The Jazz Odyssey

...Yet that somebody did—and somebody who plays the music—only serves to underscore how few people have a firm idea of the history behind jazz...

...I think it is too bad they feel the need...

...The impulse to change, to reinvent, has come almost solely from black jazz musicians...

...The closer we come to the present, though, the less agreement there is likely to be on who is a master and what qualifies as a classic...

...If we still don't feel as comfortable with bop as we do with the music that came before, at least we no longer feel threatened by it...

...Only an organization with the prestige of the Smithsonian Institution could have pulled it off...

...But what kind of an album is it, really...

...The fact that La Rocca and Barker managed to get up on a bandstand that evening and play together was a small miracle of professionalism...

...Well, one man's act of filial piety is another man's outrage, and Danny Barker let out a howl of indignation, lacerating the young man with a torrent of abuse...

...At present, most performers are deeply committed to the idea of change...

...That used to be jazz," they say, "but now this is...

...But after watching white musicians walk away with the money and the magazine covers over the years, blacks were finally moved to assert and reassert their claim to jazz...

...It is not just a recorded history of jazz—we don't need another one of those, surely—but a six-record collection that can genuinely be called complete, offering as examples the seminal recordings of this trend or that school...

...The setting was perfect—the old Delta Queen, the last of the Mississippi riverboats, during a special December jazz cruise from New Orleans to Memphis...

...The second reason has to do with that scene I witnessed on the Delta Queen...

...The bop revolution signaled the end of jazz's true classical period, the time, that is, when everyone concerned seemed to agree on basic assumptions?for this reason, the word "classic" in the Smithsonian anthology's title is a misnomer...

...True, disputes about contemporary work are normal enough in any art form...

...A mixed black and white band of New Orleans musicians provided the music, and listening to them play was about the only way passengers on that rainy winter voyage could pass the time...

...Martin Williams apparently feels this as strongly as any other commentator, for avant-gardism seems to be the axiom underlying his selections in the later, and on the whole less satisfactory, part of The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz...

...First, the advent of the jazz critic coincided roughly with the beginning of avant-garde experimentation in jazz, predating bop by only about three or four years...

...Why has jazz taken the avant-garde path...

...A magnificent anthology that simply defies review in the usual way, not to mention criticism...

...The other was Danny Barker, a black banjo and guitar player who had roots deep in New Orleans traditional jazz, but had also played for many years in Cab Calloway's swing-era band...

...This is why the new Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz (Smithsonian P6 11981) is such a godsend...

...not merely to the notion that jazz naturally involves change—that is self-evident—but (if I may paraphrase John Weightman's fine essay, "The Concept of the Avant-Garde") to the belief that the principles by which jazz is played must undergo continual alteration if it is not to stagnate...

...Nick Jr...

...In short, the accepted jazz masters whose records comprise the jazz canon...

...In 1945 Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie assaulted the ear with a frenetic, jagged energy...

...Together, the records and notes constitute a textbook for a course in jazz appreciation—the reason, one imagines, why the collection is being distributed by a book publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, to schools and colleges...

...It is of course also available to the general public at a cost of $20, plus $1.50 for postage, and can be obtained by writing to: Classic Jazz, P.O...

...At issue was the black man's right to claim the only genuinely American music as his own, and in a way it is remarkable that anyone would challenge that right in this day and age...

...When people who appreciate the music talk about it, they might quarrel about everything else, but they will agree on the fundamental importance of these players...

...Nick La Rocca Sr...

...When jazz started to change, the critics were there, ready and waiting, offering enthusiasm, encouragement and recognition to those whose innovations could be most clearly plotted...

...To attempt to describe it adequately would be a little like trying to write an exhaustive survey of jazz in the space of this column...

...Perhaps the best I can do is to offer one or two comments on the records as a whole, beginning with the observation that the earlier sides sound much better than the later ones...

...20044...

...Louis Armstrong, demonstrating on the best of his fine OKeh sessions from the 1920s?Potato Head Blues," "Struttin' with Some Barbecue" and the incomparable "West End Blues" —precisely why they called him King Louis...

...Others who can be heard on the first half and a bit more of this collection are Bix Beiderbecke, Sidney Bechet, Count Basie and his illustrious sideman Lester Young, Art Tatum, Benny Goodman, and Coleman Hawkins...

...There was material for a whole seminar on black culture boiling away beneath that confrontation on the Delta Queen...

...One was Nick La Rocca Jr., the son of the cor-netist and leader of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the white group that brought jazz to the North and was the first to record the music...

...In the afternoon, as the musicians gathered in the aft lounge between sessions, a fierce argument broke out between two of them...

...Box 14196, Washington, D.C...

...By the third day everyone was a little on edge, even the band...

...had "invented jazz...

...the early and middle Duke Ellington bands, performing with the cohesion and expression that made them truly the Duke's own finest instruments...

...On Music THE JAZZ ODYSSEY BY BRUCE COOK I was once present at one of those scenes that leap out at you with such dramatic clarity they seem to be part of some larger plan, somebody's movie perhaps...

...He also wrote the fine 46-page booklet included in the package, which offers a capsule history of jazz and an analysis of the music on the discs...

...The entire production was handled by the Smithsonian's Division of Performing Arts, in particular by the director of its jazz program, Martin Williams...

...There is, in a sense, nothing very surprising about this, considering who is playing: Jelly Roll Morton's Hot Peppers, confirming all the arguments about the modernity and subtlety of their music...

...The 86 bands represented range from the ur-jazz beginnings of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" to the modern explorations of Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane...

...The innovations of Parker, Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Tadd Dam-eron, and company were only the beginning: Since the '40s we have seen so many turning points?cool jazz," the "free jazz" of Ornette Coleman, the "new thing" of Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler and Eric Dolphy, and other permutations too, no doubt—that the road leading away from the Armstrongs and Ellingtons seems littered with milestones...

...It all began when La Rocca repeated his father's frequent contention that he (Nick Sr...

...tried to argue, looked around in vain for support from other members of the band, and finally stormed off to his cabin...

...couldn't possibly have invented jazz because he was the wrong color...

...And to prove they "invented" it, they have taken to reinventing it over and over again in the avant-garde manner...

...Indeed, so much has been compiled from so many sources that the negotiations with the different companies and labels would probably be a story in itself...

...Two reasons present themselves, neither directly a function of the music...

...There has been a terrific need among critics to show that jazz is going somewhere, that it is becoming ever more complex music, and thus Serious Art...

...Today we may have difficulty hearing what was revolutionary in bop because it has become so familiar that one can listen to the Smithsonian Collection examples practically with a feeling of nostalgia...

...ever since jazz became something to be proud of—as well as profitable...

...Some even demur at Charlie Parker, insisting that real jazz stopped when he picked up his alto sax...

...Black musicians have been hearing declarations as outrageous as the one Danny Barker heard from Nick La Rocca Jr...

...But that has not muted the argument about the commitment of jazz men to avant-gardism dating from the bebop revolution of the mid-'40s...

...jazz was the music of the American black man...