Acknowledgments vii

Introduction / Nichole T. Rustin and Sherrie Tucker 1

Part I. Rooting Gender in Jazz History

Separated at "Birth": Singing and the History of Jazz / Lara Pellegrinelli 31

With Lovie and Lil: Rediscovering Two Chicago Pianists of the 1920s / Jeffrey Taylor 48

Gender, Jazz, and the Popular Front / Monica Hairston 64

"The Battle of the Saxes": Gender, Dance Bands, and British Nationalism in the Second World War / Christina Baade 90

Identity for Sale: Glenn Miller, Wynton Marsalis, and Cultural Replay in Music / Tracy McMullen 129

Part II. Improvising Gender: Embodiment and Performance

From the Point of View of the Pavement: A Geopolitics of Black Dance / Jayna Brown 157

Perverse Hysterics: The Noisy Cri of Les Diaboliques / Julie Dawn Smith 180

"Born Out of Jazz . . . Yet Embracing All Music": Race, Gender, and Technology in George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept / Eric Porter 210

"But This Music is Mine Already!" : "White Woman" as Jazz Collector in the Film New Orleans (1947) / Sherrie Tucker 235

Fitting the Part / Ingrid Monson 267

Part III. Reimagining Jazz Representations

"Better a Jazz Album Than Lipstick" (Lieber Jazzplatte Als Lippenstift): The 1956 Jazz Podium Series Reveals Images of Jazz and Gender in Postwar Germany / Ursel Schlicht 291

Exclusion, Openness, and Utopia in Black Male Performance at the World Stage Jazz Jam Sessions / João H. Costa Vargas 320

"It Takes Two People to Confirm the Truth": The Jazz Fiction of Sherley Ann Williams and Toni Cade Bambara / Farah Jasmine Griffin 348

"Blow, Man, Blow!": Representing Gender, White Primitives, and Jazz Melodrama Through A Young Man With A Horn / Nichole T. Rustin 361

The Gendered Jazz Aesthetics of That Man of Man: The International Sweethearts of Rhythm and Independent Black Sound Film / Kristin McGee 393

Bibliography 423

Contributors 435

Index 441

Sherrie Tucker

Lara Pelligrinelli

Jeffrey Taylor

Monica Hairston

Christina L. Baade

Tracy McMullen

Jayna Brown

Julie Dawn Smith

Eric Porter

Ingrid Monson

Ursel Schlicht

João H. Costa Vargas

Farah Jasmine Griffin

Kristin McGee

Nichole T. Rustin

“Big Ears . . . evaluates the long fetch of history that is jazz, and by contemplating and calling into question where that history came from, it helps us understand the past, present, and future of jazz more clearly.” — Kara A. Attrep, Critical Studies in Improvisation

“Big Ears uses a wide variety of methodologies and spans multiple eras, topics, and locations. The book is intended to be useful in a number of different scholarly contexts, and Rustin and Tucker are completely successful in that goal. It would make a wonderful core textbook for a gender and jazz course, but also contains gems that would be useful in subjects as diverse as German studies and African American studies. In addition to its value in the classroom, this collection is a significant addition to jazz and gender studies, as well as to feminist scholarship in general.” — Stephan Pennington, Feminist Formations

“Big Ears, which is part of the Refiguring American Music series, goes to great lengths in the description of how women in general faced an uphill battle in receiving the spotlight and the accolades they deserved. It also digs into the core of jazz’s gender roots, when singing and piano-playing were considered feminine. So it is that men also faced gender discrimination when taking to the stage on a piano or for vocals.” — Elizabeth Amore, Popmatters

“[A] ground-breaking volume. . . . For scholars of popular music not directly associated with jazz, Big Ears will prove relevant due to the way in which the disparate essay topics demonstrate the widespread cultural impact of jazz from its earliest origins to the present day: jazz is represented as popular music and as a source of pop cultural aesthetics. . . . The authors in Big Ears represent a group of scholars willing to listen to jazz culture in ways which some of us might have missed or need to hear again.” — Rob Wallace, Journal of Popular Music Studies

“[I]f you want to be prompted to think in sociological and musicological terms about gender as well as race in jazz, you should add this book to your reading list or at least to your reference library. . . . It could be said that first public instance of gender analysis in jazz was in 1924. . . . Big Ears helps show how and why jazz music, and the men and women who play it, have evolved since then, as it paves the way for more analysis and discussion to come.” — Yvonne Ervin, Jazz Notes

“[M]ore jazz citizens do seem to be awakening to issues of gender. That process may be best observed in academia, thanks to scholars like Sherrie Tucker, Farah Jasmine Griffin and Lara Pellegrinelli, whose perceptive work can be sampled in Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies, a worthwhile new anthology edited by Tucker and Nichole T. Rustin.” — Nate Chinen, JazzTimes

“The pieces collected in this volume view women not necessarily as exceptional but as ‘common’ and vital in the history and culture of jazz. The editors . . . do a fine job of analyzing the role of women in jazz studies from all perspectives: as musicians, scholars, writers, critics, and listeners. They have also made these academic essays highly accessible; in turn their call for further exploration of gender dynamics as well as race and sexuality in jazz studies falls on receptive ears.” — Ivana Ng, All About Jazz

“These essays explore many issues of gender in jazz, covering a wide range from a variety of viewpoints, illuminating the past and looking at the present and possible future of jazz. . . . These essays should have a real impact on an area of jazz studies that deserves more attention. Highly recommended.” — C. M. Weisenberg, Choice

“Big Ears . . . evaluates the long fetch of history that is jazz, and by contemplating and calling into question where that history came from, it helps us understand the past, present, and future of jazz more clearly.” —Kara A. Attrep, Critical Studies in Improvisation

“Big Ears uses a wide variety of methodologies and spans multiple eras, topics, and locations. The book is intended to be useful in a number of different scholarly contexts, and Rustin and Tucker are completely successful in that goal. It would make a wonderful core textbook for a gender and jazz course, but also contains gems that would be useful in subjects as diverse as German studies and African American studies. In addition to its value in the classroom, this collection is a significant addition to jazz and gender studies, as well as to feminist scholarship in general.” —Stephan Pennington, Feminist Formations

“Big Ears, which is part of the Refiguring American Music series, goes to great lengths in the description of how women in general faced an uphill battle in receiving the spotlight and the accolades they deserved. It also digs into the core of jazz’s gender roots, when singing and piano-playing were considered feminine. So it is that men also faced gender discrimination when taking to the stage on a piano or for vocals.” —Elizabeth Amore, Popmatters

“[A] ground-breaking volume. . . . For scholars of popular music not directly associated with jazz, Big Ears will prove relevant due to the way in which the disparate essay topics demonstrate the widespread cultural impact of jazz from its earliest origins to the present day: jazz is represented as popular music and as a source of pop cultural aesthetics. . . . The authors in Big Ears represent a group of scholars willing to listen to jazz culture in ways which some of us might have missed or need to hear again.” —Rob Wallace, Journal of Popular Music Studies

“[I]f you want to be prompted to think in sociological and musicological terms about gender as well as race in jazz, you should add this book to your reading list or at least to your reference library. . . . It could be said that first public instance of gender analysis in jazz was in 1924. . . . Big Ears helps show how and why jazz music, and the men and women who play it, have evolved since then, as it paves the way for more analysis and discussion to come.” —Yvonne Ervin, Jazz Notes

“[M]ore jazz citizens do seem to be awakening to issues of gender. That process may be best observed in academia, thanks to scholars like Sherrie Tucker, Farah Jasmine Griffin and Lara Pellegrinelli, whose perceptive work can be sampled in Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies, a worthwhile new anthology edited by Tucker and Nichole T. Rustin.” —Nate Chinen, JazzTimes

“The pieces collected in this volume view women not necessarily as exceptional but as ‘common’ and vital in the history and culture of jazz. The editors . . . do a fine job of analyzing the role of women in jazz studies from all perspectives: as musicians, scholars, writers, critics, and listeners. They have also made these academic essays highly accessible; in turn their call for further exploration of gender dynamics as well as race and sexuality in jazz studies falls on receptive ears.” —Ivana Ng, All About Jazz

“These essays explore many issues of gender in jazz, covering a wide range from a variety of viewpoints, illuminating the past and looking at the present and possible future of jazz. . . . These essays should have a real impact on an area of jazz studies that deserves more attention. Highly recommended.” —C. M. Weisenberg, Choice

“Big Ears is a breath of fresh air in contemporary jazz studies. Whereas the field has exploded during the last several years, this is the first volume specifically devoted to new work on gender and jazz. The essays here are wide-ranging in form, content, and method. They pay admirable attention to jazz across media (in film, concerts, recordings) and in international, not just U.S., contexts.” — Gayle Wald, author of, Shout, Sister, Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe

“Opening new vistas upon the study of jazz in the humanities, Nichole T. Rustin and Sherrie Tucker guide a vibrant and profound conversation at the nexus of performance studies, film and literary studies, gender studies, and many other fields. The unprecedented range and scope of this essential new collection affirm the centrality of improvisation to our understanding of culture.” — George E. Lewis, author of, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music

Permission to Photocopy (coursepacks)

If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;

If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Permission to Reprint

If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Images/Art

Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.

Subsidiary Rights/Foreign Translations

If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.

Disability Requests

Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.

Rights & Permissions Contact Information

Email: permissions@dukeupress.edu

Email contact for coursepacks: asstpermissions@dukeupress.edu

Fax: 919-688-4574

Mail:
Duke University Press
Rights and Permissions
905 W. Main Street
Suite 18B
Durham, NC 27701

For all requests please include:

1. Author's name. If book has an editor that is different from the article author, include editor's name also.

2. Title of the journal article or book chapter and title of journal or title of book

3. Page numbers (if excerpting, provide specifics)

For coursepacks, please also note: The number of copies requested, the school and professor requesting

For reprints and subsidiary rights, please also note: Your volume title, publication date, publisher, print run, page count, rights sought