I don't attend many concerts these days, and, added to that, I don't have the luxury of having other friends currently contributing posts on the subject of bebop to this blog. This leaves room for creativity and deviation, my favorite norms. So, I am here to talk about George Benson, who I saw in concert last night at Bergen PAC in Englewood, New Jersey, not because he is remotely associated with bebop, but because I just had the pleasure of seeing this smooth jazz master of the past and present perform.
I'll launch with an interesting story Benson told about refusing to open a concert for his friend James Brown when he was a young man because, as he explained to Brown, "I do jazz." Due to that faux pas, it took Benson another 10 years to be recognized in the business, when "James Brown would have made me a star overnight."
Benson is a local, as are other musical greats like Stevie Wonder. I think it's in part due to that, that Benson was so generous, giving a two-hour concert, with a nice long come back after the first closing ovation. He played all the audience's favorites, such as "Give Me the Night," but also the music of his friends, tunes that appear on his most recent album, Guitar Man, which has received rave reviews. For example, he performed a beautiful rendition of his friend "Sir" Paul McCartney's early composition, "I Want to Hold Your Hand," jazzed up and arranged a la Benson. He also offered a tribute to Stevie Wonder, with his version of "My Cherie Amour," and Nora Jones, with a remake of her song, "Don't Know Why." He is accompanied by excellent musicians, particularly his longtime key board player, Joe Sample.
Benson's vocals, energy and guitar playing, remain exceptionally strong. The man is 68, not old by today's standards, but still. He is a wonderful balladeer, and I learned during this concert, an amazing mimic, doing imitations of James Brown, Little Richard and Stevie Wonder, all of them friends, whose music he has played.
Benson closed with his classic, "On Broadway," which was given a real send off by the young Chicago drummer playing with the group who blew the top off the house during a final solo in that number. He is listed only as "George Benson's drummer," playing on YouTube -- I'll be darned if I can find his name anywhere, as there was no program, but everyone had something good to say about him. He'll get an identity of his own yet!
Bergen PAC has hosted some hot and cool jazz over the years, and tonight was no exception.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Thursday, September 8, 2011
SILENT MONK
As we approach Monk's birthday, which takes place October 10, and, as my most recent post examined the role of silence in Miles Davis's music, I thought it appropriate to offer homage once again to Thelonious Monk, the founder of bebop. Silence in his music was as audible as the piano keys he played, always a cacophony of surprise -- lilting, funny and moving. But it is the silent Monk that interests me now, the man who is said to literally have spent the last seven years of his life without uttering a word. He spent his last six years with jazz baroness and art patron Pannonica Rothschild in her New Jersey home.
Many have no doubt wondered as I have what it is that drove Monk to the ultimate period of speech. Was it his wife Nellie's death? Was it the calamitous abuse suffered over the years, the beating with a blackjack by police of his hands while en route to a gig at the Comedy Club in Baltimore, Maryland, sadly, on occasion of my birthday, October 15, 1958? Was it the years of drugs prescribed and drugs abused? He was diagnosed as a schizophrenic, also as bipolar; he received shock treatments. One psychiatrist claimed he had experienced brain damage from being given the wrong drugs. Was it perhaps a combination of all these?
In October 2009, Italian satirist Stefani Benni's, Misterioso. A Journey in the Silence of Thelonious Monk, a theatrical production, ran as a double bill with a documentary about patron Rothschild, The Jazz Baroness -- An Unlikely Love Story -- at Riverside Studios in London. Did she perhaps play a role in silencing him? Or did she merely encourage it, let him have what he had wanted so long?
Monk is a man who would enter a room and say nothing, who could exist from day to day without the compulsion to speak, who thought perhaps longer and harder than most people about what the right thing to say might really be. Once, while attending a music lab, after listening to students perform, he paused a long while and then simply advised, "Just keep tryin'." To those frustrated by such verbal minimalism, I say, "Why does it ever have to be more complicated than that?"
Not enough can ever be said, written or interpreted, regarding Monk the man or his music, as far as I am concerned. His ideas, even his style of sunglasses, hats, coats and berets, were copped by other musicians and wannabees. Whatever Monk was, anyone who knows his music knows he is incomparably, lastingly, the true thing, an original.
Many have no doubt wondered as I have what it is that drove Monk to the ultimate period of speech. Was it his wife Nellie's death? Was it the calamitous abuse suffered over the years, the beating with a blackjack by police of his hands while en route to a gig at the Comedy Club in Baltimore, Maryland, sadly, on occasion of my birthday, October 15, 1958? Was it the years of drugs prescribed and drugs abused? He was diagnosed as a schizophrenic, also as bipolar; he received shock treatments. One psychiatrist claimed he had experienced brain damage from being given the wrong drugs. Was it perhaps a combination of all these?
In October 2009, Italian satirist Stefani Benni's, Misterioso. A Journey in the Silence of Thelonious Monk, a theatrical production, ran as a double bill with a documentary about patron Rothschild, The Jazz Baroness -- An Unlikely Love Story -- at Riverside Studios in London. Did she perhaps play a role in silencing him? Or did she merely encourage it, let him have what he had wanted so long?
Monk is a man who would enter a room and say nothing, who could exist from day to day without the compulsion to speak, who thought perhaps longer and harder than most people about what the right thing to say might really be. Once, while attending a music lab, after listening to students perform, he paused a long while and then simply advised, "Just keep tryin'." To those frustrated by such verbal minimalism, I say, "Why does it ever have to be more complicated than that?"
Not enough can ever be said, written or interpreted, regarding Monk the man or his music, as far as I am concerned. His ideas, even his style of sunglasses, hats, coats and berets, were copped by other musicians and wannabees. Whatever Monk was, anyone who knows his music knows he is incomparably, lastingly, the true thing, an original.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Miles Davis' Poetic Sounds
I've been listening to Miles Davis's "Poetics of Sound: 1954-1959," and enjoying the sheer beauty of its lyricism and quiet power. That quiet power is derived as much from Miles's strengths as a musician, as it is from his understanding of many traditions and influences. I am thinking specifically of 'Concierto de Aranjuez', which I am listening to right now. You can hear Miles's understanding of the Spanish tradition and soul of this piece on a feeling level in the music. At the same time, there isn't any piece of music on this album that doesn't smoothly, contextually, relate to another. There is no disruption of sound, no lack of poetry. I include silence in that poetry.
This is an appropriate place to interject that, while bebop was a creative revolt against commercialism and restrictive elements in society and music, Miles's particular contribution is to the poetry of the medium. I am a lover of poetry and of the poetics in jazz. And Miles is the master. I also can't think of a more important quality missing in the sounds of music today than poetry. The commercialism has tackified so much that might have relevance, for example, flattening and simplifying the classical to fit genres like hip-hop. The fusion of sounds is mostly just plain ugly. I am speaking specifically to what one hears on the radio just about anywhere you turn the dial on AM and FM, with the exception of a couple of stations, jazz-based or related.
I also feel that anyone wanting to return poetry to music, as opposed to lyrics, might turn to Miles Davis for instruction. Just as anyone who writes poetry in general should listen to Miles. He understood a great deal and is able to impart a great deal through his music, and equally through his silences. These are delicate things to state because we are not talking about facts, but intuitions and feelings, understandings beyond words that are translated nevertheless. And from which you grow in your own understanding of music and traditions.
So can we grow from silences in music such as jazz, just as from the silences or caesuras of poetry in which the reader/listener actually apprehends a multiplicity of meaning. And hear poetry and music, and derive meaning from it, even in the silence.
"The Poetics of Sound" might more aptly be named, "The Poetics of Silence" for this is what I believe Miles is playing upon, the meaning inherent in the pauses as well as the notes. There isn't a single cut that doesn't resonate with the listener on this theme.
The diverse listing on the album is as follows: "Solar"; the lilting, "It Never Entered My Mind," which is a Rodgers and Hart tune from the 1940 musical, Higher and Higher; "Bags' Groove," from a 1954 Davis recording. The 'Bags' reference is to vibraphonist Milt Jackson.
"When I Fall in Love," written by Victor Young and Edward Heyman, was a hit made popular by Doris Day in 1952 that was popularized by others as well, such as John Mathis, in 1959, and Etta Jones, in 1961.
"Dear Old Stockholm" is a Swedish folk song that was interpreted as well by Paul Chambers and John Coltrane, and Stan Getz, among others.
Then there is the haunting American standard, "Bye Bye Blackbird," a tune, listeners' may forget, about a prostitute leaving the business and returning home to her mother, written and composed in 1926 by Mort Dixon and Ray Henderson.
"Milestones" is, of course, the title track from a 1958 album of the same name by Davis.
"It Ain't Necessarily So," with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, is another American standard.
Then there is the ever-delicious "So What," from the seminal album, Kind of Blue, given a slightly mellower character here.
"Concierto de Aranjuez" was composed by Joaquin Rodrigo, originally for classical guitar. The concert intervals are intended to transport the listener by evoking sounds of nature via a dialogue among instruments, and also the instrument of silence. The inspiration for the Spanish composer's second movement is said to be the 1939 bombing of Guernica. The third movement is mixed metre, alternating between 2/4 and 3/4.
What is heard in the silence in Miles Davis' music is, alternately, the death of the old, and the birth of the new, whispering reframing of notes and phrases in a freer time and space.
This is an appropriate place to interject that, while bebop was a creative revolt against commercialism and restrictive elements in society and music, Miles's particular contribution is to the poetry of the medium. I am a lover of poetry and of the poetics in jazz. And Miles is the master. I also can't think of a more important quality missing in the sounds of music today than poetry. The commercialism has tackified so much that might have relevance, for example, flattening and simplifying the classical to fit genres like hip-hop. The fusion of sounds is mostly just plain ugly. I am speaking specifically to what one hears on the radio just about anywhere you turn the dial on AM and FM, with the exception of a couple of stations, jazz-based or related.
I also feel that anyone wanting to return poetry to music, as opposed to lyrics, might turn to Miles Davis for instruction. Just as anyone who writes poetry in general should listen to Miles. He understood a great deal and is able to impart a great deal through his music, and equally through his silences. These are delicate things to state because we are not talking about facts, but intuitions and feelings, understandings beyond words that are translated nevertheless. And from which you grow in your own understanding of music and traditions.
So can we grow from silences in music such as jazz, just as from the silences or caesuras of poetry in which the reader/listener actually apprehends a multiplicity of meaning. And hear poetry and music, and derive meaning from it, even in the silence.
"The Poetics of Sound" might more aptly be named, "The Poetics of Silence" for this is what I believe Miles is playing upon, the meaning inherent in the pauses as well as the notes. There isn't a single cut that doesn't resonate with the listener on this theme.
The diverse listing on the album is as follows: "Solar"; the lilting, "It Never Entered My Mind," which is a Rodgers and Hart tune from the 1940 musical, Higher and Higher; "Bags' Groove," from a 1954 Davis recording. The 'Bags' reference is to vibraphonist Milt Jackson.
"When I Fall in Love," written by Victor Young and Edward Heyman, was a hit made popular by Doris Day in 1952 that was popularized by others as well, such as John Mathis, in 1959, and Etta Jones, in 1961.
"Dear Old Stockholm" is a Swedish folk song that was interpreted as well by Paul Chambers and John Coltrane, and Stan Getz, among others.
Then there is the haunting American standard, "Bye Bye Blackbird," a tune, listeners' may forget, about a prostitute leaving the business and returning home to her mother, written and composed in 1926 by Mort Dixon and Ray Henderson.
"Milestones" is, of course, the title track from a 1958 album of the same name by Davis.
"It Ain't Necessarily So," with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, is another American standard.
Then there is the ever-delicious "So What," from the seminal album, Kind of Blue, given a slightly mellower character here.
"Concierto de Aranjuez" was composed by Joaquin Rodrigo, originally for classical guitar. The concert intervals are intended to transport the listener by evoking sounds of nature via a dialogue among instruments, and also the instrument of silence. The inspiration for the Spanish composer's second movement is said to be the 1939 bombing of Guernica. The third movement is mixed metre, alternating between 2/4 and 3/4.
What is heard in the silence in Miles Davis' music is, alternately, the death of the old, and the birth of the new, whispering reframing of notes and phrases in a freer time and space.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Dexter Gordon's Ballads
What is there to say about Dexter Gordon's ballads? During the two long winters I spent in Ithaca, New York, I would walk for hours listening to his "Ballads" on my headset: "Darn That Dream " "Don't Explain." "I'm A Fool to Want You." "Ernie's Tune." "You've Changed." "Willow Weep For Me." "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry." "Body and Soul." Most of the tunes were recorded between 1961 and 1964, and some appear on some of his other albums such as "Doin' All Right," but not in as beautiful an arrangement as here.
I fell in love with the hulking tenor sax player during what turned out to be for me an extraordinary period of musical appreciation, when I actually had time to listen to the music I loved, especially jazz. Shortly before he died, Dexter played the part of the amazing, lyrical, drunken sax player in the 1986 film set in Paris, "Round Midnight." Paris had been good to Dexter, as it was to many musicians, and Dexter's performance, which garnered him an Academy Award nomination, turned out to be a kind of homage to artists like Lester Young, and others like Bud Powell, who inspired him and with whom he had played.
I also tried to pay homage with a poem to the artist who brought so much tenderness and warmth into my life with his music:
Ballad to Dexter
Drunk with ballads and piano now
after a snowy walk past lamppost arms
and warm benches with their sleeping ghosts
all day a madman sits there
face red shivering in his thin black suit
and fallen socks
but now he's gone
I think i see his shadow there
drifting in the park
so full of silence you can hear it
as the cars shiver by
in the slow snow rain
and blue windows like a holy horn
pain a kind goodnight for somebody
somewhere
Smoke drifts over the sidewalk
with its lone scattered footprints
and i hear a voice inside
maybe dexter's say
don't go let it snow rain
watch it come down like
love it blows away
it flys too soon
but tonight it seems
inside this dusk
perfume these
wandering prints
will take me home
no don't go
pretend you'll stay
pretend this all
won't go
won't go away.
(published in The Cafe Review, Winter '96 issue)
I fell in love with the hulking tenor sax player during what turned out to be for me an extraordinary period of musical appreciation, when I actually had time to listen to the music I loved, especially jazz. Shortly before he died, Dexter played the part of the amazing, lyrical, drunken sax player in the 1986 film set in Paris, "Round Midnight." Paris had been good to Dexter, as it was to many musicians, and Dexter's performance, which garnered him an Academy Award nomination, turned out to be a kind of homage to artists like Lester Young, and others like Bud Powell, who inspired him and with whom he had played.
I also tried to pay homage with a poem to the artist who brought so much tenderness and warmth into my life with his music:
Ballad to Dexter
Drunk with ballads and piano now
after a snowy walk past lamppost arms
and warm benches with their sleeping ghosts
all day a madman sits there
face red shivering in his thin black suit
and fallen socks
but now he's gone
I think i see his shadow there
drifting in the park
so full of silence you can hear it
as the cars shiver by
in the slow snow rain
and blue windows like a holy horn
pain a kind goodnight for somebody
somewhere
Smoke drifts over the sidewalk
with its lone scattered footprints
and i hear a voice inside
maybe dexter's say
don't go let it snow rain
watch it come down like
love it blows away
it flys too soon
but tonight it seems
inside this dusk
perfume these
wandering prints
will take me home
no don't go
pretend you'll stay
pretend this all
won't go
won't go away.
(published in The Cafe Review, Winter '96 issue)
Friday, February 11, 2011
SO WHAT
I don't know anyone who loves jazz who ever listened to Miles Davis's Kind of Blue just once. Kind of Blue is considered by many to be the greatest jazz album of all time. Recorded in two sessions on March 2, 1959 and April 22, 1959 at the 30th Street Columbia Studio in New York City, it featured an extraordinary sextet: pianist Bill Evans (also Wynton Kelly); drummer Jimmy Cobb; bassist Paul Chambers; John Coltrane on tenor sax; "Cannonball" Adderley on alto sax; and Miles on horn. The album, based entirely on modal jazz which uses scale improvisations, came out Aug. 17, 1959; it wasn't the first modal album ever, but it mesmerized a generation, and has become a musical treasure.
In 1959, I was barely an item in the universe, a bicultural kid, living in Talara, Peru, who probably had never heard the word, jazz. It awes me how it is I would wind up loving jazz the way I do, how it is the music can touch my mind and soul the way it does -- unless music travels through time and space and can reach us even if it doesn't come through our ears. I do have this pretty simple theory that the music our parents loved, particularly when we were in the womb and very young, somehow settles into our genes. This would explain why so many of us born in the 50s and 60s dig bebop, hard bop, modal jazz, the jazz of the 50s. Similarly, I've found that many of the kids born to parents who as youths loved disco in the 70s, grow up to love disco music and its styles too. Clearly, the love of certain kinds of music, just like musical talent, has mysterious sources.
That said, I didn't know anything about modal jazz or much about Miles when I first heard Kind of Blue in the early 90s. A kid working in a basement record store in Northampton suggested it when I asked him to recommend the best jazz ever recorded, and predicted it would "blow me away." As a poet, I was experimenting with typing to different kinds of music, mostly modern jazz, on an old Remington, a manual typewriter that allowed me to hear the music within, if you will. Jazz inspired me to break out of my own molds, preconceptions about music and rhythms, and reach into my own word songs and poetry.
The kid in the record store was right. I was really blown away by Kind of Blue, especially "So What," a modal composition based on two scales: 16 measures of the first, followed by eight of the second, then eight again of the first. There have been periods in my life, when I couldn't wait to hop in my car just so I could play that Miles' piece on my CD, over and over. It never inspired poetry, but a short story, named after the composition. Throughout the years, "So What," like its parent album, has never lost its hold on me. I derive a special excitement from knowing what the horns and other instruments are going to do when I listen to it. The soloists on it, in order, are: Miles, Coltrane, "Cannonball," Evans (and horns), and Chambers.
Listen to it sometime. It is just so damn cool.
In 1959, I was barely an item in the universe, a bicultural kid, living in Talara, Peru, who probably had never heard the word, jazz. It awes me how it is I would wind up loving jazz the way I do, how it is the music can touch my mind and soul the way it does -- unless music travels through time and space and can reach us even if it doesn't come through our ears. I do have this pretty simple theory that the music our parents loved, particularly when we were in the womb and very young, somehow settles into our genes. This would explain why so many of us born in the 50s and 60s dig bebop, hard bop, modal jazz, the jazz of the 50s. Similarly, I've found that many of the kids born to parents who as youths loved disco in the 70s, grow up to love disco music and its styles too. Clearly, the love of certain kinds of music, just like musical talent, has mysterious sources.
That said, I didn't know anything about modal jazz or much about Miles when I first heard Kind of Blue in the early 90s. A kid working in a basement record store in Northampton suggested it when I asked him to recommend the best jazz ever recorded, and predicted it would "blow me away." As a poet, I was experimenting with typing to different kinds of music, mostly modern jazz, on an old Remington, a manual typewriter that allowed me to hear the music within, if you will. Jazz inspired me to break out of my own molds, preconceptions about music and rhythms, and reach into my own word songs and poetry.
The kid in the record store was right. I was really blown away by Kind of Blue, especially "So What," a modal composition based on two scales: 16 measures of the first, followed by eight of the second, then eight again of the first. There have been periods in my life, when I couldn't wait to hop in my car just so I could play that Miles' piece on my CD, over and over. It never inspired poetry, but a short story, named after the composition. Throughout the years, "So What," like its parent album, has never lost its hold on me. I derive a special excitement from knowing what the horns and other instruments are going to do when I listen to it. The soloists on it, in order, are: Miles, Coltrane, "Cannonball," Evans (and horns), and Chambers.
Listen to it sometime. It is just so damn cool.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Take Five
On my 11th birthday, my dad handed me an orange album titled Time Out. "Dave Brubeck," he said. "Now, this is great music. Listen to 'Take Five.'"
I wasn't even sure what Take Five meant -- I certainly wouldn't have known it referred to the unusual 5/4 time of the piece. While "Take Five" wasn't the first jazz piece to utilize this meter, it is part of what made the piece distinctive.
Time Out was actually released in 1959, years before it became my gift. In 1961, "Take Five," the album's most popular piece, became the first million selling jazz single on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
Believing my dad, as only an adoring daughter can, I played Time Out, and thought it very interesting. But I had no frame of reference for it aside from what my dad had told me. At the time, I idolized James Taylor, and jazz certainly couldn't compare with his music. It would be years before I would "see" into the appreciation my dad was talking about. But it was a start. And I never forgot it.
Now, when I listen to my favorite jazz, whether it's Bird, or Miles, John Coltrane or The Dave Brubeck Quartet, I think of my dad, who passed away last year. The love of jazz was one of his many legacies that I hold dear.
I recently watched a video of The Dave Brubeck Quartet performing "Take Five" in 1966 in Germany: the bespectacled Brubeck on piano, Paul Desmond on alto sax, Eugene Wright on bass, and Joe Morello (wearing sunglasses) on drums. It's Desmond's piece -- meaning, he composed it -- and it's also Desmond who fascinates me watching the video. I close my eyes listening to his sax and hear an eloquent white man's musing on urbanity, feeling the race toward the future and technology and liking it. It's truly a brilliant musical articulation.
I wasn't even sure what Take Five meant -- I certainly wouldn't have known it referred to the unusual 5/4 time of the piece. While "Take Five" wasn't the first jazz piece to utilize this meter, it is part of what made the piece distinctive.
Time Out was actually released in 1959, years before it became my gift. In 1961, "Take Five," the album's most popular piece, became the first million selling jazz single on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
Believing my dad, as only an adoring daughter can, I played Time Out, and thought it very interesting. But I had no frame of reference for it aside from what my dad had told me. At the time, I idolized James Taylor, and jazz certainly couldn't compare with his music. It would be years before I would "see" into the appreciation my dad was talking about. But it was a start. And I never forgot it.
Now, when I listen to my favorite jazz, whether it's Bird, or Miles, John Coltrane or The Dave Brubeck Quartet, I think of my dad, who passed away last year. The love of jazz was one of his many legacies that I hold dear.
I recently watched a video of The Dave Brubeck Quartet performing "Take Five" in 1966 in Germany: the bespectacled Brubeck on piano, Paul Desmond on alto sax, Eugene Wright on bass, and Joe Morello (wearing sunglasses) on drums. It's Desmond's piece -- meaning, he composed it -- and it's also Desmond who fascinates me watching the video. I close my eyes listening to his sax and hear an eloquent white man's musing on urbanity, feeling the race toward the future and technology and liking it. It's truly a brilliant musical articulation.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Ted Gioia
This guy has opined on every musical subject it seems -- from Chet Baker and Lester Young to Tito Puente and even the tango. Here's a link to a review of his latest book, The Birth (and Death) of the Cool: http://tedgioia.com/
"Bebop was defined by its social context as much as by the flats and sharps of its altered chords. Outsiders, even within the jazz world, the modern players had the dubious distinction of belonging to an underclass within an underclass...a musical revolution made...by sidemen, not stars." - Ted Gioia
"Bebop was defined by its social context as much as by the flats and sharps of its altered chords. Outsiders, even within the jazz world, the modern players had the dubious distinction of belonging to an underclass within an underclass...a musical revolution made...by sidemen, not stars." - Ted Gioia
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Melodious Thunk and Nellie
Melodious Thunk is what Thelonious Monk's wife Nellie used to call him. She did everything for him, sometimes, as for a child, as he was disoriented and slow, and so much about the music he conjured and played that he couldn't grasp much of anything -- unless it was music. I imagine he probably heard the noises made by those he loved, like Nellie cooking in the kitchen where he played his piano, also as a kind of music, and probably retreated deep into himself when the noises of the world got ugly. When its music got ugly.
There are geniuses like that who only know how to do one thing right, superbly. If they are lucky, they find a Nellie, someone to steer them or keep them in the vicinity of their art, where they can paint, write, make music. That was Nellie. Where is her prize?
I had a chance to recently savor the extraordinary nature and genius of Monk through a story told about him in Geoff Dyer's gorgeous collection, But Beautiful [A Book About Jazz]. The stories are an act of love, getting so deeply and thoroughly inside the skin of jazz greats, like Monk, that you honestly feel you carry away a piece of those artists, along with their music, when you finish reading.
David Thomson of the L.A. Times said that this book might have been the best "ever written about jazz." In my small sphere of experience with such literature, it is. If you are a jazz lover who cares, not just about the music, but about the individuals that created it and the culture and worlds from which they sprang, please pick up this book. It is a celebration of the art unlike any I have read to date. Dig this:
" -- See, jazz always had this thing, having your own sound so all sorts of people who maybe couldn't have made it in the other arts -- they'd've had their idiosyncracies ironed out -- like if they were writers they'd not've made it 'cause they couldn't spell or punctuate or painting 'cause they couldn't draw a straight line. Spelling and straight-line stuff don't matter necessarily in jazz, so there's a whole bunch of guys whose stories and thoughts are not like anyone else's who wouldn't've had a chance to express all the ideas and shit they had inside them without jazz. Cats who in any other walk of life wouldn't've made it as bankers or plumbers even: in jazz they could be geniuses, without it they'd've been nothing. Jazz can see things, draw things out of people that painting or writing don't see." - Geoff Dyer
There are geniuses like that who only know how to do one thing right, superbly. If they are lucky, they find a Nellie, someone to steer them or keep them in the vicinity of their art, where they can paint, write, make music. That was Nellie. Where is her prize?
I had a chance to recently savor the extraordinary nature and genius of Monk through a story told about him in Geoff Dyer's gorgeous collection, But Beautiful [A Book About Jazz]. The stories are an act of love, getting so deeply and thoroughly inside the skin of jazz greats, like Monk, that you honestly feel you carry away a piece of those artists, along with their music, when you finish reading.
David Thomson of the L.A. Times said that this book might have been the best "ever written about jazz." In my small sphere of experience with such literature, it is. If you are a jazz lover who cares, not just about the music, but about the individuals that created it and the culture and worlds from which they sprang, please pick up this book. It is a celebration of the art unlike any I have read to date. Dig this:
" -- See, jazz always had this thing, having your own sound so all sorts of people who maybe couldn't have made it in the other arts -- they'd've had their idiosyncracies ironed out -- like if they were writers they'd not've made it 'cause they couldn't spell or punctuate or painting 'cause they couldn't draw a straight line. Spelling and straight-line stuff don't matter necessarily in jazz, so there's a whole bunch of guys whose stories and thoughts are not like anyone else's who wouldn't've had a chance to express all the ideas and shit they had inside them without jazz. Cats who in any other walk of life wouldn't've made it as bankers or plumbers even: in jazz they could be geniuses, without it they'd've been nothing. Jazz can see things, draw things out of people that painting or writing don't see." - Geoff Dyer
Monday, January 3, 2011
hello world post
Welcome to Bebop Times the newest phase of the Bebop Project of writers, artists and editors in at least three states.
* * *
I notice my friends have called this a blog about jazz, not just Bebop, and that's fair and fine. The genre is vast, and our tastes, varied.
I'm certainly interested to know what aspects and styles of jazz my friends and fellow artists and writers are attracted to and why, and who and what they recommend. The performers' words might be heard here as well.
* * *
I notice my friends have called this a blog about jazz, not just Bebop, and that's fair and fine. The genre is vast, and our tastes, varied.
I'm certainly interested to know what aspects and styles of jazz my friends and fellow artists and writers are attracted to and why, and who and what they recommend. The performers' words might be heard here as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)