Why Jazz isn't more popular

I like Trane's tone on soprano. Check out "Central Park West," I think his sound is beautiful on this tune. And Coltrane pretty much single handily brought the soprano back to the musical consciousness.

Everything is going on on the jazz scene today, it's not being too well publicized. There's a very good Goodman ghost band in NYC called the Stan Rubin Orchestra. The band plays the old charts of the Goodman band, and I mean the old charts. Stan paid Benny for his old charts when they got dog eared and worn, recopied them, and put them in his book. Stan memorized Goodman's solos and played them on his clarinet till he suffered a stroke. After that, he hired a Goodman clarinet specialist to replecate the Goodman solos note for note. The band dates back to the 1950's, and is still going strong in the NY area. I used to sit in one of the tenor chairs, but I got busy with other things. Plus, I got tired of reading the written out Babe Russin tenor solos.

But nobody wants to pay for a large ensemble. That's one reason why the new music might sound a little threadbare. Today, a large ensemble is anything over 5 pieces. After that, promoters start crying about air fare and hotel rooms. The big old ghost bands that used to wander the land are no more.

Jazz is being priced out of business.

Julian
 
rleitch said:
I think one of the hardest things that folks, perhaps some musicians and critics especially, have had to deal with in responding to modern jazz (which, as Coltrane argued, is American classical music) is the extent to which, often by a very young age, major players like Coltrane achieved a level of complete mastery over many aspects of the music which most of us will never attain, even after a lifetime of working at it.
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"I'm jealous of you, so I won't listen to you"? Well, I suppose some people are like that, but I doubt that the majority of folks are.

I think there's a further question of, "Mastery over what?" I grant you that Coltrane and Chris Potter (just to name two folks in this thread) are virtuoso players, but are they better musicians than, say, Paul Desmond (looking at his bio, most of his "fame" started in his late 20s)? Is Coltrane > Charlie Parker, and if so, at what level?

In another sense, is a good musician better than a good player?

Additionally, I tend to think at the time Coltrane made the comment that you quote, jazz was the biggest thing in the US. It hasn't been for quite some time.

I will probably never manage even one seriously decent chorus of improvised sax playing over I Got Rhythm changes. Nonetheless, I can recognize that, for a player like Coltrane, the very thing I will strive for all my life and likely will never achieve, would be utterly old hat, unchallenging, and uninspiring. This doesn't diminish anyone. The thing is to recognize that my own musical desiderata are not those of a major musician: had Coltrane wanted merely to sound "good" on the soprano, he could have done so, easily. He had other fish to fry.
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I think how good you or I can play jazz has rather little to do with the popularity of the genre :D.

I realized at a very young age that someone is almost always better than you, no matter the field you're in and, if you're regarded as "top" in your field, there's probably somebody that does a facet of your job better. Sometimes it's fun to strive to be the best, tho, even tho you'll never achieve it.

You can argue that Coltrane's the best sax player evar. That's fine. I could counter that, oh, Sal Andolina plays soprano an awful lot better. Or insist that Charlie Parker was a better player.

Again, this thread's not about why jazz was popular in the 1960's ....
 
MrDibbs said:
NO! Not even close in my opinion. Bird swings.
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Personally, I think each has a couple tunes that I like. That's about it. At the very least Parker will always be known for taking essentially a student saxophone -- the Grafton Acrylic Alto -- and playing the heck outta it, which should have put to rest the question of, "Is it the horn or the player?"
 
pete said:
Again, this thread's not about why jazz was popular in the 1960's ....
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Pete,
You pretty much misunderstood my point about Coltrane entirely, but never mind.

I bring up the historical comparison simply because the complaints you guys are making here are exactly the same old ones that were made about Bebop in the 40s (technically deficient, no grasp of good melody, fraud music only patronized by "hipsters," nothing but soloing, you can't dance to it), and then again about Coltrane and the avant garde in the 60s.

Thankfully, the musicians don't listen to critics very much! The players will decide whether somebody like Chris Potter really counts in the long run. With the exception of being able to make a living playing what you want to play, any other kind of popularity is a sideshow IMHO.

Rory
 
rleitch said:
Pete,
You pretty much misunderstood my point about Coltrane entirely, but never mind.

I bring up the historical comparison simply because the complaints you guys are making here are exactly the same old ones that were made about Bebop in the 40s (technically deficient, no grasp of good melody, fraud music only patronized by "hipsters," nothing but soloing, you can't dance to it), and then again about Coltrane and the avant garde in the 60s.

Thankfully, the musicians don't listen to critics very much! The players will decide whether somebody like Chris Potter really counts in the long run. With the exception of being able to make a living playing what you want to play, any other kind of popularity is a sideshow IMHO.

Rory
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Yes Rory, I noticed the same thing. The criticism I see here is pretty much the same that Parker and Coltrane were subjected to 60 and 50 years ago. But both still went on to become the musical and cultural icons that they are today.

Julian
 
sideC said:
Yes Rory, I noticed the same thing. The criticism I see here is pretty much the same that Parker and Coltrane were subjected to 60 and 50 years ago. But both still went on to become the musical and cultural icons that they are today.

Julian
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Yes, but the question of this thread is, "Why isn't jazz more popular?" (which is what I was trying to answer, along with my reasons for not liking jazz). I don't think you can make it into an argument of, "There aren't any jazz superstars at the moment" -- or, even if they are, it's like saying that they're famous sitar players: nobody cares, except for a few folks in India.

Additionally, while Coltrane may be a sax icon, I bet that a) most people don't know who he was and b) probably most sax players don't know who he was.

Turn the question of this thread on its head: "What can be done to make jazz more popular?"
 
Gandalfe said:
Teach it in school. I know that where a lot of us were exposed to it.
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While you're older than me, Jim, it's not by that much :).

I was "lucky" enough to have been in a high school that was large enough to support a "symphonic" band, "concert" band, jazz ensemble and marching band. As I was the ONLY bari player, I was in all of 'em.

However, I also attended four different high schools. The first had a large band, but we never did any jazz. The second was the one I mentioned, and we even played a Brubeck medley in one of the other bands. The third and fourth did absolutely nothing jazz-related, but also had large bands.
 
rleitch said:
The players will decide whether somebody like Chris Potter really counts in the long run. With the exception of being able to make a living playing what you want to play, any other kind of popularity is a sideshow IMHO.
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That is a major exception. It is in all walks of life that I know of. Loads of talent gone to waste due the inability to get sufficient funds. Not being able to make a living by any other means than teaching or repairing instruments is IMO the major obstacle facing jazz. By that token, sitar players catering to 0.1% of the population in India may be doing well for themselves and their art (not that actually know anything about sitar music).
 
Gandalfe said:
Teach it in school. I know that where a lot of us were exposed to it.
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There were no jazz programs in schools when I was there. There was no jazz on the radio or TV, either. We learned from records and by listening to other players. Many jazz greats came out of that era, and formal education had nothing to do with it.

Jazz is not "popular" now and was not then because there are and were few venues at which people can hear it and be exposed to it. It's been a niche music since after the big band era.

Club owners don't want to support jazz now because the people who patronize it are not big spenders. Never have been.

Jazz will become popular when a young person with superstar qualities brings it to the record-buying, MP3-downloading demographic such that young people want to associate with the society itself without regard to whatever music happens to be playing in the background.

The closest thing to that in recent times has been Harry Connick, Jr. and Diana Krall. And their constituency is already getting a little long in the tooth.

And even if another babe or hunk comes along, jazz popularity will be, as it has always been, a passing fancy.

Witness the neo-swing movement of a few years back. If it had been about music, more of us guys who can play the music would have found work in it. But it wasn't. It was about clothes and youth. Which are what all popular music is about.

We jazz musicians are stuck in the middle. One one side you find moppets with discretionary cash and no responsibilities who think the capital of Montana is Hannah. On the other are the post-middle aged boomers with collapsed 401Ks who want to line dance to the Electric Slide. Somewhere in that middle we find a few patrons. And we play for them when we can.
 
pete said:
Yes, but the question of this thread is, "Why isn't jazz more popular?" (which is what I was trying to answer, along with my reasons for not liking jazz). I don't think you can make it into an argument of, "There aren't any jazz superstars at the moment" -- or, even if they are, it's like saying that they're famous sitar players: nobody cares, except for a few folks in India.

Additionally, while Coltrane may be a sax icon, I bet that a) most people don't know who he was and b) probably most sax players don't know who he was.

Turn the question of this thread on its head: "What can be done to make jazz more popular?"
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Yes, I know what the topic of the thread is, I addressed that in my earlier post. I was responding to the sidebar Coltrane and Parker 'critique' which cropped up in this tread.

I don't understand your second statement quoted here saying that 'while Trane may be a sax icon, most sax players don't know who he is.' Wouldn't the fact that he's an icon indicate that he would be known to saxophone players?

I think if you're talking about Trane not being known to saxophone players here in the world of the internet, an artificial world of facsimile saxophone playing, you just might have something. But out in the real world, where saxophone players are playing, trying to make headway with their music, familiarity of the man and his work is at a very high level. You have to listen to the music, be familiar with the styles contained within. You will hear John Coltrane in just about anyone who can play the saxophone well in the jazz idiom today.

He had a major record label, Impulse Records, built around his music. So that would indicate that plenty on non musicians know who he is.

Back to the topic.....

But I truly don't feel that eliminating or deemphasizing the more complicated music is going to make jazz more popular. That's like saying that all painters must paint landscapes or still life. I've been doing this music my whole life, playing professionaly for about 40 years now. My first memory in life is listening to my Dads new 78rpm recording of Bud Powell's "Glass Enclosure." And I'm third generation in the jazz scene. So I'm saying that some of us are very steeped in jazz, know many of it's ins and outs. I need to be challenged by the next new thing, yet I know and love the old 'traditional' stuff. I need complicated stuff to keep things interesting.

This music will be here after all of us are gone...I'm proud to be a part of it, that's why I defend it the way I do. I'm not ashamed to say that I love the music called jazz.

Music is a business, and there are corporate obsticles that must be dealt with when it comes to radio airplay. Music right now is transitioning from record stores to the internet download realm. Again, jazz seems to be falling through the cracks, just as it did to some extent during the transition from vinyl to cd disk.

Anyone on here who self produces their own commercial recordings can attest to how difficult it is to get radio airplay and sales distribution nowadays. There can be 10 threads on that subject alone.....

Julian
 
A record label that specializes in a jazz catalog is hardly a "major" label. Profitable, yes, but compared to the likes of Music Corporation of America, small cheese indeed.

I've always felt that "popular" music has to be music that is accessible to all. A "good" tune, be it classical or pop, jazz or folk, is one (in my opinion) that you can whistle or hum, using the instruments God (or evolution) gifted you with when you were born.

By this definition, the Beatles, Bach and Beethoven, and Cyndi Lauper all produce "good" music, at least in some of what they have done. Jazz? Well, you might manage the root tune, but once the artists go to work on their changes, you lose everyone but the other jazz enthusiasts. (The same can be said of those tunes produced by B, B and B, and CL where they otherwise depart from the simple, human accessible melody.)

By this definition, much of "smooth jazz" is very accessible. Most of the rest of jazz is not.

And, any musician who wants to make some money out of his craft needs to appreciate classical, pop, rock, R&B and all of the rest that people want to hear and dance to. Unfortunate that they don't support 'Trane or the others, but that's life.

To them (the masses), you are mostly just a technician, hired for your skills that they want to use for their entertainment purposes, and nothing else. Just because you get a big tip in addition to your fee, there's no reason to think that their tastes coincide with them.

Or, you can keep playing the jazz equivalent of "art" music, do it for peanuts, and wonder why nobody cares.
 
Coltrane is an icon to the folks that know his music. Here's a good example: ever heard of Sigurd Rascher? Same general idea: Rascher's arguably done more for the sax, but very few folks have ever heard of him. Heck, I didn't until I had a teacher who was a 2nd gen student of Rascher.

I think a lot more people had heard of Coltrane about 30 years ago. My students didn't. I remember people asking who Count Basie was in jazz ensemble and why the ending of a piece was Basie-esque.

But I truly don't feel that eliminating or deemphasizing the more complicated music is going to make jazz more popular.
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Oddly enough, I was listening to some Bebop on the way home tonight. Charlie Parker, to be precise. The statement the announcer made was something to the effect of, "Bebop was made to be overly complex BECAUSE 'boppers wanted to eliminate poseurs from their ranks." "Intentionally complex" rarely = good. And I do think that if you need to be trained to "appreciate" the art, the art isn't good. You should be trained to appreciate something that's already good MORE.

I think one of the problems that classical music suffers from (switching genres) is that Bach, etc. is old hat -- sort-of. There are pieces that have been played to death (keeping with Bach, Cello Suite #1 comes to mind -- and it's currently in a MasterCard commercial) and people then say, "I've heard everything by $composer! He's boring!" Well, these pieces weren't 'boring' when they were new and I guarantee that you haven't heard everything by $composer. Heck, I've recently been introduced to the string quartets from Beethoven and those are grand, but you're more likely to hear Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or Fur Elise rather than these quartets.

Hmm. I'll probably hear "Take 5" if I listen to the local jazz station all day and maybe "My Favorite Things". Unlikely that I'll be hearing anything by the Paul Desmond Quartet, for instance. It's probably gonna be three or four guys that play competing solos.
 
I can assure you that I don't, and never have worked for "peanuts." (Well, not too much:-D). It is a common misconception that if you play jazz, you're going to be poor. If you play well enough, and you know the business, and know how to hustle, you can make money. As a matter of fact, I just came in from doing a little winter storage maintenance on my 1969 Buick Skylark Custom convertible. I paid for the national award winning restoration of this car mainly with royality and risidual fees paid to me from recordings I worked on in the 1980's and the early part of the '90s. The money came mainly from jazz recordings. I'm not bragging, just showing that I've, and many of my friends have, made a good living over the years, made good money playing jazz. I own my own home in a nice neighborhood. My Buick shares garage space with my Dodge hemi Charger. Not bragging, just showing the profitability of the jazz business if you work hard and hustle and save your money.

Smooth jazz is not at all accessable here in the NYC area. New York City's smooth jazz radio station, CD101, changed it's format to all talk, I believe, back in '08 or '09. No one here has picked up the smooth jazz format. The 24/7 straight ahead jazz station, WBGO, is going strong, as is a most of the time jazz Columbia U station, WKCR. Phil Shaap plays a Charlie Parker show every morning from 8:20am till 10:00am on KCR. So smooth jazz has gone the way of fusion music in the jazz capitol of the world.

As for as Impulse being a major label, it was that.... during it's heyday. You have to take into account that jazz has a much stronger sales base world wide than it does here in the US. You would have to spend time, lots of it, travelling the world to see the appeal of this music some see as unimportant. I've worked one nighters at festivals in Europe that were located only a 1 or 2 hour bus ride from one venue to the next. Every night a different festival, but no more than a 1 to 1 and a half hour bus ride per day! Every town has it's own jazz festival. And I'm talking about doing this for the whole month of June or July. Major festivals with headliners like Jimmy Heath, Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner, Sonny Rollins, Phil Woods, Benny Golson, major artists being paid major money. So the work and the paydays are still around, but you have to travel. Art is much more appreciated in other places than it is here in the US.

I also remember seeing Art Blakey and Wayne Shorter on a tv commercial in Japan during one of my first trips there back in the late '70s. It was a pleasant surprise, but it just goes to show you the appreciation and recognition that improvising musicians get in other parts of the world. I also saw Sadao Watanabe in a very slick Honda motorbike tv spot back then. Jazz musicians get their dap, maybe not here in the states, but around the world. You've got to look at the big picture, if your perspective allows you to do so.

And what's the problem with complex music, I ask again? Pete, you mentioned "Take 5." What's more complex than that? But I bet that nearly all of us can tap our toe, or bob our heads to it. It's not that intimidating to listen to because it's so melodic, and we've heard it a million times. So sometime complex can be cool, no?

Terry, I threw in a 'dap' for you, man.:-D

Julian
 
I would hazard that the number of adult Americans who don't know who Coltrane is is roughly equivalent to the number of Brits who haven't heard of Shakespeare. Rascher? seriously Pete, get real!

Here are the top selling jazz albums from last year. _A love Supreme_ continues to be a best seller (despite the fact that folks who don't like/understand it continue to insist that it is irrelevent). Coltrane is on 2 and (IMO) a major influence on 3 others.

http://www.apple.com/euro/itunes/charts/top10jazzalbums.html

R.
 
pete said:
The statement the announcer made was something to the effect of, "Bebop was made to be overly complex BECAUSE 'boppers wanted to eliminate poseurs from their ranks."
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I hope you aren't naive enough to believe that. That announcer has no clue about why and how those guys came to evolve a new form of jazz.
 
I'm not a 'Trane fan myself. Oh, I can analyze what he did and see the genius in his playing. It's just that 'Trane didn't speak to me. I'm more of a Getz/Prez kind of guy, where the technique is hidden and the melodies appeal to my personal sense of melody.

Smooth jazz is dying because it is boring. There are some excellent players, but the music content is dull and the over-compressed recordings suck all the dynamic life out of it. So it turned into Muzak for boomers, until they got bored with it.

On the other hand, the stuff Mark Murphy did on Muse with Ritchie Cole was both spectacular and accessible to the general public (at least a large percentage of it). But it never got broad appeal.

After thinking about it for a while, I have decided that the main reason Jazz isn't mainstream music is because it isn't promoted.

The US public will buy just about anything if it is promoted enough. (Think McDonalds, Rap, Pop Tarts, Snuggies [a backwards bathrobe], Pet Rocks, Cabbage Patch Dolls, and so on)

But it's more profitable to produce "one hit wonders" or "one CD wonders" and take the inflated publishing, production, and promotion costs out of their royalty checks than it is to do that for someone who has been around long enough to develop great jazz skills.

Sad but true, Jazz, like most high art, appeals to a small percentage of the audience. Even when Jazz was popular music, Glenn Miller was much more popular than Duke Ellington.

Personally two of my "classical" favorites are Shostakovitch and Prokofiev, but when the symphony comes around, it seems more people prefer Bach, Mozart, and Brahms or another performance of Beethoven's fifth. Not that those are bad pieces/artists, but they are pretty much the pop music of the classical genre. I never hear Suk, Amirov, Esphai, Atterberg, Martinu and the like in concert, and when they do play Prokofiev, it's usually the "classical" symphony.

Perhaps for most of history, the masses have never appreciated fine art.

I don't think there is anything we can do about it.

So my hat is off to the guys and gals who play jazz and classical music.

Insights and incites by Notes
 
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