The People in Between
By HUMPHREY LYTTELTON
'IT is a great mistake to think that jazz is for young people.' On the face of it, this looks like some mis- chievous perversity from a Noel Coward interview. The man who uttered it is a Swiss impresario very much concerned with hard busi- ness fact. As such, it is worth looking into seri- ously.
Ever since the Trad Boom rocketed jazz into the `pop' charts four or five years ago, it has been taken for granted in this country that unless jazz will appeal to 'the kids' it is commercially a dead duck. Those who, encouraged by a sudden and unexpected rush of bank notes to the wallet, subscribed enthusiastically to this theory over- looked an awkward fact of life. People are `kids' for a remarkably short time. Today's kids are tomorrow's staid adults, superseded by a new generation with quite different tastes. As a long- term proposition they are, to say the least, dodgy.
Since most jazz musicians are in some degree dedicated men, looking on music as a career and not just as a means 'of making a quick for- tune, it is the long-term proposition which in- terests them. With care and a certain amount of luck, a jazz musician has as much chance of reaching an active old age as his `classical' counterpart. Up until now, advanced age has even carried with it certain advantages. When William `Bunk' Johnson was discovered at the age of fifty-eight languishing in the rice fields of New Iberia, Louisiana, what elevated him almost to sainthood in the eyes of `revivalists' was not so much his prowess, which by this time was vestigial, but his associations with a lost era. Today, fifteen years after his death, it is probable that he is remembered less for the remnants of a striking style than for the set of false teeth which some enthusiasts bought for him so that he 'could start playing again.
Even now, it is safe to say that most surviving jazzmen of sixty or over have been associated in their youth with New Orleans in its heyday or with the boisterous Dixieland music of the Jazz Age. There are, of course, fans to go with these veteran survivors of a past epoch. New York's Dixieland clubs—Eddie Condon's or Jimmy Ryan's—live primarily off the expense accounts of ageing businessmen striving intem- perately and rather desperately to relive the 1920s. Youth, either actual or recalled, has up to now been an important factor in the commercial success of jazz. The New Orleans and Dixieland ,revivals which culminated in the Trad Boom de- pended on people who were old enough to feel nostalgic about their youth—or more important still, young enough to know nothing about the Twenties and therefore to find traditional jazz completely fresh and contemporary. But time has moved inexorably on and New Orleans has few mysteries left.
Two musicians. who visit Britain in October underline the change. Buck Clayton is fifty-three, a few years younger than Bunk Johnson at the time of his rediscovery. But Buck is neither a revivalist nor a survivalist. If not a `modernist,' he is at least a modern, a sophisticated musician, contemporary of the late Lester Young and a man who is at home in almost any contemporary jazz surroundings. Pee Wee Russell, fifty-eight and once closely associated with the `Chicagoan' school of Eddie Condon, has by sheer originality —and apparent indestructibility—outlived all his- torical classifications, and has recently been teamed, without too much incongruity, with Thelonius Monk. Clayton and Russell will be appearing mainly in jazz clubs—the one with my band, the other with Alex Welsh. And the people who turn out specially to hear them, if they belong to any particular era at all, will be those who started collecting-records in the late Thirties and who are now in their middle forties. Coming to jazz just about the time that the music became truly international, they are what statisticians call a `bulge.'
Established in their careers, with money to spend but little inclination to be trampled under- foot by teenage hordes, these are the people on whom my Swiss friend has a calculating eye. As teenage taste swings away from jazz, they are gradually coming into their own. In a few weeks, Annie Ross opens her club in Covent Garden, and London will have its second establishment run for mature jazz fans by an established jazz star (Ronnie Scott's being the first, of course). Annie's clientele won't be `the kids'—but neither will they part with their old-age pensions at the door. Thank goodness, it is just beginning to dawn that there are people in between!
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