Count
Basie, Oscar Peterson, Niels-Henning Ørsted-Pedersen, Martin Drew
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
Count
Basie, Oscar Peterson, Niels-Henning Ørsted-Pedersen, Martin Drew
In the act of playing music, it is impossible to separate the process from the product. Or, it was. In an important piece of journalism, Eric Felten turns a floodlight on the technological airbrushing of live performances in an effort to insure perfection. Felten’s Wall Street Journal essay emphasizes that two recent massive public events in the United States masked actual performance. One was the Super Bowl, with Jennifer Hudson singing “The Star Spangled Banner.” The other was President Obama’s inauguration, where Yo-Yo-Ma, Itzhak Perlman and associates played “Simple Gifts.” In both cases, the performers mimed over pre-recorded sound tracks. Here are two paragraphs from Felten’s article, which is headlined, “That Synching Feeling.”Â
My, what a standard of perfection is now demanded. No longer is a good or even a great performance good enough. Now we must have performances free from the “slightest glitch.” And since no one — not even a singer of Ms. Hudson’s manifest talent nor a violinist of Mr. Perlman’s virtuosity — can guarantee that a live performance will be 100% glitch-free, the solution has been to eliminate the live part. Once, synching to a recorded track was the refuge of the mediocre and inept; now it’s a practice taken up by even the best artists.
Whatever the motivation, the fear of risking mistakes has led musicians to deny who they are as performers. The most disheartening thing about the Inauguration Day quartet’s nonperformance was the lengths to which they went to make sure that nothing they did on the platform could be heard. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma put soap on the hair of his bow so that it would slip across the strings without creating even a wisp of sound. The inner workings of the piano were disassembled. There is something pitiful and pitiable about musicians hobbling their own voices.
Response to the Rifftides post on hard bop has created a lively discussion. You can read the comments here. In addition to the Savoy CD called Hard Bop that was, more or less, the focus of the piece, the commenters mention or allude to other albums. If you’re thinking of expanding the hard bop (if there is such a thing) section of your library, or starting one, here are a few worthy candidates. Other nominations will be accepted in the “Comments” section. The links will take you to Amazon.com pages that in most cases provide audio samples.Â
You get that right-tickin’ rhythm, man, and it’s ON!
So easy, when you know how.
One never knows, do one?
Rifftides reader and occasional correspondent Red Colm O’Sullivan writes from Ireland (where else, with a name like that?):Â
And here’s another frequently used term that has no meaning whatsoever: “Hard Bop”. I have NO IDEA what that MEANS (as opposed to supposed to mean).
The urge to put ideas in boxes will not be denied. Accordingly, one day in the early 1950s someone, presumably a critic, dreamed up a box called “hard bop.” The inventor no doubt intended the term to be a synonym for “soul” and “funk.” He or she may also have meant it to distinguish jazz played primarily by black people on the East Coast from jazz played primarily by white people on the West Coast. It seemed important to critics in those days to make that distinction. To some, it still seems important. At any rate, “hard bop” came to signify jazz that had rhythmic drive, leaned on blues harmonies, drew inspiration from church gospel music and was hot, not cool.Â
Unfortunately for box theory, try as you will to contain music, it flows around, into and out of boxes. Strict hard bop constructionists cannot force this album’s lyrical “I Married An Angel” into the category with any greater justification than they can jawbone Clifford Brown’s “Daahoud” (the Pacific Jazz version) into the shape of West Coast Jazz. Nearly half a century later, the music in this collection swings on in the category that matters most: the one labeled “Good.”
The notes then discuss the musicians and the 21 tracks on the CDs.Â
…So it is quite possible that there never really was a musical style that could properly be described a “hard bop.” However as Doug’s not quite tongue-in-cheek essay reminds us, there was a powerful music developing in the mid-fifties. I lived and worked in the New York area during that time span, so I was thoroughly immersed in it throughout its early development. I know that I continue to think of this music as “hard bop” whenever I think back on it (which is often), and when I heard it still being played by many of today’s best young jazz people, which is also quite frequently.Â
…I join Doug Ramsey in not giving a damn about the legitimacy of the terminology, because what really matters is that the music itself was among the most legitimate and exciting jazz ever created. – O.K.
In a posting a few months ago, I outlined the problem that all who write about music must face: keeping up. Nothing has changed, except that more CDs than ever are stacked throughout the office and music room. A colleague says he told a caller demanding to know when his album would be reviewed that his desktop looked like the Manhattan skyline, “and your CD is on the 44th floor.” Following are recommendations for three CDs retrieved from the jewel box skyscrapers.Â
Aaron Irwin Group, Blood and Thunder (Fresh Sound New Talent). In a tray card photograph, we see the 30-year-old alto saxophonist drinking a glass of milk and looking about eighteen. Irwin’s compositions and arrangements have a concomitant freshness about them, and resourcefulness. His writing tends to make his quintet sound bigger. There is no piano; Ben Monder’s guitar has the chording assignment. Chris Cheek’s tenor sax adds a third melody voice. Both solo with economy and plenty of unexpected turns, as does Irwin. Matt Clohesy is the bassist, Ferenc Nemeth the drummer.Â
Hank Crawford, another of the cadre of Ray Charles saxophonists who went on to their own fame, died on January 29. David “Fathead” Newman and Leroy “Hog” Cooper, Crawford’s colleagues in the Charles band, died earlier last month. Crawford’s alto, Newman’s tenor and Cooper’s baritone saxophones were integral to Charles’s big band in the 1950s and early ’60s.Â
CD: Tom Harrell, Prana Dance (High Note)Â