Listening to Jazz

I am well aware that I have been very quiet on here over the past month. Outside of the occasional update, there are few clues as to what I have been doing with my life. The answer is quite simple and one that plagues a lot of us. My schedule has been and will be busy for the next few months. This is in part because of my final semester at university and the need to get the finals to look the best that they can. I’ve been very distraught lately and spending endless hours doing research and writing up essays in the hopes of pleasing the powers that be. Some days are downright exhausting and I don’t want to see the school server ever again. Others make me realize how much I’m going to miss the realm of academia. It’s a mixed emotion kind of experience, but there has been one thing that has kept me sane. As I open the study materials, I pull out headphones and click on Spotify for some motivation. So what have I been putting on?

Much to my surprise, I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz.

It doesn’t take deep research of The Memory Tourist to confirm how surprising this is. Jazz is not my forte. I don’t know the masters nor would I be able to tell you every subgenre or even how long back it was invented. Nothing really makes sense for why over the course of the final week of the semester I listened to almost 20 different jazz albums. This isn’t some hair-brained scheme to be one of those “smart people” that are greater for their music taste. No, this is maybe a mishap caused by my belief that Spotify is godawful at perusing film scores outside of Top 40 stuff. Left to my own devices, I went search for a score, more so a mood, and landed where I did. Having been a big fan of a recent viewing of Sweet Smell of Success (1957), I thought that a jazz-twinged score would be up my alley. 

And so it began. I popped on Dizzy Gillespie’s work for The Cool World (1963) and was blown away. I think on some level bebop was a genre that intrigued me because it was the manic, cool cousin to what I had interpreted as jazz. It was fun. The horns were blaring with such bombast. Who wouldn’t like bebop? I get that there’s something soporific about the style and it’s not always the most rewarding melodically, but it really connects with you when the musicians land on one melody and just go for it. Oh sweet mercy, does Dizzy know how to latch onto a moment and blow such a solo. This isn’t so much true on The Cool World, but it was the appetizing teaser for where things were about to go.

I guess before I go forward that maybe I should share some of my history with jazz. I think it’s difficult to be American or more specifically a music fan without knowing something about one of the prominent forms of the 20th century. Of course, you can argue that everyone knows Miles Davis the same way everyone knows Bob Marley does reggae, but for the most part, I don’t think people talk about jazz records like they do “Pet Sounds” or “To Pimp A Butterfly.” Outside of a select few, there’s no implicit place to go with jazz that isn’t “Kind of Blue.” At the same time, I think people are turned off because jazz can be one of two things. It could be something akin to smooth jazz that lacks a pulse, or closer to free jazz that has so much of a pulse that it becomes a Jackson Pollack-style wall of noise. There’s a large barrier to entry, though I’d argue it’s all about finding a corner of history that interests you and dive in. 

At the same time, I think the aversion publicly to jazz is something that initially makes sense but is disappointing. Whether you like it or not, a lot of culture is defined by jazz’s radical rewriting of music. Even in more milquetoast things like Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts, you have Vince Guaraldi producing some of the most echoic holiday standards. Depending on your tastes, there’s La La Land (2016) and Justin Hurwitz’s entire filmography adapting the genre into their own interesting direction (I recommend The Eddy if you want a more organic depiction from him of jazz musicians). Of course, who could forget The Harlem Renaissance or even poetry in general, where the free-formed nature is both brilliantly understood and as easily mocked? I do wonder how many people first discovered John Coltrane because Lisa Simpson on The Simpsons admired him to the point he almost became a supporting character. As someone who was part of the literary arts movement in high school, there is an affection I have for artists and self-expression. As someone who played bass for a decade, I have respect for musicians who do something genuinely innovative with their instruments.

John Coltrane

Before I delve back into something more personal, I want to conclude with the idea that jazz is more omnipresent than many let on. One of my favorite albums is Nicolas Britell’s If Beale Street Could Talk (2016) score, which I’m sure is indebted to the jazz form. Similarly, artists like Kendrick Lamar have sampled various classics to emphasize a sense of history and community. I’ve personally been enjoying the late 80s/early 90s hip-hop movement that’s built around jazz samples with artists like De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and The Pharcyde. There’s so much freedom in their sound and I think it unlocks the real appeal of jazz beyond it being bombastic or even how strong its pulse is. There’s something subconscious that is unlocked and inspires the creative mind. It may not always be the most marketable, as seen on De La Soul’s “Buhloone Mindstate,” but damn if it’s not taking the listener somewhere special. I’d argue even more contemporary albums like Jpegmafia & Danny Brown’s “Scaring the Hoes: Vol. 1” rely on the free-thinking nature of jazz musicianship to turn food commercials into the funkiest percussive beat of the year. 

The spirit is still alive and is making music better. At least, that’s how my uneducated brain would consider things.

To general audiences, I understand why jazz is inaccessible. There’s a sense that you could respect it without ever liking it. Outside of the few jazz singers like Billie Holiday that transcend, there’s little room to feel like the music is “talking” to someone who doesn’t understand the language hidden in the notes. It’s not an easy thing to put on and just groove to sometimes. Those more indebted to a Top 40 technique are likely to be lost at times and find certain bold risks to be downright garbage. It’s true that I never went to school for music nor can I even read a sheet. The best I can do is feel it. However, I do have some experience with jazz that made me both excited and remorseful to finally impulsively crack into Dizzy Gillespie’s larger catalog followed by who knows who. 

Back in my early 20s, I was the type of student who thought that media classes would be easy grades. This wouldn’t suggest that I got A’s or B’s in them, but they were something that I could latch onto and enjoy studying. Film was more the case than music, but by that point, I had gotten one of my highest grades in a History of Rock class where the teacher told us on the first day that he was tired of people spelling rhythm wrong. It was fine and beneficial to a larger understanding of 20th century culture. However, my belief that I could skid through a History of Jazz class was proven to be less fortuitous. I knew next to nothing going in and, based on my work ethic, I probably knew just as much going out.

With some regret, my early 20s were marked with semesters of half-successes and half-failures. Rarely could I achieve the perfect run of classes because I didn’t know how to focus. My future was uncertain. I think on some level I believed my days as a newsroom journalist would last forever, that I would get together with my friends and start an empire. There was no financial incentive to back this opinion up, just good times and the early 20s belief that things would work out by the late 20s. Alas, the reinvention of myself Post-25 has proven that theory completely wrong.

But at the time it was difficult to appreciate whatever I learned. I’m sure I missed the maximum amount of classes permitted. I’m not even sure if I turned in the final essay. There was little motivation there. Outside of a test that included identifying “Manteca,” I don’t remember much. Then again, I probably should’ve been more reverent. I was aware that my teacher was Kate Reid who was so renowned that the journalism department interviewed her for a segment. When I went to see a band called Nutty for extra credit, the idea was to tell them that Kate Reid said hello and see how they reacted.

I don’t know that I hold this time of my life too critically on what I would come to like and dislike in the world. I was pretty aimless. With that said, I do remember going to see Nutty at this random café and having a mixed reception. They weren’t bad, but they were the right elements to color me unimpressed. They were upbeat with a touch of comedy. The vocalist acted at times like a comedian, filling in the changeovers with random remarks. At one point they did a cover of Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” that embodied the one thing about jazz I had latched onto. While the original song was a base, everything around it was allowed to have these fleeting solos and moments to express themselves. If anything, this suggested that there was substance to the sound. Anything could happen. The song could grow in an infinite number of directions. How exciting was that?

To be honest, I haven’t listened to a lot of interpolations during my most recent run of jazz records. I’m aware of Coltrane and “My Favorite Things,” which isn’t to say I’ve heard the full 14-minute version of it. However, I held onto the idea that jazz’s great appeal was its limitless potential to explore sound. I began doing research, watching videos, and collecting lists of records that I could like. The ironic downside is that I got into Dizzy Gillespie a day late to DVR a TCM airing of Clint Eastwood’s Bird (1988) for further indulgence. 

As one can guess by the way this essay is going, there’s been a revision of my stance on jazz. I don’t know that I ever hated it, but right now I’m a casual fan. You can’t really call yourself an expert on anything after a week. Odds are that by this time next year, I’ll still be casual because I’m not a full-on convert yet. I still will pull out other genres and take a break. With that said, I’m always scouting records that I want to listen to and ones I’m saving for special occasions. For example, I’m holding off on Miles Davis because I want to be entrenched in the genre before I assess his greatness. I guess it’s the old theory: is it better to first listen to a musician at their most accomplished or most primitive? I think the former is easier to lose sight of vision, so I tend to go somewhere towards the middle or even primitive. After all, you can notice the growth whereas the other way only acknowledges the devolution.

Again, this isn’t some comprehensive listening of every album. I can’t be sure that I’d be able to tell you what was on which album with very limited examples so far. I might be able to determine which artist performed it, but even then jazz is such a collaborative medium that who’s to say that several of these musicians weren’t playing together? I’m bad with names, so if their title is not on the tin, I am likely to overlook that detail. Outside of watching this great Charles Mingus documentary from 1968, I haven’t really dug into the creation of these records, if there is actually anything worth sharing other than it was sometimes pure luck something turned out great.

I think it’s easy to start with Dizzy Gillespie because he struck me as one of the more prominent artists. I don’t listen to a lot of music with trumpets in it, so there’s some novelty in itself of hearing someone not only play, but recontextualize what a horn can do. Plenty of it is brilliant. It’s here that I began to notice that jazz as a genre was an extension of the big band era and I think I heard that transition in a lot of instrumentation from recordings like “Sonny Side Up” that still had those booming drums and certain electric sounds that could get the dance floor moving. It was moving away from conventions, but you could tell where the influence was from. There was also this amazing record “Bird and Diz” where Gillespie plays with Charlie Parker in a feverish clashing of two accomplished artists trying to outdo each other. It’s so entertaining to just hear the conversation through horns. You’re fine with the tracks going longer. In fact, you want them to. You want to see what these pioneers can achieve with endless space. I think more than anything, this is what I’ve gravitated towards with jazz is the idea of burying the most inspired idea 8 minutes into a 15 minutes piece. There is something sublime about patiently waiting and then having the explosion happen. 

Right now, I am less drawn to the world of jazz vocalists, so I hope you forgive me for largely ignoring those contributors. It’s also why I was a bit unimpressed with Gillespie’s “School Days” even if I recognize its competency. This isn’t to say that I haven’t appreciated the use of voices on a record, but it’s less for crooning and more to establish something more primal. I’m thinking of the collected works of Charles Mingus, whom I admire for a few reasons let alone that he was a pretty great bassist and very experimental with form. Even his album titles were works of art going back to “Mingus, Ah Um.” He was the type to just yell out names like “Coltrane!” to signal musicians to solo or even do vocal scrapes to create perverse harmonies. Of everything, there’s also “The Clown,” which is a fantastic record but also features Jean Shepherd of A Christmas Story (1983) reading a story of a clown losing his sanity with these jazz interludes that build awe-inspiring atmospheres. 

One of the funniest album titles I've seen.

More than any other artist I’ll mention here, Mingus has really resonated with me because I think he’s going for something purely emotional. He’s a rebellious type, unafraid to speak out against political injustices. It may explain why he seemed troubled in general and used his frustrations creatively to present these amazing soundscapes. Of course, there’s “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” which is among his masterpieces and finds him creating a metaphorical film score that crescendos with an amazing mix of strings and horns. I can’t say everything he’s done is downright virtuoso. Of the four records I’ve heard, maybe “Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus” is my least favorite, but even then he’s such a colorful character that I want to keep digging. After all, he was the self-aware type to invest himself so much into music that he even had his psychiatrist write the liner notes to a record. He’s the type of avant-garde that I could get behind and would love to continue learning more about.

With that said, I am less able to get on board as immediately with Ornette Coleman. While I am aware that Mingus was very supportive of what he was doing with free jazz, I think there is some personal bias into why albums like “The Shape of Jazz to Come” and “Change of the Century” haven’t spoken to me. I want to appreciate more experimental forms, but I guess I am still rooted in traditional motifs that listening to an artist totally dismantle form bothers me. It doesn’t help that one of the first things I read from Coleman when picking out his records was that he felt free once he learned that he could make mistakes. Similarly, he used to get beat up because people hated what he was doing to jazz music.

I’m not that cold. I do respect Coleman and actually find something of substance in most of his work. The issue is that as far as fitting the groove, I don’t personally connect. It’s a bit too manic and boppy. I’m not sure sometimes if he’s going anywhere or just putting first-take experiments out. I’ve tried listening to analyses of “The Shape of Jazz to Come” and I’m still unable to appreciate free jazz as more than an idea. I get that it’s tied to Civil Rights and rejecting conventions. However, I think there’s a popular notion that free jazz is general jazz and that’s making me hesitant. There’s the idea that everyone is playing random notes without a larger synchronicity and thus everything means nothing. In that regard, I think that Coleman is at least more accomplished, but it does feel like those burned on poor imitators could hate him easily. 

With that said, there is another contemporary of Coleman that I actually have begun to admire. While I have only heard two records by John Coltrane, I am in awe of what he achieves on “Blue Train.” A lot of it could just be that I am not used to saxophone runs or that his backing band has an excellent rhythm. Something about it feels so alive that it makes you feel like you’re in that nightclub just watching Coltrane go off. There’s a soul to every note and you’re aware that he's experimenting. You want to see him go further and see where the sound can take him. There’s the hope that he won’t lose sight of the bigger picture. Everything is suspenseful and emotional, thus creating the distinctive type of beauty that comes with those who see jazz as a passion. I’ll admit that I didn’t connect as immediately with “Giant Steps,” but “Blue Train” is the gateway that makes him make sense to me. I want to hear more.

Though if we want to talk about another great artist that I have been latching onto, I’ve become a big fan of Sonny Rollins. Along with appearing on “Sonny Side Up,” he was one of those bebop pioneers who found a niche playing saxophone and creating something organic. I love what he does with the band and even the sense of exploration. “Way Out West” may be one of my lesser favorites from him, but even his willingness to explore jazz in relation to western melodies shows a desire to see where everything can go. It’s maybe the thing I also loved about Gillespie’s “Afro” which helped to popularize Afro-Cuban Jazz and remains one of my favorite subgenres that I’ve peaked into so far. Still, Rollins had a way of grounding everything around him and making you want to hush down and focus. He was rarely the most rambunctious, but he still knew how to find something to resonate with.

Sonny Rollins

I know there’s easy answers like “Saxophone Colossus” to call favorites, but I think that “The Bridge” wins for me. This could just be because the story behind it is downright inspiring and makes me wish there was a way to document that time. Basically, Rollins was experiencing burnout and worrying about being repetitive. After taking a break, he began to find his groove again by playing on the Williamsburg Bridge every day. He slowly rediscovered himself and created something with greater emotional substance as well as a freedom to move around in these interesting ways. In a time when Coleman and Coltrane were re-establishing the field, something about “The Bridge” avoids feeling quaint because of how it feels like Rollins reinventing himself as well. 

The last two that I’ll discuss may not really have much career-wise in common, but they both speak to something that I’ve had a subliminal affection for. As a child, I had piano lessons at the nearby park. I was able to learn scales and basic melodies. However, things slowly fell apart when the teacher was revealed to be an alcoholic and most of his students dropped out. I never learned piano again and there’s a part of me that admires pianists as a result. I wish I could turn those notes into something as beautiful as they do. More so than getting giddy every time I hear a bass walk, I just love someone who creates something grander on a simple piano, capturing distinct emotions of joy and sorrow.

That is why I’m often impressed with Thelonious Monk albums. While I am not good enough at music theory to explain what makes him so great, he is someone who I connect with. Whereas Mingus favored guitarists over pianists, I think there’s something to pianists being the center of a jazz combo. There’s more room for a piano to explore and even potentially solo when the bass and horns drop out. Monk in particular had a way on “Brilliant Corners” and “Monk’s Music” to provoke and compliment every other musician in this way that showed his compositional gifts. He wasn’t usually the most aggressive about them, but he knew how to tweak something so that it played to his instinct. 

This may be why I like “Monk Solo” as much as I do. It’s one of the times where he disregarded the backing band and chose to simply play by himself. It’s here that you notice his gifts for carrying a melody and even the way he diverts from it. There’s a beauty in what he plays and you notice that passion. He could probably carry himself for whole hours at a time, and that’s the work of a master craftsman. I know that I haven’t heard a lot of musicians, especially since the late 60s, but Monk in particular is one that I feel like I’ll be listening to a lot.

The same could be said for the one artist on this list that I’ve been the most familiar with going back even to childhood. Herbie Hancock is so ubiquitous in pop culture that sometimes I have trouble thinking of him as a jazz artist. It makes sense once you go beyond “Rockit” and find what he’s really doing, but even then he’s the bridge between the artists that I have been mentioning and whatever experimental waves have come since. It could be that he’s played with Miles Davis or that he seems impatient with music falling into one camp. Whatever it is, he’s somebody that I haven’t quite latched onto despite name recognition but really want to.

Herbie Hancock

“Head Hunters” in particular is a record that I want to like more than I do. As I’ve moved beyond bebop, post-bop, and even free jazz, I do wonder where my interests will take me. I’m unsure if I’m going to fall as immediately in love with the 70s output that is driven by a fusion of jazz with funk and electronic music. Don’t get me wrong. I see why it’s innovative. I even recognize a small sample from a Dr. Dre track. With that said, I think it’s maybe where jazz in a classical sense begins to mold into something I more recognize and maybe am more critical of for different reasons. I can still admire Hancock as a pioneer, especially on albums like “Inventions & Dimensions,” but it’ll take time for me to really get to the heart of his music. With that said, Hancock and Sun Ra are two that I’m looking forward to and even Miles Davis’ notorious “On the Corner” is one I’m curious to give a spin.

At least from recent listening, that has been what’s grabbed my attention. While I haven’t loved all of it, none of it is distinctly bad nor turning me off from continuing to explore the field. What’s incredible is that in listening to these albums while studying, I do feel like my mind is more open to the potential of what music and general thought can be. It’s a pretentious way of going about things, but I’m as driven to focus on my work as I am to find the next record. Who knows if I’ll love Miles Davis as much as I’m supposed to. I think with so much context, it’ll be difficult not to.

Like jazz itself, this essay feels like it has been all over the place, though hopefully it’s been an enlightening trip. The best that I can equate listening jazz to is like a good epic book. You may find it daunting at the start of something like Leo Tolstoy’s “War & Peace,” but stick around and you’ll find these humanistic elements starting to appear. They may not all connect nor make complementary sense, but the journey would be incomplete without it. I don’t know how far my jazz journey will take me, but I am much more willing to go on this path than I was even in April. With the likes of Gillespie, Mingus, Rollins, Coltrane, and Hancock guiding the way, I doubt things will be all that rough. 

If nothing else, I hope the hours of doing this have worked in my favor. I hope the stereotype is true that smart people listen to jazz, if not for my sake then for the teachers who are waiting to submit their final reports on me. Fingers crossed.