Searching for Jazz

Imagine this. A smoky dark bar on the corner of a quite street corner, unassuming with no major store sign. The insides are run down, aged leather booths, a Formica bar with metal trimming and a mirror that looks a little smoky, plenty dirty. The rest of the room is of old wood paneling, high ceilings, glass light fixtures from generations past, checkerboard tile floor, worn but clean and metal chairs from the 1950s with basic wooden tables. The waitress is a round black women in a stiff bright white shirt and black pants. Proper, warm, sassy with a hearty laugh, she offers you a plastic menu of collard greens, fried chicken, okra, steak, beer, soda or water. An elder black man, immaculately dressed in a white three piece suit walks into the store with an elegant companion wearing a colorful dress and a fur stole. Moments later, I almost bump into the gentleman and he tilts his white fedora and whisperingly says, “‘scuse me baby,” in a deep baritone. The steak was rich, the collard greens salty. The musicians were breathtaking, easy going, full of humor, skill and style. The place was pretty much empty, but smoke and music seemed to linger in the darkness of the bar. Welcome to the Crawford Grill on Wylie Avenue. Welcome to my ground zero of all Jazz/Blues experiences.

In 2001, while still an undergraduate in Pittsburgh, I had a random encounter with Jazz History when my friends decided to take me out for my birthday. My wish was to hang out with my close friends and listen to live jazz music. My friends took up my wish and one night we all piled into cabs to head to a local jazz club. Upon climbing into the cab however, our driver informed us that the place were going to was known for gun shootouts. Staring at our bewildered faces, he took it upon himself to take us to the Hill district and to the Crawford Grill. Little did we know that we’d been dropped into a time-capsule of Jazz history, neglected, overlooked, but completely unforgettable. From the 1920s to 1950s the Hill district in Pittsburgh was a premier black neighborhood and area in which the creme de la creme of the Jazz world performed. The jazz clubs in the area was the birthplace, or incubator, of some of the most influential musicians who produced the purely American art form of jazz. Mary Lou Williams, the pianist and musical mother to bebop innovators Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk was discovered in Pittsburgh. Earl "Fatha" Hines, Errol Garner, Billy Eckstine, Kenny Clarke, Ray Brown, all enormous talents in jazz, all ground breakers, were all discovered there. As the economy and neighborhood fell to dis-repair and crime, Jazz clubs quietly disappeared and we had happened to stumble into the most venerable and last standing Jazz club in the Hill district. The Crawford Grill, in its time, was THE place where artists such as Louie Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington would play and we were witnesses to the clubs’ sad melancholic end-note.

That magical night ended with 8 college students, completely out of place, but utterly excited to have stumbled upon one of the most authentic Jazz experiences we could ever encounter. We ran around, ecstatic about our experience, told our friends and tried to return later, only to discover it had closed its doors soon after our visit. Ever since that visit, I have visited several Jazz venues, in search of that same experience only to discover something else, or to be bitterly disappointed.

My experiences with Jazz in Chicago have been mixed. Upon performing this assignment, I decided to visit Blue Chicago, one of the more popular Jazz venues in the city. Upon entering the club, the artifacts made me reminisce of the Crawford Grill: dark,, shabby, a worn plastic menu, drink choices of beer, beer and beer. The room itself was not very big, around 700 s ft and there was a small empty space for dancing on a gray tile flower. The furniture looked rundown, not polished but worn in recently, without an essence of negligence but over-use. Wooden stools lined up against a metal rail and slender counter where we ordered our beer from a dumpy white waitress in sweats and pony tail. To the right hand back, a small stage awaited performers as tourists started to fill in empty formica tables and cracked red pleather booths. From my experience, Blues clubs have a similar veneer as a Jazz club, but with lower brow tastes and the interior of Blue Chicago wasn’t very different. Unfortunately, in addition to the typical jazz and blues club ambiance, Until bright orange t-shirts, and souvenirs plastered over the top of the bar. The jarringly new orange t-shirt looked out of place and immediately labeled the identity of the club–tourist destination.

Despite a tourist destination vibe, I have sometimes experienced some truly memorable Jazz performances. But sometimes, I have been to slow nights with forgettable acts. Unfortunately, this was one such night–amateur practice night, entertaining but not entirely memorable. For Jazz music to truly be memorable, I once heard that you need “Heart to tickle the soul, Grit to go with the gravy.” Unfortunately, in these performances, both of these were missing. Additionally, attitude, performance and style was missing so while the music was not bad, it did not reach a level of memory in either of these areas. What remained was a sad tourist shell of what Jazz and the blues are really about. A mediocre complaint of a man’s desire to not work, a tepid interpretation of a painful life; the intensity was missing but the beat was right for some dancing. An excited tourist group from Tulsa awkwardly danced for half a number and sat back down on the area. Excitement just didn’t last long,

While going through this experience, I remembered the sad, proud and dying Crawford Grill and I understood why it died. It refused to change and got left behind. As Jazz has lost its original popularity it had a few directions to go: tourist destination or collaborate with the philharmonic and perform for an affluent aging white crowd who grew up listening to the original masters of Jazz. Soulful musicians still exist, but generally in order to continue to exist, Jazz and Blues have had to water down their work to cater to a wider audience. I was reminded of fine art and classical music, desperately trying to retain importance in a world no-longer interested. As a result of disinterest, theatrics, shock value and sex appeal are being applied to keep interest going. That particular night, neither intensity of the soul, theatrics or sex appeal lingered–as a result the experience was tepid, temporarily fun, but hardly as memorable as my experience years ago. In the end, I ask the question, when does attitude, performance and flippancy become a gimmick, or the real thing. I also wonder how to overcome such an intense authentic first experience and where I can find the real thing again. In the end, I also realize that nothing can beat authenticity and proud skill exhibited masterfully, soulfully and exquisitely.