I've had a jazz DVD on my shelf for the better part of a year now, and I finally put it on last night and watched the whole thing in one glorious pass, stereo speakers blaring and a glass of wine at my elbow. The disc features taped performances of various European concerts from the 1970s with the likes of Kenny Drew, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon, Red Rodney and Dizzy Gillespie--though the addition of several songs by Willie Dixon also on the disc are an odd pairing with the rest. Sound and video limitations aside, it's about what you'd expect from aging boppers past their prime: wonderfully heart-warming, but nothing musically memorable. Nevertheless, there were some nice moments: a young Victor Lewis playing with Getz, outstanding trio work by Drew, and the Marsalis boys playing with Art Blakey.
The DVD is called Jazz Collection: The Legends Series, and as I watched Blakey and the other jazz giants it made me wonder again if there will ever be any jazz giants in the future. I know there have been numerous and frequent eulogies for jazz in recent years, so I'll resist going there, but the question remains. What will jazz be like in twenty years when everyone who ever played with Charlie Parker is dead? The "Young Lions" from the 80s--when the Marsalis boys were Jazz Messengers--never really panned out. Oh, there were some fantastic albums, Ralph Moore with the Ray Brown Trio, Mike Smith's second album for Delmark, and Christopher Hollyday's debut on Novus are still some of my favorite discs of all time. But that was twenty years ago!
Hollyday's brilliant Parker/McLean melange is now doing work in the service of Smooth Jazz (the acoustic jazz equivalent of Satanism), while Smith has disappeared almost completely, and Ralph Moore, god bless him, has taken refuge along with fellow Lion Kevin Eubanks in the Tonight Show band. With the end of the training ground for young musicians in the bands of greats like Blakey, Betty Carter, Ray Brown, and--for a short while--Horace Silver, it's doubtful that the great performing tradition of jazz groups crisscrossing the country will ever revive. Likely, things will revert to the way they were before recording came along, artists content to make a name for themselves locally--with, of course, the added 21st Century update of having their independent label recordings available world wide on the Internet.
The thing is, this is not like the passing of Arena Rock or Disco. Jazz has survived in the same basic combo form since Louis Armstrong, and so it's not the "style" that determines the music it's the intent of the musician. The willingness to learn an instrument so well as to be able to improvise should have more reward than the once-a-semester performance in a high school or college jazz band. So with the need to make an actual living coming face to face with the a black hole where once there were gigs to aspire to, it's no wonder that musicians decide not to pursue careers in jazz after college (not that I think college is a very good training ground for jazz . . . but that's another post.) Soon--if it hasn't already happened--the jazz message of Blakey, et al. will be nothing more than a faint echo and there will be no one left to take up the cry.
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