Race and Place and the Construction of Jazz Authenticity: New Orleanian Autobiographers Tom Sancton and “Wingy” Manone

This chapter considers accounts of jazz interracialism offered by New Orleanian-raised musicians Tom Sancton and “Wingy” Manone. Although separated by two generations and sharply divergent socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, Manone and Sancton both foreground the significance of their immersion experiences in New Orleans’ complex multiracial and multicultural environments in shaping their views on race and jazz authenticity. In contrast to Bob Wilber’s colorblind view of jazz history and his geographical distance from New Orleans, Manone and Sancton establish race and place as key to their constructions of their jazz selves. Their rich descriptions of the cultural practices and landmarks of New Orleans—the second line, fish fries, the blackberry woman, Preservation Hall, among others—offer compelling evidence of the city’s unique cultural mixing that was central to the development of jazz.

Don Asher’s Fictional-Real Jazz World

This chapter examines the life and writings of Don Asher, who studied with pianist Jaki Byard before embarking on a career as a New England society band and honkytonk pianist and later as a nightclub pianist in San Francisco, including a long stint at the famed hungry i. Asher was also a novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and collaborator, and analysis of selected works of his fiction and nonfiction uncovers his enduring and sometimes transgressive fascination with African American music and culture. While Asher’s work appears to illustrate “the problem with white hipness” (Ingrid Monson) or “love and theft” (Eric Lott), his ethnic satire was aimed not only at African Americans but also at other groups—Italians, Irish, Jews—as well as at himself and his fictional counterparts. This chapter considers the rich stew of literary and performance traditions in which Asher found models for his satirical, comedic impulses.

The Authenticating Collaborators of White Jazz Autobiography

Most white jazz autobiographies credit another author or collaborator in addition to the autobiographical subject. This chapter considers the role of these other voices—the collaborator, amanuensis, or explainer—in shaping the process of authentication that is a central theme of these texts. How and for what purpose do they attempt to legitimate the autobiographical subject, to convince the reader of his worthiness as a jazz musician and also as a figure of cultural and literary significance? White jazz autobiographers represented a unique set of challenges for their collaborators, who responded by establishing ideological positions that resembled (with variations) those drawn by the contestants of the jazz wars of the 1930s to the 1960s. Central to these ideological expressions was an extraordinary concern with contesting the origins, meanings, and performance of jazz along racial and ethnic lines.