La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Swing Under the Nazis

From Library Journal Zwerin is a trombonist and former jazz critic for the Village Voice. His stories of Gestapo jazz fans who ignored the official Nazi condemnation of jazz, a gypsy guitarist's nimble sidestepping of Nazi control, etc. show the vitality of jazz as an expression of freedom under the Nazi occupation. This is not a history, however, but a journal of personal discovery in which Zwerin interviews surviving German musicians and jazz fans and tosses in an account of his trip to South Africa to show the parallel of its oppressive government to that of the Nazis. "Sticking to the `the subject' is bad form," Zwerin maintains, but trivial details of his life, grumbling about the lack of fun in today's jazz, and cynical generalizations about the character of Germans intrude on otherwise fascinating material. William Brockman, Drew Univ. Lib., Madison, N.J.Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.