Bohemian Footnotes #1 - Bohemia After Dark
“Kenny Clarke, veteran modernist who still out-rhythms, out-solos, and out-guesses all comers in the percussion field is the pivotal point around which this album revolves . . . or, perhaps Swings, is a better word. As a great jazz musician, he is also able to recognize potential greatness in other musicians. After all, his part in laying the rhythmic foundation for modern jazz is no small one! Here, he has brought to Savoy and Ozzie Cadena (A&R chief) a group of "new" jazz stars . . . most performing for the first time on wax here! Titled after that out standing N.Y. City club that has been a prime force in the presentation of the "hard bop" East Coast (if you like terms) school of jazz, the Cafe Bohemia in Greenwich Village has been a jazzman's home away from home! (Unfortunately, the young lady gracing our cover does NOT come with the drinks at the club.) The recording date was extremely informal. From the rather large group the men organized their riffs, took turns and blew. Very few re-takes were made, because the spirited session seemed to "take off just right" and stay that way! Out of Chaos comes Beauty, they say ... and from the freedom of organization and uniformity in tight arranging has come an outstanding "blowing" session of high merit! The jazz world owes thanks to Kenny for his "discovery" for records of the brothers Adderley, who were fresh up from Florida when recorded here. Additional thanks too for the opportunity to record such stellar "youngsters" as Don Byrd, Paul Chambers, and Jerome Richardson . . . all 3 now rated among the leading lights on today's scene.”
Sleeves notes from Bohemia After Dark LP.
Quite a bit smaller than “The Jazz Corner of the World” that was Birdland was the Café Bohemia, which, according to certain record sleeves, was only “The Jazz Corner of the Village1..” It was a jazz club only by accident; its owner, hardly interested in the stuff at all, had failed at everything else2.. One drunkard promised to pay his tab by playing a string of shows there, but, by the night of the first, cirrhosis of the liver, and a few other things, had already killed Charlie Parker - for it was he! The name on the posters, though, had already changed the nature of the place3..
Oscar Pettiford led the house band for a while and wrote Bohemia After Dark in the venue’s honour. Not in the least romantic, barely even smoky, it is New York hard-bop or, as it said on the door, “progressive jazz only4..” With no lyric, the piece conveys the atmosphere of the music club through music alone, making it, like all post-swing jazz, nothing more than music for music’s sake: rhythms to which you can nod your head, but never dance5..
Cannonball Adderley became one of the stars of hard-bop, coming to prominence after sitting in on a session with Pettiford at the Bohemia. He had only just moved to New York from Florida and brought his sax to the club for fear of it being stolen. Within a few weeks, he had already recorded Bohemia After Dark with the Kenny Clarke Sextet. Of course, later reissues would have to put Adderley’s name on the front so that people would buy it, for, by then, he had already played on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and led successful groups of his own.
A number of key live LPs would be recorded at Bohemia in the three years that it opened6. and Mr. Davis would found his first important quintets there. It couldn’t last though, neither as a pit-stop for touring musicians or young tyros trying to make names for themselves: the young players do make their names and the old names go on touring, sending each off to bigger venues. Even the notion of bop as a hard, intellectual music with no white audience couldn’t last7.. Black musicians may have stopped being merely the white man’s entertainer, but they couldn’t stop white listeners being entertained.
There was a difference between earlier white Bohemianism and black Bohemianism (or Bohemia after dark, if you’ll forgive me): Bohemianism generally meant giving something up or renouncing one’s privilege and most of those young jazz players had neither. So, where in other fields, the artist may prove the purity of their intention by declining the money, Mr. Davis could scowl, refuse to compromise, and take it anyway, without caring what anybody says8.. Even Mr. Adderley, who had a conservatory education, would do well without compromising any notions of being an outsider, because jazz came from the outside, so, when it moved to the concert hall and the arts festival, it was only fair to charge people to get in.
Notes
1. As seen on certain reissues of Bohemia After Dark.
2. “For six months, I tried to make the place pay, first as a bar and restaurant, then with girl shows, and then with various acts.” Jimmy Garofalo, the owner of Café Bohemia, in an interview with The Village Voice.
3. “The Bohemia’s audience reminded me of cafes in Europe, where people were serious and intense, and paid attention. They regarded the music as an art form, and even acted a little superior about the fact that they were there and listening to Miles.” George Avakian, quoted in "When Giants Walked the Village," Downbeat magazine, 2005.
4. “As long as they could, they would create a chamber music - even a soloist’s music - of protest and rejection, playing for themselves as Outsiders. They would accept the fact that the only vitality they could encompass was the nervous frenzy of a jungle turned to asphalt. Their music was their religion in that they put into it all the skeletonic truth they knew. Having played it, they died of consumption, drinks, drugs, or mental breakdown.” Wilfred Mellers, Music in a New Found Land.
5. “Swing had always been a staple component of jazz in any category, because jazz began as dance music, and without a detectable beat the dancers would have been stymied. (…) No matter how complex, subtle or allusive it became, jazz had always contained that energizing simplicity. Unfortunately bebop had the technical means to eliminate it.” Clive James, Cultural Amnesia.
6. Charlie Mingus - Live from Cafe Bohemia; Kenny Dorham - 'Round About Midnight at the Cafe Bohemia; Art Blakely - At the Cafe Bohemia, Vol. 1, 2, 3...; The Jazz Messengers - At the Cafe Bohemia, Nov. 11-23, 1955; George Wallington - Complete Live at the Cafe Bohemia; Etc.
7. “A new soapbox for minority groups that have special brands of music to get off their little chests.” The New Yorker magazine, 1955.
8. “If I don’t like what they write, I get into my Ferrari and I drive away.” Miles Davis, Attributed.