David Hajdu - Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics and Culture

David Hajdu has described his first two works as “bookends.” They are, respectively, a study of the most prominent music of the first half of the 20th Century – jazz – via Duke Ellington and his long time collaborator Billy Strayhorn; and its companion piece, an extensive analysis of Bob Dylan, a towering figure comparable to Ellington.

In his third book Hajdu examined the comic book, an indigenous art form that prefigured what would become a thriving and defiant youth oriented culture. The unprecedented popularity of horror and crime comics in the 1950’s among the nation’s post-war youth provoked a near hysteria so pervasive that there were more than fifty acts of legislation banning or restricting the sale of various kinds of comic books, televised Congressional hearings, and years of book burnings by parents, teachers, churches, and children.

Hajdu, an Associate Professor of Journalism at Columbia University, has been writing on all sorts of music and popular culture for thirty years. Besides his monthly column for The New Republic, he’s been a contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and other publications. His latest book is Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture, a collection of essays, many published previously.

Having written about a diverse range of popular music and the comic book, a preamble to a cultural revolution, David Hajdu delves into the lives of the artists who mirrored a rapidly changing society. His breadth of coverage is extraordinary. We meet the superstars of yesterday – Billy Eckstine, Richard Rodgers, Sammy Davis, and Dinah Washington, and those of today – Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Kanye West, and Josh Groban, along with many who were part of the long transition, Bobby Darin, Brian Wilson, John Lennon, and Joni Mitchell.

Billy Eckstine, for example, was once the most popular male vocalist in the country, more successful than Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby, with a dozen top ten hits during one three year span. He led a groundbreaking orchestra whose members included Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Art Blakey, and Sarah Vaughn. Hajdu says: “He defied the rules, changed them, and became a new kind of role model for generations of black singers.

Sammy Davis, Jr. gained acceptance as a popular African- American performer due in part to the groundwork laid by Eckstine. Davis, bred solely to perform, played six musical instruments, danced, sang, and possessed an exceptional skill as an impressionist. But, desperate for mainstream acceptance, he had little sense of his own identity. “He could do everything as anyone except himself; Davis was obsessed with proving his worth through performance.”

Whatever insecurities Richard Rodgers may have felt were not evident in his music. He created a huge catalog of songs for the theater, first with Lorenz Hart, later partnering with Oscar Hammerstein. According to David Hajdu, Hart insisted that he and Rodgers write “something of value.” The goal was reached many times over, the team producing “so many pieces of wracking beauty.” But Richard Rodgers was “a man with dark, hidden passions. His benign façade may have been a disguise after all.” He drank to excess and experienced severe bouts of depression. The negative aspects of his personality were concealed from the public, emerging only in the “wrenching music” familiar to generations now irreversibly welded to the American Song Book.

For readers not exposed to David Hajdu’s writing before, Heroes and Villains can be an excellent introduction. His refreshing insights into the creative process and celebrity is illuminating. The broad survey depicts decades of well known performers, illustrating the person behind the persona. After reading this entertaining collection, readers will have a better understanding of what it is that makes a star, and an ability to imagine which of today’s supernovas will be remembered fifty years from today.