Dyer, Geoff. But
Beautiful [A Book About Jazz]. Picador, 1996.
I was impressed with
how Geoff Dyer writes about music. I picked up the book with a certain
prejudice, since I had just read about how he likes to study a subject
intensely for a few years and then create a book about the topic. He calls it ‘gatecrashing.’
This sounds familiar: I do kind of the same thing although I may not immerse
myself for quite as long (usually it’s a year-long project chosen on New Year’s
Day), and I produce an article or essay instead of a full-length book. I’ll be
honest with the reader about my dilettantism and even crack jokes at my own
expense. I blogged about my gatecrashing here in 2012: http://margaretmontet.blogspot.com/2012/12/resolving-happy-new-year.html.
What would a whole book
about jazz by a non-jazzer be like? It was compelling! Without using jargon, he
describes the sonic fabric, the onstage environment, and influences acting upon
the musician. It’s no secret that many depend(ed) on substances in order to
cope with life on the road, or unstable home and family lives damaged by that
life on the road. They toured anyway, creating new interpretations of standard
solos and tunes as they travelled from town to town. That recording you’ve
listened to a thousand times of Art Blakey’s group playing “A Night in Tunisia”
would sound different live in Philadelphia, and different again in Chicago.
Dizzy Gillespie’s version would sound different still. You’d still recognize
the tune, but the performances would differ. The point in jazz is not to make
your performance sound the same as the original (as with a pop or rock cover
band), but to make it sound new and unexpected. With the standard tunes often
performed in jazz, it’s not even common knowledge who recorded it first.
But
Beautiful profiles Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington,
Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Ben Webster, Charles Mingus, Chet Baker, and Art
Pepper. Somehow, Dyer makes clear to the reader that the performance being
created onstage as we read is a direct product of the experiences and
tribulations that each musician has gone through. Their emotions and memories
come out in the music. We are there on the stage with the musician, with cigarette
smoke impeding our breathing, and the sound of ice in glasses mingling with the
music. Dyer is a Brit—this is obvious from words like serviet for napkin—and he
seems unaware of jargon that an average American jazz fan like me would know.
At one point he has Ben Webster telling Charlie Parker that “you don’t play the
tenor sax that way.” But we all know, (don’t we?), that Parker played alto
saxophone. I’ve noticed over the years that saxophone players say ‘saxophone,’
not ‘sax,’ or more simply refer to the range: ‘Charlie Parker played alto.’
These quibbles don’t
take away from the book. The descriptions of the musicians are superb. I was tempted
to call out from work so that I wouldn’t have to put the book down.
“Throughout I relied
more on photographs than on written sources…” That acknowledgement appears in
the paragraph leading into Dyer’s bibliography. Sure, they say a picture is
worth a thousand words, but still, what a curious, interesting way to put
together a profile of a jazz musician. That comment stopped me in my tracks as
a lot of the book did. Dyer is writing as a listener and as such has no need for
pesky jargon. He has to make himself clear to his readers, not his jazz
subjects, and he does this with aplomb.
