From a JBJ reader — and a surprise listening encounter:
Writes Paul Botts, first quoting another commenter on my earlier posting: ” ‘He was a jazz pianist for those who don’t really like jazz.’
Oh for…is it really necessary to regurgitate now the same nonsense that Peterson heard for 50 years? His having a grudge against jazz writers seems completely unsurprising to me.
As a lifelong jazz lover and a semi-professional jazz pianist myself, I’ve always loved the passion and flair and above all the wit of Oscar’s playing. And it has long struck me that critics who gloss over his astounding driving rhythmic power (including but not limited to that infectious driving swing) were missing something really damned important to jazz in particular. . Given his late-career writing and solo recording, for people in 2008 to be repeating the same 1960s conventional wisdom about his supposed lack of lyricism and exploration is just silly. And the other thing he did so so well is accompany great jazz singers — some of the sexiest music in my whole collection is on the album he recorded with Sarah Vaughan in about 1978.”
OK, I (HM) say — if Oscar Peterson’s your fave, don’t be dissuaded. The remark quoted about him being a jazz pianist for those who don’t like jazz wasn’t mine, though I agree he’s a pianist for those who don’t cotton to jazz’s relentless (and I believe, fundimental) experimental/developmental drive, and that appeals to the “classical” quality of his technique beg a basic issue.
As for comments taking my criticisms more harshly to task: Writers like me strive to make distinctions, to analyze in context, yes indeed to advance our own tastes — but essentially to enhance musics’ pleasures and enjoyments, not to detract from them. And opinions have shadings.
Case in point: Two days ago I made a rare car trip into Manhattan, with the radio turned to WKCR-FM, Columbia University’s estimable student-run station. For about an hour, bluesy piano music was programmed with no announcements crediting the players, just track after brief track of an old-school trio session. I guessed at the pianist’s identity.
Busier than Count Basie but with relaxed swing like Jay McShann’s, block chords a la Milt Buckner, some catchy melodic ideas akin to Nat Cole’s, balance like Ray Bryant, perfectly articulated single note runs almost as Art Tatum could deliver (but without Tatum’s arpeggiations), nice use of space in phrasing that didn’t strive to overwhelm yet not as airy as Teddy Wilson, expert boogie-woogie bass and delightfully contrary right hand motion a distance from Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson or Jimmy Yancey, an upbeat but also wistful quality — in all quite warm of touch and soothing. Yes, it was Peterson, in his first recordings from Montreal, 1945-46. I dug it, pleased to hear him sound like this.
Then the deejay began a lengthy monolog, and I switched to WBGO-FM, Newark’s NPR jazz station. More piano trio music, this time negotiating the bebop-based composition “Opus de Funk” that requires some tricky close-fingerings. Ah, more Peterson, I thought. But the announcer afterwards credited Horace Silver (who composed the song, and many others) in a recording from 1953.
So there was a quite a bit of that bluesy, swinging piano style existant some 50 years ago, which doesn’t take a thing away from someone like OP, who mastered the style and lived by its underlying, undying concept. But that’s not what jazz beyond jazz is about.
Oscar Peterson: Consolidator, conservator
All due respect to the formidable pianist, dead at age 82 — Oscar Peterson’s jazz has never been my personal cup of tea. A consolidator and conservator rather than a explorer and originator, the man mastered jazz conventions established by the generation before him, and found joy in spinning endless variations that celebrated rather than questioned them.
Glance back: J-B-J 2007 events
Notable happenings and turning points:
2007 favorites/gift ideas
Gifts for the listener who’s heard everything… for your jazz-beyond-jazz companeros . . . for yourself . . .
Tenacious esprit
Rumor is the scene is gone — but “downtown” improvisers persist: “free” music/art vs. real estate and what-have-you . . .
Applause for AACM in New York
Richarda Abrams calls the names of performers at concerts produced by the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians-New York in a proudly stentorian voice, and Friday’s concert season-ender of saxophonist Mantana Roberts’ quartet and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith’s trio was typically earnest, iconoclastic and rousing. But it’s almost a cry in the wilderness. More than 40 years since its founding in Chicago and almost 25 since its establishment in NYC, the non-profit AACM cooperative still has a mostly underground reputation, though its stars have ascended to important posts in musical academia.
Spitzer bows re online sales tax
In a remarkable response to protest from this website (and ok, perhaps some others), New York State governor Elliott Spitzer “believes that now is not the right time to be increasing sales taxes on New Yorkers” and “has directed the Department of Tax and Finance to pull back its interpretation that would require some Internet retailers that do not collect sales tax to do so.”
NY state chokes “Associates” income trickle
Bad news for those of us budget-pinched creators — bloggers, authors, musicians, artists, etc.– trying to tap a bit more revenue by offering links to such online stores as Amazon.com from our own websites.
Surviving the Warhol Economy
Elizabeth Currid’s The Warhol Economy — “How Fashion, Art & Music Drive New York” — argues that the creative capital conjured by artists and their ilk is more significant to the success of modern metropoli than more prosaic, dependably lucrative industries. So, she says, NYC ought to support nightlife and other semi-social structures that bring the creatives together to mix and match (simultaneously attracting the duller but well-heeled financial services types, realtors and lawyers), also subsidize artists’ workspaces and affordable housing. Now wouldn’t that be nice?
Confession: Deaf to Gospel
I may burn at the stake for political incorrectness, but it’s the truth: I have an intense aversion to gospel music. My distaste dates to a haunting childhood vision in which an overwhelming Mahalia Jackson is routed by a malevolent clown.
Guitars and jazz tradition, popularism, innovation
Jazz at Lincoln Center opened its canon to Swing Era guitar heroes Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian last week, while John Scofield, one of the instrument’s current avatars, disappointed in performance of This Meets That with his trio + Scohorns. Where does the six-string ax belong, and what’s it to do?
Singers of the songs
Norah Jones, Tina Turner, Corrine Bailey Rae, Luciana Souza and Leonard Cohen are not voices necessarily dear to fans of serious jazz, but Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter don’t alone make River: The Joni Letters a must-hear.
Herbie enriches Joni
A decade ago, pianist Herbie Hancock established his “New Standards” initiative, aiming to wed sophisticated improvisation to a contemporary American pop songbook (post-Berlin, Gershwin, Porter, et al). At last, after several disastrous attempts, he’s justified such a project with River: The Joni Letters — infusing well-known high art pop songs by inimitable Joni Mitchell with the depth of lyrical, inspired jazz.