The Return of Jazz Shtick-by Steve Provizer

Cymbal-Head

Why did Louis Armstrong's standing in the jazz scene plummet during his "Hello Dolly" era, as if he had not been The Man? The reason may be that 1964 was about the time that jazz lost its sense of humor. Not its sly, oblique sense of humor, but the acceptance of a broad style that included a slick dance and a straight-up belly-laugh. The change didn't happen with the Boppers, although it started to shift. Diz had one foot in the old school, one in the new. It was still acceptable for jazz musicians to sing, dance and entertain. Still hip, but increasingly less so.

To some extent, starting in the late 1950's, the entertainment part of a jazz presentation was farmed out to a new wave of comedians-L. Bruce, M. Sahl, B.Newhart, S. Berman, W. Allen, Nichols and May. The politics of the era made escapism a dirty word. We all took ourselves quite seriously.

The reason I'm on this jag is that I recently saw videos of the group "Mostly Other People Do The Killing" (MOPDtK). This is a group about which there is much to say. However, there was one particular video which featured drummer Kevin Shea doing just about everything to a drum set except eat it. And that's probably in the works. This is essentially the first time comedy and jazz have successfully been combined since the days of Pete Barbuti playing the piano with his nose and Lenny Bruce tapping on a cymbal during "To is a preposition, come is a verb;" and Lenny's bit was telling, but not funny.

In the video, deadpan all the while, Shea sticks an odd-shaped piece of paper on his nose and proceeds to straddle the drums, hump them, bump them, milk them, tangle with them, move them, disassemble them, pratfall over them and use them as a staging area for a finger puppet show. At one point, it looks like Laurel and Hardy moving a piano, but with the bass drum standing in for Ollie. The audience seems too intimidated by the 'seriousness' of the context to respond as I did-laugh out loud. It's just not done. Mr. Wooster.

After all this, Shea moves the band into a fiery "Night In Tunisia." His is a gutsy, funny and focused performance. I know, performance art, yadda-yadda, but this is essentially shtick and a little shtick never hurt anyone.

All Hail the Jazz Prodigy

Oy. Why do jazz writers love prodigies so? Can this be a deeply-seated musical inferiority complex rearing its ugly head? "We stole one from the classical boyos"? "You see! Our music is so great that even the prodigies dig it!" Shoot. If ever a genre did not have to prove that the genius of its practitioners unfolds early on, it is jazz. Yes, early jazz professors were often weaned in academic environments like Storyville, where the student body tended to dress in negligees rather than mortarboards. Mozart may not have been part of the bordello curriculum, but as teenagers, Joplin, Blake, Bolden, Armstrong, et al made as much music as Bizet, Piatagorsky or Scriabin; probably more, as they lived lives not bounded by the constraints of the music conservatory and the Royal Court. This early blossoming has continued throughout jazz history (go crazy, commentors). Jazz is essentially a meritocracy, but this merit is not measured strictly in virtuosic terms. Craft and emotional expressiveness are constantly in balance. And from where I stand, if you lack either, you can play the music, but in the end, your name will be writ in water. The prodigy thing is a litmus test for the way we listen. It tests the idea that music has deeper resonance for the spirit. So, before you trot out the latest wunderkind who could have been a concert pianist, but chose jazz instead, really listen to what he or she brings to the table. It's not enough to play the right notes. They must have weight. And, as Louis said, you gotta love each one.

There's Two Kinds of Jazz People...

-Those who care that Dolphy plays in/out of tune and those who don't. -Those who think a player from a given city has a "sound" from that city and... -Those who skip the Mal Waldron solos and... -Those who admire Wynton's playing and hate what he says and... -Those who think the piano is a percussion instrument and... -Those who lack the moral scruples to create a post like this after creating this post and... -Those who think that bastards can't play beautiful music and... -Those who just collect 78's and those who also play them. -Those who lost Trane in '58, or in '60, or in '63, or in '66; those who lost him in the reverse order, and those who never lost him. Like most people, depending on the day, I am both/all kinds. Addenda welcome.

The Loss of the Targeted Hang

My last post bemoaned the disappearance of local places to buy horns. Another aspect of moving instrumental sales online was the demise of places where you could do what you might call a "targeted hang." That is, a place where musicians could indulge themselves with some serious checking in and screwing off, while convincing themselves they were actually getting something done-fixing a dicty spit valve, re-corking a pad, getting a dent banged out, or looking at horns you couldn't afford. Buying a bottle of valve oil could take two hours. These were all excellent excuses for going in to sniff out who was in town, gawk at your improvisational betters, or simply think to yourself "yea, there are actually a bunch of people in this world going through the same crap that I am."


Night clubs are different. Institutions like Berklee are different. In fact, there were never many of these places in Boston, at least as far as I knew: Tottle's for mouthpieces, Rayburn's for everything, JDS (Jack's Drum Shop) School of Music and John Coffey's indescribable studio.


There's a lot happening on the blog, so I'll keep it short and come back later with a look at my little Stevie self waiting for a trumpet lesson, watching the entire trombone section of the BBC orchestra get loaded on John Coffey's booze. Talk about early inspiration...

Pawn Shops and the (Jazz) Underclasses

One measure of the way things have been going for the jazz underclasses and the working poor in general over the last 20 years is to look at what's happened to pawn shops.


Pawn shops are like tidal wetlands. You take estuaries for granted until a weather catastrophe hits and your split-level gets washed out to sea. Look at New Orleans.


In the same way, when financial storms hit, pawnbrokers have been there to absorb some of the blow. They have allowed people to drop off property and either get ready cash, or pick it back up when flusher times return. With their disappearance, the financial tides have gotten rougher.


Jazz musicians have always been active users of the service. Sometimes a visit to the local pawnbroker could get you bus money back home when the tour went bust. In the case of Bird and many others, it was money that ended up in a dealer's pocket, but when you need a fix...




For musicians in less dire straits, keeping an eye open for a horn that might work just a little better-and what musician doesn't-pawn shops were the place to go. Over the years, I have bought a Schilke, a Benge, and a Paris Selmer-all cheap-at Cambridge pawn shops.


Unfortunately, in the space of a few ill-conceived years, Cambridge got rid of rent control, turned Harvard Square into a suburban mall and decided to close all its pawn shops; too scrofulous. Boston has relegated its pawn shops to 'the wrong side of town' and these carry almost no instruments. They're all about the bling.


This leaves only 2 alternatives here in Boston: pay retail at the one remaining music store that carries some used horns, or go online. Going online means you don't even have a chance to hold the horn and blow it.


As far as I can see, the online market is really skewed. The eBay trade has created a false "Antiques Roadshow" mentality wherein certain horns acquire a reputation based as much on "collectability" as on playability. Most playing musicians are not about collecting. We want to be able to go someplace, grab a few horns, go in the back room, blow for a few hours and either find something we like or not. If we do, a musician's price is what we want-and should-be able to pay, not a collector's price. Can I get a witness?

Then, there's the fact that in the few pawn shops left that carry instruments, all you can find are guitars. But that's another story.

R.I.P. Bill Dixon.

Summer always seems to take away the elderly and this one decided it wanted Bill Dixon. I can't think of much more beyond that right now.


Let this space be his and more will come as we who were touched by him gather our thoughts.


Let's begin with Stanley. And Stephen who adds,"Visit Bill's facebook page for photos and remembrances. Leave comments, please."


 Stef shines as does Derek Taylor and Mr. Kelsey was out of the gate early in the old blogroll. Ben Young, as ever, more than does his part as does Mr. Bynum.


And Mr. Dalachinsky made a work last night.


JOY SPRING (riffin on Clifford)-         
for Bill Dixon


 1.
the moon makes its own music
tonite
somewhere
music that seeks to constantly
interrupt itself
a piece of something already a part
of some thing
a grain of flavor
fading into grainless nerve endings
fractious parcels
sailing through the window
there
a view / a circumference
a broken piece of
volume
in the magazine fill the bucket
here
a rebel walk
i give to you  / you give to me
whatever you give to me
tune yer ears
bowpie –ring oh the seem real
blue pink rose
this new street we’ll call it
EXTRA PLACE.

2.
nite displays itself like a slain lover
whose bench was once a tree
slain lover cries / exclaims
I YEARN FOR BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPES
there beneath the awning

yawning light
water falls  -  grapes
crush in the stomach
wine is born
i’m not sure where i am or
for how long  (i’ll love you)
some rain in the once empty chambers
of my bowels
all weird & strictly romantic.
3.
i’m a lucky guy
& can tenderly dream of
sunset eyes
knowing nothing about books or
prayers   negative values
the symmetry of youth
desired placement
optimum opacity & ghost images

i am in the middle of a straight line
puttering  away
exposed to the dark rocks
bright metal
dark trees
against an overcast sky
& the white-against-black mood
of the music
blind to color yet able to visualize
history’s vanishing letters while
        beholding agitation.

4.
the man from the forest
weaves
a clock of hammers
eggs tick the promise of how-good-it-re
ally-is aways
bell/wind of whispered flutters
echoessssssss plurallllls
a sense of patches
grand mar rocks the steepness
& you lie there
old & young / thinkers in a story of…
enjoyin yerselves
devoted to the limitations of the scale
& how to triumphantly overturn
IT.


dalachinsky   6/17/10 

Jazz Blog-itudes

Some jazz blogs are straight ahead educational: "Download transcribed solos by Brownie, K.D. Miles, etc." God bless these people.


Most jazz blogs do the work of 'exposing' the music-"The Fearless Fosdyke Four will be at the Bluze and Brew Tavern/Festival/Restaurant this weekend. Don't miss it." Or: "You'll want to check out the FFF's latest CD release on the Gasoid label, available at Amazon/ Walmart/CD Baby/iTunes..." It works better if they post audio or video of the group in question.


Similar blogs, but with more critique, give you a blow by blow of concerts or cd's. These are almost always self-selecting for material the reviewer likes, so seldom is heard a discouraging word. This is often the home of The Top Ten List (see my other post on this menace).


Then, there are interview-oriented sites: "When last heard of, 33 years ago, Desmond LaBrea was on the road with the Jules Verne Aquanauts. We discovered him making baignets in Paduka and asked him why he left the world of riffing for the world of sifting..."


In the blogs above, there is often room for exploring jazz esoterica, i.e.: How many jazz groups have been named after lesser tributaries of the Snake River? I love that stuff.

Then, there are jazz blogs that are more 'meta.' They ask questions and may suggest solutions: "What's up with jazz? Where is the audience? Where's the money going?" "Let's do a Jazz IPO." It is in this arena that the rough-and-tumble lurking in the hearts of jazz people sometimes breaks out. I find the level of emotional engagement here seductive and enjoy this arena. This is where we get closest to experiencing personal agendas, but mostly, the emotion remains subtext, and infuses formal discussions on the redistribution of money, etc...


I have had a long musical life, marked with some pleasure, some pain and, at this point, a feeling of having read the same newspaper headlines over and over. I think this experience helps me sniff out magical thinking. Others see me as cynic. Both views are correct. We're all subject to the vagaries of age, temperament, career success, sex life-It's the human thing and, to the extent that the jazz blog world reflects this ungodly mess, it is better for it.


Some say the old battle between the Beboppers and the Moldy Figs was bad for jazz. Don't know. I think it was a reflection of the emotional importance that the music once had in many people's lives. Most homicide victims fall to the hand of someone they love, or once loved. By the same token, you're probably more likely to jump into swirling currents for the adored one. I'm not sure how many jazz bloggers I'd take the plunge for, but that's another story.

We'll Take the High Road

No one seems happy about the fact that consciousness-altering substances have been at the center of American popular music for the past 100 years or so-and have probably played a role in 'classical' music as well-no doubt our scholarly respondents will fill in the details.


The Silent Majority (still a great expression-thanks, Spiro) doesn't care for this. It represents a lifestyle that is-choose one or more: amoral, immoral, loathsome, sinful and, no doubt, too evocative of the Shadow Within... We won't dwell on the fact that bourbon also does a pretty good job of altering consciousness.


The Protectors of High Culture don't like it because it undermines their trope about art as direct, unmediated communication with the gods. Their Romantic Heroes must burn up all libidinous, social and political frustrations in the promethean fire of their work; not in a hash pipe.



But that just doesn't seem to be the way things actually work.


One single example: the universally loved Louis Armstrong smoked pot daily. This is, on its face, illustration enough of the tangled, unsightly web of cultural contradictions surrounding the issue.


I'm not about defending or attacking musicians getting high (as a guy looking for a job, at least that's my cover). I'm about removing the moral overlay, the cant and hypocrisy; recognizing that some of the greatest musical improvisation has been fueled by drugs and going from there.


I admit it is a tangled web. As a dad, I see the traps here; the fear of admitting you did what you probably don't want them to do-at least not yet. Probably no 'civilization' has had the courage to overtly display its propensity toward, even reliance on, intoxication. In fact, it seems to me that the creation of (narcotized) ritual may have been the most useful way ever found by a society to finesse the problem. "Don't bother daddy now, Junior. He's trying to see god. It's important for the crops."


I've always bemoaned the Western lack of cultural ritual outside the sanitized versions presented by organized religion. It's interesting to think that our musical 'icons' have always sought the space-spiritual space to me-that is made accessible by consciousness alteration. But shhh. Best keep it to yourself.

Findings of the Institute

In 2008, the Rex Stewart/Jabbo Smith Meme and Trope Institute undertook a multiple year study of the increasingly distant proxemics, gestural and spatial relationship between the jazz performing cohort (expanding) and the jazz audience (contracting). This is a précis of our findings.

The Institute initially proceeded under the supposition that the jazz performer-audience relationship could be viewed through the lens of the larger cultural zeitgeist, i.e., economic, sociological and political pressures. However, no pattern emerged that would allow a viable corollary thesis to be formulated.

The second supposition was that changing musical patterns could explain the phenomenon. However, bitonality, ‘free’ playing, the fragmentation of musical forms, etc., while somewhat disruptive, could not be definitively cited.

Eventually, Institute interdepartmental collaboration led us to undertake a media-centric analysis and it was this approach that yielded conclusive results. To wit: photographic and cinematic evidence showed that the disparity and disaffection cited above could be attributed to the rise of the bad jazz moustache and the general decline of the jazz musician tonsure.

It was noted that during the era of increased synchronization between jazz audiences and performers-c.1920-1945, few musicians of stature sported ‘beavers’ of any kind. A profusion of moustaches was noted, with good examples furnished by Mr. Berigan, Mr. Hawkins, Mr. Prez and many others. However, the nattiness and subtlety of these ‘lady ticklers’ began to see a precipitous post-WW II decline and a new crop of facial hair, more akin to ‘crumb catchers,’ supplanted what had once been modeled along crisp, carefully groomed lines.

The final phases of the schism began in the 1950's when, to use the vernacular, “all hell broke loose.” (The idiosyncratic facial hair outcroppings of Thelonius Monk preceded the 1950’s, but the Institute deemed Mr. Monk an anomalous factor, much like the ‘free radical’ of the chemist). Research showed that ‘parts’ in the hair, once firmly established through the use of Brylcreem and other hair pomades, began to wander erratically from side to side.

So too, at this point, did the goatee, Van dyck and ‘soul patch’make their appearance under the 'beatnik' rubric and spread like fungus (eukaryotic organism). Mr. Ornette Coleman, first photographed wearing a conservative sweater and non-obtrusive ‘stash,’ exploded in random hirsuteness (c.f. R.R. Kirk at right).

In some ways, the transformations of Mr. Sonny Rollins-“Mohawk” haircut, followed by shaved head-marked the definitive point at which the proxemics, gestural and spatial relationship between jazz performers and audience made a final disengagement.

The entire final report of The Rex Stewart/Jabbo Smith Meme and Trope Institute can be seen here.

Next Study:Digital Metronomes: Threat or Menace?

Europe, Taxes and All That jazz

Reading about the impending demise of the JazzBaltica festival, and noting the European allusion in Matt's recent posting, it struck me how unexamined is this business of European jazz subsidy-and how seemingly anomalous. What's actually behind their willingness to lay out tax spondulics? The meager explanation we've been fed all along is that Europeans are simply "more cultured" than we Americans, care more about the arts, etc. Come on, people, does this 19th century explanation ring true to you? Not to me.

Yes, there is a long history here. James Reese Europe's Hellfighters made a big splash all the way back in WW I (they liked his name or his music?). Louis, Bechet and others cut a wide early swath. Europe acquired a reputation as a less racist environment and some small percentage-especially black musicians, have chosen to stay there. It was the French who created serious jazz criticism and historiography. No doubt, there's a certain amount of hubris inhering in all that for Europeans. Whether it's completely justifiable or not-well...........>

All that's on the one hand.


On the other, I've been over there a lot as, no doubt, many readers of this blog have. I played music in the streets, subways and clubs, hung out, did some recording, etc. and I just didn't see or experience much difference between the way Europeans relate to the consumption or production of music and the way Americans do.


If you're looking at aesthetics, the devil knows the popular music over there is at least as bad as ours is-maybe worse. Bravo to them for taking more lunch and vacation time to chill, but like us, people spend most of their time thinking about food, booze, sex and money (the order varies).


This is not just idle speculation. The foundation is cracking and we need to do some real analysis before the edifice simply evaporates.

Why did this tax trickle-down happen for so long? What fed the machine and greased the wheels? The weight of history may have played some part, but what kind of business/government linkages were necessary and how were they forged? If national self-image was a driving force, how do jazz promoters leverage that in US marketing? If movable feasts seemed preferable to permanent Temples of High Culture, how did the money flow to one and not the other?

Good answers are hard to come by, but they can only come after the right questions have been unearthed and asked.

Top Ten Reasons Why "Best of" Lists Suck

The "Best Of" List Industry continues to grind out the sausages. Downbeat Magazine's recent listing of the 25 Favorite Big Band Albums is not the worst example, but it did snap this camel's back. Call it vain, call it ironic, but in an attempt to undermine this international conspiracy, I offer my own top ten list:


1. Usually there's no commentary at all to validate a listing. If there is, it doesn't.
2. Hyper-selectivity is anathema to discovery. Stumbling through a thicket of sound leads to real discovery, not following a road map.
3. Listing is something you do when you walk back to your cabin after drinking to forget that the ship is about to capsize.
4. Inclusiveness doesn't work. The more people you ask to help produce a list, the more the juice is sucked out.
5. The Net's about self-aggrandizement; no one argues with that. Can't ya be a little more subtle about it?
6. It may be possible that someone could go to a friend's house for a listening session and say "Play me your top 10 Zoot Sim's records." OK, but there are so many more interesting ways to go from one side to the next that if you actually did spend the night with these 10 albums, I'd recommend seeking treatment for OCDC.
7. By reifying the 'experts,' lists decrease, they don't increase, the flow of actual communication. Trust your friend's musical advice, not a stranger online.
8. At least keep the list short. The larger the list, the harder it falls.
9. Getting on such lists only misleads musicians into thinking their gigs will improve.
10. You've probably stopped reading this list by now, which only goes to prove my point.

Checkin' in With Mr. Shipp.

Jeff Schlanger. Music Witness.

1. How has the Vision Festival helped over the years to cohere the core community of artists through good times and bad? 

"I don’t know if a group of musicians cohering is the right way to put it-for every artists music must rise or fall on its own merits not on a scene. But the Vision Festival definitely gave a high visibility platform to a scene that had been ignored previously. People are slow to forget but in the 1980s there were two main currents in the media-the marsalis school and the whole bogus back to the tradition psuedo movement of young black boys and a kind of post Zorn school of white boys. 

That is not meant as an affront to Zorn-who is a friend of mine and someone I respect- or to any of those musicians many who I adore- but I am just trying to delineate a certain thing. Just remember William has been on the scene since the 1970s and did not really start recording until the mid 1990s. So William and some of the people around him where basically considered a bunch of fucking insurgent black punks on the lower east side that wanted to play free jazz by the jazz media back then.

Around the late 1980s a Swedish record label Silkheart Records was the first label who really started recording this scene as a scene--- of course Bob Rusch and cadence records had recorded some of us before but that is a different stream within the business his contribution to the whole thing we can deal with later—but Silkheart was one of the first people to even acknowledge that there was a vibrant scene here. 

Then you have people from the punk rock and alternative music world who started to profess their love for jazz-like Thurston and Henry Rollins etc etc and we were the people they gravitated towards which gave us a lot of visibility in different types of media.

Then around that same time the Vision Festival developed –it was a new extension to the Sound Unity Festival and other events that Patricia and William had done in the 1980s. So all this together added up to a specific core group of musicians getting an international profile. But just remember that before all this coalesced every one had been working very hard for years in a sort of void.

The Vision Festival is not 100 percent responsible for this-Charles Gayle and David S. Ware had their own mojo and logic of their career development happening on a separate track-I had thrust myself into the middle of the jazz establishment as a huge antagonistic force and started really getting notice because of the aplomb that I could do that with –plus my distinctive style etc etc-but the Vision Fest was a big part of the mix."


2. What were some memorable moments for you in prior years?

"There are so many great moments over the years in the Vision Festival to pick some above others would not be fair—but one of my favorite things was not at the Vision Festival proper but when Rai Radio in Italy wanted to import the Vision Festival to Rome and they did a three day festival called New York Is Now of Vision Festival artists. That was really magical. All the sets where great from what I remember. I really enjoyed a solo piano set by Dave Burrell. That set elucidated the connection Monk’s style has to the avant garde and thrust Burrell into the position of the one who truly understands that real estate."

3. How did the small ensemble with Marshall Allen come into being?

"There was a festival in San Fran at Yoshis-they wanted me out there with a a trio but not specifically with my working trio –so we brainstormed to come up with an interesting 3rd person and Marshall was on my mind because he had been honored at the Vision Festival that year and when I brought him up they said yea-lets do it."

4. What were some highlights of your work with Mr. Allen?

"Well it's a trio-me-Joe Morris on bass and Marshall of course on reeds-there are only 2 highlights-they are the two projects we have done so far-the cd on Rogue Arts-’’Night Logic’’ and the gig we did in San Fran . We have an upcoming gig this summer at George Weins Newport Jazz Fest. This trio is really magic. For me to play with Marshall is beyond the beyond for I grew up worshiping the whole Sun Ra trip. But Marshall is such a natural player and he has no trip and no ego in his playing—it is actually almost impossible to fathom—he can make anything work.The energy and the taste that he plays with take me out every time I hear him."

5. How have the poets, visual artists and others contributed to the experience?

"Well Patricia’s whole vision with the festival is multi-discipline- and is meant to include dance-for she is a dancer-poetry and visual art. There has obviously been loads of collaborations throughout human history between different art forms and I don’t know what I can add or say that makes it any different here. It does bring the whole community together though. I personally love working with dancers and poets and I love having nice visual art around me when I play. But the community thing is Patricia's thing. I personally don’t give a fuck about community-I  basically care about Matt Shipp."

6. Describe your association and friendship with notable poets in the community such as Mr. Ferris and Mr. Dalachinsky.

"I don’t know where to begin-Ferris and Dalachinsky are two of my closest friends. I have known both since around 1984-have been through a lot with them-people in our world know about Steve but John Ferris might be an unknown to them. He is a lower east side legend—a cantankerous old black poet who is brilliant and a fucking crazy motherfucker-but everyone loves him. I could tell you many many stories of things I have seen with John that would stretch credibility-many around 4 in the morning and after many things where absorbed into our systems. But you get the idea –he has been around and seen everything and is a walking repository of a lot of history. He was a bodyguard for Malcolm X but the thing I like most about John is supposedly he beat the shit out of Stanley Crouch years ago-from what I have heard.Oh I forgot-he is a great writer. He wrote liner notes for my first cd, "Circular Temple"." 

7. How was your two day engagement in Novosibirsk with Mr. Mateen?

"Well those two days were two days out of a two week tour of one nighters-so the whole two weeks where tremendous musically- Sabir and I have really developed into a team and it is so natural to play with him. At this point in my life if a situation is not natural then fuck it. Sabir is playing on a very high level now-it is easy to look at him and just classify him as a certain thing —but if you really check him out he is making a stand to bring this whole thing somewhere different. 

Of course no person is symmetrical and it depends on what situation you hear him in. But he has the inspiration at this point in history and though he cannot be easily pigeon holed he is really coming up with some new lines and things on his instrument. Plus historically how many people can you say played in both Sun Ra’s band and Horace Tapcotts band-sort of an east coast west coast panorama. Anyway, Sabir is a unique and it is great fun to make music with him."


8. How is the year ahead looking in terms of performances, releases, etc?

"Good."

9. Has it been an improvement over prior years? 

"My situation in the scene has definitely improved over the years. It has been a slow process of having to build our own eco system in which to thrive and we have had to build it brick by brick-of course we still have to deal with vulgar jazz society but that is so dead that it makes us stand out to be positioned against that even at the expense of misunderstandings which  I court. Of course this is all still very hard- even though some of us are doing alright make no mistake, no one is getting rich off this. However it is a great privilege to be able to play and to do alright.

The one thing that has really changed is that at the beginning of the 1990s there really seemed to be a whole culture of Europhile critics that viewed black American creativity in a suspect way when compared to what was coming out of Europe but even though some of that still exists, we have been given a fair shake in the media and a lot of writers have dealt with us on our terms and for that I am thankful. Of course there are still a couple of writers out there who in my opinion are racist and have an agenda-like Downbeat critic John Corbett-in my opinion—but all in all we have been given a fair shake." 


10. Do you have any particular aspirations for the near term that look to be fulfilled?  

"The only thing I want to do is to keep pushing notes down on the piano and when I push enough of them down then one day I want to drop the fuck dead."

MUSICAL KUDZU

An Oscar Wilde quote worth knowing: “There are only two tragedies in life. One is not getting what one wants. The other is getting it.”


Case in point: “Kind of Blue;” a wet dream for the Mile Davis Estate; maybe not so great for jazz.


In the last 50 or so years, jazz has had an uneasy relationship with popular success. There is always a lot of talk about how Bop moved jazz from dance music to art music and, being less tied to the functional needs of the culture, moved into a smaller corner of American life. Vocalists could have a foot in the jazz and popular camps and succeed, not so modern instrumentalists.


Occasionally, something hit: Errol Garner’s “Concert By the Sea”-1955, “Ellington at Newport”-1956, Brubeck’s “Take Five”-1959, “Getz Gilberto”-1964. The success of these, amplified a hundred-fold in the case of “Kind of Blue,” takes a toll, as the material is increasingly used for essentially nostalgic purposes. There's less space in the American musical brain for jazz anyway. A phenomenon like Kind of Blue hogs what's left.


No doubt my patience has worn thin as a result of living long enough to hear several generations of jazz DJ’s “discover” K.O.B. In any case, the phenomenon resurrected thoughts I’d had on the way repetition created musical monsters of 3 songs: "Satin Doll," “Blue Bossa” and “Misty.” All of which have suffered fates akin to that befalling “Kind of Blue.”


First, “Satin Doll.” It’s to the good that this song provided solid income for Ellington. Unfortunately, like musical kudzu, it has crowded out the many works of genius he created in the mind of the average music consumer. His great work lay elsewhere-Bartender: another Black and Tan Fantasy-but the psychic space is taken up by Satin Doll. The pseudo hip lyrics only make things worse:


"Cigarette holder which wigs me
Over her shoulder, she digs me.
Out cattin' that satin doll.
Baby, shall we go out skippin?
Careful, amigo, you're flippin',
Speaks Latin that satin doll."



And: switch-a-rooney. Johnny Mercer, how could you?


Everyone plays this song, no matter how scant their credentials for playing jazz. In wedding party rooms, pizza parlors, church basements, rehearsal rooms, even in recording studios, this tattered tune is infinitely resurrected.


A second song suffering a similar fate is Kenny Dorham’s "Blue Bossa." KD was one of the finest jazz trumpet players of the 1950's-early 60's. He was musically adventurous and wrote a number of interesting tunes that pushed harmony, time signatures and explored 'free' and classical concepts. Not so, this song.


It was born in an era when ill-conceived mash-ups resulted in tunes like: 'Bossa Nova Baby,' 'Soul Bossa Nova' and 'Bossa Nova USA.' Like “Satin Doll,” it is played by anyone who can recognize a D minor chord. I understand its value as a learning tool that can be used to addle the brains of aspiring musicians at Berklee and like institutions. All well and good, if it had been quarantined to quarters. However, it has continued to leak out and infect the wider listening public. Evaluating Dorham’s composing skills via Blue Bossa is like using Satin Doll to evaluate Ellington. Their ubiquity warps judgment.


Number 3 on this list: "Musty," er, sorry, “Misty,” written by pianist Errol Garner.

As a musician, Garner was an interesting case: Couldn't read music, which in jazz by the 1950's, was getting to be rare; made a bunch of records, but only a few clicked; at 5'2" (nickname: The Elf), he needed to put phone books on the bench to get up to the keyboard. To my ears, he does attain one of the classic jazz goals-you can recognize it's Garner right away, largely because of the stretching of time, the independence of left and right hands and the frequent use of octaves and tenths, a la Stride players like James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. Jackie Byard was a similar eclectic stylist a half-generation later.


A composition like Misty served Garner well, allowing for the kinds of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic digressions he liked to make. However, as this song seeped more and more into the popular repertoire, it came under attack by kitch-a-coccus, began to age badly and lost its appeal. Its fate has been remarkably similar to that of Blue Bossa and Satin Doll. Every wedding in every Elks hall in American resounds with its opening descending arpeggio.


Note, please, that I make no claims about whether it did or didn't gall these musicians to have to play these songs interminably (KD died too young to have to), merely that crossing over into long-term, popular success has not only neutered these songs, it has sapped, in some way, the creative strength of jazz. There are those who have used these songs as raw material and tried to transmute them into something original, but for the most part, they are used for nostalgic purposes; to try and re-create a feel-good feeling that can be used to sell the song itself, and an idealized version of sophistication.


A moratorium should be declared.

Jazz Pseudonym Prison

In looking at Coltrane's 1961 recording Ole, one sees Eric Dolphy listed as "George Lane." I guess he was under contract with Prestige at that time and had to go through the charade of using a pseudonym. Who was kidding whom? Dolphy! Probably the single most easily identifiable musician in jazz. For god's sake, Charlie Parker listed as Charlie Chan?


Somehow I don't think Dolphy or Bird was afraid of having Green Room Dom Perignon privileges taken away. How serious was the potential of other threatened punishments? Of actually being suspended, blacklisted or having royalties withheld?


Pseudonym use is a ludicrous, adolescent ritual and one that I think only musicians in the recording world of jazz have been subject to. It positioned jazz musicians somewhere between individuals with fully-vested rights and indentured servants. Yes, Hollywood had the "studio system," but look at the difference in financial rewards! And, at least that system seemed to be conducted along business lines-you can have Gable if you lend me Nelson Eddy. Such exchanges happen in jazz: "so and so performs under an arrangement with," but taking a wider view, that process has at least a grudging quality to it, if not the odor of collusion.


Also, is this same kind of contractual nonsense the reason why so many jazz albums didn't list the names of the freaking players? Did these labels at least have the excuse of having to cover their butt legally, or did they simply not deem the people who recorded the music SIGNIFICANT enough to credit?


As far as I have seen, labels of '78's were always clearly marked with the names of the musicians-at least in small to medium-sized ensembles. (Was there rampant mis-appropriation of composing credits? Yea, but that's another story, one as old as show biz. Jolson was not a songwriter and neither was Irving Mills, but you'd never know it from their ASCAP checks). Does this pseudo-contractual nonsense go back to the 20's? I rely on our panel of '78 experts to tell us.

Got the Military-Blues Brass Band Blues

Thanks to M. Chalfen for his Wilbur Sweatman, W.C. Handy and Victor Military Band citations (see comments at "Twelve Bars That Died for our Sins." Just for good measure, I'll throw in James Reese Europe's band in 1919. All tunes taken at a stately tempo-Reese pushes a little bit harder... Yea, the Sweatman swings most. Smears, breaks, clarinet obligatos are the order of the day, all happening within the tight arrangements and performances of trained musicians (Victor Military Band: mama, you're just too tight). Much attention is also paid to dynamics.


In style and instrumentation, I hear this music fusing two brass band traditions; representing, once again, our friends "uplift," and the dreaded "devil's music."


Civil War bandsmen who wanted to continue to be musicians post-war could either move into "civilian" gigs-minstrelsy, circuses, medicine shows, informal parade bands, etc. The strain we know best is the New Orleans version-Eureka, Eagle, Bolden Brass bands etc.). Of course, this dangerous direction led to jazz. Find a good overview here.





The other possible direction to take-more 'legit'-was to maintain a relationship with the military, or to move into the disciplined circles of Tuskegee and Hampdon, Gilmore and Sousa; all institutions associated with 'uplift.' A brilliant article concisely summarizes this.


For reasons cited before, these military-blues brass bands served up blues the way America knew them before "Crazy Blues." This hybrid style culminates here and basically ends here as a popular-music form. It is, however, preserved in community bands all over the U.S.; serenading picnickers on summer nights, entertaining in senior citizen homes, or marching down the street in haphazard formation at the Allston-Brighton Day Parade, shifting easily between The Stars and Stripes Forever, medleys from The Sound of Music and arrangements of St. Louis Woman. Oh, don't they ramble...