Boulez, Stravinsky and the Oscar Peterson Trio

[sgcim]

I just finished David Raksin's autobiography (only available on Kindle), and was surprised to hear of DR's involvement as a jazz musician, before his film music career (he played first tenor with Benny Goodman's new big band back in the 30s!).

In 1951, his two friends, Stravinsky and Boulez, happened to be in Hollywood, and Igor said he wanted to hear some jazz.

DR took them to a club where the Oscar Peterson Trio (Ray Brown and Herb Ellis) were playing, and Igor was fascinated by OP and especially Ray Brown, who used four fingers on his right hand to play the bass, unlike the classical method.

Pierre Boulez ignored the entire thing, which didn't surprise DR at all.

When Stravinsky asked him why he wasn't surprised, DR said it was a typical reaction of French intellectuals to jazz.

He then went on to tell the story about Hughes Panassie (actually a Belgian jazz writer) grabbing the mic at an Eddie Condon group performance in NY, and giving a detailed analysis of what each musician was doing (to the audience), as the musicians were playing.

Condon, annoyed at what was going on, lambasted Panassie after the song was over: "Why do 'dese Frogs have to tell us how to play jazz? We don't teach them how to jump on grapes!"

[Larry Kart]

Stravinsky's use of the flugelhorn in "Threni" (1957-8) was inspired, he told Robert Craft, by his experience of hearing Shorty Rogers play the instrument.

“I can listen to Shorty Rogers’s good style, with its dotted tradition, for stretches of fifteen minutes and more and not feel the time at all, whereas the weight of every ‘serious’ virtuoso I know depresses me beyond the counteraction of Equanil in about five.” -- "Conversations With Stravinsky"

[JSngry]

"Dotted tradition"? Does that mean "swing"?

Serious question.

[Larry Kart]

"Dotted tradition"? Does that mean "swing"?

Serious question.

No entirely sure, but my guess is that I.S.'s "dotted tradition" would be, for us, a subcategory within swing. Think of Rogers, all things being equal (which of course is not exactly the case), as the trumpet/flugelhorn equivalent of Pete Brown, and I think you've got it -- additive/motivic bounciness. My guess is that swing that deployed/cut across larger rhythmic units in a significantly more plastic manner, a la Armstrong or Lester Young, would not have plucked Stravinsky's magic twanger. As with his affinity for ragtime in the late teens, I think he tended to respond to music whose irregularities were at once compact in their dimensions and tightly knit.

BTW, toward the end of Stravinsky's Octet, there is a passage that reminds me very much of Joplin's "Stoptime Rag."

[Larry Kart]

Per previous post:

Octet (passage beginning at 5:40 to the end)

Stoptime Rag (passage beginning at 1:26)

[David Ayers]

Dotted notes. Absence of legato. Stravinsky liked pulse. You guys listen to so much jazz you have forgotten what it sounds like!

[sgcim]

Actually, Boulez was quoted as saying that he wished classical sax players could get that cold, unemotional sound that Lee Konitz got back in the 50s, rather than that

overdone vibrato Mule started.

So even Boulez was influenced by jazz, although not OP.

Raksin straddled both worlds (classical and jazz), and studied with Schoenberg, so there are plenty of recollections of hanging out with Arnold, plus Huxley and Mann.

He worked with Stravinsky on "Circus Polka", Chaplin on "Modern Times", and was close friends with Berio, Babbitt, and a host of other figures from the classical and jazz worlds.

I spent sixteen hours glued to the monitor, reading both the abridged and unabridged versions. Fascinating guy.

[JSngry]

Dotted notes. Absence of legato. Stravinsky liked pulse. You guys listen to so much jazz you have forgotten what it sounds like!

Legato = absence of pulse?

[medjuck]

Don't dots over notes indicate that they're to be played staccato (I don't really remember much from my music lessons 50 years ago.)

[JSngry]

Talking about dots after notes, one "agreed upon" way to notate "swing".

Played literally, strictly metronomically, this would definitely not swing (at least not as generally understood/consumed), but played with a consensual understanding of the suggestion, it can...or might.

Time is one of those things that means different things to different people...

[Teasing the Korean]

I spent sixteen hours glued to the monitor, reading both the abridged and unabridged versions. Fascinating guy.

Did you ever read Raksin's response to why "Laura" became a standard? He said, "It has a lot of shoulder chords." The interviewer asked him what he meant by "shoulder chords." Raksin replied - and I am paraphrasing - the kind of impressive chords that cocktail pianists like to identify by raising their shoulders right before they play them!

Talking about dots after notes, one "agreed upon" way to notate "swing".

Played literally, strictly metronomically, this would definitely not swing (at least not as generally understood/consumed), but played with a consensual understanding of the suggestion, it can...or might.

Time is one of those things that means different things to different people...

Have I ever posted here the story of how Elmer Bernstein notated "swing" in his charts for "The Man with the Golden Arm?" Pretty funny stuff.

[JSngry]

Not remembering it if you have, please do tell!

[Teasing the Korean]

Not remembering it if you have, please do tell!

The film was scored for a big band plus a string section.

Elmer apparently didn't know that when you wrote straight eighth notes for jazz guys, that they would automatically swing them.

So, anything with a swing feel that should have been written in 4/4, Elmer wrote in 12/8, with a tie between the first two eighth notes of the triplets, so that the musicians reading the charts would "swing."

I guess you can see where this is going. The string players had no issues whatsoever reading the oddball notation. But the rhythm, brass, and reed sections, which were primarily if not entirely composed of jazz guys, had no idea what they were looking at.

It caused real problems at the sessions. But, of course, it all worked out in the end, because it is a great movie, and a great album, as long as you find the mono version and not the reprocessed-for-stereo version.

[JSngry]

That's funny...when I arranged horn charts for local blues bands, I would sometimes write the 12/8 charts in, well, 12/8. But I soon learned that you could write them in 4, save time and paper by so doing, and they'd get played the same way no matter what, as long as you didn't have studio and/or "jazz" players on the gig, because they would use their eyes first and their ears second. Funny how that clash of cultures might well still exist.

[Mark Stryker]

Talking about dots after notes, one "agreed upon" way to notate "swing".

Played literally, strictly metronomically, this would definitely not swing (at least not as generally understood/consumed), but played with a consensual understanding of the suggestion, it can...or might.

Time is one of those things that means different things to different people...

Is D-flat the original key for "Satin Doll"? Don't think I ever heard or played it in anything other than C.

Edited October 4, 2014 by Mark Stryker

[JSngry]

I believe it is.?

[David Ayers]

Bit easier to play in C....

[Daniel A]

Duke himself plays it in C:

[JSngry]

Original in C

Maybe I've worked with too many singers over the years and think that everything's in a weird key now,

[David Ayers]

Pity. I really want there to be a transposing instrument which has to play in D-flat to get to C.

[JSngry]

Just work with singers, lots of singers, some of them not as odd as others. Your own instrument will become that eventually.

Trust me on this one.

[sgcim]

I spent sixteen hours glued to the monitor, reading both the abridged and unabridged versions. Fascinating guy.

Did you ever read Raksin's response to why "Laura" became a standard? He said, "It has a lot of shoulder chords." The interviewer asked him what he meant by "shoulder chords." Raksin replied - and I am paraphrasing - the kind of impressive chords that cocktail pianists like to identify by raising their shoulders right before they play them!

Talking about dots after notes, one "agreed upon" way to notate "swing".

Played literally, strictly metronomically, this would definitely not swing (at least not as generally understood/consumed), but played with a consensual understanding of the suggestion, it can...or might.

Time is one of those things that means different things to different people...

Have I ever posted here the story of how Elmer Bernstein notated "swing" in his charts for "The Man with the Golden Arm?" Pretty funny stuff.

Great Raksin story TTK. His autobiography is packed with anecdotes like that, involving everyone in the music world DR encountered, from Ben Webster to Aaron Copland, etc... He scored over 100 films, and I've transcribed about twelve tunes of his that have never been played (outside of the films), and plan to record them someday.

The saddest story was the one that involved Oliver Nelson's death.

The film people were working ON to death, and he collapsed under the strain at the film's recording session. He went home, and passed away that same day.

DR was president of the Composer and Lyricist's Guild, and made a speech to the CLG about the inhuman working conditions that did his friend, the great ON, in, and one of the members said, "It was his own fault".

DR nailed that guy's ass to the wall.

He then got a law passed that improved working conditions for film composers.

Edited October 5, 2014 by sgcim

[Mark Stryker]

Speaking of "Satin Doll," Michael Weiss posted in another thread a while back about the time he, Barry Harris and I went to hear to the late Detroit pianist Johnny Allen play with a trio including saxophonist George Benson and bassist Will Austin at a brunch gig in suburban Detroit. They played "Satin Doll" with these changes:

D-7 G7/D-7 G7/E-7 A7/ E-7 A7/F6(!)/F#maj7(!)/C

[CJ Shearn]

That's great that Raksin got that law passed. I had never heard the story of Nelson's death, very tragic.

[Big Beat Steve]

He then went on to tell the story about Hughes Panassie (actually a Belgian jazz writer) grabbing the mic at an Eddie Condon group performance in NY, and giving a detailed analysis of what each musician was doing (to the audience), as the musicians were playing.

Condon, annoyed at what was going on, lambasted Panassie after the song was over: "Why do 'dese Frogs have to tell us how to play jazz? We don't teach them how to jump on grapes!"

A side remark ... (yeah, late, I know, and a minor point, but if it was a case of setting the stage ... )

That remark by Condon has often been quoted but the situation when it was made according to most reports was nothing like this but rather a case of Condon not having been named among most notable jazzmen by Panassié and/or not having been invited to participate in one of Panassiés U.S. recording sessions.

But above all, Panassié never was BELGIAN nor active there to any great degree. Don't know what Raksin was thinking of but if he went in that deep he ought to have been able to tell Panassié and Robert Goffin (or Carlos de Radzitzky) apart.