JAZZ : Too Fast, Too Easy and Too Unctuous

As the aspiring young musician may observe, times have changed for the better in the profession of his choice. The conditions under which performers in jazz and related fields work today are in many respects vastly preferable to those under which their predecessors had to labor.

Gone are the days when great artists languished in obscurity or in financial limbo, only to be praised and saluted in posthumous essays and albums. Far behind us is the era when most of the lucrative and prestigious jobs were inaccessible to musicians, no matter how gifted, simply because racial segregation was a pervasive way of American life.

There is, however, another side to this picture. Sometimes recognition comes too fast, too easily, and the dazzling rays of success blind the musician to any acknowledgment of reality.

Is the easy route to the top a curse in disguise? Is jazz or fusion music becoming too self-important? Surely there is evidence that some relative newcomers to the scene, after brief exposure to the limelight, are not only receiving disproportionate acclaim but are fast getting to take themselves too seriously, with results that are half-pathetic, half-comic.

To take a typical case history, the latest album by a saxophonist named Najee (“Day by Day,” EMI Manhattan 90096) includes a long essay in the course of which 73 people are thanked for their supposed contribution to the presumptive success of his venture.

Starting with “special thanks to the Creator who makes all things possible” and moving on to “my mother for your undying love and support,” he has unctuous words of praise for brothers, sisters, bankers (sic), management, a booking agency (William Morris, of course), various singers and other artists who may or may not be heard on this particular album, and dozens more, their identities and contributions in many cases unexplained, though they are lauded for their “constant support,” “positive creative energy,” “aggressive contributions,” “tireless efforts,” “inspiration,” “dedication,” “enthusiastic support,” and on and on and on. All this for 73 people who helped to make possible an album in which, to judge by its sound, at most a dozen musicians took part.

I was reminded of the ancient fable: “A mountain was in labor, sending forth dreadful groans, and there was in the region the highest expectation. After all, it brought forth a mouse.” (Phaedrus, Fable 22.) The mouse in this instance is not a bad album, merely one of boundless mediocrity by a musician who was unknown a couple of years ago, and who a decade hence may have returned to that condition of obscurity.

Even the wardrobe stylist is credited, along with Najee’s five producers, executive producer, production coordinator, administrator. Did Lester Young ever thank his wardrobe stylist or booking agent or siblings? Did Ella Fitzgerald salute her producers, lawyers, administrators, hairdresser? Did Miles Davis ever thank anyone?

In all the years when Art Tatum and Charlie Parker created their masterpieces, I never once read on any album cover the name of their managers and agents, even what brand of instrument they played. Somehow posterity has remembered them. Somehow the legends of Charles Mingus and Ellington and Basie live on, even though we were never privy to the names of their advisers or the addresses of their fan clubs. The men and their music had an innate dignity that called for no explanations, no explosions of gratitude.

I mean no personal disrespect to Najee. His thanks are well-intended, and the effulgence of the potentially profitable light he gives off may have obscured certain harsh realities, such as the fact that these delusions of grandeur are ultimately self-defeating. Yet his case is all too typical of what is happening in a world dominated by get-rich-quick producers, each of whom convinces his latest discovery that he has achieved something unparalleled since the invention of the wheel.

Is there no humility left in music? Are we to be confronted indefinitely by these middling-to-minor talents who are built up (and build themselves up) with mountains of verbiage to herald their mouse-sized contributions?

There should be a word for this trend. Since the suffix - megaly denotes anything abnormally enlarged (gastromegaly, acromegaly etc.), let us call it jazzomegaly. The symptoms are obvious: a painless swelling of the ego, an enlargement of the gratitude vein, a pronounced fever in the vocabulary.

The cure is simple: Take a backward glance, observe how few of the men and women now enshrined in the music halls of fame looked on their own artistry as gravely as this; or even assuming they did, how humbly they kept to themselves the awareness of their importance.

For the seeker of musical verities, until jazzomegaly is expunged from the marketplace, it might be wise to keep this advice in mind: When a new artist simply offers his wares without pomp and circumstance, he may well deserve a hearing. If, however, he finds it necessary to thank 73 people, the operative words are caveat emptor.