Word: musician
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Jersey State Court of Pardons last week paroled a lifer, Negro Clinton Brewer, because during 19 years in jail he had become a musician. He had written Stampede in G Minor, a jazz tune which sold well on an Okeh record; stood to get an orchestra arranger's job if freed. Convict Brewer, who had killed his wife during a quarrel, lost his speech because of a prison neurosis. Negro Richard Wright, author of Native Son (the story of a Negro killer), became interested in Musician Brewer. So did Jazz Pundit John Hammond and Band Leader Count Basie...
...Young Man With a Horn showed tinny enthusiasm, a specious literary talent; Dale Curran's Piano in the 'Band had a warmer enthusiasm, less talent. But even Send Me Down leaves a long way to go. Its author has had some actual experience as a jazz musician, has knowledge and taste about the music, can do good reportage on the professional and erotic life of his colleagues. Beyond that he does not venture...
...paid hot outfit in Chicago. His pianist brother Frank sticks to the seaboard; his greater talent and his tameness betray him into the venal successes of the "swing" rage. Between the two of them they cover most of the salient features of jazz and Jazz-living among white musicians. There is some sore stuff on that corrupt necessity, the musician's union, and an interesting passage about marijuana. Send Me Down, in its own scale, is a likable enough performance. But it is scarcely adequate to its subject...
William Christopher Handy wrote several very good songs and one unkillable one, St. Louis Blues; but essentially he was less a musician than a good businessman whose business was music. He is often called "the father of the blues." He is not; their source is profound and nameless...
...very convincing if a little too neat. Every war has to have its ideological devils. In World War I, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer were elected. This time, it seems, a first-rate scientist and a first-rate musician are to be blamed equally with a class-conscious revolutionist...