Thinking in Jazz

by Berliner, Paul F.

  The spirit would also be something that would be transmitted by the minister if he was an eloquent speaker. He could summon it with his message. Often times, it would also be the choir or the soloist in the choir, and occasionally, when the organ player or the piano player would be hot, it was like having Ray Charles in church. To me, that’s where the spirituality comes in. If the music has spirit, you can feel it. If it’s without feeling or without meaning, deep inner meaning, then it’s spiritless.

  Churches that encourage ecstatic singing, handclapping, and animated physical movement in the service of religious devotion hold inestimable value for young musicians in the congregation. These practices cultivate an expressive freedom in performance that is absent from churches where notions of dignified worship restrict movement and repress emotion. Nevertheless, musicians whose religious backgrounds are more moderate find the music of fundamentalist churches compelling. Many recall visiting such churches or tuning in to weekend radio broadcasts of such services and spending occasional mornings or evenings on the street outside these churches in their neighborhoods, listening to the performances, thereby expanding the range of their early musical influences.7 Nat Adderley describes the “Gregorian chant style” of music heard in his own Episcopal church, as well as the lasting “musical impressions” generated by the “sanctified kind of feeling” of the Tabernacle Baptist Church “across the street.” He goes on to say that “what one hears in his formative stages has a tendency to affect him. . . . [It] cause[s] you eventually to play what you play, the way you play it, with a particular feeling.”8

  The appreciation for impassioned musical expression carries over into the secular world of “musical situations . . . like the gospel pop field.” Don Pate notes that the record store where he worked in Chicago “used to sell Savoy gospel pop records featuring groups like the Mighty Sounds of Joy right alongside the jazz records.” Countless jazz performers also merge sacred and secular musical elements in their creations. Pate adds that the religious poem and chanted refrain on John Coltrane’s album A Love Supreme ‘served as a bridge between religious and secular music for some devout listeners who were generally mistrustful of the latter’s social values. “My mother was amazed that a jazz musician would feel this way about God, and, she said, ‘Well, he must have been all right if he felt this way.’ I mean this was before she even heard the record! So I mean the cover of the album, everything else, prompted her to get into the music and listen to it.” Altogether, the youngsters’ early base of musical knowledge and its multilayered cultural associations provided solid ground for their specialized study of jazz.

  The varied and subtle ways in which a music culture actually shapes the sensibilities and skills of its members are not always apparent to the members themselves until they encounter individuals whose backgrounds differ from their own. When young black musicians first encountered white audiences who, to their surprise, clapped to the “wrong beat” when listening to jazz, the musicians perceived an alien scheme of rhythmic organization imposed upon the music by the outsiders. Similarly, an African American singer recalled the occasion when a white, classically trained pianist substituted for her gospel choir’s accompanist. After an introduction to the choir, the pianist asked the director for her “music.” The director explained that they did not use “sheet music” and that the pianist should take the liberty to improvise her part in relation to the choir’s. Taken aback, she replied apologetically that, “[without] music,” she was unable to accompany them. She had never before faced such artistic demands. The choir members were equally astonished by the pianist’s remark, never having met a musician who was dependent upon written music.

  As these situations suggest, children who grow up around improvisers regard improvisation as a skill within the realm of their own possible development. In the absence of this experience, many view improvisation as beyond their ability. Moreover, music teachers in the schools can encourage the early inclinations of talented youngsters to embellish compositions assigned during lessons and improvise their own pieces, or they can inhibit such inclinations. Stories of the early abilities of prospective jazz artists to improvise within the diverse styles and structural forms of classical music, rock, polkas, and marches are common.9

  Because of cultural differences that have generally distinguished white and black American communities in the past, the capacity for jazz improvisation and other musical skills has, at times, been confused with the benefits of different training and subject to racial stereotyping. Even though Red Rodney and his white peers played in swing bands in high school, they thought that improvising was something special that only the “black guys” did well. In contrast, the white players were the good readers, the good section players. It was an important turning point in Rodney’s view of his own potential to become an improviser when Dizzy Gillespie took a personal interest in him and initiated his association with Charlie Parker.

  Different Paths of Commitment

  In the face of the diverse musical options around them, learners decide to pursue jazz for reasons that are as different as their ultimate individual contributions to the field. Many prospective players are simply overwhelmed when they first hear jazz. The circumstances surrounding such encounters remain as vivid in the memories of performers as does the music’s dramatic impact. For them, it was love at first sound. The bands at the Apollo Theatre “mesmerized” Charli Persip as a child; he walked around “in a cloud” after performances and “daydreamed” about them during school. Gary Bartz was stunned by the beauty and power of a Charlie Parker recording. The music made him euphoric, intoxicating him with the notion that “I just had to play that.” This determination to play like Parker came even before Bartz had discerned which instrument it was that Parker was playing. Buster Williams was captivated by Oscar Pettiford’s “intensely moving, personal sound” on recordings, an expressive representation of the person behind the music that revealed even “the sound of his thumb sliding up and down the neck of the bass.”

  This intimate identification with great artists can have an effect similar to religious conversion, in many instances transcending cultural boundaries. When Howard Levy first heard John Coltrane, he had the inexplicable experience that he was hearing himself singing, as if he had known Coltrane’s music all his life. Similarly dramatic was the experience of one young Japanese musician who, adjusting with difficulty to the loss of his sister, heard a Coltrane concert in Japan. Disarmed by the performance, he returned alone to his apartment and wept into the night. Rising at dawn from a restless sleep, he interpreted the experience as a sign that he was to become Coltrane’s musical disciple.10

  The pursuit of jazz is not always as visceral or direct for youngsters. Their commitment to the music sometimes reflects a variety of considerations, from the precise artistic challenges of jazz to such fluid issues as the personal identity of individual musicians and their relationship to society. Fred Hersch abandoned his early career as a classical pianist because he tired of the tradition’s preoccupation with “the purely technical aspects of performance” and with the masterworks of composers. In contrast, jazz offered him the prospect of creating his own music. While touring the country with renowned soul bands, Keith Copeland became similarly discouraged by their lack of creativity. “The guys often wanted me to play just like the drummers on the records,” he bemoaned, “instead of making up my own parts.” Akira Tana became bored with the limitations rock bands placed upon collective improvisation; he found jazz to be “more sophisticated, more musical, more expressive.”

  Within the artists’ own community, family and peer approval offers additional inducements. George Johnson Jr. remembers the pleasure that family friends displayed when hearing him sing jazz tunes from his father’s record collection. They were touched and amused by the sight of a young boy performing their generation’s music. “It’s natural to want to be like your father when you grow up,” Johnson reflects. Harold Ousley explains his decision
to become a jazz saxophonist in terms of the warm relationship he developed with a favorite uncle who invited him to listen to Jimmie Lunceford recordings. The first instrument his uncle taught him to recognize on recordings, when Ousley was but six years old, was the saxophone. For the children of musicians, opportunity to meet leading artists intensifies the children’s early involvement with jazz. Don Pate was thrilled the night his father, jazz bassist Johnny Pate, brought members of the Basie band home to join his family for dinner. One of the high points of Wynton Marsalis’s childhood was the occasion when his father, pianist Ellis Marsalis, seated him between Al Hirt and Miles Davis at a New Orleans nightclub. The renowned figures had come to honor the elder Marsalis by hearing his band perform.

  Economic incentives are also significant for performers, especially during crests in the waves of jazz’s popularity. Regardless of cultural background, many players come from poor families in which each child feels a responsibility for contributing to the household income.11 Those who evidence musical talent early begin playing professionally at the first opportunity. Conventional occupational role models viewed with great pride in particular communities can have the effect of channeling the talents of youngsters. In more adverse terms, patterns of job discrimination can also direct youngsters toward a musical career. When Curtis Fuller was a child, there were limited career opportunities for African Americans. Not everyone could be a sports hero like Jackie Robinson or Willie Mays, Fuller explains, so he took one of the other routes and became a jazz musician. Art Davis adds that racial barriers commonly discouraged talented black musicians of his and earlier generations from pursuing careers in Western classical music. Thus, for many, jazz held out the prospect of bettering their economic and social circumstances. The opportunity to travel with road bands and to see the world was an added attraction, one that took on special meaning for those who were ambitious to escape from the stifling confines of a small town’s bigotry.12

  Special aptitude for jazz provides young performers with an identity among their peers, a matter of considerable priority for teenagers. In Ronald Shannon Jackson’s town, all the students were known for “what they could do.” One person was “the greatest baseball player”; another “the greatest actor”; and Jackson “the greatest drummer.” Sometimes musical skill compensates for the early shyness of youngsters. By enabling him “to play jazz at parties and be accepted by everyone.” Walter Bishop Jr.’s ability “opened up a whole new world socially.”

  If in some communities jazz performance is a vehicle for social acceptance, in others—or in subgroups within them—it is a symbol of rebellion, a musical emblem distinguishing individuals from their contemporaries or from their parents. Don Pate’s attraction to jazz reflected his rejection of black middle-class social values. In contrast to his peers, whose party socials included “Motown records and a lot of dancing,” Pate, who was “never concerned with the crowd.” used to sit on the floor on pillows in dimly lit rooms and listen to jazz. The music served likewise as a symbol for white performers’ rebellion against middle-class values. Bobby Rogovin recalled troubled teenaged years aggravated by the tense family relationships in his household’s cramped quarters. It was only within the world of sound created by his jazz recordings that he could preserve any sense of privacy. Within this world, he regarded the artists as “close friends” who spoke to him in a deeply personal language that eluded family members around him.

  Changing self-perceptions also mark changes in the musical tastes of performers. Emily Remler initially loved to play rock, regarding it as “good-time partying music.” In her mid-teens, however, she abandoned it for jazz, which, as epitomized by Pat Martino’s work, she viewed as “introverted and serious.” Remler wanted to become “that serious about music.” Wynton Marsalis also traces his professional interest in jazz to his early teens, when he “questioned everything about life” and became especially concerned with political and social issues integral to African American history. Although Marsalis had attained proficiency as a classical musician, the jazz tradition held increasing attraction for him because of “culture heroes like Charlie Parker” with whom he felt a special identification.13

  A dynamic tension between musical and extramusical issues sometimes permeates the learning programs of reflective students working through difficult periods of personal growth, changing social awareness, and self-definition. Arthur Rhames grew up in a home where he felt tom between the cultural values represented by African American music on the one hand and Western classical music on the other. As an exceptionally gifted child, he received private piano training. Early church schooling and influences within his extended family reinforced the personal esteem he developed for classical music. Rhames adopted this preference so thoroughly that whenever his mother played rhythm and blues recordings at home, he would retreat to his bedroom with an obvious display of disdain and spend the time playing classical music recordings, miming the conductor’s role as he listened.

  When Rhames was later transferred into the public school system, however, his musical tastes and prodigious talents so isolated him from his peers that he led a relatively solitary existence. Ironically, the loneliness Rhames suffered eventually led him to identify with the mournful sounds of the blues. Enlarging the scope of his education, he adopted B. B. King as a musical model and began learning the guitar. After acquiring a fundamental technique, Rhames performed in teenage soul bands, eventually finding a place for himself among his contemporaries. Rhames’s increasing proficiency as a blues guitarist laid the foundation for his eventual interest in jazz rock, or fusion music. He adopted John McLaughlin as his next mentor and continued to grapple with larger questions of personal identity. For several years he patterned not only his performance style after McLaughlin but his lifestyle as well, looking briefly into Indian spiritualism before joining a religious group with similar interests, an attachment he maintained for several years.

  These combined involvements prepared the way for Rhames’s discovery of John Coltrane. Identifying immediately with Coltrane’s “Eastern orientation, musically and spiritually,” Rhames had the “profound revelation” that Coltrane’s music comprised the culmination of everything he had studied over his career. Subsequently, Rhames took up the saxophone and devoted himself to learning jazz, which he had come to appreciate on its own terms. In the years to follow, his concerts would feature Rhames on guitar, piano, and saxophone and as vocalist, his then current preoccupation. The biographical details of Rhames’s story find parallels in the lives of other extraordinarily talented aspiring musicians and highlight the delicate interplay between social and musical factors that can influence the interests, tastes, and knowledge of learners, ultimately shaping their interpretations of jazz.

  As implied above, an appreciation for the role of cultural milieu in the development of improvisers would not be complete without considering their exposure to the diverse fabric of America’s music culture and the particular demography of the villages, towns, and cities where improvisers grew up. Population and immediate musical environment vary from one part of the country to the next. In some cases, they may be distinctive and relatively uniform, but they are as often pluralistic, representing different kinds of ethnic mixtures. Within discrete locales, the character of musical knowledge is itself constantly subject to change. Innovative individuals produce new musical models, supplementing or supplanting older ones. New ideas transform the general sound-scape as they pass through permeable community borders. Furthermore, differences in values and knowledge can distinguish particular neighborhoods and households, thereby influencing the chosen learning models and precise performance practices of their members. Even within households, the absorption of musical knowledge is a relative matter, varying with the talents of individuals, whose discovery of the importance of jazz occurs at different stages in their education.

  Though aspiring artists may follow different paths initially, arriving at a commitment to jazz along direct o
r circuitous routes, they ultimately face the same basic challenge: to acquire the specialized knowledge upon which advanced jazz performance depends. Precisely how to pursue such knowledge is not always apparent to new enthusiasts. Traditionally, jazz musicians have learned without the kind of support provided by formal educational systems. There have been no schools or universities to teach improvisers their skills; few textbooks to aid them. Master musicians, however, did not develop their skills in a vacuum. They learned within their own professional community—the jazz community.

  TWO

  Hangin’ Out and Jammin’

  The Jazz Community as an Educational System

  I tell people, “I was a high school dropout, but I graduated from Art Blakey College, the Miles Davis Conservatory of Music, and Charlie Parker University.” —Walter Bishop Jr.

  Continually drawing sustenance from its fundamental ties to African American culture, the American jazz community cuts across boundaries defined by age, class, vocation, and ethnicity.1 At its core are professional musicians and aspirants for whom jazz is the central focus of their careers. Overlapping with the core are accomplished improvisers who divide their professional energies and talents between jazz and other musics. Serious amateurs or semiprofessionals who earn their living outside of music sometimes play a significant, but less influential, part in the life of the field. Around its core of artists, the jazz community includes listeners with wide-ranging tastes. Their ranks include supporters with diverse national and cultural backgrounds who have adopted the community’s music as their own—a trend reinforced since World War I by the movement toward greater social integration and by such factors in the music industry as international record distribution, the promotion of touring bands abroad, and the interaction among overseas performers with expatriate jazz artists and American military band personnel stationed abroad. It is their abiding devotion to the music that binds this diverse population together.