We’ve been watching Ken Burns’s jazz documentary again, for the third or fourth time at least (I can’t watch the last tape, in which Wynton Marsalis skips over 15 years of exciting post-bebop jazz to pronounce himself the reincarnation of true jazz, as if Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor and Arthur Rhames never existed), and my favorite quote came up, from Roy Eldridge. It’s a statement that, to me, seems to sum up the essential condition of music:
The beboppers are good. But they closed more clubs than they opened.
And while I’m at it, I’m a tremendous fan of Coleman Hawkins, the greatest musician who shares my birthday (Judith Shatin is second). Hawkins had something in common with Claudio Monteverdi, Igor Stravinsky, John Cage, and Miles Davis. He was a star of the swing era – his 1939 recording of “Body and Soul” was the signal recording of the WWII era – but when bebop came along, he changed his style and went along with the younger bebop guys. He was like Erik Satie: “Show me something new and I’ll start all over again.” God bless those who can be influenced by the younger composers.