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Careers in Jazz
By Bill Anschell
www.billanschell.comEvery year, university programs spit out thousands of jazz musicians sporting hardearned
diplomas and high hopes. But when these graduates hit the first formal
rite of jazz passage – a desperate trip to the local pawn shop – they learn that the
diploma is literally not worth the paper it’s printed on. Entering school, their dream
was simple: To perform music they love for attentive audiences in jazz clubs,
concert halls, and festivals, and to earn a fair wage for their efforts1. But set loose
from the nurturing womb of the campus, they quickly experience the shock of an
indifferent and often hostile new reality.
The world doesn’t take kindly to jazz artists, and before long these graduates
find their ideals displaced by bitter cynicism. At best, one percent of them will
eventually realize their dreams, and only after years of paying dues. These are the
Chosen Ones, whose success results from a rare combination of often freakish
talent, perseverance, good looks, personality, ambition, geography and an ability
to skillfully navigate unpredictably changing public tastes.
Why so few Chosen Ones? Simple economics: People who want to play jazz
actually outnumber those who enjoy or even tolerate it, let alone pay to hear it.
Consequently, in the microscopic jazz economy, there isn’t nearly enough to go
around, though competition for the crumbs is relentless and sometimes brutal.
This simple financial reality underlies virtually all of the infighting, backbiting,
and doomsaying that define the jazz condition.
But when the jazz bug bites, it’s hard to shake. Of the remaining 99%, the vast
majority continues the battle, even in the face of shattered dreams and personal
defeat. How do they survive? By compromising their music, their lifestyle, their
self-respect, or any combination of the three.
What, then, are the paths to survival? Whether through free choice or fate, hopeless
devotion or clinical insanity, jazz musicians eventually sort themselves out into the
following subtypes:
1 Additionally, a declining but still significant subgroup
of males enter the jazz world motivated by the idea
that, as artists, they might somehow have special appeal
to women. Their miscalculation is gross, in that: 1)
Women prefer men who aren’t broke; 2) Women prefer
men who bathe regularly; 3) Women prefer men whose
music isn’t antiquated and irrelevant; 4) Women can
grow tired, after spending another lonely night on a
barstool in a deserted jazz club, of assuring men that the
first two measures of their second chorus in the fourth
tune of the last set didn’t really suck – in fact, were
pretty good, actually very good – especially knowing
that the singer’s charts were lame, the drummer was
rushing maniacally, the bassist was drunk and near
comatose, the piano was painfully out of tune, and
the sound coming from the stage monitors was like
a chamber of horrors; really, in light of all that, the
whole solo was practically super-human, the work of a
great artist overcoming adversity to make a powerful,
transcendent statement.
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Gig Whores are the largest class within the jazz community, and are the easiest to find. They ply
their wares in hotel lobbies, restaurants, private parties of all types, and anywhere else that jazz
is degraded to an artless commodity and sold to the highest bidder. This is done knowingly and
willfully, but not without self-awareness and – at times – self-pity. While a Gig Whore may claim
to be working “in the trenches,” the jazz musician within knows that he’s really plumbing untreated
musical sewage.
Even outside the jazz arena, jazz Gig Whores, working undercover, populate the music world’s
ample underbelly: the pianist wearily accompanying a tone-deaf vocalist in a community musical
theater production, the bugler announcing post parade at a horse racing track (slyly inserting
a Charlie Parker lick disguised as a flourish), the off-camera bassist backing American Idol
contestants, the herald trumpeters – dressed in renaissance costumes – serenading department
store shoppers at Christmas time, the wedding band leader cajoling guests into a conga line for
“Hot, Hot, Hot” (and the six accomplices to his musical crime, barely hiding their disgust and selfloathing),
the drummer making “punch-line” sounds for a would-be comedian … each banking
part of his pay to subsidize the day when he might dare to take the jazz plunge, holding his nose
with one hand as the other gratefully palms the ample paycheck.
Yet there is room for heroism in the Gig Whore’s world. That same pianist might acrobatically shift
keys and drop beats in tandem with the vocalist, magically masking her every misstep. The bassist
might find mistakes in the vapid Idol charts and fix them on the fly with improvisational prowess.
The wedding band members might “fake” the bride’s favorite song, a last-minute obscure request
they all just happen to know by ear. More often than not, jazz Gig Whores make up in talent what
they lack in pride, taste or integrity.
While money motivates the Gig Whore’s musical lifestyle, fear motivates his more immediate
actions. Gig Whores have an intense phobia of open spaces – on their calendars – which can
elicit sudden adrenaline-fueled outbreaks of cold-calls to contractors, restaurateurs and wedding
planners. Between calls, they sit by their phones with the desperation of dateless adolescents.
They’re also terrified of their booking agents, clients and contracts, and compensate by overworking –
shortening their breaks and prolonging their sets. You’ll often find a Gig Whore (and his
unfortunate band) playing in an empty room long after the clients and guests have left, a lone
custodian angrily mopping the floor, his iPod unable to fully drown out the tired music emanating
from the bandstand.
Identifying Signs
• Tuxedo
• Bad toupee or comb-over
• Tie emblazoned with stylized jazz instrument
• Overzealous handshake
Jazz Classes, in Detail
Gig Whores
Survival Techniques
• Advertising in Bridal Magazines
• Moving abroad for hotel gigs in exotic
countries, only to play the worst in
American pop music for drunk
American businessmen
• Alcoholism
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Named after “air plants,” which live without need for soil, these are the true heroes of the jazz
world. They eat only out of necessity, seemingly nourished by the music they play, including their
hours of daily practicing. Most varieties of Epiphytes thrive in subterranean environments, such as
dank basement apartments, with little apparent need for sunlight. They move frequently from hovel
to hovel after seemingly exhausting the available air that sustains them. Their skin is wan, and they
blink uncomfortably in daylight, preferring to wear sunglasses around the clock.
Epiphytes are the trendsetters in the jazz community, admired and emulated by their peers. Their
speech is heavily peppered with cutting-edge jazz lingo, and they are often innovators in jazz
vocabulary. Although they are the elite class of the working musicians (short of Chosen Ones,
who live in a separate musical universe), they are the least likely to reproduce, finding economic
advantage in a more streamlined lifestyle. In this sense, an adverse Darwinian effect works against
the forward movement of jazz, as natural selection favors gene propagation from the less talented,
more whorish players.
Caucasian Epiphytes often live their lives as modern-day extensions of the Beat Generation.
African-American Epiphytes are frequently motivated by a mandate to explore and perpetuate
the roots of contemporary black culture and identity. Regardless of race, Epiphytes can be highly
temperamental, and many are gifted with a special ability to make the other musicians on the
bandstand hate one another.
The relationship between Epiphytes and Gig Whores is particularly intriguing: Epiphytes live on the
fringes of mainstream society in order to stake their place in jazz music; Gig Whores work on the
fringes of the jazz world in order to stake their place in mainstream society. Yet between them is a
quiet understanding, a shared realization that there is no perfect solution to the Jazz Problem. Both
are driven by a Buddhist sensibility: Epiphytes believe that material objects are impermanent and of
no value; Gig Whores embrace the notion that life is suffering.
Identifying Signs:
• Low body mass
• Self-cut hair
• Unmatched shoes
Epiphytes
Survival Techniques
• Migratory movement among communities and countries that are
briefly tolerant of jazz
• Supplementary income earned from plasma banks and focus groups
• Narcotics addiction
Silver Spoons
The clearest path to survival in jazz is simply to have no need for money. And while many jazz
artists create their music with little regard for listeners, those who are independently wealthy have
the luxury of disregarding their audience entirely. As a general rule, the wealthier the artist, the less
accessible his music and the loftier his rhetoric about musical freedom and innovation.
Many of these artists purchase their own concert spaces, where they book themselves, joined by
their fellow moneyed, avant peers or by Epiphytes with avant leanings. Although anger is often a
central element of their musical aesthetic (inspired, as they are still, by the spirit of 1960s rebellion),
in the largest sense, no harm is done.
Their audience consists of the same four to eight people for each concert. Because so few people will
pay to hear the music, it is often supported by grants from arts agencies.
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Silver Spoons spend their abundant free time thinking about, and writing descriptions of, the deep
philosophical underpinnings of their work. These descriptions are then adapted to serve as the
narratives of their grant proposals. The grants panelists, who know nothing about jazz, equate the
artists’ impressive discourse with depth of musicality, and reward them accordingly.
It should be noted that not all independently wealthy artists are drawn to the avant-garde. Some take
part in the mainstream jazz arena, where they play out a conflicted relationship with their money.
The most callous ones offer to perform in jazz venues for free, undercutting their working peers and
driving down the already meager local pay scale. Others carefully pick their spots, accepting only
the most flattering gigs, thereby earning an artificially exalted reputation among audiences and the
media. And some, uncomfortable with the seeming oxymoron of being a “moneyed jazz artist,” live
Spartan lifestyles that enable them to “pass” among their less privileged colleagues.
Subset
• Artists living on disability
following psychotic episodes
Survival Techniques
• None needed
Identifying Signs
• Carefully chosen frayed second-hand clothing
• “Street” jazz nickname (replacing embarrassingly
aristocratic given name)
Career Professionals
Like Silver Spoons, Career Professionals have no shortage of money; the difference is that they work
for it. Although they take their “straight gig” seriously – often earning advanced college degrees and
struggling to climb the corporate ladder – they still self-identify primarily as jazz artists. This creates
an inevitable disconnect between their day-to-day and stage personae.
In their suburban neighborhoods they’re accepted as hard-working citizens, lent an air of the exotic
by their occasional late-night jazz gigs. Among their jazz peers, they spin their personal narratives
along these lines: By making a living outside the workaday jazz world, they’re able to keep their
music “unpolluted” by artistically compromising gigs. The reality beneath the spin – that they and/
or their spouse simply don’t want to forgo the creature comforts that a jazz income can’t buy –
goes unstated, but is silently understood by all.
Career Professionals have tremendous admiration for Epiphytes, but are reluctant to take the
corresponding vow of poverty. On the other hand, they view Gig Whores with outright disdain;
ugly cousins who have chosen the musical low road.
The biggest challenge faced by Career Professionals is maintaining their chops. Working nine to five
makes it difficult to keep up any sort of practice regimen, and insisting on playing only meaningful
gigs minimizes their time on stage. They compensate with intensive bursts of practice before each
performance, shutting themselves off from their families and shortening their sleep habits. At the
same time, they insist that mere chops are irrelevant to any music of significance, which is, by
definition, the only music they play.
Identifying Signs
• Air of dignity
• Chronic fatigue
• Normal friends
Survival Techniques
• None needed
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Survivalists
Unlike the more highly trained and thoroughly moneyed Career Professionals, Survivalists typically
bounce among unskilled jobs, taking them mainly out of desperation as their gigging income falls
short. More often than not this sets off a perpetual cycle of gigging, falling into debt, washing dishes
or working at a music store to get back ahead, quitting to gig full-time again, then falling back into
debt. Few have the wisdom to leave the jazz world altogether; many are trombonists.
Artists in this group are envious of Gig Whores, who more successfully troll the depths of the music
world for scraps. They view Epiphytes with ambivalence, being reluctant to admit that they are
separated from them only by a lack of talent.
Identifying Signs
• Air of desperation
• Bad teeth
• Domino’s car-tops
Survival Techniques
• Pyramid schemes
• Selling cell phones and sunglasses in makeshift mall kiosks
• Drug-dealing
2 A more gender-neutral report might recognize the
growing number of female instrumentalists by referring
to “working spouses” rather than “working wives.”
However, the sample of female players hasn’t been large
enough, for long enough, to yield statistically significant
results. It is hoped that they will be more grateful
than resentful for being excluded from this admittedly
phallocentric document. Female vocalists – as has been
documented extensively outside this report – are a
different species altogether.
Jazz musicians with working wives may be nearly as fortunate as the Silver Spoons, and freed to lead
similarly privileged lifestyles. Or they may discover over time that their jazz career and the terms of
their marital relationship are virtually incompatible. It all depends on a complex formula that charts
the timing of an artist’s marriage against the progress of his career to that point. The results of this
equation can be distilled into two subsets, with highly divergent outcomes.
A jazz artist who marries young, when his bride shares his delusion that he might become a Chosen
One, eventually develops an inevitable air of failure and defeat. His once idealistic wife, hardened
by the burden of becoming the family provider, constantly reminds him that his career choice has
proven to be a selfish indulgence. Though she once bought into the jazz community’s inflated sense
of self-importance, she quickly loses interest in her husband’s gigs, considering them – as does the
rest of the outside world – trivial and irrelevant. Forced to carry his weight, he becomes unavailable
for rehearsals, instead preparing family meals or driving his kids to soccer games. He may cancel gigs at
the last minute because his wife needs “a night out with the girls,” and he can’t find a sitter. Deemed
unreliable and uncommitted by his jazz peers, he gets fewer and fewer calls. Under pressure –
especially if his wife can’t fully pay the bills – he gradually morphs into a Gig Whore of the most
desperate variety, eventually landing in a high-paying, soul-crushing variety band. In the worst-case
scenario, the wife at that point discovers that her husband – who if nothing else was at least once
an idealistic artist – has lost all appeal. She leaves him for a successful businessman who has a clear
concept of self, doesn’t work nights, and listens to music that isn’t all crazy. The artist’s life continues
its downward spiral until he hits bottom as a bitter Survivalist.
By contrast, the jazz artist who is already an established Epiphyte by the time he meets his future
wife has found his salvation. The wife-to-be understands the realities of the jazz world, perceives her
future husband’s devotion to his financially unviable art form as romantic, and marries the husband
and his music alike. Such women are the angels of mercy in the jazz world; the sole counter-
Working Wives2
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3 While this discussion of “Jazz Educators” focuses on
university professors, jazz is also taught in the secondary
schools and through private instruction. These lowerlevel
teachers have one commonality with university
faculty: They’d really rather be gigging. Beyond that,
though, they have their own unique profiles:
Secondary school teachers: Although these teachers rank
beneath university teachers in the jazz pecking order
and in societal standing, theirs is the more noble calling.
While university professors are largely responsible for
the flooding of the market with aspiring professionals –
highly trained and largely generic -- secondary school
teachers are more interested in building the future jazz
audience. Their focus is on instilling an understanding
of and appreciation for jazz among their students;
unfortunately, this appreciation quickly fades with the
students’ maturity.
Private instructors: Whether teaching in the back rooms
of music stores or out of their own homes, these are
individuals who tried and failed to make it as Gig
Whores. Although most other musicians consider
private instruction the final stop before suicide, society
is kinder to these unfortunates, allowing them to
hide their indignity behind “the importance of arts
education,” “passing knowledge from generation to
generation,” and “keeping youth off the streets.”
Jazz Educators3
evidence to cosmic indifference. Their fortunate husbands become, in a sense, quasi-Chosen Ones,
minus the true Chosen Ones’ fame and (modest) fortune.
Identifying Signs, Survival Techniques
• Artists supported by their spouses are better dressed, better fed, and better mannered than most
of their peers. They have no survival techniques, as their fate is fully in the hands of another.
Jazz music, like philosophy, ancient literature, and other insular fields with limited real-world
application, has created its own cozy home in the educational system. In secondary schools, it gives
young musicians a relatively harmless introduction to a music they’ll later discard as outdated and
irrelevant. But at the college level, jazz majors are irretrievably immersed in the music’s history,
theory and – above all -- performance. Once the real world shatters their performing aspirations,
many flee right back to the university or conservatory where, safely ensconced in a tenured position,
they perpetuate the vicious cycle.
Tenured university teaching posts are probably the most coveted positions in the jazz field (other
than the exclusive province of the Chosen Ones). Ironically, the personality traits that make for
success in the academic world have nothing in common with jazz artistry. Jazz professorships require
advanced degrees, and those who pursue them are by nature practical, career-minded and – with
their orientation to future security rather than present artistic expression – far from spontaneous.
Perhaps that’s why university professors have pioneered their own form of jazz. As they’ll explain to
their Jazz History classes, jazz music has evolved since its inception to reflect the lives and times of
its practitioners. From bebop through free jazz, the music has been the artists’ vehicle for reacting
to their social, political and cultural environment. No surprise then, that jazz enables these same
professors to express their own unique academic milieu: their music is the sound of personal
ambition and scholarly thought. Performance and composition alike are theory-driven, and the
ability to athletically navigate complex written chord changes is paramount. Rather than relying on
their ears, faculty performers are glued to their scores, negotiating obtuse chords by calculating scale
choices with mathematical efficiency. Unfortunately, the music’s intellectual underpinnings render
it inaccessible to all but fellow professors and advanced students. Undereducated audiences are left
behind, even those who recognize that appreciation of such intricate music could only be a mark of
personal sophistication.
Although jazz professors rarely overlap in style with the Chosen Ones, most still aspire to join
their ranks. Toward that end, they book Chosen Ones for concerts, often finding ways to share the
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“The Industry”
stage with them, sometimes composing a special tune for the occasion (and typically naming the
tune after the Chosen One, thereby marking their relationship for eternity). They wine and dine
them, take joint photos, and if possible book them on the side for personal recording projects.
Interestingly, although Chosen Ones are the subject of great envy among jazz professors, many
aging Chosen Ones who neglected to plan for retirement eventually seek and easily land university
posts. There they are allowed to bypass normal hiring procedures in exchange for lending their
credibility and doing virtually nothing.
Like other tenured faculty, jazz professors are required to publish, and as the number of jazz PhDs
increases, so does the obscurity of their topics. Jazz Educators’ conferences are full of presentations –
scheduled early in the morning and sparsely attended – on subjects ranging from “The Scalar
Implications of Minor Seventh Flat Nine Chords in Mid-period Bill Evans Voicings” to “A Study
of Coltrane’s Reed and Mouthpiece Choices in Relationship to His Late Career Dental Work” to
“Post-Chromatic Stress Disorder in the Neo-Lydian Landscape.”
If you, Reader, were to try to look like a jazz artist, you would wind up looking like the jazz
professor, who tries far harder to look like a jazz artist than an actual jazz artist does. Goatees,
berets, tinted glasses, African scull caps, ponytails, and earrings are standard fare. By contrast the
committed jazz artist, especially the Epiphyte, doesn’t much care what he looks like and doesn’t have
the money to try anyway.
Identifying Signs
• The aforementioned
jazz disguise
Survival Techniques
• The university professor is fully bilingual, equally at
home with the pinched, grammatically correct language
of the academic, and the jargon-laced, “street” banter of
the jazz artist. By necessity, he has multiple personalities
to complement his linguistics: entering a music
department meeting, he can readily swap out his loose
jazz cool for the requisite constipated classical clench.
We’ve all known the awkward kid taunted throughout his school years. He’s the first to be bullied,
the last to be picked for sports teams, and the least likely to land a date; his only recourse is to plan
his eventual revenge. Entering adulthood, he channels his rage into his career, fighting his way, dogeat-
dog, to the top. Whether a greedy CEO, an evil slumlord, or a powerful politician, underlying
his every move is the subconscious desire to exact payback on his early enemies and redeem his
tormented youth.
So it is with the child who is drawn to music, but simply has no talent for it. No matter how much
he practices, he never makes it past third chair in band, never gets to play in rock bands with his
friends, and is never picked to solo in stage band. Undaunted, he pursues a music degree, majoring
in jazz – the most challenging and hopeless musical form. He gets called for a few scattered gigs at
first, then never called back, shunned once again for his tin ear.
It doesn’t take him long to discover that there’s only one path to success; best of all, by taking it,
he’ll be able to wield devastating power over those who have rejected him. Without looking back,
he joins “The Industry” or its periphery: label executives, radio programmers and promoters,
critics, arts administrators, booking agents, soundmen, and recording engineers. Collectively, they
ruthlessly bully working musicians and ensure that the jazz world will forever be a career cesspool.
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4 This well-fed, parasitic middleman -- typically a jealous
amateur musician formally trained in non-profit
business administration – may work either directly for
the government or for a government-funded non-profit
presenting agency. Either way, he or she enjoys a salary
and accompanying benefits unthinkable for a working
jazz artist.
5 Smooth Jazz is, of course, not jazz at all. Apart from
the fact that its bass and drum parts are actually
repetitive pop patterns and its harmonies are simple pop
progressions, its practitioners are entirely unlike jazz
artists. They are well-paid, well-balanced, enjoy normal
hobbies, have many fans, appreciate their audiences, and
seem to harbor minimal disdain for mankind as a whole.
Describing the industry’s destructiveness could be a full story in itself, but for the sake of brevity,
here are single examples of how each of its component parts might suppress an artist. In reality, the
examples are endless, and the whole – the machinery’s ability to demolish aspiring musicians -- is far
greater than the sum of its parts.
Booking Agent: Promises the client a polka band; books three jazz artists and a french accordian
player, omits all details until the day of the gig, then assigns the artists a complete setlist for the
evening – all authentic polkas – and insists they wear lederhosen and pretend to be German.
Critic: In a race against his peers to discover and give birth to the next Chosen One, finds the least
accessible new artist on the scene and writes a review glorifying his music as simply too sophisticated
for less enlightened ears, provoking the other critics, in the spirit of competition, to trash the young
artist as “utterly without talent,” destroying his career before it has even begun.
Soundman: Working with an acoustic jazz trio in a small hall, uses the concert as an opportunity to
show off massive new gear. Tapping into finely honed heavy metal sensibilities, mixes the kick drum
and bass above all else, rocking the house with his thunderous, state-of-the-art subwoofers.
Recording Engineer: In the middle of a sensitive song where the band members are interacting at
an artistic level previously unknown to them, accidentally hits a button that not only destroys the
take, but sends a deafening, ear-piercing squeal through the headphones.
Arts Administrator4: Diverts and sucks dry the scant dollars that governmental agencies and
charitable foundations earmark for jazz artists.
Club Owner: Books a jazz artist for a weeklong stint, persuading him to cancel several lesser gigs
already on his calendar. Shortly before the week begins, dumps him for a better-known Smooth
Jazz5 act.
Radio Programmer: Conducts focus groups to determine which new jazz CDs are least likely to
distract “listeners” in their office environments. Broadcasts these discs exclusively, rejecting any
music that is remotely assertive or interesting, thereby convincing the station’s audience that jazz is,
indeed, dead.
Radio Promoter: Charges artists exorbitant fees in exchange for pestering radio programmers to
play the artists’ new recordings. Easily gets compliance of the radio programmers, who are happy to
be relieved of the task of sorting through hundreds of new CDs that arrive every week from other
hopeful, but less wealthy, musicians. Thereby ensures that airplay goes to the artists with the most
money, rather than to those who make the best music.
Record Label: Signs an artist to an exclusive deal, does nothing to promote his music, then discards
him as used goods, yesterday’s news, tomorrow’s Gig Whore.
These disparate industry segments don’t lend themselves to generalization, beyond their
destructive effect on the jazz environment. However, those who reach the top of their
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profession – particularly the more highly paid record label executives – may share certain
characteristics:
Identifying Signs
• Blood on their hands
• Blatant displays of excess, including
expensive cars, single-malt scotches,
cigars, and professionally
reconstructed women
Update: The jazz industry in the digital age
The industry, as described above, still exists, but breakthroughs in digital technology
have created promising new opportunities for better exploiting naïve jazz artists.
Digitally enabled predators include jazz-specific web-hosting sites (charging
more than double the typical web-hosting fee in exchange for burying the artist’s
information among hundreds of his peers), database companies selling lists of email
contacts (primarily addresses of festivals that don’t accept unsolicited materials), and
international “promoters” who request CDs from artists looking to perform at festivals
abroad, then sell them on eBay. All have in common that – in a field where there’s
not nearly enough to go around – they siphon money directly from artists, further
reducing their minimal incomes by preying on desperate, false hope.
Survival Techniques
• The industry itself is a survival method for
_ those drawn to jazz, money and power, which
_ are otherwise never found in the same place.
• When times get tough, label executives stay
afloat by moving from bankrupt company to
soon-to-be-bankrupt company. Recently they’ve
discovered a more sure-fire survival technique,
stacking their supposed jazz rosters with artists who
actually have nothing whatsoever to do with jazz.
This fires up a “jazz revival,” wherein the public –
now fed a diet of pop music labeled as jazz –
suddenly discovers that it likes jazz after all.
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Sample Interactions Among Classes
When musicians from two or more classes interact professionally, the results are both predictable
and entertaining.
Example One: A bandleader, knowing an Epiphyte has fallen on hard times, invites him to play a
wedding gig, along with the leader’s usual assemblage of Gig Whores. What happens?
The Epiphyte shows up for the tux gig wearing black jeans, black tennis shoes, white tee-shirt, dark
navy blazer, and bow tie. He begins the gig playing in a correctly subdued, unswinging style. During
each break, he eats frantically off the buffet, then stuffs more food – cocktail shrimp, brie cheese,
spanakopita, and swedish meatballs – into his pockets. He also drinks furiously from the open
bar. Each subsequent set, his playing becomes louder and more adventurous, and before long he’s
embarking on long, angular, ear-bending solos, even as he’s swearing at the drummer for not digging
in hard enough. The rest of the Gig Whores, caught between wanting to please the leader and
emulate the Epiphyte, choose the latter and begin to similarly stretch. The bride’s mother complains,
the Epiphyte storms off the bandstand, and the leader silently vows to replace his entire band.
Example Two: A record label, impressed by a Gig Whore’s resourcefulness, invites him to join its staff.
Now, instead of wearing a clown nose and playing “Pop Goes the Weasel” for toddlers’ birthday parties,
he can have a dignified day job oppressing his fellow jazz artists. What is his response?
“How much does it pay?”
The Classes at Play, and at War
Jazz Class Hierarchy
Chosen Ones
Epiphytes
Jazz Educators
Silver Spoons
Gig Whores
Working Spouses
Career Professionals
Survivalists
Industry
The jazz class system is both hierarchical and pliable. This enables an artist not only to interact
with artists from other classes, but also to move from one class to others below it as his career
inevitably declines.
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Career Trajectories
Jazz career trajectories conform directly to the law of gravitational forces: Any and all movement is
downward. One Gig Whore might marry a woman who financially supports but personally belittles
him; another, when times get lean, might be forced to take a low-level day job for survival. An
Epiphyte, finding his available oxygen supply running low, might compromise his musical ideals
by becoming a Gig Whore, or stand on principle and join the Survivalists. A Silver Spoon, tired of
playing inaccessible music for audiences of four to eight people, might instead enter the industry,
founding a new record label that documents, for eternity, the same inaccessible music.
Full Circle #1
A label A&R man hears a standout young soloist at a New York club one night and quickly signs
him to a deal. The thusly anointed Chosen One puts out several critically acclaimed releases and
tours internationally for a number of years before falling out of favor with changing public tastes.
Moving back to his hometown, staying rent-free at his parents’ house, he becomes an Epiphyte,
playing with the best local musicians, but – with gigs far from plentiful in a relatively small city
– barely making enough money to cover his living expenses. Memories of his glory days make it
hard for him to accept this austere lifestyle, and he gradually lowers the bar, earning more money
and retaining less dignity as he becomes a Gig Whore. The demeaning gigs eventually drive him to
drink, and he becomes notoriously unreliable. Before long, his calendar starts to empty, and he’s
forced to look for non-playing work. He holds a series of meaningless part-time day jobs while
gradually building a roster of untalented private students. One day, having hit rock-bottom, he is
seemingly rescued when his old label calls, looking for a new A&R man, hoping to cash in on his
name recognition. He relocates to New York where, his first week on the job, he hears a standout
young soloist at a club.…
Full Circle #2
An impressionable young jazz pianist is booked by an agent for a solo gig in a hotel lobby. He
quickly discovers that the clientele hate it when he plays Coltrane tunes, but love it when he sings
Sinatra songs, no matter how badly. Soon, he parlays his vocal success into a steady gig with a bassist
and drummer, and before long begins to get lucrative work playing corporate receptions. He hires
more band members, and expands the repertoire to include pop favorites. He stops playing piano,
preferring instead to front the band on vocals, adding dance steps, shaking his ever-widening butt.
One night while singing “Mustang Sally” at a wedding reception, he coaxes the drunken crowd to
yell “Ride, Sally, Ride,” and discovers the euphoria of audience participation. From there, his life as
an entertainer becomes an unquenchable thirst for affirmation. When he occasionally encounters a
quiet audience, attentive to the music, it frightens him, sweat flowing from his brow as he tries ever
harder to get them dancing and singing. His eventual midlife crisis points him toward the more
lucrative, less stressful life of an agent, and the day he books his first job he will have successfully
matured from whore to pimp, sending an innocent young pianist into the very lobby where he got
his own start.
The variations are endless.
Copyright 2009, Bill Anschell
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www.billanschell.com for more jazz vignettes and music
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