Parenting & Family Quote by Stan Kenton

Kenton is doing something sly here: he frames the criticism as a kind of intellectual pose, then counters it with a scene so physical you can almost feel the slush on the boots. “Wise boys” isn’t just a jab; it’s a way of demoting the tastemakers to a club of talkers who confuse volume with emptiness because they’re listening for the wrong proof. He’s not arguing theory, he’s producing witnesses.

The intent is defensive, but not apologetic. Kenton isn’t claiming his music is subtle; he’s claiming subtlety isn’t the only legitimate measure. “Loud, blatant and that’s all” is the classic dismissal of big, brassy modernism as mere spectacle. His comeback is to treat spectacle as meaning: if hundreds of kids will drive “a hundred miles through the snow,” the music is doing real work in their lives. That’s not a review, it’s a social fact.

The subtext is an early map of the culture war between critics and audiences, between jazz as elite craft and jazz as mass adrenaline. Kenton’s bandleader persona leaned into size, impact, and a kind of postwar ambition; this quote reads like a manifesto for an America where feeling counts as a credential. “Faces of the kids” and “ecstasy all their own” makes the audience the art’s missing instrument. He’s saying: you can call it noise from the balcony, but down at the bandstand it becomes a communal high, a temporary republic of sound.