A DownBeat Critic's Poll -- 60 years later
Is jazz a competition?
One of my favorite things to do is thumb through old magazines that I have in a collection. There are dozens of old DownBeat and JazzTimes magazines from decades ago. It is fun to see advertisements from 50 years ago and to read the articles and ruminate on the past and future of jazz.
I recently stumbled across the 1963 DownBeat magazine Critic’s Poll—timely because the 2023 Poll was just released—and I think it is interesting for so many reasons. Here are the alto and tenor sax results from 1963:
My first observation is clear — every single one of these 20 artists is a legend, so how could there possibly be a “winner?” Could we really assert that Johnny Hodges is a better “competitor” than any of the nine musicians listed below him? Similarly, often John Coltrane is the gold standard of musicians/composers/saxophonists, so how is he not “winning?!” Clearly, the idea of this being a contest is preposterous!
Another observation that I have is that the typical narrative is that Ornette Coleman was so avant-garde that he was not “accepted” by the mainstream, but here in 1963—four years after his first release—he is nearly at the top of the list.
Some of my colleagues and students that saw this poll were curious why Johnny Hodges is at the top of the list. It does not seem that he had a hit record in 1963, but the Duke Ellington Orchestra was HOT at that time. Paul Gonsalves, the featured Ellington tenor player, also made the poll that year.
My most chilling question — since these are all absolutely stunning, talented, iconic, proficient, profound, prolific, artists, then what do we have to offer today? Are we chasing the past? Can we too have something to offer?
My best advice to students is to avoid the contest. There is no contest.
These are the ways to be a 21st-century jazz musician:
be the best you that you can be
listen to the history of the music, internalize the sound of the greats, swing hard, learn how to navigate chord changes well, and also seek your own path
celebrate other musicians around you and find a community of like-minded artists
be assertive and confident but also humble
know and believe that jazz and other artist music has a future