Will West Coast Jazz Finally Get Some Respect?
I intend to find out
Sandra Evans is a woman on a mission. She wants to make the definitive documentary about West Coast jazz.
Like me, she loves those classic recordings by Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Art Pepper, Hampton Hawes, and others. But most jazz films ignore this entire movement—pretending that the history of the genre only took place in New Orleans, Chicago, and New York.
That’s simply not true.
The West Coast players deserve their place in our cultural history. Their music should be heard. Their story ought to be told—and it’s a fascinating story.
I’ve been helping her as best I can. You can see me in this new trailer about her project.
As a young man, I was also on a mission to celebrate the legacy of West Coast jazz. I convinced Oxford University Press to publish a book on the subject—and this turned into my single biggest project when I was in my twenties.
I met many of the jazz elders who helped create West Coast jazz—and saw how they had been unfairly forgotten. Many were living in poverty. Some were playing music on the streets.
It was sad to see.
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I took this personally, as Michael Jordan might say. I grew up in Los Angeles and later moved to the San Francisco area. This was my own homegrown jazz tradition. I loved it and wanted to share my enthusiasm with others.
But even superstars such as Dave Brubeck and Chet Baker were frequently attacked back then. And someone like Vince Guaraldi was simply ignored—jazz history books pretended he didn’t even exist.
They weren’t real jazz musicians. That’s what I kept hearing.
If you didn’t live through this era of jazz policing on steroids, you can’t even begin to imagine the level of hostility—which was amplified tenfold if a West Coast jazz player dared to have a hit record.
I could cite dozens of other examples of musicians who would have won prizes if they moved to New York. But if they stayed out West, they got little or no respect.
That was how it worked back then.
I got punished too. My grant requests for financial help on my West Coast jazz project were turned down. I wanted to do full oral histories of the leading players on the scene, but nobody wanted to fund it.
Sandra Evans is now fighting the same battle. She is working tirelessly on raising the money she needs to complete her project. If you can help out, please do so. (You can learn more here). Or if you can’t donate, please spread the word—by sharing the video or fundraising link online.
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Your book was a huge part of my education in jazz, and remains my favorite thing you have written. (Well, along with your first, The Imperfect Art.) I've returned to the book and re-read it over the years maybe five times, not counting the occasions when I just dip in for a chapter or two. Maybe the most important thing I learned was that west coast jazz was more than Brubeck/Shorty Rogers/Kenton etc., though you do well by them too. So one of the gifts of SubStack is I get to say directly to you: thank you for writing the book. It made a difference.
Yes! Unfortunately, given the racial element to all of this, there is a sizable (and loud) group of critics, activists, etc. that claim the West Coast scene *wasn’t*—or even *can’t be*—jazz. Mulligan and Baker were nothing—and couldn’t be anything—but “appropriators” in the eyes of some.
This is why we can’t have nice things.