Popular Culture Review 29.2
son to Neil Armstrong ’ s first words on the moon , Epistrophies Jazz and the Literary Imagination draws together not only the myriad threads of the African-American experience , but provides much useful insight on some of its perspective on wider American popular culture through the decades .
Taking Epistrophies Jazz and the Literary Imagination as mirroring less a single jazz tune , and more an entire , multi-artist , concert extravaganza , the book ’ s structure makes even more sense , and its mission becomes that much clearer . The “ headliners ” each take center stage for a while and then yield to someone else . Their individual accomplishments , and the mythos surrounding them , are examined in such engaging terms , that readers will become just as eager as is Edwards , himself , to understand why , for instance , it is so important to the legend of Louis Armstrong that his use of Scat singing arose from “ an accident ” even though many who were present at the supposed incident claim that was not the case ? Readers also will be given much food for thought as to how that speaks to what factors help to shape any sort of popular culture , race notwithstanding .
Like Louis Armstrong , Duke Ellington receives top billing in the “ concert ” that is Epistrophies Jazz and the Literary Imagination . His musical and literary beginnings are expertly chronicled . While some of this may be well known , what may be quite a bit less so is the prodigious amount of , more conventional , poetry and prose he wrote , and how throughout his life he constantly converted prose to poetry and back again , and tried to infuse jazz into other areas of music , and vice versa . It may surprise many readers to find just how much of a distinction Duke Ellington drew between the jazz being played in Harlem , and that being played in New Orleans , and in just how much higher esteem he held the former .
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