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Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, Grant Green, George Benson?
Now there are so many jazz guitarists out there who when you mention Jimi or the blues, they wrinkle their noses. I find that invariably the jazz guitarists who don't dig jimi and/or the blues don't speak to me. Not that you have to be playing red house on your jazz trio gig but early benson, wes and green obviously came from the blues esthetic...
What say you?
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04-18-2013 08:54 PM
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Interesting thread - first off, I think it's possible to dig jazz guitar with a heavy blues influence like Grant Green (one of my favourite players) and not be into Hendrix. Blues like Jazz contains niches and sub-genres etc. so GG's way of playing blues is more my thing than Jimi.
Lee Konitz talked about how he intentionally refrains from playing phrases that have an overt blues vocab to them - because he feels that in order to do that really well you have to have certain musical and cultural influences in your background. And IMO that's not necessarily a race thing, but when you listen to someone like Jimi, Wes or GG they come from a rich musical lineage where those influences are deeply imbedded into the culture they belong to. Someone from Australia like me doesn't hear and feel that stuff in the same way, as much as I love it.
Blues influenced jazz done well is fantastic - but mediocre blues cliches inserted into jazz solos I can live without.
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I generally agree, but not completely. Maybe Rosenwinkel, Lund, Monder, J. Lage, and some of the others we see mentioned here don't have a lot of wes/benson/green in them. But do these guys (or others) really wrinkle their nose at the blues or Jimi?
But how about Peter Bernstein? He's about as close to grant green as you can get and still be completely modern. I heard Kreisberg with Lonnie Smith a few years back, has playing was as greasy as can be. Or Adam Rogers when he plays his tele. (Or how about Dan Wilson)
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agree, particularly with pocket. If you can't play in the pocket on a funk groove you ain't got that swing...
Originally Posted by Richb
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and from kreisberg's bio
JK: Because of my background, maybe I have a different way of expressing myself through jazz. Many guitar players start learning jazz and immediately they learn the music of Wes Montgomeryor Charlie Christian, but I wasn't originally attracted to it. Now, of course, I believe those two guys are geniuses, but at the beginning my favorite music was listening to [saxophonist] John Coltraneand [trumpeter] Miles Davis, but then listening to Eddie van Halen and blues and rock players. Very different ways of expression. And then, Jimi Hendrix, John Scofield, Pat Metheny and George Benson. Then I realized there was a reason: Coltrane influenced all the others, there was a connection. They gave me a different way to think about the guitar.
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What say us? lol.
Firstly, I think its possible that you are missing a good music and culture discussion and might be just a tad tired of talking about gear all the time... Maybe, maybe not. Just a hunch.
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Secondly, I presume that you are talking about white players for the most part, the current generation in particular. You have referenced one.
I love discussions like this. People will predictably wring their hands, walk on eggshells around the obvious, and pretend that race has nothing to do with it.
whatever. let's get to it.
It seems to me that white fans have gone bonkers for jazz, in the US and Europe, and blacks can seemingly take it or leave it. There also seems to be a strong supply of young white jazz musicians. I don't know why this is. Blacks will tell you that its "their" music, and frankly it is. Maybe it reminds them of some times they would just assume move beyond. Maybe Miles did it inadvertently because as his son recalled, he wanted to do what Hendrix was doing - filling stadiums, not clubs - fused jazz with rock/funk, and jazz has never been the same. Who knows?
I was in NY recently and probably saw fewer than 10 African Americans in the entire JALC hall to see two shows (Allen room and Dizzy's). There were hundreds of folks there.Last edited by fumblefingers; 04-18-2013 at 11:39 PM.
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To play jazz without some blues feeling sounds a bit.... cold, doesn't it?
Many would say the same thing about swing, but then there is Latin Jazz (Dizzy is generally credited with pioneering it I believe).
Shakespeare said To Thine Own Self Be True. Others will tell you that "race = culture".
When we see a white dude aping BB King - i mean really gesticulating and howling etc - does he seem...... disingenuous? phony? Of course he does. When the BeeGees and Mick Jagger started all their falsetto singing in the 70's to sound black, were they being phony (albeit successfully so)? Of course they were.
If you dont grow up with a black experience, a blues experience, a funky soulfull experience 24x365 then you have to fake it a little. The question is, should you?
In other words if you are going to play jazz should you get swing and blues into your natural way of expressing yourself as best you can? The answer as far as I am concerned is yes.
But then there is room for all kinds of improvisational music or "jazz" now. We have the whole world mixed in now. The world has shrunk.Last edited by fumblefingers; 04-18-2013 at 11:23 PM.
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Kind of a ludicrous post Rich, so I'm not really too miffed - but what if like me, you're basically disinterested in rock/funk/pop as a listener and a player? A friend of mine recently played me 'Stuff' - Cornell, Gadd etc. I'd never heard it before, I thought it was great, but in the same way that I think Ravi Shankar is great, or John Lee Hooker - but it's not really my thing, and if it's not your thing why should you bother to learn how to play it? Just play what you really, really like IMO Originally Posted by Richb
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Not just guitarists but horn players and pianists too.
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Hi Jack,
Good to see you back
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It might depend on what you think jazz is - if you view it from the perspective of a folk art with a lineage; history & canon of music (songs & styles) then you will probably want to cover all of these basis and be able to play ideogrammatically - however if you view it as a strategy for creating improvised music in a group setting - then you might not
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Coltrane had the fire of the blues in his soul. Originally Posted by jzucker
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Good to see you online again, Jack.
I think Bob DeVos has a great bluesy style. Very tasty.
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I can't help but recall a very specific kind of what people refer to as "European Jazz" which is less involved with blues - you listen to that pastoral ECM stuff, to people like EST who are/were Scandinavian, and they refer to their folk music more than blues-based stuff, can you really call that jazz? Sure, it's improvised music and occasionally has a bluesy feelling to some of the playing, but that's more of an intellectual thing rather than something genuine and heartfelt.
Personally, I don't think that you can play jazz without "getting" the blues in some shape or form.
And as far as the blues go, I don't get white guys who play vaguely bluesy rock on Strats through Marshalls and reference Clapton and Page as early influences, then call themselves "bluesmen". No such thing, gents. Try a little harder, dig a little deeper.
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I like the fact that there's multiple sources people come to jazz from...I want what I hear to be "authentic" to the player, not some ideal.
Is it a racial thing? It can be...but it's not the "race" that matters, that's almost incidental...it's whatever music you came to jazz from...very few people start out playing jazz anymore..and even in the past, the music played in folks' houses influenced them. if you grew up in a house that played blues and R&B, that's always gonna be part of you...as it is if you grew up in a house that played french waltzes...tzigane music...classical...hendrix...the grateful dead...country and western...
So when I hear a player, if blues is in their upbringing, that's cool. But if it's not, that's cool too...jazz is a pretty big music, there's room for different approaches.
I will say, when I'm in the mood for some of that bluesy sounding stuff, nothing else will do.
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Blues, or Blooz?
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So only Americans can play jazz? Why wouldn't it be genuine and heartfelt for them to reference their country's folk music? There's nothing special about "blues" that makes it more heartfelt than any other music. Originally Posted by mangotango
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Well there's the historical quasi racist line --usually by white music critics--that give blues practioners the "noble savage" stamp. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
All good music is heartfelt and played with feeling
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I was at a traditional Chinese Wedding recently and during the Tea Ceremony the music that was played sounded like an 10 Minute Asian Coltrane Drone Blues Jam to me.....Mostly pentatonic with bends all over the place.
and from our own Dr. Matt Warnock interview
George Benson: I learned the blues from my former boss Brother Jack McDuff. He was an organist who took me on the road when I was nineteen years old. He kept stressing, “Man, put some blues in that stuff, man.” I said, “Wait a minute, man, it’s not a blues song.” He said, “I don’t care! Put some blues in it.” Laughs. I asked him why he liked the blues so much, and he told me that no matter where you are in the world – you could be in America or in China – if you play blues, they understand it. So that’s why it’s so valuable to me. I’ve experimented with that philosophy over the years and have found that he’s correct. People like the blues no matter where you are all over the world. So it became something that I decided should be a part of everything I did. The blues is like street music. It’s like the language of the street.
George Benson Interview : Guitar InterviewsLast edited by djangoles; 04-19-2013 at 12:50 PM. Reason: SP
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Jack Zucker is back
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Based on their style of playing, I am often times surprised by the number of ("younger") contemporary jazz guitarist who state that their early influences were T-Bone, Hendrix, Bloomfield, Clapton, Beck, etc. Originally Posted by jzucker
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I dunno why that's hard to beleive...I don't sound anything like Kurt Cobain (yes, I picked up a guitar because of Nirvana...how cliche...summer of '92)
Pat Metheny has said he tried to sound exactly like Wes when he was a teen...what a difference a few years made...
We eventually purge some of those early influences...then there's those lasting influences that we might try to purge but eventually accept as part of us...that's who we really are...
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this is correct! Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Not hard to believe, just a surprise, as I am surprised that Kurt Cobain was one of your earlier influences. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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