Word: crows
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...swing by white combos. According to Pianist Mary Lou Williams, the Bop era of the '40s began when Thelonious Monk decided: "We're going to create something they can't steal, because they can't play it." But the real problems of Crow Jim emerged in the '505 with the big-money success of West Coast jazz under the leadership of Brubeck, Mulligan, Shorty Rogers and Shelly Manne-all of them white. The new jazz put more emphasis on sophisticated arrangement and composition, avoiding the traditional African-born aspects of hard swing...
...Uncle Tom." West Coast jazz is no longer an important consideration, but Crow Jim is, especially among the angry young men who are passionately involved in the rise of Negro nationalism. Jazz compositions these days bear titles like A Message from Kenya (Art Blakey), Uhuru Afrika (Randy Weston), Africa Speaks, America Answers (Guy Warren), Afro-American Sketches (Oliver Nelson). Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite-We Insist includes tunes like Tears for Johannesburg, a lament for the Africans shot down in the Sharpeville massacre. To younger jazzmen, a great musician like Louis Armstrong is suspect-instead of hopping...
Charlie Mingus denies that Crow Jim exists: "How can you talk about Crow-Jim and look at Mississippi?" And, adds Negro Pianist Horace Silver: "The whites started crying Crow Jim when the public got hip that Negroes play the best jazz." Nonetheless, believes Silver, the differ ence between soul or "funk" music and other varieties of jazz is the difference between talking "colored" and ordinary English-and only a Negro musician can feel it. "It is murder today for white jazz players. Negro clubs just won't play them." says Impresario George Wein. White Pianist Paul Winter...
...direction. Querulous Trumpeter Miles Davis has always insisted on hiring his musicians on talent only, although he concedes that "some colored cats bitched" when he added white Saxophonist Lee Konitz to his group. (In jazz argot, the pressure applied by Negro bigots to Negroes who will not subscribe to Crow Jim is called Crow Crow; its opposite is Jim Jim.) Says Negro Saxophonist Sonny Stitt: "Man. if a guy can play, that's all that counts. I don't care if his skin is purple, orange or chartreuse...
...other Negroes to play with him, it's because he's looking for the same emphasis musically and emotionally." Cooler heads know that the future of jazz could depend on resolving prejudice. Noting that modern jazz owes much to the European classical tradition. Pianist Taylor points out: "Crow Jim is a state of affairs which must be remedied; jazz can never again be music by Negroes strictly for Negroes any more than the Negroes themselves can return to the attitudes and emotional responses which prevailed when this was true...