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Eric Hobsbawm on jazz
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Fagge, Roger (2018) Eric Hobsbawm on jazz. In: Gebhardt , Nicholas and Rustin-Paschal, Nicole T. and Whyton, Tony , (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies. Routledge music companions . New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781315315805
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Official URL: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-...
Abstract
Two days after Duke Ellington’s death on 24 May 1974, the Observer newspaper published an obituary written by the historian Eric Hobsbawm. It was symptomatic of Hobsbawm’s significance as a jazz writer that he was asked to write about such a significant musical figure, and the article paid tribute to ‘The last and greatest of jazz musicians’ who ‘spanned the entire history of the music for which he invented a mode of collective composition’. Ellington was at his best, Hobsbawm suggested, when working with his band, and without this he would be remembered as at most as a ‘composer of enchanting songs’, ‘an ironical and reticent jazz pianist’ and ‘perhaps as a dandy and viveur’. But ‘with and through it he became as fine a composer as any who has come out of the USA’, including inventing ‘jazz composition and arrangement almost singlehanded’. Hobsbawm continued ‘It is doubtful whether jazz as we have known it will survive his death.’ In many ways this was a perceptive, scholarly account of Ellington, but the review then introduced a more personal note. After pointing out that critics and musicians would continue to work out his significance in the future, he suggested that the only thing ‘gone forever’ was the opportunity to see Ellington live, and here Hobsbawm became more emotional. Jazz fans he suggested have ’moments of unforgettable, vivid, dreamlike but lucid ecstasy, remembered in every detail’. And for Hobsbawm, ‘None was quite like the great Ellington nights’, recalling two occasions ‘an all night breakfast dance in the improbable setting of the Streatham Astoria in 1933’ and ‘an extraordinary evening in a San Francisco nightclub in 1960’.(Hobsbawm 1974)
| Item Type: | Book Item | ||||||
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| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > D History (General) M Music and Books on Music > ML Literature of music |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Hobsbawm, Eric John, 1917-2012, Ellington, Duke, 1899-1974, Jazz | ||||||
| Series Name: | Routledge music companions | ||||||
| Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||
| Place of Publication: | New York | ||||||
| ISBN: | 9781315315805 | ||||||
| Book Title: | The Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies | ||||||
| Editor: | Gebhardt , Nicholas and Rustin-Paschal, Nicole T. and Whyton, Tony | ||||||
| Official Date: | 6 December 2018 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Number of Pages: | 481 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | "This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies on 6/12/2018, available online: http://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Jazz-Studies-1st-Edition/Gebhardt-Rustin-Paschal-Whyton/p/book/9781138231160 | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 23 January 2018 | ||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 7 July 2020 | ||||||
| Related URLs: |
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