|
Post by dottorjazz on Feb 26, 2015 17:15:01 GMT
as some of our readers know, the man from Hamlet, N. Carolina, is my top musician. I met him (on record) in 1968 and immediately fell in love. love grown in the decades, still alive and strong today after 47 years. I have maybe 99% of his known recorded work, and the missing 1% is surely not essential. ok, I've got a lot of records actually unnecessary but...I'got 'em. my first two records were both Impulse: A 50 Live at Birdland and A 94 New Thing at Newport. it was like a lightning strike for a 15 yrs old guy grown up with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. I can't say how it happened but I was hooked. my musical tastes changed suddenly and I was into Jazz. I knew nothing so I began reading the very few books then available and began listening. you could walk into a shop and ask for any record to listen: I spent most of my free time there. Trane shocked me, I didn't even think there could be a music able to squeeze my brain, heart and guts like Coltrane's. in the same year I began playing the drums and Elvin Jones was an astonishing discovery. how could he play that way? I was aware of mostly 4/4 rhythms but he was totally different from rock drummers: a real knock. that same year I begged my mother to let me attend to a 4 drummers concert in Milano. Elvin Jones, Max Roach, Art Blakey and Sunny Murray. Roach and Murray played solo, the first fantastic, the second abominable. Buhaina played with his Jazz Messengers and Elvin Jones with a trio (Joe Farrell and Jimmy Garrison). there's a video on YouTube of this concert in Copenhagen: I've clear in my memory how Jones' performance was embarrassing: he was drunk and had to be accompanied to his instrument. it was a bewildering experience, he played really bad sometimes stopping and letting his two puzzled partners alone. anyway Jones's spectacular drumming may be heard on tens of Trane's records. no other drummer could be more coherent with Trane's music than Elvin. in rare occasions he was not with him and his substitute was Roy Haynes, for example in Newport 1963. I have never liked his way of drumming Trane's music. he is a great musician for sure but he never entered Coltrane's world. any different opinion? brief quiz: which record is this? back cover displayed.
|
|
|
Post by gregorythefish on Mar 2, 2015 15:27:42 GMT
hmmmm, my main question is this: what didn't you like about sunny murray? i haven't watched the video yet, but i will.
|
|
|
Post by dottorjazz on Mar 3, 2015 19:40:35 GMT
did you watch it?
|
|
|
Post by gregorythefish on Mar 4, 2015 15:44:52 GMT
I did! I loved everything. Blakey and his group were especially on fire. Wow! Got to seek out some of that later lineup's work. People in the comments were calling Max Roach's drumming "melodic" and that is weird to me. I get that they aren't being literal, but being literal is my business, so I wish they had tried harder to describe what they meant.
Sunny Murray is an odd duck. His vocalising certainly can be bothersome, but I don't find it "atrocious", just "not for me". I liked his PLAYING very much. It kept an interesting stream of constant splash from the cymbals underneath an ametric collection of noises otherwise. Clearly played on drums, but no real sense of the individual parts of the kit. He played it all at once, which I like. But yeah. That 'singing' was not my bag, baby.
I'm guessing that's your complaint too?
|
|
|
Post by gregorythefish on Mar 4, 2015 15:45:13 GMT
I may also write up a little of how my journey into jazz began. That could be fun.
|
|
|
Post by dottorjazz on Mar 5, 2015 16:38:32 GMT
I'm guessing that's your complaint too? no, I guess you're not a drummer. I can assure you almost anyone could "play" that way. anyone who could't play the drums. drums are the only instrument that must be played with four limbs at once. the most difficult thing is to achieve complete independence among hands and feet. the easiest is to play at unison. Sunny Murray is, from a technical point, nothing more than zero. listening to him in a solo context is dramatic, even if you don't compare him with the masters of drum-technique, and Roach IS the master, as well as Jack De Johnette to cite a younger one. different when he plays in a small group context, Free context. here his lack of technique is much less important. I wanna be explicit: technique is NOT enough, never, but if you mix ideas, heart, knowledge with skill, you'll have a great musician. Murray ain't. Murray is interesting and different with Ayler or his own groups, where he drives simple no-rhythms behind the soloist. he could never be a spectacular rhythm maker as Elvin Jones was behind Coltrane. surely he was a noise producer. in Free, Milford Graves is a lot better. ah, I forgot: I'm a drummer too. anyway if you're a Murray's fan, look for these: Sonny's time now on Jihad and Big Chief on french Pathé.
|
|
|
Post by gregorythefish on Mar 5, 2015 18:37:25 GMT
hmmm... dott, i'll admit i'm not a drummer. i've played drums in a few punk bands, but i am first and foremost a guitarist and bassist. however, i tend to take a much more holistic look at music in general. i do not believe there is a right or wrong way to play music. easy does not mean bad. look at miles' simple modal melodies! i don't really have a problem with your assessment of sunny's performance, as i think we just prefer a few different things sometimes, but i will say that i rather liked it, for the most part. he may not be exhibiting the technical prowess of roach, whom i also love, but i still very much enjoyed the unique take on a drum solo that he provided. he played solo drums in a very new way, in my opinion. i did not get a sense of unison from his performance, but as someone who has played a lot of black metal, which relies a lot on unison movement between all four limbs, that shit ain't easy. sure, it's easy for a moment, but the strength and muscle control required to sustain it, even at a moderate tempo, for just a few minutes, is nuts. that's the lens i look at sunny's playing through, and i love it! and i have heard "sonny's time now" which i love, and am looking for a nice copy of big chief. no luck yet.
|
|
|
Post by dottorjazz on Mar 5, 2015 21:09:31 GMT
"i've played drums in a few punk bands". I remember that Sid Vicious, bassist with Sex Pistols, declared they played loud 'cause they couldn't play. this keeps nothing away from the importance of the group, maybe more social than musical. their success was astounding. ok, success doesn't mean quality, as Murray's naivety doesn't mean he wasn't sincere. simply he had no drumming skills but his role in Free Jazz is somewhat interesting. not more: he is not an innovator, simply a different percussionist. a master of the drums is something different, for me. in Free, as I wrote somewhere else, there was good AND bad music. a good musician can play good or bad but a bad musician will never play good. your musical taste will tell you what's good or bad.
|
|
|
Post by gregorythefish on Mar 6, 2015 15:07:44 GMT
Now, dott, surely you aren't insinuating that all punk bands can't play. and the sex pistols msot certainly COULD play. all you have to do is listen. and the pistols were HUGELY musically important. they introduced a new way to think about music that could be socially viable. i still think murray had plenty of drumming skills. he just used them in a way that does not appeal to you. i've heard several people make similar arguments about ayler's abilities based on the first few seconds of "spiritual unity", but they really just don't get what he was trying to do.
|
|
|
Post by dottorjazz on Mar 7, 2015 9:12:11 GMT
no, of course, I cited a Vicious' sentence only. every generation grows up with its own music. to listen, to dance to, to discuss among friends. I did with Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Zeps, King Crimson, Genesis, Van Der Graaf Generator. I loved music and was satisfied with their records. I didn't know Jazz nor Classical. then, suddenly, I encountered Jazz: electrocuted as St. Paul on the road to Damascus. a new world opened his doors to my ears. why and how? I can't really say. but my musical taste was forever changed. I didn't deny my past love but I found something more interesting and appealing. Punk has been a brief movement, new, different, more in social context than in musical field. no importance as musical skills, great importance as a protest voice. and loud. you say the Pistols had a huge musical importance. I say the Pistols had a huge protest importance. the texts were their strength, not the music around them. it's only my opinion but, in terms of musical importance, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Bird or Trane, to name a few, changed Music forever from a musical point. not the pistols.
|
|
|
Post by gregorythefish on Mar 7, 2015 16:02:39 GMT
ah, checking whether or not you agreed.
i am the same way with jazz, in that it's discovery for me opened a new world, and has sharpened my axe with regards to music i find 'good' and 'bad' but i did not abandon everything.
i think using music in the way the sex pistols did, while it may not be refined, is as "musically" relevant as some of our own heroes in jazz. having a huge importance and being a musicians makes your music important, at least tangentially.
semantics, though, i must say.
|
|
|
Post by Rich on Mar 7, 2015 16:52:27 GMT
It's great knowing that you guys are also eclectic music fans like me! I grew up listening to hip hop, then I got into rock, then jazz. I'm a novice drummer and keyboardist but I have lots of experience recording, mixing, and mastering, and also with all facets of hip hop music including vocals, production, and DJing.
Dott, I love that photo of Coltrane. As for his backing drummers, Philly Joe Jones backed Trane a lot when he played with Miles, right? What's your take on him?
Crazy but sad story about Elvin Jones too.
|
|
|
Post by dottorjazz on Mar 7, 2015 21:21:54 GMT
Dott, I love that photo of Coltrane. As for his backing drummers, Philly Joe Jones backed Trane a lot when he played with Miles, right? What's your take on him? PJ Jones is a solid hard bopper, great taste, high technique. I'd say perfect for Miles' music until 1964. born and dead within hard-bop laws. then a teenager, Tony Williams, hit Miles' rhythmic heart and changed the way to keep rhythm in his bands. Elvin Jones, IMO, is something more. born in hard-bop, he developed a style completely different. his polyrhythms are astonishing. I think propelling a volcano like Trane was very difficult but he succeeded. a real rhythmic war machine. when I spoke of other Trane's drummers, I was referring to post Miles period. even Roy Haynes couldn't fit, and he's a great drummer. but, as a substitute for Jones, I can't love him. listen to My Favorite Things backed by Haynes and you'll understand. Trane's picture shown above was taken during his Japan tour, 1966, in Hiroshima. front and inner cover are these:
|
|
|
Post by alunsevern on Jul 7, 2015 10:39:08 GMT
My gateway to jazz was the guitar, oddly enough, because now I listen to very little jazz guitar (and to no other guitar based music at all), but back in the late 60s, two of my closest friends were both guitarists. Their hero was John McLaughlin and I sort of caught the bug from them, I suppose. So, the simple truth is that during the heyday of jazz fusion and pointless sterile virtuosity we began a journey into jazz prompted by the simple expedient of looking for Jihn McLaughlin recordings that we frankly didn't even know existed. We found his own EXTRAPOLATION, which was reissued on a cheap Polydor label at around this time, and that was what we bought and played to death. I still think it is a great British jazz record. We found that he played with Miles Davis and bought everything we could afford on which he appeared (Bitches Brew alone almost cleaned out the kitty). We found Jack Bruce's Things We Like - not a great jazz record but a very good one.
And so much of what I subsequently came to discover stemmed from trying to track down the work of a guitarist who within a very short time would come to typify everything that was wrong with jazz-rock-prog fusion or whatever one might call it. The fact was, I suppose, I was discovering jazz during a period when jazz itself was dying - or perhaps, more accurately, was being slowly murdered...
A little later I branched out - prompted by sheer uninformed curiousity - into Charlie Parker because again the verve material was available on cheap budget reissues. Then django (because ditto), then a little later I heard the four records that were to change my listening habits for ever. Blues and the Abstract Truth; Kind of Blue; and Keith JArrett's Koln Concert and Facing You.
These particular records had nothing to do with each other - a friend had borrowed them from his university record library, or perhaps had been lent them by a tutor, I can't remember, but it was this experience that showed me that (pre-internet) that there was an unexplored world of jazz out there and it would - with just a few infidelities - become my main lifelong listening, and now and for some years my only listening. Everything else - folk music, electric folk, underground rock, punk, new wave, Indy music, electronia, everything - has all been disposed of. Life is too short to listen to mediocre music.
Throughout the 70s and 80s most of the jazz I bought came via cheap cut-outs in the prestige two-fear series, and I still have a very soft spot for these because at a time when money was tight and information much, much hard to come by, they offered a musical education. They were how I first heard sonny Rollins, Monk, Dolphy, to name just a few. and I bought most of them from an extraordinarily irascible Welshman who owned a record shop just across the shopping arcade from where I worked.
|
|
|
Post by gregorythefish on Jul 7, 2015 14:39:23 GMT
that was a nice story, except for the mediocre music part. perhaps i will share mine. but it is long and mostly silly.
|
|