I’ve been put into this state of mind recently by one of my favorite records released this year, Proliferation (482 Music), by a quartet called People, Places & Things led by Chicago drummer Mike Reed. Actually, scores of well-known and lesser-known musicians have come from here, but don’t qualify to be remembered specifically as playing some semblance of Chicago jazz – if such a thing even exists. Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz both came from Chicago, but their ingenious style of improvisation has always been associated with “317 E. You could throw in Benny Goodman, a native Chicagoan musically nurtured among the Austin High guys, but his ultimate brand of big band swing was too generically cosmopolitan to be strictly identified with his home town. Of course, Chicago’s jazz legacy runs much deeper, if not necessarily as famously, than these examples. And maybe, if you’re of a particular age or historical inclination, even the Austin High Gang, those teenaged worshippers at the feet of the Original Masters, who eventually absorbed like-minded out-of-towners into their club and evolved into the Eddie Condon crew – guys known as Wild Bill and Pee Wee and Bud, Maxie and Muggsy and T, who never grew up and created an irresistible hybrid of New Orleans democracy, Swing Era suavity, and a rough-and-ready Windy City spirit which became identified as “Chicago Style,” with a wise-cracking Jimmy Cagney wannabee as ringmaster.Īll well and good and true. ![]() Certainly the AACM, only 40 years later, providing a second revolution of structure and intent which realigned the possibilities of sound in ways available to global access and reinterpretation without severing ties to the jazz tradition. Think Chicago, jazz-wise, and what comes to mind? Obviously Armstrong and King Oliver, up from New Orleans, in residence and initiating not just the Midwest but all the world in the vigor and romance of swing.
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