Posted by
jillian on Dec 20, 2011 in
Issue 3, Dec 2011,
Volume 10 |
Comments Off on The Rediscovery and Resurrection of Bunk Johnson – a Grounded Theory Approach: A case study in jazz historiography
Richard Ekins, Ph.D., FRSA 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 ‘credentialising’ (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 the ‘rediscovering’ 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. Introduction This article focuses on a highly mediated event in the history of jazz. I conceptualise the ‘event’ as the ‘rediscovery and resurrection’ of William Geary ‘Bunk’ Johnson (c. 1879 [?1889] – 1949), a jazz pioneer more commonly known as Bunk Johnson. Bunk Johnson was regarded as one of the top New Orleans jazz trumpet players in the period 1905-1915, before the recording of jazz. Between 1915 and the early 1930s, he toured the Southern States in minstrel shows and circuses before retiring from music in the Great Depression years. He settled in New Iberia, Louisiana, where he worked in the rice and sugar fields. He had lost his teeth by 1934 and was unable to play trumpet (Hazeldine and Martyn, 2000). He was ‘rediscovered’ in 1938 by a group of jazz enthusiasts researching early jazz. Fitted out with new teeth and a new trumpet, he first recorded in 1942. He recorded extensively in New Orleans, San Francisco and New York, between 1942 and 1947, before his death in New Iberia, in 1949. To many writers and enthusiasts, within that tradition of so-called ‘authentic’ New Orleans jazz which privileged New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz and which privileged those black ‘stay at home’ (Godbolt, 1989: 13) musicians who did not migrate to Chicago (or New York, or San Francisco) in the early 1920s (Charters, 1963; Stagg and Crump, 1972), the rediscovery and resurrection of Bunk Johnson is, arguably, the most important single event in the history of New Orleans jazz revivalism (Stagg and Crump, 1972). I am particularly concerned with issues relating to how this event has been placed within a particular type of narrative; the issues around unpacking and problematising the event; and alternative modes of historical writing through which histories are constructed. Theoretically, my standpoint is rooted in a social constructionist ‘sociology of knowledge’ approach to jazz historiography. Pivotal to my approach is George Herbert Mead’s theory of time and the past (Mead, 1929b; 1932;...