jazz paranoia


Pulled out an old CD the other night: David Sanborn's Upfront. It's one of few acquisitions I can pinpoint to my freshman year of college, that brief season spent in Iowa where if winter is not longest it is their fiercest season. Between school dances at which I first discovered I could dance after all, and bouncing about the bench of the jazz band piano, it was a splendid year for music. One song I heard and had to have after airplay at a raucous outdoor dance one night was Sanborn's infectious "Bang, Bang." So in those days far before the reign of iTunes, I bought the whole album.

Lately I've been buying more CDs, which brings on occasional spurts of storage guilt in which I peruse the dustier cases that round out my now 400+ collection. Is there possibly one I should resell? Or maybe there's some hidden, long-forgotten gem to get me out of my 5-10 record rotation rut (the problem's emotional as well). On one of these jaunts the other night, I pulled Sanborn from hibernation and peered at him warily. He was only so many cases from my Kralls.

I've had not a little guilt for my taste in "jazz" these days. Sure, twas Julian Adderley's "Sticks" provoked my tears at church Sunday night, but I had to go allmusic him to confirm that was the same bloke I call Cannonball. And while I recently bought my first two but long overdue John Coltrane CDs I suspect my taste runs to his more traditional stuff — no doubt a major failing. After all, attempts to broaden my jazz collection did not go so well for pride at the little shop where I got my stash.

I wanted to get some new hits, I told the owner. "What do you like?" "Well," I began hopefully, "McCoy Tyner, Oscar Brown, Jr. ..." I'm embarrassed to say I forget the other pianists I mentioned — I don't know them by instrument, mainly; I just know the songs I like — and if I like one, maybe I'll like an album. But even so, my short list was quite damning: "You like piano jazz?" Oh. Well just because I play it and always fall for musicians better than me at my instruments ... "Well I like other things too," I mustered hastily. "Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone..." "Oh, you like vocal jazz." That didn't sound very refined! That sounded even worse than liking piano jazz. I didn't tell him I own five Harry Connick Jr. CDs — five. Not including his breakthrough soundtrack.

The shopkeep hastened to reassure that it didn't matter what I liked as long as I liked it ... but that seemed akin to telling a guy who drinks Bud Light at a party it doesn't matter that he's passing up, say, Guinness, as long as he likes his cheap-ass beer you could make from the spit-glasses at a wine tasting. Objectivity has its limits to be sure, but there comes a point when you've got to admit in liking, say, Tom Jones or Ricky Martin, you're showing an abject lack of taste. Nothing in you that wants to dance to those two is moved by a thing of quality. Which is not to say either is the performative equivalent of a drum machine ... but still. You own TJ, you gotta own the full-on camp of it, the totally hang-your-head sell-out (though I still say he's a better buy than Britney or Journey).

So I dropped my Sanborn cautiously into the mix. Sure he'd been purchased from the same era as my Kind of Blue and Dizzy Gillespie 3-set, but a friend whose father is also on allmusic tells me nothing I own by Dizzy goes remotely beyond his mainstream work. Would she think better of my catalog if I told her I found her dad supplied the keys on an Art Blakey I own? No doubt that too is from his "Taco Bell" stage or something (the term a writer friend uses for work you can't pretend was done for anything but the money — though we say solvency is grossly underrated).

I doubt the Sanborn will ever be found in some future Jazz Hall of Fame (though he is better than Kenny G, I suspect he's somewhere in the realm of Pat Metheny — a smooth-jazz culprit I bet I'm wise to not yet own, should jazz aficionado police get hold my albums). But he's not bad. The record is well-suited to an urban night of solitude — the sort when you know posh, classy bars are filled with supposedly glamorous crowds and chitchat but you don't mind being hunkered here, alone, with your dehydrating drink of choice and late-night freelance work or writing or sitting home to mind the house. The music may be lonely, sure, but it has the sort of loneliness not of having nothing better to do but knowing the "better things to do" may not be all they're praised for.

Which strangely reassures me. Sure, my hips may have no self-respect at what tune they'll respond to, but my heart still knows that purity of genius when it hears it. Some B.B. King licks. Blakey's "Dat Duit" (yes, especially the piano solo). The spare, emotional keys backing up Oscar Brown Jr.'s vocals on "Brother Where Are You?" Coltrane's "Blues to Elvin." And even some of Tom Jones' more distinctive work. Even camp can have that all-important purity; the essence is just utterly different from what's pure in Blakey. Sometimes, more than anything, I need a little Tom Jones to revive my spirit; other times I need mellow time with King or Robert Cray. But that doesn't change the integrity in either. Maintaining mine means admitting sometimes my soul is just as hungry for less-refined things as it is for top-shelf music. If such tastes are failings, at least acknowledging that leaves room for a general character refinement that may lead to me someday reselling Tom Jones just as I no longer need to chase after all those parties evoked as the melancholy backdrop of Sanborn's set.

posted @ 12:58 AM on Wed - November 2, 2005 remark! Email |  as quoted:
before I said ...  but more recently: 

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