Tom Stoddard

An interesting book that describes the jazz scene on the Barbary Coast, the red light district of early San Francisco that was akin to Storyville in New Orleans. The book mostly focuses on the development of SF jazz from 1900 through around 1920, although there is some discussion of music up through 1940. The first 75% of the book is told through oral histories of the early musicians that the author either conducted or searched out. They are almost all quite interesting, assuming, of course, show more a predisposition in the reader to care about jazz history and/or San Francisco history. The last quarter of the book, written by the author, comes across as more of a scholarly paper than an interestingly written history. This may have been exacerbated for me by the fact that I already knew most of the background San Francisco history that Stoddard presented. The author makes an interesting case for the fact that jazz was developing on the San Francisco wharf dives at about the same time the music was evolving in New Orleans, with a lot of cross-pollination going on between the two. He quite specifically states that he is not trying to claim that jazz was "invented" in San Francisco, or anywhere else, rather than New Orleans, but only makes the point that there has been a lot of myopic, "New Orleans and no place else" sort of research done on topic. As a seven-year resident of New Orleans back in the 80s who worked in the jazz community as a radio producer for most of that time, I found Stoddard's research interesting, if his writing style more than a little dry. But to readers in general, it's the early oral histories that really make this book sing. show less

Jazz > California > San Francisco > History/and criticism/Jazz musicians > California > San Francisco >/Biography