Groove, Bang and Jive Around

Despite decades of notoriety as one of the “filthiest books in the world,” Steve Cannon’s first and only piece of longform fiction, Groove, Bang and Jive Around, has hardly been read since first being published in 1969. In the words of American poet Ishmael Reed, Cannon’s debut work inspired a generation by breaking with staid literary modernism. Its publication “signaled a resurfacing of the irreverent, underground trickster tradition of Black orature.” This erotic farce follows Annette, a teenage runaway, from the outhouse of a New Orleans juke joint to the psychedelic paradise of Oo-bla-dee—an idyllic country possibly founded by Dizzy Gillespie—by way of bacchanalian voodoo ritual. As Ophelia Press, its original publisher, wrote, Groove, Bang and Jive Around is an absolute necessity “for everyone who wants to know where and how the action takes place in Sex and Soul.”
Steve Cannon (1935–2019) moved to New York City in 1962 and joined the Umbra Workshop. He worked with and was a mentor to many artists and writers. In 1990 he founded the magazine and gallery A Gathering of the Tribes in New York City’s East Village.