larking again

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he so loved larking

And now he’s dead

it must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

they said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving, but drowning.                                    (Stevie Smith)

Somewhere I read that Philip Larkin enjoyed this famous poem because he could imagine the first line of the second verse was “Poor man; he so loved Larkin.”

I love Larkin for his poetry and his wit, but mainly for his honesty when writing jazz reviews, such a contrast to today’s obsequious and fawning pundits. In 1969, for example, he wrote:

“If I were to frame Larkin’s Law of Reissues it would say that anything you haven’t got already probably isn’t worth bothering about. In other words, if someone tries to persuade you to buy a limited-edition of the 1924-5 sessions by Paraffin Joe and his Nitelites, keep your pockets buttoned up; if they were any good, you’d probably have heard them at school, as you did King Oliver, and have laid out your earliest pocket money on them.

                Everything worthwhile gets reissued about every five years.”

We have to bear in mind that Larkin was at school in the middle-to-late 1930s, one of the true golden ages of jazz, so he’d have been buying contemporary stuff released before the shock of the be-bop era and the inception of baffling forms of jazz such as free, acid, funk and smooth (smooth! makes sign of a crucifix). He wrote his Law of Reissues over thirty years later, by the lamp glow of the residual radiance of jazz’s silver age, light-years away from where we are now. Jazz was yet to arrive at the Darwinian multiple-bifurcation which would eventually lead to universal chaos.

What would he make of today’s scene? He was certainly a waver, but I have the feeling that he’d now be more of a drowner. And I suspect he’d have trouble finding anything to buy other than reissues. An emerging previously never-released King Oliver, originally rejected because it wasn’t good enough, would seem a jazz detectorist’s dream.

“Nobody heard him, the dead man; but still he lay moaning” just about sums it up for me.

Happy Christmas

Philip Larkin's Jazz

The poet Philip Larkin was also jazz critic for the Daily Telegraph from 1961 to 1971. His often acerbic comments were reproduced in book form, title “All What Jazz,” a handy dip-into sort of historical guide to contemporary music, or jazz at least.

Almost 50 years ago, he wrote:

“My favourite New Year’s resolution is Cyril Connolly’s for 1929: ‘Resolve: to be altogether more advanced and intelligent.’ And clearly, according to Leonard Feather in the Melody Maker, I’m going to need to be. Of course jazz is not dying, he says, unless by jazz you mean swinging jazz, Dixieland jazz, or anything in straight two or four. Of course, that’s on the way out, and still more American jazz clubs will collapse. But anything in Latin, or Cuban, or 5/4 rhythm, any freedom music ‘in which the beat is often suspended. Distended or ignored at certain points’ anything with electric or electronic sounds, anything ethnic or with sitars – why, man, the scene is made. By a subtle stroke of page make-up, this cheer-leader is printed shoulder-to-shoulder with an article recalling the deaths in 1967 of Edmond Hall, Muggsy Spanier, Willie Smith, Buster Bailey, Herman Chittison, Pete Johnson, Red Allen, Billy Strayhorn, Rex Stewart, Sidney de Paris, Stuff Smith, Jimmy Archer and one or two more.”

What an annus horribilis 1967 must have been  (my words). Larkin continues:

“Readers of this column may rest assured that as long as there is any swinging or Dixieland jazz in straight two or four on recent records they will hear about it. The rest will be judged by the degree to which it approximates to the excitement produced by the aforesaid swinging or Dixieland jazz.”

A quote from the frontispiece of “All What Jazz” is from Miles Davis, and was originally published in Down Beat on 13^th June 1968:

“But if something (i.e. Ornette Coleman) sounds terrible, man, a person should have enough respect for his own mind to say it doesn’t sound good. It doesn’t to me, and I’m not going to listen to it. No matter how long you listen to it, it doesn’t sound any good.”

Larkin was renowned for his love of ‘traditional’ jazz, Dixieland and New Orleans and was often critical of the avante garde. In the introduction to my 1984 edition of his book, he writes:

“In any case, my views haven’t changed. If Charlie Parker seems a less filthy racket today than he did in 1950 it is only because, as I point out, much filthier rackets succeeded him…”

These words sound iconoclastic in 2017. Yet I find myself sympathising. Jazz these days appears to be anything a musician wants it to be. Take any rhythm, beat or melody and add the word “jazz” and – voila! – it is jazz. No it isn’t. It’s not jazz. Maybe it’s smooth-jazz, for example, but that’s not jazz. We need a champion of jazz; we need somebody to ride to the rescue to take it away from the floss and dross being passed off today as jazz and thereby restore its authentic gloss and substance.

These comments could appear contradictory. After all, as you’ve probably noticed I’m a huge fan of Charles Mingus, undeniably one of the most innovative and exciting musicians of all time, sometimes testing the tolerance of audiences to the very limits with his avante-garde ideas and compositions, but even he said that his music should not be shoved into one of the pigeon-holes of categorisation. Just call it Mingus music, he said. That’s sweet subtle irony… one of the greatest jazz-men of all time calling for his own music to be stripped of the title “jazz.” But he understood. I think many don’t understand these days. If Philip Larkin were alive today, I’d be writing him letters of support.

mexican jumping bean

Charity shops are not too rich in jazz records, but occasionally a real pearl comes to hand - like this one, my favourite baritone sax player joining one of my favourite piano players.

Recorded in front of a sedate Mexican audience in 1968, "Compadres" I think has not been released so far in CD format, so I'm especially pleased to find this original album.

It features: Dave Brubeck (on piano); Gerry Mulligan (baritone sax); Alan Dawson (drums) and Jack Six (bass). Produced by Teo Macero on CBS label (S 63395 CS 9704) the liner notes are written by Leonard Feather. I can't track down actual recording dates.

Tracks are: Side 1 - Jumping Bean; Adios, Marquita Linda; Indian Song; Tender Woman
                  Side 2 - Amapola; Lullabye de Mexico; Sapito; Recuerdo.

Good value at twenty times what I paid for it - £1.25.

a brief thought on genius

genius: noun: consummate intellectual, creative or other power, more exalted than talent

(Chambers Dictionary) - a prosaic definition, hardly doing justice to the inherent nature of the word itself. 

"He died soon after celebrating his thirty-first birthday; he did not live long enough to achieve his full potential. But Chu's reputation has been short changed; the record by which he is remembered, Ghost of a Chance, is a fine ballad performance whereas Berry was nearly always at his very best in faster moving music. The comparative under-estimation of his talent is most unjust for he was a very fine musician who lacked only the ultimate spark of genius possessed by those two famous near-contemporaries, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young."

These words were written by Tony Watts in 1995 and are extracted from liner notes to "Blowing Up a Breeze," a Topaz collection of Chu Berry tracks (1933-1941). Nobody could deny that the three tenors, Hawkins, Young and Berry, all have prodigious talent, yet I can't quite put my finger on the crucible of that "ultimate spark of genius." At what point will gifted, or talented, or proficient, or even damned fine, find ignition to become genius? A jazz musician (any musician) can have complete mastery of his or her instrument, equal to the best of musicians, and yet still not quite earn the accolade "genius." My music teacher once told me: you can polish your saxophone as much as you like but you'll still not be able to play the bugger. Perhaps by the same token, a musician can be as technically perfect as possible, but still not be able to play jazz. Take Yehudi Menuhin for example.

And this is where I like the word "spark" in Tony Watts' annotation. It's a lovely word, making me think of two flints being struck together - but then I wonder if spark is enough. What's the point in having a spark if there's no tinder to set alight? The result needs to be flame; sparks just scintillate for a moment and then instantly vanish. So I venture to suggest that the difference between ‘talented’ and ‘genius’ rests less with the musician per se (the spark) and more with the listener (tinder). A variation on the tree-in-a-forest philosophical mind game: is a musical genius still a genius if nobody is there to appreciate such genius? It’s me (and the receptive you, of course) that makes the genius. We decide, as subjective as such a process may be. And I decided that Hawkins and Young were undoubtedly geniuses, but so was Chu. It’s a good album, by the way.