How many jazz solos can you remember?

[David Ayers]

Related to the thread which asked if you had one LP/CD you listened to obsessively. The question was if we still have one favorite we listen to repeatedly and almost obsessively, every day or at least several times a week. The operative word seems to have been 'one'. At least nobody listed a box set yet, as happened when we tried to do this in the classical thread (favourite five CDs - as opposed to compositions mais passons - and one list of about 20 included the entire works of Stravinsky as one item). I suppose the original question was about how we listen, and how we reconcile the way we used to experience recorded music with the way we experience it now (those of us with large and established 'collections'). We still showed our usual tendency to just post lists... anyway...

The version of this question I was toying with before this thread came up, was how many jazz solos can you remember. That would be from beginning to end, in substantial outline if not perhaps with every decoration. Musicians and non-musicians likely have different ways of remembering music, and musicians are likely better at remembering since they know what they are hearing more or less, though since musicians understand what could be played in the same framework they may for that reason not remember what actually did get played. But the reason I ask is that on the one hand we are asked to believe that jazz is a music of substance, and principally the art of the soloist, but on the other it is hard to remember many of the solos, not least because many are schematic, the rules are quite graspable, it makes little difference what is played as long as it kinda fits etc. That might mean the music is not as substantial as we are asked to believe, and that really it is something else - and not therefore Beethoven by other means.

I remember very few. I could go on but I'll throw it open.

Edited March 5, 2011 by David Ayers

[BillF]

I agree that "jazz is a music of substance", but am not sure that it is "principally the art of the soloist". Of course, I may have been influenced by the fact that I've been listening to Gil Evans, Tadd Dameron, Shorty Rogers, Gerry Mulligan, Bill Holman, Bill Russo, Quincy Jones, Neal Hefti, etc.

[mikeweil]

For me jazz is both the art of the soloist and the composer - it wouldn't exist without one or the other, just like classical musi wouldn't exist just as sheet music without a performer.

At least I was always more interested in bands integrating both, like the Modern Jazz Quartet. I still can memorize most of John Lewis' solos from European Concert (disc one) or The Comedy, but also several solos by Wardell Gray or Lester Young and others put to words by Annie Ross, King Pleasure, or Jon Hendricks - e.g. Twisted, Jackie, Farmer's Market, Moody's Mood For Love etc.

Edited March 5, 2011 by mikeweil

[A Lark Ascending]

I don't remember whole solos - but fragments of solos that I'll hum along and anticipate in relistening.

I leave worrying about whether jazz is a 'music of substance' or not to those who feel the need to worry about such things. For me it's not the particular nature of individual solos as that overall sense of a music that creates an illusion of evolving organically, in the moment. As if the musicians had options to go somewhere else (however narrowly astray) but didn't. Very different from most classical music (or most pop or folk musics) where the same path is taken each time with minor variations of nuance, tempo etc.

There's something about a record like 'Miles Smiles' that appeals because it appears to have been spirited out of the air rather than read from a page or walked through. Might be an illusion, but what an illusion. I had the same feeling listening to Stan Tracey's 'Captain Adventure' earlier in the week - live recordings from the 70s where my enjoyment came from that overall sense of hearing music being spun on the spot rather than from my following of any particular line with attention.

Which is not to say that there are not brilliant solos that stand apart from others - but it would take someone with a better understanding of music and a better memory for melodic contours than me to explain.

Edited March 5, 2011 by A Lark Ascending

[jlhoots]

Rollins: You Don't Know What Love Is (from Saxophone Colossus)