Switched on Pop - Jazz 1959

Episode Date: September 24, 2019

Charlie's out on parental leave, which means no one is here to stop Nate from going off the rails. And you know what means... JAZZ! As soon as dad left the room, Nate enlisted his favorite journalist, jazz and sports writer Natalie Weiner, to come on the show and discuss her incredible 1959 Project — a day-by-day chronicle of jazz during one of its most pivotal years. We listen to classic 1959 albums Miles Davis's Kind of Blue and Dave Brubeck's Take Out, discuss the complex legacy of Billie Holiday, and dig into some of the year's forgotten gems. Sixty years later, jazz is no longer the cultural juggernaut is once was — but it still has much to teach us about pop culture of the present. Playlist: •Miles Davis - So What •Dave Brubeck - Take Five •Billie Holiday - Blue Moon •Billie Holiday - Billie's Blues •Erykah Badu - On & On •Amy Winehouse - There Is No Greater Love •Muriel Roberts - Sleigh Ride •Terry Pollard - Laura •Willene Barton and her Trio - Rice Pudding Check out the 1959 and 2019 jazz cuts we're listening to. We are conducting an audience survey to better serve you. It takes no more than five minutes, and it really helps out the show. Please take our survey here: https://voxmedia.iad1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_ewVXHPZIsQNlxCR?Source=note Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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www.voxmedia.com slash pod survey. Thanks, y'all. Welcome to Switch on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan, and with my erstwhile co-host Charlie Harding out on paternity leave, it means there's no one to stop me from indulging in some of my more pop-centric sensibilities, namely today, jazz. Jazz might feel far from the center of popular culture,

but that wasn't always the case. At one point in time, jazz ruled popular culture, and arguably the zenith of jazz's popular culture. was 60 years ago, a year that takes on almost mythic proportions in the minds of many jazz lovers, 1959. Journalist Natalie Weiner covers jazz and pop for Billboard, Rolling Stone, and other outlets, and also sports for SB Nation. But she's been chronicling this important year with her 1959 project. Every day she posts on what happened on this day in jazz 60 years ago, shining a new light on famous musicians and putting some of jazz's forgotten greats back under

the spotlight. And we are very pleased that she is here to join us to listen closely to some of the highlights from this pivotal year. And then we'll turn the lens to 2019 and think about what role of jazz plays in culture today. Natalie, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. So before we dig into some of these sounds, I'd love to hear what led you to start this 1959 project. Yeah, I mean, the short version is that I was at Billboard, one of the very few people there who cared at all about jazz. And I had been sort of asked to come up with pitches that would allow us to talk to

older jazz musicians. And so I thought, you know, 1959 kind of an obvious starting point, not super original, but I was like, you know, it's definitely a good kind of like guiding light. And the more research I did into it, I was just overwhelmed by the sheer amount of music and news and events and everything that was happening then, especially in New York City. And like, I live in New York. So it's basically just my way of time traveling, you know, because I wish I could have been alive then to see all of it because it was just such a like exciting and fruitful time. So I was like, what about a timeline where. we had a thing for every day and my editors were like, that's way too much work. And so I just like,

I kept thinking about it and thinking about it. And then 2019 came around. I was like, it's an anniversary year. Like, I kind of have to just bite the bullet and do it since I've been thinking about it for so long. And yeah, I did not expect to be able to keep it up for this long, but here we are in August. Yeah, it's an impressive accomplishment. I also can very much relate if I could go back and be born in a different decades. Definitely timing it to be like in my early 20s around 1959 is a very appealing option. Yeah, I mean, 59, it's just, you know, the 60s have the reputation, right, of like Bohemian and hippie and whatever, you know, like that all this stuff was happening. But 1959 is kind of when everything was starting to break open a little bit.

And there was just like so much creative energy happening. I mean, the beats kind of get the majority of the credit. But one of the reasons that I was interested in looking more into this project is I feel like jazz needs to be the central artistic force that we consider when we look at that late 50s era as far as like driving American culture, you know, and not like the beats and the abstract expressionist. You know, not that they weren't important, but their impact was so much more niche and insular, you know, whereas jazz really like reached and touched so many different aspects of America. So let's talk about some of the the blockbuster jazz albums from 1959.

And I feel like any discussion has to begin with the Miles Davis kind of blue record, which today still sells 5,000 copies every week and by any metric is like the best-selling album of all time, best-selling jazz album. So maybe we can listen to a little bit of Miles Davis's trumpet solo for. from the first cut of this record, so what? Now, that solo might be familiar to a lot of listeners, but I'm curious if in revisiting this album as it was actually released in 1959,

if you discovered anything new about this really familiar cultural object? Hmm, that's a really good question. I don't know if I can say that I did, but only because, like, It's one of those rare moments when the critical consensus and the popular consensus align. You know, you talk about how this album still sells so many copies, like even today. But for jazz heads, all the same, like, if you are a jazz musician, you can't sing that trumpet solo. You know, like, you're not really. Like, that's like a rite of passage is just, like, going really deep on Kind of Blue.

And there's a great book by Ashley Kahn, and it's just specifically about the making of Kind of Blue. and he really gets in the weeds and listen to like all of the master tapes, you know, and recorded every single word that was said. You know, you hear it and that's what people think jazz sounds like. Let's listen to one other kind of seismic album from 1959. And then I want to take that idea you were just saying like, this is the sound of jazz and see what that actually entails. Like if we're getting our idea of jazz from 1959, what is that idea?

And I think the other blockbuster best-selling album from this year would be Dave Brubeck's timeout. Should we listen to Take Five or Blue Rondo a LaTurk? Oh, too late. I think Take Five is probably, yeah, again, it's just one of those records. That's like the thing. To me, this is another album that, like you were saying, just kind of screams jazz. And if these two classic albums from 1959 are the benchmark for a lot of casual listeners of what jazz sounds like, what idea of jazz is being presented to them? For sure. I think it's one that's very refined, very sophisticated, you know, kind of music that isn't necessarily aggressive in any way.

You know, like kind of blue and timeout are both records that really played on the like West Coast ideas of like cool, you know, and Miles had already kind of gone into cool stuff with obviously the birth of the cool. But like on kind of blue, he was really like combining that with modal improvisation. And so there's a fluidity and a freedom that comes without any sort of like really intense climaxes or decrescendos, you know? It's kind of like even keel a little bit. And that makes it play well for better or worse as background music, you know, which is why you sort of see these albums sold or played in like Starbucks, you know? Like that's kind of where, and like, you know, Miles Davis is like rolling over in his grave. Like that was never obviously his intention. Bruback, I think you could argue, did care about that. They were very different artists. But it is interesting that they tapped into such a similar sound, you know, at the same time.

Yeah, both of these records seem to have almost a dual identity at the time. was something innovative, radical and path-breaking about each of them, Miles Davis, as you mentioned, using these new modal textures to explore different ways of improvising Dave Brubeck using, in the case of Take 5 that we just listened to, a very unusual 5-4 time signature. Today, what I'm hearing is that maybe some of the more radical aspects of that music have been stripped away, and it's more the soundtrack of coffee shops and, you know, light and cocktail music, I guess. Right. I mean, I think that's how a lot of people encounter them. And I don't even know if the radical aspects have been stripped away necessarily just as much as they were so popular that they've become neutralized.

You know, like anything that one point sounds like new and crazy, like eventually becomes normal, you know, if it becomes like widespread enough. And so that's kind of what happened here with other aspects. of jazz that didn't necessarily happen as much. And so that's why some of it still sounds so like wild, you know? Yeah. No, it's a great point. I want to move now to another event from 1959 that I think continues to hold a lot of mystique and intrigue for jazz listeners. And that's, what you chronicle in the 1959 project is the gradual decline in eventual death of one of the most important American singers of all time, Billy Holiday. Yeah. Her death in that year was obviously a monumental event. I think maybe what is hard to

understand today is that she was like a massive star on the scale of like any celebrity death that we would think of now, you know, like Prince or something, you know, like that's the level at which it was covered and talked about. And people knew, you know, she had been arrested before, you know, her story was pretty well known. She had actually already published her autobiography. And so there was this whole mythology that Farah Jasmine Griffin actually wrote an incredible book that I recommend to everyone. But it just sort of talks about how Holiday, like, constructed this whole mythology around

herself. And some of it's true and some of it's not. And it's, like, very difficult to disentangle the, you know, the drug use, the prostitution, the sort of like notorious promiscuity, like, anti-artistic genius. and all of these things that went into like cultivating her public persona and you know and so that obviously came to a head when she died. I mean, her last recordings have been controversial for a long time because you can like hear that she's in poor health like in her voice. It's tragic in a lot of ways to hear but also, you know, she's still an artist. Like she's still doing her thing.

She's not like incapacitated. To me, one of the most tragic parts about her death is that she didn't even have her cabaret car. in New York when she died. Like she hadn't performed in New York, I don't think, at all in 1959 because of her legal issues. And it's just like to me that points to the kind of systemic racism and discrimination that was more than handicapping for artists at that period, you know, because it's just like that there's no reason why that should have been the case, you know, but.

Yeah. It's really interesting. You point out in your posts on the topic that the way her death was reported was very different to depending on whether it was a more mainstream news outlet or an outlet more focused on a black readership like jet in some of the more mainstream accounts it's very her death is very sensationalized uh and in and in others as you say it's in the jet piece for instance it's much more focused on billy holiday as a victim of some of these more systemic forces that you're talking about right and the fact that that was recognized even at that time you know i think a lot of times

we assume that like we're only able to notice these things in hindsight, you know, but like there were people at the time saying like no Billy Holliday is a victim of the system, you know, which she I think was. And I mean, Black Papers chronicled her death. Like, I mean, there was a three part series in the Chicago Defender like from the guy who co-wrote her autobiography and he's kind of questionable, you know. But still, the fact that they took a serialized account of her death, you know, it's like this was, it was a huge, huge deal, you know. And I don't know. I posted this and I will just tell everyone to read it over and over and over again. But James Baldwin commemorated her death like the month that it happened in commentary. And it's actually wrapped up in a review of Porgy and Best, which was another massive jazz moment of 1959. But you sort of intertwines her story with the movie in this way that's just like devastating and perfect as most things James Baldwin are. But yeah. Let's listen to a bit of Billy Holiday in her prime to get a sense.

of why her death was such a big deal. Let's listen to a bit of a classic recording like her version of Blue Moon. You saw me standing alone without a dream in my heart without a love of my own, blue moon. You knew just what I... You heard me saying a prayer for someone I really, This clip has so much of the aspects of holiday style that would prove so influential,

the incredible rhythmic control kind of laying these phrases slightly behind the beat, manipulating a melody from its original contour to fit her sort of artistic vision, and then that timbre that is where words start to fail. And I think like what I was just thinking about is how like that sense. and like how distinctive she was, it sort of defined an era, you know, that late 40s, early 50s time. And so her death,

along with the death of Lester Young, who was one of her frequent collaborators and also a legendary jazz musician, he died a few months before in New York and inspired the song Goodbye Pork by Hat, which is a famous Charles Mingus tune. Their death sort of marked the end of an era in a way, like for jazz, you know,

and that's another reason why 1959 is such an, interesting turning point, you know, because you're seeing not necessarily the first generation, but one of the earlier generations kind of like move on. Louis Armstrong was still active, you know, and he's kind of like the grandfather of it all, you know, which creates this interesting overlap, but you're seeing some of the marquee figures pass, you know, and so then there's this question of like, who is the torch going to, you know, where is the music going, et cetera, et cetera. So that's like another kind of interesting thing about Billy's death. But, I mean, aesthetically, It's just like, I mean, she's one of the geniuses of American music, period.

And like you said, it's just for her very intentional ability to channel like such strong storytelling into her music using an array of devices that traditionally instrumentalists use more than singers, you know, and so that was what kind of set her apart. Yeah, she, her aim was to sound like the saxophone of Lester Young, who, who you just mentioned. And you can turn on the radio dial today, and you have a high probability of hearing someone influenced, whether they know it or not by Billy Holiday.

But there are also, I think, a few contemporary singers who might owe a very specific debt. And of the many, two that really come to mind for me are Amy Winehouse, who in this recording we'll listen to is actually reinterpreting a Billy Holiday number. There is no greater love. It's kind of uncanny to me to listen to that recording decades after Holiday's death. I mean, she's almost miming it, you know? Like it's like that close that you're like, you're towing the line a little bit.

I'm kind of, honestly, I was a little surprised you brought up Amy Winehouse because for me, the clearest Billy accolite is actually Erica Badu. But, you know, I don't know. That's like who I hear is. Natalie, you read my mind. And our next clip is from Erica Badu. This is on and on. There you go. We are on the same wavelength.

It's interesting because it's not, you know, sometimes, and we'll talk about this more a little later, but sometimes there are moments where I, you know, as a jazz fan, I'm like, oh, very good, very wistful, like, oh, no one, you know, no one listens to this music anymore. It doesn't matter in our society. But then you listen to someone like Erica Baidu, and you're like, no, some of these sounds from 1959 are still very much with us today. With Erica, it's the idea of singing in a way that doesn't have to be pretty first. You know what I mean?

It's like really manipulating your voice in a way that's like just having so much control that you can do that, you know? It's like it's really, really hard. And also just resisting the temptation to be overly romantic or like nostalgic. So earlier you mentioned Billy Holliday's final recording. And for me, one of the powerful parts of your 1959 project and revisiting this pivotal year was listening to those recordings again. Let's listen first to a recording of a tune called Billy's Blues from earlier in Billy Holiday's career. I'm a life I say I don't. I'm a life I say I don't. And now let's listen to a recording of the same song this time from actually the last recording that Billy Holiday made, a live session at the Storyville Club in Boston.

And just as a warning, the audio quality here is not great. But it'll give us a chance to compare these two versions of the same song. I love my man. I'm alive. I say I don't. Now, I'd always avoided listening to these last recordings. You can hear her control of pitch and rhythm and vibrato isn't quite the same. It made me almost uncomfortable to listen to.

But I think you suggest like a different way to hear some of these final recordings. Yeah, I mean, I just think it's like, I don't know, with age comes wisdom. You know, she was like, it's not like she wasn't with it, you know. until the very end. And so I don't know. I think you just hear something different. It's like the fact that it doesn't sound the same is actually good. You know,

like would you want her to be repeating the same thing that she did all the other times? You know, I don't know. I think it's like her ability to adapt was a strength. Yeah, no, I find that very compelling because it's like you could listen to this in one way and say, oh, this is her not at the peak of her powers. Why would I listen to this? But then on the other hand, there's this kind of bravery and conviction that comes from someone at the very end of their life still up on stage, singing their heart out that is now I listen to. And I'm like, wow, it gives me chills in a way.

Like, there's something very powerful about it. In the grand scheme, you know, like zooming out for a second, like one of the reasons I wanted to do this project is because I think it's a year that gets so often can. canonized, you know, in like really straightforward ways. Like we're talking about like kind of blue, timeout, you know, shape of jazz to come. Mingasaw, like Giant Steps was recorded this year. These are all like incredible jazz records that would change the course of what was to come. Like there's no question about that. But the thing that really fascinates me is just what would it have been like to be a part of the scene at that moment?

Like what do you learn from like listening to more than just those records that have been deemed by whoever to be the best and most important, you know? And I'm not, I'm far from the only person who thinks this, but like those kinds of histories, I think are actually kind of toxic, you know? And like, yeah, it can provide a listening guide for a beginner, you know, somebody just starting out. But like, what if we decided to retell the whole story from square one and go back and look at all the information we have available and say, well, what was actually happening?

Like, what's getting ignored and why? Who decided that this was good and this was the thing that we need to listen to, you know? Absolutely. Those are the kinds of questions I've been trying to ask. And I love that your way of doing that is like, okay, well, let's just see every single day of 1959. Let's see what was actually happening. And then we won't fall victim to that sort of looking back in hindsight, myopia. Yeah.

One of the things that gets erased that comes through really powerfully in this 1959 project is the stories of the women in jazz who have not, unlike Billy Holiday, who have not been favored by history and who have sort of been left on the margins of the story of jazz. Like I'm someone who has a degree in musicology and a study jazz, but there were a lot of female musicians, especially instrumentalists,

which historically have not been treated as well by jazz historians as the vocalists. There were so many that I'd never heard of before. And that just kind of blew my mind, honestly. I mean, same. I was hoping we could listen to a few of these forgotten artists and see whether it's something like you were saying, like, is this, were these artists rightly kind of left behind or is there something else at work here? Let's begin with the incredible piano stylings of Muriel Roberts, who only released one album called Music for All Times and Seas. seasons. This is the first track off that record.

I mean, it's like, it's Christmas music. But, yeah. Muriel, I think, is an interesting case study. Just because it's like she can clearly play. Like, it's a fun record. You know, I'm not necessarily arguing that Muriel Roberts is canon. You know, I don't, I mean, if you decide that there should be a canon. But like, I think it's more like, what was she capable of? and what was she not allowed to continue to do? You know, like the fact that there's only one record, you know, and like she was gigging in New York. You know, that's how I came across her name.

It was because I was like looking at ads from the time and it was like Muriel Roberts playing at whatever place she was playing, you know, doing her thing. And I was like, okay, who is this person? And like you're saying, that happened to me so much like in the course of this project. And I too am a person who's read about jazz, who's played jazz for a long time,

who's written about it a lot, you know. and these names are new to me. So it's like, so what does that mean that this whole class of people was just determined, like, not to have mattered? You know, is it possible that all of them were insignificant? And some people, like Mary Lou Williams obviously does get some, you know, recognition today. But even that is like really minor compared to her male counterparts. And people like Shirley Scott, I mean, she was everywhere in this year. And we talked a bit about Mel Balliston, who was a trombone player.

She was doing arrangements for all kinds of mainstream artists and stuff. It's just you could go on and on and on and on and on. And like that's the fact that in doing this project, I really haven't had to try to create gender parity. You know, I don't think that it's 50-50. You know, I think it's probably somewhere along the lines of 30, 70. But the fact that I really haven't had to go out of my way to do that, I've simply paid attention to the women who I've come across. You know, like that to me says something like pretty damning about how. how, you know, about the gatekeepers in jazz at that time and still today, you know.

You're saying that if you just look at what was being reported in the news and who was actually playing and releasing records in 1959, it would be something, I mean, again, not with any numbers, but something like a 30-70 split in terms of women to men. Whereas if you look at, like, say, a jazz, a history of jazz textbook today, those numbers would probably be a lot smaller. or probably be like 10 90 or something. Right. And the women are all like footnotes, you know? Like their contributions are deemed derivative and insignificant, you know, because in jazz history, like, the emphasis is so often on originality and innovation and, like, who is deemed to have done the thing first, you know what I mean?

And it's just like, I find that kind of a tiring way to look at it overall anyway. But like, I just think, like, the other issue with not writing the, you know, these women into jazz history is that it's meant every subsequent generation of women in jazz has had to be like the women in jazz. You know, we're still at this point where women in jazz can't just be jazz musicians. You know, they have to be the women jazz musicians. Like, even in 2019. And a big reason for that is that they're viewed as new still because this history isn't

written, you know, so and it's a thing, you know, I write about sports too. It's the exact same problem. In every other kind of music, it's the same thing. When we don't have women written into the history, they will continue to have to reinvent the wheel every time they just do the thing, you know? You point out on the liner notes of this Muriel Roberts album, there's the author actually challenges listeners to do kind of a blindfold test to play this Muriel Roberts records for your friend and see if they can tell that it's a woman pianist. That actually feels like it still has a lot of relevance. I almost want to play this next clip. without identifying the artist and see if we just naturally have certain, you know, masculine or feminine associations listening to it.

Was this the William Martin one? I can't remember. Yeah. Yeah. Like, so, I mean, I'm going to be perfectly real. Like, if you did a blindfold test with me and played this for me, I would be like, this is some, you know, like seven foot tall Texan. like backwoods, tenor, sax player, male, like, super grungy.

And it's just got, I guess what I'm saying is this is not what you'd expect or what I would expect. This is an artist I'd never heard of until coming across her in your 1959 project. Walene Barton just getting absolutely filthy on the tenor sacks in this blues number called Rice Pudding. And the fact that she played with an all-woman band too, which wasn't enormously unusual. It was like unusual enough that it would be like, hey, look at these ladies playing music. You know, but there were more than one, if that makes sense.

But yeah, it's like she's playing R&B, you know, on saxophone, which really is not a thing we ever really associate with women even now. And so just the fact that that existed, you know, and that she wasn't the only one that many women participated in big bands and in bands all over, you know, and they just aren't noted. And also it was just harder for women to do anything at that time just because of the expectations of like getting married and having kids and all that kind of stuff. So like the musician's life was not necessarily conducive to kind of the societal expectations for women. Like you really had to buck the system just to be a musician in the first place. But yeah. Yeah. Another striking quote from your project comes from the aforementioned trombonist Mel Balliston

who described the difficulties of keeping together her own all women band in the 1950s. You know, people, she said she had to disband her all women group because people had to keep dropping. out to get married because they were pregnant because to join the workforce. You realize, yeah, to decide to be a woman in jazz was not just a musical decision. It was like a whole lifestyle choice that meant you had to leave a lot of other things behind, maybe. Right. And that one that was more or less acceptable for men and like absolutely unheard of for women.

You know, like if you wanted to do that, you know, it's just like you're saying like, I don't I don't think I can swear, but you're like saying everyone else can suck it, basically. You know, and most women aren't willing to do that, you know, for a lot of reasons that make a lot of sense. And so that makes the achievements of the women who I have come across in this process, like even more striking to me. The fact that most of them did only get to make one record or one single or whatever, but like they did it anyway, you know? Yeah. Another name we haven't brought up is Dinah Washington who had like a massive year in not. 1959. And her and Ray Charles actually sort of operated in a similar space that I find super

fascinating, this like area where R&B and jazz were like overlapping and intermingling, you know. But they both found enormous success in this year. They kind of had their breakout singles, actually, both in 1959. Dining Washington had what a difference a day made. Ray Charles had what I say in in 1959, among others. And Diana Washington also not really critically acclaimed among jazz heads necessarily. What a difference. A day made 24 little hour. And Amy Winehouse was like a big, big, big Dinah Washington fan.

I want to take a quick break and then return to, this topic of how do we understand jazz today and what does listening back 60 years to the heyday make us think about the role of jazz today. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to

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Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly Democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.

But what we want to do in this space is talk about America. and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time.

The view on immigration from the bottom up, instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. So one way to sort of stress test the changing role of jazz in culture is to go back to an event that's been happening continuously since the 1950s and was in its six iteration in 1959. It's the Newport Jazz Festival.

And Natalie, you were just at the... the 2019 version of the Newport Jazz Festival. So based on what you've learned about the festival in 1959, how does it compare to what it's like today? I mean, it was definitely bigger, I think, just as far as the number of people who went. It was like a massive attraction. People drove from all over, which they still do.

And I think in 1959, it was seen as a harbinger of a, a larger trend because it was the first jazz festival, but in 1959, there were a number of other large jazz festivals. The first Playboy Jazz Festival was at Chicago Stadium. The anniversary of that was just this past weekend. So that's like a 20,000 person capacity venue, you know, like filled with jazz fans. And then like there was a Randall's Island jazz festival, too, that happened later in August. So it was just like there was a huge appetite. And I would say now it's definitely a more niche thing. Jazz doesn't have quite the same poll for the mass audience. But I would say I think

things are turning a little bit and have been maybe for like the past decade because the internet has made jazz so much more accessible to a younger audience. You know, like if you want to listen to something, you can just Google it. And there are so many hip hop artists and electronic artists who like cite jazz and use it in their work. Kendrick Lamar was kind of a huge catalyst for like a new wave of jazz musicians out of California. You know, there's now kind of a lot of local scenes like Chicago and London that are really like driven by young adults, like 30-year-olds and under approximately, you know? And so that attracts audiences of the same age.

And honestly, my only like real criticism of this year's jazz festival was I feel like they really need to get rid of some of the chairs, you know, because there's like not enough room to like stand and watch the people at this point because there are so many young people who want to be there and um you know and be standing and appreciating the music and don't bring lawn chairs you know which is kind of the Newport Jazz Festival way is to like bring your lawn chair and plop down at the main stage and just sit there all day yeah yeah absolutely get on your feet uh I mean that's that's encouraging to me it makes me think of Kendrick Lamar almost as a latter day Miles Davis like

making jazz cool again perhaps. I wrote a story that controversially had that exact title. But it was about how, you know, Kendrick sort of served as a centerpiece for people like Comasi Washington and Thundercat and Terrace Martin, who is now in Herbie Hancock's band, and he produced Herbie's new album, I believe. I could be wrong on that. Yeah, yeah, that's right. But Kendrick was the one who sort of formed the place for all of them to, like, hit the mainstream.

You know, they were just, like, jamming in L.A. I mean, Thundercat obviously had his own career before, but Kendrick sort of brought them all in the room together with him and his major label, you know, sort of heft, really like skyrocketed them to a different tier. And that's fascinating, you know, to see how jazz has become a part of his work. You know, I think there was a point in time recently where jazz had a reputation that was kind of the opposite of what it was in 59,

and what you're describing today, a moment perhaps in which what we were talking about at the onset of this episode, the way that these landmark records, like kind of blue and timeout, established jazz as maybe a sort of refined coffee shop kind of style. Yeah. I've made a habit of anytime popular media like mocks jazz,

I try to save it. So I wanted to just play one clip that I think capture it's the attitude that for a long time a lot of people had about jazz. This is from the British comedy duo The Mighty Bouch. Are you aware of the music known as jazz? Are you aware of jazz music, the movement of jazz? Why do you keep going on the back jazz for? Because it's the most important art form in the 20th century. No one listens to jazz. Science teachers and the mentally ill. That's all jazz is for. You better take that back, you electropons. Or what? You better just take it back, asshole. I won't be taking that about. I'll be leaving it

out there for all to say drink it back up no i hate jazz you hate jazz you fear jazz huh uh yeah yeah you fear jazz don't you feel the lack of rules no the lack of boundaries oh it's a fence no it's soft ah what's happening the shapes the chaos huh has to be simple nurse rhymes for you don't it stop the evil little de did did dee die die die die die the melody gets abstract you mess your trousers and run to your mommy shut your mouth huh I don't know. I mean, I think that's hilarious. I do too, but I do think it captures this attitude towards jazz of it being sort of serious and a little dry. So it gives me a lot of optimism that you think that jazz might be drifting back towards some relevance in popular culture.

And I'm wondering if someone, you're someone who covers jazz, but also the pop world and the R&B world, you've profiled Ariana Grande and Cheryl Crow. So I'm curious if you have any thoughts about going from 59 to now, like why jazz might have that relevance today again? I think like the assumptions sort of that are being played on in that clip are real. And they're sort of specifically a product of this neoclassical era of jazz, almost the era when some of the biggest figures, and jazz were fighting really hard to make it part of America's institutions, you know,

which is kind of a double-edged sword. They wanted the music to be taken seriously and to get more resources. But as a result, that meant sort of making it elitist, you know, like a symphony or something, or inaccessible or somehow, if you don't understand this, there's something wrong with you. You know, it's not that there's something bad about the music. You know, it's that you just don't get it. And sort of a lot of those kinds of walls were put up, I would say, from 19. 1975 till 2000.

But the distinction has never been as big, I think, for musicians as it has been for listeners. Many musicians of all stripes, like, come through jazz or, like, have played it at some point or listen to it or whatever, you know, because it's just like music. I think genre often means a lot less to musicians than it does to listeners. But, like, now that everybody sort of has access to all that information and like, oh, maybe it's not as scary once you actually listen to it a time or two. You know what I mean? Like those walls are sort of disintegrating because like the barriers to entry are so low. So that's just my take on it. But I think even in 1959, even though jazz was such an enormous part of TV soundtracks, movie soundtracks, these giant festivals, it was like part of R&B that was making massive chart moves.

And even stuff like Amma Jamal's Poinsiana, you know, that was a hit. You know, that was a single that was in jukeboxes. So there was a mainstream jazz presence in the way that there isn't necessarily today, but it was still associated with the beatniks as this too cool stuff for weirdos, you know? So it was those dual forces at play. Like one of the reasons that it had such a big impact on TV and movies is because people were like, oh, this is code for something like sort of illicit and mysterious. The movies that had jazz soundtracks were like anatomy of a murder.

What do you think that's about? It's like the stuff that's sort of meant to be code for like the dark side or whatever or something like something torrid, you know, like I don't know. Just stuff that's that's not for everyone, you know, that's not mainstream. That's not acceptable necessarily. So it's sort of there were other forces at work there too. Natalie, thank you so much for joining us and taking us through some of the discoveries and rediscovery you've come across. exploring the jazz scene of 1959. I've really enjoyed this conversation both because as a jazz head,

it kind of shines new light on figures that are known to me and others that are unknown to me. And because as we fast forward to the present, it makes me feel like jazz can still have a place in popular music today, and maybe we're actually inching towards that. So with that in mind, I was hoping you might contribute, a few songs to a playlist that we can share with our listeners, kind of a 1959 to 2019 playlist featuring some of the artists you found from 1959 and some of the ones you're listening

to today. Yeah, sure. Definitely. We will throw up a link to Natalie's 1959 project as well as some of the key text she mentioned, James Baldwin. Natalie, thank you so much for joining us. I hope we can have you back sometime. Definitely. Thank you again for having me. This episode of Switched on Pop was produced by Mois, Nate Sloan. Special thanks to Natalie Weiner for joining us. Check our show notes for links to a Spotify playlist and some of the articles she was talking about. Switched on Pop is edited and engineered by Brandon McFarland. Our production fellow

is Megan Lubin and our community manager is Sarah Terry. Executive producers are Nishat Kurwa and Liz Nelson. We are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and you can find more shows anywhere you get podcasts, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, app, Radio, Public, IHeartRadio, et cetera. Hit us up on Twitter at Switched On Pop or email us, contact at switchedonpop.com. We'll be back in another week with a fire episode for you.

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