You need to get hip to jazz. If it seems dissonant and complex, it surely can be. It also swings and is lilting and romantic. Do not be afraid of jazz, little one. Dive right in. Jazz requires your attention for several reasons: it is the only indigenous American art form combining brass band, blues, slave shouts, and Caribbean music with classical European instruments like saxophone and bass. This music was born in bars and houses of ill repute. Pour a drink and light a smoke and spin some wax, cat.
Jazz morphed into swing when white radio got ahold of it, and then the big bands were born. Benny Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, and a million others. Bands were huge with dozens of players and even a few girl singers. After the second ugly war, big band had to give way to bop as it was blacker and faster with Charlie Parker blowing more notes than anyone. In 1948, a bunch of cool cats met at the great jazz pianist Gil Evans’s tiny crib behind a Chinese laundry. These meetings led to the Miles Davis Nonet, or nine. Miles had spent time in Charlie Parker’s band after Dizzy split. They decided to harmonize, slow down the tempo, and generally shift big-band arrangements to a more arty form. They got a gig opening for Count Basie at the Royal Roost, and that’s where Capitol Records heard them and offered them a chance to put it all on wax. Basie had dug the nine, though he thought it was more classical than jazz. They made the record on what was called 78 rpm and all the songs are about three minutes long. Gil Evans and Miles would make more records, but this one starts a whole movement called cool jazz. It is called this because it is cool. It sounds sad and feels cool. The musicians wear dark suits and take their craft very seriously while letting the music snake out like magic. You must attempt to be cool. Put on shades, pour a drink, light something even if it is a candle, and see if this record does not delight you. Birth of the Cool was recorded in 1949 and 1950, but the squares at the label sat on it till Miles was worldwide. By 1957, we had rock ’n’ roll and On the Road. The time was right. The riff was ripe.
I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them.
—Ira Gershwin
Jazz and Ella are the swingin’est four-letter words you need to know. All the great American composers get made better over the course of these eight magisterial albums. Pop music in the Jazz Age was the music of George and Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern and all; the people who wrote musicals for the stage and screen were the pop hit songwriters of the day. These albums were arranged and packaged to showcase the songwriters’ work by one of the great vocalists of all time. It is a perfect meeting of top-notch material, great arrangements, and the ultimate interpreter. Norman Granz was the owner of the legendary Verve label and Ella’s manager. He was a visionary in terms of how his black acts were treated: he allowed no gigs in segregated places and demanded equal treatment in hotels and restaurants. He also had the creativity and wherewithal to get the best arrangers for this epic set. Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn arranged all the songs for their Songbook. It spanned eight years, but Ella conquered this mountain of American Standards, and now you have something exquisite to spin while you light candles for that dinner with someone special.
THIS IS ELLA ON MARILYN MONROE. SOMETHING COOL YOU DIDN’T KNOW.
“I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt,” Ella later said. “It was because of her that I played the Mocambo, a very popular nightclub in the ’50s. She personally called the owner of the Mocambo and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him—and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status—that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman—a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.”
No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.
—Gil Scott-Heron
He is called the “godfather of rap music” for his driving poetry and social content. He has been sampled a zillion times by rappers. But they don’t always have his power. Gil Scott-Heron wrote “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” The message was humorous and radical and to the moment. Gil Scott-Heron’s father was a professional footballer, the first black man to play for Celtic in Glasgow. Gil grew up being raised by his mother in Tennessee and later in New York. While attending university, he took time off to write two novels, The Vulture and The Nigger Factory. This is before he became the musician and educator of America for a generation; he can safely be called an overachiever. His poetry is revealing and always honest, his voice deep and delightful. His collaborator on many of his records was Brian Jackson, whom he met in college. This album has “The Bottle,” an infectious beat, and is a devastating indictment of the destructive power of drink, a Woman’s right to choose, and prison. It was also a catchy hit, and he described it in his usual frank way, “Pop music doesn’t necessarily have to be shit.” No, it does not, and everyone from Public Enemy to Kanye West has taken it on board. You will dance and learn.
You’ve got to learn to leave the table
When love’s no longer being served.
—Nina Simone
“The High Priestess of Soul” was her moniker. Classical musician, church singer, jazz vocalist, activist, shit-disturber, intimate of black writers James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, and Langston Hughes, international star, schizophrenic, shouter at audiences, and wild diva, she has a street in Holland named for her. Covered by loads of artists, imitated by none. Nina Simone was a child prodigy who played in church and refused to play until her parents were seated down front with the white people. She was determined to be the first black Woman classical artist. Having been accepted to Juilliard, she was denied entrance to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia on what she felt was the basis of her race. After the bombing of an Alabama church by the Klan that killed four black girls, and the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, she wrote “Mississippi Goddam” as a reaction to the ongoing struggle for equal rights. It is a scathing piece, a from-the-heart lament on the state of race in the USA. In the middle of the song, she says, “This is a show tune, but the show hasn’t been written for it yet.” Nina Simone lost money to record companies, shot at noisy neighbors, advocated violent revolution, went through bad marriages, had a hit record from a Chanel No. 5 commercial, and all the while was a singular presence and unique voice. Dig her and reach a higher state.