Bootsie Barnes and Larry McKenna - The More I See You

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

Bootsie Barnes passed away on April 22, 2020 at the age of 82. The editorial staff at JazzProfiles is re-posting this piece as a tribute to his long and fruitful career on the Philadelphia Jazz scene.

“Their resumes are only a shadow of who these men are. To really know the true Larry McKenna and Bootsie Barnes, you have to meet them. They are as men just as their music sounds: giving, open, genuine and deeply funny. Working nearly every night, Barnes and McKenna are consistent, positive forces on the scene. Deeply admired by younger generations of musicians, they show us that a life in music should be lead with grace, joy and honesty.”

- Sam Taylor, insert notes author

The More I See You is the title of the recently released Cellar Live CD [CL 050718] featuring Bootsie Barnes and Larry McKenna and if you are are a fan of the two tenor sound dating back to Al Cohn and Zoot Sims or Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott or more recently Eric Alexander and Grant Stewart [aka Reeds and Deeds], then this disc belongs in your collection.

And the more you listen to The More I See You, the more things you’ll find to enjoy starting with Bootsie and Larry’s robust, vibrant, "take no prisoners" tenor blowing and continuing through to the driving rhythm section which is formed by Lucas Brown on Hammond B-3 organ and Byron “Wookie” Landham on drums.

Essentially Bootsie and Larry have taken the traditional tenor sax, guitar, organ and drums format and substituted a second tenor saxophone to alter the sonority of this configuration.

Then there are the marvelous choices that make up the nine tracks on the CD which include one original each from Bootsie and Larry, solo ballad renditions - You’ve Changed for Larry and My Ship for Bootsie - two fun-to-play-on  Jazz standards - For Minor’s Only by Jimmy Heath and The Break Through by Hank Mobley - and three selections from the Great American Song including the title tune, The More I See You Sunday in New York and Hank Mancini’s theme to the TV series Mr. Lucky that provide textured melodic vehicles to show off the two tenors unison sound to perfection.

Another quality on display throughout this recording is balance: no one solos for too many choruses; all the players have an opportunity to solo; the tempos are a mix of burners, ballads and medium finger-poppers each long enough to settle into a groove; as referenced, the song selections are a nice balance between familiar popular songs, Jazz standards and original compositions; the performances are consistently played in a straight-ahead Jazz style.

The end result is a satisfying beginning-to-end listening experience encompassing over 60 minutes of brilliantly conceived and executed quartet Jazz.

Sam Taylor contributed the following insert notes which frame the context for The More I See You [Cellar Live CD CL 050718] as fitting squarely into the modern Jazz scene that encompassed Philadelphia in the second half of the 20th century, a period that also served as the formative years in the development of the styles for both Bootsie and Larry.

In his notes Sam also recounts his personal experiences with Bootsie and Larry’s music in the Philadelphia Jazz club scene.

Following Sam’s informative annotations you’ll find Pierre Giroux’s review of The More I See You [Cellar Live CD CL 050718]  in the October 9th edition of Audiophile Audition, as well as, a video montage and an audio-only Soundcloud file featuring two tracks from the music on the CD.

“What defines the sound of a city? Ask three Philadelphians and get four opinions, as the joke goes. The people, their collective spirit both past and present, is a good place to start. Philadelphia, a city overflowing with history is home to a proud, passionate, willful, and fiercely loyal people. The city's jazz legacy is no different and has always been a leading voice. Shirley Scott, McCoy Tyner, Benny Golson, Trudy Pitts, Lee Morgan, the Heath Brothers, Stan Getz, Philly Joe Jones and countless other Philadelphia jazz masters are bound together by the same thread. These giants played in their own way, without concern for style or labels. They had an attitude; an intention to their playing that gave the music a feeling, a rhythm, a deep pocket. In Philadelphia today, there is no question who preserves that tradition, embodies that spirit and who defines the "Philadelphia sound": Bootsie Barnes and Larry McKenna.

Now elder statesmen of the Philadelphia jazz community, Bootsie Barnes and Larry McKenna were born just a few months apart in 1937. The times in which they lived often dictated their career paths, but no matter where their music took them Philadelphia was always home.

Bootsie Barnes credits his musical family as the spark that began his life in music. His father was an accomplished trumpet player and his cousin, Jimmy Hamilton was a member of Duke Ellington's band for nearly three decades. "Palling around with my stablemates, Tootie Heath, Lee Morgan, Lex Humphries" as he tells it, Barnes began on piano and drums. At age nineteen he was given a saxophone by his grandmother and "knew he had found his niche". Over the course of his decades long career, Barnes has performed and toured with Philly Joe Jones, Jimmy Smith, Trudy Pitts and countless others, with five recordings under his own name and dozens as a sideman.

Mostly self-taught, Larry McKenna was deeply inspired by his older brother's LP collection. It was a side of Jazz at The Philharmonic 1947 featuring Illinois Jacquet and Flip Fillips that opened his ears to jazz. "When I heard that I immediately said: 'That's what I want to play, the saxophone'", McKenna recalls. Completing high school, McKenna worked around Philadelphia and along the East Coast until the age of twenty-one, when his first big break came with Woody Herman's Big Band. McKenna has played and recorded with Clark Terry, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett and countless others. He has four recordings under his own name, with extensive credits as a sideman.

Their resumes are only a shadow of who these men are. To really know the true Larry McKenna and Bootsie Barnes, you have to meet them. They are as men just as their music sounds: giving, open, genuine and deeply funny. Working nearly every night, Barnes and McKenna are consistent, positive forces on the scene. Deeply admired by younger generations of musicians, they show us that a life in music should be lead with grace, joy and honesty.

The first time I heard Barnes and McKenna together was at Ortlieb's Jazz Haus in the mid 1990s. As an eager but shy young musician of about fourteen, I somehow found my way to the storied club on Third and Poplar Streets. A sign out front proudly stated "Jazz Seven Days" - the only place in the city boasting such a schedule. The bouncer working that night took one look at me and with what I can only imagine was a mix of pity and amusement, hurriedly waved me in. Eyes down and hugging the wall, I made my way along the long bar, past the mounted bison head's blank stare, towards the music. My go-to spot was an alcove next to the bathroom: a place just far enough from the bartender's gaze so as not to be noticed, (did I mention I was fourteen?) but close enough to the stage to watch and listen. The house band was the late Sid Simmons on piano, bassist Mike Boone, and drummer Byron Landham. (Anyone who was there will tell you: this was an unstoppable trio.) Barnes and McKenna were setting the pace, dealing on a level only the true masters can. The whole room magically snapped into focus: the band shifted to high gear, the swing intensified and the crowd had no choice but to be swept up in the music. They had a story too incredible to ignore. I sat there in disbelief at the power and beauty of what they were doing. It is a feeling that has never left me.

How they played that night at Ortlieb's those many years ago is exactly the way they play today. In fact, they are probably playing better than ever. The track Three Miles Out is a shining example. Barnes solos first, hitting you with that buttery, round tenor tone with a little edge as he gets going. His ideas are steeped in the hard-bop tradition delivered with a clear voice all his own. There is no ambiguity, no hesitation, just pure, joyful, hard-swinging tenor playing. McKenna follows, with his trademark tenor tone, both beautiful and singing, strong and powerful. He swings with natural ease, a wide beat and always makes the music dance. He has what I can only describe as a deep melodic awareness thanks largely to his mastery of the American Songbook. McKenna is unhurried and speaks fluid bebop language. This is classic Barnes and McKenna.

The most challenging thing to describe is the way someone's music touches your heart. I hope my fellow native Philadelphians will allow me to speak for them when I say we are all forever in the debt of Bootsie and Larry. May we live and create in a way that continues to honors them and their music.

I can't wait to hear what they play next.”

- Sam Taylor/New York City, July 2018

A

Part 2 - "1959: The Beginning of Beyond: A Critical Debate at the End of the 1950s" - Darius Brubeck

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Part 2 from the Darius Brubeck’s essay - 1959: The Beginning of Beyond - which in its final form, it serves as Chapter 10 in Merwyn Cooke and David Horn, The Cambridge Companion to Jazz [2002].

As noted in the first posting, it’s a long piece, so we have used the subject headings within the essay as a means of presenting it on these pages in smaller samplings.

Darius is not the first to observe 1959 as a pivotal year in the evolution of Jazz but he is one of the few to have written about it in a broader context, one that goes well beyond the immediate impact of developments that took place that year. We wrote to him to request his permission to offer it as a blog feature and he kindly gave his consent for us to do so.

Not much as changed in the world of Jazz criticism since the publication of the articles by John Mehegan and André Hodier in the Down Beat Special Silver Anniversary Edition [August 20, 1959].

In various manifestations, the anti-intellectualism in Jazz argument espoused by Mehegan’s The Case for Swinging continues to find itself in direct opposition to the Jazz-as-art position put forth by Hodier.

This polarity persists to this day although it would appear that Hodeir’s argument that Jazz is an art form which demands an active role in the service of its creation from an elite audience may have won the day one consequence becoming less than 3% of the listening public favors Jazz today. 

A further elaboration and explanation of these differences of opinions forms the next segment in Darius’ essay about why 1959 was such a pivotal year in Jazz.

© Copyright ® Darius Brubeck, copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.

A critical debate at the end of the 1950s

“The relationship between theory and practice, the pros and cons of jazz changing into a formalised discipline and getting closer to classical music

and further from 'pop', are the background dynamics for ongoing musical and critical developments in jazz. Much of the jazz from around this time entered the canon and so did the issues debated. The arguments in favour of 'intellectualism' in jazz take on new, unanticipated meanings in the present era of academic Jazz Studies, but anti-intellectual attitudes have remained the same. I believe opposing sides of the intellectualism issue as understood around 1959 are well represented by two articles summarised below. Much of the jazz criticism written in the 1950s revolves around ideas about music, which criteria should apply, what jazz is and is not, the search for 'direction' and the catch-phrase 'where jazz is going'. Readers and writers, musicians and critics, often identified themselves with opposing, prescriptive concepts of jazz' in the abstract, and must have wanted very much to influence others. Participation in an ongoing debate about jazz was apparently part of the joy of being a jazz fan.

Down Beat: Special Silver Anniversary Edition (20 August 1959) features an article entitled The Case for Swinging by John Mehegan, which sums up the history of jazz as 'evolutionary', but argues against further evolution. It also contains Andre Hodeir's Perspective of Modern Jazz: Popularity or Recognition (translated by Eugene Lees), a prescient rumination on the nature of jazz-as-art.

Mehegan was a working jazz pianist and academic, and an influential pioneer in jazz pedagogy - perhaps the first to believe jazz was teachable in a systematic way. Given this background, it is surprising that he espouses a vehement, anti-intellectual line, although it was common in those days to do so. Let me assure the reader that I am not unfairly quoting Mehegan (with whom I studied briefly) in order to make fun of him or his ideas but, rather, because he is the best-informed and most coherent representative of this persuasion. He was not, though it is hard to tell from this article, against modern jazz, but indeed an admirer of Lennie Tristano and Bill Evans and a modern-jazz player himself. Because of his technical knowledge, arguments he used count as an insider's informed opinion and bear consideration if only to arrive at a better understanding of the underlying issues. In other words, they are not the vapourings of a disaffected journalist who 'couldn't swing a rope'. However, in print he adopts a crusty, hostile tone. Near the end of the article he writes:

If we continue to smother [jazz] with a superstructure of complexity and intellectuality it cannot possibly support, we will eventually destroy it. This applies specifically to the cabalists, the metaphysicians, the formalists, the pretenders, the beatniks, the Zen Buddhists and the been-zoolists.

[Mehegan 1959b]

Given the date of publication, exactly at the time of the Lenox School of Jazz (this will follow as a separate blog feature), I believe that his real targets are Gunther Schuller, George Russell and John Lewis, although his shotgun blast takes in the whole avant-garde. Collectively these three were promoting the principles of third-stream music, a meeting of jazz and classical music on an equal basis which contrasts with the random couplings of the distant past. Russell, as we shall see, might indeed qualify as a 'cabalist’ and 'metaphysician', and Schuller and Lewis were uninhibited advocates of intellectualism.

One of Mehegan's pet hates is formalism, which 'has not been generally successful musically speaking for the reason that jazz is basically a folk music employing visceral or non-intellectual materials and, like all folk art, is preponderantly content with a minimum of form'. This attitude should prepare us for the mindset of an academic but anti-intellectual conservative, with certain implicit beliefs about the world. Taking it 'from the top', Mehegan's article (drastically edited) reads:

Did Charlie Parker leave a rich nourishing heritage for future jazz men - or did he finish off the art form?... The time composite of jazz has undergone extensive changes since 1920 ... these changes, coupled with expanding instrumental and writing techniques, express in capsule the morphological history of the art form ...

Although the jazzman has displayed great ingenuity in the areas of time and horizontal extension, he has been singularly uninventive in dealing with the problems of vertical sound (harmony).

This is an odd opinion coming from a jazz pianist, but he does not stop to give reasons for it:

Jazz is and always has been a tonal music employing the diatonic scale as its frame of reference.

Parker himself never questioned the diatonic system in jazz harmony and never made any attempt to destroy it. In fact, as is well known, Parker returned to the most primitive harmonic materials, the blues, in order to deal freely with the horizontal line.

If the opposite of tonality is atonality, then few would fundamentally disagree, however much we might wince at the term 'primitive'

With authoritarian bravura (and spectacular unintended irony), Mehegan concludes with a list of 'essentials' musicians in 1959 would question - or, using his words, 'attack' or 'destroy' - in order to arrive at a fresher conception of jazz:

suppose we accept the circumscribed limits of a diatonic harmonic system, 4/4 time, eighth-note, quarter-note, half-note time composite, eight bar sections and the various attendant qualities we have been accustomed to. The point is that if we learned anything in the past 20 years, we have learned that to abandon or seriously alter any of these basic essentials of a jazz performance results in what can no longer be called jazz.

The four albums mentioned at the beginning of this chapter [Kind of Blue, Time Out, Giant Steps, The Shape of Jazz to Come] are remembered best for doing everything that 'results in what can no longer be called jazz. Thus, in a strange way, one agrees with Mehegan. What was called jazz before 1959 is different from what is called jazz now, supporting the dichotomy between the historical and contemporary mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.

But we are not quite through with Mehegan's case. If we accept the circumscribed limits of jazz he proposes (and his is not a bad description of what - in a statistical sense - jazz is), then his later statement that 'all, it would seem [is] in a state of exhaustion' logically follows. For Mehegan writing in 1959, 'the evolution of jazz' is at an end.

Hodeir's article is not 'the case against swinging' but it is in all other respects an opposing and, indeed, formalist view. In contrast to Mehegan, he is not worried about the 'exhaustion' of jazz as creative music, but rather the time it takes for an increasingly specialised form of creativity to make it into the mainstream. Hodeir demands an active role in the service of creativity from an elite audience. He plunges the readers (of Down Beatl) into the historical and aesthetic problems of modernism, high culture and popular art:

Carried along by the prodigious cadence of constant renewal, jazz dies almost as quickly as it is created... But it happens that the public... does not keep correct time with the rhythm of change... This phenomenon has been observed in European art [when] Cezanne and Debussy unveiled the beginnings of a 'modern art' that is in no way of popular origin.

[Hodeir 1959]

The new problem for modern jazz, according to Hodeir, is that recognition (for an artist or work of art) comes before and perhaps without popularity. For example, Monk was recognised as historically important (in 1959) without having experienced popular acclaim. Like Mehegan, Hodeir constructs the narrative of jazz history around the theme of 'evolution', but they really mean different things by it. Hodeir's evolution is punctuated by outstanding masterworks which show enough strength and strictness of conception to transcend the norm. Mehegan wants to set out rules that define jazz in technical terms that are normative for the genre. (These rules and a concept of 'jazz' itself, rather than any particular manifestation in the form of jazz masterworks, are what evolved out of chaos.) Hodeir does not define jazz at all. Like Ellington and most musicians, he believes that an artist must be free to create without reference to predetermined categories and that there must be valid 'universal' criteria of musical value not limited by genre (see heading quotation on page 153 - “Jazz Among the Classics and The Case for Duke Ellington”).

For Mehegan, generic boundaries are all-important because he is trying to rule out 'what can no longer be called jazz', so 'popular music, and jazz,

while undeniably similar, are really antagonistic terms. The worst outcome of Mehegan's kind of evolutionary theory is that jazz musicians (he does not name any) looking for a way out of the 'cul de sac' of formalism (provided they have admitted they no longer live in the realm of ‘folk-music’) might opt for

The final solution [which] is the oldest one in the world ... Give the people what they want... So at last jazz has joined the other entertaining crafts that form the basis of what we call show business ... The real difference between an art form and an entertaining craft is that an art form has a continuity which demands some contribution from each artist in order to insure its own succession; an entertaining craft makes no demand except that of popularity.                                                              

 (Mehegan 1959b]

Hodeir spends rather more time considering the meanings of the term 'popular'. Although frankly elitist in outlook, he never equates popular with vulgar. He also does not slip into the present-day assumption that popular equals commercial:

A musical work can be popular in two very different ways: by its origin and by its audience. They do not always coincide.

... the art of Ellington, and still more that of Armstrong, remained rather close to the popular origins [note the strict sense of 'popular' here] wherefrom jazz was little by little emancipated. Both won popularity before the cultural interest in jazz was fully realised. And it is only fair to add that they contributed powerfully to the recognition of jazz as an art. Better yet, jazz recognition was identified with their recognition.

With the advent of modern jazz, however, the problem of achieving popularity truly began to pose itself... For having wished to invent a complex language, suitable to convey a certain number of new truths, jazz became an art of specialists; in cutting itself free of its popular sources, it voluntarily limited itself to an audience of connoisseurs. Then it became risky to seek popularity if, deep down, one did not wish to give up what had been gained in modern jazz.

True popularity for a 'difficult work' is recognition by a reasonably large elite. The most celebrated masterpieces have taken this cultural route to success; it is a route that is necessarily long. A work, an artist, is recognised only thanks to the diffusing influence of a few clairvoyant souls...

And on a cultural level, the demand that this work show enough strength and strictness of conception to reach those whose sensibilities were nourished and developed by the greatest artists remains the least deceptive criterion of recognition.

Aside from those happy few who today appreciate it, the most advanced jazz has already launched invisible missiles toward the public of tomorrow.

[Hodeir 1959J

To be continued .... [including more discussion of “invisible missiles”]

Shorty Rogers and His Giants - Infinity Promenade

Harry James And His Orchestra - Sleepy Time Gal

We Want Miles: MILES DAVIS VS. JAZZ

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

“The archetypal jazzman, as elegant as he was inaccessible, Miles Davis was considered the twentieth-century incarnation of cool, both in his attitude and in his playing. A ladies' man, an enigmatic personality touched by genius and by rage, this son of the African-American middle class established himself as one of the greatest innovators in jazz, a genre he never stopped confronting and de-compartmentalizing through various aesthetic revolutions. With exceptional photographs, handwritten scores, original record-cover art and expert biography, "We Want Miles" attempts to trace the legend of one of the most fascinating and extraordinary artists in the history of music.”

Just when you think that you won’t have anything further to do with the most merchandised Jazz musician in the history of the music, this book came along.

The book is essentially a companion volume to a museum exhibition initiated and organized by the Cité de la musique, Paris, with the support of Miles Davis Properties, LLC, in association with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It is published by Skira Rizzoli in a 9.5 x 11.5” folio format.

The exhibition appeared at Musée de la Musique, Paris from October 16, 2009 to January 17, 2010 and then traveled to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Jean-Noel Desmarais Pavilion for a showing from April 30 to August 29, 2010.  The exhibition curator was Vincent Bessieres.

Vince Bessieres also serves as the editor of the book which has contributions from George Avakian, Laurent Cugny, Ira Gitler, David Liebman, Francis Marmande, John Szwed and Mike Zwerin.

Skira Rizzoli has done its usual fine job with the formatting of this work which includes a bevy of photographs. 

Here is the chapter breakdown:

We have included below the introductions from the book as provided by the two, museum curators.  Sadly, the exhibit did not visit a museum in a city in the USA.

© -Laurent Bayle and Eric de Visscher, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

LAURENT BAYLE / GENERAL DIRECTOR, CITE DE LA MUSIQUE, PARIS ERIC DE VISSCHER / DIRECTOR, MUSEE DE LA MUSIQUE, PARIS

WE WANT MILES

“In 1980, after nearly five years of silence, Miles Davis began to play again in the studio and on stage. The snappy title of one of the first records heralding his comeback was the self-evident statement "We Want Miles" Who is this "we"? How do you explain that simply saying a first name can conjure up an artist's undeniable power? To understand the univer­sal respect commanded by a figure of this stature, recognized for ele­vating a fledgling musical genre to a global phenomenon, we need only call to mind the course of his career: Miles Davis got his start playing in big bands in his hometown of St. Louis, enthusiastically embraced bebop, initiated the cool, embarked on a quest for a third avenue between swing and free jazz, and subsequently immersed himself in electric jazz, with occasional forays into soul and rock. Could this also explain how his name became legend, with musicians of every stripe all over the world incessantly chanting "We want Miles" to encourage him to return to centre stage?—a stage he would now take by storm, with numerous records, television appearances, advertising and film projects that transformed him into a genuine media icon. First, Davis became aware of the legend of jazz, which had expanded into a worldwide genre, then of his own legend as a "global" artist who transcended styles, schools and genres to assert himself as a musician, creator and leader of one of the twentieth century's signature musical cur­rents. Although he contributed to the history of jazz in much the same way as Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk, no other musician embraced its many developments with such boldness and ingenuity. He even anticipated its major turning points, transforming music meant for entertainment and dancing into music that had to be listened to, and he was subsequently criticized for some of his choices by those who shunned progress.

As with Serge Gainsbourg, whose name immediately came to mind when the Cite de la musique was considering a first temporary exhibition on French chanson, cult figure Miles Davis instantly occurred to us as soon as the topic of jazz was proposed. In addition to a record title [You're under Arrest], these two figures, born in the same year, shared the desire to avoid being confined to any one style, always seeking out new, innova­tive—and sometimes unexpected—musical avenues. They were inspired by the sense of "the moment" both in the way they related to their era and in their work: Gainsbourg wrote fast, Davis created music on the spot, pushing the art of improvisation to the limit without ever losing the connection with his audience. To quote saxophonist David Liebman from one of the texts in this catalogue, "When Miles went on stage, past and future didn't exist. It was all about the present tense, the essence of true improvisation and what most jazz musicians strive for daily when playing."

It is undoubtedly this "mystery of the present moment" that Miles Davis never ceased to explore, developing both the sounds (his move to electric and amplified instruments is an example of this, as are his collaborative efforts with Gil Evans) and the language of jazz. To do so, he tapped into a fertile source of renewal by working with new musicians. From John Coltrane to Herbie Hancock, the long list of artists who worked with Davis demonstrates his openness to the influences of other sizeable talents—his contemporaries as well as younger musi­cians. From Kind of Blue and Tutu to Porgy and Bess and Bitches Brew, Davis' great albums all bear witness, in various forms, to his quest for the perfect moment.

This is the exceptional journey related in this book—a faithful counter­part to the exhibition first presented at the Musee de la musique and subsequently at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts—which presents a chronological account by Franck Bergerot supplemented with reminis­cences by certain key figures of the time. As for the exhibition, the photographs were chosen with particular care, since it is true that jazz and photography share a common history. Both capture the moment and record contrasts, immortalizing the illustrious heroes and pivotal moments of a musical genre that is quintessentially ephemeral. Neither the exhibition nor this catalogue would have been possible without the tireless efforts and unfailing ingenuity of curator and editor Vincent Bessieres. The project received steadfast support from the Miles Davis Estate, especially Cheryl Davis, Erin Davis and Vince Wilburn, Jr. The many lenders, photographers and institutions that contributed to the exhibition not only made it possible but also ensured its originality. To them, and to the people at the Cite de la musique and at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, who helped make it a reality, we offer our heartfelt thanks.”

© -Vincent Bessieres, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

VINCENT BESSIERES/ EXHIBITION CURATOR

MILES AND MILES OF MILES

“Jazz has had its fair share of eccentric personalities, picaresque protag­onists, tragic destinies, meteoric careers and dazzling creators. But Miles Davis is still the most fascinating and mysterious of them all. The exhibition "We Want Miles" does not claim to be the last word on this artist who left his mark on the twentieth century; rather, it is an attempt to sketch a broad outline, analyze his transformations and follow his evo­lution. Like the art of Picasso, to whom he is often compared, Davis' music has its periods. In step with the fast-paced century, he set out in a new direction every five years. He lost his audience, found another, lost that one—and won over yet another. When Miles shed his skin, you just had to keep up with him. He sparks both desire and frustration: when you arrive where you expect him to be, he's already gone. What he played one day he would never play again. And yet it's always Miles. His sound may have changed, his bands may have had a high turnover rate, he may have flouted convention and been electrified by electricity, but something remains, making it possible to identify him in just a few notes.

This is the thread running through the exhibition, which seeks to discover this complex and elusive man: Miles the proud young boy, Miles the coun­try bumpkin who dreams of Bird, Miles the epitome of cool, Miles the boxer, arrogant Miles, Miles the down-and-out junkie, Miles who turns his back on his audience, Miles and his kind of blue, Miles as Porgy, Miles as Bess, Miles celebrating the saeta, Miles who finally smiles, Miles who questions jazz, Miles the hepcat, Miles the rocker, Miles the show-off, Miles and his bitches' brew, Miles who thinks he's Hendrix, Miles on the corner, Miles who vanishes, Miles who reappears, Miles the star demanding royal treatment, Miles haunted by his ghosts, Miles who never looks back, blue Miles, Miles who stares down the ignorant, Miles the macho, the hero, the leader, Miles with his nerves on edge, Miles beaten by the cops, Miles who shamelessly tells his story, Miles and his trumpets of many colours, Sphinx-like Miles, hip Miles, bop Miles... Miles, Miles, Miles. "We want Miles," you say. But which one? Can we separate the man from his music? Can we understand his work without connecting it to his life? His music has survived him, of course. But in the quintessentially personal medium that is jazz—this inti­mate art form in conversation with the world—Miles inhabits the music as much as he plays it. Or is it the music that inhabits him? Imagine his silhouette on stage, his body hunched over, his trumpet raised. What did Miles play that he had not experienced? Aside from boxing, nothing else interested him. Miles never stopped looking jazz in the face and con­fronting it.

Opening new pathways, absorbing trends, surpassing styles, he turned around and gave it back, all the while avoiding clichés, easy recipes and ready-made formulas. His misconduct cannot be dis­missed on the grounds that he so often strove for excellence and originality. Who is not a fan of Miles Davis? Who cannot find, in this vast, varied body of work, a piece that speaks to them? Everyone has a favourite Miles Davis album, even Barack Obama, whose election as president of the United States adds symbolic resonance to an anec­dote in Davis' autobiography about a White House dinner President Reagan invited him to in 1987.

When another guest, a woman of a certain age, condescendingly asked him what he had done that was important enough to merit an invitation to the hallowed halls of the White House, Miles replied, "Well, I've changed music five or six times." That's enough to warrant an exhibition ... and this book, which will serve as a lasting record of it. "We Want Miles," and we can never get enough of him.”

As the seven chapter breakdown spanning the years 1948-1991 of the book would indicate, there is a style, perhaps more than one, of Miles’ work that may appeal to a wide variety of audiences.

Like the one constant in the universe, Miles’ music was always changing.

As Miles was quoted as saying in 1985:

“… maybe in a way I change music and stuff …. Yeah, you can say that … I do change it … but I can’t help it, you know, It’s not that I am a genius but it’s just that I can’t help it.”

  

Part 1 -"1959: The Beginning of Beyond: Introduction and Historical Records" - Darius Brubeck

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The following serves as an explanation about how Darius Brubeck’s essay - 1959: The Beginning of Beyond - came about. 

In its final form, it serves as Chapter 10 in Merwyn Cooke and David Horn, The Cambridge Companion to Jazz [2002].

It’s a long piece, so we have used the subject headings within the essay as a means of presenting it on these pages in smaller samplings.

Darius is not the first to observe 1959 as a pivotal year in the evolution of Jazz but he is one of the few to have written about it in a broader context, one that goes well beyond the immediate impact of developments that took place that year.

We wrote to him to request his permission to offer it as a blog feature and he kindly gave his consent for us to do so.

[As a point in passing, I would add Charles Mingus' Mingus Ah-Um to the list of significant recordings released in 1959.]

© Copyright ® Darius Brubeck, copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.

“The idea for this chapter came from Mervyn Cooke's suggestion that we jointly organise a seminar - on jazz in 1959 - at the University of Nottingham. As soon as I began I found the choice of year felicitous both as a decisive cultural moment in establishing an autonomous art-form and as a year for musical landmarks recorded in every style of jazz (from mainstream to avant-garde). Nineteen fifty-nine was the year when jazz, as it is now, began. Jazz before this time is now largely regarded as historic, as music usually identified by regional (e.g., Harlem school, Chicago style) and temporal (early jazz, Swing Era) associations. From 1959 onwards, it more strongly resembles universal current practice, indicating - and without condescension to pre-1959 jazz - that this is the beginning of contemporary jazz. This is easily demonstrated by the still pervasive familiarity of certain of the recordings made in that year. Kind of Blue (Miles Davis), Time Out (Dave Brubeck), Giant Steps (John Coltrane) and Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come are albums that can scarcely be unknown or un-owned by jazz aficionados - and the 1960s had not even officially begun. Perhaps they began when John F. Kennedy was elected to the US Presidency and Robert Frost read his poetry at the Inauguration ceremony. In his speech, the young president raised the image of a relay in which 'the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans'. This was turnover time in American culture and politics, as it was in jazz.

All reliable histories recount and analyse the musical achievements at and around this time and the broader discussion of American culture hinted at above is beyond the scope of this chapter. What is offered here is an interpretation of how and why so much happened when it did and the impact of this history on present-day jazz reality. The jazz life is as different from what it was 40 years ago as every other kind of life, but there has been surprisingly little discontinuity in the music. This is remarkable, given the breadth of outside influences and, of course, the many major artists who have flourished in the intervening years.

While the aforementioned album titles themselves proclaim new directions and the artists involved were simultaneously pushing the boundaries of jazz outwards, jazz in general was 'groovin' high' and definitely in forward gear that year. Wes Montgomery signed with Riverside, Thelonious Monk recorded his famous Town Hall Concert and two of Miles Davis's sidemen on Kind of Blue, John Coltrane and Bill Evans, were recording as leaders while Miles himself was working on Sketches of Spain with Gil Evans. Further, John Lewis and Duke Ellington composed feature-film scores, Odds Against Tomorrow and Anatomy of a Murder respectively. Nineteen fifty-nine also saw the term 'bossa nova' used for the first time (in connection with 'Desafinado' by Antonio Carlos Jobim) and the publication of the second edition of George Russell's almost mystical treatise on music theory, The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organisation for Improvisation. It was the year Eric Dolphy moved to New York, of Johnny Dankworth's success and also of the infamous riot at Newport (the first regular US jazz festival, founded by George Wein in 1954), and much else. Studious fans could prolong this scene-setting recitative of 1959 to chapter length. The music that was recorded in that year is enough to flag it as one of unusual creativity in jazz even in the context of the extraordinary period from the mid-1950s through to the mid-1960s when American artists and intellectuals in every discipline were successfully modernising the cultural landscape. Indeed, it was a 'golden era' in terms of the high quality of art, music, dance, film, literature, drama and even television, one which was embraced by audiences large enough to confer full celebrity status on a few jazz musicians and many other artists in every field.

Historical records

The year 1959/60 is a sort of axis of symmetry between the first jazz recordings (1917) and the end of the twentieth century. It is often stated that jazz is the first music almost fully documented by sound recording. The annotated boxed set of records From Spirituals to Swing, made from Carnegie Hall concerts starring Benny Goodman in 1938 and 1939, only reached the market in 1959 and has remained the foundation of many enthusiasts' collections ever since. Prominently featuring Count Basie with members of his and Goodman's bands, with gospel, blues and boogie-woogie musicians representing African-American tributaries to the then modern music, the Carnegie Hall concerts were the first public presentation of jazz as a historical music, but it was really the 1959 release - which sold over a million copies - that popularised this idea. It is interesting to reflect that a sort of manufactured historical document in 1939 was, by 1959, really historical. In the late 1950s, as compilations of archival jazz and folk recordings became available, the relatively new medium of long-playing records made it possible to hear jazz history without being an expert collector. Anthologies compiled from early commercial releases of jazz, blues and 'field recordings' of African-American music in the Deep South posited and fixed (in time) musical traditions that became canonised as the roots of Jazz. What had been mostly accessible to researchers as 'oral history' was becoming accessible to everybody as 'aural history', but always, of course, in the shape of a packaged product, which we now might see as somewhat suspect - not in terms of the authenticity or simple worthiness of the music presented, but for the criterion for selection. I have yet to be convinced that it is fundamentally wrong or misleading to teach a 'canon' in jazz studies, but for better or worse this is how it started. Through the compilation of historical tracks, be they rescued from deepest archival obscurity or re-packaged hits, the musical past is constructed as leading up to something - in this case, modern jazz. This in turn encouraged people to believe, correctly, that modern jazz and jazz LPs could have long-term artistic and commercial value and would also be worth collecting; or, from the record companies' point of view, re-packaging.

Even though members of the first generation of jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong had some good years left, Sidney Bechet's death in 1959 foreshadowed the inevitable passing of the New Orleans/Chicago era. Billie Holiday and Lester Young, who directly influenced modern jazz, particularly the cool style of the 1950s, also died in 1959. The 1950s generation of musicians that grew up listening to them, to Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Goodman and Basie, and later to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, had all but taken over from those with local and historical connections with early jazz. Born in the 1920s and later, they were entering their prime in the 1960s as mature talents, hitting the scene just behind the watershed of bebop. They pursued careers with a full awareness that jazz is both a changing modern music and one with its own history and traditions. They were, on the whole, musically educated, experienced and inclined to experiment. This was not avant-gardism for its own sake. Making a living in jazz was going to depend on the appeal of the music per se rather than the previous built-in marketability of social dancing and jazz versions of popular songs. A 'personal voice', always prized and admired in jazz circles, was now also a personal 'approach' (in the jargon of the time) to music itself, more than just a 'sound' and some signature 'licks'. Many musicians felt that putting theory to work in practical and individual terms was going to be important to their survival, so it was important to 'study'. Interest in music theory and theories about music was not 'academic' in the narrow sense, but part of finding an approach.”

To be continued with -

A critical debate at the end of the 1950s