The alliteration is obviously pleasing because Amazon offers five books with titles which relate to a connection between Jews and jazz. This one must be simpler than any of them because it mainly consists of brief details and photographs of 142 individuals (on 142 glossy pages which are eight inches wide and five inches high). All but four are Jewish and the four who are not have links to Judaism which are explained.
As someone descended (on my mother’s side) from Jews, I’ve always been curious to know if I was right about the several jazz musicians I suspected of being Jewish and here’s the confirmation concerning Goodman, Shaw, Getz, Cohn, Mezzrow, Hodes, Kaminsky, Braff, Konitz, Bud Freeman, Shelly Manne, Herbie Mann, Shorty Rogers, Steve Lacy and more. Promoters Granz and Wein are here as well and a trio of surprises. All named so far are white, but what are Willie “The Lion” Smith, Lionel Hampton and Louis Armstrong doing here? The Lion had a Jewish father and his own Barmitzvah at the age of 13, but the other two merely had strong links with Israel. Lionel’s are not fully explained but Louis was given a Star of David by Jewish manager Joe Glaser (also in the book) which Louis wore thereafter in memory of a Jewish family in New Orleans who had helped him when he was a young orphan.
As the above paragraph makes clear I gleaned a lot of interesting information from these pages but I regret that there’s no consideration of why so many significant white jazz musicians are Jewish. No doubt that is considered in the other five books mentioned above. I should conclude with further names in this book of men who provided songs long entrenched in jazz repertoire: George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and Harold Arlen. And let’s add a final duo – the creators of the Blue Note label – Francis Wolff and Alfred Lion.
Jews And Jazz, by Laurence Seeff. Self published. 171pp. ISBN 978-965-597-586-4
