Book Review: Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin (1955)

Paperback cover of Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin, originally published in 1955.

The author James Baldwin, 1924-1987.

Notes of a Native Son, published in 1955, was James Baldwin’s first collection of nonfiction. Baldwin’s first book was the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, published in 1953, and it put him on the map as an important young writer. Notes of a Native Son further established Baldwin as one of the leading African American authors of the day. The book’s title was a deliberate echo of Richard Wright’s novel, which Baldwin offered a lengthy critique of. The edition I read of Notes of a Native Son included Baldwin’s preface to the 1984 edition of the book, which is quite interesting to read. In it, Baldwin confides that he initially wasn’t that enthused about the idea of collecting his essays as a book. Fortunately for us, he was persuaded to do so. 

Baldwin is probably best-known today for his essays rather than his fiction. Baldwin’s biographer James Campbell wrote of his essays:

“On reaching the by now characteristic rhetorical finale, they would exhibit a common theme: how to survive this pain—the pain of hatred and self-hatred—which threatens to wreck the structure of the self more violently than anything white people individually can do.” (Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin, by James Campbell, p.93) 

I’ll admit that the essays in the first section of Notes of a Native Son weren’t my favorites, partly because, though I cringe to admit it, I haven’t actually read the books Baldwin is critiquing, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Native Son. I was supposed to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin for a Civil War class in college, but I only got about halfway through it and I can’t remember anything about it. In the first essay, “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” I wish that Baldwin more clearly defined what he considers a protest novel to be. Is it merely a work of fiction that offers a critique of a social ill, or are there other qualifications it needs to meet?

The essays in the rest of the book are all based on Baldwin’s life experience, and these essays are the core of Notes of a Native Son. For me, the title essay was the strongest one in the book. It’s the most personal, as Baldwin describes his complicated feelings towards his father. (Actually his stepfather, but since Baldwin didn’t have a relationship with his biological father, he always refers to his stepfather as his father in his writings.) The first two sentences of the essay are as good a hook as the opening lines of any fiction: “On the 29^th of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born.” (p.85) Wow. 

The essay “Notes of a Native Son” gives the reader a lot of information about Baldwin’s childhood, and it’s interesting to see how Baldwin’s life paralleled that of John Grimes, the protagonist of Go Tell It on the Mountain. It’s a true tour de force personal essay. Baldwin’s biographer David Leeming writes, “Notes of a Native Son maintained the autobiographical approach that had been set in Mountain and which would color all of Baldwin’s work—fiction and nonfiction.” (James Baldwin: A Biography, by David Leeming, p.100) 

The last four essays in the book cover Baldwin’s experiences as an African American living in Europe in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. In “Equal in Paris,” Baldwin takes us inside his harrowing experience spending a week in a Paris jail after his friend stole a hotel bedsheet and then gave it to Baldwin. Paris hotels don’t take kindly to petty theft, apparently. And so, Baldwin, with his limited resources and a limited command of the French language, must navigate a judicial system that is slow moving in the extreme. 

Some of my favorite quotes from Notes of a Native Son came from Baldwin’s Introduction to the book, and his 1984 Preface. In the Preface he writes, “The conundrum of color is the inheritance of every American, be he/she legally or actually Black or White.” (p.xii) So very true, and it’s a conundrum that our country is still trying to address in a meaningful way. 

In the “Autobiographical Notes” that open the book, Baldwin writes: “In the context of the Negro problem neither whites nor blacks, for excellent reasons of their own, have the faintest desire to look back; but I think that the past is all that makes the present coherent, and further, that the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.” (p.6) Of course, Baldwin is right, and again, as a country we are still struggling to deal honestly with our past. 

The “Autobiographical Notes” also features what has become one of James Baldwin’s most famous quotes: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” (p.9) 

While most of the time Baldwin’s prose is as sharp and clear as a windowpane, there are other times when his sentences turn and twist like switchbacks on a steep mountain road. In reviewing Baldwin’s 1972 book No Name in the Street, I noted one sentence that contained 13 commas in it. I’m not sure if any sentences in Notes of a Native Son matched that number, but there were certainly some that came close. 

Notes of a Native Son doesn’t have the same intense heat of The Fire Next Time, but that’s to be expected of a book that was composed over several years rather than a few months. Notes of a Native Son still bristles with heat, but it’s a slow simmer. 

James Campbell saw some of the frustration that suffuses Baldwin’s 1984 Preface to Notes of a Native Son firsthand. He was interviewing Baldwin on his 60^th birthday in 1984. Baldwin picked up Notes of a Native Son and started reading aloud from the essay, “The Harlem Ghetto.” “Baldwin closed the book, returned it to the table, and widened his eyes in that dramatic way of his: ‘Nothing—has—changed!’” (Campbell, p.267) 

The last sentence of the “Autobiographical Notes” concludes with Baldwin writing: “I want to be an honest man and a good writer.” (p.9) James Baldwin surely was both.

Concert Review: Aaron Neville at the Dakota Jazz Club

Singer Aaron Neville

Last night I saw the legendary soul singer Aaron Neville at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis. I’ve known who Aaron Neville is for a very long time, but I had never seen him in concert before. Neville performed with his pianist Michael Goods, and together they kept the audience at the Dakota spellbound for 90 minutes. 

Neville is known for his distinctive high voice, and it stills sounds pretty darn good at age 78. There’s no mistaking Aaron Neville’s voice for anyone else’s. Although Neville was seated behind a keyboard for the entire show, he only played a few opening chords to some songs. To his left was a music stand with a huge notebook filled with lyrics. Neville didn’t share that many stories during the concert, which surprised me. He’s certainly had a lengthy career in the music business. 

Neville opened the show with a medley of songs from the 1950’s and 1960’s: Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me,” Sam Cooke’s “Cupid” and “Chain Gang,” and the Drifters’ “There Goes My Baby.” Neville sang his big hits, “Don’t Know Much,” his hit duet with Linda Ronstadt, and “Tell It Like It Is,” with the former appearing early in the set, and the latter being one of the last songs of the evening. In between, Neville sang a mixture of songs, most of which were familiar to me, and most dating from the 1950’s and 1960’s. Some highlights were “Pledging My Love,” first sung by Johnny Ace and later covered by Elvis Presley, and Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire.” Neville sang two songs made famous by Nat King Cole, “Mona Lisa,” and “When I Fall in Love.” For those two songs, Goods switched to an electric keyboard, rather than the acoustic piano, and to me the keyboard ended up sounding like a cheap synthesizer. 

I was secretly hoping that Neville would play some songs by the great New Orleans songwriter Allen Toussaint, but that didn’t happen. Neville gave us lovely versions of Johnny Mathis’ “Chances Are,” and James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.” Neville is an outstanding ballad singer, and it was fun to see such a legendary singer in such a small venue.

Album Review: Blue World, John Coltrane (2019)

The CD layout of John Coltrane's Blue World, recorded in 1964 and released in 2019.

One of the more remarkable stories in jazz last year was the discovery of a lost album recorded in 1963 by John Coltrane and his “Classic Quartet.” Titled Both Directions at Once, the album sold very well and charted in the Top Ten in seven countries. In 2019, Coltrane fans were treated to the release of another lost Coltrane album, 55 years after it was recorded. Blue World was released on September 27, 2019, and it features 8 tracks Coltrane recorded for the soundtrack to Canadian filmmaker Gilles Groulx’s 1964 film, Le chat dan le sac. (English title: The Cat in the Bag.) 

It’s remarkable enough that lightning struck once in 2018 with the release of Both Directions at Once. That it would strike again in a similar way a year later is extraordinary. As a jazz fan, what’s so wonderful about Both Directions at Once and Blue World is that they are both superbly recorded studio sessions from the peak of an artist’s career. This isn’t a poor-quality live recording made by someone in the audience with a tape recorder: this is John Coltrane’s Classic Quartet in Rudy Van Gelder’s studio. 

Coltrane made the recordings on Blue World with his regular quartet: McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. It’s fascinating that Groulx was able to get Coltrane to agree to record these songs as a favor. Groulx hadn’t known Coltrane for very long, but they obviously must have hit it off. Coltrane recorded Blue World at Rudy Van Gelder’s legendary studio in New Jersey, but he and Van Gelder kept the session a secret from Impulse!—Coltrane’s record label at the time. Groulx attended the session and suggested the songs that he wanted Coltrane to play. Once the session was over, Groulx took the master tapes with him, eventually depositing them in the vaults of the National Film Board of Canada. It hasn’t exactly been a secret that Coltrane’s music was used in the finished film, which was a hit on the art-house circuit in the 1960’s and has been available to watch online for years. But somehow, the Coltrane session went unreleased until now. Maybe the success of Both Directions at Once convinced everyone that there was indeed a market for unreleased John Coltrane music. 

What’s unusual about Blue World is that it features Coltrane revisiting older songs that he had already recorded. The tracks on Blue World are “Naima,” originally on Giant Steps, “Traneing In,” from John Coltrane with the Red Garland Trio, “Like Sonny” and “Village Blues” which are both from Coltrane Jazz, and “Blue World,” with the writing credited to Coltrane, which is actually a slightly changed version of “Out of This World,” written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, which appeared on 1962’s Coltrane. (As the liner notes indicate, it was probably retitled and credited to Coltrane to avoid licensing issues.) 

The music on Blue World is superb, showing what a terrific unit the John Coltrane Quartet was. “Naima” is a showcase for the band’s approach to ballads, and it’s one of the greatest ballads Coltrane composed. “Village Blues” is, well, a blues, with Tyner stating the melody before Coltrane comes in. “Blue World” is taken at a slower tempo than Coltrane’s 1962 recording of “Out of This World,” and it features an excellent Coltrane solo. “Like Sonny” is a short tune, inspired by Sonny Rollins. “Traneing In” starts with a lengthy bass solo from Jimmy Garrison, and it demonstrates what an excellent soloist he was. McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones are both the kind of musicians who are always so great, so in the pocket and on the money, that it’s hard to describe their playing without just sounding redundant. “McCoy Tyner plays great piano on ‘Like Sonny.’” Yes, and in related news, the sky is still blue. Tyner and Jones’ playing on Blue World is excellent throughout. 

My complaints about Blue World: at the beginning of each track, we hear Rudy Van Gelder call out the take. You can hear a tiny amount of chatter from the musicians, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. Adding the studio chatter would be fine if you heard Coltrane giving instructions to the group or something interesting, but since no one says anything interesting, adding the studio chatter just seems pointless to me. It just makes me wonder why the track has started but I don’t hear any music yet. My other beef is with the running order. There are two alternate takes of “Village Blues,” and one alternate take of “Naima.” The alternate take of “Naima” is the last song on the album. Great, makes sense. But the two alternates of “Village Blues” are stuck in the middle of the album, in between “Blue World” and “Like Sonny.” So, by the time you’re five tracks into the album, three of the tracks you’ve heard are “Village Blues,” which doesn’t make for the best listening experience. They just should have moved all the alternate takes to the end of the album, after the master takes of the five songs. 

Because it was a special project and not intended to stand alone as a self-contained album, Blue World isn’t quite the treasure trove that Both Directions at Once was. While the special edition of Both Directions at Once was 2 CD’s and featured 14 tracks, Blue World features 8 tracks and clocks in at just 36 minutes. It’s an intriguing look at where the Coltrane Quartet was on June 24, 1964. The group had just recorded their classic album Crescent in late April, with one final session on June 1^st, just three weeks before the Blue World session. Not quite six months after the Blue World session, the group would record one of John Coltrane’s masterpieces, A Love Supreme. So, no pressure, Blue World, just match up to the two classic albums recorded on either side of you. Of course, Blue World is completely different from Crescent and A Love Supreme, since it was never intended to be released as an album. But for exactly that reason, it has a relaxed vibe. Coltrane isn’t making a major statement here: he’s revisiting some old songs as a favor for a friend. Blue World isn’t likely to reframe Coltrane’s stature as a jazz artist, but it’s an awfully nice artifact to show up, 55 years later.