What a drag it is getting old. Pete Townshend should have kept the great promise of his generation and died, or at least hung up the six string, after Keith Moon went six feet under in 1978. And while the Rolling Stones still fill up arenas, it’s always a good idea to buy bleacher seats.
When Mick Jagger looks no bigger than a prancing dot, it’s easy to get into the decadence. But when you can see the folds of skin hanging underneath his ecstatically waving arms, it’s easy to understand why rock is a young man’s game. He’s a man of wealth, but he hasn’t had taste in 30 years.
An entirely different perception of aging is applied to the blues musician. Mississippi John Hurt was forgotten for over 30 years after his brilliant but brief stint with Okeh Records in 1928. But the new wave of folkies that gathered at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 yearned for the authentic.
Playing many of the same songs he had recorded in the ’20s, Hurt was able to inspire young audiences from his big break in 1963 until his death in 1966. Nobody questioned why he hadn’t innovated in decades, and the wisdom that comes with age was seen to lend great strength to his work. Listening to the raw beauty of his final version of “Nearer My God To Thee” makes questioning the value of his mature work nigh unthinkable.
The aging jazz musician has a difficult role to play between these two extremes. Jazz is abstract music. It’s not about the decadence of youth and it’s not about the wisdom of old age.
But it is a music that demands great technical prowess and constant innovation, and both demands become more difficult to fulfill with time. Many romantic jazz fans have remarked that John Coltrane’s death in 1967 was a blessing and not a curse. Unlike Miles Davis, who fooled around with commercial repetitions for the last few decades of his life, Coltrane was said, like Charlie Parker or Eric Dolphy, never to have played a bad note.
But some jazz musicians need not burn out in order to avoid fading away. Last Friday’s Olde Club show featuring 71-year-old drummer Rashied Ali was a relatively successful example of the importance of music made by jazz’s elder statesmen. Seventy seven-year-old pianist Randy Weston’s most recent recording, Zep Tepi (2006, Random Chance Records) is an even more beautiful example.
Drummer Rashied Ali surrounded himself with young musicians and fresh compositions from the band. Too much of the show focused on his diminished abilities as a soloist; there will never be a 71-year-old drummer who can keep up with musicians 50 years his junior. But Ali was still able to do what he has always done best, pulsing behind the abstract explorations of the soloists and pushing the musicians outside the confines of the composition.
In these more subdued moments Ali showed a mastery of his craft, a skill developed during the development of free jazz itself and continuously displayed on his almost impeccable body of work as a leader. It would be an exaggeration to say that the taste displayed by Ali could only come from a lifetime behind the set, but it is an impressive achievement that Ali can teach and lead yet another generation of musicians.
Pianist Randy Weston has released one of the best jazz records of 2006.
His rhythm section has been around nearly as long as Weston himself, and many of the compositions on the album have been around for 50 years. Although he was never a classically inspired pianist known for his virtuosity, Weston has lost some of his technical skill. But the album suffers from none of these potential flaws.
Instead, percussionist Neil Clarke brings an entirely new sound to the group with his intricate and propulsive hand-drumming, and Alex Blake’s strumming bass work is constantly driving and at times hypnotizing. Weston himself plays sparsely, but the timing of his restrained playing is reminiscent of Thelonious Monk at his best. Weston once remarked that Monk “was the most original I ever heard [and] played like they must have played in Egypt 5,000 years ago.
” After years of searching, Weston has arrived at an equally remarkable sound. Turn on WSRN tonight at 2 a.m.
to hear a set of Weston and Ali, or podcast the time slot and listen at your convenience.
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