The First Book of Jazz by Langston Hughes

First published: 1955; illustrated

Subjects: Composers, musicians, and singers

Type of work: Art, biography, and history

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Principal Personages:

• W. C. Handy, the “father of the blues,” who put blues down on paper
• Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, a legendary jazz trumpeter
• Bessie Smith, a famous blues singer
• Jelly Roll Morton, a ragtime and blues pianist
• Duke Ellington, a keyboardist and one of America’s greatest jazz composers
• John Coltrane, a jazz saxophonist
• Charlie Parker, a saxophonist who played bebop
• Miles Davis, a “cool” jazz trumpeter
• Ornette Coleman, a musician associated with “free-form” jazz, which broke previous musical rules

Form and Content

The 1955 edition of The First Book of Jazz was updated in 1976 by publishing company Franklin Watts, well after Langston Hughes’s death in 1967. Both editions present the history of the development of jazz, discuss seminal figures in that history, and identify key elements of the form itself. The earlier edition incorporates lively drawings by Cliff Roberts, one double-page spread of head shots of jazz greats, and lists of famous jazz musicians and recordings. The 1976 edition eliminates the drawings and the lists, substituting black-and-white photographs of musicians in action and of posters advertising musical events, liberally distributed throughout the book.

Both editions incorporate lyrics of worksongs, spirituals, and jubilees associated with the development of jazz and selected lines of music itself. Those readers able to read music could actually play a few bars, for example, of boogie-woogie and get a sense of the sound. They could play a line of the “straight” version of “Loch Lomand” and then play a line of the “swing” version to hear the impact of the introduction of the elements of jazz on a traditional Scottish song. For those unfamiliar with musical terminology, a glossary appears at the end of the later edition of the book. Both editions have an index for handy reference to the wealth of information presented.

Hughes’s organizational pattern for the book is loosely chronological. He begins the presentation of historical information with a discussion of the rhythms of African drums and the cultural significance of drumming, explaining how drumming came to Congo Square in New Orleans from West Africa. Hughes then takes readers to the worksongs, field hollers, jubilees, and spirituals that form the bedrock of the blues. He includes minstrel shows in his history, focusing on the musical aspects of these productions. The jazz forms of blues, ragtime, and boogie-woogie are explained, and a whole section is devoted to the role of the trumpet in the development of jazz, with expansive reference to Louis Armstrong. The uncertainty of the origin of the term “jazz” and various speculations are discussed.

Several central elements of jazz—such as improvisation and syncopation—are identified, with emphasis on the fact that jazz musicians may not read music and that jazz improvisation allows for a basic melody to be played differently each time that it is performed. Hughes also addresses the introduction of different musical instruments to jazz playing and the changes in the size and makeup of the jazz band.

The author discusses the swing music of the late 1920’s and 1930’s, with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Cab Calloway, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and others featured during this era in which black and white musicians began to play together in the same bands. The 1940’s brought bebop, with revolutionaries Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Lester Young. The 1955 edition of The First Book of Jazz concludes with Hughes’s treatment of bebop, while the 1976 edition continues with the “cool,” or progressive jazz of the 1950’s, as played by Miles Davis, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and Stan Kenton. It then moves into the jazz rock of the 1960’s, with Davis shifting gears and leading the way into this new blend, which used electrical instruments.

The 1976 edition concludes with a description of the free-form jazz movement of the 1960’s, led by Ornette Coleman. In free-form jazz, musicians seem to break all the musical rules. Several players improvise simultaneously, laws of harmony are abandoned, and there is no set rhythm or key to follow. The rejection that this movement experienced is addressed, as is Coleman’s profound influence on the development of jazz.

Critical Context

Historical works on the development of jazz are often suited for older readers and frequently tie the music to sociopolitical conditions; Amiri Baraka’s Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963) and Black Music (1967) are examples. Langston Hughes’s treatment, however, is clearly suited for younger readers and is strikingly free of rationales embedded in a sociopolitical context. While this stance strips jazz of important aspects of its roots, it does put the music itself center stage. Inevitably, sociopolitical factors hover just beneath the surface, such as the fact that virtually all the African American originators of this distinctly American art form were poverty stricken in their youth, but the music and its creators are what this book is about. That Hughes—a keen observer and re-creator of human language and foibles, a short-story writer, a poet who frequently used a blues structure for his poetry, and a stellar light of the Harlem Renaissance—should extend his writing about “his people” to write specifically about jazz musicians was both natural and fortunate. What is less fortunate is the occasional oversimplification that creates a feel of superficiality. The author’s repeated insistence, for example, that “jazz is fun” ultimately grows tedious. The implication, uncharacteristic for Hughes, is that these talented, passionate jazz musicians who battled poverty and racism throughout their lives were happy-go-lucky party lovers, out for a good time.

Bibliography

Berry, Faith. Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem. New York: Wings Books, 1995.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Langston Hughes. New York: Chelsea House, 1989.

Chinitz, David. “Rejuvenation Through Joy: Langston Hughes, Primitivism, and Jazz.” American Literary History 9 (Spring, 1997): 60-78.

Cooper, Floyd. Coming Home: From the Life of Langston Hughes. New York: Philomel Books, 1994.

Harper, Donna Sullivan. Not So Simple: The “Simple” Stories by Langston Hughes. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995.

Haskins, James. Always Movin’ On: The Life of Langston Hughes. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1993.

Hokanson, Robert O’Brien. “Jazzing It Up: The Be-bop Modernism of Langston Hughes.” Mosaic 31 (December, 1998): 61-82.

Leach, Laurie F. Langston Hughes: A Biography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004.

Mullen, Edward J., ed. Critical Essays on Langston Hughes. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986.

Ostrum, Hans A. A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002.

Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Tracy, Steven C., ed. A Historical Guide to Langston Hughes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.