There are a million things I wish to say about Jo Stafford. A million things all jumbled in my head. I’ve started this blog entry over and over again, but I can’t seem to find the words. So, I will just say that you can keep all of your tepid, screechy, run-of-the-mill American Idol divas. Give me just 30 seconds of any Jo Stafford tune and I’m done for.
This voice, forever silenced, can never be duplicated. Yet, its resonance will last for ages.
It has taken me quite a while to finish reading Cats of Any Color, the book by Gene Lees that examines the effect of race and racism on jazz and the musicians who played it. And it occurred to me tonight why this book took me so long to read. After almost every chapter, I found myself putting the book down in disgust and not returning to it for a number of days.
While Lees seems to focus on how much white musicians and composers have been excluded and pushed into the background in the world of jazz, he has also, in my opinion, taken much of the accomplishments of black jazz musicians and found some way to attribute them to whites. From reading this book, one would glean that behind every great black jazz musician there was a white musician, teacher, composer, etc. My problem does not come from the suggestion that there may have been white influence. Jazz is such a ubiquitous art form, it would be ridiculous to suggest that any of its major players were not affected in one way or another by an entire spectrum of artists — black, white and otherwise.
The problem I have is that Lees seems to cast such a wide net that nearly all of the genius of black jazz artists can be traced back to white hands. Examples:
Will Marion Cook, who was an influence on Duke Ellington, had studied at the National Conservatory under Antonin Dvorak and later was a violin student of Josef Joachim in Berlin…
Jimmie Lunceford was a student in the Denver high school music system directed by Paul Whiteman’s father
Gottschalk is the founder of Third Stream in American music, not John Lewis.
I’m sure that if given enough time, Lees could successfully link Louis Armstrong to the angel Gabriel of the bible and prove that both Armstrong’s sound and his singing were influenced by the hip celestial being (assuming Gabriel was indeed a white guy). In this particular case, I really think that the issue I take here has more to do with the messenger than the message. Lees’ entire book feels like it is not only attempting to legitimize the contribution of whites to jazz, but it also seems to go out of its way to even prove that blacks were not as pertinent to the creation of the music as history has made them out to be. To me this would be the same as stating that Hank Williams, Bob Dylan and The Beatles were not the geniuses people have made them out to be because the real backbone of all their creations was the music created by black musicians. All three have acknowledged the immense influence African-American musicians have had on their music, however, attempting to ascribe their brilliance to someone else, or even better, to try to suggest that they were not even the true inventors of their particular craft is both ludicrous and incendiary.
Elsewhere in Cats of Any Color, Lees states the following:
If the Original Dixieland Jazz Band was the first to be recorded, it was not because of white exclusion…it was a matter of default…several black bands refused to record. Then it was their fault, not that of an “establishment”, that they were not the first on record. Could it be that they were smarter than their black colleagues?
Lees is aware and even states earlier in his book that black musicians did not want to be recorded because they thought that their ideas would be stolen. He states that blacks were being recorded before, during and after the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. What he doesn’t acknowledge is the history of music and the frequent theft of ideas and music from black musicians. What Lees doesn’t point out is that Nick LaRocca, a member of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, stated that jazz was in fact an invention of a white man, more definitively, the invention of LaRocca himself. LaRocca stated that blacks had nothing to do with the origin of jazz. And yet, Mr. Lees can’t seem to understand why black musicians would be reticent to have their music recorded. When you are a part of a society that has a history of screwing over your kind, why would you suddenly trust certain members of those who are doing the screwing, especially when they belong to the record industry?
One of my biggest qualms with the book is Lees’ perspective on the film ‘Round Midnight.
‘Round Midnight is insulting to white Americans and patronizing to black. Its essential message is: We French are able to appreciate the great art of your noble savages, your naive but talented singing-and-dancing darkies. You do not appreciate them; you kill them
Mr. Lees, are you sure you were watching ‘Round Midnight and not some other awful film that was, from your description, created in America during the 30’s or 40’s? I’ve seen ‘Round Midnight more times than I can count and I never, ever got the impression that they were denigrating white Americans, nor did I get the message that the French thought of black Americans as noble savages or talented singing-and-dancing darkies. Whether they did or not is not the question. Whether that attitude was portrayed in this film is.
First of all, if the movie had portrayed white Americans that way, it would have been a pretty shitty movie instead of a film I really love and respect. Secondly, even if the movie had been that way, as shitty as it would have been, it wouldn’t have been straying that far from how many white Americans actually felt about black Americans at the time, would it?
I find it disturbing that Lees finds more fault with a film like ‘Round Midnight which seems to come closer to the truth in its portrayal of Bud Powell and Lester Young (Dexter Gordon plays a sort of amalgamation of the two) than in the film Bird’s portrayal of Charlie Parker. Is it not true that Powell was severely beaten by the police or that he received electroconvulsive therapy that eventually lead to his artistic decline? Is it not true that Lester Young endured bitter racism during his lifetime, that he was mistreated while in the American army undeniably due in part to the fact that he was married to a white woman?
Powell was 41 when he died, Young, 49. Young drank himself to death. Do you think his demons had nothing to do with the unfair treatment he received during his life because of his race? Fact is, Mr. Lees, the America you think ‘Round Midnight portrays is the America that did indeed exist. Only, don’t make the French out to be the bad guys. At least, not in this instance. They have the weight of their own sins to bear. But in this case, the blame is unwarranted.
Furthermore, I find that Lees bends truth in the direction that most supports his arguments. A perfect example is in his discussion of Lester Young and the white musicians that influenced Young. Lees claims that the following statement was made by a French composer and jazz critic:
No white man ever contributed anything to the development of jazz
In response to this Lees states:
This in spite of Lester Young’s acknowledged debt to Frank Trumbauer and Bix Beiderbecke
Lees goes on to describe how much of an influence Trumbauer had on Lester Young’s sound, as if that has ever been denied or doubted. Fact is, there are actual recordings of Young stating the fact that Trumbauer was a major influence. “You ever heard Singin’ The Blues?” The problem is Lees implies that Trumbauer was a white musician here, yet near the beginning of his book he states:
And how much worse was it for American Indians, whose achievements in jazz (Frank Trumbauer’s among them) and other fields of the arts have simply been ignored
Later, Trumbauer’s wife is quoted as saying:
Frank was an Indian, you know, and would never say one word where none would do
It appears that Trumbauer’s race, at least where Lees is concerned, sways from white to Native American depending on the argument Lees is attempting to prove.
I will agree with Lees on one thing, his criticism of Wynton Marsalis. Men like Marsalis and writer/critic Stanley Crouch, men for whom I have a great amount of respect, seem to be on the opposite side of Lees in that, at times, they appear to exclude or severely downplay the contributions of white musicians to the jazz art form. To me, the most glaring example of this was the near exclusion of musicians like Bill Evans and Stan Getz from the Ken Burns’ produced documentary Jazz. Marsalis was a co-producer on the project and Crouch also contributed a number of insights and commentary to the documentary. I find it sinful that most people would probably walk away from that documentary thinking that Getz was a drug-addict and criminal (at least that is what I mostly gathered from the segments on him), and that Evans did nothing more than play piano on the groundbreaking Miles Davis album Kind of Blue. Both Getz and Evans are major contributors to the jazz idiom, not only because of their recordings, but also because of the enormous influence they had on the musicians that came after them, which only proves my point on the ubiquity of the music. Getz was largely influenced by Lester Young who was greatly influenced by Trumbauer. Religion and race are so tightly interwoven in jazz that when you try to diminish the accomplishments of one group while elevating those of another, all you are really doing is wading in ambiguity and, most of all, diminishing the art form.
To me, the most important question that one has to answer when determining whether or not a jazz piece is good, whether it is relevant or sub par fluff is, “Does it swing?” Does it swing? Are the musicians saying anything? When you close your eyes and open your ears, are they speaking to you? That is all that matters. When you hear a song that moves you, that’s it! It doesn’t matter if the person playing the instrument is black or white, a Muslim or a Jew, man or woman. And when you consider that most colorful of family trees, and you look at branches that can lead from Trumbauer to Young then splits into more branches of Bird and Getz that branch off into even more great musicians, you have to realize that whether jazz is black or white is an argument that neither side can win. There is only one sure fact about jazz music. It is American. At its best, it represents what America should be, and what I hope America will one day become — all inclusive.
I’m gonna miss Obama Girl
I don’t have any kids, but if ever I do, I think I am going to sing this song to them each night before they go to sleep. It’s obviously a children’s lullaby and meant for innocent imaginations that only the minds of unmarred youth can hold, but I really like it. I would sing it until my little boy or girl got to the point where chocolate brown bears driving trains over peppermint rails became a farce instead of an awesome fantasy. Then a part of me would mourn that inevitable loss of incorruptibility and I would begin teaching them to never stop embracing the things of virtue. It’s impossible, I think, to leave this world without being at least grazed by corrupt things, people, ideals. But it doesn’t mean that they have to become a part of you.
Of course, I would never actually play this song for them because after they heard Nat King Cole sing it, they would never want to hear my voice again.
ding dong ding dong
here a bell a ringing
all the children singing
you’ll be singing too
whoo-oo whoo-oo
here a whistle blowin’
soon they’ll all be goin’
you’ll be goin’ too
there’s a train out for dreamland
that rides on a peppermint rail
it only stops at ice cream stations
to pick up crackerjack mail
there’s a train out for dreamland
it’s run by a chocolate brown bear
it puffs around a candy mountain
as it sails through the air
you’ll see a big, white snowman
who melts when he hears you laugh
a singing mouse
a licorice house
and a funny looking jelly bean giraffe
all aboard now for dreamland
we’ll choo choo choo choo to the skies
so if you want to go to dreamland
well then just close your eyes
I thought he sounded like someone was choking a homeless person.
But that seems like eons ago. Now? Well…now I think he’s a f’ing genius. That voice, that guttural agony. Without compunction, it lays bare all of his sins, his heartaches, his infinite sadness and his endless nights of longing. Jersey Girl is…well…it is what it is. It makes you know why you are in love, reminds you of why you were in love or makes you realize why you want to be in love again. Don’t look for Britney or Justin when it comes to love songs. Thomas Alan Waits has got that all hemmed up.
And I will argue with you to the grave and never back down on my opinion that Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen) is the greatest “drunk at the bar, two in the morning and I’m all alone” song ever penned.
Tom Waits ain’t no pop star. He’s the guy pop stars have nightmares about. Because they know that his voice will resonate long after theirs has dissolved into the stratosphere.