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Jammin' at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema. Krin Gabbard. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 350 pp.
From The Jazz Singer to Short Cuts, Krin Gabbard examines the role of jazz in American movies ("the `other history' of jazz" as he calls it) and in the process hopes to tell us a lot about the role of jazz in American culture. In a number of respects, he is successful in his quest.
His introductory chapter discusses the myth of jazz purity, the (mis)use of the term jazz in films such as The Jazz Singer and The King of Jazz (1930), and finally the career and films of Kay Kyser to illustrate the "powerful effect that a narrow definition of jazz has had on the writing of the music's earlier history" (32). In remaining chapters, he deals with The Jazz Singer, jazz biopics, films that present jazz as an art form, films dealing primarily with jazz trumpeters, films featuring Duke Ellington, the films of Louis Armstrong, the jazz actor (focusing especially on Hoagy Carmichael and Nat King Cole), and a final chapter on New York, New York and Short Cuts. As one might imagine, the mythology of cinema jazz is at times terribly at odds with the reality of the jazz musician's...