stripped naked and had their clothes burned in front of them . There ’ s no direct connection between the two episodes , beyond the fact that they happened in what is usually regarded by outsiders as a quiet and sleepy city , but they point to an undercurrent of violence and prejudice that ran through urban Oklahoma . If Chet Baker was not directly affected by it – though he was well aware of the Tulsa massacre and at least once spoke of it in flat-voiced horror – it made a powerful impact on his parents and seniors and was part of the legacy that the family hoped to leave behind when they made the move to California and , for Chet , into a world where not being black brought other issues .
The question of race hovers in any discussion of jazz , and always problematically . In the 1980s , European musicians like trumpeter Franz Koglmann redirected interest and serious attention to some of the white stars of early jazz , Bix Beiderbecke , Frankie Trumbauer , and others , who had tended to be either lionised without much attention to their music – far more people know the Bix story than actively listen to him – or else dismissed as second-order outliers in the development of the music . Chet drew as much from that line as he did from bebop , but as reputations were shuffled and in some cases cancelled , the observed influence began to fade and , latterly , Chet seemed like a trumpet player who had simply turned his back on the dominant form of the time , bebop . It ’ s a picture that needs refocussing .
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