when heroin hit jazz

[Hardbopjazz]

https://www.city-journal.org/article/when-heroin-hit-jazz

An interesting read. 

[JSngry]

How come nobody talks about cocaine?

[sonnymax]

"When heroin hit, jazz’s day was already beginning to fade."

"Jazz aficionados constitute a left-leaning community and always have. Thus, the literature tends to treat the jazz-heroin epidemic mainly as a story of racism..."

"The 1950s were when jazz truly lost its black audience."

City Journal is published by the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

[JSngry]

Ok, then that makes sense.

Not in terms of reality, in terms of inaccuracy presented as fact.

[Gheorghe]

Very interesting to read, maybe not everything when it is no more about musicians, but anyway: 

Since I hear jazz I had known that some of my heroes where heroin addicts, mostly Charlie Parker, and Fats Navarro and of course Billie Holiday. During that time I didn´t know there was so much more of them, since other users had more quiet or lesser glamourous lives and was no books written about them: So I was completly astonished, that persones I had thought that look like sober people, like J.J.Johnson and Tadd Dameron was junkies. 
 

I heard about so many others much later, mostly also whitey that I was astonished they became users. Bill Evans always looked like a literature professor and more like one, who goes home and has a quiet home with a lot of books, having tea and stuff...., and........he was a junkey ?!!!!!! 

About Chet Baker I had not heard until 1978, but then I liked his then actual music (never the Westcoast times). 

And the greatest shock was, when I learned that even in the recent past there were some of the "young lions" who did drugs. 
Did not say Art Blakey as early as 1971 that heroin became out of fashion, his youngsters in the Messengers Edition all are sober ? 

I was shocked that Woody Shaw was a junkey and almost blind. He always looked like a model citizen with all them cover fotos with him, his baby, his dad, but some of the hottest and most fascinating trumpet I ever had heard..... but a tragedy and a shock for me because I didn´t have no idea.....I even didn´t know that he was almost blind, I had thought well he wears eyeglasses like most intelectuals..... and so on....

Now I would not be surprised to read, that even musicians I avoided to listen to (Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck) were junkey.....

[gvopedz]

Take a look at Anita O'Day's autobiography, High Times Hard Times.

[Ken Dryden]

Count Basie regularly used cocaine.

Woody Shaw was also diabetic, which can lead to blindness.

Dave Brubeck was straight as they come, though Paul Desmond evidently did some drug experimentation late in his life.

Gerry Mulligan had some drug and alcohol abuse issues but was eventually clean.

Emily Remler was addicted to heroin and likely died from an overdose at 31.

Edited September 18 by Ken Dryden

[jlhoots]

Woody Shaw had retinitis  pigmentosa, probably unrelated to diabetes.

[Teasing the Korean]

19 hours ago, sonnymax said:

City Journal is published by the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

...whose senior fellow is Christopher Rufo.  Avoid.

[tranemonk]

On 9/18/2024 at 7:40 AM, gvopedz said:

Take a look at Anita O'Day's autobiography, High Times Hard Times.

I have it somewhere and never got around to reading it. Is it worth it? Hopefully it's less depressing than Art Pepper's book.

Edited September 19 by tranemonk

[mikeweil]

45 minutes ago, tranemonk said:

I have it somewhere and never got around to reading it. Is it worth it? Hopefully it's less depressing than Art Pepper's book.

It is, IMO. 

[gvopedz]

2 hours ago, tranemonk said:

I have it somewhere and never got around to reading it. Is it worth it? Hopefully it's less depressing than Art Pepper's book.

You will be reading about heroin and needles on the first page of the book's preface.

[AllenLowe]

bullshit article - not a single citation. And anyone who cites John Lincoln Collier and Ross Russell, two writers whose work was filled with distortions and errors, has not idea what they are talking about. Where is the evidence that Charlie Parker's kid died because he spent all of their money on drugs? Show us the medical records, doctors' reports. This is pure fiction. Shame on this story - and anyone who makes the statement that jazz had no more innovation after the 1960s is unqualified to write about jazz.

[sonnymax]

I agree with Allen.

[Gheorghe]

8 hours ago, sonnymax said:

I agree with Allen.

Also agree with Allen, but without the smilie I don´t understand😉

[T.D.]

On 9/18/2024 at 4:39 PM, Teasing the Korean said:

...whose senior fellow is Christopher Rufo.  Avoid.

 

16 hours ago, sonnymax said:

I agree with Allen.

Agree. Read Skimmed the article and it was a waste of time.

[sonnymax]

7 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Also agree with Allen, but without the smilie I don´t understand😉

Historically (or is that hysterically), Allen and I rarely agree. Hence the fainting.

[clifford_thornton]

haven't read it, won't read it. Heroin and opioid addiction is everywhere, and have been everywhere for a long time, but its effect on Black music and Black art get the most lip service. Pretty easy to see why.

[Big Beat Steve]

I was a bit puzzled when in one of the very first paragraphs the author cited James Lincoln Collier's "The Making of Jazz" as a prime source for his statements. I had started reading it last spring but was somewhat put off by his sweeping generalizations that crop up time and again. So ... all to be taken with a huge grain of salt ...
Though heroin addiction no doubt was widespread. As to which is cause, and which is effect ... that sounds like a different story ...

OTOH, the following statement as such no doubt is true:
"The 1950s were when jazz truly lost its black audience."
But IMO this is due to mainly musical reasons in the first place. R&B, Jump Blues, City Blues (you name it ...) replaced jazz (i.e. Swing-style jazz) as the POPULAR music among the Black community and eventually evolved into Soul (with Soul Jazz being about the only style of jazz that was able to maintain a relatively firm footing in the Black community while that style lasted). Yet the days of jazz as a definite part of popular music were largely over soon after WWII. 
But where's the link of this loss of the Black audience and the widespread use of dope? I cannot quite see it in this article.

Edited September 27 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

Jimmy Smith

Lou Donaldson

The Three Sounds

Gene Ammons

Sonny Stitt

Etc 

It was not White People buying those records and going to those clubs in the 50s and some of the 60.

[Mark Stryker]

6 hours ago, JSngry said:

Jimmy Smith

Lou Donaldson

The Three Sounds

Gene Ammons

Sonny Stitt

Etc 

It was not White People buying those records and going to those clubs in the 50s and some of the 60.

The Black working class audience for jazz remained healthy at least until the late '60s, and in some ways into the '70s -- and it still exists here in Detroit, though not to the degree it once did. In any case, here's the great Gerald Early talking about Jimmy Smith et. al. in the '60s in an interview with Ethan Iverson,

"You know, when I was growing up, somebody like Jimmy Smith was like God.  To black people he was God! It was like a Hammond B-3 was the thing! If Jimmy Smith was God, then he had some acolytes under him, like Richard “Groove” Holmes, and Brother Jack McDuff, and these people.  And I didn’t know any white people who really liked this music very much.  I’m sure there were some because Jimmy Smith was pretty popular, but by and large this was black music.

"At any rate, while they certainly had their detractors and there were some who didn’t like that sound, their importance culturally in the African-American community was quite apart from whatever their worth was as musicians.  Those that had this groove style of playing (especially with a Hammond organ) occupied a kind of position that I think was quite apart from how any professional musicians might evaluate them based purely on their abilities as musicians.  What they were expressing as musicians was deeply connected to the culture.

"And I think that it’s important for any musician that is interested in jazz – or anyone who really wants to understand this music – to understand that aspect of the musicians as well.  How the first-generation fans decide how they’re going to translate the music into their cultural lives may have nothing to do with how later listeners see it or what they think it’s about."

 

[JSngry]

Yet another case of white critics thinking that something is not there just because they can't/don't see it.

[Teasing the Korean]

14 hours ago, Mark Stryker said:

"And I think that it’s important for any musician that is interested in jazz – or anyone who really wants to understand this music – to understand that aspect of the musicians as well.  How the first-generation fans decide how they’re going to translate the music into their cultural lives may have nothing to do with how later listeners see it or what they think it’s about."

That's a given, for jazz or any other cultural product.  And that is precisely what gives a piece of art longevity - the fact that it can be recontextualized by future audiences.

[Big Beat Steve]

2 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

That's a given, for jazz or any other cultural product.  And that is precisely what gives a piece of art longevity - the fact that it can be recontextualized by future audiences.

But IMHO this is one reason why it cannot do any harm to any of those interested in the history of an art form (jazz in this case) to try to get access to CONTEMPORARY publications on the subject matter and read up on them and not rely too much (let alone only) on latter-day (re)interpretations by journalists (who often are no all-out historians in the first place) or authors. Some of these much more recent publications may offer historically important insights (if diligently researched and documented) but just as many may be grossly skewed by today's perspective and/or narrative.

[Teasing the Korean]

6 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

But IMHO this is one reason why it cannot do any harm to any of those interested in the history of an art form (jazz in this case) to try to get access to CONTEMPORARY publications on the subject matter and read up on them and not rely too much (let alone only) on latter-day (re)interpretations by journalists (who often are no all-out historians in the first place) or authors. Some of these much more recent publications may offer historically important insights (if diligently researched and documented) but just as many may be grossly skewed by today's perspective and/or narrative.

I agree about the importance of contemporaneous accounts, but they may not necessarily affect how future audiences receive the music.