so actually, all you have to do is to give him a cushion and just let him go. He’ll play right over the top of what you’re laying down, so you lay something down that’s pretty simple and you keep it straight. It could be a walking line or something else with that feeling. But when you’re playing with somebody like Pharoah Sanders who doesn’t play as much, you can play a little bit more out front, a little more complex and with more activity, because he uses the rhythm section more than somebody like George Coleman.
Experience over time greatly enhances musical cohesion, of course. Specific knowledge of the concepts or approaches of different musicians— reflected in their recurring vocabulary patterns, the logic underlying phrase construction and motive development, and long-range storytelling strategies—provides additional clues for fellow band members. Consequently, while attending to their own parts—assessing inventive material and selecting elements for development—performers must constantly exercise musical peripheral vision to make similar assessments about neighboring parts as they endeavor to predict their courses. After a rhythm section becomes accustomed to particular soloists, it can “follow their train of thought and complement it;” Akira Tana says. Curtis Fuller elaborates. “In Miles Davis’s band, Philly” Joe even learned to play little things to set Miles up for his phrases. He’d play things before and after Miles’s figures. Little things like that let you know the drummer is listening:” In groups that perform together frequently, players sometimes develop a core of common patterns that they periodically reintroduce in performances to stimulate interplay.12
Fashioning an internally cohesive accompaniment matters greatly to Miles Davis, who, as Fuller reports, “also spent a lot of time getting the rhythm section to know how each other plays so that they could anticipate one another.” Kenny Barron discusses this process. As a pianist who prides himself on being able to “adjust to almost anything that a drummer can do,” Barron strives not only to synchronize his comping figures with the conventional accompanying patterns for drums described earlier but to
do different things with each drummer based on what [each does]. Playing with Ben Riley is playing one way. Playing with Elvin Jones is quite another. Also, Billy Hart does little rhythmic things with his sock cymbal that are different from both Ben and Elvin. Ben and I have been working together for a long time now, and it’s almost intuitive between us. Elvin’s playing is, in a sense, freer and looser than Ben’s playing, so there might not be a chance to do those rhythmic things together in the same way that Ben and I do them. I’ve only played once or twice with Elvin, so I’d have to listen to him and find out where he places his figures rhythmically—the things he does that he’s always going to do. There is something in his playing somewhere that is constant. If we worked long enough together, I would find that thing and key in on it.
Watching a partner can be important in developing such rapport. A musician recalls a concert in which a young drummer “didn’t take his eyes off the piano player the whole night,” successfully anticipating the pianist’s accentuation patterns from the motion of his arms.
As Fred Hersch and Keith Copeland delineate, the constant stylistic features of a bass player can also shape the expectations of other band members and suggest different limitations for improvised interplay. “Sam Jones is a great bassist,” Hersch asserts, “but he’s fairly conservative. On waltzes, he’ll play just one note at the beginning of each bar; on a ballad, he’ll end up double timing it usually. If he’s playing a walking bass line behind you, the only thing he might do in reaction to what you’ve played is to introduce a substitute chord change, taking a slightly different harmonic route through the piece.” In contrast, other bass players “will stop walking for a while and strum their basses, or play a constant pedal point or play a countermelody, or change the rhythm.”
Similarly, Copeland describes Mike Richmond as
a bass player who can play passages in which he’s almost not keeping time, but he’s playing around the time. Because I know the way Mike plays and can feel what he’s playing, I can follow him during those passages. I can play around the time and playoff of his improvisation, and when we return to the form of the piece, we come out in the same place at the same time. He’s just one of those cats who’s got a beautiful gift for melodic playing, as well as the ability to play with the time rhythmically. When he breaks up the time in different ways, it doesn’t make me feel the least bit uncomfortable.
Cumulative experience and longtime association with other artists enhance the ease of negotiating their interplay and musical conversation. After thirty years of performing with bassist Richard Davis, pianist Roland Hanna is familiar enough with the way Davis thinks
to have an idea of what he might play from one note to the next. If he plays a C at a certain strength, then I know he may be looking for an A or an E or whatever direction he may go in. And I know he may be making a certain kind of a passage. I’ve heard him enough to know how he makes his lines. So I may not know exactly what note he’s going to play, but I know in general the kind of statement he would make, or how he would use his words, you know, the order he would put his words in.... We train ourselves over a period of years to be able to hear rhythms and anticipate combinations of sounds before they actually happen.13
Group members can eventually develop musical signs that reveal one another’s intentions. As implied earlier, the soloist’s extensive use of rests invites greater activity on the part of the rhythm section. “Pharoah might play something and want the group to react to it,” says Calvin Hill. “Like he’ll play a little bit and rest, giving the group some time. Then he’ll play a little bit more and rest again, giving the group some more time.” Although soloists often deliberately leave space to encourage others, at times they may simply tire and require a short rest, or they may have a temporary lapse of imagination after completing an idea. “The give-and-take is ideal,” Lee Konitz asserts, “so that if you go down for a second, all you have to do is to keep quiet and let someone else play for a second. In that way, the music continues to grow.” Akira Tana agrees: “If a horn player is playing a solo, and in the middle of it he lays out for a moment, the drummer should comp for him and chord for him, trying to inspire him and give him things that will boost him.”
Additionally, the repetition of a phrase can suggest a motive for development on the part of other artists or the whole group. “If a piano player hints at a certain rhythmic figure behind the soloist throughout the chorus or during the first half of the tune, the drummer can keep time and comp simultaneously, either playing the same rhythmic figure as the pianist, or playing off of it, or playing against it;” Tana explains. “You can do the same thing with the soloist too, answering his phrases, playing along with the things he states rhythmically, or playing variations on those things.” As an alternative, rhythm section players can invite intensification of the music by repeating a big band riff and leaving space for their counterparts to fill in with call and response exchanges.14
Beyond such overt musical suggestions are myriad subtler ones. An example would be the challenge Don Pate acknowledges when Roy Haynes “signals something to me just through a gesture in his playing.” In Miles Davis’s quintet with Tony Williams, a dramatic leap to the trumpet’s high register on a downbeat was often a signal for the group to switch from a floating rhythmic feeling or a two-beat feeling to a precise four-beat, swing feeling. Similarly, Fred Hersch has a clear sense of a group’s expectations when he plays
a loud rhythmic figure, or a complex cross-rhythm, or certain chords. It’s a musical signal that means for the drummer to change what he’s doing, to do something that provides some contrast to what has come before. Let’s get out of our present format and take the music somewhere else.
When I’m playing with Art Farmer, it’s the same kind of thing. Art is very spontaneous. He listens to what you play behind him, and you really play with him. When he plays something that I know I can feel from him, that mea
ns for me to do something. For example, when he’ll go up to a high note and shake it, that means “Okay. Come on up there with me.” Or, when he will choose a series of very remote pitches in a line, that means, “Layout.” It doesn’t mean, “Try to find me:” It means, “I’m trying to lose you, so just let me play without you for a while.”
Kenny Barron also articulates with understanding his sense of collaboration with other musicians as pivotal.
Knowing when to play inside and when to play outside in Freddie Hubbard’s band was really just based on listening to the solos more than anything else. You followed the soloist wherever he wanted to take the music, and many times he wanted to take it out. This was primarily signaled by the soloist’s choice of notes and by his line. You could hear it if he started playing tonally and then suddenly he was doing something else with his line. That was a signal for you to follow suit with your accompaniment.
The vehemence with which a player makes musical suggestions has bearing on the mutuality of the musical exchange. Pianists can make a subtle harmonic offering to soloists by presenting a non-chord tone or color tone in the inner voice of a passing chord. To present the same color tone in the upper voice of a sustained chord is a more pronounced offering, one that can produce dissonance if others ignore it. The particular musical effects that performers strive to produce typically guide such decisions. Similarly, in negotiating over chord substitutions, soloists can follow a pianist’s firm lead, but they may decide to continue inventing melodies based on their own versions of the progression, engaging in bitonal invention and producing inventive schemes of harmonic counterpoint by superimposing one pathway upon another.
Amid the group’s enveloping mix of patterns—at times dancelike, at times lyrical, at times speechlike—the powerful color of the revealed emotions also demands reaction. Improvisers immediately catch and follow up the feelings of despair or joy or whatever of the endlessly varied shades of meaning conveyed by the evocative timbres of the patterns’ mixture. “The amazing thing about playing with Art [Blakey],” says Terence Blanchard, “is that he has a way of tuning into inspiration that can draw an emotion out of you that you may have never experienced before.”15 Jazz veterans have expressed to Bobby Watson their wish that they had performed with Blakey—if only once, to have felt his powerful press roll behind them.16
Curtis Fuller comments from the inside as music flows to him from another artist, “When you hear Paul Chambers play some frisky little thing behind your solo, it makes you feel frisky like that and it influences what you play.” Kenny Washington makes a similar point: “Sam Jones’s feeling is simply unbelievable. It’s a down home type of feeling. That’s why we call him Homes. Sam plays just like he is—a beautiful, easygoing cat who puts on no airs. If you listen to some of the early recordings he made with Cannonball, there is such a great, great feeling just from the way he plays time. It’s like when you’re walking down the street and you feel happy and you don’t even know why.”
Ronald Shannon Jackson compares his experiences with different soloists:
Playing with Kenny Dorham was more like the essence of a dream-type thing. It was a more esoteric, ethereal feeling, and I always felt like I was floating after each set. He was very warm and lyrical. It was like playing with a jazz vocalist. Because of the way he played and the way his tone was, you had to listen a lot to him when you played. Or, more to the point, in order to enhance anything, you had to be right where he was, which would allow him to open the whole thing up, to get the flow going. You couldn’t be overbearing in volume. You had to be very, very supportive. He was the type of person who would allow you to lay the foundation first and then would say, “I’ll play on top of that:” rather than the type of person who says, “I’ll lay the foundation, and you play around this.”
Playing with Kenny was more like backing a Nancy Wilson-type jazz singer, whereas playing with Stanley Turrentine was like backing an Aretha Franklin-type gospel singer. With Stanley, I could use greater volume. It was like a mixture of blues and funk and bebop, and by the end of each night we would have more of a beat going. Because McCoy Tyner was working in the group, there was more urgency in the music, which meant more drum playing and greater freedom for me as a player. Because the tempos were faster, it was a greater workout musically, and I always felt rejuvenated at the end of the gig.
Finally, the larger framework of a group’s common tradition may provide allusions that prompt new ideas and influence the performance’s course. When saxophonist Arthur Blythe plays “little phrases” that bring to mind another song for John Hicks, “I might use it:” Hicks says, to playoff the second song within the framework of the first. Lonnie Hillyer is also the kind of player who likes to quote different compositions in his solos. “A friend of mine says he always hears me quote from ‘How Are Things in Glocca Morra?’ Now, if I’m playing with a sensitive piano player, he might answer me with something related to “Glocca Morra’ in a rhythmic, melodic, or harmonic sense.”
As compelling as allusions to popular tunes are improvised patterns reminiscent of the characteristic interplay of renowned artists within historic bands. Tommy Turrentine says, for example, that if, while formulating his solo, he hears the drummer play a figure “ka plum:” reminding him of “something Max Roach played behind Fats Navarro:” he “would think about the way Fat Girl played” and incorporate that “feeling” within his own performance. If the figure reminded Turrentine of “what Miles played with Max,” however, then he might be inspired to perform a phrase by Davis.
Equally important are shared interpretations of the referential meanings of musical patterns. The “exhortative potential” of some phrases, “urging, beseeching, and daring,” can inspire “soloists to create ever more exciting improvisations and riffs.”17 The potential of other phrases for humor can be exploited by the playful juxtaposition of materials with different historical and cultural associations.18
Shaping the Larger Performance
In their responses to other players, musicians typically seek to preserve a general continuity of mood. Beginning a solo, John Hicks listens to the “spirit coming from the whole group” to determine “a direction” for expansion that “contributes to the overall feeling.” Toward such ends, soloists can draw inspiration from the general approaches or specific ideas of their immediate predecessors. At times, they select a common vocabulary pattern or tune quotation introduced in the solo prior to its final idea (exx. 13.16a-b). As often, they select the solo’s final idea. Showing special consideration in this regard, Count Basie was known for “prepar[ing] an entrance for the next man” at the close of his own solos.19 “If Sonny Stitt plays before me,” Harold Ousley says, “I’ll listen to the phrases that he plays, and they will give me ideas for related things that I can play. I might take the last phrase that he played and come in on it. Sometimes, musicians do this as a connecting point to their own solos.” Soloists may simply treat the “connecting” figure as a fleeting transition, or they may treat it as a motive, transforming it according to the procedures by which they develop their own ideas (exx. 13.17a-f).20
When soloists trade eights or fours and other short improvised phrases, they sometimes respond to the most general features of each other’s phrases, for example, extending their contours gracefully to create such continuity between the parts that the resultant line sounds as if conceived by one mind. Other times, they adopt comparable practices to those described above, imitating or transforming, to varying degrees, the precise features of the previous player’s ideas (exx. 13.18a-b). As often, they combine such operations with developing their own ideas (ex. 13.18c). Tommy Flanagan reflects on the piano duo albums he has made with Hank Jones and Kenny Barron:
You don’t know what the other player is going to play, but on listening to the playback, almost every time, you hear that you related your part very quickly to what the other player played just before you. It’s like a message that you relay back and forth. It happens at an
y tempo, whether it’s very fast or whether you’re playing a ballad. Or, if we’re switching off every eight bars, there will be something in my eight bars that related to the last part of the soloist before me.... You want to achieve that kind of communication when you play. When you do, your playing seems to be making sense. It’s like a conversation.
Because of the influence that improvisers often exert on those who follow, some band leaders deliberately vary the order of soloists from piece to piece. Featuring different players in the first solo position varies the potential influence each soloist has on the initial direction of the piece’s interpretation and, over the course of a set, may vary the overall feeling or concept from piece to piece, as well. A leader may have assertive, self-sufficient soloists perform ahead of those who usually require an inspired model to reach their own potential. Sometimes, musicians unfamiliar with the piece may themselves decide to avoid the first solo to gamer ideas for their own approach by studying the ideas of soloists who precede them (HO).
Of course, improvisers can take the opposite musical tack when their cumulative sense of the performance suggests that a strong contrast would enhance its dramatic qualities. “If the music’s been really hectic rhythmically, very rhythmic and loud;” Calvin Hill says, “I might just be silent for the first four or eight bars” of the solo, “not play anything; or, maybe, play one note every three or four bars.” Issues of professional image can also influence such decisions.21 A musician once advised me that if the previous soloist had “really covered a particular thing well, like playing very high and very technically,” the best strategy for avoiding an unfavorable comparison was to adopt a “different approach altogether.” Toward such ends, the soloist might draw stimulus from such varied sources as musical ideas unrelated to the performance that “had been going on in my head earlier that day ... [or even] a sound out in the street” (BW).
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