I Love New York

This article first appeared on All About Jazz in October 2001.

There's another reason as well. New York City is a financial and business center, certainly, and this is one reason it was marked for attack. But it is also very much our nation's cultural and arts center, the showpiece of the country that tells the world that this upstart nation is not made up of rubes and hayseeds, but possesses a sophistication that rivals many of the capitals of old Europe. There's been some general agreement that the United States has offered the world two forms of art that didn't exist prior to the development of our nation: musical theatre and jazz. Both of these are well-accounted for in the Big Apple.

New York City has been jazz music's temporal and spiritual home almost from the moment the word "jazz" was used to describe the music. New Orleans, St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago, and Los Angeles all had their place in the development and nurturing of the jazz baby, but it is universally recognized that that baby grew into adolescence, adulthood, and middle age within the confines of NYC. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the first "jazz" group to have its music committed to record, was a hit in New York when many other New Orleans musicians were playing in Chicago or various points in the American South and Southwest. Their success helped spread the popularity of jazz across the country quickly, and opened up job opportunities for musicians in locales far from NYC. Tin Pan Alley, the songwriting incubator that contributed many a standard to the jazz repertoire, has long been a monument to the unique talents of American popular songwriters. It's hard to imagine the repertoire of any jazz singer without the contributions of Gershwin and Irving Berlin.

The great Louis Armstrong made New York his new home, moving there permanently in 1943. New York City provided Armstrong with the acceptance that his real home, New Orleans, could not because of the racial prejudice that persisted there. Duke Ellington's broadcasts from the Cotton Club, beginning in 1927, established his orchestra as a major attraction, and Ellington himself exuded the sophistication that became synonymous with NYC. New York welcomed, or at least invited, jazz into Carnegie Hall with Benny Goodman's famous swing recital there, a program that did much to further the causes of jazz and racial tolerance.

The sounds of jazz that echo still over New York City include the piano work of Fats Waller}} and James P. Johnson}} as well as the saxophone of Sonny Rollins practicing at night on the Williamsburg Bridge that runs over the East River. Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers weigh in with luminaries like Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, and Freddie Hubbard, and Cannonball Adderley's piercing alto can be heard taking the town by storm. The shape of jazz to come is here too, in the squawk of Ornette Coleman, the flights of Don Cherry, and the energetic drumwork of Billy Higgins. There's poetry in the air as well, in the words of Jon Hendricks and Amiri Baraka. Somewhere, too, is the reverberation of Miles' trumpet, its lonely, intimate tone speaking to the New York night in the hours closest to dawn.

The clubs and nightspots of NYC, most long gone, include Connie's Inn, where the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra could be heard, the Three Deuces club on 52nd Street where you might catch Erroll Garner or Illinois Jacquet, the Savoy Ballroom, where Chick Webb beat on his drum kit like a man possessed to the delight of a room full of dancers, and Minton's where a small but dedicated group of musicians that included Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, and Thelonious Monk invented bebop. From a window across Broadway from Birdland, Lester Young watched a new generation of jazz musicians come and go, and offered his plaintive, breathy playing as commentary on his inner demons. Over in Greenwich Village, the Village Vanguard played home to virtually every great jazz musician and became a point of pilgrimage for every young musician, myself included. Historic moments captured there on tape-1961 performances by the Bill Evans Trio and Coltrane, to name but two-serve to remind us of the wealth of music available at any time to residents and visitors alike.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, fewer people are out and about. Tourists are staying home, and the economic repercussions include not just the airlines, the hotels, and the travel agents, but also the musicians who perform for and entertain visitors to their city as well as the people who live there. Work can be difficult to find for jazz musicians and the work there is generally doesn't pay what it should. The fact is many of the clubs and nightspots are themselves suffering from lack of business.

Purchasing recordings of musicians is great, but live performances are the bread and butter of any working musician. President Bush has encouraged Americans to get back on the airlines, to get back "to the business of America." To this I would add: get out and see some live jazz music. Being in a venue with other people, partaking in that special connection between performer and audience, and losing yourself in a reverie of music and perhaps a chilled libation, are all guaranteed to lift your spirits and help you forget about the events that have occurred this month. If you can afford to make the trip to New York City to raise your glass and listen to that music, so much the better. The twin towers of the World Trade Center may be gone, but the music of New York, the rich traditions of our nation's cultural capitol are still there for all to enjoy. May it always be that way.