Four Jazz Lives

IV. Jackie McLean

Jackie McLean THE OTHER MUSICIANS treated in this book have all been outsiders throughout their jazz careers. They have never been involved with the mainstream of jazz playing, and they have never been a part of the various coteries that make up that mainstream. Herbie Nichols grew up in the jazz center of the world, but was ignored by his contemporaries for reasons that are still not clear to me, except that his music was not fashionable. The adversities and ironies that have characterized Cecil Taylor's and Omette Coleman 's careers have been the predictable result of the conscious assimilation in their music of elements alien to the mainstream. These men are all innovators, and innovation breeds adverSity. Taylor and Coleman, at least, never expected anything else; they knew early in their careers that their music would offend a substantial part of the jazz establishment . But Jackie McLean has never considered himself an innovator, nor have the analysts of his time considered him [ 182 ] Four Jazz Lives one. He is certainly an individualist, having one of the most distinctive tones and phraseologies on the modern alto saxophone , and his playing and composing have never been anything but contemporary. But although he has been a member of the various jazz vanguards of the last seventeen years, he has never been the man who provoked the abrupt upheavals that forced and formed the vanguard. Unlike Coleman and Taylor, who are often accused of being esoteric and arrogant, respectively, by many of their fellow musicians, and the relatively unknown Herbie Nichols, Jackie McLean has commanded the respect of jazz musicians, promoters, and followers since his late teens. He was raised in the hothouse of modern jazz, and before he turned twenty he could count among his friends and associates most of the big names of modern jazz. He went to high school with Sonny Rollins; at seventeen he was a student of the great Bud Powell; at eighteen he was a protege of Charlie Parker; at nineteen he was tutoring Miles Davis on East Coast attire; before he was twenty-five he was thought by many musicians to be Charlie Parker's heir apparent on the alto saxophone. Jackie McLean is said to have "paid his dues," meaning that he has worked his way up through the more respected bands, and that he has suffered all the slings and arrows of the jazz life. He has held jobs and recorded with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Mingus, Art Blakey and many, many more top modern jazz musicians. As for his ''heavy dues," Jackie was a drug addict for much of his adult life, yet he has managed to raise three children who are conspicuous among other teen-agers only for their sanity. Jackie McLean at thirty-five is still a growing man. In the last few years, he has become a leader whose records sell consistently, and who would be in considerable demand for Jackie McLean [ 18 3 ] nightclub work were it not for the fact that he was handicapped by his situation as a jazz musician without a cabaret card, which is roughly analogous to being a fisherman without a boat. This restriction forbids him to work in nightclubs in New York City, the biggest jazz market in the world. Jackie expects to have his cabaret license by the time this book is released, and he will then be able to accept some of the offers which, until now, he has been obliged to decline. The reason for Jackie McLean's presence in these pages is not only that he exemplifies much of the best and the worst of the jazz life but also that he is one of the few jazz musicians who has been able to keep his music fresh and moving for more than a decade and a half. Jackie McLean was born John McLean, Jr., in New York City on May 17, 1931, the son of John McLean and Alpha Omega McLean. His father was a guitarist of some repute, having worked with such swing musicians as Tiny Bradshaw andsaxophonistTeddy Hill. Hill was one of the pivotal bandleaders of the late Thirties, but he is probably better known for operating Minton's ("the birthplace of bebop"), a bar that was easily the most seminal establishment of the bebop revolution. By the time Jackie was eleven, the McLeans had lived on 135th...