Duncan Heining's Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers, British Jazz, 1960–1975 is part of the ongoing Popular Music History series published by Equinox and edited by Alyn Shipton of the Royal Academy of Music. It follows on from the forthcoming An Unholy Row: British Jazz, 1945–1960 by Dave Gelly. The stated aims of this series are to ‘challenge established orthodoxies in popular music studies, examine the formation and dissolution of canons, interrogate histories of genres, focus on previously neglected forms, or engage in archaeologies of popular music’ (p. ii). Other volumes focus on fresh areas of study such as Shipton's own biography of Scottish trumpeter and author Ian Carr, Peter Ind's work on overlooked jazz pianist and pedagogue Lenny Tristano, and Rob Palmer's monograph on the influential and innovative bass sideman Paul Chambers.

While other popular music genres and subgenres such as rock and roll, psychedelia and ska became synonymous with progressive cultural changes during the 1960s, British jazz has generally been portrayed as ‘at best a side show’ (p. 2) at this time. Heining looks beyond familiar tropes such as footage of brass and woodwind players accompanying the Aldermaston marchers, Ronnie Scott's Soho club, and genre friction between traditional and modern jazz enthusiasts. In so doing, his work attempts a laudably holistic account of its subject that acknowledges the full range of causality and consequences involved and locates British jazz firmly with its ‘broader social, political, economic and cultural context’ (p. 2). His methodology employs a similar rationale to Ian Macdonald's essay ‘Fabled foursome, disappearing decade’ in Revolution in The Head. Both works share similar theses, whereby to understand The Beatles and/or British jazz it is necessary to understand the 1960s. However, Heining's work is thematic rather than chronological; topics such as class, education, race, immigration, tradition, innovation, gender, sexuality and drugs are introduced using exemplars in the form of significant events, protagonists, performances and recordings. By such means this era is portrayed as a period when British jazz ‘came of age and began to develop an identity of its own that was distinct from the original African-American template’ (p. 3).

Heining's methodological outlook, post-Marxism, constitutes a useful framework: ‘to a significant extent, events within society, including those of political and cultural activity, are dependent on economic relationships. Specifically, a view of class is both implicit and explicit throughout the text. This focuses not on status or wealth … but on the dynamic relationship between individuals and groups with respect to the dominant mode of production’ (p. 2). Heining subsequently cites and incorporates Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Antonio Gramsci. He sidesteps reductivism by referencing Roland Barthes, Thomas Khun, Abraham Maslow, Jacques Ranciere and others. Given this book's manifest ambition to provide something approaching a definitive analysis of British jazz during this period it might have been useful to offer more than a passing reference to Jacques Attali and his Noise thesis. In a work whose focus is firmly set at the point where cultural production meets economic activity, Fredric Jameson might also have offered a useful touchstone. It is intriguing to imagine how later topics such as British jazz and the avant-garde might have been further illuminated by research that engages with theorists such as these. Here Nicholas Gebhardt (Reference Gebhardt2001) has provided an interesting benchmark for analysis from comparable perspectives in relation to American jazz.

Nevertheless, Heining's obvious familiarity with the back story of British jazz engenders a compelling exploration of this subject. In a discussion of how the genre was overshadowed by rock and roll he catalogues popular musicians from the era who cut their first chops vamping with the exotic, lively and unpredictable rhythms of jazz, which was easy to learn but also incorporated a powerful improvisatory ethic. As John Entwhistle recalls: ‘We were all interested in traditional jazz at the time … Kenny Ball, Ken Colyer, the Chris Barber Band, that kind of stuff’ (p. 7). Skiffle, commonly associated with American rock and roll, was actually more connected to the British trad scene. Banjo player Lonnie Donegan would sing Lead Belly numbers in the interval between Ken Colyer sets – even his transformative world-wide hit ‘Rock Island Line’ was ‘recorded during a break from a Chris Barber session’ (p. 20).

Heining's analysis of the ideological divide between trad and modern jazz is equally strong. This, he argues, did not reflect age disparities (revivalists were often younger than their modernist rivals) but was actually a by-product of nationwide changes in education following the 1944 Butler Education Act (p. 59). Heining situates the genre conflict entirely in the perception of the audience by producing evidence to refute the notion of any musical differences between performers themselves. Many players engaged in the free interchange of personnel between revivalist and modern jazz groups in an atmosphere with ‘as much mutual respect as suspicion between musicians in the two camps’ (p. 23), given the shared nature of their ultimate source material (p. 25). He concludes that ‘the real story of British jazz in the 1960s is actually much more complex and far more interesting’ (p. 5) than the traditional binary assessment of the revivalist-versus-modern divide, a paradigm he considers to be overly simplistic and not a narrative that accurately reflects the lived experience of participants. In the first of many overt criticisms of George Mackay's work, Heining interprets Mackay's analysis of the 1960 August Bank Holiday ‘Battle of Beaulieu’ as a typical example of such a misreading. Class conflict in the form of local teddy boys (p. 53) was, he argues, the real cause of disturbances on that day – rather than trad/mod rivalries.

Heining also seeks to challenge any assumptions that post-war British trad and modern jazz can be seen as a derivative reproduction of its African American forbear, arguing that even ‘from the outset it was much more than that’ (p. 91). Once again he censures Mackay for underestimating the strength of the British jazz scene prior to the arrival of key influential South African musicians in the 1960s. The Blue Notes may have had a significant impact on UK jazz, Heining argues, but they ‘came onto a scene that had already been created and was already moving in new directions’ (p. 122). His broad knowledge of the genre incorporates innovative work by composers and performers such as Kenny Graham, Johnny Dankworth, The Rendell-Carr Quintet and Michael Garrick. British jazz, Heining concludes, was simply not as conservative as MacKay implies. It was clearly at a different stage of development from American jazz – but it also functioned in an environment where a chasm between innovation and recording severely limited the careers of popular and innovative artists such as Group Sounds Five and Mike Taylor. Here, and elsewhere, the tone of Heining's refutation of Mackay seemed overly personal: ‘We may note the anachronistic use of the term “neo-conservative” here, but it is more sad that it is hard to find evidence in his book of a deep knowledge of or a wide listening to British jazz of the sixties or any other era’ (p. 92). ‘Sadly for McKay, one would answer his questions by referring him to Issue 2 of The Wire magazine …’ (p. 195). More assiduous editorial input might have helped here. It could also have ironed out some of the book's typographical errors.

A refreshingly sober viewpoint in a chapter on drugs and alcohol resists the temptation to romanticise this destructive and devastating social issue. However, there is a long history of sociologically and statistically robust research into this subject, from that of Charles Winick onward, that might have been more thoroughly referenced. Instead, Heining's preference for unsupported anecdotal evidence tends to offer clichés such as ‘arguably, British jazzer's main drug of choice has always been beer, followed closely by distilled alcohol of various kinds. In spot number three, we have the jazz woodbine, also known as frass, hash, Mary Jane … heroin – smack, horse, gear, brown …’ (p. 183) that don't really do justice to this subject. The themes of race and gender are, however, immaculately presented and researched. Heining offers a valuable account of some under-recorded and under-represented musicians who faced considerable cultural and social obstacles. Sections on more widely recognised names such as Joe Harriott and Cleo Laine are supported by extensive email and telephone interviews with veteran practitioners. I wonder whether assertions such as ‘The solos from Parker in “Do It”, Pukwana on “Restless” and “Daveshi's Dream” … are magnificent’ (p. 269, my italics) might have been augmented by musicological evidence employing some elements of theory and/or notation. Nevertheless, Heining demonstrates a nuanced appreciation of the complex relationship between the British and American genres – ‘however much they might identify with that aspect of American culture, there was at other levels a rejection of much that the USA stood for – not least, its foreign policy and rampant consumerism’ (p. 311) – and the leading role played by modern jazz in the UK avant-garde.

Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers largely succeeds in its stated aims. Heining vigorously challenges established orthodoxies in jazz studies in a thoroughly researched volume that would sit well on the shelves of any university library. It is a valuable addition to Equinox's Popular Music History series – maybe a final volume might cover British jazz in the 1980s, 1990s and beyond?