The Worst Labels and Jargon in Jazz

Physicists are forced to concede that they can know either the location or the speed of a particle. They can't know both because the very act of looking changes the particle's behavior. 

The way scientists freeze frame electrons is the way categories have been imposed on every art form. In jazz, categorizing is a lazy shorthand that ignores the mutability of the music-and the musicians. Apparently, critics don't have the time to explain that Player X usually plays Standards and tends to improvise melodically, while player Z plays mostly originals, is less concerned with chord changes and more often plays modally. Instead we say this one is a "smooth jazz" player and that one an "avant-garde" player. Seldom does the fact arise that players change over their lifetimes, passing from one category to another-Grover Washington, Jr. and Donald Byrd, for example. 

Unfortunately, labels seem to have an unlimited shelf life. Once coined and adopted, generations of critics fall back on them and they stick like corroded trumpet valves. I grudgingly acknowledge their existence, but am happy to write about a few that particularly irritate me.

Dixieland Jazz. Cramming the music of the likes of Oliver, Keppard and Bechet into one category is ridiculous anyway. But with the relentlessly tenacious mythology of the Gallant South, the word 'Dixieland' grows especially egregious. The popularity of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB) probably provided the impetus for its wide use and god knows their racial views were suspect. I know the phrase was taken up by Bechet and other black musicians early on, but if you say to me "Hey, it was good enough for Louis Armstrong to use," I would say it's probably a case of his understanding that on some occasions, using shorthand could make his life a little easier. Promoters of the phrase "Dixieland revival" latched onto a handy marketing device.

Be Bop. I guess it was good for branding purposes, as such catchphrases are in the world of commerce-Coca Cola, Alka Seltzer, Finger Lickin' Good. But the disparity between the serious nature of the music and the phrase attached to it is palpable. An exception can be made for the trickster Dizzy Gillespie, who was as serious as they come, but who knew how to work wordplay into the music (ooh bop she bam, etc.).

Hard Bop. A ludicrous title. There was no harder bop played-in any sense of the word-than that played by Bird, Diz, Fats Navarro and company. If anything, hard bop took its foot off the pedal more often than Bop.

New Testament and Old Testament Basie bands. I haven't found anyone who knows who pinned these labels on the Basie bands pre and after the early 1950's. Why it stuck, I don't know. I'm not saying that jazz is the enemy of the bible-although it certainly has often been seen this way. Let's just say I believe in the separation of church and the jazz estate.

Cool Jazz. First of all, all jazz is cool, no matter how hot it gets. Second of all, this label is used to differentiate East Coast from West Coast jazz, which is ridiculous. A lot of musicians were burning on the West Coast, while Miles, Gil Evans and company were creating the music specifically called Cool in New York City.

Neo Bop, Post-Bop, Neo-Swing. Putting neo- or post- in front of anything demonstrates a chilling lack of imagination. 

These locutions are now, happily, in the Dust Bin of History:

Licorice stick (for a clarinet). In the film "Song of the Thin Man", I actually heard Keenan Wynn refer to the instrument as a Jew Stick.

Skins/Tubs (for drums), Popsickle Stick (a reed player's reed). 

Hot Lick, Oh, Daddio, Real Gone, Wig Out, Solid Sent, Moldy Fig.

Tacking "-ville" on the end of anything, is, like, hicksville, dullsville, squaresville.

                                               

Kenny G. and Jazz Schadenfreude

Do I like his music? No. Do I want to listen to it? No. But, like a jazz Beatrice Hall, I will defend his right to play it.

I'm goaded to this position by the response I've seen by some people in the jazz community who took the opportunity to revel in his recent divorce. This is the lowest kind of schadenfreude. It's aimed at a person when it's really about something else.

Do musicians think he was stealing their audience, that the millions of cd's he's sold have kept their own releases from flying off the shelves? That pins out the level on the Self-Delusion Meter.

Listen, people, I know the dilemna of the jazz musician, My own adjustments to the ratio of practice hours to gig fees started early and have never stopped. Who knows why Kenny G.'s brand of syrup triumphed over the hordes of sax players who play the way he does. Maybe he's cuddlier than they are. Whatever the reason, his ascent has marked him as a jazz lightning rod/scapegoat, repository of ill-feeling toward all that's wrong with the American audience and the music industry.

We probably know babkes about the man Kenny G., but whatever we know or think we know, the guy is different than the music. Divorce is tough. Let's start there.

Sweet, Hot and Smooth@-by Steve Provizer

Sometimes people don't know a good, no, a brilliant idea when it bites' em on the tweet. Alex W. Rodriguez @arodjazz was looking for advice on how to write a "smooth jazz" chapter for his jazz curriculum and I suggested he trace its roots back to the age-old dichotomy between "sweet" and "hot" jazz (Notice the copyright mark on the title-shows what a good idea it is). He didn't bite on it, but I am. It's a potentially juicy area for exploration: Bert Williams-hot or sweet? James Europe wasn't sweet, but could you really call him hot? George Benson: when did it happen?) Of course, it's also an impossibly large question for the likes of me, but Gap-toothed sitemaster Chris would pop me in the chops if I didn't run with it (This is all good insider stuff, by the way, but you're paying big money for access, so why not). In the pop world, there was probably always a definable split between sweet and hot. You had parlor music/popular song (sweet), blues (hot), ragtime/cakewalk/minstrel/vaudeville/black theatre (in-between), marches (more or less sui generis). Then, by the teens, "jazz" (hot). Note the large category not easily defined as either one or the other. No doubt musicians were aware of what their audience wanted (their "demo" we modern hucksters would say) and were fluid as necessary. Sometimes a person sang some folk; sometimes some blues-stands to reason. Vaudeville billed itself as family-friendly, but hot performers came out of there. Did they wait until they left to start being hot? Seems doubtful. With the over-generalized style practiced by a blogger who wants to hold his audience, I mean, given our space limitations, it's not possible to parse what happened before "jazz." It seems more reasonable to tackle the issue of Sweet, Hot and Smooth@ by starting in the late teens, when the word 'jazz' began to stick and denote something pretty specific. Sidebar to researchers: It would be interesting to know the extent to which the use of the label "jazz"was media-driven or a collective decision-spoken or unspoken-on the part of its practitioners. Until that time, we shall struggle ahead, picking up our investigation next time with: "Jazz Cage Match@ Part the First: Fletcher 'Hatchet' Henderson vs. 'Grapplin' Guy Lombardo."

Sweet, Hot and Smooth Roots-by Steve Provizer

Now, ladies and gents, the promised jazz cage scrap between Fletcher 'Hatchet' Henderson and 'Grapplin' Guy Lombardo, or should we say, the familias Henderson and Lombardo. It's tag team, as both come brothered-up, but Fletcher and Horace are outgunned by the Lombardo mob: Guy, Carmen, Liebert and Victor.

Henderson does higher ed. and pledges Alpha Phi Alpha at Atlanta U. At the same time, the Lombardos rehearse a grammar school orchestra in the back of their dad's tailor shop. That puts them ahead in the early rounds, as they turn pro in the teens.

Henderson, however, comes on strong and is the first to score in NYC, forming an orchestra in 1922 and getting good gigs at Club Alabam and the Roseland.

The sweet and hot waters are muddy.

Henderson's arrangements at this point are as much Whiteman as anything else. His is a social dance band with a blues tinge. Meanwhile, Lombardo records for jazz label Gennett in early 1924 and there's not a hell of a lot of difference between those recordings and early Henderson. Late 1924 marks the real split. The Lombardo boys start "The Royal Canadians" and Louis Armstrong joins the Henderson crowd. First knockdown goes to the Royal Canadians, as they implement a strong PR strategy, using the tag line: "The Sweetest Music This Side of Heaven." Even if the sobriquet 'sweet' has been in general use, it starts to get burnished to a high cultural gleam by the Royal Canadians. When Armstrong joins Henderson in 1924, he brings the heat. Henderson and fellow arranger Don Redman respond by creating arrangements that allow the Armstrong fire to shine in a large ensemble context. Soloists like Hawkins hear Louis and join the fray. As the boys in the quarterlies would say, this is the juncture at which Henderson and Lombardo self-differentiate; in the process, creating more distinguishable sweet and hot streams in popular music. A quick retrospective follow-up reveals the following: Henderson's band nurtured jazz stars and the new idea of what large-ensemble jazz arranging could be. He couldn't keep the band together and mostly lived off arrangements he'd originally done for his 20's band that the Goodman band scored big with a decade later. The Royal Canadians go on to sell somewhere between 100-300 million records and become the musical face of New Year's Eve in America. Just sayin'. Next Time on JazzGrudgeMatch2010@: All in the Family-"Dorsey vs. Dorsey."