The Washington Informer: Opinions/Editorials

A learned man, whose father, grandfather, several uncles, and his own brothers were Christian preachers, there was little room in his life for the more temporal arts, especially those like secular jazz music, which (during his lifetime, as now) was most often performed in smoke-filled bars and night clubs. Yet there are many enduring jazz tributes to The Man.

The most moving is by saxophonist and Pastor Ben Branch. The Rev. Branch was one of the last people to whom Dr. King spoke before his assassination. He was set to perform at the rally for striking sanitation workers in whose behalf Dr. King was in Memphis in early April, 1968.

It was nearly 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968 when Dr. King emerged from room 306 at the Lorraine Motel, stuffing in his shirttail, according to author Barbara Reynolds. After a quick exchange of greetings Dr. King leaned forward, putting both hands on the green iron railing of the balcony, and asked the Rev. Branch to play a special request later that evening. “I want you to play my song tonight, play `Precious Lord.' Play it real pretty. You know how I like that one.”

“I sure will,” the Rev. Branch answered, pleased that he had been asked. When Dr. King stood up straight, at about 6:01, the sound of something like a car backfiring, or like a firecracker jolted those men at the Lorraine Motel. It was a shot heard virtually around the world, because in the eternity of that moment, the Great Man of Peace had been stilled.

Years later, on an album called "The Last Request," the Rev. Branch and the Operation Breadbasket Choir and Orchestra performed a nine-minute version of "Precious Lord"--jazz, like I have never heard it before.

And while his musical tastes seem to have bent toward spirituals and gospel music, Dr. King had a healthy respect for Jazz. “Jazz speaks for life. The blues tell the stories of life's difficulties, and if you think about it for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph,” Dr. King said in the Opening Address to the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival.

“This is triumphant music,” he added. “Modern jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.” It sounds like he had been communing with John Coltrane and some of the other jazz masters.

“It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of ‘racial identity’ as a problem for a multi-racial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls. Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is an amazing figure in American and world history. The more we study him, the more we discover about him that we didn't know, indeed, the more we learn. Jazz music itself is an “improvisational form.” Each time a composition is played, it is interpreted differently, something different is heard by each audience.

Principled opposition to the Vietnam War, courageous support of the civil rights agenda, a caring heart for “the least of these my brethren,” and yes, even a tuneful ear for the hip sounds of jazz means to me, that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is not only vital and contemporary today, he was and would still be hip just as he was when he was among us.