Author : Clora Bryant
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 502 pages
File Size : 15,51 MB
Release : 1998
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520220980
Here too are recollections of Hollywood's effects on local culture, the precedent-setting merger of the black and white musicians' unions, and the repercussions from the racism in the Los Angeles Police Department in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Author : Sean J. O'Connell
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 16,62 MB
Release : 2014
Category : History
ISBN : 146713130X
From the late 1910s until the early 1950s, a series of aggressive segregation policies toward Los Angeles's rapidly expanding African American community inadvertently led to one of the most culturally rich avenues in the United States. From Downtown Los Angeles to the largely undeveloped city of Watts to the south, Central Avenue became the center of the West Coast jazz scene, nurturing homegrown talents like Charles Mingus, Dexter Gordon, and Buddy Collette while also hosting countless touring jazz legends such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Billie Holiday. Twenty-four hours a day, the sound of live jazz wafted out of nightclubs, restaurants, hotel lobbies, music schools, and anywhere else a jazz combo could squeeze in its instruments for nearly 50 years, helping to advance and define the sound of America's greatest musical contribution.
Author : Peter Vacher
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 375 pages
File Size : 15,64 MB
Release : 2015-09-17
Category : Music
ISBN : 0810888335
The development of jazz and swing in the African-American community in Los Angeles in the years before the second World War received a boost from the arrival of a significant numbers of musicians from Chicago and the southwestern states. In Swingin’ on Central: African-American Jazz in Los Angeles, a new study of that vibrant jazz community, music historian and jazz journalist Peter Vacher traveled between Los Angeles and London over several years in order to track down key figures and interview them for this oral history of one of the most swinging jazz scenes in the United States. Vacher recreates the energy and vibrancy of the Central Avenue scene through first-hand accounts from such West Coast notables as trumpeters Andy Blakeney , George Orendorff, and McLure “Red Mack” Morris; pianists Betty Hall Jones, Chester Lane, and Gideon Honore, saxophonists Chuck Thomas, Jack McVea, and Caughey Roberts Jr; drummers Jesse Sailes, Red Minor Robinson, and Nathaniel “Monk” McFay; and others. Throughout, readers learn the story behind the formative years of these musicians, most of whom have never been interviewed until now. While not exactly headliners—nor heavily recorded—this community of jazz musicians was among the most talented in pre-war America. Arriving in Los Angeles at a time when black Americans faced restrictions on where they could live and work, jazz artists of color commonly found themselves limited to the Central Avenue area. This scene, supplemented by road travel, constituted their daily bread as players—with none of them making it to New York. Through their own words, Vacher tells their story in Los Angeles, offering along the way a close look at the role the black musicians union played in their lives while also taking on jazz historiography’s comparative neglect of these West Coast players. Music historians with a particular interest in pre-bop jazz in California will find much new material here as Vacher paints a world of luxurious white nightclubs with black bands, ghetto clubs and after-hours joints, a world within a world that resulted from the migration of black musicians to the West Coast.
Author : Johnny Otis
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 32,51 MB
Release : 1993-11-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9780819562876
An intriguing memoir by the legendary bandleader.
Author : Andrea Gibbons
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 36,77 MB
Release : 2018-09-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1786632705
A majestic one-hundred-year study of segregation in Los Angeles City of Segregation documents one hundred years of struggle against the enforced separation of racial groups through property markets, constructions of community, and the growth of neoliberalism. This movement history covers the decades of work to end legal support for segregation in 1948; the 1960s Civil Rights movement and CORE’s efforts to integrate LA’s white suburbs; and the 2006 victory preserving 10,000 downtown residential hotel units from gentrification enfolded within ongoing resistance to the criminalization and displacement of the homeless. Andrea Gibbons reveals the shape and nature of the racist ideology that must be fought, in Los Angeles and across the United States, if we hope to found just cities.
Author : Jeff Gold
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 835 pages
File Size : 40,33 MB
Release : 2020-11-17
Category : Music
ISBN : 0063076764
A visual history of America’s jazz nightclubs of the 1940s and 1950s, featuring exclusive interviews and over 200 souvenir photos. In the two decades before the Civil Rights movement, jazz nightclubs were among the first places that opened their doors to both Black and white performers and club goers in Jim Crow America. In this extraordinary collection, Grammy Award-winning record executive and music historian Jeff Gold looks back at this explosive moment in the history of Jazz and American culture, and the spaces at the center of artistic and social change. Sittin’ In is a visual history of jazz clubs during these crucial decades when some of the greatest names in in the genre—Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, and many others—were headlining acts across the country. In many of the clubs, Black and white musicians played together and more significantly, people of all races gathered together to enjoy an evening’s entertainment. House photographers roamed the floor and for a dollar, took picture of patrons that were developed on site and could be taken home in a keepsake folder with the club’s name and logo. Sittin’ In tells the story of the most popular club in these cities through striking images, first-hand anecdotes, true tales about the musicians who performed their unforgettable shows, notes on important music recorded live there, and more. All of this is supplemented by colorful club memorabilia, including posters, handbills, menus, branded matchbooks, and more. Inside you’ll also find exclusive, in-depth interviews conducted specifically for this book with the legendary Quincy Jones; jazz great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins; Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic Robin Givhan; jazz musician and creative director of the Kennedy Center, Jason Moran; and jazz critic Dan Morgenstern. Gold surveys America’s jazz scene and its intersection with racism during segregation, focusing on three crucial regions: the East Coast (New York, Atlantic City, Boston, Washington, D.C.); the Midwest (Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Kansas City); and the West Coast (Los Angeles, San Francisco). This collection of ephemeral snapshots tells the story of an era that helped transform American life, beginning the move from traditional Dixieland jazz to bebop, from conservatism to the push for personal freedom.
Author : Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 524 pages
File Size : 39,74 MB
Release : 1998-05-12
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520206281
"Documented with great care and affection, this book is filled with revelations about the intermingling of peoples, styles of music, business interests, night-life pleasures, and the strange ways lived experience shaped black music as America's music in California." —Charles Keil, co-author of Music Grooves
Author : Cynthia E. Exum
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
Page : 130 pages
File Size : 39,92 MB
Release : 2012
Category : History
ISBN : 073859587X
Leimert Park, one of the first comprehensively planned communities in Southern California, was founded and developed in 1927 by Walter H. Leimert Sr. and designed by Olmsted Brothers, a firm headed by sons of Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., the master planner of New York City's Central Park. In its early years, Leimert Park was a pasture situated on portions of the Rancho Cienega O Paso de la Tijera, once owned by land baron E.J. "Lucky" Baldwin. The area is best known for its gracefully curved tree-lined streets, Spanish Colonial and Mediterranean-style homes, and Art Deco buildings designed by some of the nation's foremost architects. Famous residents Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, and Los Angeles's first African American mayor, Tom Bradley, have called Leimert Park home. In 1967, artists Alonzo and Dale Davis founded Brockman Gallery, and with this beginning, a new era of Leimert Park as an arts and cultural center dawned. Today, with its art galleries, jazz and blues clubs, coffeehouses, performance spaces, restaurants, and Afrocentric fashion and merchandise shops, the area has evolved into one of Los Angeles's great idyllic communities.
Author : Karin L. Stanford
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
Page : 132 pages
File Size : 32,4 MB
Release : 2010
Category : History
ISBN : 9780738580944
The notion of Los Angeles as a wonderful place of opportunity contributed to the western migration of thousands of Americans, including African Americans escaping racism and violence in the South. But Los Angeles blacks encountered a white backlash, and the doors of opportunity were closed in the form of housing covenants, job discrimination, and school segregation. African Americans fought for equality, building strength in community and collective identity that became their ongoing Los Angeles legacy. This story, encapsulated here in vintage photographs, encompasses the settlers of African descent, antislavery and antidiscrimination efforts, and their cultural contributions on Central Avenue and in Hollywood. Also shown are important flash points, including the 1965 Watts uprising and the O. J. Simpson murder trial. The story of African Americans in Los Angeles is one of promise, dreams, and opportunity realized through survival, willfulness, and foresight.
Author : Candacy A. Taylor
Publisher : Abrams
Page : 460 pages
File Size : 46,35 MB
Release : 2020-01-07
Category : History
ISBN : 1683356578
This historical exploration of the Green Book offers “a fascinating [and] sweeping story of black travel within Jim Crow America across four decades” (The New York Times Book Review). Published from 1936 to 1966, the Green Book was hailed as the “black travel guide to America.” At that time, it was very dangerous and difficult for African-Americans to travel because they couldn’t eat, sleep, or buy gas at most white-owned businesses. The Green Book listed hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses that were safe for black travelers. It was a resourceful and innovative solution to a horrific problem. It took courage to be listed in the Green Book, and Overground Railroad celebrates the stories of those who put their names in the book and stood up against segregation. Author Candacy A. Taylor shows the history of the Green Book, how we arrived at our present historical moment, and how far we still have to go when it comes to race relations in America. A New York Times Notable Book of 2020
