As described earlier, audiences are typically most intrusive when their own performance consists of drinking and socializing, with jazz providing incidental accompaniment. Charles Mingus, like some other artists, occasionally dramatized such issues by chastizing audiences and club employees directly for their “noise” and demanding respect for his music.6 The transitory nature of concert hall and jazz club engagements places musicians under fewer obligations to humor listeners than engagements in commercial clubs, where the length of a group’s stay may depend on drawing back regular customers night after night.
Musical Responses to Difficult Audiences
In the presence of inattentive listeners, improvisers pursue any number of options, each having its own ramifications for the performance. In the face of a boisterous dinner club audience, Lonnie Hillyer once concluded a delicate improvisation of a ballad with explosive, fiery lines whose unexpected character stilled the house for the next soloist. Approaching the microphone to exchange places with him, Hillyer’s friend nodded in appreciation of the courtesy.
Many times, however, musical efforts to engage problematic audiences fundamentally undermine performances. One leader, unnerved by a small group of undemonstrative listeners scattered throughout a large auditorium, attempted to draw them out by increasing his performance’s “energy.” In the process, he inadvertently rushed the tempos. This, in turn, prevented his group from achieving a groove. “It’s when you’re not performing enough in public that an audience like that can really throw you,” a member of the band remarked afterwards.
Other musicians may attempt to increase their appeal by self-consciously compromising their artistry.7 “Some performers play worse when there’s an audience than when they’re alone, because they are so involved with the audience,” one player asserts. “Their music takes the back seat. They might play down to the audience, playing some silly things that get over, but that don’t mean anything musically. For example, I know [a string player] who wears bells on his feet and stomps around in a manner that has nothing to do with his playing. Other musicians can get across to the audience just by playing. There’s a big difference.”
Chuck Israels serves up a cautionary tale as he reflects on the potential for disrupting a soloist’s musical growth that fawning can set in motion.
There are players who, under the pressure of commerce and looking for acceptance, have lost their own voices. [There was a famous tenor player who] used to have an incredible way of coloring the sound of his saxophone. He had more colors, more timbres, than anyone, and you could identify him immediately from his sound alone. But now he seems to have decided to sound like a second-class imitation of a more commercially oriented tenor player. The tremendous invention that he used to employ all the time is now stifled in favor of really simple, repetitive music.
If you stifle your creativity in order to try to appeal to a mass audience, and you get involved with pandering, you run the danger of not knowing the difference between what you’re doing for yourself and what you’re doing in order to please the audience. To me, an artist is somebody who is deeply concerned with communicating what he believes to be his message and not what the audience wants to believe is his message. This is not to say that a true artist purposely cuts himself off from the audience. But his message has to be what he finds valuable. When people haven’t followed that, I have only seen artistic disasters result.
Alternatively, musicians often attempt to ignore unresponsive audiences and play exclusively for themselves. Such conditions commonly take their toll, as well. Art Farmer plays “things that I feel according to the circumstances of the moment.” When considering what to play under different circumstances, he says,
I’m not thinking the same way. For example, if I hear noise and people talking, I know that they are not concerned with what I’m doing. An inattentive audience is very distracting. When I feel any tension or I feel ill at ease, my mind doesn’t go out. Under those conditions, I play the most inside things, the safest things. I just don’t think any other way. If I feel completely free and relaxed, like late at night with hardly anybody in the club, I’m just thinking other ways. The audience has a great deal to do with it. If you feel that what you are doing is well received, it frees you to go ahead and try for other things.
In light of the importance of these factors, it is a tribute to the creative powers of early musicians and their commitment to jazz that they overcame the distracting, even dangerous, conditions surrounding performance in speakeasies and other rough establishments that hired them. Jelly Roll Morton describes turbulent “gambling houses . . . ginmills and dancehouses” where he worked in New Orleans and Chicago. Beyond the sporadic violence of which musicians could be incidental victims, they were sometimes harassed by mobsters who operated the establishments. In Chicago, after changing managers, Louis Armstrong “was threatened with gangster violence” and had to hire bodyguards for protection.8
Contemporary musicians resign themselves to adverse performance conditions of another order, and occasionally even find redeeming features in them. “Sometimes, the informality of the club and the lack of absolute attention give you the freedom to try out things you might otherwise be hesitant to try” (CI). For Ira Sullivan,
the dinner jazz clubs are what make the challenge of playing and trying to reach people even greater. Sometimes, I get tired of the prima donna attitudes of the younger players who get so bugged when you have to play in those places. They say, “What? I’m supposed to play for this noise?” One player thought that the solution was for him just to play louder. I said, “That’s no good. They’ll just talk louder.” People come here to meet old relatives and to talk and eat and have a few drinks. That can’t be changed.
But every once in a while you play so strong and beautiful that suddenly you hush up an audience like that, and it’s a great feeling of accomplishment you feel. Like you’ve given them something special even if they don’t really recognize what it is you’ve done for them. You’ve reached them where they didn’t know they can be reached.
Aptly illustrating Sullivan’s remark is an event in which Barry Harris replaced a promising young pianist at a commercial club when he sat in with her group. Harris’s masterful sense of rhythm instantly drew the bass player and drummer into a groove, elevating the group’s performance from competent to outstanding. For the first time that evening, talkative audience members at the table in front of mine fell absolutely silent and began swaying unself-consciously to the music. “I don’t know what it is,” one eventually exclaimed, “but he’s really good, isn’t he?” Because the sophisticated language of jazz limits the prospects for communicating with a general audience, improvisers sometimes adjust their expectations, taking satisfaction in modest accomplishments. A renowned musician more than once expressed his conviction that if only he had “reached one other human being” in the course of an event, it was enough to justify his performance.
Responding to Knowledgeable Audiences
In contrast to unsophisticated listeners, knowledgeable audiences interpret the musical ideas of improvisers in light of the larger jazz tradition. “If I’m a mature artist and I’m playing to a mature audience, they can hear the reference to artists like Bird in my playing immediately,” Arthur Rhames explains.
If it’s done in a respectful way, not out of duplication directly, but placed in the right perspective, then everyone is able to relate to what I’m doing. There’s an unspoken communication with the audience that way. I’m aware of my predecessors. I’m aware of this legacy. I’m aware of this tradition. It’s a beautiful feeling because it’s both nostalgic and has, at the same time, a very present feeling of joy, hearing these different lines, different turns, different mannerisms related in certain perspectives.
Moreover, sophisticated audiences respond consistently to a performance’s most special moments—its “soul focal points,” as composer ally Wilson aptly describes them.9 An exciting counterpoint within the
rhythm section’s interplay, a clever retort within the competitive exchanges of soloists trading fours, the climax in a musical idea’s development, and the improvisation of phrases that are especially tasteful, poignant, or rich with historical meaning: all elicit a strong audience response.10 “Look out now! Play it now!” cried listeners at one event when Lou Donaldson introduced a searing blues pattern into his solo. In another instance, Buster Williams fashioned a deeply moving solo around phrases with subtle speechlike inflections. Throughout, audience members filled the spaces between his phrases with such calls as “Yeah! I hear you!” and “Tell it, Buster,” urging him to continue. These interactions recall the improviser’s description of collective improvisation as a group conversation. In the metaphor’s broadest sense, audience members enter into and broaden the base of the conversation, responding to the musical statements of band members as if they were literally speaking with them.
In turn, artists continue a spirited musical discussion with such an audience. Lou Donaldson will “play various types of pieces at the beginning of the evening, and from the audience’s reaction, I’ll know what to work on for the rest of the evening.” Similarly, when Curtis Fuller catches “people in their little musical highs and little spiritual highs,” and knows that he has “got them,” this realization influences his next selection. “If I’ve got them going in this direction, on the next song I should play something in line with the first statement to enhance that high and take them even further. Also, I’ll sometimes use dialogue and expressions in between numbers like, ‘Here, the next song is going to be so and so.’ I like to set up the audience, like, ‘Hey [he laughs]. I’m getting ready to lay it on you!’ I’ll say something that will cause the audience to respond, ‘Oh, yeah!’ like a minister saying, ‘Our text for today is so and so. turn to page so and so.’ “
Moreover, as Fuller describes in detail, musicians sometimes playoff the audience’s response throughout an improvisation:
I feed on the audience when I play. You have to speak the language that the audience knows. I could draw on a familiar figure that even a layman would understand, something in front of a current hit or a blues lick that’s soulful. If I play that and I see someone sway or someone says, “Yeah!” I’ll stay right on this because they understand where I’m coming from, and I’ve got this going for me. Then he’ll say, “Yeah, baby!” When I get that message, the guy in the audience is saying, “I’m still there. Come on, run it by me again” [Fuller laughs], you know? Sometimes, I’ll keep the thing going there. I’ll deal with that phrase and expand on that, develop that. Then you’ll hear him say, “Yeeeaaaah!” or “Heeeyyyyy!” And when I see those little interests tapering off, I’ll say, “All right now, come on. Let’s try something else and take it another way.” I’ll put something else out there in my solo, and I flirt with it to feel them out to see what the response would be. lt could be something melodic or rhythmic, something like a quotation, but not a gimmick. Just something that would stir up their interest. When I get that audience around that, they won’t let me off the stage.
As implied above, various aspects of the experience shared by improvisers and audience within the realm of jazz are reminiscent of intense qualities of human relationship experienced “in real life,” that is, off the stage. Tommy Turrentine, who generally enjoys joking and making other people laugh, says that “it’s the same thing when I play. I feel good when I get a response.” From Charli Persip’s perspective, “there are divine moments when you receive feedback from audiences which make you feel sure that you’re on the right road. The thrill of being liked and the pure adoration of fans is like falling in love.”
For other artists, the expression of intimate feelings when improvising is itself like being in love with the audience. Musical banter sometimes grows out of this relationship. Roy Haynes recalls Charlie Parker offering musical commentary on the changing character of the audience through melodic quotations evoking the titles or lyrics of tunes. “He could see something happen and play about it on his instrument. Like he’d see a pretty girl walk in the club we’re playing. He’d be playing a solo and all of a sudden he’d go into . . . ‘A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody,’ wherever he was [in the piece].” Other times, he might weave into his improvisation patterns that mimicked the unusual behavior of an audience member. It was a function of his “fast mind, genius mind” that he could instantly absorb such material and make it “fit” within the context of his performance. Other Parker sidemen give comparable accounts.11
Similarly agile were the reactions of one drummer, who interacted playfully with a listener as she strolled in front of the stage. The drummer improvised patterns based on the rhythm of her swaying hips. In the context of dances, jazz musicians can derive rhythmic stimulation from the palpable pulse generated by an enthusiastic crowd, or the graceful movements of exceptionally skilled dancers.
The audience does not always affect musical events in such specific ways as eliciting particular phrases from an artist or influencing the development of these phrases into motives. It may rest, instead, on the periphery of the musician’s consciousness, remaining, nevertheless, a powerful motivating force. The audience can energize improvisers amid the debilitating aspects of road life. There are times when he is on tour that Kenny Washington is “just tired from traveling.” If he is tired when he enters a club, at first he may not “even want to play the drums. But,” he says, “if I can feel the electricity from the audience, I can play well. In the Vanguard, I can feel the vibes of what the place will be like that night, just walking down the stairs. If the audience is attentive and excited, I can go to new horizons in my playing.” For New Orleans veteran Johnny St. Cyr, as well, the “spirit” engendered by an “enthusiastic” audience stimulates his imagination; “with your natural feelings that way, you never make the same thing twice,” he declares. “Every time you play a tune, new ideas come to mind and you slip that on in.”12
Melba Liston remembers one Baltimore engagement that was “extraordinary because of the whole feeling in the air. It can be very contagious when you have a very enthusiastic audience clapping in between solos and after each composition. That night, the acoustics were terrible with echo, but the audience was so lovely, they made up for it. The band felt something special, not as individuals, but as a whole, as a unit.” Chuck Israels recalls comparable events. “The highest points are when you have the concentration of everyone in the room. It’s something that engulfs everyone. When you accomplish that without pandering, that is success. It’s fulfilling and self-renewing. It’s a real performer’s high when you have that and don’t let go of it. You can sense it sometimes just through the body language of the audience. It’s electrical when you and everyone around you are paying rapt attention to the same thing—the actual transmission of musical thought in the air.”
For artist and audience alike, it can be a profound transformational experience when the normal boundaries between them melts away, and they seem, as Denny Zeitlin puts it, to merge with the music, in effect, to “become the music.”13 From John Coltrane’s standpoint, an audience member who was as deeply moved as the players was “like having another member in the group.” Coltrane regarded listening itself as “an act of participation” in the music.14
Returning the affection and respect of improvisers, jazz audiences are fully aware that their responses may be contributing to the creation of an ephemeral musical masterwork. Privy to these events, they are part of a larger musical tradition from which they themselves draw inspiration. In the Village Vanguard, an elderly black man seated beside me at the bar listened intently to Lee Konitz’s nonet perform arrangements from Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool album. At the close of the first set, he sighed audibly then spoke with deep satisfaction. “Look at those young cats in the band, playing that music. It makes me feel good to see it,” he observed. “I know they could make more money playing rock today, the easy music. But they chose this instead, to carry on the trad
ition. It’s a beautiful thing. Those sounds bring back memories from my youth, from the forties when they were originally played. And they’re still here. The players come and go. Some die. But the music carries on.”
Ultimately, knowledgeable audiences may influence the ongoing performance practices of improvisers. A bass player recalls that Betty Carter enjoyed challenging listeners with different arrangements of her repertory and eagerly anticipated their reaction. One evening, Carter introduced a new line of text within the body of an original song and used the line as the springboard for elaborate rhythmic, melodic, and timbral variations. Afterwards, she expressed pleasure at the audience’s enthusiastic response and decided to add the text to the song’s formal arrangement.15 Ever mindful of the audience’s importance, Barry Harris recalls the early encouragement of his young schoolmates, and their faithful attendance at dances where he and his peers developed their initial skills. “They were really the ones who made us what we are today,” he insists.
Improvisers are also inclined to take criticism more seriously when it comes from listeners whom they perceive as sharing the jazz community’s values. Lou Donaldson recalls that the customers at renowned clubs like Minton’s Playhouse were not necessarily musicians, but they “knew their music” and could be very hard on artists whose performances were not up to their standards. In the face of obvious audience restiveness, artists may revise plans for the performance under way.16 Carmen Lundy has learned that “certain things really worked with audiences, like my scat singing,” but she has tried songs that “just didn’t work and dropped them” from her repertory. Sophisticated listeners can even affect changes in a band’s membership. Musicians have periodically approached Roberta Baum after performances to point out “weak links” in her groups and suggest replacements.
Thinking in Jazz Page 70