Why Isn't Jazz Popular?

**citizenk74** · 01-29-2021, 02:10 PM

**2bornot2bop** · 01-29-2021, 04:00 PM

Originally Posted by Gillespie

Well jazz was popular, when it was called swing, it was the pop music of its day. It hasn't been popular since the beboppers arrived and lowered the danceable element while raising the "art" element.

That’s a myth that was debunked decades ago. You missed the memo?

**2bornot2bop** · 01-29-2021, 04:36 PM

Look at the facts. Everything, all music has a cycle. Some longer than others.

Rock n roll isn’t what it was in the 60’s. It’s dead.

In the 60’s there was popular black music on a large scale for the first time ever.

Youth drives the music popularity polls. An entire industry did a hard right to follow rock. And Motown came out of nowhere.

Still, jazz has found it’s niche. Who cares that a majority of people don’t listen to it. Does classical music worry that their popularity has fallen? No, you’re not going to appeal to everyone.

**2bornot2bop** · 01-29-2021, 05:36 PM

And in the mid 90’s I spent years at Seattle’s Jazz Alley. Each of these concerts were packed completely to artists like Ray Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Gene Harris etc., the latter who I attended 4 concerts in a week of a 7 day appearance. Every night was a packed house. Even in Seattle, where rock was king, jazz sold out the house. Popular? Who cares, it was popular to many.

**Stevebol** · 01-30-2021, 12:37 AM

Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop

And in the mid 90’s I spent years at Seattle’s Jazz Alley. Each of these concerts were packed completely to artists like Ray Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Gene Harris etc., the latter who I attended 4 concerts in a week of a 7 day appearance. Every night was a packed house. Even in Seattle, where rock was king, jazz sold out the house. Popular? Who cares, it was popular to many.

I heard stories about Seattle around that time. It was vibrant. That was a long time ago. Musicians don't seem to have a passion for live music anymore. Not in clubs.

**Stevebol** · 01-30-2021, 12:42 AM

Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop

And in the mid 90’s I spent years at Seattle’s Jazz Alley. Each of these concerts were packed completely to artists like Ray Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Gene Harris etc., the latter who I attended 4 concerts in a week of a 7 day appearance. Every night was a packed house. Even in Seattle, where rock was king, jazz sold out the house. Popular? Who cares, it was popular to many.

Las Vegas could be another Seattle. Forget casinos, the strip and gambling. It's very easy to navigate the city. You can get anywhere in a 1/2 hour. There's nothing to do except go to bars. People here will listen to anything.

**steve burchfield** · 01-30-2021, 12:56 AM

Jazz players who understand they are hired to please their audience seem to have long careers in any area. Self indulgent selfish players do not usually keep much of an audience!!1

**Litterick** · 01-30-2021, 06:26 AM

Whitney Balliett, 1965:

The knell that is sounded periodically for jazz is ringing again. The jazz press, which loves to weep over even fancied catastrophe, is itself pulling the rope, and there are other signs. Folk music has seized a considerable chunk of those listeners who, fifteen years back, might have been studying jazz. The night club business, which is probably outmoded anyhow, is rapidly falling away, and fewer jazz records are being made. Radio and television have again slammed their doors. Musicians of every stripe are scratching for work. But these are, I'm sure, transitory difficulties sown by faddism, and they have little to do with a problem in jazz that does deserve brooding and even melancholy: the chill that has crept into the music in the past decade. One feels it in the glittering younger pianists, in the crushing sarcasm of Sonny Rollins and the autonomous frenzy of John Coltrane, in the vapid musings of Miles Davis, and, most depressingly, in the drummers shaped by Max Roach.

Whitney Balliett
Such Sweet Thunder: Jazz Today
London: Macdonald, 1968, 282.

**2bornot2bop** · 01-30-2021, 04:13 PM

Originally Posted by Stevebol

I heard stories about Seattle around that time. It was vibrant. That was a long time ago. Musicians don't seem to have a passion for live music anymore. Not in clubs.

Seattle still has a scene. We’ve an annual 20 day jazz festival. The Earshot jazz festival, and Port Townsend has a huge weekly festival as well. Pre COVID that is.

**Cunamara** · 01-30-2021, 04:45 PM

At the Twin Cities Hot Summer Jazz Festival the audience turnout is always excellent. Thousands of people. If half of them would just go to some jazz shows at clubs once a week the rest of the year, the scene would probably thrive. Of course, there is no cover charge to attend the events at the festival as sponsorship covers those costs. To go see a show at the main club in Minneapolis, between the cost of tickets for two, a light meal and a few drinks the evening ends up being $200 or more. I have seen some great musicians there but at those prices it's not something I can afford to do all that often. For the same reason I don't go to very many concerts, either, of any style of music. I'll splurge to see a few favorites, but that doesn't expose me to new artists nor does it help those artists to become established. Musicians and venues certainly should be able to make a decent living but unfortunately I am not exactly polluted with cash to help make that happen.

One nice thing the Twin Cities festival does is that it adds many of the clubs, bars and coffee shops in town to the roster of events, not just the main stage set up downtown, if they are hosting jazz. A few years back my band was included because we just happened to be playing a gig that fell during the festival; we got paid by the festival several times as much per musician as we usually collected as a band. My best payday as a musician ever! I was very appreciative of their generosity and every year look for ways to try to help promote attendance among my friends and family.

**BickertRules** · 01-31-2021, 12:58 AM

Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop

That’s a myth that was debunked decades ago. You missed the memo?

1) I love when people refer to a “myth” that was “debunked” - but refrain from explaining or referring to a credible explanation of the “myth” and its “debunking”.

2) What memo? Could you just forward me a copy, or am I just supposed to take your word for it?

**BickertRules** · 01-31-2021, 01:37 PM

Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop

Still, jazz has found it’s niche. Who cares that a majority of people don’t listen to it. Does classical music worry that their popularity has fallen?

Apparently, yes.

Results from 7 minutes of internet searching:

Classical music sales decline: Is classical on death’s door?

The Decline of the Audience - Terry Teachout, Commentary Magazine

Is Interest in Classical Music Dying? – Truth Be Told

Decline in classical music sales can be stopped, says Select MD - Rhinegold

Can the symphony be saved? | Salon.com

https://newrepublic.com/article/1142...h-ruining-them

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedgavi...r-movements-2/

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/a...charities.html

https://www.npr.org/sections/decepti...=1612113779586

http://www.operapulse.com/explore-op...pera-audience/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/video...or-opera-video

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-in-one-chart/

**henryrobinett** · 01-31-2021, 01:42 PM

That was easy. I didn’t have to look got any links. The classical world has been VERY WORRIED for a long time about their decline in their small market.

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**henryrobinett** · 01-31-2021, 01:44 PM

BTW that myth that was debunked?? I missed the memo too and I’ve been there. Quite the contrary.

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**christianm77** · 01-31-2021, 02:06 PM

There’ll be some get out clause where Benny Goodman etc don’t count for .... reasons

**BickertRules** · 01-31-2021, 02:34 PM

Benny Goodman? Do you mean that great musician, bandleader, and entertainer of the 1930s-40s who was among the first and last America jazz men to reach massive popularity (not just a puny Kind of Blue sort of “popularity”) with the big swing bands - the apex of the music before the circle-jerking beboppers injected the slow-acting poisons of audience apathy, insularity, and exclusion that has just barely not completely killed the music, as far as public interest is concerned?

You mean the leader of the Benny Goodman Orchestra, who scored six top-ten hits in a six-month period in the 1930s - and not on some sort of training-wheels jazz charts - no, the Pop charts.

Benny Goodman, whose greatest guitarist was...

...Allen Reuss.

That Benny Goodman?

Originally Posted by christianm77

There’ll be some get out clause where Benny Goodman etc don’t count for .... reasons

**Lobomov** · 01-31-2021, 02:56 PM

Originally Posted by BickertRules

Benny Goodman? Do you mean that great musician, bandleader, and entertainer of the 1930s-40s who was among the last America jazz men to reach massive popularity (not just a puny Kind of Blue sort of “popularity”) with the big swing bands - the apex of the music before the circle-jerking beboppers injected the slow-acting poisons of audience apathy, insularity, and exclusion that has just barely not completely killed the music, as far as public interest is concerned?

That Benny Goodman?

You're telling me these aren't pictures of the packed 2019 Seattle jazz scene?

**BickertRules** · 01-31-2021, 02:59 PM

Wow; just wow.

Originally Posted by Lobomov

You're telling me these aren't pictures of the packed 2019 Seattle jazz scene?

**Litterick** · 01-31-2021, 03:26 PM

In 1935, the clarinettist and bandleader Benny Goodman, aged just twenty-six, left New York with his fourteen-piece “swing” band and, traveling in a rag-tag group of cars, headed for the huge Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. It was not an easy trip. There were half a dozen dismal, sparsely attended one-nighters and three weeks at a dance hall in Denver, where the band was forced to play waltzes, tangos, and novelty numbers. On the opening night at the Palomar, the band played ballad numbers in the first set, and there was little response from the dancers. Then one of the musicians said, if they were going to bomb again they might as well do it in style. So Goodman called for his hot, often up-tempo arrangements, many of them by the ingenious black bandleader and arranger Fletcher Henderson, and the kids stopped dancing, clustered around the bandstand, and began roaring. Before the weeks at the Palomar were over, it was clear that Goodman had suddenly made jazz—still a suspect and largely subliminal American folk music, despite the brilliant inventions during the previous decade of Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Duke Ellington—into a popular music.
...
A year later, when the band went into the Paramount Theater in New York for three weeks, legions of kids appeared, and a screaming, dancing riot nearly took place. It was the first great American show-biz frenzy, and it prepared the way for the Sinatra frenzy of 1947 (also at the Paramount), for the Elvis and Beatles frenzies, and for all the endemic, mindless rock-borne frenzies of the Seventies and Eighties.

Whitney Balliett
'Swing King'
New York Review of Books
August 13, 1998.

**Litterick** · 01-31-2021, 04:21 PM

New York Times, 23rd December 2001.

Dressed to the Nines

To the Editor,

Re ''Sulka, Haberdasher to Royalty, Is to Close Its Last Shop in U.S.'' (news article, Dec. 21):

One day, in the late 30's, when Benny Goodman and his brilliant drummer Dave Tough were walking past the Sulka that was then on Park Avenue, Goodman stopped and asked Tough if he could take him in and buy him a tie, and Tough said: ''Thanks, Benny, but I have one.''

WHITNEY BALLIETT
New York, Dec. 21, 2001