"Formulaic" Hard Bop/Blue Note ...

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Isn't it the nature of language to become codified over time?

Surely language doesn't exist UNTIL it's codified.

MG

[king ubu]

Interesting thread here!

I'm not sure about all these topics myself, but my experience of late (or rather: of about the past 2-3 years) has been that more and more my listening went backwards in history. I figure I must have about as many pre-bop discs (is "swing" really a good label? Or rather "Swing" it should be... but if you take into account stuff like Luis Russell's band, "Swing" is certainly not a large-enough label) as I have 50s/60s discs.

When I started listening to jazz, it was stuff like "Back at the Chicken Shack", "Money Jungle", "Mingus Ah Um", "Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet", then also "Ascension" and soon after more Miles, Mingus, Coltrane, then Adderley and Monk.

From there I went on to the other end of the 60s - Andrew Hill, Sam Rivers, Jackie McLean, those artists stretching the boundaries of the genre. I became more and more interested in improvised music, free jazz (two more difficult labels), various kinds of European jazz (i.e. the output of the Hat label, Cecil Taylor, Ayler, also some FMP stuff, Irene Schweizer, etc etc). But over the time, as I got into this quite a bit (see the "funny rat" thread), I got somehow not tired of it, but I stopped listening to much music of that kind.

I didn't go back to Blue Note and hardbop though, but rather started exploring earlier jazz - the point of entrance was Lester Young, I guess, and Lunceford, then Billie Holiday, Ellington... (before I'd heard some of those 50s Verve mainstream albums, Hawkins encounters Webster etc) - and there's so much glorious and individual music to discover there that it could turn out into a loooooooong journey!

One point that goes beyond labels/styles/eras, that I have been thinking of quite often in those recent times: there was much wider a variety of styles within the general style referred to as "Swing" in this discussion. Many more individual voices, some even I dare say idiosyncratic. Think of Ellington's band, for instance - each of the guys had his own voice. If you play those 1927 OKeh sides long enough, you'll be able to tell the trumpet players apart... but in the larger picture: think of, for instance, Dicky Wells, Bennie Morton, Vic Dickenson, Tricky Sam Nanton, Lawrence Brown, Miff Mole, Jack Teagarden... just for tromboninsts. Then there were Jay and Kai and somehow everything got smooth and similar. Sure some guys turned that kind of playing into perfection and were extremely fascinating individualists (Rosolino comes to mind), but there was bad need for guys like Roswell Rudd and Julian Priester and Jimmy Knepper to break up the style of trombone playing again. Same on tenor... even today, most of the younger guys are so influenced by Coltrane, it's just boring (albeit on a high technical level, of course - but what's that then, high gloss boredom?). Before that you had musicians like Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Chu Berry, Don Byas, Hershel Evans, Lucky Thompson, Illinois Jacquet, Flip Phillips, Bud Freeman...

I'm not sure I really have a point - but in general to me it seems like the individualism in hardbop got more boiled down to nuances (of course there's still Mobley, Griffin, Lateef, Golson, Jimmy Heath and a few others who largely were able to escape the Coltrane/Rollins dominance, at least for large periods). But the general variation diminished... possibly?

And as a post-script concerning free improv: I still attend concerts in that genre more often than any kind of mainstream concert, but in a week or so I could catch Evan Parker and Schlippenbach again... and o vey, this already bores me before being there... (it's a great festival that used to present more local and younger musicians, there's still someone like Peter Evans on the programme, but they seem to rely more and more on the well-known "safe values", which is a rather ironic/sarcastic term to describe that crowd, but in the end guys like Brozziman, Schlippenbach and Parker are just that by now, and quite formulaic as well...)

[Big Beat Steve]

A good point you've made there about "variety" existing within one style ("Swing", in this case).

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Nice post Flurin. I can see where you're coming from.

It's as if, during the twenties and thirties, no one was saying "THIS" is what it's supposed to be. In a sense, all jazz - even (much of) Paul Whiteman's music - was experimental in those days. But none of that experimentation aesthetic excluded the results of earlier experiments - because no one was saying "THIS" is what it is.

But Bebop, and later on Hard Bop, WERE supposed to be a particular kind of thing, because of the (shared) visions that informed their creation and development. You couldn't DO Bebop with a sax, trumpet and a rhythm section of (say) Avery Parrish, Freddie Green, John Kirby and Jimmy Crawford. Nor could you do it with Otis Spann, Hubert Sumlin, Willie Dixon and Fred Below (though (people we think of as) blues musicians had played in all kinds of earlier jazz bands).

MG

[king ubu]

Yes, MG - but in the end guys like Lucky Thompson or Benny Golson were able to bring another "voice" into bop. Budd Johnson as well (now that's one of the true individualists who continued to work in a most varied range of settings for several decades... for instance on Randy Weston's great Verve album "Tanjah"!) was able to adapt to many kinds of settings.

And someone like Bennie Wallace then was able to bring a sound likened after Webster's into harmonically through and through modern jazz. Not to derail your point at all, just making some remarks that might even more strongly proof your point.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Yes, MG - but in the end guys like Lucky Thompson or Benny Golson were able to bring another "voice" into bop. Budd Johnson as well (now that's one of the true individualists who continued to work in a most varied range of settings for several decades... for instance on Randy Weston's great Verve album "Tanjah"!) was able to adapt to many kinds of settings.

And someone like Bennie Wallace then was able to bring a sound likened after Webster's into harmonically through and through modern jazz. Not to derail your point at all, just making some remarks that might even more strongly proof your point.

And that's even more true of Coleman Hawkins. But he, and others, were "updating" their visions, rather than incorporating the older visions into the new music.

MG

PS - something similar happened in the sixties, when a lot of bop-related tenor players got Coltrane retreads.

[king ubu]

Yes, I thought of that when putting Jimmy Heath's name in that list... but those tenor sax players were already rooted in modern jazz. What did they look for in Coltrane? His vision, his spirituality? Or just technical stuff? More advanced playing techniques, harmonies? Or was Coltrane actually already in another stage that went beyond modern jazz/bop as bop went beyond swing? Probably in the end he was, roughly 65-67, but when did his influence become so overbearing that even seasoned guys like Thompson, Golson, Heath, Mobley etc. felt a need to take healthy or exagerrated doses of his playing and add that to their own styles?

[king ubu]

And what about those earlier stages? I realise the topic title deals with swing > bop, but how about earlier similar stylistic developments? Jazz musicians from New Orleans, Chicago or NYC had different approaches, how did the transitions work? Was it similarly hard to adapt, or were those merely different dialects, while bop - to remain in the metaphor of languages - was a different language alltogether (though of the same family of languages, of course)? Take Earl Hines - he went from the early days into swing, and touched bop with his big band as well - quite a trip! Bechet for instance never embraced swing, but there must be a bunch of swing era guys who were active before. Was this change of style/set of rules an issue back then as well? Or was bop the big revolutionary break, the one, the first one? (up to what was referred to as the october revolution of jazz, at least...)

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

but when did his influence become so overbearing that even seasoned guys like Thompson, Golson, Heath, Mobley etc. felt a need to take healthy or exagerrated doses of his playing and add that to their own styles?

Not sure about those guys, but Frank Foster was certainly incorporating Trane-isms into his 1967 work. Harold Land a bit later, I think - 1968/69? I'm less familiar with his work. And they were Trane-isms; it seems to me those musicians weren't trying to emulate the spirituality of Coltrane, but incorporate some of the new language into their music. They were, after all, THEMSELVES and didn't need to become what they weren't.

MG

[king ubu]

Yes, still with some of these musicians it didn't lead to very... positive results. I still prefer old Harold Land ("Study in Brown") over anything of his work with Hutcherson.

Foster and Land are obviously better examples than the musicians I listed - didn't think of either of them (though I recently got hold of the two OJCCDs by Foster which are roughly from the period in question).

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Yes, still with some of these musicians it didn't lead to very... positive results. I still prefer old Harold Land ("Study in Brown") over anything of his work with Hutcherson.

Foster and Land are obviously better examples than the musicians I listed - didn't think of either of them (though I recently got hold of the two OJCCDs by Foster which are roughly from the period in question).

"Soul outing" I used to have, and is a bit earlier; never heard the other one. His Trane-type stuff started on some of the things Duke Pearson was doing at BN (I was listening to Byrd's "Kofi" yesterday, which made me think about him) and also his own "Manhattan fever".

MG

[king ubu]

Still need to get "Manhattan Fever" - the OJCs are pretty nice, but rather slight... "Kofi" is fine, I find! But we're derailing the thread... I see though Tom Storer is posting, I'm sure he'll bring us back on track with his concise upcoming comment!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

He was, but he's seen that we're derailing the thread, so he's pissed off somewhere else

MG

[king ubu]

He was, but he's seen that we're derailing the thread, so he's pissed off somewhere else

MG

glad for your confirmation - otherwise my post above might have been proof of madness sometime in the future

[Tom Storer]

The bassist for a popular New Orleans/Chicago style "trad" band used to post over at that other message board. Can't think of the names right now. Anyway, this was a knowledgeable guy whose point of view as I understood it was that (with exceptions, clearly) bebop marked the end of lyricism in jazz. He felt that the harmonic complexity of bop led to widespread "running of the changes" that was (is) less creative and interesting, while simultaneously longer-winded, than shorter, simpler solos built on melodies and personal sound. He was a big Charlie Parker fan, too, so he wasn't just being a moldy fig, but he felt that for every great bop player there were a thousand dull copycats.

I think he has a point, although greatly exaggerated. There are times when bop doesn't do it for me and I want something quirkier, whether pre-bop or post-bop.

EDIT: what the hell? I'm being stalked!

Edited November 19, 2008 by Tom Storer

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

EDIT: what the hell? I'm being stalked!

MG

[king ubu]

The bassist for a popular New Orleans/Chicago style "trad" band used to post over at that other message board. Can't think of the names right now. Anyway, this was a knowledgeable guy whose point of view as I understood it was that (with exceptions, clearly) bebop marked the end of lyricism in jazz. He felt that the harmonic complexity of bop led to widespread "running of the changes" that was (is) less creative and interesting, while simultaneously longer-winded, than shorter, simpler solos built on melodies and personal sound. He was a big Charlie Parker fan, too, so he wasn't just being a moldy fig, but he felt that for every great bop player there were a thousand dull copycats.

I think he has a point, although greatly exaggerated. There are times when bop doesn't do it for me and I want something quirkier, whether pre-bop or post-bop.

Interesting point! On the other hand whenever I immerge into Parker's music (about once a year or so, and usually quite intensely), I am astonished to find how much beauty there is in his music. His sound, his lines... I'd challenge this notion of the "end of lyricism" - to compare with literature, expressionist (German) poetry (think of Trakl*, Benn, Georg Heym) was able to conceive imagery of stark beauty (also consider painters, E.L. Kirchner for instance, though much of his Swiss mountain paintings in lilac and pink is crap in my opinion)... my point being: it's about different kinds of beauty.

I do see the point about the dull copycats - to some point I guess as far as the tenor sax is concerned, there are still too many of those around. But then again I guess the whole academic jazz school system keeps perpetuating itself to a large degree, with in the end not much of a goal except for feeding themselves and saving their own asses... but again I derail

*) here's a fantastic page, all in english translations as well:

http://www.literaturnische.de/Trakl/englis...dex-trakl-e.htm

EDIT: what the hell? I'm being stalked!

hey, that was intended as a compliment!

[JSngry]

Just out of curiosity, do you consider yourself a Heideggerian?

Just from your heavy emphasis on emotion (care).

Although I guess the noticing the aspect part of that isn't really phenomenological; that iconicity is more in the spirit of Wittgenstein...

I don't know what any of that means. Sorry.

[JSngry]

Isn't it the nature of language to become codified over time?

Surely language doesn't exist UNTIL it's codified.

MG

Not sure I agree with that...

[Larry Kart]

Isn't it the nature of language to become codified over time?

Surely language doesn't exist UNTIL it's codified.

MG

Not sure I agree with that...

Surely (and don't call me "Shirley") the truth lies somewhere in between -- that is, if we're talking about literal (spoken, then in most cases written-down) verbal languages. The most "expressive" (in itself) sound or series of would-be communicative sounds doesn't really work until others get and agree that that sound or series of sounds means whatever it means or is supposed to mean. In particular, such codification means that, say, what "take my chair" indicates doesn't depend that heavily on my "performance" of "take my chair." Now, if you're talking analogously, and want to bring into the tent other non-verbal languages, like music, their "languageness" is a good deal looser and different than that of verbal languages. We are, at least in my experience, prepared to deal with pleasure and interest with large swatches of music whose principles of order we don't readily detect. Nor is the language of any music that I'm aware of -- even the simplest, most direct, and most familiar -- as enclosed by the "this means that" process as is the case with verbal languages. Musical sounds can always be taken as "just sounds," while the sounds that make up words can always be understood as words, which accumulate into discourse, unless one consciously or inadvertently disguises those sounds, or one is not engaging in discourse (i.e. words are being used but one has no intent to shape them into sentences), or the auditor doesn't know the language.

I'm reminded BTW of the brutal running battle in language affairs between prescriptivists (that would be, among others, people who write usage guides and who say that there are right and wrong ways to use the language), and descriptivists (that would be most professional linguists, who say that there are no right and wrong usages, only usages -- e.g. "Descriptive grammar has nothing to do with telling people what they should say." "Languages are self-regulating systems that can be left to take care of themselves"). A wise man on the prescriptive side notes that no descriptivist linguist writes or publicly speaks other than in some version of standard English (or whatever language the linguist is using).

[Popkin]

Just out of curiosity, do you consider yourself a Heideggerian?

Just from your heavy emphasis on emotion (care).

Although I guess the noticing the aspect part of that isn't really phenomenological; that iconicity is more in the spirit of Wittgenstein...

I don't know what any of that means. Sorry.

It doesn't mean anything; that's the whole point of continental philosophy

[king ubu]

wtf?

[JSngry]

We can hear something we've never heard before and understand it right away, no codification involved.

Then as more people get hold of it and use it to represent at least as much as to present, it gets codified. That's when the "formulas" come in & that can be either good or bad, depending on, say, whether the end/intent of the formula is creating an efficiency or disguising a deficiency.

Then some people lose interest, thinking that it's all a ruse, and sometimes it is. But in order to get past that, you have to look a substance apart from style, significance instead of signification, meaning apart from language instead of meaning of language.

And then it starts all over again, all of it. And it never stops unless you choose for it to.

[JSngry]

Just out of curiosity, do you consider yourself a Heideggerian?

Just from your heavy emphasis on emotion (care).

Although I guess the noticing the aspect part of that isn't really phenomenological; that iconicity is more in the spirit of Wittgenstein...

I don't know what any of that means. Sorry.

It doesn't mean anything; that's the whole point of continental philosophy

Oh hell, even nothing means something,otherwise it wouldn't be nothing, it just wouldn't be.

But I still don't know what those terms mean. I haven't read/studied much "formal" philosophy.

But if a "Heideggerian" is somebody who hides the good shit while digging around in used shops when you don't have the money on hand but soon will & you plan on coming back soon, count me in, at least before I got old and got credit.

[JSngry]

My real point in all this, though was a simple one - the music(s) under discussion here are at root languages. So of course there's going to be formulas, and patterns, and all that stuff, just as in any language, and no, nobody will say "stop me if you've heard this one before", because even if you have (and of course, you more than likely have, nobody even thinks about saying that if they're certain of their originality, they just say it and let you get to it when and how you can, if you can), they're hoping that you'd like to hear it again (at least from them), and reality proves that they are not completely off-base in that hope.