and privilege. Her articles have appeared in Dædalus, the American Studies Journal, Jazz Perspectives, and the Journal of Jazz Studies. She holds a BA in Music (piano) from Truman State University and a PhD in musicology from Washington University in St. Louis.
Klotz applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness, and reported the following:
The first thing browsers would likely be drawn to on page 99 of Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness would almost certainly be the image at the bottom of the page. The image comes from the Dave Brubeck Collection, and was taken by photographer Lonnie Wilson during a “Dave Teaches Teachers” program in California in 1954. The image shows Brubeck playing at the piano, with about 30 viewers looking mostly intently at his playing. The viewers are predominantly white women. The text on page 99 shares the text of a review of one such piano class. One reviewer used a range of reactions explained within a feminine sphere of musical consumption when describing these women: “Some of the ‘girls’ squeaked and squealed like ecstatic teenagers while others dug it like supper club sophisticates and took notes for later study.”Learn more about Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness at the Oxford University Press website.
I’m a bit mixed as to whether browsers would get a good or poor idea of the whole work. As to approach, page 99 reflects the importance of archival research and primary sources to my project as a whole. However, the text on the page simply recounts the review; analysis comes in subsequent pages. This section of the book connects whiteness with respectability through these women’s interest in a certain kind of jazz (jazz performed by Brubeck). In this time period, critics and other writers were positioning Brubeck’s jazz (and some other cool jazz musicians) as uniquely respectable. For example, one writer declared to the readership of Good Housekeeping magazine that, “Jazz used to be the boy with dirty hands whom you wouldn’t let come into your house…and now, with clean hands, it is to be found in the concert halls, the music conservatories…and in the nicest living rooms.” But while you wouldn’t necessarily get that important connection from the text of page 99, the image truly paints a picture of white middle-class women’s musical interest (there is only one Black woman in the image, positioned at the back of the room). In that way, page 99 has the potential to reveal quite a lot about whiteness as an intersectional performance visible both onstage and off.
On a more personal note, page 99 comes smack dab in the middle of one of my favorite moments in my book. There has long been a narrative in jazz that women simply do not like or understand jazz music as much or as well as men (you don’t have to look too far today to see similar narratives still thriving). However, the Brubeck Collection showed me how strong midcentury women’s interest in jazz was—fan letter after fan letter recount self-described housewives’ varied ways of engaging with the music, whether as listeners, players, or idea creators. So for me, page 99 presents a jumping off point for another potential project on jazz and gender.
--Marshal Zeringue
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