Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews. Raise your hands if you know who bandleader Paul Whiteman is. I see the hands of early jazz fans and probably no one else. And therein lay the problem for jazz historians, who have not been kind to Whiteman.
His name itself, for one thing. There is the fact that he never integrated his orchestras. He used Black arrangers and never denigrated Black music or musicians. But Whiteman was tone deaf to the subtleties of race — a demerit in a figure who took up a considerable amount of cultural space.
She had a year career with the troupe. Jones is a cultural trailblazer, but there is no preening about it. She does not see herself as a Civil Rights icon or even classify herself as a particularly noteworthy representative of Black culture. Jones is content to portray herself as a hard worker, a dancer who persevered and sacrificed to perfect her craft and establish a career.
Jones poignantly depicts her average, middle-class upbringing. Her mother and father, an interracial couple during the age of Loving vs. While in school, Jones performed in a dance recital that supercharged her love of performing. She went on to attend the Phil Garcia Dance School, where she excelled.
She saw the all-Black production of The Wiz on Broadway, and the experience proved to be pivotal. Professionally and personally, she experienced racism even when she was a Rockette, there were moments , but these outrages are not as much of a focal point in the book as is her life as a performer. Her post-Rockettes career has been busy. Despite being a vegetarian, Jones was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer in and became an advocate for health education in the Black community. Engagingly written, it is no coffee table tome; the illustrations are small and black-and-white.
