Checking Our Balances: Louis Armstrong, Ralph Ellison, and Betty Boop

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Acknowledgments ix
4. Introductory Notes 1
5. Part 1
6. Songs of the Unsung: The Darby Hicks History of Jazz 9
7. “All the Things You Could Be by Now”: Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus and the Limits of Avant-Garde Jazz 27
8. Experimental Music in Black and White: The AACM in New York, 1970–1985 50
9. When Malindy Sings: A Meditation on Black Women’s Vocality 102
10. Hipsters, Bluebloods, Rebels, and Hooligans: The Cultural Politics of the Newport Jazz Festival, 1954–1960 126
11. Mainstreaming Monk: The Ellington Album 150
12. The Man 166
13. Part 2
14. The Real Ambassadors 189
15. Artistic Othering in Black Diaspora Musics: Preliminary Thoughts on Time, Culture, and Politics 204
16. Notes on Jazz in Senegal 224
17. Revisiting Romare Bearden’s Art of Improvisation 249
18. Louis Armstrong, Bricolage, and the Aesthetics of Swing 256
19. Checking Our Balances: Louis Armstrong, Ralph Ellison, and Betty Boop 278
20. Paris Blues: Ellington, Armstrong, and Saying It with Music 297
21. “How You Sound??”: Amiri Baraka Writes Free Jazz 312
22. The Literary Ellington 326
23. “Always New and Centuries Old”: Jazz, Poetry, and Tradition as Creative Adaptation 357
24. A Space We’re All Immigrants From: Othering and Communitas in Nathaniel Mackey’s Bedouin Hornbook 374
25. Exploding the Narrative in Jazz Improvisation 393
26. Beneath the Underground: Exploring New Currents in “Jazz” 404
27. Contributors 417
28. Index 421