The death of Ralph Gleason last year was a major blow to the jazz world. He was that excessively rare bird, a musicians’ critic. Musicians, who are not noted for their love of critics, actually praised him. Men like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, different in outlook and temperament as they are, paid tribute during his lifetime, not waiting to make the formal gesture after he was gone and safely tucked up in earth. It was a remarkable achievement.
This posthumously published book contains pieces written over the years, from 1952 onwards, garnered from various sources but mostly from the San Francisco Chronicle, Rolling Stone and liner notes. One of the tasks Gleason set himself was to make the older jazz comprehensible to the young generation, to expound the continuity of the music, to ensure that the relevance of what happened yesterday to what is happening today vas properly understood. He was a great knocker-on-the-head of vapid theories and general waffle, always insisting that the only way to understand is to listen. It sounds simple, even obvious; but it is too often ignored – and not only in jazz.
The writings on Duke occupy more than a hundred of the something under three hundred pages. A deeply felt obituary note, of course; but the ‘meat’ is in a long series of pieces stretching from 1952 to 1974 under the overall title ‘A Ducal Calendar’. There are insights and assessments of rare quality all through. Apart from Duke, there is an opening chapter, ‘Jazz: Black Art/American Art’, a short crisp taking of the range, so to say. Then, before Duke, there are the ‘others’, the ‘Heroes’ – Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Jimmie Lunceford, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet, Carmen McRae, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Albert Ayler, each a piece of genuine perception and independent thought.
Perhaps a man’s deepest thoughts do not appear in his journalism, his occasional writings. But Ralph Gleason’s quality was present in everything he wrote. It is present here. Many of his clinching final lines are unforgettable. There is a brief foreword by Studs Terkel, and a discography, inevitably dated in numberings but useful as necessary follow-up to the texts. If you want to know what real jazz criticism is, read Celebrating The Duke.It is a fitting memorial to an outstanding critic and writer.
Celebrating The Duke And Others, by Ralph Gleason. An Atlantic Monthly Press Book: Little, Borwn if Co., 280pp. $8.95.
