Jazz for grownups

Bebop (bop) jazz developed by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk is easier to recognise than define. Best to dwell on what bop isn't. I like "it strove to counter the popularisation of swing (eg, Benny Goodman, Glen Miller) with non-danceable music that demanded listening." - a crusade launched to stamp out depraved dancing then.

The technical definitions are confusing. Certainly fast tempi and instrumental virtuosity are essential bop elements but being "based on the combination of harmonic structure and melody" doesn’t distinguish bop from other jazz. I agree with this Wikipedia pearl: "(it had) an air of exclusivity, the 'regular' musicians would often reharmonise the standards in order to exclude those whom they considered outsiders or simply weaker players." Of all music bop is easily the most elitist.

Most find it hard to sing along to bop solos, let alone whistle them. Either they're resolutely minor key or possibly atonal, which I take to mean unattached to any formal key signature. So how are we supposed to appreciate them?

Well, it's always fun to watch and/or listen to any activity based on the My-Next-Trick-Is-Impossible text. Here's Dizzy with SALT PEANUTS - note his second solo starting about 4 min 20. Professionals only need apply. Funny, I like this but hate deliberately difficult posh stuff like Tartini’s Devil’s Trill.

Bop is no doubt serious music despite the verve with which it’s played. I don’t think we’re meant to listen to twenty bop tracks one after the other. Not me, anyway. Also I reckon we’re asked to applaud the sheer technical skill as something separate from the music – a tribute to human endeavour if you like. Oh yes, here’s a plus – bop is never sentimental.

Drums as they should be

Tone Deaf is still a pop novice but one thing's for certain: most groups could ditch their drummer and adapt something mechanical. A kitchen blender, say, or a wind-up Barbie doll. Imaginative drumming is rare in the pop sector although I’ve been meaning to discover whether Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason has (had?) any legitimate skills.

I'm not exactly a drumming enthusiast but ten bars of Coldplay, et al., are enough to send me looking for some more stirring percussion. So how about Chico Hamilton, 91 years young, whose latest CD (Revelation) came out last year.

Of course it isn’t apples vs. apples. Pop/rock groups require something noisy, obvious and only vaguely rhythmic. Most of their practitioners could probably sell off half the drumkit and benefit from the increase in stage space. Whereas Chico, a specialist in jazz chamber music, is subtly insistent rather than an in-yer-face clatterer, a part of the music instead of in competition with it.

He’s best known for his quintet of which the other instruments (cello, bass, guitar, flute) hint at his quiet, laid-back style. In the 1958 movie Jazz on a Summer’s Day he’s seen wearing a suit doing something subtle to his tom-toms with hairy mallets. If you click HERE you’ll get the whole movie which is 81 min. long.

Here’s a shorter piece, THE WIND, dating back to about the same time but with an alto instead of a flute.

Chico’s work has reached a wider audience notably as background music to the movies Sweet Smell of Success, and Repulsion. He’s also played at the White House at an event hosted by George W. Bush. Hmmm

Friendship - a mixed blessing

Two friends shaped my interest in music. Richard I’ve already mentioned (See “I Told You So”). X came earlier and our friendship ended unpleasantly, hence the need to hide his true identity.

X dates back to mono LPs. He was widely knowledgeable and became a leader writer on The Times and then The Daily Telegraph. He introduced me to Beethoven, Respighi, Stravinsky, Holst and Elgar in particular, and the evolution of European music in general. But I paid a price. He didn’t like Mozart and my later rehabilitation took some time.

X liked jazz and used to play trumpet along with Ellington and Stan Kenton records. He taught me the rudiments of trumpet-playing and gave me his old trumpet when he bought a replacement. Again I paid a price.

His preference was for the high-note jazz-men, especially William Cat Anderson and Maynard Ferguson (left and right above respectively), and they became my favourites. But it was a very unbalanced view of jazz. Years passed before I was able to appreciate Miles Davies.

Despite the painfulness of our rupture he provided a large early chunk of my musical education. However, as I say, nothing comes for nothing. X was an extremely good journalist, widely read and powerfully opinionated. I was lucky to know him but he wasn’t well liked and impartiality wasn’t one of his qualities. He didn’t care to hear any of my independent opinions. When he pooh-poohed my view that string quartets might represent the most advanced form of musical language I realised he had nothing more to tell me.

Tone Deaf has already shown that music can be a “difficult” enthusiasm. Getting started often requires a kick up the backside. X kicked well and the word “friend” has no simple definition.

The keys are alive... nah, not that

The greatest conversationalists are: Journalists? Atheists? Book readers? How about jazz musicians? I shared my first London flat with a jazz drummer and I know. Obiter dicta by the great pianist, Thelonius Monk, transcribed by another, Stan Tracey. HHB found them and I’m grateful.

● Just because you’re not a drummer doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time.

● Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head when you play.

● Stop playing all those weird notes (That bullshit!). Play the melody.

● Make the drummer sound good.

● You’ve got to dig it to dig it – you dig?

● It must be always night, otherwise they wouldn’t need all the lights.

● Let’s lift the bandstand.

● Don’t play the piano part, I’m playing that. Don’t listen to me. I’m supposed to be accompanying you.

● The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the outside sound good.

● Don’t play everything (or every time); let somethings go by. Some music is just imagined. What you don’t play can be more important than what you do.

● A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world. It depends on your imagination.

● Stay in shape. Sometimes a musician waits for a gig and, when it comes, he’s out of shape and can’t make it.

● When you’re swinging, swing some more

● What should we wear tonight? Sharp as possible

● To a drummer who didn’t want to solo. Don’t sound anybody for a gig. Just be on the scene. These pieces were written so as to have something to play and to get cats interested enough to get to rehearsal.

Signs his cheques Mr Jazz

These days jazz is like ballet. I enjoy both provided someone else has gone to the trouble of booking the event, getting me there and sitting me down at my ease.

My jazz tastes are fuddy-duddy, end of WW2 to about 1975. After that things started getting - there's only one word for it - etiolated. Look it up if it's new to you. A useful word; lots of things in 2011 are etiolated.

So big bands like Ellington and Basie, giants like Charlie Parker, the Gerry Mulligan quartet, the MJQ, and a whole slew of marvellous practitioners on the big booting tenor sax. I'm listening to the prototypical tenor man at the moment - Coleman Hawkins. There's a word for him too although Carl Nielsen has already snaffled it for one of his symphonies. Inextinguishable! Inextinguishable Hawk.

I don't think of him belonging to any particular style or fashion. He could play fast or slow, bop if you like, ballads, or something he wrote himself. Just now, as I listen, he's engaged in his own Bean Soup and earlier he launched himself à toute vitesse into a very urgent Get Happy.

But let me try and catch his essence. Not as breathy as Ben Webster; can be smooth at the upper end when smooth's called for but more often (I think; I've only heard him about a thousand times) he prefers a buzzy sort of rasp. He was a bulky sort of chap and his shape is reflected when he's down below mid-range and the tone is more chocolatey but with a certain hiss. It's almost unnecessary to say it but even in the most complex variation - and he was never complex for the sake of it - he always swung. Hell would have frozen over before he lost that quality.

No sense of strain, of course. No enormous changes of volume. He wasn't dramatic probably because he thought the word really meant melodramatic. Nothing much I can say about him except that when someone says "jazz" it's Hawkins' broad, generous face that swims to mind.

The sleeve note says he battled alcoholism. If that's true he did it offstage.

FROM MY SHELVES
I love Strauss operas but I've not seen Elektra and it's rather jagged to take in from a CD. Solution: A DVD version for Christmas