The Fallacy of Genre Purity

If I really want to torment myself, I can think about what an obnoxious believe-it-all I was in my twenties. I say "believe-it-all" and not "know-it-all" because I believed that I knew it all--especially regarding music. Oh sure, I was passionate, but unfortunately my passion was skewed by dogmatism, and my dogmatism was one of purity. Some kind of music Nazi I was: Every genre that I so obsessively plowed through had its pure form, I was convinced. So, real soul music came from the South, country music did not have tons of strings and backing vocalists, real rock and roll was three minutes long and had short guitar solos, real jazz musicians were black. And so on. Had I been into classical music, who knows what I would have insisted upon--I might have been one of those "original instruments" people.

Anyway, over the years I've come to realize how limiting (and wrong) my genre purity passions were. Especially since I often contradicted myself by digging such forms as Soul Country and Country Soul. And the whole, white jazz musicians are suspect thing, yeesh! I mean, okay, tragic cutie pies like Chet Baker were probably overpraised, but that's more a reflection of the society than Chet's worth as a player. The guy made some good records...

But we're not even here to talk about Chet today. Rather, it's two other white jazzters--Stan Getz (vinyl) and Buddy De Franco (CD).

I've spun two Getz's over the past few days: Stan Getz (on Fantasy) and Pure Getz (on Concord). The self-titled record (on red vinyl) is an especially exciting listen. Our tragic, junkie, Jewish, white tenor player Stan is joined by Cal Tjader on vibes, Billy Higgins on drums, a very young Scott LaFaro on bass, Vince Guaraldi on piano, and Eddie Duran on guitar. A hot set leavened with the lovely ballads that Stan specialized in. As my jazz mentor Grover Sales writes in the liner notes, the recording is "an unalloyed delight."

The Pure Getz record (from 1982) is most notable for a version of Billy Strayhorn's "Blood Count"--a cry of grief from Getz that rivals the original performance by Johnny Hodges (discussed earlier in the blog's history). Also, a lovely version of "Come Rain Or Come Shine."

The Buddy De Franco CD, Blues Bag, is a pleasant surprise that keeps on growing. I bought it as a four dollar afterthought a few years ago, and have been rewarded twenty times over. De Franco, usually known as a bop clarinetist, here takes on the bass clarinet and more modern guys such as John Colrane ("Cousin Mary") and Ornette Coleman ("Blues Connotation"). The support crew is outtasite: Art Blakey on drums, Lee Morgan on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, and Victor Feldman on piano and vibes (Feldman's career as a sideman and session musician is beyond fascinating: Steely Dan, Tom Waits, scores of jazz greats). Snap this one up if you find it.

Finally, we finish off with a CD two-fer that collects the first two albums of the dB's, the power pop New Wavers from New Jersey--Stands for deciBels and Repercussion. When listening to these discs today, you have to laugh at how what goes around comes around: You hear their influence in early REM, The Shins, etc. And you think to yourself, "Hey, is this a Big Star/Alex Chilton song?" Genre purity? Feh!