for dancing.112
Still, Charles Buchanan of the Savoy was in high dudgeon about the prospect of shuttering what he termed the “world’s finest ballroom” situated at 140th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem.113 Complicating matters was a “confidential” report from the FBI warning that the U.S. Communist Party, in the process of electing the African American leader Ben Davis to the New York City Council, was “very much concerned about the closing of the Savoy” and were “taking up the cudgels.”114
DESPITE THE FREQUENT AND REPETITIVE announcements of the demise of the music we call jazz, it has persisted. In 1980 the musician and entrepreneur Dr. Billy Taylor ascertained that a “well-produced hard bop record or a reissue by a respected artist earns back production costs with U.S. sales of 5,000 to 10, 000 within one year.” Considering that the vocalist and guitarist George Benson was then selling “over a million units” gave a hint of the profits to be made when it was thought the music was withering. Grover Washington, Jr., the saxophonist, routinely sold a half million units, while the group Weather Report fluctuated between these two figures. Dexter Gordon, McCoy Tyner, Woody Shaw, and Bobby Hutcherson were then reaching 50,000 to 100,000 units. A few decades earlier Theolonius Monk, Bill Evans, and John Coltrane were capable of selling 100,000 records in the United States alone. Though his music was often scorned, Atlantic Records was pleased with the sales of Ornette Coleman, as was Blue Note subsequently. Their music was derided at times as well, though Anthony Braxton and Cecil Taylor sold albums marketed by Arista that approached 20,000 in sales in the United States alone. It was not unknown for Keith Jarrett to sell 400, 000 records, with each unit selling for $16. Success in the area of 40,000 to 60,000 had been attained by Gary Burton and Jack De Johnnette. Fantasy Records survived for years on the music of Dave Brubeck, then backed Credence Clearwater Revival, a kind of rock group, which registered millions in record sales, then financed the blockbuster movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which grossed more than $100 million. Fantasy was financed by a group of investors who realized a hundredfold return on their investment. Thus Fantasy was able, at least for a good while, to circumvent the single greatest problem of an independent label: getting paid by distributors.115
Clive Davis of Columbia Records well knew the dynamics of the industry in which he played a major role. “Profits more than doubled in 1968, doubled again the following year and rose dramatically again in 1970,” he chortled. Simultaneously “black radio was also becoming increasingly militant; black Program Directors were refusing to see white promotion men,” forcing the hiring of more African Americans. One of his stars, trumpeter Miles Davis, released an album, Bitches Brew, that sold 400, 000 units.116
This bright picture notwithstanding, by 1990 executive Ahmet Ertegun said that “most current jazz recordings, which are made for the contemporary market, sell under 10,000 copies.”117 By 1991, Ertegun was distraught, lamenting that “due to the recession there is a general job freeze in the music industry and it’s even difficult for people who have had years of experience.”118
The contrast between the upbeat words of Davis and the lament of Ertegun continues, as the music continues to sway. There is little doubt that as this century proceeds, digitalization will challenge the ability of musicians to make a decent living,119 though Deutsche Bank is among those predicting a continued expansion of streaming revenue, i.e. music distributed online.120 The global recorded music market has decreased significantly in recent years, reflecting the change from an analog to a digital market.121 Still, it would be a mistake to locate this crisis exclusively within the bounds of either the music industry generally or the subset that is “jazz” more particularly. The culture industry generally—including movies, museums, theater—all face unique challenges today.122
This ineffable point should remind us all that there are terribly destructive forces—racism, organized criminality, brutal labor exploitation, battery, debauchery, gambling—from which grew an intensely beautiful art form, today denoted as “jazz.” It is the classic instance of the lovely lotus arising from the malevolent mud. A good deal of this book concerns the mud, but in order to digest this malodorous substance as I was writing these pages, I often found myself listening to the pulchritudinous tunes of the musicians who continue to prevail against difficult odds. I recommend that readers emulate this writer.123
1. Original Jelly Roll Blues
NEW ORLEANS HAS A JUSTIFIABLE CLAIM to being the birthplace of the music known as jazz. The African roots of Black New Orleans reach deeply into Senegal and Guinea, regions with rich and extensive musical traditions,1 particularly with regard to stringed instruments and percussion, the heart of rhythm sections that distinguished the new music. However, this music was often played with instruments of European origin, for example, the horn devised by Belgium’s Adolphe Sax in the early 1840s, and the European influence was strong at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Nevertheless, the wider point is that these European instruments (and those of African derivation, too, for example the banjo and drums) were infused with the unique culture that arose in New Orleans’ Congo Square, one that reflected a potpourri of West African and North American influences.2 Interviewed by the pacesetting Jazz Studies initiative of Tulane University in 1958, Alice Zeno—the mother of clarinetist George Lewis and born in 1864—spoke of her grandmother, born in 1810 and passing away in 1910. This elder spoke to her granddaughter in Wolof; the younger also spoke French, the language she spoke more than English in the first years of her life—before learning German and Spanish. Zeno in some ways resembles the new music that arose in the late nineteenth century, a mélange of African, European, and North American influences.3
Still, Africa was at the root: U.S. Negro missionaries in the Congo in the late nineteenth century were stunned to hear melodies reminiscent of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” then a musical staple back home.4 The bassist Gene Ramey, born in Austin, Texas, in 1913, said that his grandmother “remembers coming from Madagascar, yeah, at the age of four or five….”5 Yet another bassist, George “Red” Callender, has spoken of his “Ashanti,” a West African ethnic group, ancestry.6
New Orleans may have been the opera capital of the United States during the antebellum era.7 Reportedly, New Orleans was the only U.S. city to maintain an opera company continuously in the nineteenth century, the Civil War years (1861–1865) excepted. It also has a rich history of Free Negro culture, which included a militia with drum companies. Some Free Negro musicians were educated abroad, circumventing the U.S. preoccupation: depriving Negroes of education of all sorts.8 After the Civil War, a number of musicians in bands with the vanquished so-called Confederate States of America dumped their instruments in pawnshops in New Orleans, and Negroes happily bought some of these battered instruments, tools that jump-started the creation of a new musical art form.9 Moreover, the banjoist known as Creole George Guesnon, born in New Orleans in 1907, argued passionately that “I don’t believe there is any other city on the face of the earth as rich in Negro folklore and unwritten legends as New Orleans,” a phenomenon that fed imagination and creativity, contributing to the blossoming of a new music.10
There were other peculiar tendencies shaping the emerging new music. John Wiggs, a bandleader born in 1899 in New Orleans, spoke movingly of those he called “bottlemen,” who collected glass vessels and accompanied their task by blowing on horns—often three feet long—rendering beautiful blues songs that could be heard blocks away. Later he noticed the same trills and flourishes of these men replicated by trumpeters, particularly the “bending of notes.” They also used cowbells. Children were drawn to these men as they exchanged dolls for bottles.11 Some of the earliest performances of the new music that took place were heard along Franklin Street inside such places as the Twenty-Eight Club and the Pig Ankle Cabaret; these “spasm bands” used homemade instruments and often honed their art
