Thinking in Jazz

by Berliner, Paul F.

  While indicating the predominance of different core conventions during particular historical periods, many performers ultimately eschew simplistic generalities about jazz idioms or schools. 54 They express concern that categorical views of music history misrepresent the complex nature of musical style, at times even obscuring either the diverse improvisation approaches favored by some contemporaries or the overlapping concepts shared by members of different generations. David Baker comments that the “reason why so many of the avant-garde players sound like the earlier players is that they rejected the excesses of chromaticism which you had in bebop and their playing is basically diatonic like the playing of the swing period.”

  It has always been the case that, just as the conservative features of some artists recall earlier performance practices, the progressive elements of other artists distinguish them from their peers and anticipate subsequent practices. One pianist in Barry Harris’s workshops reports that, as early as the thirties, he heard Art Tatum use in his improvised bass lines contemporary intervallic approaches based on fourths, and Mary Lou Williams describes Tatum’s harmonic concept as anticipating that of bebop.55 Lee Konitz describes participating in Lennie Tristano’s first recorded experiments in free improvisation in the late forties.56 Tommy Turrentine recalls one of his career’s illuminating moments when Ray Nance called him over to his apartment and said he had a record he wanted Turrentine to hear. Nance said, “You ain’t going to believe it, man.” When Turrentine arrived and listened to the album, he could tell by its “fidelity” that it was recorded during the twenties. Also, “you know how the rhythm section was playing then—that style. [But] this trumpet player was so clean and playing changes, and weaving in and out of these changes.” When Turrentine was unable to identify the trumpeter, Nance said, “Jabbo. Smith!” Smith “was making runs like Dizzy, man, back in twenty-three.” After that, “Ray said, ‘See, man, there ain’t nothing new under the sun!’”

  Negotiating the World of Critical Judgment

  Within the jazz community’s social network, students take notice of the critical issues that consume the artists around them, and they learn to interpret the varied ways in which artists express their views. Musicians require, on the one hand, no more than the momentary meeting of eyes or a brief smile or nod, to confirm the shared judgment about a soloist’s exceptional phrase. A blank look at the wrong moment, on the other hand, can be self-incriminating, indicating that a musician has failed to apprehend or appreciate a soloist’s tasteful chord substitution or a momentary excursion into a radically different improvisation approach.

  Offering overt judgment, one pianist listened impassively to the greater part of his own recording. Whenever he improvised an asymmetrical pattern that created an interesting counterpoint to the band’s accompaniment, he muttered almost imperceptibly under his breath, “Not bad.” In another case, a great artist whom I had invited to listen to selected numbers from my record collection warned me that he had a habit of falling asleep to music that bored him. We laughed together at his remark as I placed the needle on one of my favorite solos by a well-known trumpeter. Moments after the solo concluded and another began, this one by a pianist, my guest slumped in his chair. With some embarrassment, after several minutes, I stopped the record and shook him gently awake. Milt Hinton remembers direct feedback on the bandstand from Dizzy Gillespie, who sought to coach his development in the new bebop style. After completing each solo, Hinton would look back at the trumpet section, and if Gillespie “liked what I was doing he would nod his head. Or if he didn’t, he would pinch his nose as if to say, ‘That stunk.’ “57

  In other instances, students develop their understanding from observing open critical discussions, discovering that evaluations reflect not only the different values of critics, but also their predispositions toward collegiality. Musicians who are generous in their praise sometimes describe their counterparts as “monsters” or “muthafuckahs” or as “hip” or “bad” for their formidable skills, drawing out “bad” with a descent, “baaaad,” to signify great. Others, having attested to a player’s basic talent, are not inclined to elaborate. They simply appreciate the musical statements of artists on their own terms. Lonnie Hillyer and his peers “used to listen to guys and say, ‘Well, that’s what it means to him.’” Or, as a common maxim in the jazz community expresses, people play the way they are.

  At times, artists’ views can be very harsh. They indicate with classic understatement that an acknowledged master, simply, “can play,” or they comment tersely that a player whose taste differs from their own “can’t play.” Equally damning are overriding judgments that individuals “can’t swing,” “are corny,” or are “saaad,” the last referring not to emotion but to incompetence.

  Performers can be equally unsparing in their self-criticism.58 A trumpeter recalls Miles Davis once remarking that if he improvised four good measures a year, he considered that it was a good year. Art Farmer remembers in his early career always

  feeling my own playing was awful. I never thought that it was great. I felt the same thing for years, even when I was working with really great players like Lester Young and Oscar Pettiford. I would go to work with a very enthused feeling, like “Now’s the time to play!” But by the end of the evening I always had the feeling that I was slinking home with my tail between my legs. I always felt like that character in the old ad for Ben Gay. There’s a character with a little tail who’s supposed to be pain. And somebody rubs the Ben Gay on this cat and it would disappear and the caption would read, “Curses, foiled again!” And that’s the way I felt.

  Musicians grappling with their critical standards sometimes develop a modesty and shyness that they constantly struggle to overcome in performance. When Melba Liston toured with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band in the forties, she “played some lead parts which were written—musical interludes and things—but wouldn’t stand up and take off. I don’t do that with Dizzy’s band, even now. A month ago when we played together, he looked at me and he asked, ‘Well, are you ready to take another solo?’ I said, ‘No,’ and he said, ‘Oh, yes you will’ and I said, ‘Oh, no I won’t.’ We went back and forth like that [laughter], but in the end I did take some choruses on ‘Manteca.’”

  The critical reflection improvisers express toward their own abilities and those of other players underscores the comprehensive artistic demands of the jazz community. It reflects the general view that most soloists have specialized sensitivities and talents. In fact, creativity and intelligence display themselves in endlessly varied and subtle ways within the intimate realm of improvisation. Charlie Parker’s appraisal of artists was especially “positive” in this respect. He found reason to praise others if only for such unique features as tone color or technique (WB). Art Farmer also focuses on the strengths of artists, as when he compliments Freddie Hubbard for “playing the horn so well” or Miles Davis for the “depth of his feeling,” indicating that “those two things are what it’s all about.” He also admires Don Cherry solos for their “sheer spontaneity.”

  Just as often, performers juxtapose strengths and weaknesses. Artists who are great interpreters of ballads and slow pieces are not necessarily great players on fast pieces with complex harmonies, or vice versa. Among pianists who are fluent chord-change players, some improvise “elegant, thoughtful melodic lines, but are not resourceful in terms of the colors you can get from different voicings.” Another player, a guitarist, “has an incredible harmonic ear and a rhythmic concept full of surprises, but lacks a melodic ear.” Other performers who are “harmonically or melodically sophisticated lack rhythmic strength and sensitivity.” Yet another’s solos are appealing “intellectually” because of their interesting intervallic patterns, but are ultimately “cold,” missing emotion. Two trumpeters are “great power players,” but are not “touch players” who can perform with nuances of mood. A saxophonist improvises with “great personality, energy, and aggression—and with wonderful feeling,” but
stands in need of harmonic development. He “plays things out of thin air with no harmonic basis.”

  For some artists, what is a specialized capacity for either improvisation or written composition can generate other dichotomies. One musician is a “great [jazz] composer in the written medium,” but incapable of composing music satisfactorily as an improviser, unable to limit and control his ideas under the pressures of performance. Another player, however, is an exceptional improviser within the framework of the compositions of other musicians, yet lacks the interest or the skill to compose formal pieces with song-like characteristics: his “compositions are unmemorable throwaways.” Representing further distinctions, some artists have limited training and experience interpreting written arrangements in big bands, but possess an extraordinary aural memory for repertory, “knowing every tune that’s ever been played.” To the amusement of friends, some singers display such mental prowess by breaking into a different song whenever a conversation’s turn of subject or key word reminds them of a corresponding lyric. Musicians with a limited recall for repertory may be skilled “music readers” and “lead section players,” interpreting written music with great conviction.

  Finally, there are special individuals, musicians whose excellence is far-reaching, encompassing many or most of the features discussed above. Roy Haynes recalls that Fats Navarro was

  a spectacular musician because, in a time when some cats arrived on the scene with nothing, he came on with everything: he could read, he could play high and hold anybody’s first trumpet chair, he could play those singing, melodic solos with a big, beautiful sound nobody could believe at the time, and he could fly on fast tempos with staccato, biting notes and execute whatever he wanted, with apparently no strain, everything clear. And every note meant something. You know there are those kinds of guys who just playa lot of notes, some good, some bad. Fats wasn’t one of those: he made his music be about each note having a place and reason. And he had so much warmth, so much feeling. That’s why I say he had everything. 59

  Young improvisers struggle to develop competency in the fundamental language of jazz and to assert their individuality within a world of criticism preoccupied with comprehensive artistry, impassioned by allegiances to different performance schools, and responsive to personal taste. Because musical development can be so gradual as to be imperceptible to students, they take heart in praise received from experienced players and reflect on weaknesses revealed through criticism. Youngsters must also learn when and when not to take advice, a principle often confusing in practice. Complaints that a vocalist uses too much vibrato, countered by complaints of too little vibrato, remind Vea Williams of Sarah Vaughan’s general advice, “Don’t let anyone change your style.” Rufus Reid confronted just such a basic challenge after an early performance with a famous group when he learned “through the grapevine” that the leader “didn’t like my playing. The news just destroyed me,” he recalls. “It was just like another growing pain. I said to myself, ‘Well, you don’t expect everybody to like what you play, do you?’ I realized that I could play one of the greatest solos there is, and there might be one person who would agree with that and three who’d say, ‘Oh, man. That’s nothing.’ So, I’ve grown to accept that you can’t please everyone.”

  Students inevitably weather such rebuffs, gaining, in the process, firmer footing as critics themselves. Ultimately, a young artist clarifies personal objectives and assumes responsibility for an independent musical direction. Moreover, time and experience provide emergent musicians with a more realistic perspective on the nature of artistic growth and creativity. “When I was younger, I never felt that I really put it all together in my solos,” Art Farmer remembers.

  And of course, I learned much later that you never do. You have good nights and you have bad nights. And some nights are exceptionally good. But no night is ever just fantastic from the beginning to the end. You never put it all together the way you would like to. You can always find something wrong with it. Nothing is ever fully realized, and you never say, “Well, this is it.” You’re always on your way somewhere. To me, playing is generally a never-ending state of getting there.

  Sometimes, I feel like a breakthrough is happening in my playing, and then I go back and listen to records I made years and years ago, and I can see the basis there of what I’m doing now. I might go to work and play something and think, “Well, that’s new. I never played that before,” and then I might hear that I played something very close to it ten or twelve years ago. There hadn’t been any real break-off that you could put your finger on and say, “Well, I went from here to there.”

  I hear some players who make big changes in their styles, but that’s not that important to me. The only goal is to play better. And I feel my playing has gotten better over the years. I have better control of the horn, greater freedom to venture out more on the horn and to be more expressive. Basically, my ambition is just to be more expressive.

  As improvisers continue to strengthen their expressive and conceptual abilities through self-criticism and peer discussion, they also benefit from direct interaction with others on the bandstand. There, the intricacies of musical discourse remind learners that, within the characteristically collective art form of jazz, the solo is simply one part amid a complex texture of accompanying patterns that are themselves commonly improvised as the whole group interprets a composition’s elements. Correspondingly, as the next section discusses, jazz performance depends as much on each player’s knowledge of the practices governing all aspects of group interplay as on any player’s soloing ability.

  PART III

  Collective Aspects of Improvisation

  ELEVEN

  Arranging Pieces

  Decisions in Rehearsal

  People never understood how arranged Bill Evans s music really was. Sure, it was free and improvised. But the reason we could be so free is that we already knew the beginning, the middle, and the ending. —Chuck Israels

  Performers’ attention to the artful regulation of their interaction expresses itself most formally in the creation of musical arrangements, details of presentation worked out for each piece in advance of music events. Arrangements represent varied degrees of planning and impose different compositional constraints upon improvisers. They introduce stable precomposed elements to group interplay, providing overall shape to performances and reducing some of the risks associated with collective improvisation.

  Learners begin grappling with the challenges of arranging music through their early experience with groups. Needing separate parts for each group member, young players strive to formulate multiple components from the sparse, often skeletal, versions of tunes available to them. Toward such ends, they draw upon principles learned in much the same way that they mastered other aspects of jazz, by gleaning and synthesizing bits of technical information from various sources.

  Once again, as complete aural scores of favored renditions, recordings provide invaluable models. “If you could only afford a few records,” recalls one performer, “you learned them so thoroughly. You played them over and over and over, studying them for every musical detail, every bit of information you could get about the heads, the solos, and the arrangements before you wore them out completely.” Jimmy McPartland and fellow band members in the Austin High School Gang copied their individual parts from records by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and the Wolverines.1 Similarly, Lonnie Hillyer and Charles McPherson spent “endless hours” together, learning musical parts from recordings by Count Basie’s band and other popular swing bands. Occasionally, fledgling bands included musicians who could transcribe recorded arrangements for fellow members. Printed arrangements of some popular swing compositions were also available to those performers with the means to purchase them.

  Eventually, many try their own hands at creating new arrangements, drawing not only on versions by other artists but, in some instances, on knowledge gained from method books and private study with composers in the class
ical music community.2 George Duvivier’s early training in four-part harmony provided him with a useful “starting point,” but he still needed to learn more about each instrument’s capacity. “I wrote one early arrangement in which there was something completely out of the range of the poor trombone player [laughter]. I didn’t know what the problems were, so I got a book about all the instruments, what they could do and what they couldn’t.” Tommy Flanagan recalls the bewilderment of his friends when they attempted to perform his first arrangement, an introduction to an Oscar Pettiford piece in which he had written all the parts in the same key. Flanagan had yet to learn about transposition.

  Veterans within bands help remedy such deficiencies. When Tommy Turrentine toured with the Snookum Russell band in his mid-teens, he had the good fortune to share a room with bassist Ray Brown, who taught him about orchestration, “how the pitches and ranges of different instruments related to the keyboard.” Other formal opportunities for study arose when, as the size of bands expanded during the late twenties and thirties, many leaders hired specialized arrangers or music directors to help regulate aspects of group interaction and to shape the styles of their bands. In many instances, bands rely upon oral or head arrangements. In other instances, musical scores or books of the band’s repertory preserve the details of arrangements and served as texts for learners. Tommy Turrentine partially learned “to write music” by looking over the shoulders of fellow musicians who wrote out arrangements of Ellington compositions for their early group. Moreover, the task of copying individual parts from master scores creates jobs for younger members, enabling them to serve as apprentices to arrangers. “Gerald Wilson was a trumpet player and a fine arranger,” Melba Liston remembers. “I started copying for him in the [Jimmie] Lunceford band and studied his scores so that I could write just like him. He didn’t like that too much, and he finally let me go—everybody was saying he wasn’t writing any of his music [she laughs]. But he was good to me and taught me a lot. I reached the point where I was writing about half his book.”