All That Jazz

Sometime in the past forty years or so my dad acquired a book called the Who’s Who of Jazz. It is big case bound thing about the size in height and width of an extra-large paperback that your airport novels like Jack Reacher stories come in but it was about 75mms thick and full of type. Entries on what seemed like thousands on jazz players with a brief bio and synopsis of each entry’s recording history. It was very detailed but not real attractive. You think it would be difficult to make a book about what is a pretty exciting, involving art form look tedious but apparently not.

Dad must have picked it up in a second hand shop or more likely a book exchange as it had obviously had previous owners. Some small child had written on the end papers with felt pen and drawn some squiggly lines over the forage of the book, partially colouring in the edges of the block of the text pages. When Dad died I picked it up one day and brought it home knowing that mum would have no interest and one less object in the retirement village unit would be no bad thing.

By this stage it was getting pretty old and the pages were yellowing and some were even starting to fall out. I don’t really know if Dad had ever opened it because when it came down to it Dad was never much of a researcher or big on hobbies.  However he did love the music from the swing era, the music of WW2 from bands led like Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Glen Miller. He had plenty of time time for Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and the great jazz vocalists like Frank Sinatra and Elle Fitzgerald but after that I would say his interest in jazz fell away.

So what he did love in jazz was really at its peak for about decade, so contextually not a little like saying you were into rock and roll but really what you like is say the California sound from about 1965 to 1975. In fact for a man who would have been twenty in 1951 I always thought it odd that newer jazz and indeed rock and roll seemed to have no interest to Dad. By that stage he was too busy working and anyway Dad had a big sentimental heart and the big band period’s music is full of emotion.  So Dad having a Who’s Who of jazz was a little out of character.

I, like a lot of people I suspect, have a love hate relationship with Jazz. I admire the sheer musicianship of the major players, the vision of the really important figures like Louis Armstrong, Ellington through to Miles Davis etc. but in the end I find it best in small doses or as background music in restaurants. I know that is a dumb thing to say but I listen, actually listen to a good vocal performance and words in a traditional song structure more than I noice instrumentals. When I want to stir my jazz loving friends I describe it as just a lot of noodling and honking and plinking.

Anyway I glanced through the book, decided it had no real interest to me and put it onto the bookshelf where it has sat for a few years until when I was having a bit of a clean-up [never enough room for all the books] I pulled it out again. I resolved to give my jazz loving buddies a look and if they saw any value in it then one of them could have it, if not the bin awaited.

So we were together at dinner on Saturday night and I brought the book out and said as much, yours if you want or I bin it. There was a bit of excitement but you know jazz aficionados, they like to play it cool and to be fair it is an ugly book in average condition.  Anyway Jazzman started looking through the pages, no doubt searching out the bio of some obscure Swedish vibraphonist who set the jazz world aflame at concerts in basement clubs in Berlin, Copenhagen, NY and Tokyo before mysteriously dying in a penniless state in Lisbon.

 The women at the table abused us for disturbing the dinner party conversation between the dips and lamb [dinner had a Lebanese theme and all very nice, thanks for asking] by poring over the volume and discussing the influence of so and so not just on hard bebop but also jazz rock fusion music of the 70s when Jazzman paused mid-sentence and started to flick a page back and forth. He looked perplexed.

After a few seconds he took a deep breath and in a voice loud enough to cut through and halt the conversation about school fees at the other end of the table Jazzman announced,

“You’re not going to believe this but there is no entry for Miles Davis!”

Obviously the response from the music fans around the table was of disbelief. I choked on my craft brewery lager which tasted just like Becks but 20% more expensive and in a can.

The ladies just opened another bottle of wine.

No Miles Davis, It is a Who’s Who of Jazz for fuck’s sake!

Would you do a Who’s Who of rock and roll without Chuck Berry, cricket without mention of Shane Warne, F1 racing without Ayrton Senna, and architecture without Frank Lloyd Wright?

Jazzman must have already had one Shiraz too many. I snatched the tome from him and carefully checked. There on page 87, between the entry for some dude called Clifton Davis, trumpet player and Thomas Davis, tenor sax man there was…. nothing. Seriously, there was no entry for Miles Davis in the book. Maybe it was older than I thought and it been published before Miles was known. I checked the publication date and it was in the 1970s.

Was it intentional or just the biggest oversight in the compilation of Who’s Whos in the history of man? I don’t know.

But I own a Who’s Who of jazz with no mention of Miles Davis. Naturally Jazzman now wanted to keep it. So I said yes. As a party trick he would have a bigger audience for it than me.

Now Jazzman has a keen analytical mind and it did not take him along to work out that a publishing faux pas of the highest order had not occurred. Apparently the book is one of a series of volumes and this one focusses on the years before the 1950s which explains why no Miles Davis. Makes sense I guess and it does explain Dad’s interest but the truth has ruined a good story.

This is, in case you were wondering, my point. In this modern world we would do better if we do not jump to conclusions so often. Plus we all need to remember to use our rational minds to check the facts because sometimes through error, ill will, a masterplan or just the need for a good story we don’t get all the details all the time.

And in jazz, as in everything else it isn’t just the superstars that count.

Three songs about Jazz that aren’t jazz

Ron Sexsmith - Jazz at the Bookstore

The Fratellis – Acid Jazz Singer

Carole King - Jazzman, well it is a bit jazzy