The Future of Jazz

There are some jazz aficionados who don’t agree with Leonard Feather’s “The Future? Well, You Needn’t Worry” (Dec. 1).

He and Frank Wess seem to think that with so many young jazz musicians coming up, the music is in good hands. Decent hands would be more accurate, and certainly not profound hands , as when Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Monk, Miles, Mingus and Coltrane were around.

The young musicians now getting large recording contracts are giving us nothing but warmed-up, refined be-bop executed with awesome technical facility and tight musicianship but played with a cliched slickness. A true innovator does not continue a school of jazz but develops his own, as Bix did “Chicago style,” Parker started “bop” and Miles laid down the “cool.”

There is always the possibility that today’s youthful swinging technician could develop into a jazz master but not a probability, because of mass communication’s leveling process (wherein all musicians hear the same artist and everybody sounds like everybody else) and the disappearance of regional music.

In addition, jazz is coming out of conservatories, and while schools can teach tradition and musicianship, they cannot teach innovation. Jazz needs more musicians like Monk and fewer musical machines from schools.

BOB GEIB

San Diego