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

[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.

It seems to me that if someone disagrees with this (usually to say there's loads of great jazz players many of whom are doing new things with the music, which is true) that they kind of feel this the pit of their stomach. They might utterly reject it, but it's there.

I believe we all form our complicated relationships with this music formed by that knowledge.

Much of what made that music GREAT was the social situation and the era in which it happened. That can't be recreated by even the most talented musicians. If Louis came back today and played how he played in the 20s, it wouldn't be the same (I disagree with Wynton here.)Duke Ellington, Bird, Louis etc were who they were because of the time and place they lived in as well as their musical genius.

I say this because - assuming the level of musical talent hasn't declined (presumably there are more geniuses now then in the 20th century, because there are more people) the fact that we don't seem to have figures of that stature any more in jazz must have something to do with other factors.

It can't AFAIK be lack of raw talent - jazz attracts a large proportion of the most able musicians - even many famous classical musician's children are now involved with Jazz - just from the point of view of a numbers game there are so many jazz musicians today, there must be many players with Bird's raw level of talent and creativity...

So why is this is? Or do you even agree with my points?

[marcwhy]

Well …. if by "best = culturally significant" you mean "popular to the masses," then jazz ended decades before the '70's. When it was dance music, it was big, and when it stopped being dance music, it faded. I'd avoid using the terms "best," though, and "objective fact" when discussing this stuff ..

[Groyniad]

see my very recent post on the sociology of jazz...

[dortmundjazzguitar]

i've answered this in the other thread. replace the term jazz with black-american music and you've run out of arguments. so in the end it will boil down to defining the term jazz. boooooooring.

[Groyniad]

benson is a real case-study here

he hardly dreams of putting out any straight-ahead stuff

he could re-define mainstream jazz guitar with three trio albums (or whatever)

but he does 'breezin' etc. instead

for anyone with deep love for charlie parker - that refrain has got to strike one as what - jejune - simple to the point of being simplistic - BORING (except for the groovy feel i suppose)

but why doesn't he do 'i'll be seeing you' and 'i concentrate on you' and 'i cover the waterfront' or whatever?

i think the answer has to be that he believes this material has been done so much that he can't add anything to it - can't make it his own in any strong sense.

but then bill evans MIGHT have thought this in 1957 - but he didn't. and thank god he went through the whole songbook re-doing everything so fabulously

but then chick corea CAN"T do that again can he? no i suppose not.

and my view is that whereas almost every single tune in the great american songbook is a PEACH (almost) - almost no tunes written after wayne shorter are much of anything at all. impressionistic sketches that can only have appeal in the way they contrast with great tunes - as sort of comments on the great tunes for those who are steeped in them already.

i think its the lack of really good tunes to play that has done it.

certainly for me - i'm obsessed with the mainstream repertoire - and very conscious that i'm bringing it to my peer-group for the first time (my dad knew all the words - but he's dead 20 years) - and that i'm acting like a kind of folk musician sticking to it as closely as i do.

the tunes have to be in the ears of your audience so when you play the first line of 'i'll be seeing you' they all go - oh, i LOVE this tune....

[christianm77]

see my very recent post on the sociology of jazz...

Where is it?

[Groyniad]

Where is it?

three down from this one in 'everything else' we had very similar thoughts at very similar times

[christianm77]

benson is a real case-study here

he hardly dreams of putting out any straight-ahead stuff

he could re-define mainstream jazz guitar with three trio albums (or whatever)

but he does 'breezin' etc. instead

for anyone with deep love for charlie parker - that refrain has got to strike one as what - jejune - simple to the point of being simplistic - BORING (except for the groovy feel i suppose)

but why doesn't he do 'i'll be seeing you' and 'i concentrate on you' and 'i cover the waterfront' or whatever?

i think the answer has to be that he believes this material has been done so much that he can't add anything to it - can't make it his own in any strong sense.

but then bill evans MIGHT have thought this in 1957 - but he didn't. and thank god he went through the whole songbook re-doing everything so fabulously

but then chick corea CAN"T do that again can he? no i suppose not.

and my view is that whereas almost every single tune in the great american songbook is a PEACH (almost) - almost no tunes written after wayne shorter are much of anything at all. impressionistic sketches that can only have appeal in the way they contrast with great tunes - as sort of comments on the great tunes for those who are steeped in them already.

i think its the lack of really good tunes to play that has done it.

certainly for me - i'm obsessed with the mainstream repertoire - and very conscious that i'm bringing it to my peer-group for the first time (my dad knew all the words - but he's dead 20 years) - and that i'm acting like a kind of folk musician sticking to it as closely as i do.

the tunes have to be in the ears of your audience so when you play the first line of 'i'll be seeing you' they all go - oh, i LOVE this tune....

Agreed 100%. Which is not the same thing as saying that no great songs have been written since then, of course. But most jazz musicians aren't writing songs.

(Incidentally, sometimes when people talk about the standards repertoire there is an assumption that playing standards is the traditional way to play jazz at the expense of original jazz compositions. This is not in fact the case of course, jazz musicians have always written original compositions, and in fact have done so from before playing AABA standards became the basis of jazz performances.)

[lawson-stone]

One thought on tunes. I recently learned "Over the Rainbow," and "When You Wish Upon a Star." When I play these tunes, people stop and listen, and smile. Every.single.time.

Time was, not too long ago, even animated Disney movies had songs that had rich chord changes and intriguing melodies that invited the jazz player's attention.

I haven't heard too many movie tunes recently that had the same effect. Some great music in the movies, but not much for the improviser.

[christianm77]

i've answered this in the other thread. replace the term jazz with black-american music and you've run out of arguments. so in the end it will boil down to defining the term jazz. boooooooring.

Well let's make this more interesting than that:

Name an artist around now that you think is on a par with Duke Ellington, Ellington, Bird, Monk, Mingus or Miles (i.e the big big figures) within jazz (or without if not).

I ask this not to validate some argument but because I'm genuinely interested to know who you would regard as being on that level...

[Nate Miller]

One thought on tunes. I recently learned "Over the Rainbow," and "When You Wish Upon a Star." When I play these tunes, people stop and listen, and smile. Every.single.time.

Time was, not too long ago, even animated Disney movies had songs that had rich chord changes and intriguing melodies that invited the jazz player's attention.

I haven't heard too many movie tunes recently that had the same effect. Some great music in the movies, but not much for the improviser.

this is why, right here....we committed cultricide somewhere in the mid 60s. Time was movies had big production numbers in them.

all my favorite tunes come from old movies. "You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me", "Days of Wine and Roses"...Hell, I posted a clip of "Body and Soul" here and one of the comments was "I had no idea that was a boxing movie"

Oh well. I guess you have to watch the old black and white films to know that "Stella" was from "Streetcar Named Desire"

[goldenwave77]

I'll be polemical, take up the argument, and perhaps people will consider things anew.

When you get right down to it, jazz musicians did not really invent new uses of the same 12 tones that everybody has been using in Western music. You could probably find a lot of Ellington-ism presaged, or previewed in classical works, I am told. (I am not an expert on classical music, but think this is probably right.) Charlie Parker did not invent the flatted 5th, or the flatted 6th, to be simplistic about it.

So, to be incredibly reductionist, and simplistic, that leaves rhythm and the increased importance of improvisation. For the latter, Louis A. is far and away, IMO, the most important figure: He made the solo improviser a star--before him, there were some hot players, but the idea of the solo-ist as a commanding figure, is one he invented. Subsequent players took off from him, pushed the envelope, and I'm not sure anyone since 1970 has really pushed it much further. (I'm throwing this out---and I'm sure lots of responses will come back, so I'm ducking, ahead of time.)

Well, that leaves rhythm. What I think is distinctive about jazz is its phrasing...it's rhythm...to my ear, its not really straight time, a lot of the time....sit down and have a non-jazz, but musically accomplished person play stuff from The Omnibook. Almost certainly, it will not sound like what Charlie Parker played.

Part of this is the limitations of notation---music always precedes (and supersedes), written notation. Part of this is just a fundamentally different rhythmic sense---probably derived from West African drumming. Part of it is a conscious attempt to "play around with" or "juke" ordinary time conceptions...and I'm not sure, classical/European type concepts of music time apply. IN fact, I might argue that heavy classical training might actually be counterproductive to playing great jazz....what we feed our brains as musical input, gets reflected in what and how we play. (I like Chick Corea a lot...but to my ear, there is always a slightly classic-ized feeling to what he plays...same thing with Keith Jarrett...) At a minimum, you need to steep yourself, really immerse yourself, in a lot of the older, more swinging stuff to get its real sense.

So how do you get that slightly off-beat rhythmic sense?....a lot of it is swing-based, and to players growing up in the era 1920-1960, say...there were lots of examples of good, loose swing....rock n' roll started the process of killing it (though good rock, does swing, e.g The Who with Entwistle on bass, or The Allman Brothers, but lots of bad, IMO, rock n' roll, is just really, really dull, thuddy, and SQUARE...AC/DC, and a whole bunch of other "classic rock bands". A lot of "Modern Country" is just bad rock n' roll, with some twang added...the electric bass and the heavy drums, and some countrified "kick ass" attitude...give me a good Western Swing band, or decent honky tonk group, any day of the week.)

I love hard bop: The mixture of a bop-based rhythm section and a good lead soloist, sometimes playing simpler heads, is interesting, but also offers improvisational possibilities. Go listen to The Sidewinder album by Lee Morgan. The title cut was a big hit, but not nearly as interesting as other cuts. Great personnel--Barry Harris et al. I can almost pick out, at random, any Blue Note album from say 1950-65, and there is about a 75% chance that it is good, and about a 10% chance, that it is great, and they put out a LOT of music on that label.

I like some Fusion....BUT when the music gets electrified, it can lose nuance in tone, and in rhythmic character. Ron Carter told Miles to take a hike, when Miles wanted him to play electric bass...has anyone played more kick-ass bass than Charles Mingus?! Yes, there are great electric bassists around, but turn up the volume, and it becomes a different animal.

I think there are huge numbers of players since 1970 who, to my ear, don't swing....maybe they can't....maybe they don't want to...but a lot of "modern stuff" with intricate, harmonic stuff (that can't be hummed, and is not memorable) and with a rhythm section that is not playing off---and against---and together with, differing soloists just doesn't grab me. I suspect, and I might be wrong, there are students in college-type jazz programs who think...all that "old stuff" has been done/is not worth listening to....I might be overstating this. Funny thing, Europeans seem to be more reverent toward the American jazz tradition than Americans are.

I have a bullet-proof vest somewhere around my apt., and I'll go put it on now.

[lawson-stone]

Hard to say what "on par with" means. Technically? In innovation?

There is an interesting concept I came across reading Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies that actually makes sense here.

Be patient, this is actually relevant.

He asks why societies through history become more and more complex and ultimately collapse, the latter being defined as a rapid, uncontrolled and dramatic simplification of a formerly complex society.

He describes how "complexity" emerges as societies develop strategies for coping with external problems, internal aspiration, etc. At first, growth and innovation happen rapidly and fruitfully, at little cost relative to the gains made. But as complexity increases, it becomes harder and harder to make the same gains that were made at the beginning, and so more investment in "complexity" is needed. As the "costs" rise, the gains diminish, and at some point the lines cross and the society now invests in a complexity that is not returning a benefit. At that point, the society might decide to stop investing, or it might decide the investment is worthwhile for other reasons.

The point being, that major enrichment from change in a specific domain is always evident early in the process of growth, but becomes harder and harder with the growth of that enterprise. The first antibiotics were developed for pennies on the dollar of therapeutic return. Now, scientific developments are hyper-expensive and relative to the benefit to society, amazingly unprofitable.

So Bird, Diz, Ellington, etc. stand at the beginning of the process of the "jazz society" developing in complexity (complexity just means "richness, high evolution"). If nobody had really systematically exploited the upper intervals of chords for improvisation, then the first person to "get" that has made it harder for the next musician to go beyond it while staying within that same community of endeavor. That's why in jazz we saw "lateral" evolution: the arrival of bossa nova, afro-cuban influences, the introduction of rock-influences, etc.

I'm suggesting the stature of Bird, Diz and company partly is irreplaceable because they stand at a point in the evolution of jazz that cannot be occupied by anyone later, regardless of how great they are as players. Nobody is going to discover the systematic exploitation of upper intervals of chords for melodic improvisation again. Now, we have to work harder, longer, and look farther, to find less and less, assuming we want jazz to stay basically the same enterprise it has been.

Or we can stop moaning about the lack of "founders" (that's what they are) and realize we are in a different level or stage of development, and ask about the "investment" being made now.

Or we can redefine jazz so as to allow more lateral evolution, but obviously for many (like me) that can be a very mixed bag. When societies burdened by over-investment in a complexity that no longer returns a real benefit decide to expand laterally or morph into a different kind of community, that is often viewed by later historians as collapse.

[goldenwave77]

Oh well. I guess you have to watch the old black and white films to know that "Stella" was from "Streetcar Named Desire"

Well "Streetcar" was written in 1947, and "Stella" was written in 1944, so that can't be right.

I think you're thinking of the film "The Uninvited" (1944) which introduced "Stella". (Never saw this film, and I've never even heard of it, or seen it being shown, so it's probably easy to not remember it.)

[goldenwave77]

[QUOTE=lawson-stone;647662]

There is an interesting concept I came across reading Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies that actually makes sense here.

I agree with a lot of the points made in this post.

I hope this guy Tainter didn't spend 800 pages on why "low hanging fruit is easier to gather". (Come to think of it, if he did, he would be demonstrating his own thesis, in a way.)

[lawson-stone]

[QUOTE=goldenwave77;647667]

There is an interesting concept I came across reading Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies that actually makes sense here.

I agree with a lot of the points made in this post.

I hope this guy Tainer didn't spend 800 pages on why "low hanging fruit is easier to gather". (Come to think of it, if he did, he would be demonstrating his own thesis, in a way.)

Not 800 pages, to be sure. His work was more historical in nature: why did large societies in the past collapse? Developing the historical data and proving that the analogy between low hanging fruit and cultural innovation is valid, and how that analogy works out historically and sociologically, takes some work.

Sometimes making the argument takes some space.

[Groyniad]

I'll be polemical, take up the argument, and perhaps people will consider things they might not have.

When you get right down to it, jazz musicians did not really invent new uses of the same 12 tones that everybody has been using in Western music. You could probably find a lot of Ellington-ism presaged, or previewed in classical works (I am told. I am not an expert on classical music, but think this is probably right.) Charlie Parker did not invent the flatted 5th, or the flatted 6th, to be simplistic about it.

So, to be incredibly reductionist, and simplistic about it, that leaves rhythm and the increased importance of improvisation. For the latter, Louis A. is far and away, I believe, the most important figure: He made the solo improviser a star--before him, there were some hot players, but the idea of the solo-ist as a commanding figure, is one he invented. Subsequent players took off from him, pushed the envelope, and I'm not sure anyone since 1970 has really pushed it much further. (I'm throwing this out---and I'm sure lots of responses will come back, so I'm ducking, ahead of time.)

Well, that leaves rhythm. What I think is distinctive about jazz is its phrasing...it's rhythm...to my ear, its not really straight time, a lot of the time....sit down and have a non-jazz, but musically accomplished person play stuff from The Omnibook. Almost certainly, it will not sound like what Charlie Parker played.

Part of this is the limitations of notation---music always precedes (and supersedes), written notation. Part of this is just a fundamentally different rhythmic sense---probably derived from West African drumming patterns. Part of it is a conscious attempt to "play around" or "juke" ordinary time conceptions...and I'm not sure, classical/European type concepts of music time. IN fact, I might argue that heavy classical training might actually be counterproductive to playing great jazz....what we feed our brains as musical input, gets reflected in what and how we play. (I like Chick Corea a lot...but to my ear, there is always a slightly classic-ized feeling to what he plays...same thing with Keith Jarrett...) At a minimum, you need to steep yourself, really immerse yourself, in a lot of the older, more swinging stuff to get any real sense of it.

So how do you get that slightly off-beat rhythmic sense?....a lot of it is swing-based, and to players growing up in the era 1920-1960, say...there were lots of examples of good, loose swing....rock n' roll started the process of killing it (though good rock, does swing, e.g The Who with Entwistle on bass, or The Allman Brothers, but lots of bad, IMO, rock n' roll, is just really, really dull, thuddy, and SQUARE...AC/DC, and a whole bunch of other "classic rock bands". A lot of "Modern Country" is just bad rock n' roll, with some twang added...the electric bass and the heavy drums, and some countrified "kick ass" attitude...give me a good Western Swing band, or decent honky tonk group, any day of the week.)


I love hard bop...the mixture of a bop-based rhythm section and a good lead soloist....sometimes playing heads which are slightly less demanding...is interesting, but also offers improvisational fertile ground. Go listen to The Sidewinder album by Lee Morgan. The title cut was a big hit, but in a lot of ways is not nearly as interesting as other cuts on that album. Great personnel--Barry Harris among others. I can almost pick out, at random, any Blue Note album from say 1950-65, and there is about a 75% chance that it will be very good, and about a 10% chance, it will be great, and there was a LOT of music put out under that label.

I like some Fusion....BUT when the music gets electrified, it can lose nuance in tone, and in rhythmic. Ron Carter told Miles to go take a hike, when Miles wanted him to play electric bass...has anyone played more kick-ass bass than Charles Mingus?! Yes, there are great electric bassists around, but turn up the volume, and it becomes a different animal.

I think there are huge numbers of players since 1970 who, to my ear, don't swing....maybe they can't....maybe they don't want to...but a lot of "modern stuff" with intricate, harmonic stuff (that can't be hummed, and is not memorable) and with a rhythm section that is not playing off---and against---and together with, differing soloists just doesn't grab me. I suspect, and I might be wrong, there are students in college-type jazz programs who think...all that "old stuff" has been done/is not worth listening to....I might be overstating this. Funny thing, Europeans seem to be reverent toward the American jazz tradition than Americans are...

I like modern art, took a college course in it...but a lot of it, once you figure out the little "intellectual conceit" that is behind it---is not really very interesting....op art creates a great visual effect that grabs you immediately, and then after you look at it for 30 seconds, its time to move on....a lot of performance art has the same characteristic, whereas with figurative art---the meaning is sometimes more subtle and sustained....people and human behavior and social aspects of the same, are to me, more interesting and subtle than programmatically based stuff. But that's a separate conversation.

I have a bullet-proof vest somewhere around my apt., and I'll go put it on now.

i'm with you - except to say this. that it is really all about rhythm does not diminish it one jot. the rhythmical uniqueness of jazz is the glory of twentieth century art - its the greatest artistic achievement of the 20th century (accomplished by the most systematically under-privileged group of people in the developed world). what a story.

but i can't help thinking its over now. though when i hear peter bernstein playing dewey square with that piano player at smalls it warms my heart. in my experience all the great jazz musicians i've played with are pretty much devoted to the whistle-able tunes in the songbook. 'what a great tune' is still the thing that gets said most often after a half-decent performance. but this is an anachronism now.

one of the things i hate is the way that jazz has become the province of the self-styled intellectual who loves 'obscure' or 'difficult' music. boy i hate that. these people tend to believe that Louis A. is the guy with the joke-voice who sang 'wonderful world' - shiiiiiiit.

[christianm77]

Myself - I don't remember anything before the '80s. I'm of the post Star Wars, post rock, post computer generation. To me, it's a pose to say I reject this era of popular culture and embrace the earlier mid century world of B&W movies, social dancing, pre-rock pop music and so on to the exclusion of the modern world.

I actually know people who do this.

So I don't think I'm coming from an irrevocably fuddy-duddy/musically conservative stance. I don't spend my time listening purely to the jazz of 1920-70. It's not even what I study all the time - I like a lot of the modern players.

The problem I have is this -

* Compare the Beatles to Ellington? Sure
* Compare James Brown to Ellington? Doesn't seem at all absurd to me.
* Stevie Wonder, Marvin etc - the same. It feels comfortable to compare them.
* D'Angelo? J Dilla - again possible. My ignorance comes in here as I don't feel I understand this music from the inside out as well as I do more traditional live band stuff. I've listened to this music and have some understanding of how new this music was and influential it has been.

But in jazz since 1970
* Metheny? Jarrett? Not sure - it's like it's not a worthy comparison. And yet these guys are amazing amazing musicians. Perhaps they have as much raw musical 'firepower' for want of a better word as any of the classic jazz figures, and yet...
* Rosenwinkel? Potter? etc - now I feel we are on dodgy ground. Comparing these guys to Ellington, Miles etc feels a bit daft. Again it's not through their lack of ability as players. So it has to be something else.
* Robert Glasper - it feels like he's an important figure, but it seems a lot about reuniting music in some way rather than driving it forward.

I'm certainly sure people will disagree with me on this, look forward to seeing how :-)

[Nate Miller]

Well "Streetcar" was written in 1947, and "Stella" was written in 1944, so that can't be right.

I think you're thinking of the film "The Uninvited" (1944) which introduced "Stella". (Never saw this film, and I've never even heard of it, or seen it being shown, so it's probably easy to not remember it.)

Hey smart guy, Stella is from Streetcar and here's my proof!

[dortmundjazzguitar]

Well let's make this more interesting than that:

Name an artist around now that you think is on a par with Duke Ellington, Ellington, Bird, Monk, Mingus or Miles (i.e the big big figures) within jazz (or without if not).

I ask this not to validate some argument but because I'm genuinely interested to know who you would regard as being on that level...

ok, but i think you need to make your mind up what you want to discuss cultural significance does not equal geatness or bestness. and "on par" is just too vague and basically a reduction to personal taste. but for the sake of the argument: is stevie wonder on par with monk, or is d'angelo on par with mingus? donny hathaway on par with sarah vaughn? for me, probably yes.

tristano considered diana ross the greatest thing since billie holiday.

edit: you seem to have answered the question yourself

edit2: see, i told you it would boil down to a definiton of jazz.

[princeplanet]

All cultures throughout history abound in "Golden Eras" or the "Belle Epoch". But you can't objectively quantify when these eras start and end, simply because such things are always open to subjective review. When was the golden age in architecture? Movies? Cars? Fashion? Rock'n'Roll? Jazz?....

My nephew was doing a paper at school and asked me for advice : "When did Rock'n'roll die?" Huh? It's dead?? According to the University text he was studying from it was. But go to your newsagent and you'll see more magazines about contemporary Rock/Indie Rock than there were in the 70's. So which perspective is correct? Well, the one that you choose to view it from, of course!

Personally, a Golden Era to me is one that is so dense in terms of stellar output, that every year (or even month) within that period is associated with certain defining releases. So if we consider 1956 to 1966, we can mentally go through each year in our minds and we think of all the great Jazz albums that come from each year that WE ALL KNOW!.

Now lets consider say, 1986 through to 1996. Go through each year in your mind and think of the era defining Jazz albums that come out in each year. If only 10% of you can think of 10 outstanding albums per year from that period, then that adds weight in favour of the OP's premise. Collusion of subjectivity becomes a kind of "Objectivity", or something...

But going back to '56 to '66, you can do the same for Pop Music, Fashion, cars, movies etc, so Jazz was certainly not the only thing that stuck in our minds. So cultural significance does not equate with popularity, Jazz fell off the music charts in the 60's, yet we still hold that era close to our hearts because they continue to resonate. Heck, Shelley or Modigliani were ignored in their day, but they continue to resonate for so many of us we deem them to have enduring cultural significance.

So it's not a question of whether Chris Potter is "as good" or an equal "genius" compared to say Coltrane or Parker, he may even be a measurably better artist in many respects (how do you judge that?). No, it's gotta be about: does he, or will he resonate with a great number of people in an enduring way. In 2066, how will 1976 to 2016 be viewed? Right now you'd probably bet that the greats from 1926 to 1966 will be listened to more than the latter era, but contemporary juries have been wrong before. Have you read many Coltrane reviews from the late 50's?

[Groyniad]

g77 is spot on - OF COURSE - about the role played by LA. he made jazz by making it a soloist's art and he did that simply by being an utterly compelling soloist.

what is it to be an utterly compelling soloist?

its to project a certain personality or persona or style in your playing (with your playing - through your playing - by playing)

a personality etc. that is - if not likeable - then certainly engaging or interesting or enjoyable. so 2 parts: the personality has to come across clearly - and it has to be at least engaging if not likeable.

frank sinatra

louis armstrong

bing crosby (don't like - but you can't ignore)

billie holiday

bill evans

sonny rollins

jim hall

wes montgomery

i'm just trying to think of people who very very very obviously project a certain personality very strongly in all their playing

so now you have to say some things about that personality - you have to be able to characterize the different personalities that are presented to you in and through their musical performances.

its actually very easy to do - it has to be, otherwise the jazz star would NOT be projecting a certain personality clearly in their music.

(i suspect actually that the ultimate value of a given player's playing will come down to the features of the personality he or she is successfully projecting. - this is why i think bird is the best)

so - let me try:

LA - larger than life exuberance and incredible vitality and intense optimism - someone not only with a capacity for intense joy but with a propensity to feel it etc. etc.

frank sinatra - easy going swell with charm - always understated sophistication - and a lady's man

billie holiday - a hopeless romantic, prepared to lose everything for love, effortlessly stylish and warm by default

bill evans - a hopeless romantic (!!), immensely sharp and quick witted but interested only in matters of the heart (or of beauty - so an aesthete). but virile and assertive despite all his refinement and sensitivity.

sonny rollins - virile but always joking (even when not really appropriate to be) - prone to sarcasm and mimicry - full of fun and very forceful

----

so bird for me is the deal - he is as at once and to the same degree angelic and mischievous.

so if you don't sort of fall in love with the person in the music then the music does not work. jazz is important mainly because this is the way it works (and LA started that).

[christianm77]

ok, but i think you need to make your mind up what you want to discuss cultural significance does not equal geatness or bestness. and "on par" is just too vague and basically a reduction to personal taste. but for the sake of the argument: is stevie wonder on par with monk, or is d'angelo on par with mingus? donny hathaway on par with sarah vaughn? for me, probably yes.

tristano considered diana ross the greatest thing since billie holiday.

edit: you seem to have answered the question yourself

edit2: see, i told you it would boil down to a definiton of jazz.

I think our overall attitude towards music is the same by the sounds of it.

I'm a little uncomfortable with the J word anyway beyond its application to a historical style, but obviously there are loads of musicians out there who self identify as jazz musicians. Perhaps that self identification is the big thing to change.

So what musicians, self identifying as jazz musicians in the current era, have the same significance as the giants of the past we all venerate (I think quite genuinely)?

A lot of the biggest figures had very ambivalent feelings about being called jazz musicians, and sometimes rejected the term completely. I remember reading a Charlie Parker interview in which he was very keen to distance himself from 'jazz.' In the 30's swing wasn't even considered jazz by many writers, and so on and so forth...

But the fact that any of use the term 'jazz' means we must see a binary distinction between 'jazz' and 'not-jazz' even if an attempt to define it tends to go around in circles. The fact that the distinction is made AT ALL is actually the interesting point, not how we define it.

The interesting question is not 'what is jazz?' but 'why do we feel the need to define certain music as jazz, and what do we get from this definition?'

BTW - there was another point to your post which was a disagreement over the definition of 'good' - beyond personal taste (which is the main thing for me anyway) we would need to look at the influence of artists on other artists and their general significance to culture as a whole. A bit dry, but there you go.

In that case, jazz musicians of the early to mid 20th century have been hugely influential on later forms of popular music. Later jazz musos, somewhat less so.

[goldenwave77]

Ellington and James Brown?!


I went to HS with a kid named Jimmy Ellington. Other than the fact that he disliked being called "Duke", he was known for an unending supply of "knock/knock" jokes. So, he was a big hit with girls who met him for the first time. After they got to know him, he became less amusing.

I would agree that James Brown, with his limited style, is akin to Jimmy Ellington, but not to the Duke.

[destinytot]

I don't find Breezin' at all 'jejune'. Like the piece below, it's a vehicle for something significant in the lives of many people who are alive today. Moreover, it is so for valid reasons - valid where it counts (i.e. to those who appreciate it).

Far from being simplistic or superficial, I think both pieces have greater cultural significance - and relevance - than the old "standards" (even in terms of nostalgia, as both are almost half a century old).

Whatever this music - art? - is about, reducing a "song" to a stereotypical harmonic or rhythmic sequence isn't it. And no style is 'off-limits' for practioners of this music.