The Telegraph's Top Jazz Tunes - Depressing?
Doom & Gloom Part 6

   D&G 1  :  D&G 2  :  D&G 3  :  D&G 4  :  D&G 5  :  D&G 6  :  D&G 7  :  D&G 8  :  D&G 9

04/02/16 - Reading the Daily and Sunday Telegraph at weekend with their recommendations for outstanding music of all types, brought home the general ignorance of jazz... including among others 'Stranger on the Shore' and 'What A Wonderful World". Nice records, but...! Best wishes.

Don Bridgewood.

05/02/14 - Regarding Don's remarks about the general ignorance concerning Jazz. At the risk of being morbid jazz will virtually die out when the sole remaining fans and musicians do. Joe Public neither knows nor cares about jazz. there are one or two youngish musicians around but as the saying goes " one swallow does not make a summer " yours in depression. -

Moe Green

05/02/14 - Please don't be depressed, Moe. As I'm sure I must have written before, when I started playing jazz in the north west in 1980, I felt a bit like the one swallow. At thirty I seemed to be the youngest player around, and the audiences, God bless 'em, were even older than the oldest of us. (Cliff Crockett was only in his mid-sixties back then.) I couldn't see how the music could possibly last another twenty years.
But here we are, thirty-three years later, and nearly all the bands include musicians who are younger - often much younger - than I am. As for the audiences, they don't seem to have aged at all. They were mainly fifty and upwards then, and they're mainly fifty and upwards now.

As long as the music's good, it will attract an audience. It ceased to be the 'in thing' in about 1963; that's all. The teeny-boppers stopped listening, but teeny-boppers grow up. -

Allan Wilcox

05/02/14 -  

I feel compelled to give a prompt response to sympathise with Moe. Our audiences are being ruthlessly whittled away by the twin forces of death and Matron. My belief is that the great majority of jazz lovers stay at home listening to their recordings, only venturing out when a big name (Wynton Marsalis) hits town. It is probably too late for us musicians to try and entice a wider audience to come and listen to us. At the traditional end of the spectrum we have probably contributed to our own downfall by paying too much attention to the vociferous “give us a stomper” brigade, who would happily listen all night to Dr Jazz played on cowbells.

A number of times on being asked what I would like to sing I have offered “Taking A Chance On Love”, a tune that, when sung, appears to be familiar to many listeners. Not infrequently the bandleader has rejected it apparently because either the musicians don’t know it, or it is thought to be too modern (1940 from “Cabin In The Sky”), or it is in the incredibly difficult key of C (okay there may be another reason which bandleaders are too tactful to suggest!). And yet when playing at non-jazz functions (weddings – very thin on the ground now) and not constrained by our perception of the listeners’ expectations, I have noticed that our music has appealed to a wide range of folk, in interests and ages.

Although it’s eleven years since the “Doom and Gloom” correspondence started and the death of local live jazz may be more lingering than was anticipated, none of the suggestions have brought more than sporadic and localised success.

Harmoniously (to those still willing to listen),

John Muskett

05/02/14 - 

I saw the 25 jazz tracks listed in the Sunday Telegraph, and I thought it was a good selection. Apart from the two already mentioned the list included Ain't Misbehavin, Summertime, St James Infirmary, all decent jazz numbers.

There was also an interesting blues list which contained one of my favourites - Smokestack Lightning by Howlin' Wolf.

Sam Wood

09/02/14 -

Thanks John for reminding us that " Doom and Gloom " has been around for 11 yrs. The comments made are still relevant though as you say extinction is not yet upon us. I did not see the Telegraph jazz list but at least someone was interested enough to publish one.

I agree that a lot of fans will stay home and listen to their C.D. s ( or 78 s ) but the rest of us should enjoy live jazz while we still can and good luck to the lonely swallows. Incidentally, John, what is wrong with " Dr. Jazz " on cowbells ? I used to play " Body and Soul " on cowbells,soup tureen and Klaxon and I don't think that the artistic integrity suffered.

Moe.

09/02/14 -

My remarks on the Telegraph's choice of 'jazz' performances, seem to have suffered some misinterpretation. The melody, tune, call it what you will, is immaterial. It is surely the performance that defines its nature. As regards the future of jazz, well the last rites seem to have been pronounced over it for at least 60 years. So Moe, do not despair. All is not lost.

Don  Bridgewood

10/02/14 -

Could I add a little note to the discussion now building up between my old pals Don Bridgewood and Moe Green, please? Don is talking about the ignorance of Jazz; Moe has a gloomier outlook on its slow, but eventual demise, once the existing old fans and we old players and vocalists die out.

The young are not listening to it, or taking it up? Well, that's a matter of opinion. The WHOLE of Jazz isn't just the one-and-a-bit-century-old Jazz that is going, or has already gone, out of fashion. Like pictorial Art, it depends on the eye/in this case 'ear' of the beholder. In other words, this negative opinion, depends on what styles of Jazz are being listened to or spoken about.

JAZZ is multi-faceted. There are other aspects of Jazz that are still being listened to by the young Jazz enthusiast. Modern Jazz is still being listened to, sometimes along with Funk, and Blues/Modern Jazz/Funk Fusion. Wynton Marsalis, Courtney Pyne Digby Fairweather and others, who are capable of transcending the various styles, have done their bit in recent times, to rekindle enthusiasm, particularly in the younger potential fan, for the now ancient, but ever-classical styles that began in about 1890 in New Orleans; they have also encouraged young musicians and fans to embrace the more modern styles of Jazz. We can't just ignore these other styles; they are also JAZZ. You can't get away from that fact!

A heck of a lot of the 40s to 50s (early) Jazz pioneers in Britain who started aping the American New Orleans, Chicago, Memphis, Nicksieland, and many other styles, went on, in their own day, to become great exponents of Modern Jazz or Mainstream (someone out there is sure to be hopping mad at my mentioning Mainstream. They simply moved on a few notches along the timescale of Jazz; but if Traditionalist fans and musicians like/liked superb musicians such as Humph, Roy Williams, Johnny Barnes, Tom Kinkaid, Dave Mott, Digby Fairweather, Sandy Brown, Bruce Turner and many others to whom the NW fans flocked not so long ago, then they also like[d] Mainstream Jazz). It was a sort of lingua-franca, or interface between two once main rival styles (Modern and Traditional Jazz).

The young and even middle-age Jazz fans ARE out there; but - and here I heartily agree with Moe - they don't want to know the oldest styles of Jazz from New Orleans, etc. They regard them as "old hat". But a great throng of them do like to listen to the styles that emerged from the late 1930s and 40s onwards. Styles that are anathema to a very large percentage of the people who gravitate to this fantastic site, and who are entitled to their own likes and dislikes. But some younger fans in the world outside, and some who consult this site, like other styles and particular exponents as well as the traditional versions. I refer here to the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown, Thelonius Monk, et al. Many new Jazz lovers are fans of Hot Club de France, too. If you ask them why? The replies I've heard tend to encapsulate into "Because of its sheer energy!" So the whole of Jazz isn't dead! What is happening is that the younger fans Jazz-orientated ears are not listening to the styles that we - the people who look and listen or contribute - on this site are used to, either because we are fans, or because we've been playing, singing, or even dancing it for decades. New Orleans Jazz and general Traditional Jazz is, I agree, going out of fashion, or has gone out of fashion. It's run its present niche-time. Let's face it! We've had a really good innings; about 120 years is pretty good, don't you agree? It will return one day, possibly in another 50 years. Sorry, I can't hang about until then! Other celestial fish to fry! Thank you and good night!


Joe Silmon-M

11/02/14 -

I think that Moe may have unwittingly solved a 74½ year old mystery. In his playing of “Body and Soul” on (fully chromatic) cowbells, soup tureen and klaxon, he will surely have used vintage implements – oops, I mean instruments - which will have sounded in old, high-key, pitch. Thus the original sheet music key of C for most of the chorus (Db and B for the middle eight), as played by Moe, will have sounded a semitone higher to the young Coleman Hawkins (surely influenced by Moe) in 1939 wielding his new low concert pitch (A = 440 bpm) tenor saxophone. Thus Hawkins, and almost everyone since, has taken the piece in Db, a semitone above Moe’s masterful modulations of yestermillennium.

Harmoniously,

John Muskett

12/02/14 -

I cannot take the credit for influencing Coleman Hawkins' recording of " Body and Soul " as suggested by that eminent musicologist John Muskett. In fact I heard it played 10yrs.previously at Der Schwarz und Blau Café in Berlin by the Weimar Hot Syncopaters. Their percussionist played the middle eight on cowbell, police siren and chorus girl. I was unable to get hold of a siren and though available ( very much so ) I left out the chorus girl on grounds of propriety. The result of my performance I hope did indeed influence Hawkins and subsequent performers and it is from such musical experiments that greatness springs. I was later asked to perform this piece at the Hotsy Totsy Club augmented by two young ladies but unfortunately my wife had a few words with me and I had to decline.

Moe Green.

16/02/14 -

It's Sunday 16th February 2014 and the sun is shining, the rain has stopped, and I only have to do things like swim across the drive to the car. So I thought with all this good news about, let's make another contribution to your Doom and Gloom section. I think the purpose of this category is to make everybody feel down in the dumps, so if I let everyone know I feel great, that should really put the cat among the pigeons. Tonight, we start Cliff Crockett's next centenary of Jazz Drumming at The Four Crosses, Bicton (He was 100 on 2nd Feb 2014). Tomorrow, we've got the Merseysippi Jazz Band's 65th birthday session with John Hallam and Colin Turner as guests. Then there's the Blue Magnolia Jass Orchestra at Mossley Hill British Legion on Tuesday, and so it goes on with 4 more gigs this week. But the likelihood of experiencing youngsters bumping into our music will only be when we busk (or play on a bandstand in the outside world.) The youngsters won't come to our jazz clubs; would we 'olduns' go to their discos! We must go out to meet the youngsters: We all danced to jazz when we were young and now youngsters are starting to do this again with Lindy-hopping, etc. And they aren't hostile to the sounds - some of them book us for their weddings. So I'm sure our music will survive, albeit in lesser amounts. But so-what, we can look forward to it in the care home we're destined for - providing we can impress on the owner's that that is what we want.

After writing this I'm reaching for the bottle now, thoroughly depressed; I trust this fits the bill for Part V of Doom & Gloom (Part VI is inaccessible as yet).

Malcolm Hogarth

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