Is Jazz Dead? No, But Something Is

Will Layman at PopMatters has written a clever and witty article entitled "A 'Dear John' Letter To Jazz: To Hell With Loving You." His introductory points ("My friends all say they like you, but it turns out they’re just using you") are on-point, except for one thing: Layman fails to draw a distinction between the pop-culture image of "jazz" and the real sound of jazz that is, contrary to Layman's conclusion, still flourishing around the world. A quote:

Jazz, I know there was a time when you were the cutest cat in school, the bee’s knees, the zippiddy-doo-dah coolest sound around. Folks danced to you. They mobbed ballrooms to Lindy their very asses off while you throbbed and swung, saxophones roaring.

And even after that was the case, you still had a devoted popular following. College kids in Allen Ginsberg glasses might pop their fingers to Brubeck or Miles Davis.  Jukeboxes in cities got worn out from playing funky stuff like Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” or Cannonball Adderley’s “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy”.

And as recently as the ‘70s there were pop radio hits like Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good”—and as recently as the ‘80s Bobby McFerrin took some overdubbed scat singing up the charts with “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. When Wynton Marsalis was 21 years old, wearing a killer suit and holding two Grammys in his hands—one for jazz and one for classical music—there was still some kind of hope.

But then two decades of “smooth jazz” dreck rolled over the landscape and real jazz seemed both more obscure and more rare. You became a taste from the past. Once only the hip kids were likely to know about you. But in recent years the hip kids are too busy digging really obscure or noisy/unpopular rock to bother with obscure/noisy/unpopular jazz.

The problem with this is that Layman isn't really talking about what he thinks he's talking about. The Vanguard shows he mentions later in his piece don't really have much to do with the Lindy Hop, "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" or Chuck Mangione. They also don't have much to do with Wynton Marsalis or anyone else who doesn't dare mess with history. "The rock aesthetic of simplicity, directness and sincerity doesn’t much cotton to your complexities and abstractions," Layman writes. "A society that prizes spectacle and memoir doesn’t know what to make of a trumpet solo that resembles architecture more than it does a sit-com or a confession." 

Ah. So that's how it is.

It's easy to see how a layman (oh, man, too easy) could miss "simplicity" and "directness" in jazz. Likewise, the altered chords and mile-a-minute chord progressions that pepper most jazz compositions can throw rock or pop devotees off. It's also easy to see how that same layman could confuse Sinatra or Nat King Cole with jazz. Sinatra never made jazz, though he admired it (and was admired by it, famously in the case of Lester Young). Ol' Blue Eyes just didn't want to share the spotlight. Nat King Cole did make jazz in his earlier days, but by the time he was recording for Capitol, he was making charming pop music, which in the 1940s and 1950s used several building blocks of jazz, such as swing and basic instrumentation. Even Ella Fitzgerald, who is by now irretractably part of the jazz pantheon, wasn't really a jazz musician; just place a Fitzgerald scat solo next to one by Sarah Vaughan. It's a thin line, but it sure is there.

The argument that jazz is "failing" or "dying" because it's too complex or abstract is age-old, and also bullsh*t. I mean, come on, people buy Pink Floyd records, right? Or Steely Dan? Or Weather Report? So what's the deal?

Well, reputations, as the saying goes, are easy to make and hard to lose. Thanks to John Coltrane (yup, pretty much) and the free jazz players he inspired, much of the then-large jazz audience left to wear out their Grant Green records. The jazz clubs died, never really to return, and by 1975 jazz in the United States was - I gotta say it - over. 

Then Wynton Marsalis came along. I'm not going to go into it, but the short story is that rather than actual revitalizing jazz (most of the record deals that came about as a result of the neo-traditionalist movement have faded after all these years), Marsalis inspired the mostly forgotten jazz musicians already playing to step up their game, and he also inspired young musicians like Brad Mehldau and Kurt Rosenwinkel to walk through the doors that unwitting record execs were holding open. The labels expected Marsalis, but luckily we got something else from those guys.

And now there's a new breed of jazz musician out there, playing music that has by now become not a "new sound" but "the sound" of jazz. Rosenwinkel, Mehldau, The Bad Plus, Aaron Parks, the list goes on. And a listen to "Never Stop" by The Bad Plus or "Fall" by Rosenwinkel should show that whatever abstractions are present, they don't upstage simple good music. 

Will Layman's piece is a good article on something. But, in the end, that something isn't quite jazz. 

Comments

[Jason Parker]

"The argument that jazz is "failing" or "dying" because it's too complex or abstract is age-old, and also bullsh*t."

Amen. To me, it's all about 1) presentation, and as you say, 2) the perception of what jazz is.

And while I realize that Layman was trying to be funny, or satirical, or ironic or something, his piece does nothing to help either of those things.

Kick-ass music is kick-ass music. We just need to get our music into the ears of music lovers.

Jason
jason@oneworkingmusician.com

[Jon Wertheim]

True THAT. One thing I was thinking about when I write this (I just realized it never made it in) was Terrell Stafford's presentation of Billy Strayhorn tunes, compared to a hypothetical Marsalis presentation, or (to head off the usual Marsalis baggage) a Bryan Ferry presentation (one "jazz" career kickstart Layman forgot). Stafford isn't afraid of 2011, and seems confident that Strayhorn's music can weather the now in a way that marsalis never seems to be, almost as if Ellington and Armstrong are too fragile to bear the brunt of an update.

Thanks for your comment, as always.
j

[N]

Some very good points and overall a good article but your paragraph about Sinatra, Cole and Fitzgerald goes too far. Be careful that in your quest to defend the complexities of modern jazz you don't end up trying to writing off the older or "simpler" music of someone like Ella from the genre of jazz. I can understand your argument for Sinatra and possibly for Nat King Cole as well, but have to draw the line when you try to say that Ella "isn't really jazz."

I understand that you're trying to talk about a certain harmonic sensibility characteristic of Jazz from the latter part of the 20th century. That development is also clearly present in a comparison between Ella and Sarah Vaughan. But Ella's singing comes directly out of big band horn lines and jazz soloists. She would have defined her own music as jazz, nothing else. If the artist and the audience both define their music as Jazz, and if their music comes directly out of the existing genre there really is no defensible way to say she isn't jazz.

Moreover, although I can accept the arguments about the other two a bit more there are some dangerous implications in them. As modern jazz gets farther and farther from popular music it is easy to forget that at one point jazz WAS the popular music. Just because something is simpler and on the charts and thus "popular" doesn't immediately exclude it from being jazz. In the specific case of Nat King Cole I'm not well versed enough in his music to really debate it; however your argument for him making "charming pop music" and thus not jazz, while possibly true, doesn't hold together from the evidence you've cited so far.

All in all I agree with your major point and love a lot of the jazz coming out today. The point I make may seem to be a nit-picky thing for me to get worked up about but I think it is symbolic of a dangerous tendency that shows up too often when people are defending modern jazz. We need to remember that jazz went through many iterations to reach the modern day. To write off Ella in the way that you do could lead us to write off Basie, Armstrong and a host of other quintessentially jazz musicians. I'm simply cautioning against this mistake.

[Jon Wertheim]

N,

A "mistake" in your eyes, N, not in mine. I wasn't writing off Fitzgerald at all, nor was I condemning her for the reasons you listed.

Fitzgerald (or Basie or Armstrong) was a complex and intelligent performer, and on deserving of her legendary status in the history of music. In the history of jazz? I'm not so sure.

You're right - there was a time, mainly in the 1930s and 1940s, when a certain style of jazz was popular. Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, all were, for a time, jazz musicians. Does that type of jazz exist today? Possibly, in a minority. Is it in any way relevant to the music of Robert Glasper or Ravi Coltrane or Joe Lovano or Rez Abbasi or any number of contemporary jazz musicians? No - not in a way unique to them.

Ella Fitzgerald was jazz from the start of her career to the beginning of bebop. But once bebop came in, she was obsolete, no matter how many scat solos she sang with JATP. My comparison with Sarah Vaughan was mainly about this aspect. Ella sang like a swing musician trying to be hip. Sarah Vaughan was hip, because she has come of musical age in the bebop era, unlike Fitzgerald.

You say "just because something is simpler and on the charts and thus 'popular' doesn't immediately exclude it from being jazz." You couldn't be more right. Every time this logic has been used as a basis for criticism, it has been a mistake (look up Martin Williams for proof). To describe Fitzgerald as simple is an obvious idiocy. But there is a fine line between a Glenn Miller or an Ella Fitzgerald and an Artie Shaw or a Sarah Vaughan. That line is what I was trying to reference here, and that line is why I don't think I am writing off "Basie, Armstrong and a host of other quintessentially jazz musicians." I'm not writing off Ella, either - I'm just recategorizing her.

Thank you for your thoughtful and respectful comment - if you're still unsure about where I'm coming from, please comment again.

-j

[Will Layman]

Hey, Jon -- Thanks for referencing my column, and I appreciate that you found it witty. That was certainly the intent.

I took plenty of crap about this column in various places, mostly from folks who think I'm selling the great jazz (the great SERIOUS jazz) of today short. But that wasn't my point. I love the more challenging -- and often very contemporary and not at all stodgy -- jazz of today's most interesting players. Jason Moran, Vijay Iyer, Ambrose Akinmusere: all those guys are getting great reviews from me.

But there's no denying that jazz is a serious minority taste today, more so than at any time in its history. That's not a knock on the music, even though my satirical article put it that way. And, man, I'm sorry, but the music's complexity IS a big reason why it doesn't attract an audience. It is now essentially FULLY art music. And while I think that the music' ingenious incorporation of elements of hip-hop and other contemporary elements is worthy of more attention, well: it's still JAZZ -- tricky and complex and harmonically rich. You say that Steely Dan and Weather Report sold lots of records, and that's true. But if you think those bands are considered COOL today, then just poke around some. Steely Dan is pretty much the most reviled band in the classic rock cannon for most younger music fans: too tricky and complex and "inauthentic." That may all be bullshit, but it's what's out there.

And, as my article sort of seriously joked, there are just days when I want to join the ranks of the haters. Why not just LOVE some pentatonic blues licks played with great tone on a Telecaster and NOT bother with a #11 chord brilliantly deployed, you know?

That's the feeling I was trying to seriously evoke.

-- Will Layman

[Jon Wertheim]

Will -

And thanks back at you for taking my article at face value. I didn't want to write a takedown, and I'm glad I didn't write one unknowingly. I'm with you - in fact, I've been listening to almost straight hip-hop for a month now, but don't tell anyone.

You're completely correct. I think that jazz world could do with some better music videos and more prominent publicity for the more "popular" aspects of performers like Bill Frisell (the Telecaster you mention) and Kurt Rosenwinkel, who can sound exactly like a 1960s/1970s rock guitarist. That there are complex chords doesn't matter.

It's like layers of reality. On one level, we hear a distorted guitar playing ideas that are recognizable, if not identical, from rock. Add another level, we get those ideas across strange chords. Add another level, we get a weird time signature. Add another level... I think any genre is like this, but jazz stands out as one which prides itself on beginning at the reality level farthest removed from the starting point - not a great tactic for connecting with new or alienated listeners.

So yeah, Steely Dan wasn't a great example - just like in jazz, starting a rock band at the farthest level of listener reality isn't a great idea. A minority will dig it - a MINORITY. A better example would be, say, the Kurt Rosenwinkel/Allan Holdsworth connection (which leads to Van Halen and elsewhere). Go to Elmo Hope FROM there, not the other way around!