2004-10-12 Where are the Brits?

Alyn Shipton, the British jazz writer and presenter, has written a 'New History of Jazz' aimed at, it would seem, the American market. His use of such US terms as 'measure' for the British 'bar', or 'check' for 'cheque' hints clearly at the target market. No problem there, you would think, as long as the book is informative, readable, and representative of jazz's international spread, as many claims for this particular history have made. With some important exceptions his book does most of this.

Curiously though, there is more on recent jazz in India than in post-war Britain. A chapter entitled 'Jazz in Britain' would, on the surface, seem to remedy this, but on closer inspection 'Jazz in Britain' means mainly US jazz musicians who played in Britain before WW2. This chapter tells us much about pre-war British tours made by the likes of Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington or Cab Calloway, but little of home-grown British jazz musicians, and anyway, the chapter stops at 1939!! What - was there no 'Jazz in Britain' after this date?

Stan Tracey and Tubby Hayes are just two British jazz musicians who can stand alongside the best the US has produced, but look in vain for their names in the index - they're not there - so Shipton clearly doesn't think they're good enough to deserve even a one-sentence mention. (Four pages on the decidedly minor figure of Mugsy Spanier, compared to less than two pages on the profoundly influential - and great - Bill Evans is just another of many anomalies).

West Indian born Joe Harriott, who played his jazz in Britain, appears twice - once under the section for India, because of his collaborations with Indian-born John Mayer in their Indo Jazz Fusions group, and again briefly in a discussion of the US 'Free Jazz' movement; but only a minute number of British jazz musicians get any mention at all, usually so brief as to have little or no meaning.

Of course, no-one would claim that British Jazz deserves a great amount of space devoted to it - Jazz was, is, and presumably always will be, an American dominated music - but to exclude musicians as outstanding as Tubby Hayes and Stan Tracey is perverse in the extreme, and while Shipton was away "workin' for the Yankee dollar", he seems to have forgotten his own country.

Turn to this book to find out what's been happening recently in India, Latin America, France, South Africa, Russia, Germany or Scandinavia, but you'll have to look elsewhere to know what's been going on in your own - and Shipton's - country.