Jazz: The Once-and-Future Musical King

 

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here's a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here's a strange and bitter crop

- Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday

Did you know April is Jazz Appreciation Month, with April 30th being International Jazz Day? Probably not, sadly. Despite jazz being America's contribution to the world music scene, most Americans have since moved on to other musical genres more easily monetized by the large music mega-corps. It's a shame that this uniquely American art form isn't more widely celebrated. 

However, for those of us who know the way to the back alley speakeasy and remember the secret handshake to gain admittance, it's time for a party. One person who is part of our club is Family Guy jazz aficionado, Seth MacFarlane. I happily, and quite accidentally, discovered that he is hosting a "Jazz Appreciation Month" channel on Pandora. Hearing MacFarlane's distinctive resonant tones introduce select jazz tunes is a treat. It is the next best thing to having Brian Griffin at your elbow, obnoxiously pontificating about jazz while sipping a martini.  

 

A year or so ago, I recall coming across a jazz tune on YouTube that I found quite enjoyable (sadly, the precise video has been lost to time and my fickle memory). Because it can be such an amusing dumpster fire, I often like to read comments below the videos.  Happily, for this particular video, I discovered few criticisms. Most of the comments reflected enjoyment in the original composition, with one memorable comment being "Jazz makes me feel classy." I remember that observation because I found it to be profound in its directness.  Think about it: when was the last time you listened to, say, Kanye West's Flashing Lights and said, "Boy, do I feel classy!" And did you feel like donning a tux after listening to Zach Bryan's Blue Jean Baby? Then there is Carcass's...well, you get the idea. That is the thing about jazz: unlike just about every other musical genre (with the notable exception of classical - that is a discussion for another time), jazz uplifts the listener's condition, invites him to leave his workaday life behind and saunter over to a nightclub in his best duds, one where the champagne cocktails are mandatory and the dames fatal. Jazz is transcendent in a way that other genres aren't. 

  

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As with the blues, jazz is a genre born of struggle, particularly the historic hardships of the African American experience. I began this post by quoting the lyrics of jazz crooner Billie Holiday's haunting Strange Fruit, a piece of music born out of the dehumanizing violence of the segregationist Jim Crow South.  Based on a poem by Abel Meeropol, Holiday's 1939 recording of the poem set to music would become both "a declaration of war" and "the beginning of the civil rights movement," as Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun put it. From that point, jazz would be the battle hymn of America's struggle during the Civil Rights era. It would become, as Wynton Marsalis put it, "democracy in action." 

This innovative new art form would spread quickly. Jazz historian Gerald Horne points out how jazz encouraged "racial boundary crossings by creating racially mixed spaces and racially impure music, both of which altered the racial identities of musicians and listeners.” No doubt, this is why jazz spread from coast to coast in the early Twentieth Century, a time that saw the rapid urbanization of America. Jazz found rich soil in the culturally diverse landscapes of America's bustling cities, particularly New Orleans, New York City, and San Francisco. Unlike the farms and coal mines that inspired country music or the frozen Nordic origins of "death metal", jazz is the scion of what William Gibson would term "the sprawl", which is to say the ever-growing metropolitan centers of the modern world. Despite its rustic origins, jazz ultimately became urbane while other genres remained obstinately provincial. In that sense, it would not be wrong to call jazz a remarkably forward-looking or anticipatory form of music. 

Jazz didn't just break down class and racial barriers either, but also musical barriers. Someone once quipped that jazz isn't about the notes, it is about the music. This, of course, refers to the freeform nature of the musical style, something that often proves a stumbling block to outsiders. The one rule that governs jazz is that there are no rules or, as Miles Davis put it, jazz is about playing what's not there. In other words, it is about improvisation.  This is why there is something similar yet strikingly different when one compares, say, the jazz of Loius Armstrong to that of John Coltrane. Sure, you can hear the similarities, but one cannot look past the vast differences in style, yet both are considered 'jazz.' This musical morphology or, perhaps, adaptability is what makes the genre so enduring and dynamic.  

I suspect this is why Duke Ellington saw such a strong connection between jazz and American liberty. As he put it:

“Jazz is a good barometer of freedom… In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.”

These words are worth remembering as this nation faces an unprecedented time of creeping authoritarianism. Just as jazz helped undermine racism, perhaps it will prove to have an important part to play once again as this nation fights to regain its liberty? 

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Cinema, like jazz, can be a mirror of the times, and what makes for a better mirror than one that combines both jazz and cinema?  Alexander Mackendrick's The Sweet Smell of Success is precisely that. Taking place in the foreboding urban nightscape of New York City, The Sweet Smell of Success is all smokey nightclubs, unscrupulous denizens, and, of course, jazz. I am such a huge fan of this movie that I used it for the name of this blog: Robot Jazz was derived from Robard's Jazz, the name of a jazz club in Sweet Smell of Success. 😁   

The Sweet Smell of Success is about a jazz guitarist, Steve Dallas (Martin Milner), who falls in love with the young sister of J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), a jingoistic and unscrupulous media mogul (based on Walter Winchell but eerily reminiscent of Rupert Murdoch). Hunsecker is shown to have a less-than-healthy obsession with his sister Susan (Susan Harrison) and sends the equally unscrupulous press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) on a quest to destroy Dallas and break up the romance he is having with Hunsecker's sister.  What follows is classic film noir, a shadowy urban adventure where the audience follows Falco as he slimes his way across the smoke-filled night haunts of the Big Apple, one accompanied by an unforgettably brash jazz soundtrack that punctuates the on-screen action. 

The Sweet Smell of Success is a timeless movie, one as relevant to 1950s America as it is to a 2025 America governed by nefarious politicians and mega-corporations who value life only in terms of quarterly earnings.  I find Hunsecker to be a stand-in for Trump, Musk, or Bezos, while Falco is representative of the many White House todies, such as Marco Rubio, who exist only to beg scraps from Trump's table. It is both then and now, a warning and an observation. Like George Orwell's 1984, it is a cautionary tale all too real.

But The Sweet Smell of Success is also a jazz extravaganza. Not only is Elmer Bernstein's audacious, brassy score a banger but the Chico Hamilton Quintet steals the spotlight as Dallas's band. Interestingly, the soundtrack was something of a landmark event in the soundtrack industry as two separate soundtracks were released nearly simultaneously, with one LP featuring Bernstein's score and the other featuring the tunes played by Chico Hamilton's jazz band.  Be it Bernstein or Chico, the soundtrack is one that you won't soon forget. As Allmusic's Blair Sanderson noted, the "music has the hard-edged, gritty sound that was associated with big city life in the 1950s." No argument from me! 

I don't want to get sidetracked with a comprehensive movie review, so I will end with this succinct observation: If jazz can also be a cinematic experience, The Sweet Smell of Success is it. Whether you enjoy jazz or just classic cinema, you owe yourself to watch this masterpiece, for both the music and the Icarusian warning.

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We covered some weighty material; how about something hopeful?  

As with any healthy musical genre, jazz has also evolved as a new generation has taken up their saxophones and keyboards. I was reminded of this recently in a conversation I had with a young man who was delivering a package to my home. (As much as I would like to say it was the complete works of Verve Records, it was actually something jazz-unrelated 😅). When he arrived, I was streaming some classic Coltrane tunes. After giving me the parcel, the young man said, "You know, I like to listen to something similar to this. It is a style called 'lo-fi'. Your music reminds me of it." That was all the opening I needed to begin a lengthy lecture about how jazz has influenced many contemporary genres (and, yes, I was happy to inform him that I was familiar with lo-fi, chill-hop, and trip-hop, to name but a few electronic jazz mutations!). Of course, I was eager to give him a bunch of recommendations to expand his musical horizons and, hopefully, get him acquainted with the classics that paved the way for modern permutations. I hope those seeds sprouted! Be that as it may, I took his interest in classic jazz as a testament that the old magic was still at work, and that jazz, in all its forms, was not going anywhere anytime soon. Quite the contrary: it seems poised to expand yet again, this time with the help of music streaming services that make it more accessible than ever. 

As I shared one of my favorite jazz-infused movies earlier, I will end by sharing one of my favorite jazz-inspired short stories. It is called Annotated Setlist of the Mikaela Cole Jazz Quintet by Catherine George. Here, George delivers a tale about an amateur jazz band and their musical efforts to keep the quintet going while surviving the hardships that come with living on a generation ship that is endlessly searching for a planet to call home. Divided into segments named after the band's compositions, it is a tale that tugs the heartstrings and resonates with anyone who enjoys artistic struggle as well as imaginative yet grounded, character-driven science fiction.  As this story proves, hot music, as jazz was once known, can and will thrive in the future, even in the cold of space. 

 Jazz is, after all, the once-and-future musical king. And you can blow that out your horn.

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