JAZZ
Take the "A" Train to Harlem
VIDEOS
SONGS
"Stormy Weather": Classic Versions
CONTENTS
Selection Of The Best Jazz Albums
Dr John And Post Jazz New Orleans
George Gershwin: A Selection Of Recordings
Guitar:The Story Of Jazz Guitar
"Stormy Weather": Classic Versions
Piano: The Story Of Jazz Piano--New York's Keith Ingham Interviewed
Piano: The History Of Jazz Piano by Simon J Harper
Saxophone: The Story Of Jazz Saxophone
Trumpet: The Story Of Jazz Trumpet
DR JOHN AND POST-JAZZ NEW ORLEANS
Jazz really left New Orleans in the early 1920s, when Louis Armstrong and others took the riverboat, or the tracks, north to Chicago (and then to New York).
But the swamp was still there. And, freed of the post march band generation (jazz), the swamp took over: on "Gumbo" (1972), Dr John sounds like he's eating gumbo when he's singing, taking his head out of the trough for another verse. Or were the vocalists in this style simply trying to recreate the slurry jazz sounds of cornets and trombones?
In any event, the more rock and funk oriented music from New Orleans has influenced a wide range of musicians. Listen to Dr John's brilliant sounds on "Gumbo" and you will hear John Lennon circa 1974 ("Walls And Bridges"), some of Ringo Starr's '70s singles, a hint of Randy Newman, perhaps a dose of southern rock ("Let The Good Times Roll", etc), and a model for Croce's iconic "Leroy Brown" (1973, and covered by Sinatra)--in short, a model for much of '70s mainstream music. It was a model that white artists could easily slip into. Eric Clapton's slower jazz-like blues sound is also to be heard on "Gumbo".
Dr John himself was at this time a kind of white Ray Charles too: he covered Charles' first hit "(The) Mess Around" on the album, and far more expressively (well, it was a later, freer time with better recording studios). And there are other tracks that are Charles-like too. Charles was a huge model for the early Beatles, so maybe Dr John was updating this influence, reminding people of the great Ray sound.
The big point about "Gumbo" is that it is authentic. It moves. You can see the bayou, the spirits of jazz and Buddy Bolden, of Creoles, of history.
Here Dr John talks about the rhythms and plays "Iko Iko", the opening track from "Gumbo":
The rhythm of New Orleans is a major point: Abba wrote "Dancing Queen" as a modelling on George MacCrae's classic "Rock Me Baby", but the Abba backing musicians, the rhyhm section, were totally into "Gumbo". They wanted to recreate that sound.
Rhythm, complex and intoxicating rhythm, also came to the fore with Art Neville and The Meters, the organ and guitar fronted band that influences such modern artists as Vijay Iyer. As soon as he saw The Meters, Mick Jagger booked them for a European tour with the Rolling Stones.
Dr John plays "The Mess Around":
It is as if Dr John, The Meters and others listened to the Stax soul of the '60s and said, "OK, that's not bad, but this is really how you do it. Afterall, we are the real beginning of American music". Keith Richards has said how you can spot a New Orleans record in an instant. The freedom of the southern coast must have something to do with it, as well as the French/Afro racial mix. There is also what Jelly Roll Morton called "the Spanish tinge" from the near Latin countries, such an important flavor in New Orleans music.
Jelly Roll didn't invent jazz, but New Orleans probably did.
The important early post-jazz piano/vocal performer was Professor Longhair (born in 1918) who introduced the growly vocals and rhumba influenced piano blues sound. His first album was "New Orleans Piano" (1953).
New Orleans also contributed the major black piano hero of the rock and roll era, Fats Domino. Domino was a massive influence on the Beatles.
Both Domino and Huey "Piano" Smith (born 1934) were influenced by Professor Longhair. Smith had the hit "Rockin' Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu" in 1957. He mixed boogie woogie piano of Pete Johnson, Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons, Jelly Roll Morton AND Fats Domino!
Later, there was Alan Toussaint (born 1938). Toussaint wrote a number of era- defining tunes such as "Working in The Coalmine", "Southern Nights" and even "Fortune Teller" (an early cover hit of The Rolling Stones"). In the '70s he began working with Dr John and The Meters. To underscore the power of New Orleans, he also produced the Patti Labelle hit (and her album containing it) "Lady Marmalade". (Maybe this was a step too far for real music!). He is now sampled by hip hoppers.
It is no accident that Toussaint's first album was called "The Wild Sound Of New Orleans" (1958). His hit years have been, however, the 1970s on...
Dr John's sound must be the wildest. He was born in 1940, so is John Lennon's age, but the local Crescent City tradition meant he was coming from back in the day.
Here is another track from "Gumbo", a live version ("unplugged" with guitarists from the Eagles) of "Let The Good Times Roll":
"Gumbo" is maybe the ultimate record. It sounds live, definitive. An essential soundtrack. "All others are just imitators"... He really has the honky tonk bar-room piano going on the slow rambling, real-life-filled "Tipitina".
The Rolling Stones, , ... imitators!
In 1973 John recorded his next album, "In The Right Place". Toussaint produced and The Meters provided the backing. The funky backing made the record a funk classic rather than a pure New Orleans groove like "Gumbo". It was his biggest seller, containing his enormous hit "Such A Night".
Dr John plays "Such A Night" solo, live:
Dr John tells the story of his career in this soundcheck interview:
He describes the way to be a musician, and a writer:
"We were told, you gotta respect all the music... That's just how it is, you gotta listen to everything, you know."
Many great versions of this great song--here are some female versions.
The song was written in 1933 and was first sung by Ethel Waters at the Cotton Club. Singers up to
Chaka Khan are represented here.
Arlen with Gershwin, 1934
But first there is a fresh modern version by Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass from 1975.
Ethel Waters
Check out that 78 sound
Lena Horne
This is from 1943. Keith Richards named his famous 1960s Bentley after her, the "Blue Lena".
Billie Holliday
A "bootleg" sound.
Judy Garland
On her TV show.
Dinah Washington
More rock than swing, but...
Shirley Bassey
A '50's version. This is cool.
Gladys Knight
Removing the pips from her mouth, she sings from her album "Before Me", a tribute to
earlier singers.
Chaka Kahn
Hitting it live, the soul/disco queen.
Viola
And yes, a disco version, for real.
There are several well known tunes that are actually blues, or part blues. One such tune is the Glenn Miller hit "String Of Pearls": it may go through four keys, but it's still a blues.
W C Handy's St Louis Blues, 1914
"String Of Pearls"
The tune begins in C major. After the theme plays for the first time, the tune repeats it in F, a standard blues change, and then C is returned to by the dominant G. Three chords, including a "I IV", and finally the V. Blues is, of course, all I IV and V.
For non-musicians, this means it has three chords, no doubt the three chords that a teenage Jimmy Buffett was so keen to learn at school, the three that gets the chicks.
Then, "String Of Pearls" changes key altogether to Ab major, by way of the big hike to Eb from the initial key of C major. The same relative thing happens as before, and Db and Eb chords are visited in their turn.
Another upwards jump from Ab to B brings you to the new key of E major. Same thing happens again--there may be different riffs on top here and there, or a solo, but the chords are the same.
Finally, the tune returns to its starting key of C major, and the same thing chord sequences happen again.
So it is "bluez infuzed", despite appearing very complex.
"In The Mood"
Glen Miller's biggest hit was of course a blues: the right order of I IV and V is there, though there is the inventive decoration and orchestration on top. As with "String Of Pearls", the enormous popularity of the tune may reflect the fact that people jes' love those "three chords".
"Koko"
Another such effort is Duke Ellington's classic 1940 record "Koko". "Koko" is so complex and unusually textured that the idea that it is actually a blues may not occur to even Ellington fans. Elllngton found as much inspiration in the blues as anyone else. Note bassist Jimmy Blanton near the end.
It is worth quoting thisYoutube comment:
"This is one of the most fantastic pieces of music ever written (and here) played... such an attack that it disturb some people. I know: I've seen them look when I blast I on my car (stereo)."
Best compilation for Ellington?
"Alexander's Ragtime Band"
Written by Irving Berlin in 1911, the tune jumps from the I to the IV to repeat the same melody, as does a blues. He starts "cake-walkin'' a little before finishing the self-contained verse, but the overall structure is still the I IV V of the blues. Berlin occasionally used the standard I IV "jump" for building melodies in other tunes--his playing was technically very limited, as he could apparently only play in one key and had an assistant turn a handle on the piano when he needed a key change! Maybe that suggested this approach sometimes--or maybe it was the soul and power of the (new) blues that suggested it instead.
To emphasize the blues flavor, the second clip is pioneer jazz trumpeter Bunk Johnson. The blues flow of the chords is quire evident in this faster, instrumental version.
"Anything Goes"
For Cole Porter, anything usually went--particularly lyrically! In this classic, he does a similar thing to that done by Berlin in Alexander's Ragtime Band". However, the I IV move is part of the first line itself. The I is returned to via a IV minor chord. So, if the song is in A, the chords for the snaking melody line are A, D, D minor and A. The tune is not a blues, but that I IV element is present. The middle section goes elsewhere--of course, blues don't have middle sections!! (Note: the beginning of the clip below is the brief intro music--the thirties "Verse" to a show tune).
"Summertime"
George Gershwin visited and hung out with an isolated Afro-American community on an island, to get the right feel for "Porgy And Bess". He scored with "Summertime", which, like "Anything Goes", has the melody traveling from the I chord to the IV. It then goes to the V before returning to the I chord again. Unlike the Porter tune, the melody itself is also obviously blues-inflected. The second half of the tune finishes with a typical Gershwin "tag" flourish (as in "I Got Rhythm", another "disguised blues" candidate), but the blues element is obvious.
The tune is often played by blues bands, for example the Janis Joplin recording. Below is an incredible slow blues live version by Ella Fitzgerald.
"Jailhouse Rock"
Keeping it simple, Elvis' early hit, like some of his others (Hound Dog", etc) are basically blues but speeded up. Rock and roll was three chords, and usually those three chords appeared in the standard twelve bar blues progression. This was also the case with Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Larry Williams.
"A Hard Day's Night"
Yes, the verse section is basically a dirty blues. This mean, genius Lennon composition uses the flattened VII chord instead of the IV in the first part of the verse, but the structure (and feel) is blues. The racy music under the words "But when I get home to you I find the things that you do..." is over the IV and V chords, again approximating a blues.
"Can't Buy Me Love"
Paul McCartney also loved the blues: this 1964 hit (also on the "A Hard Day's Night" album) follows the blues chord pattern exactly (until the chorus sections of course). Ella Fitzgerald covered it straight away.
"Big Brother"
Stevie Wonder's brilliant album "Talking Book" (1972) contains many masterpieces. One is "Big Brother", which again is actually over a blues structure. The message of course is definitely a blues message, watching out for or bemoaning the "big brother" of 1984. A fantastic version is on New York pianist Vijay Iyer's album "Historicity" (2009).
You've heard of moon songs, love songs, cowboy songs. Well, these could be called "need to know" songs!
There are so many people out there who don't know many of the greatest songs from the Twenties and Thirties. I don't mean the usual Sinatra-recorded songs .... I mean these (often more fun) songs. You NEED to know these songs!
"Just A Gigolo"/"I Ain't Got Nobody"
Louis Armstrong recorded an early version. He sang at the end of the song, "I'm just a gig-I-know". It is segued into "I Ain't Got Nobody". David Lee Roth recorded a version in the eighties.
Verson:
"The Sheik Of Araby"
A classic song in music and lyrics, the song was recorded by many jazz greats, in particular Fats Waller and Benny Goodman (with Charlie Christian on electric guitar).
Version:
"After You've Gone"
A classic from the Twenties. It was a staple jazz jam in the swing era, and is identified with Benny Goodman, among others.
Versions:
Fiona Apple (with Nickel Creek)
The latter is a rehearsal, and includes the "verse" intro. Most people just sing the "chorus", in swing era speak.
"Honeysuckle Rose"
Written by Fats Waller (lyrics from Andy Razaf), it was the standard jam tune of the swing era (whereas "Tiger Rag", from The Original Dixieland Jazz Band was the jam of the earlier "jazz age"). The Benny Goodman Orchestra jammed it at the famous swing Carnegie Hall Concert in 1938.
Versions:
"Ain't Misbehavin'"
The Fats Waller classic.
Version:
"Body And Soul"
A very clever tune, and also a good jam tune. Coleman Hawkins recorded a stunning tenor sax version in 1939 that set up basically what jazz has been ever since (for better or no), a piano trio backing a solo sax player!
Versions:
"Don't Blame Me"
Apparently John Lennon used to sing this when he was about twenty. It is relatively easy to play on guitar, with some simple rock-like chords. Frank Sinatra once introduced it on an early 50s radio show (his) as a "blues" tune.
Version:
"I Can't Get Started"
This is a romantic classic from the Thirties, similar to "As Time Goes By", in that manner. The most famous version is by Irish-American trumpeter Bunny Berigan. The lyrics are very clever and yet in the mood at the same time. Berigan's trumpet goes stratospheric. There is also a swinging version by Sammy Davis Jnr on the David Letterman Show.
Versions:
"Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?"
One of the most distinctive hooks, musically and lyrically, in music. The lyrics are by the king of alliteration and wordplay in song titles, Eddie De Lange (for example, "Darn That Dream").
Version:
Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday
"Moonglow"
By the same writers as "Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?", "Moonglow" was a thirties classic as frequently played as, for example, "Honeysuckle Rose" and "After You've Gone". Benny Goodman recorded a definitive version, most recently on the soundtrack of the film "The Aviator".
Version:
[I haven't printed the writers of each song formally, as it is perhaps easier for discoverers to approach them by name/title only - initially at least].
PEGGY LEE: ARE THESE HER BEST TRACKS?
Are these the best Peggy Lee records? ...
The version that knocked out Paul McCartney--soon recorded on the second Beatles album
A harp--this is incredible
Classic by those men in the brackets (Rodgers-Hart)
The '60s, and the latin hit
Why Don't You Do Right? (live with her husband Dave Barbour)
Why Don't You Do Right? (with Benny Goodman)
Her first big hit
This may not be her best recording, but it sure is funny--'70s disco
One of the all time great songs, and great romantic songs, is "Besame Mucho". Written by Mexican woman Consuelo Velasquez in 1941, it has been jumped on by performers from the teenage Paul McCartney to Andrea Bocelli. McCartney is said to have wanted it on the first Beatles album, but producer George Martin exercised rock and roll quality control: it was too show biz!
The Spanish lyrics:
Besame
Besame mucho
Como si fuera esta noche la ultima vez
Besame
Besame mucho
Que tengo miedo perderte, perderte otra vez
Quiero tenerte muy cerca
mirarme en tus ojos
verte junto a mi
Piensa que tal vez manana yo ya estare lejos
muy lejos de ti
Besame
Besame mucho
Como si fuera esta noche la ultima vez
Besame
Besame mucho
Que tengo miedo perderte, perderte despues
The English lyrics are by Sunny Skylar
Besame
Besame mucho
Each time I cling to your kiss
I hear music divine
Besame
Besame mucho
Hold me my darling and say that you'll always be mine
This joy is something new
My arms enfolding you
Never knew this thrill before
Whoever thought I'd be
Holding you close to me
Whispering it's you I adore
Dearest one if you should leave me
Each little dream would take wing
And my life would be through
Besame
Besame mucho
Hold me my darling and say that you'll always be mine
Here are some great versions:
Tino Rossi: this version is in FRENCH! From 1945, it is nevertheless almost contemporary with the song's writing
Pedro Infante: an English version for a film, by the Mexican legend of the forties and fifties
Artie Shaw and his Gramercy Five: a 1953 recording
Lisa Ono: Japanese singer with a very light bossa nova version
The Beatles: one of the 1962 Decca audition demos
The Beatles in 1969: a mock latin version by McCartney
Placido Domingo: a disco version from the early '80s, seriously! The second is similar.
Andrea Bocelli: a modern hip version
Cesare Evora: svelte version, with excellent soprano sax solo
Gadjo: a current dance version, described as "Latin house", ie: the tune is placed over a beat
The writer of Besame Mucho", ConsueloVelasquez, is interviewed here on TV in the sixties: the covers of some of the many covers of her song are displayed ....
Placido Domingo and a mariachi orchestra, live: finally bringing it all back home to Mexico. Not "Besame Mucho", but other Mexican songs with a mariachi backing. This is effectively the world in which "Besame Mucho" developed.
Charlie Christian
I
The Beginnings
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Blind Lemon Jefferson played the blues, the early blues in the 1920s and later, but he played long intricate solo lines to accompany his singing. These lines inspired his teenage guide of the time, T Bone Walker (later famous in the '40s as a jump/R&B player/singer) and, through him, BB King. If he was heard by jazz players, he must have had an influence. It is also likely that the "Spanish tinge" (a term used by Jelly Roll Morton to help explain the jazz of New Orleans) included Spanish guitar, with all its soloing: see for example the Spanish guitar composer Tarrega, active into the early 20th Century. Tarrega himself had been prone to running away from school as a child to hear gypsy music, so a possible gypsy element (pre- Django Reinhardt) may also have had an influence on the early jazz guitar.
II
Eddie Lang
Eddie Durham
Lonnie Johnson
In any event, by the late 1920s/early '30s two guitarists had become well known in jazz. The first was Eddie Lang, famous for accompanying/playing with violinist Joe Venuti. Lang was also was an accompanist for Bing Crosby. Although he died in 1933, his fame didn't and he is a jazz legend.
Here is a rare clip of Lang and Venuti, in color
The American-Italian Lang also played with the black Lonnie Johnson under a blues pseudonym, Blind Willie Dunn: Lonnie Johnson transcended genres, playing blues, folk blues and jazz, including a session with the early Duke Ellington Orchestra, where he is the featured soloist.
Eddie Durham was a little later: he was an arranger with Count Basie in the mid and late '30s. However, he is also known as the first utiliser of an electric guitar, though he did not solo to any extent. That was left to the incomparable Charlie Christian (see below).
III
Django Reinhardt
Charlie Christian
[Tiny Grimes]
In France in the early '30s there was a young gypsy guitarist who had burnt two fingers of his fretting hand to the state of useless (?) appendages, in a caravan fire; Django Reinhardt. Possibly still the most extraordinary guitarist to ever live, Reinhardt played American jazz tunes, with a few of his own also (such as "Swing 39" and the very famous slow tune "Nuages" - "Clouds").
While every person of intelligence who knows music knows Django Reinhardt, every jazz musician knows Charlie Christian. Possibly THE inventor of modern jazz (because he was on record, in 1939 with Benny Goodman, before any of the others), his guitar style is very fluent and essentially unduplicable. It's too fluent. Despite his revolutionary music, like Eddie Lang he also died very young, in 1942 at the age of 25. This was when his great (eventual) successor, Wes Montgomery (see below), heard him as a nineteen year old and decided to play guitar.
Here is a clip of Christian's famous big band record "Solo Flight" with Benny Goodman's orchestra (1941)
Below is a great photograph of Christian in a session with Benny Goodman (and Count Basie).
Tiny Grimes was not a very famous guitarist, but he backed/partnered Charlie Parker on his earliest ("indie") recordings in 1944. Soon many other guitarists also adopted the bebop style.
IV
Herb Ellis
Barney Kessell
Charlie Byrd
As bebop came to be replaced by "cool" jazz (Miles Davis in New York and "West Coast" jazz), jazz guitar broadened into the musical "mainstream". Herb Ellis, for example, was in the Oscar Peterson Trio from 1952-58 (replacing the Trio's earlier guitarist Barney Kessell). Charlie Byrd (after studying with classical guitar maestro Andre Segovia) brought bossa nova to "the world" with tenor sax player Stan Getz in their 1962 album "Jazz Samba".
Later, all three of these guitarists would perform live and record live at the Concord Jazz Festival and elsewhere as the "Great Guitars" unit, making many flowing recordings of classic jazz tunes.
A great Charlie Byrd album is "Blue Byrd" (1978). He also recorded intricate solo versions of tunes such as "Moonlight Serenade" and "Something".
Tal Farlow was a very fast and fluid modern jazz guitarist who rose in the 1950s. In the clip below he talks about his influences and how jazz guitar existed in the earlier days. The tune played is Charlie Christian's "Airmail Special".
V
Wes Montgomery
Kenny Burrell
Joe Pass
Jim Hall
By the end of January in 1960, Wes Montgomery had recorded his second album. "Discovered" a few months earlier at the age of 36, he changed jazz guitar by simply being extraordinary. For some people he is jazz guitar. Below, he plays the classic "'Round Midnight".
Almost as famous, and almost as laid back, was/is Kenny Burrell. A favorite guitarist of Jimi Hendrix, his "Midnight Blue" album of 1960 is a midnight jazz classic, and much imitated. I still have to identify and levy deserved justice on the UCLA student organiser who did not schedule an accurate time listing of performers at a UCLA jazz and reggae festival in 2006, so that I and a Hollywood film editor I met at the festival both missed Burrell! (He hardly ever plays). I did, however, see John Scofield (see below).
Joe Pass was a follow-on from the guitarists in group IV. Most famous as a solo performer, melody and chords blending in his brilliant style, he was an even bigger household name than say Ellis, Byrd and Kessell. Indeed, he even physically resembled both Eddie Lang and Django Reinhardt.
Jim Hall came to prominence in the late '50s/early '60s, playing with Jimmy Giuffre, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins and Bill Evans. In this clip, with Sonny Rollins, he plays fast clusters of notes that look towards George Benson.
VI
George Benson
Apparently discovered by Quincy Jones when he was 8, Benson is of course a huge mainstream popular music star. However, his jazz albums (including his singing) of the late 1960s and early '70s are swinging.
VII
John McLaughlin
John Scofield
Mike Stern
Fusion, no tunes and .... feedback. The legacy of Jimi Hendrix on jazz is John McLaughlin and his angular successors. His first album, recorded in England, was the exotic "Extrapolation" (1969). Soon he was on Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew" in the same year, and later making the two excellent Mahavishnu Orchestra (his group) albums. Bye bye Gershwin, hello Shakti (his Indian world music group of the mid '70s)! The 1960s resulted in fully electric jazz (electric pianos, sometimes trumpets, etc) and fusion jazz everywhere.
John Scofield is in the fusion mold, perhaps a breath of fresh air compared to the current laid back commercial jazz guitarists. Mike Stern was part of Miles Davis' "comeback band" in 1981. Scofield joined in 1982.
FORMER BENNY GOODMAN (ONE BRIEF TOUR!) AND HENRY "RED" ALLEN PIANIST KEITH INGHAM TALKS JAZZ PIANO HISTORY
Interview by MyMusicDiscovery, New York, October 2008
Ingham smashes thirds on Broadway
Pianist Keith Ingham came to New York from England in 1979. While in England, he had been a pianist of choice for touring US greats in Europe such as Roy Eldridge ("Little Jazz"), Henry "Red" Allen (the famous New Orleans trumpet contemporary of Louis Armstrong), and Bud Freeman. It was at the suggestion of such greats that Ingham came to America.
By 1985, he had played piano for Benny Goodman, accompanying the master, then in his mid seventies, at a performance in Vermont. Ingham says he was fortunate to be around at a time when he was able to play with some of jazz's legends, "about five years before they died". And occupying the room next to Goodman in the hotel, Ingham heard him practise: "You knew you were in the presence of a master musician" says Ingham. He says Goodman liked what he played: "I laid down a solid beat for him". Ingham has also recorded albums with vocalist Maxine Sullivan (two are being re--released), and played with legendary jazz guitarist and personality Eddie Condon.
A special passion of Ingham's is what may for some these days pass as "pre-historic jazz", that is, all the jazz before bebop! "Listening to jazz 'educators'", says Ingham, "you would think that jazz started with John Coltrane and Miles Davis!" He then points out the obvious pivotal figures of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, the virtual inventors of and templates for jazz. He elaborated, "Duke Ellington was completely new. Nothing like that had been heard in music before".
As a pianist, (I also saw his brilliant trio gig at Cleopatra's Needle in New York City, with bassist Boots Maleson and drummer Steve Little), Ingham was keen to discuss some of the pianistic legends of jazz, in particular the names from the first fifty or sixty years of the music--don't forget them!
James P Johnson
We started with stride legend James P Johnson: Johnson was the pianist that Duke Ellington learned from, placing his hands over the keys raised up and down by the Johnson piano rolls he inserted into his piano. "Hands on" learning, you might say! Johnson's most influential record was the famous "Carolina Shout". Ingham says Johnson was the best stride pianist: Duke Ellington said he was "pure magic". Ingham says that "white pianists can't play ragtime. They are more mechanical than black players--they don't have the flow of the black pianists. The best white stride player is Don Yule".
Jelly Roll Morton claimed to have invented jazz, yet Ingham says he was "stuck in a ragtime feel". "But he was a wonderful composer, with beautifully structured pieces. For example his tune 'The Pearls'".
Earl "Father" Hines, who partnered Louis Armstrong on his classic Hot Seven recordings, was a founding pianist of jazz, and Ingham is a fan also of his brilliant work with clarinetist Jimmy Noone on the latter's "Apex Club" recordings (1928). The writer can attest that it is very colorful, and very good, music.
Willie "The Lion" Smith (usually photographed with his cigar and hat) was influenced by Debussy, says Ingham. "(And) his left hand originates in Chopin's waltzes." This writer once heard a radio documentary (that included one of the famous jazz history Library of Congress recordings) where The Lion was interviewed. For the tape recorder, Smith reverentially played some early, little known Irving Berlin compositions (as well as other tunes), demonstrating what was in the air in the 19-teens. One tune, "Sand Dune", did indeed to this writer sound a little like a Chopin miniature.
I also asked Ingham about two essentially forgotten Chicago pianists and band leaders of the 1920s, Jimmy Blythe and Tiny Parham: Ingham said that Blythe was a great accompanyist. Parham was more of an "oompah musician". In the collaborative melting pot of the Chicago of that era, both pianists accompanied the famous Johnny Dodds, the Armstrong Hot Five and Hot Sevens clarinetist. Ingham commented that Benny Goodman told him he loved Johnny Dodds. Ingham continued, "The South Side of Chicago was the main centre for jazz in the 1920s. New York only had Fletcher Henderson". [Louis Armstrong went to New York in 1924 to join Henderson's big band for a period].
Art Tatum
The Thirties and Forties were dominated, pianistically, by three pianists: Art Tatum, Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson. Tatum was "everything--a freak," said Ingham. Fats Waller was "essentially a stride pianist, with a powerful left hand and a beautiful touch". And Teddy Wilson? - pianist for the Benny Goodman Trios and Quartets): "So perfect. Al Haig (a major pianist of Charlie Parker's) adored him. I used to sub for Al, and I played at his wake", said Ingham.
The 1950s, of course, saw the rise of "cool jazz", following the bebop revolution. Ingham says of Miles Davis' (famous first quintet) pianist Red Garland, "(I) love him. You hear one note and you know who it is. A wonderful touch." Ingham says Garland brought a huge repertoire to Miles Davis, for example the tunes "You're My Everything" and "If I Were A Bell" (the first two tracks on Davis' "'Relaxin With The Miles Davis Quintet" album of 1956).
What about Ahmad Jamal (who played at New York's Blue Note club this year)? He was "(so) not a ... cocktail pianist!" Ingham also commented on Jamal's 1950s sidemen: bassist Israel Crosby was a great player, as was his drummer of the time, brush-meister Vernel Fournier. Ingham added: "I recorded a marvellous double LP with Fournier in the late '80s ("Keith Ingham Plays The Music Of Victor Young").
Wynton Kelly
Wynton Kelly, a contributor, of course, to Miles Davis' "Kind Of Blue" album of 1959): "Most swinging. ... He was on so many records before he joined Miles. He was from the West Indies. I actually got to see him when I was playing on a ship from England. I came here, and he was playing with Jimmy Cobb and Paul Chambers. That was Miles' rhythm section. They were doing a little thing - I don't know why they were playing it, but they were playing "The Surrey With the Fringe On Top", and it was a knock out. I remember that. It was a promotional thing. A friend of mine who worked in Sam Goody's Record Store when it was Sam Goody's was an English guy ... He had his ear to the ground, and he said 'Come on, they're playing and it's free'. I forget where it was, in a hotel room. They floated on air those guys ... We've lost it all now, we really have. (It's all) anger and ego (now). Ego - it's either anger or ego. Nonsense".
I asked whether he meant anger and ego in jazz, or in music in general: "Well, everything. It's really ... everything is image now, of course, and it's visual. If you looked like Ella Fitzgerald you wouldn't get a chance to sing (now), because she was so (cosmetically challenged)! ... Well, she came up singing on radio but nobody cared with radio. You couldn't see them".
I asked a few general questions on jazz styles and playing, mentioning that Ahmad Jamal throws in quotes eg: the first phrase of the verse of "The Surrey With The Fringe On Top": "Oh, he loves the quotes, man. He's a master of that. But he did make great music out of (for example) a dumpy thing like "Music Music Music", if you remember that song". I asked whether Ingham used quotes. "No, I don't really - sometimes. I tend to think they belong in the song they're from. There are many melodies that are cliches in jazz for example ... [sings]. That comes from "All This And Heaven Too", a song from the Forties written by Jimmy Van Heusen. It's a regular cliche because these guys that were playing heard that. I mentioned the quote from Duke Ellington's "Rockin' 'n' Rhythm", that Bud Powell used to play: "That's a piano thing, that's really a piano thing".
Keith had some interesting reflections on the nature of the piano as an instrument. "You've got eighty-eight keys, and you don't use most of those. (Not) the top and bottom. (With) classical pianists you can tell certain people by their touch, but in general (not). (But with jazz), isn't it amazing how some people can just get a different tone and sound out of that thing? It's an impersonal instrument ... you're not blowing into it - when you touch the piano there's the mechanical action of the hammers being hit before you actually strike the chord. Bill Evans had a sound, Tomy Flanagan, Hank Jones, Oscar Peterson. It's amazing. Your personality transcends the mechanism of the piano. And you're not blowing through it, where it's easy enough to get your own sound".
"It's very interesting how jazz has made the piano, in its way, a very approachable and warm instrument. You can tell the jazz pianist. Each one is different".
I said that I thought that the famous classical pianist Artur Rubenstein, for example with Chopin, was quite identifiable, but other classical pianists sound more mechanical: "Yes, he was more dramatic and passionate. Spontaneous - improvised in a way".
I continued by saying that I had read Rubenstein's autobiography, and in the book he said that when he was about twenty or so, if there was a part in a concerto that was really difficult and he couldn't really be bothered playing it, he would hit the sustaining pedal and fake it, and the audience wouldn't know the difference. They would think it was amazing. Ingham said, "Yes, they're full of tricks. It's like jazz. You put the pedal down and play rapid triplets and everybody thinks that's fantastic. It's not difficult to do".
On Bud Powell: "Love him. Great composer. I would say that not only was he a genius piano player, but his composition was fabulous. I'll play you one when we go up, we'll start with "Strictly Confidential" or "So Sorry Please". They are marvellous pieces, marvellous structure. The man was a genius. Percussive ... and crazy too. He had that element of 'you're right on the edge', bordering on the edge ... it always comes out with him".
Red Garland
I noted that Ingham's trio had just played "Mr PC" from Coltrane's "Giant Steps" album (1959) to end off the last set: "Yes, I've got a story about [the tune] "Giant Steps". Tommy Flanagan was on piano the first time that "Giant Steps" was played, and he just gives up. I asked him about that. He said, "I couldn't play that shit ... it was flying by so fast. He said 'I finally had to just leave it to the bass player.' And you can hear it on the record. But when he came to record his own album of Coltrane pieces he played it beautifully, but it was one of those things, it was so different."
On English pianist Stan Tracey: "I like Stan Tracey a lot. He was the house pianist at (famous London jazz club) Ronnie Scott's when I was in London, and I thought he was very interesting. A lot of people used to knock him but I liked him. Well, he was an awkward sounding pianist, but he had really interesting ideas. Of course, Monk was his idol".
Ingham says he is not in general familiar with the new jazz pianists. "Duke Ellington said the whole thing: he prophesised - he said, 'To play jazz, one day, you'll have to come out of a conservertoire'! You'll have to be classically trained. And it's probably become true. The problem is, they all sound the same".
He continued to the theme of jazz education being too narrow now, being in effect just a treatise on a few works of Coltrane and Miles Davis, and that's it! "That jazz educator thing fell apart: they didn't get any funding anymore. But they're the ones responsible for making everything the same because it was all they could do. So they told the students the same (rubbish)".
I made the point that jazz did not just develop by people learning rigid material. Keith agreed enthusiastically: "(Yes) they listened to eachother and they stole from eachother ... as the classical guys did".
Ingham's latest recordings include an album with vocalist Sharon Paige of songs containing the lyrics of Ned Washington (for example, the classics "I Don't Stand A Ghost Of A Chance With You", "Stella By Starlight, and "The Nearness Of You") entitled "Love Is The Thing" (Self Released, 2008). He also recorded an album, in 2007, of the music of Joe Marsala with prominent clarinetist Bobby Gordon--Ingham wrote the arrangements: "Lower Register: Bobby Gordon Plays Joe Marsala".
Ingham has recorded many albums with vocalists, for example several albums with the famous Maxine Sullivan. "Maxine was great. A couple of them are being re-released".
Given his brilliant playing of a number of Billy Strayhorn tracks at the Cleopatra's Needle, NYC trio gig (review to appear shortly), maybe Keith Ingham should now record an album of Strayhorn compositions!
(An edited version of this interview is also published at All About Jazz.com, with a discography).
Introduction
The tinkle of pianos, like pots and pans being banged. "Tin Pan Alley", the birth of the great American Song.
Where is it? It's where it was: New York, West 28th Street, between Broadway and 6th Avenue.
Why was it? To write and sell songs to the sheet music publishers in or near the same street.
Where is it now? Probably in Mariah Carey's bank account. Or, hopefully, in a bedroom and home-recorder near you.
Who was it? The aftermath of the American Civil War was characterised by enormous piano sales. The best writer in America was Stephen Foster, and the two were united by sheet music sales (publishers). From about 1885, the Alley was operating. By 1911, Irving Berlin was a major contributor (1911 was the year of "Alexander's Rag Time Band").
For a comprehensive write up of the original song publishing , see the site www.parloursongs.com
The Original Songs
The early, original period of Tin Pan Alley are up to about 1930:
The Songs Of Stephen Foster
He wrote many classics, and though before the existence of Tin Pan Alley, they were the raw material that fueled the first mass sales of music to amateur pianists: "Camptown Races" (1850), "Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair" (1854), and "Beautiful Dreamer" (1864). The "father of American music" lived 1826-1864.
Stephen Foster
"After The Ball"
From 1892. An enormous seller (in terms of sheet music), it was the first "(five) million seller". It was written by Charles C Harris.
The sheet music cover for an early version
For a photo of the original typed lyrics see
"Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home"
From 1902. This was a 1930s swing era classic also.
"Give My Regards To Broadway"
A classic that eveybody knows now. They may not know it was written in 1904: well, it was the year of Count Basie's birth anyway. It written by Alley legend George M Cohan.
Cohan (1878-1942)
"Shine On Harvest Moon"
The year 1908 was the birth of this classic song.
"Take Me Out To The Ballgame"
A part of American folk-lore, written by Albert von Tilzer. See William Hung's interpretation!
There is a photo of von Tilzer at the Songwriters' Hall Of Fame site:
"By The Light Of The Silvery Moon"
From 1909, this song has been sung by '50s acts ad infinitum.
"Alexander's Rag Time Band"
The break out of Irving Berlin, in 1911.
"The Dark Town Strutter's Ball"
Shelton Brooks was a successful writer of the time, and this came out in 1917. It is well suited to traditional jazz bands, and, with its boogie qualities, has been played by rock bands as well.
"Swanee"
George Gershwin's first hit, from 1919. The Swanee river.
"Whispering"
Later a swing classic (Benny Goodman, etc), it was written in 1920.
"Caroline In The Morning"
A total classic with a great hook, musically and lyrically: "Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning ....": 1922.
"Way Down Yonder In New Orleans"
A Louis Armstrong and typical Dixieland jazz classic, from 1922 also.
"Sweet Georgia Brown"
The enormous classic from 1925: The Beatles, for example, backed a recording by a Liverpool singer in Hamburg on this.
"Baby Face"
An irresistable hook in the first three notes ("Ba-by face"), Little Richard knocked it out later. It was written in 1926.
"Ain't She Sweet"
Another typical Tin Pan Alley 1920s classic (from 1927). The Beatles made a well known 1962 demo record of it, with John Lennon on vocals.
"My Blue Heaven"
1927: by now, records were the main method of music sales, and this hit (the version by singer Gene Austin) was a huge seller, the biggest to that time. It's a good record. In the rock and roll era, Fats Domino also recorded it, underlining the "era cross-over" qualities of the song (as with "Baby Face").
THE SONGS OF GEORGE GERSHWIN
The Gershwin House plaque
The Gershwin House, West 103rd Street
Photographs: Mymusicdiscovery
The early Twentieth Century Schubert? [ "... was as good as Gershwin, and Gershwin was as good as Schubert": Ned Rorem, "Setting The Tone", the American composer's book from 1983]. Gershwin's songs are brilliant statements of (mainly) Manhattan-born magic, and often translate easily into rock covers and modern movie soundtracks. Most of the major Gershwin songs are below, with a rhapsody thrown in.
Above is the plaque on the Gershwin house on 103rd Street, New York's Upper West Side. George and his lyricist brother Ira lived here from 1925-1931, so many of their well-known songs must have been written here. Views of the house from the street are also above.
"The Man I Love"
Thought by some to be Gershwin's best song, this tune was supposedly written after someone said to Gershwin, "I bet you can't write a tune using just these three notes". He then went and wrote maybe his best song. The English Lady Mountbatten went around in the early 1930s telling people about this "amazing song", after she had been in New York and heard it.
"Embraceable You"
A classic tune with a clever chord progression. It has been usually recorded by female singers, yet is written from the male perspective. It is, for example, hard to find Frank Sinatra's version.
"Someone To Watch Over Me"
It is a lot of people's "favorite song". It is unusual in that it has "all three" diminished chords that it is possible to have in a given key.
"But Not For Me"
Like "Someone To Watch Over Me", the song has "all three" diminished chords possible given the key of the song, but this time the order of introduction of each of the diminished chords sees, after the first one, the next one being the diminished chord a semi-tone higher in tone than the first one, then finally the next one coming the next semi-tone up. Gershwin probably wrote it as a challenge to himself, to see of he could stack the diminished chords up like that. Elton John sang it on the soundtrack to "Four Weddings And ....".
"Summertime"
From Gershwin's opera "Porgy And Bess", it was the first song (or second) recorded by The Beatles in a studio (in Hamburg in 1960). But where is the one 78 rpm record that apparently survived? Essentially the blues, the song has been played by rock artists, for example Janis Joplin.
"It 'Aint Necessarily So"
Very unique and theatrical, it is also from "Porgy And Bess".
"S'Wonderful"
The song where Ira Gershwin famously rhymed "glamorous" with "amorous".
"Our Love Is Here To Stay"
The famous lyrics of Ira Gershwin, ".... the Rockies may tumble, Gibraltar may fall, they're only made of clay ...." are a signature of this song, but the music ultimately carries the day.
"Liza"
The ending of the verse of "Liza" was clearly an inspiration for Paul McCartney when he wrote "And I Love Her" (from "A Hard Day's Night" in 1964). The same twisting descending line also cropped up in "the verse of "Killing Me Softly", in the 1970s.
"Lady Be Good"
A blues-style song that lent itself very well to swing jazz eg: the classic 1930s versions by the Benny Goodman Quartet and Count Basie with Lester Young.
"I Got Rhythm"
The song that helped Charlie Parker invent modern jazz (by basing his bebop melodies on the vigorous chord progression). Thi is a neat example of Gershwin's translateability into other musical forms or styles.
"A Foggy Day"
The Gershwin brothers' response to London: "another foggy day in London town .... had me down". George Benson recorded a snappy, swinging version on a late '60s album, with the now turban-wearing Dr Lonnie Smith at the Hammond B3 organ.
"Rhapsody In Blue"
A brilliant fusion of jazz, blues and classical.
A SELECTION OF THE BEST JAZZ ALBUMS
.... For The Record
Miles Davis "Kind Of Blue"
Everybody, probably including Barack Obama, seems to think this is the best album in jazz, so I begin with it! I prefer some others also, however.
Cannonball Adderley "Something Else"
This album was to a fair extent directed by Miles Davis, the trumpeter on the album. A trumpeter I know considers this the best Miles on record. The album was recorded for Blue Note in early 1958, just before the records Adderly recorded with Coltrane for Miles ("Kind Of Blue" and "Milestones"). The first two tracks (the first side of the LP version) are "Autumn Leaves" and "Love for Sale".
Lee Morgan "The Gigolo"
A mid '60s progression from "Something Else", showing the influence of the funk that had transpired since. Great party album as well a beautiful sensitive trumpet from the leader. How is this "hard" bop? It's more like "fun" bop or even "soft" bop, to me. The pianist was Harold Mabern, whom I was lucky enough to meet briefly in NY in December. He said he doesn't like labels, particularly as it is the blues that is behind everything he plays, whatever the apparent "genre" of the music. You can hear it behind the ostensibly Coltrane-like piano comping he does on the record. Wayne Shorter is the tenor saw player, providing the post Coltrane feel.
This trio of modern jazz records, well-recorded, now gives way to the older classics:
Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington live!: there are three live albums that paint the colors of the Duke very well: the double set of the famous Fargo dance gig of 1940 (featuring the classic Blanton-Webster band - see below), the "Live At Carnegie Hall" concert of three years later, and the famous "Ellington at Newport" album of 1956, with the "epic ride" of tenor player Paul Gonsalves on "Diminuendo And Crescendo in Blue", and other more modern Ellington classics such as "Satin Doll".
Amazon says of the 1943 Carnegie Hall record:
"Though the audio quality of this, the first of Ellington's annual Carnegie Hall concert presentations, is not the greatest, the music is utterly extraordinary. Beginning, appropriately enough for a wartime concert, with "The Star Spangled Banner" and moving through a cavalcade of the band's greatest arrangements and solo features (including an uncommonly brisk, virtuoso turn for Ben Webster and company on "Cotton Tail"), The Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concerts: January 1943 is a stunning portrait of America's greatest orchestra at the peak of its powers. As was his wont, the Duke used these concerts as a springboard for the premiere of an extended work, and what really makes this an essential item for fans and collectors is the only complete recorded document of Ellington's "Black, Brown and Beige" (Duke later recorded a very moving but incomplete version featuring Mahalia Jackson for Columbia). A sweeping, ambitious long form, "Black, Brown and Beige" traces the history of African Americans from slavery days onward, alternating between the celebratory and the reflective. It features some of Duke's most inspired writing and one magnificent solo spot after another, but none so grand as Johnny Hodges's stunning testimonial on "Come Sunday."
Duke Elllington "The Blanton-Webster Band"
Ellington gets two places here. This is his studio side. Before the "cool" jazz era of Miles and his successors, "albums" didn't exist. Artists recorded sessions of four cuts at a go, typically: two 78 rpm records. But the pinnacle of Ellington's caree was his early 1940s band. This band is represented on a triple CD set on Bluebird, The Blanton-Webster band. The set was nominated, by an authorotative book of the '90s, as the "number two best jazz album of all time", next to "Kind Of Blue".
An Amazon review states: "These 66 songs not only represent Ellington's artistic apex, but perhaps reflect the greatest creative period by any single artist in jazz history. Ellington had already made a lasting impression on jazz by 1940, but adding writer/arranger Billy Strayhorn, young bassist Jimmy Blanton, and tenor great Ben Webster brought the band to extraordinary new heights. The new blood boosted a roster already touting Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams (replaced by Ray Nance), Rex Stewart, Juan Tizol, and Barney Bigard. The set list reveals masterpiece after masterpiece: Ellington's "Cotton Tail," "Never No Lament," "All Too Soon," "In a Mellotone," "Warm Valley," "I Got It Bad," and "Sentimental Lady" plus Strayhorn's "Chelsea Bridge" and "Take The A Train" offer a mere taste of the treasures within."
Louis Armstrong "Hot Fives and Hot Sevens"
The "Hot 5 and Hot 7" recordings. These are from when Louis was at his best and most colorful and original, the mid to late 1920s. The track that sums it all up is the oddly named "Potato Head Blues". Heard on CD, Louis' inventions sound more like classical music.
Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers
Contemporaneous to Louis at this time was the guy who claimed to have "invented" jazz, Jelly Roll Morton. With the Red Hot Peppers, morton recorded classics in 1928 such as "Doctor Jazz", nominated by Eric Clapton as a favorite and influential (on the young Clapton) track, for a radio interview on BBC radio in 1996.
Charlie Parker "Bird Symbols"
Again, a compilation of 78 records, this set covers some of the middle and latter half of Parker's best period (1944-48). Miles Davis was the main trumpet mate on these reocords, so Miles weighs in more than a couple of times on this list, in some form or other.
However, to really buy a Parker collection that is stunning, and includes the tracks on "Bird Symbols", buy this: "Charlie Parker A Studio Chronicle 1940-1948".
Again, from an Amazon contributor:
"JSP, run by an eccentric British jazz fanatic called Ted Kendall, has a habit of turning out box sets of older jazz recordings that put the big companies to shame. Having put out the best available set of Hot Fives, Kendall turns his attention to the second most important jazz recordings of all time - the Savoy and Dial sessions of Charlie Parker. I am totally new to bebop, having cut my teeth on Coltrane and Miles Davis. This box set is like the New Testament of jazz ...."
Swing: Fats Waller/Benny Goodman
Fats Waller (there are numerous compilations of his small group 1930s records), an effervescent talent, shares the Swing Era limelight with Benny Goodman (see the Benny Goodman/Teddy Wilson Trio and Quartet recordings on the Bluebird label), Artie Shaw and Count Basie (particularly on anything with Lester Young, or Sinatra live).
An Amazon reviewer on the Benny Goodman set: "Do yourself a favor and buy what will become one of your favorite CDs."
Stan Getz "Jazz Samba"
If samba is jazz, this album is a brilliant record to have. Segovia-taught Charlie Byrd, on guitar, adds further exoticism. Four years later (in 1966) Frank Sinatra also recorded an inventive "samba" jazz album with writer Carlos Antonio Jobim: "Sinatra And Jobim".
.... For The Record
As the partner of Charlie Parker in inventing modern jazz, Dizzy was always destined for immortality. A number of his recordings stand out as landmarks, and a pareticluar flavor is that of the exotic: latin tinges abound in Dizzy's music. When he first began to play in Billy Eckstein's orchestra with Charlie Parker in 1943, Eckstine told him to "stop playing that Chinese music".
"Hot Mallets"
This track was recorded by Lionel Hampton's orchestra, with Dizzy prominent. The hot mallets may have been supposed to be the pounding vibes of lionel Hampton, but history sees them, on this record at least, as being the notes shooting from Dizzy's trumpet.
"Salt Peanuts"
This is an introductory record of bebop, the "new music" after swing. On Ken Burn's jazz documnetary film, a musician spoke of how he first heard bebop on a boat coming back from the European war in 1946. the record was "Salt Peanuts": "What WAS that music?" Dizzy wrote it, and also sings some nonsense lyrics. It is a virtuosic work out, with humour, and of course was a Dizzy favorite. It was recorded with Charlie Parker, as were the next two tracks, but Parker began recording separately from Dizzy from mid 1946.
"Dizzy Atmosphere"
A more esoteric companion to "Salt Peanuts". It was one of the essential tracks performed by Parker and Gillespie ("Bird and Diz") at their landmark Carnegie concert of 1947.
"Hot House"
"Hot House" is a bebop classic, recorded at about the same time as the above two tracks.
"A Night In Tunisia"
In the early 1980s concert program for television, "Dizzy Gillespie's Dream Band", Dizzy introduced this famous number as a tune that had ":withstood the viscitudes of time". It's a jazz classic, and as extoic as its name. A feature of the tune is the break passage after a long serires of dissonant chords: on a take at his recording session for the number in 1946, Charlie Parker played a break that has been issued on record as the "Famous Alto Break". the backing musicians made mistakes that meant the full take could not be issued, but the famous break, of a machine gun fusillade of notes, can be heard in a thirty second clip from the take.
"Two Bass Hit"
One of a number of classics that Dizzy recorded with his big band (formed initially in 1945), along with such tracks as "Good Bait" (a great riff adventure) and "Things To Come". Miles Davis recorded it on his milestone model album "Milestones" in 1958.
"Summit At Birdland"
This is an album of a concert in 1951 at the New York club Birdland, released under Charlie Parker's name. It was well recorded and features very historic tracks by Gillespie wih Charlie Parker and the brilliant Bud Powell at the piano. This magic combination of "three of the greatest gentleman in modern jazz" (as DJ and MC "Symphony Sid" Torrin introduced them) always made history. One of the very significant tracks is "Anthropology".
"The Massey Hall Concert"
Held in Toronto in 1953, this has been called the best jazz concert ever. It may well be, but it is certainly the best bebop concert ever: Duke Ellington's live recordings and other live recorded jazz that is not bebop may also contend for the title of "best concert". But this night featured the five leading musicians of modern jazz on their respective instruments: Parke ron alto sax, gillespie on trumpet, Bud Powell piano("Mister Hammer Fingers" and the Parker of the piano), Charlie Mingus on bass (he was he person who recorded the gig), and Max Roach on drums. the concert starts with Duke Ellington's "Perdido", continues with "Salt Peanuts" and then goes into "All The Things You Are", and that is just side one. These three tracks are totally astonishing and should be heard by anyone with ears. They also represent a kind of history of jazz itself, as the tracks cover Duke Ellington, the succeeding modern jazz virtuosity of "Salt Peanuts" and then a long sophisticated salute to the history of popular song that underpins jazz, on the Jerome Kern composition "All the Things You Are".
"Manteca"
An Afro-Cuban latin jazz fest, "Manteca" was a live favorite at Dizzy's later gigs. It combines tonic and flattened seventh riffing with a beautiful melodic release section. A result of Dizzy investigating Afro-Cuban music from the late 1940s, it is a classic like "A Night In Tunisia". Quite frankly, it could be used in nightclubs now. Why not?! It makes "Copacabana" look like a mottled banana.
In the book "The Story Of Popular Music", author Tony Palmer described what happened to the creators of modern jazz after the first years of its birth by commenting that, in the 1950s, "lost in their own brilliance, Parker and Gillespie [faded out]". But Dizzy had already done the above. He continued to play it over the world until the late 1980s, adding his famous bent trumpet to the show from the late 50s.
"Jazz Party"
Dizzy utilised the bent trumpet to add some mic-tickling soft muted trumpet on this album recorded wit Duke Ellington for CBS in 1959.
"The blues had a baby, and they called it rock and roll", but not before it hooked up with jazz! These are not selections of jazz musicians simply playing the blues ie: over the customary twelve bars, but examples of where the jazz musician really took the blues somewhere else, and therefore contributed to the development of composed music. Note that the tracks that stand out are by the very top names in jazz. They ain't famous for nothing.
Bessie Smith/Louis Armstrong
"St Louis Blues" (1924)
Armstrong plays in the background as the Empress Of The Blues does her stuff.
Louis Armstrong
"West End Blues" (1927)
"West End Blues" is a classic number of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven years.
"Potato Head Blues" (1928)
This track, written by Louis, has a non-blues verse that is pure beauty and tension, while the trumpet breaks are total blues yet of the peerless level of pure "classical" music.
Duke Ellington
Ko Ko (1940)
The music of "Ko Ko" is so complicated and colorful that you may not immediately realise that this rich and dramatic music is set over a standard blues chord progression.
Charlie Christian
"Blues In B" (1941)
A studio jam with members of Benny Goodman's Sextet (which included Charlie Christian, of course).
Charlie Parker
"Now's The Time" (1945)
An earlier sign of Parker's compositional genius, this blues riff was later given another title ("The Hucklebuck") and passed off as their own composition by someone else. It was, under this title, a huge dance hit in the 1950s.
Duke Ellington
"Happy Go Local"
Part of this six minute painting of a steam-train and its driver was a killer blues riff that was later taken by a casual member of Duke's band and represented as his own. The "new" piece was called "Night Train", and has been a hit for more than one performer since. Oscar Petersen, for example, recorded it on his most popular album "We Get Requests" in 1962. In fact, under the"Night Train" name, it is really a jazz classic itself. Ellington commented on the rip-off by saying, "Well, if someone copies your music it's a compliment".
Charlie Parker
"Parker's Mood" (1948)
One of Parker's most mature works, the twists and turns of the blues melody were later given lyrics and recorded by King Pleasure.
Thelonius Monk
"Bemsha Swing" (1956)
Monk creates his Picasso-like blues figure.
"Monk's Mood"
One of the ultimate and most original creations out of the blues.
Miles Davis
"All Blues" (1958)
The classic Miles Davis take on the blues from "Kind Of Blue". As with most of the other tracks here, the tune has its own original blues-like riff or figure.
Wes Montgomery
"West Coast Blues" (1960)
Hypnotic and flexible riff that was a kind of composition in itself, and, given its appearance in 1960, that could therefore be said to have helped the whole Beatles/Stones rock idea of a riff song: eg the Beatles' "Day Tripper" (1966), or the Stone's "Live With Me" (1969).
New Orleans And Pre-Swing Jazz
King Oliver/Louis Armstrong
King Oliver had the band that introduced Louis Armstrong. They were a huge hit in Chicago from 1922, and a feature was the break passages where Oliver would play and then be followed by his protege Louis.
King Oliver
Louis Armstrong
Louis went to New York in 1924, played with the first big band of jazz (Fletcher Henderson's) then returned to Chicago to form his Hot Five band and then his Hot Seven group. These two bands recorded one of the three top series of recordings in jazz history (that is to say, along with the best of Duke Ellington and, say, Miles Davis). These recordings also constitute the first recordings of modern
popular music as we know it: when Louis began to sing (and scat) on "Jeepers Creepers", he created the template for everything from Bing Crosby to U2. The instrumentals include "Potoa Head Blues", "Cornet Chop Suey", the famous "West End Blues", and the virtuosic duo "Weatherbird", recorded by Louis with master jazz pianist Earl Hines in 1928. The latter track was re-attempted by Wynton Marsalis and his pianist on his late 1980s television trumpet documentary.
Henry "Red" Allen
A trumpet stalwart, he was, like Louis Armstrong, from New Orleans.
Bix Beiderbecke
Once described as the sound of a girl saying "yes", Bix was the first white trumpeter to be copied by the original trumpet masters, the Afro-American trumpeters. He had a lyrical sound, well represented on, for example, "Singing The Blues", "I'm Coimng Virginia", and "Ostrich Walk".
Red Nicholls
Another pioneer white trumpeter, prominent in the early 1930s.
Swing
Oren "Hot Lips" Page
A main figure in the Kansas City band of Benny Moten in 1932 (their records that year are a must hear, as in addition to Page, Count Basie is on piano), he was also the king of blues trumpet: at a jam session in the 1940s, someone began to play the blues. Fats Navarro, one of the other trumpeters present, is reported to have groaned and said "Why did you have to go and do that?" (ie: play the blues) . Why? Because Hot Lips Page was there, and noone could compete with him on the blues. To hear an example, listen to the clip above at the top of the page: he plays a guitar blues-style lick, on trumpet.
Roy Eldridge
Eldridge was the stratospheric link between Armstrong and Gillespie. He played in the older jazz style )ie: as opposed to "modern jazz", but with astonishing virtuosity. Listen to the amazing "After You've Gone", his calling card. His nick-name was "Little Jazz". You know, of course, that anyone in jazz with a nickname must be at the top, or noone would have bothered to come up with a nickname in the first place.
Bunny Berigan
Berigan, an Irish-American, had the biggest hit of 1937 with "I Can't Get Started". He sang it as well as playing a peerless high trumpet. He was Tommy Dorsey's favorite trumpeter, and a great stylist. His breathy singing added a special dimension to his records. Another example was selected by Wynton Marsalis for his documuntary on trumpeters from the late 1980s: a show tune called "Until Today". The song was recorded on film for amovie, and I once magically discovered it on an old LP of jazz film recordings in a jazz shop in London.
Harry James
The white star trumpeter of Benny Goodman's 1940s swing orchestra. While ultimately a little show-bizzy, his big band (formed when he left Goodman) was the first big big band to hire Frank Sinatra.
Duke Ellington's Trumpeters
The Duke's band/orchestra was a showcase for a number of famous trumpeters in jazz. "Bubba" Miley was the first star, king of the growl trumpet. He was succeeded as main trumpeter by the virtuosic Cootie Williams, who later left to play in Benny Goodman's sextet in 1940. He returned to Ellington twenty years later. Ellington's trumpet stars of the '40s included Ray Nance [he improvised, in front of the studio microphone, the famous solo on the Ellington theme "Take The A Train" in 1941], cornetist Rex Stewart [a major figure in jazz later also, appearing in jam groups and in a major television jazz documentary film in 1959]. The 1950s saw the arrival of Clarke Terry, who is playing next month at the Blue Note in New York. He is also famous for flugel horn, and has recently featured in children's cartoons on TV.
The last virtuosic trumpeter with Ellington was Cat Anderson, whose peculiar talent was very high playing. Ellington wrote a feature for him called "El Gato" (The Cat).
Trumpets were a major feature of Duke's sound, and the above are just the most well-known members of the orchestra.
Bebop/Modern Jazz
Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy extended the range of the trumpet, and of course partnered Charlie Parker and others in developing modern jazz.
Miles Davis
Miles, in his own words, changed music "five or six" times. Playing often with a mute (in the 1950s), he took jazz and music to a more relaxed place ("cool" jazz), and then later into electric and rock fusings."Something Else", under Cannonball Adderley's name, is a great example of peak, late 50s, Miles.
Fats Navarro
A brief life, but, also like Clifford Brown after him, a significant sound.
(Chet Baker)
Miles called him "a white version of me"; but his early '50s recordings with Gerry Mulligan and their piano-less quartet are interesting on several levels.
Clifford Brown
He only lived to 25, but he is one of the trumpet legends of jazz. A great example of his playing is his double live album, on Blue Note, with Art Blakey, Lou Donaldson and Horace Silver at Birdland in 1954. He also recorded an interesting album with strings.
Lee Morgan
Another Blakey alumni, he played classic tunes and a sort f party bop funk, in a very melodic way. His famous track "The Sidewinder" (1962) surely influenced John Lennon in his writing of The Beatles' "Day Tripper". Two of his best albums (Blue Note) are (the album) "The Sidewinder" and "The Gigolo".
Roy Hargrove
Current day, Roy Hargrove has a strong style that he has blended with, for example, the playing of Herbie Hancock and drummer Roy Haynes (with the latter, on an album of Charlie Parker works).
Any discussion of a top ten anything, which I would rarely do anyway, will be subjective. However, the ouevre of Miles Davis lends itself fairly easily to a top ten, as the best albums pretty much suggest themselves.
The Birth Of The Cool (1949)
Exceptionally interesting, with compositions by Gerry Mulligan and Lee Konitz as well as by Miles. Unusual names for tunes also help bring out the newness of it all:"Jeru", "Bopchild" (threre's a descriptive name right there, "cool" jazz was the "child of bop"), etc. Mulligan's baritone sax helped the unusual sound and arrangements. The band is a nine piece unit.
Walkin' (1954)
After serious heroin addiction following a trip to Paris (Miles said he turned to heroin to help himself get over French actress Juliet Greco), he came back with "Walkin'". The album is the earliest recording I have heard that sounds like a modern record (I heard a CD version). It sounds great, especially the bass. A good example of the latter is "Solar". The album is a sort of bebop album, but with a groove to it. As somebody wrote, "He called the cats back with Walkin'". The title track stayed in his live repertoire well into the '60s.
'Round About Midnight (1955)
This is a CBS compilation of his first great quintet (Miles, Coltrane, and rhythm section), but any album he released on the Prestige label at this time is also the same group. Miles wrote that people were queueing round the block to see them, and celebrities also came including people like Elizabeth Taylor.
Milestones (1958)
The first modal album. "Modal" means essentially, in the jazz context, that the soloists play on a series of scale changes (different modes) rather than chord progressions So instead of a trumpeter improvising over the fixed chords belonging to a tune, the solo is sustained structurally by the choice of different scales instead. A by-product is that the track can last virtually for ever, rather like "Indian music". The tantric title track is a good example.
Porgy And Bess (1958)
Miles turned from modal improvisation to the pre-composed melodies of George Gershwin's opera "PorgyAnd Bess". Yet, Davis still turned in a new way of playing the very famous "Summertime", by changing the beat ("shortening "it) and adding a hypnotic backing/introduction.
Kind Of Blue (1959)
His most universally celebrated album. One day, I heard some jazz sax from a beatbox at Los Angeles' Venice Beach market. I thought it was "Kind Of Blue", and asked the black woman who ran the stall. It sure was.
Sketches Of Spain (1960)
Miles took the famous second movement of Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto d'Aranjuez, a concerto written for the guitar, and played it with brass. A lot of people like this hot Latin album. The other tracks are similarly flavoured. In his autobiography ("Miles: The Autobiography"), Miles wrote that he heard that a Spanish bullfighter, after listening to the album, simply went out and killed a bull. "Now I don't know if that's true', wrote Miles, "but that's what he said".
Nefertiti (1967)
Nefertiti was the last fully acoustic album by Miles' "second great quintet": Miles, composer/tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist the very famous Herbie Hancock, and rhythm section. Ten years on from the first quintet with John Coltrane, Miles was about to "go electric" (Hancock turned up at a session one day the next year and was surprised to see that he had to play an electric piano). This album, however, was acoustic, and has many innovative moments. The title track, by Shorter, is a part of the jazz "standard repertoire", a classic.
Bitches Brew (1969)
From the African beach cover to the music inside, this album is a classic. It is a double album of "fusion", a combination of jazz and rock. Miles electrified his trumpet and involved electric guitar maestro John McLaughlin. Bass clarinets and so on give this album an unmistakeable flavor.
On The Corner (1972)
Miles funked out with, amongst others, John McLaughlin again. He had spoken to Jimi Hendrix a few days before Hendrix's death about recording together, and this album is an extreme example of what may eventually have resulted. A current review (on www.musthear.com) describes it as Miles playing "distorted licks through a wah wah pedal on the trumpet". Traditional jazz fans bailed; it's great!
ELLA FITZGERALD RELEASES NEW LAID BACK ALBUM!
"Love Letters From Ella"
Concord 2007
There is some interesting news in jazz: a new Ella Fitzgerald album has appeared, made up mostly from sessions in the '70s yet with the recent overdubbing of the London Symphony Orchestra and other musicians on six of the ten tracks. The issue is by the famous Concord jazz label, in coordination with Starbucks.
The album is a great "soundtrack to life" record, particularly in the romantic department. In this regard, it is a good companion to Stan Getz' "Jazz Samba".
It begins with an uptempo Count Basie/Ella recording from 1979. It then turns distinctly (and appropriately) "modern" with the Joe Cocker-covered "Cry Me A River". This song was originally written for Ella in the mid '50s, but a dispute over a word in the lyrics led the director of the film in which it was to appear to not use the song at the time. Here Fitzgerald reclaims it (in a mid 1970s recording). The LSO is placed over it, and the effect is niiice. Cocker's version never really explained the song to me, but this one certainly does. The feeling Ella gets is fantastic.
A series of further perfectly picked tracks follow:
"You Turned The Tables On Me" was a 1930s swing classic (there is an excellent version by Benny Goodman), and "I've Got The World On A String" is one of the best songs of that era. It was, for example, Sinatra's first hit of his great 50s period. Ella's incredible voice communicates it excellently: one pass at the word "finger" totally scores with that famous "semi-tone down" second syllable.
Another Sinatra masterpiece is "Witchcraft": it may be hard to see how a male can be a witch (as it's now a woman singing the song) but it is a superlative piece of music. The mood continues with "My Old Flame", an interesting and arresting song that John Lennon apparently sang in Hamburg from time to time. It is also one of the classic Charlie Parker slow records from 1948, with Miles Davis on trumpet. The unusual tune does a lot of travelling.
A well-placed change in pace is the 1920s flavor of "The One I Love (Belongs to Somebody Else)": this is an Ella and Joe Pass duo performance (no orchestra), with an almost bossa nova yet also authentic flapper feel: Joe Pass is not unlike Charlie Byrd (eg: the Byrd on Getz' "Jazz Samba").
An orchestra-overlaid "Take Love Easy" follows, before an Andre Previn (piano) and Neils-Henning Orsted Pedersen (the famous Oscar Peterson bassist) take on Gershwin's classic melody twister "Our Love Is Here To Stay". As a rock-era person, I have not been an enormous fan of Ella's scatting, and this is conveniently the first track (track nine) with scatting on it. Here the scatting adds to the record!
Track ten takes us back to Count Basie, who therefore neatly bookends the action with another 1979 recording: "Some Other Spring". This is a great record with Ellington-like voicings in the arrangement, which turns out to be by alto-sax legend Benny Carter (Carter also arranged the first Basie track on the album).
This album is a magnificent mood setting: as made "back in the day" as it is "laid back in the day", and yet because of the new orchestral overdubs (which work) it is as if it is a new record by these genius performers. And with appearances from Previn to Pass, some of the premier musicians of this type of music are represented. The modern producers and arrangers (ex-Basie drummer Gregg Field and orchestrator Jorge Calandrelli) have made a great album. The famous Concord label scores, and so will you with this record!
Who is the best American composer, Charles Ives, George Gershwin, or Duke Ellington?
Ellington's forte was short works, changing rapidly over three minutes. While the standard record at the time was a tune repeating identical verses, Ellington wrote "through-composed" music: the track would start with maybe a riff figure, then there would be another, then a first tune, then a second theme, then a key change, etc. As in a traditional classical piece, the first part may return, but in a different light.
Duke Ellington's career ran through several eras:
1924 - 1932
The first Duke Ellington recordings were in 1924, with his Washingtonians. In 1926, he made his first well known records. "Black And Tan Fantasy" and "Creole Love Call" (1927), "The Mooche" (1928) and the attractive "Black Beauty" (1928) were early masterpieces. [The chords of "Black Beauty" seem to have been deliberately borrowed by John Lennon to knock out part of the verse of the 1963 Beatles song "It Won't Be Long", that begins the landmark "With The Beatles" album].The advent of the Depression provided ample material for new inspiration, eg: the vibrant "Wall Street Wail". Ellington had to make more novelty-style records at this time. He recorded two tracks with an accordianist, and featured also other unusual solo instrumentation lineups. But he soon got back on track with furthur early masterpieces. A good example is "Rockin' In Rhythm" (1930). It is a truly through-composed piece, and provided, in one part of the record, a riff that was often played by bebop stars two decades later. The tune opened his performances until his last concerts in 1974. Two others are the famous "Mood Indigo" (1930) and the classic "Solitude", from 1932. The year 1932 also saw the "birth" of swing, with "It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing".
1933 - 1938
In 1933, the Ellington orchestra toured Europe. It was a formative moment, as the critical acclaim paid to Ellington appears, by his own words, to have changed his opinion ABOUT HIMSELF. He realised he might actually be really good ie: in a serious, lasting sense. The famous English music commentator, Constant Lambert (the father of The Who manager Kit Lambert!) wrote that "I know of nothing so energetic .... in Ravel as in [Ellington's record] "Hot And Bothered"". The Duke was now a major composer, and seen as such, at least in some parts of the world.
There was a brief lull after his mother died in 1934, but Ellington spent the years of the mid 1930s moving from his earlier usually uptempo "Model T" type pieces to setting up his modern era as a writer of popular music classics. From 1935 to 1937, his early master works "Mood Indigo" and "Black Beauty" were joined by more classics: "I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart", "Caravan", "Prelude To A Kiss" and the sophisticated "Sophisticated Lady". All these stayed as central parts of his live repertoire through into the 1970s. The 1935 composition "In A Sentimental Mood" was later converted, with some alterations, by Marvin Hamlisch into the Barbara Streisand hit "The Way We Were".
This period also saw tunes such as "Never No Lament", which with lyrics became the famous "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" (McCartney sang it on his "Russian" album), "Concerto For Cootie", and kaleidoscopic extravaganza pieces such as "Tooting Through The Roof" (subtitled "Trumpets No End", illustrating the intent of the music).
1939 - 1943
These years are seen by most people as both Ellington's and the band's peak. Sometimes referred to as the "Blanton-Webster" years or band, this era saw stunning works such as the "pre-bebop bebop" "Cottontail" (featuring Webster), the classically-complex blues "Ko Ko" (featuring brilliant orchestral use of the baritone sax of Harry Carney; the title is also the name of a definitive Charlie Parker track, though a different work), and the rise of tracks written by Ellington's new co-writer Billy Strayhorn, fifteen years Ellington's junior. Strayhorn and also Ellington's son Mercer (born in 1918) came up with a whole new "book" of hits, like the Ellington band theme tune "Take the A Train" (by Strayhorn), and the jazz-jam classic "Things Ain't What They Used To Be" (by Mercer Ellington).
One cover of the triple CDs covering
the "Blanton-Webster Band"
There is also a brilliant live recording of the band at a gig in Fargo, North Dakota in 1940:
One of the Fargo 1940 covers
The period was ended by the band's concert at Carnegie Hall in December, 1943. Blanton had just died and Webster had left, but the concert, which has been available on various labels, is a great album to hear. Duke was more formal than usual in his announcements, apologising for the absence of a main soloist through illness and introducing a replacement number as including "variations on the theme known as 'Honeysuckle Rose'" by clarinetist Barney Bigard. Ellington was not, in reality, simply being formal for the Carnegie Hall audience in referring to Fats Waller's well known tune "Honeysuckle Rose' as "the theme ....". It was a very important tune for jazz, and music in general: many bands played it, sometimes with interesting variations. Benny Goodman's orchestra performed it at times with slowed down saxes playing the famous riff (the main melody), and, in the biggest "variation" of all, Charlie Parker used it as an important crutch in inventing modern jazz.
One of the releases of the
Carnegie Hall album
1944 - 1951
In 1943, the inventor of modern bass playing and the provider of the new bouncing rhythmic beat behind the 1939-1943 Ellington band, Jimmy Blanton, died at 24, of TB. Things changed immediately for Ellington: he continued to have hits, and to write interesting forward-looking pieces, but, in addition to the demise of the world's fist modern jazz bass player, the mid '40s were also the aftermath of Ben Webster leaving with his tenor sax, the infamous two year musicians' union-forced recording ban (from 1942-44: no recordings using instruments were made by anyone in America), and also the advent of "modern jazz", or bebop (which was also played by small groups, not orchestras).
Ellington was, however, a composer, and composers change and develop according to circumstances. The famous 1943 Carnegie Hall concert led to annual Carnegie concerts, and in the mid to late '40s the band played and premiered many new Ellington pieces. These concerts are available on various labels on double CDs.
.
1951 - 1956
1951 saw Ellington a bit war-weary: modern jazz had begun to morph into cool jazz, with experiments from Miles Davis, and "big bands" were virtually out of fashion. As saxophonist Coleman Hawkins had forcast in the early '40s, the future of music was in small groups (he was correct even up to the current day, as we typically see rock bands). In addition, his premier soloist, alto sax player Johnny Hodges, the possessor of the most beautiful sound in jazz, left to front his own, yes, small group. However, "Hi-Fi" and LPs were now in evidence, and Ellington recruited white drumming star Louis Belson to contribute to the popular "Ellington Uptown" album (1952).
1956 - 1960
Duke was about to turn 57 in 1956, and people questioned the future of his music in the upcoming rock and roll era. But don't question the Duke: a genius that tends a verdant field will always find something new to plant in it. And so it happened .... at the Newport Jazz Festival that year (the Festival was perhaps the first music festival, with all its sixties connotations of musical and other excess). At the Newport Festival, on one of Ellington's famous established pieces, tenor virtuoso Paul Gonsalves took off on what has been described as "his epic ride", where the saxophonist played a dynamic long solo that may have saved big band jazz. Like other sax virtuosi, Gonsalves had his own sound, and this exciting hit of higher pitched tenor sax provided a new feel in music. The difference between Gonsalves' sophisticated sound and the blaring honking of rock and roll sax players of the time was stark. The concert is available on CD: "Ellington At Newport 1956".
Newport: voted one of the
ten best live jazz albums by
www.allaboutjazz.com
1960s
Ellington released a number of different types of LPs, from recordings of hits of the time (eg: "Ellington 66", which has an interesting version the Beatles' "All My Loving") to his sacred concerts in the mid and later '60s.
Late 1960s - early 1970s
The band recorded a number of "Suite" albums, albums of tracks written after visits by the band to various exotic parts of the world. Prominent amongst them is "The Far East Suite" (1966). "The New Orleans Suite" is considered by some to be the best. A great final look is the "70th Birthday Concert", recorded in Birmingham, UK in 1969. It is a double album, and contains several newer pieces including the excellent "Black Butterfly": one attractive and distinctive moment of clarinet was later borrowed by Duke fan Stevie Wonder on one of his '70s classics.
The Far East Suite
The 70th Birthday Concert
Ellington Discographies
There is an excellent and large listing of CD releases of music by Duke Ellington, including compilations containing tracks by the Duke, at the "Rolling Stone' magazine site: www.rollingstone.com/artists/dukeellington/discography. Included under the Ellington discography by "Rolling Stone" is even this compilation, "Music For A Bachelor's Den, Volume Two: Exotica", which apparently therefore contains at least one Ellington track:
A great jazz site, in general, is www.allaboutjazz.com
GEORGE GERSHWIN ESSENTIAL RECORDINGS: A SELECTION
A Chestnut CD compilation from 2005 has many of the best; the company made excellent choices, though my copy has a couple of rough transfers. In any event. it's hard to beat the selections, which include the original jazz band arrangement of the "Rhapsody In Blue" performed by Paul Whiteman in 1924. Now that's history. There are also very good sleeve notes from Neil Kellas. The CD is totally worth it for the original "Rhapsody In Blue".
So, a rhapsody and a few songs ....
"Rhapsody In Blue" Parts I and II (Recorded 1924) Paul Whiteman Orchestra
The original version was arranged for the Whiteman Orchestra by Ferde Grofe, the composer of the famous "Grand Canyon Suite". As Whiteman's band was primarily a large "jazz" orchestra, the arrangement is half jazz half classical, the piano of course having centre stage. A tuba provides bass: the two 12" 78s are totally rocking. A more recent exponent of the piece was the mouth organ player Larry Adler, who first played it at 14: Gershwin told him he played it as if it had been written for him.
Myself and Larry Adler
Photograph: Copyright Simon Harper 2007
Most of Gershwin's compositions were songs. In 1924 (obviously a very good year for the Georgester), he also wrote (with his brother Ira) his first musical, "Lady Be Good" - Chuck Berry of course adapted the title: "Johnny B Goode". The musical included three of Gershwin's greatest songs: "Lady Be Good", "Fascinating Rhythm", and perhaps his best tune of all, "The Man I Love".
********
"Fascinating Rhythm" Judy Garland
This is a great piece of music, half song and half classical figures. Judy Garland sings a superb version in 1939, with (because of the year) a contemporary band sound. The recording approaches classical standards, as Garland's voice is timeless: very much a part of modern music as well as of earlier eras. There is thus an excellent match of music and artist.
Note that there is also a brilliant studio version, with a superbly slowed down passage in the bridge, by the "Velvet Fog", Mel Torme.
The cover of the complete Judy Garland on Decca
"The Man I Love" Billie Holiday with Count Basie and his Orchestra
Suggested by some as Gershwin's best tune, "The Man I Love" was loopily recorded by Billie Holiday with Count Basie in 1939. Tenor sax maestro Lester Young takes a long solo that sounds as if he just might be on drugs. It's a funny record, but also very beautiful. There are obviously many versions of the song. A quasi classical version is Benny Gooodman in a six minute live recording with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in the 1950s. In a TV show, Larry Adler raved about the song. When I met Adler, when he was 86, he simply said of Gershwin, looking away across the table in thought, "Oh, he was a genius".
This song is, in any event, so hot that I changed a few words to make it "The Girl I Love", so I could sing it; a bit later, Harry Connick did the same thing.
"Someone To Watch Over Me" Frank Sinatra
This version is from Sinatra's classic '50s period. The song is about the about the only song I know of where all three possible diminished chords (in the key of the song) are used. I bet he wrote it after setting himself the challenge of doing that.
"Summertime"
Everybody knows this song. It can be played as a blues, or in any other style. I have heard it played by a drunken bar band at a university college party, and of course as part of the opera from where it comes, "Porgy And Bess". A very unique, if somewhat eccentric, version is Miles Davis', from his "Porgy And Bess" album of 1959/60. Part of the pull of the song is from the move to the relative major key towards the end of the verse eg: "so don't cry little baby, mama and papa are standing by". By the time of the word "by", of course, you are back in the groove of the minor key again.
"It Ain't Necessarily So" Paul Robeson
Also from the opera "Porgy And Bess", this is just one of the hookiest tunes of all time. It also has addictive variations, really meant to be played by an orchestra. Paul Robeson made a definitve version. The religious side of the lyrics had the song being banned from airplay on a local station where I lived, the station being owned by a church. (They also banned the Sex Pistols!!).
"Our Love Is Here To Stay"
"The Rockies may tumble, Gibraltar may fall .... but our love is here to stay". So wrote Ira Gershwin. George died before this song was finished; it was only finished because he had luckily played it to , who was able to remember it and write it down.
"I'll Build A Stairway To Paradise" Paul Whiteman Orchestra
This was an early Gershwin tune, and was a tune that Paul McCartney's father used to habitually play on the piano when Paul was a teenager. The Chestnut compilation has an interesting instrumental version by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra recorded in 1922, from about the time of its writing.
"How Long Has This Been Going On?" Peggy Lee with the Benny Goodman Orchestra
There is a great version by Peggy Lee from her early days in 1941, with a superlative band arrangement as well; Goodman rocks out with a clarinet counter-melody early, then adds an astonishing piece of serious playing towards the finish. Later, in 1959 when she performed at the Copacabana in New York in her new "Fever" era, the song still rang through; a review stated: "probably the most impressive number Peggy sang was 'How Long Has This Been Going On?'" There's that song again.
Cartoon mrlucky.com
"But Not For Me" Nat King Cole
This is one of the Gershwin tunes that are really good to orchestrate. There is a version, with other tracks like "The Man I Love", on an album from the 1960s by an orchestra led by the British bandleader Frank Chacksfield (Decca). The A side has the "Rhapsody in Blue", Julian Katchen being the pianist. Elton John sang the song on the soundtrack to "Four Weddings And A Funeral". It has typical splendiferous lyrics by Ira: "They're writing songs of love , but not for me ... I've found more clouds of gray than any Russian play could guarantee". The Chestnut CD has a Sinatra style swinging live version by Nat King Cole. If this CD was released as a more expensive pressing ...!
"Embraceable You" Billie Holiday
This is one Gershwin's greatest songs. Billie Holiday recorded a compelling version ... with, for some reason, very edgy chords. Bebop pianist Bud Powell used to always play it in his 1950s trio sets. An impressionistic take is found in his trio set "prelude" to the famous Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie concert at Massey Hall, Toronto in 1953 (the album "Jazz At Massey Hall").
"S'Wonderful" and "Liza" Benny Goodman Quartet
I have always thought of these tunes in the same breath, as they both have a rising figure, with a sort of a bail out at the end back to the start. Benny Goodman recorded magnificent versions on his famous RCA Bluebird series of quartet and trio recordings in the 1930s. They are very clear, and sound great on CD. In another Judy Garland connection, "Liza" was featured on a newsreel report of the birth of her daughter Liza Minelli, with the mother singing a few bars.
"Liza's" "bail out" reappears relatively unchanged in The Beatle's "And I Love Her", and in the same place. Paul McCartney's take on it then appeared in Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly" (in the channel to the chorus), in the 1970s. All that from George just running his hands over a few notes of two descending chords, on the way back to the beginning of the tune sometime in the 1920s.
There are also many other Gershwin classics, both written with his brother Ira as lyricist, and (mainly earlier) with other lyricists.
GREAT SAXOPHONE PLAYERS OF JAZZ
Coleman Hawkins
Hawkins, "The Hawk" or "Bean", basically invented tenor sax as we know it, all the way down to Bill Clinton playing his way to office. The Hawk took an unusual step in the mid 1930s, travelling to Europe for four years. On his return to America in 1939, he recorded the classic "Body And Soul", a solo tenor exposition in front of a small group. This was the future, and indeed Hawkins said it himself in the early 40s when he told a friend that small groups were the future of jazz.
Hawkin's sound is full and round-bodied. Sounds like a wine, don't it?
An extraordinary school photo of Coleman "Haskins" in 1921
Lester Young
Lester Young was the opposite approach to Hawkins: a light, airy sound that was soon transformed into bebop and modern jazz by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Lester played with Count Basie as the leading solo voice, and was also a very good composer. He became best friends with Billie Holliday, and unfortunately died within months of her also. He was rumoured to wear lisptick at times, and his sensitive persona saw him sitting on the floor in the bathroom with his tenor sax, in tears. His peak tracks are generally felt to be up to and including 1944, when he was drafted. In the army, rascism affected him badly, but many of his (more boogie) records after the war are also interesting.
Young's playing is very distinctive; as Count Basie said: "Lester was a stylist". He has a sideways sound, and indeed he used to sling his saxophone sideways on the band stand instead of facing straight ahead like the other players. There are photos of him standing up and holding the sax horizonatally in front and to the side of him: this may have been for show, but it is HOW he sounded. There is an excellent double CD compilation on the Primo label, "The Immortal Lester Young".
Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young provide the template for tenor sax to the present (Coltrane apart of course). Hawkins sounds more mainstream, but it is really Young's vibratoless approach that made modern jazz possible.
From [Answers.com]: "Young's freewheeling style included holding the saxophone at odd angles: he often held it nearly horizontal. His signature porkpie hat also was copied by generations of jazz musicians. Young and his contemporary Coleman Hawkins are often listed as the original twin towers of modern jazz saxophone." Unlike the other twins, these two will never fall.
"I'm trying to look like Picasso".
Johnny Hodges
Parallel to or just behind Hawkins in terms of start time (Hawkins was already recording important records with Fletcher Henderson's band in 1924) was Johnny Hodges, the famous alto saxophone player with Duke Ellington' orchestra. Nicknamed "The Rabbit", Hodges is the most beautiful sax sound in jazz, rich, ofetn described as "creamy", setting up the most sensual of Ellington's masterpieces (or those his sidekick Billy Strayhorn), particularly in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Hodges stayed with Ellington until 1970 (he left for a five year period in 1951) as his premier soloist.
Johnny in 1965
Ben Webster
What jazz is about: Webster in New York in 1945
Another powerful player in the genral Hawkins mould was Ben Webster. Webster has a very distinyive sound, and is most famous for his immense contributioons to Duke Ellington's peak band of the early 1940s, not surprisingly known as the [Blanton]-Webster band (Jimmy Blanton was the revolutionary bass player who single-handedly invented modern bass playing and provided the "spring in the swing" of the Ellington band of this famous era). The track "Cottontail" is a brilliant example of Webster's power and virtuosity, and, as it was recorded in 1940, is also an example (due to Ellington's writing) of virtual "pre-Parker modern jazz". Webster could do it.
A 1973 quote from Webster: "Son, you are young and growing, and I am old and going. So have your fun while you can." [www.bobrigter.com]
Many brilliant photos of Webster are collected at www.benwebster.dk
Webster at right with the best jazz orchestra ever: Ellington, 1940.
Charlie Parker
The Bird played alto saxophone, a higher pitched instrument than the larger tenor. He wasn't really a sax player however, more a composer. The alto was the voice that his compositions came through. Everyone knows Charlie (see the article in the mymuiscdiscovery archives, for example); he was strongly influenced by the Duke's Johnny Hodges ("he plays so pretty") but Parker's language was totally new, rooted in the composer Bela Bartok's flattened fifth notes and melody lines of the composer Paul Hindemith (see the first movement of Hindemith's Kammermusik No2 Op36/1, for example).
Stan Getz
Stan Getz took the lighter vibtaro-less sound of Lester Young, added the sensual approach of Hodges; he played it on the tenor sax, and when he mixed it with bossa nova, invented the most intoxicating sax sound on record. He was known as "The Sound" in the late 1940s, when he began playing with Woody Herman's band as part of the "Four Brothers', four Los Angeles based sax players (three tenor and one baritone) who helped Herman invent new and tougher big band sounds (the "Four Brothers" tag was actually an amending of the true name they had had for themselves, the "Four M....ers".
Getz's most commercial album is surely "Jazz Samba", from 1962. This is pure beach babe music. Getz is paired with guitarist Charlie Byrd to make a bossa nova masterpiece, featuring some of Carlos Antonio Jobim's bossa tunes and other works.
"Jazz Samba"
There are a number of sites about Stan Getz:
PBS: www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_getz_stan.htm
His label Verve: www.vervemusicgroup.com
Getz was Verve's biggest success. The label also has a brief jazz history section on their site, by type of jazz.
There is an interesting interview (1986) by Mel Martin at http://www.melmartin.com/html_pages/Interviews/getz.html
There is alsoa superlative listing of his recording sessions, beginning at the age of fifteen in 1943 at www.jazzdisco.org/getz/
A number of videos are at www.home.ica.net/~blooms/getzhome.html
Harry Carney
Out of date order here, but beginning his recording career in 1924 with Duke Ellington, Harry Carney was the baritone sax player who gave Ellington his very important deeper sound part. Ellington's and Strayhorn's scores would have the trumpets, other saxophones and trombones on one stave each, butthere was always a separate stave for Carney; his lower baritone part was very important to the sound (an alto sax is relatively high pitched, a tenor sax lower, and the baritone very low).
Gerry Mulligan also played baritone sax, beginning in the early1950s, but in the ("West Coast") modern jazz style. He made exceptionally interesting records with Chet Baker on trumpet, in their famous piano-less quartet over 1952-53.
John Coltrane
Everyone knows Coltrane. He also played with Ellington on one album ("Take The Coltrane"). In addition to the well known albums "Giant Steps" and "A Love Supreme", "Ascension" is a very interesting piece, from the 1960s. His son Ravi said that a key to Coltrane is that he often wrote in whole tones eg: the tune "Giant Steps".
Wayne Shorter
Shorter played with Miles Davis' second major quintet in the 1960s, then formed the fusion group Weather Report. But he is a very good tenor sax player in more conventional music, and I saw him play in a quartet in London, and in 2003 he performed his more recent excellent full orchestra music.
[Photographs from Wikipedia unless stated]
This is an ambitious title for a one week page! Well, it can be done:
Jelly Roll Morton and the Red Hot Peppers
This is not the chilli variety of red hot peppers. Jelly Roll, real name Ferdinand Lamothe, claimed to have invented jazz. He was a contemporary of Louis Armstrong in New Orleans, and his recordings with the Red Hot Peppers in 1926 were certainly a template for jazz up until the modern jazz revolution in 1945. These records set out the "best" way to play small group jazz, and one, "Blue Blood Blues", is also an Ellington template complete with Duke style tinkling piano and deeper musical investigations by the soloists. A singalong classic is "Doctor Jazz", which Eric Clapton played on a BBC radio show as an example of one of his early influences.
Jelly Roll is at right, photographed in 1918.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Loius Armstrong
His Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings (1925-28) are peerless examples of music of any kind, and set the path for individual jazz soloing. A brilliant example is "Potato Head Blues", a crazy title but Louis' solos turn this into classical music.
Sidney Bechet
With Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington he has been described as one of the three greatest improvisatory geniuses of jazz. He began his famous vibrato sound on clarinet, and switched to soprano sax when he saw one in a London shop window. In 1919, the famous conductor Ernest Ansermet said of him "this is the road that music will follow in the Twentieth Century". Correctement, Ernie. A piece of solo in Bechet's "Blues In The Air" (the early 1940s) later shaped itself into his famous world wide hit "Petite Fleur", in the late 1950s.
The young Sidney
Bix Beiderbecke
He was the white counterpart to Louis Armstrong, and the first white trumpeter that Afro-American jazz players began to copy. He had a lighter, flapper touch (hear "Ostrich Walk"). His trumpet was once described as the sound of a "girl saying 'yes'". He lived from 1903 to 1931.
Bix is second from right, in this photo of his Rhythm Jugglers in 1926.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Duke Ellington
The Beatles of jazz (unless it's Louis Armstrong)? . He fused so many things to make (his) jazz into a classical form and style. Ellington was said to listen to Debussy, amongst other classical composers. Some of his orchetra's trumpet sound is in Scriabin's over the top orchestral piece "Poeme d'Extase" of 1906.
So that's half way.
Let's take a popular music diversion into the swing era (1935-45), when jazz was the main popular music of the Western world.
The Swing Era
Clarinetists Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw stand out as the figureheads of this time, the era of the "big bands". Goodman was the "King Of Swing", and Shaw had the "loudest band in the land" (and eight wives). The progress towards swing was begun by Loius Armstrong's "swinging" triple time solos in the 1920s, and perhaps more visibly by the tenor sax player Coleman Hawkins. Coleman Hawkins surfaced as a major player in 1924 when when he was with the Fletcher Henderson band (essentially an early swing orchestra), and a film clip exists of Hawkins speaking and playing accapella to the camera in Belgium in 1935. And roaring out of Kansas City came Count Basie and his master of the lighter, more "modern" side of tenor sax, Lester Young eg: Lester is brilliant on a track from their first session in 1936, "Lady Be Good"). Count's records are the ultimate swing music, for example "One O'Clock Jump", complete with its hooky key change as the piano and rhythm are joined by the full orchestra playing the stunning riffs.
The main swing anthem was written by Jelly Roll Morton (above), "King Porter Stomp"; maybe he DID invent jazz, as the loudmouth claimed!
Fats Waller
Fats came out of the swing era, although he was well known before it began. He was a superlative composer (the all time classic "Ain't Misbehavin'" and the swing staple "Honeysuckle Rose"), and a massively popular entertainer and singer. Gangsters once kidnapped him (so he said) and held him "captive" for two days, just so he could play for them at close range. They stuffed dollar bills on him after every song that he HAD to play! The Beatles could be said to be a replay of Fats Waller, but with electric guitars underneath and several voices on top. It's the same kind of melodic (and band) sound. In Hamburg, the Beatle used to regularly perform one of Fat's novelty hits ("Your Feets Too Big"). Finally, Charlie Parker used "Honeysuckle Rose" to find his way to HIS sound: the brilliant melodic riff that drives "Honeysuckle Rose", if played higher in the scale and faster, begins to resemble Charlie Parker.
Fats Waller
Charlie Parker
The dawn of modern jazz was from the collaberation between the "Yardbird" and Dizzy Gillespie. See "The Story Of Charlie Parker" in the Mymusicdiscovery Archives section.
Charlie Mingus and others
Mingus was the bass player and composer who invented the cohesive bass line (the style that every jazz bassist plays now) and who widened "jazz composition". His influence has extended down to Joni Mitchell and many other current writers and players. He was also the first truly famous composer-bass player, before Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney. As a rhythm and "root note" instrument, the bass provides a good vantage point to see around you musically, and in a melodic way (just ask Gene Simmons, Phil Lynott or Sting, and note the jazz inflections of the last two writers).
Not to be omitted is a contemporary of Mingus, Thelonius Monk, who as the pianist at Minton's night club in 1941 helped invent modern jazz with guitarist Charlie Christian and drummer Kenny "Klook" Clarke, in addition to of course Parker and Gillespie. Monk wrote the modern jazz classic "'Round Midnight", and is revered by many later musicians as as big an influence on them as Duke Ellington.
Miles Davis and others
Finally, the guy who partnered Charlie Parker in many of his masterpieces, who invented cool jazz and who led the way into electric jazz-rock: the man who turned his back on the audience, taking jazz full (or half!) circle. "What have you done, Miles", asked an uninformed white woman as Miles was about to receive a lifetime honour: "Oh, changed music five or six times", he answered.
John Coltrane rivals Miles as a forward-looking jazz composer, and can be seen as perhaps the last word in jazz explorations to this day.
Charlie Parker in his twenties
Charlie Parker redesigned melody, by exploring the upper reaches of the scale and through snappy bebop figures, mostly of course written by him. Imagine the Beatle's "Yesterday" played by Charlie Parker, ie: with a two note ending to each phrase - "Yester" - instead of "Yesterday". It sounds like Charlie. I do not think the Beatles (or any other melody writers since the late 1950s) could have existed quite the same way without Charlie Parker. Someone said in the sixties, "If Bird were alive today he would think he was in a room full of mirrors", ie: his sounds were reflected everywhere. The Sesame Street Theme, advertisements, practically any melody written after 1955 (not early three chord rock and roll).
So what are the highlights of da Boid?:
"The Jumping Blues" (1942)
Recorded by Jay McShann and his Orchestra in the home of the Bird, Kansas City. On this track Charlie opens up his brief solo (he was twentyone) with a characteristic climbing tune; it is the opening notes of what another writer (Bennie Harris) would later extend as the Parker classic "Ornithology".
"Ko Ko" (1945)
This is a masterpiece, built on the chords of the bebop favourite cover "Cherokee". It is generally regarded as the most virtuosic Parker record.
"Now's The Time" (1945)
This was another early Parker classic, a clever riff that was later ripped off by an R&B performer and renamed the 'Hucklebuck", which in that form became a famous '50s dance record. Charlie did not get royalties. From the same session as "Ko Ko".
"Yardbird Suite" (1946)
A beautiful record, originally written by Charlie when he was about twentyone, with the Jay McShann Orchestra. There is also a brilliant colourful finish. Exoticism was a trademark of early Bird, and in fact of bebop in general.
"Lover Man" (1946)
This is a track from the famous session in mid 1946 where Parker collapsed and later wound up in the Camarillo State Hospital for six months; he was so out of it that the producer had to hold him up to the microphone and stop him spinning around. He wasn't fully successful, however, as at one point on the record you can hear Charlie spin away from the microphone as the sound of the sax disappears! Parker later said "Lover Man" should be stomped into the ground", but the recording is a true classic and is very evocative.
"Relaxin' At Camarillo" (1946)
This was apparently written by Charlie in a taxi on the way to the studio in LA, not long after he was released from his six month sojourn in the Camarillo Hospital (following his heroin and stimulant fueled breakdown in Los Angeles in 1946). The riff was so convoluted that the pianist Dodo Marmarosa just couldn't "get it" for quite a while in the studio. It is a characteristic Parker piece of the time during this West Coast interlude before his return to New Work in April 1947.
"Ornithology" (1946)
The aforesaid tune, that was developed out of Charlie's solo on "The Junping Blues" in 1942. This is one of the fast bebop classics, a counterpart to "Out Of Nowhere" (below) as representing the slower side of Charlie at this point.
Live at one of the major 52nd Street clubs in New York where Parker's quintet played over 1947-48 before Miles Davis (at right) left after Christmas '48, fed up with Charlie's clowning. Parker's output fell.
"Out Of Nowhere" (1948)
They said he was slower after his hospital stint, but that's OK if the playing is as beautiful as on this track. The sax is so elegant and earthy, a strange mix that appears to have been possible only with Parker. This recording is a cover of a "standard" of the time, and a huge favourite of Parker. Miles Davis plays the slow trumper foil to the beauty of Charlie. Parker recorded several other slow Tin Pan Alley classics at this time eg: "Don't Blame me" (John Lennon used to sing this one, before the Beatles were famous), and "My Old Flame". These tunes have interesting and oblique chord changes, and so attracted the Parker. Charlie did not play the tune straight: he played "inside" the melody, thus effectively creating a new composition, a new sound scape. It is part of the series of 1947-48 Parker super masterpieces.
Bird and Dizzy Gillespie in the early1950s
"Summit At Birdland" (1951)
This is a live album recording of Charlie, Dizzy Gillespie and piano genius Bud Powell reuniting at the famous New York club Birdland, named of course after Charlie. The lead off track is another definitive Parker composition, "Anthropology". The beboppers sometimes selected unusual names for their pieces, and Parker's titles occasionally represented the professorial aspect of his persona and of bebop. (Dizzy Gillespie was known as "Professor Bop").
"Concert At Massy Hall" 1953
Called "the best concert ever". It is pehaps a counterpart to Bob Dylan at the Trades Hall in 1966 or Jimi Hendrix at Monterey. The five band members were Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charlie Mingus on bass and Maz Roach on drums. The idea was to invite the five best modern jazz musicians, on their respective instruments, to come to Toronto and play a gig. Luckily Mingus recorded it. The first half was Bud Powell with bass and drums, and the second was the full five. The first three tracks played by the quintet (taking up an entire LP side) are the highlight: they open with the Duke Ellington latin flavoured "Perdido", follow with Dizzy singing his comic early bop classic "Salt Peanuts", and then a dreamy "All The Things You Are" (the Jerome Kern classic). The latter sees Bud Powell drifting through strange atmospheric chords as Charlie explores the hall's acoustics. One odd piece of folklore about the gig is that Parker apparently had to borrow a plastic alto sax to play!
In brief, anything recorded by Parker over 1944-48 is a must buy; after 1948, the two live concerts above are the primary music to hear.
Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie playing with the Earl Hines Orchestra in 1943, when they perfected their new invention of "modern jazz". Because of a recording ban there are no records of the band. Parker is at far right, and Gillespie appears to be at far left. Earl Hines was the first major jazz piano virtusoso, partnering Louis Armstrong on his Hot Seven sessions in the late 1920s.
Big bodies, little notes (sometimes played very fast...). Exceptions are certainly Monder and Frisell, who seem to invent entirely new sound worlds. These players use an amp and their imagination, sometimes backed by bass and drums only.
Let it rock:
Adam Rogers
Phrygia
Ben Monder
Ubiquitous Ben Monder: cool name, cool playing
Kurt Rosenwinkel
Now resident in Europe.
Bill Frisell
Frisell is unique. And not just for his green Telecaster guitars. What does he do? Nobody knows... He has a side-line in Dylan covers, and has backed Elvis Costello solo. Here is "Equinox":
Frisell backs Elvis Costello in a duo of the song, "If I Only Had A Brain": Declan McManus, of Ireland, had a chance to change his name... so he chose "Elvis"...
Wolfgang Muthspiel
Europe
Kevin Eubanks
With Dave Holland: hey Kevin, aren't you supposed to be on The Late Show or something?
**** For some comparison of earlier jazz guitar:
George Benson
Live George Benson in 1989, "Stella By Starlight"
Bireli Lagrene
The same song by Bireli Lagrene, of Europe:
Joe Pass
And the standard for solo guitar, original standard style: Joe Pass
Joe Pass
Photographs: Wikipedia
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