On the Shoulders of Giants

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Armstrong’s popularity increased as a result of his thousands of recordings, his playing three hundred gigs a year while touring Africa, Europe, and America, as well as his appearances in over sixty movies—including Pennies from Heaven (1936) and Hello, Dolly! (1969)—and dozens of television shows. Some of his hit recordings included “Stardust,” “What a Wonderful World,” “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” and “We Have All the Time in the World.” His recording of “Hello, Dolly” in 1964 achieved two landmarks: it knocked the Beatles out of the number one slot on the Billboard Top 100, and it made the then sixty-three-year-old Armstrong the oldest singer to have a number one hit. In 1990, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an “early influence.”

  Some of the same criticism that a few African-American activists leveled against the Harlem Renaissance was also aimed at Armstrong. He was accused of playing a modern version of the blackface minstrel in a desperate effort to appeal to white audiences. He was also criticized for not being more openly vocal during the Civil Rights Movement. Although Armstrong preferred to stay quietly out of the political spotlight—whether because of his personality or because he feared repercussions to his career—he did support civil rights through his major financial contributions to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists. One exception he made was in his very public 1957 criticism of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom he referred to as “gutless” and “two-faced” for refraining from action in the desegregation conflict in Little Rock, Arkansas. As a result, he canceled his State Department–sponsored goodwill tour of the Soviet Union, declaring, “The way they’re treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell.” In a Larry King interview in 1967, Armstrong discussed his civil rights stance: “As time went on and I made a reputation, I had it put in my contracts that I wouldn’t play no place I couldn’t stay. I was the first Negro in the business to crack them big white hotels—oh, yeah! I pioneered, Pops!”

  Louis Armstrong died in his sleep of a heart attack in Queens, New York, on July 6, 1971, at age sixty-nine.

  Final Notes That Linger: The Legacy of Jazz

  Musicologist Samuel Floyd remarked, “The Harlem Renaissance has been treated primarily as a literary movement, with occasional asides, contributed as musical spice, about the jazz age and performances of concert artists. But music’s role was much more basic and important to the movement.” While it’s true that the great works of literature and art affected many people, reshaping how whites saw the African-American, and providing successful artists as role models for black children to emulate, that number was relatively small. It was music, specifically jazz, that reached out to the general population of America and made them reconsider the type of people who could produce such lovely sounds. As such, jazz became the most influential black-created art form in America. Miles Davis once said, “Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.” That was certainly the case here: jazz revolutionized the role of African-Americans in society.

  Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is credited with popularizing the phrase Jazz Age, observed, “The word jazz in its progress toward respectability has meant first sex, then dancing, then music.” True, at the beginning jazz was merely the accompanying music to a larger parade of attitudes and behavior. But in the end, it was the music that endured, that outlived the Jazz Age—and every other age that has followed. The New Negro of the Harlem Renaissance was supposed to change America, and that’s exactly what these extraordinary musicians did. They gave Harlem life its own sound track—and America its own musical identity. The music may have evolved over time, but its heart is still in Harlem.

  Any celebration of an art form lends itself to overstatement. Let’s be clear: Jazz didn’t cure cancer. Jazz didn’t stop world hunger. Jazz didn’t even eliminate racism. But it is not an exaggeration to state that what jazz did do was provide a subtle and entertaining means to communicate to white America that black America was a lively, innovative, creative, and talented contributor to the culture. Once jazz, and all the types of music that jazz influenced, became an acknowledged part of American culture, biases began to fade. When some of a person’s most treasured memories include the music of men and women of color, those musicians are seen with the same fondness as the memory. Jazz—and its progeny of rock ’n’ roll, rhythm ’n’ blues, soul, rap, and hip-hop, to name a few—raised generation after generation on the notes and words that articulated their teen angst, provided the lush background to falling in love, gave them the rhythm to dance at their weddings, and blared from the radio on all those long family car trips. And each of those generations has shed one more skin of racism. The Harlem Renaissance wanted America to take notice of the greatness African-Americans were capable of. Jazz accomplished just that.

  “Everything Was

  Mostly Fun”

  How Jazz

  Influenced My Life

  BY KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR

  Jazz’s impact on me has been monumental. First, jazz stands as a series of mileposts that chronicle my maturation from childhood to manhood. There’s a jazz song attached to the memory of every major event in my life. Miles Davis taught me how to be cool, or at least to think I was cool, as a gawky, towering teen. Thelonious Monk’s exuberant piano playing infused me with the same exuberance on the basketball court. Certainly it didn’t hurt my chances to have Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine harmonizing behind the sofa when I first kissed a girl. And it wasn’t just the music, but also the musicians, many of whom I met at various points in my life and whose wisdom guided me. For example, Thelonious Monk was fiercely independent and encouraged others to have faith in their own vision. He once said, “I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing—even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.” He was talking about playing jazz, but he could just as easily been talking about playing professional basketball. That kind of confidence inspired me to be more independent, more confident of my decisions, even if others didn’t agree.

  Second, jazz connects me to African-American history. Because its origins date all the way back to Africa, it’s like a musical slide show of four hundred years of everything that black people have had to endure and overcome and celebrate. I can’t listen to certain songs without thinking about our collective history. Billie Holiday’s mournful and haunting “Strange Fruit” conjures horrific images of the lynchings, mutilations, and burnings of hundreds of black people:

  Southern trees bear strange fruit,

  Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

  Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,

  Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

  Jazz reminds us never to forget just how precarious any group’s place in a society can be. If we never forget their suffering, especially the causes of it, we are less likely to have to endure it again.

  The third way that jazz influenced me is best summed up in Count Basie’s assessment about his life as a jazz musician: “Everything was mostly fun, the whole thing!” All those generations of jazz greats who shimmied and gyrated and played their hearts out would be sadly disappointed if all we came away with was a dry, passionless historical perspective. “Not to deny that [jazz] is a thinking people’s music,” said jazz drummer Brian Blade, “but when I listen to music, if I ever catch myself thinking, I’m in trouble—I know something is wrong.” The best of art evokes strong emotions—emotions that can later be examined as to what they mean in the larger scheme of the universe. But at the time I’m listening to the music, I just want to feel it swimming around inside my body and animating my limbs as if I were a puppet with each string tugged by a different instrument. And when the song is over, I want to feel my heart beating faster in my chest, as if something I really cared about had just happened.

  Raised on Jazz

  Jazz’s inf
luence on me probably started while I was still in the womb. In those prenatal months my parents sang with the famous Hall Johnson Choir, who performed some of the era’s most notable choir singing onstage and on-screen. They did the choral music for the all-black movie Cabin in the Sky (1943), which starred jazz legends Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, and Louis Armstrong. The choir also performed in classic Disney movies, such as Dumbo (1941) and Song of the South (1946).

  When I was a baby, my dad was playing his trombone at various places with other musicians whenever possible. He would often play jam sessions at Minton’s Playhouse on 118th Street in Manhattan. Minton’s jam sessions were famous for including jazz legends such as Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker. Sometimes these after-hours sessions would last until after sunrise, and my mom would just put me in the stroller at seven o’clock on Sunday morning and walk up to Minton’s to collect my dad for Sunday breakfast, which was an important family meal in my household.

  As I got older, my dad would sometimes take me with him to rehearsal. This is where I met such jazz greats as Dizzy Gillespie, Yosef Lateef, Cecil Payne, Kenny Dorham, Randy Weston, and Max Roach. Sometimes I would be out walking with my dad and he would point out members of famous bands to me, people like Ben Webster or Jimmy Rushing or Johnny Hodges. They’d be strolling by, a bag of groceries in their arms or an unfiltered cigarette dangling from their lips, just like everyone else. They seemed a little like superheroes walking around in their secret identities.

  Living in northern Manhattan meant that you would encounter jazz greats at many different places. Some of my friends went to school with Johnny Hodges’s daughter. Johnny played alto for Duke Ellington’s band as a principal soloist. My friend Woody Owens lived in the same building as George Duvivier, a superb bass player. Woody took lessons from George with other kids from the neighborhood. For George, it was his way of giving back to the community and keeping the tradition alive. My friend Tyrone Leonard lived across the street from Jimmy Cobb, who was Miles Davis’s drummer in the later fifties. Tyrone introduced me to Jimmy when I was fifteen years old. There would often be other guys who played with Miles at Jimmy’s house, which is how I got to meet bass players Paul Chambers and Ron Carter. Ben Riley, Thelonious Monk’s drummer, also lived in Tyrone’s building. Sometimes Tyrone would babysit for Ben and his wife, Inez. One day Tyrone had a hot date and I took over his babysitting duties. From then on Ben would leave my name at the door of the Village Vanguard Jazz Club whenever Thelonious was performing. I was there so often that I got to know the band members pretty well, and I have considered them friends ever since. I’ve been told that Thelonious watched the NBA finals in 1980 because he knew “that kid” from the Vanguard. It is an honor to have brought some joy to his life as he has in mine.

  To us kids in the neighborhood, jazz musicians were like today’s rock stars, but more humble and more connected to the people. Sure, they wanted to be successful, make lots of records, and make even more money. But for most that was more wishful thinking than a real possibility. After all, they’d chosen to dedicate their lives to a type of music in which the odds of achieving all that were slim. Even some of the more famous jazz musicians were still anxious about their next paycheck. Like wealthy athletes who stay in the game well past their prime, they were in it for love of the game. They couldn’t have quit jazz even if they’d wanted to. Like my father, who, despite his prestigious Juilliard education and natural musical talent, couldn’t support his family as a musician. So he became a transit cop. But that didn’t stop him from jamming at Minton’s or anyplace else he could find a couple of jazz musicians anxious to play. They couldn’t not play. It was a calling.

  That’s what we admired about them. That’s what I admired about him.

  Recorded jazz was on the turntable at my home every day of the week. Walk into our home and you’d likely hear Count Basie, Nat “King” Cole, Louis Armstrong, Billy Eckstien, Duke Ellington, and Sarah Vaughan. When my dad started attending the Juilliard School of Music, classical music was added to the mix. Still, jazz dominated and wafted through the house the same way the smells from my mother’s cooking did, seeping into the walls and furniture as if it were another member of the family. It wasn’t just the music that made my parents such intense jazz fans. They also felt that jazz, with its roots firmly planted in African-American history, was a dignified and enjoyable aspect of black culture and that the prominent musicians were appropriate heroes and role models for young blacks. Like most kids, I was looking for role models and mentors. I was searching for black faces who had a passion for what they did, but also knew how to project cool and confidence, the two most important tools for surviving childhood, especially at my awkward height. Duke Ellington said, “By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.” I may not have known exactly what that meant, but I knew it was cool and confident. I knew I wanted to have those qualities.

  Exposure to jazz celebrities through my dad made me feel special and also made me appreciate my dad as a musician. Once when I was five or six years old, my dad took me backstage at the Apollo Theater to meet Sarah Vaughan. A few of Dad’s friends had been hired to play backup for her performance. We arrived earlier than curtain time and he took me to Sarah’s dressing room. Even at my young age I knew that Sarah was a major star, and so I was afraid to approach her. She was sitting in front of one of those multibulbed makeup mirrors smoking a cigarette in her dressing robe. With a little prompting from my dad, I walked up to her and said, “Hi, Sarah,” and she said, “How you doin’, boy?” After saying “Fine” I was at a loss for words. She just chuckled and made some small talk with my dad. Some thirty-five years later, in 1986, I was doing some master-of-ceremonies work for the Los Angeles Playboy Jazz Festival and had the chance to meet Sarah again. She didn’t remember our first meeting but she still had her easygoing regal presence. And she was still at the pinnacle of female vocalists.

  Louis Armstrong was a favorite of mine at an early age, just as he had been a favorite of my dad’s from his childhood. I vividly remember when I was nine years old going to the movie theater with my mom to watch High Society (1956), a remake of the classic film The Philadelphia Story (1940), starring Cary Grant, James Stewart, and Katharine Hepburn. Only this was a musical version starring popular jazz singers Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and the incomparable Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. His nickname was short for “satchel mouth,” due to his saddlebag cheeks. His charisma, lively sense of humor, and charm—the way he seemed always to be thoroughly enjoying himself—made jazz more than just music, it made jazz an attitude.

  I also learned early that jazz could be used as a yardstick to measure who was and was not a worthy role model. For example, when I was attending Power Memorial Academy, an all-boys Catholic high school, there was only one black faculty member, the French teacher, Brother Watson. I remember how excited I was when he told us he was also a drummer. The perfect role model. In fact, I was so impressed that I brought an Art Blakey record to school to show him. Blakey, also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, was famous as the inventor of the modern bebop style of drumming, and one of the most influential jazz musicians ever. But when I excitedly showed the album to Brother Watson, he just stared blankly and said he’d never heard of him. That would be like telling a kid today that he’d never heard of Tupac or Cypress Hill. I knew right then that, despite his being the only black teacher (and some kind of drummer), he probably wasn’t someone I wanted to emulate.

  Miles Davis: The King of Cool

  Someone I definitely did want to emulate was the King of Cool, Miles Davis.

  Anyone who’s ever met him, seen him, or heard his music knows you only need one word to describe Miles: smoldering. The way his glaring black eyes were framed by his shining dark skin gave his face the blazing intensity of someone who just had to blow that damn horn in the next two seconds or explode. The way he gripped his trumpet like a weapon, a sniper
horn that in his trained hands could fire a spinning jazz note straight through your heart and out the back of your head before you even knew what the name of the song was. This was a serious man of unmistakable passion, who got up every day burning to do the one thing he loved to do.

  I wanted that kind of passion in my life, too.

  Everyone knew he was the best jazz musician around. Unquestionably he was the best jazz trumpeter since Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie and played with all the greats of his time, including Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Charlie Parker. He was the touchstone at the center of nearly every movement in modern jazz: bebop, “cool” jazz, hard bop, orchestral jazz, fusion, and on and on. As one critic said, Miles was “probably the single artist who best represents the turbulent course jazz has taken.” He influenced almost every other jazz musician of his time, and most who came after. (In proof of the breadth of his influence, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the St. Louis Walk of Fame, and the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.) But I wasn’t a musician. I was a kid, a kid who towered over others but still needed someone to look up to. Miles was the epitome of everything I hoped to be: stylish, physically fit, and the best at his chosen profession. And look up to him I did. Still do.