Music That Gets Better With Time
Kennedy Center Spotlights Jazz Luminaries, Alive and Well

By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 3, 2007

In August 1958, photographer Art Kane asked dozens of jazz musicians to meet on 126th Street in Harlem at, for them, the unholy hour of 10 a.m. "I didn't know there were two 10 o'clocks in the same day," one musician joked.

After the picture Kane took was printed in Esquire in 1959, it was all but forgotten until 1994, when it was revived in Jean Bach's Oscar-nominated documentary, "A Great Day in Harlem." Today just seven of the 57 musicians in the photograph are still alive, and three of them -- saxophonist Benny Golson and pianists Marian McPartland and Hank Jones -- will be in Washington for an eight-day celebration, Jazz in Our Time, that begins tonight at the Kennedy Center.

It will stand as one of the city's most ambitious and illustrious jazz events ever. Golson, McPartland and Jones are scheduled to perform in the coming week and are among among 35 musicians who will receive Living Jazz Legend Awards at the kickoff gala. On March 10, Bach will present a special screening of her film about Kane's photograph, which has become a touchstone of music and memory.

"In retrospect," McPartland says, "that was the greatest jazz photograph ever."

By 1958, when such giants as Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Charles Mingus, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young gathered on that Harlem street, jazz was already being replaced in the public imagination by the loud, rebellious sounds of rock-and-roll. Yet in spite of its shrinking slice of the market, jazz continues to endure, seemingly of its own will. One secret of its survival may be that jazz is an exception to our culture's obsession with youth. It is an art form in which age brings mastery.

That's why pianist Billy Taylor, artistic adviser to the Kennedy Center, and Michael Kaiser, the center's president, decided to honor some notable creators of the music while they're still with us. Among the legends being feted are saxophonists Ornette Coleman and James Moody; trumpeters Freddie Hubbard and Clark Terry; pianists Dave Brubeck, Barry Harris and Ahmad Jamal; and singers Jon Hendricks, Cleo Laine, Abbey Lincoln and Nancy Wilson.

"The Kennedy Center has never had anything of this scope for this length of time," says Kevin A. Struthers, the center's manager of jazz programming. "This is a one-time-only celebration."

When the honorees were young, jazz was almost an outlaw music, scorned by adults and academics. It took an act of rebellion, or at least a blind leap of faith, for Golson, McPartland and Jones to pursue the jazz life. If they followed different paths, there is one thing on which they all agree: They didn't choose jazz -- jazz chose them.

* * *

McPartland and Jones were both born in 1918, but their early careers could not have been more different. McPartland was born Margaret Marian Turner in England and was studying classical piano at London's Guildhall School of Music when she first encountered the daring new sounds of jazz. She joined a touring piano quartet on England's vaudeville circuit while still in her teens.

"I promised I'd go back to the Guildhall," she recalls, "but I never did."

On a USO tour during World War II, she met and married American cornet player Jimmy McPartland, then settled in the United States after the war. She was the first European-born woman to become a major jazz instrumentalist, and she has also composed songs recorded by Tony Bennett and Sarah Vaughan. McPartland is currently at work on a jazz-inflected piano concerto inspired by the environmental writings of Rachel Carson, and in April she's scheduled to record a new live album with her trio.

"People think, 'Are you still playing?' " says McPartland, who turns 89 this month. "Why shouldn't I be? I just am glad I can play and can get better."

After turning 60, McPartland discovered she had a talent for interviewing musicians. Her "Piano Jazz" program, which premiered in 1978 and still airs on NPR, is a remarkable archive with more than 750 illuminating interviews on how jazz is made. (Fans can watch an episode taping Sunday at the Terrace Theater.)

If her program demonstrates how the music remains eternally fresh, no one embodies that sense of timeless artistry better than Hank Jones. He grew up in Pontiac, Mich., the eldest of three brothers who became renowned jazz musicians. Thad Jones (1923-86) was a trumpeter, bandleader and composer who, near the end of his life, led the Count Basie Orchestra. Elvin Jones (1927-2004) was an influential drummer with John Coltrane in the 1960s and later toured the world with his own groups.

In a career that now spans 70 years, Hank Jones has worked with almost every major jazz figure of his time -- but he seldom performed with his brothers, which he says is "one of the things I've regretted." With his graceful phrasing and crystalline touch, Jones remains recognizably the same musician he was 50 years ago, and his recent work with his trio and with saxophonist Joe Lovano is among the best he has ever done.

"I had no idea I would be performing this long," Jones says, almost sheepishly. "As they say, I'm going to keep doing it until I get it right." (Jones will headline a March 10 concert at the Terrace Theater with Italian singer Roberta Gambarini.)

* * *

By the time he was 9, Benny Golson was practicing at the keyboard every day at his Philadelphia home, with the aim of being a concert pianist. Then came his moment of musical epiphany.

"When I reached 14," he recalls, "I went to the Earle Theater in Philadelphia to hear Lionel Hampton. When the curtains came back, I saw the glitter on the instruments from the stage lights. I was in awe."

The band played "Flying Home" and other classics, and the sound of Arnett Cobb's tenor saxophone caught the young man's ear.

"That's when the piano began to pale," he says.

Years later, Golson described that transforming experience to Cobb. "I told him, 'You're the reason I play the saxophone.' Tears came in his eyes."

In the late 1940s and early '50s, Golson studied music at Howard University, where his professors told him he would be expelled if he played jazz. Nevertheless, he would "sneak over the wall" to play in such bygone nightclubs as Little Harlem, Cafe Republic and Club Bali.

One night, Golson recalls, he saw his music theory teacher in the front row of the audience at Little Harlem. Afterward, his professor's only comment was, "Great set."

In the 1950s, Golson was a rising jazz star, working with Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey. When he joined the other musicians in Harlem in 1958, he was months away from forming the elegant and influential Jazztet, with trumpeter Art Farmer and trombonist Curtis Fuller. (Fuller will appear with Golson Wednesday on the Millennium Stage.)

From the beginning, Golson has been a talented composer, perhaps best known for his poignant ballad "I Remember Clifford," which he wrote in memory of his friend Clifford Brown, the superb trumpeter who died in a car accident in 1956 at age 25.

After moving to Hollywood to write music for TV and film, Golson put away his saxophone for eight years. When he picked it up again, he was nearing 50 and discovered that he had become a different kind of musician. The vigor of his younger style gave way to a knowing refinement reflecting his varied experiences in music and life. Now 77, Golson recently formed a new version of his Jazztet and is writing music for a recording date this year.

Three years ago, another piece of Golson's past caught up with him when he appeared in Steven Spielberg's "The Terminal," starring Tom Hanks as an Eastern European emigre stranded in JFK Airport for legal reasons. In the film, Hanks notices Golson and rushes up to him to ask for his signature -- on a well-traveled copy of the "Great Day in Harlem" photograph.

For more information on Jazz in Our Time, go to http://www.kennedy-center.org.