Photo by Jens Thekkeveettil on Unsplash
Once the musicians decide to tackle “Days of Wine and Roses,” and once they’re done flipping through books and scrolling through smartphones to find the music, they count it off and hurl themselves into it.
I focus on the clarinet player. He’s not the greatest musician, but he’s a daredevil. He’s unafraid to play up high, even if notes sometimes get away from him, like a basketball player unafraid to launch threes, even if they’re not quite in his range.
Next to him stands Joe, the leader of the group, his alto saxophone strapped to his chest. When he plays, Joe commands the room, but now he’s just listening. After the clarinet player finishes, he looks at Joe. The saxophonist nods and says, simply and coolly, “All right.”
Out in the suburbs of Boston, on the edge of a rough-and-tumble downtown cut in half by railroad tracks, I’ve come to hear jazz.
Every Tuesday night, the Amazing Things Arts Center, which makes its home in a converted firehouse in Framingham, hosts a long-standing jazz jam. It’s a place for musicians to go out on a limb, to experience this crazy, complicated, confounding, and ultimately—if played correctly, confidently and with heart—beautiful music.
Art hangs on the wall of the center, along with a life-sized cutout of James Dean. Musicians mill about the stage. All are invited to participate in the jam, but I never do, even though I’ve played piano since I was 11 years old. Frankly, I’m not sure I could conjure the right notes. Jazz isn’t for the uncommitted. You have to put in the time and woodshed, flailing away at your instrument, and even then you might not get it.
I’m reminded of my father, who played a lot of jazz on the stereo when I was growing up in Philadelphia. On Sunday nights he listened to WRTI’s Harrison Ridley, who after a particularly hot number would always intone, “Yes, indeedy.” My dad could feel those songs in his gut, but he was unsure how the sausage was made, so to speak. “I like jazz,” he would say, “but I don’t understand it.”
Over at the refreshment stand, I pay my $6 admission. A clipboard is there with a list of people waiting to play. “Did you want to sign up?” the lady behind the counter asks. “No,” I say. “I’m just here to listen.”
Jazz jams start with a set by experienced pros, and then the others, the nonprofessionals who have a love of the music and the courage and conviction to climb on stage, take over. They filter in and out. One night, a singer scats a few numbers, and then a guitarist hops up, followed by a couple of horn players. Towards the back of the stage, a soprano saxophonist works hard at not being noticed. “I’m trying to be unassuming,” he says. He has an iPad set up with the sheet music he needs, and he’s wearing cargo shorts, a T-shirt, sandals, and gray hair. He looks like a dentist kicking back after a long day of pulling teeth.
As they play, the musicians look around to see who wants the next solo. Jon, who’s built long like the big bass he plucks, serves as their leader for the night. He makes sure that everyone on the list has a chance to play, and that the players don’t step all over each other. When the drummer is about to solo, Jon holds out his hand like a traffic cop, making sure the pianist doesn’t jump in. When Jon points to his head, the players know that’s the signal to take the song back to the top.
He tries to bring the numbers in for smooth endings, but the musicians don’t always stick them properly. They skitter to the finish, like a plane bouncing once or twice before coming to a stop on a runway.
You never know what to expect at the jam. Sometimes the results aren’t pretty. I walk in once, and a guy with round-rim shades, mutt chops, and what appears to be a coonskin cap is sitting behind the bongos. He looks like a mix of Dr. John and Daniel Boone.
When the band launches into “My Favorite Things,” the music is clunky and unsure. It doesn’t flow, the players playing individually rather than jelling together. The bongo guy bangs away, while a long-haired kid on saxophone seems lost, his horn drowned out in the din. The night’s leader, Joe the saxophonist, lanky with slicked-back hair, like someone out of a doo-wop song, finally steps in and blows his horn, his notes loud and right, to get the band back on track. It’s like he just hammered in the stakes of a tent about to be blown away on the wind.
The band moves on to “Invitation,” then “Iris.” The music remains sloppy, at times a mere mumble. Joe listens, paces. At one point, he brings his tenor to his lips, but this time he doesn’t play anything, as if he thinks better of it, as if he wants them to stumble about and figure it out on their own.
Other times, the music snaps into place.
As I often do, I arrive at the jam late one night. Between my daughter’s bath time, story time, and bed time, I often feel like I have to move the mountains of my regular evening routine before I can walk out the door. On this particular night, I rush out to the jam, leaving a pile of dishes in the sink that ultimately will need to be tackled. I fly down the road, pull into the art center’s parking lot, but then pause before the door to the center’s small performance space.
On the door is a poster of Pete Seeger. “American hero” the sign reads, but this isn’t what stops me. Inside, the musicians are running through “Someday My Prince Will Come.” They glide together through the song, and above them a violin soars. I just stand at the door and listen. It’s wonderful.
When I finally walk inside, though, only three people sit in the audience. Unfortunately, this isn’t uncommon. Low attendance has been an ongoing problem at the jam. Magic can and does happen on the stage here, but not many come to hear and take part in it. Some years back, the art center’s director got on Facebook to plead with people to participate. “It’s up to all of us,” he wrote. “If we use it, and if we take care of it, it will live.”
One night, as the players take a break, Jon the bass player talks to the meager crowd. “Don’t go away,” he says. “If anyone goes away, it’ll be a significant part of the audience.”
I guess this shouldn’t be surprising. To see live jazz is to take a trip, from the lows of the blues to the highs of gospel, from backstreets and alleys to cathedrals and skyscrapers. But too often nowadays, the music feels pushed to the side. It can’t be found easily on the radio. You can’t just go down to your local bar and hear a band swinging and blowing. You have to seek it out.
There are exceptions to this. The music was born in New Orleans, and it still feels essential there. The great jazz station, WWOZ, can be heard everywhere you go. It seems like the city’s soundtrack. Go down Frenchman Street, where music pours from club after club, where young brass bands take it to the streets, attracting a crowd so big it blocks the intersection, and you feel like you’ve found what Tom Waits was searching for, the heart of Saturday night. Sitting in the Spotted Cat, a music club, I listen to a Dixieland band, and the year might as well be 1926. Jazz is alive and well.
Outside of New Orleans, the music seems consigned to scattered clubs and public radio. Even that is tenuous. Philly’s WRTI, the old home of the late great DJ Harrison Ridley, has long been split between jazz and classical, another musical genre that’s glory days are long gone. Nearly a decade ago, Boston’s WGBH cut back its jazz programming to only weekend nights.
And sometimes the music feels exclusive. In New York City, I stood outside the legendary Blue Note jazz club and pondered the $25 cover charge. I eventually went elsewhere. Some years back I saw Branford Marsalis and his father, Ellis, in concert. The two strolled out talking to each other, ignoring the audience. They were playing it so cool, like the crowd was inconsequential to what they were doing, like we didn’t matter.
The music at the jazz jam may have its hiccups, but the musicians don’t exist in a rarefied air. I love watching them. Pay close enough attention, and you notice the little details, such as how the drummer swirls his brushes so hard he looks like he’s mixing cake batter; how the trumpet player stands off stage, in the corner alone, almost as if he’s hiding in the shadows; how the piano player touches the keys, so slight, so unobtrusive, but still adding to the mix, his playing light but right; and how the players refer to their music books as the “hymnal,” as if they’re going to church, which in many ways they are.
Before the songs the musicians call out the keys and hash out the rhythm, and afterwards, they pause to dwell on the moment as the music fades away. “B flat. That was fun,” says the violinist after one song ends. His name is Dave, and he plays without fear. The music he makes is big, bold, and out in front.
“You were playing it in A flat,” says Joe the bass player.
“I was?” says Dave.
The musicians laugh.
I’ve been playing piano for some 30 years, and I have dabbled in jazz from time to time. I remember as a teenager the first time I ever left behind the music on the page and tried improvising. The solo wasn’t great, but I was off script, taking chances, going for it. The moment felt important, a new territory that I somehow stumbled upon, like I just split the musical atom.
I wasn’t a music major, but I took jazz piano lessons during my undergraduate days. One semester the lessons were early in the morning, or at least early for my instructor, who was up playing late the night before and insisted on getting coffee before we started. He told me to stop playing like a “white guy from the suburbs.” I indeed am white, as was the teacher, but I was a proud city kid, so I was annoyed that he would insult me by saying I was suburban.
Another instructor told me to sit still while playing. Don’t sway your head, don’t move all around. The only one who can get away with that is Stevie Wonder, he said. More importantly, he told me that every note should count when I solo. That made sense to me immediately. You don’t want to noodle. Every note should have a purpose. To put it in writing terms, no word should be wasted. Read Hemingway and you feel like every word matters.
That’s why I like Miles Davis. He wrings so much out of so little. I listen to the “Round About Midnight” album, studying the contrast between Miles and John Coltrane. Both seeking the truth of the moment in their own way, Coltrane in a blizzard of notes, dazzling and profound, and Davis, playing blue and cool, less is more.
I snuck in some piano lessons again as a graduate student. My teacher emphasized dynamics and playing with emotion. I think of Miles again, of his “It Never Entered My Mind,” how he plays his trumpet almost like a singer, like Sinatra, making you feel it.
As I’ve gone on in life, I’ve held on to these lessons from my old teachers. I may not be as technically skilled as others, but I mean what I play, and I try to make every note ring true. Still, I can’t say I play piano as much as I should. I have responsibilities now, so I’m always stealing five minutes here, 10 minutes there, to sit down at the bench. This isn’t enough to fully inhabit and understand jazz. To do that takes time, courage, and abandonment, all of which I don’t have.
Others aren’t afraid. The music only lives on if people play it, and the jam is buttressed by a core group of regulars. They are not professionals. Rather, they seem to have stepped out of “Sultans of Swing,” the Dire Straits song about a band playing for the love of the music and not much else. Jazz may be on the retreat, its place in the culture diminished, but the jam regulars stand at the ramparts, fighting the good fight. They are the true believers, the keepers of the flame, the National Guard for our musical legacy.
“Let’s take five,” says Joe the saxophonist, again leading the proceedings one night. He works the room, talking with one person about the difficulties of making a living as a musician, and with another who has song suggestions for the jam. “Why don’t you throw them at me?” Joe says. Behind the drum kit, one of the regulars sits waiting. He sports glasses and grey hair. Flipping through worn copies of music books, he is patient for the music to start back up. He looks like a grandpa eager for someone to play catch with him. Another regular, a guitarist, lugs his amp to the stage. He wears glasses attached to a lanyard, and he has the air of an accountant about to fill out your 1040.
Finally, the break wraps up. “Let’s play some music,” Joe says. “What do you say, guys?” A smartass calls out from the audience, “You guys play any Journey?” The musicians ultimately settle on “Fly Me to the Moon,” and after a quick chat about how to begin, they count it off. The drummer holds down the beat. He’s not flashy, but he keeps the rhythm tight and moving. The guitarist, meanwhile, takes lead. At times, his delivery isn’t the most fluid, but he knows the notes he wants to play and is determined to get them right. When he finishes, he looks around to see who wants to solo next.
The song rolls along but comes to a clumsy end, like a gymnast who tumbles though the air but fumbles the landing on the mat. Still, no bones were broken. “Safe,” someone says.
Discussion turns to what the next song should be. “You guys want to do a funk version of ‘Misty?’” asks a sax player. This throws the musicians for a loop. Joe steps in. He snaps his fingers. “Groove on those first four measures, and let’s see if we can get that funkified,” he says.
The regulars are not the hippest looking crew. Miles Davis they are not. Instead, they often look schleppy and wrinkled, their jeans too loose, hanging off them. They may have the keys to the kingdom on stage, but off it, they seem stiff and all too regular.
They certainly aren’t a diverse group. Outside of Dave the violinist, no black folks, the very people who invented the music, are among the ranks of the regulars. Not many women are either. One night a woman carrying an electric bass climbs on stage with the men. She more than holds her own, taking the bass line for a long, easy walk around the block. With her blue jeans and long black hair, she seems loose, free, and completely in the moment on stage. I marvel at her. Where did she come from? Women show up from time to time at the jam, but the bassist could very well be the coolest lady in the Boston metro area.
The musicians also skew older. Some young people do show up, but for the most part, the players are older than 50. I am in my 40s, and more than once I am the youngest one there. I can’t help but wonder what the future holds for the music, at least at the jam.
While their numbers may be thin, and their bodies may be aging, the regulars keep at it. I suspect they may be tired after the working day, but in the evening, week after week, they come to this suburban outpost of jazz. I wonder why they do it. Without much of an audience, they are playing only for themselves.
I think of James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” Its main plot focuses on Sonny, a tortured jazz musician recovering from heroin addiction, but “Sonny’s Blues” is about a lot of things—fathers, sons, and brothers, race and being black in America. But it’s also about what goes into making music, the effort, the pain. “Sometimes you’ll do anything to play,” says Sonny, “even cut your mother’s throat.”
Good music can take you away, at least for a little while, as the narrator of “Sonny’s Blues” realizes as he watches his brother play: “I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.”
I believe the regulars want out of the jam the same thing I want, a respite from that tiger, from those troubles stretched over our heads. The music they make is very much alive and breathing. It moves and flows and takes you somewhere.
On another Tuesday night at the jam, the stage is brimming with seven players. Almost 20 people sit in the audience. For the jam, this qualifies as a good night. There are even a smattering of young people, as well as a couple of women, in the crowd. Joe the saxophonist takes the helm.
At first, the music feels a bit off. It’s not clicking. A clarinetist hits a wrong note and stares in disbelief at the sheet music. He backs away, walks around to the other musicians, peers at their sheet music instead, but still can’t find the right notes. The guitarist, one of the regulars, the one who looks like he should be working at PricewaterhouseCoopers, sits in the center of the stage. He looks nonplussed, the cacophony swirling about him nothing compared to the madness of tax season.
After the group rattles to the ending, a freight train screeching to a halt, Joe switches things up. Walking around with a clipboard, he pulls some musicians off-stage, brings others on. One of the regulars, a drummer, gets behind the kit. A new bassist hops up, as well as young piano player wearing dark-framed glasses. Every so often as he plays, he sneaks a hand up to his face to push them back into place.
No denying it, the band is now on more stable ground. The song is a bossa nova, and it’s rolling. It’s swinging. I’m bopping my head to the goodness of it. Yes, indeedy. It’s moments like this that you wait for at the jam.
Next up is the quick-as-lightening “Donna Lee.” Joe the leader grabs his tenor. “How fast should the tempo be?” someone asks. “As fast as you can play it comfortably,” Joe advises. Someone cracks in the audience, “We’ll have the defibrillator ready.”
The bassist takes the bass line for a walk. Actually, it’s more like a jog. After playing the opening flurry of notes on his sax, Joe makes his hand into a six shooter.
“All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it,” Sonny’s brother says in “Sonny’s Blues.” Jazz is a rich music, and I do my best to really listen, to open my heart and soul to it. But I can’t stay all night at the jam, much less think of climbing on stage to chase the magic and fire of performance with the other musicians.
As I listen to the musicians one night, Dave the violinist peers into the darkness, to the audience. “Who else is out there?” he asks, sounding like a homeroom teacher taking attendance. Besides myself, two people sit in the crowd, if I can call it that, and one of those is the sound man who works the board. “Anyone else want to play?” Dave says. “Anybody?” No one moves. I look down. I’ve got to leave. I’m tired, and dishes wait for me at home.
I walk out the door, to the waiting world and all its trouble stretched above us, and leave the musicians on stage to carry on.
John Crawford is a writer and editor in the Boston area. His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Smart Set, Points in Case, and other publications. He can be found on Twitter, @crawfordwriter, where he writes weird, depressing, semi-amusing missives about climate change.