Jazz : A Journey Across Oceans, Beyond Colour and Transcending Time

Miles Davis

Let’s just make this perfectly clear, I am Australian, I moved here with my parents from New Zealand when I was very small, we come from farming blood.  But the fact of the matter remains that Jazz is my soul music.  I didn’t grow up with it at all.  The music I was educated with was Elvis Costello, Billy Joel, The Beatles, Richard Marx, Bryan Adams.  Jazz did not factor one iota, Jazz found me.

I think my first real taste came from a midday movie I saw purely by chance called ‘The Five Pennies’, a strange picture from 1959 about a cornet player in the 20’s played by a less rubber faced Danny Kaye.  Guest starring Louis Armstrong and string of great big bander-s I was transported and in love.  I wanted my future children to grow up above jazz clubs, to know the cool cats on the great instruments and have music run wild and free through their veins.  As I speak there is a framed poster I bought off ebay about 6 months ago, hanging with pride of place on my wall.  It’s a clipping from 1959 Billboard newspaper advertising this brand new release of ‘Saints Come Marching In’ sung by Louis Armstrong and Danny Kaye from their upcoming movie ‘The Five Pennies’.  In the event of fire in my home you will see me running down the street with this firmly tucked under my arm.

I have mentioned before that the sounds of Fiona Apple inclined me to look into Jazz music more.  The very satisfying fact was that no one else dug it so the CD’s (yes CD’s, this was about the same time as Napster, so jazz downloads weren’t common) were the cheapest you could find.  With limited funds this was good news and I started buying everything I could afford, but my favourite was a double disc album of Miles Davis’ greatest hits and a Charlie Parker 5 disc set.  I would open my bedroom window, lay on my wrought iron bed with a pack of luxuriously long, thin cigarettes and pretend I was someone cool amongst the billowing smoke at my fingertips and dripping cool sounds from my stereo.  I was someone who would be found at a club, behind an iron door, guarded by a man the same size and weight of said door, this door down an alley way, this alley way only accessible by night and by the right kinds of people, people who were just that kind of cool to know where it was.  From my pickings of great jazz men I became well acquainted with some lovely jazz ladies and bought a couple of compilations to fuel the fire.

Charlie Parker

At first listen they sounded sappy, a little limp with a need to please men and then I listened harder and worked for my music by understanding it and I found these women stronger, speaking out and lamenting the lot they had in life despite the idea that they shouldn’t say a damn thing.  These were women truly repressed for more than just race and gender but social propriety and they defeated it with their voices, outstanding!

There is an album in my possession that means more to me than any other album I own.  I found this album late night in a large DVD/CD/book superstore in the late café district in my home city.  I was there with friends as they scoured the shelves for manga and David Lynch movies.  I was flicking, the click clack of cases making music to the already light beat of what was dubbed fit for human listening in this coveted forum of hip consumerism.  I found a white cardboard case nestled amongst the others.  It simply had the words ‘Ella’s Moods’ to the left of a light blue image of a beaten track and cottage.  I bought it, it was expensive for a jazz CD.  I had to wait another day to listen to it as I was stuck up all night watching trippy, wacked out movies and drinking beer with said friends.  So I settled down the following afternoon and turned it on and…woah.  They had remastered it, the quality was amazing, so crisp, so clear.  They picked the best songs sung by Ella Fitzgerald of the era, and to this very day I haven’t found such an incredible line-up on an album since.  This was no simple love, this was no wilting flower.  This woman had been done over, worked down, done in and spat out and I loved her.  This album changed me, profoundly.  I connected with the song Black Coffee so much that it became my dream to sing it onstage.  I would pretend I was there, drinking my whiskey, smoking my cigarette and starting my song much to the anticipation of the waiting crowd.  I decided that I must exude this quality at all times and tried to smoke seductively, all class, I was going to make smoking look good.  I was going to have the true dignity and worn heart and lived life of the women I admired most.  And I did.

Ella Fitzgerald

Before I would go anywhere, and this included the period of time I enjoyed drum and bass and went raving, I would put my Miles Davis album on at top volume and bebop my way around the house until my heat raced and I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.  Yes Jazz was my soul music and it didn’t matter a damn thing what colour my skin was because it found my heart and we all beat red blood.

Around this time I watched a documentary.  Not only did it make me love documentaries but it made me love Jazz more, it was Ken Burns Jazz. The stories, the American history brought me that much closer to a culture I had no ties to except within myself and the stamp it had forcefully pressed against my heart.  It drove home the complex nature, the intense dedication required despite the restrictions, turbulence, internal and external hatred and strife they found, and how above all that these great musicians built the world of music as we know it.

I think the reason Jazz had affected me so much is because I slowly found myself surrounded by my favourite aspects of so many other musicians and genres all bundled into this one.  I loved the fast pace of punk (I had a great many punk albums I adored), I loved the instruments and high pace of Ska (I went to many of those crazy concerts – absolute madness), I loved the soul down time of intense ballads and the excruciating loneliness of a guitar, violin or brass solo.  The elements were all there in the things I loved so Jazz found a home in my heart.

To this day I put on my favourite instrumentalists and fellow Australians The Necks I can write like my hands are guided by an external power, I play Mr Davis and Mr Coltrane and I can perform any task around the house far quicker, it’s like time stops for them and their greatness and if I play Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday or even a little Peggy Lee I am holding my heart, an ode to a lover and I’m having a cry for all the men who have ever crossed my path.

John Coltrane

Jazz goes above and beyond the call of music, it transcends in a way I think it wanted to, but didn’t dare presume, in its day of big life.  The fact that today it is finding its feet, rhythm and heart in brand new souls means that the greats of music, the true legends, will never die.  So long as we have the decency to carry them on and give them the respect they thoroughly deserve then this genre of superhero musicians will continue to live on.

By Lisa Inger

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