"I'll play it and tell you what it is later."

Recently I've dived into a very large collection of jazz between the 1950s and 1960s.  It's amazing to think that some of the most square sounding music could have such a chalky history of drug abuse.  For example, I would have never guessed that this guy had such an intense herion addiction:




I think part of the allure of this music (and I go from everywhere, Mingus, Coltrane, Getz, Davis, Monk, anybody) during this time, you start to figure out more what the music is about. I mean that in two ways:

- The first is the idea that any great jazz composer couldn't be able to demonstrate their ability to create in any other way.  Hearing how singers sing and then how jazz artists actually speak (honestly, Miles Davis' voice sounds worse than Tom Waits'), it makes you realize that this is their medium.  While people focus so much on how one sings and how the arrangement needs vocals, the fact that its stripped away is so refined.

-  The second is the story behind the music.  Bill Evans, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker all had serious drug addictions.  In fact, a lot of them didn't live very long.  Listening to Bill Evans without knowing how much the man struggled makes the music feel empty and listless, but understanding it puts so much raw emotion into a keyboard.  Miles Davis was an incredibly angry man and knowing that makes you realize how aggressive and intense his message is.

Few other times (since the 1940s) have really been able to convey that intensity.  That's why I would rather listen to Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack he wrote for the film A Charlie Brown Christmas in July than have to tolerate the choppy compositions that are ham-fisted together.  Contemporary jazz is so shameful because the art isn't really appreciated.  The tempo is dropped and mood was lightened in the last three decades.

After meeting a former jazz musician and having him tell me personal stories about famous musicians during the time I really got where the vanguard was coming from.  It makes people you had no idea existed become fascinating because of their music.  You go back and you imagine Charles Mingus being so large and violent like he was thought to be, and you hear Mingus Ah Um and you really understand where his chaotic sound and bass come from, having instruments abruptly chime in and out.

People easily remember a band because of a familiar voice, but I think it's just as easy to do the same with solid jazz sound.  They all sound distinct as a cohesive body AND with the associated instrument of the composer.

I guess my point to this is that I feel people too easily shun some of the most intense music one could listen to.  Many people have been moved by lyrical songs (i.e. when I drove for the first time at 16 by myself listening Jimi Hendrix's track "Are You Experienced?")  but it's just as easily capable listening to "Waltz for Debby" or "Better Get Hit In Yo' Soul".   Jazz is better at intensifying and soothing the psyche than any other genre.