| |
OP-ED
Jazz Cannot Live By Bread Alone
by Chris Kelsey
September 2000
Ever wonder why that Ron Carter solo album you bought for 50 cents
at a garage sale sounds like the leader just swallowed a fistful of
Nytol? Well, maybe he got a free sample when he did the company's
TV commercial. Carter is famous for being one of the busiest session
bassists in New York, which means that he's probably spent much more
studio time recording jingles than playing jazz. It tells. As a practicing
full-time jazz musician in the '60s, Carter was one of the music's
most justly celebrated bassists. As his career developed, however,
and he (presumably) acquired a taste for the finer things in life,
Carter's creative self shriveled to an almost imperceptible nub, in
favor of the Have Bass Will Travel who's given us such epic "jazz"
albums as the recent lamentable Brandenburg Concerto. Apparently,
the money to be made from playing jazz wasn't enough for Carter; he
needed to be more comfortable. So he became a mercenary, and his music
essentially died.
Of course, Carter's not alone. Chances are excellent that if a jazz
musician is making a living playing music, he or she isn't doing it
by playing anything the least bit hip. With some it's session work;
with others it's dance or show gigs. There's simply not enough jazz
out there to pay the bills, so any musician disinclined to work a
day job must by necessity play commercial music. And if you think
that playing commercial music for a living doesn't affect the way
an otherwise superb musician plays jazz, then you're either naïve
or stupid or you can't hear. Let me tell you a story... a true story
(only the names and personas have been changed to protect me from
lawsuits).
Once upon a time there was a jazz pianist. Lets call him Barkly. Barkly
was a little famous, but not very famous, and he had little
money to finance his various projects. Barkly was extremely dedicated
to his music—so dedicated that he did nothing else. He worked
a crummy day gig to pay the bills, since he long ago determined that
playing crummy non-jazz gigs was detrimental to his emotional as well
as musical well-being.
One day, Barkly was looking for a horn player (no specific instrument,
just someone who could both improvise and read well) for a quartet
project he had in mind. A good musician friend of Barkly's played
him a CD of some new music he'd just recorded. The album featured
a very fine horn player—let's call him Myron—who not only
could improvise very well, but could also read down the friend's rather
difficult tunes without a hitch. Just the kinda guy Barkly wanted
for his project. Barkly gave Myron a call, presented to him his proposal—there's
no money in it, I'm going to shop the master to the record labels,
blah, blah, blah. Myron tells Barkly, yeah, great, that's just the
sort of thing he'd be interested in doing. It seems that Myron makes
his bread by playing commercial gigs, but He Really Wants To Cut Back
On Those And Play More Creative Stuff. Even if it doesn't pay much.
Well, alright then, let's do it, says Barkly.
So the new group goes into rehearsal. Right off the bat, Myron reads
the stuff down pretty well; some things he can't handle, but he assures
Barkly that he'll practice them before they meet again. Which is not
right away, since scheduling rehearsals around Myron's jammed calendar
of mambo gigs and weddings makes it hard to nail down a time for the
band to get together. They do eventually rehearse a second time. Myron
plays somewhat better, but he still doesn't get everything. There's
a passage in one of the tunes that he consistently "ghosts". Barkly
asks him if he wouldn't mind playing what he wrote, and Myron fairly
explodes, "Man, do you know how hard it is to play that on this (his
instrument)?" "Well, no, I don't," says Barkly, "but
as Monk once told Coltrane, 'The notes are on the horn.'" (Barkly
doesn't say this last bit, for diplomacy's sake.) Barkly's still got
time to get the music in shape before the session, so he lets Myron's
clams and outburst slide. There's another problem, though, which Barkly
finds more irritating, if not downright ominous. It seems that Myron
can't play all-out this day, because he's subbing on Broadway that
night and he doesn't want to wear himself out before the gig.
Now, any musician will tell you that you can't just expect things
to come together on the bandstand. If you can't nail the music in
rehearsals, then the odds are great that you're not going to do it
on the gig. And if a musician consistently holds back during rehearsal,
there's no way in hell you can know what the music's going to sound
like when the game's on the line. Barkly thinks about this as he listens
to Myron take things down an octave and play everything in a near
subtone. The rehearsal is a near total loss. The tunes are marginally
tighter, but the energy is terrible and Barkly leaves the rehearsal
feeling pessimistic.
The day of the session comes. There are problems from the beginning.
The engineer Barkly had originally hired has to leave town at the
last minute. He sends his assistant, with the promise that the engineer
himself would mix the session when he gets back to town. The assistant
is a nice guy, but it's obvious he hasn't recorded much jazz. It takes
the band three hours just to get set up, which is twice as long as
it should take. They're left with a mere three hours to get all the
music on tape, which is hardly enough. The musicians are pretty cool
about everything, except Myron. He's muttering under his breath about
the assistant's incompetence, and generally helping to make a bad
situation worse. Apparently Myron's used to a higher standard of professionalism
than can be found in a little $60 per hour jazz studio. Hell, Barkly's
used to a higher standard, but he's got to make the best of it, because
even though the session's only costing 300 bucks, it's his
300 bucks, and there isn't another 300 bucks in his wallet to pay
for another session in case this one is a disaster. So Barkly tries
to calm Myron down as best as he can.
They began laying down the music. They're multi-tracking, but the
performance is live in real-time; Barkly wants to avoid overdubbing
if possible. They play the first tune. The time for Myron's solo comes…
and he sucks. Literally. On what is supposed to be a balls-to-the-wall,
high-energy free-blow, Myron sounds like he's slurping lemons through
his horn. Incredibly, Barkly realizes that Myron's holding back. They
take a break between takes and Barkly casually asks Myron if he's
got a gig that night, which of course he has. Just before they start
the next tune, Barkly mentions to Myron just how rare an opportunity
it is to go into the studio and make a record, and that whenever you
get a chance to do it, you gotta go for it, just leave everything
on the floor. What Barkly doesn't say is this: "This baby's going
down on tape, and people very well might be listening to it AFTER
YOU'RE DEAD—unlike the stupid little cha-cha gig you're playing
tonight, when nobody will even give a shit if it's you or Larry 'Bud'
Melman up there on stage, they just want to get laid, and the insipid
little background music you're playin' is going to help them do it.
If the two hundred bucks you're gettin' paid for that is more important
to you than making art, fine, but don't turn around and tell me how
much you want to be an artist." Myron agrees with Barkly…at least
he agrees with the part that Barkly actually says. The session
continues. It's taken some verbal butt-kicking, but Myron throws off
the straight-jacket and—upcoming gig or no—plays long
and hard and well. When all is said and done, the session is a success.
A happy ending, right? Well, no. A couple of months later, after the
record is mastered and in the stores, Barkly books a gig in a small
New York club celebrating its release. The gig's on a Saturday night.
For obvious reasons Barkly figures that Saturday's the best night
to have a record release party. Barkly calls Myron for the gig. Myron
says, in his inimitable neo-hipster-white-guy-attempting-to-be-cool-pseudo-jazzspeak,
"Hey man, Saturday's the night I make my bread, man, I can't do a
jazz gig on a Saturday. Maybe if it was during the week…" . He doesn't
ask how much the gig would pay; he rightly assumes it won't be much
(50 bucks). He didn't even have anything else booked. He simply turned
the gig down because he didn't want to miss out on anything down the
line that might pay better. So for all his talk (and that's just what
it was: talk) when push comes to shove, Myron's a mercenary—a
hack who for even one night refuses to turn away from the bigger bucks
he makes playing bad music.
So what's the moral to this story? That Barkly's a great guy and Myron's
a jerk? No, but Barkly is an artist. Myron is not. Unfortunately,
Myron doesn't know this. Myron thinks that as long as he keeps his
chops up, he can turn on the creative thing whenever he pleases. Only
guess what: it doesn't work that way. You don't become a great player
by doing it part-time. If you spend most of your time playing crap,
it's going to have an effect on the way you play everything else.
When you play just for a paycheck, you lay out emotional and creative
capital that can't be spared if you want to be a great player. Name
me a single great jazz musician—an innovator along the lines
of Bird or Coltrane or Ornette—with a split commercial/creative
personality, and I'll show you the exception that proves the rule.
Sure, you hear stories about Bird playing casuals, but the very fact
that Parker died penniless is proof enough that he would not—could
not—play the commercial game. Maybe the exception is Roswell
Rudd. Apparently, the father of free jazz trombone has spent a great
deal of time over the last couple of decades playing dances at resort
hotels in the Catskills. Yet even Rudd's example doesn't hold water,
because during those years his creative output was almost nil. How
many records did Rudd make between the early '70s and the late '90s?
Not many. The physical and psychic energy it takes to do both is enormous,
and if a giant like Roswell Rudd can't do it, then how can a relative
mediocrity like Myron?
Of course even jazz musicians have to make a living, so what's the
answer? Well, that's a good question and I'm sure I don't know. As
for myself, I've sat on both sides of the fence, though as a mature
musician I've worked only day gigs. Indeed, most of the free jazz
musicians whose work you value and records you buy do the same. It's
difficult to make a living playing free jazz to the point of being
impossible. Very, very few can do it, and those who actually do live
very modestly. The rest of us do what we can—they teach, or
proofread legal documents, or work as clerks. Almost none of them
make ends meet by playing commercial gigs.
In a creative situation, mercenaries like Myron bring too much explosive
baggage to the bandstand. How many jazz records and performances are
affected by brass players saving their chops for higher pay? How often
does the cynicism born of playing Barry Manilow covers night after
night poison the air at a recording session? Sure, a bad day gig sucks
just as much if not more than a bad music gig, but a bad day gig doesn't
make you want to throw your horn in the trash and take up handgun-swallowing.
Sure, it would be nice if great musicians like Cecil Taylor and Joe
McPhee were paid like pop stars, or even like members of successful
cover bands. But they're not. And still they play great music. The
first-rate artists among jazz musicians—especially free jazz
musicians—are without exception the ones who've devoted their
lives to their art. Completely. The passion and dedication
required to play this music at the highest level makes it impossible
to do otherwise. It pains me to say this, since by doing so I'm accepting
my own economic marginality, but a serious musician who compromises
himself by playing commercial music is dealing a death blow to his
or her hopes of being a great artist. If you don't believe me, then
you've probably never heard a Ron Carter solo album.
|
|
|
|
|
