Jimmy King was in a rickshaw, on the way back to his apartment, a trumpet in hand and a cigarette between lips. Though still in college, the Chinese student played nightly at the Parliament Ballroom, the "first music club in the Far East."
The Parliament kept crowds on their feet every night on its huge sprung dance floor, with King and his all-Chinese "Jimmy King Big Band" blowing out groundbreaking swing tunes after nearly three decades' monopoly of Russian and Filipino bands in the city.
This was Shanghai, 1947, the year when Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker made many of their momentous bebop sounds, and the year when Capitol Records first used tape for recordings in the United States.
It was also two years after the War of Resistance Against Japan, and two years before the founding of the People's Republic. Shanghai was then a den of decadence which had been taking its shape since the early 1920s, when poverty and warlords ruled most parts of the country.
The era was merely an Asian version of Fitzgerald's jazz age of the 1930s - entangled political powers, a flush of money, alluring women and, going along with them, the hits of Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman were played at the watering holes of tycoons and gangsters, such as Sassoon House (now Peace Hotel) on the Bund and Jimmy King's Parliament.
Before the outbreak of the anti-Japanese war, most of the bands in Shanghai were Russian and Filipino, playing in the dance venues and clubs. Jimmy King and his Chinese colleagues' emergence was a result of the war. The Westerners had fled Shanghai as the Japanese pushed near, and the dance clubs hired the Chinese to keep the business going.
Today, the Parliament Ballroom still stands near the Jing'an Temple on Nanjing Road W., amid a cluster of glass-walled skyscrapers. Its dark hall now hosts acrobatic shows but its sprung dance floor - a sign of "decadence" - was demolished during the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976).
But the city has re-embraced the sound of jazz since the 1980s. At first it was the vinyl of Big Band hits being played in bars trading in nostalgia, followed by the mimicked vocals of Billie Holliday and Sarah Vaughn.
Today, as many people dance wildly in thumping discotheques while others linger over cocktails sipped to jazzy chords in hotels, most of the veteran musicians in their 80s find little demand for any impromptu but oldies like "Moon River" and "Summertime" on the stage of Peace Hotel. But some places are paying tribute to this original, creative facet of culture.
The Cotton Club (1428 Huaihai Road M., Tel: 6437-7110) wouldn't be regarded as the first place of the city's jazz scene. Some say its resident band plays only jazz-influenced blues, but the club is the first choice by many expats to treat their visiting friends to a taste of Harlem jazz-and-blues - and perhaps because it was the only bar that Wynton Marsalis visited and played during his tour of the city last February.
"What makes the place notable is the free atmosphere of collaboration among multinational members, and an interplay of vim between them and the audience," said Coco Zhao, who sings with the band on Wednesdays. She used to sing standard tunes by the piano, accompanied with the chinks of champagne glasses at the Grand Hyatt.
"I like it so much more here," she said, tired of the "inflated luxury" that had once made her sometimes feel "too showy."
The bandleader, Greg, leads with his steady, cool rhythm guitar, with occasional bursts into emotional improvisations, completed by the shining solos from Chinese trumpeter Feng Yucheng. A student with the Shanghai Music Conservatory, Feng is often viewed as the most talented trumpeter by the city's jazz musicians.
Just about 500 meters from the Cotton Club, another group of musicians gives quite a different spectacle of blue notes in Full House (4 Hengshan Road, Tel: 6473-1181). Tony Tian and his "Walking Two" band play both Frank Sinatra and bebops.
"I named myself 'Tony' because of my enthusiasm for singer Tony Bennett," Tian said in his hallmark sexy bass voice. His vocal and English training started in his early listening and mimicking of Big Band hits shortly after the "cultural revolution" ended in 1976, when he was still a worker in a local factory.
Tian is now singing at several bars and clubs in town, while teaching some students and furthering his own study on jazz harmonics. Unlike most of the band members, who are teachers from the conservatory, Tian hasn't had a college education. "Jazz music is the first undertaking I took seriously," he said, "and I think it's going to be the only one in my life."
People have been arguing about Shanghai's music scene, with some saying the city is too sophisticated and cynical to have the forthright desire for expression that has led other cultures through their development of music. But whether the quavering of 1930s oldies is a put-on air of kitsch, or however hard these musicians are trying to get into the real mood of swing, the city itself, gasping in the gigantic shadows of highrises, shows a picture that often corresponds to the jazz illusion.
Maybe that's the reason why Phil Morrison and Keith Williams, who were playing last year at the Ritz Bar of the Portman Ritz-Carlton (1376 Nanjing Road W., Tel: 6279-8888), feel attached to the city, and have returned after half a year in Japan.
The two American musicians have just released their new album "China Skies" in conjunction with Chinese musicians. It's a musical undertaking combining the elements of American jazz with traditional Chinese instruments, "erhu" and bamboo flute. The liner notes say they are "striving to be of service to humanity by promoting international harmony through music."
It might sound grandiloquent, but looking at how jazz music traveled all the way from New Orleans to Jimmy King and then back to today's nighttime scene, they may have hit the right note.
(Eastday.com 04/06/2001)
