Influence or Robbery

[Bright Moments]

porcy62 and i had an interesting dialogue going on in a different thread and we decided to open it up as a separate thread. here is where we are so far:

me:

there's a whole section in the RRK biography about how RRK felt that ian anderson (whom by numerous accounts is a decent person) "stole" his flute act.

porcy:

I couldn't imagine RRK playing in "Acqualung" or Ian Anderson playing in"Domino".

Maybe they are share the same KARMA

me:

actually ian anderson performed rrk's serenade to a cuckoo on the first tull album.

see:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&t...33:8x5tk6axqk9w

porcy:

I knew it, I own this Lp.

All this story remember me that old, and fair, complain about whites stolen music from blacks. (in Miles self biography there is almost a whole chapter about it)

Beethoven stolen something from Haydn, and Elvis from Chuck Berry, and Sonny Stitt from Byrd, it's a complex matter, maybe we could start a new post about "Influence or Robbery".

In my point of view, all musicians start as "thief" and later become "victim".

_______________

so what do you all think about this? wynton marsalis told ed bradley the other night that no one "owns" music, everyone takes from everyone else and makes it their own art (or words to that effect).

[A Lark Ascending]

I came to jazz in the 70s partially through the Keith Tippett/Louis Moholo/John Surman/Mike Osborne/Brotherhood of Breath area of the music. It always sounded quite unique to my ears.

I was recently listening to Albert Alyer's Greenwich Village recordings and was astonished by how much of that UK/South African exile music owed to Ayler. Not just in its high octane freedom but in the use of marches and tunes derived from folk/popular culture.

Now the musicians mentioned have never hidden that influence. But having never previously really listened to Ayler except in passing I was greatly struck by the parallels.

Robbery? I think not. They take Ayler's way of doing things which they clearly love and take it somewhere else. Strikes me as the way music happens.

[JSngry]

I can't really compare Jethro Tull to Brothehood of Breath as far as the "ethics" utilizing influences.

"Influnce" to me means using something and turning into something, if not entirely different, at least recognizably different. BOB did that w/Ayler, but did Ian Anderson do that w/Kirk's flute style (not the context he put it in, but the actual style itself)? I can't hear it if he did.

Seems to me that Anderson basically took Kirk's style at face value and incorporated it into his overall package (a package that certainly involved much more than just that one thing) as an "effect". No knock on that, to be sure, but let's call it what it is. "Robbery" might be too strong a word, but "influence" is certainly too weak a one.

"Appropriation", perhaps?

[Shawn]

I think Jim pretty muchs nails it here.

Serenade To A Cuckoo was the first song that Ian Anderson learned to play on the flute (remember that on the first Tull album, he mostly plays harmonica). Anderson was a big fan of jazz & blues and I have a feeling he heard Kirk and flipped over his flute playing. We all tend to sound like our influences when we first start playing our respective instruments. As Anderson became a better player over the years...the Kirk influence becomes less and less evident.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

This is incorrect. Anderson plays harmonica on only three tracks of the first album (Some Day The Sun Won't Shine For You; It's Breaking Me Up; Song For Jeffrey). He plays flute on all the rest (6 - including Song For Jeffrey), save for the two where he plays neither (the Mick Abrahams features: Move On Alone; Cat's Squirrel).

Mike

[porcy62]

We all tend to sound like our influences when we first start playing our respective instruments.

I subscribe.

I think we have to judge an artist for his whole career and music. Consider Miles, if he would have died very early we would have judge him like a weak trumpet players who could not play like Dizzy, or a Roy Eldrige disciple.

I was listening at Dohram "Trompeta Toccata" this morning and the bass line remebered me an Ennio Morricone western theme. Is Morricone a thief? I think he knew Trompeta, because Morricone is a trumpet player and probably know the works of Dorham, but he transformed a bass line in a powerful comment of Sergio Leone's movies.

[A Lark Ascending]

"Appropriation", perhaps?

I see the distinction.

Prog-rock groups of that era were keen on 'appropriation'. Lots of 'chunks' of classical music got appropriated.

Having said that is Ian Anderson 'appropriating' RRK any different to Martin Carthy 'appropriating' a Bob Copper song? Often he transforms the music he gathers from the tradition; but sometimes he...and other folk revivalists...just get off on singing a bloody good song or playing a bloody good tune with little embellishment.

Maybe what matters here is acknowledging the source, which Carthy has always been very strict to do. Did Anderson acknowledge the RRK source?

[Michael Fitzgerald]

The influence was acknowledged. The notes to the first album: "Serenade to a Cuckoo is this Roland Kirk one which was the first thing Ian learned to play on flute (so he says) - it's probably all right." I mean, just the fact that they include a RRK tune on the album tells me they're paying tribute. I bet RRK got some nice royalty checks as a result.

Sometimes Anderson made sure to deprecate his own playing in regards to RRK:

"Anyone who compares me with Roland Kirk obviously does not understand what Kirk is doing. Roland Kirk is a jazz musician who leans heavily towards blues — loose, free blues. Technically he's a master of his style and he certainly understands his instrument. Now I don't have a style; but I do have a sound. The fact that I use my voice with the flute doesn't mean I'm imitating Kirk. Really, the comparison is irksome. He's been playing flute for years — many, many years. I've been playing flute only since 1968. I don't even know the mechanics of my instrument."

http://www.tullpress.com/db25jun70.htm

Here, he notes that he was playing before he heard Kirk:

http://www.jimnewsom.com/IanAndersonInterview.html

Now, I think that Sam Most got the vocalizing thing with the flute on record before Kirk did. Can someone confirm that?

Mike

[JSngry]

Now, I think that Sam Most got the vocalizing thing with the flute on record before Kirk did. Can someone confirm that?

I can confirm that I've heard the same thing more than a few times over the years.

[A Lark Ascending]

It's probably inevitable that anyone in any field will commence their careers 'borrowing' from elsewhere. I know I took most of my teaching techniques from other teachers in the early years...and continue to steal to this day.

Another example of influence/robbery I recently noticed - I was listening to some very early John Taylor and Keith Tippett recordings (late 60s/early 70s). What stood out was how much of McCoy Tyner both had absorbed. Probably inevitable for a young piano player at the time.

By the mid-70s there's hardly a trace of Tyner there and he'd be one of the last pianist you'd compare either of them with based on their recordings of the last 30 years.

Edited October 17, 2004 by Bev Stapleton

[JSngry]

Hey, let's face it - Kirk no doubt felt "robbed" simply because a white guy (an Englishman no less) took somehting that he had broght to the forefront (Sam Most notwithstanding) and got rich doing little more than "imitating" it.

The reality may or may not more complex than that, but given the Great American Heritage of black artists having their creations brought into the mainstream at a great profit by white people, often enough not credited or at best merely paid lip service to, I don't think that the emotion behind Rahsaan's statements should be discounted. I remember reading an interview in the old Jazz And Pop magazine where Rasaahn was going totally ballistic about Dick Hecsktall-Smith's playing of two horns simultaneously, and, especially, the then-recent invention of an effect that created octaves out of an electric guitar. "Wes Montgomery busted his ass to perfect that, and now any sorry motherfucker can just push a button and sound just like Wes Montgomery" is a rough, to the best of my memory, quote.

These types of things hurt, especially when it's been as commonplace and institutionalized as it has been in the popular music industry. "Get over it" ain't exactly good enough. Not that anybody here has been so callous. But, hey, you got to respect the indignation at at least some level, I'd think.

[A Lark Ascending]

The indignation is understandable.

But it would be interesting to speculate what music would sound like today if every musician had begun their career determined not to appropriate an idea that had been first dreamed up by an earlier musician.

[JSngry]

Absolutely.

I think it just hurts more when the money's being made by somebody who just uses it as an "effect" and doesn't turn it into something personal. I have no problem w/imitation early on. It's how we learn to do pretty much everything we do, including walking and talking.

Now, you take this lady from Chicago I asked about a few days ago, Nicole Mitchell. she does the "singing/speaking while playing" thing too, but she's come up with some new twists on it. I don't think that anybody would be indignant if she ended up getting rich and famous by doing it (not that there's a chance in hell of THAT ever happening, but hey, we can all dream, can't we? ) becasue she's not imitating. She's taking the "influence" and building on it, which is how we all like to see it go down, right?

As far as I see it, Ian Anderson's flute playing is NOT what made Jethro Tull the band that it was. I've never been much of a fan, but, hey, they did what they did in a way that I could "appreciate" it. Then again, I'm not the one confronted with hearing my style imitated (not particularly well) by guys making all the dough while I'm stuck playing a lot of club dates.

In other words, I'm able to appreciate the "whole" while at the same time taking a somewhat derisive attitude towards one part of it. Kirk, on the other hand, didn't have the luxury of that distance, and I can feel what he's saying to a pretty fair extent. If somebody steals my car, it gives me little comfort to know that they eventually repainted it and customized it. ESPECIALLY if they financed that work be winnings from racing my car in its original (or perhaps even worse!) condition!

[A Lark Ascending]

I can see exactly what you're saying. The fact that the likes of Anderson made a huge fortune way beyond what Kirk could hope for, displaying a fraction of the talent, is bound to rankle...and the racial politics dimension only intensifies that.

[Despite having a general affection for the prog-rock of that era JT are not my cup-of-teabag either]

But I'd imagine Kirk 'borrowed' alot of the devices he used from earlier musicians before he started to develop his own innovations. It's how we all start.

Bruckner, Mahler, Elgar, Debussy, Schoenberg...it's hard to listen to any of their early music without hearing Wagner. It's that thing of hearing or seeing something new and striking and saying 'I want to try that.'

I'm reminded of a similar example. Back in the 70s and 80s a bunch of Irish musicians turned traditional Irish music on its head and made it relevant and exciting for the rock world. Yet the likes of Planxty and the Bothy Band never really broke out of the world of the folk revival and the marginal folk-rock area. And from the late 70s onwards interest went elsewhere and they ploughed on in their own way.

Anyway, towards the end of Planxty's lifetime that used a keyboard player called Bill Whelan to provide colouring and arrangements. Ten years later Whelan puts together an extravaganza called 'Riverdance' and cleans up across the world. The whole musical basis - in a more sugary form - lay in the 70s work of Planxty. Whelan had found a way to bring it to a mass audience.

I've read interviews with Andy Irvine (one of Planxty's members) where without being openly hostile, his indignation with Whelan is barely supressed.

In terms of innovation it should have been the Planxty lads who got the fortune. But that's not the way it seems to work. Whelan might have had little of musical interest to add to what they'd achieved...but he sure knew how to dress it up for wider consumption.

Edited October 17, 2004 by Bev Stapleton

[Jim R]

I think that Sam Most got the vocalizing thing with the flute on record before Kirk did.

This has me a little curious now... what year (roughly) would this have started? I wonder if we really know the genesis of this technique. I've heard the Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal do it, but I'm not sure when he started (I'm not really a fan)...

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Most's first recordings were done in 1953 for Prestige, then Debut.

Mike

[Jazzmoose]

I can see exactly what you're saying. The fact that the likes of Anderson made a huge fortune way beyond what Kirk could hope for, displaying a fraction of the talent, is bound to rankle...and the racial politics dimension only intensifies that.

Well, I understand the racial politics dimension, but anyone who gets upset because "lesser artists" are raking in the bucks rather than the riches going to the innovators and talented just hasn't been alive long enough to see how things work in my opinion. It surely can't take that long following pop music to see that the real talent involved is the incredible skill of promotion rather than pure musical talent.

Not that I can't understand an artist feeling that way, mind you.

Edited October 17, 2004 by Jazzmoose

[7/4]

It surely can't take that long following pop music to see that the real talent involved is the incredible skill of promotion rather than pure musical talent.

This is a cronic problem all over the map, not just in pop music.

[A Lark Ascending]

Well, I understand the racial politics dimension, but anyone who gets upset because "lesser artists" are raking in the bucks rather than the riches going to the innovators and talented just hasn't been alive long enough to see how things work in my opinion.

You don't have to look far on jazz boards to find hosts of people who get upset about just that. Wade into any discussion of pop or smooth jazz...

[Bright Moments]

compare the musician who slips in a lick from bye bye blackbird into his otherwise original composition

with

the hip hop artist who "samples" parts of prior artists hits to create a "new" song.

is there really any difference? i think yes.

the former is influence and manifests itself oftentimes spontaneously. it is used humorously to enhance the enjoyment of the music.

the latter is robbery and is used to make a buck.

B-)