Harvey Pekar on Jazz

Hosni

The Atlantic
Sam Machkovech

Harvey Pekar—namesake of famed underground comic series American Splendor, Veteran Affairs office clerk, book writer, curmudgeon. But before all of those, the Cleveland native was a jazz enthusiast and critic. Even in the last years before his death, he still was; see his work in outlets like NPR and the Austin Chronicle to find some of the finest, to-the-point treatises about bebop-era jazz by any American critic, or look up "Leave Me Alone," the jazz opera he co-wrote and starred in last year.

Most people know how he looked and acted through actor Paul Giamatti's eyes, or maybe Robert Crumb's, or any of the other underground artists who penned his American Splendor tales through the years. I felt lucky to see him—and, of course, hear him—in an unfiltered way, when he gave a presentation at a small Texas music conference last year. He sat in a chair three times his size and asked his friend, Jeffrey Barnes of Brave Combo polka/jazz fame, to play selected avant-garde jazz CDs for the crowd. Hundreds of college-age Texans, all in unabashedly hipster-ish garb, sat back, closed their eyes, and listened along to Pekar's musical whims while he rambled about the tunes as he pleased. It was a concert, in a way, but it was also a gift he wanted to give to a new musical generation.

I was even more fortunate to get Mr. Pekar's phone number and call him a few weeks before the keynote to talk about jazz for the conference's program notes. It's how I'll always remember him—to-the-point, but giving and excitable, and exceedingly patient with my relative jazz novicehood. After our talk ended somewhat abruptly (his wife had just come home), Mr. Pekar said I could call him anytime if I needed more for my story. That is no longer true today. But I'm hopeful this interview will be solace to anybody else as sad about his passing as I am.


Q. You recently stated in an interview with NPR about jazz that more people need to care about the avant-garde in general. I'll play devil's advocate: why should they?

They need to care, or they need to be at least aware of it, because if people stop experimenting, you know, and trying to push the boundaries of art, then they're gonna be repeating themselves year after year. The art form will turn into a folk art form, which doesn't grow.

Q. What's really changed in art? Why is it so important that we call for a return?

Do you understand why I'm saying it's important? That the art form needs to grow?

Q. I'm just playing devil's advocate, would like your perspective on what has—

You know, not only jazz, but a whole different, um, set of art forms. I don't know, maybe, humans [now have a] physical inability to be able to appreciate some of these things that people are doing, which would be too bad. It's like, what, you're just not genetically set up to enjoy this stuff? There's less interest in this stuff as it gets farther and farther out.

Q.I want to get at how you became a fan of jazz, how it became a part of your life from the earliest days.

I was 16 years old and I was just flailing around, looking for an interest. I heard, you know, these jazz records. They were modern records, at the time in the '50s, and I realized that I didn't fully get what was going on. But I liked a lot of what I heard. What I felt was, if I listen to this stuff enough, I could train my ear so I could hear what was going on. I kept on buying records and listening to them. Finally, I was able to hear the relationship between the jazz improvisers' solos and the underlying structure that it's based on, the chord progression. That was pretty easy to do in the swing era, y'know, when jazz was, like, pop music, you know. It had made the charts and everything like that.

When bebop came along, bebop was more complex. To really dig bebop, you know, you had to work. I s'pose there are some people that have such good ears that they were able to follow it from day one. But I think most people had trouble with it, not understanding what was going on, not understanding how the soloists were constructing their solos, where they were in the composition, what part of the composition they were playing on at a given time. So, after a while, some of 'em said, "I can't deal with this, man, I'm listening to Chuck Berry and Frank Sinatra."

Q. So was understanding jazz like solving a puzzle for you? [Editor: I removed the interviewer babbling about his own life and listening to Lee Morgan]

For me, the thing is, the '40s and '50s, bop music, Lee Morgan is what I'd call a post-bopper. He came in the generation after Dizzie and Charlie Parker. He wasn't in the founding generation of bebop. A lot of people continue to play bop or solos based on bop-like chord progressions. And so over time, it became easier for people, they were exposed more to this kind of play, so they had less trouble with it than people did when I was a kid. I'd say, if you're listening to Lee Morgan and you like it right off the bat, (laugh) you're doing what you're supposed to be doing.

Q.Back to my original question, if jazz and art are to be important to the mainstream again, what can anyone really do to reach that as a massive, national effort?

We need a new Leonard Bernstein for that. The conductor of the New York Philharmonic who used to give lectures about jazz on TV and stuff. That might help. If you're looking at someone doing something on a large scale.

Q. Is that really feasible?

It's been done before. If someone took it into their head, to try and introduce people to jazz, depending on whom they are, they could probably get some airtime. You know, Wynton Marsalis is always getting his stuff on, but his stuff's old-fashioned. He's got this Lincoln Center Orchestra. He tries to dress up old jazz, older forms of jazz, which I'd rather hear played by the originators than by him... he's a commercial success, but he hasn't really helped anything. As far as pushing the boundaries further or anything. The most far-out he ever was was when he just started, and he was playing Miles Davis. And then he went backwards from there.

Q. You didn't necessarily come from a hippie or beatnik upbringing—

No.

Q. So what clicked for you at a young age?

I mean, I was young and interested in all this stuff. I had access to people who knew something about it. I used to talk to them about it all the time. Jazz or novels, you know, I'd read books about 'em. I'm self-educated on it.

Q. It seems like reading your reviews, jazz dies for you at a certain era. Can you pick a certain year where jazz falls off for you?

First of all, I have this huge... I sold a lot of it now, but I had an enormous record collection. I was getting stuff, people were sending me free records all the time to review and all that. I was just being bombarded with stuff. I kinda, you know, just burnt out on it. And then, along came all this writing stuff, and I didn't even have time to keep up with it. I'm still defending jazz, I'll defend it when I'm down in Texas. The fact that I got burnt out doesn't say anything bad about jazz, it just says [laughs] I just got burnt out, it was me!

Q. I don't mean the amount of jazz, but the eras, I just—

I like all the eras. Every one of 'em. I've written about all of 'em.