Thinking in Jazz

by Berliner, Paul F.

  “I try not to be a repeater pencil” is Lester Young’s clever encapsulation of the nature of spontaneity.40 If “I were to try to play mechanically, playing things that I’ve worked out before,” John McNeil explains, “it might make me sound real good, but it would also make me feel guilty—as if I haven’t really done anything good. I’d prefer to make things up as I go along. You never make everything up,” he concedes, “but I’d like to make it up as much as I can with the smallest amount of prefiguring possible.” Red Rodney also has “licks that identify me, but I try to create all the time. I may not succeed all the time,” he admits, “but when I do, and I surprise myself, that’s when I’m the happiest. I get the most rewarding feelings when, instead of playing what I’m comfortable with and know is going to sound good, I try something different and it works.”

  Doc Cheatham adopted comparable goals after analyzing his idol’s performances.

  That’s the trick that I learned in Chicago. If you went to hear trumpet players like Louis Armstrong, for instance, they would play any tune like “Chinatown,” and they’d play fifteen or thirty different choruses, and they would never repeat the same thing. They had so much talent. Every time they’d playa tune, the solo would be different, unless there was some little gimmick that they would want to do. Like on “King Porter Stomp,” they would always jump back to play little breaks [patterns played without accompaniment] and things like that.

  As discussed earlier, however, the absolute equation of spontaneity and unique invention with solo formulation belies the varied music-making practices favored by jazz players. Artists bring different individual attitudes to improvisation as a compositional process and engage in different degrees of preparation for particular performances. Where precisely along this spectrum musicians are located is something that fellow band members can freely observe as, night after night, they hear artists’ solos on the same compositions. One of his associates describes Lester Young’s response to a trumpeter with Count Basie who “took the same solo on a certain tune every night, and when he’d start Lester would look at me and say, ‘Damn, Lady Kay, there he goes again,’ and we’d sing the whole solo note for note right along with the trumpet player.” At the other end of the spectrum, Jimmy Heath recalls his and John Coltrane’s reactions when listening to Dizzy Gillespie’s introduction to “I Can’t Get Started,” which Gillespie’s big band performed regularly: “He’d play it differently each time, and we’d look at each other in amazement.”41

  Some improvisers are not as concerned with spontaneity as an issue in its own right. Relying more heavily on well-liked prefigured material, they strive instead to enliven its use during each performance with nuances of interpretation and embellishment. From improvisation to improvisation, they infuse features that are similar with fresh conviction and emotion, whether negotiating stretches of planned vocabulary or an entire through-composed solo.

  In some instances, the issue of spontaneous invention is tied to personal limitations. “I’ll teach students different chord voicings for a tune each week,” a pianist complains, “but some always come back playing the tune the last way I showed them. They can’t seem to remember earlier voicings or to figure out how to mix them in new combinations when they play.” More often, as their need to rely strictly on preplanned models for improvisation gradually diminishes, students develop their skills and abilities over time. Years ago, Lou Donaldson would “work out little patterns” for solos, but generally he does not “have to now.”

  Similarly, Warren Kime used to perform entire Harry James solos in public when learning how to play jazz. “Many people thought I could improvise at the time, but I really couldn’t yet.” Don Sickler took a similar tack in his own youth, aurally composing original solos outside of performance, but “switching them around” from event to event to create the impression that he had improvised them. Another musician “wrote out” and memorized solos for his first few recording dates in an effort to avoid making “mistakes” that might jeopardize the performances of his “more spontaneous” band members. With experience, Kime, Sickler, and countless others acquired skill and confidence, relying less and less on such practices.

  The artist’s response to wide-ranging performance variables influences the spontaneous aspect of invention. Having to perform under the pressure of a slightly faster tempo than customary for an artist can provide a useful psychological edge and inspire creative thinking, but very fast tempos may cause the artist to rely heavily on preplanned and repetitive material.42 “There is one player I heard recently,” Lee Konitz says,

  who can be very razzle-dazzle, and this is very impressive to me. I give him credit for the dues he had to pay to be able to do that, but his playing always feels worked out. He must play pretty much similarly all the time, because he plays at a certain tempo where you can’t improvise too much. That’s a sock-it-to-me kind of energy and the whole philosophy behind it is to make an effect. He’s like a lot of players who are always preparing and calculating for the home run when they solo. They can deliver that kind of a blow with the music and it’s very effective. But for someone who demands more, the effect is suddenly over and done with and you’re not going to get any more.

  When Konitz’s own performances develop comparable difficulties, becoming “technical and mechanical,” he tries to slow the tempo down so that he can be affected by his “own notes.”

  The length of an improvisation is also germane. When solos are long, improvisers may “run out of ideas” and fall back on an uninspired use of their vocabulary. “Sometimes, if I really extend myself and play more than two or three choruses,” Harold Ousley says, “I find it hard to keep creating.” Indeed, for their general limitations, some improvisers are characterized as “two-chorus players.”43 Others, like Art Tatum and Coleman Hawkins, amaze their admirers by creating improvisations that remain “interesting chorus after chorus,” displaying an “ability that comes with years of playing and study” (TF).

  A piece’s formal properties also potentially influence the player’s approach, with “rapidly changing harmonies” allowing less time for the flexible treatment of vocabulary patterns and motivic development, perhaps, than for modal structures. 44 A musician may work out a complete model solo for a piece based on complex harmonic movements to ensure a competent performance, yet, in the case of another piece, rely upon planned licks to negotiate only particular features of the progression. Barry Harris recalls such moments even in solos by the most creative musicians, punning, “When they reached the bridge of ‘Cherokee,’ they’d be lickin’ like dogs.” Stories abound concerning keen critical powers sometimes applied specifically to the inspired use of ideas. Charlie Mariano describes jam sessions in Boston, for example, which were packed with musicians who socialized boisterously while others performed for them. Whenever musical events progressed to the most difficult sections of choruses, however, it would “suddenly become so quiet in there, you could hear a pin drop.” Once the listeners had discerned whether soloists had discovered new ways to play particular chord changes or whether they had simply repeated the same phrases used during previous choruses, the audience instantly resumed its animated interaction.

  The advice Miles Davis once gave Curtis Fuller after having heard him perform a solo also speaks to the importance of spontaneity in creative invention. Davis “said in his hoarse whisper, ‘Hey, man, every time you get to that part of the tune, you keep playing the same thing. You keep playing that B minor against that D sound. Sounds too dark every time you get there. Get with a piano player and work on something new.” Fuller recalls that “it sounded cruel and harsh at the time, but I realized he was right, and it enhanced my growth.” In another instance, Charles Mingus once actually reduced a promising young saxophonist to tears, before an audience, with his running commentary of “Play something different, man; play something different. This is jazz, man. You played that last night and the night before.”

  Artists can avoid such pr
oblems by treating planned phrases flexibly—creatively displacing, varying, and recombining them as underpinnings for new ideas. Additionally, repeating phrases in relation to particular segments of a lengthy progression separated by stretches of contrasting material presents risks different from those an artist faces if repeating phrases within short forms, where similar phrases are more likely to be noticed. 45

  Many describe their performance histories as ongoing cycles of creativity during which the proportion of old to new musical ideas conceived during a particular composition’s solos constantly changes. At early stages of the cycle, as when initially learning a new piece, improvisers may plan particular patterns that, from performance to performance, result in a high degree of fixity in the display of their ideas. Arriving at the cycle’s later stages, a player, having become comfortable with a piece’s structure, may take greater liberty with patterns, varying or departing from them frequently in the conception of new phrases. This is observable, for example, in Booker Little’s solo on “Bee Vamp,” alternate takes of which reveal a high concentration of planned and repeated phrases. At the same time, Little’s actual treatment of the phrases distinguishes each take.46 In the first, the shorter of the two, he appears to interpret the material rigidly, as if he had designed its underlying model as a composer’s sketch or warm-up routine, a prelude to the second performance’s more radical departures.

  The same cycle may be reinitiated as an artist adds the latest inventions created within the piece’s form to the vocabulary store, and they recur with increasing frequency in subsequent improvisations. Should the patterns gradually coalesce into longer chains of ideas that comprise another relatively fixed model for the solo, the artist once again strives to use them judiciously. “Oh, God, I’ve played this a million times before,” John McNeil sometimes says to himself during a performance. “‘What am I doing standing up here playing?’ I feel like this when it gets to the point where I can almost write my solo down before I play it.”

  Similar changes in the relative fixity of ideas can cut across the solos associated with different pieces. Even without planning specific patterns, improvisers commonly develop habits of musical thought. These habits evolve out of the general use of their language or the focus of their latest practice routines, both of which lead them to favor particular current patterns and composite phrases among their otherwise unique features of solos. Artists accept the ebb and flow of inspiration as an inevitable condition of the creative process, but many endure considerable frustration at the bottom of their creative cycles when, as is characteristic, they cannot anticipate their next breakthroughs. McNeil articulates how the cycle itself can inform an artist over time. He knows that he is “just about to make some progress when everything sounds so boring that I hate what I play. Then, right about that time, for some reason, I get a whole lot better. I improve a lot and I improve real fast. But then I reach another point where I don’t improve, and I’ll just stay the same for a while. It’s always worked that way for me.”

  The constitution of players and their physical command of material affects the larger concern of spontaneous and unspontaneous musical conception. “I haven’t been touching my guitar at all since my last recording date,” Emily Remler admits at one point. “I guess I just got sick of my playing. Now, I’m struggling to get back to where I was because I lose the vocabulary so quickly. So lately, I haven’t been surprising myself when I play. You have to stay in good physical shape for that.” From Jimmy Robinson’s perspective, the fact that improvisers “have bad nights is understandable because that’s the way your body is. It doesn’t respond the same way every night, and you can’t be as consistent as you would like. Some nights are real good, and others you just can’t do a thing.” He adds that lack of the proper rest can prevent the body from responding as it should. Once Robinson returns to a regular practice schedule and, as he says, “my chops get right, then I’ll get the freedom to play like I know I can, and I’ll be able to surprise myself in my playing again.”

  Relaxation, mental and physical, is an essential ingredient in the dynamics of performing. Extreme conditions reveal the extent of its importance and may override that of other aspects of performance described earlier. As a case in point, years ago at a jam session, Warren James improvised a solo in the early hours of the morning when, he says, “I was so tired that I could hardly stand up.” He was sure he did not have the energy needed for the task. When he got to the bandstand, however, his mind and body were so relaxed that, for the first time, “I really let go and played by far the best solo I had ever played in my life.” Conversely, tension can severely compromise a performance, causing rigid muscles and inhibiting a soloist’s breath control, ultimately undermining flexibility and, at times, endurance, range, and phrasing. Moreover, tension can block powers of concentration and imagination. “The main problem is to free your mind when you play,” says Art Farmer. “I find that in my own playing, whenever I feel any kind of tension, I’m restricted to playing the most fundamental kinds of things.”

  Predisposition toward risk on the part of an artist’s personality, to whatever degree, is an influence on improvisation, already widely perceived to heighten the vulnerability of the artist. “I have seen great musicians have a horrible time with their playing some evenings,” Joe Giudice says. “Any fertile mind will have difficulty at times. When someone is trying to discard some things he has already mastered and tries to put something else in its place, he’s going to cut some hogs.” Not all artists are willing to tolerate risk in equal measure. One musician expressed his reluctance to learn new improvisation approaches, which would require him to “live with sounding bad for six months or more” as he gradually mastered fresh materials and learned to integrate them successfully into more familiar vocabulary. Red Rodney has observed a dwindling of spontaneity in the work of some artists as time takes its toll. “Now, as some people get older, they just play all their tricks. I can hear that in great, great names in jazz. Those are players who are no longer interested in creating all the time.”

  When evaluating a performance, the improviser typically favors inconsistency in the service of spontaneous, creative exploration over consistency in less extemporaneous invention. “If you’re closed, then the music can’t take you anywhere. It’s just back to ‘Well, now I’m going to play this, and then I’m going to play that’ ” (DP). Most admired among players are the controlled risk takers, those who are neither complacent in performance nor overconfident, routinely overreaching their abilities. Within the bounds they set for themselves, consummate artists expertly turn musical miscalculations into “musical gems.”47

  Evolving a Unique Voice within the Jazz Tradition

  On the grand scale of judging the overall contribution of the artist to jazz, a fundamental criterion for evaluation is originality, also a highly valued component within an individual solo. The categories against which improvisers evaluate originality correspond roughly to the definitive stages of artistic development described earlier by Walter Bishop Jr.: imitation, assimilation, and innovation. It is to be expected that only some individuals within the jazz community complete the succession of developmental stages and realize success within them.

  Musicians who remain at the imitative end of the spectrum enjoy the least prestige. Some, having undergone the years of intensive training required to develop fundamental improvisation skills, succeed only in absorbing the most general performance conventions of a particular jazz idiom. Although at times receiving praise for “competence,” they are often characterized as “generic improvisers.” One unsympathetic artist views their solos as comprising “the same phrases you hear from everyone else, a string of acceptable, idiomatically correct pieces of jazz vocabulary, riffs, and motives—little figurations, all strung together in a trite and uninspired way.”

  Displaying greater ability, but equally vulnerable to criticism, are “clones,” musicians whose keen ears enable them to absorb an idol’s precis
e style, but who improvise exclusively within its bounds. One famous musician, in responding to a question on this issue, referred to the disciple of another renowned artist as a “clone” but added, “You have to give him credit just for being able to play that well. Still, it’s odd to hear someone sounding so much like somebody else all the time.” Commonly, the predominant influence on clones changes over their careers.

  Related to clones, but a step removed, are “eclectic improvisers.” Their solos reflect diverse apprenticeships, presenting a hodgepodge of the traits of different idols, but fail to personalize them or to integrate them into a unified style.

  As an observer of jazz for over thirty years, Art Farmer comments:

  I have seen a lot of things come and go. Basically, ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of everybody out there is just copying somebody else. Here in New York, I remember every piano player was trying to play like Horace Silver at one time, and then later on, everybody was trying to play like Bill Evans. Some of the guys who were playing like Horace a couple of years later were trying to play like Bill. And then everybody was trying to play like McCoy Tyner. It’s just something that comes and goes. Horace was dominant at one time and everyone dug that, and then along came Bill with a different style.