Keeping Jazz Makers Alive

Evicted or with no medical insurance, musicians playing their last chorus are saved by the Jazz Foundation

by Nat Hentoff

Years ago, without a steady gig or paycheck and a first child on the way, I was anxiously freelancing and began to empathize with the common lot of many musicians who existed from gig to gig with no medical insurance. I asked a former sideman who had played with several renowned jazz leaders, but was then scuffling: "How do you make a living?"

He shrugged: "I wait for the phone to ring."

I became aware that there were jazz players—some internationally known and most in jazz discographies—who had been evicted for nonpayment of rent at times, and others—too sick to work and without medical care—winding up in emergency rooms. A one-time piano phenomenon whom I'd interviewed, Phineas Newborn, ended up in a pauper's grave.

But at last, in 1989, a group of musicians—among them trumpeter Jimmy Owens and bassist Jamil Nasser, along with the late Herb Storfer, former jazz archivist at the Schomburg Library—started the Jazz Foundation of America in New York.

They began to bring new life and even gigs to forlorn survivors. As one example, the Jazz Foundation now says: "Not one musician in eight years has ever gone homeless who came to us before being evicted."

- more -