best selling non-vocal all-acoustic jazz albums

[Chuck Nessa]

Change of era around the late '60s and '70s. Club owners and indie label owners inspired by the "post war boom" were retiring and selling out. Think about the "street" implications of this shift.

That being said, I think the newer "indies' and the cashing in by the majors more than made up for the difference. Just other people selling the records and making the money.

I may elaborate later.

[JSngry]

I've always assumed that as the jazz-related music scene(s) diversified in the 70's, that so too did the interests of jazz audiences. And in the process, a fair number of the people who were either previously interested (or who would have been interested) in purely acoustic jazz, moved off into listening as much or more to fusion, jazz-rock, jazz-funk, and other related musics.

In other words, fewer listeners of more traditional, acoustic jazz. And more listeners to fusion and the like (some of whom were former acoustic jazz listeners, and some who were previously unfamiliar with jazz).

Here's what I saw, albeit from a young, inexperienced perspective -

Very few "people who were either previously interested (or who would have been interested) in purely acoustic jazz, moved off into listening as much or more to fusion, jazz-rock, jazz-funk, and other related musics". The fans of fusion came mostly from "advanced" rock listeners, fans of "jazz-rock" horn bands, people into the rock-oriented big bands (which had been "gaining steam" since the late-1960's, remember), etc. In other words, very few people dropped Max Roach for Billy Cobham, Ray Brown for Max Roach, or Kenny Burrell for John McLaughlin.

If anything, some of those fusion fans migrated towards accoustic jazz, but not in sufficient numbers to replace the fans who were either dying off or getting too old to be as actively interested in club-going and side buying as they had been.

Which, when you think about it is natural. How many 20 year olds in 1950 would have gravitated to Johnny Hodges over Bird as their focal point? Or how many 20 year olds in 1964 would have gravitated towards Zoot Sims over Trane?

No, the new trends didn't drive anybody away who would have gotten on board "if only". If anything, they brought people in who might have never known what was there, and in numbers big enough for the "corporate jazz world" to notice, and to attempt to attract in various ways.

Again, it's a question of scale - Bebop, Hard Bop, and all that other stuff had (mostly) passed the point of being "now" music, so expecting new listeners to come to it in droves would have been purely a pipe dream, expectations of many fans and musicians alike to the contrary. Young folks don't usually go apeshit over thier dad's music. They just don't.

But the Baby Boomers had BIG NUMBERS, and something, anything, that would attract them to something, anything, resembling "jazz" was both musically inevitable and commercially advantageous (for players and "owners" alike). This notion put forth by some that "if only Miles had stayed accoustic, if only Cannonball had not gone funky, ifonlyifonlyifonlyifonlyifonlyifonlyifonlyifonly" that the type of music that they loved would have remained a vital musical idiom and a viable commercial force is just so much bullshit, I think. Things change, and people change with them.

Dexter Gordon got to be a "star" on Columbia because he came back to America, and had a legend that he could live up to. Woody Shaw did the same because he was a young-ish guy making fresh, non-cliched music that very much spoke to its time. McCoy Tyner did well because he too was making powerful music, and was coming out with about 25 albums a week on Milestone.

A lot of other cats didn't do so well simply because they and their music appealed to a certain audience, and as that audience aged and got less active, there wasn't sufficient interest in "Dad's Jazz", so to speak to pick up the slack. Which, as I said earlier, is perfectly normal. These folks didn't lose thier music to electricity, they lost it to reality. If anything, electricity bought them a new lease on life, since a few people who started out in the newer forms worked thier way back.

And the REALLY old guys, the Basies, etc, well, after you pass middle age, you enter into that realm where you're so old, and you've survived, that it's COOL for young folks to like you again. Alberta Hunter's late-life comeback is a good example. She could have sounded EXACTLY like she did in 1980 and been 45, and nobody would ahve given a rat's ass. Again, normal enough - who doesn't havee issues with thier parents, and who doesn't love thier grandparents to death?

I'm speaking in generalities, obviously, but I hope you get my point. Why would any normal teenager buy a Dexter Gordon side on Prestige in 1968? But the same person gets into "jazz-rock" and such, explores a little more, and why wouldn't he buy a well-hyped Dexter Gordon side on Columbia in 1978?

But would the same normal guy at any point in time have a real impetus to buy, say, a James Moody side on any label? Probably not, and that's not fusion's fault, or rock's fault, or anything else's "fault". That's just how shit works.

We've not even touched on how "free jazz" (off all sorts) was or wasn't doing these years, and we should, because there were signs (and signs is about all they were) that this music, the other "enemy" music, but also the (mostly) other music besides electro/funk/etc that was dealing in totally contemporary language with totally contemporary issues was slowly surely going to find an audience big and young enought to be small but sufficient for long enough. Maybe. But the Reagan/Marsalis Big Chill nipped that shit before it had a chance to fully play out one way or the other. Arrested developement indeed.

Many, many, MANY of the people pushing this "jazz was dead until you-know-who saved" it have agendas, and being truthful and realistic about life in general ain't one of them. Like I said - don't believe the hype.