“Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.” – Duke Ellington
Louis
Armstrong once claimed that “Every time I close my eyes blowing that
trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans…It has
given me something to live for.” This statement conjures an image which
most anyone familiar with jazz music can recall: Armstrong clutching
his trumpet forcefully, his eyes closed in a manner that distances him
from his physical surroundings in favor of a perfect harmony between the
man and his instrument. As Armstrong alludes to in this remark, this
connection also speaks to the enduring influence of his New Orleans
background, which informed his musical style and indeed continued to
live on through his music. To be sure, while performing, Armstrong
appeared lost in a reverie, a condition that imbued his performances
with a kind of mythical flair, as if one were watching a man consumed by
a moment of transcendence. In other words, if the music of Louis
Armstrong produced an emotional response in the listener, this
invariably paled in comparison with the deep, organic pathos he was able
to produce through his music.
In 1956, Duke Ellington was featured
on the cover of Time Magazine after a bravura performance at the Newport
Jazz Festival that summer. This remains one of his most iconic
achievements, and a landmark for jazz music as a whole (only four jazz
musicians were ever displayed on the cover of Time). At the same time,
however, this recognition stands as one of the prevailing ironies of
Ellington’s career, as he was deep into the latter stages of his
performing life by this point. Indeed, there is a way in which
everything that Ellington had done up to that point in his career was
obscured. Put differently, it is misleading to recognize Duke simply for
his accomplished performance at the festival, as one could justifiably
argue that he transformed the very nature of jazz (both its stylistic
qualities and its cultural identity) in his career up until this point.
While
those two men became jazz’s most famous performers, others rose as
legendary singers. If Billie Holiday wanted to become a jazz singer, she
chose the best of all eras in which to attempt it. A wave of great jazz
and jazz/pop crossover artists swept over the United States from the
1920s through the 1950s, generating a golden age for the genre. This
wondrous jazz era was well represented by both black and white master
artists, men, women, vocalists, and instrumentalists, and Billie Holiday
has stood the test of time as well as any, despite struggling with an
environment that easily could have doomed such aspirations.
Etta
James, the legendary jazz, gospel, rhythm & blues, and soul singer,
was perfectly positioned to reign as the supreme artist in the emerging
soul genre of the ‘40s and ‘50s in America. No one ever doubted her
talent, the highly distinctive and versatile nature of her voice, or her
drive to succeed, and yet, she has been “woefully overlooked” in the
history of indigenous rock and blues music in the United States. She is
famous and recognized for several iconic hits with which she is
eternally associated, such as “I’d Rather Go Blind” and “At Last,” but
her place in the pantheon of great soul artists is unsteady and not
always instantly recognizable by those outside of a knowledgeable group
of devotees. For the rest of soul music’s listeners, mention of her name
will result in a hasty inclusion into the inner circle of leading
artists, as though James had been momentarily forgotten. Once the object
of focus, however, she is revered as one of the titans of the genre,
and those who had allowed her to slip from their minds are immediately
reawakened to her powerful vocal and interpretive gifts.
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