- Paperback: 200 pages
- Publisher: Pathfinder Press (NY); illustrated edition edition (December 1997)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0873488598
- ISBN-13: 978-0873488594
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 14 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 962 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,890,255 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
General Observations and really great vignettes,
By Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Black Music, White Business: Illuminating the History and Political Economy of Jazz (Paperback)
This book is a useful expose of how the music business scams and exploits all artists, not just Black artists. It is vitally important at a time when the Wynton Marsalis/Albert Murray school of Jazz history is trying to claim that Jazz is a "celebration" of American capitalism. Kofsky shows Jazz musicians have been and continue to be victims of capitalism! And as someone with a background in studying the history of country music and western swing, I can agree with another reviewer here that the same tales of exploitation can be told about white musicans as well.Kofsky is most effective in the individual stories he tells in the separate articles in this book where as has already been pointed out he "names names." Kofsky unmasks a lot of people who have manufactured images that they were friends of the jazz musician like Blue Note Records. One of his most interesting vignettes is his exposure of Vanderbuilt heir, self-praising liberal, and paternalist interferer with Jazz John Hammond. He exposes how Hammond's phoney story about Bessie Smith's death was part of the legend that helped net the already-wealthy Hammond scores of thousands of dollars, back when a dollar was a dollar, while Smith and her estate got zilch. Just the Bessie Smith story is worth the price of the book!
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.2 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews) 11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An important illumination of the way jazz has worked,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Black Music, White Business: Illuminating the History and Political Economy of Jazz (Paperback)
As the pithy title suggests, African-American culture has been the primary source of jazz music -- and folks who hail from that culture have had prescious little influence over where the profits from the music have gone... and, even, over who has gotten work and who has been heard.This book illuminates that ugly side to the jazz world. The first three chapters get things rolling in fits and starts without adequate evidence to demonstrate that the explotation of black musicians has been markedly different from that of other musicians. If this were the bulk of the work it would be interesting reading but would not do much more than preach to the choir. The rest of the book builds on those chapters, deepens them, broadens them, and creates an inarguable portrait of exploitation that goes so far as to names names *and* provide well-researched explanations that refute, for example, the notion that race is what one should focus on when exploring the history of jazz. The "black" and "white" of the title may appear to refer to genetics or race -- but the text makes it clear that these are cultural categories and are inextricably bound up within the history of jazz, what it has sounded like, what it sounds like now, and how it has been made. 5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
General Observations and really great vignettes,
By Tony Thomas - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Black Music, White Business: Illuminating the History and Political Economy of Jazz (Paperback)
This book is a useful expose of how the music business scams and exploits all artists, not just Black artists. It is vitally important at a time when the Wynton Marsalis/Albert Murray school of Jazz history is trying to claim that Jazz is a "celebration" of American capitalism. Kofsky shows Jazz musicians have been and continue to be victims of capitalism! And as someone with a background in studying the history of country music and western swing, I can agree with another reviewer here that the same tales of exploitation can be told about white musicans as well.Kofsky is most effective in the individual stories he tells in the separate articles in this book where as has already been pointed out he "names names." Kofsky unmasks a lot of people who have manufactured images that they were friends of the jazz musician like Blue Note Records. One of his most interesting vignettes is his exposure of Vanderbuilt heir, self-praising liberal, and paternalist interferer with Jazz John Hammond. He exposes how Hammond's phoney story about Bessie Smith's death was part of the legend that helped net the already-wealthy Hammond scores of thousands of dollars, back when a dollar was a dollar, while Smith and her estate got zilch. Just the Bessie Smith story is worth the price of the book! While this book is not always available on Amazon, it is always available from BooksfromPathfinder, an Amazon Z store that you can get to by clicking on New and Used further up this page! 4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Rabid polemic,
By C. Bourke "Backbeat" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Black Music, White Business: Illuminating the History and Political Economy of Jazz (Paperback)
A book so bitter about how the big record business has abused the jazz musician that it loses all perspective or even a grip on reality.Under close examination, Kofsky's rabid polemic doesn't stack up. His vitriolic attack on John Hammond is a case in point. As a Marxist, Kofsky can't even entertain the idea that Hammond, a Vanderbilt-heir, could ever be altruistic. With more scholarship and less soap-box ranting, Kofsky's thesis may have been more credible, but his anger lets him down. He distorts statistics in a dishonest way - eg the case of Hammond allegedly receiving royalties from a Bessie Smith retrospective, and his donation to fundraising to give Smith a headstone. Kofsky updates the royalties to contemporary dollar value, but not Hammond's donation, to make it look even more tight-fisted. Hammond was a vociferous advocate for jazz and civil rights, and had the wherewithal to say what he thought. To Kofsky, this is self-aggrandisement. Kofsky accuses jazz critics of 'intellectual dishonesty': this diatribe is a blatant example of exactly that. Yes, musicians have been ripped off. But it's also a ripoff to suggest this book has anything to do with music, or anything of value to add to our understanding of music history or the music business. |
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