The Beautiful Persons

They stare at the bandstand in monkish silence, nodding sagely to the rhythm of drums and bass. Every song is a seance for them, and they listen with every muscle. They are devout, transported, almost catatonic, and when the music stops, there is a little lost moment while their eyes blink and they heave the sigh of the far voyager come home. Then they smile approvingly and say, "Yeah!"

Cultural Death. In the years since innocent Ira Gershwin wrote Little Jazz Bird, the jazz audience has changed even more remarkably than the music it worships. The 50 or so shrinelike nightclubs across the U.S. that book nothing but modern jazz combos are ghostly reminders of the lost swing and jump clubs. There is none of the throbbing, wailing excitement that jazz grew up on, and very little of the old, wild fun. The ennui flows like wine in the new midnight world (no one would dream of dancing), and the hush is nearly deafening.

Mystics, beatniks, hipsters, junkies and musicians out of work form the fringe of the modern audience--together with simple jazz fans. But at the core of things are the intense jazz snobs whose twin occupations are fawning over musicians and playing it cool--the true believers who put Miles Davis up in the Kahlil Gibran class because he "has feeling," or else down in the Count Basie class because he makes money. In their tame argot, jazz musicians are "beautiful persons," and so, by osmosis, are they.

Out in the sunshine, a beautiful person may greet life with a puzzled squint, but he can stay secure in jazz merely by reading Down Beat magazine, calling all the players by their nicknames, and taking pains to dig only the right musicians. Today, one good word spoken for Louis Armstrong spells cultural death. John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk are the musicians to admire--it doesn't really matter that they are also the best.

Just Beer. In most clubs where jazz is played, the audience infuriates the waiters by drinking next to nothing and hissing "Sssshhhh!" at everybody by way of proving that they are present on serious business. "I drink occasionally but more than beer would interfere with my listening powers," says a beautiful person who studies at Shelly's Manne Hole in Hollywood. "The music can't consume you if you're talking or boozing."

Consumed or not, few jazz disciples know much about the music. Since they are given more to worship than appreciation, they seldom develop an ear--only an attitude. Often, as in his current series of seminars at Manhattan's Five Spot, Monk, for one, will spend a whole night horsing around on his piano while his sidemen accompany him with all the enthusiasm of cops frisking drunks. On other nights he plays brilliantly and the sidemen follow with insight and devotion--but the applause is just the same, Monk's audience is far too devoted to him to worry about his music.

Dreams of Aid. Older musicians complain that the new, cerebral audience has taken all the joy out of jazz. "The extreme hips try to contemplate jazz rather than enjoy it," says Drummer Shelly Manne. "The audience isn't participating any more. They don't even tap their feet." Foot-tapping, of course, is unthinkable to those engaged in metaphysical seeking. "In me, jazz causes a great inner stirring," says an extreme hip. "It's an inner satisfaction unlike anything else. It's exciting, but more. It's a feeling like being tickled."

Few beautiful persons will even admit to that mysterious tickling sensation --they insist that jazz is just the cup of tea for a true intellectual out on the town for a little cerebration. But the tickling has always been strongest down where the libido lives, and however cool jazz may be, its rhythms and spirit are still sexual; the libido gets a chance to float around in the dark.

Real Ambassadors. The cool ones have spawned a whole school of sober-sided musicians who mistake the trancelike atmosphere of the nightclubs for concert-hall attentiveness. Their ambition is to brighten up jazz's image. Saxophonist Paul Winter, who came on the scene with a White House concert, is among the many who think that the presence of booze and dark lust in the nightclubs is harmful to their art. Winter, who figures that jazz musicians can be of greater help to the world's teetering countries than Peace Corpsmen or even helicopter pilots, wants them to clean up their lives for the great leap into diplomacy. "Jazz is one of the few hopes the free world has left," he says earnestly, "and what could be of real help everywhere is a Jazz Corps!" The jazz audience, in large part, agrees, insisting that its musicians have been "the real ambassadors" all along. Jazz thinkers, quick to catch the drift of such talk, are constantly dreaming and demanding that jazzmen start getting some fast federal aid.

This is disastrous talk. The kind of committee approval and lukewarm acceptability required by federal grants would surely be fatal to jazz; it would force jazzmen to go to work for squares. Gone would be the blue lights and the old naughtiness. George F. Babbitt would be right there, tapping his foot.

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