Big NY Times piece about Wynton and JLC

[Brad]

To me it was just a suck up piece, good PR for him (as if he needs anymore) and all that. I was disappointed in Mr. Chinen.

[Christiern]

There must be a site containing the tax returns of every bebopper.

[JSngry]

Here's my question - if Wynton were to drop dead today, what difference would it make to the future of jazz?

To the music, none, obviously. And to the business, none, I'm afraid, not really. Look around - who's got the goods (and I use that term with no little disdain) to be the next "face of jazz" to the "general public" (which is to say, "the powers that be")? I'm looking hard, and I'm seeing.....nobody. And I'm thankful for that.

Yeah, the little gigs might come back, but for how long? And on what scale? People really don't care that much any more. If anybody thinks that jazz as it now exists has a future of being anything other than an ongoing cult music (of many cults and many musics), hey, good for you. Don't forget to leave some milk & cookies out for Santa!

If you want a really healthy music, you gotta have a healthy scene. And what's the scene today? "Jazz education", taxidermy, reissues, and rabid cults for the most part. Yeah, that's got "healthy future" written all over it...

I knew jazz when jazz was still alive, and I know jazz now. Ain't the same creature. And I don't think it ever will be again, unless it's something that comes up from the roots and makes people have to either listen to it or else risk being left behind (and those who are already miles behind being interested in/obsessed with catching up doesn't count).

Here's to hope!

[John L]

Here's my question - if Wynton were to drop dead today, what difference would it make to the future of jazz?

To the music, none, obviously. And to the business, none, I'm afraid, not really. Look around - who's got the goods (and I use that term with no little disdain) to be the next "face of jazz" to the "general public" (which is to say, "the powers that be")? I'm looking hard, and I'm seeing.....nobody. And I'm thankful for that.

Yeah, the little gigs might come back, but for how long? And on what scale? People really don't care that much any more. If anybody thinks that jazz as it now exists has a future of being anything other than an ongoing cult music (of many cults and many musics), hey, good for you. Don't forget to leave some milk & cookies out for Santa!

If you want a really healthy music, you gotta have a healthy scene. And what's the scene today? "Jazz education", taxidermy, reissues, and rabid cults for the most part. Yeah, that's got "healthy future" written all over it...

I knew jazz when jazz was still alive, and I know jazz now. Ain't the same creature. And I don't think it ever will be again, unless it's something that comes up from the roots and makes people have to either listen to it or else risk being left behind (and those who are already miles behind being interested in/obsessed with catching up doesn't count).

Here's to hope!

Interesting ideas, Jim. As for the first question, I agree with you.

As for the more general question about the future of jazz, I guess that the answer probably depends a lot on what we mean by "jazz." I am an optimist in the sense that I think there is a high probability of the continued development of living, breathing, and relevant musics that incorporate a lot of the baggage of jazz in one way or another. Can we really ask for more than that?

Edited August 29, 2006 by John L

[Larry Kart]

Here's my question - if Wynton were to drop dead today, what difference would it make to the future of jazz?

To the music, none, obviously. And to the business, none, I'm afraid, not really. Look around - who's got the goods (and I use that term with no little disdain) to be the next "face of jazz" to the "general public" (which is to say, "the powers that be")? I'm looking hard, and I'm seeing.....nobody. And I'm thankful for that.

Yeah, the little gigs might come back, but for how long? And on what scale? People really don't care that much any more. If anybody thinks that jazz as it now exists has a future of being anything other than an ongoing cult music (of many cults and many musics), hey, good for you. Don't forget to leave some milk & cookies out for Santa!

If you want a really healthy music, you gotta have a healthy scene. And what's the scene today? "Jazz education", taxidermy, reissues, and rabid cults for the most part. Yeah, that's got "healthy future" written all over it...

I knew jazz when jazz was still alive, and I know jazz now. Ain't the same creature. And I don't think it ever will be again, unless it's something that comes up from the roots and makes people have to either listen to it or else risk being left behind (and those who are already miles behind being interested in/obsessed with catching up doesn't count).

Here's to hope!

Hey, Jim: For a host of interlocking reasons -- really good youngish players (who keep cropping up and/or arriving from elsewhere all the time), genuine communal feeling, decent (or better) places to play, affordable housing, etc. -- the Chicago scene that began to bloom in the mid-1990s is getting stronger all the time, or so it seems to me. Of course, you're absolutely right about the "healthy scene" thing; I wouldn't believe this one if I hadn't seen it happen in front of my eyes and if I hadn't had stored in my experience the related but somewhat different healthiness of the AACM scene that took shape here in the mid-1960s. I'm also aware that the interlocking aspect of all this implies a potential fragility -- for instance, if the kind of players who make up this scene or will add to it in the future can't live in Chicago as readily any more because the housing/rental market undergoes a big change, that could be a BIG problem. Likewise if a shift in city regulations or the like knocks out many of the venues where good stuff is happening on maybe five out of every seven nights.

[Hot Ptah]

Here's another issue I see with Wynton being the lead man at JLC and the "face of jazz".

At one time there were several jazz artists well known to the general public, including the people who did not like much jazz or care about jazz much. Those jazz artists created a warm, positive feeling among the general public, for their music. I am thinking of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and a few others (debates could rage about who they were). If you mentioned "jazz" to the average person who did not own a single jazz album, he or she might say, "oh yeah, that Louis Armstrong is such a good trumpeter, and such a fun singer. I saw him on Ed Sullivan, that was nice."

There is really no one like that today. Wynton has become THE jazz artist that the general public knows about, but almost no one, from the "unwashed masses" to hard core jazz fanatics, really has a warm, positive feeling about his music.

So the only jazz artist known to most people creates music that no one has a happy feeling about.

No degree of planned manufacturing of a position of prominence can overcome this situation.

[Joe G]

I'm also aware that the interlocking aspect of all this implies a potential fragility -- for instance, if the kind of players who make up this scene or will add to it in the future can't live in Chicago as readily any more because the housing/rental market undergoes a big change, that could be a BIG problem. Likewise if a shift in city regulations or the like knocks out many of the venues where good stuff is happening on maybe five out of every seven nights.

I think the mood of the times (unless I'm totally wacko) is one of societal fragility. Books on the shelves have titles like "The Long Emergency" and "Collapse". Think of the housing bubble, which drives our economy in large part. Think of how much of the way that we run things in this country (nearly everything) is dependant on a reliably cheap source of energy, namely oil, most of which now lies under the surface of countries whose people don't like us much. Americans wonder how long we can "afford" to be in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what all this plus those soaring budget and trade deficits means for our financial future. If gas goes to over $5 per gallon, how many bands are going to be able to tour? And we don't have the option of taking the train. If we have to endure rolling black/brownouts, how do you put on a concert? How will Monday Michiru fire up her drum program? Somedays it feels like we're on the edge of an abyss...

So I pick up my guitar and play, just like yesterday, and that's one of the things I do to lift my spirits. Other people who happen to be listening to the music my friends and I make seem to be uplifted, too.

Yeah, the little gigs might come back, but for how long? And on what scale? People really don't care that much any more. If anybody thinks that jazz as it now exists has a future of being anything other than an ongoing cult music (of many cults and many musics), hey, good for you. Don't forget to leave some milk & cookies out for Santa!

If you want a really healthy music, you gotta have a healthy scene. And what's the scene today? "Jazz education", taxidermy, reissues, and rabid cults for the most part. Yeah, that's got "healthy future" written all over it...

I knew jazz when jazz was still alive, and I know jazz now. Ain't the same creature. And I don't think it ever will be again, unless it's something that comes up from the roots and makes people have to either listen to it or else risk being left behind (and those who are already miles behind being interested in/obsessed with catching up doesn't count).

Well, I don't know what to say to that, speaking as a practicing and performing guitarist and tune maker-upper. If I'm not playing Music of the Future that Synthesizes the Past and Speaks to the NOW, am I just wasting my time, entertaining some little "cult"? Joseph Campbell believed that our society is moving far to rapidly too have any sort of a stable mythology, and I think we can see that in the arts as well. Stylistic change is so rapid that it leaves one breathless, but still, we can play Bach, can't we? But then sometimes I scratch my head when I see a young guy in a suit playing an archtop backing up a crooner. No names, please.

Not sure what my point is here, just kind of thinking out loud. Sometimes looking at the long road ahead makes it difficult to do the work in front of us. And that work, on a good day, means finding ways to play, and vehicles in which to employ those ways, that really excite me. And that is not always easy, sitting here in this "terminal moraine" of world culture, teetering on the abyss.

[Joe G]

Here's another issue I see with Wynton being the lead man at JLC and the "face of jazz".

At one time there were several jazz artists well known to the general public, including the people who did not like much jazz or care about jazz much. Those jazz artists created a warm, positive feeling among the general public, for their music. I am thinking of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and a few others (debates could rage about who they were). If you mentioned "jazz" to the average person who did not own a single jazz album, he or she might say, "oh yeah, that Louis Armstrong is such a good trumpeter, and such a fun singer. I saw him on Ed Sullivan, that was nice."

There is really no one like that today. Wynton has become THE jazz artist that the general public knows about, but almost no one, from the "unwashed masses" to hard core jazz fanatics, really has a warm, positive feeling about his music.

So the only jazz artist known to most people creates music that no one has a happy feeling about.

No degree of planned manufacturing of a position of prominence can overcome this situation.

Of course, those greats whom you mention go back to the age when jazz WAS the popular music. Not at all the case today.

[ghost of miles]

miles behind

Potential title for a Davis retrospective?

[relyles]

There is really no one like that today. Wynton has become THE jazz artist that the general public knows about, but almost no one, from the "unwashed masses" to hard core jazz fanatics, really has a warm, positive feeling about his music.

I know this to be the opinion among the majority of enlightened connoisiuers of this and other bulletin boards, but can we really say that is true of the entire jazz community?

[Hot Ptah]

Here's another issue I see with Wynton being the lead man at JLC and the "face of jazz".

At one time there were several jazz artists well known to the general public, including the people who did not like much jazz or care about jazz much. Those jazz artists created a warm, positive feeling among the general public, for their music. I am thinking of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and a few others (debates could rage about who they were). If you mentioned "jazz" to the average person who did not own a single jazz album, he or she might say, "oh yeah, that Louis Armstrong is such a good trumpeter, and such a fun singer. I saw him on Ed Sullivan, that was nice."

There is really no one like that today. Wynton has become THE jazz artist that the general public knows about, but almost no one, from the "unwashed masses" to hard core jazz fanatics, really has a warm, positive feeling about his music.

So the only jazz artist known to most people creates music that no one has a happy feeling about.

No degree of planned manufacturing of a position of prominence can overcome this situation.

Of course, those greats whom you mention go back to the age when jazz WAS the popular music. Not at all the case today.

One of the reasons that jazz WAS the popular music was that these popular people were playing it. Wynton cannot inspire that type of popularity for his music, and since he IS jazz to many people, jazz becomes less and less popular.

[Larry Kart]

[Well, I don't know what to say to that, speaking as a practicing and performing guitarist and tune maker-upper. If I'm not playing Music of the Future that Synthesizes the Past and Speaks to the NOW, am I just wasting my time, entertaining some little "cult"?

Joe, I've heard you play in-person and on record, and you ARE in effect "playing Music of the Future that Synthesizes the Past and Speaks to the NOW." And people genuinely dig it. That's not everything, but how many get even that far?

[Joe G]

Of course, those greats whom you mention go back to the age when jazz WAS the popular music. Not at all the case today.

One of the reasons that jazz WAS the popular music was that these popular people were playing it. Wynton cannot inspire that type of popularity for his music, and since he IS jazz to many people, jazz becomes less and less popular.

True, but don't forget about a little thing called Rock-n-Roll. The popular music of the day is usually dance music. Bebop isn't dance music (does Charlie Parker, an addict playing hyperfast lines give most people the warm fuzzies? He's more than that, I know.), but rock was. Now it's hip-hop. Not much in the way of warm fuzzies there, either, but again, that's not the mood of the day.

[Joe G]

Thank you, Larry.

[paul secor]

Wynton's sure stirred up a lot of words from all of us.

[Hot Ptah]

Wynton's sure stirred up a lot of words from all of us.

He has that in common with Stanley Crouch.

[Guest youmustbe]

I was listening to the Monk 1960 broadcast from Philly with Steve Lacy in band and at end of CBS broadcast, Pops' recorded voice announces the show. There is always a 'Brand Name' attached to an Art form, whether it is Armstrong or Picasso or Toscannini or Nuryev or whoever. So with Wynton today.

[Hot Ptah]

I see it as a missed opportunity that a major effort was made to create a position for, and publicize, a particular jazz musician, to become the brand for jazz and the face of jazz--and then his music does not move large numbers of people to become more excited about jazz.

[Larry Kart]

I was listening to the Monk 1960 broadcast from Philly with Steve Lacy in band and at end of CBS broadcast, Pops' recorded voice announces the show. There is always a 'Brand Name' attached to an Art form, whether it is Armstrong or Picasso or Toscannini or Nuryev or whoever. So with Wynton today.

Ah, yes -- jazz, Jackie Gleason, and Timex. Just the same thing as Pops, right? Does Wynton endorse Swiss Kriss?

[relyles]

I see it as a missed opportunity that a major effort was made to create a position for, and publicize, a particular jazz musician, to become the brand for jazz and the face of jazz--and then his music does not move large numbers of people to become more excited about jazz.

Has there ever been a musician whose music has done this?

[Hot Ptah]

I see it as a missed opportunity that a major effort was made to create a position for, and publicize, a particular jazz musician, to become the brand for jazz and the face of jazz--and then his music does not move large numbers of people to become more excited about jazz.

Has there ever been a musician whose music has done this?

I think that if several musicians from jazz history had been given the unprecedented help, position and publicity campaigns that Wynton received, their music could have made people more excited about jazz as they ascended into the prominent position.

No one can really know for sure, as no other musician has ever been the beneficiary of all of this high powered help. But I can see that it would have been possible if the help and publicity and position had been handed over to Duke Ellington, Billy Taylor, John Lewis, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Maynard Ferguson, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, many others. Some of them might have been terrible administrators or had personalities that would not have allowed them to succeed in the position. But who really knows? Wynton did not have business managerial experience before he took the job, and he did not have the greatest personality before it was all handed to him--as I can attest from an April, 1982 interview which I conducted of him.

By the way, in that April, 1982 interview, Wynton expressed great doubts about whether it was a good idea to revisit the past and try to play like the 1960s Miles Davis Quintet. Somewhere along the way his thoughts changed on that issue.

Edited August 29, 2006 by Hot Ptah

[Guest youmustbe]

What I meant was that certain people become the 'Brand Name' for their respective Art form.

A lot of Jazz guys, studio guys were on Gleason's records. I've spoken to a number of them and they said that Jackie was great to work with.

Jackie's idea of Jazz was Dixieland, like a lot of others. Dixieland was the 'tired, white businessman's' idea of Jazz. There's a great scene in the film 'Country Girl' when William Holden takes Bing Crosby's wife, Grace Kelly to a bar to hit on her, and in the bar is a Dixieland band with a chick singer with that blonde hairdo that they all had then, singing 'Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home'.

The Old Days! Glad they're gone!

[JSngry]

The popular music of the day is usually dance music. Bebop isn't dance music (does Charlie Parker, an addict playing hyperfast lines give most people the warm fuzzies? He's more than that, I know.), but rock was. Now it's hip-hop. Not much in the way of warm fuzzies there, either, but again, that's not the mood of the day.

Yet, Bird regularly played dances as well as clubs & concerts. Quite well, too!

When jazz tried to confront rock, the uproar was fierce. When jazz tries to deal with hip-hop, the uproar is even more fierce. The uproar only sometimes has to do with the quality of the resulting music.

The idea of jazz being a "siperior" music is all well and good, but it begs the question - superior to what, and why? The obvious answers are easily dispensed, but after that, there's a lot of layers of little things that are killing the music. The notion of "superiority" too easily morphs into "seperation", and once you get too seperated, bad things happen. There's got to be some connectivity, some relevance to something other than yourself.

Look, it's a bit of a stretch, but the typewriter was a wonderous invention that was used to tell many great stories. Yet other than a few diehards, who uses a typewriter anymore? Why should they, other than personal quirkiness? I know that's "means" instead of "results", but still, you gotta wonder, at some lvel, about the "qualities" of a story written by somebody who insists on using a typewriter, who refuses to confront a computer. What's going to be at the root of the stories told by somebody like that? Is it going to be a story of engagement, or a story of a willful seperation from "regular" life? And at what point does the seperation change from "apartness" to "disconnected"?

Which is not to say that a bit of seperation is not a good thing. Leaders lead by being in front, not in the middle. And a leader can still be waaaaay out in front if there's a chain of people behind him still going the same way. But once you get out there all by your lonesome, with nobody in sight, what's left other than to either keep going your way and hope that you might bump into somebody else along the way or else just keep on keepin' on, content to be alone and, in your mind anyway, "right"?

TYhe thing that cracks me up about jazz (or more specifically, many jazz musicians) today is that they want it both ways - they want to insist that they are a breed apart, superior beings playing superior music that's not fit for the ignunt masses. And then, they want to be accepted and rewarded by at least some factions within those same ignunt masses. It's like, "I hate you. Love me! Or at least give me your money. What have I done to deserve it? Hey, I'm better than you. Isn't that enough?"

If there was a real connection to the people and the times, things wouldn't be that insanely dysfunctional. But too many jazz musicians and idealogues are so busy damning anything and everything that's changed since their "Golden Era" that I've reached the conclusion that they are at some level suicidal. Sure, there's people doing good work today. There will always be people doing good work. But what we're seeing too much of today isn't "music for the sake of music", or music to confront the now and offer a better way, it's music for the sake of stubbornly refusing to accept that typewriters are no longer the ultimate in storytelling tools, and by god, you can take mine when you can claw it out of my cold, dead hands.

Wynton is a symptom, not the disease.

[AllenLowe]

"Wynton is a symptom, not the disease."

well, so is George Bush, but I still hate him - and Wynton, like Bush, is a willing carrier.