Is Goodbye Porkpie Hat a 'Blues'?

[neatomic]

becks immersion into jazz & fusion happened post blow by blow when he toured with the 2nd version of the mahavishnu orchestra..he got a boxload of "jazz fusion" cassettes and listened to them while touring..after the tour he cut wired..he brought in narada walden who was mahavishnus drummer on the tour..and jan hammer

it's altogether possible he heard my goals beyond pork pie hat version on a cassette without ever hearing the mingus version..he was no jazzer

he credits mclaughlin in print for why he did it

cheers

[Doctor Jeff]

I have not heard of Mr. Cohen. Nice version. Sorry to see he smokes--can't understand why any horn player would risk his breath. Or singer.

Re' GPPH it sure sounds like a blues and has that feel. One expects the I-IV-V tension/resolution no matter what the actual chords are.

[pubylakeg]

No mention of Jansch & Renbourn's Pentangle version ?

[neatomic]

love john renbourn (rip)...he cut it more than once

cheers

ps- i'd bet pentangle (great band) version was inspiration for mclaughlin version was inspiration for beck..and so it goes


pss- and i adore bassist danny thompson..what a stellar giant

[ragman1]

I like this tune because it's dark, suits me. Not that I'm depressive at all but I like to wallow occasionally.

Personally I only like a few versions of this tune, basically the ones that sound like proper jazz. I don't like Beck's thing because it's twangy and too poppy/rocky. This one's good because it's got such a simple, lovely solo.

It's not what clever-dick changes you use, it's how you play it. If you know what you're doing you can make the hardest things simple.

Sure it's blues because someone died. It's a lament from his soul. That's what counts. Beyond that, who cares?

[Lazz]

[ragman1]

Well, it's okay. More like a party than a funeral. Don't like the words. Not quite what Mingus intended, I suspect - but what the heck

[Lazz]

The words are Rahsaan's.
I can't guess what Mingus intended other than sincere memorial appreciation marking a life.
Kirk's eulogy seemed very apposite to me. More so than Joni's version.
I suspect Mingus may have enjoyed it, too.

[Lazz]

Good work, nice job!

[docsteve]

And this is the version that probably sparked Pentangle's, done just by Bert Jansch and John Renbourn:

I think they had quite a cheek to cover this tune, as not many people had covered it before - probably Bert and John didn't care at all, they just liked it and riffed on it. And whatever they are doing, it doesn't sound like a minor blues progession to me.

[ragman1]

Your vid didn't appear:

It's not bad. Folk Blues, though, not really jazz. Cleverly worked out.

[ragman1]

Oh, it looks like mine didn't either!

(edit)

I might have something on my computer that's blocking the vids. Not sure.

In case no one else is seeing it here's the cunningly disguised url:

xxxhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfeXvvQ98y8xxx

[ragman1]

Sorry about so many posts. I've found what was blocking the vids. They're all there.

[henryrobinett]

I really disliked the Bert and John version. Cool for what it was but it was barely the song. Missed about 3/4 of the chord changes.

Also I don't know why people are reaching for assuming the XXX version inspired McLaughlin or Beck. Mingus' Ah Um was a very popular record in the early mid 60s and forever. It was released by Columbia, Miles post Prestige label and Brubecks. A huge label that promoted it. That was not an unknown tune by a long shot.

Just saying.

[docsteve]

I know this steers off-topic, but Bert Jansch, John McLaughlin (who worked in a music store in the mid-sixties) and Jeff Beck all knew each other, and respected each other's work, so it's quite probable that they got each other interested in this tune. AFAIK there were not many covers of Pork Pie Hat in the sixties apart from those young Englishmen.

As I said, Bert and John probably didn't know what they were doing in the eyes of the Jazz Police. No offence meant, Henry, I know exactly what you mean. However, if they did miss most of the changes, I suspect they didn't know better, or didn't care.

[ragman1]

I can play Folk Blues and I understand it. I suspect they saw it as a blues which was interesting because of the dissonance in some of the chords. After all, the head is completely a blues scale. Obviously they were going to play it in their own idiom, not as a jazz band would.

Their opening riff just goes Em/A - Em/A, pretty standard. The Pentangle version uses the standard riff Em/F#m - G/F#m.

Doc Watson uses it for Summertime and I've heard Martin Taylor use it too.

[ragman1]

Incidentally, Kenny Burrell uses the Dm/Em/F/Em thing too on Midnight Blue.

[sgcim]

And if so, why?

The Minor pentatonic works very well over much of it to good effect, but surely there's more to it than that.

I don't think the tune itself is a blues, even though it does two things a blues is supposed to do:
1) It goes to the iv chord on the fifth measure
2) It's twelve bars long.

But other than those two things, it goes too far away from the harmonic structure of a blues, starting on the seventh measure, to call it a blues.
The fact that Mingus used blues changes for the blowing section, instead of the tune's changes, IMHO proves that the tune itself isn't a blues.

All those versions of GPH were fine except for Bert Jansch and John Redbourne's. They didn't play the right changes at all. The version with Stefan Grossman was fine, because he played the right changes for JR. Danny Thompson was the only jazz musician in Pentangle; maybe the drummer, too.