JAZZ LOVERS ARE NOT BORN THEY ARE MADE

An age-old adage in jazz is that if only people had more exposure to it they would learn to love it. Like my Mom used to say about broccoli, "How do you know you don't like it if you won't try it?"

I was lucky. My Dad, then a cop, now a painter/sculptor, used to play "Dixieland drums" on the weekends along with his Louis Armstrong, Kenny Ball and Red Nichols records. My folks would take us down to a Quonset hut next to the L.A. river to hear live trad jazz. It was an Elks Lodge or some such meeting house just downstream and across the "river" from the present day Autry Western Heritage Museum in Griffith Park where my father has some sculpture in their permanent collection. My brother and I would climb through a hole in the chain link fence, scurry down the slanted cement walls of the "riverbed" and forage for tadpole and anything scavenge-able for 7-10 year olds while our parents and their friends would slide the the first pitcher of beer and sack of pretzels listening to the bands.

Once we'd get bored or wet and filthy, we'd head back to the lodge, belly up to the bar for a Coca-Cola in a bottle and sit down in front of the stage. There would generally be 5-8 musicians up there mostly older than my folks by 10-20 years with the occasional young acolyte, playing standard New Orleans fare. "Bourbon Street Blues", "Bill Bailey", Rampart Street Parade", "Tiger Rag" (I loved that one as a kid), "My Mother's Eyes" and on and on. They were transplanted Southern men, for the most part. Many had come West for gigs working in the TV and movie studios. Occasionally they'd bring in a ringer. Someone in town for a big paying gig who would drop by and jam a few numbers with the locals. "The Southern California Hot Jazz Society" was what, I believe, this group of fans and players called themselves. I don't know if they are still in existence.

My mom also loved music. She'd play records by vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme, John Gary as well as the occasional Swing record and show tunes. She also adored taking us to Children's Symphony concerts at the Pasadena Civic where we were exposed to orchestral music. 

So I was lucky, the exposure to music and especially improvised music really set me up for those first jazz records I'd buy on my own at the used LP stores in San Diego while attending college. The first one I really recall twisting my head around was Miles Davis' "Round Midnight" LP featuring John Coltrane. Once in college, with a little expendable cash, I haunted the used record stores and sucked up lots of jazz. I was a huge fan of anything Miles, Monk or Mingus did and LOVED the Brazilian sounds o Flora Purim, Airto, Milton Nascimento, Hermeto Pascoal. I was involved in booking concerts on campus and helped bring a lot of great jazz acts to the school including Sonny Rollins, Weather Report, Art Blakey, The L.A. Four,  Hubert Laws, Freddie Hubbard, Mose Allison, Pat Martino, McCoy Tyner (with John Blake), Leonard Feather, Jean-Luc Ponty, Cobham-Duke Band (with John Scofield & Alphonso Johnson, Elvin Jones, Chuck Mangione, Ron Carter, Tom Waits, Gary Burton, Jan Hammer Group, Noel Pointer, Yusef Lateef, John Klemmer, Oregon, Flora & Airto, Manhattan Transfer, Old & New Dreams (Charlie Haden, Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry & Dewey Redman, and Hiroshima, Stanley Clarke, The Crusaders, among them.

These were just the jazz bands we had on campus. I was hooked, I took Jazz Appreciation classes with Dr. Eddie Meadows, and also hit tons of shows around town by any jazz artists I could find. Places like The Catamaran Hotel in Mission Beach and for a short while Elario's penthouse restaurant in La Jolla were hot spots for national jazz acts. You could go to the Civic Theater downtown and see people like the Milestones Jazz Stars (Rollins/Tyner/Carter/Al Foster) or VSOP (Hancock/Shorter/Carter/Tony Williams/Hubbard) but the number of dedicated jazz venues were fw and far between other than on the college campuses. These days with the establishment of the beautiful downtown cultural area, the town's jazz offerings are more frequent.

My tehn soon-to-be father-in-law also needed someone to attend swing concerts with since his wife and daughters were less likely to go with him while he fed his obsession. Through his tutelage I was lucky to see and in some cases meet many of the great band leaders, singers and players from the golden years of the Big Bands such as Count Basie, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman, Les Brown, Maynard Ferguson, Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Joe Williams, Marshall Royal, Snooky Young, as well as "ghost" bands like Glenn Miller Orchestra, and the bands of Woody Herman and Artie Shaw. I was just old enough to still catch many of the jazz greats who are no longer with us like Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, Alice Coltrane, Hank Jones, Colin Walcott, Ray Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Willie Bobo, Jaki Byard, Dannie Richmond, Don Pullen, Joe Farrell, Jaco Pastorius, Joe Zawinul, Tony Williams, Bud Shank, Shelley Manne, Laurindo Almeida, Milt Jackson, Connie Kay, Gerry Niewood, Esther Phillips, T. Lavitz, Tito Puente, Kenny Kirkland, and on it goes.

Once out of school, I couldn't stay out of the music business. I built a log house, worked in the burgeoning video business but never seemed far from a conversation about music and especially jazz. When I made the switch and moved from California to the East Coast in the early 1980s I could only take 100 of my 1200 LPs with me. 30 of them were Miles Davis records. I was in deep, a die hard collector since my first Beatles 45 in 1964. Within a decade, I was pushing 10,000 LPs and the CD thang was just beginning.

The live music scene in Philadelphia was especially strong and had great opportunities for jazz. At clubs like the original Zanzibar Blue and The Ripley Music Hall (both now gone) where you could catch national talent as well as accomplished local heavyweights. Larger crossover and fusion guys played the Chestnut Cabaret (defunct) or the T.L.A. and occasionally a BIG act like Pat Metheny would play the legendary Tower Theater in Upper Darby. Later on the Keswick Theater in Glenside became the go-to spot for fusion, contemporary and groups too popular for the smaller clubs like from straight-ahead legends like Marian McPartland to the chameleon-esque Chick Corea performed there. Philly may get short shrift in the press since many of the great, homegrown talents have made a tradition of leaving for the more fertile jazz climes in NYC just up I-95 but this proximity also allows for artists of note stopping in town more frequently than to cities a greater distance from the jazz center of the universe. Locally you could catch the Sun Ra Arkestra a couple times a year or the masterful saxist Odean Pope regularly at places like the Painted Bride Arts Center. The great Pat Martino still gives lessons from his family home in South Philly when not on the road as one of the predominant guitarists of his generation. For a few years the Afro-American Museum or the Clef Club was a hot spot for shows by the likes of Benny Carter, David Murray, Max Roach, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and many others, the latter still promtes jazz through concerts, education and community outreach.  The Philadelphia Art Museum still has a long-running weekly series Art After 5 on Friday nights. !st Fridays feature international music and all other Fridays feature jazz, drink & food and of course, their world-class art exhibits. Art After 5 has featured everyone from Greg Osby, Jason Moran, Brad Mehldau, Trudy Pitts, Bill Charlap, Trio 3, and hundreds of others. The Academy of Music hosted big names and the KOOL Jazz Festival played multiple venues in town including dates at the large outdoor Mann Music Center where you might see Miles, Dizzy, Blakey, Ella, Herbie, Oscar Peterson, The Heath Brothers etc. over the course of a two-day festival. Nowadays Philly boasts the Kimmel Center, one of the nation's finest performing arts venues for it's most prestigious jazz shows and right around the corner.  Ars Nova Workshop continues to put on dozens of concerts a year featuring the hippest avant-garde musicians and ensembles from around the country and the world, many shows free of charge in unique and varied setting from college classrooms, off the beaten track city parks to venerable old historic buildings. By far one of the premier left-of-center jazz series presented continually in the country. Philly's vibrant jazz history continues to evolve and there is always some new venue or neighborhood embracing the music.

I was also very blessed to have always lived in towns where there was a strong and dedicated jazz radio station or two. In L.A. it was KLON back in the day, now KJaZZ has taken up the standard. KSDS in San Diego was an incredibly vibrant station back in the late 70s and long a major contributor to the popularity of the music in the region. In Philly, WRTI, even when going from 24/7 jazz to jazz all-night and classical all-day, still holds onto some of the hippest programming around with the old school knowledge and good taste of DJs like Philly's own Bob Perkins and the ever challenging, hip and wide-open playlists of J. Michael Harrison's late-night show, "The Bridge" on Fridays which stretches the boundaries of improvised music with great interviews, a dash of poetry and genre-bridging choices.
 
So through the 10 years of owning a jazz-centric record store, booking shows by national jazz acts and later as a publicist for over a decade and a half for some of the greatest jazz legends and legends-to-be, collecting nearly 30,000 pieces of recorded music and memorabilia and enjoying a legion of mind-blowing performances, I have been and always will be indebted to those first Sundays when my folks would take us to the river and anoint us with the jazz spirit.  

As a long-time publicist for the lamentably dissolved IAJE's annual jazz conference, I witnessed first hand each January, 1000s of jazz fans, musicians, educators, students and industry professionals coming together to share their enthusiasm and love for the music. Every year formal panels and informal discussions proliferated asking the same question, "How do we get more people to love jazz?" And often, through all of the hypothetical business models, prospective educational  solutions and harsh economic realities, the answer always seems to hinge delicately on the idea that one must "play it and they will come."

Nearly every time you go into a Starbucks or half of the fine restaurants in the world. You will hear jazz playing in the background at some point during your stay. In a huge portion of the movies in theaters, jazz or jazz influenced music is part of the soundtrack. Commercials constantly pick hip vintage jazz tunes to help them sell their products.

Maybe we just need to get more music out of the pricey concert halls, dwindling clubs and back out on the streets, into the public's ears where it is unavoidable. More free concerts in town squares, more festivals and yes, more jazz for cows.

 The most entranced jazz crowd ever.

I attend some fascinating concerts...in my dreams...

1:35am

Dream –

The first half of the dream is gone but it was long and outdoors…

I’m on a street corner. Nighttime. I walk across the street into a small parking lot between two older, brick storefront, mid-block. I am talking to someone who is telling me a story they heard from, “You know that guy that lives out here who is a bit messed up but otherwise cool.”  A white rental van starts up in the space I (alone now) am standing in front of. There are two guys, 20s, brown hair, typical looking, in the front seat looking suspicious, like they’ve just been caught smoking pot or something. One talks to me and I hear them even though he doesn’t look to be yelling and the windows are all rolled up. He was asking directions. I point how to get out of the lot the back way, through a chain link fence. 

As I watch them pull away, to my right, something moves. I seem to know it’s the “messed up” street guy I was told about. He’s young, mid-late 20s. Blond and bearded, tall and looks clean. He’s pushing a weird sort of gondola on wheels covered with an Army-green canvas. He says hello as if he knows me and we walked out the driveway toward the sidewalk. When we get there we see my friend Greg Bierman who is also going to the concert/rave/event (?). We go right on the sidewalk and we are on Duarte Road, across the street from the back corner of Hinshaw’s in West Arcadia. We stand at the traffic light talking about the concert. Someone presses the crosswalk button and we wait. As we finally cross, “Messed Up Guy" leaves his gondola there at the corner. “No one will bother it.” We cross the street and Greg is checking little address numbers on the glass doors of Hinshaw’s and finds the right one. “This is where it is?” I say, surprised. “Yeah, it’s in some kind of conference room.”

We walk inside. It is a pretty luxurious seeming room. Everyone is dressed fairly nice and I see a lot of faces that I recognize. Back East music scene people. I am, of course, naked but have a soft yet roughly textured olive covered blanket, lightweight it seems but overflowing, wrapped over my shoulders covering everything nicely except my chest hair. I feel sure that someone will notice my odd raiment but no one does. My ex-wife, Lynn, looking basically like she does today, has reserved a flat, highly polished very low table. Japanese, on which we are to sit on little cushion. I wonder if “Messed Up Guy" will sit with us and I wonder if he will stink.

She is sitting just behind this table on a stool. To our right is a guy standing at a tall soundboard. It is a young Joey Calderazzo (which is weird since the group billed is Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette and others and Joey is also a pianist). He speaks softy to the crowd, asking everyone to now be quiet and they take their seats. I ask Lynn what the news is and she says, “Not good. Kidneys.” The implication in the dream is that it is a diagnosis she just got back. I decide to not tell her about my health. “No Ed?” I whisper instead and she shakes her head side-to-side which makes sense for I know I was just with them somewhere and Ed was going to be working at home that night. She steps off the stool, gives me a hug and comes around to two of the places (cushions) facing the stage. I think, “Good, I didn’t want to sit hunch-necked and backwards all night.”

As the music softly starts, a light short acoustic piano figure is followed by a very quiet woodwinds wash and then some bowed acoustic bass. Subtle and atmospheric sounds with very little movement. People are sitting low, on the floor in front of us and I wonder if I will be able to stay awake through this since I got no sleep the night before. I consider asking her to poke me if I snore but it is too quiet to talk and I’m sure she would poke me anyway. She turns and whispers, of course, “Nice blanket.” Hahaha. That’s my girl.

In front of us is a not quite opaque curtain made of what looks like soft roughly textured material pleated thickly like a theater curtain. It is lit softly from in front and behind. The impression is that the musicians are behind it playing. There are strongly lit big squares or perhaps projections of rich color on the curtain. I somehow know that the piece of music is titled “Journey in Three Colors”. I wonder if the screen will ever go up. I surmise that this could be Jarrett being elitist, or pretentious or it could be some kind of sense-experiment where the colors are controlling the music or vice-versa. I also consider that if we never see musicians just a curtain, Lynn might bail, people may boo or start getting rammy and chatty since the music is so soft and static. I’m very curious to see what happens. I realize that we are more reclined than sitting up straight, our legs out before us. I hope I can stay awake.

On the screen is what at first looks like a list of songs or credits as if on an album cover but when I look at the left column, I realize it is sort of like poetry that describes the color and action of the story while mentioning what the instruments represent. It seems to be changing in real time to the sounds being heard. Unfortunately, I can’t retain the opening lines of the poem.

In the dream, I wake up and I am in another part of the room looking in another direction, at a different more traditional stage set up. I'm sitting in another group of chairs/stools with Greg and a woman who is my date or someone I am dating who also happens to be there. The room behind us is crowded. There is a stage in front of us, which seems off to the right and on a wall perpendicular to the previous stage. Singing in front of a royal blue rich velvet, gold-trimmed curtain is Merle Haggard and to his left is a tall, balding guy playing a bass guitar. Merle is holding a trumpet in his hand, fingering though not playing it. He is singing the line from Emmylou Harris’s song <that I actually played in my gig earlier yesterday>, “I was Feeling Single, Seeing Double / wound up in a whole lotta trouble. / But today I’ll face the big fight / ‘cause I really had a ball last night.” When he repeats the last line, he comes to the C#7 chord and really emphasizes the trumpet as if meaning “Here’s the chord…pay attention,” towards the bassist who misses the note but plays one that almost works. The song ends and I hear him say top the bassist off mic, “That was that C#7 I warned you about.” The crowd claps excitedly and Merle walks off the stage.

I see him walk out onto a balcony off to the right of the stage. It’s like a high school gym balcony with tall wooden folding bleachers filled with people standing and applauding. Merle is walking along the front with a large entourage of people. At first I think he is going to sing from there with a wireless mic but he is walking across the front of the balcony toward the exit on the right. It must be break time. 

From where I stand, somehow looking down on him, though it seems like more of a close-up camera angle than what I should be seeing from where I sit below, he is wearing HUGE light blue dungarees. So are his entire entourage (about 7-8 guys). The POV I am seeing is only their legs and you can’t see their shoes because the flare of the pant legs are so huge. Like rapper/rave boy jeans. A couple of them are dragging behind them what look like fake big ball and chains, like prison guys of old, coming out from under these huge pant legs. The music being played to their exit is a big band version of Merle’s famous prison song, “Mama Tried”.

I turn and Lynn is across the room getting up from her seat. The seat next to her where I had been sitting is filled by someone I don’t know and I feel bad for it seems I must have left her sitting there to go say hello to someone between acts and fell asleep and never gone back.

I feel horrible about it and literally wake up on the couch having fallen asleep at 7:30 last night when I got home from town. I had laid down for a nap and set my cell phone alarm for 9pm. I remember hitting the snooze key 5-6 times and I guess it finally gave up on me. I had finally got up at 1:30am and had to jot this dream down before I lost it. Now, I’ve some editing to do on my father’s new art book and need to watch this movie, MY IDIOT BROTHER that my cousin lent me tonight and wants to get back back on his way to work at 8am today. I’m wide-awake, after 6 hours of dreaming.