redbeansandricetatsaechlich les ich gerade noch ein bisschen weiter, hier, faszinierendes Dokument, Unterricht bei Lennie Tristano, Praktikum bei Charles Lloyd, Pete LaRoca… und dann die Sache mit dem Loft… tatsaechlich wollten sie eine weisse AACM werden… und Leroy Jenkins hat ihnen direkt erklaert, dass sowas nicht funktioniert, wenn man nicht schwarz ist…
Somebody had a friend who was a lawyer. Next thing I know, we’re a 501c. Next thing I know we’re up for the New York State Council of the Arts grant and got $5,000. Next thing I know we’re in the Space for Innovative Development on West 36th Street, a renovated church that the Rubin Foundation, who then supported the National Symphony in Washington – that’s all I know about them – they came to my loft to hear us play, so we could get in. Nikolais Ballet, Murray Louis Dance Company, Joe Chaikin Video Theater or whatever it was called at that time, and Free Life Communication on a 2,000-foot square, beautiful, pristine space. We became the resident music group of this place. So we were a big deal for a couple of years, 300 concerts the first year, all free jazz.
(das letzte fettgedruckte illustriert ein bisschen, dass eine weisse AACM anders funktioniert als eine schwarze)
vielen dank, das ist super interessant! auch, wie das weitergeht, wie die jungs aus der weißen mittelklasse langsam den mainstreamjazz übernehmen, nachdem sie vorher in ihren lofts die ganze zeit „ascension“ gespielt haben und dafür eigentlich ein bisschen zu spät dran waren:
And Trane being so massively the father-figure, and having taken so many of these guys under his wing, specifically who was on that record date, by the way, on Ascension. Him not being there, and free jazz never catching on as a popular, commercial music, which was never – that was never going to happen. We were kind of like the leftovers, because we’re predominantly white and a little late in the game. There’s a big separation. This is 1968. This is Vietnam. This is the height of the assassinations, and [Robert] Kennedy and [Martin Luther] King, blah blah blah. There’s a whole social milieu thing happening that this is – we’re part of. On the other hand, we’re also – we’re white middle class, a lot of us, and to one degree or another, we are exposed to rock-and-roll, or have been, because it’s part of our generation. We’re 20 years old. We passed through the ’60s. We saw the Beatles. We heard the Beatles. We heard Janet [Joplin]. We heard Jimi Hendrix. I always say – I tell you, if it had been a couple of years later, it would have been Jimi Hendrix, not Coltrane. That would have been, “This is my idol.”
(…)
But we were like the underground – this is before the Lower East Side, before the whole downtown thing, we were kind of that. Again, predominantly white, middle-class guys. Not New York. A lot of guys coming from elsewhere, but allaround 20 to 25 years old and all working other kinds of gigs, for the most part – making a living and just wanting to play jazz. But this is the era when jazz is at a very low point, when there’s a transition musically happening, and when economics were such that you never expected that you were going to be playing jazz for a living. It wasn’t like that. And everybody’s wanting to be a sideman to somebody who’s still around. It was still Horace Silver. It was still [Art] Blakey. It was still Elvin. It was still Miles. There was always the hope that somebody will get picked. Lo and behold, two things happened. Horace Silver got Mike and Randy [Brecker]. That was heavy, but not really, because Horace was, with all due respect, considered a little – not commercial, but not quite the real deal. But when Gene Perla got the gig with Elvin, that was the beginning of our generation’s starting to be taken into account. Gene’s older than me, but he was part of this little crew, and when he took Wilbur Little’s place and became the bass player with Elvin Jones – you can’t talk about a heavier position for a bass player. That, and Bill Evans. Those are the bass player gigs at that time. That’s the top of the pyramid. When that happened, that meant, slowly – it was a signal and a sign that our generation was coming of age, that some of us would become part of the scene and of the mainstream, which is eventually what happened.
ich versuche es gerade hiermit, liebmans vielbeschworener freund bob moses (hier ca. 19 jahre), mit jim pepper, larry coryell, keith jarrett und steve swallow, da kann man ziemlich gut hören, wie die sich so ziemlich un-woke zwischen coltrane und janis joplin durchmogeln:
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