C.B. Davis, PHD: Talking with Beethoven (and Dr. Ira Progoff)

C.B. Davis, PHD: Talking with Beethoven (and Dr. Ira Progoff)

Jazz Profiling in Georgia

Jazz Profiling in Georgia

When I was a professor at the University of Georgia in Athens, I used to hang out in a Borders that had a decent CD department with a better-than-usual Jazz section. I wondered about the jazz buyer and one day, I ran into him.  After chatting a little about music, I told him I was a jazz musician and where he could hear me play. Then I asked him about sales.

    “Jazz doesn’t sell or we would have more of it.” He said, “When I’m gone you can watch it dwindle to nothing.”

     “I knew there was intelligence behind this stock.” I said, “So, what does sell? Is it that instrumental RnB they call smooth jazz?”

    “It’s worse than that.” he said, then gestured toward the holiday crowd in the store. “It’s busy today, we might actually sell some jazz. You see, look, there’s a rarity. A woman in the jazz section!”

     We both looked at the 30-something, casually-dressed woman in the first aisle of jazz. She seemed to be pensively looking for something.  I was about to walk over and observe her more closely, but the jazz buyer held me back.

     “I’ll bet I can guess what she’s looking for.” said the buyer.

       “Huh? Do you know that customer?”

    “Nope. Never even seen her in here. But she’s going to buy either Harry Connick Junior or Diana Krall. How much do you want to bet that I’m wrong?”said the buyer.

     “No thanks, I don’t gamble. But you should have to pick only one, so which is it?”

     “You try. What do you think she will buy?”asked the buyer.

     “Well, your guesses are good, but maybe Norah Jones. Is she in the jazz section?.” I asked.

     “No” he said, “she’s too popular. No one could find her if she were here.”

     I laughed and he gestured.

     “Look.” said the buyer with a smile. I turned and saw the woman turn the corner at the end of the aisle. I could clearly see that she was holding a CD by the New Orleans crooner, Harry Connick Junior. The buyer then noticed another customer in the jazz section.

      “OK, check this out. Perfect. A professional in his 50s …. he might be more of a challenge,” said the jazz buyer, who had inhaled a sandwich.

   I looked at the older guy in the suit, thumbing through CDs.  “You young people don’t gauge the age of your elders very well. I’d say he was in his 60s.”

    “Good, then it should be easy for you. Don’t deliberate too much. Take a quick guess.”

     “Ok, just instinctively I would guess Brubeck. “

    “You are correct,” said the jazz buyer guy, now devouring an apple. I turned to look at the man in the jazz section. He had yet to make his choice.

     “What do you mean I’m correct? He hasn’t made his choice yet!”

     “I said,” he said, “that I could tell you what everyone would pick, and you are correct. That’s what he’s going to pick. You see him there at the B’s?

     “Well no actually, that I can’t see, but go on.”

     “Well he’s looking at that CD trying to remember whether he has it or not.” I asked. “Why don’t you help him? “

     The jazz buyer said, “If I asked him the logical, pertinent questions, I might sound patronizing.”

   “What do you mean?”

     “Are you looking for “Take Five? Do you have “Time Further Out?”

     “Oh, I see.” I said.

The buyer squinted and asked, “How did you know he would pick Brubeck?”

     “Well, the Quartet was very popular around the time that guy was in college.” I said, thinking that I knew my own reasoning.

     “Why not the Modern Jazz Quartet? They were also popular with college kids in the 50s, as was Dizzy Gillespie.”

     “Oh, I see what you’re getting at. He might have been a hipster back then.”

     The jazz buyer, who was in his late twenties, just looked at me as if I had just spoken in a foreign language.

     “Oh,” I said, “hipster means something else now.”

     “No. Well yes, but no.” said the buyer. “Your instinct told you something I have observed to be almost invariably true.”

     “Oh! You mean how white people buy jazz by white artists. Isn’t that an unfair generalization?”

      “No” he said. “Not here anyway. Where are you from?”

      “Northern California.”

     “Things might be different there, but probably not. You buy black artists because you are an aficionado….an actual jazz musician.”

    The buyer paused as he watched a young man approach the older one who was looking at Brubeck CDs.

     “This is a lot of jazz traffic even at Christmas rush. He must be the old guy’s grandson or something. “

     “I don’t think so,” I said, “See. The old man doesn’t know who the kid is.” I continued with my analysis. “This kid is a band geek. He’s going to want something like Maynard Fergusson or Stan Kenton. No, he’s too young for those …maybe Wynton Marsalis or Joshua Redman?”

     “I see how you snuck two black artists in there. But no. He’s a hipster band geek.  He’s going to like some dreamy boring thing that doesn’t swing. “

      “Hipster band geek might be into Dave Douglas?  He can be dreamy and not swing.”

      “Whoever it is, it will be a white artist.” Said the buyer.

     “Why couldn’t it be that they just that they like those particular musicians?” I suggested.

     The buyer shook his head. “No. It’s uncannily invariable.”

      “Ok. What about black customers? “I asked.

     The jazz buyer shrugged and said, “We don’t get many. They are much less predictable though. Look, there’s a black lady in the classical section now.”

     Another white man, between the ages of the previous two was now walking into the jazz section. He was a clean but ungroomed middle-aged hippie.

     “What about this guy,” I said, “He looks like a classic rock person to me, so in jazz he likes probably something funky or good old-fashioned fusion. Maybe smooth jazz. But he might buy black artists, don’t you think?”

     The jazz buyer sipped on his drink and said, “Nope.  But I will admit he is a more difficult subject. would be thinking guitarists.”

     “Is he a Pat Metheny or a John McLaughlin?” I said. “No…wait…is Jeff Beck in the jazz section?”

     “Yes, but only because I put him there.” Said the buyer. “Look, he’s in the F’s.”

      We both searched our brains for guitarists whose surnames began with an “F”. We can rule out Tal Farlow, if you even have any,”

     “Nope.” Said the buyer.

     “Hay no Feliciano…. Robben Ford? Fripp? Frith? I know…. Bill Frissell.”

     Was I correct? No. But he did pick up the latest by Bela Fleck, the sole jazz banjoist on earth, also a white guy.

     “I find this whole demonstration disturbing.” I said. “At least you sold some jazz.”

     The buyer sighed and said “Jazz doesn’t sell well because white people only buy white jazz artists, and black artists are dominant in jazz. The black jazz artists outnumber the white 20 to 1. The white customers outnumber the black by about the same ratio.”

     From then on, every time I went into that Borders I would play the “guess what people will buy” game, mostly in the jazz section.  I confirmed the buyer’s observations that any white person who ventured into the jazz section seemed only to buy the work of white artists. None of these people think of themselves as racists. They like jazz and these just happen to be their favorite artists, every one of them white.

     I probably could not tell a white musician from a black one in a blindfold test unless I recognized a known player, which I probably would. I can tell Lester Young from the white players who followed his style like Getz, Zoot, Desmond etc. but not because those guys sound “white.”  But I do have an idea of what “sounding white” means.  I discovered this while talking to some summer session students the morning after Ray Charles died.

     “Do you know what popular music would sound like if it weren’t for Ray Charles?” The students stared blankly at me as if I wanted an answer. Not only was this a Script Analysis class, but it was early for Drama majors.

      “It would sound…. white.” I said, and wondered almost immediately if that was appropriate.

     One of the students asked, “What do you mean? What does white sound like?”

     I shook my head and said, “I’m sorry. That just came out. It’s not a responsible thing for a historian to say. But as a jazz musician, between jazz musicians, it’s something unspoken but generally understood. “

     This was followed by silence until I said, “Ok, let’s make this simple. Most country music sounds white, but not all of it. It’s 2 beat like polka. Any style can sound white, though. You must have heard the Beach Boys, right? They were from my time but have stood the test because of their creativity and unique sound. But you would not mistake them for a black group, would you?”

     More silence. The oldest student then asked, sarcastically, “What about the Carpenters? They sound white, and they happened way after Ray Charles.”

      “Well, we evolved from apes and there are still apes.” I said, and immediately wondered if that was going to get a prickly reaction. Somehow, I made a teaching moment out of it and talked about cultural evolution being more mercurial than biological evolution.

     Later that day I was standing in line for coffee. I looked down at the newspaper headlines. Ray Charles caught barely a moment’s coverage when he died right in the middle of the weeklong blanket media overkill of Ronald Reagan’s death and funeral. I flipped over the paper and saw a small lead to Brother Ray’s Obituary. An old white woman was just ahead of me in line. I asked her pardon when I realized she had also been looking at the paper.

   “I was looking for something about Ray Charles dying.” I explained.

     The old woman smiled and made eye contact. “He was great, wasn’t he?” she said.“I’d march down the street for Ray Charles before I would for Ronald Reagan.”

     Every so often, even in Georgia, people will surprise you.