Hall of Justice
For too long we have ignored our state's contribution to the history of jazz, from Scott Joplin's ragtime influences to Jack Teagarden's unrivaled improvisations. It's time to fix that: It's time to build a Texas Jazz Hall of Fame.
(Page 2 of 3)
By this time, despite the Depression, big-band swing was everywhere, accounting for 70 percent of the nation's record sales. Yet the movement itself was in trouble. "Texas helped keep the swing alive when it was beginning to teeter under the commercial weight of sameness," says Burns. "It was the roadhouses and juke joints of Texas and Oklahoma and Kansas that helped make Kansas City the mecca and allowed Count Basie to come out and resuscitate a kind of stale thing, with his blues-based, riff-based sound."
The 1935 Basie Band, the first of an epochal string of great ensembles, was crawling with Texans. Trumpeters Joe Keyes (Houston), Carl "Tatti" Smith (Marshall), and Hot Lips Page (Dallas), along with trombonist Dan Minor (Dallas), made up four-fifths of the brass section; Buster Smith and a tenor player from Denton, Herschel Evans, joined Lester Young on the saxes.
Evans and his successor in the Basie tenor chair, Sherman's Buddy Tate, would join with three other impressive talents in the fabled ranks of what would come to be known as the Texas Tenors. Albert "Budd" Johnson had already recorded with Louis Armstrong and would prove to play an important role in the transition of swing to bop. Two other rambunctious tenors came from Houston's Milton Larkin Band, Arnett Cobb and Illinois Jacquet. Though the five were joined in name only, they did share the ability to create quite a ruckus. What caused this sound to develop? "When we would play dances," theorizes Jacquet, "we'd take solos without microphones, so if you couldn't blow your brains out, you just wasn't going to be heard." Whatever the reason, as Bobby Bradford observes, the Texas Tenor sound took over: "It got to a point that if you didn't have that big sound like the Texas guys, man, you might as well put the tenor saxophone down."
Thankfully, Texans never have. The lineage of Texas Tenors is long and impressive: Red Connors, Tex Beneke, Jesse Powell, John Hardee, Booker Ervin, David "Fathead" Newman, Dewey Redman, King Curtis, James Clay, Marchel Ivery, and Billy Harper are among those who have carried on the tradition.
Beyond the Tenors and the Kansas City sound, Texas swing stars Jack Teagarden, Harry James, Teddy Wilson, and Charlie Christian would astound everyone with their virtuosity. As the post-war years saw the big bands give way to the rise of bebop, Texans Kenny Dorham and Gene Ramey were on the front lines. Dallas' William "Red" Garland would ride the post-bop wave manning the keyboard with the Miles Davis Quintet, a group that included a young John Coltrane.
But the greatest influence was yet to come. Fort Worth's Ornette Coleman threw out the book on improvisation, abandoning chords for an entirely new theory called harmolodics and setting the already divided jazz world on its ear in the late fifties (see "Unsentimental Journey," page 102). He's left it there. Time has proven Coleman to be one of the most important musical figures not only in Texas but also the world, as his influence has become immeasurable.
Another saxophonist from Texas didn't get too far with his professional career, yet he left a more profound legacy on young players than any single musician could accomplish. M. E. "Gene" Hall, while teaching at Denton's North Texas State University from 1947 to 1959, was the first educator in the nation to place jazz instruction on a formal college credit basis. To this day the university (now the University of North Texas) remains one of the nation's most respected music institutions and has seen such talent as Jimmy Giuffre, Bob Dorough, and Harry Babasin go through its doors.
While cities build symphony halls, sports stadiums, and monuments to important figures, some of the greatest artists in American history still go unrecognized—and not just in Texas. Jazz has all but vanished from the mainstream media, and in 1999 it accounted for only 3 percent of all music sales. Musicians are finding it harder to make a living in the U. S. "When you go abroad, you see that people have great respect for the music," says Fathead Newman. Fort Worth's Dewey Redman laments that he can't get a job in his hometown. Perhaps that explains why there are currently only a few permanent museums devoted to jazz in America, which include the modest American Jazz Museum in the Eighteenth and Vine district in Kansas City and the smaller collection at the New Orleans Jazz Club. In New York the block of Fifty-second Street that once housed the bebop revolution is now aflame with the glass and neon of retail chain stores. Harlem's Lenox Avenue even boasts a Starbucks, but just down 125th Street is an enormous Con Edison building that a group including Leonard Garment, a former jazz musician and lawyer for Richard Nixon, hopes to transform into the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. This is just the sort of effort needed to correct the country's myopia toward one of its great cultural achievements.
But what of a Texas Jazz Hall of Fame? "I wish that there were more than just one [hall of fame]," says jazz critic Gary Giddins. "I think that it is a major disgrace that we have this huge rock and roll hall of fame [in Cleveland] that gets all this attention and there's nothing comparable for jazz. And I think the major reason is racism. Look what they did with country music in Nashville. If there was ever a one-horse town, it was Nashville. And they built the Opry and made that the center, and it's a major tourist attraction. Now the obvious Nashville for jazz was New Orleans, and what did they do? They got rid of Basin Street because they were embarrassed by it; they took the signs off for ten to twelve years. They wanted nothing to do with it, and what do they have there? They've got this little sweatbox called Preservation Hall. It's just a disgrace."
Meanwhile, former Microsoft executive Paul Allen has erected an elaborate new music museum in Seattle. The Experience Music Project is a high-tech wonder housed in a 140,000-square-foot building designed by architect Frank Gehry. It features bought-and-paid-for artifacts and honors Jimi Hendrix and all manner of popular music (mostly rock, very little jazz). Jim Fricke, one of the EMP's senior curators, says Paul Allen has "always been a Hendrix fan, but not a weird obsessive fan." Just one who could single-handedly fund the $240 million project.
Other ventures should be so lucky. Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which opened its $92 million, I. M. Pei-designed doors in 1995, was pushed through by a coalition of influential businessmen including Rolling Stone editor and publisher Jann Wenner, who wrung funds from private donors and staged several high-profile fundraisers. Yet the financing was troubled, embroiled in city politics. And the hall, despite its best efforts, has seen attendance level off in recent years. The oldest and most successful venture has been the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which opened a small exhibit hall (spurred by Tex Ritter) at the end of Nashville's Music Row in 1967, expanding in 1976. The powerful Country Music Foundation helped raise the funds, and they are now spearheading a multifaceted fund drive for a new $37 million, 137,000-square-foot facility, which is scheduled to open in May.
A Texas Jazz Hall of Fame could learn something from these ventures. Though at least two serious efforts are under way to build Texas music museums (one in Houston, the other in Austin), the Jazz Hall should be devoted exclusively to its subject. This should be a place to celebrate and appreciate a unique and sadly neglected art form.
So where should it be? Dallas and Houston both lay claim to onetime thriving jazz scenes, yet the nod should go to the Fort Worth area. First, the city's arts scene exploded during the nineties, and the downtown now boasts an impressive entertainment district. Second, the University of North Texas is in nearby Denton. And most important, it's the hometown of Texas' most famous jazz musician, Ornette Coleman.
My Library
