Thinking in Jazz

by Berliner, Paul F.

  2. Bobby Tucker in Shapiro and Hentoff, 1966, 200.

  3. As one scholar suggests aptly, “The rhythmic excitement of [some] phrases depends on the tension created between the articulation of the line and the fairly square metre of the changes.” Cases in point are Lester Young’s “metric suggestion of 3/4” for two measures within the framework of a 4/4 meter, and Lennie Tristano’s creating “rhythmic interest ... by temporarily superimposing a new metre on the square [4/4] meter of the changes ... a very deliberate use ... of a repeated 1118 pattern followed by 3/8 patterns.” Newsom 1973, 402, 404–5.

  4. Fraser 1983, 176.

  5. Ibid., 192.

  6. Like Konitz, Sudnow (1978, 90) recognizes the importance in mature playing of intentionality in the ongoing selection of melodic goals, “each and every next sounding place expressly aimed for and arrived at.” From John Lewis’s perspective as well, “you have to be a musician first and an instrumentalist second. It’s more important to be a master of the music than a master of an instrument, which can take you over.” Balliett 1971, 166–67.

  7. Hancock’s account is in Pareles 1983.

  8. For the artist, as for the analyst, the assessment of these matters is never free from interpretation and varies with the aesthetic values and training of the observer. As early as 1938, Sargent (1976, 168, 174) describes such unique African American musical practices as the cultivation of blue notes and the harmonic ambiguity that surrounds their application. The blue (flatted) third or seventh “often appeared simultaneously with a chord that is completely out of harmony with it according to the European notion of harmonization,” a chord containing a natural third or seventh, for example. In Bessie Smith’s performances, “the sureness and consistency of her deviations from European usage carry with them their own artistic justification. And the effect is undeniably satisfactory.” In a similar light, Kubik (1959, 449–50) explains the discrepancies between early New Orleans soloists’ pitch choices and the underlying harmony in terms of practices of “bitonality,” but Schuller (1968, 83) refers to some such discrepancies as “flaws.” At the heart of such differing interpretations are methodological problems associated with applying to jazz “a traditional analysis of functionality in Western art music,” and the challenges presented by issues as basic as inferring the improviser’s actual harmonic model and defining dissonance and consonance. Kernfeld 1983, 12–17.

  9. Davis 1990, 103.

  10. Sudnow 1978, 146.

  11. I overheard the advice on scat singing backstage at a concert of Betty Carter’s quartet at Pick-Staiger Auditorium, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, December 5, 1978.

  12. The remark concerning “inappropriate” harmonic tension is from my discussion with pianist Billy Taylor on the occasion of a concert he gave at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, July 8, 1983.

  13. A jazz trumpeter in New York described reading about this interaction between Wynton Marsalis and Art Blakey in an article about Marsalis which had appeared in a jazz magazine. Personal conversation, winter 1986.

  14. “Lester sings with his horn; you listen to him and can almost hear the words.” Holiday 1969, 59. Other artists elaborate on Young’s special ability in Daniels 1985, 317–18. Gene Ramey describes Parker’s practices in Reisner 1979, 186–87. Similarly, Porter (1985a, 613–17) discusses Coltrane’s solo during “Psalm” on his A Love Supreme album, as a “wordless recitation of [Coltrane’s composed] poem, one note to each syllable. Each section of several lines has an arched shape ... [which Porter interprets] as [grow]ing out of formulaic procedures used by preachers in black churches.” The rhythmic and melodic implications of language for jazz artists, as well as the latitude for personal interpretation, are demonstrated by Louis Armstrong’s, Roy Eldridge’s, and Dizzy Gillespie’s respective performances of a poetic line suggested to them for a musical experiment by Feather 1960, 68–69.

  15. Tiny Parham comments on Joe Louis’s soulfulness in Shapiro and Hentoff 1966, 210.

  16. Pee Wee Russell comments on committing oneself to each solo as if it were one’s last appear in Balliett 1977, 89.

  17. Davis’s youthful distinction between white and black swing bands is from Davis, video 1986.

  18. Golson on Brown is from Crawford 1961, 23.

  19. For a discussion of the importance of the music’s “idiomatic rhythmic emphasis that generates a dance-step response,” see Murray 1976, 144.

  20. Ellington in Shapiro and Hentoff 1966, 238.

  21. Handy in ibid., 252.

  22. Ellington in ibid., 238.

  23. Included under the rubric of “verbal signifyin(g)” is “marking, loud-talking, testifying, calling out (of one’s name), sounding, rapping, playing the dozens and so on.” Gates 1988, 52. Gates interprets intertextuality in jazz as a form of signifyin(g). Ibid., 63–64. Building on Gates’s interpretation, Floyd (1991, 271, 277) proposes that the jazz artists’ “calls, cries, hollers, riffs, licks, overlapping antiphony, and the various rhythmic, melodic and other musical practices” dating from the early ring shout serve “as Signifyin(g) musical figures ... used to comment (Signify) on other figures, on the performances themselves, on other performances of the same pieces, and on other and completely different works of music.” Toward such ends, improvisers transform borrowed material by “using it rhetorically or figuratively—through troping, in other words.... Signifyin(g) is also a way of demonstrating respect for, goading, or poking fun at a musical style, process, or practice through parody, pastiche, implication, indirection, humor, tone or word-play, the illusions [sic] of speech or narration, and other troping mechanisms.... Such practices are criticism—perceptive and evaluative acts and expressions of approval and disapproval, validation and invalidation through the respectful, ironic, satirizing imitation, manipulation, extension, and elaboration of previously created and presented tropes and new ideas.”

  24. The order of soloists is not included on the album, but I believe that the trumpeter is Clark Terry. The incident is part of a sequence of trading fours at a jam session with Dinah Washington, Clifford Brown, and Maynard Ferguson on the piece “I’ve Got You under My Skin.” Washington, rec. 1954.

  25. The Mingus-Dolphy exchange is on Mingus, rec. 1960.

  26. Charlie Parker especially favored such practices in live performances, where they served the function of facilitating communication with the audience, providing them with familiar material amid his improvisations. At times, they provided the basis for creating humor. Parker quoted “familiar melodies out of context as a musical joke” in live recorded performances where they can be heard to raise laughter from the audience. Contributing to the humorous linear juxtaposition of materials were “harmonic clash[es]” that Parker sometimes created in a quotation’s application or its deliberate melodic or rhythmic “disfiguration.” Owens 1974, 1:29, 99.

  27. Pee Wee Russell similarly states that “when I play the blues, mood, frame of mind, enters into it. One day your choice of notes would be melancholy, a blue trend, a drift of blues notes. The next day your choice of notes would be more cheerful.” Balliett 1977, 90. Percy Heath quoted in Balliett 1971, 182–83.

  28. Keith Jarrett made the point about overplaying in a lecture, School of Music, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, October 19, 1987.

  29. Trumpeter and band leader Johnny Cappolla made the remark during a private improvisation lesson in San Francisco, spring 1968.

  30. I heard various versions of this story from different musicians in New York.

  31. Gil Evans praises Davis in Davis, video 1986.

  32. Thad Jones’s comment on Eldridge described to me in a personal conversation with a musician who was an associate of Thad Jones, New York City, winter 1982.

  33. Eldridge on Armstrong is quoted in Eldridge’s obituary, Wilson 1989.

  34. Gillespie is quoted in Fraser 1983, 143.

  35. Description and illustration of similar features of “large-scale melodic continuity” in Coltrane’s
solo on “So What,” are in Kernfeld 1983, 50–54. With respect to Coltrane’s performance on the suite’~ Love Supreme,” see Porter 1985a.

  36. Such advice typifies the kind of wisdom attributed to Miles Davis that, during my research, I frequently heard quoted by other artists for one another’s benefit.

  37. Sudnow (1978, 57) also describes such turning points in his development. “From a virtual hodgepodge of ‘phonemes’ and approximate ‘paralinguistics,’ there was a ‘sentential structure’ slowly taking shape ... themes starting to achieve cogent management.”

  38. As is the case for many others, Jim Hall likes his “solos to have a beginning a middle and an end. I like them to have a quality that Sonny Rollins has—of turning and turning a tune until eventually you show all of its possible faces.” Balliett 1977, 223.

  39. Pee Wee Russell also describes his own objective as a soloist to “write a little tune of your own.” Balliett 1977, 90. Here artists refer to the cogency and coherence of their creations rather than a single model of a “tune.” As mentioned earlier, tunes within the jazz repertory run the full gamut from those comprising short repetitive phrases to those comprising extended intricate lines with little repetition. In fact, as Gushee (1981, 160) suggests, soloists typically avoid extensive or too literal repetition of four and eight-bar phrases in their improvisations which may be “immediately labelled as ‘composition,’ “ that is, the kind of repetition found in many popular tunes and considered suitable as a vehicle—encapsulating the larger performance—but requiring contrasting, expansive ideas during solo invention to sustain interest throughout a performance.

  40. Lester Young’s witty remark is in Porter 1985b, 58.

  41. Lester Young anecdote is in Balliett 1971, 174. Heath’s recollection of Gillespie is in Watrous 1992. Making comparable distinctions for early jazz players, Pops Foster (1971, 77) describes some early New Orleans trumpeters who “really played beautiful tones, but they wouldn’t make their breaks off the melody like the hot trumpet players would. If they had to playa break, it had to be written for them.”

  42. Analysts, too, have remarked on the incredible pressures of composing at the tempos negotiated by jazz improvisers since the bebop period. For example, at such tempos, ideas are commonly conceived and executed at a rate of “six-and-one-half eighth notes (or thirteen sixteenth notes)” a second and at extremes, over a third faster, at a tempo of one quarter-note = 310 or even 355. Owens 1974, 1:35, 112; Kernfeld 1983, 60.

  43. Robert Witmer mentioned the ascription “two-chorus player” to me in a personal conversation, fall 1985.

  44. The effects of negotiating “rapidly changing harmonies” are speculated on in Kernfeld 1983, 59.

  45. At one extreme, a scholar describes a Coltrane solo as “dominated” by a short vocabulary pattern of four or five pitches whose “formulaic” use recurs “thirty-six” times and appears “only three times in unique surroundings.” In contrast, other Coltrane improvisations create “a flexible relationship between the recurring melodies and the beat; they appear ahead of or behind a pulse, and Coltrane compresses them into untranscribable groups.” Contributing to his ability to disguise “excessively repetitive appearances of formulas” was Coltrane’s eventual cultivation of “timbral contrast ... [as] an established stylistic device” and his “rhythmic fluidity,” the result of radical advances in saxophone technique that enabled him to perform eighth-note formulas at twice their initial speed. Kernfeld 1983, 18, 45, 60.

  46. The two takes of “Bee Vamp” appear on Dolphy, rec. 1961a, vol. 1, and 1961b, respectively. My interpretation is that the shorter of the two takes—released as an out-take years after the release of the first—was the initial recorded performance of the piece.

  47. Ken McIntyre mentioned “musical gems” to me during a private improvisation lesson, Wesleyan University, CT, fall 1969.

  48. Cecil Taylor comparing Joe Gordon to Idres Sulieman in Spellman 1966, 59.

  49. Descriptions of changes in tone, articulation, ornamentation practices, expressive devices, harmonic approach, dynamics, emphasis on different formulas and intervals, treatment of rhythm, and the like are in Porter 1985b, 55, 65–68, 75, 78, 82, 86–88.

  50. Insightful portraits of Davis at various stages in his career and the changing musical values that defined each are provided by Kerschbaumer (1978), Carr (1984), and Davis (1990).

  51. For a discussion of Coltrane’s stylistic development between 1960 and 1967, see Porter 1983, and for a massive compilation of transcribed Coltrane solos documenting his work, see White 1973–78.

  52. Kirk performs the reed instruments simultaneously on Kirk, video 1988.

  53. The “Prof” Buster Smith anecdote is in Parker, video 1987.

  54. In their transcriptions and analyses of solos, Feather (1960, 62–72) and Wang (1973, 545) detail the core conventions generally distinguishing swing and bebop players. In part, as Wang points out, “swing phrases are more uniform in length, more symmetrical in shape, and more congruent with the harmonic phrase than those of bebop; ... bebop, on the other hand, is more complex, full of greater contrasts, has more rhythmic subtleties, and makes greater and more expressive use of dissonance.”

  55. Mary Lou Williams quoted in Shapiro and Hentoff 1966, 294–95.

  56. In part, Konitz refers to the group’s 1949 improvisations on “Intuition” and “Digression” appearing on Tristano, rec. 1949.

  57. Gillespie bandstand evaluation of Hinton is recounted in Shapiro and Hentoff 1966, 344–45.

  58. Jimmy Knepper, when asked by Leonard Feather (for his Encyclopedia of Jazz entry) which were his best recorded solos, replied simply “No Good Solos.” Jeske 1981, 15.

  59. Haynes on Navarro is in Crouch 1977. Benny Golson praises Clifford Brown, whose performance style was in many ways an extension of Navarro’s, in almost precisely the same terms point for point in Crawford 1961, 23.

  11. Arranging Pieces

  1. McPartland in Shapiro and Hentoff 1966, 102–21, 144.

  2. Written method books were available to artists in the mid-thirties, including such early texts as Norbert Bleihoof’s Modem Arranging and Orchestration and a Down Beat column devoted to the subject. Carter 1986, 11.

  3. Collier 1988, 63.

  4. An Armstrong-Hines duet on “Weather Bird,” Armstrong rec. 1928a; Eldridge-Bolling duets on “Fireworks” and “Wildman Blues” are heard on Eldridge, rec. 1951.

  5. Descriptions of various precursors to unaccompanied solo improvisation by horn players, as well as such well-known performances as Hawkins’s solo on “Picasso,” are in Guralnick 1987, 24–27; and Rollins’s solo on “Body and Soul,” Rollins, rec. 1958; Rollins actually recorded his first unaccompanied solo performance on “It Could Happen to You,” Rollins, rec. 1957.

  6. Distinctions for arrangements are in Schuller 1988, 32–33.

  7. The references to etiquette are from Becker n.d.

  8. For a discussion of practices of “verbal framing in jazz,” see also Beeson 1990, 9–10.

  9. The string bass doubling reference is from Shipton 1988, 301–2.

  10. Morton quotation is in Lomax 1950, 63. In the use of riffs, contemporary players sometimes plan “send-off choruses” in which a repeated riff introduced at the end of each solo carries over into the first chorus of the next soloist, who, in turn, delays entering the performance for a few measures or overlaps with the horns to create excitement. Ingrid Monson, personal conversation, Spring 1992.

  11. A brief discussion of such arrangements is in Schuller 1988, 35, 38. For the most part, my study confines the discussion of arrangements to small group practices. An elaborate analysis of the extended works by large jazz ensembles and orchestras such as Duke Ellington’s is provided by Tucker 1991 and Schuller 1989.

  12. “The Prophet” is on Dolphy, rec. 1961a, vol. 1.

  13. Reference to Dodds is in T. Dennis Brown 1988, 312. See also Dodds, rec. 1946.

  14. Wells quoted in Balliett 1977,
143.

  15. Drummer Dannie Richmond reports that Charles Mingus also requested specific kinds of piano accompaniment, including, for example, particular chord voicings, reinforcing the melody of the piece with the right hand, or playing a counterpoint to the melody. Priestly 1983, 77–78.

  16. Morton quoted in Lomax 1950, 63.

  17. Although a common model for early jazz groups was for individual players to be featured during a break, Armstrong remembers his duet breaks with Joe Oliver as an exciting innovation, just as Edgar Hayes describes his band’s unique breaks featuring three trumpets, with Dizzy Gillespie as section leader. At the same time, Lawrence Gushee observes that early dance bands in New York City (preceding the Oliver and Armstrong recordings) commonly featured duet breaks—some with trumpets playing parallel thirds or sixths, as part of their written arrangements. Armstrong in Shapiro and Hentoff 1966, 104; Hayes in Gillespie 1979, 93; Gushee, personal conversation, winter 1992.

  18. Four renditions of “Like Someone in Love” can be heard on Baker, rec. 1956; Blakey, rec. 1960; Coltrane, rec. 1958; Dolphy, rec. 1961a, vol. 2.

  19. Pops Foster describes Jelly Roll Morton dictating to a transcriber the details of arrangements for recording dates. Band leaders also sometimes hired individuals with extraordinary abilities for music apprehension and recall to transcribe another band’s material so they could perform it. One such individual “could copy down any arrangement he heard once.” James P. Johnson’s skill was also spectacular. Foster says that in studio sessions devoted to composing and arranging compositions with Fats Waller, Johnson could transcribe a chorus of Fats Waller’s performance as “fast as Fats would play it.” Foster 1971, 146, 142, 150. Similarly, Lil Armstrong could take instant dictation from Louis Armstrong, writing down the tunes he composed with the trumpet “as fast as Louis played.” Preston Jackson in Shapiro and Hentoff 1966, 102. Glimpses of rehearsals in Jacquet, video 1993, and Monk, video 1990, provide insight into collaborative aspects of creating and transmitting arrangements.