A little night music
By Steve Knopper, Special To The News
December 13, 2003

If you want to be a jazz musician, first consider amassing a personal fortune in another industry. The genre may be rich in tradition, but it's far more modest when it comes to compensation. Many musicians have real-life examples of that reality.

• Denver guitarist Dave Devine's parents tried everything to talk him out of playing jazz for a living.
• Erie saxophonist Fred Hess spent six years wondering where his next check would come from.
• Aurora pianist Shamie Royston studied psychology in college, just in case music didn't work out.

In fact, according to a recent study by the National Endowment for the Arts, the majority of jazz musicians in four major metropolitan areas it surveyed need second jobs to support themselves on the performance circuit. Most made between $20,000 and $40,000 a year.

"This isn't just something that is a rumor or an old, tired stereotype," says Tom Bradshaw, the NEA's director of research. "There are, in fact, some real, hard issues in terms of artists getting their work heard and getting proper remuneration for it." The NEA study, released in January, focused on a variety of subjects concerning musicians in New Orleans, San Francisco, Detroit and New York City.

It also delved into demographics:
• Most jazz musicians are white, highly educated and male.
• Many belong to the American Federation of Musicians, and union members are more likely to have health plans and higher income levels.
• Piano is the most common instrument.

Despite all the challenges, the musicians surveyed find ways to keep their passion for this distinctly American music afloat. That's certainly true of four local jazz players - Hess, Royston, Devine and trumpeter Hugh Ragin - who, in recent interviews talked about how they got started with jazz and why they keep playing, along with the NEA study and how its findings compare with their own lives.
All four musicians, for example, supplement their performance careers with teaching jobs. And all four would never consider any other type of career.

In the past year, Hess says, it has cost him $12,000 (putting out two CDs, hiring a public relations firm and so on) to be a musician. "But I don't worry about that, because I get to go to New York and do these things," he says. "I'm not looking to make a living in jazz. But I want to be somebody in jazz."

Fred Hess sits in his one-room Erie house from 7 to 10 p.m., watching hockey or boxing on TV with the sound off, and plays his horn. He's done this every night he hasn't performed in 2003 except one. "It was July Fourth and I went to a picnic," the saxophonist recalls in his office at Metropolitan State College of Denver, where he's coordinator of jazz studies. "I got home late and I had a few beers. So it wasn't a good night to practice." Hess, 58, has been playing jazz for 45 years, since first hearing Miles Davis and John Coltrane records in the mid-'50s.

Hess' entry in a recent jazz encyclopedia reads: "Hess wished to play the saxophone as a teen-ager, but his mother said it sounded like a duck, so he took up trombone." Later, he switched back to sax. But at an age when many contemplate retirement, his career ambitions are just beginning. After years on the local scene (he founded the Boulder Creative Music Ensemble in the early '80s), he recently hired prominent out-of-town sidemen to play in his combos. Suddenly, national reviewers raved about him as an important figure. Gigs at New York's Knitting Factory and other hipster venues followed, much to his surprise. "I hired a public relations firm from Boston and it was like, 'Wow, everything is bigger,' " he says. "Now I'm getting reviews saying, 'This is what we jazz fans are waiting for!' And the music isn't really different.

"It hasn't all been upbeat. Referring to a six-year period that preceded his teaching job, Hess says, "Those years were a struggle. "You have a couple of months with gigs and a couple of months without gigs. You get a gig and the guy runs off with the money. Crazy stuff happens. There's nobody policing this stuff in the jazz world."

Hess - divorced with a grown daughter and a grandson - wears big, fluorescent-blue glasses and plays jazz in a free style that recalls the skronky, brilliant experiments of Ornette Coleman. A couple of years ago, he realized there were prominent younger players who could do things that had passed him by. But instead of retreating into his comfort zone, Hess became addicted to practice and determined to retrain himself.

It's working. "I thought it would take me nine months. It's been five years. But now I can do some of those things," says Hess, who just released a new quartet CD, The Long and Short of It, with local jazzman Ron Miles. ( Hess plans a CD release concert Feb. 1 at the St. Cajetan Center on the Metro State campus.)

"At this point, I decided to make music my thing. I'm 58, so I can't wait until I'm 75."