I would be interested to know how he came to like this type of jazz. Was it always there ? A gradual growing familiarity ? A sudden epiphany ?
Both of my parents are [not professional] musicians, and I am too. I put in my share of hours in NY jam sessions in my late teens/early 20s, and spent a lot more time in the jazz clubs listening after I came to terms with the reality that I didn’t have 4 hours a day to spend in a practice room to keep up with those guys.
The first albums I spent a lot of time with were all pretty straight-ahead. Oliver Nelson’s Blues and the Abstract Truth, Coltrane’s Giant Steps and Blue Train, Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Collosus, George Shearing’s Blues Alley Jazz, Dexter Gordon’s Tangerine, Dizzy Gillespie’s Sonny Side Up, and a lot of Charlie Parker.
As I met more musicians, I was exposed to more stuff. One of my musician friends started doing publicity/booking/promotion work for Jazz in NY, and over about 10 years grew into one of those guys that knows everyone in the industry, and he fed me music constantly, which really pushed me. A lot of my absolute favorites stemmed from a few recommendations from him that grew by exploring associated musicians.
One thing to keep in mind with listening to Bebop is that it’s a transitional form. Not that anything else isn’t, but Bebop was more distinctly a pivot point. Bebop artists were taking apart existing, well known, popular tunes, and writing these technical melodies for them, and then improvising over those chord changes. Audiences at the time would feel a sense of familiarity as the chord changes passed by, in a way that doesn’t happen today for people who have lost touch with the originals.
For example:
- Donna Lee (Charlie Parker) ~= Indiana
- Dig (Miles Davis) ~= Sweet Georgia Brown
- Oleo (Miles Davis) and Dexterity (Charlie Parker) ~= I’ve Got Rhythm
- Ko-Ko (Miles Davis) ~= Cherokee
Part of understanding that kind of bebop is having that relationship with the original tunes so you can see the difference between what was already there and what the artist is contributing.
In a lot of ways, listening to bebop is like listening to the Roots of Rock and Roll. I don’t know many hard rock/metal fans who regularly listen to Chuck Berry, just like I don’t listen to Charlie Parker very often. When I do, it’s with a more historical/anthropological mindset.
Appropriation gave way to a lot of people writing completely original tunes that weren’t based on old chord changes. “Jazz” tunes. These were recycled into later rounds of appropriation and reinterpretation. There is this continual give and take between what is old and what is original.
For example, John Coltrane’s “Countdown” is Miles Davis’s “Tune Up”, but with Coltrane’s signature chord substitutions a new melody. Coltrane’s Body and Soul keeps the melody from the original, but substitutes the chord changes in a structured way that keeps the tune intact, but changes the harmony. Coltrane’s _26-2_is Charlie Parker’s Confirmation. Many of Coltrane’s originals from the 1950s, like Giant Steps and Central Park West are built on the same cycle of chords trundling up by a minor third then resolving down by a fifth repeatedly. Giant Steps is practically a tutorial on this harmonic structure, and his improvisation is a linearized representation of the chord shapes with almost no alteration. It is almost as if Coltrane invented a new musical technology and then went around applying it until he ran out of outlets, and then moved onto his next phase.
Part of why I enjoy Uri Caine so much is because he is participating in a modern version of the same tradition, but with a broader canon–there is structure, and layers to how that music was conceived that I can sink my teeth into. Caine builds on Verdi building on Shakespeare. And the irreverence with which he does it is brutally compelling, but also not inconsistent with what Charlie Parker was doing in the 1940s.
One example that’s a little bit outside of this framework is Keith Jarrett’s Standards trio. They have been pumping out roughly the same thing for 30 years, but without accepting much outside influence or borrowing much from the “new”. Their “thing” is perfectionist piano trio renditions of classic Jazz and American songbook compositions.
That Helen Sung album is along the same lines. Lets take apart track 1 a bit.
It’s a song called Conception and was written by George Shearing in the late 1940s, as an original. Conception is an institution built by all of the musicians who continue to contribute to and translate it. It’s not just fun to listen to, it’s fun to watch them build it, one brick at a time.
It is very difficult to make a meaningful contribution to something like Conception–we hold this sort of attempt to a higher standard. But perhaps more importantly, if this was your first time hearing a recording of Conception, there’s some context to fill in.
She’s reformatted the melody, removing the trailing three quarters of the A section and replacing it with some sparse, punchy harmony–that’s her contribution. She keeps Shearing’s original bridge–which is a significant choice because not everyone (particularly Bill Evans!) went that way. Her articulation on the bridge is distinctly Jarret-esque–to the point where I’m sure she’s listened to his version on Whisper Not at least a few times before recording this one.
Personally, I think her entry falls short compared to some of the others. It’s tough to compete with Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, and George Shearing, so this isn’t really much of a negative statement.
Part of me wonders if the stuff you’re having an easier time with tends towards original compositions–which are more likely to stand on their own, and maybe you lose track of it when the musicians start appropriating and referencing a canon that you’re not as well versed in.
