They had a right to sing the blues: as blacks' social and economic circumstances have improved, their music has taken a nosedive. American culture at large has abetted the decline, and suffered from it

National Review, July 8, 1991 by Tom Bethell

IT'S DIFFICULT to go to a large music store these days without being bombarded by this insistent doggerel called rap music. "I could do that when I was ten years old," said Ray Charles, capturing in his comment the mood of triumphant mockery that characterizes rap. As in a bad dream, words and phrases turn over and repeat restlessly. At times we seem to be in the midst of a convention of imps hopping about on pogo sticks.

Some are eager to deny that this is decadence. Invoking the Progressive Myth as though we had not heard it a thousand times, a New York Times editorial writer found something very familiar in these sounds: the history of music has been one of "innovative, even outrageous styles" that eventually became mainstream." And so it will be, no doubt, with rap. (Beethoven, too, wasn't appreciated in his own day.) Newsweek referred to rap as "the next evolutionary step."

I'm not here concerned about the immorality of what used to be called the "lyrics," or the general air of triumphant badness. It is the musical decline, reflecting a more general change in the culture, that concerns me here. How are we to account for it?

The evidence of this decline is readily at hand. "Next to the nettle lies the rose," and next to rap there lies, in the music-store racks, a great treasure trove of American music, reissued on compact disc. The "hot" collectors of the 1930s would be dumfounded: their long-sought "wants" on such labels as Okeh and Vocalion not only copiously available but complete, in many cases, with second takes, unissued masters, and archival photographs.

Musical Paradise Regained

WE'VE HEARD about the Robert Johnson reissue, with every known take of this Mississippi Delta blues singer recently released by Columbia. It sold 325,000 copies and made the Billboard charts. What I want to draw attention to here is a new issue of (I believe) even greater musical merit, which has so far received no attention. I refer to some recordings made in 1944 by the great trumpeter Bunk Johnson and the clarinetist George Lewis, in an old dance hall in New Orleans. The sessions (which lasted for a week) were recorded by William Russell, as it happens one of those old "hot" collectors himself. Now 86, and living in New Orleans, Russell has been supervising the release of the material.

Bunk Johnson was discovered in the late 1930s when a number of people did the first research into early jazz history. Several New Orleans musicians said that Bunk had been among the best trumpeters in the early days. He had "the most beautiful tone, the best imagination," Louis Armstrong said. It turned out that Bunk, then 59, was working in a rice mill in New Iberia, Louisiana. He claimed he could still play. The story of his being equipped with false teeth and a new trumpet has been often told.

The band that Russell brought together to play with Bunk was probably the best then available in New Orleans. The drummer, Baby Dodds, was brought down from Chicago, where he had earlier recorded with Armstrong. Columbia's famous talent scout, John Hammond, who signed up everyone from Bessie Smith to Count Basie to Bob Dylan, happened to be in New Orleans that summer. He heard about Russell's session and showed up one night as the band was playing. He remarked to Russell that these would be the best recordings ever made in the city. Time proved Hammond right. Nothing since has come close.

Russell returned to New Orleans the following year and recorded more bands, including a brass band with Bunk, and a great session with the old-time trumpeter Wooden Joe Nicholas and Albert Burbank, the clarinetist much admired by Woody Allen.

However, few people ever heard these wonderful recordings. Finally, in 1988, Russell concluded that the time was right, and he sold them to a local record producer (Audiophile, 1206 Decatur, New Orleans, La. 70116). Recently I spent some time with Russell in New Orleans, and he told me that one of the things that encouraged him to sell was the quality of sound on compact discs.

Three CDs have been issued ($15 each), two of Bunk at his best, and the third including perhaps the best George Lewis sides ever recorded ("High Society," "Ice Cream," "Burgundy Street Blues," and others).

From Bunk to Junk

IN FIFTY YEARS, the history of jazz uncannily recapitulated the history of European music: from classical to avant garde, with an intermediate romantic phase. With Bunk's band the idiom is classical, yet amazingly relaxed. Trumpet, trombone, and clarinet create an interweaving polyphony comparable in complexity to parts of the Brandenburg Concertos. In the long, nine-minute "Midnight Blues" Jim Robinson's glissando and George Lewis's poignant soaring provide a nonchalant counterpoint to Bunk's endlessly inventive melodic line. I don't know anything else quite like it in American music. But Bunk, always ready with a putdown for those who admired the Art of it, cruelly remarked as it ended: "There's a record Bill Colburn is going to put under his arm and carry all over San Francisco." One of his greatest admirers, Colburn had put Bunk up in his apartment the year before.