Musing about the Folk/Modal Jazz connection

[ronjazz]

Cream started out fine, the first few records. Good tunes, too. They quickly became the epitome of boring self-indulgence and anti-listening. Sort of inevitable with egos that size and all the 'perks' of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Few can withstand that kind of hagiography w/o at least some damage.

I'd like to go on record as saying I can't think of a more overrated musician than Ginger Baker. The same dynamic level all the time: bang or thud. Called himself a 'jazz drummer'. Not in a world with Vernell Fournier, who had a touch, and sensitivity. I don't care how different groups are, music is music---or ain't.


Clapton is cool. Greenie was my boy...

You haven't heard the trio records Baker did with Charlie Haden and Bill Frisell, I see. Or maybe it ain't music, right?

[joelf]

I heard enough, thanks...

[neatomic]

c'mon...lighten up

baker 'n blakey

cheers

[Cunamara]

the Beatles have some tricks for sure, where they picked them up - harder to trace. I’m sure some people have the knowledge.

I think that when you listen to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, etc., we have to bear in mind that jazz was on the radio when these guys were growing up. All of those sounds were in their ears. In terms of song structures, etc., both the Beatles and the Stones made extensive use of something other than I-IV-V chords. In the case of Cream, both the bassist and drummer had played jazz professionally prior to forming that trio.

So I think that in the 1960s and 1970s pop music was being written by people who still had some connection to the jazz tradition, even if only subconsciously. By the 1980s, 1990s and later pop songwriters probably had little if any connection to jazz. I think this explains the proliferation of songs with only one or two chords, no harmonic development, little or no melodic development. Or, in the case of some "music," essentially no melody or harmonic structure at all but only spoken and essentially drummed rhythms layered on top of each other. No doubt I am showing my age and limitations here- to me that is not music but instead harkens back to the Beat poetry tradition. Certainly a valid art form, but not music. Get off my lawn! What the hell do I know, Ron Carter plays with hip-hop groups at times.

[christianm77]

At some point I would like to go through the Beatles stuff with this sort of thing in mind.

Blackbird is for me the perfect example of how to evoke very classic if gospel tinged functional harmony using minimal notes (in this case intervals, mostly 10ths, over a drone)

But they changed it up depending on what type of song they were writing. There’s faux Bossa nova, French chanson, Dylan pastiches, country songs, all sorts of stuff even before they got into the psychedelics...

OTOH something like Tomorrow Never Knows is clearly the music of the future.

[KirkP]

Shady Grove comes to mind as a traditional tune for dorian mode. It’s interesting because the melody is mostly Cmaj pentatonic or Amin pentatonic (same notes) but the tune has a D dorian tonality. The pentatonic scale of the melody leaves out the minor 3rd and 6th of D dorian, but I dorian works for improvising. I find it hard to resist using the whole chromatic scale to add chromatic approaches where I like, but then it doesn’t sound too authentic.

[xavierbarcelo]

But the eighties and nineties had quite a few jazz tinted or, at the very least, very complex songwriting: Steely Dan, Peter Gabriel, Radiohead, Tears for Fears, The Police, David Bowie, Prefab Sprout, Bruce Hornsby, King Crimson (80s band with Adrian Belew), Stevie Wonder, Jamiroquai, Steve Vai, etc, just to name a very eclectic few. And then, there was the whole acid jazz movement... it seems like a reduction to say that it all went down harmonically from the sixties on.


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[KirkP]

the Beatles have some tricks for sure, where they picked them up - harder to trace. I’m sure some people have the knowledge.

I think Paul McCarney grew up listening to a lot of show tunes, tin pan alley, etc. Also Bach.

[christianm77]

But the eighties and nineties had quite a few jazz tinted or, at the very least, very complex songwriting: Steely Dan, Peter Gabriel, Radiohead, Tears for Fears, The Police, David Bowie, Prefab Sprout, Bruce Hornsby, King Crimson (80s band with Adrian Belew), Stevie Wonder, Jamiroquai, Steve Vai, etc, just to name a very eclectic few. And then, there was the whole acid jazz movement... it seems like a reduction to say that it all went down harmonically from the sixties on.


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I quite enjoyed this

Would be good if he sang the right notes though ;-)

sorry what has this got to do with folk music again haha?

[joelf]

Good tune, well-rendered.

Both those guys were/are cool. Good group, too, w/the right feel for this kind of thing...

[joelf]

So where does blues figure in all this? There's all kinds, including one or two-chord. And it's certainly connected, really a bridge between the 2 forms being discussed.

Haven't seen it come up here. Why?

[PMB]

So where does blues figure in all this? There's all kinds, including one or two-chord. And it's certainly connected, really a bridge between the 2 forms being discussed.

Haven't seen it come up here. Why?

If we're talking British folk/modal, I believe Big Bill Broonzy had an enormous on most guitarists there after his first tour in 1951-2. The aforementioned John Renbourn once said, "I started out trying to play like Big Bill Broonzy and I'm still trying". Muddy Waters also left a big mark after his 1958 tour although many folkie/blues purists were initially shocked by the urban repertoire, sound and dress of his band.

As for modal leanings via blues, that was probably more prevalent in the US after the early '60s Newport festivals and rediscovery of guys like Blind Willie Johnson and Skip James, individualists whose music was infused with hypnotic, harmonically static textures.

[joelf]

Good answer. Thanks.

Anyone else?

[BWV]

What are the roots of blues? Is it not a fusion of African and Celtic/British or whatever you want to call it traditions? The white side of that fusion is old time/country and blues is the black side.

[christianm77]

The blues features heavily on Kind of Blue? Two 12 bar tunes on one record?

[joelf]

The blues features heavily on Kind of Blue? Two 12 bar tunes on one record?

Sure.

I'm thinking the more guy/gal-with-an-acoustic-and-beer-can. Stereotypical and one-dimensional though it be. I was a collector (and thought a blues player) in my teens. I remember the sweetness and purity of Mississippi John Hurt's Candy Man. I'm not one to hold back progress, and you can treat a thing all kinds of ways (and sometimes bring the wrath of the originators/writers). But songs like those ward off 'sophistication' b/c they stand on their own.

The ones that hang on 1 chord a while are tempting to 'do up'. Even 2. Like what Gil Evans did with Leadbelly's Ella Speed. Or his own Jambangle, an orchestration of barrelhouse piano.

Interesting about Miles's comment that he tried---and failed---'to get the sound of the African thumb-piano' with Kind of Blue. Shows where all these tributaries stream from.

(Though Bill Evans had a lot to do with the sound and concept of that recording [and writing, uncredited, Blue in Green])...

[christianm77]

Josh White has to be in the mix surely?

[PMB]

Josh White has to be in the mix surely?

Josh White certainly made his presence felt in England among acoustic blues and folk players. He toured there regularly and Ivor Mairants put out an instructional songbook book containing the guitarist's tunes in the late '50s. It evidently sold so well that Framus even released a signature-model guitar. However, White didn't seem to make much of an impression upon English electric blues guitarists, especially the 'purists' who preferred grittier Chicago blues and found JW's act and presentation a little too polite and slick.

[MarkRhodes]

Several versions of a blues from the '20s, "See See Rider"

[christianm77]

Josh White certainly made his presence felt in England among acoustic blues and folk players. He toured there regularly and Ivor Mairants put out an instructional songbook book containing the guitarist's tunes in the late '50s. It evidently sold so well that Framus even released a signature-model guitar. However, White didn't seem to make much of an impression upon English electric blues guitarists, especially the 'purists' who preferred grittier Chicago blues and found JW's act and presentation a little too polite and slick.

Yeah, who cares about them though? :-)

[PMB]

Yeah, who cares about them though? :-)

True, a bit OT but I think the resistance of someone like Eric Clapton to Josh White - "he was a bit of a showman who was used to playing white audiences and I was aware that he wasn't quite the full ticket" - indicates just how pervasive White's influence was in England at that time. For instance, that JW folk-blues instructional book from 1956 was arguably the first of its kind anywhere in the world and even included TAB! (called Spanish Cifra in the text). The guitar itself was still considered such a novelty that almost half the folio is filled with explanations of the instrument and its notational conventions.