Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
Back in the days when I was teaching college organic chemistry, I was asked, for a small stipend, to review a new organic chemistry textbook. When the publishing company made the offer, I told them that my review would depend on what was in the book and not on whether I was being paid. The textbook was very original, with new and different examples of problems I had not seen before. There was one slight problem: The author included a chapter on industrial science that was 30 years out of date. I suggested either revamping the chapter, or taking it out entirely. Even though I praised the rest of the book highly, the publisher obviously did not like what I said about the last chapter. I never heard from them again, and the laudatory parts of my review never appeared in the book publicity. Obviously they expected a paid stooge for what I now believe was a conflict of interest.
There are conflicts of interest in many fields, especially in the arts. During my tenure as a scientist for Monsanto (1969–1996), I had to sign a document every year in which I had to disclose not only any blood relatives working for Monsanto or its subsidiaries but also whether I had any investments or legal actions with companies or technologies that would be in conflict or competition with Monsanto’s businesses. I think I know what constitutes a conflict of interest.
I have been presenting jazz on the air for over 29 years, and I continually get sent promo copies of CDs. If I keep them for my own collection, that is a conflict of interest, but what do I do with them? Luckily, St. Louis Public Radio has a license that allows us to give them to subscribers. Selling them is also a conflict of interest, and a perk that some DJs engage in (full disclosure: I did that for a very short time in the late 1980s). I know some DJs and book reviewers who have told me they got into it for the free stuff.
What I’m describing thus far is petty. What I am now describing is not, because it affects many fans and artists. In jazz in the 1940s and 1950s, there was a well-known critic and writer who produced record albums. That is not a problem, but when he began reviewing his own records, it became a conflict of interest. It is interesting that I heard nothing about this being wrong. What of the reviewer who receives free tickets to an event in exchange for a review? Does that color his or her review? I have been at concerts (of all types of music) and have occasionally been appalled at the laudatory reviews of something I knew was substandard. The critic might have had an off day, or the free concert tickets might have colored his or her judgment. In a time when the vast majority of people in this country have no clue as to what constitutes good or bad art, do we even need critics any more?
Quite a bit of what I receive from the record companies as promos comes with lots of praise from either DJs or known writers on jazz. I get at least one CD a year with a new female vocalist who is lauded as the second coming of Ella Fitzgerald. I have ears, and I know, and these writers should know, it is not true. So not only do I think that there are huge conflicts of interest in the record business, but also that some critics and writers are intellectually dishonest.
Maybe it is because they are afraid that they will miss the next wave of innovation. I have lived through two periods in jazz when this happened. The first was when Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor began recording, which led to the subsequent “New Thing” movement of the 1960s. Coleman’s approach was so new and so different that only a few musicians understood that he was really a refreshing, new, original voice. I heard him live in 1960, and didn’t have a clue (now he sounds quaint to me). But soon after his arrival, many of the critics who had missed Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk became afraid that they would miss the great new players of the “New Thing.” They began praising anybody who could hold a horn or beat on a piano or drums on stage. Most of these “geniuses” disappeared without a trace once the hullabaloo was over. With the exception of Amiri Baraka and a few others, most critics of the period missed Albert Ayler completely.
The “young lions” movement of the 1980s and early 1990s brought quite a few young musicians to the fore. Some of them are doing well today after serving apprenticeships with older players. Most have disappeared. Many of these young musicians played in the hard bop style of the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, and some of them even played like the Miles Davis 1965–1968 quintet. Even though, as Clark Terry told me, “they knew the square root of a B-flat seventh chord,” they lacked an emotional commitment to the music, so much of what they played sounds dry and academic. That did not faze many of the critics, however, because what they heard was a facsimile of the music they had grown up with. They praised these people to the skies. It was their job to point out that the emperor had no clothes, and they failed us.
I have a peculiar facility of being able to memorize large amounts of music that I hear. There was one young pianist during the “young lions” period that I could name the records that he took each chorus from. He learned not to do that when he began serving apprenticeships with older players and is today a very fine player (who does not get the recognition now that he got in the 1980s!). In the last 10 years, I have read critics dismissing the work of photographer Ansel Adams because his images were “too real.”
Today, the success of an artist seems to be related more to looks than substance, how many Twitter followers he or she has, how many tweets per minute their performances get and whether their performances are big spectacles with lots of explosions and fireworks; not on whether they can play and sing in tune, paint or photograph in a way that reaches people emotionally or write something that causes people to stop and think in a way that might change their lives.
This problem is not only endemic to the arts, but also to our daily work and our politics. Heaven help us all.
Dennis Owsley holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. Jazz Unlimited is heard every Sunday night from 9 p.m. to midnight. It has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis, and was named “Best Jazz Radio Show” in St. Louis for the years 2005–07 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In, 2008, n celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day in the City of St. Louis. Owsley is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award.
