The protagonist is Jimmy Rabbitt, whom we first met as the manager/fixer in The Commitments. Jimmy is now working in the field of vintage Irish rock, assembling compilations and organising reunion tours. He hates jazz; as he says “He wasn’t a bigot, he was just right”. This goes back to a case of teenage sexual frustration when, as a teenager, Jimmy’s girlfriend told him that her parents were out for the day, but they arrived at her house to find her father very much at home and listening to Charlie Parker.
In an attempt to open his mind to jazz his wife buys Jimmy
tickets to see Keith Jarrett in Dublin. Jimmy will take his pal, Outspan,
(guitarist in the Commitments), with him. Outspan hasn’t heard of Jarrett and
the conversation goes: -
“Keith Jarrett”
“The one out of Boyzone?”
“No”
“I’ve run out of Keiths”
“He’s a piano player”
“Like Richard Clayderman?”
Jimmy does his research. Jarrett sounds like a terror; he’d
walked off stage because some ‘sham’ in the audience couldn’t stop coughing.
This was all part of the Jarrett experience – “the tension, the terror. This
wasn’t a gig, this was a concert.”
At the concert someone coughs, ‘The applause was dying. So
was Jimmy’
The descriptions of the concert itself are, of course the
high points of the story and serve as wonderful descriptions of the improviser’s
art.
‘Jarrett was staring at the piano keys. His head was moving
from side to side as if he was making his mind up.... Then he started playing.
And it was incredible. Like he was composing the piece Jimmy was hearing and
throwing it away at the same time…. And it was brilliant. Never played before.
And it would never be played again… something so brilliant, gone… He wanted to
stand up and catch a note and take it home’.
It’s a very short story, just 12 pages but it builds the
tension and creates a release, like a good jazz piece and I’m jealous of a
fictional character because he got to see Keith Jarrett live and I never did (I assume that Doyle was writing from experience).
I doubt many people from the jazz world will read Jimmy Jazz unless they are already Roddy
Doyle fans, although, you never know, it may turn up in a collection of jazz
writing one day.
The Guts is available from the usual online retailers, some second hand shops and selected branches of Oxfam. Dave Sayer
4 comments :
Great minds think alike Dave, as the saying goes. I have been thinking for awhile about posts/references to jazz in non-jazz literature although sometimes, with writing, there's a jazz feel to it even if it has nothing to do with music!
What do others think? Have you got jazz quotes from non-jazz books?
Interesting one, Doyle's a master. Hmmm but what's a ''non-jazz'' book? Conundrum of the day in this regard ponder this, isn't it demoralising when some ''bona fide'' jazz books, of the interesting-as-paint-drying direction aren't jazz even when the subject matter seems to deem it so? Perhaps every book is jazz except when become dull. But again into the mystic you can't improvise a book and have it consumed by a reader in real-time. More's the pity.
I should have been more specific. By non- jazz I mean novels that aren't jazz themed but have jazz incidents in them e.g On The Road.
OK, again ironies about how about Jazz (1992) by the Nobel winning Toni Morrison.
It's a ''non-jazz'' book because even though set in the Harlem of the 1920s when you might think jazz is centre to the time the narrative also extends back to the pre-jazz of the mid-19th-century American South.
In it the character Alice however does digress to comment according to the narrator that jazz ''disturb (s) her peace, making her aware of flesh and something so free she could smell its bloodsmell.''
Great idea for a thread!
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