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?