The Music in Music City

"Hee Haw, hillbilly music. The Nashville sound isn't original. It just isn't cool." Say my friends from "up north" in New Yawk. I find myself defending Nashville, a transplanted Connecticut Yankee who has come to love the south. What is cool, anyway? You might just ask Jim Hoke.

Often introduced as "The Son of the Pioneers" meets Gene Autry, Frank Zappa and Ornette Coleman, Jim Hoke is a country, progressive jazz musician and composer all rolled into one. I interviewed him one afternoon. He greeted me with an air of casual intensity. He's a bit of a grunge, with a short ponytail and a pair of red shoes.

Hailing from Oklahoma, Hoke said the lay of the land helped to inspire him. Oklahoma is about freedom, individuality independence and spontaneity, much like the cowboys of old. "Doing it the cowboy way." The Sons of the Pioneers are a group of cowboys that not only perpetuated the myth of the singing cowboy today, but have also appeared in many B-grade westerns. They sing the classics such as Happy Trails and Cool Water. Gene Autry, besides singing, always did what was right because it was the right thing to do.

In a rendition of Happy Trails, an "in your face" soprano sax, a chorus, and a piano tell the tale of a tumbling tumbleweed. Seemingly incongruous, it all jells into one ensemble. Hoke says he can play "any style (of music) from swamp ignorant blues to refined tasteful chromatic." He has awareness of chords and of rhythm that you seldom find in musicians.

I asked Hoke, how he does he do it. For all those non-music majors out there, a chord is a string of notes. A chord progression is from one chord to another. Together, they all form a movement that eventually finds its way back home or to the beginning. A string of chords characterizes a certain kind of music such as pop. Hoke is able to pick out a contrasting element that is remotely linked between different types of music, weaving jazz, country or rock riffs into one whole. Sometimes spontaneously, sometimes analytically deliberate. Hoke's rendition of Tennessee's state song Rock Top is done in time signatures of seven-eight, five-eight and two four with a re- harmonized chorus. Put simply, you can't dance to this Rocky Top.

Another musician known for his famous arrangements is the late Frank Zappa. In an obituary in Time magazine, Michael Walsh writes that Zappa "was the most protean and adventurous American composer of his generation. Zappa fused two seemingly irreconcilable 20^th century musical strains-Stravinsky and Varse with rock, rhythm and blues." The Berceuse from Stravinsky's Firebird counterpoints the doo-wop of the Duke of Earl on a song called The Duke of Prunes.

Hoke did a similar number with a doo-wop and Zappa. Taking one of his 50s doo-wop songs, Hoke sang eight parts archipelago and completely rewrote it. Upon hearing the tape, Zappa called Hoke on the phone.

"Jim."

"Who is this? asked Hoke.

"This is Frank Zappa. pause I got your tape. pause How long did it take for you to do that.....?"

Hoke can play seventeen different instruments including sax, piano, harmonica, Jew's harp, British Isle penny whistle flute, drums, recorder, and autoharp.

Hoke says much of his creativity comes from his intellect. Jazz musicians copy from each other. They are entertainers, paid to look good, playing from their wealth of licks from other musicians, sometimes making a career out of them. The music industry survives on perpetuating the mystique of the cool jazz musician.

There are not many originals like Miles Davis who once told aspiring musicians to "Play everything you know and then throw it out." Hoke has been compared with another original Ornette Coleman who is a pioneer in jazz and wrote Free Jazz which sounds something like fusion. Hoke is nailing his personal style and although he seems consumed by his passion, it does not control his life. Pinkola Estes, a Jungian psychoanalyst describes a pair of red shoes as being the mark of creativity, an archetype. In the story The Red Shoes, the shoes seem to have a life of their own. They never stop moving to the point where the character collapses, never to dance again. With some artists creativity completely consumes their life often with tragic results as in the case of Janis Joplin.

Hoke seems to have his life in balance and has cultivated some perspective. He has been able to support a family of four playing sax and producing in Nashville and has played with the likes of Janis Ian, Webb Wilder and Emmy Lou Harris. Although his career thus far has been hardly lucrative and he often seems to be flying by the seat of his pants, he has come to know the heights of his own true bliss.