BY JANELLE GELFAND
It started in the 1920s, when Cincinnati's
founding father of jazz, Artie Matthews, introduced ragtime. By the 1930s,
crowds shimmied and shook at the Cotton Club on Mound
Street. Cincinnati
was fertile ground for some of the biggest jazz talent in the country.
Today that legacy is endangered. The days of streets lined
with jazz clubs are long gone and players must leave town to find work. Many
great players earn less than $100 for an evening of music. And, in a town where
at one time blacks couldn't stay at the hotels where they performed, signs of
Cincinnati's segregated past are still evident in the jazz clubs, musicians
say.
"When I was playing in all these different clubs in Cincinnati,
you could walk from club to club. Now, people have forgotten about the
music," says local pianist Billie Walker, who studied with Matthews.
"Heroes are not remembered, artists are not praised,
and it's really sad," says Arzell Nelson,
guitarist, composer and winner of the 1981 Ohio Valley Cool Jazz Festival
Award.
Cincinnati was a
jazz mecca, a crossroads in the American heartland
where jazz greats traveling to New York,
Chicago, Detroit,
New Orleans and Kansas
City passed through on trains and riverboats. WLW
radio, the "nation's station" with a 500,000-watt reach in the 1930s,
lured virtually every major musician to the Queen
City. Fats Waller joined the staff
in 1932, and played organ for the station's theme song, "Moon
River."
"Even if Cincinnatians had wanted to, they would not
have been able to ignore this wonderful music," wrote William Lawless
Jones, a Cincinnati jazz historian
who died in 2000.
In the music files of the Cincinnati Historical Society,
African-American musicians are conspicuously absent.
Names such as bandleader Zack Whyte
and his Zanesville-born trumpeter Melvin James "Sy"
Oliver - who became one of the finest arrangers in the business - were active
in the '20s. Jimmy Mundy, born in Walnut Hills in 1907, left to become an
arranger for Earl Hines, Count Basie and Paul
Whiteman. Mundy arranged the Big Band classic "Sing Sing
Sing" for Benny Goodman.
Frank Foster, a graduate of Walnut
Hills High School,
achieved fame as a bandleader for the Count Basie
Orchestra. In the '30s and '40s, African-Americans jitterbugged to swing bands
at Music Hall's Greystone Ballroom.
Many jazz greats came out of Cincinnati's
West End, including Sadie Birch, "the Sarah Vaughan
of Cincinnati in the '30s and
'40s," Nelson says.
Then there's George Russell, 82, who wrote a groundbreaking
theory book - a bible for jazz players - and helped establish the jazz program
at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.
"He did those remarkable arrangements for Dizzy
Gillespie - 'Cubano Be, Cubano
Bop.' In the second part of 20th century, he ranks with Duke Ellington,"
says Oscar Treadwell, host of "Jazz with OT" on WVXU-FM (91.7).
"My next door neighbor was the arranger and saxophonist
Jimmy Mundy," recalls Russell, who grew up in Walnut Hills. "Another
neighbor played the saxophone, and when I heard him, I decided to be a
musician."
Russell remembers when most Cincinnati
hotels would not allow black artists to book rooms, so they would board with
local families.
"One time, my mother took in several of Duke's
musicians," he says.
Until the mid-1960s, there were two musicians' unions: one
for blacks, one for whites. Today, audiences and players of mostly one race
still gravitate to certain clubs. While jazz is an African-American invention,
the University of Cincinnati
College-Conservatory of Music jazz department has
just one black faculty member, trombonist Marc Fields.
Drummer Art Gore studied with Russell at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
In the '70s, Gore toured and recorded with superstar jazz guitarist George
Benson. He recalls one exciting night in the '80s when Benson came to town and
sat in with him at the Greenwich.
Today, to make a living, musicians play private gigs in
country clubs. It's good money, but it doesn't allow freedom to improvise.
Walker, who is also a singer, is frustrated that she cannot use her creative
powers.
Pianist William Menefield, 25,
graduated in June from CCM in composition, but is leaving soon to "see
what the scene is like elsewhere."
The musicians wonder why jazz has not caught on in Cincinnati
when it thrives in cities such as Dayton,
where the great Billy Strayhorn was born. Some cite jazz's
reputation - small ensembles playing in smoky dives - and say it was too impure
for the Ivory Soap city. Many jazz players have fallen victim to drugs.
One of Cincinnati's
finest jazz composers, Odell Jackson, wrote a symphonic composition while he was
in prison. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra premiered his "Introduction
and Allegro for Jazz Trio" in 1971.
"A lot of guys were unfortunately dabbling in
heroin," Nelson says. "When he got out of prison, he did arrangements
for Nancy Wilson."
"Jazz has always been considered devil music, or the
lowest rung on the musical scale," says Treadwell.
In 1997, jazz lovers Barbara Gould, William Mallory, Sr.,
Marcus Ware and Nelson founded the Greater Cincinnati Jazz Society. They raised
money to bring the "100 Years of Jazz" exhibit to Cincinnati.
"All I wanted was to see these incredible musicians
recognized," says Gould of Indian Hill, who co-founded J Curve Records to
record Cincinnati's jazz legacy.
Today, both the label and the society are defunct. Its founders would like to
resurrect the society. They hope that the National Underground Railroad Freedom
Center can provide a showcase for Cincinnati's
jazz greats.
"In order for jazz to be a part of our culture, it has
to be consistently showcased," Mallory, the former Ohio House leader and
father of Cincinnati's mayor, says.
"Maybe this is the beginning. We want to resurrect all of the history and
spirit and creativity that we're losing."
William Menefield
'My father plays saxophone, my mom played violin, and I just
grew up around it. I had the privilege of sitting right in my living room,
listening to some of Cincinnati's
greatest musicians rehearse.
"(My dad) produced the It's Commonly Jazz Series for
about four years, and I would go with him.
"I started playing piano at age 8 or 9, when my mom
took all the televisions out of the house. Piano became my recreation. It was
just fun; something I did after coming home from school and doing homework. It
was just playing by ear, enjoying discovering what I believe now to be one of
the most beautiful instruments. I started composing around the same time.
"Being an African-American, there are so many things
attached to jazz music, for me, that make it important
for me to be a part of.
"The music has so much to do with African-American
history, stemming from the slavery days. That's when the marriage of the
rhythms and drumming of West Africa were brought over
here to America.
"It was birthed out of a time of serious oppression:
slavery. Those things are very important to me. It's so much more than playing
the piano and trying to sound good.
"Unfortunately, I think there is some segregation, as
far as the music. The jazz scene is a reflection of what goes on in the city as
a whole. We recognize that it is a problem. But things are not as blatant as
they were in the '50s and '60s, when it was very clear you could not use
certain facilities if you were African-American.
"It's so tough to earn a living. It's definitely more
than just, 'I love the music.' It's beyond a passion. It's spiritual. It's
something that's inside me that I know I just have to get out. If I could not
express myself in this way, I would probably explode."
Pianist/composer William Menefield,
25, a University of Cincinnati
College-Conservatory of Music graduate, appears
locally at Jazz at the Hyatt, Simone's and other venues.
Billie Walker
'My father had a band, and when Artie Matthews came here, my
parents hired him to play piano. I heard them practicing all the time. They
played ragtime, and that's the way I started playing.
"We would slip into the Cotton Club on Sunday
afternoons. There was a man who would let us in and tell us we had to sit in
the corner. We were 15 or 16, and didn't know who the people were up there
playing. But it was music.
"My mother took me to (Matthews') Cosmopolitan
School, downtown on Ninth
Street. I started (lessons) with him ... My next
teacher was Helen Gromme from the Conservatory. I
studied classical music with her until I started with jazz.
"I just enjoyed playing classical music and I enjoyed
playing jazz, too.
"I went to the Hall of Mirrors, and that's where (a
talent agency) had auditions. I went down there to try out, and there were
about 25 of us, but I was the only one they took. My agent asked me if I could
sing. I thought, heavens no.
"The first song I sang was 'Body and Soul.' The job I
have now is the only job I've ever had where I don't sing.
"My first job was at the Gypsy Inn in Roselawn. The owner liked that I could play classical
music.
"I was hired to go to New York
to play, and my agent said, 'Don't tell anyone you're from Cincinnati.
Say you're from Detroit.'
"I noticed after I left here, people want you to
improvise, to play what you feel. Here in Cincinnati,
you play it straight - what I can whistle to.
"I remember working five hours every night, and
afterward, we would go to another club and continue playing. And you picked up
from other musicians what they were doing. But now, there's nothing. I go home
at 11 p.m."
Billie Walker performed for many years in New
York and has played with Cannonball Adderley and Burt Bacharach. She appears Friday and
Saturday nights at the Cincinnatian Hotel. To hear an MP3
file from "The Legend of Billie Walker (Live at the Cincinnatian),"
which will be released next month, go to Cincinnati.Com. Keyword: jazz
Art Gore
'I come from a musical family in the West End.
My first education was from my uncles, Edison Gore, a drummer, and Rufus Gore,
who played sax. I started hanging around musicians when I was about 9, because
my uncles brought musicians to the house.
"My uncle saw that I was fascinated by it, so he just
gave me some sticks. That was my first lesson.
"I was playing professionally while I was still in
(Taft High) school. We had two unions, a separate union for black musicians. I
joined the black union in the 11th grade.
"(Later) I joined the union in New
York, a great union. It was more about musicians than
it was about race.
"I went to Conservatory of Music on Oak
Street for private lessons with the principal percussionist
of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and I went to the Berklee
College of Music in Boston.
"At Berklee, I didn't have a
scholarship and I ran out of money. Uncle Sam drafted me. I was supposed to go
to Vietnam, but
I auditioned for the band. I tell people, music saved my life. I watched a lot
of people get on a train to go to Vietnam.
Some sad moments. I returned to Berklee
on the GI Bill.
"We don't get a lot of support from the media or the
city. Last week, we had (jazz legend) Joe Lovano (at
the Blue Wisp). Tapes should have been rolling. It's history. So much is gone
up in the air ...
"We don't put any importance on it, like we do the
ballet or the Cincinnati Symphony. This multimillion dollar endowment they have
- you never heard of any endowment for jazz in the city. But when local jazz
musicians do good, they say, 'He's from Cincinnati.'
"When I leave here, I'm famous. I can go to Japan
and Europe and people know who I am."
Drummer Art Gore toured and recorded with jazz guitarist
George Benson from 1972 to 1975. He returned to his hometown in 1981.
Arzell Nelson
'I was born in the West End ... at
home on Clark Street. My
greatest influence was my father, Willie Nelson, who played tenor sax.
"He made me my first instrument, a flute out of bamboo.
My mom played piano. I kinda started playing the
blues at first, because my grandmother played the blues. Later on, my father
bought me a set of Spike Jones drums. So I tried to mimic Spike Jones when I
was 7, and started playing the violin around that time, too.
"When we moved to East Walnut Hills, that's when I
really got a sense of what jazz was all about. I lived right around the corner
from a jazz club called Herbie's. As a kid of 9 (in
the late '50s and early '60s), we'd go listen to all the great jazz players
coming through there.
"One of the greatest musicians I ever heard, and I
walked to Mount Adams
to see him, was Wes Montgomery. Then I got to hear some of the great people
around here, like Champ Childress, a great trombone player who played for
Lionel Hampton.
"I spent most of my years as a composer/songwriter. I
used to write musicals. I signed a brief contract with Columbia Records as a
songwriter, (but) I didn't have enough confidence in myself to take the chance
and live in New York full time.
"When you're in Cincinnati,
you don't realize how significant it is what you do. The attitude you grew up
with is, 'Who cares?'
"We've had some of the greatest people in the music
industry come out of Cincinnati.
The list is long - major people. And it's had little impact in Cincinnati."
Arzell Nelson, a
pianist/guitarist, is retired director of the Cincinnati Human Relations
Commission. His musical, "Little Boy Jazz," premiered at Cincinnati
Playhouse in the Park. He's writing a blues musical with Jymii
Crawford titled "Beulah's Kitchen."
Posted: 2/26/06
Source: Enquirer.com
Return to: Black Music Archives