Jimmy Jazz, included in ‘The Guts’ by Roddy Doyle (Vintage Books, 2013)

Jimmy Jazz is a short story appended to the end of The Guts, a 2013 novel by Roddy Doyle and features several of the same characters from the principal novel. It’s a ‘hidden track’ like Her Majesty at the end of Sgt. Pepper’s by the Beatles or English Rose by the Jam at the end of Setting Sons (I don’t know of any examples from the jazz world).

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