Cats of Any Color: Jazz Black and White Book

In Cats of Any Color, Gene Lees takes a long overdue look at racism in the past and present of jazz--both the white racism that for decades ghettoized black musicians and their music, and what Lees demonstrates is an increasingly strident prejudice of some black jazz musicians against their white counterparts. In candid interviews, jazz players, composers, and critics share their thoughts on how racism has affected their lives. Lees points out that many jazz musicians have been at least in part Native Americans, but the Indian contribution has never been acknowledged. Dave Brubeck, who himself has Indian ancestors, describes how racism long made it all but impossible for jazz groups composed of white and black players to book tours. And Horace Silver recalls listening as a boy to the black Jimmie Lunceford band through the wooden slats of a Connecicut pavilion to which blacks were not admitted--except as performers.

From the old shantytowns of Indiana to the streets of South Central Los Angeles to the still-smouldering controversy surrounding Wynton Marsalis's jazz program at Lincoln Center and the apparently anti-white Jazz Masters awards of the National Endowment for the Arts, Cats of Any Color directly confronts racism in its many guises.