The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #426

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    As much as I love danceable music (in any tradition), there really is plenty of music not meant for moving-to*--examples are too numerous and obvious to list (though if pushed, I can reel off a bunch without much effort). And the jazz family is no exception. Bebop grew out of social-dance music, and one of its appeals, I suspect, was that it was too fast for dancing. Though I can still hear dance in a lot of the less-frantic tunes. In any case, there was and is an audience for that kind of jazz, as there is for the shredding styles of rock.

    * And dance is not the only movement-related music. Marching is, like, really boring moving-to music, and there are lots of musics-to-work-to, such as sea shanties and track-lining songs.

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  3. #427

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    I once said bebop wasn’t dance music and got into trouble…

  4. #428

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  5. #429

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    I once said bebop wasn’t dance music and got into trouble…
    Well, it sounded like it was trying hard not to be--but I've seen couples get up and dance to tunes with manageable metronome settings. I suspect the guys at the after-hours clubs were sick of chick singers, too, which didn't stop Eddie Jefferson and Jon Hendricks from devising vocal versions of bop instrumentals.

  6. #430

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    Quote Originally Posted by supersoul
    Then no offense as I put you on my ignore list.
    Imagine my sorrow.

  7. #431

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    Quote Originally Posted by supersoul
    Then no offense as I put you on my ignore list.
    Until he reincarnates under a different name in a few months.

  8. #432

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    Those who say, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" expose their ignorance of dance and architecture.

  9. #433

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    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    Those who say, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" expose their ignorance of dance and architecture.
    And writing.

  10. #434

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    Quote Originally Posted by RLetson
    Well, it sounded like it was trying hard not to be--but I've seen couples get up and dance to tunes with manageable metronome settings.
    Most swing dancers really don't like bop - I think a lot of this comes from the influence of Norma Miller, who didn't like it. (I had the honour of playing for Norma a couple of times incidentally, she was still travelling all over the world towards the end of her life). So you certainly hear a lot of anti-bop sentiment from dancers who blame it for killing dance in jazz. Ken Burn's documentary takes this line - the narrative presented in the documentary is at least misleading - those 'no dancing' sings were the result of venue licensing laws, not purist musicians.

    So, as with most history, it's not so simple.

    Barry Harris reported that he first heard Bird in a Detroit dance hall... OTOH Dizzy was one of the top amateur dancers at the Savoy - he had free entry, which back then must have meant he was a REALLY good dancer; there is no question dance was really important to him even if he couldn't persuade Norma haha.

    Barry would always emphasise the importance of dance to bop. He had a lot of respect for that stuff - for instance he used to love it when guitarists played old school rhythm at workshops. He said the worst thing ever to happen to jazz was that it went out of the dance halls and into the jazz club, because dancers would keep the musicians accountable for their sense of swing. Even in the present age where all the swing dancers seem to be tech profressionals it's still somewhat true. I can only imagine this was very very specific back in that day. Most modern jazz players do not have a clue how to play for dancers. IMO it's not just a stylistic thing - it's a mindset thing.

    (Incidentally, it's also the reason Barry gave for tapping your foot on the 1 and 3, not the 2 and 4. Because as a dancer, 1 and 3 is where you shift your weight.)

    A lot of jazz club players at least over this side of the pond would rather do anything that play a medium bounce, and they tend to think In harmony rather than rhythm and energy. The best players, for me, have both.

    Barry gave different reasons for the decline of social dance in jazz. TBH it always seemed that the swing dancers grew up and settled down. Social dancing moved over to Mambo, early R&B, jump music ...

    I suspect the guys at the after-hours clubs were sick of chick singers, too, which didn't stop Eddie Jefferson and Jon Hendricks from devising vocal versions of bop instrumentals.
    I don't know. There's an interesting sidebar regarding the late, great Harry Belafonte who started his career being backed by the Charlie Parker Quintet. They also pop up on Slim'n'Slam sides. There was a lot of cabaret and so on back then. Now we have this idea that bop was dead serious and very purist, but I get the feeling the story is more complex.
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 05-02-2023 at 03:52 AM.

  11. #435

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    Quote Originally Posted by RLetson
    Well, it sounded like it was trying hard not to be--but I've seen couples get up and dance to tunes with manageable metronome settings.
    That reminded me - one hilarious thing I see a lot at gigs is... You are playing a nice medium blues. A couple gets up to dance. Perhaps some more.

    The tune finishes. The band leader say 'quick, lets play something up and energetic so they can dance to it!"

  12. #436

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    Quote Originally Posted by James W
    Interesting. That excerpt from the wikipedia article doesn't even mention Chomsky. I notice you've moved on from claiming Chomsky 'supported' the Khmer Rouge to that he's guilty of 'intellectual dishonesty'. Please, direct me to some actual quotes from Chomsky that prove this, that shouldn't be too hard, right? Anyway, it's quite common for people to traduce Chomsky, ascribe false opinions to him etc. It makes no sense that he would support a murderous authoritarian regime because he's a libertarian-socialist known for his freedom of speech advocacy. It's just that he directs most of his attention to the crimes of his own country, and is a consistent moral voice in pointing out American exceptionalism and the hypocrisy involved etc. so he ends up annoying people involved in spreading propaganda for the US. Also note that he wrote this article: The Soviet Union Versus Socialism (chomsky.info)

    And no, the ABC article was not meant as a joke. Read it. Also read the following, a comment left on this video which eloquently sums up the whole Chomsky/Cambodia issue, and listen to the video:

    Dude, I cannot spoon feed anymore than I have. You have a name, Sophal Ear, and links to his work in the Wiki article. There, you will find a dozen quotes. Knock yourself out. Or keep defending and propping up a moral accomplice to a genocide, who in a normal world, would have been held accountable. So typical of the modern left, so predictable - INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY.

  13. #437

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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter C
    I guess?

    I definitely wouldn't pay to watch/listen to that, but whatever floats someone's boat I guess...


    To the layman, I would say it's a correct statement "you don't/can't dance to bop." There are exceptions to every rule of course. Swing was MADE FOR dancing. Even when swing got pared down to jump blues (Louis Jordan), being danceable was still paramount. When bebop came in, wasn't that also around the same time rock and roll started? Which of course completely took over, dancing or no. And bebop got harder and turned into bop, which was definitely a musician's thing, and a hardcore jazz listener thing. I don't think it would have mattered if it was danceable or not, the jazz era had run it's course, and once RnR was on the scene, it was pretty much death to everything else in the pop culture/mainstream.

    It's amazing rock lasted as long as it has, altho it keeps changing to keep surviving of course. Am I wrong in saying jazz hasn't changed/evolved much since Miles? I'm not the huge listener most of you are: I know what jazz I like and I stick to that. But I haven't heard any jazz that has done anyone thing new in many years? Unless you count stuff like Jakob Bro and maybe Bill Frisell, but I honestly barely consider them jazz... in the case of Bro, he's almost ambient music, and Frisell came from a jazz background, but what he plays now is his own thing... he's classified as "jazz" because people don't know where to put him, but I really don't hear any of his newer stuff as jazz.

    My favorite current jazz player is Lage, and he's definitely jazz, and unique-sounding, but I still don't hear anything groundbreaking/evolving in there. His "blend" of different styles and techniques is what makes him him, but I don't hear him doing anything others haven't done, really... except maybe, like Frisell, is ability to switch from electric to acoustic for entire albums?

    Anyway, I'm no jazz listening expert, as I said, I listen to what I like, and it took me awhile to warm up to Frisell and Lage... but this is just a layman's perspective. A layman who loves jazz, has read many books and watched many documentaries on it from it's inception to today.

  14. #438

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    Um, speaking of dancing--

    I had the good fortune to take workshops with sure-enough jazz players* who also played for dancers--the Augusta Heritage Swing Weeks were strongly dance-centric when I started attending in 1996 (it helped that there was a swing-dance revival going on). And the local players who taught me how to play out had a lot of rock and country bar-band experience and understood how to please a dancing (and drinking) crowd.

    What I took away from the swing-dance environment was a sense of the tempo ranges that accommodate dancing and singing, along with the advice that a tune shouldn't go on for more than about four minutes--dancers get tired and they might want to change partners or hear some variety of material/styles/tempos. I also saw how much the musicians got from their audiences--it's a lot like what my niece the actor says about audience reaction feeding back onto the stage.

    Some of what I hear in bebop and its descendants is the urge to exercise one's chops beyond the constraints imposed by dancers and singers--to play fast, to play complex figures, to mess around with harmonic forms, to extend and transform familiar materials. It does turn jazzy swing (of which there was plenty in the pre-WW2 period) into a listening music, and that is an audience-limiting factor. Nevertheless, I've seen couples get up and dance to an appropriately tempo'd bebop number. Just not in a NYC joint that lacked a cabaret license.

    * In a deeply historical sense. The two most senior guys in '96 had been playing since the mid-1930s--one of them had drummed for Jelly Roll Morton, and the other (a few years younger) came up playing sax, flugelhorn, and piano. Some of the younger guys were military service-band veterans--a couple from the Navy's Commodores. Chuck Redd's brother Robert was the main piano teacher for quite a while--and the guitarists really liked the fact that he made space for them.

  15. #439

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    To those arguing against ‘socialism’ in music, consider this: going back in history, the great composers and their orchestras were generally the recipients of royal (or otherwise landed) patronage. From where did those kings, lords, barons etc derive their wealth?

    Answer: they extracted that wealth from the peasants who lived under their ‘protection’.

    Handel was not out on tour, booking arenas, with the local high schoolers queued up to buy tickets.

    So please, let’s not have the supposed sacrosanct purity of the free market as the standard here. That market did not even exist in anything resembling its current form until the advent of the cotton gin, and even then the companies that benefitted were the state-approved organizations such as the Dutch East India Company, the Virginia Company (chartered by James I in 1606), etc. No, classical music would never have been what it became without being subsidized by the labor of peasants.

  16. #440

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    Quote Originally Posted by coyote-1
    To those arguing against ‘socialism’ in music, consider this: going back in history, the great composers and their orchestras were generally the recipients of royal (or otherwise landed) patronage. From where did those kings, lords, barons etc derive their wealth?

    Answer: they extracted that wealth from the peasants who lived under their ‘protection’.

    Handel was not out on tour, booking arenas, with the local high schoolers queued up to buy tickets.

    So please, let’s not have the supposed sacrosanct purity of the free market as the standard here. That market did not even exist in anything resembling its current form until the advent of the cotton gin, and even then the companies that benefitted were the state-approved organizations such as the Dutch East India Company, the Virginia Company (chartered by James I in 1606), etc. No, classical music would never have been what it became without being subsidized by the labor of peasants.
    That Jacob Soli ‘the Free Market: History of an Ideal book looks interesting, your comment reminded me of a lecture of his I was watching.

  17. #441

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    Quote Originally Posted by ruger9
    I guess?

    I definitely wouldn't pay to watch/listen to that, but whatever floats someone's boat I guess...


    To the layman, I would say it's a correct statement "you don't/can't dance to bop." There are exceptions to every rule of course. Swing was MADE FOR dancing. Even when swing got pared down to jump blues (Louis Jordan), being danceable was still paramount. When bebop came in, wasn't that also around the same time rock and roll started? Which of course completely took over, dancing or no. And bebop got harder and turned into bop, which was definitely a musician's thing, and a hardcore jazz listener thing. I don't think it would have mattered if it was danceable or not, the jazz era had run it's course, and once RnR was on the scene, it was pretty much death to everything else in the pop culture/mainstream.

    It's amazing rock lasted as long as it has, altho it keeps changing to keep surviving of course. Am I wrong in saying jazz hasn't changed/evolved much since Miles? I'm not the huge listener most of you are: I know what jazz I like and I stick to that. But I haven't heard any jazz that has done anyone thing new in many years? Unless you count stuff like Jakob Bro and maybe Bill Frisell, but I honestly barely consider them jazz... in the case of Bro, he's almost ambient music, and Frisell came from a jazz background, but what he plays now is his own thing... he's classified as "jazz" because people don't know where to put him, but I really don't hear any of his newer stuff as jazz.

    My favorite current jazz player is Lage, and he's definitely jazz, and unique-sounding, but I still don't hear anything groundbreaking/evolving in there. His "blend" of different styles and techniques is what makes him him, but I don't hear him doing anything others haven't done, really... except maybe, like Frisell, is ability to switch from electric to acoustic for entire albums?

    Anyway, I'm no jazz listening expert, as I said, I listen to what I like, and it took me awhile to warm up to Frisell and Lage... but this is just a layman's perspective. A layman who loves jazz, has read many books and watched many documentaries on it from its inception to today.
    I think Julian is a really communicative and accessible player. It’s shading over into Americana and Western/Manouche Swing a bit too, but these influences are completely organic and it doesn’t sound like he’s putting it on. He’s also one of the first jazz guitarists I heard in recent years l that wasn’t obviously indebted to Kurt Rosenwinkel.

    He did a really nice album with Chris Eldridge (punch brothers) which is just basically Americana stuff…

  18. #442
    Off topic, but I studied at NCCU with Wynton's brother, Branford, and even got to play a little with him, though I didn't know what I was doing (and still don't, though I'm getting there). Man, I love his sweet and imo unearthly soprano sax playing. Just think it's really gorgeous. Love Wynton's playing too. These guys though, they definitely have their opinions about music and music education and though I respect the heck out of them and their talent I don't always agree with all their strong opinions (nor I guess do they always agree with each other).