New York City Is the Jazz Capital of the World

Is It Really?
I go around this city, NYC, and I look for jazz--oh, I find some but not like when I moved here in the late sixties. Then there was jazz everywhere and played by somebody besides Wynton Marsalis and the other members of his family who have suddenly become the most important jazz representatives we have in this country. I remember the first time I got a chance to lay under Thelonious Monk's piano at the Village Vanguard one night back in 1972--that was a great privilege that jazz lovers waited in line for, that next chance to slide under that grand to become "Trinkle Tinkled" on or to enjoy the vibrations of "Friday the Thirteenth" as Monk's big feet pounded the beat out on the Vanguard's filthy stage carpeted floor, except Monk's piano wasn't on the stage but table-level.

Then we'd scramble over to the Village Gate to catch Mingus at the Top of the Gate or to go down in the East Village to hear Albert Ayler playing at Slugs--by the way, did I mention that one of those last Mingus bands I saw had Jaki Byard at the piano--oh joy, what a great pianist Jaki was--one of the greatest ever--and, by God, true to form, Mingus got pissed at a bourgeoisie couple sitting and kissing during the last tune of the first set and he just casually walked over to the kissers's table and took her drink and poured it on top the dude's flat head--when the dude bitched, Mingus wrote something on a napkin and gave it to her--and they immediately got up and abandoned the Top of the Gate.

I came to New York City because of the jazz here, that I did, and I got to see a lot of the greatest stars ever in jazz here, including Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Peewee Russell, Buddy Rich, Zoot Sims, Bob Brookmeyer, Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Sam Jones, Cedar Walton, Junior Mance, Bill Evans, Mose Allison, Teddy Kotick, Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, The Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, Art Blakey and three or four of his different Jazz Messenger bands (one with Wynton Marsalis in it), the Oscar Peterson Trio, Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Rassaan Roland Kirk, Cannonball and Nat Adderly, Sonny Fortune, Archie Shepp, Ester Satterfield, Chris Connor, Stan Getz, Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Earl "Father" Hines, Eddie Condon and his All-Stars (Wild Bull Davidson, Jimmy McPartland, Bud Freeman, George Wettling, Cutty Cuttshaw) Jimmy Rushing, Carmen McRae, Max Roach, Monty Alexander, Marian McPartland, Cal Tjader, Kenny Burrell, Charles Earland, Bobby Hutcherson, Charles McPherson, Lonnie Liston Smith, Tony Williams and Life Line, Wayne Shorter, Pharoah Sanders, Leon Thomas, Eddie Jefferson, Rashid Ali, McCoy Tynner, Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Ed Blackwell, Bern Nix, Count Basie up in the Rainbow Room, Kenny Barron, Anthony Braxton, Philly Joe Jones, Dr. Billy Taylor, Hank Edmonds, Red Norvo, Louis Hayes, Charley Persip, Bob Cranshaw, Lee Wiley, Billy Higgins, Billy Harper, Phil Woods, Bill Goodwin, Sam Rivers, Horace Silver, Buck Clayton, Milt Jackson, Roy Haynes--and all the ones I've missed, but you see what I mean, don't you? I mean today in New York City there seems to be only WyntonMarsalis and he gets anything he wants, including the Jazz at Lincoln Center program and now his own Jazz at Lincoln Center building, a multimillion dollar performance hall, recording studio, and nightclub (Dizzy Gillespie Coca Cola Club (an abomination to me, but Wynton loves success, so hell, why not let Coca Cola give it to him--couldn't Coca Cola have rebuilt homes in New Orleans with the monies they blow buying their damn brand name onto every wall every broadcast every art show every NASCAR race?--it doesn't matter to Coca Cola, as long as they can commercialize it). In my day, jazz lovers did all they could to avoid commercialization. We felt jazz was above such sleazy bottomlife existence. Selling jazz. That's what these post-golden-age jazz geniuses are doing, hustling jazz, at least what they think and say jazz is. Why Wynton's even teaching jazz to children--teaching them how to read jazz and write jazz--Shit, that's not what jazz was when I was a student of jazz--you learned jazz from within to without. Yes, you learned to master your instrument but you mastered it your way and not some successful cat's way. Hell yes we listened over and over again to the masters's solos, but we tried not to mimic them, dammit, to develop our own unique sounds/styles, acts, and it was up to us to keep it cool and in motion--and there were clubs where jazz was welcomed all over Manhattan-- and you didn't have to have a neon name to get a gig--just a demo tape or perhaps you sat in at a jam session--Sunday afternoons and Monday nights were jam nights--the off nights. Jams were our colleges; except, I admit, I went to a college with a jazz music master's degree program--and a swinging jazz band full of guys who became jazz stars. We learned more playing together than in composition and master classes.

Now Wynton Marsalis rules the world of jazz. Yes, there are still some masters around, like McCoy Tynner, one of the greatest pianists ever, but you don't see them on Jazz at Lincoln Center--oh yeah, Wynton brought Bob Wilber out of mothballs for a cool concert--and it was great but due to Bob Wilber and not Wynton Marsalis. [I played piano in New Orleans back in the mid-sixties and Ellis Marsalis, Wynton's father, was competition for piano bar jobs in New Orleans, him and a dude named Armand Hug. I never thought much about Ellis's piano, but then he was slick and cool though not very exciting.]

If New York City is the Jazz Capital of the World, then jazz is in pretty sick shape. There's no jazz around now like there was then. All the real geniuses of the genre are passed on now...did I mention I saw Ben Webster, Sweets Edison, Eubie Blake, Sammy Price, Jimmy McGriff, Ham Bluitt, Julius Hemphill, Don Pullin, Jack Walrath, George Adams, Jon Faddis, the Brecker Brothers (I hated them), Lou Donaldson, Ray Bryant, Jay McShann--[we saw Dizzy Gillespie sit in with Muddy Waters at Max's Kansas City one night--it was recorded; I've heard it]--the Fillmore East was still going when I came to New York City and I saw B.B. King there--there were jazz clubs all over town--the Cedar Tavern had jazz, the Top of the Gate, the Gate, the Village Vanguard, Buddy's Place (the club run under Buddy Rich's name), the Half Note, Jimmy Ryan's, Eddie Condon's, the Metropole Club (where Roy Eldredge and Coleman Hawkins led the band), Sweet Basil, Seventh Avenue South, Princess Pamela had a little jazz restaurant, Slugs, the Ritz Club had jazz, The Tin Roof had jazz, Fat Tuesday's opened later but it opened and had jazz, the West End Cafe had jazz--OK, OK, I've made my point--whoaa, the Village Corner had jazz--there was jazz in the NYU Student Center all the time--NYU even had a jazz festival. And then one morning Albert Ayler was found floating face down in the Hudson River just off Riverside Park way uptown in Manhattan.

I have a friend, one of the great alto players of today whose just left NYC and moved to San Antonio, Texas. He wrote me last week he did 32 gigs in 24 days down there last month. Up here, he was struggling to survive and only getting gigs that were getting him nowhere.

Whew, I've run out of growl.

Don Imus
The gnarly old cokehead fool just got fired by CBS Radio (made famous by Mel Karmazin the man who founded Infinity Radio, which came to power on the back of Howard Stern--came to such power that Infinity started buying up every radio station in the USA, competing heavily with Clear Channel and other radio station syndicates for more and more stations, Infinity finally getting so big it bought CBS and then was bought or merged into Paramount and Viacom [I once worked for Viacom. Guess where it came from? It was once CBS's production arm. In the 60s and 70s CBS owned most of the top shows on teevee, Gunsmoke, I Love Lucy, Maverick, etc--the big shows--to the point the Justice Department ruled that CBS was unfairly dominating television production so they had to spin off their production wing and that, under a man named Ralph Baruch, became Viacom International--and I worked for them writing show synopses for their huge European television distribution]. This was all due to Howard Stern.

Where did Howard Stern come from? Why he came from Washington, D.C., at the invitation of WNBC radio here in NYC...an AM station, and Howard Stern got drive time--and guess who was the morning man? You guessed it, Don Imus--Imus in the Morning --this was the time that Imus was the big man in town, though soon Howard was shoving the old geezer--and Don was an old man then--into a has-been bin. WNBC fired Howard though he had the highest ratings of any of their shows. So what happened then? Melvin Allan Karmasin happened, that's what happened. Mel owned NYC high-powered rock station WXRK-FM and Mel hired Howard, not as his afternoon man but as his morning man...and Howard Stern took over the NYC radio market and then came up with the nationwide syndication network that eventually did make Howard the King of All Media (Howard's Simon & Schuster book, Private Parts, was the fastest selling and largest selling book of all time; then Howard starred in the movie of the same name). Howard immediately drove Imus off the planet and put WNBC totally out of business; in fact, he put NBC out of the radio business. Where did Imus go? Why to WFAN-AM radio. And who owned WFAN-AM? Why Mel Karmazin and Infinity Radio. That's how Drugstore Cowboy Cokehead Don Imus got a second chance--thanks to Howard, who had a weird knack of rewarding competition he'd destroyed by hiring to work for him--like Bubba the Love Sponge. Howard always said all you have to do to make it in radio is to just say everything you say like you know what you're talking about--the best ratings are gotten through sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

I wasn't all that impressed with the Rutgers's girls's and their coach's response to turkey-necked Imus was all that hard like it should have been. Can you imagine Malcolm X coming down on Don "Let's Snort a Couple of Lines" Imus?

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler