Unavoidable Composers

[Bobby Timmons]

Why are great american songbook composers excluded from jazz? That's ridiculous, they were foundational to jazz.

Also, you can't make me play a Wayne Shorter tune.

[pamosmusic]

Why are great american songbook composers excluded from jazz? That's ridiculous, they were foundational to jazz.

Also, you can't make me play a Wayne Shorter tune.

Im not “excluding them from jazz.” But they belong to an obviously distinct category in that they weren’t writing their music for jazz musicians, and jazz musicians adapted it later.

Jazz composers (monk, mingus, etc) were writing music for themselves and their bands and counterparts to play in the idiom they’d built.

And noted on the Shorter, though I wasn’t trying to, and also your loss.

[mr. beaumont]

I was trying to think back to the "Virtual Jam," which was intended to focus on jazz tunes by jazz composers...I think we did quite a few Horace Silver tunes...maybe Brubeck?

[sgcim]

Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson if you're playing with horn players.

[Christian Miller]

GASB composers weren’t by and large jazz musicians. Quite a few were classically trained composers, but they were writing mostly for stage, orchestrated charts and ‘legit’ old school music theatre singers.

There was obviously some overlap between the music theatre and jazz worlds, but they weren’t the same.

What happened to a lot of those tunes is that they were, well, jazzed up. The jazz changes often mutating quite far from the originals…

Whereas jazz composers, different type of thing.


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[Bobby Timmons]

I know. It's still part of jazz post hoc.

[pamosmusic]

I know. It's still part of jazz post hoc.

Thanks to Mendelssohn, Bach is an early Romantic, post hoc.

(Alright Christian … hit me with it)

[sgcim]

Clifford Brown has some that are important, Jordu, Joy Spring, Daahoud, Sandu.
John Lewis has Django, Afternoon in Paris and others.

[Bobby Timmons]

Thanks to Mendelssohn, Bach is an early Romantic, post hoc.

Don't have to get irrational.

[mr. beaumont]

I think John Lewis is a good pick...

[PMB]

I think John Lewis is a good pick...

Agreed. Speaking of tunes attributed to Miles, the original Milestones was written by John Lewis.

[PMB]

GASB composers weren’t by and large jazz musicians. Quite a few were classically trained composers, but they were writing mostly for stage, orchestrated charts and ‘legit’ old school music theatre singers.

There was obviously some overlap between the music theatre and jazz worlds, but they weren’t the same.

What happened to a lot of those tunes is that they were, well, jazzed up. The jazz changes often mutating quite far from the originals…

Whereas jazz composers, different type of thing.


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I first read that as 'mutilating'. Jerome Kern certainly felt that way about jazz versions of his tunes and his widow hated The Platters' version of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes so much that she took legal action in an attempt to limit any further distribution after its initial release.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Herbie is one of my favorites. He and Mingus I think are in a similar boat. I don’t know if I’ve ever been to a session where either one was called. Some gigs where they’re called.

But they’re Composers with a capital C and definitely people you’d need to go through if you want to write in the genre, even if maybe you could skirt around playing them on the bandstand.

Watermelon Man got called recently (good opportunity to present my funk and blues experience LOL), Cantaloupe Island could probably be called, Maiden Voyage is not my cup of tea but isn't that also a popular session tune?

I would say that many Mingus tunes are not as easily accessible as those three tunes by HH. At least we have now access to the notated original form of Goodbye Porkpie Hat; Mingus (also apart from his difficult mental dispositions) was a demanding leader who would let the band learn the hat by ear and only the bassist knew the changes of the head and the blowing changes as saxophonist John Handy recalled in an interview. For having to follow the changes by ear he did a real good job with his solo.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Don't have to get irrational.

Peter was alluding to the fact that Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdi played an important role in the Bach revival of the 19th century.

[A. Kingstone]

Good read.

American Popular Song

Wilder, Alec

[Bobby Timmons]

Peter was alluding to the fact that Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdi played an important role in the Bach revival of the 19th century.

Yes I see. That doesn't make my statement false like his.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Good read.

American Popular Song

Wilder, Alec

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

[ragman1]

That's sort of what I mean right there. Miles wrote great tunes, but not so many of them that end up being absolute must-knows. Solar and Tune Up, probably?

Graham got there first :-)

Unavoidable Composers

[pamosmusic]

Graham got there first :-)

Unavoidable Composers

There must be some!

At least it validates my tendency to leave him off the list

[pamosmusic]

Yes I see. That doesn't make my statement false like his.

Im being facetious to make the point that a composers use by later musicians does not make them a composer of that milieu.

[grahambop]

There must be some!

At least it validates my tendency to leave him off the list

I guess you’d be safe with So What, All Blues, Milestones (the modal one) and Nardis.

[Bobby Timmons]

Im being facetious to make the point that a composers use by later musicians does not make them a composer of that milieu.

Yeah but your example is absurd while mine is true. Seeing as Gasb composers both wrote the bulk of the songs used in jazz which shaped it, and they had overlap with it, therefore they're part of jazz.

I'm pretty sure if you're borderline playing like Erroll Garner you might have lineage in jazz.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Yeah but your example is absurd while mine is true. Seeing as Gasb composers both wrote the bulk of the songs used in jazz which shaped it, and they had overlap with it, therefore they're part of jazz.

I'm pretty sure if you're borderline playing like Erroll Garner it isn't disassociated from jazz as some other form of music.

Can you hear the difference?

[Bobby Timmons]

Yes, I can hear. Can you read? I already wrote that although many of the tunes were not written directly for jazz performance, they later shaped jazz because they made up the bulk of the material used in jazz. But some composers did write within the jazz style at the time like the Gershwin clip.

[AllanAllen]

Watermelon Man got called recently (good opportunity to present my funk and blues experience LOL), Cantaloupe Island could probably be called, Maiden Voyage is not my cup of tea but isn't that also a popular session tune?

I would say that many Mingus tunes are not as easily accessible as those three tunes by HH.

Those Herbie Hancock tunes are also in the Aebersold beginner book. I’m sure that helped their popularity at jam sessions.