rom its very inception in 1950, as a place where jazz along with folk and
blues could be enjoyed as well as investigated, discussed, dissected, and
even on occasion written and recorded, Music Inn was no mere concert venue.
Rather, like its neighbor down the road, it was the setting for some of
the most remarkable music ever made in the Berkshires, a place where the
line separating audience and performer was often blurred, a campus where
musicians taught and teachers learned from musicians, and ultimately, a
stage where some of the most significant social and cultural transformations
of the postwar era were played out in all their triumph and tragedy.
When a young, married couple from New York City named Philip and Stephanie
Barber bought part of the summer estate of the Countess de Heredia in 1950,
they had no intention of living a quiet, peaceful life in the country. Rather,
their plan was to re-create in this rural oasis the cultural milieu they
had left behind by making their new home a magnet for the sort of company,
conversation and conviviality they had come to treasure in the city.
Clemens Kalischer
JAZZ DANCERS AL MINNS AND LEON JAMES FIGURED
PROMINENTLY AT THE MUSIC INN AND THE HISTORY OF THEIR ART
Thus was born Music Inn, with perhaps only a wry nod to Tanglewood up
the road. It would be a place where musicians and critics would congregate
to exchange theories and riffs, a sort of jazz salon. "When we first
opened, it was to explore the beginnings of jazz, where it came from,"'
says Stephanie Barber. "Everybody was always arguing about that. Did
it come from Africa, did it start in the South, did it come from Africa
to the South? So we would invite people from different parts of the world
to play with each other and the next morning a panel of experts would discuss
what happened the night before." Next Column
Clemens Kalischer
ORNETTE COLEMAN, MAX ROACH
AND JIMMY GIUFFRE
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Clemens Kalischer
JOHN LEE HOOKER AT A JAZZ
ROUNDTABLE IN THE EARLY 1950'S
The brainchild of the Barbers' friend Marshall Stearns, an English professor
at Hunter College and a well-known jazz critic and historian, the "Folk
and Jazz Roundtable'' was one of the first serious inquiries into the origins
and development of jazz, which at the time was still looked down upon by
``serious'' music lovers.
Jazz was also played primarily by African-Americans, and by inviting
musicians to stay with them the Barbers tested the limits of local hospitality.
"Black people were not popular in New England," remembers Stephanie
Barber, who today lives in Lenox not far from the original site. "In
the early days, we had problems finding beds in local inns for artists who
happened to be black, when we overflowed our own capacity. People in the
village did not approve of what we were doing. But in good New England fashion,
they believed we had the right to do it." The neighbors' disapproval
of what went on at Music Inn would be a recurring theme over the course
of the next three decades.
As for the musicians themselves, the roundtables often proved revelatory.
In the liner notes to the "Historic Jazz Concert at Music Inn"
album, recorded in 1956, Nat Hentoff recounts the time Charles Mingus exclaimed,
"Hey! I've got roots!" after one particularly illuminating solo
by ragtime pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith. Dave Brubeck recalls
the time Dr. Willis James, an authority on African-
American field hollers, demonstrated a field holler in five-four time.
"He said that the Dave Brubeck Quartet was on the right track,"
says Brubeck, providing a crucial endorsement at a time when his rhythmic
innovations were controversial. "That was my big moment of glory. He
explained that if you go back to the field hollers, they go right back to
Africa, and why shouldn't I be doing what I'm doing, that it was in the
tradition of Africa to play in complicated time signatures. It didn't hurt
at all to have him defend me in public." As a result, said Brubeck,
he went on to record a sequel to his experimental "Time Out" album,
called "Time Further Out," part of which was written at Music
Inn.
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