EXPLOSION OF JAZZ

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 888, 10 August 1956, Page 13

EXPLOSION OF JAZZ

HEAR ME TALKIN’ TO YA, the story of Jazz by the Men Who Made It, edited by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff; Peter Davies, English price 18/-. MAN, this is a lot of talk, a whole lot of talk from the only guys who knew what they were talking about, the cats who made this music. . . Messrs, Shapiro and Hentoff have let the jazz musicians speak for themselves, and they burst out like clusters of star shells; dozens and dozens of them, New Orleans old timers, blues shouters, Kansas City men, the big band kings, the new cool school, It’s an explosive book to read, explosive with life. If you’re a» little desiccated, or if you shrink from life, you'll find plenty to shock you. Probably the shrillest critics of jazz are the ones who are appalled by its vitality. Yet vitality was all the early jazzbos had: no money, no musical recognition, no standing in the communityLouis Armstrong's contemporaries counted him lucky because he was sent to a reformatory where he had the chance to play a musical instrument! Vitality kept them alive and kept them playing, and playing kept them happy. Those were the times before the U.S. Navy closed down the New Orleans red light district of Storyville. There, at the beginning of the century, every house had a jazz piano player, and the little delinquent boys like Louis, running errands for’ pennies, whistled jazz along the sidewalks, After World War I jazz went off up the Mississippi to St.. Louis, Kansas City, and then spread to Chicago. Harlem jumped to it, and Harlem soon had New York jumping. The bands got bigger, there was less improvisation and more playing to written orchestrations. Some musicians made money and a lot of impresarios made plenty. There were the inevitable compromises between what the impresarios thought the public wanted, and what the musicians wanted to play. This book emphasises that most of the best jazz has been played after hours, in small clubs. on back streets where the jazzbos gathered when their regular jobs finished for the night. They didn’t recognise exhaustion. Fresh ideas chased each other in brilliant profusion, Everybody could relax and let what was in them find its way out through their instruments. They were single minded; talented, and fortunate in being members of one of the few groups in the mechanised modern world who have been able to express their talent freely. ._Some of them spent it foolishly and died young, some are still creating, spreading round them what they have to

give. The last voice in the book, that of trombonist Jim Robinson, calls the universal message of the creative artist: | "I enjoy playing for people that arehappy. I like to see people happy. If everybody is in a frisky spirit, the spirit | gets to me and I can make my trombone sing. If.my music makes people happy, I will try to do more. It is a challenge to me. I always want people around me. It gives me a warm heart and that gets into my music. When I play sweet music, I try to give my feelings to the other fellow. That’s always in my mind. Everyone in the world should know

this,"

G. leF

Y.