Jazz and the Black Audience

[marcello]

Guy-- not to discourage your inquisitiveness but sometimes you gotta take a deep breath-- two, then three-- & do some work on your own, serious work, reading, & thinking about this shit... esp. since, presumably, yr too young to have known this stuff even second hand... majors/indies-- do you even know that means, & when? was Decca a major label with Basie?? dude!!! at least send Goldberg a mentor fee, if not edc, Roy Hall or Webb Pierce & check yourself against the simple notion that the record biz was some binary kind of thing... it's really a terrific subject & a very important one wrt to the preservation of American (& world) culture(s) but yr flailing so much it's hardly even worth fixing at this point... just. start. over.

Whatever. MG made a statement that was in fact not true, and I pointed that out.

Guy

Decca was a major label, along with Victor and MG is also correct about the history of Columbia Records.

This is a very well written book:

The Label: The Story of Columbia Records

by Gary Marmorstein

George Avakian was charged with starting a jazz division after Paley bought Columbia and Avakian showed his promise with a reissue program. It was his ( GA's) forsight to sign up Miles and Brubeck. Wouldn't you?

[JSngry]

What self-interest could possibly be furthered if some powerful white people controlled black people into not liking jazz? What would be in it for the powerful white people? It's not like jazz is a gold mine of revenue--and if the white people controlled jazz, wouldn't they want to increase the number of people buying it, white and black alike, instead of driving away a whole group of potential buyers?

It's less (much less) about money and more (much more) about "culture" - who "owns" it and who gets to "channel" it.

I personally think that freelancer is getting it more "right" than Billy Harper (who I love like few other), at least in terms of cause.

But when it comes to effect...you gotta wonder how Michael Brecker (no dis intended, honestly, this ain't about just music) got to be the Tenor Voice Of A Generation when Billy Harper got to spend a lifetime as at best a cult figure. Sure, there's issues of "business" and such that some people "play" a helluva lot better than others and that's in no way to be minimized and is in no way intrinsically nefarious, but then again, "the system" can keep a name in play for a good long time or else it can decide to let that name go off into the breeze. Billy Harper got a bit of push in the early 70s, seemed willing to play the game just a little but not very much and by the mif-70s was somebody who if you didn't know about by now, you weren't going to.

Not saying that there's a Racial/Racist/Whatever motivation for all/any of this, but ya' know, this is people doing business, and it's normal for people, any/all people to gravitate towards that which overall offers the least resistance from without and from within. Let's not inflate this into a Grand Conspiracy, but let's not negate this by pretending that it's not a very real factor in The Way Things Work (For Real) either.

Now, you take Wynton's thing at LC. In some ways, that should have been a Major Cultural Triumph, deaing as it on the surface appears to with issues like "ownership" of the music, "self-definition", etc., issues that have long been simmering in many more minds than the casual white fan could even begin to imagine. But look closer - this gig was created by Reader's Fucking Digest MoneyPeople. It's the biggest Jazz Plantation ever, and Wynton is the House...you know. And it is so not focused on evolving the music/culture organically as much as it is on propagating an (desperately attempting to become "the") official version of what this music is now, has been, and always will be forevermore. And it's version that was "selected" by fucking Readers Digest MoneyPeople. Laughter is not the best medicine here...

Still, I think that freelancer's got it right overall, although the Billy Harper POV comes into play as to one among many, many possibilities as to why, maybe, there's not an AACM type "in the community" presence across the land. When thigs got "difficult", "culture" got steered in a certain direction, probably simply because that's where the money was at the time, and at the time, money was cruical. But once there, what? Are you gonna work on getting it home again or are you just gonna take it under your wing and claim it as your own? The parallels to post-Katrina are kinda...."interesting"...

Again, it's nowhere near "that simple". But it's not that easy either...

[umum_cypher]

We aren't talking about Billy Harper's interpretation of history here, we're talking about White Lightening's report of his interpretation, with no primary evidence before us, but with that in mind -

Surely there's a kernal of truth to pretty much everything Harper reportedly says, but it's surrounded by such a thick husk of bullshit that the truth value is hard to get at. For instance, segregation and the resultant dissipation of black capital was certainly a factor in the lessening of work and in/formal education opportunities for black jazz musicians ('The White establishment used its funds to move the venues away from the Black Neighborhoods into the white ones'), but that overlooks how important white capital (indie labels, clubs) were to jazz during its boomtime, and doesn't explain why other forms were able to flourish in jazz's place without (supposedly) those kinds of black-owned resources.

'Jazz needs subsidy to survive as much as the opera - but the White establishment never subsidized Jazz': opera is expensive as hell to put on (this is not an argument for opera's subsidizing, it's a fact). But why should jazz have needed subsidizing in a way that hip hop didn't? Why could a jazz quartet fail because of a lack of subsidy but three MCs and One DJ succeed, in the same place, at the same time, before the same audience? The patronage and subsidizing needs to come from a core audience first, that's why. My money's on Freelancer. One of the most difficult things for historians to explain, after as many social and material influences as you can think of have been evaluated, is the fact that styles and tastes simply change. It's frustrating not to be able to pin that on anything particular (education policies, material resources, concentration of demographics, socio-political influences), but there you go - it's vague even beyond the need for 'immediacy'.

Has anyone read Brian Ward's Just My Soul Responding? It's very dense and very good on this, as I remember.

One of the worst things about this kind of cult-nat derived rhetoric (the 'white man' made us do this, educated us to do that) - and if I'm wary of the report it's because in two long interviews I did with BH he didn't talk or even seem to be conceptualizing like that - is that it allows black Americans in history and in the present no agency whatsoever, and there's nothing more depressing than someone denying their own power to resist or influence events, even in the knoweldge that they themselves have put up such resistance and had such influence, in order to solidify in their own minds and those of their audiences a simplistic historical explanation based on emotive and attractive racial alliegences. Though, eventually, I take his points!

I would write more here but I have a policy document to present at my meeting with the White Establishment this morning. (We're going to make 50 Cent do an album of Bellini arias).

[edited to increase verbiage]

Edited July 13, 2007 by umum_cypher

[AndrewHill]

Man, I feel like I'm stepping into a den full of hungary lions, but I always found it interesting in the Monk movie 'Straight No Chaser' that when they show the clip of Monk, Abdul-Malik and Haynes at the (I believe) the Five Spot that after they play for a couple of minutes, they pan the audience and they are, if I recall, a predominantly, if not an all white audience. Maybe this was filmed in the late 50's? (that part is a guess too). Sorry that I don't have the exact date.

[Guy Berger]

Surely there's a kernal of truth to pretty much everything Harper reportedly says,

Just wanted to add -- if Barak/White Lightning claims that Harper said that, then Harper said that.

Guy

[umum_cypher]

Surely there's a kernal of truth to pretty much everything Harper reportedly says,

Just wanted to add -- if Barak/White Lightning claims that Harper said that, then Harper said that.

Guy

Sure, I wasn't casting aspertions on WL's integerity, but if we really want to talk about this idea in relation to Billy Harper, then a gloss isn't enough, we need to see the actual words, that's all.

Re: 5 Spot Audience. May well be so - but isn't also true that clubs like the Blue Coronet in Brooklyn were providing jazz to overwhelmingly black audiences at the same time? This is the problem isn't it, the documentary evidence for this kind of thing is patchy, and the 'samples' taken to construct cases for jazz's relative popularity/decline/whatever tend to be taken from the most familiar, visible or easily available sources. Which is not at all to doubt the 5 Spot point, but to say that there were a lot of less visible/local scenes which might prove the opposite.

[Simon Weil]

I did an interview with Billy Harper about a month ago and asked him about that.

Mr. Harper believes that once the White establishment realized that Jazz is worthwhile they "confiscated" it from the Blacks by trying to erase the Black elements of the music - Swing era & White Big Bands. They did the same thing with Elvis.

The White establishment used its funds to move the venues away from the Black Neighborhoods into the white ones. Jazz needs subsidy to survive as much as the opera - but the White establishment never subsidized Jazz. They also raised prices. All that chased the Black Audience away from Jazz. In addition, the White establishment "educated" the Blacks to prefer certain musical genres that the Whites regarded as inferior, such as Rap/Hip Hop.

That's how mr. Harper regards these issues.

Well the point about subsidy raises some issues. Cause when the language of the music is so far removed from that which you will naturally acquire through osmosis, you've gotta go to school to learn it. Seriously who that's at the mercy of street life and an insecure home environment has got the time and inclination to 'learn' 251s and "coltrane's' superimpositions over them. you want to relate and express yourself in something far more immediate and urgent. I remember reading a jazz musician saying once that 'the whole world was singing the blues these days and that a rapper has the blues so bad he can't even sing anymore, he's just got to speak'. The poetry of Coltrane is so far back in the distance.

I think that hits on something true - the idea that effectively, the black ghetto "has the blues so bad he can't even sing anymore, he's just got to speak". And then the line about Coltrane's poetry being past. It's like no poetry after Auschwitz. Or the line about not being able to express ultimately what went on the Holocaust. All these are part of the same spectrum - with the more horror you're confronted with the less able you are to express it - like all the lyricism goes out the window, or indeed, one can't make jokes about it.

Like things become more and more unspeakable.

That the urgency and intent of rap was able to become another commodity and grow consumer culture legs is now a given. I think it's the distance of the jazz language and it's connection to another eras conception of pop culture that relagates it to the same, subsidized academic spaces as the opera. Much more than rappers filling a vaccuum that was already there, and needed something more direct than three part harmonies. If Fire music/venting could have been commodified it would have been. After all Fluxus is now entry level cognition for the visual arts.

Maybe I'm misreading you, but Fire music/venting seems to imply a diminished value to a certain sort of black 60s-70s expressionistic playing. That is this music was, in part, only venting. That basically there were no useful forms to be extracted from it, drawn upon, built on.

I don't agree. On the other hand, I think rap, on some level, is only venting. It's just a vehicle for rage, in that way. It's true to say that much out expressionist 60s music we're taking about had rage in it. But the rage seems to be part of a spectrum of emotions. In rap it's the emotion. So I would distinguish between the rage of the 60s - when there was still hope of getting out of the ghetto - and now, when one is in the ghetto for life, knows it and is enraged.

The reason I think that rap has become popular (= commodified) is because, since the 70s, all the things we used to believe in have gone out of the window. To be believe that there is nothing worth believing in is to be hip, to be Post-Modern. And that's what rap is really about, not believing there's any point, being enraged about it.

I think 60s black expressionistic music still retains a feeling of hope - and is connected to deep expression of the concerns of the ghetto. I don't think that it is venting at all. But to hear those deep concerns would put the wider audience - in America, in the world - on the road to doing something about that. In my view that's why it hasn't become popular.

"There are ghettos everywhere, including in everyone's head" (Albert Ayler 1966)

It's universal.

Simon Weil

[ghost of miles]

One of the most difficult things for historians to explain, after as many social and material influences as you can think of have been evaluated, is the fact that styles and tastes simply change. It's frustrating not to be able to pin that on anything particular (education policies, material resources, concentration of demographics, socio-political influences), but there you go - it's vague even beyond the need for 'immediacy'.

I really think that's the primary element at play here. (Although Jsngry's points are all on-the-money, as usual.) I mean, there's no law or rule that anything in the culture has to survive as a popular form. That may seem stupidly simple, but as I & others have said in this thread, the African-American audience has been moving on since the early/mid-1940s...and much of that is "styles changing." All kinds of factors may exacerbate or accelerate those stylistic changes, but they happen, whatever the reasons.

[medjuck]

I'm not an expert on Davis. The story I heard was that Columbia did Prestige's manufacturing and the boss of the pressing plant told his boss about how many Miles Davis records he was manufacturing, so Columbia hired him.

A complete tangent --

MG, where did you read/hear this story? I've never heard it mentioned before. It's generally stated that George Avakian signed Miles to Columbia after the latter's performance on "Round Midnight" (and the crowd response) at the 1955 Newport Festival. (Which also fits the timeline.)

Guy

In conversation with Bob Porter.

MG

Hmm... was Porter working for Prestige in 1955?

Guy

No - but I rather think that would have been a story he would have heard from an authoritative source when he did work for Prestige. I'm inclined to credit it.

MG

Well, without independent verification of Porter's claim (I believe you, not necessarily Porter), I'm somewhat more skeptical. But it's definitely plausible that Columbia became interested in Davis as a result of the 1955 Newport Festival, checked his sales at Prestige, and then signed him.

Guy

The story of Miles's signing with Columbia is one of the most documented events in Jazz history. Amongst many other places it can be found is in the liner notes to the Miles/Coltrane Columbia box set. BTW I once had an e-mail exchange with Avakian about the event. From listening to the music and announcements it seemed to me that Miles was the leader of the group rather than just a last minute addition. But Avakian assured me that I was wrong and that Miles's participation had not been announced in the program.

[Christiern]

Bob Weinstock was well prepared for Miles' departure from Prestige. He made sure that he had a lot in the can, then he took advantage of Columbia's promotions, spent some extra money on color covers, and tied his albums to Columbia's PR tails. He told me that himself and I never heard anything like Bob Porter's story when I was on the Prestige staff.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Bob Weinstock was well prepared for Miles' departure from Prestige. He made sure that he had a lot in the can, then he took advantage of Columbia's promotions, spent some extra money on color covers, and tied his albums to Columbia's PR tails. He told me that himself and I never heard anything like Bob Porter's story when I was on the Prestige staff.

Thanks Chris. OK.

MG

[robertoart]

I did an interview with Billy Harper about a month ago and asked him about that.

Mr. Harper believes that once the White establishment realized that Jazz is worthwhile they "confiscated" it from the Blacks by trying to erase the Black elements of the music - Swing era & White Big Bands. They did the same thing with Elvis.

The White establishment used its funds to move the venues away from the Black Neighborhoods into the white ones. Jazz needs subsidy to survive as much as the opera - but the White establishment never subsidized Jazz. They also raised prices. All that chased the Black Audience away from Jazz. In addition, the White establishment "educated" the Blacks to prefer certain musical genres that the Whites regarded as inferior, such as Rap/Hip Hop.

That's how mr. Harper regards these issues.

Well the point about subsidy raises some issues. Cause when the language of the music is so far removed from that which you will naturally acquire through osmosis, you've gotta go to school to learn it. Seriously who that's at the mercy of street life and an insecure home environment has got the time and inclination to 'learn' 251s and "coltrane's' superimpositions over them. you want to relate and express yourself in something far more immediate and urgent. I remember reading a jazz musician saying once that 'the whole world was singing the blues these days and that a rapper has the blues so bad he can't even sing anymore, he's just got to speak'. The poetry of Coltrane is so far back in the distance.

I think that hits on something true - the idea that effectively, the black ghetto "has the blues so bad he can't even sing anymore, he's just got to speak". And then the line about Coltrane's poetry being past. It's like no poetry after Auschwitz. Or the line about not being able to express ultimately what went on the Holocaust. All these are part of the same spectrum - with the more horror you're confronted with the less able you are to express it - like all the lyricism goes out the window, or indeed, one can't make jokes about it.

Like things become more and more unspeakable.

That the urgency and intent of rap was able to become another commodity and grow consumer culture legs is now a given. I think it's the distance of the jazz language and it's connection to another eras conception of pop culture that relagates it to the same, subsidized academic spaces as the opera. Much more than rappers filling a vaccuum that was already there, and needed something more direct than three part harmonies. If Fire music/venting could have been commodified it would have been. After all Fluxus is now entry level cognition for the visual arts.

Maybe I'm misreading you, but Fire music/venting seems to imply a diminished value to a certain sort of black 60s-70s expressionistic playing. That is this music was, in part, only venting. That basically there were no useful forms to be extracted from it, drawn upon, built on.

I don't agree. On the other hand, I think rap, on some level, is only venting. It's just a vehicle for rage, in that way. It's true to say that much out expressionist 60s music we're taking about had rage in it. But the rage seems to be part of a spectrum of emotions. In rap it's the emotion. So I would distinguish between the rage of the 60s - when there was still hope of getting out of the ghetto - and now, when one is in the ghetto for life, knows it and is enraged.

The reason I think that rap has become popular (= commodified) is because, since the 70s, all the things we used to believe in have gone out of the window. To be believe that there is nothing worth believing in is to be hip, to be Post-Modern. And that's what rap is really about, not believing there's any point, being enraged about it.

I think 60s black expressionistic music still retains a feeling of hope - and is connected to deep expression of the concerns of the ghetto. I don't think that it is venting at all. But to hear those deep concerns would put the wider audience - in America, in the world - on the road to doing something about that. In my view that's why it hasn't become popular.

"There are ghettos everywhere, including in everyone's head" (Albert Ayler 1966)

It's universal.

Simon Weil

i definitely didn't mean to imply Simon, that free jazz was simply venting. I was thinking back to another recent thread that I thought had some relevant comments that related to this one as well. The music of that era has been, and will continue to be among the most important listening experiences I have. In fact I wish I had more emotional energy to give to it. I think that any aesthetic that requires considerable committment on behalf of the listener/viewer will always stay marginalised at best, obviously. And for many of the reasons you also express. It does seem though that much of the legacy of that era has been 'claimed' to a certain extant by the post-punk generation, (if only in claim to it's expressive range and energy being influential), as much as it was marginalised even further by the polemics of the Marsarlis generation. Maybe the very things that are dismissed as not relevant/or negating of the development of jazz heritage aesthetics are in fact the very things that some listeners/audiences find lacking in Marsarlis era music.

To me the sound of Julius Hemphil still feels more 'in the world' than the simulacrum affect of much contemporary jazz. So yeh, anything that has sincere and challenging aesthetics, that also challenges tha social order, that can't be so easily diluted for consumption by the masses, is/will get left behind. Although the 'young lions' probably contributed in rehabilatating the reputation of soul jazz to a certain degree, so thats something positive.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Although the 'young lions' probably contributed in rehabilatating the reputation of soul jazz to a certain degree, so thats something positive.

Over here, I'm a bit out of touch with Marsalis/young lionsville. Could you explain this please FL?

MG

[AllenLowe]

a few comments, as I arrive, as usual, late to all this -

Hemphill's memorable comment about Marsalis (which I've seen quoted, but which I also heard in person) was that Wynton was "tilling the master's fields." This from a guy who was very racially conscious, yet quite racially ecumenical in his thinking; I never encountered any resentful sense of race as a point of white entitlement coming from him; not to say, in any way, that he was not, once again, deeply aware of race and his own social point of view; just that ultimately he saw the music as music and, unlike Harper, had some perspective on the whole thing (heard him also praise Lee Konitz as the first alto player who gave him a sense of a way out of bebop conformism); but Jim is absolutely right in his comments that it's neither all or nothing at all. Race and its relationship to product and access and market dynamics and simple personal background/social comfort is a multi-layered topic. I was recently at a conference in which a very highly charged comment was made about white theft of black music; 10 years ago I would have stood my ground and fought the whole thing rhetorically with various personal and historic and musical observations. This time I walked away from it because I long ago learned that when you take a particular side in this argument you are not merely representing yourself to anyone listening, but you become a surrogate for virtually everything said or done in the name of white opinion on this subject over the last 50 years, from Dick Sudhalter to Larry Kart (sorry Larry, just kidding). And I won't be a poster child for white academic opinion, won't put myself up in a way that forces me to spend half the argument defending or refuting opinions that are not mine, but merely ascribed to me for being white and/or sharing some perspective with certain white critics (like Sudhalter). and then I will add a quote from Anthony Braxton which, if self serving here, makes a point compellingly counter to Harper (and sorry for repeating this from another self-serving post of mine):

"I think Allen Lowe...is deeply misunderstood because he doesn’t hate himself. Now if he hated himself, and hated TransEuropa, then he would have a more successful run, but he is misunderstood because he wants to include the input of the great transeuropeans who have also contributed to the music – it is not understood – and the idea of European Americans being connected to the music is looked at almost as if it’s a racist proposition, or some diabolical political plot to destroy the essence of the music, when in fact, as far as I’m concerned, my research a long time ago made it pretty clear that we don’t talk of the historical aspects of the music correctly, that jazz has been etched out and defined as a vehicle for African Americans...

Edited July 15, 2007 by AllenLowe

[robertoart]

Although the 'young lions' probably contributed in rehabilatating the reputation of soul jazz to a certain degree, so thats something positive.

Over here, I'm a bit out of touch with Marsalis/young lionsville. Could you explain this please FL?

MG

well now I'm reading it back I think I'm too scared to, probably at the limits of my perceptions here. Especially after Allan's post which kinda makes my statement a bit pithy now. And I should fess up that despite really not getting into the Marsalis era recordings I do love most of the guitarists associated with that generation like Russell Malone and Bobby Broom etc. I did recently read an interesting comment by Malone where he stated that he carried some resentment for the fact that players like Metheny, Scofield, Frissell etc were elevated to critical/commercial positions that were far harder to reach for himself. Although he did go on to say that when he met those players it was all about the music for them. He also said 'something like' that without that resonance of the blues, ( I think he actually said ethnic element) that the music wasn't really jazz. It was clear that it was a 'feeling' and an aesthetic that he was refering to and did not seem in any way exclusive, just that it was what defined the music for him. I also read many years ago someone say that you could listen to John Scofield and enjoy all the things you like about Grant Green without having to think about the politics of Grant's experience.

[umum_cypher]

Something I've been pondering for a while is a point of Theodor Gracyk's, made in the context of a somewhat reactionary and disingenuous argument about the politics of musical/cultural appropriation.

He says (paraphrasing): the complaint that a given artform is denied recognition and should have a wider audience, be granted more funding etc etc, is logically incompatible with the complaint that given artform might fall/has fallen prey to theft/appropriation.

His example, as I remember is MTV: is was right, he says, that black musicians should have complained that in its early days MTV screened no videos by black artists. But, he goes on to say, that complaint - when answered - rendered invalid subsequent complaints that black music (hip hop the case in point) had become too-widely adopted by 'outside' (i.e. white) audiences.

There are problems with this argument, but I still think it's compelling. And the contradiction could be found in jazz history of course - if, for example, those involved with the Jazz and People's Movement in the early 70s subsequently pulled the appropriation thing.

But Allen, I'd still be wary about pinning all this on Harper without the transcript, although point taken, the argument's not exactly a rhetorical rarity one way or the other...

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Although the 'young lions' probably contributed in rehabilatating the reputation of soul jazz to a certain degree, so thats something positive.

Over here, I'm a bit out of touch with Marsalis/young lionsville. Could you explain this please FL?

MG

well now I'm reading it back I think I'm too scared to, probably at the limits of my perceptions here. Especially after Allan's post which kinda makes my statement a bit pithy now. And I should fess up that despite really not getting into the Marsalis era recordings I do love most of the guitarists associated with that generation like Russell Malone and Bobby Broom etc. I did recently read an interesting comment by Malone where he stated that he carried some resentment for the fact that players like Metheny, Scofield, Frissell etc were elevated to critical/commercial positions that were far harder to reach for himself. Although he did go on to say that when he met those players it was all about the music for them. He also said 'something like' that without that resonance of the blues, ( I think he actually said ethnic element) that the music wasn't really jazz. It was clear that it was a 'feeling' and an aesthetic that he was refering to and did not seem in any way exclusive, just that it was what defined the music for him. I also read many years ago someone say that you could listen to John Scofield and enjoy all the things you like about Grant Green without having to think about the politics of Grant's experience.

Thanks very much, FL. I like Broom and Malone a lot, too, and can see what you mean now.

I never thought of them as being linked to the Marsalises of this world before but I can see that it's more than just that they're contemporaries. When I think of "Organic" by Don Braden - surely one of the Young Lions? - which I've got, there are two kinds of thread leading out from that for me.

The first is his BEAUTIFUL performance of "Moonglow", just accompanied by Malone (but also the work, in other tracks, of David Newman and Jack McDuff) - it's clear that Braden was trying to link both backwards and forwards in that album.

The other is that, according to the sleeve notes, despite having worked with a lot of good organists early in his career, he had to go to Bob Porter for history lessons in Soul Jazz. Also, in the sleeve notes, Dorn says that the album would be the last time Braden would be heard in that context. And further, Braden says: "...one of the goals Joel and I had for this CD was to capture that "havin' a good time" feeling. At the same time, I wanted the recording to have the intelligence that all of my favourite jazz records have."

No matter how much I enjoy the music in this album, Braden's attitude is most unsatisfactory to me. OK, the guy's got to play it the way it feels to him. But it feels patronising to me. "Oh yeah, I can do this shit, but really, you know, it's of little value." I don't get anything like this feeling from Broom or Malone, both of whom I've seen live. I managed to get a short chat with Malone after his gig and didn't get anything like it from talking to him, either. That's why I find it hard to put them in the same bag as Braden.

MG

[JSngry]

I also read many years ago someone say that you could listen to John Scofield and enjoy all the things you like about Grant Green without having to think about the politics of Grant's experience.

Ya' know...there's just so many levels and layers of wrong in that....

[AllenLowe]

I don't have numbers, but I would be interested to see what the comparative bookings/earnings are for contemporary white and black jazz musicians; I would be more than surprised if whites were earning more and working more. And a few more observations:

1) the most powerful individual in the history of jazz is Wynton Marsalis, who is African American;

2) dopey white liberals are the source of many problems; when I lived in New Haven there was a young black jazz musician who was completely incompetent as a player; yet he frequently got the arts-community jazz gigs because he was young and black and fit their idea of what a jazz-cat looked like. I used to tell them ALL the time about the older black players who lived in town who could really play (like Bobby Buster who worked with Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons or Dickey Meyers who worked with Jimmy McGriff, or Sonny Williams, who plays on an old John Hammond Smith LP - ) but they were clueless and never hired guys like that. This carries over in many ways to the critical community, which is largely composed of dopey white liberals.

3) Ultimately, as Ralph Ellison says, the music is spread socially and culturally, not genetically (which would be a Nazi-like theory) - and I've always felt that as the music has moved so far from it's community roots we can no longer consider it to be racially specific -

4) Of course, I always remember an interview I did with Dizzy Gillespie many years ago; he had just performed at the White House with Stan Getz. I had seen it, as it was televised. Itzhak Perlman was the host; after they played, Perlman went over to Getz to ask him about the origins of bebop. Dizzy, when I talked to him, was still seething about this unintended insult: "They never let you forget you're black." This from a guy who had just told me that a white man - Dave Schildkraut - was the only alto player to "capture the rhythmic essence of Bird." So he was no racist -

5) At the end of the day I can play the blues better than any of these guys - Malone, Braden, Broom - probably because I know the music better than they do, understand where it's been better, and have listened to it more - so much for racial determinism -

Edited July 16, 2007 by AllenLowe

[robertoart]

I also read many years ago someone say that you could listen to John Scofield and enjoy all the things you like about Grant Green without having to think about the politics of Grant's experience.

Ya' know...there's just so many levels and layers of wrong in that....

Yeh your right. Big silly generalisation. I remember reading it in Wire years ago. Can't even remember the source article or the context actually. Thanks for pulling me up on that. Just thinking though about the relevance of that era kind of broadly defined as fusion and wondering about where that took the music and the audience as well. Is there perhaps a connection between that era and the earlier post that mentions the popularity of smooth jazz amongst black audiences. Could there be seen to be some connection or transition there? I don't intend to in any way pigeonhole a multifaceted player like Scofield into that question either. It was dumb.

Any opinions yourself Allen on what it was like to be a working musican through that era and your experiences of the changing audience/and or expectations of what improvised music was striving for during that time?

Edited July 16, 2007 by freelancer

[Joe G]

I did recently read an interesting comment by Malone where he stated that he carried some resentment for the fact that players like Metheny, Scofield, Frissell etc were elevated to critical/commercial positions that were far harder to reach for himself. Although he did go on to say that when he met those players it was all about the music for them.

I think it's silly of Malone to harbor resentment in this case. If your main artistic thrust is to be "just" a great straightahead jazz guitarist, you're going to hit a commercial ceiling. He should compare his career to people like Jimmy Bruno or Vic Juris, etc. Besides, the level of commercial and critical success that a one-of-a-kind artist like Metheny has achieved is difficult for ANYONE to attain.

[marcello]

I did recently read an interesting comment by Malone where he stated that he carried some resentment for the fact that players like Metheny, Scofield, Frissell etc were elevated to critical/commercial positions that were far harder to reach for himself. Although he did go on to say that when he met those players it was all about the music for them.

I think it's silly of Malone to harbor resentment in this case. If your main artistic thrust is to be "just" a great straightahead jazz guitarist, you're going to hit a commercial ceiling. He should compare his career to people like Jimmy Bruno or Vic Juris, etc. Besides, the level of commercial and critical success that a one-of-a-kind artist like Metheny has achieved is difficult for ANYONE to attain.

You can only play so many chourses of "Cherokee" before you hit a ceiling.

People respond to a artist who are tring to make real music.

By the way, there is a whole 'nother subject of Crow Jim that is part of the jazz scene, but there is nothing to be gained by exploring it. Not these days.

[Hot Ptah]

... Just try to get one child of yours to listen to ANY album you wish they would like, and the impossibility of shaping the musical taste of youth will become apparent.

Apparent to a parent?

Go to a predominantly black high school in any American city with a stack of mainstream jazz CDs by major artists and play them for a class. Let's make them major black jazz artists. Then tell the students, "you should really like this, you know". See what happens.

[Hot Ptah]

I did recently read an interesting comment by Malone where he stated that he carried some resentment for the fact that players like Metheny, Scofield, Frissell etc were elevated to critical/commercial positions that were far harder to reach for himself. Although he did go on to say that when he met those players it was all about the music for them.

I think it's silly of Malone to harbor resentment in this case. If your main artistic thrust is to be "just" a great straightahead jazz guitarist, you're going to hit a commercial ceiling. He should compare his career to people like Jimmy Bruno or Vic Juris, etc. Besides, the level of commercial and critical success that a one-of-a-kind artist like Metheny has achieved is difficult for ANYONE to attain.

The funny thing is that Malone could branch out into more commercial music and do so creatively, but chooses not to do so. When I saw him live a few years ago, he ended the concert by adjusting some knobs and switches on his guitar and amp, and then playing some scorching, distorted electric blues, with his jazz chops apparent in his solos. I thought to myself, "wow, he could easily take this direction into a really interesting place, possibly where Duane Allman might have gone if he had lived, only with even more chops than Allman." (In the context of this discussion, the fact that Allman was white is a problem, but that is what I was thinking at the time). But this "electric blues with creative soloing" was tacked on to the end of his concert like a little novelty number.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

... Just try to get one child of yours to listen to ANY album you wish they would like, and the impossibility of shaping the musical taste of youth will become apparent.

Apparent to a parent?

Go to a predominantly black high school in any American city with a stack of mainstream jazz CDs by major artists and play them for a class. Let's make them major black jazz artists. Then tell the students, "you should really like this, you know". See what happens.

Well, make them MINOR black jazz artists - Lonnie Smith, Boogaloo Joe Jones

MG