Love Letter: Modern Jazz Quartet
Love Letter: Modern Jazz Quartet
Published in print, September 2019.
Words by Gabriel Jermaine Vanlandingham-Dunn
It was around 2004 that I was invited to an intro photography class at a local community college in Baltimore, Maryland. My dear friend, the late Alan Rutberg, taught the class and he’d asked me to talk with his students about album cover photography and how powerful it could be. Having collected records, mainly jazz, for most of my life, he felt that my background in Africana Studies would help his students understand how art reflected and impacted the Black American experience. I was honoured by his request and knew exactly which record I wanted to talk about. I arrived to the class with a beautiful copy of the Modern Jazz Quartet’s self-titled LP (Atlantic, 1957) in my bag.
I wish I could tell you exactly how I came to know the MJQ. It might’ve been me stumbling upon a copy of Milt Jackson With John Lewis, Percy Heath, Kenny Clarke, Lou Donaldson And The Thelonious Monk Quintet (Blue Note, recordings from 1948 and 1951-2, released in LP format in 1955). Or maybe it was my former boss hipping me to their airy masterpiece Space (Apple, 1969). But more than likely it was the constant search for samples used in my favourite hip-hop songs that got me to know them (Pete Rock, No ID, DJ Premier and Diamond D made good use of their spacious sound). I could easily nerd out on them for days, but I’ll drop a few facts and get back to my story.
The group was founded around 1952 with John Lewis on piano, Milt Jackson on vibraphone, Percy Heath on bass (who replaced Ray Brown) and Kenny Clarke (who was replaced by Connie Kay in 1955). Lewis and Jackson (along with Brown and Clarke) played together in Dizzy Gillespie’s large ensemble and first started playing as the Milt Jackson Quartet. Their sound was unique, marrying the jazz and blues experience with euro classical sensibility. For this, all listeners didn’t love them. In fact, when Kenny Clarke departed the group, he left emphasizing that he couldn’t stand playing the music anymore. Yet they became very popular for their special renditions of standards and original compositions such as Django, Bag’s Groove, Ralph’s New Blues, Fontessa and La Rhonde. The switch from the independent Prestige label to the major powerhouse Atlantic Records in 1956 brought the group to a wider audience and allowed them to tour internationally.
I explained some of these things to the (mostly teenage) students that afternoon, but they didn’t seem to understand the significance, until I reminded them about the era in which the MJQ came about. Although no period has been easy for us Black folk in the States, the 1950s in particular were no joke. There were many changes happening around the world, and while many white families were enjoying the expansion of the middle class, the civil rights movement began in earnest. The students and I made a brief timeline to create a better understanding of the importance of representation concerning Black folk during the time when the biggest stars of the day were Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. With all this in mind, I then asked them to look at the self-titled cover, emphasizing its production in the year 1957.
The first word that comes to mind is dignity. These beautiful brothers are dressed sharply in dark suits (very rarely did you see them not wearing perfectly fitted three-pieces). The backdrop of the shot is a dark maroon that matches their ties. Fresh haircuts align their domes, while Lewis and Heath sport full beards. Jackson looks extra professorly with his specs (like the style worn by Malcolm X). All eyes are locked on photographer Fabian Bachrach’s lens. In short, these brothers did not come to fuck around. Though their music was perceived as commercially aimed, they were not only serious about their craft, but also their image as Black men in America. In a decade where many jazz musicians were getting their cabaret cards revoked (a racist system that deserves its own essay) and being limited to gigging for pennies, these cats began touring the world, representing the greatness of Black men’s strength and beauty in the process.
When breaking down these observations to the class, it made more sense to them why I’d connected with the image. Growing up there were plenty of positive images of Black men in my community, yet the media mainly perpetuated stereotypes and criminality. During the era that gave birth to the television, album covers mattered very much. The artwork not only sold a product, but it also allowed artists — those lucky enough — to be seen as they wanted to be seen. This text-less cover comes across as a triumph of the day; a salute to the ancestors, but also a cementing of a long-lasting presence of Black genius. The Modern Jazz Quartet played together for almost 50 years, taking breaks while each member recorded plenty of material outside of the group. I can’t help but think that this image, along with their lengthy discography, inspired many more brothers to make sure that they are seen and heard with respect, on their own terms, every place that they travelled.
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