it don't mean a thing

University Challenge has stopped asking questions about jazz. I’m not suggesting that’s deliberate policy but I have a feeling that the maxim “out of sight, out of mind” applies. You don’t miss what you got until it’s gone.

A few weeks ago, though, Mr Paxman did mention an issue I’ve never been aware of. Apparently, in the world of classical music it’s a well known fact (albeit hearsay and anecdotal) that composers write 8 ½ symphonies and then die. This could be no more than an intellectual myth, but it could explain why the sonata, fugue, concerto and folk tune are so popular; the inference is that composers can write as many as they like of those without detriment to their health. Medical advice and common sense is, therefore, to stop at the eighth symphony otherwise the ninth could be unfinished.

Another well-known fact about death is that we all have about 3 billion heartbeats and then we die. I think I mentioned this in an earlier blog. By extrapolation (or some other statistical device) I calculate that one symphony is equivalent to 333,333,333.33 heart beats if the nine are finished, or 375,000,000 if the composer is wise enough to quit while he or she is ahead.

We all know the phrase “See Venice and die.” If the aphorism is true, then Venice must be the equivalent of 3 billion heartbeats or 8 finished symphonies. This means that 1 symphony is worth 1/8th of Venice, or more appositely, 20 square miles. By interpretation, 1 square mile is worth 18, 750,000 heartbeats, or 1/20th of a symphony.

Take it one step further. The City of London is one square mile, making it worth no more than 1/20th of a finished symphony. So we can state an equation: City of London = 1/20th of a symphony.

As a rough estimate, the City of London financial industry must employ some 30,000 bankers. This means that 1 banker is worth a single note of music (and that’s being generous by rounding up). Arithmetic has never been my strength, so I could have the odd decimal point in the wrong place but I think my theory is proven – it would take 600,000 bankers to be worth Eroica. As a final thought, one banker is, therefore, worth no more than a few flakes of skin excoriated from Napoleon’s backside.

Still feel good about your job, Mr King?

Jazz returns on my next posting. Happy New Year to all my readers (me).

darn that dream

After much deliberation, I have decided to accept the recently offered position of CEO of the newly formed Lincolnshire & Norfolk Recorded Jazz Appreciation Society. In the past I have sought to avoid such commitments, reasoning that time generally is too short, and my remaining time specifically is even shorter; I have had many other things to achieve before my allotted span reaches its natural conclusion.

Just lately I’ve had the inclination to reassess values and priorities. A review of my life so far revealed that my total of achievements stands at nil. Here is not the place to dilate on reasons why, or what, I have not achieved. Suffice to report that my sole achievement throughout my 60-odd years is to be the only likely candidate for the dubious accolade of “lifetime non-achievement award.”

When it was mooted that I should be the leader of LANRJAS, my first response was to refuse politely. However, I realised that the role would not be so much a burden to be endured during my declining years, but more an opportunity to redress the balance of failure and success. I looked deeply at the litany of unrealised ambitions, the metaphorical library of unwritten novels and orchestra of musical instruments unlearnt, and I experienced an epiphanical moment. I re-organised my list of things to achieve before I die. Right at the top, I wrote: become the CEO of a jazz appreciation society. Ergo! I have finally achieved.

Membership currently stands at one. I am that one. The decision to appoint me as CEO was unanimous. The work now ahead of me is alarming. First, the membership must meet to define objectives and codify a mission statement. Working as a team, I must formulate a modus operandi and produce some form of Memorandum of Agreement defining how the society is to be managed. The society’s newsletter needs a punchy banner heading and I’m not good at anything demanding pith and brevity. Then I should commence garnering articles and reviews to go into the newsletter, interesting snippets and comments from among the membership. Policy decisions must be made. Do we, for example, accept advertising in the newsletter? Will the newsletter benefit from having a crossword? If so, how often? And what about a Christmas competition? And these are just a few of the important decisions to be made. And I haven’t started the Christmas shopping yet.

For a while I was quite proud of myself because I’d actually succeeded in producing a membership list, but somehow I contrived to close the computer without saving it, so now I must start all over again. Organisation is not my forte – and yet suddenly I find myself catapulted into a key organisation role. I have obviously taken on more than my fragile constitution is able to stand. I see only one choice ahead of me – I must resign as CEO of LANRJAS.

I’ve written myself a letter and have accepted my resignation, with regret of course. The Lincolnshire and Norfolk Recorded Jazz Appreciation Society has reverted to being purely a figment of my imagination. As a child, my dreams were so vivid and consistent that I began to wonder which life was real. I worried: what if my dreams are the reality and the reality is actually a dream? Do I have my own Hornby 00 train set or is there merely space in the cupboard where one should be? LANRJAS was a dream and for a scintilla in time could have been a reality. Now there’s just another space in my toy cupboard.

too close for comfort

Back-to-Mono is an imprecisely named little shop in a tiny arcade off the High Street in Lincoln. It sells pre-owned 12” LPs, a few in stereo, hence my opening line. Here I fell upon a hoard of inexpensively priced jazz albums. I bought two, thereby trebling my collection.

One was a Gerry Mulligan compilation, a series of duets with what were at the time (1957 – 1960) more famous saxophonists, specifically Paul Desmond, Johnny Hodges, Stan Getz and Ben Webster. True, I already had most of the tracks on CDs, but one in particular caught my interest. Mulligan and Getz swapped instruments on a slightly muddy version of “Too Close for Comfort.” Both obviously took the title literally; they sounded uncomfortable in their new environment. Mulligan lost his immediately recognisable phraseology and Getz sounded as if he was being asked to play while climbing Steep Hill. Rather than delivering superb examples of the art, these doyens of their trade produced a curio. But I like the tune. I treasure the version by Art Pepper.

The second album was “T for Trombone” by the Jack Teagarden Band. The cover lauds the name of Ruby Braff (t), but I bought the album because it includes Lucky Thompson on tenor. To Associated Recordings’ eternal shame, no recording date is listed, and I can’t find the information on line. If you know, please leave a comment. Needless to say, the album includes “A Hundred Years from Today” and “St James Infirmary Blues.” These two are not listed in my top 100 jazz numbers, but they are entwined with Teagarden’s name – and the man does play wonderfully soulful trombone to match Thompson’s bluesy horn blowing.

Of essence is that I’ve discovered Back-to-Mono. The two albums cost me £8.50 and I could have bought lots more but the mobile rang to say our table was ready at Pizza Express, a few yards away. The proprietor told me he’d only just started trading but expected to be able to change his stock of jazz albums frequently. I shall visit whenever I’m in Lincoln. I recommend you to do the same.

And if you’re lucky, you’ll encounter the busker. Is he a Lincoln regular? He played the tenor sax in front of a recorded backing track. He’s no Lester Young, but he was well worth the couple of pounds I tossed into his pot. I like buskers. On Saturday we had the jazz man in black leather gloves, a bagpiper with frost-bitten knees, the Salvation Army brass band and a guitar man named Joshua Meek.

These buskers were vastly more entertaining than that execrable Christmas music now mandatory in every shop we entered. We need a campaign – abolish piped music in shops, especially at Christmas, ESPECIALLY Wizard and Cliff Richard.

Looking back on my blog postings, I can see how grumpy and intolerant I appear, but I’m consistent.

do you know what it means to miss new orleans?

Suppertime is never really good for philosophical debate. This could be because antacids and digestive juices react chemically with abstractions. Or maybe it’s the fact that our suppers tend to be excuses for quaffing copious volumes of red wine, port and single malt. Either way, as evenings process into late nights, supper conversation tends to become a little more intense, pensive and irrational in nature.

Here is the question from a recent bibulous encounter over plates of stilton, brie “Rustica” and Jacob’s cream crackers: if jazz were a language, which would it be?

One diner thought Spanish, reasoning that Spain’s fiery national traits were a strong parallel for the evolution of our favourite music. It’s a large country of diverse landscapes and enough land to allow very different forms of culture to co-exist happily, without unduly restricting parochial and regional aspirations. It can be at once introspective, romantic and exciting – this is all reflected in the language. My Spanish vocabulary is limited to calling “Hola!” across a road so I nodded sagely without attempting to contradict. Somebody did start to relate the Basque separatist cause to the history of Jazz, but by then the stopper was out of the whisky. “Mingus is to jazz what the Basques are to Spain,” explained my friend, as if I had a chance of understanding what he meant. Was Mingus a Basque separatist? “It’s an analogy,” he despaired as I poured myself a large tumbler of malt.

The Maestro thought that he could detect a clear Teutonic influence. “We like to pretend jazz is one original phrase after another, but in reality proponents tend to adhere to quite strictly established formats. Pass the whisky.” I obeyed. “The Germans are like that,” he continued. “Hitler tried to ban jazz, but that’s only because he didn’t understand the music.”

“It’s Italian,” proclaimed a visiting marine biologist. “Totally mad, chaotic and undisciplined,” he argued, but then the man is a self-confessed devotee of Ornette Coleman.

“Probably Latin,” I ventured.” Laughter rippled around the table. “A dead language,” said the cello player. But Latin is not a dead language; it’s an immutable language. That’s the great strength of Latin. No interfering scholar attempts to tinker with it and send it careering towards that oblivion where pedants while away idle hours writing letters to ‘The Times’ about the inexorable dilution of the English language, totally ignoring 2000 years of linguistic history. “You know where you stand with Latin,” I explained. “It’s cast iron.” The port came round again, closely followed by whisky “You see, there’s only one true jazz – New Orleans. All the others are scions, off-shoots, hybrids, but they are never true original jazz. New Orleans is THE jazz – it can’t move or change. Time and idioms marched on, leaving New Orleans unchanged. Like Latin.”

“It’s all double-Dutch to me,” chipped-in Mrs Pooter Dodman. “The X-Factor is just about to start. Shall we go through to the lounge?”

The Maestro and I stayed at the table, gently swirling whisky. “Bad year for mushrooms,” he slurred.
“Is that an analogy?” I asked.
He peered at me through the bottom of his glass.
“No. It’s a Bunnahabhain,” he said.

yesterdays

A couple of days ago I made a prize acquisition. A charity shop in Sleaford had for sale an old Panasonic record player. A label on the dusty black casing read simply “PATS tested. Pooter. £5.00.” The machine even had my name on it. How could I resist? I bought it and carried it home.

The record player dates from the days when the original Dansette and Bush portables were in decline and manufacture was switching to places like Japan to produce a new breed of sleek, smoky-dark, Perspex-rendered modernistic products. It predates Euronics (whatever they are) and I suspect the anatomy of my new acquisition has more mechanical parts than a 1950s Meccano kit. It was produced when the word “digital” meant you used fingers to press buttons.

Mrs Pooter was not too impressed. I’m from the era of 78rpm and she’s more of your 45rpm age. “What do you want with that old thing?” she queried. The answer was obvious to me. So I can play my old albums on it, of course. “You’ve only got one,” she grumbled and left the study to stir the contents of the Remoska. She’s right of course. I do have only one album – but what an album! It’s Charlie Christian live at Minton’s in May 1941. I bought it on E-bay some years ago and have been waiting for this opportunity to play it on a genuine old-style record player. I also have a single – Hard Work by John Handy, but I question whether this latter disc can be regarded as jazz. It’s more R&B-cum-funk.

Despite uxorial reservations, the search is on. I want to buy old jazz LPs and EPs. Modern CDs are too clinically pristine for me, even the re-mastered ones. Reproduction is perfect to the extent that even Kid Ory sounds as if he recorded the track yesterday. All those atmospheric clicks and crackles have been digitised out. My tasty pig’s ear has been turned into synthetic yet expensive silk

Those for whom youth is still an anchor to their perceptions will probably not understand what I mean. But I was brought up on the then radically different and glorious Radio Luxembourg (hissing and fading) and warped shellac 78rpm disks that wobbled on the turn table and scratched irremediably the first time they were played. My original Bud Freemans never sounded as if he was standing next me in a synthesised and antiseptic recording studio; they sounded as if the band had performed on toy instruments in a noisy tin-lined club on the floor below. I’m conditioned to expect jazz to be enjoyed with socks in the ears and rusty nails being used as a stylus. Wonderful stuff.

Now, my new-old Panasonic turntable allows me to relive my youth. Charlie crackles and clicks, and clatters and claws, as only true and genuine jazz can and should. This is jazz with a capital C. I’m in my element again. I have jazz with the C-Factor. And I love it.

Dinah

Driving home the other day, I listened to an old cassette. It’s a little stretched now so takes time to reel in the slack enough to operate at the correct speed, and the crackles are becoming more noticeable, but I tolerate its shortcomings because the tape contains a prime example of what I believe to be perfect jazz.

The track is by the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and is titled “Dinah.” I actually have two versions of the number, both recorded on the same day, 21 December 1939 in New York. The line up is Hampton (vib), Benny Carter (tp), Edmond Hall (cl), Coleman Hawkins (ts), Joe Sullivan (p), Freddie Green (g), Artie Bernstein (b) and Zutty Singleton (d). The lesser version is superb and was originally issued on the Victor Label 26557/Master BS 046024-1. Take 2, however, is perfection personified.

This, of course, does provoke the debate “What is perfect jazz?” That I can’t answer. The subject is too subjective and probably anyway demands the expertise of a musicologist to expound meaningfully. But I can explain why Take 2 of “Dinah” is perfect to my inexpert ear.

After an initial couple of bars from Hampton’s vibraphone, it explodes with three simple notes from the trumpet. The tone and exhilaration of that triplet bursts into the senses like rifle fire and brings goose pimples to the flesh of my arm. Benny Carter is better know for his saxophone work, but his opening solo on “Dinah” proves he was of equal measure on both instruments. This is the most awakening and scintillating opening chord of any jazz track I know, including Armstrong’s “West End Blues.”

The improvisation is a perfect example of how to take a well-known theme and weave something wonderfully creative and new without completely losing all traces of the original melody. Carter starts the track spinning, Coleman Hawkins on tenor picks up the thread beautifully and Hampton himself maintains the flow. The entire 2 minutes 36 seconds is tightly-packed and perfectly co-ordinated with each and every instrumentalist fully understanding (and demonstrating) what jazz generally, and this number in particular, is all about.

The number swings. I use that term a lot. I don’t mean to imply that good jazz MUST necessarily swing, but this one has the added bonus of not just swing, but drive as well. It scoots along rhythmically at a pace to outrun a cheetah yet never flags, never tires. Muscle is provided by the steady pound of drum, guitar and bass, in their background way exhorting the melody instruments to excel. And their efforts are rewarded by success. Foot-tapping is not mandatory; it’s ineluctable.

The ebullience is heightened when the band begins to riff behind the vibraphone solo. The repeated refrain never dominates but simply underscores the efforts of the band’s leader, lending perfect support to the outflow of originality as his solo progresses. A good riff is a thing of great artistic beauty. This is the Mona Lisa of all riffs. The excitement mounts as all musicians bend into the recording with every kinetic ounce of their gargantuan skill

These are masters of their instruments. Each and every one can probably hear the sounds in their heads a fraction of a second before they replicate the note with absolute perfection. All instinctively know what the others have in their minds, some innate sense allowing them to anticipate where the rest of the band members are headed. The result is perfect harmony and co-ordination. I freely admit I am in a layman’s awe of the art of the jazz instrumentalist.

Because the track is less than 3 minutes long, it doesn’t have time to start to jade like so many post-LP jazz numbers. It says what it has to say, no more or less, in a forthright and succinct way and, having said it, comes to a striding and confident end, leaving the listener slightly breathless, exhilarated and wishing for more of the same.

Listen to “Dinah.” It’s one of my nominations for the honorific of “perfect jazz.”

oh play that thing

Somehow I’d managed to convince myself that the capacity to learn to play a musical instrument was directly proportional to the amount of time spent listening to it in the hands of experts. Forty plus years of absorption should surely at least give me a good head start. I was about to become a musical opsimath.

By steady attrition, I eventually selected the alto saxophone as my intended instrument. The tenor is a lot heavier to lug around and I’d read somewhere that the soprano’s fingering is more difficult to conquer, so the alto seemed a promising compromise.

For the first few weeks I appeared to be progressing well. I wanted to play “Ornithology” but my music teacher insisted I practise scales. Within a couple of months, I’d more or less mastered the key of C and could play the first few bars of “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.” Then a musician friend lent me a microphone and suggested I record myself as an aid to improving technique.

That was a mistake. The lowing and mooing from the tape deck was nothing like the mellifluous sounds I heard in my head. So I started to work on improving my tone. I changed reeds, bought metal mouthpieces, cleaned the horn from time to time, puckered my lips a little more than was natural and thought Paul Desmond. Still I sounded like a lovelorn stag arriving too late for the rut.

But I persevered. I acquired a couple more scales, played along with Dexter Gordon on my favourite version of “Lullaby of Birdland” and generally drove my neighbours to the verge of suicide. At the time we lived on a farm and the neighbours were a barn full of cows – that’s a measure of how bad I was.

After about 18 months, a new music teacher expressed concern that I couldn’t play “God Save the Queen” by ear, I was incapable of improvising on “Three Blind Mice” and his neighbours were now beginning to complain about the noise on Saturday mornings. To add to my distress, a fellow pupil, a young girl who had been learning for about six months, was actually playing in an amateur swing band and was already romping through “Seventy-six Trombones” at a fair lick.

The final nail in my musical coffin was when I flicked open a biography of Ronnie Scott and read that Pete King was playing professionally in clubs within two years of picking up a saxophone for the first time. After two years, I managed a faltering “Auld Lang Syne” at a friend’s Old Year’s Night trosh and still sounded worse than the ships in the Wash at midnight. What should have been inspiration proved to be a deterrent. I admitted defeat. I sold the saxophone on e-bay.

I’ve now bought a penny whistle; I’m rubbish on that too. I’m going to try the kazoo next. It worked for Red McKenzie. What I don’t understand is this: how can anyone love jazz the way I do and be such a total failure at trying to play the stuff?

if silence is golden, you ain't worth a dime, 'cos your mind is on vacation but your mouth is working overtime

A few years ago I went with a couple of musicians to a big-band jazz concert in a public hall near King’s Lynn. During proceedings, one of my companions asked a particularly vocal lady to keep her voice down. She objected and a brawl almost ensued. We were asked to leave to forestall trouble, a little unfairly I thought. I missed more than half the programme of a superb swing band, but all my teeth were intact.

Live jazz in pubs and clubs can be a tricky issue. The good manager will be aware of the need to maintain a fine balance between the wishes of those there to listen to music and have a drink at the same time and those there to drink with a background of music. Sometimes the two groups can’t be reconciled easily, especially in pubs; they are there for different reasons and often mingle uncomfortably.

A pub near Norwich ran Friday lunchtime jazz sessions, presenting such local luminaries as Stella Goodey, James Goodwin and Derek Cubbitt. The music was played against an unremitting soundscape of chinking plates, scraping chairs on a tiled floor, repeated creaking of a servery door and buzz of conversation.

Yet neither musicians nor audience complained about background noise. They knew they were in an environment where about half the audience were there to hear them, the other half out for a pleasurable time. Nobody competed for ears. Somehow everyone found what they were looking for. And the same applied in most pubs dishing up successful live jazz.

I was reminded of this when I listened recently to a CD – Charles Mingus on Charles Mingus. In the introduction to the singular “Folk Forms No. 1” he appeals for quiet. “Restrain your applause… in fact don’t even take any drinks… or no cash registers ringing etc.” This was Mingus pretending to be recording in the electrifying atmosphere of a club, when in reality he was in the studios. He wanted the musicians to play as if they had the stimulus of an audience.

Some of the best jazz recordings are live in front of a vociferous audience – tracks by Wynton Marsalis, Chris Barber and Roland Kirk to name just five (Marsalis and Kirk should be there twice). I actually relish LP tracks reverberating with the rattle of ice in a glass, the murmur of voices at the bar and the thunder of rapturous applause. (That’s a Jungian slip – who talks about LPs these days?) Let’s never forget that our music was conceived and nurtured in drinking houses and dance halls and came of age in clubs and bars. Some will argue with justification that jazz started to decline the day it moved into the concert hall. In my view, jazz, and perhaps music generally, should be heard only with somebody shouting “Nigel” in the background. (Mercy, Mercy, Mercy – Cannonball Adderley – at least it sounds like Nigel to me).

In my modest opinion, if Mingus had really wanted his musicians to relax as if they were in a club atmosphere, he should have invited an audience to dance, holler and start fights. Or maybe supply his men with viper, but that’s another story. We need a campaign – more live music in front of audiences prepared to demonstrate their enjoyment of what they’re hearing.

why don't you do right?

A few weeks ago, The Times ran the obituary of Lawrence Lucie, the jazz guitarist. As would be expected from such an august publication, it was a considered, well-formulated piece of prose, setting out the history of this Methuselah of the rhythm section. Obituary authors are never identified; they prefer anonymity, presumably to avoid the risk of taking away the final limelight from the recently departed.

Yet I can’t help wondering who wrote it. A very interesting phrase was used in the body of the text. It reads: “The records by Morton’s New Orleans Jazzmen, with the saxophonist Sidney Bechet, became classics of traditional jazz.”

The word ‘traditional’ in that sentence puzzles me. What does it mean set into the context of the period when the recordings were made, the early 1940s. I thought traditional jazz was a uniquely British 50s invention, intended to separate modernists (We love Charlie Parker) from mouldy figs (Go home dirty bopper). I’ve never before heard the word ‘traditional’ used with quite the meaning conveyed in this article. Surely the New Orleans Jazzmen played jazz? We have no need to qualify it with the word ‘traditional.’ The style of jazz played by Morton was the original jazz and, many would say, the only true form of jazz.

Modern jazz (as in be-bop and its multiplicity of spawn, good and bad) took the genre of music in a new direction. It remained jazz primarily because the main exponents of the new craft started life playing the old jazz. They carried the word through to the new music. That’s a little like David Beckham inventing an entirely new team game using a shuttlecock and insisting on calling it ‘smooth football.’

I have no real gripe against most forms of jazz being called jazz. But my concern is that some of the stuff being rammed into our ears today is presented with the title ‘jazz’ when in reality the sounds are as closely related to the original thing as fine French brie is to cat food.

Play what music you like; I will applaud you. Create any sound taking your fancy; I will give it a fair audience. Record it and perform it; I will pay to listen. Publish the sheet music and take the royalties; I will make my contribution unflinchingly. Promote your music any way you think appropriate; I will support you.

But please – PLEASE – do not call it jazz purely because you believe you can benefit from the reflected glory of true jazz. The word jazz needs protecting from the unscrupulous and the opportunist. What we need is a conservation order slapped on the word ‘jazz’ so only the real thing can be so described. It worked for sherry and cheddar cheese.

We need a campaign.

if I Hadi talking picture

One of the great unsung heroes of the alto and tenor saxophones was a man named Curtis Porter. He’s probably better known as Shafi Hadi, no doubt having changed his name on religious grounds during the late 1950s.But even as Shafi Hadi, few will have encountered him because he appears to have enjoyed no more than the metaphorical 15 minutes of fame. By then, he’d dropped into semi-obscurity.

I first heard him in about 1962 or 1963 when Mingus and his Tijuana Moods album erupted into my hitherto cloistered British-trad-jazz-revival consciousness. Suddenly I was listening to a sax player capable, in my opinion, of trouncing the great Bird himself.

His tone was cut of the best diamond, sharp yet plaintiff, stuffed full of 100 carat emotion and bluesy fire. Solos were considered and intelligent, delivered with exacting precision. Phrasing and intonation were often laconic; he eschewed the fusillades of notes. For him, his jazz was not about increasing the numbers of notes per second by running frenetically up and down the chords, but was more to do with turning short sentences and phrases into pithy sayings of expressive substance. Pauses were as significant as the notes themselves; somehow he stitched silence with sound to produce solos of the utmost beauty.

Little is know about him. He started playing in various R&B bands (before R&B become a corrupted concept) and I know for a while he was associated with Hank Mobley. His first recording venture with Mingus was “The Clown” in early 1957 (about 6 months after becoming a jazz player at the age of 26) and he was involved with the great bassist on at least seven albums until middle 1959.

During 1958 he collaborated with John Cassavetes on the sound track for the producer’s film “Shadows” in which Mingus was also involved. Cassavetes acted out the roles as Hadi improvised accompanying music. Cassavetes wrote: “It was terrific. He played the story of his life to music.” The actor also records that Hadi was married, was large in stature as well as creativity, and stood physically tall. Nat Hentoff in the liner notes for “The Clown” writes that Hadi had said after the recording: “I think more jazz groups should tell stories like Mingus does, instead of just playing notes and techniques.”

And then Shafi Hadi apparently disappeared from the centre of the jazz scene. Nobody seems to know where he went, or what he did, although rumours abounded. He’d become a painter; he’d been in prison; he’d died from a drugs overdose in Philadelphia in the early 1970s. None of this is substantiated. He comes across as a shadowy figure. Writers of liner notes give sketchy details of the man, but rarely show any sign of knowing him well or even considering him important. And yet he’d demonstrated the capacity to be a monumental instrumentalist.

My favourite Hadi solos are on “Los Mariachis” from Mingus’ Tia Juana Moods Album. Listen to it, and if anyone knows more about this enigmatic and quiet genius, I’d love to hear.

clap hands, here comes charlie

Surely everybody knows that another musician has becoming legend: Les Paul. His death last week has prompted an entire litany of reviews, memorials and obituaries. He had a long and proud innings, being 94 when he died, so his fans (both professional and lay) have a lot of great stuff to remember him by. I never knew him, so I’d be disingenuous to say I’m sad. But I recognise the lacuna his passing leaves.

If I understand what I read correctly, Les Paul was instrumental in moving the guitar from the back row to the front of the band. One obituary suggested he’d invented the electric guitar, but in fact he’d created the solid electric guitar. Pre-Paul, the electric guitar was acoustic with an amplifier attached beneath the bridge. What he did was convert a plank of wood into musical notes and inspired countless youths to participate in turning the guitar into what is now probably the world’s most popular instrument. Yep – it’s all his fault.

A few years before Les, a great jazz musician took an electric guitar and sat in the front row with it, playing as if it was a melody instrument alongside the saxophone or trumpet. Others had experimented before him, but I think I’m right in saying that in the middle 1930s Charlie Christian was the first jazz guitarist to use his instrument other than for strumming or performing quick breaks in rare solos. He took the jazz world by the throat and moved even hardened professional cynics and virtuosi like Benny Goodman to suddenly sit up and take the jazz guitar seriously as a lead instrument.

Some of Christian’s best work was with the Goodman and Lionel Hampton bands. He drove many of the numbers as part of the rhythm section and then stepped forward to solo with as much creativity and flair as Goodman’s clarinet or Hampton’s vibraphone. Listen to “Seven Come Eleven” and “Honeysuckle Rose” (both 22 November 1939) and “Haven’t Named It Yet” or “”One Sweet Letter From You” from a month or two earlier.

My personal favourite, though, is his “Swing to Bop” (also known as Charlie’s Choice), an improvisation on Basie’s “Topsy,” recorded at Minton’s in May 1941. With the house trumpeter, Joe Guy, who for years I believed was Roy Eldridge performing under a pseudonym, Kenny Clarke (d) and not Thelonious Monk on piano as the album claimed but probably Kenny Kersey, this impromptu quintet jammed to provide a carriage for what is in my opinion the best guitar solo ever recorded. It swings with breath-taking confidence and Christian’s phrasing and flow of ideas stoked the energy until the number pulses and builds to a febrile crescendo of foot-tapping and be-bopping proportions. This is unalloyed swinging jazz with exposed-nerves excitement.

Why do I bring this up now? Both men were born in the same nascent era of jazz – Paul in 1915 and Christian a year later. Les Paul had a long and distinguished musical innings. Charlie Christian had a very short life – he died in 1942 of TB aged about 25 after a recording career of little more than about three years. Yet in their spheres, both had enormous influence. Les Paul’s legacy will be cause for celebration for many years to come; Charlie Christian’s is still recognised throughout the jazz fraternity.

I can’t resist asking myself what would have been if Charlie Christian hadn’t died so young. Kenny Clarke, the infamous be-bop drummer, said Christian would have been a real modern if he’d lived. He said those words long before the word ‘modern’ began to lose some its clarity. I suspect part of his meaning is lost in the passage of time.

But I wonder how many of today’s guitarists understand the debt they owe to Charlie Christian. Everyone seems to forget that Rock & Roll (the progenitor of today’s popular music) was a scion of jazz.

mercy, mercy, mercy

This posting is not strictly about jazz. It’s a cry of despair. Music is becoming far too intrusive into my life and I don’t know what to do about it.

Everywhere I go, I’m bombarded by music. I love my jazz (and often listen to other genres of music) but I would like to be able to listen to it when I want, not when some faceless cynical misanthrope in a seriously misguided marketing department feels I should.

For example, we lunched with friends at the Unthank Arms in Norwich. It’s an excellent pub serving good food. I was slightly disappointed with the range of real ales (meaning they didn’t have Abbot) but the Wherry was in good shape. In spite of the average age of the clientele being somewhere between middle-age and the catafalque, we were assaulted by pumping heavy metal rock, inappropriate for a pub at 10pm on a Friday night, never-mind 1.45 on a Thursday afternoon. Of course, the girls behind the bar were very pretty, but were only recently through puberty; obviously they chose the only music they know. Where’s the landlord’s guiding hand? My impression of the pub was severely tarnished. I’ll not return.

After lunch, we moved on to Dunelm, a vast household and fabrics warehouse on the inner ring road. Mrs Dodman wanted fabric for the cushions she’s making for our new house (subject to contract). As we waited to be served, we found ourselves standing beneath a loudspeaker set into the ceiling. It blasted a scattergun of Radio Dunelm at us so we could scarcely hear what the very helpful shop assistant was telling us. Background music I can just about tolerate, but this was virtually inside me. Why so damnably loud? Hasn’t somebody told management that the military use such techniques as a form of torture to weaken the resolve of the Taliban? And it works.

The problem is becoming endemic; it’s a plague. Few shops and pubs are without blaring perambulatory accompaniment, especially larger chain stores. It’s a greater threat to my health than swine flue, blue-tongue disease and e-coli all rolled into one. If I find a blissfully quiet shop, a car will pull up outside with its 5000 amp multi-woofer pounding until my eardrums are aching in sympathy with the welding holding the car together. What is wrong with a little silence occasionally? Will we all suddenly die of boredom if the music stops for just one minute?

Let’s start a campaign to abolish piped music once and for all. As part of the lobby, everybody over the age of sixty could drive around with car windows open playing Coltrane’s “Love Supreme” at full volume. That’ll get the bastards running for cover. And let’s see if we can force a change in attitude before the shops all start playing those excruciating Christmas tracks.

portrait

On the wall of my study (which, incidentally, the estate agent insists on dubbing bedroom 3) is a poster-sized reproduction of Art Kane’s famous 1958 photograph of 57 jazz musicians assembled in Harlem for an Esquire Magazine photo-shoot.

Many of the greats of the day turned up. The perimeters of the image are defined by Benny Golson (top left – ts), Johnny Griffin (top right – ts), Dizzy Gillespie (bottom right – t) and Gigi Gryce (bottom left – as). The odd shaped trapezium thus formed circumscribes such illustrious names as Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Max Kaminsky, Jimmy Rushing, Art Farmer and Lester Young. Count Basie is also in the photograph, but he chose to sit on the kerb at the edge of the group, alongside twelve local youngsters who were determined to get in on the act.

Imagine - fifty-seven of the top jazz musicians in the world standing together on a set of grubby steps outside a bland Harlem tenement building straight out of the Godfather. I know if we could give them all instruments and ask them to play Perdido the sound would probably be excruciating, but how many permutations of small groups could we have jamming together in sublime symphony? The mind boggles.

Now take it one step further. How many didn’t make the photo-shoot for one reason or another? Henry ‘Red’ Allen, for example; Eddie Condon; Edmond Hall; Lionel Hampton; Dexter Gordon; Barney Kessel; Bud Powell…. the list is not endless but it’s significantly longer than my blog capabilities. I can’t attempt to calculate how many jazz greats could have been involved, given the time or the opportunity. So what’s the number of permutations of potential small groups now?

New York in 1958 must have been the Mount Olympus of jazz. From here, these musicians wrought their instruments for domination of the universe of music. It all seems so long ago – so historical. And yet about half the youngsters sitting proudly in front of their living idols were probably born in the same year as I was.

Art Kane was in exactly the right place at the right time to take a precise snapshot of the state of jazz in the USA at a critical juncture. Thereafter, change accelerated and the idiom moved in new directions – for better or for worse. In some ways, the photograph must have been a valedictory, an end of term group photograph. What’s the chance of a 2009 version? If one was produced today, how many of us would be able to put names to more than a few faces, let alone know their oeuvres?

The best thing is the poster covers a mark on the wall. Such versatility; Art Kane was obviously a genius.

the music goes round and round

These are names we don’t hear much of these days: Red McKenzie (kazoo); Yank Lawson (t); Eddie Miller (cl-ts); Nappy Lamare (g); Bob Haggart (b); Ray Bauduc (d). Bunny Berigan (t) and Eddie Condon (g) drifted in and out of the band known for years as the Mound City Blue Blowers.

I’ve never fully understood how anyone can make a living playing a comb and paper anywhere other than in an underpass adjacent to Charing Cross tube station. And yet Red McKenzie was a successful band leader from about 1924 until at least 1937, and in fact continued playing at his own New York club until his death in February 1948.

The recordings I listened to while cooking a pair of lamb chops were from 1935 and 1936. They are mostly well-known standards such as High Society and Muskrat Ramble. Vocal numbers include She’s a Latin from Manhattan, On Treasure Island and Mama Don’t Allow It. Red was first and foremost a vocalist, although his singers on this album also include Spooky Dickenson and Billy Wilson. They all have that natural resonance in their voices as if they’re singing through a megaphone. The Temperance Seven took them off perfectly.

In the days when radio was called wireless, the Mound City Blue Blowers could be heard quite often in Britain. Today, I can’t remember the last time I heard one of their tracks on the airwaves. But then I play my albums rather than listen to the radio (except R3 JRR when I can) so I’m not a reliable source. The rasping notes of the kazoo swept through my kitchen as a great waft of fresh air on a sultry day.

What these tracks do is swing. That’s swing with a lower-case s, not to be confused with Swing which is an entire genre of jazz. And it reminded me of the essence of jazz, something which many musicologists and commentators apparently ignore – jazz was first and foremost dance music. It was for roughly the first 50 years of its existence a means of getting people dancing. A cynic might say the next 50 years was all downhill as arty jazz musicians started prodding around introspectively in their navels rather than trying to arouse the audience. But that would be to make an unjust sweeping statement, true though it is in part.

Yep. The Mound City Blue Blowers had me stomping my feet and banging saucepan lids in Krupa exuberance. The noise from the kitchen was cacophonous but the music was sublime, just sublime, as Para Handy would have said. And please don’t confuse Para with John, Captain or otherwise.

Let’s start a campaign – bring the kazoo back to jazz.

kirk's works

I try to avoid using the term ‘greatest’ of any individual jazz performer. Occasionally I’ll forget in my enthusiasm for one particular player, but as a rule I prefer to think in terms of many greats rather than the single greatest. Lists appear everywhere claiming to identify the “100 Greatest” this or that, but in reality the heading is merely a felony against the conventions of English grammar.

In jazz, nobody is the greatest.

To illustrate my point, consider what goes into making someone great, and let’s use an alto sax player as an example. Many varied factors combine to allow the player to produce the sound he or she does: the quality of build of the specific instrument and the artificer’s skill; the player’s embouchure and cavity of the mouth; type of reed and mouthpiece; choice of style; originality and creativeness of improvisation; robustness of performance; fingering technique; determination, practice and inspiration. No doubt I’ve omitted a few, but the sound that comes out of the horn is a meld of all these different influences. Rarely do two players sound exactly the same, despite my frequent failure to name a soloist correctly.

Now consider three saxophonists: Paul Desmond, Ornette Coleman and Cannonball Adderley. Each is (or was) a distinctive player, immediately identifiable. All were massively successful jazzmen. Each produced a vast personal catalogue of brilliant music enthralling the world for years. All three were technical masters of their instruments. Each played his own idiom of jazz. So how can we select out of this diversity which one could truly be awarded the title of “The Greatest”? We’re comparing brie with claret with whisky.

I have my favourites, of course. But that doesn’t mean they are greats, yet alone be nominees for the accolade of greatest. My preferences are purely subjective, as are yours. The most technically proficient player of all time might well bore me rigid because I don’t enjoy the creativity coming out of the instrument. Often I can’t define what it is that draws me to a particular player. So to attempt to pin the red rosette for best of breed on one specific person is fatuous.

And yet, if I was locked in a dungeon and denied freedom until I nominated a definitive candidate for investiture of the title ‘The Greatest’ I’d probably have to nominate Rahsaan Roland Kirk. His contribution to the history of our music arguably left a tad fainter mark than many others but, when considering the material characteristics of this Hector of jazz, his greatness is possibly just a little more effulgent than that of all others.

For a start he was self-taught but as a teenager he was performing with a band and at the tender age of 25 he stood artistically proud alongside Mingus. He originated his own musical instruments and adapted the keys so he could play three at once. Whistles and sirens became part of his palette. He perfected a system of circular breathing (in the nose and out the mouth) so he had the dubious ability to sustain a note almost indefinitely. I read somewhere that he could even play two melodies at once, but I’ve never heard that in practice. Even after he suffered a stroke and became virtually paralysed in one side, he still continued to perform. He wrote wonderful compositions. His range of styles started at be-bop and never finished, yet incorporated New Orleans, blues, mainstream, modern and funk. When he played the flute, he would sometimes sing along simultaneously, guttering and humming growlingly. He had superb mastery over all his chosen instruments. The creativity and originality of the man seemed to be unbounded.

And he was blind, almost from birth.

Kirk had his critics. Purists would look down their noses at his strange assortment of instruments and dismiss his work as gimmick. As jazz went through anxious and melodramatic metamorphosis in the 60s, leaving many of us perplexed and confused by what we heard, Kirk drove his chariot furiously in the vanguard of the hedonistic charge towards exploration and chaos. Sometimes excruciating, sometimes sublime, Kirk was salient in pushing boundaries of contemporary creation. Genius? I’m not qualified to say, but the man undoubtedly had greatness beyond just great.

Then my bubble burst. Somehow I missed his Blacknuss album of 1972 (six years before he died at the age of 41). I bought it on e-bay recently. I have to admit if I’d heard his version of My Girl before Hog Callin’ Blues I’d probably have turned my back on Kirk and rejected his music as stuff to play in a lift at a seedy hotel. What was his thinking in producing something so lacklustre and mediocre? Even the arrangements make little more than a barely discernible nod towards jazz.

But the great are human too. No doubt Blacknuss was a bid for commercial success. I hope it worked for him at the time. If Einstein or Masefield were to be judged by their weakest efforts, they wouldn’t today carry the respect they do. Kirk deserves the same consideration. Dare I reiterate he was the greatest ever jazzman? Of course not, but Kirk is certainly up there among the best.

i know that you know

Although you’re probably no more interested than I was, I thought I should report that the painfully young candidate won the North Norwich by-election on Thursday. She was the one who kept saying “you know” during the hustings.

She pronounces the words “you know” without any hint of a question mark at the end - you know, when the final word is given an upward lilt, as in “You know?” Rather she uses the phrase as an imperial command, as if to hint that I’m being perverse in affecting not to know, but she knows that I do know. I feel as if I’m being reprimanded, as in “You damned well do know!”

She’s one of Cameron’s bitches. I suspect she’s full of good ideas. Someone ought to tell her that throughout history new ideas have been responsible for all the world’s ills. We humans should take our lead from nature. Animals don’t have new ideas. They simply get on with life, evolving slowly without ambition or schemes other than to live beyond the next crepuscular curtain fall. But I have a feeling that a whole charnel-house of new ideas is about to drop into our lives. Sometimes I’m relieved to be old.

I wanted to ask a question of this newest and youngest MP. Why do programmers at the BBC treat their listeners with such contempt? Yesterday I tuned in at the regular time for Jazz Record Requests, only to hear some distant and tuneless organ grinding away like background tracks to a Gothic Hammer House of Horror film. Apparently, the BBC decided to delay my jazz (yes – MY jazz) in favour of a live (another parenthesis – I’m not sure live is the correct word) recital from the Albert Hall. What is this curious obsession the BBC has with live broadcasts? Why must my music be delayed to make way for something which sounds a damned sight better on record anyway? I had to miss the first ¾ of Geoffrey Smith’s programme because I had other things to do.

Already I can sense somebody saying you can listen to the programme on the internet. But that’s fine if you have a high-powered 48 gigabit fibre-optic super-fast Virgin internet connection less than 100 yards from a telephone exchange. I don’t. I have an old-fashioned dial-up system giving me about 0.25kb a minute. It would take me about 2 weeks to listen to an hour’s worth of jazz albums through my computer.

I wanted to ask the new MP whether she would take my plaint to parliament and raise the issue in the House. But I think she’s probably too busy being clear about things and assuring us she’s entirely transparent. She’s undoubtedly fully occupied formulating youthful new ideas that are brimming to be released into the atmosphere as soon as the holidays are over. God help us all. You know?

monk, bunk and vice versa

For yesterday’s supper I cooked a chicken marinade of garlic, whole-grain mustard and soy sauce, dished up with potatoes and runner beans. As an aperitif, I quaffed lightly of Art Pepper and to accompany the meal I served a classic fine 1947 Monk. I avoid writing the latter’s forename because I don’t know how to spell it. Some experts cite Thelonious and others Thelonius and they’re pretty well evenly split. But then I’m grateful for the fact that the pianist is one of the small band of famous who manage with purely a surname, like Beiderbecke, Roach and Ellington.

Digestion was not aided by a later night cap – a TV programme about the Norwich North by-election taking place this week. What a depressingly young and inexperienced bunch of candidates, most of whom look to my ageing eyes as if they should still be practising their seven times table. They talk in clichés, as if they’re reciting from an issued reader. They were all “clear and transparent” which in reality means they are obfuscating the truth. Each and every one followed the party line while claming to be an independent spirit. We watched them with a creeping feeling of doom, Mrs Dodman and I. One says “you know” all the time as if the short phrase automatically implies axiom. They are all ardent and sincere; each and everyone will put aside ambition to work tirelessly on behalf of the local community. Yet we all know the elected candidate will eventually be just another expendable grinning yapping avaricious head on the Hydra of politics.

Not one mentioned jazz, at least before I dozed off. For twenty-five years I’ve voted independent, putting my cross against any candidate professing to enjoy a good foot-tapping clarinet solo. I figure that anyone appreciating jazz should be given a chance. The rest are too worn out from the exhausting requirement of keeping up party appearances. I know that’s a non-sequitur, but I had a late night.

eat that chicken

I like to listen to jazz while I’m cooking. Mrs Dodman keeps out of the kitchen while I’m being creative with food, so I have free rein to play whatever appeals to me at the moment. The CD player is in the dining room which is open to the kitchen. Thus I can close the door to the rest of the house, turn up the volume a little, open a bottle of dry white wine and bounce around the place while chopping onion, squeezing garlic and calculating the calories.

Recently I had a moment of amazing self-discovery - my selection of music varies according to the type of dish I’m preparing. How have I never realised this assonance of tastes before?

Yesterday, for example, I cooked a sort of Remoska of fillet steak, sweet potato, asparagus, fine green beans and paprika stock. To accompany the preparation I listened to a compilation CD of jazz from the Chicago era. I bought it from the Sunday Times about 12 years ago and I resurrect it whenever the culinary mood takes me. Tucked in the middle of the tracks is The Eel by Bud Freeman. Actually, billing is given to Eddie Condon, but he rarely took centre stage, preferring to give the limelight to his sidemen. When I listen to numbers such as this, I find myself being forced to place the music in its chronological context. The track was recorded in 1933 and still sounds as fresh as last year’s wine. So how original and exhilarating did it sound when it was first released 75 years ago and jazz was yet to be seen as a somewhat pretentious and too often introspective art form? But I digress – that’s another debate.

A few days ago I cooked a prawn risotto. Then I listened to Art Blakey live at Birdland, when he had Lou Donaldson on alto (before he turned R&B) and Clifford Brown on trumpet (a couple of years before his premature death). Recorded in 1954, it features one of my all-time favourite dance tracks: Parker’s composition Now’s the Time. When I say ‘dance track’ I use the term in its broadest meaning. All sorts of jazz makes me want to dance, but it’s not the conventional granddad-at-the-disco style; mine usually involves no more than fingers, feet, shoulders, chins - and knives used as drum sticks on saucepan lids, a practice meeting with severe disapproval from Mrs Dodman.

When I cooked a chicken korma, I listened to Tijuana Moods. I think I first heard Los Mariachis in about 1963 soon after the album was released. For some reason it took 6 years to hit the shops but when it did, it jolted me out of my trad groove and sent my jazz preferences spinning in an entirely different direction. Charles Mingus gave me one of my first truly seminal musical moments in life.

For some reason ham, egg and chips goes perfectly with Wynton Marsalis and his Majesty of the Blues album. Chicken, couscous and salsa salad sits very agreeably with Gerry Mulligan’s West Coast sound, although I find that when I substitute pork for chicken his Concert Jazz Band actually aids digestion.

The Modern Jazz Quartet seems to suit cheese on toast, Georgie Fame and the Harry South Big Band sprinkles deliciously on potato and leek soup, and Dexter Gordon is a magnificent vegetarian pesto pasta, unless I’m listening to The Chase with Wardell Gray, in which case the dish turns into a bolognaise variant.

My top food is lamb chops, served with beetroot, tomato and fresh mint salad, caramelised balsamic carrots and pureed broad bean and potato mash with an optional side-dish of celeriac. That’s when I listen to recordings by Chris Barber before he was Big. Funnily enough, if for some reason I can’t find any fresh mint, I prefer to listen to Chico Hamilton. That’s weird isn’t it?

fine and mellow

One of my favourite books about jazz is “All What Jazz” by Philip Larkin. It’s a compilation of articles he wrote as recordings critic for the Daily Telegraph over a ten year period in the 60s and 70s. Most books about jazz are written retrospectively, with commentators using hindsight to try to analyse events and find meanings in what happened. Larkin was writing contemporaneously as huge changes were taking place in the jazz world. And I appreciate the fact that in places, he sounds perplexed and almost distraught at some of the albums he was sent for review.

When his words were hot off the press, I didn’t necessarily agree with him. I’m an entire generation behind Larkin. He could associate with Pee Wee Russell while my formative years were spent in the aural company of Parker, Coltrane and Mingus. But today, I am in simpatico with Larkin’s sentiments. This is no epiphany on the road to Damascus, if you’ll permit the mixed metaphor. Rather I walk a parallel path of gradual enlightenment.

What prompted this blog is that yesterday I listened to Geoffrey Smith’s Jazz Record Requests on BBC Radio 3. He played a track by a band named Led Bib. It left me totally bemused and puzzled. The music bears a jazz tag, yet as far as I can see the link is tenuous at best. Even the instruments sounded as if they belonged more on a rock stage at the 02 than in the one-time smoky atmosphere of Minton’s. My view is that these musicians have a perfect right to perform whatever type of music they like, but I question whether they should be allowed to call it jazz. I like to think that Smith is merely doing his duty by broadcasting the stuff.

Later in the programme, he played a Billie Holiday number. In the line-up were names Larkin applauded – Lester Young, Ben Webster, Vic Dickinson, Gerry Mulligan, Roy Eldridge and more. Some say Holiday declined towards the end. If Fine and Mellow recorded in 1957 is any indication, commentators who believe that talk rubbish. The hair at the back of my neck curled and bristled. This was Holiday at her best; this was jazz at its best. Changing the subject slightly, I think I can remember a Norfolk girl (Stella Goodey) doing this number superbly. I think she’s still around on the circuit. Catch her if you can. She’s a wonderful performer of Holiday and Bessie Smith numbers.

Like Larkin, I can understand that the essence of jazz is evolution. Led Bib shares genes with Billie Holiday in the same way that cabbages and humans have something like 38% common DNA. I can understand why the music carries the appellation jazz, but I can’t agree with it. When I scratch my head in bemusement, I feel as if I’m at one with Philip Larkin. I forget my gripes by losing myself in his writings of July 1966 and if I’m seen as a bit of a dinosaur, at least I’m a happy one.

i got no strings

Whatever happens, I strive to think positively. One of my beliefs is that a positive approach in any situation will encourage a satisfactory outcome eventually. Negativity is a self-fulfilling prophecy, which means: start from a negative stance and you’ll encourage a negative outcome. But in this post, I can’t find any way to state my case other than with a huge dose of the negative.

I hate “jazz” involving the sounds of 101 sentimental silky strings.

The word Jazz is in inverted commas because such music is not jazz at all, but I want to avoid the eternal debate. The fact is that this genre of music is wrongly presented as jazz. It’s a form of Easy Listening and jazz has never been that. Jazz was dance music first and foremost, then it became club-land followed by concert music before it was elevated to the status of art and started to become wayward, but it has never – ever – been Easy Listening.

I use the term Easy Listening as a recognisable term for a genre of music; it’s not intended to be a qualitative description, as in easy listening (without the upper case initials). Jazz can be easy listening but cannot be Easy Listening.

I’m not sure I’ve made myself clear on the point but I’ll press on anyway. The violin has a valid and worthy place in the evolution of jazz. To name just three, Joe Venuti, Stephane Grappelli and Stuff Smith each demonstrated individually how ably the instrument can replicate the sort of rhythms required to justify the tag of jazz. In fact, “Rio Pakistan” holds a prominent position in the favourites list on my MP3 player. But as soon as a few violins start to play in symphony during a jazz recital, I reach for the fast forward button, or seize the opportunity for a comfort break.

Perhaps this is me showing my true colours – a philistine and low-brow - but I physically shudder when suddenly those silky strings start to play. One of my ecstatic musical moments in life was when I saw Sarah Vaughan at the Hammersmith Odeon, I think in 1964. She was accompanied by Count Basie and his orchestra. As much as I adored her voice, if she’d been in front of the London Philharmonic Orchestra I wouldn’t have gone within 100 miles of the place. Forty-five years has not even dinted my resolve.

Many jazz greats have fronted the metaphorical 101 silky strings. I like to think they did that out of commercial pressure rather than with the intention of somehow pretending they were advancing the interests of jazz. The contribution Charlie Parker made to jazz allows us to forgive him anything – his drink and drugs, his sometimes shaky playing, his untimely and premature death – but never ask me to listen to the tracks he laid down in front of a choir of seraphic violins.

If David Beckham started to play cricket, you wouldn’t call the game soccer. When Ella Fitzgerald sang in front of a symphony orchestra, she was singing something entirely different to jazz.

I’ve almost exorcised my music collection. Multitudinous strings still appear occasionally on an otherwise excellent compilation tape, but I can generally anticipate the miscreant’s arrival and regard it as an interval during which to attend to those cardinal functions of life, such as opening another bottle of wine.

We need a campaign – keep the sound of 101 silky strings out of the world of jazz.

Discuss.

farewell farewell

So Charlie Mariano died on the 16th June. His obituary in the Times accompanied Farah Fawcett and managed to squeeze onto the pages ahead of what will no doubt be the next day’s tome of an obituary for Michael Jackson, who died a couple of days ago. At least Mariano had a long life (he was 85) unlike Fawcett, who was my age, and Jackson, who was a mere fifty.

I don’t know much about Mariano except he played at Mingus’ famous Town Hall Concert and later recorded with the man on the eccentric “Black Saint and Sinner Lady” album. He was married to pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi, who also made the occasional appearance with Mingus, notably in 1962. He was also a member of the United Jazz and Rock Ensemble (based mainly in Germany) and ventured enthusiastically into hybrid jazz, never being afraid to experiment with eastern styles and other ‘world’ jazz forms.

What I do know is that Mariano was a brilliant and creative alto sax player. Mingus never suffered the inept gladly; he tended to surround himself with only the most original and proficient players. Mariano was one of them. I didn’t necessarily like everything he did; I’m too much of a traditionalist for that. But there’s no denying his skill and ingenuity in his chosen instrument.

So why is the entire world suddenly in mourning for Michael Jackson, yet has hardly noticed the passing of Mariano? BBC News 24 had apparently identified Jackson as the only worthy news item last evening. The woman presenter floundered pitifully while she tried desperately to maintain momentum as ‘breaking news’ whimpered out like a tyre with a slow puncture. She pumped as hard as she could, taking a breather only when the weather man could be found. A sort of media whipped hysteria is slowly seeping into Jackson’s death. I couldn’t watch any longer and retreated to the study and contemplation. The next few days are to be dreaded.

Charlie Mariano’s demise took 10 days before his death-knell reached the obituary register. That’s inequitable. I don’t begrudge Jackson his final bow; he influenced many millions and undoubtedly deserves all the posthumous encomia and plaudits to be piled on him over the coming weeks. But I know many musicians and fans will be mourning the loss of Mariano - he hasn’t slipped away unnoticed. Yet surely his passing warrants a little more attention than the odd obituary in the more intelligent newspapers and a few postings on the internet.

I wonder which programme will hit the TV screens first – a tribute to Michael Jackson or a requiem to Charlie Mariano. That’s purely for rhetoric – I know the answer, sadly. Another great jazzman is lost. When I look at the recordings I play frequently, very few musicians are still alive. But perhaps that says more about my tastes in jazz rather than the state of the music.

My next post will not mention death at all.

i wish i knew

Am I unusual? For decades I’ve seen myself as perfectly normal in my approach to listening to jazz. Now, having talked to other jazz buffs, I wonder whether perhaps I suffer from a little known psychological condition akin to a mild form of OCD.

Here’s the problem. When I listen to jazz on the radio or on an album, I feel deprived unless I know full recording particulars. Not just the name of the band; it goes far deeper than that. I need (and when I say need, I use the word accepting that it implies dependency) to know at least the name of each and every performer, the date of the recording, location and order of solos. In certain cases, such as a Charles Mingus recording, for example, I also need to know the original LP on which the track was issued, the issuing label and the name of the producer. Does that sound sad?

As I listen, I’m compelled to hold the album cover in my hand and read in time to the music, synchronising data and sound, defining each and every performer and identifying every soloist (assuming they’re not all playing different instruments, of course – even I can tell the difference between a banjo and a trombone). Some say this must distract from the music; to me it enhances the experience. After all, the cognoscenti always seem far more content than the ignorant.

I tried to hide my condition for years, usually ineffectively. But then I came out of the closet. Now Mrs Dodman simply laughs at my distress when I slit open a new CD only to discover the manufacturers can’t be bothered to include discographical data. To my mind, this is akin to visiting an art gallery and viewing paintings with one eye closed while suffering dichromatism in the other. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what I do. Could there be a link?

Mrs Dodman and I have friends who are professional classical musicians. They never seemed bothered by the fact they can’t name the third violinist from the right in the second row. Dates of recordings aren’t relevant in their world. The identity of the arranger can be kept a secret as far as they’re concerned. The condition would appear to be jazz specific – assuming it’s not me specific.

Perhaps I’m not alone. Humphrey Lyttleton must have at least known the problem exists; he alleviated the symptoms by providing the palliative. Geoffrey Smith on Radio Three still does. Alyn Shipton similarly announces the line up and year of recording as a minimum. Three jazz DJs with understanding of their listeners. But I gave up tuning-in to The Jazz on FM because too often they played segues of numbers without a hint of disc data. Perhaps their presenters understood jazz but they certainly didn’t understand their audience. (Or did they – is it just me?). But then to my taste their jazz was usually homogenised and boring anyway, so it was no loss.

I’d like to feel I’m not different to the rest of the world. A psychologist would tell me to relax and listen to the wonderful themes and counter-melodies drifting over my consciousness. I tried, but then – is that Joe Guy or Roy Eldridge on trumpet? Is that tenor solo by Dexter or Wardell? Could it be Art Pepper on alto or is it a gifted newcomer with Kenton influences? I need to fill the gaps in my knowledge. Angst suffuses me. So please – tell me – am I alone in this?

The future is a worry. More and more CDs are being produced without discographical information; these days, manufacturers tend to go for advertising instead. Then, apparently, we’re all downloading more and more tracks from the internet, a medium so far not geared towards providing the particulars I need so badly. Too often I listen to my MP3 player when I’m away and discover I’ve forgotten who played that superb piano solo with Lester Young on “Somebody Loves Me.” (Nat King Cole, actually) and I can’t look it up because the CD cover is at home. As I age, my memory is diminishing; my brain tends to erase information rather than store new. I can see things getting only worse for me.

What to do?

bury my body

My last posting set me thinking. By one of those uncanny coincidences which could almost be interpreted as omens, I found a website for a funeral parlour specialising in Dixieland burials anywhere in the UK. To me that seems a double whammy when it comes to jokes about jobs without a future. Turn the lights out and close the business when the last fan is interred or conflagrated - see my previous posting for more information. Anyway, the chance encounter prompted me to think about death.

Mrs Dodman is younger than I am. She was brought up on a musical diet of Tamla Motown and Island Records. As a result, she never developed a fine palate for jazz. She accompanies me on jazz expeditions out of loyalty rather than musical anticipation. Now MP3 players have been invented, she quietly encourages me to listen to my music on earphones. Hence, her exposure to the idiom is limited.

Understandably, therefore, she will have difficulty picking music for my funeral. Now 62, I can’t see my tastes in jazz changing too much, so I began to look through my collection with the objective of choosing three appropriate tracks Mrs Dodman can arrange to have played as I burn.

To slice a long drawn out process to the bone, I’ve now selected three tunes to celebrate my demise.

The first is “Black and Crazy Blues” by Roland Kirk; this will lead the cortege into the parlour, being a slow deathly march, suitably sombre and funereal. Although I can’t claim to have achieved a lot in my life, I like to think that one or two people will be a little sad when I go. This track will help to drag them down into the deepest abyss of despair.

Next I’ll lift proceedings a little with Dave Brubeck’s thoughtful “Sermon on the Mount.” That makes me a little uncomfortable because I’m positively anti-religious and am insisting on a secular funeral. But funerals are for those left behind; they must be otherwise we’d all be dumped unceremoniously in the wheelie bin. Mrs Dodman believes in God so this should comfort her a little – or subdue her joy, according to her feelings at the time. It’ll be the live version with Gerry Mulligan’s aptly lugubrious baritone sax weaving in and out of the main theme.

Finally, the effects of the obsequies will be leavened by the brilliantly named “Oh, But on the Third Day (Happy Feet Blues)” by Wynton Marsalis, which to me is the epitome of what jazz should be all about. It will make me want to break through the cardboard coffin lid and dance deadly naked around the parlour. I’d like to think a coterie of lovely young ladies will cavort joyfully with umbrellas and diaphanous flowing skirts, but I think Mrs Dodman will draw the line at that.

The above hymn list is not carved in monumental stone, by the way. What excites me about jazz is that just as you think you’ve heard it all, something new springs up like a rare orchid in a hostile environment – and it was probably recorded eighty years ago as an “alternative take.” In such an event, I reserve the right to change the menu without further notice.

The funeral should take place within two weeks of my death, which is scheduled for the 27th June 2027 at 5.30am. Tickets will be available on E-bay from next year, and I’ll be offering discounts for non-returnable advance payments and block bookings

how long blues

A few weeks ago, we attended a concert at a little theatre in provincial England. The band was the Ken Colyer Legacy Jazz Band. The pop world uses the words ‘tribute band’ but jazz being almost a centenarian is able to lay claim to having a heritage, or a legacy. Jazz as a music is old.

Unfortunately, so are most devotees. Mrs Dodman and I sat at the lofty back and looked down on a brae of grey heads, nodding and waving gently like a field of poppies in a light breeze. We were just about the youngest in the auditorium, except for a couple of student anthropologists earnestly taking notes by the light of a tiny torch. When the music started, heads stopped bobbing. The entire audience sat stock still, listening intently, politely. Surely, this is the wrong way round. Shouldn’t we all begin to jig about and jive a little when the music starts? This is jazz – not chamber music.

At half-time, when the queue for toilets stretched twice around the block, I reflected on the mean age of these concert goers. A quick calculation put it at about seventy-four, omitting theatre staff and the aforementioned youthful scholarly fieldworkers, but including the band. That gives another roughly10 to 12 years before the typical jazz aficionado of this ilk is conveyed away to the strains of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” It’s not long, is it?

The last time I went to Keswick Jazz Festival (two years ago) the youngest people were the bar staff, each and every one bemused and praying that the end of the shift comes soon. Most of the audience were there to scout suitable bands to play at funerals. Musicians arrived clutching not song books but lists of comfort stops en-route to Cumbria. Without a doubt, the population absorbing this brand of specialised music is ageing and, more significantly, dwindling.

What happens to the music when few are left to pay to enjoy it, yet alone with the aspiration to play it? You see, this is a highly specialised genre of jazz, known as British Trad. It’s an endangered sub-species embraced by those now well beyond the age of reproduction; their children are lamenting the passing of the Mersey sound, not New Orleans or even Charlie Parker. As far as I can see, too few practitioners and fans are following along to grasp the reins dropped from our frail and mortal fingers.

Although I confess British Trad is not my favourite genre of jazz, the loss of it would be a tragedy. Listening to Ken Colyer’s successors romping through “Hindustan” as an exuberant finale made me realise what a gaping black hole will remain if the sound vanishes. What will the exemplar “Kings’ Arms” do on a Sunday lunch-time? Glam rock is a poor accompaniment to roast beef and Woodforde’s ales.

Perhaps youngsters are practising their Dixieland behind closed doors and will yet surprise us in years to come. We need them to keep up the tradition. I don’t want to sit alone in a draughty hall listening to the last Brit Trad trio pluck their way through “How Long Blues.” And without these youthful legatees, who will play at my funeral?

gimme a pig foot (and a bottle of beer)

A couple of evenings ago I struggled with my blog, trying to find a way to trace it without using the full URL address. No search engine recognises Pooter Dodman, despite the addition of tags and sundry other investigative devices. Then I was distracted when I heard feline strangled mews drifting through dividing walls - Amy Winehouse on television.

BBC4 screened a 2007 concert, undoubtedly a “second opportunity to catch…” I know this blog is about jazz, and Amy is not, but the woman fascinates me. She was on typically insouciant form. Her words were slurred and all but unintelligible. Her superbly synchronised dancers compensated for her inability to move rhythmically. The band was competent, professional and harmonic. And Amy herself spent most of the concert slurping from a beaker of something presumably highly alcoholic – appearing to become progressively more intoxicated as the concert drew to a close. Interestingly, she actually improved as the alcohol seemed to take effect.

I was reminded of Louis Armstrong, who was reputed to supply his sidemen with viper in the belief that the drug allowed them to play more cohesively relaxed. Despite this, he became an international ambassador for jazz and a global household name as a showman. Allegedly, Amy was supplying herself with liberal doses of alcohol; it augurs well for her future.

Possibly my eyes and ears deceive me though. I have a sneaking suspicion that Amy is actually a teetotaller, drinking nothing but Pepsi Cola. Knowing that we all love fallen angels, spin doctors have spun a bibulous myth. In reality, Amy was just pretending to be drunk all the time; it’s good for publicity, you see. I fancy she’s really a sober, determined and resourceful singer with an ambitious plan to conquer the music world in her own way.

If I’m right, then Amy is on to a winner. I truly believe the woman has the capacity to be the greatest ever British songstress. Her voice is pure golden-weave original Amy, although I think I detect faint needle-pointing from Nina Simone, Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday. She is one of those illustrious and mellifluous rare talents bordering on genius.

If I’m wrong, I hope she’ll soon realise what she’s doing to her anatomy and voice. To lose what she has would be a tragedy, all the more felt by the likes of Pooter Dodman (yours truly - mediocre, untalented and grey), an elderly man who abhors unrealised potential and the squandering of natural gifts.

Would it help if she changed her name to Amy House? A poor pun to finish on.

Dream Band

I spent a night in an old-fashioned jazz club in London, the alcohol-free but sweet-substance and heavy-haze variety I used to frequent as a youth. It might have been Ken Colyer’s Jazz Club in Great Newport Street. It certainly wouldn’t have been Ronnie Scott’s; that was too upmarket for the likes of me, for whom a good night out and home on the first Sunday morning train needed to be had for the pre-decimal equivalent of 75p, including breakfast.

The music was almost beyond credible. It was rhythmic and driven. I was leaning against a slightly damp wall being assailed by wave after wave of jazz I could not only hear but actually feel, taste and see. Notes and phrases came like hailstones, bouncing off a crowd of jigging and bobbing devotees, cheering and hollering fans, all gathered on a tiny patch of shiny linoleum serving as an occasional dance floor.

On trumpet was Wynton Marsalis. Next to him stood Lester Young on tenor sax and Gerry Mulligan on baritone. Shafi Hadi played alto, Bechet soprano/clarinet and J. J. Johnson trombone. Around the edges were Dave Brubeck on piano, Charles Mingus (bass), Charlie Christian (guitar), and Art Blakey (drums).

Never before or since have I heard live music with such raw-polished verve. Ten individual musicians coalesced into one harmonic organism, each nerve end playing perfectly with the other. I shall never forget the precious experience. Unfortunately, I missed the last two numbers because I woke up.