Jaki Byard - The Jazz Tradition and The Tradition of Humor in Jazz

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Humor has always been a part of Jazz. Anyone who has ever read bassist and all-around-good-guy Bill Crow’s book Jazz Anecdotes knows the truth inherent in this statement.

Maybe the reason for this prevalence of humor is because The Jazz Life has always been such a hard pull that musicians have been forced to develop a sense of humor in order to deal with its vagaries.

Jokes abound everywhere in the Jazz World including the play on words found in songs titles: pianist Russ Freeman’s Hugo Hurwhey [You Go Your Way] or Fats Waller’s Puttin’ On The Witz, or Charlie Mingus’ The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers.

Another example can be found in the actions of these humorous Jazz Wind-Up Dolls;

The Stan Kenton Wind-Up Doll: Wind it up and it raises its arms.

The Miles Davis Wind-Up Doll: Wind it up and it turns its back on the audience.

The Thelonious Monk Wind-Up Doll: Wind it up and it disappears.

Or in the humor in Jazz lyrics like the following which were written and sung by Annie Ross of Lambert Hendricks Ross to Wardell Gray’s famous solo on Twisted.

“My analyst told me

That I was right out of my head

The way he described it

He said Id be better dead than live

I didnt listen to his jive

I knew all along

That he was all wrong

And I knew that he thought

I was crazy but I’m not

Oh no

My analyst told me

That I was right out of my head

He said Id need treatment

But I’m not that easily led

He said I was the type

That was most inclined

When out of his sight

To be out of my mind

And he thought I was nuts

No more ifs or ands or buts

They say as a child

I appeared a little bit wild

With all my crazy ideas

But I knew what was happening

I knew I was a genius...

What’s so strange when you know

That you’re a wizard at three

I knew that this was meant to be

Now I heard little children

Were supposed to sleep tight

That’s why I got into the vodka one night

My parents got frantic

Didn’t know what to do

But I saw some crazy scenes

Before I came to

Now do you think I was crazy

I may have been only three

But I was swinging

They all laugh at angry young men

They all laugh at Edison

And also at Einstein

So why should I feel sorry

If they just couldn’t understand

The idiomatic logic

That went on in my head

I had a brain

It was insane

Oh they used to laugh at me

When I refused to ride

On all those double decker buses

All because there was no driver on the top

My analyst told me

That I was right out of my head

But I said dear doctor

I think that it’s you instead

Because I have got a thing

Thats unique and new

To prove it Ill have

The last laugh on you

cause instead of one head

I got two

And you know two heads are better than one.”

Or these lyrics to Dave Frishberg’s Peel Me A Grape as made famous by Diana Krall:

“Peel me a grape

Crush me some ice

Skin me a peach

Save the fuzz for my pillow

Talk to me nice, talk to me nice

You've got to wine me and dine me

Don't try to fool me; bejewel me

Either amuse me, or lose me

I'm getting hungry, peel me a grape

Pop me a cork, french me a fry

Crack me a nut, bring a bowl full of bon-bons

Chill me some wine, keep standin' by

Just entertain me, champagne me

Show me you love me, kid glove me

Best way to cheer me, cashmere me

I'm getting hungry, peel me...

Here's how to be an agreeable chap

Love me and leave me in luxury's lap

Hop when I holler, skip when I snap

When I say "do it", jump to it

Send out for scotch, boil me a crab

Cut me a rose make, my tea with the petals

Just hang around, pick up the tab

Never out think me, just mink me

Polar bear rug me, don't bug me

New Thunderbird me, you heard me

I'm getting hungry, peel me a grape

Slowly

Here's how to be an agreeable chap

Love me and leave me in luxury's lap

Hop when I holler, skip when I snap

When I say, "do it"...

Send out for scotch, boil me a crab

Cut me a rose, make my tea with the petals

Just hang around, pick up the tab

Never out think me, just mink me

Polar bear rug me, don't bug me

New Thunderbird me, you heard me

I'm getting hungry, peel me a grape

Peel me

Peel me a grape”

One musician who always seemed to find the humor in Jazz was the late pianist Jaki Byard [1922-1999].

Jaki’s way of mixing styles, selecting unusual tunes to improvise on or reaching back into the Jazz tradition to create bebop versions of ragtime and stride piano tunes [James P.Johnson’s Yamecraw on his Hi-Fly New Jazz CD, OJCCD-1879-2 or his Tribute to the Ticklers on his Concord CD recorded at Maybeck Hall, Vol. 17, CCD 4511 come to mind] - are all examples of the sheer delight that Jaki found in approaching Jazz with a slightly humorous bent.

Never disrespectful, Jaki Byard liked his Jazz with a large dose of fun.

More than any other performing pianist, Jaki Byard alludes explicitly to the jazz piano tradition in his playing. Consider his tour de force album, Solo Piano (Prestige ‎– PR 7686, Prestige ‎– PRST 7686). With equal authenticity and conviction, he plays a stride left hand like Fats Waller, atonal clusters like Cecil Taylor, and nearly every pianistic idiom that evolved between them.

Of course, Byard paid for his reliance on the Jazz tradition by giving up the pursuit of a clear stylistic identity for himself. It hurt him commercially; the public, unless it is indulging in an occasional bout of nostalgia, demands individuality and novelty.

Musicians generally have more respect for tradition than their listeners have. Bandleader Charles Mingus, in whose work the roots of jazz are always showing through, took full advantage of Byard's historical sense in his great bands of the sixties. Byard also enjoyed a few favored years in the mid-sixties, when Prestige recorded him as a leader with groups that included Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Ron Carter, and George Benson. One of the great thrills provided by these groups and the Mingus bands is hearing a tradition-oriented pianist like Byard with an iconoclastic saxophonist like Eric Dolphy. Byard prided himself on his adaptability and never affects the pose of "uncompromising artiste."

In an interview with Len Lyons which is contained in The Great Jazz Pianists, Speaking of Their Lives and Their Music, Jaki tells of playing a mayors' conference in New Orleans, where, despite the presence of two marching bands, he was asked to open the event with The Star-Spangled Banner, probably the least improvised-upon tune in the entire American songbook. "Something told me before the job to check out the song," Jaki recalled, "and sure enough they asked for it. ... So maybe it's good to have songs like that in your repertoire. The Battle Hymn of the Republic, When the Saints Come Marching In, Burt Bacharach, Blood, Sweat & Tears - I've used them all over the world and improvised on them. I go from that to Bach, to outside, back to inside, and all over the place."

Not surprisingly, Byard was an excellent teacher, not only of piano but of composing and arranging. He has served on the faculties of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, City College of New York, the Julius Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, and several other institutions.

Jaki was a simple, direct man with little pretense about what he did. He understood intimately how varied and evolutionary the Jazz piano tradition is. Len Lyons said of his interview with Jaki:  “I had hoped to discover the training and background that enabled him to re-create so authentically virtually all of jazz piano history. But Byard explains this versatility in his own terms. For him it all comes down to ‘tingling in your spine.’"

The yelps, squeals of joy and the huge smile on his face when he found his improvisations going into “unexpected places” would probably make for an interesting Jaki Byard Wind-Up Doll, don’t you think?

The following video features Jaki along with Ron Carter on bass and Roy Haynes on drums in a 2:20 tour de force on John Coltrane’s Giant Steps. Recorded in 1961, Jaki was one of the first and, for a long while, the few to play the tune after the Coltrane version came out a couple of years earlier.

Jaki’s playing on this piece is a perfect example of the assertion by Richard Cook and Brian Morton in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.: “Blessed with a powerful left hand and a free approach to harmony, Jaki was able to work in almost any context, from gospelly blues to the avant-garde.”