Posted by Don Mopsick on January 30, 2001 at 00:15:22:
1. Gerald Early's comment on Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Lee Morgan and the Hard Boppers of the 60's was that they were consciously trying to create a blues-based music that could not be imitated by white musicians without bordering on minstrelsy. This was a reaction against the hugely popular white West Coast Cool movement that was epitomized by Brubeck, Chet Baker, etc.
Taking this thought to its logical end: the intended effect was to exclude, to create an exclusive music. The author suggests that in this respect, they were successful, especially financially.
I have no comment at all about whether this was a valid approach to playing jazz. I myself lived through this period and remember only a confusing jumble of racial politics that thoughtful people are still trying to sort out. All I can address are purely musical issues, and perhaps now is as good a time as any (some 30 years later) to begin the process of dispassionately examining the evidence of the musical record.
To those of you familiar with this brand of jazz: compare the amount of actual blues content of the Jazz Messengers, for example, to that of players like Bessie Smith, Kid Ory, Benny Goodman, Muggsy Spanier, or most other pre-WWII players. To my ear, in comparison, Blakey's blues is a second-hand watered-down version inherited from Charlie Parker. Musical hearsay.
But Blakey himself had the wisdom, unlike some of his contmporaries, to realize that his jazz had "nothing to do with Africa," that only Americans could have created it.
Conclusion: the real story of jazz is still waiting to be told. Perhaps another 30 years needs to pass before the music itself eclipses the politics present at its creation.
2. Early's and Ossie Davis' comments on why African-Americans of the 50's and 60's felt so uncomfortable with Louis Armstrong: I was glad to hear this from both of these guys because they are of two different generations! To me this makes Louis' current "rehabilitation" all the more significant.
3. I finally realized the proper setting for some of Ornette Coleman's music: as a movie sound track! Only a movie editor can properly do for Ornette's music what Ornette himself fails to do and so badly needs: an edit job! In smaller doses, with a visual/emotional context, I finally see where Ornette could really make it. I actually own "Free Jazz" and "The Shape of Jazz to Come" and cannot play them anymore unless I don't care about killing my houseplants.
I thought that Albert Murray's comments on Ornette and free jazz were right on the money. Freedom is what jazz is all about in the first place, and one cannot embrace entropy (chaos). Except maybe as a movie sound track.
And I liked Gary Giddins' analysis of the appeal of John Coltrane's extended solo approach, comparing it to a Tolstoy novel as opposed to a musical "poem" by Louis Armstrong. I found reading "War and Peace" to be just as tiresome as listening to Trane.
Mopsick