Literary/critical interlude

I don't read as much jazz journalism as I should, but of what I did read in 1969 it is Down Beat's account of the Rutgers Jazz Festival that has stayed with me most vividly.

Down Beat, as you know, is the principal magazine of the American jazz music profession; it has been going thirty-five years, and has correspondents in every land from Denmark to Japan. Its policy is a comfortable, middle-of-the-road tolerance: whatever is, generally speaking, is right. And the man they sent to Rutgers was clearly cast in the same mould: let 'em all come, DIzzy, Herbie Mann, Jethro Tull, B.B. King, the Adderley Brothers—the more the merrier. He sat patiently in his seat and tried to hear good in everything, even sermons from Stones had they been present, and on the whole he succeeded, though there is the occasional wince. ('I was beginning to wish I wore a hearing aid so I could turn it down').

The flashpoint, if one can call it that, came on the Sunday evening. Our man arrived late, to find the Miles Davis group launched into what proved their final number, or, as he puts it, 'in the throes of what I most deplore, a free-form free-for-all' that "degenerated into a musical catfight." One must salute his honesty: here was one of the groups he was most anxious to hear, and it was terrible, and he admits it was terrible. But then—and this is the point—there followed the Newport All Stars Braff, Norvo, Tal Farlow, and good old George Wein on piano, and the reporter's relief was so enormous that his encomia became almost pathetic in their hyperbole. Braff and his friends were sparkling spring water, they were 'Macbeth' and "David Copperfield', they were incomparable, they were as eternal as sex and sunlight: 'man, this is what it's all about.' In his enthusiasm he asked a 17-year-old girl what she thought of them. She said: 'It's music to go shopping at Klein's by.'

Now the point of this anecdote it two-fold: first, all kinds of jazz are not equally good, no matter what editorial policy might be; some of it is ravishingly exciting, and some a musical catfight scored for broken glass and bagpipes, and you only have to hear the two in succession to grab one and reject the other. Secondly, jazz (that is, the form of Afro-American popular music that flourished between 1925 and 1945) means nothing to the young. This should strengthen us in our devotion to it. True, we must give up any notion we may have been cherishing that beneath our hoary exteriors lurk hearts of May: we may dig jazz, but the kids want something else. Our passion for this extraordinary and ecstatic musical phenomenon that lasted a mere twenty or thirty years in the first half of our century must now take its place alongside similar passions for Hilliard miniatures or plain-chant.

—Philip Larkin, "Moment of Truth," The Daily Telegraph, January 10, 1970, reprinted in All What Jazz, Faber and Faber, 1985

Comments

[Henry Holland]

That was the great Miles "lost" quintet of him, Shorter, Corea, Holland and DeJohnette, I'm sure someone used to the big band era would have found them unbearable. Still, this is a great album, the last with Shorter:

http://www.amazon.com/Live-Fillmore-East-March-1970/dp/B00005M0N2

What a concert, Miles opening up for Neil Young & Crazy Horse.

[Glenn Kenny]

Indeed. You can also hear said quintet, recorded in closer temporal proximity to the event that so distressed Down Beat's Ralph Berton on "Live In Europe 1969, The Bootleg Series Vol. 2." The 'musical catfight" in question would seem to have been "Masqualero/The Theme."

[James Keepnews]

Could'a been alot of things -- as the Live in Europe 1969 set (winner, incidentally, of this year's DownBeat Critics Poll for Best Historical Album of the Year) amply demonstrates, those cats threw _down_, and the set was very much in flux ("I Fall in Love Too Easily" was probably never heard again after '69). Given his pathetically atavistic unpublished writings on Coltrane and otherwise unrepentant racism -- e.g. his strong support for apartheid South Africa, &c. -- I personally don't give tinker's cuss what the librarian at Hull has to say about the music, or about his contemporaneous commentators.

[Kurzleg]

This sort of commentary always amuses me since, in the end, it almost always boils down to personal taste. I don't necessarily enjoy the type of music that I think the writer's describing, but that's in large part because I'm not equipped to do so. (Haven't heard the recordings referenced above.) Often what's taking place in a performance or on a recording is on an artistic/technical plane that requires a considerable amount of musical knowledge in order to comprehend and appreciate. Even then, it's not easy for a person possessing that knowledge to get his or her head around the performance. What a pity it would be if artists were limited to the narrow parameters of what a critic (or even broad popularity) finds palatable. I may not be able to appreciate some of this music personally, but certainly others can, and I have no doubt that for them it acts as a creative impetus. That's a good thing!

[GHG]

In response to Kurzleg, I think it's true that the amount of musical knowledge and training can allow one entry into the more complex/cerebral/rule-breaking musics - but not always. My friend is an accomplished musician - plays classical piano, blues guitar and harmonica, accordion (!) etc. I am singularly unaccomplished and can barely read music. We were talking about jazz: he likes pre-bop stuff, Louis Armstrong etc. - rightly so. But he HATES Coltrane. My fave album at the time was "Giant Steps," which I really connect to emotionally - again, with no real musical knowledge or training. He can't listen to it, finds it immensely frustrating. Taste.

[Kurzleg]

@GHG: Yeah, taste. There's no accounting for it, or so I've heard.