Jazz Profiles: One Night Stand: A Photographic Essay of Jazz Concerts in The Netherlands 1947

“Jazz has always been a favorite subject for photographers, and this is no less so in The

Netherlands

Those photographers who crowded around the stage of the Concertgebouw [in Amsterdam from 1947-1967] and other venues to hear and see Jazz were no amateurs, but included some of the country’s best cameramen including Ed van der Elsken, Cas Oorthuys, Eddy Posthuma de Boer, Hans Buter, Pieter Boersma, to name a few.

Thanks to their loving endeavors we have this book in which the golden era of Dutch Jazz Concerts comes to life as vibrantly as through listening to the best recordings.”

– Bert Vuijsje

Over the years, thanks to the kindness and generosity of a friend in The Netherlands, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has come to have an appreciation of both the long, historical association that the Dutch have had with Jazz, as well as, just how energetic and exciting the current Jazz scene is in Holland.

In terms of the former, one example of Holland’s enduring love for the music was underscored through his gift of the photographs contained in One Night Stand: Jazzconcerten in Nederland 1947 – 1967, a book that was published in 1999 by Uitgeverji Windroos, Amsterdam.

It was researched and composed by Jaap van de Klomp who lives and works in Utrecht and who is himself, a professional photographer. For much of the decade of the 1960s, Mr. van de Klomp also had a first-hand involvement with Jazz as the contractor for American Jazz musicians who appeared in Dutch Jazz clubs including Donald Byrd, Kenny Drew, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin and Charles Lloyd.

Bert Vuijsje, a noted Dutch Jazz expert, critic and radio host, wrote the following Introduction to the book.

It is offered in translation [which was part of the gift from my Dutch Jazz buddy] and interspersed with memorable photographs from the book as a way of making available to the readers of JazzProfiles some of the images from this outstanding documentary history of Jazz in The Netherlands, 1947 – 1967.

Introduction – Bert Vuijsje

“[Reflections;]Jazz in the fifties and sixties: freezing all night at the door of the Nieuwe Muziekhandel (New Musicshop) in the Leidsestraat (famous street) in Amsterdam to be the first one in the morning at the start of the pre-sale to obtain the cheapest ticket for row B in the Concertgebouw (gebouw = building). Although seated here you would look straight into the spotlights, you would be just five meters from Miles Davis, or Art Blakey, or John Coltrane, or Charles Mingus.

Saturday night November 16, 1957 was the first time I was allowed to attend. I cannot remember what I had done, as a 15-year old, to persuade my parents, but at midnight I was in the sold-out Concertgebouw, fourth row balcony, chair 47, waiting for the music of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

As a fervent reader of Michiel de Ruyter's (famous Dutch jazz expert) concert reviews, published in Het Parool (Dutch national paper,), I had realized that ever since my love for jazz had begun I had already missed too many precious moments in the Concertgebouw. One year earlier, November 3, 1956: Miles Davis and Lester Young; May 18, 1957: the Gerry Mulligan Sextet; August 17, 1957: J.J. Johnson with Tommy Flanagan and Elvin Jones. (And I won't talk about Billie Holiday, January 23, 1954; Sarah Vaughan and Illinois Jacquet, October 9, 1954; and Chet Baker with Richard Twardzik, September 17, 1955 - because at that time I had barely discovered jazz.)

The only thing I remember from the MJQ-concert is that I loved it. The following Monday I read in Michiel de Ruyter's review that the quartet had played fewer fugues and more blues than the year before, and that with regard to the ensemble-playing 'the unity and integration are still getting stronger'. There also appeared to be a French movie with music by the Modern Jazz Quartet, 'On ne sait jamais' [the film score from this moview was released as the Atlantic CD – “No Sun in Venice”]. That was something I had to see as well.

Three weeks later, Sunday evening December 8, 1957, I was at home, frustrated. Miles Davis, Barney Wilen and Kenny Clarke appeared at the Concertgebouw and I was not allowed to go there, because I had to get up early on Monday morning for class 4B1 of the Gemeentelijke HBS (Dutch equivalent, well not quite, of American high school) in Hilversum (Dutch town near Amsterdam).

Forty years later it is difficult to imagine the tense expectations with which the jazz concerts of the American giants were anticipated. The Concertgebouw was the focal point for the Dutch jazz experience, the place where new sounds were heard first.

At that time, jazz records were imported from the

USA

with a considerable delay, and as result the night concerts sometimes presented literally 'unheard of music. This difference in phase could lead to painful misunderstandings, with concert visitors and reviewers alike.

The concert of Miles Davis and John Coltrane on April 9, 1960 caused various jazz reporters to use indignant descriptions, which they probably would not want to be reminded of. (Michiel de Ruyter proved in Het Parool to be one of the few people with good ears and a contemporary view: 'Miles Davis' trumpet plays music of the future... melodies that not only belong to the finest (jazz)music of this moment, but that also - in two, five or ten years from now - possibly will be the style and form'.)

The night concerts at the Concertgebouw were probably also impressive because of the scarcity surrounding them. Jazz in the

Netherlands

did not have a Bimhuis (famous center for improvisational music in Amsterdam), let alone a North Sea Jazz Festival with three days of music performed by hundreds of American jazz artists on fourteen stages.

Thanks to the late Michiel de Ruyter I have a handy, typed, list of all jazz concerts at the Concertgebouw starting from 1952. An entire jazz-season usually consisted of less than ten concerts (not even half an evening at the North Sea Jazz Festival). Only 1957-1958 brought eleven concerts: J.J. Johnson, Jack Teagarden, the MJQ, Miles Davis, Erroll Garner, Dave Brubeck, Jazz West Coast, Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson, Benny Goodman, Jazz At The Philharmonic, Sarah Vaughan.

The most wonderful season I can remember was 1963-'64, and I am amazed to see that from October until May jazz was heard at the Concertgebouw only seven times. But the list, I know from experience, is enough to turn each jazzlover younger than forty years jealous: October 26 John Coltrane, November 9 Roland Kirk and Dexter Gordon, January 4 Max Roach with Abbey Lincoln, February 15 Thelonious Monk, April 10 Charles Mingus with Eric Dolphy, April 24 Ella & Oscar, May 30 Eric Dolphy with Boy's Big Band.

I had become, at the age of 22, jazz critic of Vrij Nederland (Free Netherlands, a major Dutch periodical) so I did not have to miss a single concert. But the professional routine with which I used to visit the North Sea Jazz Festival a quarter of a century later was not there yet. Each new night concert had the possibility of amazement, the ecstasy of the never heard before 'sound of surprise', as Whitney Balliett of The New Yorker perfectly characterized it in 1959.

Simon Carmiggelt described it in 1954, after the concert of Sarah Vaughan and Illinois Jacquet:

"People are enjoying themselves, nodding, applauding, roaring, groaning, whistling. In the uncanny poolroom-light, with smoke from unauthorized lit cigarettes dreaming erratic strings, the mood lies somewhere between that of a boxing match and a political meeting. But there is also sanctity. The holy, white ox is being sacrificed. A large fire is lit. One attempts to push through a very thin reed an enormous fury. People are sweating visibly, extremely alive and nearly dying."

During the mid-sixties the decline started. Jazz was pushed aside definitively as a symbol of youth rebellion by pop music. The Concertgebouw seldom attracted large audiences for American jazz groups and the agents moved their jazz-activities - first to the Doelen in Rotterdam, later to the Congresgebouw in The Hague and Vredenburg in Utrecht.

Thirty years later jazz blossoms again, but rarely as 'the sound of surprise': the American pioneers are either dead or have returned to more easily interpreted sounds. The audience wants a festival of recognition, or at the most a surprising re-interpretation of the familiar idiom. In short, jazz has become Classical music like earlier the works of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.

It is not likely that the magic of the fifties and sixties will come to life again in the near future in the Concertgebouw. The jazz of today is generally respectable music that is very skillfully played, but what is missing is, in the words of the British critic Richard Williams, "the feeling that music is being discovered the moment it is played".

Once, during an interview with Michiel de Ruyter, Eric Dolphy said: "When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again." That may be true for musicians, but listeners luckily have recordings, which give eternal life to jazz performances. Lovers of classical music may be jealous of this sometimes, because for them there is not an original performance of Bach’s The Passion of Saint Matthew or Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte [The Magic Flute] permanently available, as is also the case for Mozart's or Liszt's piano playing.

The French label RTE Europe 1 has issued dozens of cd's with Parisian concert recordings from the fifties and sixties, mostly made during jazz-tours that visited the

Netherlands

too, first in the evening at the Kurhaus in Scheveningen and subsequently at night at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

Thirty or forty years later, listening to those recordings, it is still remarkable to hear the amount of energy and accuracy with which the music was played. Performing in Europe was as much a new experience for Count Basic, Oscar Peterson, Art Blakey and all the others, as it was for their dedicated fans, who had to make do until that time with just a handful of records.

Europe was seen as the promised land by American jazz musicians: no racial discrimination, and an audience that took jazz artistically serious. In the early seventies, the first part turned out to be an illusion, and in later years, the European jazz-climate was judged differently by many Americans, as is witnessed by Stan Getz's opinion on Ben Webster: 'rotting away in Europe'. But during the fifties and sixties the great American jazz musicians felt honored as well as challenged by the attitude of Europe.

The jazz lover is more blessed than his classical music equivalent, and that is not just because of the recordings that have been made. A concert is more than sound, the spectacle on stage is an essential part of the musical experience. How did Paganini hold his violin? How did Mendelssohn direct? In what way did Beethoven 'attack' the piano? At best we can read descriptions or look at painted impressions. The real-life image is gone forever.

Jazz has always been a favorite subject for photographers, and this is no less so in The Netherlands.

Thanks to their loving endeavors we have this book in which the golden era of Dutch Jazz Concerts comes to life as vibrantly as through listening to the best recordings.”

- Bert Vuijsje