...that is based on decades of having smoke blown up their asses based on the "importance" of their artform; a luxury that was never afforded to everything from jump-blues to doo-wop to stax-soul to (insert a black pop-form that got "deserted" and just got incorporated into the general language of popular music without little interest in its roots).

Meanwhile, people actually care about 50-60 year old recordings by jazz-artists which is a luxury not afforded to ANY other once popular style besides Beatles, Dylan, Sinatra (insert WHITE act) with the exception of some blues acts but the kids aren't checking for those the way they they do Miles, Trane; Monk and Mingus very non-pop music. The reason is that it has been viewed as high art, as americas classical music (which I agree with 100% BTW); actually, this very reason is why people (not Payton himself admittedly, I guess that gives him some extra entitlement) can go to academies and study jazz-you think jazz-musicians prior to the, um, 70's had that luxury?

Yet, people like Payton are whining about jazz losing its pop-music roots and asking why it isn't more "cool" amongst the kids today when the very reason when most people today that are jazz-musicians in the first place is because of jazz being viewed as "high art" and something different than pop; people can study at the Lincoln jazz-centre, you think Ornette had that opportunity when he was playing R&B clubs and got beaten up for playing Charlie Parker-licks and destroying the groove? Yet, people who studied at Juilliard (Hi MIles!) was dissing him for not playing "black" enough? There's so much bullshit in the history of jazz it's not even funny that is related to class and shit...

All those dudes who talk this shit are just fucking assholes; either they are academy-trained musicians so far from the roots of jazz its not even funny or they are guys like Payton who might have genuine jazz-cred but fail to recognize that any attention given to him is *because* he exists outside of the pop-music epicentre and is recognized as a "serious" artist... Yet, dude feel he can comment on music rooted in Hip-Hop and even funk and think his words carry any weight just because he is a "good" (tm) musician? FOH!!!