Once again, thank you for chiming in and as usually I have no disagreement with what you have laid out. I respect the author’s right to focus on those aspects of a given subject they choose to focus on, but in someway, on a subject about which I do know something, that tells me quite a bit about that person. Thanks again!
Sorry but I can’t resist this: “All of meeee, why not take all of meeeee…”
mybutbeautiful asked: Hey Yo… Truth be told, I enjoy reading most things I read about Jazz regardless of who writes them, especially if it sharpens my awareness of what I know about Jazz. I have learned to smell a rat in jazz literature due to that kind of openness regardless of the political bent of the individual writer. I can always learn things anecdotally by being open since a lot of the growth of Jazz occurred before I arrived on the planet, but it also sharpens my instincts for BS. Thanks for sharing that link with me and weighing in. The smugness of a Teachout and his ilk permeates their work and the Ella omission to me was a stark one. Ta ta!
randomberlinchick replied:Yo! Great points my Dear and I hear where you’re coming from. I read atane’s comments, too, which were also spot on as usual. There is a point, though, that I think needs addressing, and it is this question of “bias.” I remember being at an event in Austin a long time ago, where one of Spike’s films was being screened and he took questions from the audience. A black woman asked him when he was going to do a serious film about black women. His answer was that perhaps that was her film and she needed to do it. Of course his answer was a bit more eloquent than the abbreviated version I’m offering, but that was the point: I can’t write that, and if it’s important to you, then you need to write it.
All work is biased. The bias begins with the selection of the subject matter. If it’s biographical work, then selecting those elements of a life that may have spanned close to a hundred years is bound to piss someone off. That’s just the way it is. I struggled with this when I had to cut years of field work, interviews, participant observation, crazy-ass stories, etc. into the word count demanded by the university. For each story that got told, there were five that didn’t. It sucked and at times I felt like I let down the people who had shared their lives with me, but later I came to realize that that wasn’t the case.
Now, from what I’ve read about Teachout and what I know personally about the Ella/Louis collaborations, I’d say he made a poor choice. His choice to make, however. And that’s where an excellent review, like the one you wrote, makes this clear and gives him perhaps something to think about.
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