Suite History, Part 2: Michael McGerr on Ellington, Nelson, Carter and Marsalis
Posted in Jazz Notes on Feb 11th, 2008
Historian and Indiana University professor Michael McGerr is a man whose scholarly knowledge and personal enthusiasms are infectiously wedded. In Part 2 of this Night Lights interview, Michael talks about the influence of Duke Ellington’s ambitious Black, Brown and Beige suite and the civil-rights movement on later composers who undertook extended black musical histories as well. Michael is a guest on this week’s show, Suite History: Duke Ellington, Oliver Nelson, John Carter, and the African-American Odyssey…
In the early 20th century African-American composers began to write extended musical depictions of black American life–Scott Joplin with his unstaged opera 
It’s one of the biggest states in the Union, and throughout the 20th century it was a wellspring of musical vitality, producing artists such as Ornette Coleman, Scott Joplin, Hot Lips Page, and Jimmy Giuffre…
