I don't listen to very much jazz anymore, but there was a time, oh yes, there was a time when jazz rocked my world. So to speak.
I learned to love it from
Art Hodes, who lived in
my hometown and was a friend of our family. He taught me how to play
gin rummy.
We just watched the Simpsons episode last night where
Bleeding Gums Murphy dies, and it made me think about Art Hodes and what a profound influence he had on me. We used to go see him perform every so often when he played nearby, and he would always play "Sweet Georgia Brown" for my mom (whose first name is Georgia). We got a chance to see him play just a few
months (update:)
weeks before he died. He was almost 90 by that point. (Actually no one knew exactly how old he was, because when his family came to the U.S., they didn't have a birth certificate for him or anything and at Ellis Island, they just guessed. At least I think that's how the story went. Something like that, anyway. It's close enough for jazz.) When that show began, he struggled a bit to get to the piano and sit down, but when he played, I remember how impressed I was that, even though his hands shook a bit, he could still play a
mean piano. The hands just knew where to go.
When he died, we went to his funeral, and it was like no funeral I'd ever seen. But then I'd never been to the funeral of someone who'd lived that long, either, and who had done so much. A bunch of area musicians played boisterous jazz all the way through it.
In the meantime, I had my own jazz story. Through sheer luck,
my high school band's director, Mr. Cross, was a jazz lover himself. I became fairly skilled as a clarinetist by the time I entered high school, so I looked to Mr. Cross for challenges above and beyond playing the music on the page. And he knew exactly how to push me. He challenged me to become a better soloist by encouraging me to enter solo and ensemble competitions (which was also helpful in showing me that I was not the only hot shot young musician out there) and gave me many, many opportunities to work on solo improvisation in the jazz band.
The best thing he did, though, was figure out something he could let me do: he had me arrange my own parts. Jazz arrangements for bands didn't typically come with a clarinet part, and even though it's in the same key as, say, the trumpet or the tenor saxophone, there's a distinct sound to the clarinet in jazz that's very different from either of those instruments. Since I was the only clarinetist in the jazz band, we agreed that there should be a special part tailor-made for the clarinet's sound. So each time Mr. Cross got a new score for the band, he would lend me the conductor's book (that showed all the individual parts) for a few days and let me pull together a part for myself. I'd play through each of the parts in the score, trying to get a feel for how each instrument would sound carrying its part, and how the clear, high tones of a clarinet could either emphasize or harmonize with it. In many cases this meant transposing keys or even transposing from bass clef to treble clef. It was an amazing musical journey. I'd write my part out on staff paper in pencil so I could change it if needed once we played it as a band. I didn't review it with Mr. Cross or anything -- we'd just play the piece as a band for the first time, and that would be his first time hearing what I'd arranged for myself. Sometimes he had suggestions, sometimes we would both cringe if I really screwed up, but often I can remember him looking over at me and smiling proudly. No one else in the band was doing that, and I'll always be grateful to him for the education he let me give myself. I'm definitely a better songwriter now because of that experience.
Anyway, I'm thinking about those guys and all my jazz heritage because I read this morning I read that the
Jazz Showcase in Chicago is closing, perhaps for good. And that makes me sad, knowing that guys like Art Hodes and Mr. Cross aren't around anymore, and jazz isn't drawing the crowds anymore. It may not even be an exaggeration to say it's dying as an art form. I can't imagine what my youth would have been like without jazz, and what my musical appreciation and skill as a songwriter would be like now without having had that start. I'm sad for all the generations to come who may not experience the thrill of jazz. Makes me want to pick up my clarinet and play a little something bittersweet. This one's for you, Art.
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