[Dixielandjazz] Work

[Robert S. Ringwald]

taken from the Blue Night
Records web site (bluenightrecords.com):

The President's Corner

Imagine this. You go to the office one morning after having worked on a
project until well past midnight the night before. You'll be laboring in a
relatively high-pressure situation where each and every task you perform
will
be monitored by a highly-paid technician who has connected you to a complex
maze of very expensive electronic equipment. Moreover, your work product for
the morning will be recorded and analyzed down to its most minute detail by
the people who hired you. They may spend days at it.

If that's not enough to
make you nervous about the entire experience, those people will
eventually take your work product from that morning and make it available
for public scrutiny as well.
And get this --- some people will actually get paid to
write about the work you completed that one morning, so that other people
can
better decide whether they want to expose themselves to it. But there's
more.

When you arrived for work that fateful morning, tired from having worked
so late the night before, the boss gives you only a general idea of what she
wants you to do, then tells you to just make up the specifics as you go
along, depending on how the other workers do their jobs!

Could you do your work under such conditions? Could you do it so well that
other people would want to buy a recording of your efforts and listen to it
over and over again? That's what the best of the jazz musicians do. Perform
by night; record by day. And we're not talkin' a five-day week here,
either. I've never heard a jazz musician tell a promoter or agent,
"Sorry, I take Tuesdays off."

Then there's the struggle it takes a good, working jazz musician to
achieve the required level of proficiency. Years and years of practice. A
load of
talent. And significantly, a willingness to forego the security most people
take for granted in our society. Nightclub gigs and record deals don't
come with paid vacations, pension plans and medical insurance.
Yet despite all of these circumstances, great jazz is still being played and
recorded. An objective economist or workplace scholar would conclude that
it just doesn't make sense. What manner of person would take such risks and
endure such pressure for such small rewards? The answer is deceptively
simple.

Jazz musicians are true artists. They do what they do for love of the
music and the creative process. Watch them work and you can see it.
Listen to a good jazz record and you can hear it.

So next time you put on some jazz, whether it's one of those evenings
where you hang on every note or one of those afternoons when the music is
just
contextual, give a mental nod to the folks who made it all possible ---
the musicians. They really deserve it.

Steven Briggs
Barrington, Illinois

--Bob Ringwald K6YBV
916/806-9551
www.ringwald.com
--
Leader, The Fulton Street Jazz Band
www.fultonstreetjazz.com
--
The Boondockers (jazz and Comedy)
www.theboondockers.com

"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball
 and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life
without even considering if there is a man on base."  --Dave Barry