Friday, December 30, 2011THE JAZZ GODS, MILES DAVIS, JOHN COLTRANE, THELONIOUS MONK, SONNY ROLLINS, GONE, BUT STILL HERE, THEIR SOUND IS STILL HERE
Birdman was sitting in 1962 in the front row at the Village Vanguard, Greenwich Village, NYC. A black cat slowly moved into the spot light, like a jaguar stalking a deer in British Honduras. It was Miles Davis, dressed in an immaculate French suit, handsome, his golden horn sparkling in the blue and red light. He turned around and started blowing Kind of Blue, a chill went through the body of Birdman, he was awed and overcome by the sound, the man, the rhythm, the music. Later on in the decade of the 60’s, he again saw the legend, Miles Davis at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco. Davis played from his Sketches of Spain, and the same feeling took over the soul of Birdman. The audience gasped with disbelief. It was if a god of music had descended from the Elysium, to blow out the unbelievable sounds into the night of San Francisco, and the Universe above.
“Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.” Walt Whitman, American Poet
Miles Davis, sat in with his horn when he was 19, at a club in Kansas City with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. He said in his book, “Miles” he knew at that moment, he had an epiphany of sound, with two of the greats of early bebop, and had to go to NYC, where he played as a young man on 52nd street, with Bird, and became the musician he was meant by the gods to be.
Sonny Rollins was at his peak between 1956 and 1966. He took two years off, playing as he strolled into the night from the Williamsburg Bridge, NYC. He would trill at length, bark out phrases, slurs and distorted his line, harps on a couple of braying figures, and showed off a gloriously beating tone. He would occasionally belch his horn, sounding like a lost mule. He is the only survivor from the gods of jazz, and still plays at 85 years young. He was recently interviewed on PBS, and asked if the great sounds of the legendary musicians were dead. He answered, “No, they are still here, their sound is still here.” What a statement on the vision of immortality of the giants. He said, “When I leave town, my sound will still be here.” He also played with Charlie Bird Parker, Davis and Coltrane in NYC. Can you imagine the rush to the soul, hearing Rollins’ horn from the Bridge, mixed with the night sounds of NYC. Hopefully that music is still echoing in the Universe somewhere, maybe above Europa. “All the bells that ever rang, still ringing in the dying rays of light,” William Faulkner, novelist.
Birdman saw Thelonious Monk in 1962 at the Five Spot, NYC. His eccentric dancing and walking around like a crazed Beat poet will never be forgotten. He left a lot of space in his music, yet could be most effective when paired with busy-sounding saxophonists such as John Coltrane. Opposites attract. Birdman later on saw Monk play at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco. These experiences were unique, most people today never saw these cool cats from the heyday of Bebop and Cool Jazz. It was if Birdman had seen Bach play in person, in a previous life, in the old days of Europe. After Monk finished at the club he spun around in a rhythmic, weird dance, and exclaimed, “All ways know, always know, always night.”
John Coltrane’s briefer stay on the planet earth, showered people and the planet with sheets of sound. He played with explosive improvisations, expressive energy, and once mesmerized an audience with his saxophone, playing “My Favorite Things” for 45 minutes, non stop, in a club. Coltrane could blow seven notes squeezed into the space of a beat or two. He played at the Five Spot Cafe, East Village NYC, for 7 months with Monk. Monk didn’t mind Coltrane playing so many notes, as long as his improvisations developed out of or illuminated the source material. He left town to play the big saxophone in the sky, at a young age. John Coltrane was a beat poet, whose sheets of sound echoed around Greenwich Village for 6 years, playing with Monk and Miles Davis. He favored cascading waterfalls of notes. He created a musical revolution. The major outgrowth of his free jazz tended to represent an outgrowth of the bohemians, and angry young men of the 50’s, and the Beat poets and writers.
Jazz critic Frank Kofsky took this view further, asserting that the free jazz movement represented nothing less than a vote of “no confidence” in Western Civilization and the American Dream. Kofsky wrote in John Coltrane for vice president in his ballot of 1964. Coltrane studied music at a school for years in Philadelphia and also studied philosophy. He was a quiet, serious musician who lived music 24 hours a day, according to his mother.
If any single sound signifies jazz it is Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, with a Harmon mute. Kind of Blue is the most famous and most analyzed jazz album in history. It is listened to over and over again by students of jazz, and people who do not even listen to much jazz. It sold over 62 million albums and CD’s, a record in the history of music. His “Sketches of Spain” still echoes in the soul of most aficionados of jazz. As Rollins said recently, his music is still here, even though Miles is gone, his music is here forever.
What is the future of jazz? Nobody knows. It had a breath of fresh air in the 70’s at the Keystone Korner Club in North Beach San Francisco. Today jazz is played at a few surviving clubs in NYC, Chicago, and New Orleans, and at festivals around the US, most notably the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival held each spring in the Big Easy. It may take a young musician, sent by the Gods, with extraordinary feeling and talent, to walk the Williamsburg Bridge at night, and blow his horn amidst the sounds of the City. Jazz sounds are still echoing out into the night wilderness.