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A FRIEND GAVE me a lot of albums documenting small jazz bands from 1940 to the late ’50s. Even though all were Dixieland groups, as the recordings moved forward in time I could hear the style regress from its original intent. And it made me wonder why.

When jazz was new, musicians played a style we now call Dixieland. I guess the name came about because when jazz was new it moved north from New Orleans and other cities south of the Mason-Dixon Line. It is a classic and enduring style. When good musicians perform it, the results can be impressive. Among the musicians on the albums were Jack Teagarden, Bobby Hackett, Dick Cary, Matty Matlock, Dick Cathcart, Abe Lincoln, Moe Schneider, Wild Bill Davison, Billy Butterfield, Nick Fatool, George Van Epps, Eddie Condon, Max Kaminsky, Jimmy Dorsey, Dave Tough, Cliff Leman, Peanuts Hucko, Jerry Fuller, Eddie Miller, Joe Rushton, Cutty Cuttshall, and Lou McGarrity.

The big bands of the late 1920s through the mid 1940s commercially eclipsed their smaller counterparts and formalized jazz. But, as bebop emerged in the 1940s, so did a “traditional” jazz revival. Dixieland may never have set any sales records but was popular enough to generate major label albums into the 1960s.

If you listen to bands from the early 1930s to the early ’50s, the common denominator is energy. The playing is hot and the music enthusiastic. It is fun to listen to. It makes you want to get out of your chair and move around. Remember, early jazz was analogous to today’s rock.

Bebop began as a hot form of jazz, too, and Dizzy Gillespie wanted people to dance to it. But few did.

The next phase of jazz, emerging in the early ’50s, seemed to develop on the west coast as a style many called “Cool”. It refined the harmonic sophistication of bop and tamed bop’s chaotic nature by slowing things down and applying an almost classical elegance. That supposedly gave jazz a degree of “legitimacy” its critics demanded.

And what do you suppose I heard as I listened to a couple of dozen Columbia, Capitol, CBS, and Roulette albums? The same evolution. Jazz from the the ’40s was unabashedly hot, commanding, exuberant, danceable, and fun.

Some recordings from ’50s are overly arranged and unbearably “cute”. Some fool masquerading as a producer seems to be trying to apologize for the genre by making it “more interesting”. Frankly, I find the arrangements pretentious at best; sometimes even obnoxious.

The recordings from the late ’50s into the early ’60s sound more mature and the playing is excellent but the original energy has transformed into an easy going, laid back approach. Urgency has given way to introspection; the music no longer commands attention.

Dixie had lost its way. I wondered whose brilliant idea it had been to take something that worked so well and change it into a caricature with a contemporary veneer.

Remember the assinine Hooked on Mozart and Hooked on Beethoven recordings from late night television commercials of the ’80s? Some nincompoop decided to make classical orchestral music more contemporary by overlaying an obnoxious 8/8 disco beat. They were all the rage for a few weeks and then, mercifully, succumbed to an ignominious death.

History never teaches idiots a lesson. You can’t improve anything by distorting its original intent. And you are what you are; a dog wearing fake antlers will never convince anyone he’s a deer.

And that brings up a most important question: Why must those who dictate commercial fashion eradicate something good to make room for something new, especially when newer may not be better? Why not keep both? Why eliminate choice?

Some people call that “progress”. I call it entropy: the gradual decay resulting from energy turning inward, the inevitable descent into disorder. It is manifest in the decline of our culture, the arrogance and corruption of government and big business and, sadly, even the ravages of old age.

We can stop the entropy affecting culture by taking a stand. Folks, it’s time to get jazz back on track. Don’t just sit there; do something.

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THE JAZZ SCENE? What jazz scene? You mean that small group of musicians who play for each other and their friends and almost nobody else?

If you live in a very big city and really search, you might find as many as a couple of dozen places where somebody performs some kind of improvisational music for an hour or more per week. Sometimes it’s real jazz. On the other hand, how about a city the size of Tulsa, Oklahoma? How many jazz clubs do you suppose you’d find?

Of course discovering or creating a venue is only part of the problem. Getting paid is another. Most musicians today would consider themselves lucky to earn about sixty dollars for playing three hours of jazz in a bar or restaurant. Earning a hundred dollars is rare. More than a hundred? You’re joking, right?

Well, suppose you find a place to play and actually can convince a decent rhythm section to perform with you for such an insulting pittance. What are you going to do for an audience? Every jazz musician with enough of a name to attract people off the street already is dead. Club owners take no responsibility for bringing in patrons; they think that’s the musicians’ job.

Sure it is. If a musician could sell, he’d already be making infinitely more money as a salesmen. Yet he must send flyers, faxes, e-mails, and tweets to every relative, friend, and friend of a friend he knows to avoid playing to an empty house. At that, the group probably will play for about seven people. After one such turnout the club owner probably will never hire the group again. (On the other hand I have seen local jazz “celebrities” play for seven or eight people and the club owner seemed to think nothing of it. But that’s because they were part of the right clique and we all know how important that is in jazz.)

Back in my wild and misspent youth I badgered the owner of a well known and highly regarded jazz club to book my quintet for a night. That was when Howard Alden was my guitarist. Of course few people knew of Howard back then, or of any other star in my group. And nobody knew my name either. But my parents had a lot of friends who liked jazz, liked me, and liked the musicians in my group.

After six months the jerk who owned the club finally succumbed to my harangues and graciously allowed us a Monday, late at night. Could he have done anything more to ensure our failure?

Well, my parents’ friends packed the joint and spent money there. A lot. When we finished the last set the greedy club owner ran up to ask if he could book us for another night the following month. (We had earned the standard union rate of thirty-five dollars each.)

I thought for a second or two and answered, “No.”

Why? Because it seemed presumptuous to send invitations to the same people month after month; I long ago had learned to avoid overstaying my welcome. Besides, I was in the middle of a series of performances on the Tonight Show and was playing concerts at beautiful auditoriums around the west and was about to perform in New York at Carnegie Hall, all for hundreds of dollars per night.

None of that had mattered to the club owner. But it somehow seemed relevant to me.

Bars and restaurants completely lost their appeal after that night. I never again wanted to rely on friends and relatives for an audience. I never again wanted to beg anyone for a chance to perform. And I never again wanted anybody to evaluate my musical talent on the basis of how many big spenders I could attract.

No wonder I now work as a sideman.

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MUSICAL SHOWS HAVE exploited pretty girls for centuries but does that kind of exploitation belong in jazz?

Recently an otherwise top-notch ensemble of middle age men appeared with a cute young woman in the front line. She could play but, in contrast to the others, fell far short. Of course she was decidedly appealing to look at and that alone commanded the audience’s favorable attention. They were unconcerned with (or unable to discern) how well she played; the shock that she could even appear in such an ensemble made her the star of the show.

Any musician could recognize her artistic shortcomings and realize the band suffered musically because of her.

Traditionally jazz bands have hired pretty girls to sing. For every Ella Fitzgerald bandleaders have hired a thousand adequate (or worse) female singers to the point where, today, by far the most important quality in a female performer is her appearance.

Do we now want to encourage the replacement of excellent jazz instrumentalists with vapid cuties? Is that what jazz is about? Has the apathy toward music taken us to a level where we need to sell a band on looks instead of sound? Is the bottom line of jazz, as with most everything else, now about the money?

Frankly, I’m disgusted with the degeneration and corruption of what once was a magnificent form of music. We have replaced creativity with caricature, talent with looks, emotion with intellect, and quality with pretense. Much of jazz consists of a bunch of self-absorbed idiots trying to pass themselves off as geniuses by extrapolating the ideas of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker into nonsense while wearing African robes and odd beards and bizarre hairstyles. Or by using an accountant’s skills try to cobble together a “killer” chart. Or by hiring a cute girl.

Folks, it’s time to get jazz back on track. Save the cute girls for the chorus line. Write some melodic and memorable tunes, look into yourself to improvise on them with meaning and feeling, and knock out the audience with talent and enthusiasm.

What? You think that’s too difficult? Then get a real job.

And if you’re not a musician yourself, then learn to recognize the good ones.

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ESPERANTO, FOR THOSE unfamiliar with it, is an artificial language dating from the 1880s. Its developers hoped it would bridge language barriers between intellectuals and statesmen around the world. It is a tongue without a country and today its speakers consist primarily of members of Mensa and others who would separate themselves intellectually from the rest of us.
  
What does Esperanto have to do with jazz? Contemporary jazz also is an artificial, largely intellectual musical language, an acquired taste requiring years for a musician to master. And once some people learn to play it they tend separate themselves from much of the rest of music.
  
The King’s New Clothes is an old fairytale you probably recall: A couple of con men convince the king to buy their “beautiful robe” — except it doesn’t exist. They claim to see it, but of course the king can’t. He is too insecure to challenge them so he goes along with the con, pays them a lot of money, and wears the imaginary robe in a parade. Everyone in the kingdom sees the king walking down the street in his underwear but is afraid to admit the truth. Then one little boy, too young to understand peer pressure, asks, “Why is the king wearing only his underwear?” and the whole sham breaks down.
  
The two come together in our story of Jazz, Esperanto, and the King’s New Clothes:
  
Once upon a time there was a tiny hamlet called Bopdoowah in the middle of a vast English speaking land. And it came to pass that two cunning strangers mixed up all the letters of the alphabet to create a new tongue. They called it Esperanto and proclaimed it the hippest and coolest in all the land. They went to the royal tower and sang a song in Esperanto for the king.
  
The king found their words and songs complex, incomprehensible, often unpleasant and chaotic, devoid of emotion, yet for those same reasons impressive. He could not understand a word but had no desire to appear a fool. So he pronounced the song a work of genius.
  
“We will teach you our tongue…for a price,” said the strangers. “Its cleverness shall render primitive the harmony and emotion of other tongues. By singing in it you shall become a king among kings.”
  
The king acquired the exclusive rights to Esperanto, studied hard, and learned it. Then he taught it to all the nobles in his court and declared only their songs to be real music. They ridiculed other songs. The court jesters and sycophants extolled the brilliance of Esperanto. Nobody else in the hamlet understood a word although some pretended to.
  
Every other musician in Bopdoowah was banished to New Orleans where they still sang in English. Even in Bopdoowah, the people sang in English at home.
  
For many years public singing in the hamlet of Bopdoowah continued in Esperanto. The songs became almost unrecognizable and popular only with the most exclusive nobility.
  
One day it came to pass that an English speaking stranger came to town. He knew nothing of the ways of Bopdoowah and chanced to visit a tavern where some nobles performed their songs. As it happened, the visitor was a talented singer himself. When the show ended the stranger asked, “What manner of gibberish do you sing? Indeed, while your notes tend to disguise it, I recognize the melody as something the rest of the world calls ‘the blues’. Allow me to sing your song with a melody and words people sing in all other lands.” And so he did.
  
Whereupon all the common people in the hamlet cried, “The stranger sings in English, our native tongue. His song is simple yet elegant, its words heartfelt, and the melody harmonious whereas the ponderous songs of the nobles may be clever but their words weave a facade of complexity that comes not from the heart. Let us go to where others sing as does the stranger that we may enjoy their music.” So one and all followed the stranger out of Bopdoowah and into the rest of the world.
  
Only the king and his court remained in the hamlet. From their lofty tower they looked down upon the deserted streets and ridiculed the departed commoners. For the king’s court, jesters, and sycophants thought their tongue of Esperanto and its songs to be superior. In time most of their children abandoned them, and their children’s children, and though the king and his court grew older and ever fewer in number, they buttressed one another with a belief in their tongue. Years passed until, one day, but a single nobleman remained in the village to sing in the clever but artificial language nobody else in the world understood or cared to learn.
  
And then another stranger chanced upon the hamlet of Bopdoowah, a bespectacled, middle aged man wearing a corduroy sportcoat with leather patches on the elbows. As he passed below the royal tower he heard a man singing an odd melody in an unknown tongue. It aroused the stranger’s curiosity for he was schooled in the languages of music yet never had heard such sounds. He hailed the aged nobleman and learned of the glorious days of Esperanto.
  
“Holy halfnotes!” exclaimed the stranger. “I am a professor from a great university and the tongue of your songs bears a striking resemblance to the written language of academia we call ‘Pretentious’. My colleagues and I live in a tower much like your own but crafted of ivory. Perhaps you would come with me to our tower and teach the arcane tongue of Esperanto to our music students.”
  
And so the last disciple of Esperanto left the village of Bopdoowah to introduce his language to the callow youth of a great university. And he taught them words from the heart have no place in Esperanto while those of the mind are its sustenance. And they learned to sing his songs. And they graduated. And they found almost nobody outside the university’s music department enjoyed their songs. And they were unable to pay for bread.
  
Then one day, lo and behold, they found teaching positions at other ivory towers in other villages. And they sang their songs to each other, for nobody else would listen. And they lived happily ever after.

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WE JAZZ MUSICIANS are at war, battling for a share of radio, TV, movie, and Internet exposure to keep our music alive. And the only chance we have to accomplish that is to work together, to help one another.

The term “professional jazz musician” is no longer relevant. Almost nobody today can earn a living playing jazz. Even big name musicians complain about the lack of work. As one described the current situation, “Every year a thousand jazz students graduate from school and compete for one gig.”

A majority of our audience has replaced visits to nightclubs and concert halls with television, videos, and computers. So, to make more people aware of jazz, we musicians need to record ourselves and put the music online, on the radio, and wherever else we can. The more jazz we produce, the better the chance people will find it and like some of it.

Yet some musicians, especially those playing rhythm section instruments, insist on charging their colleagues to participate in recording sessions. Why? Because every horn player or vocalist needs a good piano, guitar, or bass player while rhythm section musicians need only each other.

Some people may dismiss that behavior as merely exploiting supply and demand but it’s really closer to blackmail.

Let’s return to the war analogy: Suppose you were in the army and your orders were to capture a hill from vastly superior enemy forces. Now imagine every soldier in your platoon whose job it is to protect you with bazookas and cannons was to demand you pay him or take the hill alone. Replace “artillery section” with “rhythm section” and I think you will get the point.

If an established record company or a wealthy patron of the arts sponsors a recording session any musician should expect payment. But the players I refer to charge for sessions a fellow musician pays for out of his own pocket. One rhythm section musician I know even charged his own brother-in-law.

No gentleman would behave that way. Most musicians are short of cash and public exposure. The only way to overcome those problems is for us to help one another by performing at a colleague’s recording session for a percentage of any future profit (or simply for free). If only one such session were to result in financial success, the ensuing payments for recording sales or public performances would make it worthwhile.

And don’t let somebody tell you he’s so busy he can’t afford to do your session because he might be giving up hundreds of dollars in gigs. What he really means is that he might miss watching his favorite soap opera or the mailman delivering his unemployment check.

For years doctors have treated each other’s families for free. People in trades help one another in the same way. Many businesses help each other almost everyday and expect nothing in return. The term for that is “professional courtesy”.

But many jazz musicians sneer at the idea of professional courtesy. And that makes them neither courteous nor professional.

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FEW PEOPLE REMEMBER his name or know who he was. Dick Cary was an excellent jazz pianist, composer, and horn player. He was a very intelligent, educated, erudite gentleman. He also was my friend and mentor. He was born on July 10, 1916 in Hartford, Connecticut, studied classical music, and disappointed his parents by moving to New York to play jazz.

Dick was one of the best jazz musicians in New York in the 1940s and ’50s. He worked with Eddie Condon’s groups, Jack Teagarden, Bobby Hackett, Wild Bill Davison, Brad Gowens, and vocalist Lee Wiley. He appeared alongside Peanuts Hucko, Pee Wee Russell, Lou McGarrity, Cliff Leman, George Van Epps, Max Kaminsky, Bud Freeman, Jimmy McPartland, and any number of other Swing era musicians and recorded with practitioners of all jazz styles. He wrote arrangements for Benny Goodman but turned down Benny’s offer to play piano with the big band. (”Who wanted to sit around all night to wait for an eight bar solo in the second set?” he asked.) But most people remember Dick from his work in the late 1940s as one of the original Louis Armstrong All-Stars.

In 1959, when traditional jazz slowed down in New York Dick, along with several other musicians, moved to Los Angeles. He already had embraced the 1950s West Coast “cool” jazz movement (as was evident from his playing and composition), did some work in Hollywood’s recording studios, and ultimately devoted himself to composition although he continued to perform until a few weeks before his death. For nearly thirty years he hosted a Tuesday night rehearsal band consisting of many of the best jazz musicians in Southern California. They played nothing but his original tunes and arrangements.

I met Dick Cary in 1978. I needed a piano player for a lunchtime concert in downtown Los Angeles and had no idea whom to call. I was a member of the Musicians’ Union so I looked up piano players and found a listing for Jess Stacey, the original pianist with Benny Goodman’s big band between 1936 and 1938. Jess had retired and referred me to Dick.

Dick played so beautifully he became my first call for piano. We became friends. He had little tolerance for fools or musicians with bad taste or rude behavior and, in the privacy of our conversations, he would mock such people and cackle. He told me countless stories about the musicians he had known. He admired many and was in awe of some. At heart he was a romantic and he lived for good music and to perform with other top musicians.

He would invite me to his house to play duets and often suggested ways to improve my playing. For example he might ask, “Why do you want to play all those notes? Try playing more simply.”

Once I asked him what kind of tunes he thought I played best. His two word answer was, “The blues.”

Another time he asked, “Why does every clarinet player think he has to play like Benny Goodman?” I just looked at him blankly. He went on, “Why don’t you try playing more like Pee Wee Russell or Johnny Hodges?”

Pee Wee was the one musician we never agreed about. Dick thought he was excellent and I disagreed, at least about the way he played in the latter part of his career. But Johnny Hodges’ alto sax playing was outstanding and Dick’s question stayed with me. Much later, I realized why Dick suggested him: Because my way of thinking about and playing music is much closer to that of Hodges than Goodman and Dick knew I could make the most of my ability by absorbing more of Hodges’ approach.

Over the years he introduced me to a lot of great players and, in 1979 and 1980 we invited some to my house for Wednesday evening jam sessions. Dick usually played piano and sometimes would double on trumpet. My friend and top Hollywood session player, Lyle Ritz, or Dick’s regular colleague, Ray Leatherwood, played bass. Gene Estes or Burr Middleton played drums. The trombonists were Bob Enevoldsen, Herbie Harper, or Betty O’Hara. Betty also played trumpet.

After a couple of weeks Dick phoned me with a question: Dick Cathcart had spoken to him about perhaps coming out of retirement and doing a little playing. Would I mind if he joined us on trumpet? I knew Cathcart was a terrific player and enthusiastically invited him. Dick Cathcart literally began his “comeback” in my living room.

Sometime around 1980 or ‘81 the great trombonist, Bob Havens, and I sponsored a recording session. We booked a studio in Hollywood. The musicians with us were Dick Cary, Dick Cathcart, Betty O’Hara, tenor saxophonist Dick Hafer, Ray Leatherwood, Gene Estes, and guitarists Dave and Larry Koonse. (Dave Koonse and Dick Cathcart had to leave early so Dave’s immensely talented son, Larry, took over on guitar and Betty O’Hara joined us on trumpet about halfway through the day.) Betty also sang. Everybody performed at no charge.

At one point during a break Dick told me, “You played that pretty well.” I was very surprised and answered, “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever complimented me.” He gave me a funny look and asked, “Why should anyone compliment you? We never used to compliment each other back in New York.” I discovered simply being in the band was the greatest compliment they could offer.

I remember once, in a telephone conversation, I told Dick how some other musicians thought my approach to jazz was wrong. I could sense his utter delight as I finished the story. He mischievously asked, “Do you ever get the feeling you’re … ‘out of step’?” Then he cackled with glee. Somehow that one remark epitomized our relationship.

Also around that time Dick recorded his album, California Dreamin’, and needed some photos. He sat in my front yard and I took a roll of portraits of him. One, with a cigar stub in his mouth and that mischievous look in his eye, was a classic. Dick kept the negatives and I never did receive a print. But, when the album came out, he gave me a copy and the photo was on the back.

A couple of years later, Dick developed cancer and needed surgery. I visited him in the hospital and he looked terrible. But he recovered, gave up alcohol and smoking, began walking five miles a day, played tennis a couple of hours each day and looked positively fit. For the next ten years he was in the best shape of his adult life.

In 1988, when Ken Borgers, then program director at all-jazz public radio station KLON-FM, asked me to lead a concert with the Concord Jazz All Stars, Dick offered to help me “get in shape” and we played more duets at his house. He said, “Stick closer to the melody and go back to it now and then.” He reminded me, “Fewer notes. Leave space. It’s okay if you don’t play all the time.” And, “Sometimes it’s effective to repeat the same note a few times.”

The musicians for the KLON performance were Scott Hamilton (tenor sax), Bill Berry (trumpet), Dave McKenna (piano), Doug MacDonald (guitar), Dave Stone (bass), and Jake Hanna (drums). I led the group on clarinet (much to Jake’s annoyance but we were friends and, besides, everything annoys Jake). Ken Borgers later told me it was the most successful jazz concert in KLON’s history.

I had permission to invite Dick Cary and he could have had his choice of any seat in the hall. But he preferred to stand backstage, out of sight, a few feet behind his friend, Dave McKenna. On the long drive home he talked about Dave’s playing and how they both love baseball and how Dave used to go out with his daughter. And somewhere in the middle of his ramblings he slipped in a compliment about my performance that night, the second and final of his life.

The last time I saw Dick was around 1991, at his house, for another evening of duets. He looked old. His playing was a little less perfect. At one point he stopped in the middle of a tune and just sat there for a moment with his head down. Then he slowly looked up and said, “This is the damnedest thing. Every now and then my head just drops forward and I can’t seem to do anything about it. Just, you know, for no reason. My doctor says it’s something called myasthenia gravis. It’s a little annoying, especially when it happens in the middle of a performance as it did last week….”

Some time went by and I heard nothing from Dick. Then, in April 1994, the Los Angeles Times published his obituary. It was a difficult way to learn of his death. We had an unusually close rapport, unlike anything I have shared with anyone else; a deep friendship with many unspoken words. So I was ticked off at Dick. At least he could have phoned to say he was dead.

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I TRIED SOMETHING bizarre this month out of sheer frustration and it worked pretty well. I have been unable to get my “A” team into the studio for four months; someone always is working. So, instead, I used a computer program to create rhythm section tracks.

I recorded myself with it and then I sent the result to a dozen or so people for feedback. Most thought the computer generated rhythm section sounded as good as or even better than the best guys I’ve recorded with.

That is rather disturbing.

A computer lacks the ability to play jazz well so I created modified country and soft rock rhythm tracks. Pop rhythm section accompaniment is typically less interactive than jazz accompaniment and, in most pop recordings, rhythm section players rarely solo. Instead they stick to arrangements and the lead singer or instrumentalist performs pretty much throughout the entire tune. So that’s what I did.

It is nothing new. The music on virtually all television shows, many movies, and a lot of CDs is by one person with a computer. It is increasingly rare to find human beings playing acoustic instruments on TV and movie soundtracks.

And then I wondered how many human musicians we would need in the future….

Jazz and most non-orchestral acoustic music would need human performers. Unfortunately they are virtually dead from a commercial standpoint and show no sign of recovery.

Symphony orchestras and chamber groups naturally will need humans. But, for some time, such groups as the Chronos String Quartet have augmented their live playing with pre-recorded accompaniment. Rock groups and stage acts have been doing it, too. Most vocalists could perform as well with a pre-recorded backup group as with live musicians and some acts completely have replaced live musicians.

Next time you listen to “smooth jazz”, for example, try to figure out how many tunes use actual musicans in the rhythm section and how many use tracks a producer created on the keyboard.

Most pop music can get by with computerized or pre-recorded rhythm sections. Why? Because commercial music is no longer about music; it is about entertainment. And visual entertainment almost always overpowers audio. So, in many cases, a vocalist is only as good as he or she looks. And the audience concentrates on the singer, not the band.

Where does that leave us? In a bleak landscape where the creation of most music and melodies by musicians and composers has yielded to rhythmic entertainment by mannequins and gangsters, many of questionable talent but of “contemporary” and “cool” appearance. It is a landscape where dancing and pyrotechnics trump melody and virtuosity; a landscape where the essence of music has lost many of the gentler and warmer qualities of humanity. It is no wonder computer generated rhythm sections can flourish.

Besides, they are cheaper.

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SUPPOSE YOUR FAVORITE sport were baseball. How much would you like it if, over the years, teams rarely or never introduced a new player? What if, instead, the same players continued year after year even if they could hardly hit, catch, or throw the ball? Or what if you subscribed to a photography magazine that only published photos and articles by the same half dozen contributors even though the world was full of better ones?

Wouldn’t you need a word much stronger than “idiotic” to describe any team or league or publication rigidly insisting upon doing business in that way? Anybody with a shred of common sense knows that is the perfect recipe for failure.

Guess what? I have just described the jazz festival business and, in particular, the directors of traditional jazz festivals.

Oh, I suppose a few directors introduce new talent now and then, especially those trying to be avante garde. But if you look at the musicians performing at the majority of festivals you will read lists of the same names you have seen for decades.

The last thing I would advocate is to discard talented veterans. Heck, I want to see them appear often and I want them to earn a good living. But jazz also needs new names. To survive it must produce a steady stream of new musicians whose specialties range from Dixieland to the most contemporary hybrid. But nobody with influence cares.

I have spoken to several festival directors. They explained their audience consists of people of three basic categories: Type A follows two or three favorite individuals or groups through the entire festival and ignores everyone else. Type B stakes out seats at a given venue and never moves. Type C, (supposedly) the smallest group by far, wants to see an occasional new performer.

Sorry, folks. I don’t believe it. I believe many festival directors are narrow minded, prejudiced idiots.

Some years ago I brought a very good group to a festival. I was returning from a twelve year “retirement” so, despite my colorful background, few remembered my name. Some may have heard of one or two others in the group. We played to a standing ovation. The festival director was in the audience.

A couple of weeks later I phoned to thank him for inviting us. He said, “If you’re asking whether I’m going to invite you again next year the answer is no.”

I explained that was not the reason for the call but, now that he had brought it up, why not?

“Because nobody knows you.”

I was incredulous. I replied, “You were in the audience; we played to a standing ovation.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said.

His festival is now defunct. So are several others. Most of those remaining are on the edge of extinction. None of the directors understands why. All they know is that each year their audience shrinks by ten percent and nobody under the age of fifty attends. Gee, I wonder why.

When I was trying to break back into the business I offered to play at a fairly big local festival for free, just to reestablish my name. The director turned me down. Why? “If if let you play, then I can’t bring in somebody else my audience already knows. I might lose some ticket sales.” (How about the money he would save on airfare, hotel accommodations, and performance fees? Apparently he forgot about that.)

Another band hired me so I have played there every year anyway. Today the average age of that festival’s audience is 70 and attendance easily is half what it was five years ago. When you look around you rarely see any hair color but white. Barring a miracle this may be the final year of that festival. Surprise.

Do you still wonder why jazz is in trouble, why you rarely see new performers, why and festivals are disappearing? You have just read the perfect recipe for failure and nearly every festival follows it to the letter.

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ONE SATURDAY NIGHT near the end of my first semester as a freshman at UCLA the Dave Brubeck Quartet performed at Kirkhoff Hall and, for students, admission was free. The band consisted of its four original members, Paul Desmond on alto sax, Brubeck on piano, Eugene Wright on bass, and Joe Morello on drums.

They played tunes from their albums and ended with Take Five. The hall had two or three hundred seats and the acoustics were mediocre at best; the rectangular room had vinyl flooring, big picture windows along one wall, and almost no non-reflective surface except for the audience.

The performance was clean and polished and professional. It lacked sparkle or much excitement. The band must have played the same program hundreds of times before. The audience was appreciative but less than enthusiastic. Desmond’s solo on Take Five may have been his most inspired of the night but it went on too long. And then the concert was over. Everybody dispersed.

I had gone alone and decided to hang around for awhile outside. It occurred to me I might have a chance to see the musicians after the show and maybe talk to one of them so I wandered to the rear of the building and waited out in the cold, autumn night near a loading area. A few minutes later three men came out of a back door and walked toward me. Two kept going but one noticed me and said, “Hi, I’m Dave Brubeck. Were you at the concert?”

I was seventeen. I had no idea what to say to him so I just said, “Yes. It was pretty good.”

He asked, “Are you a musician?” and I answered, “Yeah. I play clarinet.”

Brubeck then wanted to know if I played jazz. Yes, I did. And then the key question: “Are you thinking about playing professionally?”

I told him the simple truth. “Well, I want to but my parents think it’s a bad idea.”

Dave Brubeck then spoke words of wisdom I have never forgotten: “Listen to your parents. They’re right. Jazz is great and you should keep playing it. But don’t do it as a profession. It’s a terrible life. By the way, what’s your name?”

“Russ.”

“Well, Russ, good luck; nice to meet you.” And off he went.

Wow. I had just had a conversation with Dave Brubeck! I headed out of the courtyard, down the hill past Pauley Pavillion, and then up the half-mile climb to the residence hall where I lived. I wondered why a big star like Brubeck would have discouraged me from trying to make a living from jazz.

Then I realized I’d never seen Paul Desmond. Maybe, if I’d had a chance to talk to him, his opinion might have been different.

No fool like a musician.