Blue Note. A Story of Modern Jazz (BBC) Page #6

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Freddie Roach did a record, here's

one called Mo' Greens Please.

Which is an expression you would say

to somebody and say,

"Hey, gimme some mo' greens,"

you know, "Give me some more food."

So, here he is in front of the

place,

I think in New Jersey, where he

enjoys eating food,

asking the woman

to give him some Mo' Greens.

This is Tony Williams, Spring.

It is just a simple orange on white.

But it's a beautiful,

simple concept.

And on the back,

very little information.

But it's sort of like a minimalist,

it's almost haiku.

And he had pretty well developed

this entire look

and changed the way that jazz

albums in particular were viewed.

I mean the graphics

and everything else.

It went way beyond anything that was

happening at the time.

And here's a great one, The Three

Sounds, It Just Got To Be.

Three.

Those early covers, they've been

copied all over the world.

A Caddy For Daddy.

The funny part is that he wasn't

really into jazz!

He'd take all of the album covers

that they would give him and

he'd go down to the music store

and trade 'em for classical records.

'Turn loose them chitlins, baby, cos

daddy want a breeze boogaloo.'

LAUGHTER:

If you walk out

of your house in the morning

and there are diamonds everywhere

in the garden and you've seen them

since you were a child,

you wouldn't even pick one up.

It doesn't mean a thing.

You're surrounded by them.

It's sort of always been there.

Always not important.

But Europe didn't have that. THIS is

where jazz started. In THIS country.

And because they were

outsiders looking in

and they didn't have people

of the calibre of Louis Armstrong

and Dizzy and Bird,

they recognised it immediately.

Because for them to access the

music, it was a lot more difficult.

You had to wait maybe until next

year, when one of these people came

back to Europe again,

or maybe two years or three years.

I mean, you had to be a devotee.

Here, Americans took

so much for granted,

it was just sort of part

of the landscape.

No-one realised that in the days

that Alfred started

and maybe he was in business 20

years before people came to realise

that jazz was not only an art form,

but America's ONLY original art

form.

And it still is.

LONG, DISCORDANT JAZZ NOTES PLAY

You know what?

It's really fascinating

because only in Europe, erm,

people had reverence and respect for

this kind of music.

In America, they wouldn't know

with a baseball bat,

if they hit it with a baseball bat,

what it is, you know?

We are very ignorant to our own art.

I think that Miles and Charlie Parker

and Duke Ellington,

these are our Beethovens, you know,

and someday, America will wake up.

There was a condescending attitude

toward it because the people

who enjoyed it the most were not

part of the dominant culture.

Whether they liked it or not, jazz

became part of the dominant culture

and became an emblem of America,

of...

..what happens when artistic licence

is just allowed, you know,

it's like you just throw the seeds

on the ground and see what happens.

DISCORDANT JAZZ NOTES END

TRANSLATED FROM:

GERMAN:

IMPROVISATION:

BASS AND DRUMS JOIN IN,

APPLAUSE:

The reason than Europeans could see

something in jazz

and Americans couldn't,

is the fact that anything that

blacks in America have created

or tried to offer to the culture

at large

has always been,

erm, minimised and ridiculed.

DRUM SOLO:

For white people in America, erm,

they could only see jazz as

bordello music because that is the

only time they ever encountered it.

And that image stuck.

So, erm, people from Europe,

who did not have the racist

bias of Americans,

could come and see something that

was incredibly creative and artistic

and they saw an opportunity to

exploit it commercially.

And in doing so, helped

a lot of these artists survive.

If it was not for them,

it might have always been

thought of as bordello music.

I'm mad about all this!

CHANTING:
You got it! You got it!

I have a right to be upset about

this!

UPBEAT JAZZ INSTRUMENTAL PLAYS

And that brought

revolution into jazz.

It brought the personal statement,

irregardless of how the press

was going to respond, erm,

what the standards of norm were

supposed to be,

into the music, you know?

Charlie Parker was mad.

Amiri Baraka's play, Dutchman,

has a great monologue where

he talks about, he said that

if Charlie Parker had went out and

killed the

first ten white people he saw,

he wouldn't need to play a note!

It was a way of dealing

with his anger.

It was a way of taking that anger

and releasing it,

so that the world could

understand it.

And that's what Bop brought.

This is the United States of America.

Mr James Moody...

HE PLAYS FLUTE OVER UP-TEMPO JAZZ

You remember when THEY started, the

United States was very prejudiced.

This was before civil rights came

through and for them

to put a black artist on the COVER?

I mean...

Alfred said he didn't care, he

was... "That's, that's what's going

to go there."

They said, "Put a pretty girl on

it," he said,

"No, no we're not going to do that.

"We're going to put Art Blakey, or

Hank Mobley or Blue Mitchell..."

Or anybody that he wanted to

promote.

Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff

created Blue Note in 1939,

with nothing more and nothing less

than their own great imaginations.

After eight years of innovative

mainstream recording

of people like Sidney Bechet,

Edmond Hall, Meade "Lux" Lewis

and many others, they were ready to

deal with the avant-garde of that

day.

Bebop.

The first bebop band, of course,

Billy Eckstine,

which had

Dizzy Gillespie,

Charlie Parker,

Fats Navarro,

Miles,

Sonny Stitt...

Billy Eckstine's band was playing

at the Club Sudan on 125th Street,

which, I didn't know that club.

But I wanted to go.

It was a Sunday afternoon

and I, for some reason or another,

I didn't get there.

And that was the day that

Alfred Lion met Art Blakey,

who was the drummer with

Billy Eckstine's band.

And Alfred has talked about this

because they developed a friendship

and of course Blakey did his most

significant recording on Blue Note.

The Jazz Messengers were really,

were developed on Blue Note.

UP-TEMPO DRUM SOLO

He WAS Blue Note, Art Blakey.

He recorded for other companies.

He did a lot of European recording

too, by the way, I'm sure you're

knowing.

But...Art was like Alfred's brother.

He had a few brothers and sons.

And he was like that. They had such

a rapport, it was just,

you just, I felt glorious when I was

with those two guys.

That particular sound,

which was the black sound,

I guess that was what

he was listening for.

He might have in his soul

been black.

He didn't know what it was

to be a white or black,

or Chinese or Japanese or anything

like that,

he just saw people as people.

MUSIC:
Moanin'

by Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers

Freddie and I were friends. And...

He had this old big tape recorder...

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