The Insanity of King Jazz

Thought the following excerpts below from a 1920s volume that belonged to a friend's grandmother would interest and amuse you.

Mike (Jamieson)

 ----- 

G. H. Clutsam (The Famous Composer).*

Jazz and Light Music

"It seems hardly possible that those of the public who derive their musical nourishment from either the stupid or the more exotic forms of jazz can appreciate the more normal types of music. But it may be!

... managers believe public taste to have been affected to such a radical extent by jazz that nothing else is required. I do not agree with this theory. There are still large numbers of people who hate the Negro music which was imported here from America a few years ago....

We have many composers who are capable of fine work, but the idea that the public wants nothing but jazz has become such an obsession that they cannot obtain a hearing....

I think the present phase will pass. The public will not continue indefinitely its admiration of the hectic, unsatisfying fare known popularly as jazz. The ear cannot permanently be tickled by infectious combinations of trite tunes (seldom the composer’s), hurting harmonies, and rhythmical vulgarities. The plague will inevitably die out, and its victims return to sanity.”

 ----- 

*George Howard Clutsam (1866-1951) was a pianist, composer, arranger and song writer, who wrote music criticism for The Observer between 1908 and 1918. The book intersperses writings by well-known musicians, singers, lyricists, composers and conductors with piano music of operettas and light music. One of them, “famous singer” Peter Dawson (1882-1961) wrote: “I think it would be an excellent plan to permit smoking at concerts....I am sure that....men, especially, would be more likely to attend.”