Free jazz that swings

[colinmce]

What is swing?

What is free jazz?

peace and blessings

EXACTLY! I have nowhere near the expertise in free improv you do, but so much of it is killing without swinging in the "conventional" sense, like the new Jack album or "Espiritu" by Bendian/Cline.

Right. I'm thinking more like the power generated by the likes Schlippenbach Trio/Quartet, Peter Brotzmann, Anthony Braxton's classic quartet, or Tim Berne. Not swinging exactly but a sustained and sometimes punishing intensity that generates the same feeling for me.

[Steve Reynolds]

What is swing?

What is free jazz?

peace and blessings

EXACTLY! I have nowhere near the expertise in free improv you do, but so much of it is killing without swinging in the "conventional" sense, like the new Jack album or "Espiritu" by Bendian/Cline.

Right. I'm thinking more like the power generated by the likes Schlippenbach Trio/Quartet, Peter Brotzmann, Anthony Braxton's classic quartet, or Tim Berne. Not swinging exactly but a sustained and sometimes punishing intensity that generates the same feeling for me.

Other groups that fall into category would be Parker-Guy-Lytton, Tarfala which is Mats Gustaffson with Barry Guy & Raymond Strid, Tony Malaby's Tamarindo (which combines all sorts of grooves and seeming anti grooves/skronk, Paul Dunmall with John Edwards and Mark Sanders, David S Ware's classic quartet - especially with Susie Ibarra and Mujician with the grooves of Tony Levin.

The mystery and interest often occurs on the margins. Swing? Non-Swing? groove? Non groove?

Many combinations of the above makes it all work

Sometimes the "clatter" of Paul Lytton turns in some odd way into a rollicking groove in the head and heart - when he never ever plays a straight groove.

[GA Russell]

Sam Rivers - Sizzle (impulse!), which to my knowledge hasn't been released on CD. Am I wrong?

[Chuck Nessa]

Anything by Lockjaw Davis, Paul Gonsalves or Earl Hines.

[JSngry]

[Steve Reynolds]

Anything by Lockjaw Davis, Paul Gonsalves or Earl Hines.

Making my earlier point better than I did:)

[CJ Shearn]

What is swing?

What is free jazz?

peace and blessings

EXACTLY! I have nowhere near the expertise in free improv you do, but so much of it is killing without swinging in the "conventional" sense, like the new Jack album or "Espiritu" by Bendian/Cline.

Right. I'm thinking more like the power generated by the likes Schlippenbach Trio/Quartet, Peter Brotzmann, Anthony Braxton's classic quartet, or Tim Berne. Not swinging exactly but a sustained and sometimes punishing intensity that generates the same feeling for me.

Yeah, "Chant" on "Made in Chicago" has a punishing intensity that made me say "yeah!" out loud, something that when a friend heard it, he found that very difficult to take. That album is not easy listening, gotta spin it several more times, but I loved it on first play. It took me over a decade to get to late Trane and where I can enjoy a lot of extreme free stuff, still working my way into Brotzmann. (Can't sit thru all of Machine Gun on Rhapsody, incredible music) funny because I can sit thru both takes of "Ascension" sometimes. It's all incredible music, it just the intensity gets me exhausted. I guess the thing I like about Brotzmann's sound though is it comes out of Coleman Hawkins/Ben Webster but goes into a complete different zone. One of my best friends is a saxophonist in NY that plays a lot of free stuff, but he plays other things in all sorts of contexts, so that opens the door for me too. I like what I heard of Zorn's "Hemophiliac", not my first thing, but an occasional dip is nice.

Edited March 21, 2015 by CJ Shearn

[Steve Reynolds]

CJ - next step - try Nailed by Cecil Taylor with Evan Parker, Barry Guy & Tony Oxley

The first 50 minute track is as relentlessly intense as anything I've ever heard on record. Cecil never slows down. When Parker is playing (on tenor on this live performance) he stays right with him - maybe even moreso than when Jimmy Lyons was playing with Cecil on, for example, sections of One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye.

The Taylor unit recordings from the late 70's and then the group recordings with the European masters (late 80's & early 90's on FMP) all fit Colin's description. Extreme high intensity stuff that at first blush or listen can seem inpenetrable.

[CJ Shearn]

CJ - next step - try Nailed by Cecil Taylor with Evan Parker, Barry Guy & Tony Oxley

The first 50 minute track is as relentlessly intense as anything I've ever heard on record. Cecil never slows down. When Parker is playing (on tenor on this live performance) he stays right with him - maybe even moreso than when Jimmy Lyons was playing with Cecil on, for example, sections of One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye.

The Taylor unit recordings from the late 70's and then the group recordings with the European masters (late 80's & early 90's on FMP) all fit Colin's description. Extreme high intensity stuff that at first blush or listen can seem inpenetrable.

Cool, I will keep that in mind! Thanks

[Milestones]

Is Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy considered free jazz?

[Joe]

The Roswell Rudd - Steve Lacy collaborations, from their early playing-for-change days to their Italian-documented purple 70s to the later valedictory recording for Verve, satisfy these criteria, at least IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AowYh_D60dA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlSSd47dgj4

Edited March 24, 2015 by Joe

[paul secor]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSquVkJ96ec

[optatio]

Gunter Hampel, Heartplants. MPS/Polydor POCJ-2672

Rec. January 30, 1965

Gunter Hampel (vib, fl)

Manfred Schoof (tp)

Alexander von Schlippenbach (p)

Buschi Niebergall (b)

Pierre Courbois (dr)

Gunter Hampel: Music From Europe. ESP/ZYX 1042-2

Rec. December 21, 1966

Gunter Hampel (vib, bcl, fl)

Willem Breuker (ss, bcl, ts, as, bs, cl)

Piet Veening (b)

Pierre Courbois (perc)

[clifford_thornton]

Cecil's music isn't usually impenetrable. It's pretty groovy.

[Scott Dolan]

Cecil's music isn't usually impenetrable. It's pretty groovy.

For the most part, I'd say that describes pretty much every Free Jazz artist that came up in that era.

No?

It wasn't until the mid-to-late 60's where things went completely out of the stratosphere (in a good way, mind you). But you sure as hell couldn't dance to Machine Gun.

[clifford_thornton]

The R&B part at the end of "Machine Gun" is quite groovy! One of the few times that a stomping, lead-footed backbeat has worked in European free music.

I'd actually say that earlier Brötzmann, as with a lot of that music's ilk, is just as "swinging" as contemporaries in the US.

[Scott Dolan]

That's fair, Clifford.

No need to go down that "swinging" worm hole, I suppose.

We could all dance to Ascension if we were really feeling it!

[clifford_thornton]

Coltrane and Ayler both put me to sleep - their music is like a lullaby, without fail. Even things like Ascension.

[mjazzg]

Arthur Blythe - Lennox Avenue Breakdown

wake up CT!

[JSngry]

Anything by Lockjaw Davis, Paul Gonsalves or Earl Hines.

Parallel thread - Inside Jazz That Is Really Free Jazz In Disguise.

My first submission would be the opening chords to

or pretty much the whole first side of Afro-Eurasian Eclipse.

The collective pitch center and tonal color of that last Ellington bands comes closer to something like Attica Blues or There's A Trumpet In My Soul than I think has generally been noted. Of course, that could be said of most any Ellington band on any given night, but those last ones...that shit was THICK, ok, thicker than the note on the paper.

First time I noticed that, it was a revelation, really, how there was this whole other thing going on in jazz, a whole other, deeper lineage of sound, not just "tone" or "personal sound" but actually bare-bones vibrational SOUND...a lot of things started falling into place once that light came on. Ellington was hip to this from waaay back, of course, but jeez, first time I heard Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, it was like, yeah, ok, some of this is just an old band not being particularly aggressively tended to, but some of it was like, shit, Duke ain't deaf, if he didn't want this TYPE of sound, he'd get some changes mad, and he didn't.

So yes, and yet again, Duke "Money Jungle" Ellington, Stealth Motherfucker Hall Of Fame.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

theres a lot of sun ra stuff that could fit in this category

[Scott Dolan]

Coltrane and Ayler both put me to sleep - their music is like a lullaby, without fail. Even things like Ascension.

Actually, when my son was an infant the only way I could get him to sleep when he was all fired up was to put on Live At Birdland from Coltrane. True story.

I remember my wife being there one day when I did it. She was staring at him and said, "how can he sleep through this??!"

[John L]

theres a lot of sun ra stuff that could fit in this category

Yes!

[paul secor]

Coltrane and Ayler both put me to sleep - their music is like a lullaby, without fail. Even things like Ascension.

Reminds me of my introduction to Ornette. In the early 60's, I'd read about him before I'd heard his music. I bought a copy of Ornette, took it home, played it, and just couldn't hear what was there. Very disappointing, but I hadn't heard much jazz at that point. I came home from work the next day and put the record on. I was lying down because I was tired, and this time I was relaxed and I wasn't trying so hard to listen. Ornette's music got through to me, and it's been there for me ever since. I remember that I was so tired and relaxed that I actually fell asleep before side one ended.

[Deepak]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I see recurring mentions of Ornette Coleman, one of my favorite musicians and I agree he fits the thread bill perfectly.