Tag: Jazz Appreciation Month

Art tends to both reflect and affect the cultural milieu in which it’s created. That seems especially so in the case of Jazz music.

April is designated Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM). Reflecting on that during this April revealed few aspects of Jazz history more worthy of appreciation than its significant role in Civil Rights. This is in homage to just a few of the most notable highlights – out of countless works worthy of mention.

Billie Holiday – “Strange Fruit”

It has been argued that the recording on April 30, 1939 and subsequent release of this song was the first act of America’s Civil Rights movement. Indeed, an entire book was written to make the point – Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday and the Biography of a Song by David Margolick. (Echo Press, 2001. It is also found as Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights. Running Press, 2000.)

The details vary with who’s telling the story, but one account of the song’s creation is that the incomparable Lady Day was accompanied by Frankie Newton’s band at Café Society in Greenwich Village when a fan approached her with a poem he had written excoriating lynchings. The song is credited to a “Lewis Allan”; his real name was Abel Meeropol, an English teacher from the Bronx. Holiday and Newton’s pianist, Sonny White, worked out a melody and the rest is history.

It’s better, though, to read the book. It presents as more likely that Meeropol created the melody as well, and had it performed publicly a few times before it found its way to Billie. Sonny White did create the recording’s piano intro. Milt Gabler’s Commodore recorded the song when Columbia found it too hot to handle.

If you have ever heard Billie Holiday’s original rendition, you’ve likely never forgotten it. If you haven’t, as with any piece mentioned here, you owe it to yourself. She uses understatement (soft, even tones and precise diction) for one of the most effective presentations of smoldering rage ever captured. One can only imagine experiencing it live. Most accounts speak of stunned, total silence following the song’s harrowing conclusion – giving way eventually to a groundswell of applause.  It was Time Magazine’s Song of the Century.

Yusef Lateef – “Juba Juba”

The album The Blue Yusef Lateef (Atlantic 1508) contains this striking piece that manages to capture a vast swath of American music in 4:20. Based on the field holler/work song format and inspired by a prison song, the performance features wailing blues harmonica and Lateef’s masterful jazz flute. Cissy Houston’s Sweet Inspirations frame the proceedings with a gorgeous spiritual-infused vocal background. The only actual word they sing is “freedom”.

Lateef’s liner notes dedicate the piece to nineteenth-century dancer William Henry Lane, known as Juba. The art of Pattin’ Juba (also called Hambone) involved clapping hands or slapping them on thighs, knees, or ribs for complex rhythmic patterns to accompany dance. Juba was an ingenious African-American form utilizing the human body as percussive instrument.

For the listener, though, the piece needs no explanation.

Duke Ellington – “Come Sunday”

The centerpiece of Ellington’s momentous suite Black, Brown and Beige is this beloved hymn-like ballad that was the forerunner to Duke’s celebrated “sacred concerts”. Apart from rehearsal performance, the premiere was in Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1943. While words weren’t necessary to convey the meaning, Duke added lyrics later. The refrain: “Ooh Lord, dear Lord above/ God almighty, God of love/ Please look down, and see my people through.”  

The February 1958 version featuring Mahalia Jackson on Columbia (CK65566) is especially recommended.

Nina Simone – “Mississippi Goddam”

For the gifted, classically-trained pianist Eunice Kathleen Waymon, a career as a concert pianist was foreclosed before having a chance to commence. (Need we say why?) This gave the world the one-and-only singer/pianist Nina Simone. Any number of her recordings could be mentioned here, of course, but no such list would be complete without “Mississippi Goddam”. (The song’s title is usually spelled without the “n”.)

Simone recorded it often and was incapable of a poor performance. A special treat is available, however: you can watch her perform it live in Holland in 1965 on her Jazz Icons DVD. Whatever version is available, though, the most striking aspect is one of contrast.

If one were to listen casually, paying no attention to the lyrics, the impression would be of an irresistibly jaunty, even catchy, pop tune. Just reading the lyrics, however, leaves the unmistakable impression of exasperated fury. Paying attention to the integrated performance rewards the careful listener with the compelling experience of art.

Charles Mingus – “Fables of Faubus” and “Meditations on Integration”

Composer, arranger and bassist extraordinaire, Mingus is another artist for whom many brilliant works could be cited. Let’s do two.

The trauma surrounding the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957 inspired “Fables of Faubus”. It is available as an instrumental, as on the Columbia album Mingus, Ah, Um. The version you definitely want to hear, however, is from 1960 on Barnaby Candid Series Z 30561, Charles Mingus Presents the Charles Mingus Quartet. Here you get the benefit of the “vocals” between Mingus and drummer Danny Richmond as they heap invective on Arkansas governor Orval Faubus and other deserving targets. Eric Dolphy’s scathing alto sax puts finishing touches on a classic satirical put-down.

It is said Mingus considered the band he took on tour to Europe in 1964 his greatest ever. You’ll get no argument here. Even considering the formidable competition other groups present, Eric Dolphy (as, bc, and f), Clifford Jordan (ts), Jaki Byard (p), and the ever-present Dannie Richmond (d) created astounding fireworks with Mingus’s bass, apparently every night. (Johnny Coles (t) was sidelined by illness not long into the tour.) Luckily, this group was both recorded (Prestige 34001) and filmed (Jazz Icons DVD).

From this tour emerged one of Mingus’s masterpieces, the complex and beautiful “Meditations on Integration”. The DVD has three different versions. With improvisers of this caliber, each version has much to commend it. The tour-de-force recorded in Belgium, however, is astounding. Dolphy is at his incomparable best on both bass clarinet and flute; Byard takes us on a tour of 20^th Century piano form Harlem stride to swing to bebop and beyond; and Jordan does some serious testifying on tenor. The band is telepathic in response to each other’s inventions; seeing creativity on this level with such skill and passion is a thrill.

John Coltrane – “Alabama” (Live at Birdland and Jazz Casual)

Musicians and fans alike eagerly awaited each recording of Coltrane’s Classic Quartet (McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones); Live At Birdland (Impulse A-50) was no different. The incendiary “Afro-Blue” was thrilling, but the haunting “Alabama” was the perfect example of no-lyrics-necessary.

One of the most heinous acts of the 1960s was the bombing by Klan cowards of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on September 15, 1963. Set to maximize harm on a Sunday morning, the bomb injured many and killed four little girls – Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley.

Even on first listening, there can be no doubt what “Alabama” is, and what it means.

Luckily, this too has a version to be viewed. On December 7, 1963, ‘Trane’s Quartet appeared on Jazz critic Ralph Gleason’s TV show, Jazz Casual. The DVD features “Afro-Blue”, “Alabama”, and “Impressions”.

Max Roach – “The Dream/It’s Time”, “Mendacity”; and We Insist! Freedom Now Suite (entire album)

Chattahoochee Red (Columbia FC 37376) is not one of master drummer Max Roach’s most famous albums, but it features the two-part “The Dream/It’s Time”. The piece opens with an amazing duet of sorts: Max drumming accompaniment to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It then morphs into “It’s Time”, the title track from a marvelous Roach record on Impulse (A-16).

Another Impulse album (A-8), and one of his best, Percussion Bitter Sweet, gives us Max’s celebrated tribute to Marcus Garvey, “Garvey’s Ghost” and “Mendacity”, a send-up of the dishonesty that is inevitably built into systemic racism. Each cut highlights the remarkable vocalist Abbey Lincoln, who had rejected record producers’ attempts to rely on her physical beauty to sell comfortably popular music.

Then there is We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, originally recorded on Candid in 1960 and re-released by Columbia (JC 36390) twenty years later. Abbey Lincoln is featured throughout an album that took all-in commitment from the leader and each musician to achieve.

Start with “Driva’ Man” as it invokes history’s harsh realities, then the elegant and hopeful “Freedom Day”, before proceeding (if you dare) to “Tryptich: Prayer/Protest/Peace”. On the latter’s challenging journey, Lincoln’s wordless vocals pair with Roach’s drums. How challenging is it? The middle section is the primal scream of these works; it’s hard to imagine Abbey did not harm her vocal chords conveying such rage. She is back to chant the names of African tribes in “All Africa”, which transitions into “Tears for Johannesburg”, and the close.

Conclusion: What a JAM!

About a century after passage of the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution, it took real courage in addition to unmatched skill to record the works mentioned here. Such music (and much else like it) clearly made inroads. Thus the unforgivable Jim Crow era was interrupted by occasional, sporadic events encompassing or resembling progress, like Brown v. Board of Education, and passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

I have marked anniversaries of the Supreme Court decision in Brown with presentations that use these and other musical triumphs. The presentation is called “With All Deliberate Speed”, which was how the Court directed that Brown be implemented in the 1955 follow-up case Brown II. Since there is still de facto segregation in many areas’ schools, despite some progress, we can see how that’s gone. It’s been deliberate, alright.

Yet, another half century has passed and we are relieved (!) that a murder committed in plain view, and recorded for all to see, actually results in a conviction. A political party loses the Presidency and the Senate, and concludes the lesson to be learned is not the need to earn back the voters’ trust and support, but the need to suppress votes.

We’ve been in a major “jam” of our own making for decades, indeed for centuries. It is the sheer, destructive insanity of racism.

Jazz Appreciation Month 2021 provided a perfect opportunity to reflect on all this. I kept coming back to perhaps my favorite song of all from this period, “Retribution “, from one of Abbey Lincoln’s two greatest albums as a leader, Straight Ahead. (The title track is almost as good, by the way: “Straight ahead, the road keeps winding…”)

Nothing replaces hearing it, of course – “Give me…NOTHING” – but Abbey’s “Retribution” lyrics perfectly capture the proper perspective:

Never was a child
Living life since I was ten
Heard every story told
Been everywhere but in
And I ain’t disillusioned
Always knew confusion’s story

Don’t want no silver spoon
Ain’t asking for the moon
Give me nothing
Don’t want no favors done
Just let the retribution
Match the contribution, baby

No street that’s paved with gold
Don’t need no hand to hold
Hand me nothing
Don’t want no sad song sung
Just let the retribution
Match the contribution, baby

Suggesting “It’s Time!” branded Max Roach a daring radical in 1962. In truth, it was ridiculously, appallingly past time even then – and that was 59 years ago.

For God’s sake.

Ken Bossong

© 2021 Kenneth J. Bossong