Interesting listening experiment from Ted Gioia

[ModesSchmodes]

I've been reading How to Listen to Jazz by jazz critic and historian (go check out his history of jazz by the way, it's... extensive) Ted Gioia. Nifty little book even for... advanced (?) jazz listeners, as it is fairly short as well. But one thing really grabbed my interest which is a listening experiment he recalled doing in his youth, which was this:

For two weeks he only allowed himself to listen to Jazz from before Louis Armstrong came to the scene. Nothing else. Two weeks of nothing but 1920's or so New Orleans, Chicago, etc. Jazz.

Then after the two weeks he'd dive deep into Louis Armstrong's recordings, in order - paraphrased - to recalibrate the ears to be able to appreciate the monumental change that Armstrong ushered in.

I think that's quite a cool idea and two weeks seems fairly doable. What do you think?

[RJVB]

Did he only listen to period recordings, i.e. performances by players who hadn't heard Armstrong themselves?

Two weeks of that is worth a special mention on its own!

[dasein]

I think this is a great idea, and I encourage you to give it a shot if it sounds intriguing.

But I would also venture that you don't need to do this, that concentrated listening of the Hot Five and Sevens recordings are going to be a revelation in and of themselves. You could even use audio editing tools to cut out everything except Armstrong's improvisations.

That Louis Armstrong is the most important figure in jazz, that all jazz musicians who came after him are indebted to him, that he changed popular music forever... all this is repeated so much, ad nauseum, starting with grade school, that it's hard to approach the music with fresh ears.

If you haven't spent a lot of time with that music, and you really listen, I think you're going to be astonished. He really does not sound like anyone else in the history of jazz. His note choices are usually pretty straightforward. But his rhythmic acuity and time feel is absolutely insane. He can subdivide the beat so precisely that it sounds like he's bending the time to his will -- it speeds up, slows down, stutters and starts again, sometimes all at once within a few bars, but always completely locked into the band.

To my ears, it always sounded like the next generation of improvisors (Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Christian, etc) developed their style partially as a reaction to Armstrong -- they knew his music, but it's as if they quickly realized that his playing was not possible to replicate, and so they developed an alternative.