Aesthetic Judgment

I like jazz.

I have ever since I was a wee sprout way back, oh long before the Flood or dirt or some other stuff.

I’m not sure if it was the immortal Ella scatting to Mr. Paganini or Charlie Shavers sweet, sweet trumpet blowing melodies straight from heaven.

I know it was WRR that did the damage.

See WRR is a radio station owned by the City of Dallas and back in those mist shrouded days when I was an impressionable boy, 'bout the same time as dinosaurs disappeared, they played classical music all day long.

Now in spite of what you may have heard or seen on television or in movies, Dallas is not a western city. Oh sure there are place where you can boot-scoot your boogie but they are mostly segregated out on the Hines strip where the Honky-tonks and the cheap hookers work.

In Dallas, the “real” Dallas most folks would be hard pressed to tell the difference between Dallas and Boston, except maybe Dallas is a bit more rigid and conservative. Classical music is deemed fit for the City station to broadcast.

But radio stations operated twenty-four hours a day and when the sun went down the things changed. Ole Jim Lowe, The Cool Fool, brought Kat’s Karavan to Dallas and that’s where I first heard Ella jamming on Paganini.

I couldn’t believe that a human could make their voice do the things Ella was doing on that cut. Those word-less lines of syllables filled with imagination and rhythm and still faithfully following the score and making just ordinary magical. I was lost.

Then at eleven I had a close encounter with Mr. Charlie. In a quick sale bin at a dime store where we never shopped, but did that day, I found a dollar LP of Charlie Shavers. It was his album, The Most Intimate and what he could do with a trumpet was like nothing I’d ever imagined. How could just breath and brass make all of that sound?

It was all downhill from that point on, Ken Nordine’s Word Jazz, Dave Brubeck and Take Five, Vince Guaraldi’s Cast Your Fate to the Wind, now Snoopy’s Theme and later Linus and Lucy, there was so much to hear and so little time between studies and football, it was maddening.

And then there was Lana. I bought Lana Cantrell’s The Sixth of Lana for the same reason every other adolescent guy in North America did, she was nekkid on the album cover!

Later when I made it into High School and the worst of the testosterone poisoning passed I listened to the record. OMFG! There was nothing which could possibly be better. In the expression we used way back then, “This girl can blow!”

Yeah, yeah that’s a whole nother thing and you’d have to ask Ms Cantrell and it’s none of your business anyway and what she does or doesn’t do in her private relationships is not at all pertinent to her ability as a singer. Yes, that’s what it meant back then, play or sing, this person could really sing and probably still means that in the dark and smoky, (probably aren’t any smoky jazz clubs left after the forces of Tarsus the Good have made us all non-smokers), jazz clubs on the dark and dangerous streets of the Naked City.

Yeah Ms Cantrell could sing like no one else and I spent the next fifty-five years searching for someone who could and failed miserably but along the way I learned two things.

I heard a lot of wonderful jazz singers and axe men who can blow and not stop and I wouldn’t have heard them if I hadn’t been looking for someone like Ms Cantrell or Mr. Charlie, (I did finally get the Complete Intimate Sessions and the search was worth every minute).

And my aesthetic taste stinks.

a set of principles underlying and guiding the work of a particular artist or artistic movement.

scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature.

The philosopher Denis Dutton identified six universal signatures in human aesthetics:^[89]

1. Expertise or virtuosity. Humans cultivate, recognize, and admire technical artistic skills.
2. Nonutilitarian pleasure. People enjoy art for art's sake, and don't demand that it keep them warm or put food on the table.
3. Style. Artistic objects and performances satisfy rules of composition that place them in a recognizable style.
4. Criticism. People make a point of judging, appreciating, and interpreting works of art.
5. Imitation. With a few important exceptions like abstract painting, works of art simulate experiences of the world.
6. Special focus. Art is set aside from ordinary life and made a dramatic focus of experience.

Bet you had no idea it was that complicated.

But there it is and I have struggled with it for lo’ these long and many years and have again learned a thing or two.

The critics are probably right; Miles Davis is a much better axe man than Mr. Charlie when it comes to innovation and Billie Holiday for all of her scratchy, drug ravaged voice can’t be matched for soul-searing interpretations but I still like Charlie Shavers and Lana Cantrell best. (Yes, I still have that first dollar LP and all of Lana’s LPs and wouldn’t take for nothing!)

So here’s my thought, you can’t get too cough up in aesthetic considerations, they may be in the end right, but you have your very own aesthetic to consider. May be what you like will never be the choice of the Glitterati or win a prize at the big shew in that exclusive gallery in New York. Maybe you won’t sell a thing and will always be just a working artist. But if you hold on to your own vision it is just as valid as the views of a critic from one of those talking head shows on cable television.

And who knows, one day some stupid kid with just a buck from his allowance will buy your work and hold on to it for fifty-five years. That’s not such a bad validation.