Ralph Gleason: Celebrating The Duke

'Celebrating The Duke, by Ralph J. Gleason, Foreward by Studs Terkel. (Atlantic-Little Brown)

Ralph Gleason was likely the first American critic to write about black music (mostly jazz) with a seriousness, comprehensiveness, and love thoroughly in line with his apprehension of that form as an art - a notion of nearly revolutionary impact when considered counter to the then (and now) prevalent feeling that jazz was, for the most part, beneath consideration, the "jungle music" of an entirely alien and off-limits culture.

Gleason pretty much grew up with the music, chronicling it for 40 years, writing for down heat and as the jazz critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, composing hundreds of liner notes, and even producing a prize-winning television documentary on Duke Ellington. Many of us first became familiar with his work in the pages of Rolling Stone, which publication he co-founded.

The most striking aspect of Gleason's work was that he was able to maintain and communicate a fan 's unflagging passion over the course of his long professional career. He saw himself, in fact, as a missionary: "I realized that by some I kind of accident -probably some late night radio show with Earl Hines or Duke Ellington from the Grand Terrace Ballroom - I had irrevocably aligned myself with those who had abandoned the formal aspects of religion and found their idols and their inspiration and their saints in the nightclubs where, refugees from a society built on the standards of advertising agencies, they were bravely struggling with the mixed blessings of truth."

Celebrating The Duke is a collection of previously published pieces that focuses (a chapter each) on the struggles and successes of Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Jimmie Lunceford, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Carmen McRae, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Albert Ayler - the principal saints in Gleason's hagiography - and which devotes more than a third of its length to genius Afro-American composer, arranger, band leader, pianist, and bon vivant Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, whom Gleason refers to simply and persuasively as "America's greatest composer."

The format throughout is essentially anecdotal. Although Gleason understood that "jazz is black music and as such is part of black culture" and also commented perceptively on the attraction black music and culture has long exerted on certain segments of white society, those folks looking for a profound socio-historical analysis of the development of the music would do better to turn to LeRoi Jones or A.B. Spellman. Gleason was a popularizer and is at his best fleshing out what are just names to many people by means of personal reminiscences that amply Illustrate his heroes' warmth, humor, intelligence, and astonishing strength in the face of almost unceasing oppression.

Celebrating The Duke was designed to impel its readers to go out and get the recorded artifacts that survive these musicians (a selected discography is appended) and discover for themselves the enduring delights to be found there. It effectively does that and will thus remain for Gleason, who died last year, a singularly fitting swan song.

- Bill Adler