The Road Trip

 

(see below)

I’m writing from a hotel in Amarillo, Texas. I’ve reached the halfway point on my 2,000-mile journey from Atlanta to Salt Lake City. It’s taken three days to get this far, with about fifteen more hours of driving to go. The first day, my wife and I were dodging downed power lines and traffic jams as a result of a tropical storm that hit Atlanta very early that morning. I’ve heard recently that parts of the city are still without power, four days later. 

In Jackson, Mississippi, we stayed at a Hilton hotel that reeked from a combination of mold and some kind of Clorox COVID disinfectant. The hotel had been at least half empty since the outbreak. Fortunately, we were able to move to a slightly better room. Apart from a very tasty takeout pizza and salad, that gave us some momentary joy, we were mostly glad to get out of town.

Last night, we stayed at a really nice Hyatt Place hotel in Fort Worth, Texas. I had researched yet another high-end Italian eatery, and the late-night dinner agenda, again, was pizza and salad. After a second very long day of driving, we both drank our fair share of wine, and I passed out quickly. I was struck how aggressively the folks in Dallas/Fort Worth drive. At 80+ miles an hour on I-20, pushing ahead constantly, weaving and tailgating in multiple lanes, whether in trucks or cars, it reminded me of New York City’s frenetic pace.

Yesterday, we took, at least at first, an easy, uneventful 5-hour drive on U.S. Highway 287, from north of Fort Worth up to the Texas Panhandle. The weather was glorious, though the landscape, at least to Wichita Falls, were somewhat bland. About  thirty minutes after a rest stop there, we suddenly had to pull over to the side of the road due to an aggressive patrol car that was responding to an accident a little ways up the road. His approach to controlling traffic to one lane to protect that accident on the right side of the highway was really ambiguous. After subduing the cars behind us, he circled in front of our car, since we had dribbled a few hundred feet ahead before deciding to pull over, as we saw the cluster of cars do behind us. The cop, in dramatic fashion, got out of his vehicle, walked briskly towards us, asked me to “roll down” my window, after I gestured submissively with both hands, and said, pointing furiously to the left-most lane of the divided highway, and with a loud, testosterone-laden voice, “Drive in that  lane, drive slowly, and pay attention!” It was the closest anyone without a face mask had breathed on me in many months.

The road northwest to Amarillo is dotted with old, grim and grimy, mostly desolate small towns every thirty minutes or so, whose fortunes, if they ever had them, have long ago passed. Empty storefronts, piles of rubble and scrap metal, and impoverished homes, if not already completely deserted, were everywhere. We wondered what, if anything these folks do.

Sometime along the way, I got a voicemail from our Amarillo hotel, asking me to call them. They had some kind of “mechanical trouble,” and, because of that, “moved us to another hotel across the parking lot.” Fortunately, COVID is not too rife here. Both hotels, it turns out, were fully booked because of some local hockey event, and members of the team were staying at our hotel. Who attends these events during a pandemic?

We’re off to Santa Fe in a few hours, only four hours away. We’ll get a little bit of a break from the drudgery of driving, and unpacking and repacking our loaded Volkswagen. We’ll stay there two nights. I’ve always wanted to visit both Santa Fe and Taos, so it will be a welcome, scenic reprieve from the monotony of driving through the Plains. I just learned that Santa Fe is at 7,100 feet. I had no idea.

As for my Pepper Adams work, obviously that has been put on hold as I relocate. I did give a memorable remote lecture to Jim Merod’s Ellington and Armstrong class a week or so ago at Soka University. Before this road trip, I was supposed to get a copy of Philip Roth’s novel Indignation  so I could look for some coloristic descriptions of the Korean War and its effect on the servicemen who fought there to ideally bring a little more life to my chapter on Pepper’s military experience. That book never made it to my local library before I left town. My able reader John Gennari suggested three upgrades to Chapter 10, only one of which I was able to address before I left, and I’m awaiting Brian Priestley’s reading of Part Two (“Dominion”) for his assessment. Both Merod and M.L. Liebler will be reading the manuscript soon, too, so there might be some more tweaks. I still need to make improvements of my own to Chapter 10, and to 7 to much lesser degree. Then I can focus on formatting it for publication.

I just learned that Amarillo is the 14th most populated city in Texas, With a population of about 200,000 people, it’s surprisingly high in elevation. I don’t remember climbing at all on the drive up here. Maybe it’s because I was too busy stuffing my face with the two burrito bowls that I bought at Chipotle? At nearly 3,600 feet, it explains the cold nights, and snow that landed a few days ago. Rock salt was strewn about on the front walk of the hotel. 

We’re off to more striking vistas. I’ll circle back in a month. I hope everyone in the U.S. has a wonderful Thanksgiving. I’m especially looking forward to it, finally being reunited with my daughter after a two year hiatus. 

Heaven Was Detroit

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

Several weeks ago, an anthology of articles mostly about Detroit's popular music culture was published in paperback by Wayne State University Press. Edited by poet and long-time Wayne professor M.L. Liebler, the collection covers a lot of terrain as suggested by its subtitle From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond. The nearly 500 page book--the first of its kind to address the great breadth of Detroit's jazz and vernacular music history--is divided into nine chapters. Eight articles in Chapter 1 are about Detroit jazz. Chapter 2 covers Detroit blues; 3 and 4: Early Soul and Motown; 5 and 6: Rock and Punk; 7 and 8: Hip-Hop and Country; 9 is "Detroit Music Miscellanea." Despite the book's breadth, there are surprising jazz anecdotes sprinkled throughout the collection. That's because Detroit's versatile jazz musicians played in jump bands, worked at Motown Records, and cross-pollinated in other ways.

The anthology is beautifully packaged, with a groovy cover and very attractive typesetting. Black and white photos grace the work instead of color ones, keeping the book affordable. The book weighs a ton, giving it an even more commanding authority that belies its $34.95 list price. "And, if you act now" . . . Yes, you can even save 40%! Buy the book before January 14, 2017 and use the order code here: http://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/heaven-was-detroit

Dave Marsh's foreword lays the groundwork, integrating Detroit's disparate musical genres in a compelling way. I especially like his evocative opening two paragraphs about Detroit's auto industry. In the way he describes its many tentacles, his piece provides a welcome context for all that follows. Marsh even elicited a sense of nostalgic longing in me when he mentions hearing the J. Geils Band for the first time at the Eastown Theatre. (Hailing from Worcester, Massachusetts, the ensemble nonetheless considered Detroit their second home.) I heard them nearly steal the show from the Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East in New York City when I was a kid.

Heaven Was Detroit's opening article is poet Al Young's memoir of his days growing up in Detroit. As a teenage friend of drummer Louis Hayes, Young was first getting involved with jazz in the 1950s. At fifteen, the author was underage, not able to experience the extraordinarily vibrant Detroit club scene. Instead, he had the good fortune of attending Sunday matinees at the World Stage.Young  then got involved  with the production of the venue's periodical. This allowed him to write about many of his local heroes--Sonny Stitt, Tommy Flanagan, Pepper Adams and so many others--that were jamming weekly there on Woodward Avenue and who went on to international prominence.

The anthology's second piece, "Bebop in Detroit: Nights at the Blue Bird Inn," is written by Lars Bjorn and Jim Gallert. This overview of the jazz club's history is written by the noted authors who in 2001 published the pioneering study Before Motown: A History of Jazz in Detroit, 1920-1960. Their contribution provides a real sense of place, something invaluable to me as Adams' biographer.

Although the Blue Bird presented jazz intermittently from the 1930s until after the war, it didn't become a haven for bebop until 1948, when pianist Phil Hill organized a house band with vibist Abe Woodley and drummer Art Mardigan. Typically, Hill's group supported soloists such as tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray who were passing through town. A few years later, the Hill band was replaced by the Billy Mitchell Quintet. That superb group included both Thad and Elvin Jones. Obviously, the level of musicianship remained just as intense. The custom of supporting itinerant guest soloists also remained in place.

"The Blue Bird Inn," write Bjorn and Gallert, "was the hippest modern jazz nightspot during the city's bebop heyday."

It was a neighborhood bar that welcomed jazz lovers. The late Detroit baritone    
       saxophonist Pepper Adams once recalled its "great atmosphere": "Nothing phony
about it in any way. . . no pretensions and great swinging music." Musicians not
only graced the bandstand, they were an important part of the audience. As
bassist James "Beans" Richardson points out, "The majority of people in there
played an instrument, so, musicwise, they were very 'up,' you know? When
there was a lousy record on the jukebox, even the bartenders would say, 'Get
that record off!'"

Part of the appeal of playing at the Blue Bird was the ability within the idiom to play whatever one cared to play. As Tommy Flanagan noted about the club, "It had all the support a jazz club needed. Everyone who loved jazz in Detroit came. We were always able to play what we wanted to play and the people liked what they heard." Part of the appeal of the club was its atmosphere. Marketed as "the West Side's most beautiful and exclusive bar," said the authors,

it attracted a mainly black audience from both the immediate neighborhood
and the city at large. Those who visited the place were first struck by its
distinctive exterior--a pure blue facade accented with a New York City-style
awning that ran across the sidewalk and right up to the curb. It was just as
attractive inside. The acoustics were excellent, and the small, understated
semicircular bandstand could hold a quintet with something close to comfort. . .
Besides its music policy, the Blue Bird became nationally known for its friendly
but fierce jam sessions and its penchant for attracting visits from national stars
when they were in town for concerts at larger venues.

In 1953, before he was a household name, Miles Davis lived in Detroit and often played with Mitchell's band at the Blue Bird. In the summer of '54, Miles returned to the Blue Bird as a guest soloist. By then, the house band included Pepper Adams.

Next week I'll continue my review of Heaven Was Detroit, revealing still more Detroit jazz lore.