« Teachout Emergent | Main | Comment: Ben Webster »
December 14, 2005
That Jake Hanna Story
Jack Tracy’s story about Jake Hanna’s reflexive quip the night he learned of John Lennon’s murder inspired an assortment of responses from readers of the Jazz West Coast listserve. Here is one exchange, courtesy of the JWC list:
From: Jeff Jansen
Subject: John Lennon Anecdote
Is this what jazz people consider humor: celebrating the murder of one musician and wishing for the murders of three more? Oh, yeah I forgot the jazz credo: if it's not jazz, it's not music; and if you don't play jazz you're not really a musician. I guess we can now add: if you're any other kind of musician, you deserve to die soon.
Jake Hanna is a bastard for making the joke, and Jack Tracy is a bastard for loving Jake for saying it, but neither deserves to die before his time.
Jeff Jansen | Portland, Oregon | USA
From: joseph lang
Subject: RE: John Lennon Anecdote
Jeff,
I do not know your age, but I have seen several comments about the Jake Hanna anecdote off-list that lead me to conclude that the reaction to Jake's comments might to be generational. I do not believe that Jake, or anyone, welcomed Lennon's death in any real sense. He was just smugly reacting to the effect that the advent of the Beatles had on musical tastes, and the concomitant effect that it had on the music business, especially for jazz players. The Beatles, and rock music in general, certainly did not help jazz musicians, except for those who benefitted from studio gigs on rock recordings. I can understand how one could be offended by reading Jake's comment in the abstract, but, given the kind of humor that is often a part of the jazz culture, Jake's comment does not seem any more insensitive than a lot of other comments by jazzmen that have been passed along through the years. To those who put Lennon on a pedistal as some kind of super cultural icon, a judgement that I do not share, I guess that they could never understand the whimsy of Jake's comment. I personally considered many of Lennon's positions, particularly his rather public acknowledgement of his involvement in the drug culture, to be as offensive to me as Jake's comment is to you. I guess that it is all a matter of perspective.
Joe Lang
For information about subscribing to the Jazz West Coast list, click here.
Posted by dramsey at December 14, 2005 11:29 AM
COMMENTS
Post a comment
Tell A Friend
About...
...Rifftides ...Doug Ramsey ...Doug's books
Archive
1235 entries and counting
Contact
CD: Herbie Hancock Herbie Hancock, River, The Joni Letters (Verve). Without its cadre of vocalists, Hancock's tribute to Joni Mitchell would not have received a Grammy nomination or widespread critical attention. In varying degrees, Mitchell, Norah Jones, Tina Turner, Luciana Souza and Corinne Bailey Rae do justice to Mitchell's songs. Leonard Cohen is effective in his atmospheric delivery of her lyrics in "The Jungle Line." But if the CD contained only instrumental tracks of the quality of "Both Sides Now," "Sweet Bird," "Solitude" and "Nefertiti," it might be the best Hancock-Wayne Shorter album ever. As it is, River is one of their finest collaborations. CD: Gambarini And Jones Roberta Gambarini and Hank Jones, Lush Life (55 Records). With a new collaboration of the Italian singer and the American pianist about to be released, it is past time to tell you about this one. Gambarini and Jones are all but flawless in this collection of classic songs and two jazz standards, Gigi Gryce's "Reminiscing" and Tadd Dameron's "Cool Breeze." Highlights of the duets: a spirited "Just Squeeze Me" and a gorgeous "Then I'll Be Tired Of You" that includes the seldom-heard verse. Four tracks add bassist George Mraz and drummer Willie Jones III. A slightly different US release of the CD, called You Are There, has only Gambarini and Jones duets. CD: Stu Pletcher Stu Pletcher, The Story Of Stewart Pletcher (Jazz Oracle). Stu Pletcher is not a household name. Even in the 1920s and '30s when he played in popular bands led by Ben Pollack, Smith Ballew and Red Norvo, he was not a household name. Nonetheless, he was a splendid cornet and trumpet soloist who modeled himself after Bix Beiderbecke and yet, like Bix admirers Rex Stewart and Bobby Hackett, developed his own conception. This collection assembled from rare sources by Pletcher's son Tom gives a rounded picture of Stu Pletcher's considerable gifts as a soloist, arranger and journeyman vocalist. DVD: Benny Carter Benny Carter, Symphony In Riffs (Rhapsody Films). This documentary was made several years before the death in 2003 of the great saxophonist, trumpeter, clarinetist, arranger, composer and occasional vocalist. It tells Carter's story from early development as a prodigy through his crucial contribution to the development of big bands, his breakthrough as the first major black composer in Hollywood and his status as a universally acclaimed cultural figure. Burt Lancaster narrates this skillfully produced hour in which we see Carter in action as soloist, leader, teacher and avuncular role model to several generations. A coda to the new edition updates the original 1989 version and includes identification of key musicians who go unnamed in the body of the film. Book: Gary Giddins Gary Giddins, Weather Bird: Jazz At The Dawn Of Its Second Century (Oxford). I take my time getting through Giddins's big compilations of his columns, reviews and essays. This one was beside my bed for a couple of years. I savored it a piece at a time, enjoying insights like this about Erroll Garner: "Two things invariably keep the train on the track. First, he swings hard enough to allay reservations; if he has charge of your foot, he can get to your mind. Second, and more impressively, he improvises with a matchless lucidity that allows people who glaze over at the thought of improvisation to follow Garner's most fanciful inventions." And this, in a chapter called "How Come Jazz Isn't Dead?": "For half a century, each generation mourned anew the passing of jazz because each idealized the particular jazz of its youth." Or, as Woody Herman, surveying the crowd at a dance he was playing, told me, "These people haven't listened to anything new since high school." Giddins, as they say, gets it.
Terry Teachout
This blog is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but it reaches past...
Doug lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism...
Doug's most recent book is Poodie James, a novel published in 2007.
Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion to Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in whch, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.
daramsey@charter.netSearch
Doug's Picks
Other Places
Other Places
JerryJazzMusician
Carol Sloane
Jazz Beyond Jazz: Howard Mandel
Jessica Williams
be.jazz
Marc Myers: Jazz Wax
Night Lights
Jason Crane:The Jazz Session
Jazz.com
JazzCorner
ArtistShare
Michael J. West
Nick Catalano
DevraDoWrite
First Draft
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
Jazzportraits
John Robert Brown
Jim Wilke's Jazz After Hours
Freedom of the Prez
PressThink (Jay Rosen)
On An Overgrown Path
WGBH Jazz Blog
Jazz Scene
Bill Crow
The People vs. Dr. Chilledair
blognoggle
Sequenza 21
Gregory Curtis
Bill Evans Web Pages
Jazz Spotlight on Sinatra
Jazz Boston
Remembrance of Swings Past
Jazzitude
Night After Night
Do The Math/The Bad Plus
Jazz My Two Cents Worth
Larry Kart/Organissimo Forum
AJ Blogs
AJBlogCentral | rss
culture
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
rock culture approximately
Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
Douglas McLennan's blog
Art from the American Outback
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude
dance
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...
media
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Martha Bayles on Film...
music
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds
publishing
Jerome Weeks on Books
visual
Public Art, Public Space
John Perreault's art diary
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
Special AJ Blogs
June 14-20, 2007
