{"id":54569,"date":"2017-07-19T02:50:57","date_gmt":"2017-07-19T02:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54569"},"modified":"2017-07-19T16:26:51","modified_gmt":"2017-07-19T16:26:51","slug":"krazy-kat-and-all-that-jazz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54569","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Krazy Kat,\u2019 and all that jazz"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Krazy Kat,\u2019 and all that jazz<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Boston Globe<\/a>
\n2017-06-23<\/p>\n

Matthew Guerrieri<\/strong><\/a>, Globe Correspondent<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

This Sunday is the anniversary of the end of one of the greatest comic strips of all time. On June 25, 1944, the final installment of \u201cKrazy Kat<\/a>\u201d was published, two months after the death of its creator, George Herriman<\/a>. In various forms since 1910, the strip\u2019s essential paradox \u2014 Ignatz, a mouse, forever beans Krazy with bricks, who nevertheless loves him back \u2014 yielded seemingly inexhaustible variations.<\/p>\n

In its day, \u201cKrazy Kat\u201d was more a critical than a popular favorite, though publisher William Randolph Hearst<\/a>, a fan, continued to give Herriman carte blanche despite the strip\u2019s sometimes meager readership. But its dreamlike artwork, linguistic fantasy, and self-referential tinkering with comic-strip form influenced numerous other art forms \u2014 music included.<\/p>\n

The dense, idiosyncratic argot of Herriman\u2019s dialogue and his precisely-dashed linework and zig-zagging scenery (a stylization of Herriman\u2019s beloved southwestern landscapes) found its musical counterpart in syncopation. As early as 1911 \u2014 only a year after Krazy and Ignatz first appeared in the margins of Herriman\u2019s strip \u201cThe Dingbat Family\u201d \u2014 a New York composer-pianist named Ben Ritchie published \u201cKrazy Kat Rag<\/a>,\u201d with a Herriman illustration on the cover. In later years, saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer\u2019s<\/a> Orchestra (which included such jazz luminaries as Bix Beiderbecke<\/a>, Eddie Lang<\/a>, and Joe Venuti<\/a>), expatriate bandleader Sam Wooding<\/a>, and clarinetist Artie Shaw<\/a> all recorded \u201cKrazy Kat\u201d tributes.<\/p>\n

Most ambitious was composer John Alden Carpenter\u2019s<\/a> \u201cKrazy Kat\u201d ballet, subtitled \u201cA Jazz Pantomime<\/a>.\u201d First performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra<\/a> in 1921, and first staged in 1922 \u2014 choreographed by Russian-born Adolph Bolm<\/a>, with scenery designed by Herriman himself (he also illustrated the sheet music) \u2014 the ballet was well-received, but Carpenter\u2019s score (possibly the first concert work to include the word \u201cjazz\u201d in the title) was soon overshadowed by more overt rapprochements between jazz and classical music. Carpenter\u2019s version of jazz was tame, owing more to the \u201csweet\u201d jazz of white dance bands than the \u201chot\u201d jazz of their African-American counterparts. But the composer effectively mined jazz\u2019s capacity for charm and whimsy…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Sunday is the anniversary of the end of one of the greatest comic strips of all time. On June 25, 1944, the final installment of \u201cKrazy Kat\u201d was published, two months after the death of its creator, George Herriman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245,1196,8,6462,20],"tags":[27331,4072,9929,8208,27330,9930,27329,1392,5579],"class_list":["post-54569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-ben-ritchie","tag-boston-globe","tag-george-herriman","tag-jazz","tag-john-alden-carpenter","tag-krazy-kat","tag-matthew-guerrieri","tag-music","tag-the-boston-globe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54570,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54569\/revisions\/54570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}