In defence of unyielding avarice

The other day I bought a copy of Getz/Gilberto, the definitive 1963 bossa nova album that features Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto and Tom Jobim. This is the record that brought bossa nova in general, and ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ in particular, into the mainstream in America. It’s a lovely album and, on a sunny day, the perfect accompaniment to my morning bagel.

I was more struck, however, by its liner notes. I think these were written as recently as 1997, by an American jazz writer called Doug Ramsey. He begins thus:

"It may seem that after Elvis came the deluge, but American popular music did not go into the tank overnight. In 1956, the year of his florescence, Presley dominated the charts with ‘Hound Dog’, ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ and ‘Love Me Tender.’ Radio listeners could not escape Presley, Bill Haley, the Platters or Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, but public taste allowed a few items of reasonable quality.

"Gone was the era when good music and popular were often the same. […] Still, at one time or another in 1956, Frank Sinatra’s ‘Love and Marriage’ and Dean Martin’s ‘Memories Are Made of This’ were in the top ten. Nelson Riddle made it with ‘April in Portugal,’ and Doris Day with ‘Que Sera Sera.’ Great stuff? No, but my god, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’?

"Popular music was sliding toward the day when salesmen, programmers, accountants, and marketers would manipulate the music business into one vast pop emporium.

"Before the music industry perfected the filtering system designed to eliminate the possibility of a record rising to the top on its musical merits, a few good ones slipped through."

(Ramsey cites the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s ‘Take Five’ and then turns his attention to Getz/Gilberto. He concludes:)

"As long as unyielding avarice rules the pop record business, it is unlikely that a jazz album will again dominate the charts. However, we have this imperishable reminder that it is possible for art music to kindle a response so universal that it becomes an indispensable element of the cultural environment. There’s hope."

I actually laughed out loud when I read this. And the jazz world wonders why it has a reputation for snobbery. I was also reminded of Harry Haller in Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse, which I am currently trying to adapt into a musical. Harry begins with much the same view of jazz music – which was just emerging in the 1920s dance halls where much of the novel is set – as a cheap, mindless form for the masses to gyrate to, infinitely inferior to his beloved Mozart and Haydn. It occurred to me that this has been an endlessly repeating cycle for much of musical history. A musical style begins as something visceral, instinctive, and designed for dance, then becomes absorbed into the establishment and becomes sterilised or intellectualised to the point where it is no longer danceable. So by the time trad jazz and swing had mutated into bebop and cool jazz, they were no longer fit for purpose as dance music. Similarly, bossa nova happened when Gilberto, Jobim etc took the infectious dance rhythms of the samba and cooled them down to the point where they were better suited to my morning bagel than to hip-shaking. From classical composers appropriating folk dances, to rock become prog-engorged, to Marvin Gaye making What’s Goin’ On, so many musical styles have moved, in their focus, from the hips to the head.

All of which is a roundabout way of guffawing at the ridiculously blinkered view offered by Ramsey’s notes. Not only does he posit that the music industry pre-1956 was avarice-free (ha!), he claims that not a single decent record ever rose to the top of the pop charts after 1963 (ha! ha!). Not only does he confuse "art music" with jazz (the jazz music in question being more often classified under "elevator music"), but he totally overlooks where jazz music came from and where rock ‘n’ roll went next. And much as I love Sinatra (I REALLY love Sinatra) I’m probably not the only person who’d rather listen to the Beach Boys than ‘Love and Marriage’...