Music Monday: Jazz and History

Last week, Dizzy Gillespie would have celebrated his 104th birthday and while Dizzy makes only an occasional appearance in my house, I took this impressive landmark to play two albums of his that I’ve long appreciated. 

I’ll be honest and admit that I’ve never really dug deeply into Dizzy’s discography and adapted instead a random sampling strategy familiar to any archaeologist who has worked on an extensive survey project. When using this method, I’ve always been drawn to his 1961 album An Electrifying Evening with the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet which was recorded at the MoMA and includes as its final track an 18 minute interview with Dizzy. The album is short, energetic, and includes genuinely remarkable performances of “Kush” and Gillespie’s classic “A Night in Tunisia” in their full orientalist glory.

The other album of Dizzy’s that I find myself coming back to time and time again is Diz and Getz (1955) with (of course) tenor saxophone player Stan Getz backed by Oscar Peterson (piano), Ray Brown (bass), Max Roach (drums), and Herb Ellis on guitar. The Peterson-Brown-Roach rhythm section and Herb Ellis on guitar overlapped with both Oscar Peterson’s Trio and with Dizzy’s early 1950s working band. Getz was not an unknown quantity to this group, but his style offered a significant contrast to the more rollicking tempos favored by Dizzy. To my untrained ear, the contrast in styles and tones really worked perfectly making this album more than a blowing session. If you like the opening track, “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” which alternates between almost skittering to silky, then you’ll find the entire set engaging.

One thing that I find compelling about jazz and improvised music is the often explicit awareness of history. Last week, I also had three albums by James Brandon Lewis on heavy rotation. Lewis is a tenor sax player whose 2019 album An UnRuly Manifesto captured my attention. He released three albums in 2021. The first, with the Red Lily Quintet is titled Jesup Wagon, after the agricultural education wagon developed by George Washington Carver in Alabama to spread the latest methods and technology to black farmers. Red Lily Quintet is a tight ensemble featuring William Parker (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums) and Kirk Knuffke (cornet) and Chris Hoffman (cello). The play Lewis’s compositions which both evoke a mood and tell a story. “Lowlands of Sorrow” is pretty amazing with Lewis and Knuffke trading solos over a driving rhythm set out by Parker and punctuated by Taylor. I like the idea that this kind of album is a modern day Jesup Wagon designed to spread a new kind of knowledge to a new audience.

The second album deserves a deeper listen than I’ve managed to give it so far, but it’s called Code of Being and whereas Jessop Wagon feels anchored in a historical time and place (even if this place is a bit unclear), Code of Being is more expansive and theatrical affair. “Code of Hella” with its droning bass and its series of “Oriental” and then Latin melodies seems to simultaneously look forward in sync with the interest in contemporary jazz to make grandiose statements and to the intimacy and melodic investment that prospered at the dawn of Bebop.