The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the mor...e it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Though the Jazz Age continued it became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children's party taken over by the... elders.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There was an old woman and she lived in a shoe, She had so many children, she didn't know what to do.... She crumm'd 'em some porridge without any bread And she borrowed a beetle, and she knocked 'em all on the head. Then out went the old woman to bespeak 'em a coffin And when she came back she found' em all a-loffing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Teams move in patterns, in rhythms, at high velocity; one must watch the game abstractly, not focusing on any single individual al...one, but upon, as it were, the blurred and intricate designs woven by the paths through which all five together cast a spell upon the opposition. The eye watches five men at once, delighting in their unity, groaning at their lapses of concentration. Yet basketball moves so rapidly and so depends on the versatility of each individual in escaping from the defense intended to contain him that the game cannot be choreographed in advance. Twelve men are constantly in movement (counting two referees), the rebounds of the ball are unpredictable, the occasions for passing or dribbling, or shooting must be decided instantaneously; basketball players must be improvisers. They have a score, a melody; each team has its own appropriate tempo, a style of the game best suited to its talents; but within and around that general score, each individual is free to elaborate as the spirit moves him. Basketball is jazz: improvisatory, free, individualistic, corporate, sweaty, fast, exulting, screeching, torrid, explosive, exquisitely designed for letting first the trumpet, then the sax, then the drummer, then the trombonist soar away in virtuoso excellence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The jazz musician is denied the dignity accorded the composer because not everything he composes is first written down, or, necess...arily, written down afterward, or, once written down, considered immutable. And he is denied the dignity accorded the Serious-music performer because the latter is an "interpreter" of presumably great music. The musician, in other words, who makes up his music as he goes along, or makes up a good deal of it, or who rarely plays the same music twice in the same way, is, we are given to understand, inferior to the musician who makes no music of his own. For all his undisputed virtuosity and inventive fancy, the jazz musician cannot, we are led to believe, be granted equality with the Serious musician who can read and play the notes written down for him by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner a century or so ago.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always greater than its performance--Beet...hoven's Violin Concerto, for instance, is always greater than its performance--whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being performed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It takes a heap o' children to make a home that's true, And home can be a palace grand, or just a plain, old shoe;... But if it has a mother dear, and a good old dad or two, Why, that's the sort of good old home for good old me and you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »