Rolling Jazz Thread 2024

I wrote about Louis Armstrong🕸 for BA this week.

Hat Hut has put out a previously unreleased Cecil Taylor live recording from February 1980.

He and his band recorded four sets between February 8 and 10. The second set, which bled from late 2/8 into early 2/9, was released as It Is In The Brewing Luminous, from which I took the title of my forthcoming book, In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor. This new release is the third set, from the night of 2/9. The band is Taylor on piano, Jimmy Lyons on alto sax, Ramsey Ameen on violin, Alan Silva on bass and cello, Jerome Cooper on drums and balafon, and Sunny Murray on drums.

Amazing! What an era of the Unit.

Hat Hut has put out a previously unreleased Cecil Taylor live recording from February 1980🕸.

He and his band recorded four sets between February 8 and 10. The second set, which bled from late 2/8 into early 2/9, was released as _It Is In The Brewing Luminous_, from which I took the title of my forthcoming book, _In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor_. This new release is the third set, from the night of 2/9. The band is Taylor on piano, Jimmy Lyons on alto sax, Ramsey Ameen on violin, Alan Silva on bass and cello, Jerome Cooper on drums and balafon, and Sunny Murray on drums.

I've always loved the Hot Fives and Sevens. Never found them corny at all. Thrilling, actually. In my brief jazz school days I thought the bebop-centric approach of my school was all wrong and that people should be transcribing Louis Armstrong and Johnny Hodges and Lionel Hampton so they could learn the basics of how to play a solo that someone actually wants to listen to before they start getting all baroque with their improv.

tbf some of the professors probably would have agreed with that. Like one of them was really big on learning not only the original version of the melody of any standard, but learning to sing the words.

Same. Connecting back to the idea that you're playing a song, not just an abstraction of a song or a vehicle for soloing.

Believe such a luminary as Lester Young recommended learning the words, as do many others.

I’m even in favor of learning the words when technically they might not have existed in the original version as in, say, the Jon Hendricks lyrics for Monk tunes.

In those famous and mysterious Lee Konitz levels of improvisation I believe the first two or three if not more are devoted to working with the melody.

To go further, you can always play the changes or something similar, but how often do you get to play that particular melody? Plus a melody might have some kind of jump or leap in it that might be physically difficult for you to play if you haven’t practiced it, which will get you out of your comfort zone pretty quickly but will make you feel good when you can do it smoothly.

Otherwise one can just get by with the bare minimum solo which is sort of a modified bass line but not in a quarter-note rhythm, at least in my case.

Which reminds me to callback that I think people could and should learn to play walking bass lines by listening to Walter Page with Count Basie.

as in, say, the Jon Hendricks lyrics for Monk tunes

i don't normally like to hand out fp's on the jazz thread, but you've put me in a tough position

O RLY?

Do you think that was an insult to Monk or to Jon?

on my part or ... ?

Like I don’t get what exactly offended you

i was just being silly because i don't care really care for them but obviously monk liked him enough to put him on a record

i am not offended, sorry, i was just trying to be lighthearted

Oh okay.

Thing is that I do know some jazz dudes who WOULD take offense, don’t feel like going into detail right now.

In Walked Budo

Suddenly in walked budo
And then they got into something

Recently listened to Mark Turner on Pablo Held's podcast, and he was saying how approaches learning to solo on an unfamiliar standard or new tune by soloing in half notes first (and demonstrating on the piano).

lol I'm actually kind of with Budo on the added lyrics thing

Why do you people hate fun vocalese?

Recently listened to Mark Turner on Pablo Held's podcast, and he was saying how approaches learning to solo on an unfamiliar standard or new tune by soloing in half notes first (and demonstrating on the piano).

Why do you people hate fun vocalese?

I know they're two different things, but there's a reason scat singing and scat porn have the same name. Shut up and learn an instrument.

Never change, ILM.

Yeah I have also heard people say "Just play the root of every chord and hold it, then do the same with the third, then the fifth, then the seventh etc." Then switch between them but in whole/half notes. That makes sense to me. I'm very pro-chord tones and very anti-scales.

Yeah. CST is kind of a blight

Jamey Abersold ruined a generation of musicians imo

It has its place, it has its use but it really… maybe I should just relink Ethan Iverson’s posts about Jeff Goldblum’s jazz album.

https://ethaniverson.com/received-wisdom-jeff-goldblum-chord-scales-the-ireal-book-and-kamasi-washington/

https://ethaniverson.com/received-wisdom-jeff-goldblum-chord-scales-the-ireal-book-and-kamasi-washington/

― The Ginger Bakersfield Sound (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, March 7, 2024 3:16 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is good, but I think the scalar/blues dichotomy he sets up is totally false. Bach isn't scalar either, and neither is Stravinsky, and Charlie Parker was listening to and absorbing all that stuff too.

Chord-scale playing isn't bad because it's not blues, it's bad because it's not musical.

It’s not, um, idiomatic

Other than deliberately modal jazz I don't think any good music has ever been written by applying scales to chords.

I mean I could probably rant about this forever, but part of the reason G Lydian sounds like shit in Out of Nowhere is not just that it's not "bluesy," but that the sharp 4 doesn't really have any obvious relationship to the chord that comes next, either as a chord tone or as a leading tone. But there are ways you could make it work! Like resolve the sharp 4 before you hit the next chord. You could even do that in a "bluesy" way. You can make any note work. But not by meandering around through a chord scale.

Btw per the self-deprecation thread, I appreciated that Mark Turner stated "I'm not talented, which just means I need to put the work into every single aspect of playing." He didn't say he sucks or pales in comparison to anybody, just that he knows people who are great with less effort, people who the music just seems to flow through.

Other than deliberately modal jazz I don't think any good music has ever been written by applying scales to chords.

WEREN’T

Well yeah, and to the extent they were, they knew how to do it interesting ways because they already knew how to play music, how to create a melody, how to phrase, etc. So using the mode was like an interesting experimental limitation rather than a jumping off point.

I appreciated that Mark Turner stated "I'm not talented, which just means I need to put the work into every single aspect of playing." He didn't say he sucks or pales in comparison to anybody, just that he knows people who are great with less effort

There’s an episode of Columbo where Falk says something similar about detective work

There's some Mark Turner stuff I really like, specifically the Fly Trio

kudos p4k I guess but this amaro freitas record is nice

Saw that the saxophonist Wally Shoup died recently. Always liked this disc he played on with Nels Cline and Chris Corsano:

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Nels_ClineWally_ShoupChris_Corsano/ImmolationImmersion

kudos p4k I guess but this amaro freitas record is nice

It's really good. Lots of guest players, too: Jeff Parker, Brandee Younger, Shabaka, Hamid Drake. I've been a fan of his since his second album (this is #4); he really sounds like no one else out there, a kind of middle ground between McCoy Tyner and Matt Shipp but with a pounding heavy northern Brazilian sense of rhythm.

I’m only halfway through my first spin but it’s really good so far