All About Jazz

www.ozy.com [OZY]() Leisurely reads. Quirky tips. Meet your weekend BFF with the lowdown on the coolest art, culture, food, travel, TV shows, music and more. Dec 25, 2021 TODAY Christmas Day is for relaxing, sitting with drink in hand listening to calming music … like jazz. Never have non-standard uses of standard instruments borne such stunningly artistic fruits. Whether we’re talking brass or woodwind instruments that previously had their homes in classical music quarters along with contrabasses, tympani and musical structures that were both rigid and complex, jazz, as it came to be called, just upended the apple cart on that whole scene. So welcome to our mini-big breakdown of jazz. AND, A ONE... 1 - More Classic Than Classical There’s a famous story about how at some point now-acknowledged rock music great Frank Zappa was opening a show for undeniable jazz genius Duke Ellington. Zappa had been undecided as to whether he should continue honing his chops and play jazz or spend his time doing rock that he felt was much less sophisticated. Watching Ellington argue with the club owner over an unpaid $20 helped make up his mind. But $20 or not, Ellington killed in all ways, every way. Most notably when he showed some swells that he wasn’t playing jazz because he couldn’t play classical, but was playing jazz [very precisely because he could](. 2 - The Satin Slick of Latin Jazz If you consider a world pre-internet, it almost boggles the mind that a rhythmic and musical quirk could traverse geographies and be absorbed and embraced by cultures that were already steeped in their own local musical traditions. This is how it was when jazz hit South America, Central America, Cuba and Puerto Rico for starters. Latin Jazz was born and [our bebop ambassador Dizzy Gillespie]( was there to help it along. 3 - Getting Way, Way Gone in Goa The daunting power of jazz is made much more than clear when framed against a musical tradition that goes back as far as people had fingers and lips. Indian jazz, in the Western Indian coastal state of Goa, could comfortably be tracked back to 1947 when two Latino cats, Chic Chocolate and Micky Correa, [made it manifest](. A musical, linguistic Frankenstein mix of tones and expressions, jazz in Goa was part Portuguese, part American and all Indian. 4 - Paris Burned When the giants, and we’ll get to them in a bit, [Miles Davis and John Coltrane]( hit Paris, Paris hadn’t been hit like that since Stravinsky scandalized polite society and had to flee the concert hall. Not nearly as dramatic — boos are more survivable than bodily harm — the moment marked the beginning of modern jazz, along with something that is necessary to have hit music: the personalities that drive it. But still … it happened in Paris. The Paris of Picasso and Jean-Paul Sartre, thanks to a sense for a lot of American jazz musicians that more awaited them in Europe than in America. WHEN GIANTS WALKED THE EARTH 1 - Beyond Eccentricity [Pianist Thelonious Monk]( didn’t start to get work playing what would be identifiable as jazz until his late teens, which he hit right before the end of World War II. But from the vantage point of now? Monk has emerged as the second most recorded composer ever. Right after? None other than Duke Ellington. But unlike Duke, Monk came way closer to rock ’n’ roll excess that itself drew from hard-living blues players. Excess or not, Monk’s melodic stylings and his reliance on improvisation set the stage for both his genius and styles of jazz that followed after his heyday. Something else significant about Monk: He wasn’t always the greatest player. But finally the fact about Monk that earns him the pole position here: He showed it didn’t matter. 2 - Count Us In Jazz justifiably gets lots of credit for lots of stuff, but it gets lost in the shuffle when the discussion turns to rock ’n’ roll. Credit for rock ’n’ roll? Mostly given to blues and R&B. But jazz? Well, yeah. And giving credit where credit is overdue, it must go to pianist and composer [Count Basie](. Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis all owe a debt of gratitude for what Basie put together in a burst of improvisational genius and what they would later call the Kansas City Sound. And when Charlie Parker, Dizzy and Monk with their bebop laid waste to what had been Basie’s bread and butter — the big orchestra deal — he survived with a stripped-down version straight through the ’70s. That’s how giants walk. 3 - Mr. Armstrong to You Trumpeter, composer and singer [Louis Armstrong]( was famous for almost 50 of his 69 years on the planet. To say that his influence was absolutely and totally foundational is probably an aggressive understatement. He played with everybody, he played everything, sang despite having a singing voice not traditionally beautiful by any stretch, appeared in movies with huge stars, usually as himself, and crushed it when it came to what got him there: his playing. Fun facts: He purportedly smoked a lot of weed and wore a Star of David his entire life as a tribute to the Jewish family that partially raised him and was treated badly because of their Jewishness. 4 - When a Famous Jazz Drummer Wants to Kick Your Ass In lieu of delivering the tribute that he wanted back when we first met over 20 years ago — and for which, when we denied him, he threatened to kick our asses — we include [Max Roach]( here for sentimental reasons. Mostly for the aforementioned ass-kicking threat and for being a total giant on the skins. And how old was he when he threatened to kick the ass of the MMA practicing editor? He was 83. Now that? As badass as it comes. 5 - Lady Sings a Lot More Than the Blues [Billie Holiday](, as the story goes, decided to sing when she decided that working as a sex worker was not in the cards for her. And while her stylings were not always pitch-perfect or technically adept, [Lady Day]( (as she was called by a rabid fan base) brought something to the table that had only been hinted at by earlier generations of singers: real emotional agita. Haunted by a heroin problem, along with all of its attendant legal and personal difficulties, Holiday’s renderings of both standards and original tunes broke the bank for an authenticity that, whether real or fake, made you believe there was none more real. NOTHING, WITHOUT A WOMAN, OR A GIRL 1 - More Than Eye Candy Some suggest jazz lost the ear of the public when musicians left behind singers. A sometimes “necessary evil” for players, female front people, singers mostly, were common, but real players taken seriously by real players? Sure, later we saw Alice Coltrane, and earlier we saw Lil Hardin, who would later go on to marry [Louis Armstrong](, but pioneers? My vote goes to [trombonist Melba Liston](. For a few reasons. One, if you can name a trombonist, any trombonist ([Trombone Shorty]( doesn’t count! Well he does, but how many of you picked him?), we’ll give you a cookie. And if you can name a woman who plays trombone? Well, that’s two cookies. Just kidding. No cookies here, but Liston killed and we lived to listen to her. 2 - Which Way? Norway American servicemen are widely held to have introduced most/many in Europe, pre-internet, to jazz. However, while free jazz is mostly what Euro players have continued to be known for, a relatively unheralded singer, the [Norwegian Karin Krog.]( Still gets a vote for doing vocally compelling work. Not quite a torch singer in an earlier incarnation, Krog did stuff with her voice in the ‘60s that rivals some of the best and trippiest that the ’60s had to offer, with the possible exception of free jazz singer Patty Waters. 3 - Drop the K-Pop Coming out of Korea nowadays? Outside of Oscar-winning movies and the absolutely rabidly followed beast known as [K-pop](, [Youn Sun Nah](, a neo-jazz singer who is trying to do that which might be damned impossible: reviving French jazz. Impossible? There’s a long line after techno in France, but the French still have a historical (see above) penchant for providing a harbor for jazz both hot and cool. BEYOND THE FRINGE 1 - Harmolodician! Here’s a good one: He won a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” a Pulitzer and a Grammy — who is it? Justin Bieber? Not even a little bit. Saxophonist Ornette Coleman, whose self-styled “harmolodics,” a free, improvisational form of both composition and playing, was so far ahead of his time that he’s the only one on this listing that was so easily and generally not understood or appreciated by his peers. Miles Davis famously said that Coleman was “all screwed up inside,” but it’s precisely that quality that got adventurous listeners listening. Though free jazz can sometimes be a hard listen, its refusal to be music designed to appeal makes it a music that appeals. See also: Albert Ayler, Peter Brötzmann, Pharoah Sanders and the aforementioned Patty Waters. 2 - It’s a Crash Jazz, Salsa and Funk walk into a bar in Colombia and what comes out? Outside of Begner Vásquez? It’s a trick question: You don’t need anything other than bass player and singer [Begner Vásquez](, whose mix of all of the aforementioned styles of music underscore the mutability of the music and significantly explains why it endures. 3 - “You People Are Like Fucking Sponges” No Wave jazz? Well, it was a post-punk reaction to the success of new wave, but its antecedents were all jazz from the silk tuxes and pompadours to the fact that James Siegfried changed his name alternately to [James Chance](, as well as James White. And he played with real jazz players on occasion. Though known more for attacking his audience, physically, Chance steadfastly refused to do anything other than that which he wanted, and his songbook is full of twisted takes on both jazz and soul. Go Deeper What to read: - Jazzin’ The Black Forest: The Complete Guide to SABA/MPS Jazz Records (1999), Dr. Klaus-Gotthard Fischer: One of the most, if not the most European jazz label, Saba/MPS released over 700 records from the 1960s to when they were bought by Polydor in 1983. You want to know something, anything, about Euro jazz? You won’t get far without this large format coffee table book of pics and players. - Riding On a Blue Note: Jazz and American Pop (1981), Gary Giddins: Giddins’ take on jazz is so deeply incisive that the awards — let’s start with the National Book Critics Circle Award — just barely hint at the realest of deals: Giddins’ love for jazz approaches an obsession. Which is a great place to start. What to Watch: - A Great Day in Harlem (1994): One day in 1958, a guy named Art Kane grabbed a gaggle of all of the hottest jazz musicians he could find and put them all in a single photograph. This film? Well, this is a film about that photograph. And by way of background features interviews with Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Hank Jones, Sonny Rollins and dozens more: 57 total. A solid document of the life and times of the musicians who made the music we’re talking about. - Jazz On a Summer’s Day (2020): One of the world’s defining festivals for the live performance of jazz music has been the Newport Jazz Festival. When Bert Stern showed up in 1958, camera in tow, it’s unknown if he had any idea of what he would capture, but after performances by Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk and Dinah Washington, to name a few, he had to know that what he had in his hands at the end of that day was culture-defining. And it was. What to Listen to: - The Jazz Show: Out of Vancouver, Gavin Walker’s podcast — he does 30 a year — is connected to CiTR, the University of British Columbia-Vancouver’s campus station. Precisely what college radio does best, The Jazz Show goes both wide and deep and gives what few commercial radio stations could give a hungry jazz listener: time. - Burning Ambulance: Music journalist Phil Freeman’s podcast, 57 shows deep at this point, features a wonderful kind of intersectionality never more on display than when he interviews Sonny Rollins and then bounces off to bassist Linda May Han Oh. Something old, something new, borrowed, blue and steeped in a great love of the spirit and the flesh of jazz. ABOUT OZY OZY is a diverse, global and forward-looking media and entertainment company focused on “the New and the Next.” OZY creates space for fresh perspectives and offers new takes on everything from news and culture to technology, business, learning and entertainment. 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