I'm often baffled by people who scrunch up their faces after being asked if they enjoy jazz. Do jazz lovers hear things that fans of other types of music cannot? Is jazz like some sort of dog whistle that only some people respond to? And if so, why doesn't jazz have the same impact on everyone?
Of course, one can attribute ambivalence to a lack of exposure to jazz and distaste to overexposure to more advanced forms of jazz. But then when you play Billie Holiday, Count Basie or Hank Mobley for people and they have this reaction or no reaction, I'm often baffled.
How can someone not be moved by those artists and this music? My guess is that some people can hear the poetry and texture in jazz and be moved by them while others cannot. It's akin to some people going to the museum, looking at modern art and loudly asking, "Why is this here? My kid could have done that." [Untitled (Red and Gray), Ad Reinhardt, 1950]
The truth is some people can feel jazz in their hearts. Others cannot. No crime. Just a shame.
Brook Benton. I came across this YouTube clip on Friday. Thought I'd share...
Maynard Ferguson. Bret Primack, who wrote the liner notes to Mosaic's The Complete Roulette Recordings of the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra (now out of print and going for upward of $700 eBay), sent along this killer clip...
Dave Brubeck Octet and Trio. David Brent Johnson, host of WFIU's Night Lights, has posted a podcast of his most recent radio show, Playland at The Beach: Dave Brubeck’s Early Octet and Trio. If you're unfamiliar with these groups from the late '40s and early '50s, give a listen. It's free. Go here.
Johnny Staccato. Ed Leimbacher at I Witness this week had a super post about the late-'50s TV series Johnny Staccato and Elmer Bernstein's jazzy score. Go here.
And here's a taste of Bernstein's jackhammer theme and John Cassavetes hipster holster cabbing and subwaying around New York on behalf of his finger-snapping, with-it clients. This classic is ripe for a TV update.
CD discoveries of the week. Smokey Robinson left the Miracles in 1972 to devote all of his energies to songwriting as a Motown Records' executive. Robinson, of course, was one of Motown founder Berry Gordy's oldest friends, confidants and earliest recording artists back in 1960. But within two years of taking a desk job, Robinson came down with stage-itis—craving a return to performing and recording. His third effort as a solo recording artist was A Quiet Storm in 1974. The pre-disco soul album became a classic and has just been remastered and reissued. Among the highlights are the title tune, The Agony and the Ecstasy and Baby That's Backatcha. The album has been teamed with Smokey's Family Robinson on a two-fer CD (Hip-O Select) available at iTunes or here.
I don't know John Heneghan but he's delightfully obsessive. Heneghan is a collector of obscure 78-rpm records from the '20s and '30s who then cleans them up in a digital transfer and releases them on albums. His latest effort is a three-CD set called Baby, How Can It Be? The unifying theme here is love, lust and contempt. In the days before jeans, midriff T-shirts and costume malfunctions, carnal fantasies were held largely to records cranked up on Victrolas. Of that ilk, this set is the mother lode. Here you'll find obscure artists such as Norridge Mayhams and His Barbeque Boys (If I Had My Way), Lonnie Coleman (Wild About My Loving) and Hartman's Heart Breakers (Let Me Play With It). Listening to this set makes you realize how different our culture is today—and how much it has remained the same. You'll find Baby, How Can It Be? (Dust to Digital) here.
Looking for a clean, simple jazz album with solid musicianship? 251 teams master bassist Dan Dean with a range of keyboard pros: George Duke, Larry Goldings, Gil Goldstein and Kenny Werner. Standards include One Note Samba, Georgia on My Mind and In Walked Bud. You'll find 251 (Origin) at iTunes or here.
Oddball album cover of the week. While 101 Strings was filed in the "easy listening" section rather than jazz, it seems the two styles of music had a lot in common when it came to album cover designers. This one is almost quaint. It has been a long time since music was preferred over TV for relaxation. Then again, it's tough to remember a time when workdays had a so-called finish line. At least he appears to be listening.
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Spotted in the band in the Johnny Staccato clip: Red Norvo, vibes; Pete Candoli, trumpet; Barney Kessel, guitar; Red Mitchell, bass; Shelly Manne, drums. Not a bad little group!
Thanks to you and Ed Leimbacher for the "Johnny Staccato" posting. Some of my earliest memories of TV and music involve cop shows like "Peter Gunn" and forgotten also-rans like "M Squad," "Staccato," "Dan Raven," and "Richard Diamond, Private Detective".
I think that "Peter Gunn" holds up best from both writing/acting and musical perspectives. It had an understated ("cool," if you will) quality that the others lacked. The "Staccato" segment, for example, has an over-the-top vibe that invites parody (and received it years later on shows like "Police Squad" and films like "The Naked Gun").
Regarding the "some people just don't like jazz" phenomenon (I'm being optimistic and using "some" instead of "most"), all baggage aside, I think for some folks it just doesn't push the buttons (or pushes the wrong buttons), kind of like how some people enjoy cilantro while others, through no fault of their own, think it tastes like soap.
My musical cilantro is reggae--I can completely understand why some people are really into it but it makes me want to put my fist through the nearest television. We just have to extend the same no-accounting-for-taste mentality to jazz, I guess.
Well, some people are a little confused as to what jazz actually is -- I remember about fifteen years ago some folks came over to my apartment after we were all out at a bar -- I switched on the stereo & I had a Mingus record on -- I forget which one. A rather tatted-out gothy punk rock girl I knew came over to me after a while and said "what is this that's playing -- I really like it." "Charlie Mingus", sez I. "Oh. Well, what kind of music is it?" After staring for a second, I said "Jazz!!". Says she: "This is JAZZ music? I thought all that stuff sucked!!" On questioning, I figured out that for her, "jazz" = Kenny G and his smooth ilk. So. You never know what they're thinking of when you mention jazz music!!
As one who loves Jazz AND Reggae AND cilantro too, maybe the recipe for Ian's culinary innocents is a Ja-Mex restaurant serving salsa and chips, Red Stripe beer, and Monty Alexander and Ernest Ranglin on the box. Familiarity breeds contentment, not contempt. Or put another way, sf great Ted Sturgeon claimed that 90% of everything is $#!+. Find the 10% that isn't.
Some people don't really know what Jazz is....any kind of Jazz. Or they heard some 'bad' Jazz....and that was enough forever.
And some people have very untrained ears. A friend of mine, an intelligent man, said he could not follow the melody as it switched from the sax section to the brass section.
Plus side - with the emergence of Youtube, more younger and older people are hearing Jazz they never heard of and liking it.
Fascinating responses to the oddly passive-negative reaction to jazz. I, too, wonder what people have actually heard: a dull cocktail pianist playing WALTZ FOR DEBBY badly, a local "Dixieland" band chugging through SAINTS, or a lengthy "modern" excursion. I gather that many people find jazz a closed system, impossible to puzzle out without a good deal of work. The formulaic reaction of people who love and breathe the music is to say, "Oh, those young folks -- they can't feel the rhythm anymore," and that is true, based on my observation at New York City jazz bars that, almost by accident, have a young audience. But I just saw something on YouTube, blessed YouTube, that I have to add to the discussion. It was a video done in the last month at a shall-be-nameless jazz / ragtime festival: two performers who swung so hard and so joyously that I couldn't sit still at the monitor. But on the third or perhaps the fourth viewing I noticed that no one in the audience -- and they were all fifty-plus, presumably jazz fans who'd come there of their own volition -- NO ONE was moving his or her body. Oh, they applauded at the end, all right, but the rocking music didn't produce a rocking audience. Hard to fathom. Who can say? Thanks, Marc, and alas . . .
Actually, Elmer Bernstein is stealing in the Johnny Staccato theme--but it is from himself, so no harm, no foul. That riff originally was used in the music for Man with the Golden Arm.
Geez, Marc's suddenly hosting a chat room; guess I'll play the game too... Record expert David is surely having us on since he probably has samples of Joe Venuti, Stuff Smith, Ray Nance, Stephane Grappelli, and a few other mad fiddlers on his shelves. He might just have Debussy and the other Frenchies who wrote for Adolphe's classical Saxes too.
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Marc Myers writes frequently on music and the arts for the Wall Street Journal. He is author of "Why Jazz Happened" (University of California Press). In 2012, JazzWax was named the Jazz Journalists Association's "Blog of the Year."
Spotted in the band in the Johnny Staccato clip: Red Norvo, vibes; Pete Candoli, trumpet; Barney Kessel, guitar; Red Mitchell, bass; Shelly Manne, drums. Not a bad little group!
Posted by: Jon Foley | December 05, 2010 at 09:50 AM
John Bunch on piano.
And Cassavetes looking like the model for "Mad Men" fashion...
Posted by: Peter Sokolowski | December 05, 2010 at 11:32 AM
Thanks to you and Ed Leimbacher for the "Johnny Staccato" posting. Some of my earliest memories of TV and music involve cop shows like "Peter Gunn" and forgotten also-rans like "M Squad," "Staccato," "Dan Raven," and "Richard Diamond, Private Detective".
I think that "Peter Gunn" holds up best from both writing/acting and musical perspectives. It had an understated ("cool," if you will) quality that the others lacked. The "Staccato" segment, for example, has an over-the-top vibe that invites parody (and received it years later on shows like "Police Squad" and films like "The Naked Gun").
Posted by: Bill Kirchner | December 05, 2010 at 02:21 PM
Regarding the "some people just don't like jazz" phenomenon (I'm being optimistic and using "some" instead of "most"), all baggage aside, I think for some folks it just doesn't push the buttons (or pushes the wrong buttons), kind of like how some people enjoy cilantro while others, through no fault of their own, think it tastes like soap.
My musical cilantro is reggae--I can completely understand why some people are really into it but it makes me want to put my fist through the nearest television. We just have to extend the same no-accounting-for-taste mentality to jazz, I guess.
Posted by: Ian Carey | December 05, 2010 at 05:27 PM
Well, some people are a little confused as to what jazz actually is -- I remember about fifteen years ago some folks came over to my apartment after we were all out at a bar -- I switched on the stereo & I had a Mingus record on -- I forget which one. A rather tatted-out gothy punk rock girl I knew came over to me after a while and said "what is this that's playing -- I really like it." "Charlie Mingus", sez I. "Oh. Well, what kind of music is it?" After staring for a second, I said "Jazz!!". Says she: "This is JAZZ music? I thought all that stuff sucked!!" On questioning, I figured out that for her, "jazz" = Kenny G and his smooth ilk. So. You never know what they're thinking of when you mention jazz music!!
Posted by: TWN | December 05, 2010 at 07:39 PM
As one who loves Jazz AND Reggae AND cilantro too, maybe the recipe for Ian's culinary innocents is a Ja-Mex restaurant serving salsa and chips, Red Stripe beer, and Monty Alexander and Ernest Ranglin on the box. Familiarity breeds contentment, not contempt. Or put another way, sf great Ted Sturgeon claimed that 90% of everything is $#!+. Find the 10% that isn't.
Posted by: Ed Leimbacher | December 05, 2010 at 07:46 PM
Ed has it right.
Posted by: Marco Romano | December 05, 2010 at 10:52 PM
Yep - same as poster TWN above.
Some people don't really know what Jazz is....any kind of Jazz. Or they heard some 'bad' Jazz....and that was enough forever.
And some people have very untrained ears. A friend of mine, an intelligent man, said he could not follow the melody as it switched from the sax section to the brass section.
Plus side - with the emergence of Youtube, more younger and older people are hearing Jazz they never heard of and liking it.
A good thing!
Posted by: John P. Cooper | December 05, 2010 at 10:53 PM
Fascinating responses to the oddly passive-negative reaction to jazz. I, too, wonder what people have actually heard: a dull cocktail pianist playing WALTZ FOR DEBBY badly, a local "Dixieland" band chugging through SAINTS, or a lengthy "modern" excursion. I gather that many people find jazz a closed system, impossible to puzzle out without a good deal of work. The formulaic reaction of people who love and breathe the music is to say, "Oh, those young folks -- they can't feel the rhythm anymore," and that is true, based on my observation at New York City jazz bars that, almost by accident, have a young audience. But I just saw something on YouTube, blessed YouTube, that I have to add to the discussion. It was a video done in the last month at a shall-be-nameless jazz / ragtime festival: two performers who swung so hard and so joyously that I couldn't sit still at the monitor. But on the third or perhaps the fourth viewing I noticed that no one in the audience -- and they were all fifty-plus, presumably jazz fans who'd come there of their own volition -- NO ONE was moving his or her body. Oh, they applauded at the end, all right, but the rocking music didn't produce a rocking audience. Hard to fathom. Who can say? Thanks, Marc, and alas . . .
Posted by: Michael Steinman | December 05, 2010 at 11:16 PM
Actually, Elmer Bernstein is stealing in the Johnny Staccato theme--but it is from himself, so no harm, no foul. That riff originally was used in the music for Man with the Golden Arm.
Posted by: don frese | December 05, 2010 at 11:53 PM
TWN: If it has a saxophone in it, it's jazz. If it has a violin, it's classical.
Posted by: David | December 06, 2010 at 12:18 PM
Geez, Marc's suddenly hosting a chat room; guess I'll play the game too... Record expert David is surely having us on since he probably has samples of Joe Venuti, Stuff Smith, Ray Nance, Stephane Grappelli, and a few other mad fiddlers on his shelves. He might just have Debussy and the other Frenchies who wrote for Adolphe's classical Saxes too.
Posted by: Ed Leimbacher | December 06, 2010 at 05:51 PM