[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 137 (Tuesday, October 12, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2076-E2077]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                 IN TRIBUTE TO JAZZ GREAT MILT JACKSON

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR.

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, October 12, 1999

  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to jazz great, Milt 
Jackson. Milt Jackson was a wonderful person and magnificent talent who 
played the vibraphone in a way that emitted rich, warm sounds like no 
one else. Milt Jackson was born in Detroit and played many instruments 
prior to playing the vibraphone. Blessed with the gift of perfect 
pitch, he originally sang with the Detroit gospel group, the Evangelist 
Singers. He started playing jazz in high school with the Clarance Ringo 
and the George Lee Band but his new found jazz career was interrupted 
by a short stint in the Army. Upon discharge, Mr. Jackson founded his 
own jazz quartet called the Four Sharps.
  Dizzy Gillespie, while in Detroit on a mid-western tour, spotted the 
quartet in a Detroit bar and promptly asked Mr. Jackson to join his 
band. By the time Mr. Jackson joined Gillespie's band, he was deeply 
under the influence of Charlie Parker. Jackson tried to emulate 
Parker's rhythmic traits and tried to achieve a hornlike quality to his 
sound. Jackson went on to create a new sound in the 1940's slowing down 
the motor on his Vibraharp's oscillator by one-third the speed to 
create a rich vibrato sound very similar to his own voice. Mr. Jackson 
was also knowledgeable in classical music and was involved in the jam 
sessions with Miles Davis and Gerry Mulligan which led to the ``Birth 
of the Cool.'' One of the most significant musical achievements in 
Jackson's career was his over four decades of work as a member of the 
Modern Jazz Quartet which was formed in the early 1950's.
  Milt always responded positively to my invitations to come and share 
his significant knowledge and talent at the annual Congressional Black 
Caucus Foundation jazz issues forum. The jazz issues forum was 
established to enhance and perpetuate the art form, emphasize cultural 
heritage, and forge awareness and pride within the African-American 
community. In 1987, the jazz issue forum in the United States Congress 
passed House Concurrent Resolution 57 which designates jazz to be ``a 
rare and valuable national American treasure.''
  He will be missed greatly as Milt Jackson was one of the world's 
preeminent improvisors in jazz. His special brilliance will be enjoyed 
by jazz fans for all the ages.

               [From the N.Y. Times, Mon., Oct. 11, 1999]

               Milt Jackson, 76, Jazz Vibraphonist, Dies

                            (By Ben Ratliff)

       Milt Jackson, the jazz vibraphonist who was a member of the 
     Modern Jazz Quartet for 40 years and was one of the premier 
     improvisers in jazz with a special brilliance at playing 
     blues, died on Saturday at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in 
     Manhattan. He was 76 and lived in Teaneck, N.J.
       The cause was liver cancer, said his daughter, Chyrise 
     Jackson.
       All the best jazz musicians know how to take their time, 
     and Mr. Jackson was no different. Originally a singer in a 
     Detroit gospel quartet, he created a new sound in the 1940's 
     by slowing down the motor on his Deagan Vibraharp's 
     oscillator to a third of the speed of Lionel Hampton's; a 
     result, when he chose to let a sustained note ring, was a 
     rich, warm smoky sound, with a vibrato that approximated his 
     own singing.
       ``He came closer than anyone else on the instrument to 
     making it sound like the human voice,'' said the young 
     vibraphonist Stefon Harris yesterday. ``It's a collection of 
     metal and iron, and we don't have the ability to bend notes 
     and make vocal inflections like a saxophone. But Milt played 
     the instrument in the most organic way possible--with a warm, 
     rich sound. He set a precedent that this instrument can speak 
     beautiful things, and that it's not just percussive.''
       Mr. Jackson, who was born in Detroit, had become an 
     impressively broad musician by the middle of his teen-age 
     years. He had perfect pitch, and he began teaching himself 
     guitar at the age of 7, started piano lessons at 11 and in 
     high school played five instruments: drums, tympani, violin, 
     guitar and xylophone; he also sang in the choir. By the age 
     of 16, he had picked up the vibraphone as well, encouraged by 
     a music teacher, and sang tenor in a popular gospel quartet 
     called the Evangelist Singers as well as beginning his jazz 
     career, playing vibraphone with Clarence Ringo and the George 
     E. Lee band.
       Out of high school, he almost joined Earl Hines's big band, 
     but his draft notice intervened. In 1944, back in Detroit 
     after two years of overseas military service, he set up a 
     jazz quartet called the Four Sharps. (He admitted that he got 
     his nickname, Bags, from the temporary furrows under his eyes 
     incurred by a drinking binge after his release from the 
     Army.) Dizzy Gillespie saw the quartet at a Detroit bar on a 
     swing through the Midwest, and called upon Mr. Jackson in 
     1945 to join his band in New York.
       Mr. Jackson's style, then and later, came from Charlie 
     Parker, rather than Mr. Hampton, his most prominent precursor 
     on the instrument; he not only tried to achieve a hornlike 
     legato with his mallets, but he adopted many of Parker's 
     rhythmic traits as well. He was the first bona fide bebop 
     musician on the vibraphone, and became one of the prides of 
     Gillespie's own band. Gillespie also brought him to Los 
     Angeles to fill out his sextet at Billy Berg's club, hedging 
     against the probability that Parker, who was in the band and 
     at the low point of his heroin addiction, would fail to show 
     up.
       Back in New York in 1946, Mr. Jackson recorded some of 
     bebop's classics with Gillespie's orchestra--``A Night in 
     Tunisia,'' ``Anthropology'' and ``Two Bass Hit.'' Mr. 
     Jackson, the pianist John Lewis, the bassist Ray Brown and 
     the drummer Kenny Clarke were the rhythm section of 
     Gillespie's band. ``Dizzy had a lot of high parts for the 
     brass in that group,'' remembered Mr. Brown. ``So he said, 
     `I have to give these guys' lips a little rest during 
     concerts, and while they're resting, you should play 
     something.' '' The development of this rhythm section's 
     relationship led to some recordings for Gillespie's own 
     label, Dee Gee, by a new band known as the Milt Jackson 
     Quartet.
       Mr. Jackson left Gillespie and came back to him again for a 
     period in the early 1950's. And in 1951, with Thelonious 
     Monk, he made recordings that would further the idiom again, 
     weaving his linear improvisations around Monk's abrupt, 
     jagged gestures on pieces including ``Criss Cross'' and 
     ``Straight, No Chaser.''
       Mr. Lewis, the pianist, began to have ideas about forming a 
     new group, one that would go beyond the notion of soloists 
     with a rhythm section. He had an extensive knowledge of 
     classical music, had been involved in the sessions with Miles 
     Davis and Gerry Mulligan that would become known as ``Birth 
     of the Cool,'' and he envisioned a more deliberately formal 
     feeling for a small band. In 1952 the Modern Jazz Quartet 
     began, with Clark as drummer and Percy Heath as bassist. 
     Connie Kay replaced Clarke in 1955. After a while, Mr. Lewis 
     became the group's musical director.
       The group wore tailored suits and practiced every aspect of 
     their public presentation, from walking on stage to making 
     introductions to the powerfully subdued arrangements in their 
     playing. They wanted to bring back to jazz the sense of high 
     bearing it had been losing as the popularity of the

[[Page E2077]]

     big bands was slipping and jazz became more of a music 
     predicated on the casual jam-session. Through two decades of 
     immaculately conceived and recorded albums on Atlantic 
     Records, beginning in 1956, their vision was borne out. 
     Initially, they found that audiences were somewhat startled 
     by the authority of their quietness; eventually the group 
     would be one of the few jazz bands embraced by an audience 
     much wider than jazz fans.
       Mr. Lewis economized, playing small chords and creating a 
     light but sturdy framework for the music, and Mr. Jackson was 
     the expansive foil, letting his tempos crest and fall, 
     luxuriating in the passing tones and quick, curled runs of 
     bebop. It was often supposed that he grew frustrated with his 
     role in the band; in a recent interview Mr. Jackson said he 
     felt that Mr. Lewis suppressed the group's sense of swing. In 
     1974 he left, dissolving the band until it reunited for the 
     first of several tours in the 1980's. Mr. Kay died in 1994, 
     and the Modern Jazz Quartet, with Mickey Roker sitting in for 
     him, gave its last performance the following year.
       Besides being widely acknowledged as one of the music's 
     greatest improvisers, Mr. Jackson wrote a lot of music--most 
     famously the blues pieces ``Bags' Groove,'' ``Bluesology'' 
     and ``The Cylinder.'' He recorded widely. He made small-group 
     and orchestral records in the early 1960's, collaboration 
     albums with John Coltrane and Ray Charles, and a large number 
     of records on the Pablo label during the 1970's and 1980's 
     with Mr. Brown on bass, as well as Gillespie, Count Basie, 
     Oscar Peterson and others. In 1992 he began a series of 
     albums produced by Quincy Jones for the Qwest label; the most 
     recent, from this year, was ``Explosive!,'' recorded with the 
     Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. The last collaboration with 
     Mr. Brown and Mr. Peterson, ``The Very Tall Band,'' was 
     issued this year by Telarc.
       In addition to his daughter, of Fort Lee, N.J., he is 
     survived by his wife, Sandra, of Teaneck, and three brothers: 
     Alvin, of Queens, and Wilbur and James, both of Detroit.