Any sensible discourse on the jazz world begins with the Federal City. While jazz originally had its inceptions in the rugged, rural sounds of great Mississippi Delta bluesmen like Charley Patton and the wily riffs of Memphis's W.C. Handy, the nascent art form finally found its first roots amongst the African-American community of Washington, D.C., thanks to the melodic craftiness of one of Washington's native sons, Duke Ellington.
Ellington's music career began at the age of seven with weekly piano instruction. By his junior year of high school he had dropped out to devote his energies to the study of what would later be accepted by mainstream music critics as America's most important musical movement in the pre-rock 'n' roll era. Six years later he moved to New York, but not before establishing D.C.'s U Street as one of the most prominent centers of musical confluence in the nation, as well as a haven for an emerging artist community during an age in which the African-American creative consciousness was beginning to reveal itself to the nation.
D.C. is also home to a slew of other jazz luminaries who cut their teeth in raucous U Street clubs like the Bohemian Caverns and The Howard Theater. Among these were Jimmy Cobb, who played drums on a number of John Coltrane recordings and on arguably the greatest jazz album ever, Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue." Leo Parker, another native inhabitant of the city, was considered a legitimate successor to Coleman Hawkins' saxophone throne before he died tragically of a heart attack at the age of 36 in 1962, the same year President Kennedy hosted the first jazz performance ever in the White House. President Carter's inclusion of a large-scale jazz performance on the White House's South Lawn in 1978 was the truest indication of how far jazz had come, as it included veritable jazz legends such as Charles Mingus (a former vitriolic critic of white society), Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz.
Even today, local and federal authorities have recognized the importance of preserving America's musical lineage in the capital city. The jazz clubs of U Street are still a popular proving ground for blossoming musicians, and contain a unique, sophisticated vibrancy that harkens back to a time when jazzmen like Miles, Diz and Charlie Parker were revered not only as musical vanguards but cultural icons as well.
The Smithsonian Institute has a permanent display on the lives of both Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald in the Museum of American History, as well as sponsoring free live jazz performances on Friday nights from 5:30 to 10 p.m. at their IMAX jazz caf?. Not to be overlooked is the D.C. Jazz Festival, a popular event in the shadow of the Washington monument that last year included Wayne Shorter and Dave Brubeck, among other performers.
In a town where the past is often buried with laughable alacrity, it is refreshing to see how a community has attempted to make a now underappreciated art form appealing once again.
