The Politics of Authenticating: Revisiting New Orleans Jazz (Experiments/On the Political) 9781666917741, 9781666917758, 1666917745

Table of contents :
Contents
Figures
Preamble
Acknowledgments
Part I: BEGINNINGS
1. Introducing the Authors and the Riff Methodology
Riff I: Robert Porter
2. Cultural Studies and the Politics of Everyday Life
3. Why Sociology of Knowledge?
4. Why George Herbert Mead?
5. Why Symbolic Interactionism?
Riff II: Robert Porter
6. Authenticity as Authenticating
7. The Move to Grounded Theory
Part II: AUTHENTICATING NEW ORLEANS JAZZ
Riff III: Robert Porter
8. Analytic Autoethnography
9. Becoming Authentic (1961–1976)
10. Revisiting Authenticity (2000–2009)
11. Enthusiasts, Competing Authenticities, and the Move to Academe
12. New Orleans Music, Authenticity, and the Case of Bob Wallis
13. Toward Authenticity as Authenticating: Mainstreaming Authenticity and the Case of Bunk Johnson
14. Authenticity as Authenticating 1: Constructing and Reconstructing Authenticity
15. Authenticity as Authenticating 2: Adopting and Adapting Authenticity
16. Progressing Authenticity
Coda on a Riff Fragment from Robert Porter
Appendix: Selected Discography
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors

Citation preview

The Politics of Authenticating

EXPERIMENTS/ON THE POLITICAL Series Editor Iain Mackenzie, University of Kent This series reflects on how interdisciplinary and/or practice-led thought can create the conditions for experimental thinking about politics and the political. What if the domain of the political is not what we usually think it is? Are there ways of thinking about the nature of politics and the political that can take us beyond frameworks of conflict and cooperation? These questions derive from a commitment to the idea that political thought has not yet exhausted its creative potential with regard to what constitutes the political domain. It is also motivated by the desire for political theory to become a genuinely creative discipline, open to collaborative interdisciplinary efforts in innovation. Moreover, if our understanding of the political world is to keep pace with political events then it is important that political theorists do not simply presume that they express one or other of these dominant models of the political; rather they should remain open to the possibility that experiments in politics may be happening ‘on the street’ in ways that require theorists to think differently about what is meant by ‘the political’. Titles in Series The Politics of Authenticating: Revisiting New Orleans Jazz by Richard Ekins and Robert Porter With Rowman and Littlefield The Political Space of Art: The Dardenne Brothers, Ai Weiwei, Burial and Arundhati Roy by Benoît Dillet and Tara Puri Comedy and Critical Thought: Laughter as Resistance Edited by Iain MacKenzie, Fred Francis and Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone Meanderings Through the Politics of Everyday Life by Robert Porter

The Politics of Authenticating Revisiting New Orleans Jazz Richard Ekins and Robert Porter

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ekins, Richard, 1945– author. | Porter, Robert, 1972– author. Title: The politics of authenticating : revisiting New Orleans jazz / Richard Ekins and Robert Porter. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2023. | Series: Experiments/on the political | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book is part jazz historiography, part autoethnography and part memoir. It sets forth a grounded theory of ‘authenticating’ as a basic socio-political process, with reference to Richard Ekins’ participation in the social worlds of New Orleans jazz, and his life as a social constructionist social scientist and cultural theorist”— Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2023024600 (print) | LCCN 2023024601 (ebook) | ISBN 9781666917741 (cloth) | ISBN 9781666917758 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Jazz—Louisiana—New Orleans—Historiography. | Jazz--Social aspects—Louisiana—New Orleans—History. | Authenticity (Philosophy)—History. | Musicology—Methodology. | Ekins, Richard, 1945– | Porter, Robert, 1972– | LCGFT: Ethnographies. Classification: LCC ML3918.J39 E54 2023 (print) | LCC ML3918.J39 (ebook) | DDC 781.6509763/35—dc23/eng/20230628 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023024600 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023024601 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

For Bob Barton, Fred Eatherton, Robert Greenwood, and David Wyckoff, with thanks.

Contents

Figures ix Preamble xi Acknowledgments xxiii PART I:  BEGINNINGS 1  Introducing the Authors and the Riff Methodology Riff I  Robert Porter

3 7

2  Cultural Studies and the Politics of Everyday Life

9

3  Why Sociology of Knowledge?

13

4  Why George Herbert Mead?

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5  Why Symbolic Interactionism?

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Riff II  Robert Porter

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6  Authenticity as Authenticating

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7  The Move to Grounded Theory

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PART II:  AUTHENTICATING NEW ORLEANS JAZZ Riff III  Robert Porter

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8  Analytic Autoethnography

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9  Becoming Authentic (1961–1976)

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Contents

10  Revisiting Authenticity (2000–2009)

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11  Enthusiasts, Competing Authenticities, and the Move to Academe

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12  New Orleans Music, Authenticity, and the Case of Bob Wallis

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13  T  oward Authenticity as Authenticating: Mainstreaming Authenticity and the Case of Bunk Johnson

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14  A  uthenticity as Authenticating 1 – Constructing and Reconstructing Authenticity

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15  A  uthenticity as Authenticating 2 – Adopting and Adapting Authenticity 127 16  Progressing Authenticity

141

Coda on a Riff Fragment from Robert Porter

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Appendix: Selected Discography

153

Bibliography 157 Index 173 About the Authors

179

Figures

9.1. 

 unk Johnson and his New Orleans Band. Sleeve Design: B Anonymous, 1956

9.2. Music of the Dance Halls. Photograph: Tony Standish. Sleeve Design: Fredun Shapur, ARCA, 1959

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This book is about the politics of everyday life1 using the symbolic interactionist perspective2 and grounded theory methodology3 to explore, unpack, and illustrate the dynamics of authenticity. It sets forth a story of authenticity as authenticating, a story of authenticating as a basic socio-political process, with reference to a historiography of New Orleans jazz from its inception in the mid-1890s to the mid-1970s.4 It is not a study in grounded theory, per se; neither is it a study in symbolic interactionism, per se.5 Rather it is a case study6 of New Orleans jazz, which combines symbolic interactionism and grounded theory with analytic autoethnography,7 case history,8 life history and memoir9 using a unique ‘riff’ methodology. Mostly in popular music and certainly in New Orleans jazz, a riff refers to a short, repeated phrase. A riff may be used as an introduction, a refrain or indeed, in any way preferred throughout a tune—as in ‘the other horns would be riffing behind him’. Less often, perhaps, a riff refers to a monologue or spoken improvisation on a particular subject. For others, playing a musical riff may take the form of a solo emerging out of the previous ensemble or orchestration. Our riff methodology draws variously on all these meanings. It tells the story of a dialogue and dialectic between interlocutor Robert Porter, writing from the standpoint of contemporary cultural and political theory, and the main author Richard Ekins, writing from the standpoint of American pragmatism, most specifically from within the perspective of the philosopher and social psychologist George Herbert Mead.10 In his three riffs in this book, Robert solos on certain themes as sparked off by his reading of Richard’s work, with the intention of driving Richard’s narrative forward in directions that are of particular interest to him, primarily; to Richard, secondarily; and, hopefully, to our readers, ultimately. Robert Porter, as a philosopher of everyday life, comes to the project as a scholar trained in continental philosophy who finds himself drawn to empirixi

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cal work, perhaps sociological empirical work, but lacks the background and training for it. The riff methodology develops first with Porter seeking clarification on ontological, epistemological, and social psychological foundations. Inter alia, Porter is influenced by process philosophy, and is intrigued by Ekins’ commitment to George Herbert Mead’s philosophy of social process. He wants to know where this will lead an empirically oriented cultural and political theorist. It has led the sociologist11 in Ekins to grounded theory. But then Porter finds himself wanting to know more about the empirical foundations for that grounded theory. This leads to some of the case history aspects of the book (the ‘story for its own sake’).12 When Glaser and Strauss were distinguishing the case history from the case study in 1970, they wrote: ‘In sum, the case history gives prominence to the story—whereas in the case study the story is subordinated to abstract purposes.’13 Back then there was no such thing as explicit autoethnography, named as such. Now there is. The explicit autoethnography of this book builds upon descriptive autobiography and memoir, all three being set forth in due time within more serious grounded theory conceptualising.14 Porter finds himself wanting to draw out from Ekins the interrelations between the three methodologies—autoethnography, descriptive autobiography, and memoir—and as the riff methodology develops throughout the book, that is precisely what he does. Previously to working on this book, Porter had been drawn to the American pragmatist C. S. Peirce’s words: ‘Remembering then that philosophy is a science based on everyday experience. . . . We must not begin by talking of pure ideas—vagabond thoughts that tramp the public highways without any human habitation—but must begin with men and their conversation.’15 Later, perhaps influenced by working on this book, Porter would draw on Peirce again: ‘You know that I particularly approve of inventing new words for new ideas. I do not know that the study I call Ideoscopy can be called a new idea. . . . Ideoscopy consists in describing and classifying the ideas that belong to ordinary experience or that naturally arise in connection with ordinary life, without regard to their being valid or invalid, or to their psychology.’16 This works out well in the context of the lived experience of Richard Ekins who between 1961 and 1976 participated in the international social worlds of revivalist ‘authentic’ New Orleans jazz, variously as an enthusiast, record collector, trumpet player, band leader, and record producer in the UK and New Orleans. When Ekins revisited these social worlds in the year 2000, he did so as a professional sociologist and academic with a particular expertise in George Herbert Mead, the sociology of knowledge, symbolic interactionism, and grounded theory. The initial dynamic of making sense of the collaboration between Porter and Ekins led Ekins to set forth Cultural Studies as the domain of study best



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equipped to embrace and clarify the diverse perspectives of both authors while rooting their very different approaches in their shared interest in everyday life, specifically in the politics of everyday life. This is the purpose of the argument and analysis as presented in Chapter 2, ‘Cultural Studies and the Politics of Everyday Life’. Porter’s fascination with the possible significance of the sociology of knowledge, George Herbert Mead, and symbolic interactionism for the development of his own work, led him in his Riff 1 to specifically direct Ekins in that direction. Fundamental to Ekins’ thinking in sociology and cultural studies are the answers to these questions: Why sociology of knowledge? Why George Herbert Mead? And Why Symbolic Interactionism? For that reason, the book devotes the following three chapters to setting forth his position on each and his view of the interrelations between the three questions. In present-day terms his position is, arguably, most akin to the German tradition in grounded theory most associated with the contemporary writer Jörg Strübing.17 A corollary of this is the view that much of what is in the current literature on symbolic interactionism in grounded theory is wide of the mark. These three chapters, particularly, explain why. With the ontological, epistemological, and social psychological foundations of the study established, Porter is now ready for his Riff 2 designed to lead Ekins into his introducing his key conceptualisation of ‘authenticity as authenticating’ as a basic socio-political process. He asks Ekins how ‘authenticity as authenticating’ connects with the kind of grounded theorist he is and his use of the grounded theory method. Perhaps sensing the importance of the ‘constant comparative method’18 to grounded theorists, Porter notes that this study is ‘unusual in that it is Grounded Theory historiography’ and wonders how it relates to Ekins’ previous work. Rightly, Porter has grasped that the symbolic interactionist focus on mapping competing definitions of the situation,19 emerging from within social processes of everyday life, will mean that ‘authenticity’ will be conceptualised and investigated in a radically different way from that conceptualisation and investigation in alternative traditions—whether in philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, or ‘taken-for-granted’ everyday life.20 Chapter 6 begins by distinguishing the approach to authenticity necessitated by the book’s roots in the symbolic interactionist tradition embedded in the work of George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer. The focus becomes the mapping of competing definitions of the situation as variously socially constructed in relation to their emergence, development, contestation, and consequence over time and place. It was in his previous study Male Femaling21 that Ekins developed a substantive grounded theory trajectory of male cross-dressing and sex-changing,

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set within symbolic interactionism, to report some seventeen years of empirical research within the social worlds of male cross-dressing and sex-changing. Porter, having noted the historiographical emphasis of the present study, invites him to detail the relations between the completed Male Femaling study and the historiographical study now being written. Answering this question enables Ekins to set forth in detail the particular use he makes of grounded theory methodology in both studies. He makes it clear that the focus of his interest throughout all his grounded theory work is on generic social processes22 embraced within an overarching basic social process (BSP).23 In so doing, Ekins is following Glaser’s sequel to The Discovery of Grounded Theory, namely, his sole authored book Theoretical Sensitivity.24 Ekins’ focus remains on generic social processes set within a BSP in the present book. However, as an emergent within the Porter-Ekins dialectic, Ekins sets forth the present study explicitly as a study of a basic socio-political process. Echoing the structure of chapters 3 to 5, which situate Ekins’ sociological development within his journey as a sociologist of knowledge and symbolic interactionist, chapters 6 and 7 do likewise within his move to grounded theory. Porter, in his own career, has moved increasingly toward ‘conceptualising the everyday’,25 which is precisely the focus of grounded theory. This explains his interest in grounded theory methodology, of course. We might say that Porter with his colleagues has been doing a sort of banal grounded theory.26 However, he has not been systematically using ‘the constant comparative method’ and what grounded theory terms ‘theoretical sampling’,27 that for many, including myself, are the sine qua non of grounded theory research strategies when linked with conceptualising.28 Moreover, although focusing on ‘banal grounded theory’ conceptualising, he has not developed a focus on generical social processes, far less basic social processes that subsume sub-processes. Nor, of course, has Porter a knowledge of how to study these from within a systematically learned and practised grounded theory methodology. It is the purpose of chapters 6 and 7 to provide both Porter and the reader with the wherewithal to do this. With the book’s ‘Part I: Beginnings’ concluded, Porter now feels ready turn to the substantive focus of the book ‘Part II: Authenticating New Orleans Jazz’. His concern is to get Ekins to ‘talk to [him] about New Orleans jazz.’ Just how far apart Porter and Ekins might seem to be, despite his fascination with Ekins’ work, is illustrated in parts of Porter’s Riff 3 and Ekins’ immediate response to it. This may be put this down to what Porter has called in conversation his own ‘promiscuous’ approach both to theory and methodology. It is a promiscuous riff. Ekins, on the other hand, sees his own use of all the various theories, methodologies, and methods combined in this book as being the very opposite of promiscuous. They are all rooted in the same ontological,



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epistemological, and social psychological emergent social process presuppositions. Thus, for instance, as Ekins makes clear, his ‘autoethnography’ is an analytic autoethnography as set forth by the symbolic interactionist Leon Anderson.29 Similarly, his ‘case history’ and ‘case study’ material is rooted in Glaser and Strauss’ conceptualisations of these methodologies. As Glaser and Strauss put it: the research goal in a case history, then, is to get the fullest possible story for its own sake. In contrast, the case study is focused on analytic abstractions and constructions for purposes of description, or verification and/or generation of theory. There is no attempt at obtaining the fullest possible story for its own sake. Fullness of description refers only to what data is needed for the constructions designated by the abstract purposes of the researcher.30

Nevertheless, Porter’s move in seeking an explication of autoethnography in his Riff 3 is exactly on target. As a cultural and political theorist rooted in writing from a grounding in self-reflexivity while participating in the everyday, the methodology of autoethnography is of especial interest for Porter. This Riff 3 is written to set Ekins off on an explication of just how Ekins utilises the methodology of autoethnography. Not surprisingly, Porter highlights what Ekins calls an ‘autoethnography of memory’. A moment’s thought reveals the fundamental similarity between Porter’s research strategy of reflecting on his situatedness within scenes of the everyday ‘present’ to conceptualise in the way he does, and Ekins’ research strategy of reflecting on his situatedness over decades of his life to conceptualise in the way he does. Both strategies are fundamentally self-conscious research strategies of memory. The difference is that time (life history and the ‘past’) and place are utilised more explicitly and embracingly by Ekins.31 Porter is now developing the riff methodology in directions that show his emphasis on using the methodology kinetically to drive Ekins’ narrative forward. Although in another context at another time, he might use his growing appreciation of grounded theory to develop a more grounded theoretical approach to his own self-reflexive conceptualising, he is recognising that this book is not the place to do it.32 Rather, Porter is determined to drive the narrative forward by giving Ekins the opportunity to detail the difference between Ekins’ self-reflexivity about ‘authenticity’ as an enthusiast and musician within the social worlds of New Orleans jazz from 1961 to 1976 and his revisiting of those social worlds as a grounded theorist since 2000.33 Ekins, taking his cue from Porter’s emphasis on theorising from the ground up— banal grounded theory—provides chapters that emphasise autobiographical and memoir description, paving the way to conceptual description—what Glaser criticizes as ‘incident tripping’34—as a lead into the more overtly and

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self-consciously sophisticated grounded theory of the later chapters. In brief, Chapter 8 introduces the analytic autoethnography of this study, distinguishing it from evocative autoethnography and other types of autoethnographies more coherently placed within other traditions in both the humanities and in social sciences.35 Chapter 9, as is appropriate to the period in Ekins’ life on which it focuses, draws more overtly upon the case history method. The focus is on descriptive autobiography, memoir, and life history. It is often said by editors of sociological journals, among others, that however good a submission is thought to be by the editor, some reviewers will want more theory and others will want less. Similarly, in assessing submissions that utilise grounded theory, some reviewers will want grounded theory of one type and others will want grounded theory of another type. Moreover, some will be favourable to combining grounded theory with other research methodologies while others will not be. Illustrative of these sorts of issues is the reviewer of a preliminary draft of this book who commented, ‘The richness of the data and the story is a huge strength. A slight problem with this is that it gets in the way of the analytical autoethnography, and indeed the grounded theory’.36 It is a problem that we are only too aware of. We did make certain revisions following the above comment. Nevertheless, it must be said that at the end of the day we did prioritize the focus on innovative ‘explorations in politics’ over the focus on purity of preferred methodological approaches. Chapters 10, 11, and 12 are intended as chapters of transition to the more overtly grounded theory historiography of the final chapters. Chapter 10 marks the beginning of Ekins’ revisiting New Orleans jazz after a twentyfive-year absence from the scene, but now revisiting as a professional academic and sociologist. Chapter 11, ‘Enthusiasts, Competing Authenticities, and the Move to Academe,’ focuses on the competing definitions of ‘authentic’ New Orleans jazz as they were played out within the New Orleans jazz social worlds that Ekins participated within from 1961 to 1976. Chapter 12, ‘New Orleans Music, Authenticity, and the Case of Bob Wallis’, is an important transitional chapter. It details the difficulties Ekins had in trying to get his first article on ‘authenticity’ accepted in the world leading British enthusiasts’ magazine for ‘authentic’ New Orleans music. The experience led him to fork out in two very different directions. He developed a relationship with the editor of the UK traditional jazz magazine Just Jazz that led to some sixty-five of his publications appearing in that magazine between 2009 and 2021.37 Most of these articles included all the paraphernalia of academic scholarship, even though they were not written to have been suitable for submission to refereed academic journals. The other direction did follow a route that would lead to refereed academic articles and professional advancement.



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Coinciding with the publication of his first article for Just Jazz on Bob Wallis and authenticity, Ekins registered for a two-year part-time MA in Popular Music Studies in the Department of Music, Liverpool University. While there he wrote six assignments that he used as the basis for six articles in refereed academic journals in popular music studies, jazz studies, and popular musicology.38 During this process he developed his phased grounded theory trajectory of ‘authenticity as authenticating’ into an embracive theoretical framework that was published as such.39 Moreover, the basic framework was so constructed that it could be developed further, either as a more nuanced embracive framework, or be drawn on more selectively, as in this book. Additionally, the framework could be progressively filled-in with more detailed studies as set within the framework’s component sub-processes. Chapter 13 summarises two further illustrations of mini-case studies within the case study approach of the whole book. The first relates to an article Ekins published on the sub-process of ‘mainstreaming authenticity’ as evidenced in the British ‘traddy pop’ fad of 1959-1962.40 The second concerns Ekins’ grounded theory case study historiography of the most important single musician in New Orleans authenticity as reconstructed (the authenticating sub-process of ‘reconstructing authenticity’), namely the trumpet player Bunk Johnson.41 Chapters 14 and 15 move to serious grounded theory historiography. Now, overt autoethnography, case history, life history, and memoir are jettisoned entirely, to set forth a phased trajectory of authenticity as authenticating, with the focus on the beginnings of jazz in the 1890s up to the mid-1970s. The emphasis is on the historical and the chronological ‘Constructing and Reconstructing Authenticity’ and the subsequent historical and chronological ‘Adopting and Adapting Authenticity’. These chapters are followed by a final Chapter 16, ‘Progressing Authenticity’, that summarises the contribution of the combined methodologies approach of the study as it emerged within the development of the study’s riff methodology. It reiterates what the book is, and what it is not, and indicates what it might have been, before briefly updating the historiography of New Orleans jazz in New Orleans from the mid-1970s to the present day. The study concludes with ‘A Coda on a Riff Fragment from Robert Porter’ that differentiates the ‘me’ from the ‘they’ and from the ‘us’ in studies such as this. It makes explicit that while the ‘they’ might find this study niche in both in its subject matter and in its theorising, the ‘me’ and the ‘us’ have good reason to argue very differently.

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NOTES 1. Robert Porter, Meanderings Through the Politics of Everyday Life (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). We follow Clare Colebrook in her view that ‘the relational structure of the concept [of everyday life] demands that the everyday be defined against abstraction, reification or decided cultural wholes’. Claire Colebrook, “The Politics and Potential of Everyday Life,” New Literary History 33, no. 4 (2002): 687–706 at 687. 2.  Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1992 [1969]). Herbert Blumer coined the term ‘symbolic interactionism’ in 1937. Blumer’s symbolic interactionism is rooted in the teachings and writings of George Herbert Mead. Subsequently, symbolic interactionism has taken variously positivist, hermeneutic, structural, and critical directions. Ekins identifies with Herbert Blumer’s so-called Chicago School symbolic interactionism, as opposed to Manfred Kuhn’s positivist ‘Iowa School’ and Sheldon Stryker’s positivist and structural ‘Indiana School’. See, for example, Michael J. Carter and Celene Fuller, “Symbolic Interactionism,” Sociopedia. ISA, 2015 DOI: 10.1177/205684601561: 1–17. Ekins is identified as a 4th generation symbolic interactionist in Lionel Lacaze, Interactionisme Symbolique Bibliographie, Vol. 2, 4e Generation: 1976–1990 (LYON-IS.PUB, 2018). 3.  Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research (Chicago: Aldine, 1967); Barney G. Glaser, Theoretical Sensitivity: Advances in the Methodology of Grounded Theory (Mill Valley, CA: The Sociology Press, 1978). Ekins’ grounded theory is rooted in Barney Glaser’s basic social process (BSP) grounded theory as set within Anselm Strauss’ pragmatist grounded theory and social world analysis. 4.  Richard Ekins, “Authenticity as Authenticating—the Case of New Orleans Jazz Revivalism: An Approach from Grounded Theory and Social World Analysis,” Popular Music History 7, no 1 (2012): 24–52, sets out an earlier version of the ‘authenticity as authenticating’ trajectory. This book takes that article in very different directions. 5.  Though for at least one reader of a pre-publication draft ‘the approach that is outlined provides a detailed explanation of one sociologist’s journey through their career as they developed their very particular approach to symbolic interactionism and grounded theory. This approach is very rarely explained with the degree of clarity that is managed in this text . . . I found this explanation extremely valuable. It is highly likely that much of this would be useful to any novice researcher seeking to develop a truly symbolic interactionist approach to grounded theory. I cannot stress enough how unique this is.’ [Reproduced with permission] 6.  Anselm L. Strauss and Barney G. Glaser, “Case Histories and Case Studies,” in Anguish: A Case History of a Dying Trajectory (London: Martin Robertson, 1977), 182–93. 7.  Leon Anderson, “Analytic Autoethnography,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35, no. 4 (2006): 373–95. 8.  Strauss and Glaser, “Case Histories and Case Studies,” 183. 9. Ken Plummer, Documents of Life 2: An Invitation to a Critical Humanism (London: Sage, 2000).



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10.  George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934); George Herbert Mead, The Philosophy of the Act (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938); George Herbert Mead, The Philosophy of the Present (LaSalle, IL: Open Court 1932); George Herbert Mead, Movements of Thought in the 19th Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936). 11.  Ekins’ principal trainings are in law, sociology, psychoanalysis, and sociomusicology. 12.  Strauss and Glaser, “Case Histories and Case Studies,” 183. 13.  Strauss and Glaser, “Case Histories and Case Studies,” 183. 14.  See, J. D. Scott, ‘[auto-ethnography] encompasses the remembering self plus the reflexive, researching self. Memoir writes the personal story, without the theory. Memoir is used by auto-ethnographers to record their memories of lived experience. Auto-ethnography is memoir refracted through the researching, enquiring, conceptualising mind.’ J. D. Scott, “Memoir as a Form of Auto-ethnographic Research for Exploring the Practice of Transnational Higher Education in China,” Higher Education Research & Development 33, no. 4 (2013): 757–68 at 760. 15.  Charles S. Peirce, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Volume 8.112 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ed. Arthur W. Burks, 1958). 16.  Charles S. Peirce, “Letters to Lady Welby,” in Charles S. Peirce, Selected Writings, ed. Philip P. Weiner (New York: Dover, 1966), 380–432 at 383. 17. Jörg Strübing, “Pragmatist Grounded Theory: Anselm Strauss and his Research Style,” Webinar: Varieties of Grounded Theory, March 12, 2021, slide at 11.35, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. Much of this tradition is only available in German and insufficiently drawn on in Anglo-American grounded theory scholarship. An exception is Jörg Strübing, “The Pragmatism of Anselm L. Strauss: Linking Theory and Method,” in Antony Bryant and Kathy Charmaz, eds., The SAGE Handbook of Current Developments in Grounded Theory (London: Sage, 2019), 51–67. 18.  Glaser and Strauss, Discovery, 101–15. 19.  ‘[I]f men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences’. The ‘Thomas Theorem’, so named by Robert Merton in 1942, was first stated in W.I. Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas, The Child in America: Behavior Problems and Programs (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928), 572. Ekins follows Merton in regarding the ‘theorem’ as ‘probably the single most consequential sentence ever put in print by an American sociologist’. Robert Merton, “Social Knowledge and Public Policy,” in Sociological Ambivalence and Other Essays (New York: The Free Press 1976), 156–79 at 174. 20.  Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1967 [1932]). 21. Richard Ekins, Male Femaling: A Grounded Theory Approach to CrossDressing and Sex-Changing (London: Routledge, 1997). 22.  Robert Prus, “Generic Social Processes: Maximizing Conceptual Development in Ethnographic Research,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 16, no. 3 (1987): 250–93. 23. Glaser, Theoretical Sensitivity, 93–115. 24. Glaser, Theoretical Sensitivity. 25.  “Part 2: The Conceptual Significance of Everyday Life.” Porter, 11–14.

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26.  Iain Mackenzie in an email to Kerry-Ann Porter and Robert Porter reproduced in Robert Porter, Kerry-Ann Porter and Iain Mackenzie, The University in Crumbs: A Register of Things Seen and Heard (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming), refers to what they are doing in that book as a kind of ‘banal phenomenology’. Mackenzie cites Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995). Many psychiatrists refer to the phenomenological approach to psychiatry when they seem to allude to little more than a focus on the subjective experiences of mental health. Most typically, they have no knowledge, for instance, of Husserl or the eidetic reduction, for example. Arguably, those psychiatrists are engaged in another type of banal phenomenology. This book embraces the range of grounded theory in the banal sense to the basic social process theorising of Glaser’s classic grounded theory. It sets forth memoir and conceptual description in addition to generic social process analysis of varying degrees of density. The book is, therefore, what might be termed ‘A Grounded Theory Mosaic’. As Ian Dey writes of his own grounded theory analysis: ‘The overall patchwork slowly developed into a more composite picture as further pieces became available. This metaphor—the picture slowly emerging as a patchwork mosaic—is perhaps a more apt way of conveying the process of analysis.’ Ian Dey, “Grounded Theory,” in Clive Searle, Giampietro Gobo, Jaber F. Gubrium, and David Silverman, eds., Qualitative Research Practice (London: Sage, 2004), 80–93 at 86. 27.  Glaser and Strauss, Discovery, 45–77. 28. Barney G. Glaser, “Conceptualization: On Theory and Theorizing Using Grounded Theory,” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 1, no. 2 (2002): 23–38. 29.  Anderson, “Analytic Autoethnography.” 30.  Strauss and Glaser, “Case Histories and Case Studies,” 183. 31.  As Dorothy Richardson puts it: ‘While I write, everything vanishes but what I contemplate. The whole of what is called “the past” is with me, seen anew, vividly . . . the past does not stand “being still”. It moves, growing with one’s growth. Contemplation is adventure into discovery.’ Dorothy Richardson, Pilgrimage IV (London: Virago, 1979), 657. On the fundamental similarity of Dorothy Richardson’s position on writing—and mine—with Mead’s philosophy of the present incorporating, as it does, his theory of truth, time and the past, see Richard Ekins, “On Memory, Forgetting and Dorothy Richardson: A Theoretical Companion Piece to Richard Ekins, ‘Dilemmas of Placing and Dating in Blue Plaque Research: The Case of Dorothy Richardson in Bloomsbury (1896–1907)’.” Pilgrimages: The Journal of Dorothy Richardson Studies, no. 8 (2016), accessed January 27, 2023, PJDRS : No 8, 2016 (dorothyrichardson.org). 32.  It should be evident that for both authors the unique format of the riff methodology, developed in the book, emerged while writing it. More technically and specifically, we might say that it was an emergent within the authors’ symbolic interactions. 33.  Put more accurately, Ekins first revisited the worlds of New Orleans jazz in 2000 after a gap of some twenty-five years. It was to be five years later in 2005 that he embarked on a serious New Orleans jazz research programme, first with the issuing of CDs with lengthy booklets, to be followed by increasingly grounded theory inspired academic articles.



Preamble xxi

34.  Barney G. Glaser, “The Future of Grounded Theory,” Grounded Theory Review: An International Journal 21, no. 1 (2022), accessed January 27, 2023, https:// groundedtheoryreview.com/2022/06/25/the-future-of-grounded-theory/. 35. Carolyn Ellis, Tony E. Adams and Arthur P. Bochner, “Autoethnography: An Overview,” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 12, no. 1 (2011), Art. 10, accessed January 27, 2023, https://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/ view/1589/3095. 36.  Cited with permission. 37.  Richard Ekins, “La Croix Records—Research,” accessed January 27, 2023, https://www.lacroixrecords.com/res.html. 38.  Richard Ekins, 2010b; 2011b; 2012b; 2014b; 2015; 2016b as detailed in “La Croix Records—Research.” 39.  Ekins, “Authenticity as Authenticating.” 40. As in Richard Ekins, “Traditional Jazz and the Mainstreaming of Authenticity: The Case of British Traddy Pop (1959–1963)—A Grounded Theory Approach,” Popular Music History 5, no. 2 (2010): 125–50. 41.  As in Richard Ekins, “The Rediscovery and Resurrection of Bunk Johnson— A Grounded Theory Approach: A Case Study in Jazz Historiography,” Grounded Theory Review: An International Journal 10, no. 3 (2011): 27–54.

Acknowledgments

On the face of it, this book has two authors: Richard Ekins and Robert Porter. In a very real sense, however, there are two other ‘authors’ that need to be acknowledged. The first is series co-editor Iain Mackenzie of the University of Kent. From the very beginning, this book was framed and structured in ways to maximise the chances of its acceptance in Rowman & Littlefield’s series ‘Experiments/On the Political’. As the publishers put it, ‘The series reflects on the political in interdisciplinary and/or practice-led ways on the assumption that crossing these borders of the discipline can create the conditions for experimental thinking about politics and the political.’ Further discussions with Iain made it clear how much emphasis he placed on the innovative and experimental—theoretically, methodologically, and substantively. The result is this book. Our second other ‘author’ is sociologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist Peter Torney, formerly of the University of Ulster. Peter has been my friend, confidant, and academic and professional sounding board on and off since the early 1980s. He was engaged in this project from the moment of its inception to its conclusion. His wisdom, support, and constructive comment as the project developed were of inestimable value. I like to see the earliest beginnings of this book in a school report written about me in 1962 by Stephen Medcalf (1936–2007) who taught English Literature ‘A’ level for just one year at Malvern College, immediately following his obtaining a double first from Oxford and a recommendation from the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) that he was one of the most brilliant students she had ever encountered. The gist of his report was that I had a talent for writing about the relations between the individual and society but not much else. Little wonder that I eventually became a professional university-based sociologist rooted in the work of the philosopher and social psychologist, George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) whose Mind, Self, xxiii

xxiv

Acknowledgments

and Society is arguably the most profound book on the relations between the individual and society ever published. It was the sociologist Michael F. D. Young who first introduced me to the sophistication of Mead’s work in late 1971 when I was a student of his at the then University of London, Institute of Education. Most especially, Young introduced me to the sociology of knowledge, which, as this book makes clear, set the path of my professional career as an academic for the rest of my life. Between 1973 and 1978 I worked on my University of London doctorate ‘G.H. Mead: Contributions to a Philosophy of Sociological Knowledge’ variously in London, Austin (Texas), and Chicago. My 1976 summer semester studying with the foremost living Mead disciple, David L. Miller, in the Department of Philosophy, University of Austin at Texas, was the most important student experience of my life. I spent most of the nights going through Miller’s collection of unpublished Mead material. I spent most of the days in his office in intensive discussions with him. His generosity was boundless, his teaching both masterly and brilliant. Meanwhile, on the New Orleans jazz scene from 1961 to 1976, variously in the UK and New Orleans, my most important mentors were the English musicians and bandleaders Dan Pawson and Barry Martyn, both of whom I feature in this book. In my later revisiting of New Orleans jazz as an academic, my principal indebtedness is to the social anthropologist and musicologist Sara Cohen of the Department of Music, University of Liverpool. In her quiet, sensitive, intelligent, and efficient way, she was inspirational. Finally, I should note that the anonymous reviewer of our last pre-publication draft was heaven sent, as was Debbie Radcliffe. Richard Ekins

Part I

BEGINNINGS

Chapter One

Introducing the Authors and the Riff Methodology

By the spring of 2021, I had just finished a five-year project that involved my publishing some forty-five articles on Ken Grayson Mills and Barbara Glancey Reid,1 the co-founders of Preservation Hall in New Orleans. Preservation Hall was cofounded in 1961 and quite soon afterward became a major, worldwide tourist attraction and remains so today. It is now advertised as a ‘historic music venue in the French Quarter working to protect, preserve, and perpetuate the spirit of traditional New Orleans jazz’.2 Mills and Reid had been systematically and cruelly erased from the history of Preservation Hall, most notably by Sandra Jaffe and her son Ben Jaffe, following Allan and Sandra Jaffe’s taking over the management of Preservation Hall. This was after Mills and Reid had been ousted in September 1961 by the Hall’s then lessee, Larry Borenstein. Such was the influence of the Jaffes’ ownership and marketing of the ‘Preservation Hall’ brand that only a small coterie of New Orleans jazz enthusiasts, record collectors, writers, and musicians knew of the importance of Mills and Reid. I wrote my articles in the spirit of ‘righting a wrong’. In academic terms, I was writing ‘hidden history’.3 The venture was the tail end of my project of revisiting New Orleans jazz that I had begun seriously in 2005. This led to my releasing eight CDs and publishing six academic articles and many more minor and specialist pieces between 2005 and 2016, all focusing on New Orleans jazz.4 On completion of the hidden histories’ series, my plan was to launch my Thomas Freeman project, designed to revisit my years in psychoanalysis as a patient, a trainee, a practitioner, a trainer, and as an academic. Thomas Freeman, who died in 2002,5 was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst with a very significant international reputation both for his work in applying psychoanalysis to the psychoses, and as, for many years, the sole psychoanalyst in Northern Ireland with the major achievement of founding, developing, and establishing what 3

4

Chapter One

eventually became the IPA (International Psychoanalytical Association) approved Northern Ireland Psychoanalytic Society.6 Within a few weeks of my starting this Thomas Freeman project, Robert Porter, as director of my research unit at Ulster University—REF UoA34: Communication, Cultural and Media Studies—invited me to give a talk on the new project as a contribution to a series of seminars he was running under the umbrella of the Ulster University, Centre for Media Research.7 My strategy in presenting this talk was to utilise my previous expertise in the research methodology of Grounded Theory (GT) and draw on GT’s key research strategy of what it calls ‘the constant comparative method’. I took ‘revisiting’ as my theme and ‘constantly compared’ what I had already researched and written about in the arena of revivalist New Orleans jazz, with what I might have expected to find in the arena of psychoanalysis. The key focus was my core category of ‘authenticity as authenticating’. Just as I had been preoccupied as a teenager with so-called ‘authentic’ New Orleans jazz from 1961 on, so when I turned seriously to psychoanalysis some twenty years later, I would soon become preoccupied with so-called ‘authentic’ psychoanalysis—the psychoanalysis initially associated with Freud himself and the ‘royal family’ that surrounded him. My analyst, Thomas Freeman, remained a devoted Freudian, following his many years of analysis with Anna Freud’s lifelong companion, Dorothy Burlingham, his supervision with Anna Freud (both of whom had received many years of analysis from Sigmund Freud), and his subsequent professional life working with Anna Freud until her death in 1982.8 At the end of my presentation, I sought suggestions as to how I might next proceed. Should I continue to publish academic articles as my Thomas Freeman project developed? Or should I plan a book on it? Should I focus entirely on the proposed Thomas Freeman project? Or should I combine it in some way with my previous work on New Orleans jazz? My presentation had piqued Robert’s interest because he saw affinities between his own work in the philosophy and politics of everyday life with my grounded theory/sociology of knowledge approach, rooted, as he saw it, in everyday life. He had published his Meanderings Through the Politics of Everyday Life in 2018, which had sold well enough to be published in paper back in 2020.9 Moreover, he was working on another book to be published by Rowman & Littlefield.10 After some preliminary discussions with Iain Mackenzie, one of the series editors for this ‘Experiments/On the Political’ Series, Robert and I agreed to write a book proposal that combined Robert’s interest in my existing work on ‘authenticating’ with proposed new work, framed in such a way to maximise its acceptance in the series. This book is the result. Initially, I had intended to set forth in one book a grounded theory of ‘authenticating’ as a basic socio-political process with reference to a highly focused



Introducing the Authors and the Riff Methodology 5

grounded theory historiography of two selected case studies: those of New Orleans jazz and psychoanalysis. As it turned out, the proposed single volume morphed into a more extensive project, in that revisiting New Orleans jazz emerged more appropriately as an initial single case study, illustrative of the novel and expanded theoretical and methodological approach that emerged from the interplay between the two authors—Richard Ekins and Robert Porter—as the project progressed. In terms of the ‘Experiments/On the Political’ series, it is constructed around a unique set of interrelations between grounded theory historiography, case study, case history, life history, autoethnography, and memoir—disciplinary concerns and connections that are, at best, very much at the margins of mainstream political theory. In terms of the form of the book and its authorship, it grew out of long, detailed conversations between the main author (Ekins) and his interlocutor (Porter). The aim of this co-authored work is to capture something of the energy and dynamism of these exchanges in the writing of the text. Periodically, the author (Ekins) will give way to his interlocutor (Porter), who will riff on some of the themes explored in the preceding chapters. The book will end with a ‘Coda on a Riff Fragment from Robert Porter’ that may be read either as a fitting conclusion to a single volume or as an invitation to pursue similar work within different social worlds. NOTES 1.  Richard Ekins, “The Ken Grayson Mills Project—The Hidden History of Ken Grayson Mills, Icon Records, Preservation Hall and Preservation Hall in Exile,” in association with Just Jazz, Parts 1–22, Takes 1–5, Just Jazz, nos. 223–270 (November 2016–October 2020); Richard Ekins, “The Causation, Practice and Power of New Orleans Jazz: Introducing an Unpublished Paper by Ken Grayson Mills of Icon Records,” 2018; Fred Eatherton, assisted by Richard Ekins, Ken Grayson Mills’s Icon Records: A Discography (London: La Croix Publications, 2018); Richard Ekins, “The Barbara Reid Project—The Contribution of Barbara Glancey Reid Edmiston to New Orleans Jazz Revivalism,” in association with Just Jazz, Parts 1–21, Just Jazz, nos. 243–277 (July 2018–May 2021). In terms of my authenticity as authenticating trajectory, I situate all this highly specialist work within the sub-process of ‘resuming authenticity’—specifically, ‘1960s authenticity resuming’ of the reconstructed authenticity work most associated with Bill Russell’s 1940s and 1950s American Music recordings. Mills was particularly explicit about this. Interested readers should explore this material in Just Jazz. It is too specialist to refer to, except in passing, in the rest of this book. 2.  “Preservation Hall—Traditional Jazz Since 1961”, Official Preservation Hall Website, accessed March 3, 2021, https://www.preservationhall.com/.

6

Chapter One

  3.  Sandra Jaffe died in December 2021. Richard Sandomir in the New York Times, in addition to numerous other obituary writers, maintains the falsehood that she founded Preservation Hall. More accurately, Sandomir’s obituary cites the impresario George Wein that ‘There is no question that Preservation Hall saved New Orleans jazz.’ Richard Sandomir, “Sandra Jaffe, Who Helped to Preserve Jazz at Preservation Hall, Dies at 83,” accessed January 27, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/ arts/music/sandra-jaffe-who-helped-preserve-jazz-at-preservation-hall-dies-at-83. html.   4.  See, Richard Ekins, La Croix Records website, accessed January 27, 2023, http://www.lacroixrecords.com/.   5.  Richard Lucas, “Obituary—Dr Thomas Freeman,” Psychiatric Bulletin 27, no. 8 (2003): 317; “Obituaries—Thomas Freeman,” The Times, 31 May 2002, 39.   6.  “Northern Ireland Psychoanalytic Society,” accessed January 27, 2023, https:// nipsychoanalyticsociety.com/.   7.  Re-branded as the Centre for Communication, Media and Cultural Studies on March 18, 2022.   8.  I knew Thomas Freeman in various capacities from January 1984 to his death in May 2002. Shortly after beginning my analysis, I met his daughter, Ruth Freeman, later becoming a colleague and psychoanalytic co-author with her. As a child, Ruth would accompany her father down to the cottage in Suffolk where Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham spent summer holidays. Thomas Freeman would have further periods of analysis with Burlingham in Suffolk. Ruth, in particular, frequently spoke of the ‘The Royal Family’ as referring to those especially close to Sigmund Freud, whether by blood or by analysis and commitment to ‘the cause’. Gina Bon, Anna Freud’s secretary for the last twelve, or so, years of Miss Freud’s life, provides interesting material on Anna Freud’s relationship with Burlingham in Suffolk. Gina Bon, “Memories of Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham,” American Imago 53, no. 3 (1996): 211–26.  9. Porter, Meanderings. 10.  R. Porter, K-A Porter and Mackenzie, The University in Crumbs.

Riff I

Robert Porter

Richard, I feel like I should begin by saying something about what has drawn me to your work in the last two or three years. Of course, I had always appreciated and admired your writings from a respectful distance—I’m thinking particularly here about your books of the late ’90s and 2000s, namely, Male Femaling1 and The Transgender Phenomenon2—but, more recently, that hitherto distant gaze was dramatically foreshortened as I began to work through some of my own concerns regarding the concept of ‘everyday life’. As you know, I published Meanderings through the Politics of Everyday Life in 2018.3 It is a very strange little book, and when I return to its pages, it tends to evoke the usual mix—well, usual for me—of pride and shame. One of the things that I particularly cringe at is my tendency to lapse into ‘bad sociology’. By ‘bad sociology’ I simply mean my using phrases like ‘everyday life’, ‘the everyday’, ‘the rough and tumble of the quotidian’ in an overly ostensive, overly dramatic, overly demonstrative fashion. The constant gesticulation or pointing at the thing—‘the politics of everyday life’—is almost child-like in places, like a child excitedly pointing at something she or he can’t quite get to grips with the linguistic tools to hand. I guess what I’m trying to say is that my conceptualisation of ‘everyday life’ in that book is quite fuzzy and indistinct. Reading your work in recent times has given me an interesting way to think more clearly about why my Meanderings book lapses into this kind of ‘bad sociology’. Or to cast this thought in a more positive or productive light, you have helped me to get a better sense of the implicit sociological commitment that comes with thinking about the notion of ‘everyday life’ in political terms that I have previously claimed to. Of course, what such a ‘sociological commitment’ looks like from my perspective in the end will largely be a product of our dialogical exchanges going forward. Leaving that aside for now, and focusing more on the matter 7

8

Riff I

at hand, I wonder if we can begin by considering the basic animating ideas of your present study of New Orleans Jazz. If I have understood you correctly, the aim of the book is to set forth what you call a ‘grounded theory of authenticating’, analysed as a basic social process that is crucial to the understanding of the origins, development, and consequences of competing knowledge claims in various areas of human experience and activity over time and place. You are a sociologist of knowledge, a symbolic interactionist, in the tradition of George Herbert Mead. I’ve heard you say that many times in our conversations. Can I begin by asking some rather annoyingly broad and vague questions? Why sociology of knowledge? Why symbolic interactionism? Why Mead? NOTES 1.  Richard Ekins, Male Femaling. 2.  Richard Ekins and Dave King, The Transgender Phenomenon (London: Sage, 2006). 3.  Robert Porter, Meanderings.

Chapter Two

Cultural Studies and the Politics of Everyday Life

Responding to your points, Robert, I will pick up, first, if I may, on what you say about ‘everyday life’ and your ‘constant gesticulating or pointing at the thing—the politics of everyday life.’ Bearing in mind that you and I have contributed for over two decades to the UK universities REF unit ‘Communication, Cultural and Media Studies’ and its predecessors,1 I think it is apposite to situate the roots of this ‘politics of everyday life’ in the beginnings of Cultural Studies as a field of study at the University of Birmingham, UK, in 1964. The following quotation, relating to the three founders of Cultural Studies—Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, and Stuart Hall—makes the essential point about ‘everyday life’: Why did it seem necessary to give an academic label to the kind of research Williams, Hoggart and then Hall were engaged in? Each of these thinkers knew there was a minor tradition of studying culture ‘from below’; that is, the cultural practices and rituals of everyday life associated with ordinary people, or with groups and populations who did not belong to the powerful social classes or to the political elites.2

Richard Hoggart had published his book The Uses of Literacy, in 1957.3 As Angela McRobbie was to put it: based partly on his personal memory of the habits, rituals, and everyday lives of the people who lived in his own neighbourhood from the interwar period through to the post-war years. He documented how women cleaned their front doorsteps and gossiped over the fences as they hung out the washing. The popular women’s magazines they read, often with lurid covers, brought some glamour and excitement amidst the hardship. These lives did not appear in official histories, and Hoggart aimed to show their richness and solidarity.4 9

10

Chapter Two

While Hoggart did not particularly highlight the politics of these everyday lives, Raymond Williams did with his Marxist-inspired theory of cultural materialism.5 And the political emphasis became especially concretised by Stuart Hall as illustrated by Hall’s view that everyday life was to be studied as infused by the political, by ‘resistance through rituals’,6 for instance. With Hall, it is perhaps important to say, too, that Cultural Studies moved away from a Cultural Studies rooted in literary criticism to a Cultural Studies rooted in the social sciences, notwithstanding that Hall’s initial training had been in English Literature. Nevertheless, it was always intended by Hall and many of those who succeeded him, that Cultural Studies would be avowedly interdisciplinary; for some, indeed, anti-disciplinary. Once we move outside the field of Cultural Studies as established by the University of Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), it soon becomes evident how the study of everyday life has had various foci and outcomes in various disciplines and/or fields of study. It is interesting, for example, to note how when the theoretical and empirical practices of those who attend to the everyday are reviewed by someone trained primarily in cultural theory, such as Ben Highmore, we get chapters on ‘Simmel: Fragments of Everyday Life’, ‘Surrealism: The Marvellous in the Everyday’, ‘Benjamin’s Trash Aesthetics’, ‘Mass-Observation: A Science of Everyday Life’, ‘Henry Lefebvre’s Dialectics of Everyday Life’, ‘Michel de Certeau’s Poetics of Everyday Life’, and ‘Postscript: Everyday Life and the Future of Cultural Studies’.7 However, when studies in everyday life are reviewed by someone trained primarily in sociology, such as Susie Scott, we get a myriad of relevant theoretical approaches highlighted, as in ‘Theorizing Social Order: Psychoanalysis, Social Psychology, Structural Functionalism’; ‘Theorizing Rituals and Routines: Interpretivist Sociology, Phenomenology, Ethnomethodology, Symbolic Interactionism, Dramaturgy, Structuration Theory’; and, finally, ‘Theorizing Challenges: Cultural Studies, Post-Structuralism, New Sociologies of Everyday Life’.8 Rather oddly, both Lefebvre and de Certeau feature in the ‘New Sociologies of Everyday Life’ section of Susie Scott’s review, notwithstanding that Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life, Vol. 1 was first published way back in 1947,9 and Scott is writing in 2009. However, it is the case that of individual thinkers, Lefebvre is the only name that features relatively prominently in both Highmore and Scott’s reviews and in your list, Robert, of important thinkers for your own book. In Meanderings Through the Politics of Everyday Life, you write, ‘My arguments are importantly grounded in the philosophy, critical theory, and political activism of figures such as Raoul Vaneigem, Henri Lefebvre, Gilles Deleuze, Soren Kierkegaard, Simon Critchley, and Alain Badiou.’10



Cultural Studies and the Politics of Everyday Life 11

And your intention is to use your orientation on all these writers to ‘make possible forms of political resistance to what is intolerable in our daily lives.’11 Whether, however, this leads you into ‘bad sociology’ is a matter we might consider as we write this present book together. More particularly, whether you have anything to learn from my approach to the theoretical and empirical practices relating to the study of everyday life, and whether you consider it to be ‘good sociology’, we will leave on hold for the moment. Better now that I turn to your set of questions: Why sociology of knowledge? Why symbolic interactionism? Why Mead? NOTES   1. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the system for assessing the quality of research in UK Higher Education Systems. It was the successor to the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) first used in 2014 which assessed the period 2008–2013, itself an outgrowth of earlier research assessments going back to 1986. Unit 66 in RAE 2008 was Communication, Cultural and Media Studies. Unit 36 in REF 2014 was Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management. Unit 34 in REF 2021 had the same name as REF 2014.  2. My italics. Angela McRobbie, “What is Cultural Studies?” The British Academy, 18 August 2020, accessed March 3, 2022, https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/blog/what-is-culturalstudies/#:~:text=Cultural%20studies%20is%20a%20 relatively,Raymond%20Williams%20and%20Richard%20Hoggart.  3. Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life with Special References to Publications and Entertainments (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957).   4.  My italics. McRobbie, “What is Cultural Studies?”  5. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society: 1780–1950 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1958); Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961); Raymond Williams, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory,” New Left Review 82 (1973): 3–16.   6.  Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1976).  7. Ben Highmore, Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2002), ‘Contents’, v.  8. Susie Scott, Making Sense of Everyday Life (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), ‘Detailed Contents’, vi.  9. Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, Vol. 1 (London: Verso, 2008 (1947)). 10. Porter, Meanderings, 3. 11. Porter, Meanderings, 4.

Chapter Three

Why Sociology of Knowledge?

My introduction to sociology had been through a 1969–1970 Certificate in Education course, training students to become lecturers in Further Education in the UK. The two core texts, in those days, were the easier to read Peter Musgrave’s Sociology of Education1 and the more sociologically serious Olive Banks Sociology of Education.2 Neither rendered what counted as ‘knowledge’, let alone ‘school knowledge’ and/or the school curriculum problematic. The sociology of knowledge might not have existed for the Sociology of Education at this time. All this was to change, following a meeting between three sociologists at the Hotel Russell, Russell Square, London in 1970. Basil Bernstein had attended—and, indeed, given a paper—at the 2nd Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association held in London in 1970.3 Some three years later, editor Richard Brown published a book of the major papers given at the conference titled Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change.4 The Abstract to Brown’s introduction to that book noted that, For some years the sociology of education has been an obvious candidate as a theme for the Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association. Its choice for the 1970 conference could be supported on several grounds. It is probably true to say that work in the sociology of education has mostly been carried out within a structural/functional or systems framework. Questions have been formulated in terms of, for example, the functions of the educational system as a whole for society, the social system of the school, and the role of the teacher. Bryan Roberts is concerned with education in conditions of rapid urban growth and describes what could be termed ‘class appropriation’ of educational opportunities in such situations. There is not only a long tradition of research on the interrelations of education and the social structure but also one of research on universities.5 13

14

Chapter Three

However, Bernstein was struck by the potential significance of the contributions of his own paper and those of Pierre Bourdieu and his protégé Michael F. D. Young for formulating a New Directions in the Sociology of Education focused upon the sociology of knowledge. He asked Young to join him at the Russell Hotel to meet with himself and Pierre Bourdieu. The significance of this meeting was first given wide publicity in an article by the British journalist Peter Wilby published in the Guardian some three years ago when he wrote: Education’s knowledge wars—fought around what schools should teach children—began nearly half a century ago with three sociologists chatting in the bar of London’s Russell Hotel.6 Social scientists, they agreed, concentrated too much on the ‘deficit model’ of education: why working-class children ‘failed’ at school and how they could be brought up to standard. But what if the fault lay not in the children, or their homes, but in what they were taught? What if the ‘deficit’ was in the curriculum and what schools counted as ‘knowledge’? What if the ‘less able’ had different but not inferior abilities that schools failed to recognise? What if their parents, despite not owning books, had ‘everyday’ knowledge—of gardening or interior decoration, say—that was as valuable as what schools deemed to be knowledge?7

I was an early progeny of that conversation between these three sociologists—Pierre Bourdieu, Basil Bernstein, and Michael F. D. Young. To answer Robert’s question, ‘Why Sociology of Knowledge?’ let me turn to an elaboration of that fateful Russell Hotel conversation and its consequences, with reference to the following selections from a recent email conversation I had with Michael F. D. Young. Richard Ekins: I am writing to you to make contact, to thank you for quite literally setting the course of my professional life—in retrospect THE most significant influence in my professional life—and to ask you a very brief question. I was a student of yours in Sociology of Education in the Academic Diploma in Education [Acad. Dip. Ed.] that ran part time from 1971–1973. You set the course for most of my life since that date. I have never forgotten the first time we spoke and the expression on your face. While in Birmingham in 1970, before moving to London in the summer of 1971, I had enrolled as an external student for the correspondence course at Wolsey Hall, Oxford, for the same diploma and showed you the syllabus I was following. You were very nice to me, but I only learned later about the meaning of your expression. It was an Olive Banks, P. W. Musgrave oriented structural-functional course! Just at the very time, you were on the move—and how.8 Which leads me to my question to you. Do you recall the date of this ‘chat’? Or were there several? Of course, if you wanted to say more that would be



Why Sociology of Knowledge? 15

marvellous—whatever you had the time, energy, and interest for! It seems to me I was one of that chat’s early progeny. Michael F. D. Young: On your specific question—the article quotes me there, unlike, annoyingly elsewhere, almost verbatim.

1.  I don’t know how or by whom the meeting in the Russell Hotel was organised. Somehow, I was told it was going on and Basil wanted me there. 2.  The [BSA 1970] conference, like most, had no sense of direction. but Bernstein recognised that it had three papers, Bourdieu’s,9 mine10 and his own which took a ‘new direction’ which was lost in the conference as a whole—a ‘loss’ reproduced in the book of the conference edited by Richard Brown: a nice man but not a sociologist of education. 3.  At the hotel it was Bernstein’s initiative that led to the idea of a book about what the Sociology of Education should really be about. 4.  For some reason which I never understood, Bernstein decided that I should edit the book not him—I was in only my 3rd year as a lecturer and had never taught Sociology of Education, only general Sociology. 5.  Anyway, Knowledge and Control was the book. BB did not like it and the rest is history! 6.  It is in fact a highly eclectic collection—the only common theme was a focus on knowledge. 7.  It got no initial publicity, was hardly reviewed until it was adopted by the Open University as a set book—and lots of teachers on B.Eds had to read it. The rest was, indeed, ‘history’. Within two years—1973, Knowledge and Control was appearing in a list of the ‘Most influential British monographs’11 that teachers of sociology saw as the most influential for their own work. As its influence spread, in particular within the Sociology of Education, the ‘old’ Sociology of Education rooted in sociological positivism and structural functionalism was jettisoned, to be replaced by a re-formulation of the subdiscipline in terms of a sociology of knowledge, which took its inspiration principally from humanist Marxisms and the ‘new’ interpretive sociologies of symbolic interactionism, phenomenological sociology, and ethnomethodology.12 In addition, especially recommended by Young were C. Wright Mills’s early papers on the sociology of knowledge.13 However, therein lay the rub. Bernstein, who himself remained rooted in his highly original Durkheimian approach,14 was appalled by the speed with which the ‘new’ directions took off. From a different standpoint, the philosophers of education (most notably R. S. Peters and others in the Department of Philosophy of Education at the Institute of Education and at the Department of

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Education at King’s College, among other places) were appalled by the lack of training and sophistication in the history of epistemology and philosophy of mind that they saw evidenced by Michael F. D. Young and his supporters.15 As a student—first at King’s, then at the Institute of Education—in both the Philosophy and Sociology of Education, I was left with the task of making sense of the seemingly diametrically opposed positions on ‘mind’ and ‘knowledge’ of the two sub-disciplines within the field of education.16 At the time, R. S. Peters was spearheading—especially with his colleague Paul H. Hirst at King’s—the establishment of a philosophy of education as a new sub-discipline of philosophy that would rank in seriousness and status with subjects such as the philosophy of law or of religion.17 Peters’s extensive use of conceptual/linguistic analysis, his view of education as ‘initiation into worthwhile activities’,18 and his co-authored work with Paul Hirst19 who wrote the influential paper ‘Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge’,20 seemed to me to presuppose a fundamentally static view of knowledge rooted in Kant, with a social theory of mind rooted in the late Wittgenstein.21 Whereas, for all its waywardness, confusions, and inconsistencies, the ‘new’ Sociology of Education was rooted in a processual view of knowledge rooted in a humanist Marxism but with a theory of mind that was never explicated with consistency and coherence. I came to the view that the ‘new’ Sociology of Education’s tendency to conflate the various interpretive sociologies they drew on, obscured, and left unpacked the very different positions on ‘mind’ and ‘knowledge’ held by the various phenomenologies, symbolic interactionisms, and ethnomethodological approaches. I felt the need to do serious work unpacking and trying to make coherent these differences. My attempts to do this soon led me to the significance and importance of the American pragmatist philosopher and social psychologist, George Herbert Mead. But first, a word more on the ‘politics’ of all this. Robert’s concern, as we have seen, is ‘to make possible forms of political resistance to what is intolerable in our daily lives.’ Broadly there are two main traditions in the approaches to the theories and practices of those concerned with the study of everyday life. There are those that focus primarily on the knowledge interest of inter-subjective understanding and those that focus on the emancipatory knowledge interest—whether that emancipation relates to class, gender, race, or whatever, and in whatever combination.22 Clearly Robert’s approach, as in the case of the most obviously Marxist-inspired approaches of Lefebvre, de Certeau and of the CCCS, is rooted in the emancipatory and, in that sense, is most overtly ‘political’ in intent. For Stuart Hall, ‘culture’ is ‘experience lived, experience interpreted, experience defined’.23 It is rooted in the everyday, and his emancipatory study of this everyday leads him and his school to draw on an array of humanist Marx-



Why Sociology of Knowledge? 17

ist thinkers, most notably Gramsci, in order to make sense of it and transcend it.24 Significantly when the ‘new’ Sociology of Education took root—focused now on ‘knowledge’—the contributions of the Birmingham CCCS and its forbears were drawn upon for support. For the ‘new’ Sociology of Education, Berger and Luckmann’s Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge was particularly influential with its emphasis on the social construction of knowledge and reality.25 What counted as ‘knowledge’ taught in schools could be rendered problematic—it was just one construction of reality—and could be replaced by an alternative curriculum rooted in emancipation from the structured inequalities of the, then, present-day capitalism. Such was the optimism of large sections of the political left in those days, that those on the left with an academic interest in education turned en masse and voraciously to the steady stream of articles and books emanating from Michael F. D. Young and his colleagues and supporters,26 as they sought to incorporate the growing corpus into their theories and practices and in their critique of the existing status quo. NOTES 1.  P. W. Musgrave, The Sociology of Education (London: Routledge, 1966). 2.  Olive Banks, The Sociology of Education (London: Batsford, 1968). 3. Basil Bernstein, “On the Classification and Framing of Educational Knowledge,” paper presented at the 2nd Annual British Sociological Association Conference, London, 1970. 4.  Richard Brown, ed. Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change: Papers in the Sociology of Education (London: Routledge, 1973). 5.  Abstract to “Introduction,” by Richard Brown, ed, Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change. 6.  On the importance of spaces and places, I might say that the Hotel Russell, 1-8 Russell Square, gave its name to the UK Russell Group of Universities. The idea for this university group was first hatched up there. It is a stone’s throw from 57–59 Gordon Square, the location of the London University Institute of Education, Department of the Sociology of Education (and Basil Bernstein’s Sociological Research Unit) at the time. From its opening in 1900 to 2018 it was known as the Hotel Russell. It was renamed the Kimpton Fitzroy on 24 October 2018. 7. Peter Wilby, “The Counterculture Class Warrior Who Turned to Gove,” The Guardian, 9 October 2018, accessed October 10, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/ education/2018/oct/09/counterculture-class-warrior-turned-to-gove. 8.  I had also attended Dick Atkinson’s course in Sociology held at the so-called ‘Free University of Birmingham’ in the Autumn of 1970. Atkinson’s expected post as a Lecturer in Sociology at Birmingham was blocked in Senate because of his previous on campus radical political activity. Atkinson put on his course anyway. Such

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luminaries as the feminist activist Selma James were visitors. Atkinson never did get a permanent university post and devoted his life to community politics in Birmingham. Kieran Connell and Dick Atkinson, “Transcript: Dick Atkinson,” 27 March 2015, accessed January 30, 2023, https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-artslaw/ history/cccs/Interview-Transcripts/Dick-Atkinson.pdf‘. See, also, John Scott, “Departments of Sociology – Birmingham 2022,” accessed March 10, 2022, https:// www.johnscottcbe.com/areas-of-research/history-of-sociology/sociology-in-britain/ departments-in-britain/departmental-listing/. Dick Atkinson, Orthodox Consensus and Radical Alternative: A Study in Sociological Theory (London: Heinemann, 1971).   9.  Pierre Bourdieu, “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction,” paper presented at the 2nd Annual British Sociological Association Conference, London, 1970. 10.  Michael F.D. Young, “Curricular and the Social Organisation of Knowledge,” paper presented at the 2nd Annual British Sociological Association Conference, London, 1970. 11. Michael F.D. Young, ed. Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1971). John Scott, British Sociology: A History (Macmillan: Palgrave, 2020), 46, citing “Source: Heath and Edmondson, 1981,” Anthony Heath and Ricca Edmondson, “Oxbridge Sociology: The Development of Centres of Excellence,” in P. Abrams, R. Deem, J. Finch, and P. Rock, eds. Practice and Progress: British Sociology, 1950–1980 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981). 12.  David Gorbutt, “The New Sociology of Education,” Education for Teaching, no. 89 (1972): 3–11. 13.  C. Wright Mills, “Language, Logic and Culture,” American Sociological Review 4, no. 5 (1939): 670–80; C. Wright Mills, “Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive,” American Sociological Review 5, no. 6 (1940): 904–13; C. Wright Mills “Methodological Consequences of the Sociology of Knowledge,” American Journal of Sociology 46, no. 3 (1940): 316–30. 14. Young now regards Bernstein as the only genius he ever met. See, Michael F.D. Young, “Engaging with Basil Bernstein—The Person and his Ideas or A Journey with a Genius—From favoured student to embattled colleague and how I finally discovered his genius in the texts he left us with after his death,” unpublished draft for Bernstein Symposium in France, received from Michael F. D. Young, February 9, 2022. 15.  I recall a particularly frosty event at which philosopher Anthony Flew from Keele University spoke out on such matters in Senate House in the mid-1970s. He wrote about them in his Sociology, Equality and Education (London: Macmillan, 1976). 16. I was registered at King’s College, London University, between 1971 and 1973, and at the University of London, Institute of Education between 1973 and 1978. The 1971–1973 course combined staff from the two institutions. All the lectures were held in Senate House, University of London. 17.  R.S. Peters, ed. The Philosophy of Education—Oxford Readings in Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973). 18.  R. S. Peters, Ethics of Education (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970).



Why Sociology of Knowledge? 19

19.  Paul H. Hirst and R. S. Peters, The Logic of Education (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970). 20. Paul H. Hirst, “Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge”, in R. S. Peters, ed. The Philosophy of Education, 87–111. 21.  John White, “Biography of R. S. Peters published in the 2015 edition of Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,” accessed January 30, 2023, https://www. academia.edu/21137290/R_S_Peters_2015_. See, also: John White, “Paul Hirst (1927–2020)”, February 2021, accessed January 30, 2023, https://www.researchgate. net/publication/348961750_Paul_Hirst_1927-2020. 22.  My own thinking along these lines in the 1970s was principally influenced by Gerard Radnitsky, Contemporary Schools of Metascience (Akademiförlaget-Göteberg: Scandinavian University Books, 2nd ed., 1970). In more recent years and with my more overt emphasis on the politics of everyday life and ‘practices of resistance’ (Iain Mackenzie, private communication, October 2022), I find Luc Boltanski’s work of especial potential relevance. See, e.g., Luc Boltanski, On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011). 23.  Stuart Hall, “Lecture 2—Culturalism,” in Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 33. 24.  Stuart Hall, “Lecture 1—The Formation of Cultural Studies,” and “Lecture 7—Domination and Hegemony,” in Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History, 5–24; 155–79. 25.  Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Harmondsworth: Penguin University Books, 1971). 26.  Michael F. D. Young, “Educational Theorizing: A Radical Alternative,” Education for Teaching, no. 91 (1973): 7–11; Michael F. D. Young, “Taking Sides Against the Probable,” Educational Review, 25 (1973): 210–22; J. Beck, C. Jenks, N. Keddie, and M. F. D. Young, eds. Worlds Apart: Readings for a Sociology of Education (London: Collier Macmillan, 1976); Michael F. D. Young and Geoff Whitty, eds. Society, State and Schooling: Readings on the Possibility for Radical Education (Ringmer: The Falmer Press, 1977).

Chapter Four

Why George Herbert Mead?

While at King’s College and the Institute of Education, I was introduced to George Herbert Mead, principally in his role as founding father of the social psychological and sociological school of symbolic interactionism, for the most part associated with Herbert Blumer.1 The story was that Mead had been teaching his course in social psychology—later advanced social psychology— at the University of Chicago in the Department of Philosophy since 1900.2 Increasingly through the 1910s, until Mead’s death in 1931, students of sociology had been attending this course for its importance to them in providing an ineluctably social theory of mind as a foundation stone for theorising the link between the individual and society.3 Herbert Blumer was one of these students, joining the department in 1925, earning his doctorate in 1928,4 and on Mead’s death taking over the teaching of Mead’s social psychology course, from within the sociology department. This intrigued me because in trying to make sense of the ‘new’ Sociology of Education’s tendency to conflate the contributions of phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, and ethnomethodology with their very different approaches to the relations between mind, self, and society, it seemed to me that Mead provided the most promising source to provide the ‘new’ Sociology of Education with the social theory of mind it needed. But far more than that, as I read all of Mead’s writings from beginning to end, I was struck by how his social theory of the emergence and development of mind was rooted in a corresponding highly sophisticated—and mostly ignored—pragmatist social ontology and social epistemology. Indeed, it seemed to me that Mead understood as a philosopher of process (a concretised Hegelian)—with an epistemology rooted in his theory of the objective reality of perspectives, with its concomitant theory of truth and theory of the present, past, and future, embedded in the specious present5—provided just the sort of coherent ontological and epistemological foundations that the ‘new’ 21

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Sociology of Education lacked. Equipped with such foundations the ‘new’ Sociology of Education would be able to deal with those who critiqued it for its supposed ignorance of hundreds of years of debate on these matters—most specifically for its alleged incoherent relativism.6 For several years my sensitising research problem was ‘On the Significance of G. H. Mead for Socio-Philosophic Relations in Education’. Quite soon my progress on this project was such that I was able to move from my self-financed master’s degree on the Sociology of Education to a funded SSRC Ph.D. in the field of Epistemology/Sociology of Knowledge with its final title being ‘G. H. Mead: Contributions to a Philosophy of Sociological Knowledge’. Most important of all was the SSRC (Social Science Research Council) Travel Award I was granted to spend most of the summer semester of 1976 studying with David L. Miller in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. At the time, David Miller was the foremost living disciple of G. H. Mead. Miller had been a student of Mead’s at the University of Chicago in the 1920s and ’30s. On Mead’s death he had been in one of the core groups of Mead’s students that prepared Mead’s unpublished writings and lecture notes for publication. In particular, Miller worked on what was published as G. H. Mead’s 780-page The Philosophy of the Act in 1938.7 At the same time, Miller maintained a collection of Mead’s unpublished papers, little known about until he published his George Herbert Mead: Self, Language and the World in 1973.8 I was keen to work through these before continuing my researches on Mead’s other unpublished papers housed in the George Herbert Mead Archive at the University of Chicago. In the event, my visit to David Miller turned into a Ph.D. student’s dream. Miller had recently retired from a full-time position and spent the mornings in his office. As he made available to me all his Mead material, I got into the habit of working on the material on my own from afternoon to late at night, while we spent most of every morning discussing Mead and his writings with each other. As I have indicated, above, I had been introduced to C. Wright Mills’s important early articles on the sociology of knowledge by Michael F. D. Young at the Institute.9 I soon learned from Miller that he had supervised Mills for the master of arts programme, which led to these articles.10 In conversation, Miller referred to Mills ‘as a bright boy but always in a hurry’. Most importantly for me, Miller was working on a book on Mead’s sociology of knowledge at the very time I was studying with Miller.11 Our pairing could not have worked better for me. Miller, with endless patience, answered my detailed queries about the complexities of Mead’s position on the interrelations between his social psychology and his philosophy of social process. We discussed how these complexities related to my training up to that point in the philosophy and sociology of education and in the sociology of knowledge, and to the



Why George Herbert Mead? 23

directions my thesis was taking. In turn, I was able to sensitize him to the debates going on in sociology at the time, especially in the UK, relating to problems in the sociology of knowledge and of what we called ideological critique in those days—the critique of Mead’s position as being a species of bourgeois ideology from a Marxist perspective—an interpretive/hermeneutic position as opposed to an emancipatory one.12 Following the refining of my thought with Miller, I was as well placed as I ever would be to write up my thesis when I left him. On my return to London, and over the next couple of years or so, I duly wrote my Ph.D., intended to provide a radical sociology of knowledge inspired sociology of education with an adequate foundation in the writings of G. H. Mead. Basil Bernstein commented on the penultimate draft of my thesis with the single comment, ‘Ekins has taken a sledgehammer to crack a nut’. Hans Joas, later to bring to Habermas the further importance of Mead for Habermas’s critical theory,13 commented that my reconstruction of Mead was similar in its essentials to his.14 To end this chapter on Why George Herbert Mead? I quote the Abstract of my Ph.D., “G. H. Mead: Contributions to a Philosophy of Sociological Knowledge”. The significance of the work of G. H. Mead for contemporary problems concerning the philosophical foundations of the social sciences has been almost entirely overlooked. This is largely because his widely recognized contributions to social psychology have been severed from their context within a sophisticated philosophy of dialectical process. Once Mead’s commitment to dialectical process is understood and made explicit, however, the underlying unity of Mead’s corpus becomes apparent, and there emerges the possibility of a philosophically acceptable basis both for a ‘critical’ sociology of knowledge and a ‘critical’ theory of society. Chapter 1 indicates the major misunderstandings of the Meadian position which have resulted in the failure to perceive the importance of Mead’s work for current socio-philosophic thought. Chapter 2 effects a chronologically oriented reconstruction of Mead’s corpus, with emphasis on central ideas developed during Mead’s neglected formative years. His mature position is shown to be a consistent development of his early synthesis of Hegelian and Darwinian perspectives. The chapter concludes with a discussion of problems of truth, and the objectivity of perspectives. Chapter 3 confronts Mead’s position with criticisms of the ‘sociology of knowledge’ as addressed to contemporary sociology of education, and it is argued that the philosophical foundations for a coherent sociology of knowledge are to be found incipient within the Meadian corpus. We criticize the ‘new’ sociology of education’s failure to differentiate phenomenological sociology, ethnomethodology, and symbolic interactionism, and demonstrate how phenomenological sociology and ethnomethodology are inadequate as foundational sources, while these inadequacies are not shared

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by (Meadian inspired) symbolic interactionism. Chapter 4 rebuts the view that Mead’s position is vitiated by its ideological presuppositions. The fruits of Mead’s preoccupations with the philosophical bases of a commitment to process are seen to provide a fertile source for ‘critical’ theorists seeking firmer ontological, epistemological, and philosophico-psycholological foundations.

NOTES 1.  Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. 2.  For the facts and figures on the years the social psychology courses ran, and the number of students registered, see Daniel R. Huebner, Becoming Mead: The Social Process of Academic Knowledge (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014), 89–90. 3.  Huebner’s research has shown how Mead’s preference was for ‘small advanced classes, both in seminar and lecture format.’ After 1917, Mead’s course was reconfigured as ‘Advanced Social Psychology’. 4.  Herbert Blumer, “Method in Social Psychology,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, 1928; Troy Duster, “Herbert Blumer (1900–1987)— Obituary,” Footnotes, August 1987, accessed January 31, 2023, https://www.asanet. org/about/governance-and-leadership/council/presidents/herbert-blumer. 5.  David L. Miller, “William James and the Specious Present,” in Walter Robert Corti, ed. The Philosophy of William James (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1976), 51–80. 6.  Later, I argue that much of the contemporary grounded theory writing that has sought to develop grounded theory while building on Glaser and Strauss, especially Strauss, most notably Kathy Charmaz and Adele C. Clarke, similarly has not grasped the complexities of Mead’s epistemology. My position is that Strauss did grasp this complexity. In brief, Mead dismissed what he called much of ‘the philosophic riffraff’ of the prior history of epistemology insofar as it sought, in all manner of ways, to cross a bridge of its own making between the knower and the known. Mead starts with the ongoing organism-environment transaction and argues that problems of knowledge only arise when the transaction is blocked. Whether in everyday life or in scientific enquiry, the ‘hypothesis’ that unblocks the act (the social construction of reality that works) is ‘true’. There may, of course, be alternative reconstructions of ‘reality’ that ‘work’. In one phase of this process, the hypothesis is ‘coherent’, in another phase it ‘corresponds’ to ‘reality’ as reconstructed. Moreover, the act is a social act incorporated within what Mead calls ‘the objective reality of perspectives.’ As Mead puts it: ‘Knowledge, I conceive, is the discovery through the implication of things and events of some thing or things which enable us to carry on when a problem has held us up. It is the fact that we can carry on that guarantees our knowledge.’ ‘The particular perspective is there, thanks to the particular problem of reconstruction that is going on.’ The grounded theory references are taken up below. For the Mead quotes on ‘knowledge’, see, George Herbert Mead, The Philosophy of the Act, 94–95 and 99.



Why George Herbert Mead? 25

  7.  George Herbert Mead, The Philosophy of the Act. Later, in 1983, Miller published selections of his collection of unpublished Mead material as, David L. Miller, ed., The Individual and the Social Self: Unpublished Work of George Herbert Mead (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983).   8.  David L. Miller, George Herbert Mead: Self, Language, and the World (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973). See ‘Unpublished Works’, 252–53. I wrote in 1978: ‘The unpublished items by Mead were sent to Miller by Dr Irene Tufts Mead. She told me (July 1976) that these items were originally overlooked by her when she sent to Charles Morris many of the materials which were to comprise PA [The Philosophy of the Act]. They were subsequently discovered by Dr Irene Tufts Mead in a trunk.’ Richard Ekins, “G. H. Mead: Contributions to a Philosophy of Sociological Knowledge,” unpublished PhD, University of London, 1978, 412.   9.  Chapter 3, note 13. 10.  C. Wright Mills, “Reflection, Behavior, and Culture: An Essay in the Sociology of Knowledge,” unpublished M.A. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1939. 11.  David L. Miller, “G. H. Mead and the Sociology of Knowledge,” (unpublished work in progress, 1976). I made a hand-written copy of this in the summer of 1976. I have no knowledge of it ever being completed, far less published. Miller died in 1986. Interestingly, his last published article was David L. Miller, “Hegel’s Influence on George Herbert Mead,” South Western Philosophical Review 4, no. 2 (1988): 1–6. His UPI obituary describes him as ‘a noted scholar on the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of science . . . an authority on American philosophy and the late George Herbert Mead’, accessed June 10, 2022, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/01/10/ David-L-Miller-professor-emeritus-of-philosophy-at-the/5931505717200/. 12. Richard Ropers, “Mead, Marx, and Social Psychology,” Catalyst 7 (1973): 42–61. 13.  L. Corchia, “The Uses of Mead in Habermas’ Social Theory. Before the Theory of Communication Action,” Italian Sociological Review 9, no. 2 (2019): 209–34 at 229. 14.  Private communication, Hans Joas to Richard Ekins, 1979. In particular, Joas objected strongly to the effacement of the differences between Mead and phenomenological and ethnomethodological approaches in the ‘pseudo-unitary “interpretive approach”, such has become common in sociology in recent years.’ More particularly, Joas wanted to develop and defend ‘the link implicit [in Mead] between a theory of praxis and a theory of intersubjectivity.’ Hans Joas, G. H. Mead: A Contemporary ReExamination of His Thought (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1980), 7, n. 18, 216, and cover blurb. Joas and I both presented papers at the Colloquium “George Herbert Mead and the Problem of Time in Social Knowledge,” University of Konstanz, 1979, attended, among others, by Thomas Luckmann and Anselm Strauss.

Chapter Five

Why Symbolic Interactionism?

My serious move to symbolic interactionism did not occur until I had obtained my first full-time lecturing post in sociology at the then Ulster Polytechnic in 1980. I used the time from the submission of my thesis at the end of 1978 to the beginning of my new post at Ulster Polytechnic to develop what I called a ‘synthetic research act’. The synthetic research act provided my fundamental orientation on my teaching of ‘Research Problems’ and ‘Research Methodology’ on the M.Sc. in Sociology at the then Polytechnic of the South Bank, London. From my Meadian perspective, a place could be found for positivistic approaches to research, provided they were seen as part of a synthetic research act resting on an intersubjective/interpretive/hermeneutic foundation as set within the privileging of a critical/emancipatory knowledge interest, in accordance with my reading of Mead as ultimately privileging this latter knowledge interest—what Joas refers to as ‘practical intersubjectivity’.1 I had rather assumed I might continue my interests in theorising about theory and methodology in my new teaching at Ulster, but, in the event, I was asked to take the major responsibility in the department for the teaching of the Sociology of Deviance. The thinking was that as I was something of an expert on Mead, and that Mead was associated with symbolic interactionism, and the influence of symbolic interactionism loomed large in the sociology of deviance at the time,2 then I would be a suitable person to teach the subject. I had also, many years before, studied Criminology at undergraduate level as part of my LLB degree at Birmingham University in 1966. However, in retrospect, what most set the direction for the unfolding of my subsequent research career was that I had befriended a number of selfidentified transsexuals in London before my departure to Ulster, and in the application for Ulster under the heading Directions for Future Research I had written, ‘Transsexualism, Foundations for a Critical Theory of Society’. I 27

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did, indeed, have vague ideas after completing my doctorate that the time had now come for me to train myself as an empirical sociologist, and the study of transsexualism seemed to me to provide an excellent substantive area with which to engage.3 While I would come to focus on transsexualism from the standpoint of the sociology of knowledge, perhaps inevitably, rather than the sociology of deviance, it is easy to see how my line manager (as they didn’t call them then) might see my proposed research focus as being a part of the sociology of deviance. And now my task became to read seriously Herbert Blumer’s book Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method and his related articles, as well as the major methods book at the time that related to sociological qualitative research—that is research most notably researching the ‘definition of the situation’4 of informants. I will, of course, be returning to the importance of this concept and, moreover, return to how I trained myself as a qualitative researcher who came to adopt grounded theory as my chosen research strategy. However, to conclude this response to your first set of questions, Robert, I will return to the topic that you began with, and that I attempted to deal with first, namely, the politics of everyday life. At the time I began teaching at Ulster, there had built up a recognisable ‘Sociology of Everyday Life’ as a focus for student texts. Indeed, I still have on my shelves Andrew J. Weigart’s 1981 book of that identical name Sociology of Everyday Life.5 I saw in it then, as I see in it now, a lack of clarity as to whether this sort of sociology was primarily interpretivist/hermeneutic or critical/emancipatory. It could, of course be either, and the interrelations between the two knowledge interests could be various. However, for me as a Meadian, the key point was that I was in the business of researching definitions of the situation with regard to their origins, developments, and consequences, and that invariably this entailed researching competing definitions of the situation. The plotting of which definitions ‘won’, which ‘lost’, how each fared, and so on, was ineluctably to be engaged in researching the ‘politics’ of these matters. I came to see all such ‘politics’ as rooted in the everyday, as always, in the last analysis, emerging from the everyday, and then, in due time, returning to the everyday. Not surprising, perhaps, one of the core texts I used in my Sociology of Deviance classes was Edwin Schur’s The Politics of Deviance: Stigma Contests and the Use of Power.6 This text traced the ‘contests’ in such areas as mental illness—‘Politicality Revealed—Psychiatry and Mental Illness’; abortion—‘Politics Intensified: The Abortion Conflict’; rape—‘Rape—Redefining the Situation’; and gay activism—‘Generating and Substituting Protest—Gay Activism.’ Throughout, deviance-defining is seen as an exercise of politics—of social power—sometimes involving the State, sometimes not. The book is rooted in a social interactionism conceived



Why Symbolic Interactionism? 29

in terms of a critical sociology and criminology. Such a standpoint does, I think, provide a meeting ground between your ‘politics of the everyday’ and mine, even though, at this point, we may—and do—draw on very different individual thinkers and schools of thought. I think I have said enough for now, so I will close with drawing again on the sentence from Stuart Hall: ‘That is what culture is: experience lived, experience interpreted, experience defined.’7 It is inherently political. To study it is to root oneself in the politics of everyday life. Insofar as we are both doing cultural studies, we will hopefully have that as our central meeting point, whether what we are doing is deemed to count as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ sociology, or, indeed, ‘good’ or ‘bad’ cultural studies. NOTES 1.  Instructive, in this regard, is David R. Maines, “Review of G. H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of his Thought,” by Hans Joas. Translated by Raymond Meyer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985’, American Journal of Sociology 93, no. 1 (1987): 198–201. 2.  Notably, in the guise of so-called ‘labeling theory’ and ‘societal reaction’ theory, most especially, as in Howard Becker, Outsiders (New York: The Free Press, 1963), a book well-suited to my ‘outsider’ identity at the time. Becker had been a dance band musician and drew on his experiences, particularly in his studies of music and marijuana use. 3.  Seminal (germinal) in this regard was Harold Garfinkel, “Passing and the Managed Achievement of Sex Status in an Intersexed Person, Part 1,” in Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1967). ‘Agnes’, the so-called intersex person, was in fact ‘transsexual’—in the terminology of the time—but fooled her medical advisers and researchers into believing that she was ‘intersex’. One of the reasons why her femininity was deemed to be so convincing was that she had been taking her mother’s oestrogen tablets since puberty but had withheld this information from those ‘treating’ and researching her. 4.  See, in particular, Preamble, note 19. Essentially, this entire book you are now reading is a study of competing, variously contested, ‘definitions of the situation’. As an adolescent, I came to contest those ‘definitions of the situation’ of male, upper middleclass appropriateness as decreed, particularly, by my mother, father, and public school. As an academic and scholar, I came to subscribe to, and further explore the ramifications of the so-called Thomas Theorem: ‘if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences’. It became a core ‘theorem’ for much of what Herbert Blumer was to term ‘symbolic interactionism’ in 1937. See, R. S. Smith, “Giving Credit Where Credit is Due: Dorothy Swaine Thomas and the ‘Thomas Theorem’,” The American Sociologist 26, no. 4 (1995): 9–28; Robert K. Merton, “The Thomas Theorem and the Matthew Effect,” Social Forces 74, no. 2 (1995): 379–424; Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method, 1. There is a large literature on the alleged

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divergencies and convergencies of Blumer and Mead. See, for instance, Anthony Puddephatt, “The Search for Meaning: Revisiting Herbert Blumer’s Interpretation of G. H. Mead,” The American Sociologist, 40 (2009): 89–105. I situate my reading of Blumer’s perspective and method within my reading of Mead. 5.  Andrew J. Weigert, Sociology of Everyday Life, (New York: Longman, 1981). 6. Edwin M. Schur, The Politics of Deviance: Stigma Contests and the Use of Power (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980). 7.  Stuart Hall, “Lecture 2—Culturalism,” 33.

Riff II

Robert Porter

Well, quite! Maybe we should simply dispense with all talk of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, Richard! Indeed, this seems to be what you are gently cautioning me to do, and I thank you for that. You say that to study the social world involves rooting the self in everyday life. You’re right, of course, you are! But I do wonder about my own intellectual history, or previous work, in this regard. It has to do with this pointing thing that I brought up earlier. My own tendency, as a cultural and political theorist, has been to engage in an overly ostensive form of talk—talk that says nothing that the pointing hasn’t already communicatively accomplished. I think this has something to do with my disciplinary or intellectual training. I was trained in the kind of critical theory that demands verticality, climbing, the stamina to trek through the woods on the promise of getting to that elevated clearing that affords the unobstructed, panoramic view, so many opportunities to look and point at things from the height and the distance of the mountaintop. This is the kind of talk we get in what used to be called ‘continental philosophy’, and readers familiar with it will no doubt recognise certain thinkers (e.g., Heidegger, Nietzsche) in my remarks about clearings and mountains. I am not only bored with this kind of talk; I’m increasingly irritated by it. Of course, contemporary critical theorists don’t necessarily use words like ‘clearing’ and ‘mountains’, etc., but they do use surrogates, notions that reek less of overt romanticism and which sort of sound more scientific, or if not scientific, then more intellectually palatable, or if not more intellectually palatable, then more likely to impress a grant-awarding body or interview panel. They might talk about ‘discourse’, ‘agonism’, ‘language-games’, ‘antagonism’, ‘assemblages’, ‘the body’, ‘affect’, ‘bio-politics’, ‘the brain’, ‘machines’—but have they really left the forest? In many cases, no! I guess my point here is that this kind of scientific sounding talk (of ‘machines’, ‘assemblages’, and so 31

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on) can all too easily fall into what Adorno famously, and rather caustically, called a ‘jargon of authenticity’. In the opening paragraphs of The Jargon of Authenticity, Adorno, with typical levity and sardonic wit, paints a picture of a rather smug and self-satisfied gathering of early twentieth-century sociologists, philosophers, and theologians, a closed circle of ‘The Authentic Ones’ as he calls them. He quips about a friend’s interactions with these ‘Authentic Ones’: ‘To his slight annoyance, a friend, who at the time was attracted to the circle, was not invited. He was—they intimated—not authentic enough’.1 It is impossible for me to read these early passages from The Jargon of Authenticity and not think of your work. What we see in Adorno’s best moments—in those moments where he is most micro-sociologically reflexive—is something that bears a strong family resemblance to your idea of ‘authenticity as authenticating’, where this is immediately seen as a social and political process crucial to the understanding of the origins, development, and consequences of competing knowledge claims in diverse areas of human experience and activity over time and place. Of course, there is a more macro-philosophical or grandly ‘critical’ gesture that Adorno is keen to make. We would all recognise this in the broad historical sweep of a claim he makes about the ‘jargon of authenticity’ as an epiphenomenal representation, or ideological veneer, of twentieth century ‘consumer capitalism’. No doubt, we could recognise the usefulness of this Adorno-inspired critical gesture in making sense of the jargon gestured at above—i.e., contemporary talk about ‘discourse’, ‘agonism’, ‘language-games’, ‘antagonism’, ‘assemblages’, ‘the body’, ‘affect’, ‘bio-politics’, ‘the brain’, ‘machines’—as seen in so many pseudo-individuated developments in the contemporary academic marketplace that is ‘critical theory’. Although, it is perhaps worth emphasising how the influence of Adorno’s notion of the ‘jargon of authenticity’ is hardly limited to a leftist critique of the culture industry of academic production. A very good example of this broader influence is to be found, rather ironically, it has to be said, in the work of someone like Charles Taylor. I say ironically, obviously, because of how uncomfortably the important influence of Heidegger, Gadamer, and the tradition of German hermeneutics on Taylor’s work sits alongside Adorno’s disdain for the very same. Nevertheless, in his The Ethics of Authenticity, Taylor makes very Adorno-sounding noises about a kind of cult of ‘authenticity’, an overly atomistic or hyper-individualised drive to self-fulfilment, being at the heart of a contemporary social malaise sliding toward self-regarding subjectivism and away from the traditionally common ties or goods that bind us together as a political community.2 I mention both Adorno and Taylor here, on the same page as it were, simply to gesture toward what I think is a general distrust apropos the notion of ‘authenticity’ in contemporary critical theory. To my mind, there has been far too much



Robert Porter 33

philosophical hand wringing about the ‘problematic’ nature of ‘authenticity’ as an abstract concept. Pure tedium! Why? Well, it is the child-like pointing thing again. Put crudely, but not too crudely if you read as much critical theory as I do, critical theorists tend to merely point at the notion of ‘authenticity’ from on high and from a supposedly safe distance and say ‘bad’! I’ve rambled on enough. I have a few related thoughts and questions. Can you say something more about your crucial notion of ‘authenticity as authenticating’? Have I characterised it appropriately by referring to it as a social and political process crucial to the understanding of the origins, development, and consequences of competing knowledge claims in diverse areas of human experience and activity over time and place? Further, and if I have understood you correctly in our ongoing conversations, we surely bypass the ‘good’ and ‘bad’, set it aside as it were, not by setting off on a philosophical quest to scale the mountain of meaning that is ‘authenticity’, but rather by sociologically focusing on how authenticity is made meaningful over times and places over variously contested trajectories short and long? Isn’t this the symbolic interactionist gesture that demands the ‘definition of the situation’ you talked about above? That is to say, a detailed study of competing definitions of the ‘authenticity’ situation with reference to their emergence, development, and consequences in social and political processes calls for the kind of micro-sociologically sensitivity and reflexivity that I (perhaps generously) attributed to Adorno? Of course, Adorno was no grounded theorist. But you are! Can you tell me more about what kind of grounded theorist you are, and how the method of grounded theory importantly connects to your key concept of ‘authenticity as authenticating’? Though, Richard, I am aware that this present study is unusual in that it is Grounded Theory historiography. Can you, perhaps, say how it relates to your previous work on Male Femaling and Transgendering? NOTES 1.  Theodor W. Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 3. 2.  Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).

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Authenticity as Authenticating

That was a joy to read, Robert. I can’t speak authoritatively about what you say on Adorno and Taylor. I can speak, however, with authority on what you say about my ‘authenticity as authenticating’, both as a social and political process and as an empirical research programme. I could not have put it more clearly myself. I ask readers to keep what you said in mind as they read the rest of this book. I will continue with an anecdote that came to my mind as soon as I read your comment about pointing at the notion of ‘authenticity’ from on high and saying, ‘Bad’! Some thirteen years ago, I had registered for a master’s degree in Popular Music Studies at the University of Liverpool, Department of Music. At the very first seminar we were invited to share our proposed research topics with staff and students. No sooner had I mentioned my topic of ‘authenticity’ than a young fellow student commented, with a facial expression and body gesture that indicated disbelief—almost disdain, because it was obvious that to him no one took ‘authenticity’ seriously nowadays, especially in music. Its only use, surely, was the commercial one of marketing a fabricated authenticity to sell an object, event, or experience as the ‘real thing’.1 Later, in that first seminar, I brought up the fact that for years I had run an independent record label, dedicated to ‘authentic’ New Orleans music, with no particular interest in making a profit. Several of the young students found it difficult to believe that anyone would do such a thing. Interestingly, when I revisited the topic of authenticity to write this book, you mentioned to me Adorno’s Jargon of Authenticity and Taylor’s The Ethics of Authenticity. I followed my reading of these two books with two important reviews of the various uses and abuses of the term ‘authenticity’. The first was an excellent review from the standpoint of a modern historian and a political theorist, entitled Authenticity: The Cultural History of a Political 35

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Concept. Interestingly, index references to Adorno and the Jargon of Authenticity were only topped by Rousseau and Emile in this ‘cultural history’ book.2 There was no mention of Charles Taylor. Whereas, in the second book, Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society, a primarily sociological edited collection of contemporary chapters, published on the basis that ‘Across sociology and cultural studies in particular, the concept of authenticity has begun to occupy a central role,’ Charles Taylor was the top cited author, with Adorno getting no mention at all.3 It was obvious, even from this limited reading, how authenticity may be variously recognised, discovered, attributed, and/or invested by self and others into self, others, objects, incidents, performances, and events. As might be expected, as I read more, I noted how the theoretical approach to such authenticities may be variously modernist, constructivist, and postmodernist,4 indeed post postmodernist.5 They be variously individual, personal, existential, or interactional,6 variously essentialist or processual.7 Moreover, they may be variously written from within philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, history, and politics or within various combinations of their interrelations as, for instance, in travel and tourism research.8 The substantive area I consider in this book—New Orleans jazz—is considered from the standpoint of ‘authenticity’ and grounded theory historiography. In grounded theory terms it is, therefore, intended primarily as a case study in substantive grounded theory.9 However, grounded theory, especially in recent years, has, itself, become a contested arena, not least because its two co-founders developed it in different directions, so it is a particularly important that I trace what led me to my present position in this book. Indeed, Barney Glaser took grounded theory back to its roots in what he regarded as the ‘authentic’ direction, choosing the name of ‘Classic Grounded Theory’ for his approach,10 leaving Strauss, to pursue his own directions variously with different collaborators and former students who built upon his approaches in the most notable cases giving their own approaches distinguishing names, as in the ‘Constructivist Grounded Theory’ of Kathy Charmaz and her followers and in the ‘Situational Analysis’ of Adele C. Clarke and her followers. My own approach is best illustrated with reference to my previous studies of male cross-dressing and sex-changing, variously, as times and naming changed, conceptualised as transvestism and transsexualism, gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, transgender, trans, and so on.11 In my previous answer, in our first interlocution, I got as far as my arrival as a lecturer in sociology at Ulster University in 1980, determined to train myself as an empirical sociologist. In retrospect, I had started on this project in early 1979 following the successful examination of my Ph.D. thesis and my attempts to secure a long-term partner following the break-up of my first



Authenticity as Authenticating 37

(and only) marriage. I responded to three advertisements in London’s Time Out magazine. All three advertisements were from people looking for a heterosexual partner, initially for evenings out; all three were worded in a way that caught my eye—people looking for sensitive, intelligent partners with an interest in the arts, music, and so on. The only person who answered my reply was a self-identified pre-operative male-to-female transsexual. We related well, mainly because we shared a similar sense of humour, a liking for country music, and because I was fascinated to be meeting in the flesh, so to speak, an actual living transsexual. It soon became clear to both of us that while we were happy to be partners in friendship and informal transsexual ‘research’ on my part, our relationship would only develop if it was more seriously research led: thus it was that Julia introduced me to her best friend, at the time, another pre-operative male-to-female transsexual who was not only a professional librarian, but also—by my immense good fortune—librarian, officer, and member of the main transsexual group at the time, so-called SHAFT: the Self Help Association for Transsexuals. Through her, I gained access to this important self-help group, its members, its publications, and its networks. While married, in London, my wife had a best friend, Carrie—a fellow philosophy student at King’s College—who had a particular liking for drag, which was popular in London pubs, at the time. Fairly frequently, the three of us would spend the evening together in such places. Occasionally, we would attend more highbrow drag performances, such as those given by the dancer and mime artist Lindsay Kemp, and all male ballet or theatre companies. It intrigued me no end that Carrie had a penchant for these things, wore heavy make-up, and presented herself in such a way that more than one of her philosophy lecturers referred to her as being in drag. Indeed, I was fascinated by the whole thing. In retrospect, it all resonated with my life-long feeling of being imprisoned by the narrow and rigid gender expectations of 1950s boyhood. Moreover, I had never been able to make sense of my early experiences at my low Church of England preparatory school, where we were shown before and after photographs of women missionaries. Before their religious conversion they looked like my mother, variously glamorous, with makeup, and so on. As missionaries, to me they looked dowdy and uninteresting. It was to be decades later that I learned about Jezebel, Israel’s ‘most accursed Queen’ and her ‘reputation as the most dangerous seductress in the Bible.’12 For then, it was enough for me to be taught that God, the religious life, and glamour could not be combined. Fairly soon, through my SHAFT contacts, I had become acquainted with members of the UK Beaumont Society, a semi-secret society supposedly restricted to male heterosexual transvestites.13 I was particularly intrigued when researching the society’s magazine, The Beaumont Bulletin, in the British

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Library Reading Room, that I had to work on them within eyeshot of security staff who had, seemingly, gone down to the bowels of the library with a bunch of keys to release them and make them available to me. I can still hear the sound of their keys jangling as they surfaced from the depths. In short, by the time I arrived in Ulster, the ground had been prepared for me to launch seriously into a research project on male cross-dressing and sexchanging, which is exactly what I did. But how was I to research it? Popular edited texts of those days on Symbolic Interactionism like Arnold Rose’s Human Behavior and Social Processes: An Interactionist Approach14 and Manis and Meltzer’s Symbolic Interaction: A Reader in Social Psychology15 gave few clues as to how to go about writing the sort of studies featured in these books. I had had no training in such things; neither were these things seriously featured in the sociology teaching at Ulster. Fortunately, I can trace the exact timing and texts of my self-taught initiation on how to do it and how I did it. I began my study of qualitative research methods with Robert Bogdan and Steven J. Taylor, Introduction to Qualitative Methods: A Phenomenological Approach to the Social Sciences,16 in January 1981. There it was set forth as clear as a bell: Symbolic interactionism stems from the works of John Dewey, Charles Horton Cooley, Robert Park, W.I. Thomas, and George Herbert Mead, among others.17 Although interactionists continue to differ among themselves as to the meaning and importance of various concepts relating to symbolic interactionism, Mead’s formulation in Mind, Self and Society represents the most comprehensive and least controversial presentation of the perspective to date.18

And soon we were on our way to Mead’s successor at Chicago— Herbert Blumer: ‘While Mead’s thoughts contain an insightful analysis of the general processes of social interaction, the task of relating his premises to concrete and everyday terms, has been left to his followers. For this reason, we will discuss the symbolic interactionist perspective, as outlined by Herbert Blumer.’19 Obligingly, Bogdan and Taylor even italicised what they regard as the crucial terms and phrases and indeed the bulk of what they presumably regarded as the crucial paragraph, in their section on ‘Symbolic Interactionism’: For these theorists, people are constantly in a process of interpretation and definition as they move from one situation to another. Whatever the case, the phrase shared perspective refers to a definition of a situation which a number of actors hold. From the symbolic interactionist perspective, all social organizations consist of actors who develop definitions of a situation, or perspectives, through the process of interpretation and who then act in terms of these definitions. While people may act within the framework of an organization, it is the interpretation



Authenticity as Authenticating 39

and not the organization which determines action. Social roles, norms, values, and goals may set conditions and consequences for action, but do not determine what a person will do.20

At the time I was reading this book, I was a friend and departmental colleague of Lindsay Prior, who later became a highly regarded sociologist in the sociology of dying and death and, eventually, in the sociology of health.21 He, too, in a rather different way, was training himself to become an empirical sociologist. I told him of my high regard for the Bogdan and Taylor book, and he replied with typical Lindsay humour, ‘Yes, I can understand why you would like it, Richard. It tells you when to pick your nose’. Certainly, you can’t get much clearer than this in the chapter on ‘Participant Observation—Working with Data’: Following the symbolic interactionist perspective, one would be concerned with how subjects define the situations in which they find themselves. More specifically, one would ask the following questions: ‘How do various subjects define their settings, the various aspects of these settings, and themselves?’ This question would be directed toward individual definitions or perspectives and group definitions or shared perspectives and could lead to a typology of subjects based on how they view their world. ‘What is the process by which definitions develop and change?’ One would explore actors’ backgrounds and positions, objects (including other people) present in a setting, and communications between actors. ‘What is the relationship between the various definitions held by different subjects?’ This question would allow one to examine the basis of consensus or conflict in a setting. ‘What is the relationship between actors’ perspectives and their behavior?’22

Sociologist that I was and sensitized to the often-made criticisms of symbolic interactionism being ‘merely’ a social psychology or microsociology, I wrote in pencil under these four questions ‘plus? structural features!!’ Eventually, after a close reading of Herbert Blumer and Anselm Strauss,23 with a nod at Simmel on social circles,24 I drew various sets of variously simple or more complicated concentric circles. I termed these ‘layers of the act’. The simplest was ‘social situation’, surrounded by ‘social act’, surrounded by ‘social world’. A more complicated one was ‘untoward act’, surrounded by ‘definition/redefinition of the situation’, surrounded by joint acts/social circles/social networks, surrounded by social organisations, surrounded by social structures, surrounded by social systems.25 Most evident to me, as my research progressed, was the need to systematically research the interrelations between sex (the body), sexuality (erotic object choice), and gender (the social accompaniments of the arrangement

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between the sexes) as variously experienced, interpreted, and defined, in terms of the interrelations between the three ‘knowledges’ relating to male cross-dressing and sex-changing: ‘lay/everyday/common sense’ knowledge; ‘member’ knowledge—the knowledge of cross-dressers and sex changers themselves; and ‘scientific’ knowledge—the knowledge of the various ‘experts’ whether primarily academic (law, psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and sociology, for example) or primarily practitioner (surgeon, hair dresser, beautician, and so on). NOTES 1.  As in: ‘All this changed between 1923 when our story begins and its finale in 1953. Authenticity and originality had been fully fabricated by 1953; the audience had been identified, and the country music industry fully institutionalised.’ Richard A. Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 2. 2.  Maiken Umback and Mathew Humphrey, Authenticity: The Cultural History of a Political Concept (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 139–41, 143. 3.  Phillip Vannini and J. Patrick Williams, eds. Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), 276. The quotation is from the back cover blurb. 4.  Svetlana, Stepchenkova and Veronika Belvyaeva, “The Effect of Authenticity Orientation on Existential Authenticity and Postvisitation Intended Behavior,” Journal of Travel Research 60, no. 2 (2021): 401–16; Michael Guy Thompson, “Nietzsche and Psychoanalysis: The Fate of Authenticity in a Postmodernist World,” Existential Analysis 15, no. 2 (2004): 203–18; Brendan Canavan, “Post-Postmodern Consumer Authenticity, Shantay You Stay or Sashay Away? A Nosography of RuPaul’s Drag Race Fans,” Marketing Theory 21, no. 2 (2021): 251–76. 5. Brendan, Canavan, “Post-Postmodern Consumer Authenticity, Shantay You Stay or Sashay Away? A Nosography of RuPaul’s Drag Race Fans,” Marketing Theory 21, no. 2 (2021): 251–76. 6. C. Weninger and J. P. Williams, “The Interactional Construction of Social Authenticity “Real” Identities and Intergroup relations in a Transylvania Internet Forum,” Symbolic Interaction 40, no. 2 (2017): 169–89. J. Patrick Williams and Yi Xiang Goh, “Notes on the Existential and Interactional Dimensions of Authenticity: A Symbolic Interactionist Study of Breast Cancer Internet Forums,” M/C Journal 18, no. 1 (2015), accessed January 31, 2023. https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.951. 7. Siân Jones, “Negotiating Authentic Objects and Authentic Selves: Beyond the Deconstruction of Authenticity,” Journal of Material Culture 15, no. 2 (2010): 181–203. 8. Jillian M. Rickly, “A Review of Authenticity Research in Tourism: Launching the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on Authenticity,” Annals of Tourism Research 92, Article 103349 (2022), accessed January 31, 2022. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.annals.2021.103349.



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  9.  Note, however, that ‘Since substantive theory is grounded in research on one particular substantive area (work, juvenile delinquency, medical education, mental health) it might be taken to apply only to that area. A theory at such a conceptual level, however, may have important general implications and relevance, and become almost automatically a springboard or steppingstone to the development of a grounded formal theory.’ Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss, “From Substantive to Formal Theory,” in The Discovery of Grounded Theory, 79–99. 10. Barney G. Glaser, Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis (Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press, 1992); Barney G. Glaser, Choosing Classic Grounded Theory: A Grounded Theory Reader of Expert Advice (Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press, 2014). 11. As Strauss puts it: ‘The naming and identifying of things, is, then, a continual problem never really over and done with.’ However, whereas the various namings change, ‘core variables, particularly basic social processes, have lasting qualities. . . They are abstract of time and place.’ Barney Glaser, ed. Examples of Grounded Theory: A Reader (Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press, 1993) 1. 12. Janet Howe Gaines, “How Bad was Jezebel?” accessed January 31, 2023. https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/people-in-the -bible/how-bad-was-jezebel/. 13.  This was the UK offshoot of Virginia Prince’s Foundational for Full Personality Expression, founded in the United States in 1962, in 1975 named the Society for the Second Self. It championed the view that transvestism was about gender and had little or nothing to do with sex (the body) or sexuality (the erotic). Later I would publish a book specifically on Virginia Prince, namely, Richard Ekins and Dave King, eds. Virginia Prince: Pioneer of Transgendering (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Medical Press, 2005). 14.  Arnold M. Rose, ed. Human Behavior and Social Processes: An Interactionist Approach (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962). 15.  Jerome G. Manis and Bernard N. Meltzer, eds. Symbolic Interaction: A Reader in Social Psychology, 2nd ed. (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1972). 16. Robert Bogdan and Steven J. Taylor, Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods: A Phenomenological Approach to the Social Sciences, New York: John Wiley, 1975). 17.  Thanks to the superb scholarship of Daniel Huebner, we now know much more about the ‘mutual influence’ between Mead and W. I. Thomas. When Thomas left his position as a professor of English at Oberlin College to start his career as a sociologist at Chicago, he had ‘been hunting for a scientific method in sociology’. John Dewey wrote to his wife on 12 December 1894 that Thomas’s attending Mead’s advanced course in Comparative Psychology (Autumn 1894) ‘was the most wonderful thing in the way of method he had ever seen . . . now he got a method which opened up something systematically every time he used it.’ Dewey is telling his wife of a conversation he had with Thomas about Mead. Between 1905 and 1910, the Thomas family lived above the Mead family, and they celebrated holidays together. Their mutual influence continued even after Thomas had left Chicago in 1918. See ‘Mutual Influence—W. I. Thomas’, in Daniel R. Huebner, Becoming Mead: The Social Process of Academic Knowledge, 102–07; John Dewey, The Correspondence of John Dewey, three vols (Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Past Masters (electronic resource), 1997, no. 00246.

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When Thomas left Chicago, self-described Mead ‘disciple’ Ellsworth Faris was brought in to teach his courses. Faris ‘reframed’ Mead by introducing Mead’s philosophy to his sociology students ‘alongside the work of Thomas, Dewey, and Cooley as part of a unified sociological social psychology.’ This left Mead, in the philosophy department, to focus in his later ‘advanced’ social psychology courses ‘to questions of common concern to Chicago sociologists, and especially to those of Thomas.’ Daniel R. Huebner, Becoming Mead, 106–07. 18.  George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society; Bogdan and Taylor, 14. 19.  Bogdan and Taylor, 14. 20.  Bogdan and Taylor, 14–15. 21.  E.g., Lindsay Prior, The Social Organization of Mental Illness (London: Sage, 1993). 22.  Bogdan and Taylor, 84–5. 23.  The best single source for Strauss on the processual social world/social arena approach relating to social ‘structures’ is Anselm L. Strauss, Continual Permutations of Action (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1993). 24. Georg Simmel, The Web of Group Affiliations (New York: The Free Press, 1955). 25.  Adele C. Clarke would say later of Strauss and Corbin’s work: ‘There was no map of the situation through which relations among elements could be systematically viewed and analyzed.’ Clarke devoted much of her development of her “Situational Analysis” to increasingly complex situational maps. Adele C. Clarke, Carrie Friese, Rachel S. Washburn, Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Interpretive Turn, 2nd edition (Los Angeles: Sage, 2018), 45. Italics in the original.

Chapter Seven

The Move to Grounded Theory

Robert, I am aware that I might seem to have veered way off your questions relating specifically to authenticity and ‘authenticity as authenticating’. However, I hope I have given you plenty of background on researching competing definitions of the situation. It would have been possible and, no doubt, interesting and worthwhile to have approached the arena of cross-dressing and sex-changing from the point of view of ‘authenticity’. Many informants would talk of finding and/or becoming the ‘real’ me. In the early days of sex re-assignment procedures, a major question was, ‘Is the person requesting it a “real” (authentic) transsexual?’ However, in the language of the now named Glaserian ‘classic grounded theory’, there was no way that ‘authenticity’ was the main problem informants were processing. I concluded that the basic social process I was researching was what I named ‘Male Femaling’. To explain how I reached that point, I will turn now to your question, ‘Can you tell me more about what kind of grounded theorist you are?’ Bogdan and Taylor had little or nothing to say on grounded theory. Much more sophisticated in terms of linking theory, methodology, and methods in a comprehensive survey was the 1979 book by Howard Schwartz and Jerry Jacobs: Qualitative Sociology; A Method to the Madness.1 I devoured it just as soon as it arrived in April 1981. It became a core textbook for me, not only in my introduction to grounded theory but in supplementing my core focus on the Mead-Symbolic Interactionist-Grounded Theory triad with those aspects of Alfred Schutz’s phenomenological sociology and Simmel’s formal sociology that my research was directing me to and that could be incorporated into my developing theoretical and methodological framework.2 Now, in my revisiting of these early days, I see an interesting example of my own Thomas Theorem influence when Schwartz incorrectly writes about Glaser’s acceptance of ‘the basic symbolic interactionist position’. There it 43

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is, in black and white in Schwartz and Jacobs. After noting that Weber, Mead, and Blumer ‘have provided us with a relatively coherent picture of the nature of social action, the origin of society, and the need to gain access to the lifeworld of individuals’, they write that ‘none of these men was involved to any extent in making first-hand observations in everyday situations’ and ask the question ‘How do you do it?’ They answer their own question as follows: Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, in their grounded theory approach, have developed a systematic answer to this question. They accept the basic symbolic interactionist position as described by Mead and Blumer.3 They accept the pressing need to gain access to the life-world of individuals in order to do sociology. They also accept the views of scientists that sociology should not be merely a rich description of other people but rather should be directed toward abstract theories which explain social action.

I was on my way. I could continue to be a sociological theorist but one that was rooted in the empirical world. I had been familiar with Glaser and Strauss’s Discovery of Grounded Theory for some time, and now I was fortunate that Glaser’s Theoretical Sensitivity: Advances in the Methodology of Grounded Theory4 had just been published—although too late to be considered by Schwartz and Jacobs. My copy arrived in April 1981. Things were so simple in those days. There were now just these two core Grounded Theory methodology texts. Glaser indicated the problems of ‘minus-mentoring’—where you have to teach yourself—but recommended setting up a Grounded Theory training seminar where researchers would bring their data and discuss it along the lines suggested in Glaser’s new work. I did just that. I wrote my first paper in March 1982.5 I stand by most of what I said then. I stressed how the introductory chapters of both Discovery and Theoretical Sensitivity emphasised the differences of grounded theory from other ways of doing social science; grounded theory’s uniqueness in stressing the distinction between verifying theory and discovering it. As I wrote: ‘In short, our commitments are primarily to a logic of discovery, but because our work will be grounded and generated from data systematically obtained from social research, it will “fit and work”’6. I noted that whereas the Discovery book sees itself as providing a methodology for sociologists, Theoretical Sensitivity is intended to underscore the basic sociological activity that only sociologists can do: generating sociological theory. Description, ethnography, fact-finding, verification are all done by well by professionals in other fields and by laymen in various investigatory agencies. But these people cannot generate sociological theory from their work. Only sociologists are trained to want it, to look for it, and to generate it’.7



The Move to Grounded Theory 45

However, as I pointed out, ‘Theoretical Sensitivity sees it [grounded theory] as “a general methodology for generating theory. It is not wedded to Sociology or Social Science—let alone to a School or position in Sociology.”’8 That was just what we were looking for in this grounded theory training seminar that included psychologists and social scientists from different disciplines and fields of study. I sketched the route that I intended all would be following in the seminar, albeit each with entirely different material. It is worth setting out extended sections of what I wrote because when I sent it to Strauss, he commented: ‘And thanks for the GT [grounded theory] pages: it’s very gratifying to see that you really understand the methodology and are using it; and transmitting it too. Will show it to Barney Glaser’.9 In my paper, I wrote: Obviously, the researcher does not approach reality as tabula rasa, but he should enter the research setting with as few predetermined ideas as possible. I had an orienting problem and a few sensitising notions but, that apart, only the details of personal and professional biography. My project grew out of previous studies in epistemology and sociology of knowledge, and I was particularly sensitised to exploring the relations between what I had been calling ‘member’ knowledge, ‘common sense’ knowledge, and ‘scientific’ knowledge. After preliminary reading in the substantive area, it seemed obvious that I should first enter the social worlds of transvestites and transsexuals themselves. I hung around transvestite and transsexual haunts until my contacts and research settings snowballed. Thus, systematic data collection began in this context. Following preliminary data analysis, I was led into an ever-widening set of contexts. Thus, transvestites and transsexuals talk constantly of their encounters with others: with doctors, psychiatrists, policemen, shopkeepers, etc. I explored the interrelations between the diverse social worlds these encounters presupposed. Grounded theory gives specific directions for what it calls Theoretical Sampling. That is to say it indicates where you might look for data next as a result of analysis of data previously collected. Just as soon as data is collected it is conceptualised in order to attempt to describe and explain what is going on in the research setting. GT calls this Theoretical Coding. Substantive codes conceptualise raw data. Theoretical codes provide mini hypotheses that can be tested with reference to data old and new. One substantive code I am using is ‘disclosing/displaying’. Transvestites and transsexuals are frequently caught in a catch 22 situation. Males wish to display as females but often do not want to be ‘read’ as males. On the other hand, if they ‘pass’ they tend to seek out ever new situations in which to authenticate their ‘passing’. When they are eventually ‘read’ they are saddened and shaken. The disclosing/displaying couple is potentially useful to explain aspects of transvestite and transsexual behaviour.

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The Grounded Theorist constantly reworks this data until eventually it is coded line by line, word by word until saturation point has been reached. Throughout this process the theorist breaks off whenever insights strike. He then writes a Memo, which encapsulates his thoughts. It may be anything from a paragraph to several pages, which provide the basis for a subsequent paper. The many substantive codes that have emerged are then subsumed under a handful of core categories which have the greatest explanatory power. All are then seen in terms of an emerging Basic Social Process (BSP) (in my case it might be Femaling) for the purposes of handling the manifold data with maximum parsimony and bite. Finally, the accumulated Memos are sorted, and with the final stage of Theoretical Writing the paper or monograph is completed.10

In due time, I found that my Basic Social Process—later called ‘Male Femaling’—processed out into five phases: beginning femaling, fantasying femaling, doing femaling, constituting femaling, consolidating femaling. I exampled each with reference to the major modes of male femaling—body femaling, erotic femaling, and gender femaling—and their interrelations, as set within an exploration of the various interrelations of common sense, member, and scientific knowledge, as they developed in individual biographies over time. My fundamental approach to the use of Grounded Theory Methodology is the same now as it was back in the 1980s. That is to say, the way I do it is to build my grounded theory findings on an ontology, epistemology, and social psychology rooted in G. H. Mead, a Blumerian symbolic interactionism, a Glaserian commitment to Basic Social Process emergence, all as set within a Straussian commitment to processual social world analysis. However, well before the time I was writing my Male Femaling book in 1995, the split between Glaser and Strauss had become evident.11 The split, as I saw it, was fundamentally about who stood where on the epistemological crisis centred around the critique of positivism in the social sciences. I wrote to Strauss about it in 1995, and in a crucial reply to me, he wrote: [Glaser] seems to take the extreme position that theory will emerge if you work with the data, like reality is out there and you work to get at it. I [Strauss], on the other hand, take the classic Pragmatist metaphysical and epistemological positions on ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ emerging theory ‘emerges’ in interplay between the researcher and the data (which get to us by various routes including our own efforts).12

In my view, there is no doubt that Strauss is a serious student of Mead’s ontology and epistemology and is committed to Mead’s philosophy of social process, his emergent evolutionism, and so on, insofar as it provides the bedrock for his own sociology. This is evident in his commentary and his



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selections for his edited George Herbert Mead on Social Psychology13 and, particularly, in his serious research on Mead. After Strauss had become acquainted with my reconstruction of Mead as a concretised Hegelian, a critical theorist, and a philosopher of social process and social praxis, he invited me to the 1979 Konstanz Colloquium ‘George Herbert Mead and the Problem of Time in Social Knowledge’. There Strauss presented his paper on ‘Mead and Time’. Strauss did not publish this paper until 1991. He added to both the paper and to the title, publishing it as ‘Mead’s Multiple Conceptions of Time and Evolution: Their Contexts and Their Consequences for Theory’.14 Frankly, I do not see the ‘new’ grounded theory ‘constructivist’ and ‘situational’ approaches to grounded theory, championed respectively by Kathy Charmaz and Adele Clarke,15 as adding much that isn’t already explicit or implicit in Strauss on Grounded Theory.16 To Charmaz, for instance, to use the word ‘discovery’ in The Discovery of Grounded Theory is seen to fall into Glaser’s ‘positivism’, but surely this is to misunderstand Strauss’s commitment to Mead’s epistemology. For Mead, any knowledge outcome, following a blocked act, entails a reconstruction of reality such that the blocked act may proceed. This entails a construction, as in ‘Constructive Grounded Theory’. But assuming the construction ‘works’, ‘reality’ answers to the construction and, in that sense, the reconstruction is ‘discovered’ in the new ’reality’ as constructed. In the same vein, we might say that following Glaser and Strauss’s research that preceded their writing of Discovery—when they then turned to write their first methodology book together—they could look back on the research methodology they had developed (a creative emergence) and ‘discover’ the methodology they, themselves, had ‘created.’ I am committed to the Glaserian generation of basic social processes as detailed in his Theoretical Sensitivity. Clarke finds focus on a singular basic social process in a study as a ‘positivist recalcitrancy’ and critiques its use.17 However, for me, as for Prus, ‘generic social processes’ simply refers to ‘The transituational elements of interaction, to the abstracted formulations of social behavior. Denoting parallel sequences of activity across diverse contexts, generic social processes highlight the emergent, interpretive features of association: they focus on the activities involved in “doing” or accomplishment of group life.’18 For me, a ‘Basic Social Process’ (BSP) is simply the single major generic social process in the research arena, which is being researched, and within which other categories and processes are best subsumed. As I put it in 1993 in relation to my study of Male Femaling: ‘Male Femaling’ emerged as the single major social process being researched. It was pervasive and fundamental. It was patterned. It occurred over time and went on irrespective of the conditional variation of place. From then on, I found it

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increasingly illuminating to conceptualise male cross-dressers and sex-changers as males who wish to ‘female’ in various ways, in various contexts, with various staging, and with various consequences. The emphasis could be on typing behaviour not people. In particular, this reconceptualization showed the proper respect for the ambiguous, ambivalent, multi-contextual, multi-dimensional, emergent nature of much cross-dressing and sex-changing phenomena.19

It is difficult to see how this use of the BSP could be labelled ‘positivist’, certainly, when seen as an outgrowth of research rooted in Mead’s ontology and epistemology.20 Which leads me on to your penultimate question—Robert—relating to ‘how the method of grounded theory importantly connects to your key concept of “authenticity as authenticating”’. At one level, if you have followed my mapping of the emergence of my basic social process of male femaling in the arena of male cross-dressing and male sex-changing, it will hopefully be clear to you how grounded theory connects to ‘authenticating’ as a BSP. ‘Authenticating’ will be the BSP researched. As such, it will be genuinely processual with a minimum ‘process out’ requirement of two clear, emergent stages, which should differentiate and account for variations in problematic patterns of behaviour. More particularly, it will have emerged as the core variable when coding in the substantive area of New Orleans jazz that is the concern of this book. As Glaser puts it, the researcher should consciously be looking for a core variable when coding his data, constantly looking for the ‘main theme’—for what, in the researcher’s view is the main concern or problem for the people in the research setting; for what is going on in the data; for what is the essence of relevance reflected in the data; for categories (gerunds) that bring out and process and change—two properties of BSPs.21 However, as you rightly point out, this grounded theory study is unusual in that it is grounded theory applied to history, indeed, historiography and historiography that uses analytic autoethnography as a major research method throughout. Put simply, I, as its author, have lived through and engaged with the historiography, on and off, for over sixty years, and I draw on autobiography to develop the socio-analytic conceptualisations, the ‘theory’ presented in this book. In that sense the study is, in part, as an autoethnography of memory.22 Suffice it to say for now that there is no doubt that ‘authenticity’ is the major topic to be researched in the arena that forms the main subject of this book. Even the most casual glance at the history of New Orleans jazz reveals the importance of ‘authenticity’ from the very outset. In jazz history writing, the first step was to distinguish ‘jazz’ from other sorts of music. Immediately, debates about the early ‘definitions of the situation’ followed with struggles concerning the construction of an ‘authentic’ canon and so forth. The particular



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feature of the construction of jazz ‘authenticity’ was that it was first carried out after the event in the early 1930s by jazz enthusiasts constructing jazz history ex post facto. As we shall see, these early young, white enthusiasts decreed that the first ‘jazz’ band was that of Buddy Bolden’s, around 1896 in New Orleans; that the first ‘jazz’ record was the 1917 Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s recording of Tiger Rag in Chicago, and so on. This was ‘authentic’ jazz.23 Alternative competing authenticity stories built upon these early formulations would emerge quite soon, and the substantive area would variously feature authenticity battles and wars over their life courses which it is the purpose of this book to introduce, compare, contrast, understand, and explain. Enough said, for now, Robert. Over to you. NOTES   1.  Howard Schwartz and Jerry Jacobs, Qualitative Methodology: A Method to the Madness (New York: The Free Press, 1979).   2.  Most notably, Schutz on the indubitable world of everyday life and the fact that ‘all the other provinces of meaning may be considered as its modifications’, and Simmel’s formal sociology on generic social processes. Alfred Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” in Maurice Natanson, ed. Collected Papers, Vol 1: The Problem of Social Reality (Nijhoff: The Hague, 1962); Robert Prus, “Generic Social Processes.”   3.  My italics. Schwartz and Jacobs are simply wrong. It needs to be emphasised that they wrote this in a book published in 1979, before they were able to access the publication of Glaser’s Theoretical Sensitivity in 1978. As would become widely appreciated later, Glaser is not a symbolic interactionist and came to regard the grounded theory methodology as in no way necessarily related to it. All the quoted passages are from 26.   4.  Barney G. Glaser, Theoretical Sensitivity.   5.  Richard Ekins, “Theory and Method in the Understanding and Explanation of Transvestism and Transsexuality: Towards a Grounded Theory Alternative,” Working paper presented to the Ulster Grounded Theory Training Seminar, March 1982.   6.  Richard Ekins, “Theory and Method,” 3.   7.  Richard Ekins, “Theory and Method,” 3.   8.  Richard Ekins, “Theory and Method,” 3, citing Theoretical Sensitivity, 164.   9.  Letter from Anselm Strauss to Richard Ekins, 8 November 1982. 10.  Richard Ekins, “Theory and Method,” 9–11. 11.  It was the publication of Anselm L. Strauss and Juliet Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1990) that really set the cat amongst the pigeons. Glaser’s objection to the book was that it had moved grounded theory into the area of ‘forced, full, conceptual description’, as opposed to emergent grounded theory. Barney Glaser, Basics of Grounded Theory. My objection to it was much the same as was later to be argued by Jörg Strübing. It turned grounded theory from what Strübing calls a ‘Pragmatist

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opening/creativity oriented’ phase into a technically oriented/instrumental phase. Jörg Strübing, “Pragmatist Grounded Theory: Anselm Strauss and his Research Style.” 12.  Anselm Strauss, 1995, personal communication. 13. Anselm Strauss, ed. George Herbert Mead on Social Psychology, Selected Papers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964). 14. Anselm Strauss, “Mead’s Multiple Conceptions of Time and Evolution: Their Contexts and Their Consequences for Theory,” International Sociology 6, no. 4 (1991): 411–26. 15.  Kathy Charmaz. Constructing Grounded Theory, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 2014); Adele Clarke, Carrie Friese, and Rachel S. Washburn, Situational Analysis After the Interpretive Turn. 16.  For me, it was Strauss’s collaboration with Juliet Corbin to produce a sort of technical ‘how to do it’ manual that obfuscated these things. See, Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. While subsequent editions to a degree rectified this, the damage had been done. 17. Adele E. Clarke, Carrie Friese, Rachel S. Washburn, Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Interpretive Turn, 39. 18.  Robert Prus, “Generic Social Processes,” 251. 19.  Richard Ekins, “On Male Femaling: A Grounded Theory Approach to CrossDressing and Sex-Changing,” Sociological Review 41, no. 1 (1993): 1–29 at 10. 20.  For an important recent article on generic social process sociology, basic social processes, and contemporary grounded theory, see Anthony Puddephatt, “Generic Social Processes: Reimagining a Conceptual Schema for Grounded Theory in the Contemporary Era,” Sociological Focus 52, no. 2 (2019): 140–55, accessed March 10, 2022. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00380237.2018.1544515?fbclid =IwAR0CbPSk9UGw5N_edz2UT-6Ltug5erehrnVjDBXV15iQRcYeNZshRXOvGjU. Puddephatt concludes: ‘Noting the critiques of knowledge stemming from postmodern and feminist accounts, we suggest that GSPs need not be considered “real” social laws to be discovered and verified. Instead, we might view them as ideal types that serve as flexible heuristic tools for data gathering and abstract comparison across substantive areas.’ For me, we did not need ‘postmodern and feminist accounts’ to make this suggestion. The ‘suggestion’ is implicit in Mead, himself, and in Strauss. 21.  Barney Glaser, “Basic Social Processes,” Grounded Theory Review: An International Journal 4, no. 3 (2005), accessed March 10, 2022. http://groundedtheoryreview. com/2005/06/22/1533/. 22.  Jeanette Monaco, “Memory Work, Autoethnography and the Construction of a Fan-Ethnography,” Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 7, no. 1 (2010): 105–42. 23.  Hughes Panassié, The Real Jazz (New York: Smith and Durrell, 1942); Bruce Boyd Raeburn, New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009).

Part II

AUTHENTICATING NEW ORLEANS JAZZ

Riff III

Robert Porter

Thanks Richard! Let me start where you finished off, by gesturing to what you are calling ‘authenticity wars’. I’d be very curious to hear more about that. In my own work, I have increasingly become interested in the idea of authenticity as a kind of ‘class’ category or, perhaps more accurately, as a way to delimit a particular population, maybe even something akin to a ‘micropolitical demography’. My emerging hypothesis: there is a kind of ‘authenticity talk’ that can do the work of this thing I’m tentatively calling ‘micropolitical demography’. By ‘micropolitical demography’ I mean something quite specific and something which might be viewed, at first sight at least, as a little jarring, maybe even weirdly or overly abstract. Let me try to unpack what I mean. Put simply, I am playing around with the idea of ‘micropolitical demography’ as a spatio-temporally specific socio-political process, whereby ‘populating’ immediately implies a socio-political coming together of a body of people immanently constituted by way of a series of characteristics or qualities that are taken to be in common. Now, you might say, ‘Hang on, Robert, isn’t that just a fancy way of saying that people who have things in common find it easy to form attachments in a given group or intersubjective setting?’ Additionally, you might ask what is interestingly or importantly ‘political’ about such a coming together? Reasonable questions to ask, no doubt. But let me push the concept further, or perhaps pull it in an unexpected direction. Think of the idea of a ‘population’ more like in the way that a social epidemiologist or health demographer might do, where one connects the study of populations—their structural characteristics and the mutation and change over time—to health impacts at a societal or macro-sociological level. So, for example, a social epidemiologist or health demographer might become interested in statistically tracking the health of different ‘populations’ along certain lines (‘class’, ‘migrant’ and ‘non-migrant’, ‘age’, ‘gender’, and 53

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so on). Two things more readily come into view here. The first is the question of scalability, generalisability, of leveraging significant amounts of data or statistical information to inform service and policy planning. In this way, the macrosociological projection techniques used by the social epidemiologist or health demographer can be used on a society-wide basis in the estimation of health needs across the various relevant populations. This, secondly then, is where the politics comes into play most obviously, where the ‘social’ in social epidemiology can relate directly to public policy. Beyond the strictures of an epidemiology focused most specifically or immediately on the distribution, causes, and possible preventions of infectious disease, say, the social epidemiologist will tend to take a broader methodological approach—longitudinal survey data usually being the weapon of choice—as well as going beyond a narrow focus on health and mortality and delving into things like migration, fertility and related social process, and marriage and relationship formations of various kinds. You could easily be forgiven for wondering where exactly I’m going with this! Let me potentially confuse things further by thinking in even more biological terms, that is, by referring to a ‘population’ as a community of bio-organisms that inbreed and/or begin to replicate or reproduce by way of mimesis. If there is a politics here—and I immediately grant you it is a weird politics—it is in the memetic pull to acclimatise, to reproduce, to become like or adapt to the ‘populace’ as such. From a more anthropological perspective—and I’m obviously channelling the famous work of the great French anthropologist Marcel Mauss—we can think of a certain kind of adaptation and coordination that happens in social relations and everyday group behaviour. One automatically thinks of Mauss’s seminal essay of the ’30s—“Les Techniques du Corps”1—where he focuses on how a particular adaptation to societal obligations of various kinds implies the movement, contortion, and comportment of the body, where the body becomes, in my terms, populated by the populace thereby adapted to. One thinks, naturally, of Mauss’s wellknown idea of how, what he calls, ‘prestigious imitation’ works in various groups settings. Let me bring this back to the notion of ‘authenticity talk’ I mentioned earlier. I raised the possibility that ‘authenticity talk’ can do the work of ‘micropolitical demography’. Mauss’s idea of ‘prestigious imitation’ can help us clarify what this might mean. As I’m sure you know, Mauss highlights the way, for example, a certain currency of status is exchanged, traded, and accumulated between and among social groups. I think, as academics, this immediately resonates, and we can recognise it in various types of everyday behaviour, bodily comportment, and forms of animated and performative talk in our professional contexts. Let me give an example of this. About ten years ago I went to an academic conference headlined by a ‘superstar’



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philosopher-cum-critical theorist. This ‘superstar’ gave his keynote address. I can’t even remember what the talk was about, but what I do remember, rather vividly, was the bodily comportment, the tics, the extralinguistic bodily performance of the speaker. Now, after the keynote, we broke up into panels, and I found myself in a room with a number of junior colleagues and Ph.D. students of the aforementioned ‘superstar’ (he was also in the room, not chairing the session, but rather regally, if informally, presiding over proceedings). One by one, and almost to a man (and they were all male), they imitated their intellectual master. The obsessive flicking of hair. The careful positioning of the watch on the lectern. The pitch, volume, timbre, and rhythm of voice. The hand gestures. The face gestures. The crap jokes. But most significantly, the constant eyeing up to the master for some kind of papal intellectual blessing or affirmation, a weird memetic politics of mutually recognising glances that gave real meaning to the actions there and then in the room. The glances were key, I think. Indeed, just remembering this experience has me reaching for a quote from Simmel’s piece on the ‘sociology of the senses’, courtesy of an Ervin Goffman book I was reading the other day, namely, Behavior in Public Places. Goffman quotes Simmel as follows: Of the special sense organs, the eye has a uniquely sociological function. The union and interaction of individuals is based upon mutual glances. This is perhaps the most direct and purest reciprocity which exists anywhere. The highest psychic reaction, however, in which the glances of eye to eye unite men, crystallises into no objective structure; the unity which arises…is present in the occasion and is dissolved in the function. . . No objective trace of this relationship is left behind. . . The interaction of eye and eye dies in the moment in which directness of the function is lost. But the totality of social relations of human beings, their self-assertion and self-abnegation, their intimacies and estrangements, would be changed in unpredictable ways if there occurred no glance of eye to eye. The mutual glance between persons, in distinction from the simple sight or observation of the other, signified a wholly new unique union between them.2

Anyway, I digress. The point here is that everything, but everything, in the room that day was the replicating, repetitious same shit, on repeat, like a corporeal mantra continually re-enacted, again and again, to the point where the actions themselves began to lose their semantic anchor, lose their meaning, in a quasi-religious ritual that is becoming more and more abstracted from any recognisable context of social significance. My response was to laugh, evoking, in my mind, the kind of mechanical puppetry conjured up anytime I would read Henri Bergson’s great book On Laughter.3 I distinctly remember murmuring under my breath ‘these people are just silly puppets’, ‘this is meaningless’, remarks that were sufficiently loud enough to earn a sharp glance or two back in my direction from others in the room. We know,

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of course, such mechanically rigid behaviour and comportment does have significance and meaning, as both Bergson and Mauss would emphasise in different ways. For instance, it is a classic example of what Mauss talks about, when he emphasises how those of a lower status tend to imitate those they view as their superiors, in order to relatively improve their place in a given social world. Now, is it too far-fetched to think of this kind of ‘prestigious imitation’ as a kind of ‘micropolitical demography’, the subtle, as well as the crude, movement, coordination, and adaptation of bodies to form a populace ever more self-identical or homogenous to itself? I’ll let that question hang for now. But my obvious suspicion is that it is not too far-fetched at all. The more immediate question is this: How does what I’m calling ‘authenticity talk’ do this kind of ‘micropolitical demography’? My hunch is, the very self-same way. By making talk of ‘authenticity’ function to move bodies in certain ways, to coordinate those bodies, to make those bodies form a populace ever more self-identical or homogenous to itself, self-identical or homogenous to itself precisely as ‘authentic’ as such. Of course, and as you have shown in the previous work you spoke about above, things are never that simple. It is always a process, a process in space and time. And it is the temporality that I want to focus on now. As we have both noted at different points, the grounded theory study you are engaged in here is historical in an important sense. As you said, you will be engaging in an historiographical gesture in your use of analytic autoethnography as a major research method throughout. As you put it: ‘I, as its author, have lived through and engaged with the historiography, on and off, for over sixty years, and I draw on autobiography to develop the socio-analytic conceptualisations, the ‘theory’ presented in this book. In that sense the study is, in part, as an autoethnography of memory’. So, my basic prompt or broad question I suppose is: Can you say something more about this historiographical and autoethnographical approach, this ‘autoethnography of memory’? In particular, it seems to me that it would be important to really emphasise this apropos your work and life in the social world of New Orleans jazz. Of course, an impatient, less cautious, maybe malevolent, reader might simply assume that all this talk of an ‘autoethnography of memory’ is subjectivist navel gazing. And we might rightly say ‘who cares’ about such unsympathetic readers? That said, it may well be worth tackling this head-on for those other readers who are maybe unfamiliar with the method—I repeat ‘method’—of ‘analytic autoethnography’. One of the things you have constantly stressed in our conversations about your historical involvement in the social worlds you want to discuss in this book is that this history is not simply yours, that it’s part of a broader social process, that it is not just about a ‘me’ (say, the subjective navel gazing of the



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‘authentic’ practitioner), but often a ‘they’ (say, those others with whom we might engage in forms of contested or agonistic ‘authenticity talk’) and always an ‘us’ (say, the endless processing of the self-identifying community or populace over time). I guess, before I stop, I should say that all of this is just a rather elaborate, meandering, preamble that is aiming to get you to talk to me about New Orleans jazz. So, Richard, talk to me about New Orleans jazz. NOTES 1.  Marcel Mauss, “Les Techniques du Corps,” Journal de Psychologie 32, ne 3–4 (1936 [1934]). 2.  Erving Goffman, Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Organization of Gatherings (New York: The Free Press, 1963), 93. See, Georg Simmel, “The Sociology of the Senses: Visual Interaction,” in Robert E. Park and E. Burgess, eds. Introduction to the Science of Society, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1921 [1908]). 3.  Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (New York: Macmillan, 1911).

Chapter Eight

Analytic Autoethnography

Robert, I would need to know more about what you mean by ‘micropolitical demography’ to have anything intelligent to say about how ‘authenticity talk’ might link with that. Your points about imitation, I will take up with reference to Mead on imitation as an illustration of the importance of consciousness of other selves. For Mead, ‘Imitation becomes comprehensible when there is a consciousness of other selves, and not before.’1 He takes issue, for instance, with the philosopher Josiah Royce ‘(Who) makes imitation the means of getting the meaning of what others and we ourselves are doing’. For Mead this is ‘either putting the cart before the horse, or else to be saying that the ideas which we have of the actions of others are ideo-motor in their character, but this does not make out of imitation the means of their becoming ideo-motor’. Mead gives an everyday example: ‘The sight of a man pushing a stone registers itself as a meaning through a tendency in ourselves to push the stone, but it is a far call from this to the statement that it is first through imitation of him or some one else pushing stones that we have gained the motor-idea of stone-pushing’.2 The sight of the stone pusher calls out the same response in the observer insofar as he is ‘taking the role of the other’ in the ongoing social act and/ or identifying with him in that act. As I will detail, in my personal ‘becoming authentic’ in relation to New Orleans jazz, after I had spent some years participating in a social world of ‘authentic’ New Orleans jazz principally through isolated reading and listening and occasional visits to hear ‘authentic’ live bands, I met Dan Pawson, a prominent participant in these social worlds. After a short while of following his band—Artesian Hall Stompers—and gaining access to other ‘authentic’ bands, I found myself practising the trumpet again, forming a band from some of his would-be musician followers, and ‘imitating’ him in various other ways. I copied his trumpet case by painting 59

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the names of numerous ‘authentic’ New Orleans musicians in white paint on the black top of the lid—and even acquired and used a set of identical mutes as Pawson’s: a toby jug, a rubber plunger, and a straight mute. My psychoanalyst, Thomas Freeman, used to ask, ‘Have you ever noticed how people imitate people they admire?’ This imitation can be variously unconscious or conscious. In my case of becoming a follower of a prominent person within the social worlds I was now participating in, such ‘imitation’ was a way of cementing my own participation in those worlds and my identification with them. To dismiss such imitation as too puerile to take seriously would be to misunderstand the nature and force of the conversion experience to this music and its social worlds. I might add a note, too, on your Simmel quotation. Mead is often regarded as a tactile philosopher because he places such emphasis on contact experience. However, from his earliest days as a physiological psychologist, he emphasised that mind involves the whole organism-environment transaction of which the sensory organs such as the eyes and ears may play a variously key role in various phases of the social act.3 However, now to the serious business of the next sections of the book. You say, ‘So, my basic prompt or broad question I suppose is: Can you say something more about this historiographical and autoethnographical approach, this “autoethnography of memory”?’ As you appreciate only too well, my sociological and cultural studies work is rooted in G. H. Mead, symbolic interactionism, sociology of knowledge, and the methodology of grounded theory. I did not need to take my methodological concerns further in my previous preoccupation with male femaling and transgender, the main substance of which culminated in my Transgender Phenomenon, 2006. However, shortly after that book’s publication, Leon Anderson published a fascinating article entitled ‘Analytic Autoethnography’.4 He noted that autoethnography had recently become a popular form of qualitative research but argued that the then current discourse on this genre in research referred almost always to what one of its major proponents, Carolyn Ellis, termed ‘evocative or emotional autoethnography’.5 For Anderson, this approach drew on postmodern sensibility that distanced itself too far ‘from realist and analytic ethnographic traditions’.6 In this article, he reviewed what he called proto-autoethnographic writings in American sociology, noting that there has always been an autoethnographic element in qualitative sociology. He first gives a ‘put most simply’ definition, which ‘captures its essential elements’ of what he means by analytic autoethnography. It ‘refers to ethnographic work in which the researcher is (1) a full member in the research group or setting, (2) visible as such a member in the researcher’s published texts, and (3) committed to an analytic research agenda focused on improving theoretical understandings of broader social phenomena.’7



Analytic Autoethnography 61

In his more complex discussion, he extends these to five key features: ‘(1) Complete member researcher (CMR) status, (2) analytic reflexivity, (3) narrative visibility of the researcher’s self, (4) dialogue with informants beyond the self, and (5) commitment to theoretical analysis.8 I prefer to use the term socio-analytic autoethnography, to avoid confusion with psychoanalytic autoethnography,9 but that apart, I want to use his model to incorporate autoethnography into this study, more specifically to embed it within my Meadian epistemological framework. From 1961 to 1976, in the next chapter that I have headed ‘Becoming Authentic’, I detail my involvement in what I later theorised as the social worlds of New Orleans jazz revivalism, particularly associated with what I later theorised as ‘reconstructed authenticity’ and ‘resuming (reconstructed) authenticity’.10 In this first section, however, I will remain at the level of my own autobiography, with the occasional comparison with similar others. In terms of the Anderson article, I am reporting selected autobiographical memories as supplemented by documents I have collected over the years—diaries, photographs, memorabilia, tapes, records, CDs, books, and so on.11 This first section tells the story of my move from a reader about New Orleans jazz, to a jazz record collector, to a New Orleans jazz revivalist enthusiast, to a New Orleans–style trumpet player, band leader, and record producer, in both the UK and the United States. It tells the tale of my increasing participation in what was then called the New Orleans revivalist jazz scene worldwide. In your terms, Robert, of ‘me’, ‘they’, and ‘us’, this section focuses on ‘me’ and ‘us’ because, although I focus on my own experiences in meeting ‘authenticity’ and ‘becoming authentic’, I am merely one example of thousands of others worldwide who identified with this sort of ‘authenticity’. In this section I do not develop the ‘they’ of contestation, although it does come up occasionally. As we will see, I plumped for one version of authenticity, what became known for a period in the 1960s as ‘Contemporary New Orleans music’,12 as opposed to the ‘Classic’ or ‘Vintage’ ‘authentic’ jazz of the 1920s and early 1930s, especially. This latter was built around the recordings— mostly the so-called race records—of New Orleans musicians who had left New Orleans and recorded in Chicago and later, in New York.13 In 1976 I left the scene entirely for some twenty-five years, until 2000. When I returned, I was a trained sociologist, with the specialist interests that I have detailed. I now saw the New Orleans ‘jazz scene’ in terms of social worlds and sub-worlds, in terms of social world segmentations, legitimations, and participations. I was especially sensitive to competing definitions of the situation, to the interrelations between identities, social worlds, sub-worlds, and so on.14 But still, until around 2009 I didn’t write about such theorisations from an academic point of view. From 2000 to around 2005, I revisited

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‘authenticity’, making contacts with almost all my former contacts, friends, and acquaintances, collecting records, again, and setting about relaunching my La Croix record label, now in the digital age, the age of the CD. From 2005 to 2008, I started my re-issue programme, all featuring very detailed CD booklets.15 In the process, I become a writer on New Orleans jazz, both writing the booklets and writing my first article on ‘authenticity’, intended for an enthusiast audience, not an academic audience.16 It is now that I meet Robert’s ‘they’. The article is contested by the editorial team of New Orleans Music magazine17 as being irrelevant to the UK’s leading and longest established specialist ‘authentic’ New Orleans magazine. It is rejected because it tells the tale of Bob Wallis’s view of authenticity, Bob Wallis (1934–1991) being a British traditional jazz trumpet player and bandleader. I end this chapter on Bob Wallis with the tale of the article’s rejection by New Orleans Music, its acceptance elsewhere, and my move in 2009 to academic writing on New Orleans jazz, to my ‘authenticity as authenticating’ project. Now I draw on Anderson’s analytic autoethnography with a vengeance. I embody all its ‘key features’. But I am also doing jazz historiography, my work being centrally concerned with constructions of authenticity within jazz history writing, and my making sense of that history, adding to it, and identifying with parts of it. Moreover, unlike those autoethnographies referred to by Anderson, my own participation in my chosen social world goes back some sixty years, justifying the term analytic ‘autoethnography of memory’ in an especially extended sense. NOTES 1.  George Herbert Mead, “Social Psychology as Counterpart to Physiological Psychology,” in Essays on Social Psychology by George H. Mead, ed. Mary Jo Deegan (New Brunswick, Transaction, 2001 [1909], 9–17 at 14. 2. George Herbert Mead, “Social Psychology as Counterpart to Physiological Psychology,” 14. 3.  Daniel R. Huebner, Reintroducing George Herbert Mead (London: Routledge, 2022) 27. 4.  Leon Anderson, “Analytic Autoethnography.” 5. Carolyn Ellis, “Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Emotionally About Our Lives,” in Representation and the Text: Re-Framing the Narrative Voice, eds. W. G. Tierney and Y. S. Lincoln (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 115–42. Carolyn Ellis, The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel About Autoethnography (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004). 6.  Leon Anderson, “Analytic Autoethnography,” 373. 7.  Leon Anderson, “Analytic Autoethnography,” 375. 8.  Leon Anderson, “Analytic Autoethnography,” 378.



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 9. As, for instance, in Dean Garratt, “Psychoanalytic-Autoethnography: Troubling Natural Bodybuilding,” Qualitative Enquiry 21, no. 4 (2015): 343–53. I propose to enter more fully into the realms of psychoanalytic autoethnography in my next book with Robert Porter, tentatively titled, The Politics of Authenticating: Revisiting Psychoanalysis. 10.  I focus on ‘resuming (reconstructed) authenticity’ in my ‘hidden histories’ Just Jazz forty-five-part series on Ken Grayson Mills and Barbara Reid. I do not develop the concept/sub-process of ‘resuming authenticity’ in this book. I have taken the view that for an academic audience, as opposed to a New Orleans jazz specialist audience, to do so might muddy the waters, unnecessarily. See Chapter 1, note 1. 11.  Ken Plummer, Documents of Life 2: An Invitation to a Critical Humanism. 12. The canon for this sub-genre of ‘authentic’ New Orleans music was to be consolidated and set forth in Tom Stagg and Charlie Crump, New Orleans, The Revival—A Tape and Discography of Negro Traditional Jazz Recorded in New Orleans or by New Orleans Bands 1937–1972 (Dublin, Bashall Eaves, 1973). Its most important ‘bible’ was Samuel Charters, Jazz New Orleans, 1885–1963: An Index to the Negro Musicians of New Orleans (New York: Oak Publications, revised edition, 1963). Its international scope is best seen in Jempi de Donder, On Tour: A Disco—and Tapeography of the Recordings Made by New Orleans Musicians with Local Bands (Dilbeek: Jempi de Donder, 1983). In addition to the musicians, those prominent in this international social world are detailed in Brian Wood, The Song for Me: A Glossary of New Orleans Music and Musicians Plus Others of that Ilk, CD Version: December 10, 2007. 13.  As, for instance, detailed in Brian Rust, Jazz Records, 1897–1942, 5th revised and enlarged edition, Volume 1 and Volume 2 (Chigwell, Essex: Storyville Publications, 1984). 14. Strauss sets out the social world perspective in Anselm Strauss, “A Social World Perspective,” in Norman K. Denzin, ed. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 1 (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1978), 119–28. See, also, Anselm Strauss, “Social Worlds and Legitimation Processes,” in Norman K. Denzin, ed. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 4 (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1982), 171–90, and Anselm Strauss, “Social Worlds and Their Segmentation Processes,” in Norman K. Denzin, ed. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 5 (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1984), 123–39. 15.  Richard Ekins, La Croix Records website. 16.  Richard Ekins, “Bob Wallis on Authenticity and the New Orleans Jazz Revival in Britain,” Just Jazz, no. 138 (2009): 22–27. 17.  New Orleans Music. Accessed February 1, 2023. http://nommagindex.azureweb sites.net/welcome.

Chapter Nine

Becoming Authentic (1961–1976)

I will start with some memoir and autobiography to set the scene and to prepare the ground for the more overtly socio-analytic autoethnography and grounded theory historiography that emerged from it. In Strauss and Glaser’s terms, this chapter is case history as opposed to case study.1 Damascene conversion experiences feature prominently in the authenticity talk of enthusiasts of New Orleans jazz revivalism. In this chapter, I first set out my own such experience in relation to other prominent participants in that New Orleans jazz sub-world that takes the New Orleans trumpet player Bunk Johnson as their instigating primary source of inspiration. All the individuals I introduce—Clive Wilson, Dan Pawson, William ‘Bill’ Carter, David Wyckoff, Ken Colyer, Barry Martyn—variously musicians, bandleaders, record producers and writers—are (or were) prominent within the revivalist social worlds I identify with most strongly. In later chapters I pay homage to the especial significance of Ken Colyer and Dan Pawson by using them as case studies to illustrate the grounded theory generated sub-processes of ‘adopting authenticity’ and ‘adapting authenticity’, respectively. Some four ago the English trumpet player, Clive Wilson, who has lived in New Orleans since 1965, working exclusively as a professional New Orleans jazz musician and bandleader, published his memoir—Time of My Life: A Jazz Journey from London to New Orleans.2 As a good memoir does, it engaged the reader from the start, in Wilson’s case with a scene-setting one page prologue to the book that documented a single aesthetic conversion experience that provided the motif and direction of his life from the age of thirteen to his present eighty-one years of age. He wrote: I am at boarding school just south of London, where I arrived only three weeks before. I am thirteen. I walk into a common room at a mid-morning break. Our 65

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common room . . . is where we went between classes. There’s a cheap record player. (Whose was it? Did it belong to us?) I hear an unusual sound; someone is playing music I’d never heard before. Drawn like a moth to the flame, I cross the room. The record jacket has a drawing in vivid color of some place I’d never heard of in a place I’d never thought of: San Jacinto? How do you even pronounce it? New Orleans? Bunk Johnson? What a strange name. What sounds! The instruments, weaving in and out of each other, form a tapestry of sound and rhythm that resonates with something within me, until now unknown, calling forth a range of feelings: strong and joyful, yet plaintive and poignant at the same time. I am not understanding it; I am not making any sense of what I am hearing. But in that moment, which remains with me today, making sense of my attraction is not important. Something stirs. The music has an intrinsic strength and power that I have not heard before and have rarely heard anything approaching it since. It is ‘Tishomingo Blues,’ played by Bunk Johnson and his New Orleans Jazz Band.3

Figure 9.1.  Bunk Johnson and his New Orleans Band. Sleeve Design Source: Anonymous, 1956



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His name, Willie ‘Bunk’ Johnson, and the drawing of San Jacinto Hall in New Orleans on the record cover, is irresistible, conjuring up an image of another world; mysterious, unknown and enticing at the same time. Questions race through my mind. What kind of music is this? Where is New Orleans? Who on earth is Bunk?4

I move now from Clive Wilson’s text to my major English mentor, Dan Pawson. Once again it was a Bunk Johnson record that set the direction for his life. Dan Pawson was born in Birmingham, England, on 29 August 1936. When he died on 29 November 2002, he had been a New Orleans–style trumpeter and bandleader for over forty years and a respected writer on New Orleans jazz for some thirty years. At the time of his death, he was a world leading authority on early jazz and the New Orleans jazz revival. Together with Barry Martyn, Dan Pawson was one of the two European life-long world champions of ‘old-style’ New Orleans jazz—the tradition that was documented on the New Orleans ‘revivalist’ records of the 1940s and that experienced its second wind with second wave revivalism of the 1960s and beyond. Dan Pawson had first heard Bunk Johnson—the 1945 HMV 78s of ‘High Society’ and ‘Darktown Strutters’ Ball’5—in 1950, as a fourteen-year-old schoolboy, and it was these recordings that set him on a life-long quest to play within the idiom of old-style New Orleans music. In a fragment of his unpublished autobiography written in 1969, Dan notes how the sounds of Bunk sustained him through his earliest and most miserable years at Shrewsbury School, a leading English public boarding school. As William ‘Bill’ Carter put it, writing of himself in an American context, ‘I doubt I’m alone among traditional jazz enthusiasts in having felt that, while wandering in an urban desert, one suddenly heard the trumpet call of truth.’6 Like Clive Wilson and Dan Pawson, Bill Carter became a New Orleans– style musician—playing the clarinet in his case—but he was also a professional writer and photographer. He put those skills to brilliant use in writing the definitive history of Preservation Hall (home of traditional jazz in New Orleans since 1961)7—of which much more later. Carter also had a happy knack of getting to the core of why so many young, often middle-class, educated white males were so attracted to the old black New Orleans musicians they deemed ‘authentic’. As Carter recalled in his Preservation Hall book looking back at ‘the trumpet call of Truth’ and reflecting on his own shyness as a youth: that magnetism seemed somehow related to the shyness that so affected me in those early years. Behind the jazz and the blues and their folk sources was an uninhibited joy, an emotional honesty, which one longed for amid WASPish constraints. Hiding it, virtually fearing it within oneself, one can nonetheless be

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powerfully attracted to it in something of someone else. Integrity of spirit and feeling is one of the American Negro’s great musical gifts to the world.8

My own Damascus Road experience—as was the case with so many other young white males over the breadth of the globe9—followed my first hearing of the same Brunswick Bunk Johnson and his New Orleans Jazz Band record that set the direction for Clive Wilson’s life. As we have seen, Clive heard that record on the record player in his school common room in early 1956 at thirteen years of age. I was a relatively late developer. It was to be in 1961 when I was sixteen years of age that I first heard that same record. Things were never going to be the same again. My preoccupation with ‘authenticity’ in jazz had seriously begun. It became the focus of my life for the next fifteen years or so, until academic life and the need to earn a living toppled jazz authenticity from its perch for some twenty-five years. Clive wrote that ‘making sense of my attraction [to the Bunk record] was not important’ for him at the time. For me it became a life-long preoccupation. What was it that led me to be so affected by this record, above all others? As I write now, my first memory of the peculiar importance music had for me is, as a seven- or eight-year-old, lying in my parents’ double bed on my own during the day, recovering from some minor ailment, and listening to my parents’ bedside radio speaker—a large walnut construction with a black wood grille. I can only recall Scottish bagpipe music and the occasional Sousa march coming out of that speaker. Whatever it was, my father must have sensed its importance to me—a mixture, perhaps, of providing me with comfort, excitement, and rejuvenation—and the following Christmas presented me with his old wind-up gramophone, a bunch of needles, and about ten shellac 78s. There may have been a Sousa march among them. I did not care. I was in heaven. Quite soon, I did care and wanted my own music. After some early mishaps—I broke my 1953 new shellac copy of ‘How Much Is that the Doggie in the Window?’10 in the car on the way back from the record shop, and it was never replaced—I discovered Elvis Presley, and I was on my way. I just missed his January 1956 hit ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, but from then on I bought every one of Elvis’s 78 shellac hit singles from his ‘Hound Dog’/‘Don’t be Cruel’ to his ‘Jailhouse Rock’.11 I was in my element. That was 1956 and 1957. The time had come for my favourite birthday and Christmas combined present of all time to that date—a Philips AG2121 Disc Jockey Major (1958)12—and my first vinyl extended play record—Elvis Presley’s 1958 King Creole. Much of the film of King Creole was set in New Orleans.13 I was clearly destined to be a collector and an increasingly discerning one. I noticed, for instance, that after 1959, or so, Elvis was getting smoother, more commercial, more ‘popular’, and I didn’t like it. I tried some Chuck Berry and



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Bo Diddley, but for a while that was just a shade too ‘rough’ for me. Later, I reverted to that sound in spades. Meanwhile, the ‘Trad Fad’ was happening14—1950s British traditional jazz was becoming popular, chart-topping music. Ever sensitive to and observant about my tastes, I noticed that of the emerging ‘Trad Fad’ trio of Chris Barber, Acker Bilk, and Kenny Ball, I found Kenny Ball too brash, Chris Barber too smooth, and Acker Bilk just about right. I started collecting Acker Bilk LPs, alongside his singles and EPs. I liked Bob Wallis, too. By now I was fifteen years of age, turning sixteen and entering sixth form at my boarding school—the time for ‘A’ levels, intensive reading, and a new ‘seriousness’. Roundabout the same time, I discovered ‘authenticity’, Ken Colyer and Bunk Johnson, beatniks, Beat poetry and art—and women. Moreover, I took up trumpet and did my best to give up pretty much everything else I had done before, especially sport. In the maelstrom of new happenings and new excitements, it is impossible now to sort out which came first and what precisely followed what. Most important, however, was my discovery of Studio 51, the Ken Colyer Jazz Club in London. Locked away as I was in a boarding school for all term-time, apart from the odd weekend seeing my parents, it was Studio 51 that took on an especial significance for me. Somehow, I learned that this club was the mecca of ‘authenticity’ in New Orleans jazz in the UK. It was the nearest I could get to the bohemian dream. As I would write later: My discovery of ‘authentic’ New Orleans jazz emerged within a heady mix of my first-time reading of Beat poetry,15 jazz, jazz poetry,16 sexual liberation and radical politics in the England of 1961. I was 16 years of age at the time. As I was at boarding school, the nearest I could get to living the dream was to visit Studio 51, Ken Colyer’s Club in Great Newport Street, Leicester Square, London, in my school holidays. Especially bohemian and Beat to me, in my adolescent imagination, was going to the all-night sessions at Studio 51 and getting my first (and last) Beat poem published in the school magazine, The Malvernian, which voiced something of my experiences at the club.17 Across the floor Relaxed his bottle by his side his woman by the other Jazz he listened and thought and lived, yes really lived?

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Lived, what for? to listen to think to write perhaps to think again and then to die R. J. M. Ekins18

I was not alone in linking the themes of Beat poetry and New Orleans jazz with all sorts of schoolboy yearnings. Years later, I made the acquaintance of David Wyckoff, a legend in the social worlds of ‘authentic’ New Orleans music, most notably because as a young Harvard student in 1951, he and his friend Alden Ashforth had dropped out of university in order to go to New Orleans and make the first recordings of Kid Thomas Valentine and DeDe Pierce in bands grouped around their favourite clarinet player Emile Barnes.19 Their wealthy parents had hired a private detective to track them down. A deal was eventually brokered whereby they agreed to return to Harvard, providing they were given enough funds to finance another recording trip during an upcoming vacation.20 Such was the draw of these New Orleans musicians. I wrote to Wyckoff: I have been reminded when dipping into the so-called beatnik literature, just now, that as a 15/16 year-old at boarding school (English public school) I was discovering, in the school library the well-known book on the ‘Beatniks’—The Holy Barbarians (1959)21 and the ‘Beat’ poets, at just the same time I was discovering the paperbacks on jazz: Rex Harris;22 Harris and Rust23 which (together with Ken Colyer) led me to Bunk as a 16-yr-old. For a young middle-class boy brought up in the 1950s it was a heady mix—the ‘rebellion’ against all those restrictive ‘middle class’ norms on race, sexuality, what counted as ‘good’ music, and so on.

David replied: I greatly enjoyed your very informative letter. Your story of your background, your exposure as a 16/17-year- old to the arts and New Orleans jazz, etc. very much coincides with my own experience, of course quite a few years earlier. For me it was Bill Russell and his AM records, and the books were Sidney Finkelstein’s ‘Jazz, A People’s Music’,24 and in ‘Jazzways’25 the NoLa photo and text section by Skippy Adelman and Eugene Williams. This coincided as well with my enjoying the writings of Henry Miller, Kenneth Patchen and a little later Ginsberg and Kerouac.26



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It took me a long time to reach this degree of sophistication. Nevertheless, I did fairly speedily launch into Charles Fox, Peter Gammond, and Alun Morgan’s Jazz on Record: A Critical Guide,27 Rudi Blesh’s Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz,28 and membership of the Jazz Book Club that soon led me to Frederic Ramsey Jr. and Charles Edward Smith’s Jazzmen.29 Jazzmen included the celebrated chapter by Bill Russell on Bunk Johnson, which led to his resurrection, his revival, and, indeed, the New Orleans jazz revival of the 1940s and ’50s. Somehow, I learned that Ken Colyer’s idol was Bunk Johnson, and so it was I scoured my copy of Jazz on Record for the entry on Bunk. After my Bunk Brunswick EP epiphany experience, I set about collecting all the Bunk Johnson and Ken Colyer records listed in both Jazz on Record and Recorded Jazz: A Critical Guide. I rarely stole books from libraries, but I am ashamed to say that I still have my never-to-be-returned copy of this Critical Guide. Inside the front cover carefully and firmly glued down is the evidence of my theft—a printed label with the Malvern College school arms and motto: Sapiens Qui Prospicit. I note now the many ‘authenticity’ motifs liberally distributed in the section on Ken Colyer in this book: Ken Colyer is probably the most uncompromising New Orleans–style trumpet player we have in the British Isles. Colyer is to be congratulated on making the effort to visit the birthplace of jazz [New Orleans], which he did in 1952 by the expedient of joining the merchant navy. Back to the Delta is a sample of his band after the split with Chris Barber and Monty Sunshine. It is rougher and perhaps more authentic music, but it fulfilled Colyer’s ambition to play New Orleans jazz the way he felt it should be interpreted. . . Colyer makes no compromise with commercial requirement and must be congratulated for his musical integrity.30

Not surprisingly, this record Back to the Delta, which featured a Bernard (before he became Acker) Bilk on clarinet has remained one of my most played and favourite Ken Colyer LPs to this day.31 I imagine that, for years, I intended to return my ‘stolen’ copy of Recorded Jazz: A Critical Guide to the library because I made no underlining and no annotation in this book. Not so, with my bought copy of Jazz on Record. It features a mass of teenage underlining and annotation, most notably on Bunk Johnson and Ken Colyer. I heavily underlined the following passage on Ken Colyer, for instance: A staunch, even fanatical, supporter and lover of New Orleans jazz, Colyer has modelled himself and his band on the traditional model, playing abrupt and economical clichés, applied to a wide repertoire of standards, pops and ragtime. Once finding himself with a rather streamlined, polished and threatening-to-be-

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commercial successful band he beat a righteous retreat back to the harsh lands of true jazz. . . Back to the Delta and back to the holy creed, the next LP was a comparatively rough affair. The rest of the Colyer recordings for Decca have remained in the proper groove with two exceptions. One a rather horrible record made in Hamburg and one an exceptionally good record of four authentic ragtime numbers.32

Naturally, I rushed out to the local record shop to order the EP of the ‘four authentic ragtime numbers’—Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen, ‘They All Played Ragtime’, on Decca DFE 6466, released in 1958. As I turned, again and again, to the Bunk Johnson pages in Jazz on Record, following my extended record purchasing and listening, I got bolder with my comments. I became a schoolboy critic, delighting in the occasional errors in the book that my growing knowledge enabled me to spot, while adding schoolboy margin comments to critical opinions of Bunk I did not agree with. The text on Bunk Johnson said: The first recordings of 194233 were rough and sour, yet full of the spirit of enjoyment and hilarity that has always made this kind of music an acquired taste. A little of it is exhilarating, but after a while its persistent lack of subtlety and imaginative ideas become boring. It is unfortunate that so many British and American revival bands based themselves on such models for they copied the clichés and the faults without enlivening the music by a natural jazz sense.34

I wrote: ‘Tripe!’ The text said, ‘Bunk Johnson played with such a band when he recorded with the Yerba Buena Jazz Band in 1943. The hectic and harrowing result will only appeal to those with eardrums like elephant hide.’35 I wrote: ‘!!!Truck!’ ‘The band did not base themselves on Bunk or George anyway!’ The fact was that the Lu Waters Yerba Buena Band based themselves on the recordings of the 1920s King Oliver Creole Jazz Band, not on the Bunk Johnson-George Lewis New Orleans band. I was becoming an ‘expert’. And then I found a gross error of fact—a surprising and heady experience for a sixteen-year-old schoolboy enthusiast, unused to discerning such errors in published books. One of my all-time favourite Bunk Johnson LPs—the Commodore LP of the 1942 Jazz Information session36—was detailed thus: ‘The final recordings for Commodore [listed as 1948] show a rather tired Bunk and a general falling off.’37 I wrote: ‘They were early recordings, anyway’, before concluding, ‘The guy who wrote all this is writing unadulterated truck most of the time.’ Apropos your interlocution, Robert, distinguishing a ‘me’ (say, the subjective naval gazing of the ‘authentic’ practitioner), the ‘they’ (say, those others with whom we might engage in a form of contested or agonistic ‘authenticity



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talk’ ), and always an ‘us’ (say, the endless process of the self-identifying community or populace over time), I will end this section on Bunk (The original New Orleans font of this particular ‘authenticity’) and Ken Colyer (The English font of the ‘same’ ‘authenticity’—to be theorized by me later in terms of ‘adopting authenticity’), with some record sleeve-note exemplars in order to consolidate the same point. Whatever the meanings of authenticity were or were not—and whatever their validity—there was no question the word itself provided the rallying point for identification with these particular proponents of New Orleans jazz. Of course, who rallied, how they rallied, and why they rallied is another matter. But there were many of ‘us’. Holding that Brunswick Bunk Johnson EP in my hands as I read and reread those notes, as I listened to the four tracks on the EP, time and time again, there was Bunk detailed as the missing link with the never recorded founders and creators of New Orleans jazz; the missing link between Buddy Bolden and Louis Armstrong; even a brief description of ‘authentic New Orleans music.’ I had found the Holy Grail. Buddy Bolden, Tony Jackson, Emmett Hardy. Jazz musicians like these, leaving behind them no recordings, have taken on an almost legendary stature in jazz history, their music existing only in the memories of men who heard them in their heyday. Until 1942 Bunk Johnson seemed destined to take his place in the silent pantheon. Bunk had played cornet alongside Buddy Bolden; some people claimed he had given lessons to Louis Armstrong. When the great revival of interest in New Orleans jazz brought him out of obscurity to make his first ever records at the age of 63, a legend turned into living flesh. In 1945 Bunk Johnson came to New York with a band of New Orleans veterans. Time magazine called them ‘the hot jazz sensation of the year’. They played authentic New Orleans music, Bunk leading on cornet delicately but firmly, George Lewis’s clarinet floating above, Jim Robinson’s gruff trombone thrusting the others forward. This band made a quantity of recordings, the four titles on this EP among the finest, before Bunk returned to New Iberia, where he died on July 7, 1949, at the age of seventy.38

Ken Colyer, however, was very much alive and kicking. Moreover, he was doing his best to further ‘The Holy Grail’ as ‘authentically’ as he could in his own playing. Eventually, hundreds of articles and sleeve notes would add the terms ‘sincerity’, ‘integrity’, ‘truth’, and ‘purism’, especially, ‘purism’ when writing about Colyer’s quest for authenticity, as in this typical example from a 1960 EP. Ken Colyer boasts one claim to fame that none of his rivals on the traditional jazz scene in Europe can equal: he has been to New Orleans and mastered the purist style by listening to—and playing with the veteran artists who as young men created the music in the early days of this century.

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A self-taught jazzman with a deep and burning sincerity in the cause of the true New Orleans music. A nationwide British tour in 1957 in which the band featured the great George Lewis himself [Bunk’s clarinet player] consolidated this vital and authentic group in its unique position as the only jazz band in the world which has made a commercial success out of being resolutely noncommercial.39

When I first heard George Lewis, it was on that Bunk Johnson EP, and the clarinet tone was so unlike anything I had ever heard before that I had to check with the EP sleeve that it was a clarinet I was listening to.40 I can note, now, that of the twenty-five George Lewis records listed in the Jazz on Record, eighteen of them have my tick of acquisition, all made in the early 1960s.41 Bix Beiderbecke has four out of four ticks, but those two musicians apart, the score is puny, indeed: Young Louis Armstrong, 1; Chris Barber, 1; Sidney Bechet, 1; Johnny Dodds, 1; Huddie Lebetter (Leadbelly), 1; Humphrey Lyttelton, 1; Jelly Roll Morton, 1; New Orleans Rhythm Kings, 1; King Oliver, 1; Kid Ory, 1; Django Reinhardt /Stephane Grappelly, 1; Muggsy Spanier, 1; Joe Venuti/Eddie Lang, 1; Yerba Buena Jazz Band, 2. I did not leave school until the summer of 1963, so it was holiday excursions to the Ken Colyer club until then, backed up by attendance at the occasional jazz festival, by my increasing reading, and my discovery of the specialist listings put out by mail order divisions of jazz record shops.42 I cofounded a school jazz club in a disused cellar-type building in the spring of 1962 and was soon giving my first lecture—‘The New Orleans Revival’. A quick look through the now online early 1960s school magazine The Malvernian reminds me of Robert’s point about ‘agonistic’ talk that I had repressed. Totally erased from my mind is the following entry for the summer term 1963, my last term at Malvern: The Jazz Club: At the first meeting of term S. Manibhandu gave a short but very informative talk on ‘Bop’, tracing its growth from the early 40’s with the aid of gramophone records. Later in the term the Club held a discussion on the merits of jazz as an art form under the more specific heading: ‘Does the work of the “back to New Orleans” purists invalidate jazz as a creative art form?’ From the ensuing discussion it became obvious that the Club is fortunate in possessing several members who can with profit appreciate both the traditional and modern idiom and are not part of the fanatical division that is the curse of intelligent jazz study and appreciation.43

On leaving school, I settled down to the first year of an LLB (Hons) (law degree) at Birmingham University, destined to become a solicitor in the Birmingham family practice. All seemed to be going well, from my parents’



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point of view. I was living at home. My attempts to find live local jazz in the ‘authentic’ Bunk Johnson/Ken Colyer idiom came to nothing. As a result, I had no ‘smoky jazz clubs’, as my mother called them, to fritter my time away in. I was developing my specialist jazz interests largely in splendid isolation, confined to reading, mail order of records and listening. All that was to change, however, on a fateful evening in February 1964. Unknown to me, a local Birmingham musician—Dan Pawson—had founded his Artesian Hall Stompers in early 1960 and was building up a reputation as leading a ‘purist’, ‘authentic’ New Orleans jazz band, especially in Birmingham and the Midlands. Quite soon, the band was getting gigs at the Ken Colyer club in London. Moreover, they were hell raisers. Dan and his laterto-be wife, Pat, had sought me out because from 1962 I had been a member of the UK Bunk Johnson Jazz Appreciation Society. Pawson was a member of that Society and, in that capacity, had found out about my membership. How come he did not know me? A Bunk fan in Birmingham. Who was I? And here he was, on my doorstep, to find out. The die was cast. In short and speedy progression, I visited his house, was overwhelmed by the size of his record collection and the New Orleans musicians he focused on, was attending his regular weekly gig in Birmingham, and all others I could make, dug out my abandoned trumpet, formed a band around a group of would-be musicians who hung around his band and rapidly embedded myself in this hyper-specialised Birmingham New Orleans jazz scene. My meeting with Dan had come at a particularly propitious time. A year or so earlier I had first heard the only record I have ever listened to that affected me in a way comparable to my first hearing of the Brunswick Bunk Johnson EP. It was a 1959 American Folkways issue, first issued in the UK on the Topic label, and headed ‘The Music of New Orleans, Volume 3: Music of the Dance Halls’.44 It featured a selection of 1951–1954 tracks recorded live in the New Orleans dance halls that because of their obscurity had taken several years to get released. Particularly important to me and, as it transpired, to Dan Pawson, were two tracks; those of the Kid Thomas Band playing ‘Anytime’ at the local dance hall the Moulin Rouge, New Orleans and Billie and DeDe Pierce’s ‘Big Mamou’ recorded at Luthjen’s dance hall in New Orleans, both recorded in 1954. These tracks were to form the initial nucleus of what became known as the New Orleans dance hall sound, recorded live in the 1950s, some ten years before the rise of the juke box would finally sound the death knell of such neighbourhood live band New Orleans music. When more was learned about these recordings and an enthusiast audience for them grew, the issuing of many more previously unknown privately recorded 1950s New Orleans dance hall tracks would follow, over the next decades, especially in the 1970s.45

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Figure 9.2.  Music of the Dance Halls Source: Photograph: Tony Standish. Sleeve Design: Fredun Shepur, ARCA, 1959

Shortly after I had started following Dan’s band, all his musicians were poached by a rival trumpet player who had pretensions of turning full-time professional. Dan, who at that time was resolutely semi-professional, was faced with the task of forming an entirely new band. He used the opportunity to move entirely away any previous notions he might have had about the ‘purism’ and ‘authenticity’ of Ken Colyer towards the altogether rougher and sparser sound of the New Orleans dance hall recordings of the 1950s, following trumpet players Kid Thomas and DeDe Pierce, in particular. I was euphoric—‘authenticity’ refined, redefined, and updated. At the same time, I was being introduced to Barry ‘Kid’ Martyn who was, at this time, running the only fully professional ‘authentic’ New Orleans–style band in the UK, apart from Ken Colyer’s band.46 I had been following Martyn’s record releases up to the time I met Dan Pawson.47 However, following the Pawson



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meeting I was now on the inside track to follow Martyn and his band as he began to bring over to England and Europe a series of visiting musicians from New Orleans, beginning with trumpet player Kid Sheik in 1963. Martyn bought over Kid Thomas and his tenor saxophone player Emanuel Paul in 1964, which was to be first of many such visits. A pattern soon emerged. The visiting musician from New Orleans would tour Europe as guest star of Barry Martyn’s band. Private recordings and recordings by specialist labels would follow. The recordings would finance subsequent trips and enthusiast followers would avidly buy every new issue.48 Later, Dan Pawson would join Barry’s band for a short while. During the first visit from New Orleans of the New Orleans trombonist Louis Nelson in 1967 to tour with Barry Martyn’s band, I launched into record producing. I established La Croix records and issued my first two LPs of Louis Nelson with Barry Martyn’s dance band and brass band, both featuring Dan Pawson.49 These recordings seemed to follow naturally from my first exploratory trip to New Orleans in 1966. Certainly, they provided a preface to my recording full New Orleans bands in New Orleans the following year, in 1968. Issuing my vinyl LP recordings and staying on the New Orleans jazz scene into the early 1970s took up most of my time while I lived in Birmingham. When I ran out of money, I did fit in a funded Cert. Ed. teacher training course, between 1969 and 1970. This led to my move to London in 1971, followed by a full-time lecturing post in law at South West London College, London, from 1972 to 1974. In retrospect, this tided me over until I could move full time to my Ph.D. studies in the sociology of knowledge. My key turning point came in 1976, when I finally left New Orleans music, entirely, for the next twenty-five years. As detailed in Chapter 1, I moved into academe via G. H. Mead, symbolic interactionism, and grounded theory. At the end of my 1976 summer semester period studying with Mead disciple David L. Miller in Texas, I met my (later ex-) wife and her drag fancier friend, Carrie, for a final two weeks in New Orleans. While in Austin, Texas, I had been introduced by local radio stations to the excitement of the burgeoning scene of Texas country music, spearheaded by Willie Nelson joined by new talents such as Billie Joe Shaver, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Joe Ely. I was hooked. Visiting New Orleans was an anti-climax. The excitement had gone, not least because of the deaths of many old-time musicians that had taken place in the eight years since I had last been there.50 The Kid Thomas band was a shadow of its former self, following the death of its long-time drummer Sammy Penn in 1969. Preservation Hall manager Allan Jaffe had foisted on the Thomas band an unsuitable drummer Alonzo Stewart—whose roots were in rhythm and blues.51 Moreover, Allan Jaffe had saddled Billie and DeDe Pierce’s Preservation Hall Jazz Band with himself permanently on helicon. It was a

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scene I found both disappointing and depressing. For me, that 1976 trip to New Orleans signalled that we had moved from ‘the end of the beginning’, as Barry Martyn labelled second wave New Orleans jazz revivalism in New Orleans,52 to the ‘beginning of the end’. In short, New Orleans jazz revivalism, as I knew it, was now more-or-less all over. Later, I would discover that I was not alone in coming to this conclusion. That is a story I will return to. For now, I will just make the point that although many of us regarded second wave revivalism in New Orleans as ‘all over’ in New Orleans by the mid-1970s—giving rise to what I term as post-revivalism in New Orleans, itself—worldwide New Orleans jazz revivalism did, of course, continue and still does, albeit in an increasingly attenuated form. Moreover, the city of New Orleans remained as a ‘Music Mecca’ for many revivalists, and this continues to be the case, as in the lyrics of Ken Colyer’s song ‘Goin’ Home’:53 well if home is where the heart is and my home is in New Orleans well take me, to that land of dreams54

NOTES   1.  Strauss and Glaser, “Case Histories and Case Studies.”  2. Clive Wilson, Time of My Life: A Jazz Journey from London to New Orleans (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019). Wilson first visited New Orleans in 1964. In 2021, he wrote what is arguably the best introductory article on the defining characteristics of New Orleans jazz. Clive Wilson, “New Orleans Jazz—Characteristics,” Just Jazz, no. 274 (2021): 16–19.   3.  This recording of Tishomingo Blues was issued originally as a Decca shellac 78 in the USA. It was released on the Brunswick label as a vinyl EP in the UK in the 1950s. Clive Wilson started at his boarding school in January 1956 and first saw and heard the EP in his first few weeks there. It is included on Bunk Johnson and His New Orleans Band—The Complete Deccas, Victors and V Discs Plus Alternate Takes November 1945 to January 1946, Document Records (2)—DOCD-1001.  4. Clive Wilson, Time of My Life, xiii-xiv. How do we explain those Damascene ‘ecstatic’ moments—conversion experiences—that led so many of us to devote the better part of our lives to New Orleans music? I can do no better than this: ‘[T]he pattern of form and feeling which the artist expresses in the language of art is concretely present in the . . . sounds (music) . . . [A]rt “presents the beauty, the splendor, the glory, the majesty, the ‘plus’ that is in things,” the profundity of the pattern in things . . . The artistic experience evoked by the forms symbolic of human feeling, moreover, is transporting and transforming. It opens a new horizon, presents something that is “other, different, novel, strange, new, remote, intimate.” The human subject is rendered “emergent, ec-



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static” and empowered to explore the possibilities of living in a richer fuller world.’ The Fellows of the Woodstock Theological Center, The Realms of Desire: An Introduction to the Thought of Bernard Lonergan (Washington, DC: Georgetown University, 2011) 9-10. The quotes within quotes are cited, respectively, as Bernard Lonergan, ‘Art’, Topics in Education, 222, 216 and 217. My italics.   5. The recordings of High Society and Darktown Strutters’ Ball are included on Bunk Johnson and His New Orleans Band—The Complete Deccas, Victors and V Discs Plus Alternate Takes November 1945 to January 1946.   6.  Richard Ekins, Booklet, “Dan Pawson, 1966-1971, A Tribute,” 504/La Croix CD 93, 3.   7. William Carter, Preservation Hall: Music from the Heart (London: Cassell, 1991).   8.  William Carter, Preservation Hall, 6.   9.  Most notably, in the UK, especially England, and in Sweden, Denmark, Australia and Japan. 10.  This was the English cover version by Lita Rosa. Rosa thought it utter rubbish and refused to sing it ever again, notwithstanding that it reached No. 1 in the UK charts. Moreover, it was the first ever Merseyside no. 1 and the first no. 1 by a female. I was eight years old at the time of this incident. 11.  “Elvis Presley—78 RPM—Discography,” accessed February 2, 2023. http:// www.45worlds.com/78rpm/artist/elvis-presley/uk. E.g., Hound Dog/Don’t Be Cruel, Blue Suede Shoes/Tutti Frutti, Love Me Tender/Anyway You Want Me, All Shook Up/That’s When Your Heartache Begins, (Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear/Party, Jailhouse Rock/Treat Me Nice. 12.  Shared history within the New Orleans revivalist social worlds often includes record playing paraphernalia. I was amazed to find that in 1964 Dan Pawson was still using this same portable—distinctly non-hi-fi machine as his main record player. Indeed, the machine seemed to me to be running slow and I still wonder whether that fact led to his somewhat less than brassy trumpet tone that remained with him all his life. 13.  See “Elvis ‘King Creole’ Film Locations—(behind the scenes),” accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K4rS0uLX84. 14.  Matthew, Brian, Trad Mad: The First Full Story of the Trad Scene in Words and Pictures (London: World Distributors, 1962). 15.  Gene Baro, sel. Beat Poets (London: Vista Books, 1961). 16.  Anselm Hollo, sel. Jazz Poetry, (London: Vista Books, 1963). 17.  Richard Ekins, “Flirting with the Beats: Barbara Reid in 1950s New Orleans,” Just Jazz, no. 250 (2019): 22–31 at 22. Set in the middle of this period was my attendance on a school English ‘A’ level trip to John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in October 1962. Trumpet playing Jimmy Porter (Derek Jacobi) was a ready-made living icon for me. “Theatricalia—Look Back in Anger,” accessed October 10, 2022. https://theatricalia.com/play/43q/look-back-inanger/production/eyw. 18. Richard Ekins, “Jazz Club,” The Malvernian, DXXXIII (March 1963), 11. For technical reasons, this poem had to be set out as a block quote in this book. The

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original publication was set out in a manner that aped similarly styled poems in Gene Baro, sel. Beat Poets. 19.  Kid Thomas: The Very First Recordings, American Music AMCD-10; Emile Barnes: The Louisiana Joymakers introducing DeDe & Billie Peirce, American Music AMCD-13. It later transpired that there had been an earlier private live recording of Emile Barnes, with DeDe Pierce, made in 1946. Emile Barnes 1946: The Very First Recordings, American Music AMCD-102. 20.  See, Fred Eatherton and Richard Ekins, “In Praise of Alden Ashforth, David Wyckoff and James McGarrell: An Annotated Discography, Part 1,” Just Jazz, no. 245 (2018): 20–5; Fred Eatherton and Richard Ekins, “In Praise of Alden Ashforth, David Wyckoff and James McGarrell: An Annotated Discography, Part 2,” Just Jazz, no. 246 (2018): 24–9. 21.  Lawrence Lipton, The Holy Barbarians (Messner: New York, 1959). 22.  Rex Harris, Jazz (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 5th edition, 1957). 23.  Rex Harris and Brian Rust, Recorded Jazz: A Critical Guide (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958). 24.  Sidney Finkelstein, Jazz: A People’s Music (New York: Citadel Press, 1948). 25. George Rosenthal and Frank Zachary, eds. Jazzways (London: Musicians Press, 1947). 26.  Richard Ekins, “Flirting with the Beats,” 22–3. The core group of Beat Generation authors, including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs met in and around Columbia University in New York City. Later, in the mid-1950s, a number of the central figures ended up together in San Francisco associating themselves with the San Francisco Renaissance. Kenneth Patchen, a major influence on the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beat Generation, had been writing in San Francisco many years before. Ginsberg’s Howl was published in 1956 and Kerouac’s On the Road was published in 1957. Henry Miller was an important influence on Kerouac. 27.  Charles Fox, Peter Gammond, Alun Morgan and Alexis Korner, Jazz on Record: A Critical Guide (London: Arrow Books, 1960). 28.  Rudy Blesh, Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz (London: Cassell, 1949). 29. The Jazz Book Club (1956-1967). Accessed April 16, 2023, https://www. booksandwriters.co.uk/J/. Frederic Ramsey, Jr. and Charles Edward Smith, eds., Jazzmen (London: Jazz Book Club, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1958 [Reprint of 1939 first edition]). 30.  Rex Harris and Brian Rust, Recorded Jazz, 53. 31. See Selected Discography, Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen, New Orleans to London and Back to the Delta—Classic Recordings from 1953/54, Lake Records LACD209. 32.  Charles Fox, Peter Gammond, Alun Morgan, Alexis Corner, Jazz on Record, 87. 33.  See Selected Discography, Bunk Johnson and his Superior Jazz Band, featuring George Lewis and Big Jim Robinson, Good Time Jazz. GTJCD-12048-2 [1942]. 34.  Jazz on Record, 190. 35.  Jazz on Record, 190. 36.  See Selected Discography, Willie ‘Bunk’ Johnson—The Complete ‘Jazz Information’ Recordings, American Music, AMCD-119 [1942]. 37.  Jazz on Record, 191.



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38. Anonymous sleeve notes, Bunk Johnson and his New Orleans Band, Brunswick Records, OE 9257. 39.  Anonymous sleeve notes, Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen, This Is Jazz, Volume 1, Part 1, Columbia EP SEG 8038, 1960. See Selected Discography, Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen, This Is Jazz, Vols 1 and 2, Lake Records LACD201D [1959–1961]. 40.  I am intrigued by the fact that just as I was discovering Bunk Johnson and George Lewis on records, at boarding school, far away from New Orleans, the young white American schoolboy, Tom Sancton, some four years younger than me, was discovering George Lewis in the flesh in New Orleans. As he writes in Tom Sancton, Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White (New York: The Other Press, 2006), at 88: ‘[H]is famous “Burgundy Street Blues” . . . contained the secret of George Lewis’s tone—it was spiritual, mystical, even religious.’ And at 71: ‘I was mesmerized by George Lewis. I got a book about his life, Call Him George by Jay Allison Stuart, and read it over and over. I bought his records at the Hall [Preservation Hall] and listened to them until I knew every note by heart. I would even stand in front of a mirror and play along with his records on a plastic flute.’ Conscious of the fact that worldwide New Orleans jazz revivalism was rooted in records whereas Sancton’s New Orleans jazz career was rooted in his experiences in New Orleans—with George Lewis, above all—I wrote to him: ‘I am intrigued by the fact that at just about exactly the same time I was having my Bunk Johnson epiphany moment at boarding school (in 1961)— like Clive [Wilson], and so many of us in the UK—from the Bunk Brunswick EP—you were ‘mesmerized by George Lewis’, in the flesh, of course, in your case. . . . Relatedly, I am wondering at what stage you got to know about Bunk and his records—so vital, of course, for New Orleans jazz revivalism worldwide. But for you, perhaps, not exactly irrelevant, but almost so, perhaps.’ In a fascinating reply, Sancton wrote: ‘My introduction to Bunk came directly from George Lewis. When I started taking lessons with him, he gave me a signed copy of the Good Time Jazz reissue of the 1942 Jazz Man session famously recorded by Bill Russell et al. I was never into record collecting and discography, but that gift from George opened the door onto Bunk’s music and his remarkable story, which I first learned from reading the liner notes and from Bunk’s talking records that were part of the album. I was knocked out by the force and beauty of those performances—Panama, Pallet on the Floor, Moose March, etc. I loved Bunk’s sound from the first time I heard it, round and clear, and his haunting way with the blues. But it wasn’t the records that drew me to the music. They enhanced my enjoyment and understanding of the live music I was hearing at the feet of George Lewis, Jim Robinson, Slow Drag, Joe Watkins, and all the other great musicians who were around then. As for the revival movement, I didn’t really know what that was at the time. I was just listening to the music, taking it all in. To me, it wasn’t about records. Hope that helps.’ Emails Richard Ekins to Tom Sancton, and Tom Sancton to Richard Ekins, 03/02/2023. Especially significant to me is that Sancton ‘never thought a white boy could do it. Until [a nineteen-years old] Sammy Rimington [from England] showed up . . . at the gates of Preservation Hall one night in June 1962.’ It was this meeting with the then Ken Colyer’s young clarinet player Sammy Rimington that set Tom Sancton off on his clarinet playing career. At the same time, in England, I was following Rimington’s progress and, indeed, was to write to him in early 1963 to learn more about him and his recordings. Tom Sancton, Song for My Fathers, 72–3; Richard Ekins, “Pitch

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Monitoring, Pitch Correction and the Case of the Louis James Orchestra, 1967,” New Orleans Music 14, no. 3 (2008): 6–14 at 6–7. It is noteworthy that the cover of the vinyl LP given to Sancton by George Lewis is headed “A Landmark in Jazz Recording History—Authentic New Orleans Jazz by—Bunk Johnson and his Superior Jazz Band featuring George Lewis and Jim Robinson,” Good Time Jazz, MONO M12048. 41.  In late 1948, Johnson suffered a stroke which left him a semi-invalid. After his death in July 1949, George Lewis took over the band. Lewis featured a variety of different trumpet players and continued recording until his death in 1968. 42.  During these early ‘solitary’ years of my participation within jazz worlds, I became a mail order devotee of Pete Russell’s Hot Record store in Plymouth. His mimeographed ‘Good News’ introduced me to all the relevant recordings that I needed to know about, especially imports. The British Record Shop Archive entry for “Pete Russell’s Hot Record Store” puts it this way: ‘DECADES before the internet was anything other than a science fiction dream Pete Russell had his own worldwide web, run from Plymouth. He was at the centre of a global music business supplying records with the help of nothing more high-tech than the lick-and-stick stamp. His mail order concern, specializing in jazz, ran from a modest office next to Plymouth Pannier Market.’ “British Record Shop Archive—Peter Russells (sic) Hot Record Store,” accessed February 8, 2022. https://www.britishrecordshoparchive.org/peterrussells-hot-record-store.html. 43.  Anon, “The Jazz Club,” The Malvernian, DXXXIII (July 1963) 20. 44.  See Selected Discography, Music of New Orleans, Vol. 3: The Music of the Dance Halls. Folkways 2463 [1951–1954]. Custom CD available. 45.  Richard Ekins, “In Praise of Leonard Brackett (1925-2007): Center Records and the Return to the Music of the New Orleans Dance Halls,” Just Jazz, no. 214 (2016): 16–20. 46.  The English trumpet player Keith Smith’s various bands were not regularly playing in the UK at this time. See, ‘Keith Smith’, Obituary, The Guardian, I May 2008, accessed June 6, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/may/01/jazz. 47.  Most notably, Down in Honky Tonk Town, Kid Martyn’s Ragtime Band, 77 LEU 12/4, released in 1962. 48.  I missed Kid Sheik in 1963. Martyn brought over Kid Thomas and Emanuel Paul in 1964, Harold Dejan in 1965, Kid Sheik and John Handy in 1966, and Louis Nelson in 1967. For these and subsequent tours and recordings, see Mike Burns, ed. Walking with Legends: Barry Martyn’s New Orleans Jazz Odyssey (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007). Especially recommended are Kid Sheik’s First European Tour, GHB, BCD-187 and Kid Thomas and Emanuel Paul with Barry Martyn’s Band, GHB, BCD-257. 49.  Louis Nelson with ‘Kid’ Martyn’s Band, La Croix Records, LP 1; Louis Nelson with Martyn’s Eagle Brass Band, La Croix Records, LP 2. 50.  Bill Bissonnette in his book Jazz Crusade lists the deaths of the old-style New Orleans musicians. The toll ratchets up as the 1960s leads into the 1970s. Bill Bissonnette, The Jazz Crusade: The Inside Story of the Great New Orleans Revival of the 1960s (Bridgeport, CT: Special Request Books, 1992).



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51. The evidence suggests that drummer Alonzo Stewart was Jaffe’s preferred drummer because he was a crowd-pleaser, reliable, and a good organiser, as well as being a vocalist. Thomas’s previous drummer, Sammy Penn, had played with Thomas for decades before he died and had to be replaced. 52.  Barry Martyn, New Orleans Jazz: The End of the Beginning (New Orleans, LA: Jazzology Press, 1998). 53. See, Richard Ekins, “The Social Construction of a Music Mecca: ‘Goin’ Home’, New Orleans and International New Orleans Jazz Revivalism,” Popular Music History 8, no. 1 (2014): 5–22. 54.  “Going Home,” Ken Colyer, accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.lyrics. com/sublyric/66256/Ken+Colyer/Going+Home.

Chapter Ten

Revisiting Authenticity (2000–2009)

Wendy Saunderson is a great believer in the importance and significance of new beginnings coinciding with new seasons, new decades, and so on. What could be of more potential significance than living into a new millennium? In this spirit, perhaps, she presented me with a copy of the just-released Van Morrison CD The Skiffle Sessions—Live in Belfast, 1998, released in 2000. The CD featured a collaboration between Northern Irish singer song writer Morrison, Lonnie Donegan, and Chris Barber. Like many rock stars of his generation, Van Morrison had started his musical career as a pre-teenager in a skiffle band under the influence of Lonnie Donegan’s 1955 smash hit skiffle recording of ‘Rock Island Line/John Henry’. What was less widely known, at the time, was that this skiffle group was an offshoot of the Chris Barber Jazz Band. For the skiffle sessions, Chris Barber played string bass, as he did on the ‘Rock Island Line/John Henry’ recording. Just prior to the 1998 live session at the Whitla Hall, Belfast, Van Morrison had been in discussion with Dr. John from New Orleans about recording an album of skiffle music with him. As Dr. John happened to be playing in Belfast on the same evening as the Whitla Hall gig, he joined the band on piano for the recorded tracks ‘Goin’ Home’ and ‘Good Morning Blues’.1 The album sold well, reaching fourteenth position in the UK album chart of 2000. The CD triggered all sorts of memories for me. While I was in my Elvis Presley phase in the mid to late 1950s, I had bought a number of skiffle 78s, in particular, tracks by Lonnie Donegan and Johnny Duncan.2 I knew that it was a back-to-basics movement relating to the roots of Black American music. I knew that the origins of skiffle music in Britain were contested—with Ken Colyer fans giving him the main credit for starting the skiffle craze in England and Chris Barber fans giving Barber the credit.3 Of the fifteen tracks on the CD, many triggered all sorts of special memories for me. Folk and 85

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blues icon Lead Belly (Huddie William Ledbetter, 1888–1949) songs were well represented, as were several Ken Colyer favourites, including his celebrated composition Goin’ Home. I had, as it turned out, come home. My interest was piqued, and I did something I had never done before. I did a Google search for Kid Thomas and DeDe Pierce, the two most exciting trumpet players I had ever heard in the flesh. I was amazed when the very first item on the page that came up—as it does now—was ‘Billie and Dee Dee Pierce with Kid Thomas Valentine—1960’ the Larry Borenstein Collection, Volume 7, 504 CD 36. I could barely believe my eyes. I had been engrossed in the New Orleans music scene from 1961 to 1976 in various capacities and, as a record collector, reckoned to buy everything that was ever issued within my chosen niche of New Orleans music. Moreover, Kid Thomas and DeDe Pierce were especial favourites of mine. Yet never had anyone suggested to me that there were recordings of them playing together. And then things became clear. My old friend Mike Dine, who I knew well when he worked at the independent record label NoLa Records had, I learnt, branched out on his own in 1978 and launched his own 504 label.4 Larry Borenstein, the proprietor of the French Quarter art gallery that became Preservation Hall had died in 1981, and Borenstein’s daughter, Sacha, discovered in her father’s estate a large collection of private tape recordings he had made between around 1955 and 1960. The story had often been told that Borenstein worked in his gallery in the evenings and was unable to get out to hear the Kid Thomas band working over the river in Algiers, New Orleans. Instead, he would invite the musicians to come to his gallery. To get around difficulties with the musicians’ union, he held the sessions as private ones, called them ‘rehearsals’, and collected tips for the band to pay them something.5 Although the cognoscenti speculated about his private recordings, there was no confirmed evidence of their precise nature and volume. For me and enthusiasts like me, they provided a vital missing link between the period in New Orleans when jazz in the neighbourhood dance halls was coming to an end and to the beginnings of the 1960s Preservation Hall period. Eventually, the negotiations between Sacha Borenstein and Mike Dine would lead to a series of sixteen CDs, the most important and exciting series of New Orleans jazz recordings produced since Bill Russell’s American Music releases, Ken Mills’s Icons, Herb Friedwald’s Riversides, and Barry Martyn’s MONOs. Ken Mills saw his Icon recordings as continuing in the early 1960s where Bill Russell had left off in the 1950s. Herb Friedwald’s Riversides and Barry Martyn’s MONO series followed closely after Mills had started his recording project. All these record labels were crucial in establishing the most important 1960s ‘authentic’ recordings of those old-style New Orleans musicians still playing in New Orleans.



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At the time I discovered the Borenstein recordings in 2000, Mike Dine had issued three vinyl LPs of the privately recorded material and ten CDs. As I played through all the sessions available at the beginning of 2000, I felt reborn. Dine had made the transition to CD in 1991. I soon discovered that George H. Buck, proprietor of Jazzology/GHB records had done likewise a couple of years earlier.6 The move to CD meant that the specialist material previously issued on New Orleans jazz LPs was quite literally ‘born again’. Tracks previously unissued from previous sessions could now be added to the LP material. In 1966, I had been ‘christened’ Lord Richard in New Orleans by Kid Thomas’s bass player Joe ‘Kid Twat’ Butler. As Wendy Saunderson put it: Butler, bass player with the Kid Thomas Band, was finishing playing a set in Preservation Hall when Richard came sauntering in. Never before having seen such a man in New Orleans—tall, long-haired and heavily bearded—Kid Twat bowed down, then threw up his arms and exclaimed, ‘Here come de Lord!’ The name stuck and, from that moment on, Richard was known as Lord Richard throughout his recording career; to the Japanese full ensemble New Orleans parade band that welcomed him on his arrival at the port of Kobe in 1968; and amongst New Orleans jazz enthusiasts around the world, who continue to seek out and exchange the early recordings.7

Mike Dine and I agreed a series of ‘Lord Richard Sessions’ to be coproduced by Mike and me on CD. This meant that I could re-release on CD all seven of my previous vinyl LPs together with additional material of mine that remained unreleased. The series eventually extended to nine CDs issued on 504/La Croix between 2005 and 2018. I determined to write very long and very well produced ‘Booklet Notes’ and set about researching for these. For the first CD featuring Louis Nelson, I combined La Croix LP 1 and LP 2 and added six previously unissued tracks. I used the word ‘old-style’ on numerous occasions as the main descriptor for the music and divided New Orleans jazz revivalism into three phases, making the point that Louis Nelson was the most prominent of the ‘old-style’ trombonists whose career spread over all three phases of revivalism—those of the 1940s to the end of the 1950s, from the 1960s to 1976, and the post1976 period. The second CD featured my Kid Thomas at Kohlman’s Tavern 1968 session, recorded in New Orleans with Clive Wilson, supplemented with one previously unissued take from that session, and four previously unissued tracks of the Kid Thomas Band with George Lewis playing their earliest recorded session at Preservation Hall on 12 November 1961. I made the point in the booklet that ‘Between them, the three flagship bands of Bunk Johnson, George Lewis and Kid Thomas span virtually the entire history of

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“old-style” New Orleans jazz and its revival,’ adding, ‘Indeed, in terms of authenticity, longevity and contemporary significance, the Kid Thomas Band may legitimately claim to be the most significant of all the old-style New Orleans bands.’8 I noted that it was the Bunk Johnson recordings of 1942–1946 that set the initial parameters for so-called ‘authentic’ old-style New Orleans jazz. As I read through these Booklet Notes now, I am reminded of Robert’s view of his use of ‘everyday life’ outlined in his Riff 1: ‘I guess what I’m trying to say is that my conceptualisation of “everyday life” in that book is quite fuzzy and indistinct.’ My conflation of Bunk, Lewis, Thomas, ‘old-style’, and ‘authenticity’ is relying on a set of taken for granted assumptions familiar enough to the likely buyers of my CDs—part of the ‘everyday life’ of those knowledgeable about this particular social world as enthusiasts—but one that I felt would benefit from unpacking and re-theorising for a more scholarly and/or academic readership. My CD 3 saw me launching into a major new ‘Dan Pawson Project’, which would eventually lead to a series of three Dan Pawson CDs.9 Dave Senior, the English trombonist on the 1966 session featured on this CD would write later of this session: For me, this was a milestone for many reasons, and I still stand by my words when I say that this music, in its context was just about as ‘authentic’ as you could get. It was of its time and in an uncanny way hard to distinguish from the real thing. I have said elsewhere that I have not played New Orleans jazz with such ‘purity’ anywhere or anytime since those days and probably never will, despite my enduring enjoyment of playing N.O. style jazz.10

When I arrived in New Orleans, in 1968, I had not planned to record the full Kid Thomas band. Rather, I had intended to record a quartet around the trumpet player DeDe Pierce but was thwarted by Allan Jaffe who was just negotiating an exclusive contract with DeDe and wife, pianist Billie Pierce. Mike Dine knew of my disappointment and for this reason suggested we released a hitherto unreleased DeDe 1967 concert, which he had acquired the rights to. This became my CD 4,11 and I used the long “Booklet Notes” as an opportunity to set forth DeDe’s position in the developing tradition of ‘authentic’ old-style New Orleans jazz trumpet players. Ken Grayson Mills, very much under the influence of Sam Charters, had noted that: In the years from 1919–1927, the New Orleans trumpet style flowered into a complex, brilliant art, without losing the marrow-like tone which had always characterized the music. Kid Punch Miller, Buddy Petit, Chris Kelly, Kid Rena, and Sam Morgan were the kings, all of them perpetrated (sic) the virile simple lead of the older men like Oliver, Keppard, and Mutt Carey, into an involved, melodic line of intense individuality.12



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I added in my “Booklet Notes”: However, as the 1920s passed, so did these standard-bearers of the New Orleans trumpet style. By 1927, Chris Kelly had died and Punch Miller had left town. During the next five years, Kid Rena’s lip would be gone, Buddy Petit would be dead, and Sam Morgan’s second stroke would finish his band. The field was now open for the followers of these trumpet kings to continue and develop the traditions set by their idols. DeDe was exceptionally well placed to do this. He had played second trumpet in the bands of no less than three of the greatest trumpeters of the period—Kid Rena, Chris Kelly, and Buddy Petit. Indeed, he had taken lessons from Rena for over six months. Each and every one of the old-style New Orleans trumpet players developed their own unique style. From one point of view, DeDe’s particular staccato curlicue emotional style is, indeed, unique. However, there seems little doubt that in developing his style, DeDe did so within the traditions established by such men as Rena, Kelly, and Petit. In a 1959 interview, DeDe said that his favourite trumpet player was Kid Rena and that he had taken Rena’s style almost exactly—referring, perhaps, to Rena’s fast fingering and his high pitch work. DeDe knew and played with the legendary Chris Kelly who played more blues than any man in New Orleans. Ethnomusicologist Sam Charters tells how Chris Kelly would develop simple blues phrases into an intense outburst of emotion and ‘played with a melodic suppleness and an incisive attack that influenced many of the younger players’. Undoubtedly DeDe took on board something of this influence. Interestingly, DeDe thought that Rena played a better class of music than Buddy Petit who is often referred to as the king of the New Orleans cornet players of this period. Like Chris Kelly, Petit was renowned for the blues. Petit was said to play with a ‘tantalizing rhythmic swing that made the girls squeal when they heard him play’. DeDe’s playing, at its best, merited similar comment. Steeped in such traditions and honing his skills in the bar rooms and dance halls of New Orleans throughout the 1930s, 40s and 50s, it was hardly surprising that when second wave revivalism took root in New Orleans in the 1960s— when live old-style New Orleans jazz soon became a spectacle for seated tourists—DeDe’s playing remained especially redolent of earlier times.13

I was especially gratified to have that CD reviewed in the following terms by New Orleans jazz authority Brian Harvey: Richard set out to record hitherto neglected New Orleans musicians like trumpeter De De Pierce and his talented pianist wife Billie—one time accompanist to Bessie Smith. De De and Billie are untainted throwbacks to the 1920s and 30’s era of Decatur Street’s roughest saloons and dance halls. Their jazz is some of the most true, most authentic ever to come out of the city. It’s wonderful throbbing visceral stuff—the lifeblood of the real music. If you love traditional jazz you owe it to yourself to have an infusion of this remarkable music.14

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My issue of 504/La Croix CD 5, issued in 2008, was the last CD I issued before moving to a serious grounded theory focus, the following year. It featured two New Orleans saxophone players—Andrew Morgan and John Handy—and much of the Booklet Notes focused on the question of so-called ‘authenticity’ in instrumentation.15 For many years, many New Orleans jazz revivalists had argued a ‘purist’ position that the only reed instrument in the ‘authentic’ New Orleans front-line should be the clarinet. When saxophonist Bruce Turner first joined Humphrey Lyttelton’s traditional jazz band in 1953, he was confronted at a Birmingham gig by an unfurled banner: ‘Go home you Dirty Bopper’ by revivalist fans ‘scenting a sell out to modernist tendencies.’16 As jazz critic Steve Voce put it in his obituary for Bruce Turner in 1993: ‘The saxophone had much the same effect on the purist jazz fans of the Fifties in their war with the “modernists” as a crucifix has on a vampire.’17 This is an issue I will return to. Moreover, this release was to presage my move to more serious work on ‘authenticity’ in other ways, namely those relating to pitch monitoring and pitch rectification, a matter I will take up in Chapter 12. But first I will say more on ‘competing authenticities’, on ‘authenticity wars’, and my move to academe. NOTES 1.  “The Skiffle Sessions—Live in Belfast 1998”, Exile—7243 8 48307 2.  2. Johnny Duncan was an American bluegrass and skiffle player whose ‘Last Train to San Fernando’ reached no. 2 in the singles’ charts in 1957. He played for a while with Chris Barber’s Band after Lonnie Donegan left the band to develop his solo career. 3. Billy Bragg, Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World (London: Faber and Faber, 2017); Alyn Shipton, Jazz Me Blues: The Autobiography of Chris Barber (Sheffield: Equinox, 2014). 4.  “504 Records,” named after the Louisiana area code telephone number. 5.  Richard Ekins, “Larry Borenstein on Art, New Orleans Music and the Origins of Preservation Hall, Part 1,” Just Jazz, no. 257 (2019): 28–33; Richard Ekins, “Larry Borenstein on Art, New Orleans Music and the Origins of Preservation Hall, Part 2,” Just Jazz, no. 258 (2019): 27–9. 6.  Eventually Jazzology/GHB, New Orleans, would buyout and issue on CD almost all the material owned by the specialist New Orleans jazz labels of the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. This did not include 504 records, which was purchased by Upbeat Recordings, UK, in 2022. 7.  Wendy Saunderson, “Lord Richard—New Orleans Sessions,” CD Booklet, 2, accessed February 3, 2023. http://www.lacroixrecords.com/index.html. 8. Richard Ekins, Booklet Notes, “Kid Thomas Valentine, 1961 & 1968,” 504/La Croix CD 92: 3.



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 9. See Selected Discography. The three CDs are listed under Adapting Authenticity—Dan Pawson. 10.  Dave Senior, “Dan Pawson’s Artesian Hall Stompers in the 60’s—The Forgotten Recordings,” accessed March 3, 2023. http://home.scarlet.be/davesenior /AHS%20in%20the%2060.htm. 11. See Selected Discography, Billie and DeDe Pierce, with Louis Nelson, Cie Frasier and Chester Zardis, 1967, 504/La Croix CD 94. 12.  Richard Ekins, Booklet Notes, “Billie and DeDe Pierce, 1967,” 504/La Croix CD 94: 6-7 citing Ken Grayson Mills, Sleeve Notes, “Kid Punch—1960, Punch Miller and his Jazz Band,” Icon LP 2. 13.  Richard Ekins, Booklet Notes, “Billie and DeDe Pierce, 1967,” 504/La Croix CD 94: 7. 14.  Brian Harvey, Hot Jazz Channel—Album Reviews, Billie and DeDe Pierce with Louis Nelson, Cie Frasier and Chester Zardis, The Lord Richard New Orleans Sessions Volume 4, 504/La Croix CD 94. Website now discontinued. ‘DeDe’ was the nickname given to him by a young cousin with whom he grew up. The name stuck. For many years, it was written variously as ‘DeDe’, ‘Dee Dee’, or ‘De De’. By the 1960s, his business card was reading ‘Billie and DeDe Pierce. The same ‘DeDe’ was adopted in the Membership Directory of the American Federation of Musicians in the 1960s and since. 15.  Richard Ekins, Booklet Notes, “Louis James, 1967 and John Handy, 1966,” 504/La Croix CD 95. 16. Mike Hobert, “Dirty Bopper Go Home,” Financial Times, 27 December 2012, accessed February 3, 2023. https://www.realclearbooks.com/2012/12/27/dirty _bopper_go_home_4475.html. 17. Steve Voce, “Obituary: Bruce Turner,” Independent, 30 November 1993, accessed February 3, 2023. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary -bruce-turner-1507707.html.

Chapter Eleven

Enthusiasts, Competing Authenticities, and the Move to Academe

Thus far I have sketched my own journey through what I took to be the most ‘authentic’ New Orleans jazz there was, with reference to major participants who identified with the same tradition as I did. However, it must be said, that the ‘authenticity’ of this tradition was hotly disputed. While ‘our’ tradition gave pride of place to the rediscovery of Bunk Johnson and first recording of Bunk Johnson in the early 1940s and the continuance of this tradition into the 1960s and ’70s through George Lewis and Preservation Hall, in particular— what might be called resuming authenticity from the 1960s—an alternative and competing tradition, often identified as the classic New Orleans jazz tradition, existed more or less in parallel with it. This was an approach that rooted authenticity in the records made by those New Orleans musicians who had left New Orleans in the 1920s and who had been recorded in the North—especially in Chicago. Crudely put—and much more on this later—we were devotees of the New Orleans ‘stay at homes’, first recorded in the 1940s. Our opponents in the ‘authenticity wars’ were those who followed the earlier recordings made in the 1920s recorded for an African American market but collected later and written about, especially in the mid-1930s, by young white enthusiasts. At the time of my participation in New Orleans jazz social worlds in England in the 1960s and the ’70s, the division between the two competing ‘authenticities’ was often very marked. Birmingham, where I lived, as with so many other towns and cities in the UK and elsewhere, had its own bands following the different traditions. Dan Pawson’s Artesian Hall Stompers was the leading Birmingham band I followed. Norman Field and the Zenith Hot Stompers were the leading band playing in the opposing ‘authentic’ ‘classic’ tradition. Each band had their own quite separate following of cognoscenti enthusiasts and would-be musicians. While there were, of course, bands formed to play a more eclectic style of traditional jazz or, indeed, that sought 93

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to combine the two ‘authentic’ approaches, the combined approach often led to difficulties. I formed my first band—the Burgundy Street Stompers—in 1964, which was really a rehearsal group formed from followers of Dan Pawson’s Artesian Hall Stompers. However, when Pawson’s band broke up in 1965, most of my band joined his new group. For a while, I played with a band named the Etruscan Jazz Band that contained members who mostly identified with the ‘classic jazz’ era. I persuaded the band to accept my talented pianist friend Bob Barton as a member. Bob Barton, at the time, was a follower of Alton Purnell, Bunk Johnson’s former and most well-known pianist—indeed, I had introduced Bob to New Orleans music and Alton Purnell. Very soon, the fissures in the band caused by the clash of the two styles led to the break-up of the band. I went on to cofound, with Bob Barton, the Crescent City Stompers, with more like-minded musicians. We played mainly as a Birmingham neighbourhood band from 1965 to 1968. Indeed, from around 1965, in a move that says much about my approach to the authenticity split at the time, I purged all my ‘classic jazz’ records from my collection to gather funds to enlarge my chosen approach to ‘authenticity’. I sold my vinyl classic jazz records made in the 1920s—Louis Armstrong Hots 5s and Hot 7s, Jelly Roll Morton Red and Hot Peppers, and so on—to fund the ever-growing new stream of recordings on independent record labels being recorded in the 1960s in New Orleans. This music was now being called ‘Contemporary New Orleans Jazz’, a still living tradition and social world within which we could and did participate. Bob Barton left Birmingham for Lancaster University in October 1967 to pursue a degree in politics and, while there, played with the contemporary New Orleans style Silver Bell Jazz Band. Later, he returned to Birmingham and played with Dan Pawson’s Artesian Hall Stompers1 among other bands. While back in Birmingham, he enrolled as a postgraduate student with Stuart Hall at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. As his musical work and talents developed, his enthusiasm for academe expired, as this snippet from unpublished autobiographical material aptly illustrates: Stuart Hall quickly talked me out of my sci-fi project and into doing a study of ‘pub culture’. So, I produced a synopsis of the pub culture study, which seemed to meet with general approval and encouragement, specially from Stuart. But I was teaching part-time at Matthew Boulton and Hall Green Technical Colleges (as you did), and, above all, becoming ever-increasingly involved in making music. The rather dry little academic world of the CCCS was so far removed from my other activities, whose vibrancy, sense of discovery and creativity were in stark contrast to the niggling, piddling, politicized worldview and argumentative cul-de-sacs of the CCCS, and it was something of a relief to draw a line under that episode of my life when Trevor Richards asked me to join his trio/



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band in Germany as a professional musician and I said yes and was away within two weeks. Apart from giving up smoking, the best decision I ever made…’2

Bob went on to live and play professionally with an array of world-leading jazz names that I could only dream of. During my years as an enthusiast and practitioner from 1961 to 1976, it did not occur to me to theorise the nature of authenticity in any serious or systematic way. In a sense, my fellow enthusiasts and practitioners introduced each other to the meaning of authenticity in New Orleans jazz by a process of ostensive definition. Certain musicians, bands, and sounds were regarded as examples of authentic New Orleans jazz and, through a process of socialisation, individuals who came to identify with the tradition were socialised accordingly. A particularly important ‘bible’, which detailed the ‘old style’ musicians of New Orleans that I identified with, was first published by Sam Charters in 1958 under the title Jazz: New Orleans, 1885–1957.3 The second expanded edition Jazz: New Orleans, 1885–1963 brought things up to date to 1963.4 Those of us who identified with this tradition and tried to play within the idiom considered ourselves ‘authentic’ practitioners, notwithstanding the fact that we were young, white males copying, in varying degrees, our ‘authentic,’ elderly, black heroes at a time and place far removed from the context within which the original music originated and developed. We considered that following and trying to play in the style of our ‘authentic’ heroes was sufficient to ensure our own ‘authenticity’. Just as it was Robert Porter who played a major role in this book being conceived and executed, so it was Robert Porter who played the main role in my making the move to thinking about jazz authenticity from an academic point of view. Following my release of five CDs in the years between 2005 and 2008 and my preparation of the “Booklet Notes,” in late 2008 Robert invited me to give a talk on my work for one of his Centre for Media Research seminars. I entitled this first paper given in an academic context ‘The Quest for “Authenticity”: Re-Visiting “Old-Style” New Orleans Jazz’. I introduced the two competing ‘authenticities’ in terms of alternative definitions of the situation of what was ‘really’ authentic, with a focus on the competing subworlds making up the international social worlds of New Orleans revivalist jazz and their accompanying identities. My talk was illustrated with life history material I had been collecting from enthusiasts waxing lyrical about their especial approach to authenticity. A favourite example was (and still is) from a clarinet player—now almost ninety—who in his own personal quest for authenticity found himself striving to get further and further back to the roots of the music. After hearing one of his CDs, I wrote to him, complimenting his efforts. He replied:

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What a pleasant surprise to receive your email with all those kind words. I spend many hours trying to develop a unique old-style sound without actually copying one of the original primitive clarinettists. As a result I do not expect to become very well known . . . yet I like to record from time to time in an attempt to keep the old-style sound alive. . . . Here are some of the CDs I have recorded (before 1995). Then in 1995 I decided that I was beginning to play too many notes, so I went backwards. I switched to metal simple clarinets. The following CDs were recorded using a metal B Hawke clarinet (c.1900) and a metal E Pask clarinet (c.1863). I never record in a studio and only use old-fashioned tape recorders. I send the cassette tapes to an old guy in Germany who turns them into CD masters for me.5

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Analysis of such material meant that my project now had a clearer theoretical focus—what I came to call ‘doing authenticity’. In this case, the clarinettist is drawing on the so-called ‘stay at home’ New Orleans jazz ‘primitives’, especially Emile Barnes and Israel Gorman. In this passage his ‘doing authenticity’ highlights his choice of ‘primitive’ instruments and ‘primitive’ recording technologies in his search for a more authentic sound. The bottom line was that whereas, in my pre-sociologist days, we enthusiasts largely assumed we knew what ‘authenticity’ was (‘we knew!’), now a principal research task became mapping variously complex and often competing constructions of ‘authenticity’ and their interrelations. In due time I built up an international network, initially by email, later supplemented by Facebook research to focus on this very issue.6 In my last two years as a full-time Professor of Sociology and Cultural Studies in a School of Media, Film and Journalism at Ulster University I developed an undergraduate module in ‘Popular Music, Culture and Society’, which included one week on New Orleans jazz as a case study. The academic music bug had bitten me, and on my retirement from full-time teaching, and as an emeritus professor, I enrolled for a part-time MA in Popular Music Studies in the Department of Music, University of Liverpool. For me, the course was pure joy. I was able to frame almost all my assignments—seminar presentations, essays, and my dissertation—in terms of an in-depth consideration of New Orleans jazz as framed by the assignment question I chose to focus on. In due time these became six academic articles in refereed journals that I used to span two REF submissions from 2008 to 2021 and to secure two periods on a 20 percent fractional contract at Ulster University as a professor of media. I continued to focus on authenticity, now as a gerund, ‘authenticity as authenticating’, considered as a generic social process, indeed, in terms of grounded theory, as a basic social process. I framed all my work, whether written for academic journals or enthusiasts’ magazines within the general rubric: ‘Authenticity as Authenticating: Early Jazz and New Orleans Jazz Revivalism’.



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NOTES 1. See Selected Discography, Dan Pawson, 1966–1971—A Tribute, The Lord Richard New Orleans Sessions, Vol. 3, 504/La Croix CD 93. 2.  Email, Bob Barton to Richard Ekins, February 28, 2022. 3.  Samuel Charters, Jazz New Orleans, 1885–1957: An Index to the Negro Musicians of New Orleans (Belleville, NJ: Walter C. Allen, 1958). 4.  Samuel Charters, Jazz New Orleans, 1885-1963: An Index to the Negro Musicians of New Orleans, 1963. 5.  Email to Richard Ekins, 19 February 2006. Unfortunately, I was unable to make the necessary contact with this self-identified New Orleans jazz ‘purist’ to secure his permission not to anonymise him for the purposes of this book. I am disappointed and I know he would be. 6.  The long-gone Ken Colyer Trust website quoted New Orleans trumpet player Percy Humphrey as saying simply ‘He knew’ of Colyer’s grasp of the music. When I sought a reference for this from the Facebook Ken Colyer Society, within minutes Pete Lay, editor of Just Jazz, posted the following comment: ‘When I chatted to Kid Sheik in N.O. I said I had played with Colyer, and Sheik used the same terminology as well . . . “Oh, he knew . . . but he did like a drink.”’ Pete Lay, “Facebook Comment,” 9 June 2022. A few hours later, Robert Greenwood added: ‘In the June 1995 edition of the Ken Colyer Trust newsletter is a letter from Bill Colyer concerning the Trust’s trip to New Orleans in April 1995. Bill writes: “Seeing, hearing and meeting Percy Humphrey again after 22 years was great. He said to me, ‘Ken knew—he played with us many times.’”’ Facebook, Ken Colyer Society, comments of June 9, 2022, https:// www.facebook.com/groups/128111250560638.

Chapter Twelve

New Orleans Music, Authenticity, and the Case of Bob Wallis

Immediately prior to my embarking on academic studies in popular music, I had what I like to call my New Orleans Music interlude. Before revisiting New Orleans jazz in 2000, I had no particular interest in writing about the music, aside from writing brief sleeve notes on my 1960s and ’70s vinyl LP releases. However, as my CD releases developed from 2005 on, I took my long CD “Booklet Notes” increasingly seriously. As I was working on my fifth CD that featured the Louis James Orchestra, I was presented with the perfect opportunity to write about an aspect of authenticity in the music that was rarely considered in detail in the New Orleans jazz literature, namely the question of pitch monitoring and pitch correction. Generations of beginner musicians learning alongside their chosen New Orleans jazz records soon learned that frequently and for all sorts of reasons the speed of the record was not correct. Most typically, the pitch was slightly ‘off’ for the whole track or session. The ‘Blues in B would be in B, for in’ stance. This issue hit me head on when I transferred my analogue tapes of the Louis James session to CD. Initially, I transferred the entire session of master tapes on to five CDs using a Phillips N4504 tape deck to dub from my five full-track, reel-to-reel, 7-inch spools, to Protools digital audio software to produce the CDs. Finding that the speed on the newly produced CDs did not match that of the original LP release, I went through every stage of the recording process from the original reel-to-reel master tapes to my present batch of CDs to find out at what stages, if any, errors had arisen and then made decisions on what to do about it. I chose to have the final ‘master’ CD pitch rectified, inter alia, on the grounds of ‘authenticity’. In other words, I did my best to ensure, as far as possible, that the final issued CD represented the speed of the music as ‘actually’1 played some forty years before. This gave me the opportunity to write a fourteen-page article referring to celebrated examples of

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technologically created wrong pitch in New Orleans jazz recordings and give alternative views on what could and should be done about it, if anything, all with reference to my own experiences with the Louis James release. I sent my article to the world-leading enthusiasts’ magazine on ‘authentic’ New Orleans jazz—New Orleans Music—and they were keen to publish it.2 I followed the publication of this piece with a minor piece, correcting errors that New Orleans Music had introduced into my article.3 In the process of all this I developed a good working relationship with the then editor of New Orleans Music, Doug Landau. I knew that many enthusiasts of the music are disinterested, at best, and downright hostile, at worst, to many so-called academic approaches to ‘their’ music, and I took the view that Landau would be an excellent editor to negotiate this possible stumbling block in my possible future articles for New Orleans Music. At the same time, in my early explorations of the academic literature, I had come across George McKay’s Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain, published in 2005.4 This book referenced an unpublished Open University BA degree dissertation by the British traditional jazz band trumpet player and bandleader Bob Wallis entitled ‘Revivalism to Commercialism: A Study of Influences on the Developing Styles of Ken Colyer and Acker Bilk’.5 I was intrigued by this reference as I recognised immediately that Bob Wallis would provide an especially interesting case-study, because when he started playing, he did so as a would-be ‘authentic’ ‘purist’, but as his own playing improved technically and traditional jazz became more popular, he became more able to present himself and his band as one of the leading popular ‘trad boom’ bands. Indeed, for a period in the early-1960s, he achieved national fame as the leader of one of the top handful of jazz bands of the era of British ‘trad’.6 As I studied his dissertation, I saw how fruitful it would be to see it in terms of his contributions to competing definitions of authenticity and wrote up an article accordingly. With the full support and backing of Doug Landau, I entitled this article ‘Bob Wallis on Authenticity and the New Orleans Jazz Revival in Britain’. Little did I realize that this submission to New Orleans Music would provoke such a kerfuffle. It provides an excellent illustration of competing definitions of the situation of authenticity in New Orleans music and the strength of emotion such competing definitions sometimes released. But first I will outline the substance of the article. For Wallis, there were three aspects to the New Orleans jazz revival, what he calls the ‘revivalists’, ‘the traditionalists’—‘a purist sect within the revival’, and ‘Trad’, all originating, in their different ways, in ‘a revival of a forgotten style of jazz played by black musicians from New Orleans who made recordings in Chicago and New York during the twenties’.7 He notes



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that right from the outset, problems of ‘authenticity’ and ‘integrity’ were a key aspect of the development of these three aspects of the revival. The recordings made in Chicago and New York evidenced a change in style linked to a change in audience and function, to say nothing of changes brought about by recording in a studio. As a result, it became possible for Ken Colyer and others to posit an ‘original’ (roots) authenticity in the earliest of New Orleans styles, depicted as a more ‘co-operative’ ensemble style and thought to be exemplified in the 1942–1945 recordings of the Bunk Johnson Band. As Wallis puts it: ‘The traditionalists were concerned with tracing the roots of jazz and wanted to play the music that had been performed in New Orleans before the musicians left to go to the northern cities in the twenties’.8 Thus far Bob Wallis is following what became the conventional account. However, he goes further to consider a range of issues that, in effect, cluster around alternative concepts of ‘authenticity’ that he finds in the personalities and music of the ‘Guv’nor’ of authenticity and purism—Ken Colyer—and in Acker Bilk. His dissertation compares the careers of Ken Colyer, as founder of the purist ‘sect’, and Acker Bilk, as the ‘traditionalist’ who had played for a short while in Ken Colyer’s band, but who, after leaving Colyer, became the most successful of all the musicians involved in the ‘Trad boom’. Wallis concludes that far from abandoning ‘authenticity’, Bilk maintained an ‘authenticity’ rooted in his personality, as opposed to an ‘authenticity’ rooted in his musical origins. Wallis does not focus specifically on the different uses made of the term ‘authenticity’ in revivalist jazz. I did and detailed six uses he drew our attention to: the authentic as ‘the original’, as the ‘real thing’, as the ‘non-commercial’, as the ‘sincere’, as ‘the emotionally direct’, and as ‘the pure’. I noted that because Wallis had, since the early 1970s, played professionally for long periods at a time in Switzerland, he did not explore the debates about authenticity that emerged in the mid-1960s following the re-classification of ‘contemporary New Orleans music’ as opposed to ‘classic New Orleans jazz’. He makes no use of the concept of ‘the archaic’ or of ‘the primitive’. There is no talk of authenticity of instrumentation. Far less is he concerned with the sorts of debates about authenticity implicit in the use of period-piece instruments. Neither is he concerned with debates about the issue of ‘authenticity’ of recorded sound. The so-called ‘authentic’ Bill Russell ‘dance hall’ sound vs the ‘studio sound’ is not touched upon; neither are issues relating to pitch monitoring and pitch rectification. I closed the article with a six-hundred-word section written by Doug Landau in which his most relevant comments on the ‘authenticity’ of Wallis’s playing included the following: One night a new trumpeter turned up, Bob Wallis. I was immediately struck by his massive vibrato, he was an impressive player, combining an accomplished

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technique with a hot, earthy sound. He seemed to have captured that particular essence we knew so well from listening to the New Orleans recordings made in the 1940s. On one occasion at Studio 51, George Lewis walked in, and according to one observer, his eyes nearly popped out; he was clearly impressed by the sound of Bob’s trumpet. Although his stint in Europe probably provided him with a reasonable living, I feel it obscured him from wider attention, and his talents never became widely recognised. Lake Records have recently produced a Vintage Acker Bilk Double CD (Lake LACD 257) from the period when Bob Wallis was in the trumpet chair: his distinctive style and captured essence of the New Orleans approach to time and timbre can be heard at length.9

Pleased with the results of my article and the support that Doug Landau had given me, I duly sent it off for publication. It was rejected outright, following an extended email correspondence between three reviewers. It is worth detailing the rejection at some length, insofar as it illustrates the hostility both to Bob Wallis as leader of what became a very popular British traditional jazz band, and Wallis’s academic approach in his undergraduate dissertation. Two reviewers [Reviewers 1 and 3] were particularly unsympathetic to my view of the importance of Wallis’s dissertation as detailing a practitioner’s resolution of many problems relating to authenticity in New Orleans and New Orleans-style jazz. From my point of view, a third reviewer [Reviewer 2] grasped the main point—that I was giving voice to a celebrated British traditional jazz trumpeter’s view of authenticity in New Orleans jazz revivalism. However, the gatekeepers with the power to reject the article scorned the direction that voice had taken, as being simply an outdated perpetuation of bad/‘false’ jazz history, associated, most notably, they thought, with jazz historian Rudi Blesh’s widely read Shining Trumpets.10 In short, they thought that Blesh’s account of what counted as ‘authentic’ jazz was dated; that Wallis had followed this ‘dated’ account; and that, in any event, Wallis as a British jazzman most associated with the popular ‘trad fad’ was of no interest whatsoever to the readership of a publication concerned with authentic New Orleans music. 22 July 200911 Dear _____ Are we really doing an article on Bob Wallis? Are we serious? Surely the N.O. [New Orleans] barrel hasn’t dried up to this extent? I never thought I’d see NOM [New Orleans Music] come to this? What’s next, articles on Eric Silk, the Yorkshire Jazz Band, Acker Bilk, Terry Lightfoot? CD reviews are OK, but articles? ______ [Reviewer 1]



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Reviewer 2, on the other hand, grasps that what is significant about the article is Wallis’s ‘thesis’ about authenticity in New Orleans jazz. It will be recalled that Wallis’s subtitle is ‘A Study of Influences on the Developing Styles of Ken Colyer and Acker Bilk.’ 24 July 2009 Dear (Reviewer 1) Have you actually read the article? This has little to do with Bob Wallis’s musical career, this is only briefly sketched in. It’s about his thesis on how successful, or otherwise, one or two of the figurehead musicians that set out to capture the sounds of NO music in the UK actually were. It’s more about this treatise on this than the man himself. I’ll concede the article is a bit dry, but it’s well written and there are a number of themes and ideas in common with those cited in Raeburn’s recent New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History (to be reviewed in 15.1 ).12 I think it is a valid topic but will I’m sure interest some more than others. All the best ______ (Reviewer 2)

Reviewer 1’s response is to dismiss Wallis’s views on authenticity as being based on what he considers to be a totally discredited and outdated view of authenticity in New Orleans jazz. 24 July 2009 Hi _____ Have just read—very carefully—Richard Ekins’s Bob Wallis article. . . The whole ‘authentic’ case that is being presented is so deeply flawed that it becomes a joke after a couple of pages. I think our readers deserve better than a second rate Rudi Blesh13 clone. _____

Reviewer 2 emails back, defending the merits of at least considering Wallis’s views even-handedly. July 2009 Dear _____ Given the hundreds or perhaps thousands of UK musicians that have sought to capture that ‘authentic’ sound, and the serious nature of Wallis’s intentions it seemed to me an interesting idea. The verity of otherwise of Wallis’s ideas are a bit beside the point, if they are as flawed as you seem to think readers are free to make their point. As it says in each issue ‘The views expressed in articles and reviews are not necessarily those of the management.’ Overall, I can see flaws in some of Wallis’s ideas, but at no point was I put in mind of Rudi Blesh. Wallis does not come across to me as purist, narrow in outlook in the musical sense. Regards _____

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But the nerve hit in Reviewer 1 is beyond assuaging. He will define what counts as an ‘authentic’ publication on New Orleans jazz ‘authenticity’ suitable for his ‘authentic’ New Orleans Music magazine’s readership. He will brook no contradiction. 29 July 2009 Dear _____ the article is utter rubbish and is unworthy of NOM the article would invite considerable criticism from readers and in order to protect his [Ekins’s] reputation and credibility you must sadly reject the article. You really can’t do anything else. Rudi Blesh and Rex Harris14 are treated as laughing stocks now, but they were writing 60+ years ago. An article like this in the 21st century is, at best, a joke which our more intelligent subscribers should not be subjected to.

Two days later I replied to the editor situating my article within current academic work on ‘authenticity’ in academic popular music and jazz studies. 31 July 2009 Doug I think Reviewer 1 misses the point. Reviewer 2 is right. Bruce Raeburn’s book is structured around social constructions of authenticity. Academics are writing about Ken Colyer and ‘authenticity’.15 I think it is a key—if not THE key—in understanding the development of the revival in its various phases, and in its various contexts. That is why I think Bob Wallis’s piece deserves wider circulation. To many/most sociologists (and, indeed, to post-modernists, in general) ‘authenticity’ and every other ‘social object’ is socially constructed. My work on Bob and Bob’s work should be seen as just that —a particular social construction of authenticity (at a particular time and place)—in this case as applied to NO [New Orleans] jazz.Arguably, it is Reviewer 1 who is being ‘old fashioned’ in seemingly arguing that certain constructions of authenticity are ‘true’ and others are ‘false’ (a laughing stock!) My point was to highlight what Bob [Wallis] was saying at the time, and obviously I stuck to his references. I wonder about [Reviewer 1’s] background. Is he trained in any academic discipline? Oral historians seek the ‘truth’ (in a sense)—sociologists (of my type) seek to study ‘definitions of the situation’. If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences. Richard

A third reviewer was called in, who commented: I am still at a loss as to how a supposedly intelligent professional person can write such intellectual gibberish. To be frank, I couldn’t give a toss about Bob



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Wallis’s dissertation, and even less about the supposed conclusions. I can see most of our readers dying of boredom by page 2.

Thus was my submission finally quashed and editor Landau overruled by those with the power to do so. The finale formal rejection came in polite mode. 3 August 2009 Dear Richard I’m afraid we will not be publishing this article. After reflection [we] concluded as below: ‘(We)have to consider the reaction of our readers, many of whom do not have English as their native tongue, and parochial nature of the piece. On balance (we) have concluded we should not publish this article.’ This concludes the matter. You may find a willing outlet in Just Jazz magazine. [email protected] Tel: 0208 317 3837

I duly sent the article to Just Jazz a magazine often looked down upon by the New Orleans jazz cognoscenti because of its reputation as a ‘trad’ magazine. It was received favourably and published, as sent, in October 2009. In the event, it was to be the first of some sixty-five articles I published in Just Jazz from the end of 2009 to 2021—all of them on various aspects of ‘authenticity’ in New Orleans music, and mostly on what I came to term the ‘resuming authenticity’ phase of the 1960s associated most especially with Ken Grayson Mills’s Icon record label and Barry Martyn’s MONO label. As it happened, with the issue of December 2010, New Orleans Music ceased publishing. Meanwhile, I had decided to work more seriously on these issues, in an academic context, and duly enrolled for an MA in Popular Music Studies in the Department of Music, University of Liverpool from October 2009 for two years. My work was looked upon rather more favourably there. NOTES  1. On the ‘actually’, see, also, Richard Ekins and Wendy Saunderson, “Does Pitch Rectification Matter in New Orleans Jazz? The Case of the Kid Thomas Band at Kohlman’s Tavern, 1968,” Just Jazz, no. 192 (2014): 8–12.   2.  Richard Ekins, “Pitch Monitoring, Pitch Correction and the Case of the Louis James Orchestra, 1967.” See, also, the minor piece [Letter to the Editor] Richard Ekins, “Doc Paulin,” New Orleans Music 14, no. 1 (2008): 20.   3.  Richard Ekins, “Back on Track: The Case of the Louis James Orchestra,” New Orleans Music 14, no. 3 (2008): 6–14.

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 4. George McKay, Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).  5. Bob Wallis, “Revivalism to Commercialism: A Study of Influences on the Developing Styles of Ken Colyer and Acker Bilk,” unpublished undergraduate dissertation, Open University, 1976.   6.  Wallis worked with both Ken Colyer and Acker Bilk. Of particular interest, is his little-known early work featured on the CDs Bob Wallis and his Storyville Jazzmen,1957 (GHB BCD-252) and Vintage Acker Bilk (Lake LACD 257) (1957). As far back as 1953, Ken Colyer was writing from New Orleans: ‘Would you drop a line to Bob Wallis in Bridlington, East Yorkshire; he’s a good kid and writes me great letters and signs off with “Always for our kind of jazz.”’ “Ken Colyer Letter to Bill Colyer,” February 11, 1953’, in Mike Pointon and Ray Smith, Goin’ Home: The Uncompromising Life and Music of Ken Colyer (London: The Ken Colyer Trust, 2010), 131–3 at 133.   7.  Bob Wallis, cited in Richard Ekins, “Bob Wallis on Authenticity,” 22.   8.  Bob Wallis, cited in Richard Ekins, “Bob Wallis on Authenticity,” 22.   9.  Doug Landau, cited in Richard Ekins, “Bob Wallis on Authenticity,” 26. Pianist Bob Barton who played with both Bob Wallis and Dan Pawson makes a particularly telling comparison relating to the ‘authenticity’ of both trumpet players. ‘Very much like Dan Pawson, his [Bob Wallis’] partially cultivated on-stage rough-diamond persona contrasted immensely with his acutely intelligent, analytical, witty and perceptive take on subjects and people he cared about. . . And yet another striking similarity with Dan: every note Bob played was infused with the blues, and when he played a blues, just as I remember it with Dan, his playing would always bring you almost to tears with its half rough-half lyrical delivery, impeccable timing and sheer bloody trueness. Two wonderful and unique musicians I loved and respected, and who I happily learned from.’ Bob Barton, Facebook comment on Richard Ekins, ‘Babe Stovall’, April 17, 2023, https://www.facebook.com/richard.ekinslordrichard. 10.  The first English edition was Rudi Blesh, Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz, Cassell, London, 1949. 11.  All email dates are as I have them in the email correspondence concerning my submitted article. 12. Bruce Raeburn, then directing the Tulane Jazz Archive at Tulane University, New Orleans, had just published his recently completed Ph.D. as Bruce Boyd Raeburn, New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History (Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan Press, 2009). I read it as an excellent book which traced the history of New Orleans jazz in terms of the various constructions of ‘authenticity’ that have surrounded the origins and development of ‘New Orleans-style’. However, it said next to nothing about the world-wide spread of the style. For the review written by Brian Wood, see New Orleans Music15, no. 1 (Sept. 2009): 30–31. 13.  I presume that Hazeldine is referring to the so-called ‘New Orleans absolutist view’ that jazz was a music that took root in New Orleans among black musicians and was dying already by 1927. This was the Rudi Blesh of Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz, 1946. Blesh later came to take a much more sophisticated position. See, Joe Maita in Conversation with John Gennari, author of Blowin Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), accessed February 4, 2023.



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https://jerryjazzmusician.com/john-gennari-author-of-blowin%C2%92-hot-and-cooljazz-and-its-critics/. 14.  Harris’s comments such as ‘The tenor-saxophonist Coleman Hawkins possessed great powers of improvisation which, had they been canalized into a different medium of expression, e.g. the clarinet, might well have secured him a permanent place in jazz,’ did, indeed, lead him to become a laughing stock for many. Rex Harris, Jazz, 172, fn 1. However, aspects of his work remain praised. The blues scholar Paul Oliver was more charitable: ‘Harris was an unrepentant ‘mouldie fygge’ in the jazz slang of the period, but he included a great deal of information not to be found elsewhere – such as extracts from the texts of the “Black Codes.” Paul Oliver, “That Certain Feeling: Blues and Jazz in . . . 1890?” Popular Music 10, no. 1 (1991): 11–19 at 14. 15.  E.g., Hilary Moore, “Ken Colyer and the Trad Jazz Movement: Class, Authenticity and the Nostalgic Imagination,” in Inside British Jazz (London: Routledge, 2007): 37–66.

Chapter Thirteen

Toward Authenticity as Authenticating Mainstreaming Authenticity and the Case of Bunk Johnson

MAINSTREAMING AUTHENTICITY In popular music studies and popular musicology, the concept of the ‘mainstream’ is quite widely used and written about, but almost always as a resource rather than as a topic. The important distinction between ‘topic’ and ‘resource’ was first made by Zimmerman and Pollner in the context of their critique of sociology: In contrast to the perennial argument that sociology belabors the obvious, we propose that sociology has yet to treat the obvious as a phenomenon. We argue that the world of everyday life, while furnishing sociology with its favoured topics of inquiry, is seldom a topic in its own right. Instead, the familiar, common-sense world, shared by sociologist and his subjects alike, is explored as an unexplicated resource for contemporary sociological investigations.1

I was a grounded theorist being initiated into popular music studies and fresh from my article on Bob Wallis and authenticity. If I was to consider the ‘mainstream’ as a topic in its own right (from the standpoint of the mainstream as generic social process—‘mainstreaming’) Bob Wallis’s move from ‘authenticity’ to popular trad jazz provided an example of this mainstreaming process as applied to a trajectory of authenticating. Wallis started playing following the quest for New Orleans jazz revivalism authenticity and later, especially in the 1960s, abandoned his purism and became one of the leading commercial ‘traddy pop’ bands. Indeed, this was probably the major source of hostility toward him from the gatekeepers at New Orleans Music magazine. They deemed it an anathema to feature the ideas of a British ‘trad fad’ musician in a full-length article in an ‘authentic’ New Orleans music magazine. 109

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Whereas Reviewer 3 of my article had said, ‘To be frank, I couldn’t give a toss about Bob Wallis’s dissertation, and even less about the supposed conclusions,’ New Orleans jazz critic and commentator Robert Greenwood had a rather different view: First of all, I think your article is excellent. The only reason I can think of as to why . . . NOM (New Orleans Music) . . . may have declined it . . . is that it is, perhaps, just a little out of the scope of that magazine and would fit better in Just Jazz which is devoted almost entirely to UK Traditional jazz. Having said that, though, your article does concern the ideology that informs a magazine like NOM and the editorial decisions that must be central to its production. Wherever your article is finally published, you are bound to get a reaction from its readership. Yours is a hazardous exercise in that you are presenting the views of Bob Wallis on authenticity, whereas your readers are likely lazily to assume that they are also your views and may take issue with you rather than the true author of those views (impossible now, in any case, except through the services of a medium). For me, the article is so stimulating (because) it raises very many issues concerned with, and often going way beyond, the immediate concerns of music.2

In my view Greenwood is spot on with all his points. More specifically, my view (as a student of music in a university setting) was that understanding and explaining this mainstreaming process was potentially of value for popular music studies and musicology, indeed, for many other disciplines and fields of study. I therefore wrote an academic article that set forth a grounded theory of ‘mainstreaming’ with reference to traditional jazz, the mainstreaming of authenticity, and the relevant popular music studies literature.3 I considered ‘British traddy pop’ (the ‘Trad Fad’)—the major force in British popular music between 1959 and 1963—in terms of a phased trajectory of mainstreaming. I considered mainstreaming as a generic social process which subsumes a number of Janus-faced major sub-processes: those of ‘sourcing’, ‘selecting’, ‘adopting/adapting’, ‘commodifying’, and ‘progressing’. I examined the dimensions of each sub-process in terms of musical style, instrumentation, personnel, and repertoire, and their various properties. Moreover, I suggested that the conceptual framework detailed in the article might provide the foundations for a comprehensive theory of mainstreaming in popular music studies, more generally. After I had written this article, it became clear to me that implicit within it was a more generally applicable grounded theory of authenticity as authenticating in New Orleans jazz revivalism. The mainstreaming ‘Trad Fad’ musicians and bands had commodified and commercialised authenticity and, variously, progressed their commercialising when the trad era was over. What I needed to do was to set out the trajectory of the major sub-processes to embrace those situations where and when authenticity was neither aban-



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doned (‘abandoning authenticity’) nor mainstreamed. This led me to develop more fully the major phases of what I termed ‘Constructing Authenticity’ and ‘Reconstructing Authenticity’ in jazz historiography by embracing the sub-processes of ‘sourcing’ and ‘selecting’ considered in the mainstreaming article. I also developed the ‘adopting authenticity’ and ‘adapting authenticity’ categories. ‘Progressing’ came to take on an entirely different substantive focus in my new thinking. It now referred to the progressing of authenticity rather than the progressing of commerciality, as in the mainstreaming article. THE CASE OF BUNK JOHNSON I wanted to work further on clarifying the tremendous importance of the definition of the situation in jazz history and jazz historiography—a point, it seemed to me, not grasped by the gatekeepers at New Orleans Music at all. I therefore wrote an academic article on the alternative and often competing social constructions of the ‘Resurrection and Rediscovery of Bunk Johnson’ and the very different significance and importance attributed to Bunk Johnson in jazz historiography, as a consequence of these alternative stories. Mike Hazeldine—a former editor of New Orleans Music—was a major authority on Bunk Johnson and Bill Russell’s American Music record label, that had recorded and issued most of Bunk’s records, especially those often viewed as exemplars of authenticity. When Bill Russell, after years of collecting information on Bunk for his intended book, never completed that book, it was left to Mike Hazeldine to do so, in collaboration with Barry Martyn. Bunk Johnson: Song of the Wanderer4 was the result. Similarly, Hazeldine lovingly compiled and edited Bill Russell’s American Music5 from Bill Russell’s own materials. However, it was very clear from these books that Hazeldine wanted to refine Bill Russell’s previous work. He regarded Bill Russell’s contributions to Ramsey and Smith’s book Jazzmen as still setting the parameter of jazz history today and saw his task to be that of adding detail, nuance, subtlety, and ‘balance’ to Russell’s work. On disputed matters, he sought to provide the best evidence he could to allow his readers to make up their own minds. In short, he was working—albeit as an amateur jazz historian—in purporting to be discovering the ‘truth’ about Bunk. In my ‘The Rediscovery and Resurrection of Bunk Johnson’ article, I classified the four major modes of jazz history writing on Bunk Johnson’s rediscovery and resurrection. I termed these ‘Trailblazing’, ‘Mythologising’, ‘Debunking’ and ‘Marginalising’. Trailblazing presupposes a positivist theory and methodology of social science and sees its history as a progressive discovery of ‘truth’.6 Mythologising may usefully be linked to W. I. Thomas’s ‘theorem’. Within this narrative mode, what ‘counts as truth’ is paramount,

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without prejudice to its ‘actual truth’. Mythologising was especially important in the case of Bunk because the orthodox view now is that he lied about his age, saying he was ten years older than he was.7 This enabled him to exaggerate his importance in the early history of jazz and to mislead early jazz history writers, such as Bill Russell, on many so-called key ‘facts’ of early jazz history and Bunk’s role in that history. ‘Debunking’ refers to that mode of jazz history within which Johnson’s discovery and resurrection is ‘debunked’ in regards to Bunk’s own story of his role in the history of jazz; in regard to historical accounts which have placed him as central to the history of early jazz; and in regard to Bunk’s role as a leading figure in New Orleans jazz revivalism and his supposed superiority as a musician.8 Finally, ‘Marginalising’ refers to that mode within which particular histories are ignored or side-lined within dominant historical narratives. For example, Bunk Johnson’s ‘discovery and resurrection’ is largely ignored within the processes of mainstream and orthodox jazz canonisation consolidated within academic jazz studies as field of study that has emerged since the 1970s. Hazeldine worked within the positivist tradition of ‘Trailblazing’ and as a devotee of both Bunk and Bill Russell, I have no doubt Hazeldine would have had little time for the latter three modes, notwithstanding the role they played on Bunk’s importance in jazz and jazz history writing. For instance, the ‘mythologising’ story was hugely important in the worldwide growth of New Orleans jazz revivalism from the standpoint of those enthusiasts who identified with Bunk. It is noticeable, however, that a combination of the ‘mythologising’ stories and the ‘debunking’ stories led to the ‘marginalising’ of Bunk Johnson in contemporary academic Jazz Studies, that has little time for either revivalism or Bunk. Often, this marginalising is of the entire revivalist movement. For instance, Peter Townsend’s Jazz in American Culture is almost two hundred pages long and purports to have an embracive intent. Nevertheless, the New Orleans jazz revival is afforded a mere seventeen-line paragraph with no mention of any actual revivalist musician.9 As in: ‘Revivalists set about reconstructing the picture of the jazz ensemble as it was in the days before it succumbed to commercialism. This involved, among other things, locating some of the legendary black musicians of the New Orleans past, and relaunching them as performing musicians.’10 When Bunk is mentioned, Christopher Meeder’s approach is illustrative of the marginalising of Bunk’s in contemporary Jazz Studies texts. In his chapter on ‘Bebop and Moldy Figs’, Meeder writes: Johnson, who was born in New Orleans in 1889, became a sort of fetish for jazz purists. Because of his age (he had claimed to be ten years older than he was), and the false claim that he had taught Louis Armstrong, Johnson was lauded by many as the authentic voice of jazz. No mind was paid to the fact that his play-



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ing did not really resemble recordings of the New Orleans musicians from the 1920s. On the contrary, his quiet, simple approach to playing (and his choice of repertoire, since he did not shy away from popular tunes of the 1940s) indicates that Johnson was part of a scene of New Orleans musicians who had developed their own tradition of music apart from the mainstream of jazz.11

Meeder is a former graduate student of the prestigious and influential Masters’ programme in Jazz History and Research at Rutgers University. His dismissal of the importance of Bunk Johnson in jazz historiography speaks volumes about current orthodoxies in Jazz Studies as an academic discipline.12 NOTES   1.  Don H Zimmerman and Melvin Pollner, “The Everyday World as a Phenomenon.” Jack Douglas, ed. Understanding Everyday Life: Toward the Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970): 80–103 at 80–1.   2.  Email, Robert Greenwood to Richard Ekins, August 8, 2009.   3.  Richard Ekins, “Traditional Jazz and the Mainstreaming of Authenticity.”   4.  Mike Hazeldine and Barry Martyn, Bunk Johnson: Song of the Wanderer (New Orleans, LA: Jazzology Press, 2000).   5.  Mike Hazeldine, comp. and ed. Bill Russell’s American Music (New Orleans, LA: Jazzology Press, 1993).   6.  Anthony Giddens, Positivism and Sociology (London: Heinemann, 1974).   7.  Recently, a view has emerged more prominently that Bunk was born midway between the two previously preferred dates. Clive Wilson, “Bunk,” Just Jazz, no. 295 (2022): 24–5, favours 1884. Wilson links this view with dating the formation of Buddy Bolden’s band to 1900, several years later than was orthodox.   8.  Jazz critic Leonard Feather led the way in his dismissal of the importance of Bunk Johnson in jazz history. E.g., Leonard Feather, The Jazz Years: Earwitness to an Era (New York: De Capo Press, 1987).  9. Peter Townsend, Jazz in American Culture (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 82. 10.  Peter Townsend, Jazz in American Culture, 82. 11.  Christopher Meeder, Jazz: The Basics (London: Routledge, 2007), 86. 12.  Interestingly, Robert Greenwood, who subscribes to Tom Bethell’s view that many of the Bunk Johnson 1944 sides for the American Music label are the apex of jazz history in terms of quality—it’s downhill all the way after that—writes: ‘I like what Meeder says in the latter part of this extract, but the rest of it is the sort of dismissive rubbish that began almost as soon as Bunk started recording.’ Robert Greenwood, Facebook comment on Richard Ekins, ‘Thought for the Day: William ‘Bill’ Russell Wagner’, June 29, 2022, https://www.facebook.com/richard.ekinslordrichard.

Chapter Fourteen

Authenticity as Authenticating 1 Constructing and Reconstructing Authenticity

I turn now to my setting forth the basic socio-political process of authenticating in New Orleans revivalist jazz. My purpose is to provide a sufficiently detailed framework to pay the proper respect to diversities of approach and to present the most fundamental sub-processes in the authenticating trajectory. Building upon my mainstreaming authenticity article, I identify these subprocesses as sourcing, selecting, adopting, adapting, and progressing. Again, I specify each sub-processes’ major dimensions as personnel, instrumentation, repertoire, and style and detail these dimensions’ accompanying properties. I might add, too, that in terms of sound, the major relevant parameters are those of pitch, instrumentation, time, voice, and technology as set forth in David Brackett’s book Interpreting Popular Music.1 These parameters interweave within and between the sub-processes, their dimensions, and properties. Theorised as chronologically presented grounded theory/basic social process historiography, the framework may be drawn upon as a benchmark for authenticity as authenticating studies in other substantive areas. My interest in utilising the case study approach has led me to continue to focus on the cases of Ken Colyer and Dan Pawson to illustrate major examples of ‘adopting’ and ‘adapting’ authenticity respectively, thereby theorising the previous more descriptive material I have presented on these musicians. For the purposes of this book, I have chosen this route as opposed to a denser theorisation of the interrelations between the sub-processes and their accompanying dimensions and properties which might be pursued on another occasion. My personal autobiography, with its participation in the social worlds of New Orleans jazz revivalism from 1961 on, combined with my trainings in sociology, cultural studies, popular music studies, and jazz studies, made it clear to me that ‘authenticating’ was, indeed, the basic social process I was researching. I came to regard it as a basic socio-political process because the 115

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research arena is so marked by intense, extensive, and far-reaching disputes concerning what counts as ‘authentic’ theory and practice. Readers will recall that a basic social (socio-political) process must have process-out requirements of two or more stages and that the BSP itself, must best encapsulate what is going on in the research area. It must also be the best umbrella concept to embrace a range of sub-processes, with their attendant dimensions and properties. From the standpoint of a historiography of revivalist New Orleans jazz from its beginnings to today, I term the first phase ‘Constructing Authenticity’. I will sketch an account of that construction as it first emerged, drawing on selected sources in the jazz history literature. CONSTRUCTING AUTHENTICITY IN NEW ORLEANS JAZZ Bruce Boyd Raeburn’s New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History is particularly good at summarising the contributions by those writers and record collectors of the mid-1930s who were the first to construct authenticity in New Orleans jazz. I will focus on those features of New Orleans style and those musicians who eventually emerged to comprise a particularly highly regarded canon in this ‘constructing authenticity’ phase in the subsequent context of worldwide New Orleans jazz revivalism. This first phase of constructing arose out of a combination of early developments within jazz criticism and the work of the so-called ‘hot’ record collectors. Charles Edward Smith, in the United States, can be seen as beginning the task of separating out ‘authentic jazz’ from other sorts of music, and distinguishing it with reference to individual performers and bands in an early article he wrote in 1930.2 Charles Delauney, in France, compiled the first Hot Discography published in 1936, which later went into five editions, variously appearing in France, the UK, and the United States.3 Major consolidating of what counted as authentic New Orleans jazz occurred between 1939 and 1942, with the publishing of Frederic Ramsey Jr. and Charles Edward Smith’s Jazzmen in 1939,4 and Hugues Panassié’s The Real Jazz in 1942.5 All the contributors to the emerging consensus adopted a diffusionist theory of jazz development. According to this diffusionist theory, what came to be called jazz originated in New Orleans at the end of the nineteenth century. From the mid-1910s on it spread north, undergoing particularly important moments in both Chicago and New York. Unlike later evolutionary theorists who would argue that jazz ‘progressed’—earlier forms being seen as more ‘primitive’ than later forms—the diffusionists in the constructing authenticity phase were primarily concerned to catalogue and distinguish ‘authentic’ (‘real’) jazz from what they deemed to be its inauthentic versions. Initially,



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this took the form of distinguishing ‘hot’ (authentic) jazz from ‘sweet’ (ersatz, inauthentic) jazz, particularly in the context of distinguishing New Orleans jazz from the ‘big band/swing’ popular music jazz of the 1930s. This approach soon led to the distinguishing, categorizing and classifying of ‘New Orleans style’ as the source and major variant of ‘hot’ jazz. The ‘hot jazz’ discographers built up large collections of ‘hot’ records, classified them and identified their personnel. SOURCING AND SELECTING Distinguishing New Orleans style entailed two major sub-processes of authenticating, namely, those of ‘sourcing’ and ‘selecting’. Coterminous with various sourcing and selecting was the detailing of the major interrelated dimensions of each sub-process, namely, personnel, instrumentation, repertoire, and style. Charles Edward Smith et al.’s The Jazz Record Book, published in 19436 is particularly important in this regard. Early New Orleans jazz, for a number of its early ‘authenticators’, shared features of ‘folk music’—functional music ‘from the heart’ transmitted aurally.7 Charles Edward Smith, a prominent early advocate of authenticity and purism in jazz, regarded jazz as ‘an outgrowth of the urbanization of folk music’.8 These early authenticators were writing at a time when ‘jazz’ was the popular music of its day.9 They were particularly opposed to its commercialisation. A shared strategy was to argue that ‘real’ jazz was ‘art’, while recognizing that in its emergence it was popular ‘folk’ music. Indeed, this ‘art’ was deemed to be America’s major indigenous contribution to music. In short, in the constructing authenticity phase, minor differences in constructions that emerged were subordinated to the agreed opposition to the binary ‘othered’ inauthenticity of commercial, arranged, big-band jazz. As I have previously indicated, authenticity talk in the substantive area of New Orleans jazz has a variety of rather different referents that are rarely made explicit, most notably, the authentic as the ‘original’, as the ‘real thing’, as the ‘non-commercial’, as the ‘sincere’, and as the ‘pure’. None of this authenticity talk arose, however, before 1917, the date of the first ‘jazz’ record made in New York by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.10 Initially, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band had migrated to Chicago as part of the mass migration from the Southern States to the North.11 But rather than stay in Chicago, as most of the early ‘jazz’ migrants did, they accepted an invitation to play in New York, which is how it came about that the first ‘jazz’ record was made in New York, at that time the centre of the recording industry. Initially the Original Dixieland Jazz Band had referred to themselves as a ‘jass’ band, before settling on the term ‘jazz’. The origins and meanings of

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the term ‘jazz’ remain a contested issue,12 but what is not contested is that the term only became applied retrospectively to what we now refer to as New Orleans–style jazz. The term was not used to refer to a style of music, either in New Orleans or anywhere else until the Original Dixieland Jazz Band had made their type of music popular. The evidence suggests that in New Orleans, reference was made to musicians ‘ragging’ the tune, and the music was termed ‘ragtime’, in this sense. This ‘ragging’ referred both to improvising on a melody and ‘ragging’ the beat (rhythm)—what later became termed ‘jazzing it up’.13 Nick LaRocca, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s cornet player, claimed to have invented jazz.14 Had this story gained acceptance, we would have been able to source the origins of jazz in the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and select the Original Dixieland Jazz Band as its principal exponent and base our theorizing accordingly. To a considerable extent, the leading discographer, writer and broadcaster Brian Rust did just this. Rust’s purchase of ‘Ostrich Walk’ by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band as a fourteen-year-old set him on a life-long path of championing the importance of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and similar bands in early jazz history.15 However, in the main, LaRocca’s claim was not accepted; indeed, it was regarded as offensive by many, particularly insofar as it rooted the origins of jazz in a young white band, as opposed to the band’s African American forbears, a story preferred by those whose constructing authenticity stories came to be favoured.16 So what were the supposed origins of jazz? Indeed, what was deemed to be authentic jazz? Thus began the constructing of authenticity stories, firstly in the context of answering the question of how to distinguish ‘real’ (authentic) jazz from its imitations, and secondly from similar but different musical forms, such as ragtime or the blues. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band probably exaggerated their inability to read music and their emphasis upon improvisation. Nevertheless, improvising became incorporated into definitions of ‘jazz’, as did ‘jazzing’ the melody and the beat. Quite soon, debates about ‘authentic’ instrumentation would flourish. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s five-piece line up on their original records was a front line of trumpet, clarinet and trombone, with a rhythm section of drums and piano, although it emerged later that the piano was foisted upon them by their promoters. Prior to this, the guitar was favoured over the piano, to be replaced by the banjo ‘sometimes during the 1920s’.17 The Original Dixieland Jazz Band played almost totally ensemble with occasional short breaks where individual, mostly front line, instruments were heard briefly soloing. Following the release of their first record, the band became an almost instant success in both America and in Europe, consolidated on their visit to England in 1919. In short succession, a variety



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of similar bands were called to Chicago and New York from New Orleans, and even more ‘imitation’ bands were concocted, particularly in Chicago and New York, to cash in on the demand for such music, giving rise, eventually, to the ‘Jazz Age’ of the ‘Roaring Twenties’. Meanwhile, mostly in Chicago, although later in New York, in a seemingly quite separate development, African American bands that had migrated from New Orleans, such as the most famous of them all, the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band,18 were playing in South Side Chicago. These bands attracted a quite separate market, whose demand for recordings were met by independent record labels such as Gennett and OKeh that catered for an African American audience—so-called race records.19 These records were to become the prime sources for the subsequent documentation of ‘authentic’ jazz, a few years later. A minority social world of collectors of this ‘new’ music emerged that was concerned to study its origins, to detail its personnel and to distinguish the ‘real’ thing from its inferior imitations. In the process, jazz discography and jazz criticism began. Charles Edward Smith gives the flavour in 1930. It may be said, almost without qualification that jazz is universally misunderstood, that the men of jazz, those of the authentic minority have remained obscure to the last. A wholesale popularization of what was, at its source, an original contribution to music, has left the world much too bewildered to perceive that this misunderstanding has sprung from essential goodness. . . the real thing went on its quiet way.20

Smith warms to his task of listing both the sources of this ‘original contribution’ (sourcing) and giving examples of this ‘finest jazz’ (selecting). The roots of jazz are located in ‘an admixture of English folk ballads and African rhythms transmitted by “colored mammies”’21 for instance. The ‘white niggers’ Bix Beiderbecke’s Wolverines are singled out for special praise, for their ‘fidelity to their medium . . . they themselves felt as a reality the spirit of the negro blues’.22 These negro blues are ‘a projection of the people’,23 as part of Smith’s linking of ‘authentic’ jazz with a left politics. The distinguishing feature of the music is its ‘improvisation’ (style) to which Smith attributes ‘a spiritual dimension’.24 For Smith, it is precisely this ‘spiritual dimension’ that is contaminated with the commercialization of jazz. With such distinction paramount, Smith examples Louis Armstrong as succumbing ‘more and more to the white man’s notion of Harlem jazz’,25 whereas Armstrong’s earlier studio group, the Hot 7, was ‘undoubtedly the most important band in jazz today.’26 A number of pioneering ‘hot’ record collectors and jazz critics were less adamant than Smith that ‘real’ jazz was totally rooted in the African American—this has remained a source of ‘sourcing’ debates to this day—but a

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broad consensus did emerge concerning the finest jazzmen and the finest recorded sessions, eventually consolidated in Ramsey and Smith’s Jazzmen and further expanded upon in Smith et al.’s The Jazz Record Book, in particular. Jazzmen featured chapters on ‘New Orleans Music’, focusing on African origins and the ‘founding father’ Buddy Bolden. Instrumentation and style are elaborated. King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band are afforded pride of place for bringing authentic New Orleans jazz to Chicago. Emerging ‘stars’ in a New Orleans style ‘canon’ are featured in separate chapters, in particular, Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke. Smith et al. elaborate with an ‘exhaustive study of available jazz records’ detailing the features of what they term ‘The Parent Style’ (New Orleans style in New Orleans) indicating how this style variously diffused in Chicago (‘Chicago Breakdown’) and ‘New York and Harlem’. Moreover, the evidence, such as it was, suggested that the hegemony that these jazz writers had established in jazz scholarship, had its direct equivalence in the social worlds of the jazz record collectors,27 who favoured the bands featured in the emerging canon of what had now become known as ‘classic’ jazz.28 RECONSTRUCTING AUTHENTICITY IN NEW ORLEANS JAZZ Even as consensus had emerged, it contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction, once it occurred to the hot record collectors and enthusiasts that there were pioneers of the New Orleans style still living in New Orleans who had not joined the mass exodus to the North in the 1920s and who had never been recorded. Indeed, a particularly important source for Jazzmen had been the letters from the unrecorded trumpet player and New Orleans legend Bunk Johnson, and it was these letters that were to play a major role in reconstructing authenticity in New Orleans jazz. RE-SOURCING AND RE-SELECTING Following the publication of Jazzmen, the chase was on to locate and record, for the first time, the New Orleans musicians that Bunk and others spoke of as being the important pioneers of jazz. The first such ‘revivalist’ session recorded in New Orleans was that of the Kid Rena Delta Jazz Band in 1940, produced by Heywood Hale Broun.29 Its personnel read like a Who’s Who of jazz pioneers, including, as it did, Alphonse Picou, Louis ‘Big Eye’ Nelson (de Lisle), Joe Rena, and bass player Albert Glenny who had played with Buddy Bolden. The instrumentation duplicated Buddy Bolden’s band, with

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the exception of Jim Robinson on slide trombone, as opposed to valve trombone. The repertoire was sourced almost exclusively from the 1911–1918 period, including standards (High Society, Weary Blues, Clarinet Marmalade), a B Blues (Low Down Blues), and a march (Gettysburg March). Jazz critic Rudi Blesh regarded these recordings as ‘representing a milestone in the history of Jazz music appreciation’. ‘To ears accustomed to the fixed pitch and the harmonic texture of white music, classical and popular, and the ruined music of the favourite Negro bands of the day, this music sounded crude, out-of-pitch, and almost barbarous. But out of the strangeness there emerged a message new to our generation.’30 Here was the sound of authentic early polyphonic jazz. Others, however, found the music so ‘cacophonous’ and ‘musically makeshift’ that they found it impossible to believe that the ‘classic’ jazz of the constructing authenticity phase could possibly have developed out of it.31 Contemporary critic Scott Yanow writes, ‘It was Henry “Kid” Rena’s misfortune that his one opportunity to record found him sounding ill. . . Rena sounds 82 rather than 42 and, in addition, the recording quality is pretty poor.’32 Whereas, for devotees of New Orleans jazz as ‘reconstructed’, the session is a paradigm redefining landmark of great musical merit as well as of historical importance. As William (Bill) Russell put it, ‘Considerable confusion still exists in regard to the question of ‘authentic’, ‘classic’ and even ‘recreated’ New Orleans jazz . . . hot fans who have wondered just how a full New Orleans jazz band, playing in the traditional style, would sound, at last have the opportunity.’33 Russell viewed the ‘lack of precision in ensemble and section playing’—far from being an inadequacy—as the very essence of ‘the rough and ready, knock ’em down and drag out style of music, which we call New Orleans hot style’.34 Rudi Blesh later reissued the session on his Circle label. His accompanying text, published in the 1948 liner notes, can be seen as marking the shift that occurred as the 1940s New Orleans jazz revival ‘progressed’ from the ‘consensual diffusionist’ theory of pre-1940, to what might be inelegantly termed the conflict ‘reverse-evolutionary’ (declensionist) theory of post-1940. There now emerged a re-sourcing and re-selecting that conceptualized the earlier forms of New Orleans style jazz as superior (less commercial, more ‘authentic’) than the later Chicago and New York variants of the style.35 The original Delta four 78 rpm discs were issued in small quantities and became collectors’ items. It was left to the Bunk Johnson recordings to kickstart the revival proper. The Bunk sessions came to define the features of reconstructed authenticity.36 Hale Broun had originally wanted to record Bunk instead of Rena, but Bunk was unavailable for the recording sessions. Bunk first recorded in 1942 with Jim Robinson on trombone—the trombonist of the Rena session described by Broun as ‘the discovery of the date’37—and

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George Lewis on clarinet. This was the band that took the New York jazz world by storm in 1945. Bunk Johnson and his New Orleans Band recorded with RCA Victor and Decca Records in late 1945. As we saw in Chapter 9, it was the re-issued Brunswick EP of the November 1945 Decca session, with its ‘authenticity’ imprimatur emphasis, that was the inspiration for so many English (and other) players to take up the mantle of the music in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I quoted extensively from the sleeve notes in that first chapter. The sleeve notes of the German EP are particularly direct in attributing primacy to Bunk in the authenticity stakes: ‘So practically every survey and collection of jazz claiming to be authentic has to start with Bunk Johnson whose playing reflects the Jazz Music from around 1895 to 1915, preceding the recordings (in authenticity if not chronological order) of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, James P. Johnson and others.’38 Producer Hale Broun, of the Kid Rena session, had asked for his musicians to feature more solo work than they would normally have played. He did this because ‘I felt this was the last chance for these men, and I wanted them to have a moment alone to make (us) their statement’39. The Bunk Johnson–Bill Russell 1944–1945 sessions, the Decca and the RCA Victor sessions and, indeed, those Bunk recordings made earlier in 1942, made no such compromises with authenticity. The emphasis in all these Bunk recordings remained on the ‘naturalist’ ensemble style,40 with the melodic lead shifting between the frontline instruments over a driving propulsive rhythm. Here was the template that was to launch the worldwide revival of a reconstructed New Orleans jazz authenticity quite distinct from the authenticity of the classic jazz recordings of the 1920s. Now the emphasis could be on ‘simple songs upon which . . . (the musicians) could build a rolling polyphonic ensemble, often reaching peaks of excitement without any solos at all’41. This approach (reconstructed authenticity style) Hadlock contrasts with ‘the formalists’ (constructed authenticity style) who focused on the multiple-strain pieces of King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton42 and other sophisticated early composers.43 Moreover, a feature of the old-style ensemble was that everyone ‘played for the benefit of the band’, as drummer Baby Dodds used to say. Whereas, by the mid-1920s in Chicago, Louis Armstrong with his Hot 5 and later Hot 7 recordings44 was taking New Orleans style in an entirely different ‘solo star’ direction. Significantly, by around 1946, Bunk had tired of what he called his ‘temporary emergency musicians’ and was looking to explore more sophisticated music with more sophisticated non-New Orleans musicians.45 He regarded himself as ‘fit for orchestra’.46 The residencies at Stuyvesant Casino, New York were 28 September 1945 to 12 January 1946 and again 10 April to 31 May 1946. The increasing friction between the New Orleans musicians became well known to cognoscenti,47 but only recently did I learn of the fol-



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lowing from pianist Bob Barton, relating a tale from Alton Purnell, Bunk’s pianist in his New Orleans band: Once, at a party at Dan and Pat Pawson’s ‘Bourbon House’48 in Birmingham (UK), Alton asked me to teach him ‘Take Five’ (!). Beautiful guy, gentle and wise, with musical knowledge and ability reaching much further than the Bunk and Lewis band recordings. He told me that at the time Bunk and his band were playing their gig at the Stuyvesant Casino in New York, Bunk used to practice relatively difficult tunes in his room, call them on stage and berate the rest of the band for not knowing them, glaring at them as though they’d just dropped catches off his bowling.49

I regard this as evidence of the tension that often surfaces related to what might be called the ‘folk music’ aspect of New Orleans jazz and the more sophisticated ‘jazz’ aspects. Alyn Shipton refers to Don Ewell as a ‘well-schooled pianist’—we might say Jelly Roll Mortonesque. Ewell played with Bunk both in his later (1946) Stuyvesant Casino Band and in the 1946 trio recordings with Ewell. Shipton puts it this way: ‘I remember Don saying [in 1980] that he thought Bunk’s 1940s Stuyvesant Casino band had been playing “contemporary folk music” rather than some kind of ideological revival jazz and he realized while making the trio records that Bunk was “some kind of genius”.’50 Extraordinarily, there are even those who blame a ‘Communist plot’ for simplifying the music. As in: S. Frederic Starr, an academic superstar/clarinettist/bandleader, recently (2005) spoke in New Orleans about the primitive-ization of New Orleans jazz, how what he felt had been a rich and complex music evolved into the relatively simple music of the Preservation Hall era. Among other things, he indicates it all may have been a Communist plot, its three principals being Al Rose, Bill Russell, and Larry Borenstein. The Communists took an interest in folk music beginning in the late 1930s (e.g., their sponsorship of the Spirituals to Swing Concerts) and somehow dumbing down New Orleans jazz fit this strategy.51

More seriously, importantly, and significantly, however, the George Lewis band with Kid Howard on trumpet had recorded in 1943 when Bunk was unable to make the session. This band moved into a looser, freer, mode illustrating well the ensemble polyphony ‘peaks of excitement’52 and this trend continued as the George Lewis band became the most famous New Orleans style band of the 1950s, becoming well known initially for its American tours and, by the late 1950s, for its tours of Europe. George Lewis and his various bands were widely recorded by both major and independent labels and Lewis soon became the most influential and imitated New Orleans-style musician within the social worlds of revivalist New Orleans jazz, as reconstructed.53

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NOTES  1. David Brackett, Interpreting Popular Music (University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000). My article, Richard Ekins, “Social Constructions of ‘Authenticity’ and the Sounds of the Kid Thomas Valentine Band: The Case of ‘Basin Street Blues’—An Approach from Sociological Musicology and Cultural Studies,” Journal of Jazz Research 9, no. 2 (2016):107–44, focuses on these parameters.   2.  Charles Edward Smith, “Jazz: Some Little Known Aspects.” Symposium: A Critical Review 1 (October), 1930: 502–17.  3. Charles Delauney, Hot Discography (Paris: Jazz Hot, 1936).   4.  Frederic Ramsey, Jr. and Charles Edward Smith’s Jazzmen.  5. Hugues Panassié, The Real Jazz (New York: Smith and Durrell, 1942).   6.  Charles Edward Smith, with Frederic Ramsey, Jr., Charles Payne Rogers and William Russell, The Jazz Record Book (New York: Smith and Durrell, 1943).   7.  On the ‘biases’ of the early authenticators—Charles Edward Smith, Bill Russell and Rudi Blesh—see, especially, Bruce Raeburn, New Orleans Style, 2009, and John Gennari, Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006): 117–63. In terms of more overt motivation, as Bernard Gendron puts it: ‘These purists were driven not only by nostalgia but by a revulsion toward the swing music industry, which by shamelessly pandering to the mass markets had in their eyes forsaken the principles of “true” jazz. A small spate of sectarian journals appeared on the scene to give vent to these revivalist views and concerns. They set themselves off as the only alternative to the two dominant mainstream jazz journals Downbeat and Metronome, which were altogether beholden to the swing phenomenon. Bernard Gendron, “’Mouldy Figs’ and Modernists: Jazz at War (1942–1946),” in Jazz among the Discourses, ed., Krin Gabbard (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 31–56. In matters less overt, we might note an elective affinity between their leftist leanings, their concern for oppressed African American people, and their subjectivities and identifications as outsiders and marginal men, particularly in the case of Bill Russell.   8.  Charles Edward Smith, “Heatwave,” Stage, 1935, September, 45–6 at 45.   9.  Theodor W. Adorno, “On Jazz,” 1936, in Theodor W. Adorno, Essays on Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 470–95. 10.  H. O. Brunn, The Story of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1961). 11. Chadwick Hansen, “Social Influences of Jazz Style: Chicago, 1920-30,” American Quarterly 12, no. 4 (1960): 493–507. 12.  Alan P. Merriam and Fradley H. Garner, “Jazz—the Word,” in The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, ed., Robert G. O’Meally (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998): 7–31; Alyn Shipton, A New History of Jazz, revised and updated ed. (New York: Continuum, 2007). 13. Lawrence Gushee, “New Orleans Jazz,” in New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Volume 2, 2nd ed., ed. Barry Kernfeld (New York: Grove, 2002), 887–8. 14.  Nick LaRocca, “The Last Will and Testament—The Story of Jazz as Told by Nick & Discussion on Bix Beiderbecke,” A Kazoo Lips Production, CD-2008, 1960. See Selected Discography, The Complete Original Dixieland Jazz Band, 1917–1936, RCA-ND 90026.



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15.  Tony Russell, “Brian Rust Obituary,” The Guardian, 2011, accessed February 4, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/mar/31/brian-rust-obituary. 16.  Jack Stewart, “The Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s Place in the Development of Jazz,” Jazz Archivist, 2005–2006, 19: 16–25. 17.  Charles Edward Smith et al., The Jazz Record Book, 37. 18.  Laurie Wright, King Oliver (Chigwell, Essex: Storyville Publications, 1987). See Selected Discography, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, 1923–1924—The Complete Set, Challenge Records International, CD-RTR 79007. 19.  Ronald C. Foreman Jr., “Jazz and Race Records—1920–1932: Their Origins and Significance for the Record Industry and Society,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois, 1968. 20.  Charles Edward Smith, “Jazz: Some Little Known Aspects,” 502 and 505. 21.  Bruce Raeburn, 25. 22.  Charles Edward Smith, 509. 23.  Charles Edward Smith, 505. 24.  Bruce Raeburn, 25. 25.  Charles Edward Smith, 513. 26.  Charles Edward Smith, 514. See Selected Discography, Louis Armstrong—The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (1925–1928), Legacy C4K63527000. 27.  Alderson Fry, Max Caplan, and William C. Love, Who’s Who in Jazz Collecting (Nashville, TN: Hemphill Press, 1942). 28.  Charles Edward Smith et al., vii. 29.  See Selected Discography, Kid Rena 1940, Bunk Johnson: The Very First Recordings [1942]—Prelude to the Revival, Vol II, American Music, AMCD-41. 30.  Rudi Blesh, Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz, 4th enlarged edition (London: Cassell, 1958 [1946]), 162. 31.  Martin Williams, Jazz Masters of New Orleans (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 233. 32.  Scott Yanow, Trumpet Kings: The Players Who Shaped the Sound of Trumpet (San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2001), 312. 33. William Russell, “Delta—New Orleans,” HRS Society Rag (October 1940): 28–30 at 28. 34.  William Russell, “Delta—New Orleans,” 29–30. 35.  Ironically, William ‘Bill’ Russell who ‘had largely (and literally) engineered’ the New Orleans jazz revival of the 1940s, was the arch declensionist, according to Tom Bethell. Bethell writes: ‘American popular musicians almost always seem to be artistically at their peak when they first come to the public’s attention. Thereafter everything tends to go downhill. Bill Russell was likewise of the opinion that the great period of New Orleans jazz was at its beginning, in the first years of the 20th century. . . Bill often gave the impression that musically everything had been in a state of decline since then.’ Tom Bethell, “William Russell Wagner,” in Tom Bethell, The Electric Windmill: An Inadvertent Autobiography (Regenery Gateway, Washington, DC, 1988), 18–33 at 19 and 23. 36.  Mike Hazeldine comp. and ed. Bill Russell’s American Music. 37.  Heywood Hale Broun, “From an Interview Done in 1991.” Booklet Notes, Kid Rena: 1940: Prelude to the Revival, Vol II, American Music, AMCD-41, 5–7 at 5.

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38.  Dr Schultz-Koehn. Sleeve notes, Bunk Johnson and his New Orleans Band, Brunswick 1071 EP8. 39.  Heywood Hale Broun, 6. 40.  Richard Hadlock, “The New Orleans Revival,” in The Oxford Companion to Jazz, ed. Bill Kirchner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 305–15. 41.  Hadlock, 312. 42. See Selected Discography, Jelly Roll Morton—Complete Recorded Work, 1926–1930, JSP903. 43.  Hadlock, 311–12. 44.  Charles Edward Smith, 513. 45.  As he did in his last recording of December1947. See Selected Discography, Bunk Johnson—Last Testament, Delmar DD25. 46.  Paige VanVorst, “The Becoming of the George Lewis Band,” Jazzology post, 31 January 2005, accessed 13 February 2023. https://www.jazzology.com/jazzbeat. php?id=14. 47. Harold Drob, “Bunk Johnson—An Appreciation,” The Record Changer 11, no. 10 (1949): 1–7; Harold Drob in Conversation with Barry Martyn, “Bunk at the Stuyvesant,” New Orleans Music 1, no. 1 (1989): 6–14. 48. Dan and Pat Pawson attended the ‘funeral’ marking the closure of the celebrated Bourbon House in New Orleans in 1964. They named their marital home ‘Bourbon House’ in its honour. Richard Ekins, “Fantasy and Reality at Bourbon House: Barbara Reid, the Olympia Brass band and a Most Unusual Funeral’,” Just Jazz, no. 265 (2020): 6–16. 49.  Facebook comment Bob Barton to Richard Ekins, 11 February 2023, https:// www.facebook.com/richard.ekinslordrichard. 50.  Alyn Shipton, On Jazz: A Personal Journey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 31. 51.  Paige VanVorst, “The Becoming of the George Lewis Band.” 52. See Selected Discography, George Lewis and his New Orleans Stompers, 1943, American Music, AMCD-100/101. 53.  The influence of the 1943 Climax session with Kid Howard—and later 1950s recordings with Howard on trumpet—was huge, most notably in the British Barry ‘Kid’ Martyn Band 1959 recordings with Clive Blackmore on trumpet and Sammy Rimington on clarinet. This tradition was still evident, as late as 2000–2017, when Søren Doc Houlind was leading his various Danish bands on trumpet. Vintage Barry Martyn, 1959–1970, GHB Records BCD-75; Søren Doc Houlind, «Music is My Life—New Orleans Jazz in Particular,” accessed April 18, 2023, https://dochoulind. dk/. Doc Houlind returned to his previous role as drummer in 2017, but still feels able to say, with some justification: ‘The band has long been known for being the best of its kind in Europe. . . Today, it is perhaps the only one.’ Søren Doc Houlind, “Band,” accessed April 18, 2023, https://dochoulind.dk/band/.

Chapter Fifteen

Authenticity as Authenticating 2 Adopting and Adapting Authenticity

ADOPTING AUTHENTICITY IN NEW ORLEANS JAZZ: THE CASE OF KEN COLYER Authenticity trajectories, in their constructing and reconstructing phases in New Orleans style jazz, entailed authenticators (jazz discographers, journalists, critics, and collectors) authenticating the music of others. The musicians from New Orleans so ‘authenticated’ had little or no interest in such processes. In the adopting and adapting phases, however, younger generations of musicians adopt and/or adapt the music of other musicians and bands they deem authentic. These younger musicians seek ‘third person authenticity’, in Allan Moore’s terms, that is, the authenticity that arises when they succeed ‘in conveying the impression of accurately representing the ideas of another, embedded within a tradition of performance.’ 1 In the worlds of revivalist New Orleans jazz, this entailed mostly young white musicians adopting and/or adapting the styles, instrumentation, and repertoires of the recordings previously authenticated, now available as potential sources to be selected from. This young white ‘revivalist’ sourcing, selecting, and adopting took place initially with the formation of Lu Watters’ Yerba Buena Jazz Band in San Francisco in 1939/1940,2 closely followed by Graeme Bell’s Jazz Gang in Australia in 19413 and George Webb’s Dixieland Jazz Band in London in 1942.4 So great was the expansion of this revivalist jazz movement that in 1954 Humphrey Lyttelton felt able to write: For over a decade now, the (British) jazz clubs have flourished, and there is good reason to suppose that they have taken their place as a permanent part of the recreational life of the country. In Britain, every large city and town has a club, sometimes several, with a band attached. There are a score of 127

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semi-professional and amateur jazz bands which have achieved a reputation beyond their own local boundaries and hundreds of amateur ensembles, of varying degrees of competence, performing for their own enjoyment and that of their friends. The urban folk-music of New Orleans has, through the gramophone and the radio, transplanted itself in urban communities all over America and the rest of the world. France, Holland, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, West Africa, India—all have their amateur bands and their jazz clubs as we do in Britain, as I know for certain through letters I receive and visitors who come to our own club in London.5

The Lu Watters Band deliberately sought to ‘authentically’ recreate the style, instrumentation, and repertoire of their early sources, most notably the 1920s King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. In making their initial sourcing and selecting, Lu Watters, Graeme Bell, and George Webb only had the music of the constructing phase of authenticity of the New Orleans style jazz trajectory to draw upon. Apart from the isolated Kid Rena session, only released in small quantities in 1940/41, the reconstructing authenticity phase had not begun. It was not until the mid-1940s that the Bunk Johnson–George Lewis recordings began to make their impact. By then, the earliest revivalist bands were set on a course that most of them stuck with, namely, sourcing and selecting their work from the constructing authenticity phase of the trajectory. Indeed, many of these musicians and bands remained entirely unaffected by the reconstructing authenticity phase for their entire playing careers. Similarly, many later revivalist bands followed the ‘constructionist’ phase in their sourcing, selecting, adopting, and adapting, even when, as was the case after around 1947, the ‘reconstructed’ choice was available to them. The most notable British example in terms of longevity is Liverpool’s Merseysippi Jazz Band, first established in February 1949 and still playing regularly. I combined ethnographic, autoethnographic, and social world research when I utilised this band to carry out a case study of adopting constructed authenticity for my article ‘Becoming a Follower of the Merseysippi Jazz Band: An Approach from Ethnography, Autoethnography and Social World Analysis: A Study in Resocialization’.6 As we have seen, in the pre-1940s phase there was a broad consensus on what counted as ‘authentic’ New Orleans style jazz. As the 1940s progressed, however, an increasingly acrimonious atmosphere surrounded jazz social worlds. There emerged a bitter ‘war’ between those who favoured the emerging and equally anti-swing and anti-commercial ‘modern’ jazz (bop) and the revivalists who were now being labelled ‘mouldy figs.’7 With the decline of the swing era of jazz, terminal by around 1947, the ‘modernists’ became the new enemy of those now labelled ‘traditionalists.’8 But among the adopters and adapters of the New Orleans style, particularly as the 1950s progressed,



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there emerged a sharp division within the traditionalist camp, between those following the ‘formalist’ school of King Oliver, early Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and those who followed the ‘naturalist’ school of Bunk Johnson and George Lewis (reconstructed authenticity). The figurehead and champion of this division in the UK and Europe was the young English trumpet player and band leader Ken Colyer, whose influence on the split in the traditionalist camp was to be profound and long lasting.9 Ken Colyer (1928–1988) was the most important revivalist musician who adopted the Bunk Johnson–George Lewis strand of revivalism. Colyer provides a paradigm case of a lifelong adopting authenticity that never faltered or changed, from the moment he heard his first Bunk Johnson record, right up to the time of his death in 1988. Moreover, it is a particular adopting authenticity that continued up until 2011 through the work of the Ken Colyer Trust and the Ken Colyer legacy bands that continued to gig in jazz clubs and jazz festivals.10 Colyer sets the stage: Bunk Johnson’s ‘Moose March’ was a revelation to me. The first time I heard that record it nearly knocked me out. Here was the perfect product. Seven men playing essentially as a unit, fitting like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to create a beautiful picture—a picture that looks ugly when there are pieces missing or in the wrong places, but which is absolute perfection when it is complete. . . That one disc . . . clearly signposted what I had been seeking for so many years and convinced me that I was now on the right track.11

As George Melly put it in his Owning Up, first published in 1965: the emergence of Ken Colyer had led to a great deal of soul searching throughout the whole revivalist jazz world. I first heard him on a river-boat shuffle. . . Like most people at the time I thought he was joking. . . What we expected a trumpet player to aim for was the early Louis Armstrong noise. Ken didn’t sound anything like that. His wavery vibrato and basic melodic approach was based on Bunk Johnson. He sounded, and intended to sound, like an old man who had never left New Orleans when they closed Storyville. He played traditional, not revivalist, jazz.12

Some twenty years later in a 1984 Thames-TV documentary, Melly noted that Ken formed the Crane River Jazz Band in early 1949 and that this was the band that ‘was to split the revivalist world’. The war was on. . . Ken believed that the basis of revivalism, the jazz recordings made during the 20s by musicians who had quit New Orleans, was a decadent development. He maintained that true jazz had never left the Crescent City. His idol was Bunk Johnson. . . Ken believed this to be the true jazz. There was no other . . . following Bunk’s example Ken formed a strictly traditional New Orleans band as he conceived it.13

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In terms of our approach, the ‘war’ is centred upon Colyer’s adoption of the reconstructed authentic ‘true jazz’, in opposition to the initially constructed version of authentic New Orleans jazz (‘a decadent development’). Within processes of adopting that reconstructed authenticity, Colyer constructs his jazz identity. Moreover, as a leader of this adopted authenticity in Europe, Colyer pioneers the development of an alternative revivalist jazz sub-world, a segmented sub-world largely separate from those musicians and enthusiasts who have constructed their jazz identities within the revivalist sub-world of the ‘classic’ jazz of the Armstrong Hot Fives, Hot 7s, and Jelly Roll Morton recordings.14 Although Bunk Johnson had died in 1949, it dawned on Colyer that many of his idols would still be living and playing in New Orleans. Colyer embarked on what came to be conceptualized as the ‘first jazz pilgrimage’ to New Orleans by a European,15 thereby providing the role model that hundreds of revivalist enthusiasts subsequently followed, albeit as refined by contemporary tourism. For Colyer and his devotees, New Orleans was the undisputed birthplace and fountainhead of ‘real’ jazz. In 1952, Colyer rejoined the Merchant Navy, jumped ship at Mobile, Alabama, and headed for New Orleans, where he played and recorded with his idols, including the George Lewis band, defying the segregation laws in various ways, and eventually spending time in the parish prison for overstaying his permit.16 Meanwhile, Colyer sent a steady stream of letters to his brother Bill in England. These documented his visit to New Orleans, and many were published in the leading music journal of the time—the Melody Maker. ‘Glory be! Mine ears have heard the glory of the George Lewis Band’17. . . ‘now I know what I’ve been practising for all these years . . . I finally knew that I was right, so right, and those other bums . . . well!’18 Colyer was no copyist and no dogmatist. He drew on many sources, particularly the New Orleans trumpet player Mutt Carey, who became famous through his stint with Kid Ory’s Creole Jazz Band in the 1940s. Similarly, he added many seemingly unlikely tunes to the New Orleans–style repertoire, for example, Brahms’s ‘Cradle Song’. However, the goal was always to work within the ‘New Orleans idiom’ exemplified by the Bunk Johnson–George Lewis band, which he believed provided a ‘potential for originality’ that was ‘limitless’.19 As a result of his pioneering trip to New Orleans, Colyer soon acquired legendary status within New Orleans revivalism. Chris Barber had a band waiting for Colyer to lead when Colyer returned from New Orleans. Colyer soon fell out with that band. It was too polished; Barber was too fond of arrangements alien to the ‘old-style’ authenticity that Colyer sought. Most particularly, his fellow bandsmen didn’t get the ‘inner rhythms’ of the New Orleans style that so preoccupied Colyer. His next band was similarly short-



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lived, though it did have a rougher, more ‘down home’ edge. Acker (then Bernard) Bilk was the clarinettist. Within a few years, the authentic traditional jazz of Colyer’s would be mainstreamed into the ‘trad jazz’ pop phenomenon of 1959–1963 by many of Colyer’s former sidemen and led by the ‘stars’ of traddy pop, Acker Bilk, Chris Barber, and Kenny Ball.20 Colyer refused to compromise. He maintained a purist cult following and the 1962 sleeve notes of a Colyer EP, issued at the height of the ‘traddy pop’ boom, give the flavour: Here is a man . . . dedicated to his music, a man whose absolute integrity is admired even by those who don’t like what he plays. . . We know . . . that he is incapable of the mechanical playing which has enabled lesser British jazzmen to survive, even to flourish exceedingly. The stubbornness of his ‘pure’ style is concerned not with chastity but with honesty . . . he is a jazzman without pretentiousness, without pretence.21

Colyer’s trumpet style never changed in its fundamentals. Moreover, through the force of his personality, the bands that he led all had the distinctive Colyer sound—ensemble playing for the benefit of the band over a propulsive rhythm section, and so on. His vast repertoire of standards, hymns, rags, and popular tunes were all performed in the style that he had adopted. In the same vein, Colyer never departed from the supposedly authentic ‘purist’ front line instrumentation of trumpet, clarinet, and trombone22 accompanied by a rhythm section of drums, string bass, banjo, often with the addition of a piano. The corollary of all this was, of course, that in times of change, Colyer would be criticized for never changing. This was to be a particularly telling criticism within the sub-worlds of authentic New Orleans jazz as secondwave New Orleans jazz revivalism began to emerge in the early 1960s and things did, indeed, begin to change. ADAPTING AUTHENTICITY IN NEW ORLEANS JAZZ: THE CASE OF DAN PAWSON It is instructive to illustrate the sub-process of adapting authenticity with reference to second-wave New Orleans jazz revivalism and the New Orleans– style enthusiast, writer, trumpet player, and band leader from England, Dan Pawson (1936–2002).23 After his death, Robert Greenwood wrote, ‘As well as being one of the leading authorities on New Orleans jazz anywhere in the world, Dan was the finest and most authentic purveyor of New Orleans music the UK has ever known.’24

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‘Adapt’ has rather different meanings: ‘fit, adjust, (a thing to another); make suitable (to or for a purpose); modify, alter; (esp.) able to adapt oneself to new surroundings.’25 I use both adopting and adapting as sensitizing concepts in Herbert Blumer’s sense, namely ‘Whereas definitive concepts provide prescriptions of what to see, sensitizing concepts merely suggest directions along which to look.’26 Sensitizing concepts thus provide a theoretical foundation for the development of grounded theory. In this section I argue that Dan Pawson’s New Orleans–style career path (adopting/adapting trajectory) went through a number of phases. He initially adopted authenticity between 1959 and 1961 in much the same way as Ken Colyer had done previously. Pawson slowly adapted Colyer’s vision of authenticity under the influence of second-wave revivalism in New Orleans between 1962 and 1971. He adapted New Orleans jazz authenticity more radically in the context of the declining interest in New Orleans jazz in the UK, especially from the 1970s on. In the 1980s, his career followed a two-pronged direction. With his own neighbourhood band, he began to incorporate elements of his study of the music of Guadeloupe and Martinique (adapting). When invited to lead the Louis Nelson All Stars (all very well-known musicians from New Orleans) at their gig at the Ascona Jazz Festival in 1988, Dan returned to a more traditional personnel, instrumentation, and style. As the 1990s progressed, Pawson found it increasingly difficult to get regular work for his own band and joined Chris Blount’s Jazzmen. Blount was a semi-professional George Lewis enthusiast, who strove for authenticity in the reconstructionist Bunk Johnson–George Lewis mode. Blount’s band had a loyal following and regular work. Ironically, in the last years of his active playing career, Pawson was forced to return to playing with an adopting reconstructed authenticity band to continue an active career. Like Colyer, Dan was to find that there remained a loyal fan base for ‘purism’ that was denied to those who took a more flexible adapting (though entirely non-commercial) approach to New Orleans–style authenticity, as was Pawson’s preferred stance. Throughout first-wave New Orleans jazz revivalism (1940–1959), the saxophone was regarded as an anathema by purists. Blesh, allegedly echoing Bunk Johnson, made the essential points when writing of the 1928 recording in New Orleans of Sam Morgan’s Jazz Band’s Bogalousa Strut: This record is an example of the fine playing of the average Negro band in New Orleans during the classic period. Made in 1928, it shows the deteriorative effect when the saxophone, first introduced into the jazz band in Chicago probably around 1917–1919, replaces the clarinet. The tone quality of the band suffers, becomes heavy and overmellow with the reed’s sharp piquant clarity gone; the polyphony becomes unclear. The saxophone used in jazz polyphony can never satisfactorily assume the clarinet part. To be heard it must squeal, wail, pop ob-



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scenely, or distort the melodic part into a meaningless series of ascending or descending scales. Bunk Johnson, who knows the requirements of jazz polyphony, said: ‘It just runs up and downstairs with no place to go.’27

As second-wave revivalism developed, it became appreciated just how much this anti-saxophone view was an imposition by jazz critics and record producers. With this realization, it then became possible to deconstruct in other ways so called authenticity in New Orleans jazz, as it had been constructed and reconstructed previously. Second-wave revivalism refers to the period that began in the early 1960s, when several events combined to kickstart a renewed interest in New Orleans jazz. Riverside records came to New Orleans in 1961 and recorded many of the old-style musicians still playing in the city. Prior to that, as mentioned previously, in the late 1950s Larry Borenstein was running informal evening sessions at his art gallery, which by 1961 turned into Preservation Hall, a home—later Mecca—for the oldstyle jazzmen. Most important for worldwide revivalism, which depended so much on records, was the Icon label produced by Californian enthusiast Ken Grayson Mills. Mills came to New Orleans in 1960 with the express purpose of continuing where Bill Russell had left off with his American Music label in 1951.28 Moreover, thanks to a book—which to many became the bible of secondwave revivalism—enthusiasts and record producers now had a ready means of sourcing almost all the old-style African American and Creole musicians known to be still alive in New Orleans. This one book was Sam Charters, Jazz: New Orleans,1885–1957,29 which listed hundreds of New Orleans musicians. Mills therefore set himself the task of locating and recording as many of these musicians as he could, having first provided a setting for them to play in regularly, namely, Preservation Hall. Following his eviction from Preservation Hall, he continued in Icon Hall, later re-named Perseverance Hall. To be precise—and, most importantly, given the widespread ignorance of Mills’s immense contribution—Mills spent three periods in New Orleans. During the first period, from June to July 1960, Mills focused on the launch of his Icon label and his initial recordings. During his second trip the focus was on the naming, establishing, and managing of Preservation Hall with more recordings for his Icon label (May to September 1961). The third trip (February to October 1962) was marked by his opening of Icon Hall, later to be renamed Perseverance Hall, and an extensive recording programme at Perseverance Hall and Jeunes Amis Hall.30 In addition, Barry Martyn, from London, documented the even lesserknown non-Union musicians of New Orleans, for his MONO (Music of New Orleans) label in the early 1960s.31 In particular, Martyn was bowled over by the alto saxophone playing of John Handy and was the first to issue a

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record of Handy on that instrument with a New Orleans band—indeed, with trumpet player Kid Howard, long-time member of the George Lewis band in the 1950s.32 Finally, and most importantly, Barry Martyn and others began to release previously unissued private recordings made of the old-style musicians in the New Orleans dance halls of the 1950s. These recordings were to have a major influence on Dan Pawson. Rarely did these bands have the full instrumentation of so-called authenticity; often they were quartets. Repertoire was a surprise to many, too, with a preponderance of popular songs and far fewer jazz standards than might have been expected. Here was evidence of New Orleans music as functional music—in this case as music for dancing in New Orleans—which had been underplayed in the previous recordings of musicians assembled specifically to record. Drawing upon Dan Pawson’s notes, musical diaries, and records covering the entire period of his involvement in New Orleans jazz,33 I give a brief mainly chronological survey highlighting Pawson’s major relevant influences as he variously adopted and adapted them in his developing conceptualization of authenticity.34 Initial adopting: As I detailed in chapter 9, Dan Pawson had first heard Bunk Johnson—the 1945 HMV 78s of ‘High Society’ and ‘Darktown Strutters’ Ball’35—in 1950, as a fourteen-year-old schoolboy. This set his musical direction for the rest of his life. Adopting confirmed: Following national service, between 1957 and 1959, Dan listened to many different bands and collected a wide range of traditional jazz records. He heard Sidney Bechet in Paris, and George Lewis (with Ken Colyer’s Band) and the Kid Ory Band with Henry ‘Red’ Allen in the UK. However, as with so many British New Orleans–style musicians of Dan’s generation, it was his hearing the full George Lewis band during their 1959 British tour that cemented his musical direction. The experience was a ‘revelation’ to Dan, crystallizing the musical sound he set for himself for the next number of years. A further epiphany occurred shortly afterward, when Dan acquired an ‘illegal’ dubbing of his first American Music LP in early 1960—‘American Music by George Lewis with Kid Shots Madison’.36 Dan was particularly affected by the Kid Shots Madison Band’s renditions of ‘Dumaine Street Drag’—an original slow blues—and ‘When You and I Were Young Maggie’. Indeed, the first demo record that Pawson made in October 1960 featured these two sides. Embryonic adapting: Dan’s father had been an enthusiast of the Latin American sounds of Edmundo Ros, an influence that was to have a lasting influence on Dan—what Jelly Roll Morton referred to as ‘the Spanish tinge’ in New Orleans jazz. From 1960 on, Dan listened to many Birmingham West Indian bands playing mainly calypso and dance music. Later he would be-



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come a serious student of the sounds of Guadeloupe and Martinique. These Latin American and West Indian influences are especially evident in his 1971 recording for La Croix.37 Subsidiary early adopting: In the 1950s and for a short time in the 1960s, Dan was drawn to the concept of ‘purism’ as espoused by Ken Colyer in opposition to commercial British ‘trad’ jazz. Initial adapting of Ken Colyer’s version of ‘purism’: As the 1960s advanced, however, Dan’s espousal of the ‘purism’ of Ken Colyer gave way to a concept of authenticity that became clearer as second-wave revivalism took hold. Following the arguments of writers such as the ethnomusicologist Sam Charters,38 the traditions associated with the origins of jazz were understood to have ‘flowered’ in New Orleans in the late 1920s. These traditions were thought to have continued through the depression years of the 1930s in the dance halls and beer joints of New Orleans. They flourished again in the 1950s dance halls of New Orleans only coming under final threat with the popularity of rock ‘n’ roll, rhythm and blues, and the juke box of the late 1950s. What Barry Martyn39 refers to as ‘the end of the beginning’ was understood to have begun with second-wave revivalism of the early 1960s and to have continued throughout the 1960s before finally petering out as the 1970s and 1980s progressed. Consolidating adapting: For Dan, authenticity presupposed working within this sixty-year-old tradition as he applied it to the developing scene in his local environment, initially British jazz clubs and later British working men’s social clubs and similar gigs. Increasingly, Dan placed the emphasis on the ‘functional’ aspects of New Orleans music. As Pawson put it: Most British and European New Orleans–style bands adopted a didactic approach to their music rather than a functional approach as exemplified by the attitudes of the musicians in New Orleans. This became very apparent to me during my first long visit to the city in 1964. . . The functional approach is entirely different. It is directed towards giving the public the music they can identify with in their own terms and entertaining them into the bargain. That’s precisely what Billie and DeDe did at Luthjen’s, what Kid Thomas did at the Moulin Rouge.40

Accordingly, in 1967 he formed the Silver Leaf Serenaders (with the same personnel as his regular band—the Artesian Hall Stompers) to play New Orleans–style dance music and background music. For Silver Leaf Serenader gigs, he adopted what he called a ‘purely functional approach’ to gigs, ranging from society parties and weddings through to some of the roughest social clubs and dance halls, where the band often accompanied singers from an (often inebriated) audience. Meanwhile the Artesian Hall Stompers concentrated on jazz gigs such as jazz clubs and riverboat shuffles.

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Incorporating his 1964 and 1966 visits to New Orleans and the secondwave revival recordings into his functional adapting: Dan moved from the Bunk Johnson/Kid Shots Madison–George Lewis sound to the rougher sounding neighbourhood New Orleans dance halls associated with the Kid Thomas Band and Billie and DeDe Pierce. Dan increasingly came to stress the ‘fusion’ aspects of New Orleans music. As he put it, ‘There is a melting pot like a great big gumbo of different influences all held together by the second line beat which, in effect, is the key to it all’.41 Indicative of this move toward the Kid Thomas Band sound is the following passage from a resignation letter written by his clarinettist Dick Bridges, in December 1966: ‘I will end by saying that the change of attitude toward music which you hoped for in me did not come about. In my book Messrs George Lewis and Ken Colyer are still the kings and Kid Thomas remains as he was, by comparison a pauper. Your faithfully, Richard Bridges’ Such was the nature of the times! Following Dick Bridges’s departure Dan hired alto saxophone players instead of clarinet players, as Kid Thomas had for decades. Charlie DeVore, the most authoritative writer on Kid Thomas, gives the flavour of what it must have been like to have heard the Thomas band live at a 1950s dance hall session: It was the loudest trumpet playing, and here I was standing at the back and that trumpet was cutting through everything. . . Then we sat down and listened all night, and it was like nothing I’d ever heard in my life. I mean, I thought New Orleans jazz was ‘Dippermouth Blues’ and ‘High Society’. But, by golly, here’s a band that made a career out of playing ‘Green Eyes’. That wasn’t even a jazz beat. I really didn’t know what to make of it. Here was a trombonist getting up there and playing the melody more than the trumpet, the trumpet going blat, blat blat behind the trombone beat, and, off in the background, a kind of wistful sound of a saxophone and piano player. They had the wildest drummer I ever heard in my life and the bass player was very, very strong.42

When Preservation Hall opened in 1961, Kid Thomas (born 1896) had the longest established old-style band in New Orleans. He continued playing until his death in 1987, and by then his band could legitimately claim to have been the most significant of all the old-style New Orleans bands, in terms of authenticity, longevity and contemporary significance.43 More consolidating adapting: For the La Croix recording in 1971, Dan used a quartet of trumpet, trombone, drums, and piano following DeDe Pierce’s live private dance hall recording in Luthjen’s, New Orleans, 1954. He recorded Latin-American and Caribbean tunes, including ‘La Golondrina’ and ‘Take Her to Jamaica’, and waltzes, including a Sweetheart (Waltz) Medley—in addition to ‘Je Vous Aime’ and other tunes popular with New Orleans



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dance hall goers of the 1950s. Barry Martyn makes the essential point: ‘The average New Orleans band in this country [the UK] can’t play a rhumba, and they don’t know the difference between a quickstep and a foxtrot. Dan realises that people want to dance, and it is important to remember that New Orleans music is music for dancing.’44 New directions: Dan recorded with New Orleans musicians in England in 1977 and in New Orleans in 1978. Both sessions continue the ‘functional’ theme and both feature alto saxophones. As one commentator wrote of the 1977 session: ‘Good swinging New Orleans music played here just as it is played on home ground—whether it be the Maple Leaf bar in New Orleans, a night club in London, or a bar in the back streets of Amsterdam.’45 Returns to tradition: Dan led an all-star band of musicians from New Orleans—Louis Nelson All Stars—at the Ascona Jazz Festival, 1988. This band included Chester Zardis on string bass, who was bassist on the Bunk Johnson– George Lewis 1942 Commodore session. The band toured Switzerland and Germany. Returns to orthodox reconstructed authenticity style: Dan’s career effectively ends with a three-year stint with the Chris Blount Band, 1997–2000, playing orthodox reconstructed authenticity George Lewis–style New Orleans jazz. NOTES 1. Allan Moore, “Authenticity as Authentication,” in Critical Essays in Popular Musicology, ed. Allan F. Moore (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 131–45 at 140. 2.  John Buchanan, Emperor Norton’s Hunch: The Story of Lu Waters’ Yerba Buena Jazz Band (Sausolita, CA: Hambleton, 1996). 3.  Graeme Bell, Graeme Bell—Australian Jazzman: His Autobiography, with discography by Jack Mitchell (French Forest, NSW: Child and Associates,1988). 4.  Owen Bryce, The George Webb Dixielanders: My Part: The First Ten Years of the British Jazz Revival, 2nd ed. (Blisworth: Owen Bryce, 2001). 5.  Humphrey Lyttelton, I Play as I Please: The Memoirs of an Old Etonian Trumpeter (London: Pan Books, 1959 [1954]), 182–183. 6.  Richard Ekins, “Becoming a Follower of the Merseysippi Jazz Band: An Approach from Ethnography, Autoethnography and Social World Analysis: A Study in Resocialization,” Jazz Research Journal 29, no. 1 (2015): 8–36. It may be worth pointing out to novice researchers that filling in the details of the Grounded Theory generated conceptual framework provides material for an almost endless number of subsequent writings that form part of a coherent and continuing long term research programme that might, indeed, last for life. 7.  Bernard Gendron, “’Mouldy Figs’ and Modernists: Jazz at War (1942–1946)”.

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  8.  Dale Curran, “Three Brass, Four Rhythm,” in Jazzways, ed. George S. Rosenthal and Frank Zachary in collaboration with Frederic Ramsey Jr. and Rudy Blesh (London: Musicians Press, 1947), 103–9.   9.  Pointon and Smith. 10.  Ken Colyer Trust Newsletter (London: Ken Colyer Trust, 1989–2010). The Trust’s final accounts state: ‘Our mission has therefore been accomplished and the Trust will finally cease to exist on 31 March 2011’. 11. Ken Colyer, New Orleans and Back, produced for Ken Colyer by Arthur Brooks and Ken Pratt (Yorks: Delph, c.1960). Interestingly, when Tom Bethell asked Colyer what he thinks is the most important aspect of New Orleans music, expecting some homily on ensemble playing, Ken replies, ‘I’d ‘ave to say the Bunk Johnson American Musics.’ Tom Bethell, “Bunk Um,” Jazz Journal 29, no. 3 (1976): 4–6 and 20 at 5. 12.  George Melly, “Owning Up”, in Owning Up: The Trilogy (London: Penguin, 2000), 415. I thank Robert Greenwood for alerting me to this passage and to the relevant passage in the previous note. 13.  George Melly, “Ken Colyer and the First Traditional Jazz Band,” from Whatever Happened to Bill Brunskill? Thames TV, 1984, accessed February 4, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYxok6qb6M4. 14. Mike Pointon and Ray Smith, Goin’ Home: The Uncompromising Life and Music of Ken Colyer (London: The Ken Colyer Trust, 2010). 15.  George Melly, “Ken Colyer and the First Traditional Jazz Band.” 16.  Ken Colyer, When Dreams are in Dust: The Path of a Jazzman, newly restored version (London: Ken Colyer Trust, 2009). 17.  “Ken Colyer Letter to Bill Colyer, 3 December 1952,” in Pointon and Smith, Goin’ Home, 102. 18.  “Ken Colyer, Letter to Bill Colyer, 6 December 1952 [7 December 8:20am],” in Pointon and Smith, Goin’ Home, 106. 19.  Ken Colyer, New Orleans and Back. 20.  Richard Ekins, “Traditional Jazz and the Mainstreaming of Authenticity.” 21. Alexis Korner, Sleeve Notes, “Too Busy,” Ken Colyer’s Jazzman, Columbia EP. SEG 8180. See Selected Discography, Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen, This Is Jazz, Vols 1 and 2, Lake Records LACD201D (1959–1961). 22.  Rudi Blesh, Shining Trumpets, 1958 (1946), 190; Dale Curran, “Three Brass, Four Rhythm,”1947. 23.  John Chilton, “Pawson, Dan,” in John Chilton, Who’s Who of British Jazz, 2nd ed. (London: Continuum, 2004), 274–5; Fred Eatherton and Richard Ekins, “Dan Pawson—A Discography: Dan Pawson on Vinyl, Tape, CD and DVD (1960–2002), 2012,” accessed February 4, 2023. http://www.lacroixrecords.com/DP.html; Raymond Lee, Dan Pawson Discography (Zwolle, Netherlands: Gerard Bielderman, 2001). 24. Robert Greenwood, “Dan Pawson (1936–2002): Obituary,” cited in Richard Ekins, Booklet Notes, “Dan Pawson: Living the Legend, 1971–1998,” 504/La Croix, CD 96, 2009, 13. 25.  Concise Oxford Dictionary, 11th edition, 2009.



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26.  Herbert Blumer, “What is Wrong with Social Theory?” American Sociological Review 19, no. 1 (1954): 3–10 at 7. 27.  Rudi Blesh, Shining Trumpets, 1958 (1946), 190. 28.  Grayson Mills, “New Orleans Music: Root, Bone and Marrow, Flower: A Report on Icon Records’ Objectives and Realities,” Jazz Report 1 (4) (1960 December), 13. Mills instituted what might be called the phase/sub-process of ‘Resuming Authenticity’ (resuming reconstructed authenticity, in this case) between 1960 and 1963. I wrote this phase/sub-process up for enthusiasts rather than for an academic audience in my Just Jazz twenty two-part series, Richard Ekins, “The Ken Grayson Mills Project,” together with the five-part series “The Larry Borenstein Story, 2016–2020”, accessed February 4, 2023. http://www.lacroixrecords.com/grayson_menu.html. 29.  Samuel Charters, Jazz: New Orleans, 1885–1957, 1958. 30.  Richard Ekins, “Ken Grayson Mills, the Start of the New Orleans Kitty Halls, and the Final Months of Perseverance Hall,” Just Jazz, no. 170 (2020): 26-34. 31. Mike Burns ed. Walking with Legends: Barry Martyn’s New Orleans Jazz Odyssey. On the influence of Barry Martyn’s MONO project on Dan Pawson, see Richard Ekins, “In Praise of Barry Martyn: Dan Pawson on the Contribution of Barry Martyn’s MONO Label to Second Wave Revivalism and Its Aftermath, Part 1,” MONO on Vinyl, Just Jazz, no. 268 (2020): 12–21; Richard Ekins, “In Praise of Barry Martyn: Dan Pawson on the Contribution of Barry Martyn’s MONO Label to Second Wave Revivalism and Its Aftermath, Part 2,” MONO on CD , Just Jazz, no. 271 (2020): 8–17. 32.  See Selected Discography, Kid Howard’s New Orleans Band 1962, American Music, AMCD-92 (Music of New Orleans, MONO LP 2); also, Hopes Hall—New Orleans 1963, featuring Barry Martyn, Kid Sheik and John Handy, GHB-BC 256. 33.  I thank Spencer Pawson for granting me access to his late father’s jazz material. 34.  Richard Ekins, “Dan Pawson: A Tribute,” 1–16; Richard Ekins, Dan Pawson: Living the Legend, 504/La Croix, CD 96, 2009, Booklet Notes, 1–16. 35.  The recordings of High Society and Darktown Strutters’ Ball are included on Bunk Johnson and His New Orleans Band—The Complete Deccas, Victors and V Discs Plus Alternate Takes November 1945 to January 1946. 36. See Selected Discography, George Lewis with Kid Shots, American Music, AMCD-2 (1944). 37.  Raymond Lee 2001, Dan Pawson Discography, 13. 38.  Samuel Charters, Jazz New Orleans, 1963. 39.  Barry Martyn, The End of the Beginning. 40.  Dan Pawson, “Repertoire.” Letter to the Editor, New Orleans Music 9, no. 4 (2001): 13-14. 41.  Dan Pawson, “Dan Pawson,” in Mike Burns, The Great Olympia Band (New Orleans, LA: Jazzology Press, 2001), 83–89 at 88. 42.  Charlie DeVore, “New Orleans Memories, Part 1: Interviews with Charlie DeVore,” ed. William J. Schafer. Mississippi Rag 26, no. 2 (December 1998), 1, 2, 4–6 at 4. See Selected Discography, Kid Thomas Band at the Tip Top. American Music, AMCD-97 (1957).

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43.  Guus Smits and Gerard Bielderman. A Discography of Kid Thomas Valentine (Zwolle, The Netherlands: Gerard Bielderman, 2010). 44.  Barry Martyn, “Barry Martyn at Large,” Footnote 3, no. 3 (February 1973): 16–23 at 23. 45. Roger Bird, 1977. “Sleeve Notes,” Andrew Hall’s Band, Rampart Records, 1977, LP. RS 104.

Chapter Sixteen

Progressing Authenticity

Thus far, I have constructed the outlines of a conceptual framework for the study of authenticating as a social process, in the context of jazz historiography, with the focus on New Orleans revivalist jazz between 1940 and 1976. In keeping with the editorial policy of the series in which this book is a part, I have sought ‘Experiments/On the Political’ through an approach which combines memoir, life history, autobiography, case history, autoethnography, case study, and grounded theory focused on competing definitions of authenticity situations in early jazz and New Orleans jazz revivalism. In following riffs from my interlocutor Robert Porter, I have sometimes been led in directions that have surprised me. I had not expected to spend as much time on what might be seen as descriptive autoethnography, as opposed to analytic autoethnography. For the more overtly, grounded theory driven latter sections of this part of the book, I drew on my previously published article ‘Authenticity as Authenticating—The Case of New Orleans Jazz Revivalism: An Approach from Grounded Theory and Social World Analysis’. Other books might have used that article as a lift off point for a very different book from this one. When I published my equivalent article on male crossdressing and sex-changing as ‘Male Femaling: A Grounded Theory Approach to Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing’, within twenty-four hours I received a letter from the sociology commissioning editor at Routledge requesting a full-length book fleshing out my article. Following on from that request led me to expand and develop the article into a research monograph. I avoided the personal almost entirely. For this book, Robert was keen for me to develop the personal. As a result, rather than develop density in my use of grounded theory, as I suggested as the next step following the completion of my authenticity as authenticating article, I have chosen rather to set the context of the article within memoir, case history, autoethnography, and case study. I have 141

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not taken so called ‘classic’ (BSP) grounded theory analysis of my chosen substantive area any further. My article was conceived primarily as a contribution to popular music studies, in particular popular music history and accordingly I published it in the appropriately named journal Popular Music History. My emphasis on how authenticity was done socially in the history of early jazz and New Orleans jazz revivalism resonated with many readers, who wrote to me about its potential applicability to their musical concerns. ‘Authenticity as authenticating’ has an obvious ‘grab’ for many musical genres, and indeed for many other domains.1 Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the prominent grounded theorist, Barry Gibson, wrote to me with the suggestion that we applied the trajectory/ framework to a historiography of grounded theory, itself. We are working on this, as I write. Barney Glaser and many of his followers argue that their approach is best termed ‘classic grounded theory’, and Glaser spent much time writing and giving seminars about the ‘authenticity’ of his approach and the inauthenticity (as grounded theory) of other approaches. There is now a vast literature on the various directions grounded theory has been taken and their relations and interrelations with each other and how their similarities and dissimilarities might best be categorised. Antony Bryant has been especially prominent in this arena.2 Bryant, like other authors, rightly emphasises the link between grounded theory and American pragmatist philosophy. However, from my point of view, the tendency to conflate the significance of Peirce, James, Mead, and Dewey and, at the same time, underplay or ignore the unique significance of Mead leads to unsatisfactory work. The subtlety and significance of Mead’s philosophy of the present, with its accompanying emergent view of the nature of the past and future, and his ‘objective relativism’, for instance, tends to be missed. For Glaser, of course, this linking with ontological and epistemological assumptions is irrelevant. Grounded theory is a sort of free-standing research methodology and/or research strategy— ‘Just do it!’ As Strübing has been the most explicit to point out, however, this position is not tenable for the serious sociologist (and others, too, no doubt) who feel the need to be attentive to their ontological and epistemological position.3 I would add, too, that they need to be attentive, inter alia, to their social psychology and their position on the interrelations between micro, mezzo and macro societal concerns, the direction taken, following Strauss, particularly in Adele Clarke’s Situational Analysis. These are matters I might have developed had I not been led in different directions by Robert’s interlocutions. Rather, now I conclude my historiographical trajectory. Chronological beginnings and endings in this research arena, like most others, are inherently contestable. Dan Pawson, for instance, continued playing New Orleans–style jazz up until his death in 2002 and, as



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we have seen, Ken Colyer legacy bands continued to 2011. I will close, however, with a final chronological comment on authentic revivalist jazz in New Orleans, itself, as opposed to world-wide revivalist jazz. As I have indicated, the mid-1970s are frequently cited as marking the end of second wave revivalism in New Orleans.4 I spent time in New Orleans in both 1968 and 1976. So many old-style musicians had died within these eight years that it certainly makes sense to me to talk of post-second-wave revivalism after 1976. For Turner, in Remembering Song,5 the end date was marked by the death of trombonist Jim Robinson on 4 May 1976. Born in 1892, Robinson had first recorded in 1927 in New Orleans with the celebrated Sam Morgan Band. For me, it was the death of clarinettist Albert Burbank, on 15 August 1976, that symbolised the end. Burbank (born in 1902) was taught clarinet by Lorenzo Tio, one of New Orleans’ most famous clarinet players. Burbank had recorded with Wooden Joe Nicholas on some of my favourite Bill Russell’s recordings in the 1940s.6 Moreover, he toured the world with the Kid Thomas Band in 1971. Indeed, I made a private recording of the band’s appearance at Fairfield Halls, Croydon. I attended his wake in New Orleans. Bizarrely, I have never been able to get out of my head the image that confronted me when I entered the room where Burbank was laid to rest. I turned a corner and extraordinarily, for me as a visitor from the UK, his body was set out a few feet away from a huge brightly lit Coca-Cola dispensing machine. His beautifully embalmed head was particularly close to the stillin-use machine. Individual deaths aside, there seemed to be a qualitative change in the music from the musicians that were left. As Hadlock put it concerning the Preservation Hall sessions: ‘The long-admired polyphonic skills of hometown players tended to become routinized into brittle, predictable musical artifacts for tourists.’7 But, of course, authenticity talk about New Orleans revivalist jazz continues unabated to this day. Raeburn, tellingly, opens his 2009 book with: When visitors come to the city of New Orleans, they will invariably ask. . . where one might go to hear some ‘real’ jazz—not the tourist music associated with the bistros of Bourbon Street but the genuine article. An honest answer, according to some local observers (especially after the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina), would have been ‘nowhere, you’re too late, it’s gone,’ but the usual response is to direct them to Preservation Hall. Often described as the ‘international headquarters’ or ‘bastion’ of ‘traditional’ New Orleans-style jazz. . . At Preservation Hall, no one ever asks, ‘How can you preserve a music that has ceased to exist?’8

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Raeburn might have written the same thing today. Other fantasies about Preservation Hall persist—that it was Allan and Sandra Jaffe who founded it, that their son Ben Jaffe continued where his parents left of, and so on. Notwithstanding my forty-five article-series, which sought in the most painstaking detail to ‘right that wrong’,9 the untruths are perpetuated. As my psychoanalyst, Tom Freeman, used to say; ‘We believe what we want to believe’—just like the tourist waiting in the long queue to enter Preservation Hall one evening for a single twenty-minute set, who assured her companion that ‘jazz started here’.10 With my focus on range and framework, I have been merely illustrative in my treatment of detail, and I have barely mentioned the post-1976 period. Future studies of progressing authenticity since 1976 should note that what I call post-second wave revivalism has taken three major streams. Firstly, several of the young white musicians who moved to New Orleans, mostly in the 1960s,11 have now joined the contemporary Preservation Hall canon, most notably Clive Wilson, Lars Edegran, and Tom Sancton.12 Most of these musicians have widened the scope of their New Orleans–style interests and expertise, in keeping with the post-mid-1970s shift to more flexible approaches to authenticity. Secondly, from the 1980s on, young African American New Orleanians who had previously shunned New Orleans–style jazz as part of Uncle Tom began returning to the music. There were two rather different streams to this. There is the new generation that has emerged from Danny Barker’s Fairview Baptist Church Christian Band experiments in the 1970s and other kindred programmes. These developments produced important individual African American musicians, such as Gregg Stafford and Lucien Barbarin who played in an updated traditional New Orleans-style jazz.13 Gregg Stafford went on to become the most single important transition point from old to young. As Bruce Sunpie Barnes puts it: ‘Many of his mentors were the musicians who created the New Orleans jazz revival period. . . He sat for thousands of hours with older musicians and learned how they played.’14 ‘He has been a bridge from old to young’.15 Moreover, he has continued that bridging work with successive generations of youngsters though his leadership of the Young Tuxedo Brass Band, his work as a jazz educator in New Orleans public schools, and his cofounding in 1993 of the Black men of Labor organisation created to promote and preserve Traditional Jazz Music.16 More noticeably, perhaps, these developments have given rise to the new wave of brass bands such as the Dirty Dozen and the Rebirth.17 The second African American stream, who also studied with Danny Barker, includes educated professionals and academics, such as clarinettist Dr Michael White,



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who are concerned to transmit the New Orleans jazz heritage to future generations and to find a space for the music in jazz studies and the jazz canon.18 Also, in the post-1976 period, scholarly jazz studies have made important contributions. We now know much more of Buddy Bolden’s role in the formation of ‘jazz’,19 for instance. It is clearer now that the New Orleans jazz revivalists focused on selected phases of the development of New Orleans style in their sourcing and selecting. Regarding instrumentation, for example, in the earliest phase of the origins of jazz, the use of the guitar preceded the banjo, and the violin was important. The scholars of the 1930s knew this, but it tended to be forgotten by the less scholarly, as revivalism took root internationally. The revivalists, both constructionist and reconstructionist, in effect, ‘froze’ chosen frames of jazz development and history in their sourcing and selecting. Realization of this has led to interesting experiments in authenticity of instrumentation, repertoire, and style, as in the recreations of the Buddy Bolden band both by Humphrey Lyttelton in England20 and in Dan Hardie’s Buddy Bolden Revival Orchestra in Australia.21 Both bands, for instance, use the valve trombone which preceded the slide trombone in early jazz. Hardie’s band features the violin. However, rather than detail such intricacies, I would prefer to end this book with material more fundamental. Accordingly, I end with a final coda. NOTES 1.  On the concept of ‘grab’, see Barney G. Glaser, “Conceptualization: On Theory and Theorization Using Grounded Theory.” 2.  Anthony Bryant, Grounded Theory and Grounded Theorizing: Pragmatism in Research Practice (New York: Oxford University Press), 2017; Anthony Bryant, The Varieties of Grounded Theory (Los Angeles, CA: Sage), 2019. 3.  Jörg Strübing, “Research as Pragmatic Problem Solving: The Pragmatists’ Roots of Empirically-grounded Theorizing,” in The Sage Handbook of Grounded Theory, eds. Anthony Bryant and Kathy Charmaz (Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2007) 580–601 at 587. ‘What then is the virtue of reconstructing the epistemological underpinnings of grounded theory? Why not simply follow Glaser’s emphatic advice: “Trust grounded theory, it works! Just do it, use it, and publish” (Glaser 1998: 254)? Because we are not in church but in academia. It is as simple as that. In sciences and humanities we are not only asked to justify our claims but also the theoretical and methodological means by which we reached our conclusions. As far as empirical sciences such as sociology or psychology are concerned, we even need to spell out the epistemological grounds on which our inquiry treads.’ The Glaser reference is to Barney Glaser, Doing Grounded Theory: Issues and Discussions (Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press, 1998).  4. Frederick Turner, Remembering Song: Encounters with New Orleans Jazzmen, expanded ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994), 100. It is no coincidence, I think, that

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Clive Wilson’s memoir Time of My Life: A Jazz Journey from London to New Orleans, 2019, effectively ends in the mid-late 1970s, with just a short one-and-a-half page ‘Epilogue’ summarizing his musical career from 1979 to the present. Wilson, himself, gives no reason for this. For me, around this time he became one of the standard bearers of what I term post-New Orleans jazz revivalism which marked the end of second wave revivalism in New Orleans.  5. Frederick Turner, Remembering Song, 100.  6. See Selected Discography, “Wooden Joe Nicholas, 1945–1949,” American Music, AMCD-5.   7.  Richard Hadlock, “The New Orleans Revival,” in The Oxford Companion to Jazz, ed. Bill Kirchner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 305–15, at 314.   8.  Bruce Boyd Raeburn, New Orleans Style, 1.   9.  See, Chapter 1, note 1. 10.  From a conversation heard outside Preservation Hall, c.2010. 11.  Charles Suhor, “New Orleans Jazz with a Foreign Accent,” in Charles Suhor, Jazz in New Orleans: The Postwar Years Through 1972 (London: Scarecrow Press; Rutgers: State University of New Jersey, 2001), 187–91. 12.  Shannon Brinkman and Eve Abrams, Preservation Hall. Photographs by Shannon Brinkman, Interviews with Preservation Hall Members by Eve Abrams. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011). Tom Sancton’s position is more complicated in that he is American, grew up in New Orleans in the 1950s and ’60s, and after extended periods away from New Orleans, most recently divides his time between Paris and New Orleans. He maintains his position as Research Professor at Tulane University, New Orleans, and plays frequently at Preservation Hall. 13.  Thomas W. Jacobsen, Traditional New Orleans Jazz: Conversations with the Men who Make the Music (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011), 66–102. Lucien Barbarin died at the age of sixty-three in 2020. 14.  Bruce Sunpie Barnes and Rachel Breunlin, Talk That Music Talk: Passing on Brass Band Music in New Orleans the Traditional Way (New Orleans, LA: Centre for the Book at the University of New Orleans, 2014), 46. 15.  Bruce Sunpie Barnes and Rachel Breunlin, 46. 16. “Black Men of Labor: Keeping New Orleans Traditional Music Alive and On the Streets,” accessed February 2, 2023. https://thebmol.org/about/. Mat Sakakeeny with Gregg Stafford and Fred Johnson, “Black Men of Labor Parade 2006,” accessed February 4, 2023. https://www.wwoz.org/media/89602-black-men-laborparade-2006. 17.  Sam Charters, A Trumpet Around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2008), 354–62. In the Selected Discography, I have included one CD by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Scott Yanow writes: ‘The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, an innovative group that combines R&B with New Orleans parade rhythms, pays tribute to the great Jelly Roll Morton on this CD. . . A few Danny Barker monologues add to the authenticity of this music, which takes great liberties with Morton’s compositions. . . (I)t is the sound of the rollicking ensembles . . . that gives this set its sense of purpose. Purists, however, should avoid this



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one.’ Scott Janow, “Jelly Review,” accessed February 10, 2023. https://www.allmusic. com/album/jelly-mw0000618420. 18.  Thomas W. Jacobsen, 2011, 102–9. In the Selected Discography, I have included one CD in which Dr. Michael White and Gregg Stafford play together in New Orleans with musicians, variously from the United States, Canada, and the UK, living in Denmark. Originally recorded for Jazz Crusade, the Upbeat release notes by Mike Pointon describes the session this way: ‘The music on this album is a fine example of jazzmen from different cultures and countries integrating and proving that the spirit of authentic New Orleans music still survives. The key figures, both black New Orleanians, have done much to keep their native music in its original form on the map. Gregg Stafford and Michael White were in The Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band, formed by Danny Barker in the early ’70s and they represent the later generation of New Orleans musicians who grew up influenced by the revered veterans who inhabited Preservation Hall.’ Mike Pointon, Sleeve Notes, Dr. Michael White and Gregg Stafford, Praying and Swaying at the Cross, Upbeat Recordings, URCD 315 (2000–2001). 19.  Don Marquis, In Search of Buddy Bolden, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 2005). 20.  Russell Davies, Sleeve Notes. Humphrey Lyttelton and Russell Davies Present . . . Gonna Call My Children Home: The World of Buddy Bolden, Caligraph, 1986, LP. CLGLP 013. Humphrey Lyttelton died at the age of eighty-six in 2008. 21.  Daniel Hardie, The Birth of Jazz: Reviving the Music of the Bolden Era (New York: iUniverse, 2007).

Coda on a Riff Fragment from Robert Porter

I return to a particularly crucial riff fragment of yours, Robert. You wrote: This history is not simply yours, that it’s part of a broader social process, that it is not just about a ‘me’ (say, the subjective navel gazing of the ‘authentic’ practitioner), but often a ‘they’ (say, those others with whom we might engage in forms of contested or agonistic ‘authenticity talk’) and always an ‘us’ (say, the endless processing of the self-identifying community or populace over time).

For the ‘they’, all this authenticity talk might seem variously odd, irrelevant, and/or misguided. I have sought to make explicit the ‘me’. On the ‘us’ there is no better example than the following extended passage from Tom Bethell’s article in New Orleans Music magazine he titled ‘Recording at San Jacinto Hall in the 1960s’.1 Englishman Tom Bethell, a prominent, celebrated and often controversial journalist and author2 wrote the most significant book on George Lewis following his residency in New Orleans in the 1960s.3 He studied the clarinet with Lewis and produced his series of San Jacinto Hall recordings which sought to recreate the sounds of Bill Russell’s 1940s recordings in San Jacinto Hall. He believed that the finest of the 1944 Bill Russell sides of the Bunk Johnson Band with George Lewis, recorded in New Orleans, were the best recordings of jazz ever made. Moreover, for Bethell, they were among the best recordings of any sort of music ever made. They were comparable to J. S. Bach in such qualities as counterpoint, embracing what New Orleans jazz writers refer to as polyphony and heterophony,4 and superior in many aspects, as in ‘a Bach fugue sounds as mechanical as clockwork by comparison and really is less complex.’5 Bethell’s nuanced writing on the nature of authenticity in the second wave New Orleans jazz revivalism of the 1960s provides a fitting conclusion to the ‘us’ of the period from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s. 149

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No one really wanted to admit the slow, steady decline that was part and parcel of the New Orleans scene in the 1960s. A tactful evasion was preferred. It was the unwritten etiquette among New Orleans jazz fans. Some I suspect may not have cared much about whether standards had declined, or even recognised its reality. As far as they were concerned it was all great—just so long as it was authentic. These were authentic New Orleans jazzmen playing in their own authentic style, so look on the bright side. That was the outlook that we were expected to embrace. Some who had come from Europe, such as Lars Edegran from Sweden, really did know that the music was not as it had been. Bill Russell did too. But Bill . . . was always very guarded and discreet about such matters. Rarely would he say anything critical. Others I expect were so enraptured by the authenticity of it all that they put aside considerations of quality. A few months later, however, something happened that put me in a more optimistic frame of mind. Ken Mills released on his Icon label ‘Endless the Trek, Endless the Search’ with a half-dozen tracks of outstanding quality. The main instrumentalists were Kid Thomas Valentine and Jim Robinson; with George Guesnon on banjo. It is often said that the blues at its best mixes joy, sadness, laughter and tears, and these contradictory elements were marvelously combined in Milk Cow Blues. Kid Thomas’s facetious falsetto combined magically with George Lewis’s serious ‘longing’ style and Jim Robinson’s subdued participation. For a chorus or two, they create one of the great moments in blues recording history. See See Rider was in the same class, another great moment. It shows just how well Kid Thomas could play at his best. In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree was also terrific—surely the best recording ever made of this fine old pop song. Kid Thomas was always happy to let someone else take the melodic lead, as George Lewis confidently does here. The session is a high point in New Orleans music of the post-war period . . . It was this recording, and this recording alone, that convinced me that it might still be possible to capture something good, perhaps even excellent in the New Orleans style. Anyway, I hoped to get beyond documenting authenticity. I wrote to Ken Mills in California . . . and he wrote back giving me some details. I was impressed that he had recorded the session on the exact date of my arrival in the United States, August 28, 1962. The Mills recording also had a lively dance-hall sound—it was recorded at the Jeunes Amis Hall in the Treme—and I wanted that sound too. I found out that San Jacinto Hall itself was still available.6

After describing some of the high and low points of his five San Jacinto Recordings, Bethell concludes: ‘Overall, I think I captured some fairly good stuff in my recordings. But it’s easy to see the mistakes I made and how they might have been avoided. It’s all over now, as far as I am concerned and has been since the mid-1970s. But some great things were captured.’7 Amen. I made my own mistakes, too. But I do like to think that my La Croix recording of the Kid Thomas Band at Kohlman’s Tavern in June 1968 was one of those ‘great things’.8 Whether this book is one of those ‘great



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things’ is a totally different matter, of course. Rather, I think of it as the first tentative steps in further conversations—the beginnings of a larger project with Robert Porter—that will lead to further ‘revisiting’ focused on other major preoccupations of my life and work, both personal and intellectual. I am hopeful that other scholars might be persuaded that the novel combination of theories, methodologies and methods introduced and developed in this book might provide the beginnings of a template for their own revisiting. NOTES 1.  Tom Bethell, “Recording at San Jacinto Hall in the 1960s,” New Orleans Music 14, no. 1 (2008): 6–11. 2.  Tom Bethell, An Inadvertent Autobiography (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1988). 3.  Tom Bethell, George Lewis—A Jazzman from New Orleans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977). At the time of first publication Bethell was a Washington editor of Harper’s magazine. 4.  Doug Landau, “A Dynasty of Trumpet Kings—No 8: Willie ‘Bunk’ Johnson, circa 1885–1949.” New Orleans Music 14, no. 1 (2008): 18–23. 5.  Tom Bethell, “Bunk Johnson, 1944.” New Orleans Music 11, no. 5 (2004): 6–10 at 9. 6.  Tom Bethell, “Recording at San Jacinto Hall in the 1960s,” 7–8. 7.  Tom Bethell, “Recording at San Jacinto Hall in the 1960s,” 10. 8. The greatest living record producer of old-style New Orleans music—David Wyckoff—who has had a most successful life by any standards, both personally and professionally, and is now a long-retired psychiatrist, considers that his 1950s recordings of neglected New Orleans musicians in New Orleans (with the late Alden Ashforth) were quite simply the most important contributions of his life. See Fred Eatherton and Richard Ekins, “In Praise of Alden Ashforth, David Wyckoff and James McGarrell: An Annotated Discography, Part 1”; Fred Eatherton and Richard Ekins, “In Praise of Alden Ashforth, David Wyckoff and James McGarrell: An Annotated Discography, Part 2.”

Appendix: Selected Discography

This selected discography introduces the recordings of New Orleans jazz with reference to the trajectory of authenticating detailed in the book. The Overture includes seven examples chosen to illustrate the major sub-processes of the trajectory: constructing authenticity, adopting constructed authenticity, reconstructing authenticity, adopting reconstructed authenticity, and adapting reconstructed authenticity. Following this vital Overture, the reader is invited to dip into the Substance of the music considered in this book as little or as far as s/he chooses, with reference to the sub-processes introduced in the Overture. Three illustrations of the sub-process of progressing authenticity—examples of post secondwave revivalism in New Orleans—are provided for comparative purposes. The selected discography concludes with the most significant recordings of the sessions considered in the finale Coda of the book. OVERTURE Constructing Authenticity King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, “Snake Rag,” recorded in Richmond, Indiana, 1923. (From King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, 1923–1924—The Complete Set, Challenge Records International, CD-RTR 79007.)

Adopting Constructed Authenticity Lu Watter’s Yerba Buena Jazz Band, “Snake Rag,” recorded in San Francisco, 1947. (From Lu Watters’ Yerba Buena Jazz Band, The Complete Good Time Jazz Recordings, Good Time Jazz, 4GTJCD-4409-2.) 153

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Reconstructing Authenticity Bunk Johnson’s Original Superior Jazz Band, “Moose March,” recorded in New Orleans, 1942. (From Bunk Johnson and his Superior Jazz Band, featuring George Lewis and Big Jim Robinson, Good Time Jazz, GTJCD-12048-2.)

Adopting Reconstructed Authenticity Ken Colyer with the Crane River Jazz Band, “Moose March,” recorded in London, 1950. (From The Crane River Jazz Band, Cadillac, SGC/MEL CD 202.)

Adapting Reconstructed Authenticity Kid Thomas, “Anytime,” recorded live at the Moulin Rouge, Marrero, New Orleans, 1954. (From Kid Thomas—The Dance Hall Years, American Music, AMCD-48.) Billie and DeDe Pierce, “Big Mamou,” recorded live at Luthjen’s, New Orleans, 1954. (From Music of New Orleans, Volume 3—Music of the Dance Halls, Smithsonian Folkways, FW02463_101. Custom CD available.) Dan Pawson’s Artesian Hall Stompers, “Big Mamou,” recorded at St Andrew’s Hall, West Bromwich, England, 1966. (From Vintage Dan Pawson—The Lost Sessions, 1966–1985, Dine-a-Mite Jazz / La Croix DJCD-008.)

SUBSTANCE Constructing Authenticity The Complete Original Dixieland Jazz Band, 1917–1936, RCA-ND 90026. King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, 1923–1924—The Complete Set, Challenge Records International, CD-RTR 79007. Louis Armstrong—The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (1925–1928), Legacy C4K63527000. Jelly Roll Morton—Complete Recorded Work, 1926–1930, JSP903.

Reconstructing Authenticity Kid Rena 1940, Bunk Johnson: The Very First Recordings (1942)—Prelude to the Revival, Vol II, American Music, AMCD-41. Bunk Johnson and his Superior Jazz Band, featuring George Lewis and Big Jim Robinson, Good Time Jazz—GTJCD-12048-2 (1942). Willie ‘Bunk’ Johnson—The Complete ‘Jazz Information’ Recordings, American Music, AMCD-119 (1942). George Lewis And his New Orleans Stompers, 1943, American Music, AMCD100/101.



Appendix: Selected Discography 155

Bunk Johnson, ‘The King of the Blues’, American Music, AMCD-1 (1944). George Lewis with Kid Shots, American Music, AMCD-2 (1944). Bunk Johnson, 1944, American Music, AMCD-3. Bunk Johnson, 1944/45, American Music, AMCD-12. Bunk Johnson Plays Popular Songs, American Music, AMCD-15 (1944–1946). Bunk Johnson and His New Orleans Band—The Complete Deccas, Victors and V Discs Plus Alternate Takes November 1945 to January 1946’, Document Records (2)—DOCD-1001. Wooden Joe Nicholas—1945–1949, American Music, AMCD-5. Bunk Johnson—Last Testament, Delmar DD25 (1947). Kid Thomas: The Very First Recordings, American Music, AMCD-10 (1951). Emile Barnes—The Louisiana Joymakers introducing DeDe & Billie Peirce, American Music AMCD-13 (1951). The Music of New Orleans, Volume 3: Music of the Dance Halls’, Folkways 2463 (1951–1954). Custom CD available. Barnes-Bocage Big Five 1954, American Music, AMCD-141. Willie Pajeaud’s New Orleans Band 1955 and Kid Thomas’ Dixieland Band 1957, The Larry Borenstein Collection, Volume 2, 504 CD31. Kid Thomas Band at the Tip Top, American Music, AMCD-97 (1957) Punch Miller 1960, American Music, AMCD-52 (Icon LP 2). Kid Howard’s La Vida Band, American Music, AMCD-54 (Icon LP 4, 1961). Kid Howard’s New Orleans Band 1962, American Music, AMCD-92 (Music of New Orleans, MONO LP 2). Hopes Hall—New Orleans 1963, featuring Barry Martyn, Kid Sheik and John Handy, GHB-BC 256. Billie and DeDe Pierce, with Louis Nelson, Cie Frasier and Chester Zardis, 1967, 504/La Croix CD94.

Adopting Authenticity—Ken Colyer The Crane River Jazz Band, Cadillac SGC/MEL CD 202 (1950–1953). Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen, New Orleans to London and Back to the Delta—Classic Recordings from 1953/54, Lake Records LACD209. Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen, This Is Jazz, Vols 1 and 2, Lake Records LACD201D (1959– 1961). Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen, Out of Nowhere, Lake Records, LACD101 (1965).

Adapting Authenticity—Dan Pawson Dan Pawson, 1966–1971—A Tribute—The Lord Richard New Orleans Sessions, Vol. 3, 504/La Croix CD 93. Dan Pawson, Living the Legend 1971–1998—The Lord Richard New Orleans Sessions, Vol. 6, 504/La Croix CD 96. Vintage Dan Pawson—The Lost Sessions 1966–1985, Dine-a-Mite/La Croix DJCD008.

156

Appendix: Selected Discography

Progressing Authenticity Clive Wilson Presents the New Orleans Serenaders (with Tommy Sancton), ‘Sweet and Hot’—The Music of Louis Armstrong and Kid Ory, GHB Records, BCD-446 (2003). Dr Michael White and Gregg Stafford, Praying and Swaying at the Cross, Upbeat Recordings, URCD 315 (2000/2001). The Dirty Dozen Brass Band Plays Jelly Roll, Columbia 470359 2 (1993).

Coda (Finale) George Lewis: Endless the Trek, Endless the Search (Icon LP 9) American Music AMCD-59 (1962). George Lewis (with DeDe Pierce) at San Jacinto Hall (San Jacinto LP SJ 2), GHB, BCD-34 (1964). Kid Thomas Valentine 1961 & 1968 (La Croix LP 4 and 5) 504/La Croix CDS92.

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Index

Adorno, Theodor, 32, 33, 35, 36 African American: audience, 93, 119; musicians, 118, 119, 133, 144. See also race records Anderson, Leon, xv, 60–62. See also case history; case study; symbolic interactionism. Armstrong, Louis, 73, 74, 112, 119, 120, 122, 129, 130 Artesian Hall Stompers, 59, 75, 93, 94, 135, 136. See also Pawson, Dan authenticating: authenticity as, xvii, 48, 115, 142; as basic social process, 8, 48, 96, 115, 141, 142; as basic sociopolitical process, xi, xiii, 4, 32–35, 95. See also grounded theory; social process; trajectory, 17, 109, 115, 127, 153. See also authenticity authenticity, xv–xvi, 71, 88; abandoning, 101, 110; adapting, 65, 111, 131, 132. See also Pawson, Dan; adopting, xvii, 73, 129, 130, 132. See also Colyer, Ken; commercializing, 35, 110; competing, 96, 100; constructing, xvii, 111, 116–18, 121, 122, 128; mainstreaming of, 109–11, 115; New Orleans, 69, 93, 101–5, 132. See also purism; Smith, Charles Edward; progressing, xvii, 111, 144;

reconstructing, 61, 120–22, 128, 129, 132, 133. See also Lewis, George; resuming, 93, 105; talk, 53–57, 72, 117, 143, 149, 150; wars, 49, 53, 93. See also Adorno, Theodor; authenticating; Glaser, Barney; instrumentation; male femaling; New Orleans jazz; purism; Taylor, Charles; Wallis, Bob autobiography, 48, 61, 65, 115, 141. See also autoethnography; methodology autoethnography, xvii, 5; analytic, xi–xii, xv–xvi, 141; evocative, xvi, 60; of memory, xv, 48, 56, 60, 62; socio-analytic, 61, 65. See also autobiography; methodology Ball, Kenny, 69, 131. See also traddy pop; trad fad Barber, Chris, 69, 74, 85, 130, 131. See also traddy pop; trad fad Barnes, Emile, 70, 96 Barton, Bob, 94, 106n9, 123 Beiderbecke, Bix, 74, 119–20 Bernstein, Basil, 13–15, 23 big band. See swing Bilk, Acker, 69, 71, 100–103, 131. See also traddy pop Blesh, Rudi, 71, 102–104, 121, 132

173

174

Index

Blount, Chris, 132, 137 Blumer, Herbert, 21, 28, 38, 39, 44, 132. See also symbolic interactionism Bogdan, Robert, 38, 39, 43 Bolden, Buddy, 49, 73, 120, 145 Borenstein, Larry, 3, 86, 87, 123, 133 Bryant, Antony. See grounded theory BSP. See social process

folk music, 67, 117, 119, 123, 128 Freeman, Thomas, 3–4, 60, 144

Glaser, Barney, xii, xiv–xv, 36, 43–48, 142. See also case history; case study; grounded theory; Straus, Anselm Greenwood, Robert, 97n6, 110, 113n12, 131 grounded theory, xi–xvii, 77, 90, 132, Carter, William “Bill”, 65, 67, 68 141: of authenticating, 4, 8, 48, 96, case history, xi–xii, xv–xvii, 5, 65, 141. 110. See also authenticating; classic, See also Anderson, Leon; case study; 36, 43, 142. See also Glaser, Barney; Glaser, Barney; methodology; Strauss, constructivist. See Charmaz, Kathy; Anselm; case study, 5, 36, 115, 128, Clarke, Adele; historiography, 48, 56, 141. See also Anderson, Leon; case 65, 115, 142; methodology, 4, 44–46, history; Glaser, Barney; methodology; 60, 142. See also Mead, George Strauss, Anselm Herbert; Strauss, Anselm; symbolic CCCS. See Centre for Contemporary interactionism Cultural Studies Centre for Contemporary Cultural Hall, Stuart, 9, 10, 16, 17, 29, 94. Studies, 10, 16, 17, 94. See also See also Centre for Contemporary cultural studies; Hall, Stuart Cultural Studies; cultural studies Charmaz, Kathy, 36, 47. See also Handy, John, 90, 133, 134 grounded theory historiography: of New Orleans jazz, Charters, Sam, 88, 89, 95, 133, 135. See xi–xvii, 111, 113, 116, 141. See also also musicology grounded theory; jazz; New Orleans Clarke, Adele C., 36, 47, 142. See also jazz grounded theory Hoggart, Richard. See cultural studies Colyer, Ken, 69–72, 78, 86, 104, 115; Howard, Kid, 123, 126, 134 band, 76, 101, 134; fans, 85. See also authenticity; Ken Colyer Club; Icon Records, 86, 105, 133, 150. See purism; revivalism also Mills, Ken Grayson critical theory, 10, 23, 27, 31, 32 imitation, 59, 60, 118, 119; prestigious, cultural studies, xii–xiii, 9, 10, 29, 54, 56 60, 115. See also Centre for instrumentation, 110, 115, 117, 120, 127; Contemporary Cultural Studies; Hall, authentic, 90, 96, 118, 131, 134, 145. Stuart; politics See also authenticity intersubjectivity, 27, 53 definitions of the situation, 48, 95, 104; competing, xiii, 28, 33, 43, 61. See Jaffe, Allan, 3, 77, 88, 144 also symbolic interactionism Jaffe, Ben. See Jaffe, Allan diffusionist theory, 116, 121 Jaffe, Sandra. See Jaffe, Allan jazz: bop, 128; British trad, xvi, 62, Eatherton, Fred, 5n1, 151n8 69, 100, 101, 135. See also Just ethnomethodology, 10, 15, 21, 23. See Jazz; traddy pop; trad fad; Wallis, also methodology Bob; commercialisation of, 110–12,



Index 175

117–19. See also purism; Wallis, Bob; history, 48, 49, 62, 111, 112, 116, 118; hot, 117; studies, xvii, 104, 112, 113, 115, 145. See also historiography; vintage, 61. See also New Orleans jazz; polyphony; purism; revivalism Joas, Hans, 23, 27, 65, 66 Johnson, Willie “Bunk”, 65–75, 87, 88, 93, 94, 111–13, 132–34; band, 101, 130, 136, 137, 149; sessions, 120– 123, 128, 129. See also authenticity; New Orleans jazz; revivalism Just Jazz, xvi–xvii, 105

Marxism, 10, 15, 16, 23 Mauss, Marcel. See imitation Mead, George Herbert, 21–24, 38, 43–48, 59–61, 142. See also grounded theory; sociology; symbolic interactionism memoir, xi–xii, xv–xvii, 5, 65, 141. See also autoethnography; methodology method: constant comparative, xiii–xiv, 4; qualitative research, 28, 38. See also autoethnography; grounded theory; methodology; methodology, xi–xvii, 27, 43, 54, 111. See also autobiography; autoethnography; Ken Colyer Jazz Club, 74, 75. See case history; case study; also Colyer, Ken; Studio 51 ethnomethodology; grounded theory; King Oliver Creole Jazz Band, 72, 119– memoir; method 22, 128, 129 Miller, David L., 22, 23, 77. See also, Mead, George Herbert La Croix Records, 62, 77, 88–90, 135, Mills, C. Wright, 15, 22. See also 136 sociology Landau, Doug, 100–102, 105. See also Mills, Ken Grayson, 3, 88. See also Icon New Orleans Music Magazine Records; Preservation Hall LaRocca, Nick. See Original Dixieland MONO. See Music of New Orleans Jazz Band Morgan, Sam, 88, 89, 132, 143 Lefebvre, Henri, 10, 16 Morton, Jelly Roll, 74, 94, 122, 123, Lewis, George, 93, 102, 132, 136, 137, 129, 130, 134 149, 150; bands, 72–74, 87, 88, Music of New Orleans, 86, 105, 133. See 122, 123, 128–30, 134. See also also Martyn, Barry authenticity; Johnson, Willie “Bunk”; musicology, xvii, 109, 110. See also revivalism Charters, Sam Louis James Orchestra, 82, 99, 100. See also pitch Nelson, Louis, 77, 87; All Stars, 132, Luthjen’s Dance Hall, 75, 135, 136. See 137 also New Orleans dance halls New Orleans dance halls, 75, 76, 86, 89, 101, 134–37 male femaling, xiii–xiv, 43, 46–48, New Orleans jazz, xi–xvii, xxiv, 60, 141. See also transgender; 62, 70, 73; authentic, 49, 59, 99, transsexualism 100, 116–22, 128–31. See also Malvern College, 71; The Malvernian, authenticity; classic, 94, 101, 120–22; 69, 74 contemporary, 61, 64, 101; revivalist, Martyn, Barry “Kid”, 65, 67, 111, 134, 4, 112, 115, 116, 120, 127–30. See 135, 137; band, 76–78. See also also revivalism; scene, 61, 73, 77; Music of New Orleans; New Orleans traditional 3, 66–69, 93, 100, 101, jazz; revivalism 110. See also Johnson, Willie “Bunk”;

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Martyn, Barry “Kid”; New Orleans Music Magazine; Pawson, Dan New Orleans Music Magazine, 62, 99–104, 109, 111, 149 Original Dixieland Jazz Band, 49, 117, 118, 122 Pawson, Dan, 67, 75–77, 115, 131–35, 142. See also Artesian Hall Stompers; authenticity; Colyer, Ken; New Orleans jazz; revivalism Perseverance Hall. See Preservation Hall philosophy: continental, xi, 10, 31–33; of education, 15, 16, 22. See also sociology; of everyday life, xi–xiii, 4. See also politics; pragmatist, 16, 142. See also symbolic interactionism; process, xii, 21–24, 46, 47. See also Mead, George Herbert; social process Pierce, Billie. See Pierce, DeDe Pierce, DeDe, 70, 75–77, 86, 88, 89, 136 pitch, 99–101, 115, 121. See also authenticity; Louis James Orchestra; New Orleans jazz politics, 16, 54, 55; of everyday life, xi–xiii, 4, 7, 9, 10, 28, 29. See also cultural studies polyphony, 121–23, 132, 133, 143, 149 popular music studies, xvii, 35, 109, 110, 115 Preservation Hall, 77, 86, 87, 123, 133; and tourism, 3, 143, 144. See also Carter, Bill; Lewis, George purism, 73–76, 100, 101, 117, 131, 132, 135, 136. See also authenticity; Colyer, Ken; instrumentation; Johnson, Willie “Bunk”; Smith, Charles Edward; Wallis, Bob Purnell, Alton, 94, 123

Ramsey, Frederic Jr., 71, 111, 116, 120 Rena, Kid, 88, 89, 120–22, 128 revivalism, 87–90, 110, 129–31, 141–45; first wave, 132; post second wave, 78, 143, 144, 153; second wave, 78, 131–36, 143, 149. See also Colyer, Ken; Martyn, Barry “Kid”; Pawson, Dan; social worlds of, xii, 61, 65–67, 95, 96, 123; world-wide, 133, 145. See also authenticity; instrumentation; Johnson, Willie “Bunk”; Lewis, George; New Orleans jazz; Wallis, Bob Robinson, Jim, 73, 121, 143, 150 Russell, Bill, 70, 71, 101, 111, 112, 121– 23, 133; recordings, 86, 143, 149, 150 Rust, Brian, 70, 118

Saunderson, Wendy, 85, 87 saxophone. See instrumentation Simmel, Georg, 10, 39, 43, 55, 60 situational analysis. See Clarke, Adele C. Smith, Charles Edward, 71, 111, 116, 117, 119, 120. See also purism social process: basic, xiv, 43, 46–48, 96, 115; generic, xiv, 47, 96, 109, 110; philosophy of, 22, 47. See also authenticating; philosophy sociology: of deviance, 27, 28; of education, 13–17, 21–23; of knowledge, xii–xiii, 4, 13–17, 22, 23, 45; phenomenological, 15, 23, 43, 44, 109; qualitative, 28, 43, 60; of the senses, 55. See also Mead, George Herbert; philosophy; Simmel, Georg; symbolic interactionism Strauss, Anselm, xii, xv, 39, 44–47, 65. See also case history; case study; Glaser, Barney; grounded theory Strübing, Jörg. See grounded theory Studio 51, 69, 102. See also Ken Colyer race records , 61, 119. See also AfricanClub American swing, 117, 123, 128 Raeburn, Bruce Boyd, 103, 14, 116, 143, symbolic interactionism, xi–xv, 21–24, 144 27, 28, 38, 39, 43–46. See also ragtime, 71, 72, 118 Anderson, Leon; Blumer, Herbert;



Index 177

definitions of the situation; grounded theory; Mead, George Herbert; philosophy; sociology Taylor, Charles, 32, 35, 36 Taylor, Steven J. See Robert Bogdan. trad boom. See jazz; traddy pop traddy pop, xvii, 109, 110, 131. See also Barber, Chris; Bilk, Acker; jazz; Just Jazz; trad fad trad fad, 69, 102, 109, 110. See also Barber, Chris; Bilk, Acker; jazz; traddy pop; Wallis, Bob transgender, 7, 36, 60. See also male femaling; transsexualism transsexualism, 27, 28, 36, 37, 43–45. See also male femaling; transgender

transvestism. See male femaling; transgender; transsexualism Valentine, Kid Thomas, 75–77, 86–88, 135, 136, 143, 150 Wallis, Bob, xvi–xvii, 62, 100–105, 109, 110. See also authenticity; jazz; purism; revivalism Wilson, Clive, 65–68, 87, 144 Wyckoff, David, 65, 70, 151n8 Yerba Buena Jazz Band, 72, 74, 127 Young, Michael F.D., 14–17, 22

About the Authors

Richard Ekins is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Cultural Studies, Ulster University, UK. He is also Research Professor of Media at the Centre for Communication, Media and Cultural Studies, Ulster University, UK. Robert Porter is Research Director in Communication, Media and Cultural Studies at Ulster University, UK.

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