Portraits of the Artists as Young Musicians
A look at AB Spellman's 1966 book Four Lives in the Bebop Business
A while back, Mosaic Records released two box sets of 1960s recordings by some big names in jazz: Joe Henderson and Freddie Hubbard. Both of them released a bunch of records in that decade on Blue Note: Hub-Tones, Page One, etc. And both played a style of hard bop that was both popular and has come to define the kind of jazz one associates with that decade.
But both of them are far from the only thing happening that decade. You had Mingus’s seminal albums for Impulse, the Miles Davis Quartet reinventing itself every night, John Coltrane’s spiritual quests into sound. You know all that already. My point is that about 55 years ago, jazz was flourishing, right? There was so much happening and all of the people we think of now as legends were putting stuff out all the time.
But that’s not exactly the case.
That year, poet and critic AB Spellman published Four Lives in the Bebop Business. Here Spellman profiles four different musicians: Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Herbie Nichols, and Jackie McLean. At the time, three of the four were doing different things in jazz and the one who wasn’t - Nichols - had been doing so up until his premature death.
By this point, most of them were established names. Taylor had released a handful of records and spent time in Europe, pushing his music deeper into the avant-garde. Coleman had snapped up by Atlantic Records and released a string of albums with his innovative, piano-less group. And McLean was a musician’s musician, having played with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Charles Mingus - who wrote “Profile of Jackie” for him - but hadn’t quite cracked through as a bandleader yet.
Nichols, however, was the tragic story here and something of the wild card. His chapter is the shortest, but in many ways it’s the most memorable. A talented pianist and composer, Nichols struggled to find work and get his music out there. In the late 1940s, as bebop opportunities started to open for musicians like Thelonious Monk, Nichols wasn’t able to find dates. He instead freelanced, taught piano, and hit the road with lesser musicians: does anyone really remember Buster Bailey?
It wasn’t until Nichols was 36 that he got to make his first records with Blue Note. “I begged Al Lion for ten years,” he says. “He said I was the most persistent man he ever met.” These two records - The Prophetic Herbie Nichols Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 - are now considered classics; the Penguin Guide to Jazz says “No one interested in the development of bebop, or indeed of jazz piano, should be without it.” But as Spellman points out Nichols didn’t make money off his records.
While his case was more extreme than the others, Four Lives shows that contrary to what seems now like a fertile scene, there were major struggles for creative jazz. Venues were few and far between, and the ones that did book acts were often dismissive of new music. Spellman quotes drummer Sonny Murray on a Taylor gig:
“When the group got there, we found (the owner) had left a Negro manager in charge who seemed to to feel that his music was not good enough for the Coronet. After the first set, he contacted Cecil and told him that he was fired. He just said ‘We don’t want this music in here, you’re fired.” (pg 19)
Or look at how Ornette Coleman was treated:
“Later Ornette took a group into the Jazz Gallery, where he drew his ever-growing audience almost nightly. It was here that his bitterness for the scene hardened after seeing Dave Brubeck follow him into the club and earn many times the money Ornette’s group had. Ornette tripled his pay demands for nightclub appearances, on the basis he should be paid according to the house he drew. These demands were immediately rejected by the nightclub owners…” (pg 134)
Even though this was pretty early in both Taylor and Coleman’s careers, each of them seem pretty fully formed. Coleman is pushing himself into new ideas and sounds, working on what would eventually become Harmolodics. Taylor, meanwhile, is as prickly as self assured as ever - a guy who mixed passions for dance and contemporary classical with group improvisation and jazz. Spellman was the rare guy in the mid 60s who got it - he’s a sympathetic listener and appreciates what each of these two innovators are doing.
McLean, meanwhile, is a survivor. He struggled with drugs, losing his cabaret card (and NYC performing privileges), and an onerous record deal that left him in debt. But he kept going, finally releasing records on Blue Note, touring Japan, and getting the recognition he deserved. That would all come later, though. By this juncture, he wasn’t able to gig in New York City and had to turn down offers.
Not that he was silent or anything, though. “He exemplifies much of the best and the worst of the jazz life,” writes Spellman. “He is one of the few jazz musicians who has been able to keep his music fresh and moving…” A good example of this is the 1964 record Destination… Out!, probably one of only a few records that earns its exclamation point. (Weirdly, however, Spellman only mentions his association with Grachan Moncur III only briefly).
All in all, the book is a nice look at these four when their reputation wasn’t quite as set in stone as today. Taylor has a hardcore following, but isn’t as well remembered as the other three; maybe an upcoming book by Burning Ambulance’s Phil Freeman can do something about that. Coleman went on to experiment with rock grooves and string sections, playing with everyone from Jerry Garcia to Jamaaladeen Tacuma. And McLean kept plowing ahead, chasing his muse into the 1990s, putting out some pretty good records on Steeplechase in the next decade. Thankfully, Nichols finally found his audience; in 1997 Blue Note released a 3CD box set with everything he recorded for the label. They’re all gone now, but Spellman still seems to be with us. Maybe. I should write him a letter.
If you’re looking for something that will give you an overview of these four musicians, this isn’t the right book. It came too soon to put their careers into perspective, and that’s not really its point, either. But if you’re interested in their origins and influences, in hearing these four now-passed musicians explain their music, and in hearing from a sympathetic writer who wanted these musicians to become better known, Four Lives is your book.