Outside Counsel

To the Jim Cullum Jazz Band yesterday, the penultimate show in this season's Hunt Real Estate Art of Jazz series. This is "traditional jazz", not usually my cup of meat. Even so, the exuberance and virtuosity on display, and the depth of the repertoire, made for a pretty irresistible afternoon of music. One of the things that marks the evolution of jazz is the change in instrumental lineups: Cullum plays cornet rather than trumpet; and clarinet is featured instead of saxophone. The result is a rather warmer sound overall, which was interesting. It was also interesting to consider that this music, invented by Buddy Boldin, and King Oliver, refined and perfected by Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, is now white music. The audience was as old and white as you can imagine, and the band could have been the most swinging accountants' firm ever, and this is not a new development. After Armstrong the cornet player that everyone knows is Bix Beiderbecke, and, of course, Hogey Charmichael contributed as much to the traditional jazz canon as anyone. There are those who will tell you that bebop came about because African-American musicians resented white co-optation of "their" music, but I think it probably had more to do with the fact that segregation prevented people from playing together. Benny Goodman resisted it, and benefited creatively, after all, and as American apartheid loosed up guys like Red Rodney or Gerry Mulligan contributed to the various new sounds that were becoming popular. Listening to Cullum and the guys in his band it was hard not to wonder what directions their music might have gone in had it not become fixed in amber. There was plenty of happy improvisation, and swing, and soul in evidence, but even though much of the material was unfamiliar to me I never had the sense that at any moment I would be surprised, and they really never got around to blowing the roof down either.