Jazz great Percy Heath fought & won vs. minstrelsy

by Stanley Crouch

Percy Heath's victory was ultimate high note

The death last month of bassist Percy Heath at 82 brings to a full conclusion the life of the Modern Jazz Quartet, which was formed in the early 1950s, broke up for about 10 years in the '70s and reunited in the early '80s. It was a signal ensemble, one of the greatest in the history of jazz, which is to say in the history of American music.

It was an immaculate band known for its class, its virtuosity and its control, and that was important because it made a successful, frontal attack on the minstrel tradition that was imposed on Negro musicians of the time.

In our era of neo-sambo minstrelsy in the worst of hip hop, it is hard for many to realize that there was once a time in which black musicians had aspirations higher than money and access to decadence. The members of Modern Jazz Quartet came of age in the 1940s when Negro musicians in and out of jazz were in a serious revolt. Their aspirations called for moving beyond the buffoon vulgarity expected of them. At that time, whether one was a concert artist or a jazz musician, skin tone could determine whether or not you were respected as an individual.

All of the members of the Modern Jazz Quartet were there when the bebop generation came forward and tried to receive respect as serious artists. One of the troubles was that many of the beboppers were heroin addicts, which meant that on one hand they were producing a difficult, virtuoso style, while on the other they were pariahs. The Modern Jazz Quartet had none of those problems. They were always on time, and performed music that brought a sort of low-keyed chamber quality to even the dingy, smoke-filled rooms they had to play in early on. Some found the group's use of classical music pretentious, and thought of the players as being deracinated, too far removed from the Negro foundations of jazz. Those people were wrong.

When that band bent into the blues, one could feel the pulse of even the most refined audience start to quicken and experience a sense of community that was as old and as American as the invention of the blues itself.

As we move to reinvent ourselves in face of the commercial sludge in popular entertainment, we can always use as a symbol musicians like Heath and the Modern Jazz Quartet. They gave us all that they could.

Stanley Crouch is a columnist, novelist, essayist, critic and television commentator. He has served since 1987 as an artistic consultant at Lincoln Center and is a co-founder of the department known as Jazz at Lincoln Center. In 1993, he received both the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a MacArthur Foundation grant. He is now working on a biography of Charlie Parker.

May 5, 2005

Source: Daily News

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