Joe Bebco’s article (“What Is To Be Done?” March 2018) resonated strongly with me. As someone whose deepest sense of jazz’s immediacy and importance was formed by seeing my idols perform in smoke-filled clubs, I have tended to shy away from festivals and cruises. They seem almost as outdated as World’s Fairs. I remember how pale an imitation of 1939 was 1964’s edition of this event. Maybe the future was more trustworthy before, than after, WWII. A high school friend’s father’s color 8mm films of the 1939 Fair strongly suggested this. But there’s more to my lack of attendance than obsolescence.
When it comes to jazz, there was something to club culture that I rarely found at concerts. I would watch as group leaders or featured players drifted over to the bar while other sidemen soloed, sometimes looking at them like proud parents, other times keeping a stiff upper lip of pretend indifference to keep criticism to themselves. Concert halls seem too linked to conservatories. I remember seeing groups crowded onto nightclub stages that barely could accommodate them, and yet triumphing over their confinement with blisteringly inspired music.
But this only skims the surface of club culture. There was a feeling that one was at a place of origin for the music they were hearing. Suddenly Birdland or the BlueNote were part of a historic present—and the listener was invol
