Passing the Late Night Jazz TV Torch (?)

Jazz on TV is, of course, a non-starter. Programs like "The Sound of Jazz," "Frankly Jazz,""The Subject is Jazz" and events like Clifford Brown on the Soupy Sales show are to Millennials as Medicine Shows are to seniors.

The last redoubts for jazz were the "hip" talk shows and jazz hasn't had a good track record even there since Johnny Carson retired. The passing of trumpeter Clark Terry, a stalwart of the Tonight Show Orchestra was a symbolic marker of the end of a 60-year relationship between big band jazz and television.               

       

         Clark Terry

Jon Batiste

Jon Batiste will be the bandleader as Stephen Colbert takes over for David Letterman on the Late Show. This represents a return, of sorts, to late night bandleaders with a jazz background. What are his chances? Let's look at the history and the landscape:

Post-Carson, Jay Leno tried to keep one foot in the Tonight Show's jazz past, while bridging to the present with Branford Marsalis, leading to an often uneasy three years. Marsalis was followed by Kevin Eubanks, a better fit who had a fifteen-year tenure. Although Eubanks had jazz chops, he weighed in as a more natural rock guy and his personality jibed better with the format than Marsalis'.

Conan O'Brien's band-Max Weinberg and company-was a hybrid, with a fair amount of swing. Was too much jazz one of the elements that pushed Conan off network TV and onto cable?

David Letterman was a pop/rock/country guy and never cared much for jazz (Knowing Carson was a pretty staunch jazz fan, if Dave really wanted that gig, he shoulda feigned interest). Letterman's band, led by Paul Shaffer, went the funk-jazz route that began to dominate late night TV. Actually it was the Saturday Night Live band that led the way-Howard Shore, with Lenny Pickett's Tower of Power sound on tenor sax. Shaffer was a member of that SNL band, as was Seth Meyers current bandleader Fred Armisen. Cleto Escobeto, Kimmel's bandleader is also out of that tradition. 

Jimmy Fallon's band The Roots, is much more in the contemporary black music vein. While it's true that Jon Batiste and The Roots both bring a black sensibility, it's pretty different. The Roots are Philadelphia and Batiste is New Orleans. The Roots busked on the street, but with bucket drums and rapping. Jon Batiste has an advanced music degree and his family has a long N.O. jazz pedigree. 

Batiste is solid for the Second Line and loves to move into the crowd and stir things up. As far as late night talk show audience participation goes, social media is now where that is supposed to happen (R.I.P. 'Stump The Band'). It's hard to think that the Second Line idea will mix easily in this high-price, high-stakes, timed-to-the-second context. Going into the audience knowing you have exactly 4'33" to get people dancing in the aisle, back onstage and back in their seats might tend to undermine spontaneity. After all, this is valuable time we're talking about.

Well, as we jazz types find ourselves saying more and more often: "maybe a little exposure will help." Can't hurt, right?

[ADDENDUM: I didn't see the whole show, but I did see this clip of "Everyday People," which they performed with a number of guest musicians. Very, very nice job. A few musicians went briefly into the audience, while most stayed onstage; a compromise, but the energy was great and the whole thing didn't drag on, as these multi-star performances usually do.]

Jazz Exceptionalism and The Media

We all have to reckon with the fiscal concerns at the center of what happened at WGBH, but it also behooves us to make a case for the exceptionalism of jazz.

To begin with, we need to differentiate this campaign from previous grassroots media movements, like Action for Childrens Television or the groups that sprung up to keep Joss Whedon shows on the air. People who lobby for a certain show don't want to kill or resuscitate a type of show. They want their teen angst show. Or, they want certain kinds of advertisers not to pollute kid's shows. Tactically, to get this done, you can target specific sponsors-or networks-and this has worked.

The jazz situation is different. We're talking about the elimination of an entire genre of music from the public airwaves.

"Market forces" are inevitably cited to explain the shrinkage of jazz on WGBH and the radio dial (TV exposure was lost long ago), but jazz advocates can't slough this off as the triumph of crass philistines. The battle won't be won on the basis of good or bad taste. The taste argument leads back to audience size and money, every time.

Instead, look at the historical precedent for a public media mission that allows more than money to be at play in programming decisions. It was a damn good thing back in 1934 and 1967 and is just as important now. Ask the question: what would art, music, theatre and literature in the US look like if they had always been forced to compete in a strict media marketplace environment?

We are asked to hand over our money to the IRS every year for a panoply of nonsensical and reprehensible uses. It makes sense to stand up and demand that valuable aspects of American culture be supported. The evidence that we don't is sobering.

Public media outlets like WGBH must be forced to question whether or not they have drifted from their mission. The need to perpetuate the existence of the organization needs to be balanced by asking the question "why are we here?"