Jazz

A life not lived.

New York City. 1950 more or less.

I was in my early twenties. In my family, one listened to classical music, Mozart, Bach, Debussy. My father frowned on so-called popular music and, well, I don’t remember what he said about Frank Sinatra and, I imagine, jazz. Time had passed and at the time I was living by myself in New York, East 31st Street, and on Third Avenue the El was still clattering by outside my window. I had a boyfriend who loved jazz and played the drums and I wanted to know more. New York had lots to offer, from classes in pottery to life sketching, lectures on art and Buddhism. Somehow an introduction to jazz turned up. The course was in a municipal building, 25th floor. I think it was the Y. It was February 17th. You had to get there by 5 o’clock. I often went to life class since I wanted to be an artist and thought that something like this would be a great opportunity for sketching.

It was an interesting evening. The surviving greats of jazz had gotten together and were having a jam session.

Perfect time to sketch their hands drumming on the guitar. Or on a tray or hauling out a precious sax. The older portly musicians were ensconced in armchairs and loomed up like mountain ranges.

Folding chairs, many already occupied, were scattered around the room. I found a seat and began sketching and taking notes. I drew swiftly and soon had filled several pages of a brown note book, bought in an art shop on West 57th Street, with drawings. A few of these sketches eventually became the inspiration for a painting that reflected the power of the evening.

Storeyville, New Orleans, red light district

Chicago jazz, Dixieland jazz

Mostly names I had never heard of – a whole world I’d never heard of

Fletcher Henderson, arranged Benny Goodman

Coleman Hawkins, king of tenor sax

5 Pennies

King Oliver – Louis Armstrong

Venuti

Goofus – Wayne King

Mahalia Jackson, gospel

Jazz, the most democratic music ever conceived they called it. There was Melody, Harmony, Rhythm. Syncopation. Its beginnings went back to the early settlers passing on folk music. There were the blues, the real blues which always had 12 bars. It was an unfamiliar vocabulary for me.

New Orleans, Chicago, Brubeck, Eddie Lang. A new world. And then there were the three sitting at a table.

There was something about them – made me think of three judges, of three lords, moody, sombre. And it was those three who became the subject for a painting. The next day I sat on the floor of my room in 31st Street and mixed together acrylic paint in black and white and slashed forceful brushstrokes onto a sheet of paper. The paint dried fast and I figured I would set the picture aside till the following day. Never really finished though, it was eventually rolled up to keep company with other sketches, where it stayed for over 60 years, a sort of symbol of that 20-year old woman whose hopes of becoming an artist never materialized but stayed in limbo.