The Rediscovery and Resurrection of Bunk Johnson – a Grounded Theory Approach: A case study in jazz historiography
Main Article Content
Abstract
This paper was written in the beginning phase of my transitioning from grounded theory sociologist (Ekins, 1997)1 to grounded theory musicologist (Ekins,2010)2. In particular, it provides preliminary data for a grounded theory of "managing authenticity", the core category/ basic social process (Glaser, 1978) that has emerged from my ongoing grounded theory work in jazz historiography. It was written whilst I was redentialising (Glaser, 2010) my transition to popular music studies and popular musicology. In consequence, it incorporates many aspects that are inimical to classic grounded theory. As with so much of Straussian and so-called constructivist grounded theory (Bryant and Charmaz, 2007), it roots itself in G.H. Mead and a social constructivist symbolic interactionism inter alia, a legitimising (authenticating) strategy. Moreover, as is typical of this mode of conceptualising, the paper fills the void of inadequate classic grounded theorising with less conceptual theorising and more conceptual description. Nevertheless, the article does introduce a number of categories that "fit and work" , and have conceptual grab (Glaser,1978; Glaser, 1992). In particular, in terms of my own continuing credentialising as a classic grounded theorist, it sets forth important categories to be integrated into my ongoing work on managing authenticity in New Orleans revivalist jazz, namely, trailblazing, mythologizing, debunking, and marginalising, in the context of rediscivering and resurrecting of a jazz pioneer. More specifically, the paper is offered to classic grounded theorists as a contribution to preliminary generic social process analysis in the substantive area of jazz historiography.
Downloads
Article Details
The Grounded Theory Review is an open access journal, which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the international Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access.
References
Berger, Morro -History in Ralph de Toledano, Frontiers of Jazz, 3rd edition, Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing, pp. 87-99.
Bethell, Tom (1977) George Lewis: A Jazzman from New Orleans, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Blesh Rudi (1943) This is Jazz: A Series of Lectures Given at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Privately printed in San Francisco.
Blesh, Rudi. (1949) Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz, London: Cassell & Company.
Bissonette, Big Bill (1992) The Jazz Crusade: The Inside Story of the Great New Orleans Jazz Revival of the 1960s, Bridgeport, Connecticut: Special Request Books.
Bryant, Antony and Kathy Charmaz (2010) Grounded Theory in Historical Perspective: An Epistemological Account, in Antony Bryant and Kathy Charmaz (eds), The Sage Handbook of Grounded Theory, London: Sage, pp. 31-57.
Burns, Mike (ed.) (2007) Walking with Legends: Barry Martyn's New Orleans Jazz Odyssey, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Carr, Ian, Digby Fairweather and Brian Priestley (1987) Revivalism, in their Jazz: The Essential Companion, London: Grafton Books.
Carter, William (1991) Preservation Hall: Music from the Heart, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Charters, Samuel B. (1963) Jazz New Orleans, 1885-1963: An Index to the Negro Musicians of New Orleans, New York, N.Y.: Oak Publications. [Revised edition of 1958 publication]
Collins, Ralph (1996) New Orleans Jazz: A Revised History: The Development of American Music from the Origin to the Big Bands, New York: Vantage Press.
Collins, Ralph (1996) New Orleans Jazz: A Revised History: The Development of American Music from the Origin to the Big Bands, New York: Vantage Press.
Colyer, Ken (1952/1953) Letters from New Orleans, Ken Colyer Trust Website. http://www.kencolyertrust.org/letterindex.htm
Colyer, Ken (1970) New Orleans and Back, 2nd edition (Kent,1992).
Colyer, Ken (2009) When Dreams are in Dust: The Path of a Jazzman, newly restored version, Ken Colyer Trust. [First published, Milbury Publications, 1989]
DeVeaux, Scott (1991) Constructing the Jazz Tradition, Black American Literature Forum, 25 (3): 525-560.
Ekins, Richard (1993) On Male Femaling: Grounded Theory Approach to Cross-Dressing and Sex-Sociological Review, 41 (1): 1-29, in Barney G. Glaser (ed.) Grounded Theory , 1984-1994, Volume 2, Mill Valley, Calif., pp. 721-743.
Ekins, Richard (1997) Male Femaling: A Grounded Theory Approach to Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing, London: Routledge.
Ekins, Richard (2006) Kid Thomas, pp. 1-12: Booklet accompanying Kid Thomas Valentine, 1961 & 1968. Kid Thomas and his Algiers Stompers with George Lewis, 1961 and Kid Thomas' Dixieland Band at Kohlman's Tavern, 1968, 504/La Croix Records, CDS92.
Ekins, Richard (2008) Billie and DeDe Pierce, pp. 1-12: Booklet accompaying Billie and DeDe Pierce, 1967. with Louis Nelson, Cie Frazier and Chester Zardis,504/La Croix Records, CD94.
Ekins, Richard (2009) Bob Wallis on Authenticity and the New Orleans Jazz Revival in Britain, Just Jazz, October, Issue No. 138, pp. 22-27.
Ekins, Richard (2010 )Tradicional Jazz and the Mainstreaming of Authenticity: The Case of British Traddy Pop (1959-1963) A Grounded Theory Approach , Popular Music History, 5 (2): 125-151.
Everist, Mark (2001) Reception Theories, Canonic Discourses and Musical Value, in Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist, eds. Rethinking Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 378-402.
Ekins, Richard and Dave King (2006) The Transgender Phenomenon, London: Sage.
Feather, Leonard (1946) ‘A Survey of Jazz Today', in Paul Eduard Miller, Esquire's 1946 Jazz Book, New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, pp. 151-163.
Feather, Leonard (1959) The Book of Jazz: A Guide to the Entire Field, London: Arthur Barker
Feather, Leonard (1987) The Jazz Years: Earwitness to an Era, New York: De Capo Press.
Fitzgerald, Michael (2008) ‘Jazz Archives in the United States', a Master's paper for the Masters of Science in Library Science, 177 pages, advisor: Timothy D. Pyatt, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Freud, Sigmund (1940) ‘Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence', The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume 23, London: Hogarth Press, 1964, pp. 271-278.
Giddens, Anthony (1974) Positivism and Sociology. Heinemann. London.
Glaser, Barney G. (1978) Theoretical Sensitivity: Advances in the Methodology of Grounded Theory, Mill Valley, Calif.: Sociology Press.
Glaser, Barney G. (1992) Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis, Mill Valley, Calif.: Sociology Press.
Glaser, Barney G. (2010) ‘A Grounded Theory Troubleshooting Seminar', DVD, Mill Valley, Calif.: Sociology Press.
Glaser, Barney G. and Anselm L. Strauss (1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Chicago: Aldine.
Godbolt, Jim (1989) A History of Jazz in Britain, 1950-1970, London: Quartet Books.
Goodey, Brian R (1968) ‘New Orleans to London: Twenty Years of the New Orleans Jazz Revival in Britain', Journal of Popular Culture, 2 (2) 173-94.
Gushee, Lawrence (1987) ‘When Was Bunk Johnson Born and Why Should We Care?' Archivist, November 2nd, pp. 4-6.
Hazeldine, Mike (1993) (compiled and ed.) Bill Russell's American Music, New Orleans: Jazzology Press.
Hazeldine, Mike and Barry Martyn (2000) Bunk Johnson: Song of the Wanderer, New Orleans: Jazzology Press.
Hillman, Christopher (1988) Bunk Johnson: His Life and Times, New York: Universe Books.
Joas, Hans (1993) Pragmatism and Social Theory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Karja, Antti-Ville (2006) ‘A Prescribed Alternative Mainstream: Popular Music and Canon Formation, Popular Music, 25 (1): 3-19.
Kodat, Catherine, Gunther (2003) ‘Conversing with Ourselves: Canon, Freedom, Jazz', American Quarterly, 55 (1): 1- 28.
Kukla, Jon (1998) ‘Bill Russell: Good String', in Jazz Scrapbook: Bill Russell and Some Highly Musical Friends, New Orleans: The Historic New Orleans Collection, pp. 1-13.
LeFevre, M. Theresa (1998) ‘Bunk Johnson: Jazz Original', in Jazz Scrapbook: Bill Russell and Some Highly Musical Friends, New Orleans: The Historic New Orleans Collection, pp. 45-59.
Lemmon, Alfred E. (1998) ‘The William Russell Jazz Collection: Made in America', in Jazz Scrapbook: Bill Russell and Some Highly Musical Friends, New Orleans: The Historic New Orleans Collection, pp. 121- 135.
Livingstone, Tamara E. (1999) ‘Music Revivals: Towards a General Theory', Ethnomusicology, 43 (1): 66-85.
Maines, David R. ‘Narrative's Moment and Sociology's Phenomena: Towards a Narrative Sociology', Sociological Quarterly, 34: 17-38.
Maines, David, Noreen M. Sugrue and Michael A. Katovich (1983) ‘The Sociological Import of G.H. Mead's Theory of the Past', American Sociological Review, 48 (2): 161-173.
Maines, David, R. and J.T. Ulmer (1993) ‘The Relevance of Narrative for Interactionist Thought', in Norman K. Denzin (ed.) Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 14, Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, pp.109-124.
Marquis, Don (2005) In Search of Buddy Bolden: First Man of Jazz, revised edition, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press.
McDonald, Chris (2006) ‘”Rock and Roll Remember?”: Addressing the Legacy of Jazz in Popular Music Studies', Popular Music History, 1 (2): 125-145.
McKay, George (2003) ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee: New Orleans Style Jazz and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1950s Britain', Popular Music, 22 (3) 261-82.
McKay, George (2004) ‘Unsafe Things Like Youth and Jazz': Beaulieu Jazz Festivals (1956-61) and the Origins of Pop Festival Culture in Britain', in Andy Bennett (ed.) Remembering Woodstock, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 90- 110.
McKay, George (2005) Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mead, George Herbert (1929a) ‘A Pragmatic Theory of Truth', in Studies in the Nature of Truth, Berkeley: University of California Publications in Philosophy, 11, pp. 65-98.
Mead, G.H. (1929b) ‘The Nature of the Past', in John Coss (ed.) Essays in Honor of John Dewey, New York: Henry Holt & Co., pp. 235-242.
Mead, G.H. (1932) The Philosophy of the Present, La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Company.
Meeder, Christopher (2008) Jazz: The Basics, New York: Routledge.
Moore, Hilary (2007) ‘Ken Colyer and the Trad Jazz Movement: Class, Authenticity and the Nostalgic Imagination', in Hilary Moore, Inside British Jazz: Crossing Borders of Race, Nation and Class, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 37-65.
Plummer, Ken (1995) Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds, London: Routledge.
Pointon, Mike and Ray Smith (2010), Goin' Home: The Uncompromising Life and Music of Ken Colyer, London: The Ken Colyer Trust.
Pointon, Mike and Barry Martyn (2010) ‘Spotlight on Barry Martyn: Mike Pointon Talks to Barry Martyn, Part 1', Just Jazz, April, Issue, No. 144, pp. 3-6.
Porter, Lewis (1988) ‘Some Problems in Jazz Research', Black Music Research Journal, 8 (2): 195-206.
Prus, Robert (1987) ‘Generic Social Processes: Maximising Conceptual Development in Ethnographic Research', Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 16: 250-293.
Raeburn, Bruce Boyd (2009) New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Ramsey, Frederic, Jr. and Charles Edward Smith (eds) (1939) Jazzmen: The Story of Hot Jazz Told in the Lives of the Men Who Created It, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
Robischon, Thomas (1958) ‘What is Objective Relativism?' The Journal of Philosophy, 55 (26) 1117-1132.
Russell, Bill (1940) ‘Delta – New Orleans', HRS Society Rag, October, pp. 28-30.
Russell, Bill (1942) ‘Bunk Johnson', Jazz Quarterly, Fall, reprinted in Mike Hazeldine and Barry Martyn (eds) Bunk Johnson: Song of the Wanderer, New Orleans: Jazzology Press, 2000, pp. 264-266.
Russell, Bill (1994) New Orleans Style, compiled and edited by Barry Martyn and Mike Hazeldine, New Orleans: Jazzology Press.
Russell, Bill and Mike Pointon (1992) ‘Bunk and Bill', BBC Radio 3.
Russell, William (1999) Oh Mister Jelly! A Jelly Roll Morton Scrapbook, Copenhagen: Jazz Media ApS.
Schuller, Gunther (1992) The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945, Pxford: Oxford Paper Backs.
Stagg, Tom and Charlie Crump (1973) New Orleans – The Revival: A Tape and Discography of Negro Traditional Jazz Recorded in New Orleans or by New Orleans Bands, 1937- 1972. Dublin: Bashall Eaves.
Stebbins, Robert (1977) ‘The Amateur: Two Sociological Definitions', Pacific Sociological Review, 20 (4): 582- 606.
Stebbins, Robert (1982) ‘Serious Leisure: A Conceptual Statement', Pacific Sociological Review, 25: 251-272.
Stebbins, Robert A. (2007) Serious Leisure: A Perspective for Our Time, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
Strauss, David (1965) ‘French Critics and American Jazz', American Quarterly, 17 (3): 582-587.
Suhor, Charles (2010) ‘Review of New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History, by Bruce Raeburn', Riverwalk Jazz, http://www.riverwalkjazz.org/html/eng/public/767.s html. (accessed 10th May 2010)
Thomas, W.I. and D.S. Thomas (1928) The Child in America: Behavior Problems and Programs, New York: Knopf.
Thornton, Sarah (1990) ‘Strategies for Reconstructing the Popular Past', Popular Music, 9 (1): 87-95.
Townsend, Peter (2000) Jazz in American Culture, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Turner, Frederick (1994) Remembering Song: Encounters with the New Orleans Jazz Tradition, expanded edition, New York: Da Capo Press.
Wagner, William (1993) ‘Bunk and My Brother', interview 11th October, in Mike Hazeldine and Barry Martyn, Bunk Johnson: Song of the Wanderer, New Orleans: Jazzology Press, 2000, pp. 266-270.
Weber, William (2001) ‘The History of Musical Canon', in Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist, eds. Rethinking Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 336-355.
Welburn, Ron (1986) ‘Toward Theory and Method with the Jazz Oral History Project', Black Music Research Journal, 6: 79-95.