Real Rhythm Guitar Basie Quartet

[campusfive]

But wouldn't that be equally true back in the day, possibly without the age thing, because the purpose of this music was to make people dance?

Not at all. The Swing music of the 30's and 40's not only the bleeding edge of jazz development as it was happening, but was also literally the pop music of the day. So, it was both totally hip to contemporary musicians of the time and popular with the general public. Magazines like Metronome and Downbeat had reader polls for best player on each instrument every year - so musicians and fans alike were obviously into it. And also but most people back in the original era danced a little bit socially, because that's what you did on a date or at a party or whatever, but it was actually a very small number of people back then that were really what one would consider a "Swing Dancer".

And disappear? No, like any music that is popular for a time, it didn't "disappear" at all - it just eventually dies out. Versions of it, at least, were just less and less common over time as both the native audience and the knowledgable practitioners dwindle. Just look at all the legacy rock and roll acts still going, just on lesser and lesser stages.

What I'm pointing out is actually this unusual rift in jazz history. Almost all jazz has an aspect of respecting one's predecessors and the share tradition.... The Swing-Era musicians loved and respected their New Orleans and Chicago roots, and would revisit the repertoire during the swing-era, and reaching back to those roots wasn't tragically un-hip. And it seems like most straight ahead jazz musicians of the more modern era are very comfortable reaching back to Parker, or Miles... or most jazz of the 50's and 60's without it being cliche or trite. But it's very rare to see anyone from the later period reach back to the previous one without condescending to it, or merely paying lip service. The aesthetics and values of bebop took hold as a default, and because they were a contrast to the earlier era, anything from that era was devalued... whether that was playing with the "thump" of a dance band beat, or playing simpler changes, or playing pre-bop melodic and rhythmic vocabulary.... I mean, the clarinet never recovered as a jazz instrument after it's association with Swing. And acoustic rhythm guitar was made irrelevant. And just think of the aesthetic contrast between an era that was filled with arrangements and partially composed solos that were a part of a song... versus the primacy of improvisation at all cost, and the "round robin" approach to solos on most tunes, where the "arrangement" is basically head/solos/head out.

If you ever come across Gunther Schuller's book "The Swing-Era", he only seems to value or validate players who were foreshadowing later developments, and only those elements of their playing that are in that new direction. For example, a common thing Charlie Christian would do on an AABA tune is to play classic riffy and bluesy swing vocabulary on the A sections, and then do his proto-bebop, "run the changes" thing on the bridge. But the only thing Schuller seems to value or laud is that proto-bebop part - so, like, 75% of what Charlie played is ignored in favor of this 25%. Which seems crazy to me - Charlie was a killer Swing player the WHOLE TIME, but nobody but the blues and rock players that followed seem to ever value that 75% of his playing.
At a certain point, I realized Schuller just didn't actually like Swing music for what it is/was... and he may not even have realized.

Anyway, that "thumpy" dance band time-feel (or at least the Basie-flavor of that kind of thing) that is so distinctly on display on that first Basie video is actually pretty anathema to the way most straight ahead players play.
But that time-feel is exactly what seems (to me at least) so distinctly special about it and what really makes all of it what it is.

Anyway, it's Monday and maybe I'm just cranky.

[omphalopsychos]

I dare say that anyone under 35 probably finds this stuff old fashion or not relevant anymore

There's an irony here. What you might not appreciate is just HOW MUCH younger generations are appreciating this stuff. And it's not just me. I know a few people from here outside of the forum and I've noticed that many of the ones who really appreciate swing (the time feel, not the time period) are younger players. There's a word that gets flung around arbitrarily, which is the word "modern". So many stuffy players (and especially "educators") who are utterly committed to quartal harmony, modal reharmonizations, and other tropes of the 60's & 70's don't recognize the stagnation some of that music is in. And I see a difference in the recent generations which is not limited to just the dancers. In addition to Stout's example, if you ever go to the Ear Inn in Manhattan on a Sunday you will be stunned at how vibrant the scene is among younger players and listeners.

[Ukena]

In the video How the Rhythm Section Swings, Marsalis says that the bass and guitar, holding up beats 1,2,3, and 4, keep the drummer in time.

There is a story that Freddie Green eventually bought an amp so he could play solos. The band members kept sabotaging it – they'd steal a tube out during a break, or otherwise render it useless, because when he would play a solo the bottom would drop out of the rhythm section.

Thanks for the news from the real world of swing, Jonathan. Your playing and your point of view are terrific.

[Hammertone]

If you ever come across Gunther Schuller's book "The Swing-Era", he only seems to value or validate players who were foreshadowing later developments, and only those elements of their playing that are in that new direction. ...
At a certain point, I realized Schuller just didn't actually like Swing music for what it is/was... and he may not even have realized. ...
Anyway, it's Monday and maybe I'm just cranky.

Cranky? Naw, everyone knows that Gunther Schuller was a complete idjit when it came to his jazz views. A moron who did plenty of damage in his time.

[Christian Miller]

Cranky? Naw, everyone knows that Gunther Schuller was a complete idjit when it came to his jazz views. A moron who did plenty of damage in his time.

glad I’m not the only person to come to that conclusion

[RJVB]

Not at all. The Swing music of the 30's and 40's not only the bleeding edge of jazz development as it was happening, but was also literally the pop music of the day....
And disappear? No, like any music that is popular for a time, it didn't "disappear" at all - it just eventually dies out.

Having been a teenager in the late 70s and 80s I grew up with disco (once I was puber enough to go against my parents' classical culture and start to mingle with schoolmates involved with drive-in shows, pirate radios etc.). I was thinking of that particular form of "pop" music, which was also largely a style for dancing instead of listening. (And we might not have techno and whatever has replaced it without the rise of the dj and the remix/sampling culture that I associate with disco, while people like Patrick Cowley must have had influences beyond the style too.)

Dying out ... how's that not disappearing? It's exactly what I was thinking of, I just didn't want to use those words...

But it's very rare to see anyone from the later period reach back to the previous one without condescending to it, or merely paying lip service.

Maybe that's why it's very rare for me to feel a connection with the more modern jazz

a common thing Charlie Christian would do on an AABA tune

Heh, I almost misread that, but, que voulez-vous, now I have to wonder

[Christian Miller]

Schuller’s a classic example of taking your own filtered, limited perspective into a field and not actually realise you are viewing it through a specific perspective at all.

I’m sure that never happens outside of music.

You know modern jazz musicians seem to me to be more interested in early jazz these days. This is probably a lot to do with their being less tribalism now … may also have to do with Wynton …. And that need to reconnect with the roots of the music that probably used to be more present in culture generally and therefore more familiar… (Kenny Wheeler starting out doing trad jazz, for example.)

Young players can be quite evangelical about this stuff IME…

Sometimes this seems to be allied to a rejection of the whole Boomer CST thing we’ve had for fifty years, or at least a way of going beyond it by looking for roads beyond it (I used the term ‘Berklee Hegemony’ in my masters thesis and im sticking to it) - a good example is Ethan Iverson who seems to have a thing against Bill Evans lol.

He has been a perceptive writer on pre war jazz even if he does say some silly shit sometimes.

Good musicians always listened to the early stuff without prejudice. I call it ‘being a musician.’

[RJVB]

I’m sure that never happens outside of music.

Ya think?

Good musicians always listened to the early stuff without prejudice.

Absent pre- doesn't mean ditto postjudice (aka judgement), or does it?

[sgcim]

Cranky? Naw, everyone knows that Gunther Schuller was a complete idjit when it came to his jazz views. A moron who did plenty of damage in his time.

He was a strict 12-tone serial composer/conductor/french horn player, which is about as far away from jazz as you can get, but he did help 'legitimize' jazz at a time when it needed exposure to a wider audience.
He gave teaching gigs to musicians like Barry Galbraith, George Russell, Jimmy Giuffre and Jaki Byard, when GS was head of the NEC of Music.
On his album "Jazz Abstractions", he got together what I consider an incredible group of musicians: Jim Hall, Scott La Faro, Bill Evans, Eddie Costa, Eric Dolphy and Sticks Evans.
He was one of the forces behind Third Stream Jazz, which produced some interesting music.
However, I mentioned his name to a trumpet player when I was a kid, and got a string of four letter words to describe him. What did I miss?

[grahambop]

One good thing that Gunther Schuller did was to get copies from Gil Evans of Gil’s arrangements on the Birth of the Cool sessions (Boplicity and Moon Dreams). Over time all the other copies were lost (including Gil’s own), but thanks to Schuller’s copies, they were preserved for posterity.

[Hammertone]

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. So, despite the vastness of his pompous douchbaggery, he did do a few good things.

[Gitterbug]

There's a rift between classic and contemporary jazz in my country. The Jazz dept. of the Sibelius Academy seems to equate the birth of jazz with bebop. They also flirt with the Ethnic dept., whereby contemporary jazz now is rife with strange Balkanese times. Us old-timers envy the virtuosity and sight-reading skills of the academically trained modern players but find their music too complex, sterile and non-swinging to be enjoyable. The Classic Jazz Society in Helsinki keeps up the flag for New Orleans and Swing-era music, and manouche also has a strong following. Several active big bands in the Capital area. Probably the only Finnish guitarist who makes a living solely out of performing (i.e. no teaching or studio work beyond one's own projects) is gypsy jazz/swing virtuoso Olli Soikkeli.

[Christian Miller]

[QUOTE=RJVB;1190746
Absent pre- doesn't mean ditto postjudice (aka judgement), or does it? [/QUOTE]

Well I just think of Trane hearing Bechet and being knocked out...

[oldane]

Good musicians always listened to the early stuff without prejudice. I call it ‘being a musician.’

This. Reminds me of a quote from Dizzy Gillespie:

Young musician listening to Louis Armstrong in the 1940s: "Why do we listen to that old s***?"

Dizzy Gillespie: "If you had listened more to that old s***, you would have played better."

[Christian Miller]

There's a rift between classic and contemporary jazz in my country. The Jazz dept. of the Sibelius Academy seems to equate the birth of jazz with bebop. They also flirt with the Ethnic dept., whereby contemporary jazz now is rife with strange Balkanese times. Us old-timers envy the virtuosity and sight-reading skills of the academically trained modern players but find their music too complex, sterile and non-swinging to be enjoyable. The Classic Jazz Society in Helsinki keeps up the flag for New Orleans and Swing-era music, and manouche also has a strong following. Several active big bands in the Capital area. Probably the only Finnish guitarist who makes a living solely out of performing (i.e. no teaching or studio work beyond one's own projects) is gypsy jazz/swing virtuoso Olli Soikkeli.

Interesting... in London there seems a lot of crossover. I think there's just a lot of gigs in the swing stuff, so modern players do get roped into it. It's not usual to find players doing odd time math jazz one night, West End (show) depping the next and a New Orleans brass band at the weekend. Unsurprisingly there's a high regard for sight reading chops.

One drummer I know said something interesting - in his opinion no-one in the UK plays modern jazz in that NYC, vibe way. Everyone is playing odd time compositions very well, but it's cerebral, whereas you can go to NYC and there are many musicians such as Donny McCaslin, Glaspar etc playing contemporary jazz but it has a real vibe, because it's connected to stuff like Funk, Hip-hop and Rock even when it's in 11/8.

In London (and maybe elsewhere in Europe too) he felt that vibeyness was more likely to be found in Cuban, Brazilian and early jazz & swing music, where the groove is all important.

Now, I suppose, you also have all these young jazz musicians like Emma Jean Thackray, Theon Cross (who I played with a few times on trad jazz gigs), Moses Boyd, Alfa Mist and so on who are playing groove music, and they are going down great with audiences.*

Perhaps that link to dance and the oral (Black) history of the music seems more keenly felt in NYC even in the more modern music (bebop and on), whereas in Europe it's basically taught as classical music. Barry Harris famously said that the worst thing to ever happen to jazz is that it moved out of the dance halls and into the jazz clubs.

And of course those odd time Balkan grooves started as dance grooves too, but something tells me transplanting them into the August Music Academy (tm) gives them a different energy from a Romanian street band lol.

For myself it was never the cleverness that drew me to Trane, or Brecker. It was always the energy and vibe. I get that from Bechet and Louis too, of course. When modern jazz is played with fire it connects. Too often, it is not.

*The SE London scene has an international following which I find amazing. I am based in SE London and I have nothing to do with any of this haha.

[RJVB]

When modern jazz is played with fire it connects.

+++. Or at least something connects. I got that often with the Willem Breuker Kollectief (not sure if that counts as jazz but that's not the point).

Which reminds me of a memorable event in my city

I mean, the clarinet never recovered as a jazz instrument after it's association with Swing.

You mean... (watch or skip to about 2:00 in!)