Whac-A-Mole

One early autumn evening in 1998, I was half-watching the news on Dutch TV, when one mid-show lead grabbed my attention: “Jazz zangeres Betty Carter is dood.” Immediately I thought (correctly, it turned out): this won’t make tonight’s US news reports.

It wasn’t the last time I had occasion to ponder this puzzle: jazz is America’s pride, democracy in action blah blah, so why is its profile so much higher on TV behind the dikes (and elsewhere in Europe) than in its homeland? In the States we think of the 1950s as the golden age of TV jazz – the famed network special The Sound of Jazz, Pops and Diz joshing away their differences on the Timex All-Star Show, Clifford Brown dropping in on Detroit comic Soupy Sales – partly because it’s gone from our airwaves now. But Dutch TV in has kept its eye and ear on the music. In a good year in the US, we’d be lucky to scrape up as much televised jazz as you’d get from a month of Reiziger in Muziek or Vrije Geluiden.

It was ever so, it seems. This has been the year of YouTube in my jazz history classes (with a shout out to VPRO’s Jazz bij Polygoon pages). Most of the 1950s and 60s concert footage we’ve looked at this spring – key players, photographed in attentive close-ups and edited in rhythm – has come from European TV, and much of that arrives with an NPS logo in the upper left corner.

For instance: at Laren’s Singer Theater in ’59 we glimpse two masters at early peaks. There’s Horace Silver in 1959, doing his theme “Cool Eyes” and the Spanish-tinged 6-against-4 “Señor Blues,” with good views of Louis Hayes’s rimshots and Horace’s flat-fingered attack, as he sweats out his grunt-and-grumble blues. (The rest of the band: Blue Mitchell, Junior Cook and Gene Taylor.) Sonny Rollins on his first European tour and in his best period, plays “Weaver of Dreams” in his best setting: trio with bass and drums: Henry Grimes and Pete LaRoca Sims.

More peaks: Ella sings a bouquet of tunes at the Concertgebouw on a ’57 JATP tour (Roy Eldridge sits in for a tune); she still sounds great in a groovy-looking studio in ’74, on the too-little-heard verse to “Just One of Those Things.” A creamy-voiced Sarah Vaughan, on a soundstage in 1958, performs a short and fine “Over the Rainbow,” “Cherokee” and “Sometimes I’m Happy.” On a TV schedule, things happen fast. Phineas Newborn’s breakneck, locked-hands “Oleo” takes all of two minutes.

Paul Desmond used to joke that “Take Five” wasn’t supposed to be hit – it was supposed to be a Joe Morello drum solo. A (pre-hit?) 1961 version for Dutch TV focuses on Morello just so – he kicks off his solo using one stick and a bare hand. (Drummers: check that shifting left-hand grip.) It wouldn’t stay his feature for long.

In the 60s, Dutch rhythm sections really tested their mettle with American soloists. The email circuits were burning when this clip surfaced: Han Bennink stoking Johnny Griffin’s furnace on a 1964 “Night in Tunisia,” shot to confirm Han was already a star. Pim Jacobs heads the backing band, as he did so often – as in ’66 for a “Just Friends” with an Oliver Nelson sextet including Konitz, Art Farmer, and English drummer Stu Martin.

One reason I’ve been showing so much YouTube jazz in class this year is the fear it’ll never be this good again, with all the rights-violations suits streaming in, and juicy stuff getting pulled from circulation every week. Some of you found out about that the hard way, when clips touted in our last column had disappeared before the Bulletin even came out.

But then there’s the Whac-A-Mole principle. Did you have that pinball-era arcade game in Holland? A mechanical mole sticks its head out of one of many holes in a box; you try to whack it with a mallet before it drops from sight, as other moles pop from other holes. YouTube’s volunteer uploaders are pure mole, and by March some of those same banished clips were back with different URLs, perhaps posted by the same party with a new name. So even when links go bust, you might do a keyword search for a lost clip later. And of course you could search off site, if that’s not too much effort.

My advice to copyright holders hereby alerted to actionable violations: leave things be, and let folks admire your fine holdings. Why attract bad publicity by spiting the fans? You’re bigger than that.

Links as of 1 April:

1. Lee Konitz/Warne Marsh, “Move” 1954 (with Don Elliott on mellophone, Mundell Lowe, Billy Taylor, Ed Thigpen)
2. Horace Silver, Laren 1959:
   • “Cool Eyes” 1 or 2
   • “Señor Blues”
3. Sonny Rollins, “Weaver of Dreams” 1959
4. Ella Fitzgerald, Concertgebouw 1957:
   • “It Don’t Mean a Thing” (with Roy Eldridge)
   • “Angel Eyes”
   • “Joe Williams’ Blues”
   • “Dancing on the Ceiling”
5. Ella, “Just One of Those Things” 1974 with Tommy Flanagan, Joe Pass…
6. Sarah Vaughan 1958:
   • “Over the Rainbow”
   • “Cherokee”
   • “Sometimes I’m Happy”
7. Phineas Newborn, Jr., “Oleo” 1960?
8. Dave Brubeck “Take Five” 1961
9. Johnny Griffin “A Night in Tunisia” 1964 with Han Bennink
10. Oliver Nelson/Pim Jacobs, “Just Friends” 1966
11. bonus track:
    Roland Kirk, “Lover Man” Amersfoort 1964, w/George Gruntz (piano)
12. VPRO: Jazz bij Polygoon