Wintertijd

Bertje, that's jazz I

There's a kid I mentioned earlier on this site. He's the twelve year old son of a buddy of mine and he means quite a lot to me. His mother hates jazz, but yesterday I had the opportunity to watch him and the band he's in play at a jazz contest. Six kids between 10 and 15 playing very nice funk-ridden jazz in a competition which featured eight other bands with kids between 15 and 19 that all played modern jazz laced with angry bebop and, worse, fusion.

Now I liked Hugo's set. So did the crowd. Obviously they didn't win, because I guess the jazz was not jazz enough according to the jury. But let me tell you, last years winners were there and played while the jury debated the winner, and they spelled out who was gonna win this year too.

Picture, if you will, four middle-class white kids with blue eyes and blonde hair that rip through Coltrane pieces with flawless precision. Coltrane was on heroine, Coltrane was angry at the world. Coltrane was an idiot who played panic-music. Even if you want to emulate that, don't do it at age 17. Four introverted teenagers, no contact with the audience, looking at eachother as if they were so goddamn cool. As if they wanted to say "Look guys, I can play 100 notes a second an make 'm all sound kind of angry! Aren't I a wizz kid?"

No, boys. You're idiots. Technically sound idiots, but idiots nonetheless. But then again, that's what you get when you hand over quintessential black music to a bunch of middle aged white people in the sixties. They start intellectualising it, turn it into dung and voila, thirty years later whole generations of white boys are dazed, confused and way out there.

So his mother, Liisa, and I looked each other in the eyes, and I understood perfectly why she "hates jazz". It's because they over-feed you this kind of crap. Instrumental masturbation. Yuck. So today I was also at a jazz gig with some friends. And a 66 year old guy called Svante Turesson played standards with his four fellow musicians. The band was older. Didn't have much to prove. Didn't think their penis-size would increase if they played fast. Jazz the way jazz is supposed to be... With a groove, feeling and swing.

This all reminded me of a story about two bulls, one young and one old, sitting on a hill overlooking a heard of cows. The young one says to the old one "Let's run down the hill and fuck us a cow!", to which the old one replies "How about we walk down the hill and fuck 'm all?". It's the same thing with Jazz, people. Why not walk and fuck 'm all? There is no need to run. And these youngsters were running so fast that I'm figuring by the time they stop, they didn't get any at all.

So in order to prove to Liisa that there is jazz that is not like what we experienced yesterday and to give Hugo something to think about, I'd like to offer some of what I consider to be good jazz on this site. And I'm starting off in the Forties. With a gentleman called Nat King Cole. Back in the day when he was still recording music with his trio consisting of him on vocals and piano, one bass-player and one guitarist. That's all. That's his best stuff. So in December 1940 that trio recorded this cut of a song that has been heard in many versions since then. This is one of the best ones.

Please enjoy listening to the Nat King Cole Trio's Sweet Lorraine. It's a simple tune. It's a great tune.

Posted by Chris at August 29, 2005 12:15 AM