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  • KD: A Jazz Biography by Dave Oliphant
  • Joe W. Specht
KD: A Jazz Biography. By Dave Oliphant. (San Antonio: Wings Press, 2012. Pp. 193. ISBN 978091672956, $19.95 cloth.)

Dave Oliphant, the noted poet, translator, editor, and publisher, is also a respected jazz historian. His Texan Jazz (1996) is the definitive history of Texan musicians who played important roles in the development of jazz in the twentieth century. Jazz Mavericks of the Lone Star State (2007), a collection of essays, continued Oliphant’s documentation of Texas’s connection and contribution to the music. Now with KD: A Jazz Biography, he has turned his attention to trumpeter and composer Kenny Dorham.

Dorham, born on Post Oak Ranch near Fairfield, Freestone County, Texas, had an impeccable jazz pedigree: he replaced Miles Davis in Charlie Parker’s group, he was an original member of the Jazz Messengers, he joined Max Roach’s quintet after Clifford Brown’s death, and he, of course, led his own various ensembles over the years. Dorham was only forty-eight when he died of kidney disease in 1972. To describe his trumpet prowess as lyrical and tuneful barely does him justice. To call him underrated as both a soloist and composer is still regrettably true.

Oliphant previously devoted several pages to Dorham’s recordings in Texan Jazz; he further appraised the trumpeter’s career in “Texas Bebop Messengers: Kenny Dorham and Leo Wright,” a chapter in Jazz Mavericks of the Lone Star State. In KD, the author combines the creativity of a poet with the knowledge of a music historian, and he chronicles Dorham’s musical life in 192 pages of poetry or, more [End Page 448] specifically, in seventeen cantos (chapters) of snugly composed rhymed quatrains (four lines each). As such, KD is a fine example of “verse biography.” Other such works dedicated to individual musicians include Martin Gray’s meditation on Charlie Parker, Blues for Bird (2001), and Tyehimba Jess’s leadbelly (2005).

Oliphant begins the story in 1963 in Copenhagen, Denmark, where Dorham was booked to play at the Montmartre Jazzhus, before doubling back to a 1930s Central Texas ranch and a youthful Kenny on roundup “on his two-year-old a satin-black/with forehead mark a whitish dot/a bridle Sears & Roebuck bought/he’d drive doggies to a dipping vat” (22). Then it is on to Marshall, Texas, and Wiley College, New York City, the West Coast, and a career that “had carried him to Scandinavia Brazil/& Paree Post Oak to Frisco & to NYC/learning lyrics & through them to feel/& to the recorded sounds he’ll ever be” (192).

Although Oliphant’s primary focus is on Dorham’s performing and recording, he reveals compelling personal details along the way. Early in the trumpeter’s tenure with bebop legend Charlie Parker, Dorham earned Parker’s respect after the two argued over Charlie’s claim that Kenny drew a $100 advance out of his monthly pay: “K cuts short the argument & pulls a blade/says he’ll draw Chazz’s blood if isn’t paid/Yard replies as he forks up a rightful sum/‘just seeing where you was coming from’” (42). Dorham’s roots in the Lone Star State are a constant presence, too. In describing “Windmill,” a Dorham original included on his 1961 album Whistle Stop, Oliphant riffs, “but a real wind spins K’s Southwest pump/to water the herd on an actual Texas ranch” (123).

Jim Jacob’s cover art, an assortment of purple, ebony, and gold hues that depict Dorham, cheeks slightly puffed, blowing his horn, reinforces Oliphant’s portrait of the Texas trumpeter as subtle lyricist and fiery interpreter. Odd as it might seem for a work of poetry, an index would have not been out of place to access the abundant references to musicians and tunes. The mix of musician names and nicknames with various literary allusions to the likes of Job, Tutankhamen, Grendel, and the Green Knight requires dedicated concentration on the part of the reader. Absorb the poet’s rhythms, and the musical legacy of Kenny Dorham comes alive.

Joe W. Specht
Abilene, Texas
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