By Chris M. Slawecki
Ive got to thank Pat Martino one day.
Several years ago, I covered the Mellon-PSFS Jazz Festival in Philadelphia and attended the press conference introducing Martino as that years honoree. I asked him privately later for his definition of jazz. He looked at me with deeply pained, almost disappointed, brown eyes.
He first mentioned that jazz was the impetus that kept him able to answer questions like that (A put-down? Im still not certain). But then he told me that "Jazz is the continuous pulsation of the now."
The August release on CD of From Spirituals to Swing: The Legendary 1938 and 1939 Carnegie Hall Concerts peels back year upon year, traversing six decades to a different place and time connecting the listener to the "now" of a different America.
In 1938, John Hammond staged a concert dedicated to the memory of Bessie Smith: "From Spirituals To Swing," the first major interracial presentation of jazz at Carnegie Hall. The 1938 concert featured Sidney Bechet, Lester Young, Hot Lips Page, the Count Basie Orchestra (including the famous rhythm section of Basie, guitarist Freddie Green, drummer Jo Jones and bassist Walter Page), plus pianists Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson.
The show was so well-received that Hammond staged a second "From Spirituals To Swing" in 1939 at the hallowed Hall. Basie and his band returned for this second performance, which also featured Benny Goodmans Sextext (with Charlie Christian, Lionel Hampton and Fletcher Henderson), bluesmen Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Terry, and pianist James P. Johnson.
Vanguards new three-CD set presents every song performed at both concerts, plus the first CD release of seven studio tracks Basie and crew recorded for Hammond in 1938. It boasts nearly three hours of music: The only live recordings of Christian performing with Young; Plenty of blues and boogie, country gospel, and seminal ensemble swing; and The Counts omnipresent, irrepressible beat, a smooth yet purposeful revelation of economy and grace. Getting to hear a sixty year old concert on CD sonically cleaned up (for the most part) while your ear almost automatically associates it with popping, hissing old vinyl feels endearingly odd, too.
Read C. Michael Baileys AAJ review of From Spirituals To Swing.
But From Spirituals to Swing also opens a three-hour window to the past. What challenges did John Hammond face presenting racially mixed concerts at Carnegie Hall in 1938? Jesse Owens is remembered for exposing Hitlers folly to the world at the 1936 Olympics. But black baseball players still werent playing in the major leagues alongside white ballplayers in 1938. Further, most people today would admit that jazz is a respected art form, even if they dont personally like it. This set reminds us that things werent always this way.
When Big Bill Broonzy moaned, "I dreamed I was in the White House/ Sittin in the presidents chair/ Dreamed he shakes my hand/ Says Bill, Im glad youre here/ But that was just a dream," how did the audience react? Laughing out loud, thats how.
Despite the presence of some of the most progressive and popular musicians of the era on the bill, Hammond had a hard time finding sponsors for "From Spirituals To Swing" and was turned down even by the NAACP. He eventually recruited two left-wing associations as sponsors, and helped ring chimes of common-sense equality that would continue to resonate for decades thereafter. "The strongest motivation for my dissent was jazz," Hammond once reflected. "I heard no color line in the music."
From Spirituals to Swing is also a reminder that jazz is as much a performance as a recorded art, a point often lost in a world of digital samples and post-production sophistry.
Finally, FSTS got me thinking about other great live jazz recordings. One of the most famous is The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever, AKA Jazz at Massey Hall. Sponsored by The New Jazz Society to bring together the finest musicians in jazz, this May 1953 Toronto show came close to living up to its billing: The Bud Powell Trio with Charles Mingus and Max Roach played the opening set, then were joined by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker for the second set. That legitimately legendary second set included incandescent versions of "A Night In Tunisia," "Perdido," "Salt Peanuts" and other mainstays of the hard bop canon. Bird is listed as "Charlie Chan" on the original credits, because he was under contract to Mercury at the time.
(Oh, for the space and time to dig into The Modern Jazz Quartets European Concert, Coltrane ripping shit up Live at the Village Vanguard, Miles incendiary Four and More and Live At The Plugged Nickel, and...)
