The Art-to-Commerce Continuum

[Dr Dave]

This thread is dedicated to the memory of Henri Bergson.

Where does art tip over into commerce in jazz? I would like to propose a continuum, and see where you think certain jazz performers reside upon it. I'm sure some, like Miles Davis, will occupy it on several different spots.

For the sake of argument, let us place at the bottom of the continuum Mr. Kenneth Gorelick, aka Kenny G. I choose him because he is just about universally despised at Jazz Corner. I am more than willing to entertain arguments that he is not a jazz player at all, but a pop musician who appropriates certain aspects of jazz to further his commercial aspirations. Whatever you think of him, he's certainly deeply into the Commerce side.

At the top of the continuum, which, as you will immediately understand, is densely populated, you may select your own jazz Genius: A performer or group whose work is so esoteric, so forbidding, so completely devoid of what Frank Zappa called "commercial potential," as to be on the very verge of Art Holiness. For myself, I choose (more or less at random) the trumpet/computer duo, Greg Kelley and Jason Lescalleet. I think it is fair to say that these guys are not going to be appearing at anything scheduled by George Wein anytime soon. Nor will they be invited for cameo appearances on the next Queen Latifah album. Although I could be completely wrong about this.

Anyway, I think the real fun will be in the middle: "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" was a Top Ten hit for Cannonball Adderley. Where does it fit on the continuum? Was it "real jazz" or just a money-grubbing effort? What are we supposed to make of Miles Davis recording "Human Nature"? Wynton Marsalis wrote that it was the crassest sort of commercialism, and not the "real Miles." Hmmm...

And what about Diana Krall? Her most recent activities excepted, was she a pretty good jazz pianist and singer wrapped in an expensive Pop package? More? Less?

[sashabur]

I think you're wrong about this "continuum" being linear. Definitely if someboudy is a genius, it doesn't prevent people from seeing his work as attractive and thus making him popular. There are plenty of talented *and* recognized people. (though many of them are being recognized as time goes), there are many of less than gifted people in the underground. Again, artists' motivations don't represent their commercial standing, or results of their work from the arts point of view...

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Originally Posted by sashabur

artists' motivations don't represent their commercial standing, or results of their work from the arts point of view...

I tend to agree. Bach and Shakespeare met regular deadlines for venues in which their works were regularly featured and upon which they depended for a living. And for all I know KennyG may think of himself as this generation's Coltrane.

[Richardo Caerleoni]

Dr Dave....“Anyway, I think the real fun will be in the middle: "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" was a Top Ten hit for Cannonball Adderley. Where does it fit on the continuum? Was it "real jazz" or just a money-grubbing effort?…..”


Strange you should mention this because I’ve just heard an hour long radio interview with Joe Zawinul, where he says he was playing around with a phrase on (acoustic) piano – the “have mercy on me” line - and Cannonball just said, ” mercy, mercy !”…and so, that developed into “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy”….originally they were going to cut it on acoustic piano but Zawinul found an electric piano in the studio. So, accidental into commercial but I don’t think money grubbing?

In fact from the interviews I've read with Cannon, he grew to hate his music being marketed as "Soul Jazz"...I've got a concert double CD of him in Paris in '69 where the audience are completely "off" with him for playing in a very broken phrased style - not funky "Dis Here" pharses...very fractured - almost like Jackie M in some ways...and he is as sarcastic in response..."We are So glad to be here...because... we are getting paid to be here!"

RC.

[Dr Dave]

Another high-concept thread goes down the toilet.

[sashabur]

So, you'd rather talk to hundred people, than to just three?

[mke]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

Another high-concept thread goes down the toilet.

I think that the problem is a paucity of commercially-significant jazz to be discussed.

[Richardo Caerleoni]

Please..."Take Five"...

RC.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Love For Sale @ Ten Cents A Dance

[Steve Reynolds]

RC - maybe mke is talking about today's jazz

[Richardo Caerleoni]

Originally Posted by Steve Reynolds

RC - maybe mke is talking about today's jazz

Hey, no problem, Norah Jones was/always will be big in my book !

Is she "today" or yesterday?

Life gets so confusing after Lester!

Lester, Bird, Trane, Ornette, Ayler...Norah.. then..? The next "New Thing At Newport"? Can't wait.

RC.

[mke]

Originally Posted by Steve Reynolds

RC - maybe mke is talking about today's jazz

Yes. Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Stacey Kent, Jamie Cullum, Peter Cincotti, maybe a few others... Then the electronica people St. Germain, etc. Not a whole lot, really -> paucity. "Take Five": discussing the commercialism of stuff that has already been canonised or discarded by history, what's the point?

[sashabur]

I think these days there's less "money-grubbing" and more "marketing strategies". Bleah.

[mtaylorjazz]

remember that the "anti-commercial-audience-hating-artiste" bag can also be a marketing strategy. After all, the concept of an underground (Underground "underground" "Underground") is often a niche marketing strategy itself. There is an argument that the guy onstage (in your favorite music magazine/website/etc.) chest-thumping about how he doesn't care whether anyone likes his music almost HAS to be posturing. Otherwise he'd be playing his music at home, by himself, for his cat or something. Not too sure how much I agree with it, but it always makes me take another look at the whole "artistic integrity" argument (especially as made by someone OTHER than the musician being discussed).

Just my 2 kroner

http://www.mark-taylor.biz

[Richardo Caerleoni]

Originally Posted by mke

Yes. Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Stacey Kent, Jamie Cullum, Peter Cincotti, maybe a few others... Then the electronica people St. Germain, etc. Not a whole lot, really -> paucity. "Take Five": discussing the commercialism of stuff that has already been canonised or discarded by history, what's the point?

mke...............what's the point? NONE!

"Jazz is dead/Jazz has gone "commercial"/Jazz has sold out/ Jazz is everywhere /nowhere baby..."

But STILL it moves!............at the sides?...by degrees?/Always watch those sides!

A Mort Subite, A Mort Subite, A Mort Subite...etc...!



The best bar in all the world...Well, in Brussels!

ALSO: Never a fan (ever) of Bergson's "idealism" (DR Dave's "inspiration" for this (deep) thread)..."In the duration, there is no juxtaposition of events; therefore there is no causality. It is in the duration that we can speak of the experience of freedom."...Politely, this is (what has become) post modernist bollocks...still, if it makes you all happy/clappy - a good career move ?...I/WE are off for a "Materialist" beer...or six. Dream on.

Richard/Anna. Back one day...Maybe..."You never can tell" (c) C. Berry.

Oh yes you can. Think not.


|Bye - RC.

[mke]

A La Mort Subite, passed it many times, must go in someday. I'm not much of a bar person, though, apart for concerts.

How does a jazz musician sell out these days? Where is the big payoff?

[Dr Dave]

This is developing very nicely now. As a rule, I'm more of a wine guy than a beer guy, but I love Belgian beer. And Belgian moules et frites. Oh, yeah!

I do not understand the distinction between "marketing" and "money-grubbing." I am impressed with Mark Taylor's anti-marketing marketing, although I doubt whether it will produce any million-sellers for Erstwhile.

When Grant Green recorded "Ain't It Funky Now," I assumed at least in part somebody at Blue Note told him it would be a good idea. Of course there is also the possibility that Green was really into James Brown. And, of course, I can yammer about intention all day and all night and it makes no difference as to the actual quality of the music.

Miles Davis is famously quoted as saying he didn't care about no market. But the music he recorded in the 1980s, especially the infamous "You're Under Arrest" sessions (where Al Foster walked out rather than play "Human Nature") seems to have been made with the idea that it might make good product rather than good music. I could be wrong about this. But you know, "Human Nature" really isn't very good at all. And maybe Miles knew this. After all, if anybody in jazz--hell, anybody in the world--was ever bitten repeatedly by the Imp of the Perverse, it was Miles.

[Jon Abbey]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

I am impressed with Mark Taylor's anti-marketing marketing, although I doubt whether it will produce any million-sellers for Erstwhile.

seriously. Greg Kelley, mentioned in your first post, has a new solo double CD out soon in a CD-R edition of 120. maybe he'll retire to the Caribbean after that sells out.

[Saxman7]

I think if an artist records what he likes, and authentically "feels" it, then that's "artistic integrity". If he records tunes he doesn't really feel, simply because he thinks it will make money, it's not....

You can hardly sit and judge a tune as "valid" or not; it's futile, as there is no one yet, I heard able to define what exactly makes a "jazz tune"!
If you believe you can, please be my guest....

Is it a matter of how many chord changes, the tempo, style, complexity of the melody, mode(s), hipness? Misty is a "standard", is it "jazz"?
Miles is a "sell out" for recording "Time after Time", but the be-boppers recording what were pop tunes (or their changes) of their time, weren't?

What makes "My Favorite Things", originally sung by who, Mary Martin, or someone, in "The Sound of Music", a "jazz standard"? Isn't that tune more about WHO recorded it, and HOW he played it?

Are the various Pharoah Sanders & Mc Coy Tyner tunes, like "Thembi", "Creator Has a Master Plan", or "Walk Spirit Talk Spirit", very simple in form & melody, also "jazz tunes"? If not, what then?

I saw Lonnie Liston Smith recently, and he said that his whole venture into the direction of what now people are calling "acid jazz" or "soul jazz", etc., was completely an "organic", unpre-meditated one. While with Miles, he noticed how Davis was using guitar effect boxes for his horn, and as Lonnie had just gotten into electric piano, he wanted to experiment with them as well.

So, was his creative quest "selling out" cause he made more money doing that, than before?

It's indeed a slippery slope for we who choose to judge others, and their creative expression. Many at the time thought Coltrane sucked, or Ornette, or many others, only later to change or not change their minds, who was "right"?

I even spoke with Kenny G's bass player one night, and asked him about the tunes. He swore up and down, that they were honestly what KG feels, and how he really expresses himself. And before he hit it big, on the album before his breakthrough one, I did hear basically the same kind of approach that he has used (and keeps using, over, & over, & over again....) on the ones that sold millions... So, did he sit and calculate what he thought it would take to catch people's ears & sell 50-60million albums? I don't really think so; as no one ever came even close to that before. Face it, as one writer's long piece on why there won't be another G-man, it was a combination of timing, collection of various musical, physical, promotional, etc. factors, all mixed in to create that phenom.....

Now, many love Nora Jones, I to this day don't "get her", at least as any kind of "jazz artist". I really don't think she does either.....

I like this Jamie Callum kid, I'm impressed with his chops, songwriting, singing, & stage presence, he's able to take jazz to the young crowd. Something very sorely needed, for any semblence of this music to survive....

Ok, enough of me........

[mtaylorjazz]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

I am impressed with Mark Taylor's anti-marketing marketing, although I doubt whether it will produce any million-sellers for Erstwhile.

I never said I was "anti-marketing". In fact, any of my musician friends will tell you that intelligent career planning and marketing for musicians is one of my favorite soapboxes. I consider them essential for a musican to take care of niggling little life details like, oh...rent, groceries, internet access, feeding little 10-year old girls, etc.

When I first moved to NY, I was lucky enough to spend time with many musicans older than I (Max Roach, Muhal Richard Abrams, Grover Mitchell). The one thing that amazed me was how these men seemed to be able to meld the activities involved in "making music and making a living" into a cohesive unit. Lester Bowie and I once had an amazing conversation about getting paid for your creative output.

I'm not expecting any million-sellers and, unfortunately, don't know anyone at Erstwhile. Anyone want to make some introductions?

http://www.mark-taylor.biz

[Jon Abbey]

Originally Posted by mtaylorjazz

I'm not expecting any million-sellers and, unfortunately, don't know anyone at Erstwhile. Anyone want to make some introductions?

hello.

[mtaylorjazz]

D'oh!! Sorry Jon. I've read lots of your posts here, but never put it together. My apologies.

MT

http://www.mark-taylor.biz

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by Jon Abbey

seriously. Greg Kelley, mentioned in your first post, has a new solo double CD out soon in a CD-R edition of 120. maybe he'll retire to the Caribbean after that sells out.

Go for the Gold, Greg!

[Dr Dave]

As it happens, there is a story on Eric Lewis in today's NY Times, which I reproduce below, as I believe it has some bearing on this topic:

January 25, 2005
The New York Times
Paying His Dues, Thinking Big
By ANDREW JACOBS

Jazz musicians are born to be broke.

It is an axiom many musicians have internalized over the years. Even some of the biggest names in jazz, like the singer Cassandra Wilson, are thrilled if their records sell 40,000 copies.

"No one enters into this believing they're going to get rich," Ms. Wilson said in an interview. "As a kid, you don't think, 'I'm going to be a jazz musician because they make lots of money.' "

It is a paradigm that Eric Lewis, a 31-year-old pianist and most recently a member of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, thinks he can change. He may live in a single-room-occupancy hotel near Riverside Park with shared bathrooms, and his bank account may be nearly barren, but Mr. Lewis has a coterie of big-name boosters cheering for his success, among them Lee Iacocca, Jamie Foxx and his former boss and mentor, Wynton Marsalis.

After nearly a decade as Lincoln Center's pianist, Mr. Lewis quit last month, saying it was time to find a spotlight of his own. "Why should I be a martyr?" he asked after playing his regular Monday night side gig at Cleopatra's Needle, an Upper West Side restaurant that pays him barely enough to cover his cellphone bill. "I want to be compensated in a way that matches what I'm worth."

In recent months, he has been working on the soundtrack for a PBS documentary, a self-financed fictionalized film about his life and the score for a ballet commissioned by the Joffrey.

Mr. Lewis is counting in part on the newfound money and attention that have accompanied the birth of Lincoln Center's $128 million jazz emporium at Columbus Circle. His yearning for fame and fortune was only heightened by the ballyhooed inauguration of the jazz center, which has been drawing New York's cultural elite and gushing press attention since it opened in October.

It was through his association with Jazz at Lincoln Center that Mr. Lewis earned the affections of people like James Curley, a benefactor of the jazz program, and Patricia Kennedy, a prominent arts patron who is married to Mr. Iacocca and who is on the Joffrey's board. Despite a steady salary and a touring schedule that takes in a half-dozen countries and a score of American cities each year, Mr. Lewis was not satisfied to be one of 15 musicians who play alongside Mr. Marsalis, the orchestra's artistic director and one of jazz's biggest stars.

It remains to be seen whether Mr. Lewis, a shy self-described chess addict whose distinctively vigorous style is much admired in the business, can hit the big time on his own. Bruce Lundvall, the president of Blue Note Records, one of the best-known jazz labels, said it was increasingly difficult to sell instrumentalists. Times have gotten so tough, Mr. Lundvall said, partly because of the spread of illegal downloading, that Blue Note has recently asked some of its artists essentially to agree to pay cuts.

Still, he said he was interested in talking to Mr. Lewis about a record deal, adding: "He's a wonderful player and a flamboyant one at that. I'm very much a fan."

Mr. Lewis is a familiar presence on the New York jazz circuit. On most nights he can be spotted playing downtown's string of basement venues or Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, the plush lounge at Lincoln Center's new temple of jazz. At places like Zinc Bar and Niagara, he often plays until dawn at jam sessions, sweating away at the piano, bathed in the adulation of friends and fans.

After a lifelong struggle with obesity, Mr. Lewis lost 40 pounds last summer (he now weighs 228 pounds and hopes to lose more), an accomplishment he says buoyed his decision to strike out on his own.

"There's a prejudice against fat people," he said. "Now that I lost all this weight, I get more attention. I feel more confident."

It has been a long haul for Mr. Lewis, who has weathered bouts of depression, stretches of poverty and tumultuous periods of self-doubt. He comes from a long line of musicians and grew up in Camden, N.J., the only child of Carol Lewis, a classically trained flutist who strained to make it as a professional musician. His boyhood home, a century-old Victorian in a neighborhood of sagging houses, is cluttered with five pianos and the framed portraits of jazz luminaries whom his mother, with young son in tow, would pursue after concerts.

"I was always dragging him backstage to meet these great musicians," said Ms. Lewis, who works as a middle school band director. "He grew up listening to the masters."

Socially awkward but strikingly self-confident in front of an audience, Mr. Lewis has been tethered to the piano since age 21/2, when he first clambered up a stool and started banging on the keys. As a teenager, he flirted with the idea of becoming a classical pianist but his mother, drawing on her own struggles, steered him toward jazz.

"As a black man, I don't know what kind of future he would have had in the classical world," she said.

Mr. Lewis won a scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music, and after graduation spent years apprenticing - with the drummer Elvin Jones, the trumpeter Roy Hargrove, the singer Jon Hendricks and Ms. Wilson. At 13, he caught the eye and ear of Mr. Marsalis, who had come to Camden for a concert; more than a decade later, in 1996, Mr. Marsalis would take him into his ensemble.

"Even back then Eric was an original," Mr. Marsalis said, speaking by phone from the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra's tour bus as it made its way through California. "His playing was playful but also serious to point of being spiritual."

The two have had a close relationship, and Mr. Lewis credits Mr. Marsalis with helping him master the historical and stylistic range of jazz. "At times, it's been adversarial, with him acting like a drill sergeant," Mr. Lewis said. "In those early years, it felt like a hazing."

In 1998, the incessant touring and competitive pressures of sharing a stage with two dozen other egos began to take its toll. During a tour stop in Brazil, Mr. Lewis suffered what he describes as an emotional implosion and abruptly left the band.

Months of panic attacks, depression and self-recrimination followed. The turning point, Mr. Lewis says, coincided with Christmas of that year, when he approached a police officer outside Tower Records near Lincoln Center and asked for the nearest mental hospital. After a psychiatric exam at Bellevue, Mr. Lewis was surprised to find that he was not seriously ill. "I went to Barnes & Noble, found some books on panic attacks and depression and realized I was not crazy," he said.

Three days later he spotted an advertisement in Down Beat magazine for the Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition, which he had entered, and lost, as a 16-year-old. For the next three months, he spent every waking moment preparing his entry tape.

"Those were very lean times," he said. "I was very alone, I owed people a lot of money and I was surviving on 99-cent boxes of Ronzoni."

He won the competition but owed nearly all of the $10,000 prize, much of it to a wily group of chess players, "hustlers" as he calls them, who spend their days in Washington Square Park or in the chess shops on nearby Thompson Street.

Although he is short on cash these days, Mr. Lewis said he did not regret his departure from Lincoln Center. In recent weeks, he has found a manager, taken on more writing for film soundtracks and booked a series of gigs. He may perform at a Los Angeles Oscar party with Jamie Foxx as host. This month he put together a showcase for himself at a Los Angeles nightclub that drew a smattering of music industry executives, jazz critics and Hollywood types.

He recognizes that straight jazz is a less-than-lucrative genre and, many of his new compositions include vocals and danceable rhythms. He says he is fed up with the jazz world's obsession with the esoteric, which he sees as keeping many of his peers struggling to make ends meet. (emphasis added, just especially for Steve Reynolds)

"I just want to make sounds that people dig," Mr. Lewis said, "and make a lot of money doing it."

-30-

I'm with Eric on this one.

[sashabur]

So what is the moral of this story, Dr Dave? "Whatever turns you on, baby, that's what you should be doing"?
"Esoteric" is not an absolute quality, it's relative...

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by sashabur

So what is the moral of this story, Dr Dave? "Whatever turns you on, baby, that's what you should be doing"?
"Esoteric" is not an absolute quality, it's relative...

So "esoteric" is relative, not absolute. Therefore it has no meaning? Get outta here!

The moral of the story, if there is one, is that following your esoteric muse is all well and good, but don't expect to make any MONEY at it. I don't play all that much these days, but when I do, I like to get PAID. It's just a little quirk of mine.

[dow30]

Who care's what it's classified as, if someone enjoys listening to it, it must be good!

[sashabur]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

The moral of the story, if there is one, is that following your esoteric muse is all well and good, but don't expect to make any MONEY at it.

I'm just thinking that following your muse feels good, I agree, but whether what comes out is esoteric or not is the matter of luck, social trends etc., and so is being paid

[mtaylorjazz]

That's the sort of story the jazz world just eats up (umm...marketing?!). We do lurve us some tortured, mentally unstable geniuses. And I don't mean that as a dig against him at all. I hope he does get paid - well.

MT
http://www.mark-taylor.biz

[Uli]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

Bruce Lundvall, the president of Blue Note Records, one of the best-known jazz labels, said it was increasingly difficult to sell instrumentalists.

How well you sing, Dr. Dave?