Rehearsing The Blues

Excerpted (If It's The Last Thing I Do)

From "Nicholas Payton Is Chillin' On Our Nutz: How One Musician Misrepresented the Facts and Bullied the Jazz Narrative Off Course," my last feature-length piece of jazz writing before I leave the jazz community more or less completely for several years:

Payton and his most vocal adherents are making much the same argument for jazz. "Some aim to nix jazz for perceived racist connotations; [Gary] Bartz is most strident on this point, comparing jazz to a plantation system with 'house' and 'field' musicians," writes Shaun Brady in the Philadelphia City Paper. [16] "Whites created the title [‘jazz’] anyway," writes saxophonist Marcus Strickland in arguing for Black American Music. [17] Because, Payton argues, “jazz” is "a label that was forced upon the musicians," [18] much like slave names, then it should be cast off and replaced. Malcolm X. Jazz X. "It’s the colonialist mentality that glorifies being treated like a slave," Payton writes on his blog, The Cherub Speaks. [19] "Go on, 
continue to box yourself in a label that was designed to marginalize [b]lack musicians and cut them off from their brilliance." [20]

Payton and his most vocal adherents are making much the same argument for jazz. "Some aim to nix jazz for perceived racist connotations; [Gary] Bartz is most strident on this point, comparing jazz to a plantation system with 'house' and 'field' musicians," writes Shaun Brady in the Philadelphia City Paper. [16] "Whites created the title [‘jazz’] anyway," writes saxophonist Marcus Strickland in arguing for Black American Music. [17] Because, Payton argues, “jazz” is "a label that was forced upon the musicians," [18] much like slave names, then it should be cast off and replaced. Malcolm X. Jazz X. "It’s the colonialist mentality that glorifies being treated like a slave," Payton writes on his blog, The Cherub Speaks. [19] "Go on, 
continue to box yourself in a label that was designed to marginalize [b]lack musicians and cut them off from their brilliance." [20]

 

As we have seen, however, the origins of the word “jazz” as "a label that was designed to marginalize" African-American musicians and their work are far from certain, and may be completely false, a jazz urban myth. And the above-quoted passages from some of the most creative and heritage-minded musicians in jazz show that not all, or even most, musicians would agree they're being "boxed in" by the word; or, if they are, it may not be because it's a racist, colonialist or oppressive word, but merely an outdated or too narrowly defined one.

 

So, the question is: Do we need to Malcolm X jazz? Does changing the name of the genre have the same symbolic power that it had, for instance, when Duke Ellington told Fletcher Henderson he wanted jazz to be called "Negro music"?

Check out the entire piece here, and feel free to leave any comments you have, or email me at jon.wertheim@gmail.com.

 

 

Why Aren't We Talking About... Don Sleet's "All Members"?

Who was Downbeat's trumpeter of the year from 1956 to 1958? Was it Miles Davis? Chet Baker? Dizzy Gillespie? Lee Morgan? Clark Terry? Nope, it was Don Sleet, who recorded just one album, in 1961, and who died in 1987, at the age of 48.

Foster Care (RIP Frank Foster)

 Frank Foster, a prominent figure in Count Basie's Atomic band who went on to have a solo career too often overlooked, has died. He was 82 years old.

Foster moved from a quiet bebop tenor (his recordings with James Moody) to a soulful but soft-toned hard bop soloist with Count Basie and then (increasingly under the influence of John Coltrane, whose birthday he shared) under his own name, making the few recordings he led say a lot about his musical vision. He also played on a few Prestige jam sessions under the leadership of, among others, Kenny Burrell and Elmo Hope. 

But after his stint with Basie and Prestige ended, Foster's name dropped off the radar. He worked with Elvin Jones in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and also dabbled in fusion with Donald Byrd for an ailing Blue Note Records. His music was good, and stayed good over the years, but he was of the modest, unassuming school of musicianship that included Frank Wess, another accomplished but undersung Basie alum who is 89 at the time of writing, the late pianist Hank Jones, and George Coleman. His last album, Well Water, was released in 2007. 

It is too bad that Foster, like Wess, won't get his due until after his death. But better late than never, and the quality of Frank Foster's music ensures that his due will be quite a celebration. RIP, Mr. Foster. You will be missed.

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You can find an interview with Foster here, circa 1992. NPR's A Blog Supreme has more. Nate Chinen's NYT obituary, and his follow-up at The Gig. 

Count 'Em '88 (Two)

Why do we think that Earl "Bud" Powell broke? There have been more than a few notable broken musicians in jazz history: Lester Young's mind and his music broke after World War II, although the break does not happen cleanly in 1945, as some claim; Billie Holiday's voice split and slowly fell to pieces, although her musical mind never dulled. Bud Powell is another famous broken jazz musician, and we even has police brutality and electroshock therapy to prove it. But did Powell's music really decline after 1953, when the second Amazing Bud Powell and Jazz At Massey Hall were recorded, or after 1955, when Charlie Parker died?

Given, Powell probably couldn't have produced a whirlwind like "Un Poco Loco" after 1953 - but, illness (physical and mental) aside, the question is why not. Can we ascribe his music's deterioration to that illness, or can we find another explanation? I think that we can find another - partially because, if we discard the usual Powell story for a moment, it is easy to discard his musical deterioration (his "broken" recordings) with it.

Shhh! I'm Grunting!

 

Keith Jarrett has made some of the most important piano recordings of the last forty years. In light of this, I'm sure that he has on occasion bemoaned the fact that the accolades his music has received are inevitably accompanied by some comment on his habit of consistently, and often loudly, humming (or singing, or grunting, or moaning, or screeching) along with his piano. Jarrett gets special attention from critics and audiences in this regard, probably because of his (unrelated) insistence on complete and utter silence during his performances. The fact is, however, that not only is Jarrett in good company when it comes to extraneous noises in performance, but it might actually be easier to count those great jazz musicians who did not produce some kind of sound with their mouths as they played. A sampling:

Count 'Em 88 (One)

Ahmad Jamal

To spend time refuting Martin Williams's claim that Ahmad Jamal in the 1950s was only a cocktail pianist better versed in crowd-pleasing than music-making only wastes it; Williams demonstrated a rare laziness in dismissing Jamal out-of-hand, and just as a picture paints a thousand words, so does the music Jamal made with his various trios in the 1950s and 1960s put that laziness to shame better than any critical argument could.

Unfortunately, Williams's dismissal, and others like it (all equally uninformed) have nevertheless kept Jamal out of the pantheon of great pianists.