Through First-class Education, A Generation Marches Down

He [benny Carter] Is All That Every Jazz Musician The World Over Wants To Be. He's Performed 20,000 Nights. How Many Shoes Have Been Shined? How Much Mascara Put On? Rouge? How Many Of Those Impossible Bowties Have Been Tied? How Many Love Songs Have Been Sung? How Many Dances Have Been Danced? How Many Have Passed To The Sound Of His Music? It's Been Said That A Man Should Not Be Forced To Live Up To His Art. Benny Carter Is One Of The Rare Instances When We Wonder Whether The Great Art That A Man Has Created Can Live Up To Him.

We Created The Spirituals. We Created So Much Great Music, Jazz Chief Amongst Our Innovations, Teaching Us How To Prize Ourselves And How To Speak To One Another, That Our Kids Don't Know That Achievement, There's No Way In The World That Could Be Good For Us.

You Need A Team. You Need People To Push You. You Need Opponents.

There Was One Thing Beethoven Didn't Do. When One Of His String Quartets Was Played, You Can Believe The Second Violin Wasn't Improvising.

What Takes Its Place Is Very Dry Education. And The Tools That Actually Can Teach You - Singing And Playing, Learning How To Participate With Other People, Spiritual Richness - Are Replaced With A Big Emphasis On How To Memorize Things. That's Such An Incomplete Education. Survival Of The Fittest Used To Mean Being Bigger And Stronger.