Creed Taylor Produced

I’m not one for claiming anything is dead, unless it’s a neighbors cat, runover in the road. A decade or more ago I ripped into my former profession because “those with an agenda, would often claim something was “dead”. – It was lazy and shorthand for “I don’t really understand something, here instead is its replacement.”

After I published “On This Day: If Jazz Is Dead” article on August 19th ^[1]http://ctproduced.com/on-this-day-if-jazz-is-dead/, Doug wrote with a follow-up that he’d originally considered as a comment to that post. Here it is instead, I’ve also added the tag /jazz-is-dead/ and will go back and look at some of the very early claims to that effect and you can follow along by bookmarking the tag. Here is Doug’s piece.

Ever since the 1920s,” wrote historian and author Frank Kofsky, “we have been reading that jazz is dead. Or ought to be or soon will be.”

But the brouhaha that MC Feather references on the inroduction to the CTI All-Stars – Hollywood Bowl dates back to a 1967 cover of Down Beat magazine ^[2]Downbeat October 5th, 1967 that screamed: JAZZ AS WE’VE KNOWN IT IS DEAD, SAYS GABOR SZABO. It’s a slight distortion of what the Hungarian guitarist actually said and also taken completely out of context.

But mere weeks after the losses of Billy Strayhorn and John Coltrane, many jazz listeners did not take kindly to Szabo’s premature epitaph. “[Y]ou, Szabo, come out of your trip saying: ‘If they would only open their minds…,” wrote an angered 23-year-old reader. “If you would only shut your mouth and open your ears (probably covered with hair), you’d change your mind.”

Several weeks later, Harvey Siders conducted a “Quotet” response, gathering such dissenting views of everyone from Willis Conover, Woody Herman, Earl Hines and Dizzy Gillespie to Oscar Peterson, Lalo Schifrin, Ornette Coleman and James Moody, who put it best: “Man, even Dixieland isn’t dead.”

Feather’s rousing, resounding line – a proto-meme if ever there was one – predates Szabo’s signing to CTI Records by mere months. The firebrand guitarist’s trajectory was then skimming the graveyard bearing so many of the markers he once saw for jazz. But the guitarist made some of his best music for CTI and, of course, jazz soldiers on to this day.

“The predictions have invariably been too eager to pronounce the final demise,” Kofsky continued. “For jazz…has a toughness, a resiliency, a durability that will surely enable it to survive and outlast whatever ephemeral trends manage to dominate the music market place temporarily.”

Doug Payne was too polite to mention the 23-year old reader was one Luciano Rodriquez. His letter appeared in the “Chords & Discords” column on Pg-6 of downbeat November 2, 1967.

Szabo Makes Him Boil
I mourned Strayhorn and Trane. And
now I am in the process of mourning Brubeck’s separation from the scene. Then all of a sudden a string plucker ( Szabo) says “jazz is dead.” This cat obviously is not hipped to jazz, except to Chico (Hamilton), who is a commercialized drummer, and to the Beatles, who he seems to be comparing with jazz.

Do you know, Szabo, who Manitas De Plata is?

I’ve been addicted to jazz since the age
of 16. Presently, I am 23, and you, Szabo, come out of your trip saying: “If they would only open their minds. . . .”

If you would only shut your mouth and open your ears ( probably covered with hair), you’d change your mind.

Luciano Rodriguez
New York City

Probably unrelated, but possibly not, it’s worth noting that a Luciano Rodriguez, age-31, of Modesto, Calif. was arrested in 1976 as one of seven men accused of retailing pirate 8-track tapes, at a Ceres, Calif., flea market. FBI agents confiscated between 5,000 and 6,000 tapes, primarily Latin music ^[3]Billboard November 20, 1976 – Pg3.

Watch out for future tales in the story that “jazz is dead“.