By Alex D Stewart
What? Deep Blue Organ Trio at the Green Mill
Where? The Green Mill, Uptown, Chicago
Why? Because I adore historic institutions and I live down the street
What is the thesis? A criticism of jazz ignorance by someone with a marginally less shallow understanding
Last Tuesday night I found myself at the historic Green Mill jazz club. I’d been avoiding it for a little while because it’s almost prohibitively expensive (for me, at least. I’m sure people with jobs have less of an issue with $6 cocktails and a $12 cover on weekends), but I had no plans and was in a musical mood. The Mill relies heavily on its history and gets away with a lot of shit because of it (on any given night, it can be difficult to tell how many people are there for the music and how many came because of its reputation as Al Capone’s frequent hangout). From my perspective, this is mostly forgiven by the Mill’s track record of booking live music almost every night of the week for almost 90 years now. Even as the Uptown neighborhood saw some really, really rough years in the 60s, 70s, and 80s (aw, who are we kidding? The 90s too) the Mill kept booking music and also managed to become instrumental in the formation of the Chicago slam poetry scene (the Sunday night Uptown Poetry Slam has been running for a good 24 years now).
Green Mill Lounge
So that’s why I was there. We walked in and found a scene that meshed fairly well with my expectations. Dark, resplendently restored Prohibition era décor, and packed with white folks; the band churning away at small Swing combo and Bop era standards. This is where I start trying to position my experience as being indicative of a larger issue with jazz: We’re now coming up on a time when jazz has ceased to be a major market influence for almost as long as it was one. Jazz has not moved units in any large amounts in America since the early 60s and it was supplanted by Blues and R&B as a reflection of Black culture and partying tendencies a further 10 to 15 years before that. Even within the well established idiom of white people being the only ones to listen to jazz (or at least pretend to, as the long running joke contends) the perception has stagnated. Asked to describe it, a random person will most likely come up with something that amounts to what was played by Dizzy Parker and their ilk. A smoky Harlem club; clean cut men in suits wailing lightning fast notes on a Saxophone/Trumpet over a quick drum shuffle (boom chicka boom, etc), and an upright bass walking out the chords-I’d attribute this perception to the appearance of 40s/50s era icons like Buddy Rich and Dizzy Gillespie on the Muppets Show, and the Peanuts soundtrack but that’s another discussion.
Here’s why that’s a problem: It is certainly a very accurate understanding of a specific kind of jazz, but it has also not been relevant since 1954 (I obviously place myself at a higher level. Being a fan of late era Coltrane and the free jazz of Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman and all. You should roll your eyes). As much as jazz is, and always was, about virtuosity, improvising, and swinging, it’s even more about pushing the boundaries of playing and composition. Literally since Morton and Armstrong began incorporating solos into the typical call and response of New Orleans jazz almost a hundred years ago, there has been a steady push against those walls formed by The Rules. So it’s fine if the style that has been found to be the most palatable combination of appealing to yet challenging a listener’s ears is Bebop- I always equate Bop era jazz with the art of Picasso. It contains abstraction and is clearly modern & Modern, but has enough adherences to common form that it doesn’t cause viewers to push their perceptions of what constitutes art too far. The only problem with this perception is that jazz didn’t stop. It kept moving outward. Freed from the confines of commercial appeal, it didn’t stop reaching. Hell, my understanding of the avant garde really only extends to about 1970. According to much more knowledgeable people than me, contemporary jazz has done things within both the dissonant, free styles and more melodic ideas that would seem as foreign to the players of 1968 as the outré drumming of Elvin Jones on, “Ascension,” and, “A Love Supreme,” would to those of 1950. That’s the problem. When I walk into a club in 2010 and see/hear people playing music that was growing stale 50 years ago, my heart loves it. It’s just that, my brain can’t help but want more.
Deep Blue Organ Trio
Once again (I’ve been saying this a lot lately) that does not mean that The Deep Blue Organ Trio are not greatly skilled at what they do. The bandleader/organist Chris Foreman is the kind of comical archetype that one doesn’t really expect to exist in real life. A blind, older black fellow in Ray Charles shades, Foreman has the kind of commanding virtuosity that makes one stop in their steps and say, “Wait! Is this shit real?” The movement between his right hand and the bass lines of his left hand and feet was astounding and, when it came time to solo, Foreman often lowered the volume on his Hammond B3; almost demanding that the crowd pay closer attention in their listening. Foreman was apparently not playing with regular partners so I’m not sure of the names of the other two players but they were most solid. The guitarist’s rhythm was nicely complementary and I appreciated the way he mostly stayed away from Wes Montgomery style octaves. The drummer, apparently a student of Art Blakey’s pounding, pushed the beat along with swagger, dropping bombs all over the place. Like I said, my heart and foot loved it. I just wish they could have done something for my brain.
