a half century of stupefication: reality shows - then & now

[Donn]

yeah...those totally un-hip days...when ladies wore white gloves, and everyone somehow managed to stay in their seats with their mouths shut at concerts and ceremonies.

You'd think everyone was white, too. Those were the days, when the studios were about presenting a sort of country club fantasy picture, complete with well groomed jazz musicians from bygone eras. Jazz was alive and well in 1962, but it didn't look or sound so much like that outside that studio.

PS for example, not TV but live (and well), Charles Mingus Sextet 1961

[Bowerybum]

I get it. One of the interesting things about this video is that in addition to Woody Herman, one of the other judges is George Simon, jazz columnist for the New York Herald Tribune. When's the last time you picked up a daily newspaper and opened it up to a column on jazz? Will Friedwald in the Wall Street Journal is the only one I can think of. Thanks for posting
this. Wonderful performances. Refreshing!
http://www.bigbandlibrary.com/georgetsimon.html" target="_blank" target="_blank

[Donn]

People direct their attention to different things - with some directing their attention towards the sublime, while others only seem to be able to direct their attention towards things that matter not-at-all.

Well, don't feel bad. That TV battle of bands might be in the matters not-at-all category, featuring re-animated relics of jazz that might have been fresh a generation or two before, but it's always good to see Krupa's smiling face again and he could still work it.

While the sublime stuff like that Mingus show there would probably have been out of place for the TV of the day. But that's a shame, it was an epic era for jazz and there wasn't much place for that music, some of the most seriously great music ever to come out of this country.

Meanwhile, I do remember seeing "Hootenanny", and that show managed to present folk music to a big demographic bulge of young people in a fairly vital way that I imagine had something to do with the emergence of bands like the Grateful Dead etc. a few years later. Which was great, but what if those kids had seen Mingus?

[Heavy_Metal]

Looks like Justin Bieber ran out of money and had to "work" again, eh?

I wonder how many of those Billboard hits could actually be performed live, without all the studio effects?

[Donn]

Mingus was out there, but not over the wall. Pretty near the frontier of where the living jazz scene of the day was, but there's no mistaking that he was in it, not just attached at the fringe. I mention him because that's the prize - American music that was kick butt serious on an artistic level.

That would not have been a big draw for national TV - then - but there were acts that were more accessible. Digging up an example, I found this public TV show "Jazz Casual" from KQED Modern Jazz Quartet live May 1962 The Golden Striker.

My point is that we had a cultural treasure in our hands, and commercial TV was living in some make-believe world that ignored it in favor of fossils, as illustrated above, shutting off a huge generation of kids. Only a minority of those kids would have dug it, but likely enough to make a difference in how things went. And yeah, I think race was an issue.

[Donn]

Well, you can say it isn't the topic, but honestly, early '60s commercial TV entertaining a bunch of white people with a couple white relic bands while jazz columnists look on as if that had anything to do with jazz in 1962, how obvious does it have to be? In a couple years change was indeed acoming, but in 1962 American TV was phony white.

Armstrong is not an exception - yeah, black, but on stage very deferential, personally and musically, a pop culture icon if you like but a very non-threatening one from the distant past. I'm talking about what was the present, outside that studio in 1962. Americans missed out on a lot there. It isn't like there was a total media blackout - Playboy magazine was there, but then, Playboy was a notable civil rights leader, so maybe the exception that proves the rule.

[hup_d_dup]

tedious...old ground - too oft covered

Mr. Bloke would never fall back to a tedious, old ground or too oft covered argument!

Oh wait, I take it back:

... your religious beliefs

Hup

[hup_d_dup]

But as you point out, you need to do research to find this out about Armstrong. It is not generally known, because it was not the way he was presented to the public. And when he went "off script" he was quickly and vigorously criticized.

Hup

[Donn]

I don't want to call Armstrong out for anything. I didn't know that story about that episode in North Dakota with the interview, that was interesting - the reporter kind of caught him by surprise, sneaking into his room posing as a waiter, but the next day Armstrong stuck with his story and wouldn't retract a word of it, and that was courageous indeed.

But the context of the story is exactly what I'm talking about, both in terms of where America was in 1962, or 1957, and how Armstrong's career fit into that. And other black superstar jazz musicians. There's a clip out there somewhere of a live radio broadcast from I suppose the '30s, where an obnoxious emcee repeatedly makes a point to address Thomas "Fats" Waller as "Boy", and Waller does what he has to do, grin and bear it. The North Dakota story mentions that Armstrong was that evening once again making history as the first black man to stay at the nicest hotel in town, and from the sound of it, it wasn't the only thing he did to push the boundaries a little when he could.

[Three Valves]

But the context of the story is exactly what I'm talking about, both in terms of where America was in 1962, or 1957, and how Armstrong's career fit into that. And other black superstar jazz musicians.

So, how does that dispel the premise that popular "culture" has devolved over the last 50 years??

Shouldn't it have gotten better for everyone??

[bisontuba]

I rest my case...

[Three Valves]

To be completely fair, the AP only wrote the article.

The publisher (NY Times obviously) wrote the headline.

[hup_d_dup]

The publisher (NY Times obviously) wrote the headline.

That joke would be funnier (I think it's a joke) if the fonts actually looked like Times fonts.

Hup