I've been listening to the Bill Evans Complete Riverside Recordings box set and
thinking about jazz musicians and self-confidence. The environment of jazz has
always been competitive and therefore required a lot of belief in oneself and
what one was doing in order to just continue to play and develop. Take Miles
Davis, a supremely confident musician if ever there was one. But when Miles
first climbed on the bandstand, was first recording with Charlie Parker, he
couldn't really cut it. It doesn't take more than a cursory listen to those
early sides to realize that Miles was not a gifted bop player. Davis had a
couple of choices: he could woodshed until he became a consummate bop
improviser, he could pursue his own style and sound, or he could pack up and go
home. I think there's little doubt about the path he chose. Bill Evans chose a similar route. Evans doubted
his own abilities, particularly early in his career. Growing up with an
alcoholic father cannot have done much to give Evans a secure sense of self. An
avid reader and one of jazz's most articulate musicians, Evans admitted to an
early lack of confidence in his playing and his vision. Believing that he lacked
the talent of other musicians he listened to, Evans felt he could make up for
the perceived lack of talent by working extremely hard. He didn't satisfy his
professors at Southeastern Louisiana College, though: they faulted him for not
practicing exercises and scales, even though he was able to master the required
pieces with ease. Nonetheless, Evans worked to develop his playing over a number
of years, arriving at his unique sound and style as the result of learning to
channel his feelings directly into the music. For him, exercises or scales could
not be an acceptable form of development because he would then lose the
emotional immediacy that fed his playing. Indeed, listening to Evans' playing is
much like meditation. You tune in to your own thoughts very deeply while
listening because the music seems to speak directly to them, at times even
seeming to reveal them to you.
Of course, Evans was completely correct in his
thought that by pursuing his own path and arriving at his own conception of jazz
piano he was behaving in the most honest and authentic way that a musician can
behave. Certainly, other jazz artists have done the same thing-Davis, Duke
Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Thelonius Monk spring immediately to mind. Mingus
and Monk in particular suffered some of the same difficulties as
Evans-self-doubt in the face of commercial indifference to the path they were
pursuing, periods of reclusiveness and depression, and widespread influence on
other musicians who apparently missed the point of what they were attempting to
accomplish. This is not to say that all the followers of Mingus, Monk, and Evans
were uniformly attempting to imitate their idols rather than taking to heart
their examples of the power of fiercely independent development, but there were
many who chose that far simpler path. Interestingly, I doubt any of these
musicians sat down with the idea that they would develop an "individual"
style-somehow it was just a given. This is what Evans had to say about the
topic:
"First of all, I never strive for identity. That's something that just has
happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together,
tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the
individual comes through eventually..." (Enstice, Wayne and Paul Rubin. Jazz
Spoken Here: Conversations with Twenty-two Musicians. Baton Rouge, LA: LSU
Press, 1992.)
Thelonius Monk was often called egocentric, living in his own universe in
which the world revolved around him. Denzil Best, who worked with Monk when they
were both teenagers, recalls "People would call his changes wrong to his face.
If he hadn't been so strong in his mind, he might easily have become
discouraged, but he always went his own way and wouldn't change for anything."
It's doubtful that Monk saw his chord progressions as anything but logical and
probably wondered what all the fuss they generated was about. They were the
vocabulary that enabled him to communicate what he wanted to communicate. The
same can be said about Davis' tone, Ellington's insistence on writing more
"serious" pieces, and Mingus' use of humor and unorthodox voicings in his
compositions. All were "wrong" in the eyes of those around them. All held firmly
to the path they were on. Some resorted to chemical succor or retreated into
their own private universe. There is little doubt that all these artists
suffered a period or periods when there was a severe crisis of self-confidence.
Evans, as befitted his temperament, was more articulate about his. But the demon
was there for all.
Some musicians don't handle pressures of self-expression and the music
business well, and some of them do fold up their tents and head home. One such
musician was John Hardee. Hardee was a multi-instrumentalist who played piano,
mellophone, C-melody saxophone, alto, and tenor sax. He worked with Don Albert
as a tenor player before returning to college. After graduation, he worked as a
band director in Texas and also played the clarinet in the military band. Hardee
went to New York to pursue his musical career, and worked with Tiny Grimes from
1946 to 1948. Most of the work he recorded was done on 78 rpm records at the
precise time that the LP format was killing off 78s as the recorded medium of
choice. His work wasn't released on LP and was lost and forgotten for some time,
even though his playing put him on a par with Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster.
So what happened? Basically a crisis of self-confidence. The jazz scene in New
York was extremely competitive at the time, and Hardee simply didn't have the
stomach for it. He felt that he could have filled the chair vacated by Ben
Webster in the Duke Ellington orchestra, and the recorded evidence, now
available on CD, supports that assertion. I strongly recommend either the
Chronological Jazz Series release John Hardee: 1946-1948 or the EMI import John
Hardee Swingtettes: Tired. We're very lucky to have these performances saved and
available for our pleasure. Had Hardee continued to be part of the New York
scene he would undoubtedly have become a major tenor player whose contribution
and influence would still be widely discussed. Hardee returned to Texas,
teaching in Dallas for most of the rest of his life. No doubt he passed on a lot
of wisdom to the kids who learned music from him.
What is the point of this discussion? I guess it comes down to the belief
that although it's important to listen to a lot of music and absorb what's been
done in the past, it doesn't really matter what the prevailing flavor of the day
is if the music that arises from a musician's deepest emotions is at odds with
that flavor. When swing was the thing, there were musicians who just didn't play
that style because they didn't feel it. Same with bebop, cool jazz, and every
other style to come down the pike. The other point here is that once a musician
has connected deeply with what he or she is feeling and found the vocabulary and
technique necessary to express those feelings, they should not allow anything to
change what they're doing or dissuade them. That's not to say musicians should
do one thing for their entire life or career. One must continue to develop or
there's not much point in expressing oneself. That impetus for a change of
direction needs to come from inside, to grow organically and be allowed to take
the artist where it will; it can't be dictated by fashion or marketing concerns.
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