Defining Jazz

LOUIS ARMSTRONG said that if you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know. I decided to ask anyway, because I didn't know, and, in truth, still don't. I asked my father, who was a jazz lover and passable keyboard and drum man. What he said was: "American music". To me that seemed a bit,shall we say,vague. Louis Armstrong narrowed it down a bit, suggesting that jazz should be defined as "negro music". If we turn up the political correctness a bit, we get "African-American" music, and perhaps sastify both my father and Louis Armstrong, bless their swingin' hearts, may they rest in peace. One thing I do know about jazz,something that if my father and Louis Arstrong knew they had the restraint to never mention,is that the word "jazz" in its African language, maybe Swahili, means "to have sexual intercourse". A verb, as in, to get down and do the dirty thang. Namely,the "eff word". In sixth grade, I had the temertiy to suggest in music class that rock n roll was a form of jazz,and was immediately shot down by my very attractive young single music teacher, upon whom I had a crush, and who assured me that I was dead wrong. I thought I would soon be a little of both. I survived, good grade and all, perhaps because I played a mean trumpet in the grade school band. The hot young music teacher went on to mention Duke Ellington and Count Basie, and my curiosity was piqued by the fact that a couple of black guys could simultaneously reign as members of the European nobility and play boogie woogie at the Hammond keyboard. I got that misconception corrected too. Among African-Americans, a little grandioise nick naming helps dispell second class citizen status bestowed automatically by American racist society, the birthright of dark skin pigmentation. Louis, Count, and Duke never got together much, never performed together. They all three knew that each one individually took up all the air in the room. They each needed their space, their stage. They respected one another from a distance. Instead, they joined temporary forces with the likes of Sinatra, Benny Goodman, a vertiable who's who list of music celebrities. Sinatra hated racism, and hung out with Sammy D. But never together, these three incons of modern American African-American music, jazz culture, American culture. They changed America. Upper middle class ladies, whose only contact with black folks was at the country club where the ladies enjoyed clean toilets, and the very sight of black men would motivate the ladies to quickly cross to the other side of the street to avoid eye contact with those darkies, instead went home after brunch at the club, kicked off their high falutin' high heels, and put Louis, Duke, or Count on the vinyl hi fi, and shook it a bit, strictly in private, hubbies at the office. Louis wore his big heart on his sleeve, and smoked marijuana, which he called "gage", twice daily, until its criminalization in 1933 forced him to give it up; supposedly. Duke was all aristocrat,with a plethora of paranoid superstitions,and Count was all Kansas City, and addicted to gambling, which kept him perpetually broke, and working. Like most poweful men of their era, they married early and often, and had more affairs than marriages. They snuck in and out of back door kitchens to and from their concerts. Ten thousand honkies would file out, exhausted, and in the parking lot, a well dressed gentleman would hand Duke, Count, or Louis his car keys, expecting valet service. Colored restaurants, colored restrooms, colored drinking fountains, for all three. Precisely what did this marvelous trio do for America, to change America? President Eisenhower had no intention of sending the national guard to Little Rock, until Louuis Armstrong called him "gutless". Then,Ike sent in the troops. America fell in love with negro music, remains in love to this day, and always shall remain therein. The racism that has always plagued and characterized freedom's land has ameliorated somewhat, but not as much as we honkies like to pretend, like to think. What Count, Duke, and Louis did more than anything else, was to show us exactly how idiotic and unjustified our lingering racism is, by showing us how to make good music out of suffering. As if we need to be shown.