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Jazzletter September 1988 Vol. 7 N0. 9

Escape from CriticismIceasedworking formallyasamusiccriticsometimeatoundI968, when I gave up writing record reviews for High Fi-delity. I wanted to escape liom criticism. . e

-r Of course, every act of judgment entails an element ofcriticism. When you recommend a¢restaur2mt,~you committhe act of criticism. The differencesbetween you and thefoodcolumnist ofa newspaper are thatyou arenot gettingpaid for it and you aren’t reaching as many people. . _

If you recommend the fiiet of sole tosomeoneiwho hasno tastefor fish, yourwordsarefallingondeafears. Andthere is the flaw of criticism. It is entirely subjective. Criti-cism in the arts. consists of trying to pass off subjectiveresponses as objective facts. The problem of the critic’srsubjectivity is compounded by that of his readers.

This had been bothering me for years. I was in anambiguous position in any case, because by the mid-1960s,many singers were recording my lyrics. This is not tosuggest that no one else ever faced thieconflict of interests.Some of the best music hasbeen written by musi-cians, Virgil Thomson’s being a salient example. Debussywrote some illuminating pieces under the nom de plumeMonsieur Creche. . r

Thomson slltnlncfl it up best in aremark whose sourceI cannot find and-he cannot remember. Ihave often quotedit. He said somewhereithat often,‘ ‘ ai‘rd-- -wrong. But, he said, and this is the phrase‘ that sticks in mymind, it is “the only antidote we have to paid publicity.”

Those words took on almost eracular significance withthe rise of the rock groups and tltelpmpagartda of the recordcompany press agents assigned to selllthem. So successfulwere these campaigns that the arts have been undermined.Oberlin College a few years ago announced the establish-merit of a course on the music of the Beatles. It hadn’t,however, bothered to teach a course on the music of Jer-ome Kem, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, etal. Various universities setiup courses on the “peony” ofBob Dylan, a glowingencomium to Dylanby a British college professor who went on astonishingly!about “original” use of cliches. The man was so igno-rant of songwriting that he apparently did not know that itis a standard device to look for some shopworn expressionandbuildasongoutofit-forexamplc.NightdndDoy,IGet a Kick Out of You, AnythingGoes. Just One of ThoseThing_s,LF_r0m Now On, From This Moment On (Cole Porter),The"Boy Next Door, Suits Me Fine, Forever and a Day(Hugh Martin), Too Marvelousfor Words, Pin Like a FishOut of Water, You've Got Something There, JeepersCreepers, Day In -—.Day Out, Fools Rush In (Where An-gels Fear to Tread). IfYou Build aBet1er Mousetrap, HowLittle We Know, Out Of This -World. Something‘s GottaGive (Johnny Mercer), Between the Devil and the DeepBlue Sea, Happy asthe Day Is Long. As Long as I Live, IllWind. M)’ Best Wishes (Ted Koehler), My One and Only,Haw Long Has This Been Going On?, Bidin' My Time,

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Who Cares?, Isn't It a Pity?, Changing My Tune, Ir‘Hap-pens.Everjy Time (Ira Gershwin). jW,erha,ve.1au gen-eration that has grown up ahistoricai, of thesepeople are teaching in colleges and fornewspapersand television. The professor who for his

use of cliches did not know enough about the artandhistorly-of songwriting even to be sub-

‘It the 1960s that I found vmyselfaoccasional reader ofthepages of comicbooks, boggledbygravely discussing the charac-terization, plot development, drawing, inking, and so forthof Spiderman as if it were Tolstoy or Aeschylus. Theseletters sounded like the -therock critics.

Thisled me to coin a that Ifind--myself, alltheseyearslata.stillusing:Thereisnothingsotrivialthatsomeone, somewhere, will not take it seriously. e

t TheriseoftherockcultureprovedthattheVirgilTh-ornson antidote is, alas, ineffectual. If a magazine or news-papercannotfindantongtheseasonedcriticsonewholikesthe entataimnent industry grindsecnt. it will findsomeonenew whodoeslike itaad an arbiter ofpublicftaste. because these publications in businessof selling advertising. And thetrash mereluitnts.sperid farmoths on advertismg tltarrt those who try to publicg andserious art. o understand whys; -fion.<=<mr_s what raw. amt in atfirst look at its ads. are more consum-ers than lov'ers"0fjazz' or chamber music;panies want to reach that larger A publication'sjobistoattractit, whichiswhy it find$P°0Plewhowillwrite seriously and eamestly (and mean. every word of it)aboutsilly things, 2 C ' . —_

fllthaslong beenacceptedasa truism thatgreatartlastsand bad or inconsequential art falls into desuetude and thenoblivion. Mozart lives,-Spohr is forgotten. if

But the theorem applies onlygm‘ tlieintusic. of a fartherpast. Andthereason itappliedatall istlmtthepublicdidnot what music would live-or tiiennusicians did.Bach lives because Mendelssohn said he shouldilive. Ex-pertsporeoveripastscoresandreviseourtestheticsandcorrect histwcal oversights. The you don’t hearSpohr isnot that the public lnssaid it'dislikes,his music butflat people who truly know music not worthplaying; On the other the French tnttsicologist MarcPincherle in the 1930s said that Vivaldiliad been unjustlyneglected, and a revival; If or ZubinMehta thought Spohr had value, you»’d,heaTr him.

But in popular music the is-quite different. Inpopular music, the lay listener; and the mer-chandisers havether say. You need only watch the televi-sion advatising for repackaged trash the past, dopeyold country and western singers, the “goldenoldies” ofrock, andall mannerofjunkfront the 1940s, to

-that something new has happened in our culture.'I‘hereisacuriousanalogytoeurgrowinginabi1itytodis-pose of our garbage. Thanls to tltertgaoad industry,.musi-

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cal garbage has a half life whose length we cannot yetestimate. As aculture we are carrying oimcrap with us intoa future rendered dubious indeed by the greenhouse effectof our emissions and the destruction of the ozone layer.

It is -an axiom of criticism tlmt a work must be judged inofits intent. But with new art the only way to deter-

mine the intent of it is to ask the man who made it. Youshould not judge jazz by formal structural criteria of. whatwe call classical music. Nor can you expect of a stringquartet playing Schubertthe same charging spontaneity thatyou find injazz. ' ' e_ As developed through the 1920s, '30s, and '40s,such pioneer critics as R.D. Darrell and Otis Ferguson andthenFeather and George Hoefer and Stanley Danceandilohn S. Wilson and Whitney Balliett had to go to theartisttgfind out what he wasdoing and why. Inevitably, insuch the ogreof friendship raises itshead.

At least in theory, a classical-music critic could go to aconservatory, get adegree in music, and never know per-sonally any of the opera singers, conductors, and pianistshe was writing about. . This was never possible in jazz.Someonewho wanted to know theintent of bebop had nochoice but to go and talk to Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker,and colleagues. It is hard to write public criticism ofprivate friends.

- Unaware that they were .we_re‘touching my discomfortwith that Ahmad Jamal began my downfall as a-critic and Mary Martin completed it. V

» In wly days at Down Beat Iwrote something sar-about one of his more commercial recordings. Then

-heopened a nightclub on the near south side of Chicago. Itwas my duty as.editorofu_|¢.magazine.to attend its open-ing.“ Ahmad was standing in a reception line. Someoneintroduced us.' “I’ve been waitin to meet ou,” he said" with a7 ‘ - V 8 Y - W17andsmile that told me he’d read the piece. “Ihave a special table for you.” . ' '

He seated me at the bandstand, right by the piano.And, when at the guests were assembled, he and VernelFournier-on drums and Israel Crosby on bass played a set

likely to set off the sprinkler system. It was apowerful and Ahma_d's own playing was daz-zling. Isatthereamazedby'it,fearingIhadmadeanenemy ofan outstanding musician. _

V -When, the set was over, Ahmad came to the table, satdown, and with a warm but sly smile, said, -“I can playwhen Iwant to.” We were friends from that evening on.

_ My main job was the assembling of information, and ajournalist’srnost valuableassetsarethecontacts from whichhe defives it. To write criticism of the people whose storyit was my duty to tell compromised my position as editor,so I quit writing record reviews.,.In l962inNewYorkIbeganwritingforwhatwasthen Hi-Fi .S£ere“o Review, working for the brillianteditor and writer Robert Offergeld. I told Bob I preferrednot-to review jazz: by HOW: £00. many of its players werepersonal friends and sometimes songwriting collaborators.Whatl-could do, however, was explain them to the public,andinthat-senselwrotealotofwhatl supposecouldbecalledcriticisrn on behalfofthe artists.

iIagteedu>reviewpopuh\rtnusic.seeingfliepervasive,pernicious, and growing influence it was exerting in our

culture. Offergeld, knowing that it could sometimes inspireme to heights of fury, deliberately assigned to merecordshe knew I'd hate. After asghastly aftemoon of screening abunch ofparticularly bad Nashville albums, I wrote a letterof resignation, stating that I simply could not go on listen-ing to sewage like this. Bob printed the letter as my re-._ Iview. I - i

Bob loved me to do things like that. SI was still ayoung Turk, and had fun’ with someof the reviews. Butlwas falling into a trap that awaits everyone who writescriticism. ' Q _ -

It is easier to condemn cleverly than to persua-sively. It is far easier to be funny- when you’re excoriatingsomething. It is in things that a critic gets toparadeh_isskillsas‘awriterarmthusat1ractreaders. Heisserving himself, not the art he is writing about.

Itis oneof the central theories of comedy thatitentailsan element of what the Germans call Schadenfreude -pleasure taken in someone else’s Theman slipson abanam peel; you laugh. Standup comedians live by this,although they do not all 8PPly. it the same way. I havenever cared for the comedy of Bob Hope, in which some-one else is always the butt of the joke. I adored that of JackBenny, who always tumed the jokes in on himself. All theold radio had galleries of characters who wouldbe on every week; On theold Bob Hope radio show, therewere two desperately man-hungry spinsters named Brendaand Cobina, who made me squirm with -unease. *1. still donot think the loneliness of old maids is an appropriate sub-ject for humor. On the other hand, on theJack Bennyshow, in which the supposed stinginess of its star-and hisbad violin playing were main elementsof the comedy, ev-eryone on the show, including his valetkochester his

"wife. outsmarted him. Benny was always the victim. Inconsequence," there was something gentle ‘about his com-edy, although perhaps it was the man’s real-life decencythat infused the character he-was playing and you.

In criticism, the only approach to humor is that of BobHope. A Jacki Benny style is not even feasible. Yoursubject matter mustbe the victim. And as the years wereon in New York, I found myself more and more falling in-tothat pattem. Then Iwas called-on to re"view- a Broadwaymusical calledIDo, I D0 and theoriginal east de-rived from it. The show was based on John Van Druten’stwo-character play The Four Poster. The story, which isset in a bedroom, follows its twoprotagonists timethey enter it as young marrieds untilthey are old. {Inmusical version, they were played by fifllltl,

Now, several years later I learned a great deal aboutthe construction ofa musical comedy from one of its mas-ters, Joshua Logan. I wrote a musical that Josh was goingto direct, though for a complex of reasons it never got tothe stage. It lies in a filing cabinet, with my scriptandlyrics and some excellent music by Lalo Still, forall the disappointment of watching-that project go down-thesink, I would have paid money for those months of work-ing underJosli’s guidance and tutelage. Noin drama could have come close to teaching me whatloshdid. Josh and I became friends, and hisrecent death sad-

OneofthethingsIlearnedisthatyouwouldbewell-advised to have a secondary plot in -your musical.

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-all musicals do, with an outstanding exceptionand Loewe’s dazzling My Fair Lady. The reason for thesubplot is simple. It spells the two lead characters. It letsthem get offstage long enough for a glass of_,Water. It letsthem rest their voices and catch their breath, and go backout to do moreof the strenuous physical work that stage-acting is, particularly that which includes singing.

. Butl didn’t know this when I reviewed IDo, IDo, andinstead of being struck with wonder at the ability of MaryMartin and Robert Preston to carry an entire musical bythemselves, on stage constantly, without a subplot, withoutany time for that glass of water and that deep restorativebackstage breath, instead ofpraising them for endurance ifnothing else, I concentrated on the fact that Miss Martinwas too old for the part. The girliis only twenty or so at thebeginning of the story. And I said that while you can age ayoung actor or actress, you cannot youthen an older one.

I forget what else I said, but it was a Bob Hope review,perhaps even a Don Rickles review. B

Something happens when a piece of writing goes intoprint. It undergoes some kind of sea change. It alwaysseems just a little different than what you thought it wouldbe. And when that review came out in High Fidelity, I readit with horror. It struck me that somewhere in Manhattanthere was a lady named Mary Martin, a real live person,and that it is not a sin too grow old, and that if I hadfelt aneed to say that she should try to avoid roles no longerappropriate for her, there should have been a gracious waytosay it. Iprayed thattheladynamcdMaryMartin hadnotreadand would never read that review.

And I quit writing reviews. Incidentally, my discomfi-ture_ over that review grew acute several years later when Iwas working with Josh Logan. Mary Martin lived in theysame East Side neighborhood he did, in fact his_.apa__rtmenthad a window that overlooked her terrace. They werefriends, having worked on South Pacific together. Everytime I went to Josh’-s apartment, indeed every time I wenttoyany kind of social gathering with him, I hoped she wouldnot tum up. She never did. And if she did read that reviewat the time, and if by any chance she ever reads this, Iapologize for it. -

Nicholas Slonimsky wrote a book called A Thesaurus ofMusical Invective, culled from writings about music fromabout the time of Beethoven on. It is a fascinatingbook,but in a sense it is a deeply dishonest one. By selectingonly derogatory reviews that have been proved wrong byhistory, Slonimskyabets that belief dear to musicians, par-ticularly jazz musicians, that the critics are usually wrong.

This takes the form of such statements as “LeonardFeather really missed the boat on Bird.” As a matter offact, Leonard did not miss the boat on Bird. _He was one ofCharlie Parker’s early champions in print and one of thefirst producers to record I can tell you that I missedthe boat on Bird, although I was still in high school and notyet a writer. For the first few monthsafter those earlySavoy and Dial records came out, I thought he was crazy.So what? I missed the boat on”Delius for years, and onDave McKenna too. one day in a nightclub I_sud-denly understood what Dave was doingand why so maypianists are in love with his playing. I got the message ofBill Evans within the first sixteen bars I heard, but PaulWeston tells me he didn’t get it for the longest time. And

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then itiiit him, as Dave McKenna’s playing hit me. Sowhat? If an-artist does something genui-"rely new, it is onlyto be expected that a good many people, including critics,won’t.get it for a while. i - ,

The idea that Bird was neglected isgrefuted by a newBluebird reissue ofthe Metronome All Star Band recordsfrom the RCA vaults. The players on those wereselected by a popularity poll of Merronorue’s Therecording of 1946 features veterans of the big“-band era, andthe music is firmly in the olderstyle. The poll-winners inI949 include Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Fats Navarro,Kai Winding,JJ. Johnson, Lennie Tristano, and Bird, amongothers. One of the tunes is an original called Overtime byPete Rugolo that is uncompromised bebop. Indeed, it isexaggeratedly so, with all the mannerisms that character-ized bop at that period.‘ 'So Bird and his music achievedjust that much recognition in only three years.

. The fact is that the bulk of jazz criticism in Americahas stood the test of time, from the early 1920s when CarlEngel sang its praises inThe Atlantic, through the late 1920swhen R.D.-Darrell wrote perceptive reviews accurately tak-ing the measure of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington,through the 1930s when Otis Ferguson was writing insight-fully. about Bix Beiderbecke, through the time LeonardFeather was praising Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie inMetronome and Esquire, on into the general praise of JohnColtrane in the 1960s.‘,

Thus I fmd myself occasionally playing devil's advo-cate with Oscar Peterson, defending the critics collectivelyand individually. To Oscar, jazz critics andhe has been publicly vocal about it for years. One _c_anunderstand why, in view of the way some of them havesavaged him, although I remind him how much others havepraised him. I mentioned a record he made that I particu--larly like, If! Should Lose You, which -is in a 1983 Pabloalbum called (fYouCou1d See Me Now. It is, by the way,one of his best albums, and out now onCD. ~

I-Iis work on that track is some of that simple, selec-tive, almost -lazy playing his detractors would have youthink he never does. But there is something else about thattrack that particularly-interests me. In the process of writ-ing his biography, I- read almost everything ever printed inperiodicals about Oscar in English _or French, and even alittle of the Italian, to the extent that Icould. I particularlyremember a French critic who said he was deeply boring.This illustrates what is wrong with criticism. ’He is notboring to me. The critic stated a fact about himself as afact about the playing. There was a when DaveMcKenna’s playing was boring to me because I; had not yetcome into contact .with that incredible juggernaut time ofhis. When I did, my subjective state of boredom ceased;but nothing had changed in Dave’s playing. ‘ ‘

One of the things I repeatedly encountered inreviewsof Oscar was the statement that his music hasjno form, thathe throws it all away inthe first few bars of the blowing.In the history of jazz, there has never been a pianist with asstrong a capacity for and avcontrol of the buildingof interest in a solo. I I‘

As for form, like all jazz musicians he has more of it insome solos than others. And, I submit, if you elevate formto the position of a primary criterion in the_evaluat.ion ofjazz, you are imposing on it it Standard more appropriate toMozart quartets. This is one ofthe differences between the

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two musics — between what Bill Evans called spontaneousmusic and contemplative music.

What I told Oscar about the solo on If I Should LoseYou is this:1 Nat Cole recorded that tune in — I think -— a ten-inchLP called Manhattan Serenade. I loved the way he did it,and from the first notes of Oscar's recording it is obviousthat he did too. For he is playing with Nat Cole's kind oftone and time, which are integral to Peterson’s playing any-way but especially obvious in this track. _

That tune is built on an octave leap on the third, which/' is followed by an octave on the tonic. Oscar plays anexquisite melody chorus, very simple. There was anothersong with which Nat Cole was associated that is built outof the octave on the third— Nature Boy. And the first twobars of the blowing Oscar plays the melody ofNature Boy.Then he begins to develop it, and all through his solo andthe out-chorus that follows the guitar solo by Ioe Pass, he isweaving his material out of that octave on the third andallusions to Nature Boy. It is the most elegantly constructedthing. And whether Oscar did this subconsciously or bydesign is irrelevant: he did it. The result is a beautiful trackin loving even if unpremeditated tribute to Nat Cole.

IaskedOscar,IfIweretowritethat,isn’tthatcriti-cism? He insisted that it was analysis and teaching. _

Nowthat is splitting the hair pretty fne.e And yet he indulges in the act of criticism every timehetells melshouldlistentothisperson orthat,orsaysthathe doesn’t care for so-and-so’s playing. Like someone rec-ommending a restaurant, he just isn’t getting paid for it.

' Tasw, the French say, is the result of a thousand distastes.Taste is built out of a process of leaming what to reject.And the artist himself is constantly making judgments, criti-cisms, when he selects this interval instead of that, thiscolor instead of that, this word instead of that. An artistgrows not just by building his technique but, which is equallyimportant, by finding out what is not-good and excising itfrom his work.

In the late 1960s, I saw the futility of criticism in amass society. No longer were people with knowledge oftheartsabletosetastandardthatseepeddowntoaless-informed public. When the record industry discovered thatit was possible to sell a million albums — and later, tenmillion, and eventually thirty and forty million - it lostinterest in anything less. An excellent jazz album that soldperhaps twenty thousand copies was laughable to the law-yers and accountants who had taken control of the majorrecord companies and for that matter broadcasting and book-publishing industries. Anticipated sales became almost theonly standard of the communications industries. -

So I wrote what I didin protest against the rising tideof the meretricious. And found that what I was doing wasabout as effective as King Canute’s effort to hold back thesea.

I wrote that if the rockers were allowed to continue towrite songs about drugs, and allowed to extol their use bytheir own example, we would have within a decade or twoa drugged-out society. And we’ve got it. Recently a promi-nent television producer said that in those years he thoughtI was crazy foryvriting such things. Surveying now a soci-ety in which mugs are one of its most deadly and pervasiveproblems, andan incredible drain on the national economy

— I favor full legalization, by the way —- he saw that I wasright and he was wrong back then. But hearing that nowdoes me no good, and writing those things then did thesociety no good. My writing prevented nothing. Oh, Iscared RCA Records once in the early days of the rockpandemic to the point where they held back release of aJefferson Airplane album, but when they saw that drugrecords were being released with impunity over at Colum-bia, they put it out. Such decisions were consciouslyitaken,with consequences to American society we see in everycrack vial around a high school.

To the extent that I continued to write criticism, it wasof the industries that distribute our “art.” Because of myexperience as a songwriter,‘-.I came to know how the pub-lishing and record industries really work, not the way theirp.r. departments would have you think they work. I be-came aware of the rampant theft of royalties. In one casean accountant openly boasted to Helen Keane, Bill Evans’manager and producer, about how much money he hadstolen from her, from Bill, from the Mamas and the Papas,and from MGM Records. She asked whyhe was tellingher this. He laughed and said she could never prove it, andthere was no other witness to the conversation. And themusic business was full ofpeople like him. .

Oscar Peterson told me very early in my career that themusic business was corrupt, dirty, evil. “But the music isanother thing,” he said. I have never forgotten that.

What is the function of criticism? Unless it teaches, ithasn’t any. The ideal though unattainable goal of criticismshould be to put itself out of business by so informing theaudience that they don’t need it any more. Beyond that, itis-"all opinion, and the opinion is formed on an interactionbetween the artist's psyche and thatof his listener. -The oft--repeated statement, attributed variously to Duke Ellington,Debussy, Richard Strauss, and probably others, that thereare only two kinds of music, good and bad, founders on therock of our inability to determine firmly what they are. Noteven the musicians can be considered infallible arbiters.They do not agree even among themselves. If they did, allour art would be the same. Each man — if he is worthanything -- is committed to his own aesthetic, and inevita-bly will judge others according to it.

I remember something Dave Brubeck said to me, manyyears ago. Dave said he looked for certain things in jazzpiano. He said he strives for them. He said he didn'talways pull them off. But when he did, it was very excit-ing. He said that if he had ever heard a pianist who playedexactly what he, Dave, wanted to hear, he’d probably. quitplaying. So, he said, since he didn’t hear anybody doingwhat he was striving for and sometimes achieving, “I’m myfavorite pianist.” . i

Can you see what a nasty little headline Icould haveput on Down, Beat's cover? “I’m My Favorite Pianist:Dave Brubeck.” »

Oscar Peterson made a similar statement, which couldeasily have been misused. --

It must be kept in mind that Erroll Garner, like everyother jazz musician, was playing the way he wanted towithin his limitations. Style, Charles Aznavour once saidto me, is the result of our limitations, not our abilities. It's'afascimting point, andlthinkvalid. i a

Inanyevent,Isuspectthatifyoucouldgetpastthfe

affectations of modesty that our society expects, you’d findthat every first-rate jazz musician is his own favorite jazzmusician. (Come to that, one can think of a few whohaven’t been first-rate who were alight with self-admira-tion.) This being so, the same strong convictions that givehis work its strength color his estimate of the work of oth-ers. He may know more than some of the critics, but hisjudgment is no less biased; it is perhaps evenmore so.

Criticism will always go on, if only in the private actof recommending a restaurant or a record. Of those criticsin the formal sense, those whose judgments are madeto thepublic, some of them tetwh. One reads them with an antici-pation of those little moments of'1-never-thought-of-that, I-never-noticed-that, when your perceptions expand.

I never escaped from criticism at all. .I just switched sides. _I understood with a great clarity that the artist is never

the enemy, the people who manipulate his destiny are. .

Stereo OldiesThere is nothing as useless as the prediction that comes toolate. Shortly after I wrote in April that some time soonsomeone would no doubt use computer technology to trans-form jazz records of the 1920s into modern stereo CD soundthan a carton arrived in the mail. It contained ll CDs, agift from a subscriber, W. Cone Johnson of Abilene, Texas.Cone is a doctor and a well-informed jazz devotee andbroadcaster with whom I have exchanged letters. ,

I examined these records with amazement. An Austra-lian jazz collector, broadcaster, and sound engineer namedRobert Parker had already done. exactly what I had de-scribed. The material, restorations of records by LouisArmstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, Red Nichols,Jelly Roll Morton, Bessie Smith, Joe Venuti and EddieLang, and many others, had been purchased by the BBC inEngland and broadcast in a radio series called Jazz Classicsin Stereo. Later the restorations were released by the BBCon its own label, in LP and CD form. They are now avail-able in the United States as imports.

The stereo is fairly realistic. I had reasonedthat itshould be possible, using computer techniques, to lock ontothe individual instruments and spread them across a stereospectnim. That turned out to be correct. The early “re-channeled for stereo” records from mono masters were atravesty, a mushy spreading of the sound. This is not thecase here. This is real stereo, as you will find by flippingthe balance knob of your equipment to the left and right.

The information is the same on both walls of the grooveof a monaural recording. To clean up the sound of his 78s,Parker used a noise suppressor that fed -both signals to amonitor which instantly switched to whichever wall con-tained the least noise, thereby eliminating clicks and pops.The resulting sound was then put through filters and a spe-cial Dolby system andan equalizer that partly compensatedfor the deficiencies of 1920s recording. Then the monosound was divided by some other high-tech artifact intofive “channels,” after which the music was recorded as adigital signal on videotape.

The resulting recordings were hailed by one critic asan “audio miracle.” That is not an exaggeration. The

sound’ not, of course, tlmt of modem digital recording.But it is remarkably good, particularly with those recordsmade after the change from acoustic to electrical recordingaround 1925. i

Because of the detail in which you can hear things pre-viously inaudible, these recordings are going to cause -- atleast they should — a re-evaluation of some of the music ofthe 1920s and early 1930s. It certainly caused me to re-examine that era. I set out to write a report for you on thetechnical advance, and ended up thinking totally-anew aboutthe jazz of the 1920s and the society that surrounded andsustained it, listening to these records —- and others rele-vant to them - over and over for two or three weeks. Theresults of that process will be ina-near-futzure issue. A

- If you can’t find these records in stores, write to MarvinElectronics, 3050 University Dr. So., Fort Worth TX 76109and ask for their catalogue of the BBC CDs. M

Fiddler Joe iContrary to widespread impression, the violin is not anintruder into jazz. The instrument has been involved in themusic since the beginning, as farback as the proto-jazz ofW-illMarion Cook’s Southem Syncopators. References tothe instrument crop up in early descriptions of jazz. Theproblem for the instrument, and its players, was thatthoughit has great dynamic range, its volume is very light. In thedays before amplification, one solo fiddle -player wasn’tgoing to be heard very well against a front line of saxo-phone or clarinet, trombone, and trumpet.

-As for its use in -sections, the bands of Artie Shaw,Tommy Dorsey, and Gene Krupa demonstrated that stringswere not practical for exuberant up-tempo numbers. Sec-tions of twelve or even eighteen men cannot outshout fourtrumpets and three trombones, much less five and four. Afull-scale symphony orchestra employs up to sixty strings,and if you ever saw the Woody Herrnaniband perfonnjointly with one, you know how easily a jazz brass sectioncan drown them.

And string sections are incapable of jazz ensemble pas-sages of their own: you could not round up sixty suingplayers on this planet capable of phrasing jazz. They comefrom too different a tradition. ~

So those musicians“who have played jazz on the violinhave tended to be loners. They have notbeen many: EddieSouth, Stuff Smith, Ray Nance, Joe ~K_6Hi!¢§1Y» Sven As-mussen, Jean-Lucy Ponty, Stephane Grappeli, pio-neering Joe Venuti. Four of éiflhi. one ‘notes reflex-ively, were bom in Europe. And Venuti was the first im-portant jazz soloist onthe-violin. I

Three things prompt-this memoir of Venuti, one ofthem a coincidence. ‘First, he has been on my mind be-cause of the remarkable BBC CD album that documents hiscollaboration with Eddie Lang. Second, I came across thenotes of an interview I did with Joe in 1974 that had neverbeen published. And third, when these notes prompted meto look up a couple of short biographies of Joe, I noticedthat he had died ten years ago that very day, on August 14,1978.

Giuseppe Venuti was bom in Italy. He told me oncehe came from a familyofsculptors and that he was trained

— ;<-\-¢-.-,-- .

entirely in classical music; jazz came later.His birthdate is given as April 4, 1898, in John Chilton's

Who's Who in Jazz and in Leonard Feather’s Encyclopediaof Jazz. Robert Parker, in his annotation to the stereoal-bum he engineered of the Lang-Venuti material, gives Joe’sbirthdate as September 16, 1903. On occasion Joe wasknown to say he was born on a boat to America around1904. ‘Dick Gibson says he once met one of Joe’s uncleswho told him that Venuti arrived in Philadelphia at the ageof ten in 1906. And, he told Gibson, “Joe could play goodwhen he got off the boat.” _ ’ ‘

It seems that he was born in Lecco, which is nearMilan. And Joe’s career, which began in the 1920s, waslong and famous, despite his long and equally; famous tastefor the sauce.

Joe grew up in South Philadelphia, where he met Sal-vatore Massaro. Massaro, like Venuti, was a violin stu-dent. They played together in the string section of theJames Campbell School Orchestra. Though they gave pri-vate performances of Italian folk music and material fromopera, they were also experimenting with jazz by the early1920s. Joe moved to New York. Massaro, who had changedhis name to Eddie Lang and put aside his violin to devote‘the rest of his all-too-briefcareer to guitar and banjo, touredwith Red McKenzie’s Mound City Blue Blowers.

Venuti and Lang crossed trails in New York in 1926,which is when their true professional pmnership began.Robert Parker describes them as a “classic example of theattraction of opposites. Eddie was cool, logical, and a goodbusinessman (also a remarkably good billiards player, ru-moredtohavemademoreinthepoolroomsthanhedidasamusician). Joe was a hot-head, flamboyant and irrespon-sible (always spoiling for ta fight and much given to crack-ing" violins over the heads of the unwary.)” y

Venuti and Lang made somesuperb recordings togetherbetween I926 and 1932, in all sorts of contexts — some-times as a duo, sometimes with that other team, Bix Beider-becke and Frank Trumbaua, sometimes with groups of theirown, sometimes as part of Red Nichols and his Five Pen-nies. They had a marvelous rapport. ~ *» t Lang worked extensively in the New York studios, asidefiom his jazz playing, which gives an indication of his mu-sicianship. But it is the collaboration with Venuti that en-dears him to history. -There is a captivating exuberanceabout their playing, and atkind of nutty irreverence. Theyare fun to listen to,. andmore so than ever in the RobertParker restorations. "

Lang was a great guitarist. In the of DjangoReinhardt and Charlie Christian, justified though it is, I amalways mystified that more credit isn’t given to Lang and toEddie Durham as thepioneers they were. Because of Lang’sinfluence on Reinhardt, and Reinhardt’s influence on thewhole evolution of jazz guitar, Lang is a true source in theFrench sense of that word, meaning a spring — and in thiscase one that flowed on to‘ become a river. Django isforeshadowed in Lang's linear solos. And he could dothings that Reinhardt, due to that damaged left hand, couldnot. He could comp chords superbly. He was all over theinstrumentwhen he played rhythm, with total command ofthe voicings, as far_as the harmony inuse at that periodwent. .

o Po@ly he doesn’t get the credit he deserves becausehe didn't live long enough. Jazz evolved enormously

through the 1930s. But Lang was not to take part in thatdevelopment. He went into hospital in New York for atonsillectomy and died of its complications March 26; 1933.He was thirty.

There is far-more to the Venuti collaboration with Langthan you will find in the Parker CD, which contains sixteentracks. They recorded seventy sides together, in variouscontexts. In the early 1960s, Columbia Records issuedtheir 1920s material in a three-album package. ,

“The first record Eddie and I made,”- Venuti told me ina conversation in Colorado Springs in 1974, “was a thingcalled Doing Things. You’ll hear Musettds Waltz from LaBoheme. But we did it in four-four,.and I interpolated themelody in a different way. Agtune we did called Wild Ca:was just an exercise by Kreutzer.” In another recording inthat Columbia collection, Venuti uses the pentatonic me-lodic material of Debussy’s Maid with the Flaxen Hair; hewas one of the earliest to start assimilating the influence ofthe Impressionist composers into jazz.

Joe told me this story of how he came to join theleanGoldkette band in 1924. He said he worked for short perii”ods in both the Boston and Detroit symphonies. He said hewas fed up with the forty bucks a week he was making inthe latter orchestra and walked down to a club where someof Goldkette’s musicians were playing and asked if he couldsit in. They were playing a blues in C, he told me. _ Heloosened his bow, looped the hair overthe fiddle, and playedhis solo in four-note chords. All his life this was one of hismost startling devices, and it was no trick: he could makereal music that way.

Goldkette hired him, and he never again played “clas-sical” music for a living, although backstage, when hewarmed up, it was always on the old masters,"with a par-ticularly partiality to Bach and Vivaldi. He was intimatelyfamfliar with the “classical” violin repertoire, and I remem-

)4: that he had a great love for Palestrina.Joe was as famous among musicians for his practical

jokes as he was for his playing, and the stories about himare part of the folklore ofjazz -— in danger of fading now, Idaresay, since there are no hangout clubs where the oldermusicians can pass them along to the younger.

One story concerns a tenor player he workedwhose foot-tapping so annoyed Joe that finally he came onstage with a hammer and nailed the man’s shoe to the floor.I don’t believe it. Unless he suddenly and psychopathicallydrove a nail through a man’s foot, he would have to had-toslip the nail through the edge of the sole. The image ofsomeone sitting there and passively allowing this is notconvincing. _ ‘ P a

Onestorythatlknowistrueisthis:One Christmas Joe sent his friend Wingy Manone, the

one-armed trumpet player, a single cufflink.The next year he sent the other one.Then theme was the time he hit several balls into a golf-

coursewaterhazard. In afuryhethrew-his club intothelake, then the rest of his clubs, then the bag, then the caddy,and finally himself. iP This is one of the best-known Venuti stories, and I sus-pect it’s true: P

A certain famous singing-cowboy. movie-star, knownfor his flashy suits and in an-noying Joe during some stage show together. The

was full of mothers and theirchildren. slippedbow under the belly of the cowboy‘s famous horse, just

ahead of the legs, and be an ticklin The cowbo brou ht- 8 8- I Y 8the horse on stage. t Onsignal it reared on its hind legs. Itwas immediately apparent that the animal was in the moodfor love. The curtains promptly closed, and Joe left. “Iwasn’t going to stick around,” he growled in the gravellyItalian voioej. t K t

Another time Joe telephoned thirty-six tuba playerslistedin the union directory and told them tomeet him for ajob on a certain comer. Joe told me it happened in Holly-wood, not New York, as one version had it. He told themto meet him at Hollywood and Vine,.and watched the cha-otic scene from the twelfth floor of the'Taft hotel with JackBregman of the publishing firm of Bregmarr, Vocco, andConn.

“The joke was on m'e, though,” Joe said. “They tookme to the union and I had to pay ten bucks aiman. Twoweeks later, Iack~Bregman said, ‘Call them again and ,I’llpay the fine.’ Butl said, ‘No chancel” l. In the early days of television — andit was live televi-sion, remember 4- Joe was on a show sponsored by a haircream company. In the middle of a commercial, he aimed

bald head at the camera and said, “This is what ——-cream oil did for me." The sponsor dropped the show.‘ ~

Again, there are variant versions ofthe story of PaulWhiteman, Joe, and the long pole. This is the one Joe told/IHC. ' - Q I I

In 1936, Joe and his twelve-piece band were hiredtowork in Fort Worthfopposite the_Paul Whiteman band ‘in tahuge theater-restaurant called the Casa Manana, as part ofthe Texas -Frontier Centennial. The extravaganza was aBilly Roseproduction, girls, a revolving stagea -block long, and. a lagoon with. a jet spray of ' water toseparate the proscenium andfthe audience; Rose had sug-gested two bands beiused; Whiteman had suggested Ve»nuti. At some points both bands played together. In hisbiography of Whiteman titled~Pops, Thomas A. DeLongwrote, “The Whiteman bandstand was placed opposite thesmaller platform holding Venuti his players. As theopen-‘air theater was generally dark, Paul decided to use alighted baton so that both bands could see him directingthem when they played together.” ' . i

Joe thought this wasa bit much. DeLong said he got abroomstick with a flashlight attached tothe end; Joe said it‘was a fishing polewith a huge lightbulb on its end.

He came onstage iniong underwear, carrying this ‘fba-ton.” :T‘I-t lit up. the whollllle arena,” Joe said. “Billy Rosecame back and said, ‘What doyou I’m running here,acircus?’ g by I _' ” .

“I said, ‘That’s exactly what you’re running.’“But they. couldn’t firc_Ill<=. because I_ owed Paul five

thousanddollars. Iwas with Paul onand off. for nineyears.When I quit theband r. . Well, I didn’t quit, we all gotfired. He couldn’t hold the band. I-Iis payroll by then wassomething like $9,600 a week. And he said, ‘Boys, I’vegiven everybody notice with pay,and that’s it.’

“I said, ‘I-Ioware you gonnaegive me notice with pay?I owe you money."’*' t

e » “He said, ‘That's all right, you’ll.tnalte it.”’ _ VI “I said, ‘fl don’t have a cent now. How’re we gonna

start our own band? I,oan‘me five thousand.’ And heloaned me five thousand dollars. So now I owed him ten,

and llilll.b8¢k-7.’.I.'Ihere’s*‘a’bit of a problem withwthat story. Venuti’s

fulltime period withwhiteman lasted from May 1929 toMay 1930, with time off for Joe’s recovery hom an auto-mobile accident in California. Joe was, let uskeep in mind,recalling events forty years in the past. It is likely that théincidentshappened not in 1936 but after a I930 run at theRoxy, when Whiteman —tfaced by Depression andshrinking audiences — plopped ten people off the payroll,including Joe, Lang,Lennie Haylllll. Boyce Cullen,Bill Charlie Margulis, and Min Leibrook.

» The critics and jazz historians have been slammingWhiteman for but one would be ill-advised to do soto the face of anyone who ever worked with or for him.Such people harbor the most immense respect and affectionforhim. I * ‘ =

I “Ooooh, to me,” Joe said, with almost a reverence inhis voice, “Paul was the greatest man in our business.”

Joe took issue —- as mostcpeople who knew Bix Bei-derbecke do -¢ with the image of Bix so unhappy havingtocompromise art for the sake of commerce in theband that he was driven to drink and death. That idea,perpetrated by the Dorothy Baker novel Young- Man with grHorn, has done Whiteman‘s memory grave damage.

. “Bix wasn’t unhappy,” Joe ‘,‘I-ie played all heto in the Whiteman band. The only thing was,

when -weseplayed ea concert. Paul would never let us go outand play a solo. Held play the {Gershwin} Concerto in'Fand Rhapsody in._Blue, he’d play ‘ [Grofel MississippiSuite. And on those concerts, we’d neverigéta chance toplay any__}azz. _ _ _ e e * t

- "You know. I played in a sytnphonyor,chesu'a_, andthen I went to a and-thenI cracked outof thatand wound up. in -a cellar. the Silver the olddays, inearly 1920s, jazz was always played‘ in a cellar.

e t “Well. Paul Whiteman gota bunch of guys togetherand he took usoutof the cellar. Actually. I

“George Gershwin helped a lot with hiscornpositions,and we had aswonderful arranger in the Whiteman bandnamed Grofe. He wrote . . . well, it was Semi-jazzand semi-classical. But that helped us a whole lot. Theband played Aeolian Hall, 1924, and did, the Rhapsody inBlue. From there jazz went to Camegie Hall, and TownHall, and that brought the level up, and the college boyslatched onto jazz.” , . t 1

A Whiteman was a notoriously inept conductor. As farback as his youth in Denver, his father- superintendent ofmusic the DenverPublic Schools, andJiminie Lunceford’s

had saidpf, him, "He doesn't know how to con-

Venuti somewhat hesitantly confirmed that Whitemanused to instruct new players in the orchestra to watch nothintbut the leadtrumpetcr, and was quite capable of givingfive beats where four should be. Still, it may be time for are-evaluationof Whiteman’s role in American music, whichis a little analogous to thatof Diaghlev’s in ballet andtwentieth century He was a man whomade things happen. ‘Certainly Whiteman must have beenblessedwith immense tolerance, not to say a sense-of hu-mor, to putup with the antics of Venuti.

While Whiteman was filming The King ofJ{1zz in Hol-lYW00d. he was ‘also doing a weekly radio showfor OldGold cigarettes. Charles King, then starring in Broadway

\~ .:" ‘ -\

I

Melody, wasagueston oneshow. As he stepped uptothetnierophonetosing,Ioedrewanoldshotgunoutofhis

and aimed it at him. 'l‘he musicians exploded,ofcourse; Whiteman wasfurious, and lost control of theband.’The1oarsoflaughterwentotn“live”ontheradionetwork, coast-to-coast as they used to say. A

s “Undoubtedly,” Bing Crosby, a bandmate of Joe’s atthe time, wrote later, “Venuti helped age Whiteman."

» At first I doubted the following story, which Joe told

happened--when The King aflazzwasplayingatthekoxyin‘New time It opened my 2, 1930. Whiteman’s tunatheRoxy Symphony to form an aches-

traofl30 musicians. Asalways,theRhap.rodyinBlue wastobefeanu'ed,withGershwinplayingthepianopart._Con-certm?asterI(urtDieterlewutolead_theorchestraasiteameupoutofthepit,andthenWhitemanwould_appear.

Whatloe said he-did may have been at the openingnight That/wastlieitnpressionhegave me.In any case. by now you shouldknow tlmtloe had acou-

_ for anything that smacked of bom-

/ne, but I've concluded since then that it may well have

Joesaid,‘fllVehadnofanfareta'tympanirolltoopenThere was abig tuba note.‘ a ‘

i “_GeorgeGershwinwasagoodfi'iendofminethoughtloughttocomeupwith something specialfor

“SoIput£ive_pounds0fflourinthetuba.“wlihadblue full-dresssuits,andallofasuddenas

tlieeunaiitwentugtheitubaplayabiewtltatnoteandtlteywhite We looked like snowmen.

Paul cameout-and said, ‘Pardon me, where are we?’ We"name and get ourselves dusted off, and

tr?

thenW¢P1IWi-"- 'In1l944,Venutisett1edinCaliforniatowodrasastudio-musicianatMGM.’He1edawestcoastbandinthelate1940s. Butintimehebegantobeforgorten. Heseemedtohave off and a good many people as-stunedihewasdead. Thestoriesabouthimbegantotakeo_nthetone*oflegend.

Heroldmetl1atiat'tl1atperiodhedr,atlktwo quartsaday. which

It also,hesaid, destroyeda 7 . . -7y Andthenhequttdnnkmg. 'I‘hatn3usthavebeenaround

He began turning up in nightclubs. Dick GibsonpresentedhimathisColmadojazzpartyinVailinl968.Gibsonhasrecordedtl1atZootSitnsstoodattheaptonof-the bandamd and listened to Venuti transfixed. Gibson

him later, “I never saw him before. I'vehéardstoiiesabotnhintallmylife. Wildstories. Iwasn't

teal. you know, maybe he was invented, likeguy with theox. Man, he’s realthough.

G_ee_,hemnreallyswing.” . A gI saw Venutiinpason for the firsttime inmylife in

Toronto, sometime inearly 1970s. I was as flabber-gastedasZoot.Z _

ln,1974, recordedan albumgwtth Joe andarhytllmDick Wellstood, George Duvivier,and

It’s Joe and Zoot and it’s on theGh1amscuro.' Istilltreastmeit. A ",

Itwas1hterthatyear—-inSeptember-thatltalked

to Joe at Gibson's jazz party, held in the Broadmoor hotelin Colorado Springs. Joe played with various groups dur-ing tlmt party. In one of them, thepianist was Roger Kel1a-way. Roger was then thirty-two, Venuti was seventy-six, ifChilton and Feather are l'iflh1»'S$Y6llIy-'Cighl if Joe’s unclewas right. Roger said afterwards, “That old man will runyou ragged. You constantly feel asif you’re being goosed.”

JO63lldIt8l,k6d0Il~8!6l'l’&6-by8]flk$ld6b6hillC1lh6hotel. It was a soft sunny afternoon, just prior, to fall.Beyonddielakefltekockiesrosesleepagainstthesky. Hetold me that he had relatives - twenty-threegrandchildren'—-scattere_dfromSeattle,wherehewasliv-ing with his second wife. to Milan,_which he visited at leastonceayeartohangoutwith cousins. OtherltalianstoldmeJoehadnoAtnerieanaccentinIta1ian;hehadnoIta1ianaccent in English. Photos taken in the early daysof hiscareer show him as a handsome youngiman. But by thatSeptember alternoon, he had grown thick-waisted. He wasb31d8lld,h6W(I'6d8lkfIllfl!Il6d813$S6‘3-_ g a

“Looking at his waddling walk and potbellied figure,”Leonard Feather wrote inthe LosAngeles Times shortlythereafter,“youwouldneverguessthatthismanisoneofthe few certified geniusesofjazz . along with Artif-strong, Tattun, and Bix.” ~

Seeingussittingtheretalkingatatableonthatterrace,othermusiciansbegautopullupchaitsandenterthecon-vetsation. They talked to him aboutGershwin, about Ravel,whom he said he’d met during the composer's inAmerica. He talked to-fltem of Ravel’s orchestrationswithbroadanddetailedknowledge. HetalkedtothemaboutMilhaud._ Though they weren’t, you had the feeling that theywetesittingathisfeet. ..- _ _- - _

“'I‘he'amazing thing about you. Joe.” I “is that-above and beyond the music, and the jokes; and all the restofit, youareoneofthoserarepeopleewhohasreachedanage, and can look back and lmow that you’ve lived.”

“Well,” he said, “you reach a and you go on. andyoureach anotherpeak,andthat'sthewayI liketodoitinmusic. r ~ - é

Someonecametotellhimacarhadaniyedforliim,He was leaving for a gig somewhere, and then a

Andlneversawhimagain. . T

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