I just finished looking through a couple forum threads on Stormtrack.org, one of them about what makes a person a “true” storm chaser, and the other about storm chasing legends, about the forerunners who have risen to icon status. In reading the latter thread, I was struck by a similarity between jazz and storm chasing that I had never seen before: each is a distinctively American art form.
While today both jazz musicians and storm chasers hail from all over the world, yet we owe our respective crafts to a handful of American pioneers who, guided by passion and a quest to learn and excel, first set forth into uncharted territory and showed the rest of us the way.
Both pursuits are young. Jazz has been with us for only a century. Storm chasing has existed half that time, a little over fifty years. In the history of both, the progression of discoveries and advancements has been rapid, even dizzying. One obvious difference is that the patriarchs of jazz have passed on, whereas most of the veterans of storm chasing are still with us. Louis Armstrong is long gone, but David Hoadley remains a present inspiration, and while I’ve never met him, I assume from his occasional input on Stormtrack–the online descendant of Hoadley’s trade magazine for chasers–that he’s still fairly active.
I suspect that Hoadley wouldn’t see himself in the same light as Louis Armstrong. From all accounts of David, he’s a humble man who likely would feel surprised to be compared with the likes of Louis. Yet both men are innovators. Both followed their instincts to accomplish something that had never been done before. In Armstrong’s case, the result was the birth of a brand new musical language of feeling, inflection, and improvisation. With Hoadley, it was the acquisition of knowledge and insights that could only come from actively pursuing tornadic storms rather than passively waiting for the storms to come to him.
Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane.
David Hoadley, Tim Marshall, Jim Leonard, Chuck Doswell, Al Moller, Howard Bluestein.
The lists are only partial, and over time they will grow. Storm chasing probably has more potential for true innovators to rise within its ranks than does jazz, for similarities aside, jazz is driven primarily by creative explorations that have for the most part already been made, whereas storm chasing deals with a subject about which much still remains unknown, and is influenced to a much greater degree by advances in meteorology and technology. Regardless, the icons of each field occupy a special, venerable position that can never be duplicated. The rest of us–whether we’re small-town musicians or world-renowned artists, or whether we’re neophyte chasers or OKU grad students with plenty of chase seasons under our belts–can only do the best we know how to carry the torches lit by our predecessors.
From our ranks, too, new knowledge will come and new beauty will be birthed, and from time to time, someone truly remarkable will rise to the surface. Let’s hope that person’s generosity of spirit will be in keeping with his or her abilities.
As was Louis’ Armstrong’s. As is David Hoadley’s.
