Why You Dig Jazz and Others Don't

Last weekend, I went to Manhattan’s Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum to see the new Art of Noise exhibit. On display were music posters; an evolution of listening devices, from Thomas Edison’s wax-cylinder phonograph to iPhone earbuds; a jukebox and much more illustrating how design shaped the way we’ve experienced music over the past 125 years.

While at the museum, my wife and I ran into a friend who was there with his wife and their two grandsons. The 7-year-old is passionate about jazz. But not just loves jazz. The kid has amazing taste: Roy Eldridge, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, etc. Obviously, he’s too young to know the music’s history or what the different jazz styles are called and why, but he has an astonishing innate gravitational pull to the good stuff.

As we were talking, I looked at his grandson and said, “I know why you love jazz so much. You listen through here,” patting my chest over my heart. “Me, too.” His grandson smiled and nodded in full agreement.

In the days that passed, I thought about our chance meeting and his reply. The encounter made me realize why some people get jazz and others don’t. I also realized there is one thing that makes jazz special and connects with some but sails over the heads of others: beauty.

American popular music has a long history, dating back to the 1840s. Before the invention of the phonograph and radio, before pianos became affordable household additions and before concerts, families sat around in living rooms and sang together. Most of the songs were traditional Americana folk melodies by composers such as Stephen Foster or originated from a family’s country of origin prior to immigrating to the U.S.

The next big shift in popular music was the mass production of sheet music in the late 1800s. The proliferation of upright pianos and the printing and distribution of sheet music offered the public a greater variety of popular-music options that could be heard instantly if someone could play them. Sheet music also boosted the popularity of theatrical musicals and gave rise to Tin Pan Alley, which provided stage shows with catchy tunes and lyrics.

The mass production of the phonograph at the turn of the 20th century followed by radio’s popularity in the late 1920s allowed the public to hear professionals play and sing popular songs. Broadway surged in the 1920s, and Hollywood musicals took off in the 1930s and ‘40s with the advent of talkies and more sophisticated recording technology.

Jazz surfaced following the popularity of the blues and ragtime at the dawn of the 20th century. The first jazz 78 was recorded in New York in 1917. From the start, jazz was frantic, syncopated dance music, growing more sophisticated with the arrival of stride and boogie-woogie in the 1920s. and then swing in the 1930s.

By the end of World War II, popular music began to splinter into subcategories. These categories multiplied thanks largely to the rise of independent record labels, the use of magnetic tape and recorders in studios, and the growing use of unbreakable vinyl in record production, all in the late 1940s. The new tape technology made recording music much less expensive, so genres that would have been ignored were suddenly documented and marketed to specific audiences.

On the jazz side, bebop in the mid-1940s not only revolutionized jazz by popularizing improvisation but also radically transformed popular music. The faster jazz form made stars of spectacular players and forced audiences to listen rather than dance. Even more important, jazz was the first form of popular music to make beauty a key component. By beauty, I don’t mean catchy melodies or pretty music.

Beauty, here, is the creation of art that purposefully sets out to make listeners swoon and admire what they’re hearing. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Many people lack the emotional capacity to appreciate beauty, which isn’t a knock. Most people can’t throw a baseball with speed and accuracy, run fast for long stretches or speak off the top of their head without a written script. One either is able to feel beauty or one can’t, and learning to do so requires desire and determination.

If one has the capacity to feel beauty, then one can pick up on what jazz musicians are trying to get across. It’s my contention that all jazz musicians of any value prize beauty and want others to feel the beauty of what they are transmitting.

Starting in the 1940s, major record companies recognized that jazz, like classical, wasn’t for everyone, so they invented pop and easy listening, which weren’t as complex or demanding on the ear.

The jazz musician who first incorporated beauty into his music was Duke Ellington, in the late 1920s. Every leading jazz musician who followed made beauty a centerpiece experience. In fact, jazz is the only form of popular music where its musicians consciously make beauty an essential aspect of their compositions and improvisations.

As jazz became jump blues in the 1940s, and jump blues became R&B in the early 1950s and then rock ‘n’ roll in the second half of the decade, these back-beat forms of popular music weren’t focused on beauty but on creating a steady dance beat. Beauty wasn’t primary for Motown, the Beatles, soul, folk, pop rock, disco or hard rock—forms more concerned with chart success and raw excitement.

My feeling is it’s impossible to feel jazz unless you can hear the beauty in the music . As readers of JazzWax know well, jazz is heard through the heart. Whether it’s Dizzy Gillespie’s big bands of the 1940s, Charlie Parker’s blues, Lester Young’s relaxed tenor saxophone, Count Basie’s swing, Miles Davis’s respect for space, John Coltrane’s sheets of sound or Bill Evans’s contemplative, conversational approach, beauty is always high on the agenda. Without beauty, jazz is worthless.

One could argue that only free jazz of the 1960s and fusion of the 1970s were less about beauty and more about making a statement and showing off one’s technique. Others might insist these forms do indeed have beauty built into their expression. I suspect the latter is more accurate, though I would say that beauty in free jazz and fusion was often processed as dynamic energy.

If you’ve ever wondered why you love jazz but are puzzled that friends can’t seem to get into it, even after you play them great recordings, it’s likely because they can’t hear the beauty. This isn’t a failing or a crime. Jazz appreciation begins with feelings.

Which leaves us with a fundamental question: Can someone learn to feel beauty? The answer is yes, if it’s something they want to accomplish. As that 7-year-old proves, the key to jazz appreciation is to be in touch with your emotions and to think about what you’re feeling as the music unfolds. You also must be passionate about beauty.

Here are a few jazz tracks that require the listener to feel and appreciate beauty:

Here’s Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Lady in 1933…

Here’s Charlie Parker playing Another Hair-Do in 1947…

Here’s Lester Young and Teddy Wilson playing Louise in 1956…

Here’s the Dave Brubeck Quartet playing Nomad in 1958…

Here’s Miles Davis playing Stella by Starlight in 1958…

Here’s John Coltrane playing Central Park West in 1964…