Jeff Goldblum IS interested in 'saving jazz'

[sgcim]

Goldblum just released his first jazz album, The Capitol Studio Sessions, recently, and while I don't hear anything special going on musically, he did say on NPR that he was interested in presenting jazz in a manner that would make it appealing to a wider audience. 

This includes using a large dose of his spontaneous humor, and playing simpler jazz that stresses the fun aspect of the music. 

He features the vocalists and trumpet player more than he does his own piano playing, so he doesn't seem to be on an ego trip...

Is this going to be a good or a bad thing for jazz? What sayeth thou?

[Chuck Nessa]

Sigh.

[Brad]

29 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Sigh.

Double that. The “fun aspect” implies there is a non fun aspect. What would that aspect be and what is fun. If he means enjoyable, it’s all enjoyable. 

[JSngry]

Dude, Jeff Goldblum is a weird guy. I mean that as a compliment, but still...a bridge to mass pop culture he ain't. Not now, not then, not ever.

[sgcim]

I guess I deserve and was expecting these answers, but as I said, somebody's gotta do it sooner or later, and it may as well be sooner...

It's like getting a colonoscopy, you've got to get it done, so you might as well get it over with...

[Steve Reynolds]

I think Per Ake Holmlander’s 3 CD release saves jazz once again today for me

those improvisations with this young trumpeter I never heard of before 2 months ago, the *great* Steve Swell and this young woman double bassist I also never heard of before continue uplifting my spirits about everything.

then the improvised/composed suite with the full large ensemble on disc 3 - Wow

another incredibly exciting recording featuring musicians of all ages from all over the world. Good for all listeners. 

On Not Two Records 

[Guy Berger]

Questions I have when I read something like this:

*Can* jazz be saved?  *Should* jazz be saved?  What does “saving jazz” even mean?  Who cares?

That said this is a wonderful music, if Jeff Goldblum leads one person to discover Louis Armstrong or Albert Ayler that strikes me as a win.

[felser]

17 minutes ago, Guy Berger said:

Questions I have when I read something like this:

*Can* jazz be saved?  *Should* jazz be saved?  What does “saving jazz” even mean?  Who cares?

 

And the ever-threatening "What is (and isn't) Jazz?".  Lived that one in the 70's a lot, before Sir Wynton came down from the mountain to gave us the definitive judgments.  

[Kevin Bresnahan]

10 hours ago, Steve Reynolds said:

I think Per Ake Holmlander’s 3 CD release saves jazz once again today for me

those improvisations with this young trumpeter I never heard of before 2 months ago, the *great* Steve Swell and this young woman double bassist I also never heard of before continue uplifting my spirits about everything.

then the improvised/composed suite with the full large ensemble on disc 3 - Wow

another incredibly exciting recording featuring musicians of all ages from all over the world. Good for all listeners. 

On Not Two Records 

Sigh

[Jim Duckworth]

19 hours ago, sgcim said:

This includes using a large dose of his spontaneous humor, and playing simpler jazz that stresses the fun aspect of the music. 

 

 Is Jazz as we know it fun?  That depends on what you know.

[Steve Reynolds]

7 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

Sigh

It works for what you like as well, Kevin

[JSngry]

 

[Chuck Nessa]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

 

PERFECT

[Dave James]

Is the question,"Is jazz dead" or is it, "If jazz is dead, does anyone really care?"  Personally, I'm only interested in jazz up until the late 60's.  There's way more than enough of that to sustain me.  Further, I don't have to keep looking for it since I already know where it is.

[Scott Dolan]

On 11/26/2018 at 6:53 PM, Brad said:

Double that. The “fun aspect” implies there is a non fun aspect. What would that aspect be and what is fun. If he means enjoyable, it’s all enjoyable. 

I’m assuming he simply means the lighter, peppy, upbeat stuff. Like Vince Guaraldi’s Peanuts stuff. Easier for layfolk to relate to and pick up on. 

I mean, if all of our first encounters with Jazz were, say, Peter Brotzmann’s Machine Gun, I doubt many of us would have stuck around to see what Jazz is all about. 

Edited November 27, 2018 by Scott Dolan

[Kevin Bresnahan]

13 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

I mean, if all of our first encounters with Jazz were, say, Peter Brotzmann’s Machine Gun, I doubt many of us would have stuck around to see what Jazz is all about. 

Steve will chime in shortly to disagree with you.

[Scott Dolan]

He can speak for himself, of course, but there’s really no way to refute that. Pretty sure an overwhelming number of Jazz fans had a kinder/gentler introduction to the genre.  

Though Steve and I do share similar tastes these days, I think if the first Jazz I heard was a Parker/Guy/Lytton piece, I’d have ran screaming and never looked back. 

[JSngry]

If you got exposure to it when I did (ca. 1970-71) anything "noisy" sounded enough like Hendrix or, sometimes, Zappa and/or Beefheart, to whet the appetite. Ayler fit, Shepp fit, late Trane fit, pretty sure Brotzmann would have fit, if his records had been available where I was when I was. The older stuff was great too, it was a new experience as well, but not as immediately familiar as the "new thing". It was great to hear it all more or less at once, but my goal as a freshman in high scool was to play tenor like Hendrix. So, Ayler, and say, Transition was like WHOA, this is already being done, it's going on now, ONWARD!

These kids today, I don't know. And the kids before them, I really don't know.

[Scott Dolan]

So what were your first four or five albums? 

Mine were:

Kind Of Blue

Birks Works

Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane

Thelonious Monk Blue Note box

 

[Guy Berger]

40 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

So what were your first four or five albums? 

I certainly didn't come in via straight-ahead jazz.  My first were Mahavishnu, electric Miles, Weather Report... I thought Kind of Blue was boring when I first bought it.

People come in via all sorts of routes.  Back in the mid/late 90s there was an influx of Sonic Youth->free jazz entrants.  Phish/MMW and the jam band scene were another path.  I don't know what the parallel is today, but surely it exists.

[Scott Dolan]

Those are still relatively tame and straight ahead. Not to mention an intentional crossover with Rock music at that point in time. 

Now, if you’d said something like Coltrane’s Live In Japan, then we’d have something! 

[Simon Weil]

I was kind of obsessed with Soft Machine 1 for a few years from 19 onward. This is when I was listening to Rock because everyone else of my age was and this was part of that. But there was group improvisation (Rock-Jazz-Psychedelia-Whatever) on there which really got to me. I was probably always going to want to listen to Jazz.

Edited November 27, 2018 by Simon Weil
clarification

[Scott Dolan]

4 minutes ago, Simon Weil said:

I was kind of obsessed with Soft Machine 1 for a few years from 19 onward. This is when I was listening to Rock because everyone else of my age was and this was part of that. But there was group improvisation (Rock-Jazz-Psychedelia-Whatever) which got to me. I was probably always going to want to listen to Jazz.

Yeah, Zappa was my gateway. While I love his through-composed pieces, the improv pieces were a major touchstone, especially during his epic length guitar solos. Then reading names and comparisons with Eric Dolphy, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane in Ben Watson’s imaginative and amusing Negative Dialectics Of Poodle Play got the Jazz juices flowing even more. 

It’s actually too bad that I didn’t hear Fusion until many, many years later, because with my ears tuned into Zappa, I may have clicked with Fusion easily. But I waited too long and my ears had moved away from that kind of sound and approach. 

[jlhoots]

Goldblum was good in The Fly.

[JSngry]

3 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

So what were your first four or five albums?

I have no idea, other than that I remember deciding one day that it was time to start buying jazz records instead of rock. The first two were a Brubeck thing on Crown, and then a Capitol Douphonic packging of Stan Kenton - Artistry In Rhythm. The first I bought because it was at the Firestone store in town, the second because I knew nothing about Kenton's chronology ant saw all these "Artistry In..." things and thought it was going to be really out there. The joke was on me. But I gboutght those records in the space of, like, two weeks, and then it was just gobble everything up. Everything. Cutout bins were a gift from god, I kid you not.

I know that among 100 (which took about a year) were Transition, Mamma Too Tight, Burnt Weenie Sandwich, The Inner Mounting Flame, and god knows what else. And I found two (!) FM stations ourt of Dallas that had jaz - one was an "underground" FM station that riotuinely played Ayler, Cecil, and that stuff, the other was an R$B station that went jazz from 10-5AM. And then the NPR station in Dallas went on the air, and they had jazz, but it was a lot of Donald Byrd/Bobbi Humphrey stuff. But jsut mostly, not always.

It was a rich time for young people who wanted to get into music, period. If you literally just kept you ears open, and your mind open to what you might hear from anybody, you could catch almost literally anything. The radio was wide open, the integration thing was going on (SO much optimism in the air, then, and a band like EW&F could not have broken out and through like they did at no other time in American History) there was literally no excuse for not hearing too much of anything other than you jsut hadn't found where it was yet.

And the new albums of the time, all the "jazz-rock" which is what it was before "fusion" finally began to crystallize, you could hear all sorts of ideas, good and bad, in the course of a single record...no, the notion of being put off by skronky jazz by hearing it before I knew what "real" jazz was, that jsut does not apply to my experience.

Hell - THIS was on the radio! Daily! Hourly! If you knew where THAT station was...

This was NOT on the radio, but it was on Columbia and was easy to find. Hello "electronic music" past Switched-On Bach:

Just saying - it was a window of opportunity for "normal" people to be challenged and not automatically feel threatened. Aggressive/noise/whatever, it was totally acceptable back then. Not Top 40 acceptable, but, you know, you could represent for this side and not be totally out of step. That came a bit later as metal started happening and "power" was confused/conflated with "substance".