The playwright
Warren Leight was born in New York City on January 15, 1957, and lived on the Upper West Side. He went to Stanford University in California on a scholarship when he was only sixteen, to study journalism. After graduating in 1977, he returned to New York and began his writing career with a series of articles that eventually formed a collection called The I Hate New York Guidebook (1983). For the next twenty years or so, Leight had sporadic success as journalist, stand-up comic, screenwriter, and movie director. Some of the highlights of those years include a stint as the creative director for a group of female comics, call the High Heeled Women, writing and directing the 1993 film The Night We Never Met, and writing the screenplay for the 1996 film Dear God. It was this last experience, which included several rewrites and the ultimate loss of control over the project that motivated him to write a play for himself.
The result was Side Man, inspired by his childhood and his experiences with jazz musicians, including his father Donald Leight, a trumpet player who worked as a “sideman” for big band leaders Buddy Rich, Claude Thornhill, and Woody Herman in the late 1940s and 50s. The play depicts the decline of the jazz industry in a personal way, but the main focus of the story is derived from Leight’s family life and his parents’ tumultuous relationship. The narrator, Clifford, is Leight’s stand-in, who revisits his past to resume the role of patient peacekeeper and rescuer.
According to Warren Leight: “Film is good money, but there is a reason: they pay you to go away. Side Man is filled with my voice because it’s my story.” He waited twenty years to write this painful story, but was able to shed some anger and gain sympathy and perspective in the process.
Overview of Jazz (and the economics of jazz)
Noted professor of African-American Studies at St. Louis’s Washington University, Gerald Early, recently said, “When they study our civilization two thousand years from now, there will only be three things that Americans will be know for: the Constitution, baseball, and jazz music. They’re the three most beautiful things Americans have ever created.” Indeed, writings about jazz throughout the 20th century evolved from depictions of the phenomenon as “tomtom beating of savages” to “an outstanding mode of individual expression” and “a rare and valuable national American treasure.” What is also the case is that a study of the history of jazz reveals much more than an investigation of an art form. In many ways, jazz is a prism through which much of our history is seen – a story of politics, race relations and economics. Side Man is a microcosm of a significant portion of that history.
Most historians put the origins of jazz at around 1895-1900, with African-American musicians in New Orleans. The music heard in New Orleans in the early 20th century displayed a blend of African, Caribbean and European cultures, which was unique among American cities. A number of styles evolved in the next decades, from both black and white cultures, the music traveled all over the world, and by the 1920’s (the so-called “Jazz Age”), there was no turning back.
One of the important functions that jazz served by the 1920s was dance accompaniment. The bands supplied a lively syncopated rhythm that set people in motion and many jazz instrumentalists referred to specific dance steps in the titles of their songs. Right through the Great Depression of 1929, in spite of some serious setbacks in the entertainment industry in general, jazz bandleaders continued to work steadily; popular recordings were issued and the dance clubs were packed. “Swing” music, which had captured the public enthusiasm and had brought unprecedented success to orchestra musicians, ushered in the so-called big band era, which extended roughly from 1929 to the mid-1940s. This music was everywhere – in New York City in the 30s, you could go to any number of night clubs, hotels, and ballrooms and hear the likes of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Jimmy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Duke Ellington and other greats; or you could just stay at home and turn on the radio and hear the bands from other cities. The boom-economy of big band music created a ready-made performing outlet for orchestral musicians who moved from band to band. The instrumentalists for hire were known as sidemen, like the characters in Warren Leight’s play. These players knew the standard music by heart and could blend in with any orchestra’s sound.
A number of factors contributed to the decline of big band music, but most can be characterized by changing tastes, beginning at the end of World War II. A number of jazz musicians themselves, throughout the big-band era, had continued to play in small groups, to allow for more improvisation and exploration of the jazz idiom. This emerging “bebop” style was much less accessible to the general public, and thus less marketable. In addition, individual “sentimental” singers, as well as the largely unaccompanied “Doo-Wop” groups, were becoming more popular than instrumentalists. And in the early 1950s, the rock and roll revolution was beginning, Elvis being one of the chief instigators. Orchestras had to downsize and countless sidemen found themselves out of work
The play
Side Man is a “memory play.” The action in the play is defined by the memories of the narrator, Clifford, and what we see on stage is actually what is going on in his mind. Under these circumstances, we do not observe the normal laws of time and space, but rather shift between two principal locations – Clifford’s mother’s apartment and the Melody Lounge, where his father plays trumpet – as well as to a few other places in New York. The events take place between 1985 and 1953, but not in linear fashion. In fact, we sometimes see more than one version of the same episode. This distinctive type of American drama includes such classics as Tennessee Williams’s Glass Menagerie and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. What is different about Leight’s memory play is that the narrator recounts part of the story that happened before he was born. Here his memories are enhanced by his imagination and the tales told him by his parents and their associates. During the flashbacks to the 1950’s, Clifford speaks directly to the audience, which takes on the role of confidant. As the play progresses, the shifts between time and place grow more unstable, mirroring the chaos and desolation of the marriage of Gene and Terry as well as the decline and fall of big-band music. Aside from being the structural device of the play, memory is an important theme. All the characters are, in many ways, locked into the past and the memories of their previous experiences and are unlikely to emerge. Clifford, in sorting through and exposing his memories is able to exorcise the demons and we have a sense of his being able to move on.
Warren Leight has presented an authentic snapshot of the experience of jazz musicians in the mid twentieth century. The conditions of poverty, despair and drug abuse, which became their lot after the big orchestras had to down-size, were real enough, but what we also see is their sense of humor and the unqualified significance of music in their lives. Bound together by a devotion to jazz that is almost religious, these men are in full communion with one another but are mostly separated from the rest of the world, including their families, to a large degree. In Side Man, Leight has given us a moving tribute to the unsung heroes of an important American musical idiom.
When Side Man opened on Broadway in 1998, it received glowing reviews. It won a Tony award in 1999 and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Characters
In addition to Clifford, the characters in the play are Clifford’s parents, Terry and Gene Glimmer (an obvious reference to the playwright’s name, Leight, or “light”), and a small group of their friends. The character who changes the most in the course of the play is Terry, Clifford’s mother. She begins as a naïve non-New Yorker who is completely unfamiliar with the world of jazz and drugs. By her last appearance in the play she has experienced madness, alcoholism, lung cancer and the pain of a disastrous marriage. Her relationship to her son is tainted by her disappointment that he was born the night she was to see her idol, Frank Sinatra, in concert.
Gene, Clifford’s father, is Terry’s opposite in that he remains almost unaltered during the course of the play. It can be said that Gene lives in a sort of bubble, and if the conversation isn’t about music, he isn’t listening. He is the quintessential sideman, in his willingness to remain anonymous and on the periphery as long as he can play his trumpet. It is his love of music that is his means of survival in a collapsing world.
Three of the other characters are Gene’s fellow musicians, Al, Jonesy, and Ziggy. They share his devotion to music and also try to prevent the family’s slide. The other is Patsy, a “career waitress,” who has been romantically involved with several of the musicians. She has an authentic relationship with Clifford, encouraging him to live his own life and let his parents fend for themselves.
Clifford Brown
“Brownie” was the legendary jazz trumpet player, who, in spite of his youth, was regarded by most as a genius and was a profound influence on many jazz greats. His untimely death at the age of twenty-five coincided with the change in the music business. Brown is the unseen presence in Side Man. The narrator is named for him. And in the second act, we see a scene in which Al produces a recording of Brown’s last performance. In their rapt response to his music we see what keeps them going.
Topics for further study
Explore the following themes in relation to Side Man.
Dreams –What are Terry’s, Gene’s and Clifford’s dreams? Are any of them realized in the course of the play? Do you think this in an important theme?
What if? – This is a related idea. What are the ways in which this question is asked or implied in the play? For example, Clifford seems to ponder the question “What if I had never been born?” in a number of ways. How does this question affect his life and his relationship to his parents?
Responsibility – In the classic parent-child role reversal, it seems that Clifford is the only responsible member of the Glimmer family. Do you agree? What is Gene’s notion of responsibility? What about the other characters?
Domestic disorder and the artist – The image of the artist as incapable of domestic happiness is a common theme in western literature. Can you think of other examples? Do you think that to be a genuine artist, you must have an unhappy life?
Explore the role that race relations have played in the history of jazz. When and how were racial lines crossed?
What is the significance of the title? What are the implications beyond the literal meaning? In what ways is Clifford also a sideman?
Explore the differences and similarities between Side Man and another memory play, such as The Glass Menagerie. Do you find points of comparison also with Eugene O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey into Night?
What is the current state of American jazz?
