Tag Archives: Jazz

by | July 29, 2016 · 6:00 am

Charlie Christian’s metric displacement

The solo guitar improvisations of Charlie Christian feature a rhythmic drive that is created to some extent by metric displacement.

Transcriptions of Christian’s solos illuminate ten different methods for creating metric displacement: metric displacement by contour, metric superimposition, metric displacement by phrase starting point, displaced motivic repetition, metric displacement by patterning, long sequences of eighth notes, long phrases of mixed texture, irregular phrase length, hypermetric displacement, and phrase ending peculiarities.

This according to “Metric displacement in the improvisation of Charlie Christian” by Clive G. Downs (Annual review of jazz studies XI [2000–2001] pp. 39–68).

Today is Christian’s 100th birthday! Below, Benny’s bugle, which opens (after the intro) with a solo by Christian that is fully transcribed and analyzed in the article.

BONUS: Up on Teddy’s hill, a jam session that begins with a 2¾-minute improvisation by Christian.

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by | July 11, 2016 · 6:00 am

Jazz and imaginary folklore

 

L’Association à la Recherche d’un Folklore Imaginaire (ARFI) is a musical collective founded in 1977 by six musicians, including three who had previously formed Le Free Jazz Workshop.

The group now consists of 20 full-time musicians and comprises numerous small groups. Its multidisciplinary performances, which may include jugglers, films, pyrotechnics, and feasting, are designed to appeal to all five senses.

ARFI’s largest ensemble, the 12-piece La Marmite Infernale, began in 1978 as a free-blowing big band but has since expanded to perform compositions.  Smaller groups such as the Workshop de Lyon, É-Guijecri, and Apollo are improvising chamber ensembles, in the traditional ARFI style, while the newer L’Effet Vapeur and 32 Janvier perform higher-tech and harder edged pieces with distinctly hip-hop sensibilities.

This according to “Imaginary folklore and the infernal cooking pot: An introduction to Lyon’s ARFI” by Jim Laniok (Coda magazine 300–301 [December 2001] pp. 29, 32).

Below, an excerpt from a performance by L’Effet Vapeur.

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by | May 16, 2016 · 6:00 am

Grappelli, South, and Reinhardt play Bach

Eddie South

The two versions of the first movement from Bach’s d minor concerto for two violins (BWV 1043) recorded in Paris in 1937 by the violinists Eddie South and Stéphane Grappelli and the guitarist Django Reinhardt are among the earliest preserved jazz renditions of a Bach composition.

These recordings document not only a fusion of musical genres, but also a meeting between three performers of diverse nationalities and ethnicities: South was a Black American, Grappelli a White Frenchman of partially Italian ancestry, and Reinhardt a Belgian-born Manouche Romani. Their collaboration evinces a fluidly complex relationship between their social backgrounds and their music that is not easily reconcilable with some of the more inflexible ways that race and culture have traditionally been theorized in critical discourse on jazz.

These recordings are transcribed in full score, both for performing and musicological/analytical ends, in Il concerto per due violini di J.S. Bach nelle incisioni del trio Reinhardt, South, Grappelli: Una edizione critica/The Reinhardt-South-Grappelli recordings of J.S. Bach’s double violin voncerto: A critical edition (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2016)

Above, Eddie South, today the lesser-known member of the trio; below, the two historic recordings.

Related article: Django Reinhardt and U.S. jazz

More posts about J.S. Bach are here.

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by | April 17, 2016 · 6:00 am

Whitney Balliett’s jazz metaphors

 

In more than 40 years at The New Yorker, Whitney Balliett encouraged readers to hear jazz through his vividly metaphorical writing.

Writing during the years of jazz’s greatest development and ferment, Balliett used comparatively little technical vocabulary, favoring a sensual rendering. Of the trumpeter Roy Eldridge, he wrote: “His tone at slow tempos still supplicates and enfolds and at fast speeds hums and threatens.” The trumpeter Doc Cheatham’s solos were “a succession of lines, steps, curves, parabolas, angles, and elevations.”

Balliett also used metaphor to great effect in describing appearances. Of Teddy Wilson: “His figure, once thin as a stamp, has thickened, and his hawklike profile has become a series of arcs and spheres.” And of the drummer Big Sid Catlett, who inspired some of his finest writing, he wrote: “Everything was in proportion: the massive shoulders, the long arms and giant, tapering fingers, the cannonball fists, the barn-door chest and the tidy waist, his big feet, and the columnar neck.”

This according to “Whitney Balliett, New Yorker jazz critic, dies at 80” by Ben Ratliff (The New York times 3 February 2007).

Today would have been Balliett’s 90th birthday! Below, Big Sid in action (wait for him trading fours near the end).

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by | March 21, 2016 · 6:00 am

The challenge of free improvisation

 

Free improvisation, which arose among jazz musicians but now encompasses a broad range of musical interactions, is best understood as a forum for exploring interactive strategies.

The practice emphasizes process, an engendered sense of discovery, dialogical interaction, the sensual aspects of performance, and a participatory aesthetic; its inherent transience and immediacy challenge dominant modes of consumption and sociopolitical and spiritual models of the efficacy of art.

This according to “Negotiating freedom: Values and practices in contemporary improvised music” by David Borgo (Black music research journal XXII/ [fall 2002] pp. 165–188).

Above and below, Ornette Coleman’s group in the early 1960s.

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by | February 28, 2016 · 6:00 am

Svend Asmussen and Benny Goodman

 

In 1948 Benny Goodman invited the Danish jazz violinist Svend Asmussen to consider coming to the U.S. to play in his band. Asmussen agreed, but he soon discovered that the U.S. Musicians Union had other ideas.

To play in Goodman’s band musicians had to be union members; but the union required foreigners to live in the U.S. for one year and have a sponsor to pay them before they could join. As Asmussen recalled, “That means you had to spend a year in America without playing or making any money.”

The two finally had a chance to perform together in Copenhagen in 1981; it was Goodman’s last recorded live performance.

This according to “Svend Asmussen: Phenomenal jazz fiddler” by Richard J. Brooks (Fiddler magazine XII/1 (Spring 2005) pp. 4–12).

Today is Asmussen’s 100th birthday! Below, history in the making.

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by | January 4, 2016 · 6:00 am

Slim Gaillard on the road

 

In On the road (New York: Viking, 1957), Jack Kerouac described an encounter with the pianist, guitarist, and percussionist Slim Gaillard, “a tall, thin Negro with big sad eyes who’s always saying ‘Right-orooni’ and ‘How ‘bout a little bourbon-arooni.’”

“Slim sits down at the piano and hits two notes, two Cs, then two more, then one, then two, and suddenly the big burly bass-player wakes up from a reverie and realizes Slim is playing C-Jam blues and he slugs in his big forefinger on the string and the big booming beat begins and everybody starts rocking and Slim looks just as sad as ever, and they blow jazz for half an hour, and then Slim goes mad and grabs the bongos and plays tremendous rapid Cubana beats and yells crazy things in Spanish, in Arabic, in Peruvian dialect, in Egyptian, in every language he knows, and he knows innumerable languages.”

“Dean stands in the back, saying, ‘God! Yes!’ and clasping his hands in prayer and sweating. ‘Sal, Slim knows time, he knows time.’”

“Finally the set is over…Slim Gaillard goes and stands against a post, looking sadly over everybody’s head as people come to talk to him. A bourbon is slipped into his hand. ‘Bourbon-orooni—thank-you-ovauti.’”

Quoted in “Nobody knows where Slim Gaillard is” (Literary kicks, 1994).

Today would have been Gaillard’s 100th birthday! Below, some rare early footage, perhaps from 1962 (see the comment below).

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by | November 19, 2015 · 6:00 am

Tommy Dorsey hits the screen

Tommy Dorsey's Band in Las Vegas Nights

Unlike his older brother Jimmy, who got his start in films with uncredited background music, Tommy Dorsey shrewdly bided his time until his band was famous enough to command a significant fee.

Unfortunately, his first film, Las Vegas nights, was a disaster. “A picture like that can come back and haunt you” admitted the film’s star, Bert Wheeler. Still, its place in history is assured as the first film appearance by Dorsey, Buddy Rich, and—as an uncredited chorus member—Frank Sinatra.

This according to “The Dorsey brothers: Filmdom’s favorites” by Robert L. Stockdale (The IAJRC journal XLI/2 [May 2008] pp. 46–57).

Today is Tommy Dorsey’s 110th birthday! Above, a still from Las Vegas nights showing Sinatra, far right in the back row (click to enlarge); below, an instrumental piece from the film.

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by | September 20, 2015 · 6:00 am

Jelly Roll Morton and Frog-i-More

jelly roll morton

Jelly Roll Morton probably wrote Frog-i-More rag in 1908 to accompany a fellow vaudevillian known as Frog-i-More, a contortionist who performed in a frog costume, but he did not deposit the music for copyright until 1918 for fear that any form of public record was an invitation to purloin his ideas.

Morton’s piano style and musical greatness are nowhere better demonstrated. All of the most typical features are abundantly evident: his wealth of melodic invention and skill in variation; the tremendous swing; his feeling for formal design and attention to detail; his effective use of pianistic resources; the contrasts of subtle elegance with hard hitting drive; and the variety of harmony yet freedom from complication and superficial display.

This according to “Jelly Roll Morton and the Frog-i-More rag” by William Russell, an essay included in The art of jazz: Essays on the nature and development of jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959, pp. 35–36).

Today is Morton’s 135th birthday! Below, a performance of the piece via mediated piano roll.

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by | September 13, 2015 · 6:00 am

Mel Tormé’s first gig

mel-torme

In a 1996 interview, Mel Tormé described his formative years.

“When I was a baby in Chicago my favorite toy was the radio, and I listened faithfully to the Coon-Sanders Orchestra.”

“My parents finally took me to see them at the Blackhawk Restaurant when I was four years old, and Carleton Coon and Joe Sanders saw me sitting there tapping my feet and singing along.”

“Finally Joe came over and asked ‘Who’s the little dwarf?’ My mother said ‘He listens to your program and knows everything you do’ so they took me onstage and had me sing a tune called You’re drivin’ me crazy. People seemed to like it, so for the next seven months they had me sit in every Monday night and sing that song.”

“I loved being onstage, and when that experience was over I knew what I wanted to do with my life.”

Quoted in Mel Tormé, an interview included in Kristine McKenna’s Book of changes: A collection of interviews (Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2001, pp. 217–224).

Today would have been Tormé’s 90th birthday! Above, the singer early in his career; below, the seasoned pro in a memorable performance.

BONUS:  Tormé was also an accomplished drummer.

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