Black-Jewish nexus in American music

[Peter Johnson]

Olivia is two.

You are wise.

You mind if I hit you up for advice when the going gets rocky (as it is bound to) in a few years?

And 'don't marry a shiksa---or you're excommunicated'.

Apropos of your kids getting married...as nerve-wracking as the teen years can be, I don't know that there's anything more nerve-wracking than one of your kids coming home with somebody and having to pray to ANYBODY's god that this is not "the one"...

My daughter actually asked me one time when she was, like, 12 or so, "Dad, is it ok to date for me somebody who's not the same religion as us?" (this coming after we'd not been to church for about 4-5 years...go figure...it must be Texas...)

I don't know what that means, I really don't. Give me the guy's name.

She gave me a name. Yeah, he's a good kid, good family, good character, nice guy, hell yeah it's ok. Good choice!

"Well....uh....it's not him...."

You see these gray hairs? Yeah....

[JSngry]

You mind if I hit you up for advice when the going gets rocky (as it is bound to) in a few years?

If I survive, yeah.

[robertoart]

There's been a historic lack of any real "sense of ownership" of the music by its players, and that will inevitably lead to frustration into bitterness into...wherever.

The lofts and musician-run labels of the '70s constitutes a golden age, IMO, contrary to the dominant Marsalis-Burns narrative.

As a distant listener I would agree with this. I would attach the new sounds and momentum of Ornette's Prime Time to that as well, extending it into the early 80's.

I think of it as the end of a Modernist timeline for jazz in a way. Because this music was arguably the last time new sounds were generated from a total Black jazz social situation that still existed outside of the University system (even if the audience was significantly White).

Perhaps this music has got kind of retrospectively colonised in a way, because people outside of Black American music were able to later participate and appropriate the sounds, without the Black cultural experience. Especially people from non-schooled music backgrounds.

I think of the Ornette-Metheny Song X album as the symbolic end of this Modernist timeline too. Because it represents another ending/beginning -and that being Pat Metheny representing the maturation of the first wave of players that learnt in the University system as much as the inner city club scene.

It also coincides with the different choices that the Wynton era were able to make. By looking back and having the luxury of choosing from the already fully formed past-sounds, to move into their future without the influence of that part of the music they wanted to disassociate with.

Sorry for the thread cap.

Pat Martino is my favourite Italian jazz musician. His story of being a young teenager and being taken into the cradle of Black American music and life is something significant I think.

Which is different to a lot of Italian jazz stories, where I get the feeling the music has played out separately from the overall Black social culture. But this opinion is from reading and not experience.

[AllenLowe]

the thing about the Jews is that we get it from both sides - we're the Capitalist exploiters and the Communist plotters. As many Jews in the record business have had a benign and or philanthropically positive influence as have been thieves - even the Chess brothers situation is more complex than is generally understood, I think; Chuck Berry left that label in a huff, but came back. Muddy Waters did OK in his treatment by the brothers, and Chess saved Etta James in many ways. This doesn't mean they paid those people all fairly; just that they were heads up better than a lot of the rest of business, and were able to handle it, I think, because Jews did not have the kind of ethnic xenophobia that a lot of people had. Even Sid Nathan was considered liberal in his hiring practices; he had African Americans on his staff well in advance of other white record company owners. Yes, this was also a business decision, but it speaks to a difference in attitude, because others were NOT making these kinds of business decisions,.

[fasstrack]

There's been a historic lack of any real "sense of ownership" of the music by its players, and that will inevitably lead to frustration into bitterness into...wherever.

The lofts and musician-run labels of the '70s constitutes a golden age, IMO, contrary to the dominant Marsalis-Burns narrative.

As a distant listener I would agree with this. I would attach the new sounds and momentum of Ornette's Prime Time to that as well, extending it into the early 80's.

I think of it as the end of a Modernist timeline for jazz in a way. Because this music was arguably the last time new sounds were generated from a total Black jazz social situation that still existed outside of the University system (even if the audience was significantly White).

Perhaps this music has got kind of retrospectively colonised in a way, because people outside of Black American music were able to later participate and appropriate the sounds, without the Black cultural experience. Especially people from non-schooled music backgrounds.

I think of the Ornette-Metheny Song X album as the symbolic end of this Modernist timeline too. Because it represents another ending/beginning -and that being Pat Metheny representing the maturation of the first wave of players that learnt in the University system as much as the inner city club scene.

It also coincides with the different choices that the Wynton era were able to make. By looking back and having the luxury of choosing from the already fully formed past-sounds, to move into their future without the influence of that part of the music they wanted to disassociate with.

Sorry for the thread cap.

Pat Martino is my favourite Italian jazz musician. His story of being a young teenager and being taken into the cradle of Black American music and life is something significant I think.

Which is different to a lot of Italian jazz stories, where I get the feeling the music has played out separately from the overall Black social culture. But this opinion is from reading and not experience.

I think the history of Barry Harris's Jazz Cultural Theater needs to be documented. It's---and his---importance can not be underestimated. I wrote much of a book documenting what took place there and on the jazz scene in the late 70s and 80s. I was almost done and told Barry (who I've know since 1976) about it. Then, without me backing it up, it died with my hard drive on a lap top. It could be salvaged for a price, or I'll start again, but I'm going to finish so the world hears this story and also so I don't make myself a liar to Barry and everyone else who I told about this.

But basically this was a black-owned enterprise which was a nightclub, center for jazz pedagogy, place where young players (like myself, Rodney Kendrick, Kim Clarke, Graham and Greg Haynes, Sue Terry---and many others) could gig, hang out with the older cats and learn, shoot the shit, and more. The teachers included Benny Powell, Frank Foster, Vernell Fournier, Charles Davis (accompanied by Jack Wilson), and, naturally, Barry. All were welcome, and if you could play or it even seemed like one day you'd play you were treated with nothing but generosity and respect. I got to know and was befriended by Pat Patrick, Cliff Barbaro, Chris Anderson, Junior Cook, Jack Wilson. Benny I had already worked with and C. Sharpe I knew before, but we got much tighter after Barry opened. Tommy Turrentine---always hanging around being a loveable pain in the ass---was on the scene, and Barry tried to help him with trumpet students. Tommy and I really loved each other. I also worked with Jaki Byard for 1 1/2 years once a month there. Barry had shake dancers his trio accompanied, a student big band I have recordings of---and a general bonhomie I hadn't seen on the scene anywhere. (the closest spaces to it IMO today in NY are Fat Cat and Smalls, another story for another day). He also never applied for a liquor license so 'young people could come in and hear the music'. There was a flea market and a 'jam for Jesse' when Jesse Jackson ran for president in '84. Records were recorded there and displayed in a case for sale. there Quite a place! Its years were 1982-87.

I was a little late for the loft scene, but as you can see I didn't do badly at all. And I think JALC is a good thing and WM a good guy.

Barry, now 82, continues his teaching at the Community Center at 250 W. 65th st. Tuesday nights. Rodney and I are still good friends and I talk to Kim once in a while. Both are real jazz musicians and would say in a second how lucky we all were to be around that place, time, and man.

Edited March 7, 2012 by fasstrack

[robertoart]

Thanks for posting that story fasstrack I enjoyed reading it.

[fasstrack]

Thanks for posting that story fasstrack I enjoyed reading it.

You're welcome, and thank Barry and the cats of his generation for giving me and my peers a story to tell.

Postscript: I was told last night that there is indeed a cheap way to rescue individual text files from a bad hard drive. So now it's a matter of when, not if. Hopefully this year, and mostly my goal is to have it done and in print while Barry's still alive---and maybe have him write the forward. I'm hoping....

Edited March 9, 2012 by fasstrack

[fasstrack]

Wade's funeral is today in Harlem. I guess I have to go. Will report back, as is my wont.

[fasstrack]

OK: Wade's funeral (cracks knuckles)... I arrived at Unity Funeral Home on Frederick Douglass Blvd. today at 3 or so. Signed the book and went to look for Wade's family. Paid my respects and reintroduced myself to Wade's mom---after 37 years---and sat down. They are warm, lovely people, and before I split I met them all. I could see they've all had great, full lives. The only drag for me was the open coffin and 'nuff said. People were filing in and conversations started.Bertha Hope was there when I arrived, and sitting at a little Previa keyboard at the front left corner by a makeshift bandstand that also had a drum set.

Barry Harris showed up soon after and I was sure glad he made it. We hugged and said hello. I told him 'Tardo (Hammer) is playing his ass off' 'Always did'. 'Where's your guitar?' 'I came from Midtown, man' Soon cats I didn't know (except for Richie Clemmons, piano)-alto, keyboard, and drums- played as more people filed in. Jazz fans would know Harold Mabern, Stanley Banks, and George Braith.

More 'workaday' cats filed in, too: Dwayne Clemmons, trumpet; Josh Benko, alto. Kathy Farmer sat at the keyboard and played My Romance beautifully. She was asked to stop and happily complied, since it was time to play recordings of Wade's groups.

At 6 the preacher got up to start the official service. After his opening remarks, followed by Wade's niece' the floor was opened to those who would speak. Barry 'spoke' by striding slowly to the keyboard, introducing a 'dirge' he originally wrote for Walter Davis Jr., then playing and singing his own lyric about life, mortality, and what we do with our lives---movingly. He got up, and walking as he talked remarked that Eubie Blake once 'said he wasn't done when he reached 100 years old. I plan to live at least that long'. The speech concluded---to applause---the moment he reached his pew to sit. Phil Schaap spoke about having known Wade since Wade was a teen, his transition from 'out' music to more traditional, and a bit about the 'Brooklyn beboppers'-to whom he said Wade belonged. Whatever-but Phil kept it short and sincere. I dug it. The next speaker made a sly comment on a silly typo on the program everyone was snickering over anyway: 'Selection: Take 5-Charlie Parker. (Brubeck's recording had been played earlier-introduced by our friendly preacher, sans correction) and it's beyond me why this was chosen or what Take 5 meant to Wade, but it's always wonderful to hear Paul Desmond, so what the hell! The speaker got a hearty laugh for pointing out that he 'never heard Bird play Take 5, but Bird loved Paul Desmond' Very cagey!

It was time to go but I left full, revivified, and thrilled that every seat was filled to honor a guy I feared would be forgotten, and I had actually misjudged everyone by having no idea was this loved. I should have known. It's all in the life you live.

Edited March 10, 2012 by fasstrack