Without necessarily intending to pay homage to Marcel Proust,
”Remembrance of Things Past” seemed to be this year`s chief entertainment theme.
Almost everyone in the field of popular music paid tribute to George Gershwin on the 50th anniversary of his death-an anniversary that coincided with the emergence of the first fruits from the archive of long-forgotten, unpublished songs and theater scores (by Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen and others) that had been discovered in 1982 in a warehouse in Secaucus, N.J.
Meanwhile in jazz, the so-called neo-classical movement continued apace-as any number of young players, with the Marsalis brothers in the lead, tried to play as though the year were 1967, 1957 or 1947. And, in a related trend, the record market was deluged by a seemingly endless cloudburst of jazz reissues, which promised to make available once more almost everything of value that even the most obscure artists have recorded.
Lumping together those various returns to the past, it would seem they arise from two basic sources-a faith that there is a great deal of material in our cultural attic that has not been properly preserved and evaluated, and a belief that present-day developments in jazz and mainstream-pop music are not as satisfying as, say, the work of Gershwin, Kern, Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker.
For instance, theater-music historian Robert Kimball, who has played a major role in protecting and disseminating the material from the Secaucus archive, believes that while ”we now have greater understanding of what we have lost in the musical theater,” that is because ”we endure season after season of numbing music that leaves us with no happy memories and realize that what we once took for granted may never come back again.”
In a recent interview, jazz` most popular neo-classicist, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, also attempted to link his professed love for the artistic past with a mistrust of the artistic present, saying, ”I`m sure it`s much easier to whip up this hasty, fast-food version of innovation than to humble yourself to the musical logics that were thoroughly investigated by (the)
masters.”
On the other hand, one genuine innovator, saxophonist-composer Henry Threadgill, has insisted that ”all this revivalism we`re experiencing, I`m really against. It`s funny to see a lot of people involved with music that`s older than they are-that`s rare in the history of jazz. These young traditionalists make a whole lot of noise about understanding tradition, (but) just in itself, it`s nothing. If you can`t make something out of it, the world can do without it.”
Real artistic issues are at stake here. And while they will be settled only by the passage of time, a glance at some events that took place this year may help to clear the air.
The kind of attention to the past that is represented by the various Gershwin tributes, the emergence of the Secaucus archive finds and the jazz-reissue boom is an undeniably welcome development-provided all the detail work involved has been done the way it should be.
But two of those Gershwin salutes-the recent Michael Tilson Thomas recording of ”Let `Em Eat Cake” and ”Of Thee I Sing” and the concert performances, under John McGlinn, of ”Primrose” and ”Pardon My English” at the Library of Congress in May-suggest that getting the details right is no simple matter.
The McGlinn performances were ideal, perfectly recapturing the performance style of the early 1930s and vividly bringing to life two long-unheard Gershwin`s scores. But Tilson Thomas seemed to reinterpret ”Cake”
and ”Sing” from a hard-sell, contemporary-Broadway point of view-broadening the humor and choosing artificially peppy tempos, as if he didn`t believe Gershwin`s music could survive on its own terms.
As fate would have it, Tilson Thomas` readings are the ones that have been preserved on record, while McGlinn`s live only in the memories of those who were fortunate enough to hear his concert. And that depressing trend has been continued by the recent, inappropriately cast, ”all-star” recordings of ”Carousel” and ”South Pacific”-although it may be stemmed next year by McGlinn`s new recording of ”Showboat,” which will include a great deal of music from the Secaucus archive that was cut from the original Broadway production, against Jerome Kern`s wishes.
Similar patterns can be found in the jazz-reissue field, where such major labels as RCA and Columbia have been putting out a vast amount of archival material, though often in an annoyingly haphazard fashion-re-releasing albums of dubious value along with the good stuff, repacking two LPs on one CD but lopping off some tracks in the process, digitally remastering old LPs and 78s in ways that make them sound harsh and brittle and ignoring some music that ought to re-emerge.
Why, for instance, has Columbia failed to put together a comprehensive anthology of the recordings Woody Herman made with his First and Second Herds? It`s a set that probably will come out now, after Herman`s death, but this material has been out-of-print for more than a decade.
Meanwhile the right tack is being taken by Mosaic Records-the independent, mail-order-only label that this year alone has given us such handsomely annotated boxed sets as ”The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Herbie Nichols” and ”The Complete Recordings of the Paul Desmond-Jim Hall Quartet.”
As for the innovation-vs.-tradition dispute that the remarks of Marsalis and Threadgill exemplify, the proof is in the music.
The work of Threadgill, Edward Wilkerson Jr., Roscoe Mitchell and others certainly suggests that the jazz avant garde is not played out. And a good deal of today`s bebop and hardbop revivalism can sound very odd indeed, especially if one is old enough to have heard that music the first time around. (A recent album by pianist Mulgrew Miller includes a bebop homage that unironically reproduces all the early awkwardnesses of that style.)
On the other hand, there are signs that such neo-classicists as trumpeter Terence Blanchard and alto saxophonist Donald Harrison are moving beyond mere nostalgia. And, of course, the diminishing ranks of original masters still include such figures as Benny Carter, Al Cohn, Art Farmer, Ruby Braff, J.J. Johnson, Hank Jones and Lee Konitz-each of whom is playing as well or better than ever.
Good luck to them all, and here`s hoping for a very creative year to come.
THE TOP JAZZ AND POP ALBUMS
Here, in alphabetical order, are the 10 best jazz and mainstream-pop albums of 1987:
Tony Bennett, ”Bennett/Berlin” (Columbia)
Duke Ellington, ”Anatomy of a Murder” (Rykodisc)
Stan Getz, ”Voyage” (Blackhawk)
Terry Gibbs, ”The Sundown Sessions Vol. Two” (Contemporary)
Laurel Masse, ”Easy Living” (Pausa)
”The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Herbie Nichols” (Mosaic)
Willie Pickens, ”It`s About Time” (Southport)
Ike Quebec, ”Easy Living” (Blue Note)
Henry Threadgill, ”You Know the Number” (RCA Novus)
Edward Wilkerson, Jr. ”Eight Bold Souls” (Sessom)
THE 10 BEST SHOWS FROM 1987
The 10 best performances of 1987, in alphabetical order:
Kip Addotta at Zanies.
Barbara Cook at George`s.
Dave Dallwitz` Southern Jazz Group at the Chicago Jazz Festival.
Art Farmer at the Jazz Showcase.
Gilbert Gottfried at George`s.
Dave Holland Quintet at the Jazz Showcase.
”Jean-Paul Sartre & Ringo” at Second City.
Hank Jones at George`s.
Joe Liggins at the Chicago Blues Festival.
Frank Sinatra at the Chicago Theatre.
