WHO CAN AFFORD TO IMPROVISE?: james baldwin and black music, the lyric and the listeners

353 Pages·2017·1.62 MB·English

by  Pavlic, Ed

WHO CAN AFFORD
TO IMPROVISE?
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WHO CAN AFFORD
TO IMPROVISE?
JAMES BALDWIN AND BLACK MUSIC,
THE LYRIC AND THE LISTENERS
ED PAVLIĆ
Fordham University Press
New York 2016
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015943137
Printed in the United States of America
18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
(Copyright page continued on page 342.)
For Stacey Cecile in the Echo Café
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Contents
Introduction 1
BOOK I The Uses of the Blues: James Baldwin’s Lyrical Quest
1 “Not the country we’re sitting in now”:
Amputation/Gangrene Past and Present 23
2 Blues Constants, Jazz Changes: Toward a Writing
Immune to Bullshit 36
3 “Making words do something”: Retracing James
Baldwin’s Career 42
BOOK II The Uses of the Lyric: Billie’s Quest, Dinah’s Blues, Jimmy’s
Amen, and Brother Ray’s Hallelujah
4 Billie Holiday: Radical Lyricist 131
5 Dinah Washington’s Blues and the Trans- Digressive Ocean 149
6 “But Amen is the price”: James Baldwin and Ray Charles in
“The Hallelujah Chorus” 162
viii Contents
BOOK III “For you I was a flame”: Baldwin’s Lyrical Lens
on Contemporary Culture
7 On Camden Row: Amy Winehouse’s Lyric Lines
in a Living Inheritance 193
8 Speechless in San Francisco. “A somewhat better place to
lie about”: An Inter-View 215
9 “In a way they must . . .”: Turf Feinz and Black Style
in an Age of Sights for the Speechless 241
10 “Shades cannot be fixed”: On Privilege, Blindness,
and Second Sight 252
Conclusion: The Brilliance of Children, the Duty of Citizens 277
Acknowledgments 295
Notes 297
Bibliography 323
Index 329
Go back to Miles, Max, Dizzy, Yardbird, Billie,
Coltrane: who were not, as the striking—not to
say quaint—European phrase would have it, “im-
provising”: who can afford to improvise, at those
prices?
—James Baldwin, “Of the Sorrow Songs:
The Cross of Redemption” (1979)