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O Even among college-educated adults, the audience for Can Jazz Be Saved? live jazzhas shrunk significantly, from 19.4 percent in 1982 to 14.9 in 2008. numbers indicate that the audience for jazz in Warning: The Audience f,or America's These alarming rate. What I find no less Great Art Form Is lltithering AwaY America is shrinking at an revealing, though, is that the median age of the jazz audience ages for attendees of live by Terry Teachout is now comparable to the performances of classical music (40 in 1982. 49 in 2008)' opera(43 versus 48), non-musical plays (39 versus 47) and a joint resolution declaring In 1987 the U.S. Congress passed ballet (37 versus 46). In 1982,by contrast, jazz fans wete national treasure." Nowadays .iazztobe a "rare and valuable much younger than their high-culture counterparts' Duke Ellington, Charlie ihe music of Louis Annstrong, What does this tell us? I suspect it means, among other taught in public schools, heard on Parker. and Miles Davis is things, that the average American now sees jazz as a form of performed at prestigious venues like TV contmercials and high art. Nor should this have come as a surprise to anyone, Center, which even runs its own New York's Lincoln since most o f the jazzmusicians that I know feel pretty much nightcl ub, Dizzy' s Club Coca-Cola. the same way. They tegard themselves as artists, rrot Here's the catch: Nobody's listening. entertainers, masters of a musical language that is but it's no longer possible for No, it's not quite that bad comparable in seriousness to classical music and just as - the great American art - head-in-the-sand types to pretend that off-putting to pop-loving listeners who have no more use for its future looks anything fbrm is economically healthy, or that Wynton Marsalis than they do for Felix Mendelssohn' out bleak. lazz has changed greatly since the '30s, when Louis 'Ihe the National bad news came in the form of Armstrong, one oithe rrpr.-" musical geniuses of the 20'h of Public Participation Endowment for the Arts latest survey century, was also a pop star, a gravel-voiced crooner who conducted by the NEA (in in the Arts, the fourth to be made movies with Bing Crosby and Mae West and whose Bureau) since 1982. These participation with the U.S. Census records sold by the truckload to fans who knew nothing made jazz musicians sit up and take irre the findings that about jazzexcept that Satchmo played and sang it. As late as notice: the eaily '50s, jazz was still for the most part a genuinely percent of adult Oln2002,the year of the last survey, 10.8 popular music, a utilitarian, song-based idionl to which jazz performance. [n 2008, Americans attended at least one o.dinuty people could dance if they felt like it' But by the thaL fell to 7.ll percent. '60s, it had evolved into a challenging concert music whose au

November 2008 concerns era. And it is precisely because jazz is now widely viewed as 5. Composition titles and lyrics should reflect romance a high-culture art form that its makers must start to grapple and values. For example, the outdated notion of "hooking (see above with the same problems as do symphony orchestras' drama should be replaced by references to up" companies and art museums a task that will be made all the reference to attention span). _ JS more daunting by the fact that- jazz is made for the most part by individuals, not established institutions with deep pockets. No, I don't know how to get young people to start listening to jazz again. But I do know this: Any symphony orchestra A Whiff of History that thinks it can appeal to under-thirty listeners by suggesting friend Paul thatthey shouldlikeSchubert and Stravinsky has already lost I have occasionally wondered what my late of Recording the battle. If you're marketing Schubert and Stravinsky to Weston, who founded the National Academy what the those listeners, you have no choice but to start from scratch Arts and Sciences (NARAS), would think of to honor excellence and make the case for the beauty of their music to otherwise organization has become not a vehicle - and abet intelligent people who simply don't take it for granted. By the through the Grammy Awards but one to reward Awards are no better' same token, jazz musicians who want to keep their own venality and comrption, The Academy equally beautiful music alive and well have got to start A few years ago, the Grammy Awards TV broadcast profession by thinking hard about how to pitch it to young listeners not managed to tick off a great many people in the - jazz,inchding a brief, dutiful, and next month, not next week, but right now. its dismissive treatment o f all too perfunctory showing of Dizzy Gillespie. The outrage establish a new Terry Teachout writes on the arts for lfre Wall Street on the West Coast led to a call to a meeting was Journal- and for his own blog. You can reach him at organization, alternative to NARAS, and serves, by Mel tteachout@,wsi.com. This piece was writtenfor the WSJ and called to advance this cause, led, if-memory was much high-flown is reprinted by permission. Torm6 and Leonard Feather. There of jazz. But one Judith Schlesinger is a clinical psychologist who writes for rhetoric about the nobility and importance and I stood up and All About lazz. She added this comment. thing made me especially uncomfortable, said so. "Do you know what's wrong with this group?" I by Judith Schlesinger said. "Too much gray hair." I said that if an alternative organization were to be with all forms After being tipped offto the existence of TT's article in the established, it had better make common cause and the higher WSJ, I went over and read it. It's well done, as always, but the of excellent music, including both classical et al' reality described is pretty dismal. Terry says he has no levels of "pop", including Gershwin, Kern, Porter, same form of suggestions for making j azzmore appealing to young people, because they were all suffering from the be called. so I thought I'd offer a few. audience attrition. I had no idea what it should 1. Male jazz m:usicians should immediately adopt the NationalAcademy of Real Music (or good music) would be it would wardrobe of prison inmates pants pooling on the floor, instantly contentious, not to mention pompous, but as the National underwear waistband showing- and perfect the art of be more accurate and certainly not as feckless the gratuitous crotch grabbing; - Academy of Jazz, which would get you about as far as practitioners 2. Female musicians should take style tips from Britney nearest convenience store. I even mused that the a group, but at a practical Spears and/or Irma La Douce and undergo whatever cosmetic ofrock should be barred from such people as enhancement may be necessary to turn back and stop time at level, you could not do that: you'd be barring such things easier the age of twenty-five; Sting, a formidable musician. It would make if 3. lazz should respect the fact that many multitasking we could prejudge music by its category, but you can't, and young people have the attention span of a gnat, and stop I suppose what bothers me is the very word.iazz, which was Evans, Bill expecting them to listen to anything for more than, say, two objectionable to Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Gil and a half minutes; Evans, and many others. a winged 4.Every jazzartistshould be Twittering and Tweeting and My comments sailed over the congregation like Nothing Booking Face, thereby acquiring close personal friends who brick, inspiring not an objection but only silence. was ever might support the music, and finallY: came of that meeting, and no such organization

November 2008 Kenton, Count Basie vs' formed. Goodman, Woody Herman vs. Stan The insulari ty of jazz fans dates at least to the 1940s and Duke Ellington.. dismaying in its probably further, when it was thought that jazz and classical The Ellington gathering was amazing, were interested only in music were mutually exclusive, which was stupid from the parochialism. For the most part they my-favorite-tenor-player foundation, since so many of the early jazz musicians had bllington, and in accord with the Basie, Woody Herman, superior classical training, including Teddy Wilson, Benny rule of thumb, indifferent to Count pointed out that Carter. and Earl Hines. And those who didn't quickly and most assuredly Dizzy Gillespie. I a diminishing audience, acquired a taste for and indeed passion for this "other" kind classical music too was experiencing cause with it' Blank of music, including Bix Beiderbecke and Artie Shaw. Back in and that jazz should make common problem was radio, which the 1930s, Mel Powell was a well-schooled classical pianist stares. I said that the most critical to the garbage of our culture' before he ever took up "jazz" (Mel was another of those who was dedicated more and more the Atlantic to the Pacific didn't care for the term). As one who grew up with both, I I noted that you could drive from Jerome was never comfortable with it, and such Down Beat with the radio on and almost neverhear Miles Davis, from California said that there affectations as "long hair" music. Kern, or Debussy. A woman Los Angeles area' She The term "jazz" ls restricting, and Down Beat once ran a was a good radio station in the even in Los Angeles' It's in contest to find another term for it. The winning entty, as I referred to KLON. which isn't up in much of Southern recall, was "crew cut." Good God. Long Beach, and you can't pick it was this one station, I noted But the term continued to be vexing to the point that Artie Caliiornia. Granting that there population was much Shaw once assembled a panel at Lutheran University in that in the mid-1940s when the - like twenty-seven stations Thousand Oaks, Califomia, to seek to define jazz. The group smaller there were something - ofeach day. included Lalo Schifrin, Los Angeles Times movie critic in that city that playedjazz at leastpart problem. Jazz today is heard, Charles Champlin, Mel Powell, Artie, and me. As a matter of That leads us to another radio stations that play fact, that's where I met Mel Powell, an idol of mine since my when it is heard at all, only on jazz.It segregated, ghettoized, as is all radio' adolescence. We didn't succeed in drafting a definition' nothing but is ozly About that time, I was invited to address the annual Rock siations play only rock, and rock fans are exposed jazz or Jerome Kern' meeting of the Duke Ellington Sociefy, held that year in to rock. They cannot shrmble on popular activity, Toronto. I remember especially an incident that occurred just In the 1930s, dancing was an enorrnously dance-halls all over this country and lrefbre I was to make my address. My biography of Woody with pavilions and me it was possible to play a month Herman had come out a few weeks before. A little man came Canada. Artie Shaw told With the rise in the up to me with a furtive mien and said, "I enjoyed your of one-nighters in Pennsylvania alone. its infusion of the bands Woody Herman biograPhY, but . . . ." 1920s of a prototypic al iazz, and - solos, to show off his I said, "But you found an error in it." almost every man wanted to take that way of playing He said, "Well, yes I did"" prowess that indefinable something, - jazzwas a how, not a what) the tempos that I said. "I found seven." lBill Erans said a ballad followed by an They're always there, what I call the Gotcha people' I defined swing crept into the music: format' Those who had daresay they exist in ruost fields, but they seem to be "up-tempo" number being the usual crowded particularly common in jazz, anlong them the I-Alone- become more interested in listening than dancing back the dancers did Understand-Bill Evans necrophiliacs. Whoever they read, close to the bandstand. while farther originated in the Leonard Feather, Nat Hentoff, Gunther Schuller, Terry their thing. Some remarkable terpsichory Harlem, and spread out to the Teachout, they seek that Eureka! moment when they can glow black community, particularly and dangerous stuff. in their I-know-more-than-you self-admiration. It is the height white kids, incredibly acrobatic on those dancers, of their achievement. One night on TV I saw a documentary grace. equilibrium, and Whether this is still true, I don't know, but at one time amazed anew by their strength, dancer at best even in many jazzfans used their love of the music as the measure of acrobatic prowess. For me, a clumsy about it with one of the their distinction. what Leonard Feather called the hipper-than- my youth, the very idea of talking (some of us) have just lived thou syndrome. It manifests itself in the my-favorite-tenor- great masters of the age we ludicrous, and player-is-better-than-your-favorite-tenor-player disputes, as in through, namely Gene Kelly, is implicitly were wonderful the Olden Days arguments about Artie Shaw vs. Benny when I said,o'Gene, some of those people

November 2008 But something dancers," he gave me a look of pity and said, "Nooooo shit!" good stuff (This Will Be My Shining Hour). By Artie Shaw's hatred ofthe jitterbugs was the expression of happened with the rise of FM radio in the mid-1950s. as television an impossible ingratitude, for they had made him the two then network radio was increasingly irrelevant things valued above all else in the United States and sopped up most of the advertising money, and music was came to pass especially by him rich and famous. The big-band or swing heard mostly through local broadcasting. FM rested solidly on dancing- and the edifices that housed it, and and provided clear and superior sound' deception, the radio so did the life he led. And so in a smooth and sleazy would present the The pattem shifted. As has often been noted, the boys who industry in the mid- I 950s promised that it to AM, helped win World War II came home and began what the "good" music on FM and leave the meretricious know sociologists quaintly call family formation which leaves where sound didn't matter andlor the audience didn't - the few free evenings for the dance pavilions. The audiences the difference. That was the implicit contract with American withered, and by the end of the 1940s the major bands were Federal Communications Commission and the gone. A few who scaled back to leading small combos, public. But of course the industry "honored" the agreement grew, the among them Benny Goodman and Woody Herman. for only a short time, and as the need for stations one When Count Basie, who had disbanded, encountered Artie quality of broadcasting on FM declined. Most societies, educated people, Shaw, he told Artie, "You should come back to the business. must presume, harbor more ignorant than educational system We need you." and especially the United States, whose European Artie said, "No, Bill *yol; should quit." has never been as good as that in most western man himself, saw no Basie said, "To be what? A janitor?" countries. Ronald Reagan, an ignorant A good many of the brilliant soloists who had become more need for education than for Redwood trees, and began Under famous in one or another of the bands, now made their homes his assault on it when he was governor of California. in small groups in small jazz clttbs, and there were a lot of his aegis, California began its decline from the best present distinction of these clubs in the major cities, including the Blue Note, the education system in the country to its Half Note, the Village Vanguard, the Village Gate, and being close to the lowest among the states. anyone Birdland in New York; the London House, Mister Kelly's, the In the 1930s and even '40s, network radio offered and leave it on a Sutherland Lounge, and many more in Chicago. Miles Davis who wanted to turn one of its stations on could play a week or two at the Cloister, and the Oscar broad cultural education, from the Metropolitan Opera grandmother every week- Peterson Trio a month at London House. Oscar could do it which, as a child, I heard with my Arruro three times a year. Gerry Mulligan took his big band into the to Grand Ol' Opry, from Bruno Walter and - Herntan, Spade Sutherland for a week, and I think two, and J.J. Johnson Toscanini to Duke Ellington and Woody his polka played two weeks at aplace called Birdhouse. Cooley and his Western Swing to Dick Kuhn and A good many of the big-band audience followed the band. The quiz shows were of a high order, and InJormation panelists, soloists into the clubs. One would think that the gang who Please asked tough intellectual questions of its Franklin P' went to iisten, not to dance in the crowds immediately in front who included Clifton Fadiman, Oscar Levant, guests such as Dorothy of the stage, formed the core of that audience, but some of the Adams, and John Kiernan, and Woollcott, dancers must have come along with them. Parker, Orson Welles, Deems Taylor, Alexander got the prize. A problem was that yotmg people could not get into places and Boris Karloff. Anyone who stumped them Brittanica. The that sold liquor, although some clubs tried to get around this five dollars and a set of Encyclopedia - which ran on radio from 1938 to 1948, was immensely by setting up separate bleachers areas for them - Birdland, show, for one. But in the long run, these efforts were doomed: and popular and educational. - without considering a future audience could not be built among the young as it had Even the ordinary popular music - Porter, Schwartz, been by the big bands and their dances. the theaffical masterpieces' by Rodgers, marvels of intelligent contour when And all the while the audience for rock-and-roll was Loesser - seem growing. weighed against what increasingly became the notm after Time There had always been crap movies, novels, and music. the early 1950s, such songs as To Each His Own,As . And Man's appetite for the meretricious seems fathomless. The Goes By, Oh Look at Me Now , and Moonlight Cocktail trivial music (The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy, The Hut-Sut the better lyrics were masterpieces of literacy. Cole Porter's Star Dust are Song, Three Little Fishes, O Mein Papa) coexisted with the In the Still of the Night and Mitchell Parrish's

November 2008 that after many years of two of the finest pieces of writing in the English language, for Donald Byrd once said to me was to play imagery, sonority, clarity, condensation, and emotional playing he had concluded that the hardest thing it' power. Johnny Mercer's Old Black Magic is another. one of melody as written and get feeling into know the the most erotic songs ever written. Not to mention the It was important, if not essential, that listeners perpetually unsung Tom Adair, who graced Matt Dennis songs on which the variations were played. jazzevolved, began explorations not on the melodies with lyrics such as Violets for Your Furs. As musicians the songs, especially At least two generations grew up on such songs acquired melodies but on the harmonies of recording of Body and Soul is as an osmotic literacy, and in their dedication to one-love-for-a- Coleman Hawkins, whose the music as Louis lifetime, whether realistic or not, these songs almost certainly much a landmark in the evolution of Blues. Andit is mutual knowledge of served as an instrument of cultural cohesion, encouraging a Armstrong's West End their harmonies the "chord stabilizing monogamy and solid homes for children to grow these songs, including - made possible the collective playing of tp in: M1' Slue Heaven' The pop and rap music of our time changes" that - - have met before. Some of the considerably abetted by former musician Quincy Jones musicians who might never - primary vocabulary of jazz, none hardly serves such a social value. songs became part of the more so than Gershwin's 1 Got Rhythm. You'd hear calling the next tune, say I noticed the aging of the audience onthe jazzcruises of the musicians on a bandstand, laconic instruction was all that Norway, which my wife and I took every year for about ten "Rhythm changes," and this years. The quality of the cruises declined, including the was needed. pretty simplistic but it absorbed cuisine, and eventually we stopped going on them. But the The harmony at first was likes of Jerome Kern, whose most conspicuous change evolved in the audience. Each year some principles from the as in such instances one saw more bent postures, gray hair, canes, arthritic practices were exquisitely sophisticated, and The Foltts Who Live on the Hill' And movement, and electric scooters. And there were few younger as The Song Is You 1927. Jazz gtadtally absorbed a people to replace those who turned up missing each year' Show Boat premiered in led by such as Hoagy Carmichael The decline of popular music was well under way by the richer harmonic language, bebop, evolving in the time of Johnnie Ray's Cry in 1951, although from today's and Matt Dennis. And then came an extended harmonic perspective the record seems like a marvel of musicality' early 1940s, bringing to the music major sevenths and extensions up the Actually Ray sang well, and Elvis Presley could, when given ,o.ubulury involving ninths, raised a piece of good material, sing very well. The decline scale to include ninths, flat ninths, sharp raised and flatted fifths' It accelerated with the spectacular rise of Presley and the elevenths, thirteenths, and both rhythmic shifts, with melodic success of Bill Halley and his Comets in the mid-1950s' also incorporated sudden places, a practice John Lewis once remarked to me that jazz evolved in a phrases starting and stopping at unexpected of Bach but completely symbiotic relationship with the development of a magnificent not totally disconcerting to devotees planted in and devoted to the past' American popular music: Kern, Gershwin, Porter, Carmichael, so to those immovably and others who denounced it as Rodgers, Loesser, Schwartz et al. This becomes obvious on such as Benny Goodman "Chinese only a moment's reflection. music." recall, there was an From its earliest dayg jazz was a theme-and-variations For a while, the aged among us will by the jazz magazines' form, and the themes comprised materials with which the ardently stupid quarrel, abetted what their enemies called the audience was familiar. There were those of course who between the beboppers and to "figs". But bebop wanted only to hear the melody, and they could find "moldy figs," eventually condensed jazzbecame generally more complex, and the satisfaction in such bands as those of Freddy Martin, Blue prevaiied and simplistic music such Baron, Wayne King, Tornmy Tucker, Rudy Vallee, and yorng audience turned inoreasingly to and Elvis Presley, andthe jazz audience, others that were disdained by the "hip" listeners who relished as that of Bill Haley at first, grew smaller' the departures from melody practiced by Johnny Hodges, almost imperceptibly for the future of American popular music Coleman Hawkins, J.C. Higginbotham, Teddy Wilson, Benny I had shuddered just jazz rise of Elvis, but that worry grew Goodman, Mel Powell, Zoot Sims, and all the others in a not since the - - arrival of the Beatles. It was not remarkable flowering ofgreat improvising musicians, some of darker and deeper with the that bothered me' I gave whom attained (Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, tsill Evans so much the Beatles themselves been their first good review in North among them) the level of genius. That was the art, although them what may have

November 2008 not "invent" America, focusing on a kind of charming youthful irreverence music conceived horizontally. Bach did in their first albums. But when the record-industry flacks counterpoint, he summarized, codified and essentially you start began elevating their stuff to the status of high art I began to perfected it, and if you want to study the subject, wol'ry. It was one of those shifts in definition so brilliantly with him rather than try to reinvent the wheel' Samuel intensely. as one pulled off by Reagan when he d-emonized the world "liberal." Barber did exactly that and studied him high-wire I had been writing in High Fidelity for some time that if the senses in his Adagio for Strings, abreath-taking record industry persisted in issuing records in praise of drugs, walk between the vertical and horizontal' comes in the time we would eventually be overwhelmed by a national epidemic. The emphasis on verticality, the chord, usually called C.P.E., whom And 1o and behold, here we are, soaked in substance and an of his son Carl Philip Emanuel, to the towering stature unwinnable war against it. I was called a right-wing crackpot I sometimes think is under-rated due in that by the record publicists at the time. of his father. From this time on, music develops Beethoven Then came Woodstock. You may have noticed that this is direction harmonically through Mozart, - - he did not know the 40'h anniversary ofthat extravaganza: it has been all but (who in his last years expressed ategretthat Wagner, impossible to avoid. Pat Buchanan, who was at that time counterpoint better), Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, exemplars, (1969) a speech writer and adviser to Richard Nixon, said on Richard Strauss, Debussy and Ravel. Other American a TV show that they were both amused by the event, an including Dvorak (an enormous influence on indication of the limited perception of both. They simply music, particularly j azz), can be cited' in didn't see what its lengthened shadow would be, this This evolution utilized elaborate modulations that led away from tonality celebration of bad music and fornicating in the mud. Dimly, due course to Arnold Schoenberg's turn particularly I did. I remember seeing the movie about it with my friend the and a fanatical devotion by some composers, became one of the late Roland Gelatt, then editor of Saturday Review. He found Pierre Boulez, to his music and it lts "rules"of it all charming. Not I. It scared me. predominant influences ofthe twentieth century. and certainly more Other forces were at work in conjunction with rock music, composition are more extended by fa. including the assertions of sexual equality from the feminist rigid than what it aspired to replace. hatmonic movement in tandem with Hugh Heffner's exploitation of Jazz was long seen to be following the with a lag of about women in the guise of celebrating them. My late mother said developments in European concert music diatonic and that women's lib would not liberate women, it would liberate thirty years. In its early days it was strictly the chromaticism and men, and she was right, as one sees in all the unwed mothers triadic, but Bix Beiderbecke embraced including and single-parent homes. There is one essential difference free melodicism of the French "Impressionists", shared some of his between men and women: men don't get pregnant' And you Debussy, Ravel, and Paul Dukas. Bix was in 1862 and died have seen what has happened to the American family in the short lifetime with Debussy, who born ten years confluence of these forces. But I think the main force for in 1918; Bix was born in 1903 and died in 1928, in his broken families and drug use has to be popular "music" since after Debussy. You can hear the French influence it is the most effective and (now) pervasive form of cornet solos, but especially in his too few piano propaganda. It has descended to the rappers' celebrations of compositions. jazz music was never what the abuse and even murder of woman. I know of no statistics The gap between and classical have had you on the subject, but it seems to me, judging from the news, the magazines such as Down Beat would Maybe among the that never have we had so many disappearances and murders believe, not at least among the musicians. enough to consider of women and young girls. fans. I knew Leonard Feather very well, This is not, by the way, an assault on the feminist him a friend, and Leonard never betrayed the least George Simon movement, which I support, but on what I see as a misguided knowledge of classical music. I don't think claim to the licence long and silently assumed to be the right knew much about it either, although he came from a And so some of of the male. cultivated family, nor did Ralph J. Gleason' jazzwas what Music is inevitably of its time and circumstances. Bach's the shoddy criticism of based on this lack, and music was acclaimed or crisp and separate lines did not turn to mushy echoes amid the was merely adapted from European Teachout, Gothic columns and stone walls where his music was usually derogated as new. All this has changed and Terry performed. Counterpoint has been in practice for about a for example a former bass player knows as much - - do es abotfi jazz. thousand years: the management of simultaneous melodies, about classical music, especially opera, as he

November 2008 which is constructed by With the arrival of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and triad, obviously a three-note chord, it and playing later the team of Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond and the playing a tone, then skipping the tone above next tone above, and then several Gerry Mulligan groups, there was a renewal of interest ih. tor" above that, skipping the of triad, in counterpoint. The late Jimmy Raney was especially playing the tone above that. Thete are four kinds Some jazz devoted to Bach. How much Dizzy and Bird actually knew of major, minor, diminished, and augmented. diminished chords, the European tradition, I don't know, btttDizzy referred to musicians have a prejudice against a taste for them, and so did attending a symphony concert as "going to church"" finding them "weak". I have The proliferation of the "big bands" in the 1930s and '40's Chopin. implicitly non- brought with it an increasingly rich harmonic usage, as in Diminished and augmented triads are the do-re-mi Dizzy's wildly exuberant band -- it is to our perpetual loss diatonic, since they entail tones from outside that it wasn't recorded more and that he was not able to scale. Bobby Hackett did lovely things with triads. jazz not triads but four- sustain it longer and the Woody Herman and Stan Kenton Almost universally, however, uses the root, as in D- bands, along with- the excesses of Boyd Raeburn. Since the note chords, adding the seventh above four-note chord on any arrangers and composers were all schooled in European minor, D-F-A-C. You can build a by Roman developments, why did the bands not incorporate more of note in the scale, and these chords are referred to time. In major the I chord them? That is a question I once put to Mel Powell, who did numerals, as they were in Bach's is major, V (the some of the best writing the Benny Goodman band ever knew is major, II is minor, III is minor, IV Marion (Mission to Moscow). Was it because the public wouldn't dominant) is major, VI is minor, VII is diminished. me as a defective dominant: accept them? (Although a public that could accept Kem's The Evans once defined the VII to this chord, rather Song Is You 1932 could hardly be seen as backward') the root is missing. Monk referred to "l think I'11- surprise- you," Mel said. "It wasn't the public appropriately, as half-diminished' lead sheets that who couldn't accept it. It was the bandleaders." Jazz musicians use a letter shorthand in symbol, for example And he told me that Goodman broke Eddie Sauter's heart give only the melody line and the chord Competent jazz by cuttin-e his charts up, simplifying them. Bill Finegan too C, Am, Dm7, G7, C, a common sequence. great many of the "standards" in all had to restrict his charts to Glenn Miller's formulae and we musicians must know a not play together never knew of what they were capable until they formed the the common keys. Otherwise they could Sauter-Finegan Orchestra which revealed, among other things, impromptu. an admiration for Prokofiev. In Sauter's case, deeper But they grew bored with this endless exercise, and to extended the dirnensions of his work were revealed in the Focus album he escape its strictures they did two things, and superimposed wrote for Stan Getz. harmony into more chromatic registers; Dtzzy But there was a problem implicit in jazz: the repeated new funes on the changes of familiar standards. top of structural use of theme-and-variations, or variations-on-a- Gillespie, for instance, wrote Groovin' High on Rhythm arc theme" Sauter and Getz escaped this to an extent in Focus. Wispering. The number of tunes based onlGot them Moose the Mooch The idea was that he would write the backgrounds for strings probably beyond counting, among p o I o and Ow by Dizzy, O I e o and rhythm section, and let Stan play what he felt like, and C h e er s,by P arker, A nth r o gt without reference to any specified melody. If you're not by Sonny Rollins, 52'd Street Theme and Rhythm'a-ningby based on familiar with the legend of that album, Stan had a death in the Monk. Bird's Scrapple from the Apple is Davis, is based on family while they were recording and he couldn't continue. So Honeysuckle Rose. Donna Lee,by Miles Sauter tracked the orchestra, and later Stan went into the Back Home Again in Indiana. could wend his way studio, put on a set ofhead phones, and played the brilliant Dizzy was a harmonic master, and without effort' Yet stuff that is in that album. through complex changes seemingly a tune, he said, A jazz musician must know,is expectedto know, hundreds when I asked him what he looked for in he said, "trf they're of tunes and be facile with them in different keys, ideally all "simple changes." sensing my surprise, Desmond held the keys, in practice the flat keys, since j azz is oriented to horns, too complicated, it won't swing." Paul with trumpets and saxophones being transposing instruments same view. jazz musicians tuned in flat keys. (Brazllian music, because its core is the Trailing behind the classical composers, the theme-and- guitar, has a leaning to sharp keys.) came to feel more and more restricted in Armstrong' The basic building block of the harmonic system is the variations form that was the legacy of Louis

November 2008 twelve tones of the They looked around for a freer way to make the music. Some Schoenberg. You must play or write all piay of them began exploring bitonalty, among them Roger chromatic scale before repeating any of them. You may or retrograde' And Kellaway and Dave Brubeck, not to mention John Coltrane's the entire row again in mirror inversion years recall, "sheets of sound". Beyond that there was only escape from there are other "rules" that I cannot after many the result. tonality I couldn't see how they could accomplish this not never having been attracted by - of the argument, if you're going to play together. Academically I can defend either side do not think it is all a A11 my life I have had the habit of going, from time to but my intuitions favor tonality' I Koussevitsky's time, back to school, or at least to the books, in the yearning matter of conditioning despite Sergei - back of a mule; to push back the walls of my ignorance. Some years ago I statement that the ear of man is like the it can get used to anything andl do took a course at the Dick Grove School, now vanished, with beaten long enough - emotion in scales and composer and arranger Jack Smalley, whom I had known believe there are inherent qualities of favors free jazz. And a since he was the bassist with the Page Cavanaugh Trio. One chord forms. But the other view never developed. To me music day we had lunch with another student very mttchyounger substantial audience for it has - challenge' puzzles for than Jack and I during which the kid asked what I hoped to is about feeling. It is not an academic what much of the get out of these -studies. I said, "Freedom from harmony." The the audience to solve, and that is o'serious"music boy was astonished. Jack said, "l know what Gene means"' after Schoenberg has been. only in its reception by He continued: "Most of us who grew up oniazz suffer from The act of art is an ar:, complete or large. Without an audience, it a disease I call Chord Symbolitis." Which is the tendency to an audience, whether small build tunes out of the chord symbols. doesn't exist, There is only silence. have been successful' The Or, as arrarrger Marion Evans put it, "Do you harmonize The jazz education programs produced an enofinous body the melody or melodize the harmonY?" colleges and universities have galore. But in the process they That is the crossjazz has never been able to get off. If, on of skillful musicians. Chops a horn, you play up and down the chord, you're playing have homogenized the music. began to abandori the "vertical ly. " That's unimaginative. ln time the younger musicians evolved. At first I Not all musicians can stomach playing the same material "standards" on which the music had it occurred to me that the over and over. Johnny Mandel was a trombone player before thought they were mistaken. Then getting jts sixties and turning to arranging and composition, as did Gerry Mulligan, "younger" audience, now into why shouldn't although Gerry was always a composer. Gerry said, "I write seventies, didn'tknowthe standards either. So pocket the royalties? to support my baritone habit." When I asked him if he needed the kids write their own material and a Horace Siiver, Dave to grasp the intellectual content of the solos he was playing, Alas there apparently hasn't been Evans, or Gerry Mulligan among them' he said, "Not when I'm PlaYing well." Brubeck, Bill jazz fron'r As for the musicians who could play a tune endlessly, An attempted clairvoyance has been a patt of music perfecting it, Mandel mentioned Zoot Sims' playing Lester the beginning. But it is vatn to try to foresee where the and Andy's was the inn of Young's Twinkle Toes over a period of twenty or thirty ears, is "going." In the days when Jim jazzmusicians York, where they could saying, "l couldn't do it. But God bless him for it." preference to in New Bob Brookmeyer One of the pleasures for the lazz audience was following stash their instruments or cash their checks, a "down 48'h Street to Jim the improvisations on tunes they knew, great tunes by Porter, answered that question with tart Ellington, Rodgers, et al. But from about the time (1967-68) and Andy's." the question was: of Hair,Broadway ceased to provide worthy material. Gerry Stan Kenton's purpofted dry response to told me that as he and John Lewis were walking down the "We're on our way to Kansas CitY." proclaiming the death street from Gil Evans' apartment, John said, "When we're Someone, it seems, has always been time, however, gone, it's over." Oscar Peterson said the same thing to me' of jazz,rightback to the risd of "swing." This Eric Dolphy pushed the music farther into "freedom" and the music's golden days may indeed be over' the late avant-garde clarinetist John Carter still farther. And a yeil at PO there was Ornette Coleman, the principle figure of the "free The Jazzletter is published 12 times year for the jazz" movement" Box 240, Oiai, California 93024, $80 a Copyright @ It is possible to break the tyranny oftonality, assuming you U.S. and Canada, $90 other countries. think that is a desirable end. You apply the principles of 2009 Gene Lees.

November 2008