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]
- Expertise or virtuosity. Humans cultivate, recognize,
and admire technical artistic skills.
- Nonutilitarian pleasure. People enjoy art for art's
sake, and don't demand that it keep them warm or put food on the table.
- Style. Artistic objects and performances satisfy rules
of composition that place them in a recognizable style.
- Criticism. People make a point of judging,
appreciating, and interpreting works of art.
- Imitation. With a few important exceptions like
abstract painting, works of art simulate experiences of the world.
- 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.
