Between 1950 and 1979, a quiet corner of the Berkshires became an unlikely hub for jazz, folk and cultural exchange. At the Music Inn in Lenox, just down the road from Tanglewood, musicians and audiences didn't just gather to perform, but to learn from each other. John Gennari tells that story in his new book, 'The Jazz Barn: Music Inn, the Berkshires and the Place of Jazz in American Life.'
John Gennari, Author: So, the inn was owned by a couple named Philip and Stephanie Barber, who bought the outbuildings of the Wheatleigh estate in 1950; A barn, a greenhouse, an ice house. And these were transformed into spaces not originally for concert performances, but for workshops and educational activities aimed at expanding knowledge about American vernacular music, both folk music and and jazz.
It wasn't until 1955 that a concert series was added to this approach, with the conversion of the barn into an indoor-outdoor space, which hosted the first extended series of concerts in one place in the country. This concert series went through the summer with two concerts a week and led eventually to something called the Lenox School of Jazz. So there was a lot going on at Music Inn, and it was it was absolutely unique at the time.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: You write that the Music Inn was where Mahalia Jackson famously broke racial barriers by performing for her first white audience. What was the draw for 1950s musicians and audiences there?
Well, in the case of Mahalia Jackson, obviously, she could perform in churches, as she was doing on the South Side of Chicago. But it was only after she came to Music Inn and connected with people who put her into the consciousness of programing at Carnegie Hall and even Tanglewood. So, it was an opportunity to expand the reach of music that was obviously well known in the communities in which it originated.
And the other really important part of it was gospel music, folk, blues, jazz, they didn't yet have a place that was devoted to anything other than entertainment. [Musicians] were drawn to the opportunity to share their art with audiences that were coming for more than just the music. They were coming to learn something about where the music came from.
So, jazz being taken seriously in the Berkshires was not lost by the people who were in the vicinity. Classical pianist Glenn Dillard Gunn was outraged that jazz was being taken seriously at this place that was just up the road from Tanglewood. Were there other, I don't know, detractors to this program, to these serious conversations, elevating folk and jazz and blues?
By and large there was almost immediately not only an acceptance of this, but a real eagerness to embrace jazz and folk music as something that belonged in a place like Lenox, Massachusetts, with its history of American literature and culture and performing arts institutions like Tanglewood.
There was a lot of confusion about whether Music Inn was just a kind of part of Tanglewood. I mean, the whole business of legitimizing jazz turned a lot on the proximity of Tanglewood, [the] physical proximity, but also the fact that so many people at Tanglewood, from Leonard Bernstein on down, took that short walk over to Music Inn to participate. For them, this was a really important development in the world of music.
Your book highlights the writing of Christopher Small with that idea that music is shaped by everyone involved. We're not talking about just the musicians, but it's an interplay with the audience as well. With that in mind, what do you think the lasting impact of the Music Inn was on jazz?
Yeah, really important concept; "Musicking" you know, thinking of music not as a noun, but as a verb. An activity that includes not just musicians, but listeners, critics.
The audience piece, I think is really important. There was something really special about providing a space for jazz other than the nightclub, the smoke filled subterranean urban club. They were being encouraged to think of what they were doing as an educational experience that a well-cultured person ought to have.
And so there's that the mere fact that Music Inn was able to stage the music in the way that it did in a concert setting, and not as was common in those days, the musicians playing four sets a night at a club, that was something that many of the musicians eagerly embraced.
This is a topic you're clearly passionate about, and it's in a place where you grew up. I bet you had more stories that you wanted to include, but had to had to cut during the editing process. So what is your interaction with the Music Inn having grown up in Lenox?
So I was born in 1960 and went to music in in the 70s, when the place had become focused more on rock music and blues and reggae. I saw Bob Marley at Music Inn.
I had begun to hear stories about the jazz scene at this place in the 1950s, but I wasn't really into jazz as much as I would become later.
When I saw this photograph of the bluesman John Lee Hooker sitting in front of a blackboard with a representation of the genealogy of the blues leading into what's called 'the jazz mainstream', and then discovered that the photograph was taken at Music Inn in 1951 by a local photographer, Clemens Kalischer, who I came to know...God, it just seemed like [writing this book] was something I was meant to do.
