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8th Annual Jazz Journalist's Association Jazz Awards
by Howard Mandel
July 2004
Jazz does not have Academy Awards. There is no global telecast of
glamorous stars in chic gowns and tuxedos beaming brightly while clips
of their latest productions play for international audiences to admire.
Jazz has the Danish Jazzpar Award, going to one great artist each
year, and magazine polls like Down Beat's and Swing Journal's
that anoint top musicians for their achievements, as determined by
a vote of their contributors. Jazz also has the Jazz Journalists Association's
Jazz Awards.
As president for the past ten years of the Jazz Journalists Association,
a not-for-profit group of some 450 writers, photographers, broadcasters
and internet professionals mostly in the U.S. and Canada but also
from every continent except Antarctica, I am proud to have founded
the JJA Jazz Awards, which celebrated excellence in music and journalism
for the eighth time on June 15 at B. B. King's Blues Club and Grill
on 42nd Street in New York City. In what has become a huge cocktail-and-supper
party for the entire jazz community and industry, the Jazz Awards
cite winners in 40 categories such as Lifetime Achievement in Jazz,
Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism, Musician of the Year, Best
Record of the Year, Best Book, Best Photographer and Best Broadcaster.
More than 500 people jammed into the elegant main room of B.B. King's
to drink, eat, gossip, and listen to bands including Dewey Redman's
fiery quartet and solo guitarist Doug Wamble, who performed between
the announcement of Awards winners, who are chosen by JJA members.
The crowd was noisy, but fell silent at special moments, as when Joe
Lovano played a deeply touching soprano sax solo version of Monk's
"Reflections" in tribute to the newly deceased soprano saxophonist
Steve Lacy. Keiko Jones, presenting the Drummer of the Year Award
to Roy Haynes, spoke about how her husband Elvin, who died last month,
is still so alive that she makes him breakfast and lunch every day.
Multi-reeds player Sam Rivers, up from Florida to receive the award
for Best Single CD Reissue of the Year, explained how his Blue Note
Records debut Fuchsia Swing Song wasn't the album he intended
to make, but the last-minute substitution of songs he'd been playing
since the 40s for some new compositions producer Alfred Lion didn't
like. Accepting the award for Album of the Year for Alegría
by Wayne Shorter, who was on the West Coast that night performing
with Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland and Brian Blade, Rivers also mentioned
that Miles had traded him to Art Blakey for Wayne in 1964, but no
one had told Rivers where to go to join the Messengers, so it never
happened. Several Awards winners and presenters said a few words about
Ray Charles, who crossed jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues and rock musics
to come up with the sound of soul.
Satirist and political activist Dick Gregory was the guest host, cracking
jokes and making serious points about the social and spiritual attributes
of jazz. The JJA demonstrated just how socially and spiritually responsible
jazz people are by turning the event into a benefit for the Jazz Foundation
of America's Musicians Emergency Fund.
Unlike civilized societies, the United States does not take care of
its artists, or recognize health insurance as a necessity for its
citizens. So the Jazz Foundation has been established to assist musicians
who have fallen on hard times with medical help, housing costs and
sometimes career advise. You'd be surprised how even well known artists
find themselves in economic hardship—in 2003 trumpeter Freddie
Hubbard announced that the Jazz Foundation had helped him make mortgage
payments when emergency medical procedures wiped out his savings.
The Jazz Awards don't directly raise much money for the Jazz Foundation,
perhaps $5000. But they do focus attention on the Jazz Foundation's
good works, as well as on the positive effects of jazz journalists,
who are often scorned by musicians for being critical, and by other
journalists or scholars for being too soft, promoting every musician
rather than scrutinizing them.
Jazz journalists actually spread news, help explain what music means,
how it functions, and whet the appetites of listeners everywhere.
The Jazz Journalists Association also tries to connect the players
of jazz to the benefactors of the music by giving awards to an "A-Team"—the
first rate advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors who may not be
jazz musicians, but who affect jazz just as powerfully.
This year's A-Team Awards presenters were themselves extraordinary:
Bebop saxophonist Jimmy Heath, bluesy cornetist Olu Dara, high note
trumpeter Jon Faddis, beyond-fusion guitarist Pat Martino, millionaire
jazz producer Creed Taylor and Dorthann Kirk, widow of Rahsaan Roland
Kirk and a gadfly at local radio station WBGO-FM. They went onstage
with honorees Arthur H. Barnes, a senior vice-president of the insurance
company HIP Health Plan of New York, who announced he'd kicked off
the WBGO 25th anniversary fundraising campaign with a $100,000 contribution;
Jarrett Lilien, corporate president of E-Trade.com, who announced
that he and his wife had decided to launch the Jazz Foundation of
America's campaign to build a New York residence for elderly and indigent
jazz musicians with a $100,000 donation; Bethany Bultman, who founded
the first free clinic for jazz musicians in the U.S. in New Orleans;
Sandy Jackson, widow of vibist Milt Jackson, who has organized benefits
for drug rehabilitation institutes serving "Friends of Charlie
Parker"; incomparable recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder, who
has worked on all Blue Note Records sessions since 1953 while also
recording jazz for Prestige, CTI, Impulse! and many other labels;
and Les Paul, who at age 89 has been knee-deep in all of American
music since the height of the Jazz Age, as a guitarist, radio star,
inventor of the electric guitar, developer of multi-tracking, overdubbing,
and many other studio innovations. Paul performs every Monday night,
still, at the Iridium Jazz Club in midtown, and he's a funny man,
looking ahead.
Segments of the Jazz Awards, which lasted three hours, were videotaped
by BETJazz, the cable television station. More information and photographs
of the event are available via the links below. I don't mean to blow
my own horn, until I put my flute to my lips, but it was a sweet pleasure
to look out into the tables and see pianist Cecil Taylor dining with
reedsman Frank Wess, singer Cassandra Wilson hobnobbing with bassist
Ron Carter, clarinetist Buddy DeFranco meeting Sue Mingus, Chicago
percussionist Kahil El' Zabar with Puerto Rican-born saxophonist Miguel
Zenon, clarinetist Perry Robinson hugging trombonist Roswell Rudd,
saxophonists Bobby Watson, Ronnie Cuber, Lew Tabackin and Gary Smulyan,
among many others. Last year the JJA hosted Jazz Awards parties beyond
New York in Washington D.C., Chicago, Monterey, California, and Jerusalem;
this year there was a second event, honoring composer-pianist Horace
Silver and two doctors who treated drummer Billy Higgins for liver
cancer, in Los Angeles. The Jazz Awards is not the Academy Awards,
but it's getting close.
SEE ALSO:
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