In jazz, it’s all about the gig.
Getting it, getting ready for it, playing it, taking a bow, doing it again tomorrow night.
That all ended in mid-March, when Gov. J.B. Pritzker shut down clubs and concert halls in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus. And though that essential move inevitably posed financial and emotional stresses for jazz musicians, the elders have faced a unique set of circumstances.
Because when you’re in your 80s and 90s, you’re playing not just for money but for time. There are only so many gigs left to go, and each one is precious.
So though the senior Chicago jazz musicians I spoke with wholly support the shutdown and said they were comfortable at home, they yearn to get back onstage, now more than ever.
“Playing adds a dimension to my life … it adds years to my life,” said 84-year-old Chicago blues and boogie piano master Erwin Helfer, who until the shutdown played weekly gigs at the Hungry Brain and periodically elsewhere. “Otherwise I’d be sitting around here (goofing) around and doing nothing.
“When I get there, I realize the meaningfulness of it. … I really would like to play again, so that people will become happier and sadder, because there’s so much emotion and music. The joy and deep sadness are all part of our being.”
Revered Chicago guitarist George Freeman was to have marked his 93d birthday with his annual celebration April 10-11 at the Green Mill Jazz Club. For him, that canceled engagement would have been more than a chance to play for the public: It was an opportunity to expand his art.
“I was looking forward to the Green Mill, that’s the truth,” said Freeman. “I was going to play these low notes. It was going to be something new and different!
“In all this trouble, I’m doing fine. I’ve got people bringing me food over. Lots of people help me out. The musicians help me out. It’s been just great. You never know how great it is until you get into a position like this.
“But I miss playing jazz clubs, sure I do. … I’m very anxious to play in the clubs and very anxious to play with other musicians.”
The widely admired 84-year-old Chicago jazz trumpeter Bobby Lewis lost several major gigs he’d been booked to play in March and April, meaning he has lost moments that never will be recaptured. Among them was a four-night run at the Jazz Showcase, which he considers “one of the greatest jazz rooms in the world,” and a performance with Orbert Davis’ enormous Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, which would have enabled Lewis to savor “all the beautiful sounds coming from in back of you.”
Those shows “were important in my life – and just about any gig I play now is important,” said Lewis.
“When players get older, a lot of them don’t have any place to play, so they kind of give up their instruments. Then the endurance isn’t there. But I just love to play.
“You have great nights and you have good nights. Hopefully you don’t have bad nights. But you can say, after you play a solo: ‘Wow, I played that pretty well.’
“It’s just reassuring to play for an audience. That’s why I like playing gigs. It’s a thrill for me to still be able to play at a level that I want, that’s still agreeable to me.”
Meaning that even a musician as accomplished and seasoned as Lewis – who has performed with Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Lena Horne and other legends – needs to know he still can do it when the pressure is on. All the more when gigs are fewer than in the old days.
For to go onstage is to conduct a very public battle with your instrument, at a time of life when your stamina, physical strength and technical nimbleness typically are not what they were half a century ago. Anyone who’s still working in their 80s and 90s already transcends expectations, but that doesn’t mean the struggle gets any easier. Quite the contrary.
“Dizzy Gillespie said sometimes you put the horn to your chops, and it feels good, and you win,” said Lewis, quoting one of the 20th century’s most brilliant jazz trumpeters. “And then sometimes you put your horn up there, and nothing happens, and the horn wins.
“And you go through life: You win, the horn wins. And in the end you die, and the horn wins.”
Until that moment, though, the elders want to squeeze as much music out of their instruments – whether horn, piano, voice or others – as humanly possible. For though casual listeners might not realize it, the old masters are sweating to hone their art every bit as much as their younger counterparts, if not more.
“I have even seen an improvement in tonality,” said the superb 80-year-old jazz singer Frieda Lee, who played her last show before the shutdown on March 13 and had gigs lined up for March 19, 21, 22, 23, 27 and 30.
“I said: ‘Wow.’ It’s kind of scary, because you look at the number of years. And I think, wow, I’m still holding in there pretty good!
“I’m still nervous,” before performing, added Lee. “Nervous as if I were going to go in front of Carnegie Hall. It doesn’t make any difference what the venue is.
“When it’s time to perform for something big, I have to have my cheat sheet. I don’t necessarily have to use it. I just have to have my lyrics somewhere, so I can keep peeping at them.”
Even with all these gigs canceled, however, the musicians remain optimistic about their art and their future prospects.
Some, such as Lewis, find solace simply by practicing in solitude.
“That’s my enjoyment,” said Lewis. “I like to associate it as a world that’s all mine, that nobody can come into while I’m playing, and I immerse myself in that.”
Nonagenarian guitarist Freeman practices every day “on ballads, standards,” he said, in addition to writing original compositions.
Being at home “is not hard at all,” he added. “When you’ve got the guitar, you can practice. Something new comes to your mind, I’m telling you it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful to have something to look forward to doing every day, because these are hard times, as you know, terrible times.”
Vocalist Lee doesn’t rehearse every day but sings whenever she’s working toward a project or a specific concert. Otherwise she scours YouTube for clips of musicians she admires and watches “old movies – movies of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, especially the film noir,” which reflect much of her repertoire’s era.
As for trumpeter Lewis, “I don’t practice jazz – I practice the technique required to play jazz,” he said.
All look forward to the next time someone says: show time. For even in the winter of their years, they desire to lift up their listeners as only musicians can.
“I used to have an instructor in college who said, ‘Applause is your ham sandwich,'” said Lewis.
“In other words, that’s what you live for – playing for people and having them hear you and making them happy.”
Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.
