Jazz and the Concert Halls: The Eddie Condon Concerts, 1942-48

Abstract

At least since Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall concert', jazz has been performed in most of the major concert halls of America and Europe and is usually distinguished in the popular mind from pop, rock, or country musics. On the other hand, jazz is also distinguished from classical music and has never enjoyed the special governmental and philanthropic subsidies lavished on our major symphony orchestras. Neither has jazz enjoyed the commercial success of rock or pop music. In fact, jazz still mainly subsists in nightclubs. Eddie Condon (1905-73) was a plectrum guitarist, entrepreneur, spokesman, organizer, and promoter of jazz who caught the ambiguity of the relationship between popular and traditional culture in his mock proverb that isn't an Art. Canning vegetables is an Art. Getting a sun tan is an Art. Jazz is just unscored music.2 Despite this and other disclaimers, Condon did much to further the history of jazz as a concert music, and his efforts reveal both the rigidity and the endurance of our cultural categories for musical sounds. Condon's jazz concerts in New York City's Town Hall and Carnegie Hall began in 1942. Goodman's big band concerts in 1938 and 1939 had been performances of arranged music, although solo improvisations were certainly not lacking. Condon's brand of small-group jazz featured groups of seven musicians who improvised without reference to any written musical scores. Moreover, Condon's concerts were not once-a-year affairs, for he tried to put his concerts on a regular monthly basis, effectively establishing another financial and aesthetic format for the music.