Word: jazzed
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Whether "Young Man With a Horn" and "Send Mc Down" had succeeded or not in presenting the average reader with a just interpretation and evaluation of jazz, they undoubtedly awakened in many a soupeon or two of curiosity about the music which gave each book its background, just as "The Grapes of Wrath" evoked a nation-wide sigh of sympathy for the Okies. But neither novel contained enough purple passages to inspire anyone to tear around to the nearest music store and buy up all the Louis Armstrong records on the shelves...
...best, a jazz novel can only favorably dispose the unenlightened reader toward hot music. To learn to appreciate it, one must hear it, and under proper circumstances. The commonest method, of course, is to spend a year of discipleship under a Glenn Miller until the realization dawns that the acme of musical perfection in the four-beat tempo is hardly a deliciously impeccable saxophone section. But potentially there are other ways of putting jazz in a more satisfactory light with the general public, particularly through the medium of the theatre and the screen...
Apparently overlooked in the wave of jazz and swing that has swept the country in recent years, the old Virginia Reel, polka, and Schotish of yesteryear are enjoying a rebirth of popularity, appearing with increasing prominence at parties and among the colleges of the country...
Assignments for program-production candidates will consist, from the very start of the testing period, of actual preparation for programs which now hold regular times on the station's weekly schedule. Particularly in de- mand will be candidates for the jazz, popular and classical music departments who can prepare the daily record programs...
...Send Me Down," accordingly, leaves either type of potential reader with the impression that something is wanting. As a workmanlike description of the world of the dancebands it is fairly entertaining. But beyond that--no great American jazz novel, this...