Speaking in the Groove:
Oral History and Jazz

Burton W. Peretti

In the past twenty years, social and cultural historians have brought the history of jazz into the mainstream narrative of United States history. The story of the era between the two world wars cannot be told any longer without reference to the rebellious expressions of "hot" 1920s jazz and 1930s swing, and historians increasingly illuminate succeeding decades with discussions of bebop, "free" jazz, jazz fusion, and other significant trends in the history of jazz. The music's relationship to other significant musical styles—such as ragtime and the blues, which preceded jazz, and rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll, which followed it—is also explored more often in textbooks and in classrooms to help students understand the relationship between musical tastes and more general social and cultural trends. The growth of jazz studies, in short, has been concurrent with the increase in the interdisciplinary richness of historical scholarship and teaching.1	1
Jazz studies has also grown up with—and has contributed to—the oral history movement. This article will address three facets of the interaction between jazz studies and oral history. First, I will explore how the tradition of the informal jazz interview (a tradition nearly as old as the music itself) has evolved, at least in part, into a scholarly endeavor. Increasingly, all aspects of jazz oral history—interviewing, archiving, preservation methods, and the presentation of oral history–based scholarship—have come to conform to the standards of trained oral historians. Jazz oral history gained a solid early foundation with the projects at Tulane University and the Smithsonian Institution in the 1960s and 1970s, and it has expanded into further efforts in the past twenty years. These collections have provided us with tapes, transcripts, and videotapes of remarkable breadth and depth.	2
In the second part of the article, after surveying archives across the nation that contain substantial oral history resources on jazz, I will discuss major methodological and theoretical issues that are raised by the archives and their contents. They include issues relating to the design and scope of projects, the variety of information found in given oral history formats, and the presentation of this testimony to researchers and to the public.	3
Third, a final theoretical concern—relevant to almost all of the topics covered in this essay—involves the intimate relationship between jazz music and oral testimony. This relationship is rooted in African American cultural traditions and is related to other trends in twentieth-century African American thought and behavior. This continuum of words and music suggests the special relevance that the jazz experience holds for all oral historians. In closing I discuss briefly the work of the ethnomusicologist Ingrid Monson, whose fieldwork among musicians and ideas about jazz's oral culture suggest sophisticated future pathways for the field.	4
The history of jazz is full of oral testimony. Since the 1920s, fans, critics, and other members of the self-styled jazz community have promoted the music as America's homegrown art form. Interviews with musicians are a staple of this effort. Beginning in the 1930s, jazz popularizers and historians disseminated the musicians' words in numerous printed volumes. Few jazz interviewers, if any, came to the task with scholarly training in oral history methods. This informal interview tradition—and the popular literature it has produced—must be reckoned with at the start of any consideration of oral history in jazz.2	. . .