Jazz Veterans of the ‘90s Hit Their 80s

In the December, 1990, issue of down beat magazine, the results of the annual readers’ poll revealed that one musician--Benny Carter--was voted No. 1 in two categories: composer and arranger. (Four months earlier, he was also elected Musician of the Year in the magazine’s critics’ poll.)

What’s so remarkable about that? Well, down beat readers, who are mainly in their early 20s, might be expected to vote for one of the many musicians closer to their own generation. The victorious Benny Carter will be 84 in August.

Carter’s recording career has covered every decade of this century except the first two, as these recent releases indicate: “McKinney’s Cotton Pickers 1928-30, featuring Benny Carter” (RCA Bluebird), “Count Basie Orchestra, Kansas City Suite, Music by Benny Carter,” 1960, and “Benny Carter/Phil Woods” (Music Masters), 1990.

Carter is the most visible and distinguished of the jazz survivors. His enduring success as an alto saxophonist, composer and bandleader offers a reminder that while more and more teen-aged musicians have taken prominent roles in the scene, others whose careers began in the 1920s have remained musically active.

Among these mostly octogenarians, who have often shown that age has refined rather than reduced their expertise: Lionel Hampton, 82, the “Vibes President”; bassist Milt Hinton, 80; the French violinist Stephane Grappelli, who will be 83 this month; and Danny Barker, the New Orleans-based guitar and banjo virtuoso, 81.

How these artists have remained vital contributors to jazz is a tribute to both the loyalty of their fans and to the sustaining talent of the artists--provided, that is, that one’s lifestyle has been reasonably stable.

Through the media--films, TV, books--we have heard disproportionately about the Bix Beiderbeckes, Charlie Parkers and Chet Bakers who died tragically young. However, the men who continue to ply their trade in their 70s and 80s, reminds us that jazz is a continuum in which the arrival of the new does not connote the disappearance of the old.

A typical case history is that of trumpeter Adolphus (Doc) Cheatham, who will be 86 in June.

A veteran of name bands (Chick Webb, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, Cab Calloway, Benny Carter), he later toured Africa with Wilbur de Paris and with Herbie Mann, worked with Benny Goodman in the 1960s, and since then has been an active New York free-lancer.

“I’ve played these Sunday brunches at Sweet Basil every week for over 10 years,” he said. “I’ve played the Dick Gibson jazz party every Labor Day weekend and I went to France last spring.”

Cheatham will never say, as ragtime composer and pianist Eubie Blake once did, that if he knew he’d live this long, he’d have taken better care of himself. “You could say I’ve been very lucky. I’m in good health,” he said. “I have a wonderful wife, two grown children, four grandchildren. I never fooled around much with liquor. I take vitamins. I still practice my horn, even if it’s only 10 minutes a day.”

It’s most remarkable that Cheatham’s best recordings are those he has made in recent years. Maturity has brought to his style a flexibility and fluency and a personal edge to his sound.

Pianist Art Hodes, who was born in Czarist Russia in 1904, was raised in Chicago and became a passionate spokesman for traditional jazz and blues. Hodes--who had his own radio show, record company and magazine in the 1940s--still works in Chicago and recently released a new CD.

Most of the senior jazz men tend to work with younger musicians, out of choice as much as necessity, but others band together with men of their own generation. In New Orleans, several old-timers still gather at Preservation Hall, as they have since 1961. Clarinetist Willie Humphrey, a long-time regular, celebrated his 90th birthday there Dec. 29.

A unique group of veterans is the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band, which was organized in 1973 by Dr. Albert Vollmer, an orthodontist for whom jazz is a hobby. This New York-based ensemble has played colleges and festivals from Oberlin and Pepperdine to Oslo and Pori.

“The players, in their 60s, 70s and 80s, are in great shape, musically and physically,” Volmer said. “Our oldest member is bassist Johnny Williams, who was born in Memphis in 1908 and has worked with everyone from Louis Armstrong and Benny Carter to Coleman Hawkins and Teddy Wilson.”

Also featured in the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band is drummer Johnny Blowers. Born in 1911, Blowers was a regular in the Eddie Condon gang in Greenwich Village in the 1940s. Around the same age is the band’s admirable vocalist, Laurel Watson, one of the jazz world’s half-forgotten might-have-beens. “I was with Count Basie in 1945,” she said, “and with Duke Ellington a couple of years later, but I was unlucky--I never recorded with either of them.” These days, Watson still works fairly regularly with the Harlem band or with pickup combos of her own.

Singers, for whom one might expect youthful glamour to be an essential attribute, have a good chance of a lengthy career. Cab Calloway, born in December, 1907, still makes the rounds of concert halls and clubs. Adelaide Hall, who sang the memorable wordless vocal on Duke Ellington’s 1927 record, “Creole Love Call,” has lived in London for many years and recently sang on her own BBC special.

Hall, born in New York in 1909, is one of several older expatriates. “Champion” Jack Dupree has lived and worked in England or around the continent for 30 years. Dupree, a blues singer and pianist, was born in New Orleans in 1910 and was raised in the same Colored Waifs’ Home as Louis Armstrong. The saxophonist Benny Waters, who’ll turn 79 this month, has been Paris-based for some 40 years and works regularly.

What keeps these artists going? The answer would seem to be the creative spirit, coupled with a healthy attitude and a comparative lack of vices. (Although alcohol, tobacco and marijuana were the drugs of choice in the 1930s, none of the performers mentioned seems to have had a serious problem, or was ever hooked on hard drugs.)

There has already been one centenarian in jazz: Eubie Blake died in 1983, five days after his 100th birthday. He was the first, but the evidence seems to indicate that he may not be the last.