Sometimes we would run through the same song over and over again to see if anybody noticed. If someone did, I don’t care.
There was this one time, in 1953 or 1954, when a few guys and I had just finished our last set at Club Carousel, and we were about to pack it in when in walked Bud Powell and Charlie Parker. We must have jammed together for five more hours, right through sunrise. That was the worst day of my life. As it turns out Mr. Rollins did not actually write this. When I read this interview in its entirely it had been posted on Facebook. That of itself should throw up caution flags. Facebook these days only causes me grief. I believed the missive that Sonny Rollins felt he had wasted his life playing jazz. It was credible. It was credible because I feel the same way. Fully I understood how someone that does not understand jazz music could make such assumptions. The reality of jazz music is a polar opposite. There is a reason whey often it is cited as America's only true art form. Jazz music at its worst is all of the things stated in the New Yorker's satire. I know this, because in my tenure working as a pianist on cruise ships I have encountered it time and time again. We are required to play jazz on the final night of the cruise, and musicians hired to READ music otherwise must "get through" the jazz set. Often it is heinous. It is heinous, because without the required education one unequivocally cannot play jazz music. The ignorant would disagree as do these unskilled jazz players. They rely upon schmaltz, grandstanding, and masquerading. I think I have experienced no worse feeling in the world than being demanded to accompany one of these players on a jazz set. They feel that by being able to make a decent sound on an instrument and by the sheer enjoyment of listening to their own bullshit, they should be considered a credible jazz player. Ask Miles Davis. While it did not begin this way the resolution of the musical eighth note shrank. It shrank into the mindless strum of a guitar. Without consciously knowing it the guitar created the pop musical genre. Without realizing that strumming down and then up in rapid succession creates an unrealistic musical spacing, the ignorant grasped the concept as validation for their ignorance at playing jazz. The new concept, which is the concept of the pop musical genre, is instead of playing strongly and with a discernible rhythm pulse, you "lay down." Like a dead fish you lay on your back, spread your legs, and get violated. I watched an entire Mickey Dolenz Monkey's musical show, and it did just this. Never during the entire show was their a discernible groove. There never was a pattern or a clave of rhythm that you could understand, subdivide, or feel. Instead rhythm became a wash of sound. The melodies and harmonies were being played but devoid of any discernible rhythm. When I first had the band AC DC I hated them. It was because they are a pop/rock band. They masquerade as fury, but when they play their instruments they are tepid. Pop music has capitalized on this loophole, and it destroyed American popular music. No longer were you required to have physical skill articulating musical passages. Simply you turned your amps up, made the synonymous physical gestures, and played as weakly as humanly possible. This was the goal, because removing musical intent was the only way to glorify the ego of the listener. I have trouble with this concept. There is valid pop/rock music. There are band who use the technique of playing between the kick drum and the snare drum in a lazy, loping, reciprocating feel. The rest are marauders. American music has become a congregation of marauders. Other than this lack of rhythmic integrity or "swing" feeling, jazz marauders actually do not know the songs they are playing. If they do happen to know the song (or rather its melodic and harmonic progression), they do not know the appropriate scales with which to improvise new melodies. Melodies and their accompanying chords are finite. They are tangible. They are mathematic. The last thing they are are "jazz is anything I think it is." "Tunes" or songs comprise the musical vehicles for jazz performance. These tunes comes in varying styles, most commonly the ballad, the medium-tempo-swing tune, the bossa, the samba, shuffle-funk, and African 12/8. Only in this area of style or feel could the phrase "jazz is anything" be entertained. Unluckily purveyors of "Smooth Jazz" have exploited this back door. They emerged as jazz wanna-be's and decided if you could play with a decent sound on your instrument but actually knew the song and its progression, you could be a musical star. American jazz never has recovered. As a former jazz music educator at two major universities, I like to define jazz this way. "Jazz is swing-oriented improvisation music based upon the American popular song and the twelve bar blues." The American popular song often uses the form A-A-B-A with the B section being called the song's "bridge." The Great American Songbook truly is the source for jazz's evolution. Iconic musical figures such as Miles Davis developed and expanded the content of jazz music. Three significant contributions made to jazz music by Miles Davis were the invention of "Cool Jazz," "Modal Jazz," and "Jazz Fusion" Unlike what widely is believed Miles created fusion with two seminal recordings, "In a Silent Way," and "Bitches Brew." It was not long after Miles 'went electric' that other bands followed. Most notably is Joe Zawinul's birth child, "Weather Report." Modal jazz substituted a musical mode for a harmonic chord progression. Most often it was the Dorian, a musical scale that has its roots in antiquity. Cool jazz created a contemplative, unhurried, more quiet rendition of songs than Bebop. The essence of jazz is the essence of all real music. It has definable parameters. It has a tangible structure consisting of a foundation, its content, and its marketing. Only a musician mesmerized by the idea that they could masquerade as a great musician could believe that any of these things could be sacrificed. Contrarily the knowledge and skill it demands to play jazz is significant. First one must be an accomplished instrumentalist. Second one must know the repertoire of songs. Third one must have studied the craft and art of improvisation. It is a life long process akin to religion. Spirituality also is involved something we have moved away from in shallow America. The music that has raped and pillaged America's valid music easily is defined. It is all of the things real music is not. It seeks to have no impact on society. It seeks to be tepid and weak. It seeks to make no statement. It seeks NOT to define a principle, opinion, or boundary. It seeks only to masturbate at the basest human level. It is pornography.
