Journeys Through The Past And All That Jazz

Journeys Through The Past And All That Jazz

by

Joe Goldberg

There is something that has been happening to jazz music for the past several years, which both pleases and frightens me, depending on when you ask, and, recollecting the matter in as much tranquility as I’m able to summon at the moment, I’m still a bit puzzled.

No music places a greater premium on spontaneity—that, indeed, is supposedly what it’s all about, the inspiration of the moment—yet, in terms of packing and promotion, jazz seems to have become a nostalgia item, not too much different from Greatest Hits packages sold on television. I doubt the music would look back so assiduously if it weren’t entirely lacking in forward motion; dead societies love to rake over their past, like dogs in shitpiles, or pyramid souvenir hunters.

Once, twenty years back, I was in a recording studio with the producer Esmond Edwards, while Colemah Hawkins and Pee Wee Russel}, two great musicians who are now dead, improvised a blues. The music was sb laden with nostalgia that when Edwards asked aloud what it might be called 1 said, without stopping to think, “Years Ago.” And you’ll find it on the record label. More jazz than suits my taste could go. by the same name.

I suspect the reason for all of this is that the main tributary stream for new jazz musicians in the last twenty years, whatever band Miles Davis happened to have at the moment, has started to turn out so-called “fusion music” players, thus, cutting off jazz at the source. The music may be dead; after all, it’s only lasted fifty years. ,

The best producer in the jazz retrieval business is Frank Driggs, who currently works for RCA. Music that you are surprised and delighted was retained by the company that produced it is likely to be around because of Driggs’ efforts: you will find his name on, for instance, old Billie Holiday and Robert*Johnson albums.

Driggs’ newest job, alternately dismal and splendid, is a six-record set called The Complete Lionel Hampton—1937-1941, which is mostly made up of small pick-up groups or spinoffs of the Benny Goodman band Hampton was in at the time. The names of great musicians involved would take up all the space I have, and the only more important project I can think of for Driggs to undertake would be the systematic reissue of all the music available in the RCA vaults of America’s greatest composer—Duke Ellington.

There are two Ellington reissues currently about, one frorri the Smithsonian Institute, the other from Columbia Records. You would expect the Smithsonian set to be more interesting, and you would be right. It is called Duke Ellington 1938, and is selected and annotated by professional archivist Gunther Schuller, and features some of the finest musicians who ever spit into a horn. The Columbia record, Volume 3 in their World of Duke Ellington Series, is another haphazard collage, no more carefully thought about than its predecessors or the next episode of Rich Man, Poor Man. I wish these people realized what they have in their hands.

Two other companies in the reissue business are Savoy, now owned by Arista, and Verve, now owned by Poly dor. Both firms recorded great music and trivia, and seem to be disguising from us their ability to tell the difference. The past weeds out the secqnd-rate, but some firms seem to make to want us to do the job all over again.

The newest Savoy sets are by the Red Norvo Trio (Charlie Mingus and Tal Farlow), the Billy Eckstine Orchestra (every great bebopper who ever lived), Don Byas, and whoever was playing in California when Savoy was around. The Norvo is worth having, the Eckstine has such dismal sound that the music simply can’t be heard, the Byas pretends a scholarly interest in a warm, sexy musician whose alternate masters aren’t worth having, and the California compilation is just that.

Verve continues to release both great and average recordings from its vast catalogue. There is a Charlie Parker compilation, not his best stuff but great in part because he is who he is, the Ella Fitzgerald Cole Porter album that blanded her out and made her a star twenty years ago, and a set called Masters of the Modern Piano that presumes Wynton Kelly to be on the same level of achievement as Cecil Taylor, Bud Poweli and Mary Lou Williams. If I’d paid for that record, I’d want to know why John Lewis’ MJQ pieces weren’t on it, and what Wynton Kelly ever did except die to merit his inclusion. I wish these people would sort out their own garbage.