Music for Grownups: Jazz Icons

The Naxos recently released its third set of vintage European jazz performances. Once again, the first thing you'll probably notice about these cats—in this case Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Lionel Hampton, Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderley, and Nina Simone—is that they dressed sharp.

 

Recorded originally for television between 1958 and 1975, the ongoing "Jazz Icons" series had languished, forgotten for nearly 50 years. Now remastered and handsomely packaged, the collection includes concerts and in-studio performances, mostly in elegant black and white.

 

The fascinating time-machine quality of these DVDs is accented by the audiences. These consist mostly of earnest-looking Danish, Swedish, and Dutch listeners, who accorded American jazz a type of rapt respect we rarely see anymore. This was serious business, both for musicians and audience. The rapt attention of the latter pays off in some of the most consistently fine jazz-playing you may ever see and hear.

 

With the exception of vibraphonist Lionel Hampton's hour-long concert, which took place in Belgium in 1958, each of the "Jazz Icons" DVDs contains between two and five separate performances. Pianist Bill Evans, for example, is captured on five occasions in Sweden, France, and Denmark. Both artist and music change over the years. The serious-looking, short-haired gentleman performing a beautifully spacious "My Foolish Heart" in coat and tie in 1964 develops into a shaggier, red-jacketed man still hunched over his piano, like a father fascinated by an infant in a crib, as he performs "Up With the Lark" with playful intensity in 1975.

 

The "Jazz Icons" series boasts a remarkable breadth of music. A world of imagination and experience separates relatively traditional pianist Oscar Peterson's intimate trio or Cannonball Adderley's searing bebop from Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the powerful, witty, and blind jazz visionary who sometimes blew three saxophones simultaneously. The only common denominator among these artists appears to be the consistently high quality of their playing.

 

Singer-pianist Nina Simone is in a class by herself. Where the male instrumentalists reflect a sober dignity abroad, Simone was a brash Civil Rights activist whose politics were inseparable from her music (the recently released To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story provides a terrific overview of her remarkable and tumultuous career on three CDs and another DVD). A rebellious, all-American sensibility informs the passion and anger with which she sings the protest songs "Mississippi God----" and Bob Dylan's "The Ballad of Hollis Brown" in a 1965 television appearance in Holland.

 

The seven latest "Jazz Icons" DVDs can either be purchased separately or together. I recommend the box, which contains an otherwise unavailable bonus disk containing 14 more tracks from Rollins, Kirk, and Simone.

 

Remember liner notes? Every "Jazz Icons" package contains a 24-page booklet featuring a long essay prefaced by a personal reminiscence by a friend or relative. These reflections provide context and insight into life of the artist in question and into the "Icons" performances in particular. And why not? Jazz has always meant many things to many audiences, and one of those things is "American classical music," although I guarantee that any "Jazz Icons" performance is a lot more fun to watch than your garden-variety classical-music video.