When Food Critics Write About Jazz

[Dan Gould]

The revolution ran on grits, ham hocks, ribs, black-eyed peas and biscuits.

When he opened Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem in 1940, Henry Minton, the first black delegate to the local musicians’ union, knew that jazz players were frequently in need of a meal and a place to give their instruments a workout. He gave them both. Minton’s extended a tricky welcome to its jam sessions: Musicians could eat free soul food and take a solo as long as they could keep up with the house band, anchored by Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke. (The house band!) This gang of nonconformists delighted in bizarre chord progressions, obscure keys and melodies that ran upside down.

Their bucking-bronco tactics threw some musicians right off the stage. The ones who stayed put included Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas, a Juilliard student named Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, who had a notable ability to put away fried chicken. Writing in Esquire years later, Ralph Ellison described Minton’s Playhouse as “a musical dueling ground,” and quoted a bartender who remembered when “Lester Young and Ben Webster used to tie up in battle like dogs in the road.” The radical sounds that came out of the duels at Minton’s and a few other clubs made a sharp break with the swing of the big-band era and formed a new style that would be called bebop.

... the success of dinner at Minton’s depends on how much you like to hear jazz musicians skittering around a tune, toying with a rhythm, tying and untying knots of harmony.

Larry Kart, he ain't. And maybe Larry couldn't do justice to the gumbo they serve but he probably wouldn't try either.

If you're curious about the food part of the review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/dining/restaurant-review-mintons-in-harlem.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region

[John L]

Did the melodies that ran upside down have anything to do with the upside down cake they were serving at Minton's?