Music
GOLDMAN, ALBERT
MUSIC By Albert Goldman When You Stand up and Blow by the Clock, You Can't Sound Like a Creative Jazzman MOST STUDS who blow the modern jazz wish they didn't have to make it in theater-clubs and...
...He sat down to his piano and began a number...
...Sometimes a man will walk off the stand and never come back, he's so hung...
...If he stops for a minute, or scratches his jaw, you wouldn't figure there was anything weird about it...
...It's just like you were looking over some guy's shoulder while he's writing music...
...When the time came for his next blast, the cellar had filled up and Bud was in an ugly mood...
...He could sit there and blow chorus after chorus like a sound track...
...Why, most studs wouldn't give you that one set...
...That's just the sort of scene I saw the last time Bud Powell played at Birdland...
...Now, jazz is no show...
...I got down to the basement early when the place was practically empty, and Bud played the first set in fine form...
...Finally he made a start and everybody began to dig him...
...The cats who fall in there don't figure to be entertained the end, but there is such a thing as being put down hard and nobody digs that...
...Bud finally started playing again because now he had something else going...
...What the hell...
...The boy with the bass hung his head and the drummer looked away...
...All those eyes and ears can bug you...
...That sure shook up little Peewee, Poor Bud, he just wouldn't get with the scene...
...Those stages in the clubs and all those people out front make a man feel like he's an entertainer and he's supposed to put on a show...
...Only next time, man, I'm gonna cut out when every-body else is coming in...
...If you get tight and squeeze the pipe, those ideas won't get through and pretty soon, dad, you'll be blowing with an empty head...
...All he had to do was keep staring at her with a real out look in his eyes and pretty soon she started to squirm...
...Well...
...When you have to stand up and blow by the clock, you're not gonna sound like a creative musician...
...But how can you be that loose in a place that's set up like a theater, with shifts of musicians going on and off the stand every 15 minutes and an audience that expects a show...
...Again he stopped...
...But now I was hip, and cut out...
...Jazz is a thing that doesn't come easy...
...Bud can do anything he wants to with his instrument when the scene is cool...
...Now, nothing chokes a man up quicker than a crowd of people...
...He'd spotted a pretty blonde chick sitting in the front row and he began to bug her...
...The last set I caught was the same bit all over again...
...Some cats can't make it at all...
...But the strong ones—they fight back...
...In fact, it wouldn't be strange if he just put down the pen and started to walk around the room getting his ideas straight...
...They show those cats out front just what they think of them—and it's pretty wild...
...Well, that's what a jazzman would like to do...
...Poor cats...
...You gotta be set just right to catch those little flicks that come up the back of your neck and into your head...
...MUSIC By Albert Goldman When You Stand up and Blow by the Clock, You Can't Sound Like a Creative Jazzman MOST STUDS who blow the modern jazz wish they didn't have to make it in theater-clubs and bars where crowds of people sit around and dig them every minute they're on the stand...
...This time he hung everybody up by playing the same tune twice...
...That way, Bud and I will goof together—you dig...
...He'd like to be real loose when he's on the gig—maybe play from the back of the room so's he could get a crazy sound, or break off in the middle of a chorus and listen to the rest of it in his head...
...Before his rhythm section could pick him up, he stopped...
...He was comfortable because there weren't any people to put him on...
...Now everyone's pretty cool at Birdland...
...If you pick up one good set in a night, you've scored...
...But now, with a full house sitting up to see him make it, he wouldn't play...
...I guess that grooved him pretty good, because when Peewee Marquette came on to announce the next group, Bud wouldn't get off the stand...
...Bud was uncool...
...Even then it's hard to lose that audience, so you'll see the jazzmen turn their backs and hump over their horns and try to catch that faint little sound in their heads...
...He wanted to know what time it was—maybe it was time to quit...
...There was nothing to it...
...They have to shoot themselves full of horse and clamp on a pair of shades before they can make the scene...
Vol. 42 • November 1959 • No. 40
