Jazz history is local history in new book

“Music heals the soul,” Maurice Jackson said recently at Busboys and Poets in Takoma Park. Jackson is one of the editors, along with Blair A. Ruble, of DC Jazz, a collection of essays that surveys the city’s long history with the most distinctly American musical form. The book suggests that jazz has grown up with Washington, through people and institutions who have seen the city through segregation and conflict to a community united by a common love of music.

Thanks to the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, most residents probably know that the pianist-composer was born in Washington. But did you know that such early jazz pioneers as James Reese Europe (who was born in Mobile, Ala., but moved to DC when he was 10) and Will Marion Cook were also Washingtonians? Or that sons of a Turkish ambassador organized the first integrated concert in Washington? Or that a Catholic chaplain at Lorton Reformatory organized a regular jazz series at the prison?

These are just some of the tales you will read in a book that discusses the varieties of the jazz experience: from the academic to the personal, from performance to broadcasting and education, and even to legislation.

The story of jazz in DC is to a large degree a story of race. Marian Anderson’s famous 1939 concert on the National Mall came about because the Daughters of the Revolution wouldn’t allow her to perform at Constitution Hall.  Segregation was the rule of the day, although not for Duke Ellington, who said that at his house, “There was never any talk about red people, brown people, black people, or yellow people, or about the differences that existed between them.”

While white audiences would go to see jazz at the Howard Theatre, the first concerts that encouraged integration — both in musicians and audience — came about thanks to Embassy Row. Neshui and Ahmet Ertegun arrived in Washington in 1935 with their father, Turkish Ambassador Munir Ertegun, and were so enthralled by jazz that they’d sneak out of the embassy late at night to see such legends as Cab Calloway on U Street.

In 1942, the young Erteguns organized an integrated concert featuring Sidney Bechet, Joe Turner and Pee Wee Russell, and held it at a venue that, said Ahmet Ertegun, was “the only place that would allow a mixed audience and a mixed band.” As Jackson put it: “Two young Muslim men took black music to a Jewish community center. If we had that kind of unity today, we’d be in much better shape.” Ahmet Ertegun would go on to become one of the founders of Atlantic Records, which released landmark albums by John Coltrane and Charles Mingus, among other jazz titans.

Contributors to DC Jazz come from diverse fields, and the book in a sense operates as a series of solos taken by writers improvising (with the benefit of thorough research) on the theme of Washington jazz. Still, the book could have used more voices of working musicians — such as that of spirited raconteur Andrew White, who has made memorable appearances at talks related to the book. White is documented in DC Jazz as a beloved musician who runs a publishing company out of his Brookland home, selling transcriptions of Coltrane solos, a huge catalog of self-produced recordings and the 800-page autobiography Everybody Loves the Sugar.

DC Jazz includes a helpful guide to local jazz research, but the music isn’t just part of the past. Despite frequent claims that jazz is dead, it remains a living and thriving art form that is still a vital part of Washington culture. You can hear jazz in such institutions as the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center, and the Library of Congress (where I work), as well as in clubs like Twins and Alice’s Jazz & Cultural Society.

It’s still easy to hear good jazz in town, but at Busboys and Poets, longtime DJ Rusty Hassan, who contributes a chapter on local jazz radio, regretted that at some such events, there were only a handful of people in attendance. In the book’s introduction, pianist Jason Moran, artistic director for Jazz at the Kennedy Center and artist in residence at Georgetown University, notes that a recent condominium project was named for the legendary John Coltrane. If jazz can be used to sell real estate, can it still thrive in concert? Moran writes that the music “is our best textbook for how the city has changed and how the country has changed.” One hopes that both remain vibrant.

Editors Maurice Jackson and Blair A. Ruble will discuss their book at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 1, at Shaw (Watha T. Daniel) Library, 1630 7th St. NW. They have also held talks this summer at Busboys and Poets, Politics and Prose, and Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe.

DC Jazz: Stories of Jazz Music in Washington, DC, edited by Maurice Jackson and Blair A. Ruble, published June 2018 by Georgetown University Press. Available at press.georgetown.edu/book/georgetown/dc-jazz and at local and online book retailers.