Roux

Wynton Marsalis once spoke of the "roux" of jazz.

The thickner.

What holds the gumbo together, in other words.

He called it, the blues.

Roux is traditionally made from a combination of flour whisked together with a bit of melted butter.

And, in the matter of jazz, I call the butter, Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

If you haven't heard of him, don't feel too bad. Neither did I till a few years ago when the local library was cleaning out their LP's to make room for the on rushing tide of CD's.

I saw some piano duets featuring the music of Gottschalk.

Oh, what the heck. I'll get it. It'll probably end up in the local dump store. (Where I do some of my best shopping, by the way.)

I took it home, slipped it out of the sleeve, noticed it had probably never been played, and dropped a needle on the first track, titled "Le Banjo".

What the......? I picked up the record jacket and scanned the back. I looked at the label, spinning merrily around. Yup. It was the album, all right.

But the music was filled with chocolate skinned women in pastel dresses, twirling silk umbrellas under a Brazilian moon. I heard purple parrots and scarlet macaws and bell-like banjo chords swelling through shiny green, long leaves in a velvet black jungle on a languid summer night. I smelled jasmine.

Wow! Who was this guy? What had I been smoking?

What had I been missing!

Gottschalk was born in New Orleans in 1829, the son of a German Jew and a Haitian creole mother. He was a child genius at the keyboard and studied under many teachers both at home and abroad. And when he was ready to write, what came out was rhythmically profound and with a tonal freshness never heard before.

Except in the pulsing music of his people.

Creole, Haitian, Spanish, French. All the folk music he knew and loved. He wrote it down and pushed it through the seive of his intellect and musical training. And it became the butter of the jazz roux.

Most of those who know, and I cannot include myself in such high company, say he was the precursor to ragtime. The genesis of dixieland. He was the grandaddy of Johnny St. Cyr, and when Louis began to sing "Stardust" with that single note persistence, that no one, and I mean no one had ever attempted before, the driving sound, and syncopation of the other Louis hovered like a ghost in the background.

Gershwins "Cuban Overture" owes it's life to George and his chords, but it owes it's birth to Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

And to go back even further, it was a powerful influence for Scott Joplin and all of the unsung hero's of ragtime. "The Entertainer", "Maple Leaf Rag". and all the rest hang on a branch that sprouted from a pot of gumbo helped along by this African American genius.

If you have never heard his stuff, Youtube has "Le Banjo" played by the pianist Johathan Plowright, as well as many other things by Gottschalk on their website.

I love jazz. Especially with a road straightening-4/4-get-out-of-my-way beat. This music is alive and well.

And a pound of Creole butter helped get it started.

© 2010 George Locke