I don't think that I saw a single mention of the changing market for jazz in that era.  

(BTW here's another egregious error, from that same page: In 1965 KD played at Slugs, and "a few years later Lee Morgan was shot to death there" (paraphrasing).  "A few" years should never be used to describe seven year's time.)

 

 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

I don't know, I've been reading Langston Hughes and James Baldwin and it  seems to me that the role of structural racism and white supremacy is often downplayed rather than accentuated in the historical narrative. We as a society need to talk about this more, not less, because we have not gotten past it yet, and nothing displays that more clearly than some current attempts at willful amnesia.  Black people understand these realities because they impinge on their lives and doubtless need little in the way of explication.  But we white folks need to listen and learn some history that was unfortunately obscured for us.

[Big Beat Steve]

Just my 2c as an "outsider (outside the USA) looking in":

Talking about structural racism as it happened in these days (and talking about it particularly today) - yes, no doubt. But should this be allowed to overwhelm and crowd out the ACTUAL subject of a book like this to the extent that any analysis of history will be skewed by that single, sole agenda that the authors have? With not much room for other causes and effects etc. to be discussed as part of the overall picture?  Sometimes you cannot help feeling that some authors go out of their way to make the story fit their agenda. 

I must admit that the KD biography is one book I've been tempted to get for some time but did not pull the trigger yet. The lenghty "introduction" mentioned earlier in this discussion was one thing that had me wondering, and what Dan Gould now refers to as "sociological academic crap" is another aspect that might well turn me off. Not because I'd feel such aspects should not be discussed (they should!). But can the reader really assume he will be presented with an evenhanded picture of the subject of the biography if everything (or at any rate too much, as Dan suggests) is subjugated to the authors' agenda? 
It may be harsh to sum this up as "sociological academic crap".  But understandable it is IMHO. Such agenda-ridden writings have happened before with such looks at history (which a biography always is), and the results were far from always for the better. 

There is a saying here that goes something like this: "If all that someone has is a hammer then everything will look like a nail to him."  
Which sums it up only too well IMO. 

 

Edited June 15 by Big Beat Steve

[Stompin at the Savoy]

40 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Just my 2c as an "outsider (outside the USA) looking in":

Talking about structural racism as it happened in these days (and talking about it particularly today) - yes, no doubt. But should this be allowed to overwhelm and crowd out the ACTUAL subject of a book like this to the extent that any analysis of history will be skewed by that single, sole agenda that the authors have? With not much room for other causes and effects etc. to be discussed as part of the overall picture?  Sometimes you cannot help feeling that some authors go out of their way to make the story fit their agenda. 

I must admit that the KD biography is one book I've been tempted to get for some time but did not pull the trigger yet. The lenghty "introduction" mentioned earlier in this discussion was one thing that had me wondering, and what Dan Gould now refers to as "sociological academic crap" is another aspect that might well turn me off. Not because I'd feel such aspects should not be discussed (they should!). But can the reader really assume he will be presented with an evenhanded picture of the subject of the biography if everything (or at any rate too much, as Dan suggests) is subjugated to the authors' agenda? 
It may be harsh to sum this up as "sociological academic crap".  But understandable it is IMHO. Such agenda-ridden writings have happened before with such looks at history (which a biography always is), and the results were far from always for the better. 

There is a saying here that goes something like this: "If all that someone has is a hammer then everything will look like a nail to him."  
Which sums it up only too well IMO. 

 

Well I agree with you that when I read a bio of Kenny Dorham I principally want to read about him, his life and music, not a sociology textbook.  I haven't read this biography yet, though I would like to, so I don't have enough info to say the race issue excessively dominates and obscures the actual topic, or not.  (I'm old and my income is not vast, so I have to wait for kindle price drops and inexpensive used copies to appear before I buy books.  My rent in this new place is cramping my music budget too.)

Edited June 15 by Stompin at the Savoy

[Big Beat Steve]

Neither do I, but I do trust Dan's judgment to some extent. Particularly because I've been "licked" by other biographies before that have been "plagued" by the same problem: The authors' politically-sociologically-academically motivated agendas dominated the narrative to an extent that at times really clouded (and IMO skewed) the presentation of that slice of history.

Edited June 15 by Big Beat Steve

[Stompin at the Savoy]

10 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Neither do I, but I do trust Dan's judgment to some extent. Particularly because I've been "licked" by other biographies before that have been "plagued" by the same problem: The authors' politically-sociologically-academically moptivated agendas dominated the narrative to an extent that at times really clouded (and IMO skewed) the presentation of that slice of history.

I certainly don't dismiss what Dan has to say but have learned that things like the author calling himself 'latinx' trigger Dan, so I take his review with a grain of salt.  If the authors take is too 'woke', Dan's has a tendency to be 'anti-woke'. 😀

Edited June 15 by Stompin at the Savoy

[Big Beat Steve]

Ouch, this is bordering on the political on this forum.  Touchy ... 

What remains IMO, however, in such books on history that are written today is that if you pin everything (or almost everything) down to what is your personal agenda that you want to further then you are ill-equipped to deal with history that by nature is bound to be complex if an evenhanded presentation or assessment is to be given. And it is hardly ever a good idea to use only today's yardsticks to judge what happened in the past and how someone ought to have acted in the past. 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

36 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Ouch, this is bordering on the political on this forum.  Touchy ... 

What remains IMO, however, in such books on history that are written today is that if you pin everything (or almost everything) down to what is your personal agenda that you want to further then you are ill-equipped to deal with history that by nature is bound to be complex if an evenhanded presentation or assessment is to be given. And it is hardly ever a good idea to use only today's yardsticks to judge what happened in the past and how someone ought to have acted in the past. 

Well it might be anywhere on a spectrum from 'personal agenda' to 'penetrating analysis of stuff which has for most of my life been swept under the rug.'    

47 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Ouch, this is bordering on the political on this forum.  Touchy ... 

 And it is hardly ever a good idea to use only today's yardsticks to judge what happened in the past and how someone ought to have acted in the past. 

And I think it is actually important to use today's yardsticks to judge what happened in the past.  Native Americans, aka First Peoples were brutally massacred, forced to abandon their own culture, languages, ways of life, their lands were stolen, their women raped and they were forced to live on reservations far from their original homes.  There simply is no way to justify what happened to them and if we are thinking, moral people there is no real alternative to using today's yardstick to evaluate this history.

[Big Beat Steve]

There is no doubt about what you say. I did not mean to say to use today's yardsticks not at all, I meant to say it is not appropriate IMO to use them ONLY. And this is not a question of justifying anything. It's a matter of taking the constraints of the period into account as well, at least when passing judgment on the actions of individuals. Some were in a position where they could have made a difference if they had tried, others (many others, I guess) weren't. And that deserves to be taken into account in an at least halfway appropriate way. Hindsight is all very well but it might too easily border on the self-righteousness because it rarely ever answers the question of "How would YOU (one individual person of today) REALLY have acted if you had lived then and had been in that position THEN?"

But remember we are talking about one person's life and biography. So it might be sensible not to get too far away from the subject matter of THIS thread.  

Edited June 15 by Big Beat Steve

[Dan Gould]

Some odd phrasing in the discussion of Dorham's work for Downbeat.  

"About 28" pieces written. 

How do you get such an indeterminate number and phrase it that way?

Did they lose track of how many? Did they not have access to every DB issue to verify a final count? 

I think if you had 28 but weren't sure of a confirmed total, then "At least 28" is the proper phrasing.

 

Interesting minutiae mentioned earlier would be that he appears on Sugar Ray Robinson's vocal LP.  I can't find any source for that on a web search, and (I think) there was no footnote provided on that sentence.

[Big Beat Steve]

What you say here may sound like petty affairs or negligible "background noise" to many, but I think you have a point with this kind of quibbles. I have come across this kind of uncalled-for vagueness or contradictions in other recently-read biographies too. And to me this always has seemed like there are areas where the author is just a shade away from losing control of the facts he has accumulated and knows he has (and wants) to work into the text that makes up the eventual book and now struggles to try to prevent this loss of control from becoming too obvious. 
Difficult to understand for the attentive reader ... 

 

[Dan Gould]

Saying how many pieces isn't even illuminating in my opinion.

Better to say he wrote from XXXX to XXXX, mostly LP reviews but also _____ is more informative than any poorly phrased "total" number of pieces.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I wonder if Kenny's daughter will come back? 

She @JazzGirl3  hasn't visited the forum since 2021.

[Ken Dryden]

On 4/13/2026 at 4:01 PM, Dan Gould said:

Being from the Netherlands, Niko, I think you can't appreciate the significance of cockroaches in the southern climes of the United States.

If Texas cockroaches are anything like Florida ... watch out.

 

<green smilie here if you can't tell>

Cockroaches in Florida and New Orleans are a pain. I remember seeing them crawling on my toothbrush when getting up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, while the one in Tulane dorms  were heard to kill, you not only had to step on them, but also roll your foot just right or they would crawl away.

[Brad]

On 6/21/2026 at 5:29 PM, Ken Dryden said:

Cockroaches in Florida and New Orleans are a pain. I remember seeing them crawling on my toothbrush when getting up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, while the one in Tulane dorms  were heard to kill, you not only had to step on them, but also roll your foot just right or they would crawl away.

When I was 10 years old (1961) we lived in Trinidad and the cockroaches were huge. Even to this day I remember how big they were.