Are today's jazz men jolly jokesters?

There was a time when jazz lovers seemed very earnest and unsmiling. I think that maybe they thought Miles and Trane and Ornette Coleman were dead serious and no laughing matter; the music had to be studied with intense concentration and furrowed brow.

But the earliest jazz was more into imitating donkies and chickens, and the saxophone was strictly for comic effects. There was a good deal of comedy, and low comedy at that. "Micky Mouse" was a style of jazz that imitated Ted Lewis, because Ted's music went so well with cartoons. The saxophone still sounds goofy, if you think about it. And, whereas classical composers occasionally put "wrong" notes in their works to be funny, jazz musicians play those notes all the time--on purpose (I think).

The reason I ask is because my recent jazz listening (The Coimbra concert and Jack Walrath) is very current--all from the last 3 years--and what strikes me is how much jocularity there is in it. The musicians seem to think life is pretty funny, perhaps in a gallows-humor kind of way.

Perhaps the joke is their awareness that "Jazz is it's own reward."