{"id":943,"date":"2012-10-16T14:32:51","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T14:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=943"},"modified":"2012-10-16T14:35:02","modified_gmt":"2012-10-16T14:35:02","slug":"the-original-milwaukee-jazz-gallerys-shadow-and-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=943","title":{"rendered":"The original Milwaukee Jazz Gallery\u2019s Shadow and Act"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>To put the original Milwaukee Jazz Gallery in the proper prism of my personal historical perspective, I regret somewhat that this small tribute must dispense with a disclaimer. I intend not one iota of the disrespect and neglect that jazz still endures, symptomatic of America\u2019s peculiar culture, and the plight of the African-American — who spawned this serious art form. I try to lessen\u00a0the music’s\u00a0cultural neglect; yet I can only be honest. Jazz is not me; but it floats my aesthetic boat more consistently than any other form, in pure musical terms. It also fires my blood more than any other.<\/p>\n

However, for several decades, my own professional identity has involved a struggle to escape the pigeonhole of being a jazz writer, which I am and hope to always be. Don\u2019t infer ingratitude, for I believe the music has as much to say to the human soul\u00a0about democracy and creativity\u00a0as any art form, wordless or not.<\/p>\n

But one reason I\u2019m\u00a0more than a jazz head is that I’m fascinated by our incredibly fertile culture (I suspect many\u00a0jazz fans are too) : You can find art under any given rock, regardless of the paucity of pedigree or pretense of whatever crawls out.<\/p>\n

I took quite seriously my decade-long role as The Milwaukee Journal\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0jazz critic and as a freelance writer for various publications. Covering the Jazz Gallery was a big part of my beat. Yet one of my most indelible memories was an in-person interview in 1981 backstage at Summerfest with Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass (which I will resurrect at the appropriate time).\u00a0It felt like a coup; Monroe was a notoriously tough interview and I was a young-pup reporter in sneakers. I have always covered country artists as well as blues, rock, R&B, bluegrass, folk, and classical music, and served as backup art critic and wrote for the Lifestyle section.<\/p>\n

I then covered all of the arts and books, as arts reporter for The Capital Times<\/em> in Madison for 19 years.<\/p>\n

That range of interest and experience is why this blog is called Culture Currents<\/em>. And my insistence on the cultural vitality and importance of American vernacular music today is what the blog subtitle Vernaculars Speak<\/em> is all about.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, jazz writing established me as a professional journalist, especially covering the improbable phenomenon of the Milwaukee Jazz Gallery during its prime in the late ’70s and early ’80s, as an ambitious\u00a0venue for national and local acts. (I’ve\u00a0 blogged previously about it and the\u00a0venue’s new incarnation,\u00a0the\u00a0Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts,\u00a0a very interesting and exciting multi-arts center.)<\/p>\n

The Milwaukee Jazz Gallery’s founder and owner, Chuck LaPaglia, was recently in town from Oakland to hear David Hazeltine, the great Milwaukee-born pianist who is now New York-based and one of the top pianists in straght-ahead\u00a0jazz. A bit of reminiscing led Chuck to\u00a0recall an\u00a0eccentric trait\u00a0of the old Jazz Gallery grand piano, an 1888 Steinway owned by a concert pianist.\u00a0It only had 85 keys, rather than the normal 88. I guess it befit a club\u00a0somewhat\u00a0cramped for space, though there are many smaller jazz clubs.<\/p>\n

But Chuck recalled that\u00a0one\u00a0pianist would rehearse on the Jazz Gallery piano and — when leaning hard into a long, ascending arpeggio —\u00a0 his right hand would\u00a0fly\u00a0off the “short” end of the keyboard and tumble down\u00a0into space, a bit of Chaplinesque\u00a0mime humor. I suspect the perpetually impish Milwaukee pianist Barry Velleman\u00a0might’ve started the gag, and word got around about the\u00a0digitally challenged piano.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, that\u00a0old\u00a0instrument\u00a0was the heart, and\u00a0a big part of the charm, of the club and invariably well-tuned.<\/p>\n

In honor of the original Milwaukee Jazz Gallery, I choose to share an unpublished poem unearthed from my body of work for my Master\u2019s degree in English – creative writing, from UW Milwaukee in 1988. The club had closed by then, but not after significantly triggering a vibrant local jazz scene that included a handful of cozily funky inner-city clubs, a few steady lighthouses of radio programming (notably Ron Cuzner\u2019s deeply nocturnal The Dark Side<\/em>), and the flourishing of the award-winning Wisconsin Conservatory of Music jazz program.<\/p>\n

The four persons alluded to by first name in the poem are pianist-vibist\u00a0Buddy Montgomery, guitarist George Pritchett, clarinetist Chuck Hedges (three of Milwaukee’s jazz royalty) and finally\u00a0LaPaglia, who made it all happen with rare dedication, impeccable taste and a deep sense of the music’s history. The magnificent jazz singer Betty Carter, who played there several times, should need no introduction.<\/p>\n

I and this poem implicitly concur with singer-songwriter Mike Mattison, who asserted at the end of part two of my recent blog about the Tedeschi Trucks Band: The blues are the fount of American music.<\/p>\n

I believe the poem\u2019s shadow metaphor arose from The Dark Side<\/em>\u2019s melancholy soundtrack to my dreams and my appreciation for Ralph Ellison\u2019s great essay collection Shadow and Act, <\/em>which articulates the cultural centrality of the blues as well as any text I know. I think the depth and complexity of \u201cthe blues act,\u201d haunted by the shadow of the black person\u2019s experience and identity (with the “double consciousness” that W.E.B. Du Bois first described), is the subject of his monumental novel Invisible Man.<\/em> I hope these revelations do not explain this brief poetic elegy completely away, into invisibility.<\/p>\n

For A Jazz Gallery<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the cat goes chasing<\/em><\/p>\n

shadows I wonder<\/em><\/p>\n

if I’m chasing shadows,<\/em><\/p>\n

the shadows of a lifetime<\/em><\/p>\n

fed by<\/em><\/p>\n

unraveling blues held tight<\/em><\/p>\n

by a drum.<\/em><\/p>\n

Are they really unraveling?<\/em><\/p>\n

Is the shadow being <\/em><\/p>\n

shut in a closet,<\/em><\/p>\n

vanquished from the<\/em><\/p>\n

light of collective rays<\/em><\/p>\n

beaming all colors<\/em><\/p>\n

contained in the<\/em><\/p>\n

goodest\u00a0blacknuss?<\/em><\/p>\n

So many are unwanted<\/em><\/p>\n

by the controlling few<\/em><\/p>\n

yet wanted by the<\/em><\/p>\n

caring few<\/em><\/p>\n

needed by how many more.<\/em><\/p>\n

Buddy George Chuck and Chuck <\/em><\/p>\n

Where do we go <\/em><\/p>\n

Where do we stay <\/em><\/p>\n

when the places<\/em><\/p>\n

are shadowboxes<\/em><\/p>\n

wearing Betty Carter’s<\/em><\/p>\n

old smile and a padlock?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Photo at top: Vibist\u00a0Milt Jackson performing at the Milwaukee Jazz Gallery in the late 70s. Photo by Tom Kaveny.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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To put the original Milwaukee Jazz Gallery in the proper prism of my personal historical perspective, I regret somewhat that this small tribute must dispense with a disclaimer. I intend not one iota of the disrespect and neglect that jazz … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-fd","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":961,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions\/961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}