PHILIP LARKINS JAZZ CRITIC Philip Larkin was not

PHILIP LARKIN’S JAZZ

CRITIC Philip Larkin was not only a very successful poet, but also a gifted Jazz critic. Jazz music was the one thing that stayed with 'You automatically stop him throughout his life, and had a place in his heart reserved for thinking about anything no other thing, or woman. else and listen': Phillip Larkin in 1966

CRITICS OF THE CRITIC • Larkin ignored jazz’s development after the bebop revolution of the late Forties. Bop is “nervous and hostile (something that they can’t steal because they can’t play it) music, at odds with the generous spirit of its predecessors”. • Didn’t acknowledge the fact that music and style changes, and that in the early twenties, Jazz itself was slated with similar terms to the ones Larkin himself used to dismiss Modern Jazz - “jerky”, “unnatural”, “fevered”, “cacophonous”. • He was no expert.

REFERENCE BACK That was a pretty one, I heard you call From the unsatisfactory hall To the unsatisfactory room where I Played record after record, idly, Wasting my time at home, that you Looked so much forward to. Oliver's Riverside Blues, it was. And now I shall, I suppose, always remember how The flock of notes those antique Negroes blew Our of Chicago air into A huge remembering pre-electric horn The year after I was born Three decades later made this sudden bridge From your unsatisfactory age Truly, though our element is time, We're not suited to the long perspectives To my unsatisfactory prime. Open at each instant of our lives. They link us to our losses: worse, They show us what we have as it once was, Blindingly undiminished, just as though By acting differently we could have kept it so.

LARKIN’S JAZZ DISC 2 – “Oxford” DISC 1 - "I Remember, I Remember" Disc 3 - All What Jazz Larkin spoke of "the trio of great white In 1968, looking back on his life with jazz, Named after All What Jazz: The Record Diary eccentrics, Beiderbecke, Russell and Wild “Compilation of articles by the leading jazz Larkin recalled "I was in essence Disc 4 – completes the Bill Davison - three players who achieved reviewer offers a lively commentary of the hooked on jazz before I heard incomplete. "listening to new completely individual styles - and it seems record world and its personalities in the any, and that what got me was to me that the unique quality of each was jazz records for an hour with a 1960's. ” the product of conscious and consummate the rhythm. That simple trick pint of gin and tonic is the best artistry. " of the suspended beat, that “I rushed out on Monday and bought Nobody remedy for a day's work I know. " Knows The Way I Feel This Morning. had made the slaves shuffle Bix Beiderbecke, who drank himself to F------, c------, bloody good! Bechet is a great death by the age of 28 in 1931, was a in Congo Square on Saturday cornet player who created solos of artist. As soon as he starts playing you nights, was something that surprising beauty and extraordinary automatically stop thinking about anything never palled. My transition to implosion. He revolutionised the else and listen. Power and glory. ” conception of the jazz solo, and influenced jazz was slow. " almost every white trumpet or cornet player

FINAL PLAYLIST King Olivers Jazz Band Riverside Blues Disc 1 – Louis Armstrong Ain't Misbehavin‘ Disc 2 – Bix Beiderbecke and His Orchestra Since My Best Gal Turned Me Down Disc 3 – Sidney Bechet Old Man Blues Disc 4 - Miff Mole And His Dixieland Orchestra How Come You Do Me Like You Do