Jazz & Pop '69

In a year of social and political upheaval---assassinations, growing racial polarization, the end of innocence for the Eugene McCarthy crusaders---the young of all political persuasions, including none, found a center of emotional gravity in music. Only there, it often seemed, was direct, open communication possible---transcending race and class and politics. And the artists, themselves feeling the need for secure foundations as fissures deepened in the outer world, devoted much of the year to getting back to roots.

The Rolling Stones returned to the raw energy of hard rock in Beggars' Banquet; the Beatles focused on lyric simplicity in Hey Jude; and Bob Dylan emerged from his long sabbatical with the spare, elemental John Wesley Harding. The vital urgency of soul music was also a primary force. Black soul powered the secularized Gospel of Aretha Franklin, the earthy conviction of Albert King and the electrified experience of Jimi Hendrix. Colleges and rock gathering places were increasingly visited by such soul bards as Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, B. B. King, Buddy Guy and Chuck Berry. The Staple Singers found new audiences at Fillmore West in San Francisco and Fillmore East in New York. White soul music was also in. the ascendant in the uninhibited sensuality of Janis Joplin (see this month's On the Scene) and in the driving energy of such units as Steppenwolf and the Jeff Beck Group, a British import. As Janis Joplin put it, "I keep trying to tell people that whites have soul, too. There's no patent on soul. It's just feeling things."

Along with the re-emphasis on "just feeling things" through blues and basic rock, another rising influence was that of country music. Country sounds were part of John Wesley Harding and were incorporated by the Byrds, Moby Grape and many other rock units; and even Buffy Sainte-Marie, a Cree Indian, found the need to go to Nashville for an album declaring I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again. The movement was in both directions. Country performers---Glen Campbell, Buck Owens, Jeannie C. Riley (Harper Valley P. T. A.)---moved onto the pop charts; and Johnny Cash, already firmly established with both country and pop audiences, released the most compelling album of his career, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. It was Cash who explained the appeal of country music in a time of troubles: "People go back to it to find the basic thing, the grass roots. People like my songs because they have true human emotions as well as being real stories." In jazz, too, the expression of "true human emotions" preoccupied the avant-garde, as it always had the mainstream jazzmen. Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Pharoah Sanders---all, in their different ways, were involved in making contemporary the original "cry of jazz." Technique, though increasingly sophisticated, was useful only as a means of letting out and shaping the deepest of feelings. And the search for roots also characterized the vanguard of jazz. Black musicians in particular, through forming such groups as SRP ("an organization of self-reliant musicians and artists") and through playing in schools, were intent on communicating with the black young. As Archie Shepp emphasized, "Jazz must return to the ghetto, where it began. We have to reach the kids and become part of the whole cultural experience, the whole history out of which jazz came." But Shepp went on to point out: "I wouldn't limit the experience of the music to ghetto children. White kids also need to know what jazz has to say, if they're going to live in a real world."

While work in jazz clubs declined this past year, the public schools did begin to show a way in which more and more jazz musicians may be able to reach and recruit a new generation of listeners. In New York City, drummer Horace Arnold and alto saxophonist Robin Kenyatta played 60 concerts in schools under the aegis of Young Audiences, which previously had been almost exclusively concerned with classical music. And under a grant to Jazz Interactions from the New York State Council on the Arts, combos led by, among others, Billy Taylor, Joe Newman, Roland Kirk and Benny Powell gave over 50 school concerts. On Long Island, in the high schools and junior highs of Huntington, Marian McPartland presented 28 concerts; and similar incorporation of jazz into the school experience took place in Los Angeles, Chicago and St. Louis.

On the college level, trumpeter-composer Donald Byrd became the first Rutgers University jazz artist in residence. In addition to composing, teaching and developing curriculums, Donald's responsibilities include the recruitment of ghetto youngsters for Rutgers' new Livingston College. "Jazz," the university announced, "will perform a vital function in this recruitment drive," with Donald functioning as a roving ambassador for Rutgers to high schools in New Jersey. In developing a model for what may become a new kind of academic career for the jazz musician, Byrd also became a professor and head of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Howard University---the first jazz department at a black college.

The rising emphasis on black culture on American campuses also indicated a new role for the jazz musician. In July, Byrd was co-organizer of The Quest for Black Identity in the Fine Arts, a festival-symposium at North Carolina College; and David Baker was set to head the first Institute of Black Music at Indiana University. Funded by the Office of Education, the eight-week seminar was to be based on four courses in black music and related cultural elements. Yet another augury of the future importance of jazz in the universities was the presence last spring of Cecil Taylor as "artist in residence" at Stanford, on invitation of the student body.

There were other signs of the legitimization of jazz. Gil Evans and Jimmy Giuffre were awarded Guggenheim Fellowships for composition (Ornette Coleman had been the first jazzman to receive one). And following the Music Educators' National Conference in Seattle, 500 school music teachers signed up as charter members of the new National Association of Jazz Educators. But, as vibist Gary Burton, whose audience spans jazz and pop listeners, pointed out during the year, the liberation of school music instruction has only begun. He and other young musicians called for teaching that takes into account the overlapping of cultures that is the essence of today's music scene---the intertwining of rock, jazz, country and western, classical, blues and experimental electronic music.

As it is now, with college music departments only starting to become aware of jazz, student-directed campus concerts are an increasingly important booking circuit for the vividly diverse pop and rock performers. During the current season, for example, fees range from $1500 (the Chambers Brothers, Richie Havens), $4500 (the Vanilla Fudge, Spanky and Our Gang), $6000-plus (Glen Campbell), $10.000-plus (the Supremes), to nearly $20,000 (Jimi Hendrix). But in terms of home-grown music, jazz is still a vital factor on many campuses. Again, there were well-attended regional jazz festivals and two climactic events. In March, 13 colleges and universities were represented at the tenth annual Collegiate Jazz Festival at Notre Dame. There, the University of Illinois Jazz Band, conducted by John Garvey, was selected as both the best big band and the best over-all jazz group. In June, the national finals of the 1968 Intercollegiate Jazz Festival were held in St. Louis. With an original field of 750 colleges having been narrowed to 15 finalists, the University of Illinois Jazz Band again won major honors. The Illini went on to triumph among the professionals at the Newport Jazz Festival in July before touring Yugoslavia, Romania, Ireland, Sweden, Austria, Finland, Norway and Iceland, under the auspices of the United States State Department.

Newport, the diadem of the festivals programed and directed by George Wein (the last of the big-time jazz promoters), set attendance records, with more than 54,000 at the four evening and three afternoon performances. Among the other celebrations staged by the peripatetic Mr. Wein were events in Boston; Charlotte, North Carolina (sponsored by the city, as part of its bicentennial); Mexico City and Puebla, Mexico; Hampton Institute, Virginia (the first full-scale jazz fete at a black college); Austin, Texas (The Long-horn Jazz Festival); and Pittsburgh. Some of those dates were included in an eight-week, 20-city tour that Wein packaged for a large brewing company, with such consumer attractions as Dionne Warwick, Cannonball Adderley, Thelonious Monk and Herbie Mann. On the basis of his far-flung experiences, Wein decried talk of the death of jazz, pointing to larger festival audiences than the year before and to the significant fact that these audiences are increasingly interracial. "We look to the black people for the future of jazz," Wein told syndicated music columnist Ralph Gleason. "The attendance of Negroes at the festivals is up 60 percent to 70 percent over last year."

Among other substantial festivals was Jazzfest '68, marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of New Orleans. Held in May, it began with a jazz Mass at St. Louis Cathedral, where the Most Reverend Phillip M. Hannan, Archbishop of New Orleans, declared that "Jazz has been an open-end dialog for all men" and that its most important aspect "is its spirit of exultation." There were parades, a jazz trip up the Mississippi in a riverboat, and concerts. At one of the concerts, Louis Armstrong came home to a standing ovation and a plaque from the state of Louisiana in recognition of his contributions to music. So successful was this New Orleans tribute to the music it helped spawn that there will now be an annual festival under the direction of Willis Conover. The 11th annual Monterey Jazz Festival, in late September, did well in attendance but was sharply criticized for its too predictable and poorly coordinated programing. Once known as the musicians' festival, Monterey would seem to be in need of spiritual regeneration.

Similar, though less vehement, charges were made by some concerning the Newport Folk Festival; but even its critics appreciated that event's wide-ranging variety---from Roy Acuff and Pete Seeger through B. B. King and Junior Wells to The Kaleidoscope, a Los Angeles rock group that not only fuses country music and blues but is also fond of electronically flavored Turkish dances. Indicating the elasticity of the term "folk" in this time of ceaseless musical interaction was the presence at Newport of Janis Joplin, then still with Big Brother and the Holding Company. And further illustrating one of the year's strongest trends, Joan Baez' performance included a set of country songs with accompaniment by a Bluegrass band. As for attendance, all records were broken, as more than 70,000 went to Newport during the five folk days in late July.

Another festival that underlined the year's expansion of musical definitions and the blending of idioms was the third annual Memphis Blues Festival, also in July. There were rural, black country blues, Gospel, soul sounds of the city and the Electric Blue Watermelon---a ten-man combo that may provide a portent of the freewheeling diversity of the next generation of musicians. The full group plays modern electrified rhythm and blues; a quartet occasionally breaks off from it to play contemporary free-form jazz; and yet another internal unit, The Insect Trust, creates new forms of pop music based on blues traditions.

Of the numerous annual European festivals, among the more interesting were those in Montreux, Switzerland (June), and Pori, Finland (July). Although such American notables as Bill Evans and Nina Simone appeared at Montreux, its essential contribution is the emphasis on European jazz, with groups last summer from 13 countries---including Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland and East Germany. The Pori International Jazz Festival, started and sustained by young enthusiasts, mostly students, has in three years become the main musical event of the Finnish summer scene. There, too, in addition to American guests, the concerts provide a valuable forum for the best of European jazzmen. Elsewhere in Europe, there was hardly a country without a jazz festival, from Poland (Wroclaw) in March through the U.S.S.R. (Tallin and Moscow), Yugoslavia (Bled), France (Antibes--Juan-les-Pins), Norway (Molde), Poland (the 11th international festival in Warsaw) to the Berlin Jazz Days in November. And in an unprecedentedly ambitious promotional endeavor, the United States Travel Service of the Department of Commerce and Pan American World Airways sponsored a tour of 18 major European cities in October and November by Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and the Newport All-Stars. At the organizing center was, of course, the ubiquitous George Wein.

The political overtones of both jazz and the new pop were also evident this past year in Europe and other countries. After the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, for example, The New York Times reported from Moscow: "At the railwaymen's club on Komsomolskaya Square, a ragtime, blues and spiritual group from Prague, called the Traditional Jazz Studio, was playing a concert. A gutsy Gospel singer had the final number. For the first and only time during the evening, she translated the English words for the audience. 'I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield---down by the riverside,' the Czech girl said in Russian, slowly and with emphasis. 'Ain't gonna study war no more.' 'Perhaps they'll understand,' a Czech in the audience said to his neighbor."

In. October, a Times dispatch from Vienna disclosed that the year-old Austria 3, a pop radio station, has enjoyed such success with the young in Austria and her Communist neighbors that it has become "a powerful influence in the popular culture of this part of the world, helping to shape the way of life of the generation under 25." Pop recordings transmitted by the Vienna station are taped by youngsters in Communist countries and replayed indefinitely. Austria 3, moreover, "is credited with having been one of the most important vehicles for the spread of American 'soul' music in the Communist world." And from Cuba, toward the end of the year, came news of a growing number of rebellious youths with long hair, wearing beads, who, according to an official spokesman, had been "debauched by the Beatles and that other epileptic music, which is also perversion."

But American music as an expression of rebellion and resistance was not for export only. Early in the year, Joan Baez, having married draft resister David Harris, former president of the student body at Stanford, went on a tour with her husband that included a series of lecture-discussions on the Vietnam war and the draft. Meanwhile, Peter, Paul and Mary took a stand by being the most prominent of the pop groups in Gene McCarthy's campaign. In the spring, during the Columbia University rebellion, the Grateful Dead gave a free concert on the "liberated" campus. Ornette Coleman and his quartet appeared" at Resurrection City in Washington during the Poor People's Campaign. And among the founders of the Youth International Party (the Yippies) as it announced it would stage a Youth Festival in Chicago during the Democratic Convention were Country Joe and the Fish, the Fugs, Arlo Guthrie and Phil Ochs. When the time came, between tear-gas assaults, Phil Ochs and a number of rock groups were, indeed, in Chicago. However, by the end of the year, music as a political instrument lost---perhaps temporarily---its lure for many performers. When the conventions were over, none of the candidates appeared likely to be responsive to Alice's Restaurant. To no one's surprise, for instance, Spiro Agnew's favorite musicians turned out to be Mantovani and Lawrence Welk.

But ironic dissent did continue to be part of the new music, along with its affirmation of doing one's own thing---energizing qualities that intrigued more and more film producers, particularly in view of the interest created by Simon and Garfunkel's score for The Graduate. Explaining the reasons for the increasing use of rock in movies, Larry Turman, producer of The Graduate, noted: "First, there has been a tremendous explosion of talent in this field; pop music is best suited to what a lot of kids are expressing. Second, there's a thing about the combination of this music and movies; you find someone hip about Kurosawa or Fellini and he probably likes the Rolling Stones. And, third, the publicity from the radio play of songs from a film is a valuable lure."

It seemed logical, therefore, when Jean-Luc Godard began filming his One Plus One in London with the Rolling Stones as featured performers and later in the year focused on the Jefferson Airplane while shooting his One American Movie in New York. And Donovan, having finished the script and score for a film, announced that discussions were taking place that might result in Ingmar Bergman's directing it. Released during the year was Revolution, a documentary on the hippies, with music by Country Joe and the Fish, Mother Earth, the Steve Miller Blues Band and the Quicksilver Messenger Service. Rock was also a prominent element in Wild in the Streets; and the musician-performers in Peter Yarrow's You Are What You Eat included Tiny Tim, the Band from Big Pink, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the Electric Flag.

The Mothers of Invention recorded the sound track for a documentary, Uncle Meat, and are planning to make their own films. Eric Clapton's next major project, following the final breakup of the Cream (if it is final), will be a movie that he intends to write, direct and coproduce. Arthur (Bonnie and Clyde) Penn indicated his awareness of the attraction of the new music by scheduling a film version of Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant. Arlo will also probably appear in Bound for Glory, a forthcoming feature-length picture on the life of his father, Woody. At the other end of the spectrum from Arlo Guthrie's quixotic life and musical style, Petula Clark, having scored in Finian's Rainbow, has gone on to star in another movie musical, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, with Peter O'Toole.

An important advance in the use of black soul music in films was Jules Das-sin's commissioning of Booker T. Jones (Booker T. and the MG's) to write and arrange the score for Up Tight, a film on revolutionary black consciousness co-starring Ruby Dee and Julian Mayfield. And Dionne Warwick turned actress in The Slaves, a picture about slavery in the South, with Ossie Davis and Stephen Boyd.

Jazzmen were also engaged in film-work---as composers, performers and subjects. Marcel Camus, who directed Black Orpheus, assigned alto saxophonist--writer Marion Brown to write and play the music for his next film, Le Temps Fou. Charles Mingus was the subject of a film portrait, Tom Reich-man's widely discussed Mingus; and Shirley (The Connection, The Cool World, Jason) Clarke was working on a 90-minute documentary on Ornette Coleman. Elvin Jones, for a long time the late John Coltrane's drummer, was further proof this past year that jazz and jazzmen are likely to become more involved in films, particularly as the numbers of young, independent film makers inevitably increase. Jones scored and played the music for The Long Stripe; and he will add acting to those two functions in The Third Bird. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, composer graduates of the jazz scene continued to be prominent in writing for movies. Lalo Schifrin was represented during the year with the scores for Cool Hand Luke and The Fox; and his 1969 credits will include Hell in the Pacific and The Brotherhood, starring Kirk Douglas. Quincy Jones, who created the memorable theme for In the Heat of the Night, included among his projects the music for Mackenna's Gold.

In the theater, jazz has appropriately been designated the musical foundation for Lenny, a stage kaleidoscope of the essential Lenny Bruce. Jazzman Charles Lloyd was appointed the production's musical director. After Lenny tours the college circuit, its Broadway opening is scheduled for late spring of this year. The big news in theater, however, has been the revolution in expectations of the musical stage as a result of the rock invasion. Hair, which set directions for musicals to come, continued its long Broadway run and triumphed as well in London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Munich and Los Angeles. By year's end, additional companies were being rehearsed for Acapulco. San Francisco and Tokyo. Your Own Thing, a rock adaptation of Twelfth Night, was set for production in 12 countries; and a film version will be shot in London and New York in 1969. John Sebastian, formerly of the Lovin' Spoonful, also moved the new music onto the stage by writing the score for Murray Schisgal's Jimmy Shine, starring Dustin Hoffman. Meanwhile, Burt Bacharach and Hal David were writing the score for Promises, Promises, a Broadway version of the 1960 Academy Award-winning film The Apartment. In describing his plans for the show, Bacharach revealed how basically the Broadway musical was going to change: "The sound I want to get in the theater is the one we achieve in the recording studio. I'll probably use a sprinkling of electrical instruments and I plan to use a variety of mikes, as well as different groupings of my musicians."

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While rock sounds were made manifest frequently on television throughout the year---via guest shots on network programs and the growing number of local music shows---there was still no major, regular, prime-time forum devoted entirely to the scope of the new sounds. There were a number of specials, among them Soul (with Lou Rawls and Martha & the Vandellas), which was also intended as a pilot for a possible NBC series. Also slotted were Aretha's World of Soul on NBC and a Motown collage starring Diana Ross and the Supremes along with The Temptations. On the jazz front, National Educational Television showed four one-hour programs shot at the 1967 Monterey Festival, in addition to four new segments in Ralph Gleason's Jazz Casual series. The most deeply affecting jazz television program of the year was a hastily assembled threnody for Robert F. Kennedy on New York's WCBS-TV the day after his funeral. For two and a half hours, with Father Norman O'Connor introducing the artists, and readings from poems, novels and plays, A Contemporary Memorial comprised, among others, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, the Thad Jones--Mel Lewis Orchestra, Joe Williams, Bill Evans, the Modern Jazz Quartet and Horace Silver.

The obituary list of musicians during the year included guitarist and new Playboy Hall of Fame member Wes Montgomery; composer-leader Johnny Richards; pianists Luckey Roberts, Hank Duncan and Cy Walter; drummer George Wettling; trumpeters Ziggy Elman and Dick Reudebusch; alto saxophonist Hilton Jefferson; clarinetist Bill Stegmeyer; trombonists Earl Swope and Cutty Cutshall; singer--harmonica player Marion "Little Walter" Jacobs; entertainer-songwriter "Little" Willie John; Ernest "Pop" Stoneman, a patriarch of country music; bandleader Willard Robison; and, in New Orleans, banjoist-guitarist "Creole" George Guesnon and Dr. Edmond Souchon II, a jazz enthusiast, string player and vocalist.

In the churches, not only prayers for the dead were heard but also increasingly the life-affirming sounds of contemporary music. For many Sundays, the most crowded church service in Rome was the "beat Mass" at a seminary close to the Vatican. There, teenage boys accompanied the Mass with electric guitars, drums and organ. In this country, jazz and rock resounded in churches from Greenwich Village to El Cajon, California, where, in April, a Roman Catholic priest celebrated a Mass in a Protestant church to the beat of electric guitars and drums---a fusing of musical and religious ecumenicism. And Dave Brubeck completed what he considers his most important work so far, a religious oratorio, The Light in the Wilderness. After its world premiere in Cincinnati in March, Henry S. Humphreys, music critic of the Cincinnati Enquirer, called the Brubeck composition "a very brilliant highlight of modern man's earnest search for an answer to the riddle of a 20th Century torn asunder by two world wars...."

On the secular scene, the Beatles, having lost spiritual touch with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, established their own kingdom on earth, Apple Corps, Ltd., a world-wide group of companies with divisions for films, electronics, merchandising and music. The music principality includes recordings, music publishing, the management of artists and recording studios. In process was a London studio intended to be the most comprehensively modern in the world. In the first batch of Apple Corps record releases in August was a hit, Mary Hopkin's Those Were the Days. Toward the end of the year, other releases included a double LP by the Beatles themselves, George Harrison's film score for Wonderwall, and the first album by the Modern Jazz Quartet in its new affiliation with the Beatles' empire.

The setting up of that empire did not appear to have changed the Beatles' impatience with the ordinary and the predictable. Having established, for instance, an Apple Boutique in London, the Beatles closed it down after seven months. Paul McCartney explained: "The shop was to have been a beautiful place where you could buy beautiful things, but it was in danger of becoming an ordinary chain store." And instead of holding a closing sale, the Beatles simply gave away all the beautiful things left in stock. "We didn't want people to think," McCartney added, "we had become mercenary." Also in character, the Beatles turned down a Command Performance before Queen Elizabeth in April. The reason: They were not yet ready to appear again in live performance; and, said Ringo, "It's better to say no to all than yes to one and no to 99 others."

Among the Beatles' recent ventures was a feature-length animated cartoon, Yellow Submarine, which, along with their movie A Magical Mystery Tour, was released in the United States late in the year. A play by John Lennon, In His Own Write, was staged in London by the National Theater. He also appeared in a movie made by his close friend Yoko Ono, in which he simply smiles for 90 minutes. But although a magnate and an artist, John Lennon was not entirely immune to the sudden reverses that afflict other mortals. In October, he and Miss Ono were busted in London on charges of possessing marijuana.

While the Beatles forged ahead in many directions, there was also continuous expansion and experimentation elsewhere. As many of the lines between jazz and rock blurred, so did those between rock and classical music. The Who, for instance, announced plans to perform and record a rock-'n'-roll opera; and in October, at New York's Philharmonic Hall, Leonard Bernstein conducted the premiere performance of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia, which contained electronic music and the Swingle Singers as vocalists. Avant-garde classical composer Earle Brown prepared to do a piece in London with the rock group the Soft Machine; and, along with Brown, many other composers began to investigate rock and free-form jazz during the year. Harold Schonberg, chief music critic for The New York Times, prophesied the eventual result of what Brown calls interpenetrating exchanges: "The new generation of composers is taking some elements of the serial school, some elements of the Cage group, some elements of traditional music ... a great dollop of electronic music, huge washes of jazz, and [is] blending them into something that quite literally is a new entertainment form."

And the interpenetrating exchanges between jazz and rock themselves were intensified during the year. The vintage jazz concept of a jam session combining stars of different groups took on a rock cast in Al Kooper's album Super Session, in which he was joined by blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield and rock-a-billy guitarist Steve Stills, a key member of the now-disbanded Buffalo Springfield. Responding to the added spontaneity afforded by the date, other rock performers have set up future "supersessions." And within such rock groups as the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, the Cream and Steppenwolf, there were increasingly extended blues-based solos that would be called jazz if present categories could be transcended. And the signs are that barriers are coming down. In the fall, tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler recorded with an electrified rock rhythm section (as Steve Marcus, a Woody Herman and Stan Kenton alumnus, had done before); and a growing number of jazz-inflected horns were appearing in rock groups. As Mick Jagger, of the Rolling Stones, put it: "Really, one shouldn't get into the habit of talking about music in categories. I suppose people think they know what they are talking about if they say, 'Oh, he's blues, and he's jazz, and this bloke's classical.' But usually, they don't know what they are talking about....What am I talking about? Just groove! Play another record!"

Obviously, not all distinctions are disappearing. Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington, among other jazzmen, continued to flourish during the year on their own musical terms. Dave Brubeck was re-energized by joining forces with Gerry Mulligan in a thoroughly jazz context; and such younger players as Robin Kenyatta, Marion Brown, Roswell Rudd, Charles Tolliver, and the members of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians are extending the jazz language. But as both the jazz and the pop streams expand, with even younger players and listeners drawing from each with lessening concern for categories, jazz and pop will increasingly meet in ways not yet conceived. Ferment and change are, more than ever, the fundamental characteristics of indigenous American music.

In the year ahead, the unexpected will continue to be the norm, as another wave of performers and composers joins and challenges such already established influences as Jimi Hendrix, Richie Havens, the Byrds, The Doors, Donovan, Country Joe and the Fish, Mama Cass, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Simon and Garfunkel and the Jefferson Airplane. Among the names and sounds that should figure prominently in 1969 are those of Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, the emerging Tim Hardin, Van Dyke Parks, the Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jerry Jeff Walker, Traffic, Sly and the Family Stone, Pearls Before Swine, the Incredible String Band, The Kaleidoscope, and Bob Dylan's friends and associates, the band from Big Pink, a house near Dylan's Woodstock, New York, home. Significantly, the music from Big Pink is a distinctive mixture of blues, rhythm and blues, country and rock.

If any one credo is shared by all these heterogeneous forces in the new music, it is their adherence to what jazz used to be called---and still is---"the sound of surprise." It is the surprise that comes from continuous exploration of your own capacities, without worrying about labels for what you find. Bob Dylan, in an interview during the year, summed it up when he was asked if he thought he could keep contact with the young audience that buys most of his records. "That's a vague notion," Dylan answered, "that one must keep contact with a certain illusion of people that are sort of undefinable. The most you can do is satisfy yourself....If you don't satisfy yourself and if you don't know why you're doing what you do, you begin to lose contact. If you're doing it for them instead of you, you're likely not to be in contact with them."

Above all, then, the best of those creating today's unprecedentedly diversified range of sonic and emotional surprises are most concerned with being in contact with themselves. Accordingly, they are concerned with being rather than just existing. Asked whether she was worried that her voice might go because she hurls all of it into each performance, Janis Joplin revealed why the new music has such impact: "Maybe I won't last as long as other singers, but I think you can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. If I hold back, I'm no good now. I'm twenty-five and, like others of my generation, and younger, we look back at our parents and see how they grew up and compromised and wound up with very little. So the kids want a lot of something now rather than a little of hardly anything spread over seventy years."

And that's what the jazz-and-pop year was all about.

All-Star Musicians' Poll

Each year, our incumbent All-Stars are asked to select their own All-Star Band. The 1968 medal winners eligible to participate in the voting were Cannonball Adderley, Herb Alpert, Louis Armstrong, Chet Atkins, Bob Brook-meyer, Ray Brown, Dave Brubeck, Petula Clark, Bill Comstock (Four Freshmen), Miles Davis, Buddy DeFranco, Paul Desmond, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Pete Fountain, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Al Hirt, Milt Jackson, J. J. Johnson, Henry Mancini, Paul McCartney (Beatles), Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan, Oscar Peterson, Boots Randolph, Buddy Rich, Ravi Shankar, Frank Sinatra, Kai Winding and Si Zentner.

All-stars' All-star Leader: Duke Ellington and Count Basie held onto their number-one and number-two rankings, respectively, this year, with Don Ellis ousting Woody Herman for third. 1. Duke Ellington; 2. Count Basie; 3. Don Ellis; 4. Buddy Rich; 5. Thad Jones-Mel Lewis.

All-stars' All-star Trumpet: Dizzy Gillespie again gained the top spot over Miles Davis, and Tonight show bandleader Doc Severinsen supplanted Art Farmer in the top five. 1. Dizzy Gillespie; 2. Miles Davis; 3. Freddie Hubbard; 4. Clark Terry; 5. Doc Severinsen.

All-stars' All-star Trombone: J. J. Johnson continued to far outpace the competition, with Bob Brookmeyer heading the also-rans. 1. J. J. Johnson; 2. Bob Brookmeyer; 3. Carl Fontana, Kai Winding; 5. Urbie Green.

All-stars' All-star Alto Sax: NO change in the two leaders from last year, but Johnny Hodges and Phil Woods traded positions, and Ornette Coleman replaced Sonny Stitt in fifth place. 1. Cannonball Adderley; 2. Paul Desmond; 3. Johnny Hodges; 4. Phil Woods; 5. Ornette Coleman.

All-stars' All-star Tenor Sax: The medal winner in '69 was again Stan Getz, with two-way ties for third and fifth places. 1. Stan Getz; 2. Paul Gon-salves; 3. Sonny Rollins, Ben Webster; 5. Boots Randolph, Wayne Shorter.

All-stars' All-star Baritone Sax: For the second year in a row, the fourth and fifth rankings changed hands, with Cecil Payne and Charles Davis reclaiming the niches taken from them last year by Bud Shank and Charles Fowlkes. 1. Gerry Mulligan; 2. Harry Carney; 3. Pepper Adams; 4. Cecil Payne; 5. Charles Davis.

All-stars' All-star Clarinet: Buddy DeFranco remained well ahead of the field, but the proverbial eyelash separated the next four finishers. 1. Buddy DeFranco; 2. Benny Goodman; 3. Pete Fountain; 4. Jimmy Giuffre, Tony Scott.

All-stars' All-star Piano: Erroll Garner jumped back into the ratings in third place, while the Big O remained the pace-setter. 1. Oscar Peterson; 2. Bill Evans; 3. Erroll Garner; 4. Herbie Hancock; 5. Hank Jones.

All-stars' All-star guitar: Perennial leader Wes Montgomery's untimely death last year resulted in Jim Hall's being crowned guitar king. 1. Jim Hall; 2. Herb Ellis; 3. Kenny Burrell, Tal Farlow; 5. Larry Coryell.

All-stars' All-star Bass: Ray Brown, Richard Davis and Ron Carter repeated their one-two-three placings of last year. 1. Ray Brown; 2. Richard Davis; 3. Ron Carter; 4. Charles Mingus; 5. Andrew Simpkins.

All-stars' All-star Drums: 1968's top threesome were dittoed this year, but Mel Lewis and Grady Tate replaced Joe Morello and Shelly Manne in the balloting. 1. Buddy Rich; 2. Elvin Jones; 3. Tony Williams; 4. Mel Lewis; 5. Grady Tate.

All-stars' All-star Miscellaneous Instrument: Milt Jackson dominated the division once more, with Gary Burton, unranked last year, making a strong second-place showing. 1. Milt Jackson, vibes; 2. Gary Burton, vibes; 3. Ravi Shankar, sitar; Jimmy Smith, organ; 5. Roland Kirk, manzello, stritch.

All-stars' All-star male Vocalist: Ray Charles moved up from fourth place to second this year but was still far from presenting a serious challenge to the Chairman of the Board. 1. Frank Sinatra; 2. Ray Charles; 3. Tony Bennett, Mel Tormé; 5. Joe Williams.

All-stars' All-star female Vocalist: Ella Fitzgerald has owned the award since its inception, but in the future she may have to keep an eye on Dionne Warwick, who broke into the big five for the first time this year. 1. Ella Fitzgerald; 2. Carmen McRae; 3. Peggy Lee; 4. Sarah Vaughan; 5. Dionne Warwick.

All-stars' All-star instrumental Combo: The Cannonball Adderley Quintet moved up from second spot to take top billing this year, while 1968's winner, the Oscar Peterson Trio, dropped to third. 1. Cannonball Adderley Quintet; 2. Modern Jazz Quartet; 3. Oscar Peterson Trio; 4. Gary Burton Quartet, Miles Davis Quintet.

All-stars' All-star vocal group: Third-place finishers in their first appearance on our charts last year, the 5th Dimension comfortably carried away 1969's laurels. 1. 5th Dimension; 2. Four Freshmen; 3. Double Six of Paris; 4. Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66, Simon and Garfunkel.

Records of the Year

Voting for the best LPs of the year is a wide-open affair; no albums are nominated, and any record in each of three categories---best LP by a big band, best LP by a small combo (fewer than eight pieces) and best vocal LP---is eligible.

Best Big Band LP: Blooming Hits / Paul Mauriat (Philips). The lush petal-smooth Mauriat sound, crystallized in the LP's pièce de rèsistance, Love Is Blue, brought Mauriat to the top of the pop charts.

Best Small Combo LP: The Beat of the Brass / Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (A&M). The inimitable Mr. A. and his gringo amigos copped our small-combo LP award in 1969 for the third straight year. The medal-winning album featured a handful of hits---This Guy's in Love with You, Cabaret, Monday, Monday, She Touched Me and Talk to the Animals.

Best Vocal LP: Bookends / Simon and Garfunkel (Columbia). The innovative and impressionistic duo's prize-winning disc demonstrated why S. & G. were still the best interpreters of Paul Simon's meaningful lyrics. At the Zoo and A Hazy Shade of Winter showed the trouper-troubadours at their very best. Obviously, there were many other records that merited attention. Following are the top 25 in each category.

Best Big Band LP

Best Small Combo LP

Best Vocal LP

Jazz Hall of Fame

Although the majority of our 25 finishers in 1969's balloting were traditional contenders, three outstanding performers in a variety of contemporary bags---Aretha Franklin, the late Otis Redding and Cream guitarist Eric Clapton---made their initial appearances in our Hall of Fame poll. Previous winners---Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Dave Brubeck, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ray Charles, John Coltrane and Benny Goodman---were ineligible. Following are this year's 25 top favorites:

All-Star Readers' Poll

While the majority of last year's jazz winners held their favored spots in the '69 poll, the complexion of pop music continues to depend on the rapidly changing tastes of its audience. Remarkable shifts occurred in all vocal areas, due to the pop influence; but one of the most noteworthy changes occurred in the leader category.

Although Henry Mancini continued first among the leaders, the Tonight show's Doc Severinsen emerged in second place---an extraordinary achievement, since he failed to appear among last year's major vote getters. A number of minor changes were noted as well---Duke Ellington slipping from second to third and Ray Charles advancing from sixth to fourth.

Herb Alpert still headed the trumpet section, with Al Hirt, Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong following in the same positions they held a year ago. Hugh Masekela climbed from 15th to 7th, but most other changes involved shifts of one or two places.

J. J. Johnson, Si Zentner, Kai Winding, Bob Brookmeyer and Slide Hampton didn't allow anyone to horn in on their top five trombone spots, but J. C. Higginbotham and Jimmy Cleveland traded sixth and seventh places.

The three first alto positions remained occupied by Cannonball Adder-ley, Paul Desmond and Bud Shank, while Ornette Coleman and Zoot Sims both moved up, pushing Johnny Hodges back from fourth to sixth.

Stan Getz, Boots Randolph and King Curtis repeated top honors on tenor sax; but Charles Lloyd and Sonny Rollins swapped the fourth and sixth places, with Coleman Hawkins holding his own in the fifth spot. Electronically inclined Eddie Harris came on strong to take eighth position, behind "Fathead" Newman, after failing to appear in the '68 poll.

Gerry Mulligan continued his longtime domination of the baritone sax. Charles Davis made a significant move from seventh to third, while Frank Capi appeared from nowhere to garner the eighth spot.

There were no surprises in the clarinet section, save Herbie Mann's phenomenal showing on an instrument seldom used by him; he claimed second, behind Pete Fountain.

In spite of the breakup of his longtime quartet, Dave Brubeck still reigned as first bench in the piano section, followed again by Ramsey Lewis. However, Sergio Mendes climbed in popularity from ninth to third and Peter Nero dropped from third to sixth, while Roger Williams surged from nineteenth to a fine fifth-place finish this year.

Riding the crest of his new-found pop prestige, Jimi Hendrix made his first poll appearance as top guitarist, followed by last year's leader, Chet Atkins. Eric Clapton, playing lead for the now-defunct Cream, rated a move from twelfth to third, which moved jazz great Charlie Byrd back to fourth. The untimely death of Wes Montgomery during the peak of his career left the jazz world and our poll minus one of its finest solo guitarists.

While Charles Mingus and Ray Brown rated one-two honors on bass, Monk Montgomery edged into third position from his eighth spot in '68, while last year's third man, ex-Brubeck aide Gene Wright, moved back to sixth. Paul Chambers climbed from thirteenth to fourth and Buddy Clark was again fifth choice.

The Cream's Ginger Baker drummed his way from 12th last year to a solid 2nd behind Buddy Rich, the repeat potentate of the skin trade. Beatle Ringo Starr moved up one notch to third, while some other worthies suffered setbacks. Art Blakey and Chico Hamilton, in last year's top ten, dropped to fourteenth and fifteenth, respectively.

In miscellaneous instrument, Ravi Shankar's ragas again brought top honors for his sitar playing, and flutist Her-bie Mann and organist Jimmy Smith each advanced one place, to pull down the second and third spots. Notable, however, were the first poll appearances of several instrumentalists: Bob Dylan, for his harmonica work, Jack Bruce, electric bassist for the Cream, Ray Man-zarek, The Doors' organist, and Earl Scruggs, regarded as the country's finest Bluegrass banjo player.

The poll for male vocalist revealed a great number of changes, but Frank Sinatra remained the undisputed favorite of Playboy readers, followed by Glen Campbell, a surprise second who didn't appear among the '68 leaders. The Doors' Jim Morrison also made his first appearance, a respectable fifth, as did Jimi Hendrix, twelfth. Tony Bennett and Dean Martin suffered significant setbacks, while Paul McCartney and Donovan advanced several places.

Soulful Aretha Franklin jumped from sixth to first among female vocalists, and the kinetic Janis Joplin, of Big Brother and the Holding Company, made a tremendous advance from twenty-second to third, behind Dionne Warwick. Barbra Streisand continued to hold down fourth position, followed by last year's favorite, Pet Clark. Nancy Wilson also moved back, from second to sixth; but the Supremes' Diana Ross took ninth, for her first showing among the top finishers.

Leading the instrumental combos again this year was Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, followed in the same relative order by last year's choices. The Herbie Mann Quintet managed to advance seven places to seventh, one jump ahead of the Hugh Masekela Quintet, making its first showing on the strength of recent popular hits.

The Beatles, still changing with the times, held onto first place among vocal groups, with Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 a strong second. However, Simon and Garfunkel, rock poets, moved from tenth to third; and the short-lived Cream made their first and probably last appearance on the poll, in fourth. The Doors also scored for the first time, in sixth, as did the Jimi Hendrix Experience, in ninth. Based on the setbacks suffered by The Mamas and the Papas, The Association, the Rolling Stones and the Jefferson Airplane, it appears as though any pop group will find it difficult to maintain dominance in that constantly shifting scene.

Opposite are the most popular artists in each category, with the musicians who earned All-Star status listed in boldface type. All will receive silver medals, as will winners of the Hall of Fame balloting and the artists who---in the opinion of Playboy readers---produced the lop records of the year.

Leader

Trumpet

Trombone

Alto Sax

Tenor Sax

Baritone Sax

Clarinet

Piano

Guitar

Bass

Drums

Miscellaneous Instrument

Male Vocalist

Female Vocalist

Instrumental Combo

Vocal Group

Three years ago, the first trio of greats named to our Hall of Fame were Dave Brubeck, a titan of mainstream jazz, nonpareil vocalist Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong, America's ageless musical ambassador. In 1967, they were joined by Duke Ellington, the incomparable conductor and composer, Ella Fitzgerald, reigning queen of songstresses, and Count Basie, whose band continues to spread jazz' joyous message. Last year, soul genius Ray Charles, saxophonist John Coltrane, who died in 1967 at the age of 40, and Benny Goodman, the King of Swing, joined the honored group. And again in 1969, artist Jack Gregory's sculptures depict our newest Hall of Fame inductees---two trumpeters, whose poll-winning sounds are poles apart, and a great jazz guitarist cut off in his prime.

The Playboy Jazz Hall of FameBeginning in 1966, Playboy readers have each year selected three of the jazz world's outstanding artists---vocalists and instrumentalists alike---for membership in our Jazz Hall of Fame. Counting 1969's charismatic contingent, the Playboy musical pantheon now includes an even dozen performers who share the distinction of having achieved artistic eminence. Almost all forms of jazz---from Dixieland to avant-garde, from swing to soul---are now represented in the Hall of Fame. And as our roster of greats grows annually, so does the music we honor. Jazz, despite the Cassandras who keep predicting its demise, continues to adapt itself to the country's life style---adding the best from contemporary idioms, augmenting its basic structure and remaining America's one truly indigenous art form.