Sunday, January 25, 2009
Jazz Shrinks Complex World - Jazz HistoryWriten by Lindsey Williams
When I've had a belly full of the complexities of current events I find a jazz band in some out of the way place and retreat for awhile into melody with a big beat.
For those of you who are turned on by horns, I recommend a small watering place in Cleveland called the Lake Shore Club.
There, Ted Witt and his Forest City Jazz Band hold forth on Saturday nights with the best music this side of New Orleans.
Located through the courtyard of an old motel, it is not the kind of joint you would wander into cold turkey. But, take my word, the surroundings are pleasant, the drinks unadulterated, the prices average, the food good and the clientele well dressed without ostentation.
I was introduced to jazz while stationed at the U.S. Naval base in Key West during World War II. The best honky-tonk in town had a small jazz combo of venerable black players, but the soul jerking notes poured out on those Sunday afternoons after church when the colored folks (their term) conducted a funeral.
No matter what day of the week a black person might happen to meet his Maker, the funeral was held on Sunday. Then the fishermen would be home, no one would lose wages, and the mood of religious contemplation would be deepest.
After regular morning services, lengthened by a substantial eulogy to the deceased, the march to the grave yard began. The coffin rode in one mule-drawn wagon and an assembly of horn players in another. The mourners marched behind in swallow-tail suits, high hats and formal dresses.
The parade to the cemetery was somber and featured plaintive hymns such as Just A Closer Walk With Thee, Old Rugged Cross, Amazing Grace, and Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Now, 30 years later, these tunes nearly break me up as bittersweet memories flood back.
The return from the cemetery, however, was jubilant as the marchers asserted their faith that their departed companion was well on his way to a just reward in heaven. Of course there was When The Saints Come Marching In, Washed In The Blood of Jesus, and Down By The Riverside. But there was also a lot of high stepping to Georgia Cakewalk, High Society and Muskrat Ramble.
It was a meaningful blend of sorrow, reverence, and Christian faith in a better life here after.
Since those days - now gone I am told by travelers to the southern-most Florida Key - I have pursued the blue and golden notes in New Orleans, Nashville, St. Louis, Memphis, and Chicago. For there, in the Mississippi Valley, is the true home of American jazz.
Strangely however, I have found the most creative practitioners of this unique American music in Key West, Cleveland, New York, and San Francisco. One of the characteristics that has made jazz great is its ability to be exported, and to be assimilated by diverse cultural communities.
Where did it all start?
Stephen Longstreet, the jazz historian, says it is best to begin in New Orleans, where the black man became in time a little lighter, and the white man often a little darker.
The French and the Spanish, the African tribesmen often with royal chief's blood under their heavy muscles - and even the Indian peering in - the long boats from Kentucky, and the Yankee mountain men in buckskin fringes - in for a big bust and swallowing of untaxed whiskey - all wanted music, and helped make it, said Longstreet.
New Orleans mixed it all up, and churned it around, and made it a part of a new nation - that was part of a New World where anything could happen.
Today we call it history. But then it was simple people, wild people, pioneers and men on their way up in a hurry. All sang a lot and stomped around to music.
Whether it was in the Congo jungle of Africa or in the tromped-down grass of Congo Square in New Orleans, it was rhythm that started it all.
Music and dancing, said the white slave masters, made the Negroes too tired to work hard, so the wild people from Africa just clapped their hands at first.
Then they made a drum on the sly and brought it out - when the Master was off somewhere else subduing the passions of his own wild country - to remind them of their native jungles.
An old horn was snitched from some white man's junk heap, or maybe a rusty old banjo was given by a keel boatman from Ohio who didn't give a damn about plantations and cotton anyway.
At last the Negro had become part of musical America. He was ready to add a sense of freedom and lusty beat that created a new musical art form peculiar to the United States.
In time, jazz evolved through a variety of forms - spirituals, marches, cake walks, ragtime, blues and swing. But the basic foundation was always twelve 4-4 bars of singable notes.
Louis Satchmo Armstrong was the last of the Golden Generation of jazz musicians. Today we rely on the artistry of Pete Fountain, Turk Murphy, Al Hirt and Ted Witt to carry on the glorious tradition of authentic jazz.
Ted Witt is great on the licorice stick and still belts out a few numbers on the fish horn soprano sax made famous by Sidney Bechet. Ted's other front men, Emmett Wiley on the slip horn and Dick Petscher on trumpet, are ably supported by John Bittance on bass, Bert Smith at the piano, Al Gutheim on the skins, and Bill Morehead on banjo.
Somehow, when those guys cut loose, such things as the economy, Watergate, and Mideast wars don't seem all that important.
September 18, 1974 .
Click here to see this article on Lindsey Williams's website
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Lindsey Williams is a Sun columnist who can be contacted at:
LinWms@earthlink.net or LinWms@lindseywilliams.org
Website: http://www.lindseywilliams.org with over a thousand of Lin's Editorial & At Large articles written over 40 years.
Also featured in its entirety is Lin's groundbreaking book Boldly Onward, that critically analyzes and develops theories about the original Spanish explorers of America. (fully indexed/searchable)
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