It came to my attention recently that April is Jazz Appreciation Month. Well, snap my fingers and tap my foot! Whoda thunkit? And not only that but this past Friday, as declared by the U.S. Congress, was Jazz Appreciation Day.
Makes you wonder if the distillation process continues on down to where, at a designated moment, signified, no doubt, by the decay of a live-oak atom in the rafters of New Orleans’ Preservation Hall, swingers and bopsters worldwide all peer over their shades and, while swirling ice cubes in a Scotch glass, slyly, on the downbeat, wink knowingly at one another.
I can’t even imagine what my cultural life would have been like without the early street education in jazz music that, seemingly out of a vacuum, nudged its way into my quite befuddled teenage mindset. Fresh from the panhandle of Idaho and lusting for everything the Southern California boulevard scene had to offer, I must say I was an eager student.
The “jazz” part was all new, of course. Up to the point where my new running mates dragged me down to an obscure cantina in the Boyle Heights section of L.A. for a heavy dose of what they called “Latin Jazz,” I could only speak fluently about Elvis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, The Platters, and Fats Domino.
There were lifestyle sidebars during those times that came from hanging out with the jazz crowd, of course. It wasn’t long before one became able to stay up all night, with nary a yawn I might add, while listening to Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker and Zoot Sims and Art Pepper and other practitioners of what many Eastern music pundits pejoratively referred to as “West Coast jazz.”
About the time the ’60s arrived, the floodgates had been totally removed and our fledgling ears had been introduced to Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck and Oscar Peterson and John Coltrane not to mention the weirdly “cubist” bebop of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk.
It would be a three-year stint in the Army, however, that would allow me to both come to terms with and somewhat satisfy my ever-evolving yet totally ravenous appetite for jazz in all its forms. There’s no stopping cultural gluttony among American youth with far too much time on its hands, even when the monthly stipend is meager G.I. pay.
If memory serves, although reading habits certainly played a role, jazz literacy proved to be both the prime attractor and adhesive around which our cliques coalesced and stuck together throughout our various tours of duty.
Not unlike jazz buffs from other generations, those of us still in touch continue to look back upon on those years as the “golden age” of the music. What we probably really mean is that it was our golden age and it was driven, qualitatively, by the jazz lifestyle.
There was that August of ’64 hitchhiking trip from Fort Benning, Georgia, to the Big Apple and back, which involved catching live performances of Monk and Mongo Santamaria in the Village and Nina Simone, Ray Bryant, Woody Herman and a 21-year-old Barbra Streisand in Midtown. Boy, were we full of ourselves after that one.
But, more than anything, it was the golden age of long-playing 33 rpm recording technology, which, seemingly, more so than with other musical genres, lent itself to jazz. Other improvisers from other intellectual landscapes would also take advantage of the dynamic freedom available with vinyl. Dylan comes quickly to mind.
We all belonged to record (and book) clubs and that kept our cultural coffers pretty well stocked. One of us would get Brubeck’s most recent experiment with time signatures while the others might come into possession of the latest in Duke Ellington, Herbie Mann, Charlie Mingus, Ahmad Jamal, or even Sinatra.
One payday I bought a “hi-fi” at the base “PX” and, with the help of a clandestinely procured extension cord we were a Signal Corps Battalion, after all our musical moveable feast was born. From one barracks to another, we would gather and listen and discuss additions to our burgeoning collection. Oftentimes, for sake of clarity, Scotch was brought to bear.
Cutting to the chase, I hereby testify that acquiring an aural jazz vocabulary allows one much easier access to all musical and cultural idioms. I never would have recognized the instrumental virtuosity of bluegrass, which led me to country, without jazz.
Likewise, my transformation into a born-again rock fan could not have happened without my first having gone through a jazz-based tutorial on “the blues.” Same with the works of Monet or Pollock or Joyce or Pynchon. To me, they all emerged from an improvisational jazz sensibility.
I feel a Jazz Appreciation Nanosecond coming on. I just might have to throw on some Coltrane, pour some single-malt, and dig that crazy beat. Appreciate it? Only like breath!
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.