After reading this excerpt from Clive James’ book, Cultural Amnesia, all I could do was grunt and murmur to myself. Every man has a right to his opinion, but James basically suggests that Beboppers buried the pleasure that came with jazz music, pleasure that musicians such as Duke Ellington and Ben Webster gave on a consistent basis. Bird and Dizzy made the music serious, “artistic”, more technical, and as a result, took all the fun out of it. While James lauds Ben Webster’s playing as poetic he states that with John Coltrane,

There is not a phrase that asks to be remembered except as a lesion to the inner ear, and the only purpose of the repetitions is to prove that what might have been charitably dismissed as an accident was actually meant.

Did jazz really die with bebop? Did Bird and Dizzy and Coltrane kill the music just because you couldn’t dance to it anymore? Come on, Clive. If it weren’t for Bird and Monk and Trane and Miles and Brownie, and so on and so on, jazz would have died long before Miles tried to kill it. If you ask me, jazz was well on its way to mainstream complacency. Swing began to drain it of its flavor, and if Bebop hadn’t of come along, it surely would have blended right into vanilla blandness and disappeared forever. Music has to grow. People have to invent or else the artform stagnates. Swing had its day. A very long one in fact. Bebop came and went, Cool and Hard Bop and Soul Jazz. Then Fusion — what I consider dreck — came and kicked jazz in the family jewels for a while. Now we have smooth jazz. Mmm Mmm good. If vomit were put to music, it would be called smooth jazz. I detest it, but it’s all a part of musical growth, I guess. Eventually, I hope we can get back to the good stuff.

My point is Duke was great, but Duke was always Duke. He never really changed. Louis never really changed. Not for the better anyway. Coltrane was ever-changing and that’s why I love him. Dizzy and Bird were exploring new ideas, trying to push the music forward. What’s wrong with that?

Ever man has a right to an opinion. I just think you are wrong, Mr. James.