You know sometimes we’re not prepared for adversity. When it happens sometimes we’re caught short. We don’t know exactly how to handle it when it comes up. Sometimes we don’t know just what to do when adversity takes over and I have advice for all of us. I got it from my pianist Joe Zawinul who wrote this tune and it sounds like what you’re supposed to say when you have that kind of problem and its called Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.
Cannonball Adderley

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy is a wonderful song, a rare song that started as a jazz tune then got picked up by a pop/rock band and made into a hit. Yes, The Buckinghams had a hit with Mercy, Mercy, Mercy in the 1960s – but it began as a jazz tune written by Joe Zawinul. Joe Zawinul died this past week. Within the last month two venerable jazz artists have died, the other was drummer Max Roach. Zawinul was a pioneer in bringing electronic keyboards to jazz – with Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderly, and Weather Report. Max Roach played drums with some of the greats of the be-bop era – Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, and worked with the great trumpeter Clifford Brown before Brown’s untimely death in an auto accident.

I remember when I first had my breathe taken away by jazz. It was in a college class, Arts in America. The professor was talking about America’s most unique art form, jazz, and he dropped a needle (this was the days of vinyl records) on John Coltrane’s Central Park West. It was absolutely beautiful. I bought a couple of Coltrane records (including the phenomenal A Love Supreme), a Billie Holiday record, and a Charlie Parker record (I got his name through my interest in Kerouac). I liked what I heard, but I was listening to a lot of rock music at the time, and, well, the jazz kind of got shelved with other things taken out only occasionally. I enjoyed the occasions, but they were sporadic.

In 2003, though, I hit a bit of a wall. A chronic health condition I had had for over twenty years, and that had been stable due to medication, flared up. The medication was no longer working and I was not feeling well. That summer, I spent extra time lying down, and one of the things that kept me company was the Ken Burns series Jazz. I know it isn’t perfect, but it reignited a love in me. Jazz became my listening of choice. Bix Beiderbecke’s Singin’ the Blues haunted me. I have a vivid memory of driving that autumn and listening to the Miles Davis Quintet’s Fall. The list could go on (and on and on). Jazz remains a frequent listening choice for me – not the only one, but often and irreplaceably so. And by the way, some new medication finally worked to bring my health condition under control.

So what? (The Miles Davis question!!!! – see his album Kind of Blue). You’ve been very patient if you have read this far, but is there going to be anything more here than three cheers for jazz? For me, jazz has not only been a joy, it has deepened my spiritual life, and that is not coincidental. Writer Albert Murray said about jazz, “it’s the creative process incarnate.” To hear jazz is to witness creativity, and creativity has something to do with the divine within us. Philosopher-theologian Nicholas Berdyaev wrote, “a creative act is therefore a continuation of world-creation and mean participation in the work of God.”

I also affirm with a New Testament writer that “every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the God (Father-Mother) of Light” (James, chapter 1). Jazz is a good gift of light and life. That’s not to say everything that has every happened under the umbrella of jazz is straight from God, but the music and creativity are genuinely beneficial gifts. Jazz drummer, Art Blakey, liked to say, “jazz washes away the dust of everyday life.” Sometimes we need that dust washed away gently, in music that meets us quietly. So I listen to Coltrane’s Naima, Central Park West and After the Rain, or Miles Davis’ Blue in Green, or Billie Holiday’s Autumn in New York, or Bix Beiderbecke’s I’m Comin’ Virginia. Sometimes the dust needs to be blown off in celebratory breezes, so I listen to Louis Armstrong’s West End Blues, Potato Head Blues, or Dippermouth Blues; or Beiderbecke’s Singin’ the Blues; or Charlie Parker’s Ko Ko (on which Max Roach played drums); or Parker and Dizzy Gillespie’s Groovin’ High; or Duke Ellington’s Take the ‘A’ Train; or Thelonius Monk’s Straight, No Chaser; or Dave Brubeck’s Take Five; or Coltrane's My Favorite Things. Mercy, Mercy, Mercy really does help when adversity strikes. Again, enough name dropping!

The Righteous Brothers, not a jazz group, once sang, “If there’s a rock ‘n’ roll heaven, you know they have a helluva band.” Well, if there are bands in heaven, think of the jazz band possibilities!!!

God speaks in tongues, and one of those is jazz.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David