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Tim Brooks
JIM FARRINGTON(EDITOR)
By David Wondrich. Chicago: A Cappella Books (imprint of Chicago Review Press), 2003. 258pp (softcover). Illustrations, Index. ISBN 1-55652-496-X. $17.95
CD: Stomp and Swerve: American Music Gets Hot. Archeophone 1003. $17.50 (available from http://
Stomp and Swerve is one of the most frustrating yet thought-provoking books I have read in recent years. The CD of the same name, produced in conjunction with the book and sold separately, is a sheer delight.
Despite its subtitle, the book is primarily a discussion of hot music on record from the 1890s to the early 1920s. Obviously the term ''hot'' is rather broadly defined, and includes cakewalks, coon songs, ragtime, and syncopated novelties of all kinds, along with protoblues (was Bert Williams singing the blues in ''Nobody''?) plus a few examples of hot jazz from the early 1920s. This is about the creative musical ferment from which jazz (as we know it) gradually evolved in the pre-World War I era. Luckily for us, it was also the first era of recorded sound, so we can actually hear much of what was going on. The author has dug deep and unearthed many vintage recordings that reflected this evolution, most of them apparently on uncredited reissue labels such as Document and Archeophone. Some one would never suspect: Arthur Pryor's Band? Arthur Collins? Len Spencer? Why not?
The frustrating part is Wondrich's writing style; he is one of the most self-consciously cutesy, smarmy, smart-ass writers I have encountered. Filled with sarcasm, put-downs and occasional profanities, his conversational prose groans under the constant weight of his opinion about just about everything, and frequent look-how-smart-I-am references to everything from classic literature to Greek mythology (who, he muses, is the god of reissues -- Hippolytus? Aesculapias?). This is the kind of writing that strives so hard to attract attention to itself that it actually gets in the way of understanding the subject at hand, which is a shame because there is a lot of interesting ground covered here.
Wondrich, we learn, hates academics (the ''thought crowd''), but he is analyzing music so he is forced to...