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?