My response to Jazz Jews by Mike Gerber:I just got my copy of Jazz Jews. I am looking forward to reading it! I wanted to thank you for quoting me in the book (p. 38) and including my book in the bibliography. So far, I read the introduction and I'd just like to say that Sudhalter's book didn't impress me a bit for several reasons. He failed to discuss two artists whose work is important. Raymond Scott's music failed to get a mention. This is understandable simply because most jazz books neglect him, too. He doesn't discuss Charlie Barnet at all. By itself, this is bad enough, but omitting him by reasoning that his work is just imitation Ellington and Basie is just plain stupid or lazy. Making negritude a primary factor in jazz studies is problematic in the face of several musicians whose racial background is itself problematic. What do you do with George Russell, Jackie McLean, Josh Redman, Etta James and Charles Mingus? What about white musicians like Johnny Otis who are so often described as African American? Keith Jarrett with his afro?I read online about Jews like Gilad Atzmon who refuse to consider their Jewishness as a factor in loving jazz (I just like the music and it has nothing to do with who I am). I recall that my recently departed German-Jewish aunt used to tell people that she didn't consider herself Jewish, as if being Jewish wasn't the central factor in her life! She failed to recognize that before becoming a refugee all of her family and their friends were Jews and their world was quintessentially German Jewish - in Germany as well as Austria and Czechoslovakia. That makes her Jewish in ways that are more important than whether she attended a synagogue or not or celebrated the holidays. Keeping popular music - and even classical music - out of jazz history makes no sense when you're describing the music between the World Wars. George Gershwin's music is profoundly important to American music and more advanced conceptually than most anybody else's. In this era before improvised solos became the defining attribute of jazz, a performance of a Harold Arlen song, say, by an instrumentalist might even be perceived as an interpretation rather than "a jazz performance." Songwriting and composing influenced by jazz might even have reached its height in sophistication outside of the USA. What about Kurt Weill and the Czech Jaroslav Jezek? In some ways, they were better songwriters than Irving Berlin. It seems that you didn't ask Artie Shaw and other musicians the right questions. Jewish culture in the United States doesn't have much to do with klezmer or even synagogue music, as many of your interview subjects point out. In the first half of the 20th century, jazz was three things at least: music that celebrates urban life, music of rebellion, and music appreciated by musical sophisticates that was open to experimentation and cross-cultural exploration. Jews were fascinated by all of these in different degrees. Some of your interviewees like Jane Ira Bloom and Stanley Crouch understand that. Why do Jews get into music? Because there are so many Jewish musicians to model oneself after and, more importantly, because artistic expression is a strong element of American Jewish culture - an aspect which has its roots in German Jewish culture probably more than in Russian Jewish culture. Why are Jews so intrigued by foreign and exotic cultures - such as the music coming from black ghettos? (Remember that black culture was not in the mainstream before the Civil Rights era.) Jews seem to have a love of marginal culture, and that's why Jewish Americans become blues musicians and Latin musicians, and why ethnomusicology has attracted so many Jews, too. Great book! - Charley
Michael Gerber's response and more
Hi CharleyI'm responding to your very welcome feedback on my book from my main email address. I'll respond to the points you make in both your emails in one goCrouch did make a very good point, didn't he, about blacks and Jews embracing the possibilities inherent in urban life? Jews had little or no reason to look back with affection on lands they had come to America from: by comparison, the New World was a release despite the bigotry they had to contend with. Young 1st generation Jews such as Gershwin had every reason to embrace modernity, which in America was very interconnected with jazz or at least people's perception of itWhy are Jews so intrigued by foreign and exotic cultures? Hmm, perhaps because in the last 2000 years Jews have been a diaspora people, assimilating middle eastern, east European, southern European, Balkan, Gypsy, western European, Latin and American and African-American influences, in many case fusing that with Jewish cultures. Kurt Weill - I may do a special edition of my Kosher Jam radio show dedicated to him and by jazz interpretations of his music. I've already done one on Gershwin, and also want to do one on Arlen, and also a more general edition on Jewish songwriters. Picking up on the theme of your book about entitlement to play jazz, I think the fact that the vast majority of jazz standards were composed by Jews, and I think it can be argued had a role in the way jazz evolved, including other jazz standards based on the chord changes of those songs, means that Jews perhaps more than any non-black group surely can claim some title.Also, if much of black music, while dealing with life's blues, is also a life-affirming way of exorcising them, then Jews as a historically outside and much oppressed and racially reviled group can certainly associate with the music in more than just an intellectual aesthetic levelAlso, as David Izenson, one of Ornette's white bassists put it, “I have a few thousand years of tradition to contribute myself. Since I’m white and Jewish, perhaps a Jewish guy is going to realise when he sees me up on the stand with black musicians that this new music has something to do with him.” And if we move it to blues music, Peter Green said something along the lines that, "As a Jew, you can put a lot of your own feeling in"The way I see jazz, pretty much from its inception, is, as I've put in Jazz Jews, it's "a coat of many colors, the dominant thread of which is black". Most of the greatest jazz innovators have been black, in terms of the musicians that have radically moved the music on, that doesn't always mean that they are always the greatest musicians. I mean, my favorite tenor saxophonist is probably Getz, awesome technically but much more importantly, also expressively, but he's nowhere near the influence on jazz that Coleman Hawkins or Lester Young or Coltrane are. All of whom are of course fabulous, but Getz is my pick. And I would reject any suggestion that that's got anything to do with me being white, or because Getz was Jewish. I mean, I've seen a lot of blues/R&B gigs in my time, and listened to a whole lot more, white and black, and the greatest musicians in that genre - Howlin Wolf, Jimmy Reed, Professor Longhair and so on - to my ears are definitely black
Jazz in the 1940s
I just finished teaching a 5-week course on jazz in the 1940s and examined in detail a decade's worth of music with fresh insights. The more I read jazz history and criticism about this decade the more disturbed I become about the jazz-is-black-music paradigm. I'm willing to accept someone's notion that Parker, Monk, Powell, Gillespie, Davis, and Roach are the most important musicians of the period, but there was a lot going on in music in the 40s. While bebop is inevitably regarded as black music, how can you talk about Charlie Parker's music without noting the roll-call of white pianists in his bands: Al Haig, Dodo Marmarosa, Richard Twardzik, Joe Albany, George Wallington? Bebop was just a part of the total soundscape, and the bebopper's ideology was shared by others. The African-American bebop innovators frequently asserted that they took their music seriously and wanted others to treat it as an artistic expression, not just entertainment. But they weren't the only ones in the jazz world to develop this attitude. The idea of taking what had been a popular music as an art form was developed by Stan Kenton in the same period. Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw had roles to play in spreading the word, too. As a historian I think it's more important to represent what was there rather than to focus only on what you like and admire. Stan Kenton's music with all its bombast is important to discuss simply because without Kenton's patronage the composers of film and television music of the succeeding decades (Pete Rugolo, et. all) might never have gotten their careers started. You don't like this music? As a jazz scholar that doesn't mean you can ignore it and pretend that it never existed and that it was without influence.
Trumpets
Trumpet players come in two different forms (at least). The loudest and most aggressive is the lead trumpet player. I thought a trumpet section was like a sax section: you put the most experienced (or strongest player) on lead. But in the trumpet world, the lead trumpet is a particular sonority. The lead trumpet player has a glorious and loud sound and has the ability to play comfortably around high C and can easily move up a fourth above that into the ledger-line note range. As far as jazz soloing goes, the lead player sound is exemplified by Dizzy Gillespie and Maynard Ferguson. Miles Davis really exemplified the anti-lead sound. When the young Miles Davis announced to Gillespie that he could play anything Dizzy could play, the older musician reportedly replied: "Yeah, but an octave lower!" And there you have it. If you want a loud trumpet sound from a section, you populate the section with several other players who could also play lead. But what works best for me is to get trumpet players with a quieter approach to sit next to the lead player. That way the saxophones can play dynamically instead of shouting to be heard.
Changes in personnel
Being a bandleader can sure give you a headache if you let it with musicians agreeing to perform and then canceling and then having to find replacements. You can look at this as an inconvenience or a chance to meet new musicians. Recently the Broken Reed Saxophone Quartet did a concert in Bensonhurst with a musician I'd never met before - Alec Spiegelman. Alec came prepared for the first (and only) rehearsal and he took the music off the page and put in exactly the right nuances. I was amazed! It turned out that his young sister Margaret had been to music camp with my daughter Eva more than 10 years ago! In a few days I'm performing with Compared to That with Daniel Linden, a last-minute sub playing bass trombone. It turns out that he's a longtime musical associate of Alec's. It's great having a frame of reference with a musician when you're meeting for the first time! So instead of getting all uptight about having to use a last-minute sub - Alec- I got to meet a couple of extraordinary musicians and expand my circle of musician friends.
I keep on finding more mid 20th-century pop tunes with Middle Eastern themes.
There's Sheik of Araby, Raymond Scott's Twilight in Turkey, Duke Ellington's Caravan (composed by Juan Tizol), Larry Clinton's Strictly for the Persians, Albert Ketelbey's In a Persian Market (recorded by Sammy Davis, Jr.!), Abe Olman's Egyptia which Sidney Bechet played and copyrighted as his own piece called Egyptian Fantasy. And how about Charles Shavers' Dawn on the Desert, which was recorded by John Kirby Sextet, Tommy Dorsey and even Art Blakey! We'll be playing all of these pieces. The common denominator is an inexplicable fascination with Arabic, Turkish and Persian music and culture. Yes, this fake Middle Eastern music is kitsch, but the more decades we are from its original creation, the more these pieces reveal musical treasures. The way I arrange them and the way the band will play 'em (Tom Olin, Deborah Weisz, Ric Becker, Jared Dubin, Chris Bacas, Lisa Parrott, Dave Smith, Petros Klampanis, Syberen Van Munster, Jacob Teichroew, Jackie Coleman, Mark Morgan, Danny Wolf and yours truly) will add more layers of cultural complexity. And thanks to 21st century warfare and politics (and I say this completely facetiously) we Americans know a lot more about the Middle East landscape than these mid-century songwriters and composers did. For them, the Middle Eastern lands represented exoticism and sensuality; for us, they are our past and future battlefields.
Ken Burns jazz: Risk
The first response to this strange view of post-World War II jazz is: where is the action? As in other Ken Burns films there are photos presented amidst talking heads. The approach makes sense when dealing with the Civil War but in a documentary about events that took place long after film was invented it's mighty peculiar. An argument could be made that few of the landmarks of post-war jazz were filmed. But in this documentary, Burns chooses to truncate actual footage. There is more footage of Charlie Parker playing in a filmed sequence on Youtube than in this movie.Burns chooses to call this segment of his history of jazz, "Risk." He and his talking heads advance the idea that jazz in Charlie Parker's hands was based on incredible risk-taking - and then explains the relation of Parker's music to heroin use. Burns and his advisors - the Marsalis Brothers, Albert Murray, Jon Hendricks, Ossie Davis, Lorraine Gordon, Margo Jefferson, Phil Schaap, Gerald Early and Gary Giddins - created the thesis of bebop-as-risk and it is, at the least, worth considering. Of course, one could argue that all improvisation is a form of risk-taking.The film takes the viewer from Parker's life and music to Dizzy Gillespie and then focuses on - of all people, Louis Jordan, one of the first rhythm 'n blues musicians and by no means a jazz musician! Most of the white musicians are marginalized except for drummer Stan Levey. (In fact, Stan Levey's own documentary, entitled "The Original Original" The Jazz Bop Pioneer Tells His Own Story" presents a better history of bebop than this one.) The white musicians such as Gerry Mulligan and Stan Getz come into the narrative simply as fellow junkies of Charlie Parker.But this is a huge topic and Burns makes an effort to present a narrative tying the whole thing together that we have to respect despite the errors and strange judgements.
Broken Reed's 2011 in Perspective
Jenny Hill is still pondering the randomness of the universe, especially the gig gods. Some months of 2011 were busy, and Jenny found herself playing reggae in various outdoor venues. Favorite spots included Thailand, opening for Ziggy Marley in Jerusalem, and playing Red Rocks in Colorado. Some creative jazz moments included playing with the Broken Reed Sax Qt, the Dan Martin trio, and a concert at the 92Y with Todd Isler and Tomas Rodriguez. The second half of 2011 saw Jenny learning stand-up comedy techniques as she was backing Denis Leary, playing the Jazz Loft Party with the Black Rock Coalition to raise funds for older jazz musicians in need, joining 2 original bands (the Huffers and Bowl of Soul), and finishing out the year performing with Govt Mule for their NYEve show at the Beacon Theater in a tribute to Joe Cocker. Jenny is working on her standup act for 2012, tentatively entitled Licensed To Hill.Charley Gerard I am lucky to have a number of musical angels in my life that made my musical dreams come true in 2011. At the top of the list are Judi Weinstock, Eva Gerard, Carl Banner, Jenny Hill, Lisa Parrott, Chris Bacas and Tom Olin. We push each other forward artistically and inspire each other to improve our skills. It’s so rewarding to make music among people who enjoy each other’s company and respect one another. Sometimes I forget that it isn’t usually like this! 2011 was pretty busy for me. The Broken Reed Saxophone Quartet did a number of interesting gigs as a small group and as the nucleus of Compared to That, a big band. There were a few projects with pianist Carl Banner and Washington Musica Viva such as the premiere of “Charles Bukowski Would’ve Liked Mozart” my send-up of a Mozart violin sonata played by violinist Kathy Judd, with Carl, drummer Lennie Robinson and bassist Jon Nazdin and my Dvorak Jazz Dances (premiered at the Czech Embassy in Washington, DC) performed by Carl, Lennie and I with guitarist Syberen Van Munster and bassist James King. Judi and I had our songs performed by the wonderful Kris Adams at Somethin’ Jazz Club in NYC. My goal in 2012 is to keep on keeping on.Tom Olin There's only one major scale. It just happens 12 times. [Cecil Payne] Gigwise, 2011 was less (not more) of the same. I worked with Linda Ipanema, did swing gigs with Felix & the Cats, Mike Arrenella, Stan Rubin. I subbed on AVE Q for Patience, and on Billy Elliott. A few high school shows tested my flute & picc. to the max. One high point was a couple of "lobby jobs" with Michael Howell. I did only a few club dates which is O.K., because they have become a dead end for me, and ruin one's hearing eventually. I believe there is stilll jazz in jazz, but it's puzzling that N.Y.C. musicians often align themselves into camps, sometimes developing a verbal philosophy to justify their lives. The school that tries to climax each solo like John Coltrane is akin to copying that of a porno star. It ain't going to happen. I try to maintain my sanity by not trying to do everything on every instrument. Saxophonically yours, Tom Olin.Chris Bacas I want to thank all the composers, collaborators and colleagues that I've worked with this past year and plan to work with in the coming year: BRSQ, Stefan Bauer, Vinson Valega, JC Sanford, Peter Paulson and Asuka Kakitani. For the new year my wishes are: more of the same, more of the different and more good health for my friends, my family and myself. CbLisa Parrott has been busy!