“All need not be lost. The potential for a traditional jazz revival is already there
to be seized upon if only the “oldies”, bands and fans alike, would lift their eyes
above their parapets! The key is in emerging younger bands. Because there really
are a number of up and coming younger bands out there making their mark in true
New Orleans style.”

Such is my depth of feeling about the steady decline of Traditional Jazz, and indeed jazz as a whole, over recent decades that I felt impelled to contribute this article to Just Jazz magazine, published in the August, 2012, issue and reproduced here with the kind permission of editor, Pete Lay.

Peter M Butler, Founder of Jazz&Jazz.com

Times have changed since I first took to jazz when it was in its heyday back in the 1950s/1960s. But I was just a teenager following trends and one of the trends I latched onto was Traditional Jazz. Those were the days when Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball were making their mark and Sammy Rimington was big close to my home in Kent. Ken Colyer was beyond my reach! It’s not that I became a devoted follower back then – rather that I preferred “Stranger on the Shore” to “Living Doll”.

So I don’t pretend to be a jazz aficionado and in my article in the May issue of Just Jazz I explain just how I got back into jazz a few years ago and why I launched the website Jazz&Jazz.com.

Not much of a pedigree, I admit, but during those intervening years, sadly jazz has been in a steady decline as frivolous musical tastes have changed and the core fan base has aged. This troubled me immensely, especially when I realised just what I had been missing. But in those same years I had at least developed PR, photography and web skills which perhaps I can now apply to aid the cause traditional jazz. Not to analyse, critique or review the music, bands and musicians – that’s the role of the true jazz professionals. Rather to take a neutral, unbiased overview of the jazz scene today in which the only axe I have to grind will become apparent.

L/R: Bob Thomas of Bob Thomas and The Thomcats, Peter Butler, Acker Bilk, Brian Smith of Welwyn Garden City’s Peartree Jazz Club

Meeting an increasing number of musicians, bands and fans, supporting my local Peartree Monday Jazz Club in Welwyn Garden City, helping launch the brand new Ramsgate Seaside Shuffle Jazz Festival in Kent and running Jazz&Jazz.com is helping firm up my overview of the current day jazz scene.

But first, a couple of other pretty relevant opinions. Although based on the American scene, there are clear parallels in the UK.

It was good to see four youngsters from Sweden at Ramsgate Seaside Shuffle. They even purchased two Seaside Shuffle T-Shirts!

How do we develop and maintain a strong jazz audience?
Kurt Ellenberger (pianist, composer and music professor) makes some pertinent comments about the current state of jazz in an article entitled ‘It Can’t Be Done’: The Difficulty Of Growing A Jazz Audience’ published by NPR Music as recently as 23rd May this year. 

‘When we ask “How do we develop and maintain a strong jazz audience?” what we are really saying is “How can we convince millions of people to alter and expand their aesthetic sensibilities and their cultural proclivities so that they include jazz to such an extent that they will regularly attend concerts and purchase recordings?” And that statement itself is embedded within another Herculean task: “How can we convince people to embrace music that is no longer part of the popular culture?”

‘What we’re really talking about when we complain about the jazz scene…… is not that jazz is dying creatively, or that it’s lost its vitality. It’s that there isn’t enough work and the work that’s there doesn’t pay enough. Those of us who were born between 1950 and 1970 came up in a very different environment than that which exists today.

‘I think it’s clear that obtaining a reasonable income in jazz …  is becoming exceedingly difficult. Those of us who grew up in the arts bubble were very fortunate to come up in an era that was, relatively speaking, flush with cash, which makes the new reality very difficult to accept. But historically speaking, this was an aberration. Beethoven had money problems, Mozart died broke, and I’m sure that we’re all aware of the many incredibly talented and influential jazz musicians of the last 75 years who needed benefit concerts to pay for medical care and funeral expenses as they entered middle and old age.’

It’s worth reminding ourselves of that old gag attributed to Sonny Morris, “If you want to make a million out of jazz, start with two million!”

Kurt Ellenberger (courtesy of the artist)

‘Jazz is not dying …’
Yet Ellenberger continues:

‘As aggravating and depressing as all of this may be, I don’t see it as a “doom and gloom” scenario; to the contrary, I think that jazz is actually thriving, not dying ……

‘Jazz as a creative force is not going away. In fact, I would go so far to stay that it will never go away because of the depth of its materials, its rich history and canon, and its openness to new influences.

‘Wasn’t jazz a street music to begin with? A hybrid that drank from many wells and remade itself every decade (much to the chagrin of many artists then and now)? Why not write music that utilizes electronics and looping, hip-hop, rap, gamelan, minimalism, trance, rock, yodeling, country and anything else that you listen to and find interesting? These things will happen because people need to express themselves, not because they need to land a gig.’

Ellenberger presents an interesting and well argued case which needs to be considered.

‘How can we make jazz vital once more?’

Responding to Ellenberger, Kotaku.com Editor Kirk Hamilton made the following observations in his May 24th article entitled ‘Growing the Jazz Audience ‘Can’t Be Done. Maybe That’s Okay?‘ :

‘Look, I’m under no illusions about jazz music’s unpopularity. I grew up playing jazz, went to school to study jazz, made a living as a jazz musician for a while out of school. Jazz is beautiful, jazz is the best. And people, by and large, don’t care about it at all.

‘How do we make jazz vital once more?

‘How can we convince people to embrace music that is no longer part of the popular culture?

‘[Ellenberger] hits the nail on the head, I think, at least in terms of why modern audiences mostly don’t care about traditional jazz. Jazz music is no longer relevant to popular culture—music has simply evolved beyond it, and like any outdated musical style, it’s now the province of niche interest groups. (I realize this is an oversimplification, and that there are myriad other contributing factors to jazz’s decline.) That’s not to say that it is any less vital, lovely, exciting or fresh today than it was then—by its very nature, Jazz can never become stale or routine—but it does go a long way towards explaining why modern audiences are no longer particularly interested.

‘But you know what? Jazz’s constant evolution is precisely why ‘How can we make jazz vital once more?’ is in some ways the wrong question. As I see it, jazz has had no problem keeping itself vital—it’s just that it’s evolved beyond the musical paradigm we typically associate with ‘Jazz’.

‘But there is one thing that Ellenberger doesn’t really take into account in his piece……. That’s the fact that just as music has evolved, so too has jazz. He’s right that acoustic bebop on traditional jazz instruments will never again rope in big audiences or lead to huge album sales. But jazz itself has diversified beyond that until it’s essentially unrecognizable.

‘Today’s jazz musicians (and jazz-program graduates) are versed in so many different types of music, from straight-ahead bebop to electronic trance to pop to heavy metal, that labeling them ‘jazz musicians’ feels like a misnomer. Jazz may be the root of most modern musical training—it’s where rock, hip-hop and funk all came from, after all—but to pretend that musicians who can play all of that music must or should make a living playing jazz feels like a narrow viewpoint.

‘Most of the working musicians I know make a living not by playing jazz, but by bringing their jazz training to bear on other more current or popular styles. And those styles certainly attract enthusiastic, passionate listeners. A bassist friend of mine tours with a number of terrific acoustic groups playing baltic and bluegrass-influenced improvisational music while accompanying a singer. A drummer friend toured with a great blues band for several years, and before that was touring with a successful experimental jam band.

‘All of these guys and gals can play the pants off of a jazz standard, and the music they’re playing is demanding, harmonically complex and difficult, but with the exception of some of Spalding’s more straight-ahead stuff, it isn’t really ‘jazz,’ not by the standard definition.

‘… It is certainly more difficult than ever to make a living playing jazz; not that it was ever really easy. But to say that jazz music begins and ends at the traditional jazz ensemble is to ignore the many ways that the music has evolved, the many ways that players have evolved alongside it, and the ways that listeners have evolved as well.’

Hamilton’s observations have a bearing on my thoughts. 

Traditional Jazz at a Crossroads
But at this point I consider it essential I stress I’m for Traditional, New Orleans jazz, not the self indulgent modern jazz of the Jazz FM era*, which, frankly, I believe has much to answer for in the decreasing popularity of real jazz. Even in New Orleans, going way back, there has been a steady decline in traditional jazz to the degree that nowadays seemingly it is played there only by overseas bands, visiting mainly from Europe. As Philip Larkin pointed out in his capacity of jazz critic for the Daily Telegraph, people die off and the young blacks in New Orleans lost interest in “that music and no longer wanted to entertain the whites”. (All What Jazz, A Record Diary 1961 to 1971).

A very good band leader friend of mine often repeats the maxim “what goes around comes around” in high hopes of a traditional jazz revival.

But we simply have to realise that Traditional Jazz is at a crossroads. So many musicians have, to put it politely, already reached retirement age. Yet they continue to play great music. Old jazzers never die! I was speaking to another prominent band leader, fifty years in the business, just recently who expressed his disillusionment with the way things are going. The leader of yet another leading UK band told me, on the very day I began writing this, of his concern that before long there won’t be enough musicians to spread around the bands. Because that’s what’s happening. Musicians are getting gigs where they can and bands are calling on musicians to fill the gaps.

On top of that, fans too are an endangered species.

Amy Roberts

Keys for a Traditional Jazz Revival
Yet all need not be lost. The potential for a traditional jazz revival is already there to be seized upon if only the “oldies”, bands and fans alike, would lift their eyes above their parapets! The key is in emerging younger bands. Because there really are a number of up and coming younger bands out there making their mark in true New Orleans style.

Sky Murphy on trombone and Adrian Cox on sax with TJJohnson in The Crypt, St Martin in the Fields.

There are also numerous young musicians eager for opportunities to play traditional jazz. Some get invited to play with established bands and at festivals. Some strive to form their own bands – not easy these days. Some, sadly, are seeking work outside of the jazz scene because other types of music pay better. But their hearts are still firmly rooted in traditional jazz.

I’ll introduce the word “precious”! Why? Because bands, musicians and fans alike simply have to stop being quite so precious about the “purism” of the jazz they like. They have to stop being so inward looking at their own age group.

What do I mean by that? Well, I asked a top band leader recently if he had heard of a particular emerging younger jazz band and to my amazement he hadn’t.

And that spells out the problem. The divide. The dichotomy!

I could be wrong but I get the impression the “oldies” stick to and don’t look beyond their ever declining fan bases and circuits. Somehow they don’t think the younger bands follow the holy grail!

‘I have to mix it a bit!’
Meanwhile the younger bands are fighting to make their mark. I take every opportunity I can to cover them on Jazz&Jazz.com. I telephoned a fantastic younger saxophonist recently who assured me that his first love truly is New Orleans Traditional Jazz. Yet at the time he was writing hip hop music. “I have to mix it, Peter, if I’m to make a living from my music!”

Dom Pipkin.

The “emerging” band I mentioned above is London based Dom Pipkin & The Ikos. Dom runs regular New Orleans Workshops and Jam Sessions at The Alleycat in Denmark Street and he recently staged a very successful Mardi Gras event in Hackney. Younger musicians who attract younger fans, and yes, I mean young fans! They mix it a bit but trad jazz always predominates. Dom recently appeared on Later with Jools [and more recently on Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Superstar] as piano accompanist to up and coming songstress Pamola Faith. That way he makes decent money to help support his passion for real jazz.

At present these younger bands are following their own “routes to market”. Somehow there has to be a meeting of minds. A coming together of older and younger generation bands. Only then will “what goes around come around” as the older bands interact with younger bands to reinvigorate traditional jazz until it flourishes again.

‘I want to play jazz like that!’
And the fans? If older fans want to encourage younger fans, they must learn not to be so precious about what they consider to be good jazz. I’ll throw out just one example. An elderly fan recently cornered me to voice his criticism of a particular very impressive trombonist for being too flamboyant, “not subtle enough, not smooth enough.” At that very same gig I heard a youngster asking his mother if she could she buy him a trombone because “I want to play jazz like that!” This speaks a thousand words! Because jazz isn’t inert, it’s exuberant, dynamic as well as soulful.

Is any of this so revolutionary? Surely not. Has it not ever been so in all forms of music? Older stars giving way to younger stars, who, while staying basically true to the inherent traditions of their chosen music, “stretch it” a bit for their fan bases as older fans give way to younger fans.

After all, hasn’t jazz improvisation – the ‘Expression of Freedom’ – in itself always been stretching and mixing it? Louis Armstrong perfected the improvised jazz solo and before that Dixieland first featured collective improvisation within their musical arrangements.

I recently heard a fantastic young jazz pianist launch into a classical piece and then skilfully blend it right back into a trad jazz favourite. In preparing for this analysis I also discussed it with one of the UK’s favourite traditional jazzmen who makes a point of “mixing it” by starring with older, established bands and younger emerging bands. An essential example of how there simply has to be a meeting of minds so that Traditional New Orleans jazz not only survives but flourishes.

I plan to feature emerging Traditional Jazz musicians and bands on my website, jazzandjazz.com, and to share this with Just Jazz magazine, perhaps with a follow up article. So I’m sure Pete Lay would join me in welcoming input from band leaders, musicians and Just Jazz readers alike.

Earlier on this website under “Is this the way to go?” Attracting ‘young blood’ to join our Jazz Clubs, I featured Ken Butler’s highly relevant article in the March issue of Just Jazz about attracting ‘young blood’ into Traditional jazz clubs.

So let’s set about implementing the keys to a Traditional Jazz revival!

Addendum
Modern Jazz*

I want to qualify my position on Modern Jazz. I’m not referring to it in any of my references to “stretching it” and “mixing it” as you will see from the context. Nor am I against modern jazz per se. In its earlier stages some works were stunning. But latterly in my opinion Modern Jazz, chiefly of the Jazz FM variety, has become self indulgent, inward looking, repetitive and tedious. It’s that type of Modern Jazz that has much to answer for in turning people away from Traditional Jazz. I discussed this in my letter in the June, 2012, issue of Just Jazz.

(Photos © Peter M Butler, Jazz&Jazz)