What is it about
trumpet players that makes them so feisty?
Miles studied boxing, and infamously punched up John Coltrane during
recording sessions. I heard Freddie
Hubbard on a radio interview once; years ago say something to the effect of “I
haven’t heard one trumpet player that’s come after me do anything that I hadn’t
already done.” Lee Morgan was shot and
killed by his wife, playing at a club over on Avenue C, in the Lower East Side. And then there’s Roy Eldridge.
Yesterday I wrote about Mildred Bailey and the song “Wham
(Bee-Bop-Boom-Bam) (which sounds a whole lot more like, and is written
elsewhere as “Ree-bop” but someone at Colombia Records penned it as
Bee-Bop). Though the song was recorded
on a date with her orchestra, the reason I know the song is that it appears on
a Columbia Records collection of Roy Eldridge that I have that goes by his nick
name “Little Jazz,” a name bestowed by the saxophonist Otto Hardwick in 1934, which
probably had something to do with the fact that Roy stood about 5 foot 3 inches
tall.
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1911, he is credited as
one of he most influential stylists of the Swing era and the improvisational
bridge between Louis Armstrong and the bee-bop innovation of Dizzy
Gillespie. He had an aggressive, faster attack than
Satchmo, and was particularly nimble up in the higher registers. I liked what Ella has to say about him: "He's got more soul in one note that a
lot of people could get into the whole song."
Like any great improvisational performer he was highly
competitive: "I was just trying to outplay anybody, and to outplay them my
way.” And with the restless urge to
battle and win came the requisite temper:
Clarinetist Joe Muranyi referred to Little Jazz as “Mt. Vesuvius to the
fifth power.” Nice. Something about the trumpet itself, the way
sound is made, the pursing of the lips, must have attracted a certain
temperament. And what a shame that
popular music doesn’t seem to afford for instruments any longer to attract
different personalities and allow them all to join together in unison. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Eldridge
I had an idea this morning that I may return to. I’ll plant a flag now and see if it is worth
revisiting. I go to the gym around
6:30AM and one of the guards always has to trod up with me and unlock the
door. They are generally young boys, in
from the countryside, often from Shanxi Province. I used to run through Chinese flash cards
when I ran, but my hips have had it, so I do the stair master instead. And you can’t flip through cards gripping a
stair master. My compromise is to flip
through them on the walk over and back.
Today the young guard asked me what I was doing and I showed him. “Dual Core” 双核 “shuang he”. Then, “Courage” 胆量
“dan liang”. The first term I’d
long since ingested. But “dan liang,” I’ve
probably looked at, in the form of that card, literally hundreds of times. But I don’t use the word. I don’t “own” it in my vocabulary. I’d use the word for “brave” which I “own”
instead. But in that moment, when I
flipped the card and showed this young man, and he read it and said “dan
liang”, I knew, somehow that I had suddenly taken possession of the word. It would be mine forever now. I’d see that young kid, remember the elevator
and it would be there. I don’t know why,
but it has something to do with how memory is stored. If something is experiential, if it is
associated with a real experience, you access it differently than if you simply
repeat it to yourself 500 times.
I have written before and long vexed at the “good” but not
“great” plateau I’ve ridden on for years with my Chinese. I was in another meeting yesterday where it
was brought home. I did just fine. Understood most of what was said. But made a false guess or two. Felt clumsy trying to express something
nuanced. Happens all the time. Shrug it off.
The way around this, of course, is to do what my daughters
do, who have gone from middling Chinese to impeccable fluency in a few years; study regularly. Flipping flashcards is only the
most modest means by which to stop the flow of memory loss, buttressing in a
few new items, like “dan liang.” I’ve
long assumed the way to surmount the heights beyond this plateau is to read and
write, in Chinese. And whereas speaking
affords opportunities every day, writing feels more academic and I tell myself,
year after year, that I haven’t the time.
This year, I’ve set out to blog every day. Welcome.
This is the ninety-first post in a row, just about ¼ of a year’s worth. I intend to carry on for a full cycle around
the sun. And then what? I could use that time in a myriad of
ways. The thought I had this morning
after the elevator ride with guard, was to have “courage” and perhaps try to
write for year, in Chinese. They will be
short, clumsy posts, for sure. But just
as this writing exercise in English is organizing information in a remarkably accessible
way in my mind, so too, will the effort yield, I think, if I do it in
Chinese.
I have a vast regular readership of say three people, whom I
may be in jeopardy of loosing, next autumn if I make such a move, I
acknowledge. But think of all the
potential readership-upside out there in the Chinese-speaking world, who’ll be
happy to tell me how poorly I express myself and why I am wrong.
We’ll see. Flag planted. I’ll need the pugnacious, “courage” and
competitiveness of a Roy Eldridge to pull this off, day after day. But writing is key to organizing the mind’s
knowledge and rendering it accessible.
Ninety-one days in and this is very clear. Me and Roy with our 乘风破浪[1].
Lips pursed.
Let me say briefly that Prime Minister Abe donning a silly
nineteenth century frock coat, like Koizumi before him, and visiting the
Yasakuni Shrine where the War Criminals are buried, as the head of state, is a
drag. This is not the way for Japan to
assert itself as a “normal” country, prepared to take care of itself and ready
to work with its neighbors. Japan
needn’t grovel, be subservient or even rely on U.S. defense any longer if it
doesn’t want to. But this is using the
wrong vehicle to assert dignity. As if
a more “balanced” take on atrocities and culpability therein, would allow Japan
to be “normal.” China, North and South
Korea, and the U.S. are all right to be annoyed. Japan could do so much in this neighborhood,
if it were clear about the past and moved into a posture of proactive dignity. Own, digest and be rid of this indignity and
the equivocation. The whole world could
truly use your sophisticated, fraternal engagement. Get on with it. We need national "dan liang."
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