Books for the News, Music

Patrick Burke on the Birth of Cool

jacket imageNow that his Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street is out, UCP author and Washington University professor Patrick Burke stopped by the studios of KWUR 90.3 FM to talk jazz on Kemper Art Waves, a bi-weekly radio show that connects St. Louis arts and visual culture to the Washington University community and beyond.
The conversation focuses on the coolest of them all, Miles Davis, and features Professor Burke’s analysis of the term “cool.” Whether discussing St. Louis’s native son (Davis was born in Alton, Illinois, and later moved to East St. Louis) or the two-block stretch of 52nd Street in Manhattan that was the center of the jazz world in the mid-1930s and the late ’40s (as he does in his book), Professor Burke proves to be one cool cat himself. Check out the podcast of this session, and the next time you are in St. Louis, drop by the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and say hello to former Press exhibits manager Kimberly Singer!