"Killer Joe" (quartet live)

[JazzPadd]

This was from a street jazz festival in a nearby small city here in Japan. I'm playing in a quartet, the bassist and drummer of which I know from a jam session held at a local jazz kissa. We play there together once a month, and when this gig came up I suggested we do "Killer Joe," which is a fun jam tune. None of the usual horn players from the jam were able to join the gig, so the tenor saxophonist was recruited by the band leader to join for the street jazz festival gig, and it was the first time that all four of us had played together.

With no pianist and an intuitive bassist, there was a lot of freedom to play around with the tune. I noticed that even though the bridge section is a different vibe on the recordings, in a live setting it was more open and we could play off of one another more, turning it into a kind of vamp jam alluding to the changes and form, but also drifting away from it. The key to that, of course, is coming back together for the theme. And I rather enjoyed playing it that way, and also liked comping and experimenting in a minimalist setting without piano.

There are several ways to approach "Killer Joe," but what spoke to me most is creating a kind of modal setting based on C D E F G Ab Bb C overall, but peppering that with whole tone lines. When playing it in the jams, most of the time the soloist would mirror a line in C in Bb. I think there's even an online lesson or two demonstrating that, and it works very well. I developed this modal approach in the solo guitar version that I posted here about a month ago, which was much more free; it was interesting to do it this time with a combo.

For those that might be curious, Japan has a vibrant "amateur" jazz scene (in the sense of Andy Merrifield "the pleasures of doing what you love") and many small cities have an annual jazz festival, usually two days on a weekend. It's an opportunity for full-time and part-time jazz musicians, advanced and intermediate, to play with one another. There were two college big bands, too. Most sets are 40 minutes, and shops and cafes in the area enjoy have more customers, while people walking around can enjoy the live jazz.

Regarding the jam sessions that gave birth to this quartet, they're held monthly at a "jazz kissa." These are cafes devoted to jazz that popped up in urban areas with the advent of jazz in Japan during the early days of vinyl, and after the war expanded up to the point of there being hundreds in the 1960s and 1970s, small Mom and Pop shops that spun jazz on vinyl to discerning listeners. When home audio and CDs began drawing people away from these listening spaces, some reconfigured into performance spaces for live jazz.

[ragman1]

And who said jazz was dead :-)

[JazzPadd]

And who said jazz was dead :-)

Indeed and agreed! I was surprised when I found out about the amateur jazz scene, and only after working here for several years. Now it has become a reason to stick around. Thanks for listening!

[JazzPadd]

Yeah man. That is my kind of jazz. Fantastic playing by everyone in the band.

Hey, thank you very much for listening and for the kind words! I’ve always had a thing for Hard Bop. It’s my fave jazz genre, and such a joy to play; I like how it brings blues and gospel back to jazz.