I took my wife to see Sonny Rollins a few weeks ago. He was musical dynamite. At 77 years old, he was playing with all the verve and vigor of a 30 year old. While other players who get to be his age leave the heavy musical lifting to younger players, Rollins didn't let his sidemen overshadow him, and his sidemen were some mighty fine players.
Rollins only played one set, but it was close to two hours and his energy never seemed to flag. The other band members took solos, but Rollins really soloed. My wife thought that some of his solos were too long, but I could have listened to him go on all night. The next day I even pulled out some of his CDs because I just hadn't had enough.
He received a standing ovation as soon as he walked on stage just for being Sonny Rollins. He's one of the remaining survivors of his generation. We fans appreciated the fact that he was willing to come to Detroit and serenade us. Outside of Labor Day weekend, not very many big name Jazz musicians come here. People will travel downtown to listen for free, but it's hard to get people to pay for this music.
Another great player that I saw years ago, was Oscar Peterson, who sadly, died a few days ago. His technique never failed to amaze me, but it was more than technique, the music was passionate and beautiful. The one time, many years ago when I saw him in concert, the audience amazed me too. People were leaving during the encore to get to their cars in order to beat the traffic.
One old timer still around and still playing is Barry Harris, one of the myriad players both jazz and nonjazz, who have come from Detroit. He is doing his annual Kwanzaa concert in Detroit. My wife and I went to one of these concerts a few years ago. He was using local talent as his rhythm section, and if I remember correctly the bass player may have gotten lost at one point. It was still a fun concert.
Another elder, who like Rollins, Peterson, and Harris, has achieved the status of elder statesman of jazz is Ornette Coleman. Because he created music that was like none that came before him, he had a much tougher time than the other musicians mentioned. There's a fairly lengthy article in the current Rolling Stone, but you have to subscribe in order to read it on line.
And then there's Sun Ra and the Arkestra. Ra himself (keyboardist, composer, and leader of the Arkestra), left the planet a few years ago, but he left thousands of recordings both from the studio and live in concert. Some Ra fans are kind of like Deadheads, but mostly without the drugs. Sunny, as his fans affectionately referred to him would have frowned on that. Ra fans would go to every live show, buy every album (which Ra pressed himself on his own Saturn label), and record shows on portable tape players. Some of these recordings have become (sort of) legitimate releases. While I don't consider myself an obsessive fan, I do have a reasonable number of his releases. I saw him four or five times when he brought the Arkestra through town, and I bought a record or two every time.
Just this month, Transparency Records released a 28 CD set recorded during the Arkestra's extended stay the week leading up to New Year's Eve, 1981 at the short lived, long defunct, Detroit Jazz Center. I don't remember which one, but I went to one of those shows. I wanted to buy a set, but I thought it was going to be way to expensive. It wasn't. I only had to fork over $85.00 and a set (one of the only 400 released) is mine. The sound isn't that great. That's normal for a Sun Ra release, but the music so far, after listening to seven discs is phenomenal . . . if you like Sun Ra. Although he does play straight ahead jazz covering the whole history of jazz, the music can get pretty far "out there" so he's definitely not for everyone. I try not to play him if my wife is home.
Some people have even accused Sun Ra of being weird. Can you imagine that?
The Pulitzer board is discovering Jazz. Not only did Ornette Coleman win one for his latest CD, Sound Grammar, but John Coltrane was awarded a Special Citation. Thelonious Monk received one last year. To me it's always good when the market for Jazz music is expanded. That means it will be easier for me to find the CDs that I want because they will be pushed the same way that the latest pop garbage is pushed.
I don't think the Pulitzer Prize is going to expand the market though. As much as I like Ornette and Jazz, I'm through kidding myself that it has mass appeal. As important as it may be to the history of music, the fact is that as a Jazz fan, I'm part of a dwindling minority. And as tiny as the appeal of Jazz is to the music consumer, the appeal of Ornette Coleman among Jazz fans is even smaller. Ornette has always been "out there". I like "out there", I own a bunch of his albums, and I've seen him in concert three times. I was at the Sound Grammar concert in Ann Arbor Michigan. It was a good concert, but I didn't think it was a great concert. I'm glad I went. Ornette has acheived "elder statesman" status. That takes a lifetime, so who knows how much longer he's going to be with us? The Sound Grammar CD was recorded in Germany. Had it been the Ann Arbor show, I would have bought it immediately. Eventually I'll get it. It just doesn't seem important right now. A friend that I attended the concert with, has a bootleg copy of the show, but it's not the complete show.
The first time I saw Ornette, he was with his Prime Time band. It was a free concert in Detroit. There was a band before him. As soon as he began, people began leaving. About half way through the show, my date asked how much longer he was going to play. My answer, "until everyone is gone."
The second time I saw him was on the Song X tour, with Pat Metheny. Recently I met someone who was also at that show, but he went to see Metheny. Big mistake. They played Ornette's music. He didn't last the whole show. For this latest one, we were all Ornette Coleman fans. Nobody left.
As for the Pulitzer, from what I've read about past awards, especially when it comes to news reporting, it's become increasingly politically motivated. Can this also be true about the music awards? According to Terry Teachout,
So what's going on here? Let's start with a little history. The Pulitzer Board embarrassed itself in 1965 when it overruled that year's jury, which voted to give Duke Ellington a special award for lifetime achievement. It would have been the first time a Pulitzer went to a jazz musician. Ellington clearly qualified for the honor, but the board thought otherwise. The Duke, as usual, had the last word. "Fate is being kind to me," he said. "Fate doesn't want me to be famous too young." (Ellington was 66 at the time.)
What made the decision especially galling was that the Pulitzer Prize had--and has--a bad reputation among music professionals. Prior to 2004, Pulitzer juries consisted of four composers and a critic. Classical composers are famously cliquish, so the prizes were usually given out to members in good standing of classical music's old-boy network, often to pieces that soon vanished without a trace. (Ever heard of Quincy Porter's Two-Piano Concerto?) Some were worthy, others less so, but the award itself came to be seen as increasingly irrelevant.
More recently, the Pulitzer Board approved the granting of special posthumous awards to Scott Joplin, George Gershwin and--yes--Ellington. Mr. Marsalis's award was rightly seen as a deliberate attempt to widen the scope of the main prize by giving it to a jazz composer for the first time. But most jazz is improvised, not notated, meaning that few of the greatest jazz musicians would have qualified for a Pulitzer. So the board changed the rules, making recorded music eligible and increasing the number of noncomposers on the five-person jury from one to three. The result? Mr. Coleman won this year's prize, and the jury also gave a special award to John Coltrane. (Thelonious Monk received a similar honor in 2006.)
I believe devoutly in the beauty and significance of jazz, and I love Mr. Coleman's bold, innovative music. But by giving the Pulitzer Prize to a good-but-not-great album that doesn't even pretend to meet its eligibility requirements, the board has debased the value of the music prize still further. As for the special award, why single out Coltrane now, great as he was? Why not Charlie Parker--or Louis Armstrong, for that matter? It's hard not to wonder whether the board is trying to atone for past blunders by playing an arbitrary game of catch-up.
I don't know what criteria they use to award a Pulitzer, and I don't care. I do know that when Detroit has its annual Jazz festival every Labor Day Weekend, Hart Plaza is packed for the entire long weekend. Of course all the music is free. The problem is that there are multiple stages and lots of crowd noise, so the music is hard to hear. A few years ago, my wife and I went down to hear Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lew Tabackin in a quartet setting. The piano volume was turned up so high the sound was distorted. Being on one of the smaller stages though, they had no choice if they were going to be heard. People will attend in droves if it's free. Ask them to pay to hear the musical gifts of masters who have spent lifetimes honing these gifts, and they can't be moved from in front of their TV sets.
I'm going to stop now or I'm going to start ranting in a most unpleasant manner. Besides this has gone from being about Ornette Coleman to a commercial for Jazz.
This past weekend I took my wife to see my favorite trumpet player, Dave Douglas at the Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor. We sat in the front row, which was so close, we could rest our feet on the stage. We could have shaken hands with Dave and the other musicians, but they were busy.
They played tunes from Dave's latest CD, Mountain Passages, with his latest band, which features: reeds, cello, tuba, and drums. He also featured songs that haven't been recorded yet. It was a great concert. I hate trying to describe music, because especially in the case of Mr. Douglas, it's so abstract. Yes, this dynamite band created moods, painted tonal pictures, but they also swung like crazy, something any self-respecting jazz musician had better be able to do.
I constantly marvel at what Douglas can do with the unusual ensembles he creates. The first Dave Douglas CD I ever bought was The Tiny Bell Trio, Live in Europe. I was amazed at the music and the beauty he created with a trumpet, electric guitar and drums. I suppose it's all in the compositions. Duke Ellington wrote with specific musicians in mind. Dave might do the same thing. Whatever he does, it works.
After the show, he was peddling the new release, so I bought one, which he graciously signed. Buy it. It's great.
Being a jazz fan, I love Mosaic box sets. If things were better financially, I'd have a lot more. I hesitated ordering the Reprise Duke Ellington set because, well, he does Mary Poppins, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and some other tunes that just sounded like they had to be cheesy. I was wrong.
As any Mosaic fan knows, it's now out of print, so you can imagine my elation when I scored a copy from a used record shop. The best part was, I got it for $51.00.
The music on this set is superb. Duke arranged all of the tunes to make them his. The band is in fine form, alto sax doesn't get any better than Johnny Hodges, and while there are some tunes that are less than golden, this is a set well worth having.
"No one can find a safe way out for himself if socety is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result." -- Ludwig von Mises
War's legitimate object is more perfect peace. Flavius Vegitius Renatus
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