Jazz and the Ambiguity of Influence, Pt. 18: Those Essential Unsung Heroes
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One could go ever-so-slightly down a tier and encounter masters galore. Where to begin? Horace Silver? Freddie Hubbard? Ron Carter? Teddy Wilson? Wes Montgomery? Johnny Hodges? McCoy Tyner? Ben Webster? Stan Getz? And on and on and on. Then there are scores and scores of players that are always worth listening to and who are creative beyond belief, Hall of Famers in the making. I'm thinking of the Joe Lovano-type players. Tom Harrell. Kenny Barron. Wynton and Branford Marsalis. These are all players who figure in the Downbeat polls. All of whom are brilliant, and there are a lot of them. Then there are the journeymen. These are the kind of players profiled in the old Jazz Times feature called Overdue Ovations. These are the people who make a life in jazz at a very high level, but who often slip through the cracks when it comes time to shine the jazz spotlight. I was looking through some old issues and came across a great example: the sax player Steve Wilson. Time and again when I've been listening to a recording my ear has perked up for a sax solo, and lo and behold it's Steve Wilson. But I didn't really know much about him until I read the article and then googled him. And I'm a jazz fanatic!
I'll quit flooding you with names, but the point is that even as you go "down" the tiers, these musicians are absolute monsters. Jazz is like classical in that to even be in the game at all you have to have virtuosic chops. And I'm talking about people you never hear much about at all. These are people who pop up on the national scene from time to time but are more locally based, maybe associated with a university, maybe not. Here's a great example. Years ago I picked up a CD that was in the budget bin at the record store, back when CDs were a thing and when we all carried Nokia flip phones. It was a recording on Russ Gershon's local Boston label, Accurate, by a combo called the Consuelo - Jon Quartet. It struck me as one of the best jazz albums I've ever heard, though I had never heard of them (they were faculty at either Berklee or the New England Conservatory). I listened to their CD constantly, since it hit that sweet spot between invention and accessibility. My point is that major and even minor cities everywhere have players like this, including cities around the world. I bet there are even some kick-ass players somewhere in Albania.
Let's talk more about the local level, for here is domain of the truest unsung heroes. One thing that really jumped out at me from Miles' autobiography, and a story I love to cite, was how much he was influenced and inspired by a trumpet player (the name escapes me) that never left the St. Louis area. I mean, without this guy, maybe we don't get Miles Davis, superstar. Joe Lovano's father, Tony "Big T" Lovano, was a local sax legend in Cleveland.
When I lived in Denver in the 80s I experienced a perfect manifestation of this phenomenon. The jazz scene there was lively and vital, with little jazz clubs everywhere. You had multiple jazz options seven nights a week. Just a half block from my apartment the Lester Young disciple Spike Robinson played at a hotel bar every weekend. Spike had been something of a jazz sensation in London after WWII, but tired of the jazz life, so he moved to Boulder and worked as an aeronautical engineer (I think). After a while he picked up the horn again and blessed the Denver-area jazz community with his first-rate swinging. In my previous installment I wrote about the club El Chapultapec, which was ground zero for Denver jazz. My friend the pianist Joe Bonner* was the biggest name on the scene. He'd played with Pharaoh Sanders and Freddie Hubbard and others, but preferred a quieter life, so he toggled between Denver and Copenhagen, where he recorded for the Steeplechase label. But it was his friend, the drummer Tom Tilton, who no one has ever heard of outside Denver, who really made things happen, putting all sorts of bands together and coming up with really creative performance opportunities in alternative venues like warehouses and museums. The trumpeter Ron Miles came up in the scene when I was there, and slowly but surely he became an esteemed national figure.
Long story short: those of us who loved the music were getting the full jazz experience. Every night we were getting to that place that only improvised music can take you to, where groove, melodic invention, and group interactivity produce the mind-body synthesis and alteration of consciousness that is the essence of the jazz experience. I've seen Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, you name it, but honestly I value just as much my experiences in local jazz clubs with musicians who never will be counted among the giants. Maybe I value them more, as I was among friends, communing with my tribe. But you know what, the giants feel the same way. More than any concert they ever gave, it was those times sitting in a circle for an after-hours jam session, where anyone could sit in, trading licks and laughs, that they really felt the true glory of the music.
In jazz, as in life I suppose, there both is and is not a hierarchy. There is no denying that the masters introduce us to elevated states of aesthetic complexity and refinement that reveal the full creative and peaceful potential of life. But on the other hand, there is no substitute for anyone at any level giving it a go for themselves and seeing what they can make happen. That's a meaning-making thing. That's a spiritual thing. And despite what they might want to tell you, in spirituality there is no hierarchy. I guess what I am saying is that the most hidden unsung heroes are those who might have played in high school or college and were never going to go anywhere after that as jazz musicians. I count myself among these persons. Not great chops, but great love for the music.
* Joe was from Rocky Mount, NC, birthplace of Thelonious Monk.
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