Is Jazz from 1920s - 70 the 'best' and if so why

[rkwestcoast]

Kind of suggests that the scene has diversified/globalised. E.g. Bates pivotally important to UK jazz (actually I've never checked him out really but I have been influenced by him second hand from everyone on the UK jazz scene that has been influenced by him haha.) Has he had an influence overseas?

Bird influenced all his contemporaries. But that was in New York. People had to go to New York to experience it direct.

I don't agree that Bird influenced all of his contemporaries..............it wasn't as if Bebop was the only style of jazz being played in the late 40s and onwards - this view seems to trade with the perspective that bebop was a cataclysmic revolution rather then an evolution................

Part of Bird and bebop's deification comes from moving jazz from the club into the halls of the academy with a canon and a syllabus to give jazz pedagogy a lodestone and a lingua franca because it can be classified, organised, explained and taught - you don't see many people offering courses in "Learn to burn like late period Coltrane in 30 Days"...............

[destinytot]

Do tell!
Maybe I need to do someone else's gig before I can do mine. I need musicians with more balls than brains to do what I want.
I saw your vids. Don't forget a shout-out for Tibet.

James Taylor, Todd Rundgren, Neil Sedaka, The Carpenters, Bread (RIP, O'Donel Levy)

[Stevebol]

Didn't jazz programs take off in the US in the 70's? That's going to change the landscape.

[goldenwave77]

Maybe I'm experiencing false nostalgia?!

I'm 57....wasn't listening to ANY music during the 1950's. By the time, I became aware of listening to music (top 40 radio, with older brothers), in the late 60's, rock n' roll was ascendant, at least for most of the casual listening audience of my age group. In my HS, jazz was definitely not popular among most students, but there was probably a hard core 5% who listened and talked about it..."check out the new Woody Shaw", etc. Album rock was beginning to get popular on radio...WNEW and Alison Steele, and Dennis Elsas, and progressive rock appealed to more heavily musical types.

When my brothers went off to college, some of them became casual jazz listeners (Django, Sidney Bechet, Louis A, some Bird and Diz, some big band stuff) and I started to dig into the stuff. In Junior HS (1973) we had a music class where we did about 6 weeks worth of listening...ragtime, blues, Dixieland, swing, into bop and hard bop, and some fusion-y stuff.

So I started listening more....the public library had LOTs of jazz records. WRVR was full time jazz on radio, 24/7 in NYC with great DJ's, NYC in the 70's had lots of clubs, and even out in the boring suburbs, when I learned to drive there were suburban spots where I heard Sonny Fortune and Joe Puma. College (1977-81) had devoted jazz listeners and even some players at a small college. In Cambridge, you could walk into the Harvard Coop and find literally hundreds, or maybe a couple thousand, jazz albums. NYC had J & R Records, Colonie Music, and later on Tower Records, and I can even remember a kind of bargain bin record shop in an out of the way corner of Grand Central or Penn Station. Blue Note Records became less of a force, but newcomers came along, e.g. Concord Jazz, Steeplechase, EMI, etc.

Now one of the things I've learned on this forum, is that fusion itself sparked a revival and re-issue of lots of older stuff, so I kind of gravitated toward a lot of it...because stuff that has been around, and stayed around, has probably stood the test of time, and is probably worthwhile....whereas 90% of any new stuff is just OK, or not that great, and gets forgotten in practically any field. In any event, I found lots to like and great contemporary stuff mixed in with the older stuff, Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson, etc.

People once had big record collections or CD collections. Nowadays kids don't seem to place great importance on music. We have the fragmentation of media...500 TV channels appealing to smaller audiences. There is some really great stuff being done with TV. I'm not a big TV watcher, but shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, are as good as anything that has ever been done in television, I believe. But mixed in with some real quality, is some incredibly bad stuff...reality shows, formulaic repeats of some gimmicky idea that was/is big for a season----vampire shows; cyborg shows; zombie shows; talent shows, etc. A lot of bad television is due to having to put out a new show for every week for a season. One of my college roommates wrote for HBO for a while...he had some comedic talent, and he was developing an idea for a show, and wanted to go without laugh tracks, and when he really researched he was amazed at the prevalence of the laugh track, almost a necessity for a sit-com.

The situation in music is less dire. Musicians don't have to do an album every week, and at least in jazz, there is no shortage of musical material that can be adapted.

Recording production costs have been lowered in real terms...everyone and his brother can put out a CD. There has been a democratization of access but now we're awash in lots of material...some of it amazingly good...some of it not very good (bedroom hobbyists playing against backing tracks on youtube).... The struggle nowadays is to reach critical mass---of people who will listen and pay attention--to this fragmentation of product.

There was a filtering process in the old days. I don't think too many people stepped inside Rudy Van Gelder's recording studio who were not already great players.

Nowadays, if you're a listener and you want to put your foot into the jazz stream, you can't tell if you're stepping into a puddle, or a "still water that runs deep" (quality-wise).

[destinytot]

Didn't jazz programs take off in the US in the 70's? That's going to change the landscape.

Charlie Brown changed my life (thank you, Vince Guaraldi):

[rkwestcoast]

Sure he has.
I know Hermeto digs him, as does Tim Berne.
He is professor also at academies in Europe - so his influence has carried across borders as well as oceans.

Something I have never felt need to own up to here yet is that I was founder-manager of Loose Tubes. And, even though I am now many miles away on the edge of the Pacific, west-coast players are always keen to talk to me on the subject of Bates et. al. - and we only ever did two gigs out here, and that was thirty-two years ago.
So I believe the impact to be broad and profound.

Yes, the music scene is way more diverse and global than previously. The infrastructure for the arts in general has changed enormously since the '70s/'80s, although much more of it survives in Europe. But I think it's near finished in North America where it seems unlikely that organisations like the German radio big-bands or the Metropole Orkest in the Nederlands, for example, could ever find seeding or career legs.

(I meant to have Nathalie Lorier on that list, but forgot - there are just too many significant artists around to think about)

I grew up in South East London in the 80s in Bromley, not far from where Django Bates was from, Beckenham........and whilst first hearing the giants of American jazz was a revelation..........hearing Loose Tubes was incredible because it didn't feel like I was listening to a group that had borrowed the band uniforms of their American cousins and I could hear non-jazz musical influences that I had grown up with and were around me.......incredible band............and I think that's one of the key changes over the last 40 years - how jazz has become localised around the world outside of the States & this geographical diversification added to a more dilute media plane mitigates against it being easier to spot the giants among us..............

[mr quick]

imo the 70s and 80s were the best decades for jazz

stuff like this.

[Philco]

Then there is the Album that changed my life.
Heavy Metal BeBop Best album.....like.....EVER!!!

The solo starting at 1.30 still blows my brain apart.
The worst part of the album....the guitar. Doesn't fit and doesn't need to be there.
Oh my god....Fusion guitar just never worked for anyone......period.
(Mahavishnu isn't fusion guitar.......so there!!.....)

[christianm77]

imo the 70s and 80s were the best decades for jazz

stuff like this.

There is no hope for you ;-)

[PMB]

An infinite future... Such refreshing optimism.

I didn't say any such thing btw :-)

Has anyone here read Jorge Luis Borges' piece The Fearful Sphere of Pascal? No mention of music (not even music of the spheres) but highly relevant to this discussion regarding an infinite future, especially the final paragraph (from Anthony Kerrigan's 1962 translation of Ficciones):

For one man, for Giordano Bruno, the rupture of the stellar vaults was a liberation. He proclaimed, in the Cena de la ceneri, that the world is the infinite effect of an infinite cause, and that divinity is close by, "for it is within us even more than we ourselves are within ourselves." He searched for words to tell men of Copernican space, and on one famous page he inscribed: "We can assert with certitude that the universe is all center, or that the center of the universe is everywhere and the circumference nowhere" (Della causa, principio ed uno, V).

This phrase was written with exultation, in 1584, still in the light of the Renaissance; seventy years later there was no reflection of that fervor left and men felt lost in time and space. In time, because if the future and the past are infinite, there can not really be a when; in space, because if every being is equidistant from the infinite and infinitesimal, neither can there be a where. No one exists on a certain day, in a certain place; no one knows the size of his own countenance. In the Renaissance, humanity thought to have reached the age of virility, and it declares as much through the lips of Bruno, of Campanella, and of Bacon. In the seventeenth century, humanity was cowed by a feeling of senescence; in order to justify itself it exhumed the belief in a slow and fatal degeneration of all creatures consequent on Adam's sin. (We know - from the fifth chapter of Genesis - that "all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years"; from the sixth chapter, that "there were giants in the earth in those days.") The First Anniversary of John Donne's elegy, Anatomy of the World, lamented the very brief life and limited stature of contemporary men, who are like pygmies and fairies; Milton, according to Johnson's biography, feared that the appearance on earth of a heroic species was no longer possible; Glanvill was of the opinion that Adam, "the medal of God," enjoyed both telescopic and microscopic vision; Robert South conspicuously wrote: "An Aristotle was but the fragment of an Adam, and Athens the rudiments of Paradise." In that dispirited century, the absolute space which had inspired the hexameters of Lucretius, the absolute space which had meant liberation to Bruno, became a labyrinth and an abyss for Pascal. He abhorred the universe and would have liked to adore God; but God, for him, was less real than the abhorred universe. He deplored the fact that the firmament did not speak, and he compared our life with that of castaways on a desert island. He felt the incessant weight of the physical world, he experienced vertigo, fright and solitude, and he put his feelings into these words: "Nature is an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." Thus do the words appear in the Brunschvicg text; but the critical edition published by Tourneur (Paris, 1941), which reproduces the crossed-out words and variations of the manuscript, reveals that Pascal started to write the word effroyable: "a fearful sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."

It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.

[christianm77]

"The best (most culturally significant) jazz was produced in the era 1920s-1970. To me that's as near an objective fact as anything in music."

Culturally significant to who? There isn't one, monolithic jazz culture out there so it can be hard to make these type of claims, I think, as an absolute............

In terms of this generation of greats 'cos we are mid-stream in the flow it can be hard to see who is sinking, who's making waves and who is just riding the current that said...............

I have a strong feeling that we will feel the resonance and influence of the Esbjorn Svensson Trio for a long time - I suspect that we will see a generation of players coming up in the next 10 years heavily influenced by their writing, their playing and their approach to improvisation.............

I really like EST. I'm heavily influenced by them....

One thing I liked about that group is the way that they were able to move beyond a narrow jazz constituency into a wider audience. But damn if ES isn't one of my favourite pianists of the past 40 years.

[christianm77]

Sure he has.
I know Hermeto digs him, as does Tim Berne.
He is professor also at academies in Europe - so his influence has carried across borders as well as oceans.

Something I have never felt need to own up to here yet is that I was founder-manager of Loose Tubes. And, even though I am now many miles away on the edge of the Pacific, west-coast players are always keen to talk to me on the subject of Bates et. al. - and we only ever did two gigs out here, and that was thirty-two years ago.
So I believe the impact to be broad and profound.

Yes, the music scene is way more diverse and global than previously. The infrastructure for the arts in general has changed enormously since the '70s/'80s, although much more of it survives in Europe. But I think it's near finished in North America where it seems unlikely that organisations like the German radio big-bands or the Metropole Orkest in the Nederlands, for example, could ever find seeding or career legs.

(I meant to have Nathalie Lorier on that list, but forgot - there are just too many significant artists around to think about)

OK then, I'll take the plunge. What's a good point of entry to the Bates universe?

EDIT: Also I feel I should mention that several of the names you mentioned I don't recognise. So, these figures, however important they might be, are not mainstream figures to me in whatever strange neck of the woods I have ended up in. So perhaps they are unsung giants? That's a bit different...

It might be significant that my engagement with music education has been limited - I'm primarily self taught - but I am a professional musician and most musicians I work with have jazz degrees etc and we often discuss music. Bates comes up a lot, never heard of some of those other guys.

Although TBH a lot of the young players I hang out with couldn't give a toss about UK jazz - they are all about the 1920s-70s stuff and swing above everything else, so that's probably skewed my own perceptions. That said, I don't actually share that viewpoint. Also I daresay that's a reaction against their teachers, many of whom were probably in the Loose Tubes anyway :-)

BTW - I do think jazz education changes things quite a bit, because it becomes possible for teachers to develop a sphere of influence.

[princeplanet]

One man's classic era is another man's ...?

Yes, but it's not just "one man's" declaration is it? Ask Wikipeadia about the Golden Age of Jazz, it will probably come up with many short periods somewhere between 1920 and 1970. For an era to be regarded "Golden" or "Classic" it has to be agreed upon by the majority. If the history books, wikipedia, the media or you grandfather's memory tell you when the golden era occurred, there's probably good reasons for it.

The simple way to look at the Why, is simply Money, right? Cultural interest = Money = Doing Something To Death.... or near Death as in the current state of Jazz (in comparison to 1940, or 1958, say...). It's all good, most of us are OK that Jazz is left alone to thrive in the dark dingy corners of the world. Or are we?...

[mr quick]

Phil, do you honestly hate this?

[destinytot]

Add a voice, and - hello!

[cosmic gumbo]

It would take a sociologist to explain the situation that has created the McCulture that exists today, and it's impossible to compare jazz music and it's post 1970's pioneers within a context that would fairly portray them with the same gravity that jazz used to occupy in the past.

Jazz is totally invisible to mainstream society. Even most of the hipper non-jazz musicians don't have a clue and don't even care. This leaves the practitioners with little audience and opportunities. Academia is the new jazz economy. Welcome to the curators...the new tastemakers...no wonder real people aren't interested.

The irony is there has never been a better supply of great jazz and musicians than right now, and less demand for it. People don't have the attention span. They can't even carry on a conversation without checking their phone every 45 seconds....

[christianm77]

It would take a sociologist to explain the situation that has created the McCulture that exists today, and it's impossible to compare jazz music and it's post 1970's pioneers within a context that would fairly portray them with the same gravity that jazz used to occupy in the past.

Jazz is totally invisible to mainstream society. Even most of the hipper non-jazz musicians don't have a clue and don't even care. This leaves the practitioners with little audience and opportunities. Academia is the new jazz economy. Welcome to the curators...the new tastemakers...no wonder real people aren't interested.

The irony is there has never been a better supply of great jazz and musicians than right now, and less demand for it. People don't have the attention span. They can't even carry on a conversation without checking their phone every 45 seconds....

You're not wrong.

[Philco]

Phil, do you honestly hate this?

You mean I have to defend my indefensible statement!!!

Hate is too strong a word. It's just a personal thing that I would find hard to explain and it would bore you if I did.

I just feel that sustaining guitars or distorted (singing) guitars in Jazz sound ugly.....or actually "don't work" in jazz.
I feel nothing but the desire to stop listening when I hear that sound.

The sound of distortion does not seem to fit into the soundscape occupied by the other instruments. It doesn't belong so to speak.
To me (and I have to keep stressing that it's only my feeling) it has never really worked. There is something inherently wrong with the sound of it.

Rock of course is a different story......and blues. It wails it screams and it conveys a lot of emotion.

In Jazz it sounds like a little chainsaw being very annoying. Is it angry sounding?....no. Is it wailing.....crying?....no. Is it out of control. (and now someone will mention that guy....is it Mark Ribbet?)
It's none of those things.
It's lost. It doesn't know what it is.

Even though I know those guys are incredible musicians ....I'm not talking about the notes they play....it's the sound.
Strangely I feel the more short sustain Bebop type playing has a place. It's part of that culture or something. It moves me.

Easy fixed of course....I just don't listen to that other style.
Even though I grew up listening to Larry Carlton and all those guys. I can't listen to it now.
And yes it's just me.

[destinytot]

You're not wrong.

I see what cosmic gumbo called 'McCulture' as a commitment to looking good.

And that thought has me acknowledge value in a lot of 'jazz' which I neither like nor enjoy - because its authenticity becomes an antidote.

Authenticity is available to players at all levels of competence.

On the one hand, I relate authenticity to the 'fraud' Groyniad talked about, and on the other to Clark Terry's adage 'imitate, assimilate, innovate'.

Concerning well-intentioned people, I think it's a terrible mistake to allow one's identity to get caught up in the authenticity of the music one makes.

Nevertheless, I think that mistake is common - within and across cultures.

For me, only artists willing to (authentically) own and come to grips with their own BS are worthy of the title 'artist'.

But I think it's for the sake of Survival, and not Art, that 'it's the singer, not the song' - though I also believe survival and art can become one and the same.

[mr quick]

You mean I have to defend my indefensible statement!!!

hah, no worries. we all have different tastes and opinions, and your preference is more close to the "natural" sound of the guitar

I've just come to adore the saxophonic quality of distorted guitar. doesn't mean I won't appreciate some martino or benson. it's almost like two separate instruments!

[rkwestcoast]

You mean I have to defend my indefensible statement!!!

Hate is too strong a word. It's just a personal thing that I would find hard to explain and it would bore you if I did.

I just feel that sustaining guitars or distorted (singing) guitars in Jazz sound ugly.....or actually "don't work" in jazz.
I feel nothing but the desire to stop listening when I hear that sound.

The sound of distortion does not seem to fit into the soundscape occupied by the other instruments. It doesn't belong so to speak.
To me (and I have to keep stressing that it's only my feeling) it has never really worked. There is something inherently wrong with the sound of it.

Rock of course is a different story......and blues. It wails it screams and it conveys a lot of emotion.

In Jazz it sounds like a little chainsaw being very annoying. Is it angry sounding?....no. Is it wailing.....crying?....no. Is it out of control. (and now someone will mention that guy....is it Mark Ribbet?)
It's none of those things.
It's lost. It doesn't know what it is.

Even though I know those guys are incredible musicians ....I'm not talking about the notes they play....it's the sound.
Strangely I feel the more short sustain Bebop type playing has a place. It's part of that culture or something. It moves me.

Easy fixed of course....I just don't listen to that other style.
Even though I grew up listening to Larry Carlton and all those guys. I can't listen to it now.
And yes it's just me.

That is an interesting take...............for me distortion (as an approach & not necessarily as a sound) is at the heart of jazz - a trait coming from (I think) the blues.............

Swing distorts meter
Re-harmonisation distorts harmony & feel
Improvisation distorts melody
The blues quality of a voice (whether human or instrument) distorts formality
Vernacular speech patters distorts the stiffness of a stuffed shirt
The blues note distorts
Dissonance distorts and makes resolution work

I think the challenge for guitarists in terms of sound is to get a distorted sound that also can capture the sweetness of the instrument..........

From Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments for Guitarists:
4. Walk with the devil.
Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the “devil box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you’re brining over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub. Captain Beefheart Issues His "Ten Commandments of Guitar Playing" | Open Culture

[Stevebol]

It would take a sociologist to explain the situation that has created the McCulture that exists today, and it's impossible to compare jazz music and it's post 1970's pioneers within a context that would fairly portray them with the same gravity that jazz used to occupy in the past.

Jazz is totally invisible to mainstream society. Even most of the hipper non-jazz musicians don't have a clue and don't even care. This leaves the practitioners with little audience and opportunities. Academia is the new jazz economy. Welcome to the curators...the new tastemakers...no wonder real people aren't interested.

The irony is there has never been a better supply of great jazz and musicians than right now, and less demand for it. People don't have the attention span. They can't even carry on a conversation without checking their phone every 45 seconds....

You'd need a sociologist to explain the effects jazz academia has had on jazz? Sounds self-perpetuating to me.

[MarkRhodes]

hah, no worries. we all have different tastes and opinions, and your preference is more close to the "natural" sound of the guitar

I've just come to adore the saxophonic quality of distorted guitar. doesn't mean I won't appreciate some martino or benson. it's almost like two separate instruments!

When I was a kid, I loved Jimi Hendrix and jazz guitar sounded boring to me. Now I love the sound of a (classic) jazz guitar and distortion bores me... Life is a funny thing.

[goldenwave77]

[QUOTE=Stevebol;648481]You'd need a sociologist to explain the effects jazz academia has had on jazz? Sounds self-perpetuating to me.[/QUOTE]

Don't count on this happening. Academe is notorious for being a lagging indicator. By the time something gets noticed/widespread in the larger culture, and is deemed worthy of academic attention, there is a decent chance it has entered its downward trajectory. (I'm talking more value-laden disciplines, not hard science or mathematics, or technology.)

For example in 1933, I think it was, the Oxford Student Union, a famed college debating forum, debated a topic which was something like "Resolved: There is no cause worth dying for King and Country." A few years later, Mr. Hitler and the Nazis reminded the world of the foolishness of this point of view, and that perhaps the lessons of WW I, were not the final word on these matters.

Group-identity politics and "cultural criticism" in the academy, has perhaps run its course as the 1960's generation heads toward its final curtain. This has been responsible for mountains of tendentious pseudo-academic claptrap that people will look back at, in wonderment, if they bother to even re-read this stuff in 50 years.

[princeplanet]

The worst part of the album....the guitar. Doesn't fit and doesn't need to be there.
Oh my god....Fusion guitar just never worked for anyone......period.

But, but, but.... The first time I heard HMBB I thought I was hearing guitars! I mean if you love the sound of distorted horns, then distorted guitars aren't far off...

At any rate, Brecker admits he was heavily influenced by distorted guitar, and it's patently obvious. If anything, I find distorted horns to be more inauthentic that distorted guitars. To be clear, I also hate hearing "rockisms" in electric jazz guitar, but surely you can distort, wiggle, bend and wail- without sounding like rock. Not that I've heard it yet ....