{"id":28,"date":"2025-09-22T23:03:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T03:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/cbehmblog\/?p=28"},"modified":"2025-09-22T23:03:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T03:03:24","slug":"week-5-oral-history-in-jazz-and-swing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/cbehmblog\/2025\/09\/22\/week-5-oral-history-in-jazz-and-swing\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 5: Oral History in Jazz and Swing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cAlthough most practitioners now see oral history as a useful tool, much remains to be done,\u201d declared Rick Halpern in 1998, \u201cnot simply in terms of restoring the experience of various neglected groups to their place within working class history but also in moving toward a greater degree of theoretical awareness and methodological sophistication.\u201d Sherrie Tucker may have taken these words to heart as she was writing Swing Shift: \u201cAll-Girl\u201d Bands of the 1940s<\/em> at that time. Published in 2000, Swing Shift <\/em>seeks to fill silences in the historical record by blending interviews with former members of WWII-era All-Girl bands with a patchwork of written (mostly editorial in nature) sources.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The absence of women in jazz narratives despite the abundance of available living sources, Tucker argues, has occurred due to \u201cuncritical reproduction of dominant gender ideology\u201d as opposed to \u201ccareless omission\u201d (Tucker, Swing Shift<\/em>, 6). Tucker also exhibits keen awareness of the theoretical landscape in which she worked, commenting that she wrote Swing Shift<\/em> while understanding \u201cgender to be constructed, historically contingent, and inextricably intersected by other social categories such as race, class, and sexuality\u201d (Tucker, \u201cWhen Subjects Don\u2019t Come Out,\u201d 293). On race and class, Swing Shift<\/em> has plenty to say, but Tucker treads lightly on sexuality because her oral sources did not give her permission to discuss their sexuality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Filling silences and challenging established narratives is a primary theme in Swing Shift<\/em>. Also present throughout the text is \u201cThe Closet,\u201d looming quietly in the background as Tucker\u2019s narrative walks on eggshells to steer clear of discussing her oral sources\u2019 sexuality. Ironically, Tucker would \u2018fill silences and challenge established narratives\u2019 for her own work just two years later in 2002, when she published an article titled \u201cWhen Subjects Don\u2019t Come Out.\u201d In this article, Tucker tackles The Closet head-on. She acknowledges flaws inherent within one of her initial goals, which was to \u2018discover\u2019 lesbians in all-girl bands and historicize them as \u201clesbian foremothers\u201d to the gay liberation movement (Tucker, \u201cSubjects,\u201d 300). Although none of Tucker\u2019s oral sources were willing to out themselves, she reveals many of them were more than happy to out each other. The Closet is usually interpreted as a false ultimatum: keep your sexuality hidden or reveal it to everyone. Invoking Sedgwick, Tucker points to a vast middle ground between those two extremes, reframing The Closet as a factor that continuously shapes the lives of non-heterosexuals who constantly enter new contexts in which their sexuality is not common knowledge. By that logic, the only way to truly leave the closet for good would be to find a way to inform every cognizant human being on Earth of your sexual identity. A daunting prospect. How will you tell the people of North Sentinel Island?<\/p>\n\n\n

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The biggest lesson I took away from these readings was to not give up when oral sources redact their recollections. It need not be the end of the world, because as Tucker has demonstrated, there are creative ways to write around the edges of a redaction. I think Tucker\u2019s later article would have worked very well as a chapter or epilogue within Swing Shift<\/em>, which makes me wonder why she did not include something like it. Was she concerned that even a peripheral discussion of what Tucker\u2019s oral sources didn\u2019t <\/em>say about their sexuality might complicate the publishing of her book? Then she changed her mind? Is it okay to share summarized versions of redacted oral material, so long as identifying information is removed and exact quotes are not used?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAlthough most practitioners now see oral history as a useful tool, much remains to be done,\u201d declared Rick Halpern in 1998, \u201cnot simply in terms of restoring the experience of various neglected groups to their place within working class history but also in moving toward a greater degree of theoretical awareness and methodological sophistication.\u201d Sherrie … Continue reading Week 5: Oral History in Jazz and Swing<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37370,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/cbehmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/cbehmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/cbehmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/cbehmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37370"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/cbehmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/cbehmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/cbehmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/cbehmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/cbehmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/cbehmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}