Do you believe this to be true?

[Hardbopjazz]

I feel online MP3 stores give access to those that may never listen to any of this music, but the history as the music as the story states may not be there.

The digital threat to jazz

Online songs come with no context, which is how the music grows

BY WAYNE BREMSER

Wayne Bremser produces www.harlem.org, a Web site on the history of jazz based on Art Kane's famous 1958 portrait of dozens of jazz musicians in Harlem.

September 26, 2004

Jazz is one of the most complex forms of modern art, yet remains accessible to millions of listeners. Fans don't need university courses to dissect the magic of jazz; we've been educated by our own music collections.

The older among us remember that wonderful dinosaur, the long-playing record, which came with a trove of information to help a listener better understand the music. In the days before MTV, record labels made the album an immersive experience with striking graphic design, moody photographs and informative liner notes written by prominent critics such as Stanley Crouch, Amiri Baraka, Dan Morgenstern and Ralph J. Gleason.

In the age of the CD, the large graphics and photos have shrunk considerably, but we have gained better sound quality and exhaustive box sets that still include essays and detailed performance notes as well as alternative takes of favorite tracks that were cut from the original LPs.

With all of this written and recorded information accessible in one package, it is easier than ever to track a jazz musician's ideas and techniques evolving day by day, session by session, which is how the art form advances.

Appreciating this, our ears are not so startled when the smooth Miles Davis of "Kind of Blue" produces the menacing "Bitches Brew" of 10 years later. Understanding this progression, we can make some sense of Ornette Coleman's listener-unfriendly "Free Jazz" the first time we hear it.

For the players, this same information has been the doorway to the past - the primary source for studying who played what, when and with whom.

How long this tradition of jazz education will continue is in serious doubt, however, with the growing popularity of digital music online. Young people are no longer tethered to albums or discs. They are downloading a large portion of their music illegally and purchasing the rest of it from digital music stores like Apple Computer's popular iTunes Music Store, which has sold more than 100 million songs.

Online music has great potential for musicians and students of jazz. Imagine typing "Night and Day" into your computer and listening to dozens of versions of the song. Or accessing Duke Ellington's entire catalog with a few mouse clicks, rather than driving around town searching record stores. That's the good news for jazz. The bad news is almost everything else.

Millions of young listeners are buying music that is sold without liner notes, correct recording dates and session information. Even the musicians' names are often removed from their performances.

That's the state of the art at iTunes. Search for one of my favorite albums, "Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster." You'll see that iTunes lists the release date of this 1957 session as 1997 (the date the CD was released). Curious about who plays bass? Good luck, iTunes won't tell you. (It was Ray Brown.)

In the liner notes, Ben Webster is interviewed by legendary critic Nat Hentoff. Webster explains the influence of his cohort Coleman Hawkins: "I dug his big tone and that drive, to me he was saying more than anybody else on his horn . . . There are times when he'll play what's in vogue for three or four choruses and then, on top of that, he'll play something he's been doing for a long time." The CD version includes further reminiscences by Hentoff, written four decades after the original notes.

You won't find any of this information on iTunes or the other online music stores.

Another drawback is that the typical digital music file is but a fraction of CD sound quality. It's like comparing a jug wine that you might drink at a beach party to a glass of good merlot that you want to smell, taste and savor. If this seems like the audiophile snobbery of a jazz fan, download Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing" from Walmart.com. To me, his guitar solo sounds as if it was recorded underwater in a swimming pool.

Which is a reminder that thousands of songs scattered out of context with virtually no identifying information are a threat to the growth of all forms of music, from folk to rock to pop to bluegrass to classical. There's no way to find out the names of the conductor or orchestra on certain classical compilations sold online, let alone the names of the soloists. A new fan might be curious about who sings and plays guitar with Eric Clapton on his most famous album, "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs." It's impossible to learn this through iTunes.

The less that contemporary players in all genres know about the past, the less likely they will be to advance the music. But jazz is perhaps at the greatest risk for two reasons: Listeners require at least a small level of explanation to approach it, and improvisation is at the core of its DNA.

Composition in jazz occurs session by session, club by club, date by date, player by player. In turn, the players need an educated audience that will encourage them to keep pushing the limits. Knowledgeable fans who are enthusiastic about jazz's possibilities can support a musician's ability to innovate.

Already there is a growing audience for jazz that's accessible rather than challenging. We have seen the popularity in recent years of cookie-cutter "smooth" and "quiet storm" jazz radio stations offering a soothing background tapestry to daily activities with a program of music that doesn't engage the audience in any kind of dialogue.

Will a listener schooled on this music, whose source for more diverse jazz recordings is an online music store, be receptive to the intensity of a performance by Ornette Coleman or Sonny Rollins that might touch a much wider range of emotions? Or by someone new who is inspired by these players?

A great work of art can be enjoyed without explanation or context, but nobody would claim to truly understand Cubism by glancing at a few paintings or try to explain Fellini by watching just one film. Appreciating jazz means listening to the work of a large network of players who developed a musical language together across decades of recording sessions.

It's impossible to study the great mid-1950s recordings of Miles Davis without knowing who John Coltrane is. And it's hard to appreciate the accomplishments of Coltrane without understanding the influence of Charlie Parker, who fashioned be-bop along with Dizzy Gillespie, who was influenced by Roy Eldridge, who followed in Louis Armstrong's footsteps by playing with the Fletcher Henderson band in the mid-1930s. It's the proverbial great chain.

Just as you can be a baseball fan without memorizing statistics, it's not essential that listeners or players learn every detail of jazz's great genealogy of influences and ideas. But to become a fan and certainly to pass the most basic stage as a musician, you need at least some familiarity with the lineage.

The best hope for the future of jazz is that the online music stores will add features in the next generation of software. The information that has been removed from jazz albums can still be replaced. But consumers probably will have to demand it first.

We live in a time when many listeners don't care who plays bass on a Jay-Z track or which 1970s funk band was sampled on a Beyoncé single. The culture of music videos leaves a large number of musicians unseen and anonymous.

While the market might not demand more information about music right now, companies such as Apple Computer, Sony, Wal-Mart and Napster, which have worked closely with the music industry to build their online stores, need to remember that tastes will change, people grow up and someday listeners and musicians might want to know more about what exactly they are listening to. In the case of jazz, the future of improvisation really depends on it. Leaving this information out for a generation is the first step toward losing it forever.

[mikeweil]

He tells some truth.

But: remember how many of us started, and how we went along. Those really interested will search further info on the web, find discography sites, discussion forums tp lace dumb questions etc.

It was a minority who really cared, and it will always be. Those just listening for fun are able to remember only one name and the song title, and that's it for them, but they are not jazz fans. Those won't stick with MP3s, unless they have absolutely no money to spend on the music.

[Jim Alfredson]

And the sky is falling...

Give me a break. If someone really wants to know who played bass on Coleman Hawkins Meets Ben Webster, all they have to do is do a quick google search.

[gdogus]

And the sky is falling...

Give me a break.  If someone really wants to know who played bass on Coleman Hawkins Meets Ben Webster, all they have to do is do a quick google search.

Agreed, and that's how I manage when dealing in digital music foms. But it is a pity that none of the digimusic outlets (iTunes, etc.) can be bothered to provide the accompanying liner notes, essays, etc., even in pdf form or something. I suppose they think that too few customers want them, so it's too much cost-and-bother.

Edited September 27, 2004 by gdogus

[Free For All]

Ray Brown, for those who were wondering.

[take5]

Millions of young listeners are buying music that is sold without liner notes, correct recording dates and session information. Even the musicians' names are often removed from their performances.

The same thing happened with records.

Besides, how many people download lots of jazz? I think most jazz fans still buy records and CDs.

[Dr. Rat]

Millions of young listeners are buying music that is sold without liner notes, correct recording dates and session information. Even the musicians' names are often removed from their performances.

The same thing happened with records.

Besides, how many people download lots of jazz? I think most jazz fans still buy records and CDs.

A musician once told me that jazz is downloaded way more often (proportionately) than it gets bought.

--eric

[Noj]

My mp3 collection has led to many, many purchases of cds.

[Chrome]

Even the musicians' names are often removed from their performances.

If the digital music services offered liner notes for a small additional price, I wonder if there'd be many takers ...

Regarding not including musician names, I would have thought the services would be legally bound to include some kind of credits.

[Alexander]

I mainly get pop music off of iTunes, in which case I'm not really interested in liner notes and discographical info (which I know is available if I want it). Since iTunes has starting making certain unreleased Verve recordings available, I've been getting the personnel listings and dates of off AllMusic.com (although these are not always unimpeachable sources, especially when dealing with out-of-print material). I'm kind of pissed that Verve doesn't make all of this info available on *their* website.

[Tjazz]

I think the article gets alittle obsessive.

Hearing jazz over the radio and in an elevator... where's the jazz notes?

Like others have mentioned, there are still books and if someone does downloading, they have online access to the information highway

Most people don't take music so seriously. They just listen. It's background music.

How many people like jazz? 3%

[gdogus]

Even the musicians' names are often removed from their performances.

If the digital music services offered liner notes for a small additional price, I wonder if there'd be many takers ...

Regarding not including musician names, I would have thought the services would be legally bound to include some kind of credits.

When iTunes is charging $9.90 an album, the additional price for liner notes had better be small - or we're beginning to get more expensive than the actual CD (for a lot of jazz, anyway).

While the article references legitimate outlets for digital music, it also has in mind the avenues for illegal downloading, which are notorious for inaccuracy, even in listing artist and song title.

[Jim Alfredson]

Why anyone would buy jazz from iTunes is beyond me, unless they start carrying OOP material. Who wants mp3s as their final source? Eech.

[Uncle Skid]

It's not even MP3s -- ITunes uses some DRM-enabled format that only allows for a limited number of burns. If you want MP3, you have to burn a normal audio CD, and then rip it to MP3!

The only digital music download service that made sense to me was EMusic, before they changed their pricing structure. More or less "unlimited" downloads for around $20/month; jazz labels included Prestige, Riverside, Contemporary, Pablo, etc.

For me, the EMusic MP3s were just a way to "preview" a whole bunch of music for a reasonable fee; certainly not a substitute for the actual CD.

[JSngry]

Let my children hear music, with or without liner notes.

[Jazzmoose]

I'm still trying to figure out how he figures we gained sound quality in the switch from LPs to CDs. No wonder that website was so weird...