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.