It Was A Very Good Year

Centennials of jazz greats celebrated

This was going to be a year of great jazz centennials. A hundred years ago, 1920 marked the birth of several jazz musicians who either changed the course of the music or deeply enriched it. Festivals, themed concerts and other events around the world would have celebrated their centenaries and honored their vast legacies.

But all that has been canceled or postponed as the coronavirus has shut down clubs, concert halls and festivals.

So for the time being, let’s raise a glass to some of the innovators, visionaries and iconoclasts who made 1920 an indelible year in jazz and changed the way we hear and think about the music:

Charlie Parker, Aug. 29, 1920-March

12, 1955. Of all the jazz languages that coursed through the 20th century, none has been more dominant or shown as much creative resilience as bebop. And no one did more to invent its syntax than Parker. Alongside trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and others, Parker crafted an idiom of fast-moving chord changes and faster-flying figurations. There was more than just speed and technical wizardry involved, though, for Parker developed complex improvisational methods that transformed the way musicians understand harmony and dissonance. That Parker also happened to be the most formidable alto saxophone virtuoso ever to bring a reed to his lips broadened the scope of his achievements.

Dave Brubeck, Dec. 6, 1920-Dec. 5, 2012.

Early in his long career, pianist-composer Brubeck was condescended to by a certain subset of jazz aficionados. How could a musician so popular among the masses and so prolifically played on the radio possibly have anything to offer those who considered themselves cognoscenti? The joke was on them, of course, as Brubeck’s music teemed with new ideas in rhythm, meter, structure and scale, all the while subtly embracing elements of Western classical music. Then, too, Brubeck’s role as a champion of social and racial justice enhanced his importance in American culture, and beyond. And no one played the piano quite the way Brubeck did, an unmistakable sense of joy emanating from every grandly conceived chord.

John Lewis, May, 3, 1920-March 29, 2001.

Just about everything that pianist-composer-bandleader Lewis did ran counter to conventional notions of what jazz was supposed to be. The elegance and tenderness of his pianism, the heightened subtlety of his arrangements and the unmistakable influence of centuries-old classical music argued that there was more to jazz than just its rambunctious, freewheeling spirit. In Lewis’ hands, the art form could capture fragility, delicacy and transparency. All these welcome characteristics, and others, radiated from the Modern Jazz Quartet, which Lewis led for decades, opening up new realms of sonic possibility.

Clark Terry, Dec. 14, 1920-Feb. 21, 2015.

Some musicians are at least as important for the influence they have on others as for the music they create themselves. Trumpet masters such as Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis and Nicholas Payton have credited Terry for having encouraged them in the earliest days of their careers. The golden lyricism of Terry’s work on trumpet and flugelhorn (an instrument he brought into the jazz mainstream) affected those trumpeters and countless others. Terry also helped shatter the color barrier on national TV, in the 1960s earning a place in Doc Severinsen’s “Tonight Show” band. At the center of it all, of course, was Terry’s sound, as warmly inviting and nimbly dexterous as any in jazz.

Peggy Lee, May 26, 1920-Jan. 21, 2002.

Singer-songwriter Lee proved that a vocalist needn’t shout to be heard around the world. Her soft-and-sly vocals delighted jazz devotees and brought the music to huge audiences across the decades, thanks to hit recordings such as “Why Don’t You Do Right?” “Fever,” “It’s a Good Day” and “Is That All There Is?” Lee taught the jazz world the value of understatement, the eloquence of minimalism, the beauty of saying everything with a few well-chosen notes. The voice-overs Lee did in the Disney film “Lady and the Tramp,” as well as the tunes she wrote for the film with Sonny Burke, proved there was so much more beneath the seemingly simple surface of her work than casual listeners may have realized.