My recent week-long vaca­tion included a lot of dri­ving from one place to another. It gave me a lot of in-car lis­ten­ing time, which I used to mid­dling ends.

I lis­tened a lot to the Sirius/XM jazz chan­nel, the def­i­n­i­tion of mid­dling. It is, for the most part, a 24-hour mix of hard bop by old mas­ters, mid-career vets, and new­com­ers with aggres­sive pub­li­cists. I also had the pres­ence of mind to grab a cou­ple of unlistened-to CDs before I hit the road.

At a cer­tain point I was once again struck by how often two artists of sim­i­lar abil­ity and level of cre­ative accom­plish­ment can have wildly dif­fer­ent careers – how one will make it big while the other resides on the margins.

I’m not talk­ing about why free jazz cats get fewer and less pres­ti­gious gigs than smooth jazz and straight-ahead guys. I’m talk­ing about any two given straight-ahead musi­cians: nei­ther inno­v­a­tive, both heav­ily indebted to their favorite jazz great, yet one receiv­ing an inor­di­nate amount of recog­ni­tion while the other remain­ing obscure.

I thought of this as I lis­tened to a track by trum­peter Wal­lace Roney on Sir­ius, fol­lowed imme­di­ately by the CD Get Happy (Del­mark) by sax­o­phon­ist Rich Corpolongo’s trio. Both men draw heav­ily on pri­mary mod­els — Miles Davis in the case of Roney, Sonny Rollins in the case of Cor­po­longo. Nei­ther artist is lit­er­ally imi­ta­tive. Rather, both sound at times as if they’re extrap­o­lat­ing on work done by their idols. Their impro­vi­sa­tions often sound some­thing like solos Miles and Sonny could’ve played, but didn’t.

To my ears, there’s almost noth­ing to sep­a­rate Roney’s and Corpolongo’s work in terms of cre­ative accom­plish­ment. They’re both equally fine musi­cians. Yet the for­mer records for major labels and plays the big jazz fests, while the lat­ter records for an indie (Del­mark), teaches, writes jazz method books, plays small clubs in-and-around his home­town, and gen­er­ally does what­ever else it takes to make ends meet.

The rea­sons are many and obvi­ous. I’ll let you suss-out the details for your­self (check out Roney’s Wikipedia entry for help). In short, how­ever, it can be boiled quite sim­ply down to one thing: luck. One guy was dealt a royal flush, while the other got a pair of twos.

It goes to show: fel­low musi­cians, don’t fret and don’t ques­tion. It’s wholly likely that your degree of mate­r­ial suc­cess has less to do with the qual­ity of your work and every­thing to do with being in the right place at the right time. The num­ber of Roneys is tiny, dwarfed by the num­ber of Cor­po­lon­gos. There’s no shame in being one of the lat­ter. Indeed, to per­se­vere and attain such artistry in the face of almost cer­tain indif­fer­ence is a pretty heroic act, some­thing to sus­tain you dur­ing the time you spend doing one thing for a liv­ing, when you’d rather be doing some­thing else.

A video/audio impro­vi­sa­tion in real time using 1930s-vintage home movies, Jascha Heifetz per­for­mances, and dig­i­tal sig­nal processing.

A video/audio mashup fea­tur­ing Mar­cel Duchamp’s 1926 short film, Ane­mic Cin­ema, and a looped por­tion of Win­sor McCay’s ani­mated How a Mos­quito Oper­ates from 1912. The sound­track is an audio col­lage, assem­bled, com­posed and manip­u­lated in in real time by me, mostly using Audiomulch.

For the hand­ful of peo­ple whose minds work in the same weird way as mine, I present my sound­track to Sym­phonie Diag­o­nale, an exper­i­men­tal ani­mated film from 1924 by the Swiss artist Viking Eggeling, ani­mated by Erna Niemeyer.

(Any­one know where i can find a copy of Worker and Par­a­site?)

In search of ancient films for which I might adapt my electronic-oriented com­po­si­tion, I dis­cov­ered this early gem. Made in 1908 by the French car­i­ca­tur­ist Émile Cohl, this is con­sid­ered the first all-animated film ever made. In the 1880s, Cohl was a mem­ber of a group called Les Arts Incohérents, which was appar­ently a short-lived, proto-dadaist or anti-art move­ment. I’d not heard of it ’til I dis­cov­ered this film; I intend to learn more.

The sound­track is Bix and Tram’s “Sin­gin’ the Blues,” though I’m not sure any­one would rec­og­nize it as such if they weren’t told. I used a bit of lap­top magic, prin­ci­pally Audio Mulch, which is my favorite music soft­ware ever.

My wife told me about a Web site the other day called I Write Like, which ana­lyzes a sam­ple of your writ­ing and tells you what famous author’s your work most resem­bles. Of course it’s ridicu­lous, but it’s also a bit of a hoot. I plugged-in some of my own writ­ing. I got what I thought was an implau­si­ble result; I tried again, got the same thing and fig­ured: if any­thing, it’s consistent.

I thought it would be inter­est­ing to cut-and-paste some ran­dom pieces by other jazz writ­ers and see how they came out. The results …

Stan­ley Crouch: Mario Puzo (my wife got Puzo also — she’s an art direc­tor, but a pretty good writer, too, much bet­ter than Stanley)

Gary Gid­dins: David Fos­ter Wal­lace (I never got past the first chap­ter of any of Wallace’s books, but I enjoyed Gary’s work in my youth)

Howard Man­del: also David Fos­ter Wal­lace (see above)

Nate Chi­nen: James Joyce (see above re: David Fos­ter Wallace)

Doug Ram­sey: Stephen King (I read every King book through Chris­tine, none since [except On Writ­ing, which I loved … and which the I Write Like site plugs, incidentally)

Chris Rich: also Stephen King (ahem)

Derek Tay­lor: H.P. Love­craft (Stephen King’s spir­i­tual daddy … other than that, I know noth­ing about him, yet some­how I think Derek would be pleased)

Me: William Shake­speare (I con­sider this an insult, but will hence­forth use it on my resume [I undoubt­edly drew Will because I use words like ‘hence­forth’])

Dick Twardzik

Louis Arm­strong: “Aban­doned child from New Orleans, born on the 4^th of July, showed a genius for trum­pet at an early age, invented the jazz solo, became a world-renowned enter­tainer famous for his radi­ant smile and eter­nal good nature.”

Char­lie Parker: “Raised by a sin­gle mother in Kansas City, roamed the city’s streets as a kid, absorb­ing its jazz cul­ture and pick­ing up a drug habit, took up alto sax­o­phone and — inspired by Lester Young — invented a new way of play­ing jazz, all the while liv­ing as a semi-bum and sociopath before dying pre­ma­turely of self-abuse.”

Miles Davis: “The priv­i­leged son of a St. Louis den­tist, played trum­pet in his home town before mov­ing to New York as a teenager where he attended Jul­liard and stalked Char­lie Parker who hired him for his band; became a junkie, kicked the habit, led a cou­ple of clas­sic bands, was obsessed with stay­ing on the music’s cut­ting edge, became known as jazz’s ‘Prince of Dark­ness,’ mainly for his ultra-cool persona.”

So much of what we know about famous jazz musi­cians stems from the nar­ra­tive that’s handed down by writ­ers and his­to­ri­ans. Many nar­ra­tives can be pared to some­thing not much longer than a Tweet and remain at least super­fi­cially com­pelling, so engrained are the sto­ries in the col­lec­tive jazz consciousness.

But what of the oth­ers? What about he play­ers who sur­rounded Pops in New Orleans or Bird in Kansas City? What of the many play­ers who were merely excel­lent or even great, but not “The Great­est?” What are their sto­ries, and why weren’t they writ­ten? What about the musi­cians Rudi Blesh ignored, or John Ham­mond overlooked?

Fame in the arts is a winner-take-all propo­si­tion. Musi­cians like Arm­strong or Parker or Miles receive a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of recog­ni­tion com­pared to those just slightly below them in the peck­ing order. If we can reduce what we know about Fred­die Kep­pard or Buster Smith to a Tweet-length descrip­tion, it’s mostly because we don’t know much about them.

For exam­ple: Was Bill Evans a bet­ter pianist than Dick Twardzik? He was dif­fer­ent, and cer­tainly more influ­en­tial. But bet­ter? I’d say, if any­thing, he was mostly luck­ier … lucky not to die at an excru­ci­at­ingly young age of his heroin habit, as Twardzik did. Lucky to land a gig with jazz’s most famous band­leader and ride it to jazz stardom.

Ascribe what qual­i­ties you will to Evans’ work — he was infi­nitely sen­si­tive; he imbued his music with abun­dant feel­ing. But who’s to say Twardzik wasn’t as sen­si­tive or as feel­ing? Evans pos­sessed an dis­tinct per­sonal style, as did Twardzik, but to say one was bet­ter than the other is an exer­cise in subjectivity.

Still, Evans’ style became the tem­plate for a school of jazz pianists, while Twardzik’s remains vir­tu­ally unknown and unrec­og­nized some 55 years after his death. Both were great play­ers. One took off, the other didn’t. One died before his influ­ence could be felt, the other lived to become some­thing like a leg­end. One is a foot­note, the other a head on jazz’s Mt. Rush­more. Why? Chance has more than a lit­tle to do with it.

Don’t under­es­ti­mate the influ­ence of luck and/or ran­dom­ness when con­sid­er­ing the careers of jazz musi­cians. His­tory is writ­ten by the win­ners (or the win­ners’ amenu­enses), and the win­ners often pre­vail thanks to fac­tors beyond their level of abil­ity and cre­ativ­ity. The great thing about music is that it has a life inde­pen­dent of the nar­ra­tive. It lives in sound, and sound doesn’t need a story. Or bet­ter: It is its own story.

Think about that the next time you extol the virtues of one musi­cian over another, or when some self-styled expert tries to tell you how to think.

The last-minute can­cel­la­tion of this year’s Cal­gary Jazz Fes­ti­val bears at least some resem­blance to the implo­sion by the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Jazz Edu­ca­tors a cou­ple of years back. Like IAJE, Cal­gary appar­ently got too big for its finan­cial britches.

I’m no expert on Cana­dian (or any other kind of) law, but it seems to me that by can­celling the entire fes­ti­val on just a cou­ple of days’ notice, the Cal­gary folks are liable for a sig­nif­i­cant amount of money in ticket refunds and artists’ fees. That they’d can­cel the event any­way must mean the cup­board is com­pletely and per­ma­nently bare.

At first glance, it looks like Cal­gary was doomed by its predilec­tion for book­ing expen­sive, inter­na­tion­ally renowned artists, not just this year, but in past years, as well. Chick Corea and Ben E. King were among the big­ger names for 2010. Folks like that don’t come cheap.

Mightn’t Cal­gary have been bet­ter off if they’d for­saken big names and con­cen­trated their efforts on pro­mot­ing the many local and regional musi­cians who make up the major­ity of the fes­ti­val? Of course, the local cats don’t put as many fan­nies in the seats, but they don’t cost as much as the Coreas and Kings, either. As it is, it looks like big pay­outs to famous play­ers year after year put the fes­ti­val in a hole it can’t get out of. Who suf­fers? Lesser-known play­ers who end up miss­ing out on a rare and cher­ished oppor­tu­nity, and local jazz fans.

Smaller can be bet­ter; it sure as heck beats zilch, which is what many Cal­gary jazz fans – and musi­cians – are get­ting for their jazz dol­lar this week.

Word of Bill Dixon’s death came yes­ter­day, and while it was far from happy news, his pass­ing wasn’t untimely — Mr. Dixon was 84, an age when con­tin­ued life is basi­cally a flip of the genetic coin. It would’ve been far sad­der if he’d died prior to 1980, in which case he would have never real­ized what we know as his great­est work, and gen­er­a­tions of younger musi­cians would’ve been denied his knowl­edge and wisdom.

Of course, that’s easy to say in ret­ro­spect. We can’t know what he would’ve cre­ated had he lived longer; last year’s Tapes­tries for Small Orches­tra was a mas­ter­piece, so there’s every rea­son to expect he would’ve con­tin­ued to pro­duce great art. But we needn’t be greedy. As it stands, Dixon’s body of work is of suf­fi­cient quan­tity and qual­ity to reward for as long as the idea of impro­vised music exists.

Chris Rich says we won’t see another of his like again, and that’s true enough. How­ever, part of Dixon’s con­tri­bu­tion was to point out direc­tions for oth­ers to explore. There were many to heed his call, mean­ing his impact on the present and future course of impro­vised music will con­tinue to be felt. It’s corny to say, I know, but while Dixon may be dead, his music lives on. More than that: his influ­ence lives on, and always will. That’s some­thing to rejoice, I think.