Thursday, January 16, 2014

The Voice of Jazz Radio




Filling the air in the room where I write is a solo piano recording of “What Are You Doing for the Rest of Your Life?”  I am more familiar with the Bill Evans version of this tune.  But this sad, deliberate phrasing, that seems to squeeze and punch with every note, is the music of Joe Albany.  I wasn’t familiar with the man’s work and poked around a bit to learn more.   This from an article that appeared in the L.A. Times in May of 2003 by Robert Garfias: http://articles.latimes.com/2003/may/04/books/bk-letter4

Most of those who knew something of the style of music being played in the late 1940s by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, had they been asked to name the pianist who was most solidly in that same league, would probably have said Bud Powell. However, to me, Joe Albany was closer to what particularly Parker and Davis were doing at the time.

I quickly came across a copy of “Joe Albany:  A Jazz Life”, a documentary from 1980 on Youtube that was completely absorbing.  Another great New Jersey jazzman, born in Atlantic City in 1924, he comes across as grizzled, and weary but steady and world-wise there in his mid fifties.  Stories of playing with Benny Carter’s group as the only white kid in the 40s, stories, remarkable stories of playing with Bird, or cursing Bird or being in prison with Bird, or of simply traveling on a long bus ride, trying to kick, and getting thrown off and arrested, again.  And throughout is his proud, sorrowful, playing.



Somewhere around minute 5:45 I was hit by something completely unexpected.  You see Joe Albany sitting in a radio station being interviewed by someone whom I assumed was “some” college radio youth.  But then, all of a sudden he says:  “Welcome to jazz, at WKCR FM in New York at 89.9 on your dial, this is Phil Schaap . . . ” Phil Schaap?  My God.  That’s the face, behind the voice.

Some readers of DustyBrine, I know, hail from the New York area.  Meanwhile some readers are jazz fans.  But unless you tick both those boxes, you are unlikely to know why I would care at all about the voice of Phil Schaap.   He is the jazz disc jockey on Colombia University’s radio station, WKCR, who has been playing, discussing and researching and testifying to jazz, on air since 1971.  Since 1981, he has hosted “Bird Flight” which has been on air, every weekday morning for thirty-two years.  I must have listened to him hundreds of times in my life.  But I’d never seen him.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Schaap

What was so shocking to me, in the Joe Albany clip was that he looked so much like somebody I knew.  In the clip there, he is 29 years old.  His appearance is uncannily familiar, as if he was my dorm room neighbor or my good friend’s cousin whom I’d met, that time . . .  (Perhaps I’ve been surrounded by Chinese faces too long.)  And of course, he looks young.  I’d always imagined, as I listened to the voice, that it was someone tall, gaunt, somber and ancient.  And when I replayed the clip and closed my eyes, it was immediately clear to me who I was listening to, as if it was a tenor player I knew. 

I shared all this with one friend who sent me a fascinating clip of Phil Schaap from just two years back, a lecture he gave on “Economics, History and the Future of Jazz” where he is appropriately older, but still endearing and familiar, discussing the sad story of the demise of the tradition: 

We spoke yesterday about the power of oratory.  In India the spoken word has different currency of power, perhaps more akin to the west, than is true for North Asia.  Phil Schaap whom I only ever knew through his voice, was not someone I’d say spoke “beautifully,” but he does speak with unimpeachable gravity and authority.  His command of jazz history is literally encyclopedic and he imbues the topic with the reverence it absolutely deserves but rarely commands. 

I recall a program once where he was invariably making an important point about Charlie Parker’s legacy and he needed something clarified.  It was not a whimsical matter, but treated with the utmost import.  So much so that he, live on air, called up drummer Max Roach, whom he knew lived nearby and asked him to come by the studio.  This seemed a bit like showmanship, I remember thinking.  Surely he wasn’t going to be home.  But about seven minutes later, a reluctant but determined Max Roach was there on air with Phil to clarify what exactly had happened on a particular recording date.  As I recall, Max said something to the effect, “well, look, I was in the middle of something but if you need me, this is important, so I came over.”

Some might call the great DJ a 抱残守缺[1].  And indeed, he is “conservative” or “old fashioned” in the best sense of those words, what might be otherwise depicted as vintage or classic.  What first comes to mind is his relentless, Matteo Ricci-like memory palace of jazz facts.  But watching him and recalling his programs I think there are two other ennobling pieces that come through:  first, you sense the determination of a fighter all but willing to die for the cause, and second, there is a certain humble cool, and a smile I never knew of, that won over Joe Albany there in real time and a thousand times effectively crossed race, crossed age, crossed class to make jazz musicians feel honored and loquacious.

That underrated role of Disc Jockey, that no one, to my mind, has ever filled out more credibly and academically than Phil Schaap is, like the role of jazz pianist that Joe Albany lived, fading in relevance with each passing year.  I still turn on the radio, when I’m in a car back home.  I heard Phil and it made me feel so warm, last summer, driving around Manhattan.  But will my kids ever listen to a radio?  Will they ever think to have someone broadcasting, curate their musical knowledge?   I suppose I can similarly wonder if they will actually attend lectures or physical universities, as well.  So much more disruption to come.



And as if a coda were planted for Phil, I am just back from parent teachers’ conference at their school.  The seventh grade class in the classroom with the parents in the kids desks, had little dance performance and some acting and then one lone kid got up and played an alto saxophone solo all by himself over in the corner.  It wasn’t Bird, but it was beautiful, in its own way as it filled the room.  And even though the tradition and live music may be irretrievably lost, I bet it would have warmed Phil’s heart, just a little bit to see this kid blow, so far from Morningside Heights   








[1] bàocánshǒuquē:  to cherish the outmoded and preserve the outworn (idiom); conservative / stickler for tradition

No comments:

Post a Comment