All that jazz
In Wednesday’s open thread this week I alluded to the fact that I don’t like jazz. I’ve tried; I’ve really tried, but it just doesn’t work for me. To my ear and brain it sounds like formless chaos, music dissolving into a wet puddle of glop.
Please don’t hate me for it, you jazz aficionados. I have nothing but respect for jazz musicians, and I know they’re highly skilled and just amazing, but I don’t want to listen to them.
When I thought about writing this post and tried to come up with some jazz that I enjoy, I remembered that years ago I owned the Miles Davis record “Sketches of Spain” and really liked it. However – as I suspected – when I looked the piece up, it says that it’s not really considered jazz by a lot of people:
The opening piece, taking up almost half the record, is an arrangement by Evans and Davis of the adagio movement of Concierto de Aranjuez, a concerto for guitar by the contemporary Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo. Following the faithful introduction of the concerto’s guitar melody on flugelhorn, Evans’ arrangement turns into a “quasi-symphonic, quasi-jazz world of sound”, according to his biographer.[
Hmmm – quasi jazz. Do I get half credit for that?
Probably not:
According to Davis’ biographer Chambers, the contemporary critical response to the arrangement was not surprising, especially given the scarcity of anything resembling a jazz rhythm in most of the piece. Martin Williams wrote that “the recording is something of a curiosity and a failure, as I think a comparison with any good performance of the movement by a classical guitarist would confirm”.
Davis had an answer for his critics:
Replying to suggestions that Sketches of Spain was something other than jazz, Davis said “it’s music, and I like it”.
Indeed. Me too.
Kind of Blue is the album that first really got me into jazz. A colleague brought it into the lab one day on CD. I was hooked immediately. I like Sketches of Spain quite a bit less, but I still call it jazz.
neo:
I’m not fully on-board with jazz either. I tend to nibble at the edges and work my way in where I can. That’s the way I do art in general. Sometimes I get it; sometimes I don’t. No harm, no foul.
I love Claude Bolling’s crossover work between classical and jazz. You’ve probably heard this one and may have liked it:
–“Jean-Pierre Rampal / Claude Bolling – Suite For Flute And Jazz Piano”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OktMw3eXyU
I gave my black jazz friend at the cafe a listen. I was a bit fearful he would dismiss it as not jazz. But no, he listened and smiled. He understood it was not pure jazz, but it was good music and anything that keeps jazz alive is a good thing in his book.
The purists are going to come down on me like a ton of bricks, but have you tried the smooth jazz genre? It kind of started with Grover Washington Jr and the song I’m sure you’ve heard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0oxkwvO4_4
My wife and I go to just about every show we can. We just discovered that here in Jacksonville many of the big names come through…we are happy and heading to a show in December (Peter White, Mindi Abair, and Vincent Igala). My personal favorite is Richard Elliot. His tone and phrasing are great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lu6K_x0wHk
At least give the Elliot clip a listen.
I’m with you, neo. I had a coworker once who was big into jazz, and we had a radio in the shop that since he was senior he could tune to the NPR jazz show, and he was telling us how great some track was and I turned to him and asked him to hum the melody. Of course he couldn’t, because there was no melody, and he sort of hemmed and hawed and tried to tell us that that wasn’t the point. (He also was so provincial with his music tastes that he didn’t know who George Clinton was when the jazz DJ mentioned him for some reason.)
As far as I’m concerned, jazz died with the big- and small-band jazz of the ’30s and ’40s. Bebop killed it.
Physicsguy – you nailed it. That’s good stuff.
Wow! A h-u-u-g-e topic, and, once again, neo is pushing all my buttons. I’ll try to do a series of brief-ish comments, separating out topics, rather than a few long ones, as is typical for me (and likely annoying).
First,
neo, you almost certainly like jazz. There are just some types of jazz you do not like. And, almost certainly, some you absolutely love. The key is to find out which is which. Based on what you wrote, and what the comments thus far have been, you are likely stating you do not like “modern jazz,” most of the innovation that has come out after WWII.
Not even Dixieland?
sidebar
Yancey Ward,
For folks complaining that they don’t “get” modern jazz I usually recommend (I’ve even purchased it for quite a few folks) Davis’, “Kind of Blue.” I tell them to put it on some evening, when they’ve had a full day and are in a reasonable mood. Dim the lights a bit. Sit in a favorite chair. Pour a glass of something; wine, beer, mixed drink, scotch, bourbon… and listen. If you listen to the whole album and nothing ever resonates, then it’s likely that modern jazz will not ever be your thing. You don’t have to like all of it. Or even most of it. But if you don’t find some moments on that album where you smile, or hear something appealing; it’s likely modern jazz will not, ever be your thing, no sense in wasting your time further.
Hmm, one of my ear worms is Louis Armstrong singing ‘Mack the Knife’.
Second,
You don’t like Dixieland?
The Andrews Sisters singing, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy?”
The Glenn Miller band playing, “In the Mood?”
As a New Yorker you have to like, “How About You?” (I like New York in June)
“Moonlight in Vermont”
There absolutely have to be songs in the “American Songbook” that you like and those songs, if not initially jazz songs (as many of them were) have been recorded countless times as jazz arrangements of varying complexity and accessibility.
And most of them were initially jazz songs. Next comment will focus on that aspect.
Neo: I’m pretty much the same. The only person that made *some* jazz palatable for me was Marian McPartland on NPR. I enjoyed her reharmonizations on the piano of well-known tunes, for example (e.g., Greensleeves). And to the extent that ragtime is a subset of jazz, I like that. But the free-form stuff, I can’t stand listening to. I guess there has to be something that my ear (and brain) can keep track of.
I’m not a zealous jazz fan in general but what I like I *really* like. I have something on the order of a dozen Coltrane albums. His extremely famous “My Favorite Things” and “A Love Supreme” got me hooked. They’re desert island disks for me.
“I Got Rhythm” was written by George and Ira Gershwin in 1928 for a Broadway show, Treasure Girl. The arrangement was slow, staid, gal in the middle of the stage singing the lyrics, rather motionless. But even then it was a jazz song.
Since about 1940, when musicians strived (strove?) to become jazz musicians they’d work on something called the “rhythm” changes. These are the chord changes from that exact music George Gershwin wrote for that simple, female vocal performance. But, since Gershwin was an incredible genius he could make something extremely versatile fit that original need, while have many great, other uses.
This clip from “Girl Crazy” with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland with the Tommy Dorsey band shows how, even by 1932, it was evolving into something much more than a slow, vocal standard. https://youtu.be/NQ2z-C8HdiA
And this clip shows you were jazz musicians can go take those “rhythm” changes: https://youtu.be/bGKjMDPPV6w
I can do this with pretty much every song from the American Songbook, and surely there are tons of songs in the American Songbook that neo, and those of you claiming to not like jazz, not only like, but love!
“Our Love is Here to Stay”
“Summertime” (I know we have Janis Joplin fans here)
“God Bless the Child”
“My Funny Valentine”
“Let’s Fall in Love”
“Anything Goes”
“Night and Day”
None of you jazz haters have a soft spot for any of those songs?
Latin Jazz!
That stuff is incredible! My wife and I play it in the house very, very often and we’ve never had any visitor that did not enjoy it. It’s extremely accessible. And awesome!
If you’ve got Spotify or Pandora look for a Latin Jazz playlist and listen for a few songs. Or, check out the Latin Jazz station on Sirius/XM.
I dare you to not find something you like.
What physicsguy said.
Soft jazz. Easy Jazz. Easy listening. Lite Jazz…
Has to be something in there you like. It’s also very accessible.
Rufus T. Firefly:
I figured I’d be hearing from you 🙂 .
I suppose it’s partly a question of what one refers to as “jazz.” I have no problem figuring I like some subsets of jazz, but not what I usually hear referred to as jazz. I’m not familiar with the terminology for the subsets.
“Boogie-woogie Bugle Boy” and the Andrews sisters – okay for me, not great, but certainly not bad. I liked Paul Taylor’s choreography to it, though, which was fun.
The earlier stuff like Gershwin and the show tunes I like very much. But I don’t think of them as jazz exactly – more like jazzy. Jazz to me (and granted, I’m not at all knowledgeable about it) has always conjured up lengthy riffs on the tunes that basically deconstruct the tunes into something quite different and much more formless – and to me, the melody part is lost.
I’m not a big jazz fan either but somewhere along the way I was put onto Sidney Bechet who I had never heard of and something about his music and the sadness of his life led me to listen more. I’ve got to be in the right mood but when I am there is nothing better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTFv9zyh1rI
There’s a world of difference between Bitch’s Brew and Take Five. I enjoy them both.
Geez, Rufus, maybe slow down! I’m getting intimidated…
I broke through to jazz with 70s fusion — Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, John McLaughlin and John Klemmer. Fusion was a blend of jazz and rock which began in the 60s.
From there I was able to branch out into older jazz like Duke Ellington big band, West Coast cool and classic Miles Davis The bop school and free jazz remain beyond me.
I watched Ken Burns “Jazz” series and was shocked to discover he skipped over 70s fusion entirely like it was a Dark Age of Jazz.
Turns out Wynton Marsalis was the advisor for the show and he didn’t see the point to any jazz after 60s Miles. According to another jazz friend, Burns’ “Jazz” and Wynton Marsalis caused a huge firestorm then on all the online jazz forums.
So, yes, there are always purists and popes looking to supervise other people’s tastes. I say, pay them no mind. Listen to what you like and die happy, as Henry Miller said of painting.
Nobody has to like jazz.
I’ve come to like certain songs years after I bought the Time Life jazz anthology. It’s a two-CD set; not sure if it’s still in print.
I let it sit in my CD cabinet for almost a decade before listening to it. Pretty sure I wouldn’t have liked it before. Maybe the music needed to age … or I did.
Perhaps my new favorites aren’t really jazz? So what.
Go taste “Salt Peanuts”, and then give “Fables of Faubus” a whirl. ‘S’all in good fun.
Whatever the genre, it has to have a melody. Not much of a fan of dissonance and ‘frantic’ playing.
My Dad always said that you have “to ‘think’ jazz”. Not sure I agree but he was much more knowledgeable than I.
I can recommend Houston Person’s album “Nice ‘n’ Easy”, “The Dave Brubeck Quartet Live at Carnegie Hall” (superb musicianship) Connie Evingson’s “Gypsy in My Soul” (Great, fun album) and “Getz/Gilberto”.
For jazz fusion fans, IMO nothing approaches Return to Forever’s “Romantic Warrior” for both musicianship and composition.
I don’t include Kind of Blue because I’m not a fan of the trumpet, as it grates on my ears. Fine as part of a band but not when it’s the most prominent instrument. I like the sax. Richard Elliot’s cover of “Over the Rainbow” is exquisite.
PS. Streaming is by far the least expensive way to explore new music. Pandora and others will suggest music based on what you like.
I’ve got no kick against modern jazz
Unless they try to play it too darn fast
And lose the beauty of the melody
Until they sound just like a symphony
– The Beatles ( approx. 1964 )
neo, you almost certainly like jazz. There are just some types of jazz you do not like. And, almost certainly, some you absolutely love. The key is to find out which is which.
Agreed.
And even when you don’t find it pleasing, it can be worth pondering because it’s a window into the sensibilities prevalent in a different time and place. (I don’t care for mid-century ‘sweet jazz’; I want to know why many of my grandparents’ contemporaries did).
Latin, Jazz-Rock, Progressive, some Swing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FExBwfQHXlE
Home town boy.
As many have said, modern jazz is not the same thing as traditional jazz. IMHO too much modern jazz is about showing off the virtuosity of the performer(s) rather than creating enjoyable music. My musician friends often are ecstatic about modern jazz, but that may be because they appreciate the difficulty of the performances. As Dwaz said, try Take 5.
I’m such a philistine that I can’t even appreciate the majority of classical music. I love the transcendent moments of classical music, but frequently feel that they’re lost in the forest of the rest of the symphony.
I’m not plugged in enough to the jazz fan world to have been aware of a “firestorm” over the Ken Burns doc, but I did hear complaints that important schools and artists were neglected.
Another jazz friend said that after the economics of big band jazz became untenable, jazz drifted away from danceable music to virtuoso and avant-garde competition. Jazz audiences became smaller and the music became less accessible.
One can make a similar argument about progressive rock.
When my elderly father bought his first car that didn’t have a cassette deck, he asked me if his cassettes could be transferred to CD’s. MP3 and WMA compressed formats had been around for a few years, and the new car would play those. So I spent a week transferring many hours of music onto one CD.
His Benny Goodman tracks were by far my favorite. You can call it “swing” but I think it is quite jazzy. It probably doesn’t do his music justice, but the 1956 movie “The Benny Goodman Story” is good and they focus on the notion that swing music wasn’t considered legitimate in the eyes of many then. Benny performs the heck out of a Mozart piece to show them he isn’t a hack.
My first forays into jazz probably started with Miles and Bitches Brew. It interested me, but I wasn’t blown away. (OMG, look at the people who performed on that album. I’m shocked that I know 3/4 of those names.)
I was a freshman in college when the first Return to Forever albums came out. A revelation. Re-watching Rick Beato’s tribute to Chick Corea I noticed his mention that the song “Spain” is considered to be some kind of iconic piece that most jazz bands feel compelled/obliged to play.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEhQTjgoTdU
It does have a nice melody, but you can’t dance to it easily and the flute and piano solos are great, but the bass solo is a little weak I think. Maybe it’s my weirdness, but there is something about the sound of that Fender Rhodes electric piano. To this day, I can’t hear one without hearing the old Chick Corea stuff in my head.
huxley and I are definitely on the same wavelength here. The cop show series “Bosch” features a lead character who only listens to the purest of jazz. Nothing but Charlie Parker all day long. It’s OK, but I can’t get that excited. And I certainly don’t want to flog it to death.
I’m a long-time jazz fan, and I’ve known more people who didn’t like the music than those who do. Since I’m not a musician, it’s hard to articulate why I like a particular genre of jazz, or one musician but not another. And it’s been a long time since I tried to convert any nonbelievers. I think people are going to like what they like, and that’s fine with me. Even polka bands have a certain charm.
In one comment, Neo wrote “Jazz to me … has always conjured up lengthy riffs on the tunes that basically deconstruct the tunes into something quite different and much more formless … ” I’d cast a more positive light on it, but that’s the thing that first captured me. When I was young and poor in New York, I spent a big part of my income on jazz clubs. Live jazz, played right, is truly something special. It’s the improvisation, especially group improvisation. When it works, there’s nothing else like it. I can only compare those moments to experiencing a new force of nature, and it’s not something I’ll ever forget.
Try Oscar Peterson.
I am elderly, my husband and all the men I know of that era, 85+, are still in love with it. We have Sirius XM and every time I get into the SUV my husband uses I have to quickly squelch the squawk. To me it is raucous and chaos, not music. I loved the romantic crooners and some swing bands of the WWII era, and really up until “the dirty bop” music came in. Oh, my! An to top it all of the Twist!
I admit though, I still like Blueberry Hill.
Wow. Listen to the early guys, like:
Bix Beiderbeck and
-Frank Trumbauer, who played with Bix a lot. Kept him from the Drink for a while.
-Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang, the prototypes for, and every bit as good as:
-Django Reinhardt
-Louis Armstrong. Anything, but especially the Hot 5s and 7s.
This is melodic jazz, and the foundation for the Big Bands of the ’40s. But better. After the War, things fragmented and degenerated, as things tend to do.
Yes, Kind of Blue is a great album. Amazing.
Tuvea,
I’m not sure if that’s meant as a joke, but Chuck Berry wrote, “Rock and Roll” music in 1957. The Beatles did a cover, along with several of Berry’s other songs.
Regarding Burns’ documentary, I was very excited it was being made and very disappointed with the final product. Burns himself said he really didn’t know much about the topic. He did lean very heavily on Wynton Marsalis (whom I generally like) and there was A LOT of vital stuff left out. However, it’s a huge topic. Probably should have been done by someone who had much more knowledge of the subject.
Peterson and Previn for jazz ensemble piano virtuosity.
Several have mentioned Brubeck’s, “Take Five.” Dave Brubeck was great and has an interesting biography. Paul Desmond, who was an integral part of that quartet just may have been as important to Brubeck’s music as Brubeck. They made something incredible together. Desmond composed “Take Five” and Brubeck proclaimed that he, Brubeck, struggled to even know what to play on piano, it was so unusual, so he mainly played chords on most of it.
What’s truly incredible about “Take Five” is that all the songs use unusual rhythms but the lay person really doesn’t notice. They are really good songs. Almost always when folks like Frank Zappa set out to do weird rhythms the songs sound very weird. Brubeck and Desmond were so brilliant they wrote songs in tempos almost never played, that sound as mainstream as a Strauss waltz. While being some of the “jazziest” jazz it’s also incredibly accessible. Very hard to do.
Rufus,
As soon as I saw the words ‘modern jazz’ the song
‘Rock and Roll Music’ popped into my head. Comes from being a mid-50’s born boomer I suppose.
Different people enjoy different cultural things.
IMHO … There shouldn’t be any judgements made against those who like what I don’t – opera or dance – nor against me for liking Musical Theater.
Except those … uh … barbarians who like John Williams or Andrew Lloyd Webber (/ sarc … for those who need it)
neo,
I really don’t like accusing people of not being accurate concerning their own opinions. After all, who should know what one likes more than the person doing the liking or not liking. However, I think almost everyone likes jazz. It’s a question of flavors. Which types of jazz one likes, or does not like. But there may even be one or two songs in a type you generally do not like that you do like.
For example, I generally do not like modern art. I think Jackson Pollack must have been laughing all the way to the bank. However, occasionally a particular piece of modern art will really move me and I connect with it. For instance, I really like Picasso’s “Guernica.”
Jazz cuts such a wide swath I can’t imagine there is not a great deal of it that you do like. I find that even folks who claim to not like “free form” “instrumental” jazz smile broadly and tap their feet energetically to Dixieland.
How much fun would it be to turn a corner in the French Quarter and stumble onto this: https://youtu.be/4VaD1yFarm0
Saxophonist Arne Domnerus and some guy on pipe organ: Antiphone Blues.
huxley,
The expense of keeping a touring big band going did kill big band music, but I don’t think it was due to smaller groups forming after WWII. I think it was technology, especially Les Paul and the electric guitar. If a club owner could, with mics and amps, make the Big Bopper and his backing band of four other guys fill his dance hall with sound just as loud as Glenn Miller and his seventeen other guys, well, what would you do? And, if you’re a musician and you’re splitting the gate I’d prefer to have 5 as the denominator rather than 17.
And, as another refutation of your argument, look at rag and Dixieland prior to the Big Band era. There’s a reason they called them Big Bands when they started becoming popular, bands had typically been smaller up until then, including jazz bands. There were duos, trios, quartets, quintets, sex and septets before the appearance of Big Bands and after.
Hurin3,
I don’t know why, but the Bix Beiderbecke story really haunts me. I think about it often. I have this weird connection to him, like I should be able to go back in time and save him. I have no idea why. I don’t even play trumpet. And it really bothers me that his father never understood how great his son had become. I never made the connection until know, but I imagine Bix and Hendricks would enjoy one another’s company.
Jazz is discordant noise to my ear and almost painful- it may have something to do with my synesthesia. I have never heard a song of the jazz genre I have been able to listen to and feel any kind of pleasure.
In theory, I should love jazz because I generally hate music with lyrics- there are some exceptions like Karen Carpenter-and there is plenty of purely instrumental jazz.
99.9% of all the music I listen to is either classical, film score, Celtic music or Spanish guitar.
What a God-awful cacophony Jazz is.
Tuvea,
We share a love of musicals and a dislike for Sir Lloyd Weber! Someday I need to see a Sondheim musical. Some critics I trust rave about him, but he seems to be in that “no hummable tunes” category.
(And I think you missed my point about “Rock and Roll” music. I understood why you quoted the lyrics. It was germane to the thread topic. I was just correcting the authorship. You claimed the composers were McCartney and Lennon and I was merely stating that it was Chuck Berry.)
For folks stating jazz took some huge turn after WWII…
It did. Kind-of. There was a new switch of emphasis to musicians pleasing musicians (including themselves) rather than pleasing the audience.
However, audience entertainment didn’t stop, or die. There were bands and musicians focused on accessibility and entertainment while, simultaneously, there were musicians going off into less accessible realms. Someone was writing, playing and producing all that wonderful lounge stuff that was big in the ’60s and ’70s! Nelson Riddle was only 24 in 1945. All those great Sinatra arrangements were done in that post, WWII era. Ella Fitzgerald, Doris Day… A lot of great, hummable, danceable jazz instrumentalists and singers in the ’50s up through today. As physicsguy mentioned, the “Easy” jazz circuit is thriving. It’s very accessible and those cats have true chops.
The expense of keeping a touring big band going did kill big band music, but I don’t think it was due to smaller groups forming after WWII.
Rufus:
Perhaps I was unclear. My point (or rather my friend’s) was that expenses killed big band and as a consequence, smaller bands emerged to fill the jazz space.
Of course, the changes weren’t on-off switches, but changes of degree — something gaining ground while something else losing.
Huxley said: “I broke through to jazz with 70s fusion — Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, John McLaughlin and John Klemmer. Fusion was a blend of jazz and rock which began in the 60s.
From there I was able to branch out into older jazz like Duke Ellington big band, West Coast cool and classic Miles Davis The bop school and free jazz remain beyond me.”
Please, Huxley, quit reading my mind. But seriously, you just described almost exactly my entry into jazz in the 70’s (plus Pat Metheny), except for the branching out into Miles Davis. I’ve just never liked his instrument (trumpet) enough to listen to more than a snippet, though I recognized his talent. I have the same negative reaction to the sax and trombone, too.
“What’s truly incredible about “Take Five” is that all the songs use unusual rhythms but the lay person really doesn’t notice.”
The album is ‘Time Out’. I overheard the music at a Sikh wedding a while back, and heard one of the rhythms from ‘Time Out’. If that be cultural appropriation, let’s have more.
‘Time Out’ and ‘Night Train’ are probably good ways to ease someone into jazz.
neo,
If you have eight minutes and sixteen seconds I think this might help you “get” it:
https://youtu.be/36wafFjFdYs
I don’t recall you discussing this specific song, “If I Were a Bell,” but I know you’ve mentioned you like the musical, “Guys and Dolls” and my guess is you like that number in the musical.
Well, in 1956 Miles Davis got together with four other jazz musicians and noodled around with that song for 8:16 seconds and Prestige records immortalized it on wax.
My guess is you will not like the entire recording. Even if you do like it, or appreciate parts of it, I’m also guessing you would prefer to listen to a talented, female vocalist do a “straight” interpretation of the song backed by a band playing the notes precisely as the brilliant Mr. Loesser wrote them.
But, if you listen to this I think you’ll be able to understand what is going on and why it can be appealing.
It starts out with a cute, playful “bell” introduction by the pianist. So, that’s fun. We are already being signaled that this will be playful. Then the rhythm section comes in and we instantly recognize it’s jazzy. It’s not going to be played “straight.” Then Miles comes in on trumpet and is fairly faithful to the melody, except he messes around with the tempo of the notes to keep it playful.
This is fairly standard with a lot of instrumental, modern jazz. A lead in rhythm to set the mood*, the entire band playing the main theme fairly simply and closely in unison, then a series of soloists stepping off into their interpretations. And those interpretations are where many people fade out, lose interest, become annoyed… And some gain interest and are drawn in.
I am almost certain, if you listen to this, you will like most of the trumpet part, even when Miles steps off. And I guess you will not appreciate what the saxophonist does most of the time and I guess you will like most of what the piano player does.
Then, like most modern jazz arrangements, it ends with them all playing the melody line together.
So what’s really neat and unique about this form of music is the 80% or so between the beginning and the end. As Cornflour wrote, every night they play the song they are creating that part, based on what they think, how they feel, how the room feels… Everyone’s a part of it. (And, sometimes an instrumentalist just phones it in.) So sometimes the musician’s interpretation will resonate with you, and sometimes it will not. But what one has to appreciate is the skill required to take the notes someone like Loesser put on paper and stretch them to see what else one can get out of them. Sometimes it’s interesting. Sometimes it falls flat.
Performing this type of jazz is like composing on the fly, on a tightrope wire, without a net. Loesser gives the musicians the wire and its length, where it connects on both sides of the Big Top, but the musician has to figure out how to traverse it.
And, if my guesses are right, you probably somewhat get, or agree with, where the trumpet player and piano player wanted to take Loesser’s melody and chords and you don’t agree with where the saxophone player took them. And that’s another great thing about jazz. You get to be right! It’s art.
*(This asterisk in the next comment.)
I played a baritone sax in a jazz band in high school and we were kind of a mess of music trying to do the early 60’s sounds. A couple of guys actually went on and are still in the music making business. I liked the early easy listening, meandering, slow flow, sounds of our type of jazz, not really very good but fun and easy, balancing bass, sax, guitar and a bit of brass. In the early 60’s it was mellow, smooth and kind of nice.
Later on I would try to listen to Jazz that was too discordant and out of sync with what I thought music should be and I was done with what folk then called Jazz.
TommyJay and huxley,
I bought Return to Forever’s “Romantic Warrior” shortly after its release and still have it. At that time, I was listening to it frequently and perhaps 6 months later caught Return to Forever in concert at the Santa Barbara Arlington Theater (“The historic Arlington Theatre, built in the mission revival style and beautifully restored, seats over 2,000. Its atmospheric interior contains faux-Spanish villas and a ceiling filled with twinkling stars”.) They focused entirely on the album and I have never heard tighter, more note perfect musicianship… truly memorable.
Rufus,
Ifmemory serves, Dave Brubeck freely admitted that Paul Desmond was by far the most talented of that quartet. Desmnd was responsible for composing the unusual time signitures.
*The asterisk
DNW recently shared a link to John Coltrane performing a jazz interpretation of, “My Favorite Things.” In my prior comment I wrote about the band setting the mood. A jazz band takes the original notes and chords a song is based on and gives them their personal interpretation, but they can also change the mood and meaning from the original song. There is so much I love about Coltrane’s incredible interpretation of that song, but my favorite thing (pun, as always, intended) is what he does with the mood. How much depth he creates.
Rodgers and Hammerstein likely wrote that song in a matter of hours to fill a cute little scene in the libretto of a musical about a failed Nun who runs through Alpine meadows. From wikipedia:
You see the play, you watch the movie and 99.9% of us see a cute little throwaway number to fill some time and emphasize Maria’s cheeriness and perseverance. Now, it is Rodgers and Hammerstein, so even they’re throw away stuff is good; “whiskers on kittens, snowflakes on eyelashes, schnitzel with noodles…” Great lyrics there, Mr. Hammerstein. And then there’s those minor and major triads Mr. Rodgers put in there.
It’s a great song that will live on forever for what it is. Singers love to sing it, especially female singers. Mothers parse the lyrics to cheer their children. The Musical will be performed forever.
But Mr. Coltrane decided to take a look at what Mr. Rodgers did and see if there was more in there.
What really amazes me when I listen to his version is how much emotion is in it, especially the sadness and anxiety he finds in that structure. Wikipedia again:
Not only that, but Coltrane decides to dig up an instrument that was all but condemned to the ashbin of history, the soprano saxophone*, and play it, instead of alto or tenor. That higher, nasally sound of the soprano saxophone with the minor scales gives it an Arabic, middle-eastern feel. And who, except Brubeck, even thinks of playing jazz in waltz time?!
Both versions are great. Rodgers’ original score and Coltrane’s interpretation. Both versions stir the human soul differently, effectively, impactfully.
That’s jazz. Take something that everyone thinks they know well and dig deeper into it to reveal underlying currents that have always been dwelling there, just below the surface, and displaying those currents so all can hear and learn from them.
*And Kenneth Gorelick, Kenny G, is eternally grateful.
huxley,
I didn’t miss your point but I think you missed mine (text isn’t great at conveying emotion, said respectfully, not defiantly).
Big Bands were always freaking expensive! 15, 18, 20 guys with matching outfits traveling by bus or train with singers, arrangers, seamstresses, instrument wranglers… What was unique about 1938 that made a Big Band less expensive than 1946?
And why were there plenty of famous, smaller bands prior to the Big Band era. Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five were all the rage in 1926. Guess why they were called the Hot Five? Bop became “the thing” in jazz right at the end of the war and maybe your friend is making some odd connection with that.
Musicians need to make money and they need recording contracts and or venues to make money. If record purchasers or cover charge payers are just as happy to pay for a 5 piece band as an 18 piece band, why pay the other 13 guys? Prior to amps and mics you can’t fill a big dance hall with music with just 5 guys. A Big Band makes a Big sound! And so do the Rolling Stones. Technology.
D*mn it, sonny wayz! You caught me! My third mention of “Take Five” in that comment should be, “Time Out!” Aaaarrggghhh! I even remember thinking that as I wrote it, yet my fingers still typed, “Take Five.”
Geoffrey Britain,
I did not know that Brubeck said that about Desmond, but, coming from Brubeck that’s high praise!
Rufus:
Yes, I’m aware of the role amps and mics played in the story. Plus things like Sinatra’s more intimate vocals made possible by amplification and Les Paul’s electric guitars.
(For the longest time I thought there were two Les Pauls. One the guitar player and the other the guitar inventor. What a peculiar coincidence, I thought, they should have the same name!)
All of this prompted me tonight to listen once again to “The Dave Brubeck Quartet Live in Carnege Hall”. Great live performance, great recording, very rare to get both. They were cooking on that night.
I can’t let the comments about jazz with unusual time signatures go by without mentioning band leader / trumpeter Don Ellis, who was a huge influence on me in the early 70s. Most everything his band played was in some unusual time signature. He enjoyed a bit of a revival a few years ago due to the movie “Whiplash”. “Whiplash” was the name of a chart performed by Ellis back in the day, and is where the movie’s title came from. Here’s his band’s original recording of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCykgzrwIw0
For a more contemporary example of unusual time signature jazz, check out drummer Senri Kawaguchi. Don’t be fooled by her age or demeanor. You can skip her introduction, the fun starts at 1:15. The bulk of the chart is in 17/8, with the eighth notes grouped 2-2-3-2-2-3-3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97k1iTcT_wg
I like so much that this form of music sprung from the U.S. Quilting and jazz music; uniquely American contributions to culture. (Super dilettante here~and hugely subjective reactions to jazz).
Two posters cited Oscar Peterson. His live Satin Doll is so stylish and fresh! John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards is a friend’s favorite. Their sound packed with a sustained strange twist on jazz that I find highly amusing. Took me a decade or more to turn to Diana Krall. Accessible jazz (?). Marian McPartland Feat Steely Dan Piano Jazz Is a kick. My late dad loved Pete Fountain a lot. Here’s Oscar- his elegant Ellington performance:
https://youtu.be/oYjB_j8EjKA
Rufus —
every night they play the song they are creating that part, based on what they think, how they feel, how the room feels… Everyone’s a part of it.
See, that’s the part where they lose me entirely. I get that they’re very skilled at their instrument, music theory, and the whole works, but to me it just comes across as musical masturbation. Interpret how you want, but play the damn song the way it was written.
Also, the couple of times I’ve been at a jazz club with a date for dinner, the music was SO LOUD WE COULDN’T TALK TO EACH OTHER. And I go to goth clubs, so I know whereof I (loudly) speak.
“For a more contemporary example of unusual time signature jazz, check out drummer Senri Kawaguchi. Don’t be fooled by her age or demeanor. You can skip her introduction, the fun starts at 1:15. The bulk of the chart is in 17/8, with the eighth notes grouped 2-2-3-2-2-3-3.”
I approve of this message!
Zildjian cymbals, of course. Just your average everyday 14th generation family company. Hopefully the Kardashians go extinct sooner.
GB,
The Arlington! I’ve seen many great movies and performances there but the most fun ever was a new movie everyone was talking about – Stars Wars.
BTW, nowdays there’s a terrific Mexican restaurant across the street – Carlito’s. Way better than that other place…
I’ve been performing music for nearly 50 years, most of it the rock, blues and soul music I grew up listening to in the 50s and 60s. Lately branching out into some more modern music from the 70s and 80s lol.
However I’ve also played a fair amount of jazz along the way. I like jazz a lot now but didn’t so much at first. It took me a while to warm to it. The word is “accessible” – perfect examples of this are the Beatles and Bee Gees, jazz not so much. I understand why a lot of people just don’t like it. And in my own case I suspect a lot of my appreciation is because I am a musician myself and find it more challenging to play than most else of what I have been playing. I still love the more popular music from my youth and still enjoy playing it. But in some cases I have heard, and maybe played those songs dozens or even hundreds of times so jazz is a welcome diversion.
Regarding the Ken Burns treatment, I certainly don’t consider it a definitive look at jazz but it is a touchstone for many comments. As huxley said it was heavily influenced by Wynton Marsalis who disdained developments after the 60s. There is definitely a school of thought among some people that the bebop era was the pinnacle of jazz.
That may be part of the puzzle here. “Jazz” actually covers an exceptionally wide variety of music but if you asked someone what “jazz” sounds like probably the first thing they thought of would be something like bebop. And bebop was militantly un-commercial, the original practitioners prided themselves on making music the “squares” wouldn’t get. This was unheard of previously when jazz, ie 30s big bands, was actually the dominant popular music. In fact though bebop players had usually started in big bands the other musicians often disliked bebop. One is reputed to have said “we don’t flat our fifths, we drink ’em” (musical in-joke at least Rufus will get).
I recall a scene in the Burns series, which otherwise reflected the Marsalis view, where they interviewed an older black couple who didn’t like bebop. They liked to dance and preferred the other type of small combo music that arose when the big bands died, the jump blues music typified by Louis Jordan. Jordan was tremendously popular and his music was not only, yes, accessible but humorous as well with songs like “Saturday Night Fish Fry” and “Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens”. Jordan’s music is a very close forerunner of rock ‘n roll.
One more word about Marsalis, who is not a favorite of mine. I read an interview with him once where he talked smugly about the fact that while his friends were listening to the Temptations, he was listening to John Coltrane. Coltrane was great but so was Motown, and Motown reached a vastly greater number of people.
Some random favorites of mine, though they may not convert neo:
“Stolen Moments” by Oliver Nelson
“Moanin'” by Art Blakey/Bobby Timmons
“Killer Joe” and “Along Came Betty” by Benny Golson
“Blue Train” by John Coltrane – actually almost anything by Coltrane though his later work really challenged “accessibility” even for jazz
“Nica’s Dream”, “Silver’s Serenade” and “Song For My Father” by Horace Silver. Silver is my favorite jazz composer and had great stylistic variety. Some of his songs were hardcore bebop but others like the Latin-influenced “Song For My Father” might appeal to those who otherwise don’t like jazz.
“Joy Spring” and “Daahoud” by Clifford Brown.
Many of the above are blues-influenced reflecting my own tastes and background. They *might* have more appeal to the non-jazz fans. Not guaranteeing anything though.
A sad note about Clifford Brown – he was an exceptional trumpet player from the 50s who died way too young. Also showing great promise as a composer. Unlike so many others in the bebop scene Brown stayed away from heroin, only to die in a car wreck when he was 25. He wasn’t even driving. In a bitter irony just a few years later Bill Evans’ great bassist Scott LaFaro, who very much unlike Evans also kept off heroin, also died in a car crash at the same age as Brown.
“All that jazz…”
(Um, slightly O/T…)
The Plot Against the President….
https://twitter.com/AmandaMilius/status/1457142740270125058
And more Jazz than that—seems I jumped the gun—as Greenwald chimes in hugely (AKA IMPORTANT thread):
“The NYT, the WPost, CNN, NBC and the digital liberal outlets are all vastly more guilty of what they have spent years claiming Trump and the GOP are: they basically ran a dangerous disinformation campaign, full of lies, in conjunction with CIA/FBI, and now won’t own up to it.”
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1456963299300495365
And the implications are…a stolen election complete with plans to destroy the nation—discuss amongst yerselves…
“Zildjian cymbals, of course”
Impressive knowledgability!
Here is a joke involving time signatures: A bandleader calls out “Stardust” and tells the singer, “At bar 6 it goes into 5/4 for three bars, then changes the key to Eb, then two bars of 7/4 before going back to F”
Singer: “How am I supposed to follow all that?”
Bandleader: “Well that’s the way you sang it last night”.
Anyway that’s what passes for humor in the world of jazz.
Brian Lovely wrote: “SO LOUD WE COULDN’T TALK TO EACH OTHER.”
I used to go to Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in the Soho part of London in the early 1980s. Ronnie constantly bitched at the customers to talk less and listen more. Well, since I’m paying, I will do what I like, I guess.
The best experience in that place was the time a friend had a nasty hacking cough. I told the waitress to bring me hot water, half a lemon, honey and bourbon. About a third of the waitresses and kitchen staff gathered around to watch the Yank assemble a hot toddy, which stopped the cough instantly. The staff were all impressed, Ronnie Scott less so, but that’s the way he was. One would think he would be grateful that the coughing stopped.
The mention of “If I Were a Bell” brings to mind Blossom Dearie’s rendition, which always brings a smile. This talk of unusual time signatures makes me wonder if the Burns documentary even covers that unique offshoot of jazz which is a lot of Steely Dan.
Thank you for the Senri Kawaguchi link. That young woman is wonderful! What a joy to watch!
FOAF,
I can’t argue with any on your list of favorites, or your opinion of Horace Silver. He’s probably not my favorite, it’s hard to pick favorites, but I really like his composition style.
Gordon Scott,
That’s what my mother gave me for coughs, from as young as I can remember. When my wife and I had our first child my wife was stunned I suggested it when our own infant son had an illness with a cough. I just assumed that’s how everyone did it!
Although, I think some of the over the counter stuff has “harder” ingredients than a little bourbon.
Barry Meislin,
That Glenn Greenwald thread is absolutely correct. Any honest journalist that doesn’t reflect and denounce what was done, or at least question how it could happen, cannot call themselves honest nor a journalist going forward.
My husband listens to jazz, always has and though my preference is classical, I listen too. Over the years (44) I’ve come to love some specific pieces by Pat Metheny, Joe Pass and a few more. Ohers have mentioned Oscar Peterson, I could listen to anything of his and his is my favorite Christmas CD. Neo mentioned Davis’s Sketches of Spain, my husband and I frequently listen to Jim Hall’s Concierto de Aranjuez as a last piece, with the lights off, before sleep. Relaxing.
https://youtu.be/iD6k2E61ABY
Does this mean you dislike jazz dancing, too? Because I can’t stand the form. All that waving about and rolling on floor!
“Anyway that’s what passes for humor in the world of jazz.”
What do you call a bass player without a girlfriend? Homeless.
How do you know it’s a singer ringing your doorbell? She doesn’t know when to come in.
How many sound guys does it take to change a light bulb? Two, TWO, twotwo.
Paul Desmond was apparently going to name his (never written) autobiography based on a question from a somewhat confused fan:
‘How many are there in the quartet?’
I laughed out loud at this one. Sketches of Spain is, perhaps, the only Miles Davis I do not like! I have tried several times to listen to it and it does not sit well with me. Try “In a Silent Way.” This probably is my favorite Miles disc, and it takes a few listens for it to sink in. There is much Miles to love, including “Kind of Blue,” his most accessible album, imho. Another favorite is Eric Dolphy’s master work, “Out to Lunch.” This is another one that takes some getting used to but it delivers every time. I recently acquired an old vinyl version of the recording.
I think Miles got it right – “It’s music and I like it.” You’ve got to listen to what you like.
I’ve recently gotten into a group called Snarky Puppy. It’s led by the bass player, so the sound is not quite what you would typically expect from jazz – more rythm-driven than Miles’ modal stuff. I like all of their music, but their older stuff with Corey Henry on keys is just fantastic.
Some of the most accessible yet melodically complex jazz I know comes from Miles Davis favorite, Bill Evans.
Always easy on the ear, and downright magical.
There are basically two types of music;
1. those you can hum to yourself (because you can actually remember the melody and thus find it pleasant ) , or
2. those you cannot even hum to yourself (because there is no discernible melody, is totally forgettable and/or dissonant).
Jazz is mostly the latter, though there are some tunes, classified as jazz, that have a nice melody. Frankly, I have no idea why some tunes are considered jazz, even though to my ears they sound totally not jazzy.
A since we are speaking of music, and NEO is a big fan of the B Jeez, it got me thinking about which pop/rock music is considered good or not.
The music of the Beatles were /are considered top notch. But today, you are more likely to hear music of the BeeGees or ABBA when “oldies” are played or at parties, etc.
Yet, in their day, the music of the two latter were considered, well, not very good.
Apparently, to the music critic, the popularity of a piece of music (say, as indicated by record sales) is irrelevant.
But critics have to show off their “intellectual” chops and stand away from the hoi polloi.
And for all you ABBA fans out there – mostly all hidden in the closet too embarrassed to admit you like their music – they have come out with
a new album !!!
Vince Guaraldi anybody?
Love Vince Guaraldi music!
I’m into jazz and swing from pre 1950. But not the modern stuff. But then I could say the same thing about modern architecture and modern classical music and modern art and modern politics…
John Tyler, I have always despised musical snobbery which is often the bane of the jazz world. I like jazz but I also enjoy country music which even some jazz non-fans have a problem with.
It reminds me of an anecdote about Thelonious Monk. Monk was the epitome of the urban jazz hipster, a black New Yorker with a goatee and porkpie hat playing idiosyncratic, difficult music not aimed at mass popularity. He was touring in Europe and being interviewed by a jazz writer there:
Writer: What kind of music do you and your band listen to when you’re not playing?
Monk: All kinds.
Writer: What do you mean, “all kinds”?
Monk: All kinds, I just told you.
Writer: B-b-but, surely you don’t listen to COUNTRY music?!?!
Monk: YOU don’t listen too well, do you?
Making the point that good musicians usually have a wide variety of tastes and look for inspiration from as many sources as possible. Ultimately music is communication and I have a strong belief that any artist who maintains popularity over a period of time, ie not just a “one-hit wonder”, is communicating to *somebody*. It may not be me or neo or any of her intelligent well-bred commenters (of which I am not one lol) but there is communication going on. The music business can be manipulative but I don’t know many examples of people being forced at gunpoint to buy a recording or attend a concert.
JT: “there are some tunes, classified as jazz, that have a nice melody”
Interestingly, “modern” jazz usually has two sources of material: 1) original jazz compositions that are usually not pop-oriented 2) the “American songbook”, show tunes and popular music from the pre-rock era that was the pinnacle of the Tin Pan Alley songwriting era – the Gershwins, Richard Rodgers (both with Hart and Hammerstein), Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen. These may be the source of the “nice melody”.
John Tyler,
I love ABBA, always have.
Rufus T. Firefly:
The good news is that I listened to “If I Were a Bell.”
The bad news is that I didn’t like it at all. I had my typical reaction, which was a combination of auditory boredom and confusion as to why a person would want to do that to a perfectly good song. I just don’t seem to have the receptors for it. Towards the end when they came within striking distance of the actual song – which you are correct that I know very well and like – it improved, but it still was to me no improvement at all on the original song (which is here, and what a great bell-like and horn-like voice and it’s already kind of jazzy, isn’t it?).
On the other hand, I did think of one sort of jazz-ish singer/player I have always really really liked, from the moment I first heard her (in high school): Nina Simone. Big fan here. I know she’s not solely jazz, either. But she always does interesting stuff, she sings really well and really expressively too, and with her I never lose the theme and the melody when she plays (or if I do, it’s for an equally interesting melody and theme). I particularly like her rendition of “Love Me Or Leave Me,” when for a while she gets into some classical-type stuff – a takeoff on Bach, I’m pretty sure, here from about 1:36 to 2:48. I don’t know why I perceive this piece as so very different from the piece you linked and so exponentially much more interesting and appealing, but to me it’s like night and day. I never lose the thread here:
FOAF:
Thanks for the Monk anecdote! I was wracking my brains for it last night, but couldn’t recall the musician. Monk was one of those guys coming in from the outside, but he got that right.
There’s a splendid documentary on Monk and you can see the whole thing here:
–“Thelonious Monk – Straight No Chaser”
https://vimeo.com/300342780
Speaking of jazz docos, here’s one on the inimitable, tragic trumpet player Chet Baker:
–“Let’s Get Lost : 1988 (CHET BAKER)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PGeOZqvISk
I also love his vocals, which to me summon the essence of West Coast Cool jazz and a foggy, chill Sunday afternoon in San Francisco with a fire going in the fireplace.
–“Chet Baker – My Funny Valentine”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvXywhJpOKs
I think I understand neo’s summation of jazz as “music dissolving into a wet puddle of glop.” Truth to tell, a random selection of jazz hits my ear about the same. However, there are jewels in the glop.
And count me in for ABBA, Vince Guaraldi and even George Winston’s Vince Guaraldi.
Abba is fun, but…sorta disco. Chet’s My Funny Valentine subtle and on replay a lot. Appreciate this topic and discussion. Rufus Wainwright recorded My Funny Valentine; but not in jazzy style.
neo,
That Nina Simone take on, “Love Me or Leave Me” is definitely jazz. Pure jazz. It happens to follow the same structure of the Davis quartet take on “If I Were a Bell” that I referenced, except only one soloist (Simone) instead of three.
So, you definitely get it. And like it if it’s an artist and take that you like. I’m sure you can appreciate the different directions Simone took the song, from the original composition, and she did it in a way you enjoy.
And no apologies necessary for not liking Davis’, “If I Were a Bell.” (Don’t tell the others here, but I find Davis’ “Bitches Brew” like nails on a chalkboard. And I’ve sincerely tried to like it.) Based on what you’ve written about Broadway and that particular musical I figured it was a good song to use as an explanation of what modern jazz so often does.
I find most all folk music like nails on a chalkboard. I’m trying now to think if there’s a single folk song I like. The whole thing, the “common man” costumes, the pretend Okie voices, the harmonica around the neck, the preppy harmonies… White suburban kids pretending they ride the rails or harvest bananas. Yuk! The whole genre turns my stomach. O.K., Goodman’s, “City of New Orleans” I like. I knew there must be one. And I believe that someone like Bob Dylan is great and wrote great songs. However there’s not a single one that interests me, or I would pay to hear him perform. It all leaves me flat, even annoys me. O.K., Dylan’s, “Clean Cut Kid” I like, but I believe that’s the only one.
So music, like all art, is personal. There are probably some people who don’t like Caravaggio or Rembrandt.
Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Hot Sevens recordings from the 1920s are tuneful, toe-tappin’ fun music. This is the foundational jazz music, and it seems to me that when bebop came along, it should have been considered a brand new and different genre. It seems to me that modern jazz is an intellectual, technical exercise, while the original jazz was made to reach the body and soul.
Rufus:
I could never get into “Bitches Brew” past a few minutes here and there. I tried. However, I did love Ralph Gleason’s liner notes! I wished I could hear “Brew” like Gleason heard it … or at least smoke whatever he was smoking:
____________________________
there is so much to say about this music. i don’t mean so much to explain about it because that’s stupid, the music speaks for itself, what i mean is that so much flashes through my mind when i hear the tapes of this album that if i could i would write a novel about it full of life and scenes and people and blood and sweat and love.
and sometimes i think maybe what we need is to tell people that this is here because somehow in this plasticized world they have the automatic reflex that if something is labeled one way then that is all there is in it and we are always finding out to our surprise that there is more to blake or more to ginsberg or more to trane or more to stravinsky than whatever it was we thought was there in the first place.
so be it with the music we have called jazz and which i never knew what it was because it was so many different things to so many different people each apparently contradicting the other and one day i flashed that it was music.
that’s all, and when it was great music it was great art and it didn’t have anything at all to do with labels and who says mozart is by definition better than sonny rollins and to whom…
https://milestones-a-miles-davis-archive.tumblr.com/post/127178536415/bitches-brew-liner-notes
Rufus T. Firefly,
You made me try a bunch of versions of ‘If I were a Bell’ on YouTube. Most were show-tune versions and I only cared for one of those and it wasn’t from ‘Guys and Dolls’. Of the jazz versions, the Davis version was my least favorite and I like jazz and listen to a lot of it.
Speaking of “Brew”, I did meet one serious jazz player, a tenor sax man, Brew Moore. My Wicked Stepfather got to know Brew in the San Francisco scene and brought him to our house regularly. Heroin was part of their relationship, but Brew was such a calm, kind man — everyone loved him.
He played in the Lester Young tradition. I heard one of his albums, “Svinget 14” all the time at home and prefer him to Young. Brew had such strong melodic lines and he could swing so sweet. He’s my idea of classic jazz. Here’s his version of a Swedish folk song:
–“Brew Moore – Allt Under Himmelens Faste”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqCWrvofHSU
I wrote about him at “The Jazz Duck” blog:
https://thejazzduck.wordpress.com/2018/03/07/artist-essay-brew-moore-the-shy-lestorian/#comment-2192
huxley,
I’ve read those same liner notes several times. He makes such a strong, articulate case I assume he must be right. But I still can’t stomach a single measure of the work
How can anyone not like the Brubeck Qtet’s “Take Five”?
Only jazz I ever cared for was a fraternity brother frequently playing Brubeck back in the Sixties.
Went to a club where a jazz duo was playing. Turns out they were high school music teachers doing a side gig. Good enterprise, I figured.
Couple if moments into the first number, there was a key change–I think it was–and one of our companions said, “He’s coming alive….”.
I think I was supposed to believe that when Something happened, the performers were transported to a higher plane and new and unique music was coming..
I like, for example, Jo Stafford singing songs of seventy or eighty years ago. But not swing or jazz.
Born in the wrong century, I guess.
Jo’s is a beloved voice to me (though, jazzy? . . . well ok, she sang with Ella), but she’s nowhere near as funny as Darlene.
Cicero:
I have always liked the opening and closing part of Take Five. The rest? Not much.
Rufus T. Firefly:
When you say Nina Simone’s “Love Me or Leave Me” (which is a big favorite of mine) has the same structure as the Davis “If I Were a Bell” (which leaves me very cold), what is it you’re referring to by structure, exactly? Obviously you don’t mean theme and then the variations and then return to the theme, do you? That’s true of just about everything, isn’t it? So I’m thinking you must mean something else, but I don’t know what. To me the Simone is endlessly tuneful and interesting, really something to listen to again and again and that makes you want to move, whereas the Davis is (to me anyway) formless and tuneless and boring.
Also, by “structure,” I’m assuming you don’t mean that Davis puts in a whole Bach-like part? If so, I certainly missed it.
I’m curious about this structure thing; I’m not just asking rhetorically to be a pain. But no need to write a ton on it, just a little bit to give me the basic idea.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Hmmm – with your dislike of folk music, it almost sounds like you dislike it for sociological reasons. In other words, because you think the people who sing it tend to be pretenders.
I think also that folk music is another of those ill-defined terms. There are traditional songs that have been around for hundreds of years (Barbara Allen, Greensleeves, etc.). Do you dislike those? Or is it the newly-composed folk-like folk music you don’t like, such as (for example) “Four Strong Winds”? Does it help if (as apparently with Ian, who wrote that song) they really did live a sort of similar life to what they are writing about prior to becoming singers and songwriters? Or Woody Guthrie, who really did have a hardscrabble early life in Oklahoma (very much so; I just looked it up)?
To me, folk songs are just songs I listen to (or listened to in the past), and I either like or hate them based entirely on that. My early music experiences were almost all auditory – the radio. Most of the time I hadn’t a clue what people looked like, including whether they were white or black. I often was in for a surprise when I finally saw the person.
Maybe you do hate the music, too, but I’m curious because I never heard of anyone hating the entire genre including the old traditional songs. Or perhaps you’re just with Tom Lehrer?
neo —
I’m with you (again) on “Take Five” — I listened to it again on Youtube just now, and the melody is brilliant, and even the jazzy development of it in the saxophone is okay, although I wish there had been a little more structure and maybe a counter-melody in the piano.
But after about the 16th bar of the drum solo I opened my eyes to see how much of the track was left.
sdferr. I didn’t mean Stafford’s voice was jazzy. I was trying to make the case that I wasn’t opposed to the era altogether. But jazz and swing and suchlike leave me cold.
Stafford did folk songs and “I’ll Be Seeing You” which is pretty heavy, given the circumstances….
There are a lot of love songs and most are not particularly gripping. But Stafford could make the good ones hit hard, almost before you know it.
Rufus T, the “folk music” you’re describing is more accurately called pop-folk. Kingston Trio, Chad Mitchell Trio, Limeliters, New Christy Minstrels…I agree there’s a lot to dislike there. I loved some of it as a teenager but now most of it makes me cringe. But the genuine article is a different story. Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd singing Child ballads. The original old blues guys. Hillbilly music like Roscoe Holcomb. Much of it is too raw for most people. But like that stuff or not, there is nothing phony about it.
As Neo says, by the way, there was nothing phony about Ian and Sylvia. Or not much, anyway. Of all the ’60s folkie groups, their work has held up best. They did sometimes ham it up a bit when they sang music that wasn’t really native to them, like black spirituals.
Another out-and-proud Abba fan here.
Neo, I think your point about jazz dissolving the tune and so forth is perfectly valid, and I react that way to some jazz. Sometimes I feel like they’re just playing lots of notes to no real purpose. But at its best those “dissolving” stretches become powerful on their own. I have absolutely no way of describing technically what goes on and don’t understand the explanations when I hear them. But it speaks to me anyway. The Coltrane “My Favorite Things” is a good example. Some of us just find it enchanting. I remember a spring afternoon in college when I was playing it loud in my apartment with the windows open, and an acquaintance who was passing by stopped to listen, and came in to find out what it was. I like to think I made a convert that day.
Here’s something I wrote about Ian and Sylvia back in ’08. I see all the YouTube videos in the post are no longer there, or at least not at those links.
https://www.lightondarkwater.com/2008/07/music-of-the-week-a-tribute-to-ian-and-sylvia.html
@ huxley > “Another jazz friend said that after the economics of big band jazz became untenable, jazz drifted away from danceable music to virtuoso and avant-garde competition. Jazz audiences became smaller and the music became less accessible.
One can make a similar argument about progressive rock.”
@ Rufus > “For folks stating jazz took some huge turn after WWII…It did. Kind-of. There was a new switch of emphasis to musicians pleasing musicians (including themselves) rather than pleasing the audience.”
One can make similar arguments about : painting, literature, poetry, dance, movies, symphonic music, architecture, comic books, ….
The audience, the voters, are just so declassee, so bourgeois, so lacking in our refined taste for what is best. We shall carry on without them and remake the world of our art, the world of our dreams, the world, in the image we enlightened ones see as perfect. Now all we need is some patrons to support our effort. Or, if we can wield the power, we’ll just seize what we need from the tasteless serfs.
A lot took this turn after WWII.
Mac:
I still like The Kingston Trio and wouldn’t lump them with the others. I especially like their comic songs – of which they did quite a few. Of course, they probably have nostalgia value for me, too. One song that comes to mind, for example, is “To Morrow,” which I LOVED as a kid. It’s like Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on first?” routine:
Yeah, they were slick and pop, but they were pros, they played a lot of instruments, and they were a trio (I seem to like trios; I also liked Peter Paul and Mary, who had gorgeous harmonies).
Rufus T. Firefly said: “Thank you for the Senri Kawaguchi link. That young woman is wonderful! What a joy to watch!”
You are welcome, she’s remarkable!
Here are some links to some other jazz artists that you might enjoy:
Vibraphonist Gary Burton (who retired from concertizing not too long ago):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU9tqY6mdrQ
Jazz Vocalist Raul Midon. From an album that received a Grammy nomination:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMQTnLNNLeI
Barbara Dennerlein on the Hammond B3 organ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYP7Mxss3_U
I loved the Kingston Trio. Even my grandfather loved them. I still love the Trio and listen to them with some regularity.
Some years back I read biographies of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. I smiled when they both admitted that they secretly loved the Kingston Trio, even though the serious folk people then despised the Kingston Trio about as much as Rufus does folk music in general and for the same reasons.
@ OldTexan > “I liked the early easy listening, meandering, slow flow, sounds of our type of jazz, not really very good but fun and easy, balancing bass, sax, guitar and a bit of brass. In the early 60’s it was mellow, smooth and kind of nice.
Later on I would try to listen to Jazz that was too discordant and out of sync with what I thought music should be and I was done with what folk then called Jazz.”
Indeed. I did like the Washington, Elliot, and Davis clips, however, and could enjoy Martino’s work at not-too-frequent intervals (back at the Wednesday Open Thread).
I did not care for “an arrangement by Evans and Davis of the adagio movement of Concierto de Aranjuez, a concerto for guitar by the contemporary Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo” but that is mostly because I am already a fan of the original concert arrangement.
There are people who don’t like the Bee Gees.
Darlene loved the Bee-Gees: https://youtu.be/3DV0sgDBsb0
Thank you for all the links and recommendations. What a very happy Sunday yesterday was.
Well. This has turned into quite the thread.
Neo: jazz–even melodic jazz based on the Great American Songbook–may not be to your taste. That’s fine–nothing to apologize for. For some of us, classic jazz is right up there with (to quote James Jones) the hickory axe handle, the clipper ship, and the Springfield Model 1903 rifle: a quintessentially American creation.
If you have a few minutes, you might try some of the shorter stuff from the 1930s-1950s. Some samples:
Count Basie and Lester Young, “Lady Be Good” (1936): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PoMKdWhdSk
Benny Goodman Sextet, “Wang Wang Blues” (1942): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neRG55i453I
Coleman Hawkins, “It’s Only a Paper Moon” (1949): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjpbaSO90wM
Count Basie and dance band (“Sixteen Men Swinging”, 1953-1954), “Soft Drink”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHxgADLdJDQ; and “Perdido”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at8ybMkCBXU&list=PLyHn3f7-9IULud65OyHehZW_SnJRaXjbY&index=20
Ben Webster (1957), “Makin’ Whoopee”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U65K6I-5sew&list=PLb5oAvw7DV7UjqKqcA3Fmft12RFXO0S_5&index=6; and “Where Are You?”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cRFVpItEPY&list=PLb5oAvw7DV7UjqKqcA3Fmft12RFXO0S_5&index=5
Most of the above tracks are under four minutes. If you have fifteen minutes, here’s the live recording of Duke Ellington’s “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956, with a famous solo by tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves (from Brockton, Massachusetts):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYgow060zOg
Gonsalves’ solo starts about four minutes in.
Since “If I Were A Bell” has gotten a lot of mentions, here are Doris Day’s and Jo Stafford’s recordings of that number:
Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgFVGca50z4
Stafford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZItJwqbYOM
Maybe not jazz-jazz, but certainly jazz-adjacent.
Rufus and AesopFan: English poet (and jazz critic) Philip Larkin made exactly the same point about modern artists pleasing themselves instead of their audiences in his essay collection “Required Writing”: https://www.press.umich.edu/8250/required_writing.
Though jazz now has a small audience, there are some truly amazing younger players out there.
Someone in this thread mentioned LA’s “Snarky Puppy”, which is one great example.
Another amazingly talented combo is “Ghost Notes”, the band that appears with selected drummers on the Zildjian cymbal company web site.
Here’s links to a couple outstanding performances.
This one features New Orleans drummer extraordinaire Stanton Moore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqSREduT-Tw
This one features British session ace Ash Soan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mty_pMNmFo
This one features Tim Cox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRf3Zw_J5gU
The kids are alright.
huxley
I recall, decades ago, liner notes on a Dylan album saying the folk scene keeps on growing. That was coffee house folk, iirc. About as authentic as….the New Christy Minstrels, about whom I say nothing negative.
Music is music. Whether the performers are wearing coats and ties–see New Christy Minstrels–or long johns and overalls is irrelevant. “Follow The Drinking Gourd” means the same thing in any case.
I didn’t care for the authenticity issue. Either the song pleased me or it didn’t. I didn’t like the preachy stuff although during the civil rights era some of it was relevant. I did like Lehrer’s take on the whole thing.
I recall a singer I’d never heard of–did folk–saying he never felt real until he was five hundred miles out of town. Even in the Southwest, that would put you in another town. Lots of that sort of thing.
In any event, about the only performer I didn’t like was Baez due to her politics. Did see her in person once. Heck of voice and, afaict, no mike but blew a male quartet off the stage.
But, hey, I like it or I don’t like it and if it came from some kind of AI with a rhyming dictionary…made no difference.
Regarding folk music, neo nailed 95% of my dislike, and I do love that Tom Lehrer song!
However, I do like a lot of true, folk music. There’s an immigrant and local DJ here who does a Sunday show with folk music from a region that roughly seems to border Slovakia to the north, Slovenia to the west, Macedonia to the south and Bulgaria to the east and I enjoy listening to his show. I also appreciate some of the recordings the government funded with folk musicians in the ’30s and ’40s. I also like some folk music (world music) I hear out of parts of Africa and Asia. A lot of blues and bluegrass is basically folk music and I like a lot of both.
And I understand there was a lot of “true” folk music that come out of the ’60s, but it most of it sounds melodramatic and contrived to me. Too “on the nose.” Although I can’t fully know what it was like, I can appreciate how confusing and maddening it must have been to have many of your High School classmates dying in a foreign war that didn’t seem to have a purpose, or involve U.S. interests. That’s really serious stuff! But, “Where have all the flowers gone?!” It’s about as profound as Yoko and John chanting, “War is over,” over and over.
Bruce Springsteen was all the rage when I was young. He bugged me too. A millionaire entertainer who dresses like the “common man,” and all those long, monotonous songs about angst ridden teens on motorcycles. Try getting a job and getting married and raising a couple of kids. See if that doesn’t cure some of that angst. If it doesn’t cure it, at least you’ll be too tired when your head hits the pillow to care.
Bruce Springsteen’s image is just as phony and curated as Justin Bieber’s, but Justin Bieber doesn’t pretend his isn’t.
It’s getting close to Thanksgiving. I guess I’m sliding into Holden Caulfield mode. Phonies everywhere!
I can’t say it any better than Mike Royko did:
https://flopajake.tumblr.com/post/122261091634/mike-royko-on-bob-dylan
Mike Royko, one of the greats! His book, “Boss” is a great, bold piece of journalism! Except for supporting the Cubs over the White Sox he was brilliant.
For the uninitiated, should there be any lurking, Tom Lehrer is a National Treasure whose work should be passed down through the ages. It is a blessing that he predates the Woke Mob Cancel Culture. Enjoy him before they find out.
The Folk Song Army, with topical illustrations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yygMhtNQJ9M
The lyrics, should you desire to commit them to memory, as is only proper respect.
https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/the-folk-song-army.pdf
For the multi-talented, the sheet music. Also available in the book “Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer”
https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-folk-song-army-music.pdf
A complete live recording, in order to savor the full magnificence of his oeuvre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHPmRJIoc2k
For details, you may consult Wikipedia, of course.
Mathematics and musicians are a formidable combination.
“In the early 1970s, Lehrer largely retired from public performances to devote his time to teaching mathematics and musical theater history at the University of California, Santa Cruz.”
Wish I could have been there!
Rufus T. Firefly:
Ah, now we’re getting somewhere with this “I hate folk music” thing. Sounds like you mean mostly protest songs, which I personally never thought of as “folk music.” But you are right that a lot of people do characterize them that way.
For me, folk music is traditional old stuff that’s been passed down for centuries (or at least a century) and often was written by “anon.” The rest is music composed by singer-songwriters, some of whom are very good and some not, and some of which is protest (political) music and some not, which sounds folkish. Those songs often follow the structural verse/chorus pattern of folk music, but so does a lot of music.
“Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” is a particularly repetitive song that sounds like a child’s nursery song and I think is meant to sound that way. Not my cup of tea. But it had nothing to do with Vietnam. It was written by Pete Seeger (radical leftist and environmentalist) in 1955 (see this), and popularized by the Kingston Trio in 1961-2 (who according to Wiki initially thought it was a true “folk” song rather than a recently-composed one). Way before the Vietnam War was a thing for young people in the US. Peter Paul and Mary did a popular version too, in 1962 also. There were other biggish versions in the early 60s (1964, for example) but those 1962 ones were the mega-ones and the time of its greatest US popularity as far as I can remember.
Whatever you or I may think of the song, it became popular all around the world and was translated into an enormous number of languages. See that Wiki link for a list. The song tapped into a universal wish for peace, and it wasn’t all that long after WWII.
Neo, I haven’t heard the Kingston Trio for many years, but in memory the songs that seem still appealing are the ones that aren’t folk songs by any stretch. “Scotch and Soda” comes to mind.
Peter, Paul, and Mary were extremely talented. I’m pretty sure I would still like at least some of their stuff. But so much of that general kind of music is spoiled for me by a sort of gilding-the-lily, show-biz sort of effect, laying on the emotion when, to my taste, the song would be more powerful if presented more starkly. E.g. Frank Profitt’s “Tom Dooley”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToATLplBlvw
I mean, that last verse, about the banjo, just kills me.
I forgot to answer the question about “Greensleeves.” This doesn’t even make sense to me, but I quite enjoy playing it on piano but really have no desire to see it performed, and I’m pretty sure I’d turn the radio dial if it came on.
I also really like playing, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” which has a similar, Olde English vibe, but, oddly, with that one I also really like hearing it performed. A few folks here mentioned Oscar Peterson’s Christmas album and I gave it a listen last night and very much enjoyed his version of that song.
I just realized I also enjoy playing (weird word to use with this song, but I play it very often between Thanksgiving and New Year’s), “What Child is This,” and I enjoy hearing it performed and (I think) it’s basically, “Greensleeves?”
Wait, I just realized, “Scarborough Faire” is the one I like to play but do not like to hear performed, and I do like “Greensleeves” and “What Child is This,” which are the same, Renassaincey melody (contemporaneous with “Scarborough Faire?) set to different lyrics. I confused “Scarborough Faire” with “Greensleeves.”
I also really enjoy listening to Gregorian Chants and other, rather ancient melodies (maybe that’s folk too?).
When I think of Scarborough Faire (other than when I’m noodling at a piano and simply appreciating the chord and melody structure) I get an image of hippies with goatees wearing panchos with fringe singing earnestly while strumming an acoustic guitar and it makes me want to dive for the radio dial. Maudlin. I can’t stand maudlin.
I don’t like hippies and I don’t like maudlin music. “Scarborough Faire,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They are a Changin,'” “Imagine,” “Give Peace a Chance…” the very intersection of the Venn diagram of hippies and maudlin music*.
*But I do like just about everything Joni Mitchell has done, even “Big Yellow Taxi.” But, now that I think about it, along with often using brilliant, complex chord structures that Bob Dylan** would never think of, her songs are never maudlin, even when they’re serious and “protesty.” “Big Yellow Taxi” is upbeat, almost fun. And, even with a very personal, introspective, sad song like, “Help Me” is somehow uplifting, musically. And, lyrically, she is falling for someone who she knows is a bit of a cad, but rather than blaming him she accepts mutual responsibility and admits she’s part of the problem. Nothing maudlin about it.
**And I don’t like to pick on Bob Dylan too much. I really do not like the vast majority of his music, but that’s just personal taste. He was, however, a young man who got caught up in something much, much bigger than himself and handled money and immense fame better than I likely could have. What I’ve heard and read of his own sense of self and philosophy he seems like a mensch.
And thanks for the education on “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” I also thought “M*A*S*H” was about Vietnam until I was about 20.
I’m not surprised to learn it had mass appeal in other languages and cultures. It seems similar to Lennon’s, “Imagine,” another song I loathe. But, to both songs’ credit, their melodies are incredibly earwormy and when I hear either I have trouble getting them out of my head. And, also to their credit; war, is in fact, bad.
Goodness, Rufus T, the Dylan of “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Times They Are a-Changing” disappeared more than 50 years ago. Whatever one thinks of his post-1965 work, “maudlin” is not remotely the right word for the vast bulk of it. A hard-edged realism bordering on cynicism is more typical. A recent lyric:
Three miles north of purgatory
One step from the great beyond
I prayed to the cross, I kissed the girls
And I crossed the Rubicon
You won’t find any happiness here
No happiness or joy
Go back to the gutter, try your luck
Find you some nice pretty boy
Tell me how many men I need
And who can I count upon
I strapped my belt, I buttoned my coat
And I crossed the Rubicon
Not saying you should like it, but it sure ain’t sentimental.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3stG270JaM
AesopFan,
I really appreciate Lehrer, but I listen to Allan Sherman more often. They are both very clever lyricists. I imagine I get more of a kick out of Sherman’s parodying other, famous songs (Lehrer tended to write his own stuff). I don’t know why, but just thinking of, “I see bones” to the tune of, “C’est, C’est Bon” cracks me up, even sitting here typing the words. I guess it’s an obvious pun, but the scene he sets with the Dr. looking at x-rays… It kills me!
And, “You Went the Wrong Way, Old King Louie!” Kills me! “He was the worst… Since Louie the first!” “Pet with Maria Antoinette… kablooie… shorten you a little bit…phooiee, chop suey…” Kills me.
“Al ‘n Yetta,” “Harvey and Sheila,” “Chopped Liver…” He was also great as the voice for Dr. Seuss’ “Cat in the Hat.” Such a sad, tragic life. One of those guys who was so good at making others happy but didn’t seem to know what he needed, or be able to find it.
And the third great in that trilogy, Al Yanovic. Like Lehrer, I don’t seem to seek Al’s stuff out or listen to it often, but my goodness is that guy brilliant! And incredibly successful! To have a music career as long as he has at the level he has is very rare. He seems very smart. He also must be incredibly grounded. He’s parodied so many genres. Not just brilliant at parodies and music production, also brilliant with video and visuals.
If any of you haven’t thought of “Weird” Al as a serious entertainer, take a look at his parody of Jim Morrison and the Doors. It’s a funny send up of Craig’s List. But it’s also a spot on Morrison impersonation and a spot on imitation of the Doors’ musical style*. And the video is a spot on parody of that late 60’s, psychedelia, shaman vibe. Incredibly brilliant!
https://youtu.be/y4sALru9IJk
*Ray Manzarek played keyboard for the song.
Rufus T. Firefly:
I submit that Mitchell’s “Marcie” is maudlin, but it’s great.
Paul Simon never gave off a hippie vibe to me, even when performing “Scarborough Fair.”
“Greensleeves” is indeed “What Child is This.”
And I’m not a big Dylan fan at all, but I do really like some of his stuff. I really really really like “Don’t Think Twice” and used to long ago be able to do a finger-pick thing of it on the guitar. Brilliant words. I also like “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Stuck Inside of Mobile” as well as “I Want You.” “Lay Lady Lay.” Probably quite a few others, too.
Mac,
As I wrote, I don’t mean to pick on Dylan too much. I’ve even listened to his show on Sirius/XM a few times and, as I wrote, he seems like a mensch. Saner and more grounded than I would be had I had to exist with his level of fame. My biggest problem with Dylan is likely my age. My four years of High School precisely overlapped with Jimmy Carter’s term as President and it seemed like my generation was going to have to pay the tab for all the indolence and disruption of the ’60s. Even those of us headed off to College didn’t seem assured jobs. Gas prices were through the roof, but that didn’t matter because there wasn’t any available. We had reached “peak oil” and our President (a man I admired at the time) was telling us we had better get used to it. I lived in a blue collar, Joe Lunchpail neighborhood and the vast majority of my classmates were hoping for blue collar jobs, but all the manufacturing was going to Germany and Japan.
Malaise was in the air. And when I looked at what those born after WWII (aka, the Baby Boomers) had been handed by those who struggled through the Great Depression and WWII it seemed like they had squandered the opportunity given to them. They partied and whined and protested and sat in and trashed poor Mr. Yazger’s farm, tuned in, turned on and dropped out… The answer, they said, was blowin’ in the wind. And here was my generation, left with paying the bar bill.
I know that’s not exactly accurate, but heck, I was 13 years old!
“The Remains of Tom Lehrer” a boxed set containing 3 CDs with all the music he recorded plus a book with photographs and transcripts of conversations and interviews with him.
Amazon $130 (remastered). Cheaper on eBay.
neo,
I don’t recall ever hearing Mitchell’s, “Marcie.” I just gave it a listen. I agree it’s very good. And, it is maudlin*. I would not get up to move the needle back in the album days, if I owned that Mitchell album and “Marcie” came on. It’s sad, but not pathetic. And, if there are angels, and they sing, Mitchell’s voice has to be what they sound like. Hopefully they don’t sound like Bob Dylan. 😉
*”Mr. Tambourine Man,” by the way, is so maudlin I want to slit my wrists whenever it comes on. I can’t listen to it all the way through. This is compounded by my having seen, when I was young, a very talented comedic performer do a serious, pantomime performance to the song, as a washed up, down and out man dancing for alms from imaginary passersby. That guy was a great performer, working in an out of the way little theater, likely for a pittance. Whenever I hear the song I can’t help thinking of him, and imagining what the rest of his life has been like, and thinking about other talented performers who never “make it.” The Beatles, “Blackbird,” and “Eleanor Rigby” are like that for me also. I can appreciate that they are very ingenuous melodies and chord structures with intelligent, poignant lyrics. They are so good that I can’t tolerate them.
Maudlin can be great. It’s just that I, personally, almost always turn to music to be uplifted, entertained, cheered or inspired with wonder. But I understand some folks seek other emotions from music, including sadness and despair, and they are no less appreciative of music than I am. One could argue they appreciate a fullness in music beyond my limiting tastes.
Couldn’t stand Dylan.
Maudlin has its place. I don’t like maudlin as the selling point for the song. But some circumstances are sad and recounting them with an appropriate amount of emotion is okay.
I remember Danny Thomas, apparently channeling his vaudeville career, doing “Mi Rosa”. Some other language, maybe Italian, while peering into a cradle where his infant daughter was dying. Very affecting. But a little goes pretty far.
Went to my high school’s sixtieth reunion Friday. As a matter of inevitability, we all had maudlin behind us. But that’s where it stayed, even when somebody mentioned a loss. Nobody wanted to get “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” on their device.
But folk like C&W applies to a lot of life beyond love and partying and that allows for a certain amount of sad, even if it’s not slathered on with a putty knife.
Rufus T. Firefly:
I guess I’m not sure what you mean by “maudlin” if you think “Tambourine Man” is maudlin. It basically says – hey, I’m not going to worry about anything bad that’s happened to me, I’m just going to follow this tambourine man and forget about today until tomorrow. It’s not asking for any sort of pity nor does it wallow in self-pity, as far as I can see. It’s a celebration of and an invitation to Nepenthe. And the tune is quite upbeat.
Maybe that spoof of it colored your interpretation of the song? The lyrics don’t ask for alms at all. They ask for nothing except to forget (perhaps through drugs, although that’s just one interpretation for “smoke rings of my mind”).
The song came out in 1965, by the way, pretty early in the hippie scene (actually, before it had spread very far). I agree that the 70s were very difficult. So were the 60s but in a very different way. I was pretty young for both decades (came to adulthood at the tail end of the 60s) and remember them pretty vividly.
AesopFan:
I believe I know by heart every song Lehrer ever wrote, including the introductory patter on some of the records. I was raised on his work, which is a bit strange if you think about it, but he was a close friend of a close family friend and so we had all his records very early on. They amused me greatly even when I was very small and didn’t quite get all the references.
Dylan, like also David Bowie, remade himself musically every album or two. I never really got into his earlier “folk” things though I own them all on vinyl and CD. “Bringing It All Back Home” was the first I liked and played a lot. I dropped away from him after “Blood on the Tracks,” which I love, but my life changed in the late 70s and music became less of my life until recently being housebound by COVID afforded me the time to use Youtube and my stereo again. As always with anything art or emotion related YMMV.
Mr.Tambourine Man isn’t maudlin? Then you must not have heard the inimitable William Shatner’s interpretation: https://youtu.be/_0hTtsqiFCc
Seriously, if you’ve never heard it you owe it to yourselves to listen to it. My kids and I often imitate Bill calling out for the eponymous minstrel to crack each other up.
A couple-three tunes for Ruffio and Hube – or anyone else – to analyze and place in the proper categories.
Neo should like the first.
1. Parker, and Laura. (I understand this got criticism … perhaps to some extent from the same impulse directed at Ray Charles when he got a chorus of presumable white-folks backing him on country flavored tunes.
Parker’s, April in Paris from the same album is equally famous, but, I think “too sweet” as someone termed it, for most of us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhNQCT6myRw
2, I won’t name this guy. He married the actress with the crazy eyes.
It’s big band, but from the “other” coast apparently. Has a ’40s Hollywood soundtrack near-jazz kind of vibe to me.
I did not know until the last decade or so that there were East Coast and West Coast bands, back then. What your parents or grandparents listened to when they were teens and 20-somethings may have in part, at least depended on where they lived. Or so I have read. I actually prefer his April in Paris – minus the string interludes – to Parker’s. That is crazy too; but there it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK2u83VAmUE
Speaking of soundtracks and of David Raksin product.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QShabLiL1lA
Always wondered if Neo could identify the street scenes …
For Rufus, et all. Re.: Conventional Big Band Swing with an added element.
Here is a clip I stumbled across from some old movie. It’s of a song everyone who knows music has heard a hundred times, in a hundred different renditions; just in the same way “Sweet Lorraine” has generated so many (the early Sinatra being the best, in that case).
Barnett must have recorded this 30 times himself from the look of the search engine results.
This is the only version I have ever heard that has any real snap and life. And, about 3 minutes in there is a call and response between Barnett and some porky little juking trumpeter who’s really into it, and whose performance must have been the inspiration for a dozen cartoon moment homages of that era. When I saw the guy bobbing and weaving as he blasted away, I said, “I know I saw that bit in an old cartoon played on Saturday morning TV.”
BUT BE FOREWARNED; it is a link to some Russian site and you cannot get it – or could not – on YouTube. Probably illegal to view … or something. But if you are feeling adventurous, and can put up with a few seconds of some video game being advertised as the price of admission, stoke up your firewall and take a look.
https://my.mail.ru/mail/emypas/video/48151/49441.html
An audiophile Classic:
Jazz at the Pawnshop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OL_x_nYamY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_at_the_Pawnshop
The saxophonist from Jazz at the Pawnshop is in this:
Arne Domnérus With Gustaf Sjökvist ?– Antiphone Blues (1975 – Album)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIZ2tPkRu5k
And to cap off the winning trifecta, a bit of History.
Al Jolson not being the Jazz Singer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tuu5YtkPIo
Ultra maudlin. Fairport Convention. That rhetorical question haunts me. Who knows where the time goes? Hard to think of a more evocative vocalist than Sandy Denny. (Well there’s a lot actually). Maudlin can be defined as mawkish; overly sentimental. Sandy Denny, maybe more accurately is: poignant
https://youtu.be/OkOB57UcYk8
DNW,
Like Charlie Parker and Artie Shaw.
Regarding Barnet and “Cherokee,” I would hope that song is not being cancelled due to its name. I had no trouble finding this version, https://youtu.be/0N04jFURR78 one of my favorite vocal performances of the song from a contemporary singer. It’s a wonderful song.
I wikipedia’ed Charlie Barnet and got a kick out of these tidbits:
First, his theme song was, “Redskin Rhumba!” If that doesn’t get him erased from jazz history, nothing will! I gave it a listen. Different melody, but he uses that same “waah-waah” brass accompaniment that’s in his version of, “Cherokee.”
Second:
Married more than 11 times and still managed to have one that lasted 33 years! Oh, and it turns out he was “one of few heirs to a very wealthy family” and when he reaped his just desserts he basically hung up his saxophone and retired to a life of comfort and ease.