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Where are ATL’s Jazz Fans?

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When I arrived in Atlanta in 1988 it didn’t take me long to realize that the annual Atlanta Jazz Festival was something very special. At that time I was a new jazz student. Just before leaving the Bay Area, California, I was just getting started in high end audio equipment where acoustic instrumentation is preferred to electronic and I was learning REAL jazz from my fusion jazz (Weather Report and Return to Forever) reference and my funk, R&B roots. In frequenting our annual jazz festival I quickly discovered our small but loyal jazz community. I recall the first jazz club I regularly frequented, Just Jazz was located just off Peachtree, which opened right after the death of the great trumpeter Miles Davis. The house band featured an extremely talented pianist named Johnny Oneal. I remember the first time I checked out Dante’s Down the Hatch restaurant in Buckhead, and heard Paul Mitchell play piano, who was one of Atlanta’s best kept jazz treasures. I used to look forward to Jazz at the Penta Hotel, later the Renaissance Hotel, after the jazz ended in the park where the jam session featured artists who played in the park alongside many of our own local stars. Once the festival jam sessions moved to Churchill Grounds I began my tradition of ending my jazz festival with a Cuban cigar and feeling a part of something very special, Atlanta’s jazz community.

I have been a “special” fan of music since the age of five and vividly remember MY first lp record purchase in East Oakland in 1972, Curtis Mayfield’s, “Super Fly” movie soundtrack. The guy behind the counter looked at the cover then to my mother, she shrugged her shoulders then looked at me and I looked at him like, “put the record in the bag fool!” I new what I liked at an early age and I also knew what was good. I loved rap too which was actually my generation. In high school I could mix and scratch and work a cross fader seamlessly. I was exposed to a wealth of diverse music in the Bay Area but in the pursuit of better sounding equipment I realized that the highest quality stereo is designed to play acoustic music and I began to learn jazz. The great electric jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius was the first jazz artist that I had ever actually HEARD play in 1986 as a part of the jazz super group “Weather Report” in the audiophile store named “Pro Audio” in Berkeley, California. Nothing else ever made such an impact on my ability to focus in on a “jazz solo” as the notes he played. After that, I became like a sponge for jazz music.

In 1998 I attended my first North Sea Jazz Festival, in the Netherlands, which had been described to me as the ultimate Jazz Festival ever by one of my musical mentors Marvin Cato. He was correct and it has been my absolute favorite vacation destination since. It’s a place where on any given Saturday afternoon 65,000 “special” music lovers can come to see their favorite artists perform on up to 16 different stages with rooms that can hold from 15,000 to 500 spectators. The sound quality is absolutely perfect in every single room! The musical IQ, the shear knowledge of music and the different genres of music, constitute “special.” Even though these people and I don’t have much in common as I am African American and they are mostly Dutch and European. When we talk about jazz we share common ground, literally, and that experience is what allowed me to understand jazz culture. I have felt more kin to the people in the Netherlands than most American music fans as a deeper human experience can be shared. Music performed by artists is art. Art is something that enriches our lives in this civilized existence and unfortunately we in America don’t support the arts as much as Europeans.

Anjanette Dawes and Ginger Dee, my lovely associates and I make up AtlantaJazz.Info which was formed to support our local Atlanta jazz and live music culture. Atlanta has an incredible live music community that if we do not support then will surely go away. As we were already out and about our friends would always ask us to recommend a nice place to go to hear live music. Even though we still make our rounds the crowds have become smaller at an alarming rate. On Sunday, the last day of our beloved Atlanta Jazz Festival when I walked into Churchill Grounds to enjoy an Opus X with Sam Yi (the owner) I was shocked to see that there were only a few of us there? I know the economy has been better and last year was an indicator too but as a fan I was saddened. Ginger and I walked in to discuss the phenomenally talented drummer Cindy Blackman who we sat in the rain to see just have an INCREDIBLE set! Once upon a time I took this session for granted that it would always be there. A club full of jazz fans and musicians mixing and discussing the festival and jazz music. I looked around and wondered, where are Atlanta’s jazz music fans? After my smoke I rolled through Studio 281 on Peters St. to catch Henry Davenport (the owner) and he said I missed it? I only smoked one cigar and we left after Cindy and didn’t even stay for the last group in the park, Hiroshima. If it wasn’t for Ginger then I could have never explored the similarities of Cindy’s play to that of the great Tony Williams and how her set reminded me of Miles Davis great fusion jazz music. The city of Atlanta brought her here from a European tour where aside from a couple VW commercials we would have very few other outlets to hear this wonderful artist. I know that I am NOT the only grateful person for our festival but we should not take it for granted either and I fear we may be doing just that.

I have been to five different clubs in the last four weeks and seen great sets. From Churchill Grounds, Studio 281, Apache Café, Sugarhill (Now Closed), Café 290, Twains (on Tuesdays) and “The Phantom Room” behind South Dekalb Mall at the cinema entrance on Mondays and others, I am committed to writing up more pieces for the site sharing with our audience where to go and what you can expect to see and hear. There is a saying that, “if you build it, then they will come.” Atlanta, let us show you the way.