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Bill Dixon's Voice (Letter)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2015

ERIC PORTER
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Abstract

In November 1966 composer and improviser Bill Dixon recorded a seventeen-minute-long “voice letter” to jazz writer Frank Kofsky. This letter may be analyzed as a critical intervention by Dixon, an attempt to change the context of interpretation around improvised music. But the voice letter may also be heard and analyzed as a kind of performance. As Dixon speaks, one can hear the rumbling and roar of the city as well as the staccato sounds of car and truck horns unfolding in dynamic counterpoint to his words. In this essay, I put the voice letter into dialogue with Dixon's personal history, his writings and interview statements, and some of his contemporaneous musical and multi-generic projects, especially his collaboration with dancer and choreographer Judith Dunn. I show how the letter maps Dixon's and Dunn's positions within a geography of intellectual circles, experimental artistic communities, and low-wage employment networks. By extension, I examine how the voice letter, as critical intervention and performance, points us to a nuanced understanding of black experimental music of the 1960s as a socially inflected, self-conscious and, ultimately, serious engagement with various modes of artistic production and thought, carried out under conditions of both precarity and inspiration.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 204 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2015 

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References

References

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All About Jazz Staff. “Bill Dixon: Excerpts from Vade Mecum.” All About Jazz, 10 January 2010.Google Scholar
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Buckwalter, Melinda. Composing While Dancing: An Improviser's Companion. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Daniels, Douglas Henry. “Oral History, Masks, and Protocol in the Jazz Community.” Oral History Review 15/1 (Spring 1987): 143–64.Google Scholar
Davis, Francis. “Bill Dixon's Dance Notation.” Village Voice, 13 July 2011.Google Scholar
Dewar, Andrew Raffo. “Searching for the Center of a Sound: Bill Dixon's Webern, the Unaccompanied Solo, and Compositional Ontology in Post-Songform Jazz.” Jazz Perspectives 4/1 (April 2010): 59–87.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill. “Collaboration: 1965–1972.” Contact Quarterly 10/2 (Spring/Summer 1985): 7–12.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill. “Contemporary Jazz: An Assessment.” Jazz and Pop 6/11 (November 1967): 31–32.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill. “Dixon Digs at Jones.” Down Beat, 2 January 1964, 6, 9.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill. “Excerpts from Vade Mecum.” All About Jazz, 10 January 2010.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill. “Jazz Through Four Innovators.” Freedomways (Spring 1967): 255–57.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill. L’Opera: A Collection of Letters, Writings, Musical Scores, Drawings, and Photographs (1967–1986) [Volume 1]. North Bennington, VT: Metamorphosis Music, BMI, 1986.Google Scholar
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Gable, Cecelia. Untitled biographical sketch in “Judith Dunn, 1933–83.” Contact Quarterly 9/1 (Fall 1983): 53.Google Scholar
Gennari, John. Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Goldman, Danielle. I Want to Be Ready: Improvised Dance as a Practice of Freedom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Hairston O’Connell, Monica and Sherrie Tucker. “Not One to Toot Her Own Horn (?): Melba Liston's Oral Histories and Classroom Presentations.” Black Music Research Journal 34/1 (Spring 2014): 121–58.Google Scholar
Heckman, Don. “Caught in the Act.” Down Beat, 11 February 1965, 37–38.Google Scholar
Horwich, Jonathan. Producer notes for The Bill Dixon Orchestra. Intents and Purposes. RCA Victor LPM-3844 [1967], 2010.Google Scholar
Jones, LeRoi. “Apple Cores.” Down Beat, 17 December 1964, 40.Google Scholar
Jones, LeRoi. “Don Cherry—Making It the Hard Way.” Down Beat, 21 November 1963, 16–18, 34.Google Scholar
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Kofsky, Frank. Review of On This Night. Jazz (November 1966): 30–32.Google Scholar
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Labelle, Brandon. “Raw Orality: Sound Poetry and Live Bodies.” In Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media, ed. Neumark, Norie, Gibson, Ross, and van Leeuwen, Theo, 147–71. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.Google Scholar
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Morgenstern, Dan. “John Tchicai: A Calm Member of the Avant-Garde.” Down Beat, 10 February 1966, 20–21, 49–50.Google Scholar
Morgenstern, Dan. “Newport Report.” Down Beat, 11 August 1966, 14–16, 38–40.Google Scholar
Morgenstern, Dan and Martin, Williams. “The October Revolution: Two Views of the Avant Garde in Action.” Down Beat, 19 November 1964, 15, 33.Google Scholar
Neumark, Norie. “Doing Things With Voices: Performativity and Voice.” In Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media, ed. Neumark, Norie, Gibson, Ross, and van Leeuwen, Theo, 95–118. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Piekut, Benjamin D. “New Thing? Gender and Sexuality in the Jazz Composers Guild.” American Quarterly 62/1 (March 2010): 25–48.Google Scholar
Piekut, Benjamin D. “Race, Community, and Conflict in the Jazz Composers Guild.” Jazz Perspectives 3/3 (December 2009): 191–231.Google Scholar
Piekut, Benjamin D.. “Testing, Testing . . .: New York Experimentalism 1964.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2008.Google Scholar
Porter, Eric. “‘Born Out of Jazz . . . yet Embracing All Music’: Race, Gender, and Technology in George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept.” In Big Ears: Listening to Gender in Jazz Studies, ed. Tucker, Sherrie and Rustin, Nichole, 210–34. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Porter, Eric. “Jeanne Lee's Voice.” Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études Critiques en Improvisation 2/1 (2006), www.criticalimprov.com.Google Scholar
Porter, Eric. What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Rustin, Nichole T. “‘Mary Lou Williams Plays Like a Man’: Gender, Genius, and Difference in Black Music Discourse.” Atlantic Quarterly 104/3 (Summer 2005): 445–62.Google Scholar
Shank, Barry. “The Political Agency of Musical Beauty.” American Quarterly 63/3 (September 2011): 831–55.Google Scholar
Spellman, A. B. “Archie Shepp/Bill Dixon Quartet.” Kulchur 3/11 (Autumn 1963): 94–95.Google Scholar
Spellman, A. B.. “Jazz at the Judson.” The Nation, 8 February 1965, 149–51.Google Scholar
Stoever-Ackerman, Jennifer. “Reproducing U.S. Citizenship in Blackboard Jungle: Race, Cold War Liberalism, and the Tape Recorder.” American Quarterly 63/3 (September 2011): 781–806.Google Scholar
Stoever-Ackerman, Jennifer. “Splicing the Sonic Color-Line: Tony Schwartz Remixes Postwar Nueva York.” Social Text 28/1 (Spring 2010): 59–85.Google Scholar
Tucker, Sherrie. “Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies.” Current Musicology 71–73 (Spring 2001/2002): 376–408.Google Scholar
Weldon, Peter. “Bill Dixon/Archie Shepp.” Down Beat, 8 October 1964, 27–28.Google Scholar
Wilson, John S. “Concert Unveils Free-Form Jazz.” New York Times, 30 December 1964, 14.Google Scholar
Young, Ben. Dixonia: A Bio-Discography of Bill Dixon (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998).Google Scholar
The Bill Dixon Orchestra. Intents and Purposes, RCA Victor LPM-3844 [1967], 2010.Google Scholar
The Bill Dixon Orchestra. Bill Dixon 7-tette/Archie Shepp and the New York Contemporary Five, Savoy MG-12184, 1964.Google Scholar
The Bill Dixon Orchestra. Archie Shepp-Bill Dixon Quartet, Savoy MG-12178, 1962.Google Scholar
Sebestik, Miroslav. Écoute [Listening]. Paris: JBA Production, 1992.Google Scholar
Frank Kofsky Audio and Photo Collection of the Jazz and Rock Movement (A Gift of Bonnie Kofsky), University of California Santa Cruz, McHenry Library, Special Collections.Google Scholar
All About Jazz Staff. “Bill Dixon: Excerpts from Vade Mecum.” All About Jazz, 10 January 2010.Google Scholar
Anderson, Iain. This Is Our Music: Free Jazz, the Sixties, and American Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Anderson, Jack. “Judith Dunn and the Endless Quest.” Dance Magazine 41 (November 1967): 48–51, 66–67.Google Scholar
Balliett, Whitney. Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954–2000. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Buckwalter, Melinda. Composing While Dancing: An Improviser's Companion. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Daniels, Douglas Henry. “Oral History, Masks, and Protocol in the Jazz Community.” Oral History Review 15/1 (Spring 1987): 143–64.Google Scholar
Davis, Francis. “Bill Dixon's Dance Notation.” Village Voice, 13 July 2011.Google Scholar
Dewar, Andrew Raffo. “Searching for the Center of a Sound: Bill Dixon's Webern, the Unaccompanied Solo, and Compositional Ontology in Post-Songform Jazz.” Jazz Perspectives 4/1 (April 2010): 59–87.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill. “Collaboration: 1965–1972.” Contact Quarterly 10/2 (Spring/Summer 1985): 7–12.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill. “Contemporary Jazz: An Assessment.” Jazz and Pop 6/11 (November 1967): 31–32.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill. “Dixon Digs at Jones.” Down Beat, 2 January 1964, 6, 9.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill. “Excerpts from Vade Mecum.” All About Jazz, 10 January 2010.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill. “Jazz Through Four Innovators.” Freedomways (Spring 1967): 255–57.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill. L’Opera: A Collection of Letters, Writings, Musical Scores, Drawings, and Photographs (1967–1986) [Volume 1]. North Bennington, VT: Metamorphosis Music, BMI, 1986.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill. “To Whom It May Concern.” Coda 8/4 (November 1967): 2–10.Google Scholar
Dunn, Judith. “A Letter to Helen.” Dance Perspectives 38 (Summer 1969): 44–49.Google Scholar
Dunn, Judith. Liner notes for The Bill Dixon Orchestra. Intents and Purposes. RCA Victor LPM-3844 [1967], 2010.Google Scholar
Ellison, Ralph. Shadow and Act. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1994.Google Scholar
Gable, Cecelia. Untitled biographical sketch in “Judith Dunn, 1933–83.” Contact Quarterly 9/1 (Fall 1983): 53.Google Scholar
Gennari, John. Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Goldman, Danielle. I Want to Be Ready: Improvised Dance as a Practice of Freedom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Hairston O’Connell, Monica and Sherrie Tucker. “Not One to Toot Her Own Horn (?): Melba Liston's Oral Histories and Classroom Presentations.” Black Music Research Journal 34/1 (Spring 2014): 121–58.Google Scholar
Heckman, Don. “Caught in the Act.” Down Beat, 11 February 1965, 37–38.Google Scholar
Horwich, Jonathan. Producer notes for The Bill Dixon Orchestra. Intents and Purposes. RCA Victor LPM-3844 [1967], 2010.Google Scholar
Jones, LeRoi. “Apple Cores.” Down Beat, 17 December 1964, 40.Google Scholar
Jones, LeRoi. “Don Cherry—Making It the Hard Way.” Down Beat, 21 November 1963, 16–18, 34.Google Scholar
Jones, LeRoi. “Jazz and the White Critic.” Down Beat, 15 August 1963, 16–17, 34.Google Scholar
Kelley, Robin D. G.Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. New York: Free Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Kofsky, Frank. Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Kofsky, Frank. “A New World Music? An Interview with Roswell Rudd.” American Dialog (Spring 1967): 33–36.Google Scholar
Kofsky, Frank. Review of On This Night. Jazz (November 1966): 30–32.Google Scholar
Labelle, Brandon. Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life. New York: Continuum Books, 2010.Google Scholar
Labelle, Brandon. “Raw Orality: Sound Poetry and Live Bodies.” In Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media, ed. Neumark, Norie, Gibson, Ross, and van Leeuwen, Theo, 147–71. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Levin, Robert. “The Jazz Composers Guild: An Assertion of Dignity.” Down Beat, 6 May 1965, 17–18.Google Scholar
Lewis, George E.A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Morgenstern, Dan. “John Tchicai: A Calm Member of the Avant-Garde.” Down Beat, 10 February 1966, 20–21, 49–50.Google Scholar
Morgenstern, Dan. “Newport Report.” Down Beat, 11 August 1966, 14–16, 38–40.Google Scholar
Morgenstern, Dan and Martin, Williams. “The October Revolution: Two Views of the Avant Garde in Action.” Down Beat, 19 November 1964, 15, 33.Google Scholar
Neumark, Norie. “Doing Things With Voices: Performativity and Voice.” In Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media, ed. Neumark, Norie, Gibson, Ross, and van Leeuwen, Theo, 95–118. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Piekut, Benjamin D. “New Thing? Gender and Sexuality in the Jazz Composers Guild.” American Quarterly 62/1 (March 2010): 25–48.Google Scholar
Piekut, Benjamin D. “Race, Community, and Conflict in the Jazz Composers Guild.” Jazz Perspectives 3/3 (December 2009): 191–231.Google Scholar
Piekut, Benjamin D.. “Testing, Testing . . .: New York Experimentalism 1964.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2008.Google Scholar
Porter, Eric. “‘Born Out of Jazz . . . yet Embracing All Music’: Race, Gender, and Technology in George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept.” In Big Ears: Listening to Gender in Jazz Studies, ed. Tucker, Sherrie and Rustin, Nichole, 210–34. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Porter, Eric. “Jeanne Lee's Voice.” Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études Critiques en Improvisation 2/1 (2006), www.criticalimprov.com.Google Scholar
Porter, Eric. What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Rustin, Nichole T. “‘Mary Lou Williams Plays Like a Man’: Gender, Genius, and Difference in Black Music Discourse.” Atlantic Quarterly 104/3 (Summer 2005): 445–62.Google Scholar
Shank, Barry. “The Political Agency of Musical Beauty.” American Quarterly 63/3 (September 2011): 831–55.Google Scholar
Spellman, A. B. “Archie Shepp/Bill Dixon Quartet.” Kulchur 3/11 (Autumn 1963): 94–95.Google Scholar
Spellman, A. B.. “Jazz at the Judson.” The Nation, 8 February 1965, 149–51.Google Scholar
Stoever-Ackerman, Jennifer. “Reproducing U.S. Citizenship in Blackboard Jungle: Race, Cold War Liberalism, and the Tape Recorder.” American Quarterly 63/3 (September 2011): 781–806.Google Scholar
Stoever-Ackerman, Jennifer. “Splicing the Sonic Color-Line: Tony Schwartz Remixes Postwar Nueva York.” Social Text 28/1 (Spring 2010): 59–85.Google Scholar
Tucker, Sherrie. “Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies.” Current Musicology 71–73 (Spring 2001/2002): 376–408.Google Scholar
Weldon, Peter. “Bill Dixon/Archie Shepp.” Down Beat, 8 October 1964, 27–28.Google Scholar
Wilson, John S. “Concert Unveils Free-Form Jazz.” New York Times, 30 December 1964, 14.Google Scholar
Young, Ben. Dixonia: A Bio-Discography of Bill Dixon (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998).Google Scholar
The Bill Dixon Orchestra. Intents and Purposes, RCA Victor LPM-3844 [1967], 2010.Google Scholar
The Bill Dixon Orchestra. Bill Dixon 7-tette/Archie Shepp and the New York Contemporary Five, Savoy MG-12184, 1964.Google Scholar
The Bill Dixon Orchestra. Archie Shepp-Bill Dixon Quartet, Savoy MG-12178, 1962.Google Scholar
Sebestik, Miroslav. Écoute [Listening]. Paris: JBA Production, 1992.Google Scholar