Satch's Late Night (The Jazz Thread)

[eumaas]

I'm reevaluating Kind of Blue. I still think it's monochromatic (really only good for rainy Sundays), but there are some great solos on that album, particularly by Miles. Cannonball is a bit flashy, but Coltrane actually holds back the sort of sheets of sound stuff he was doing during this period and delivers some nice, melodic lines. Bill Evans plays lovely piano, but christ, I still kinda prefer Wynton Kelly's song. Still, this is a pretty good intro to jazz, but it needs to be paired with something upbeat.

[Kory]

Eummy, that guide was perfect. Full marks! Also:

In a way it's the post-punk of jazz--

This explains a lot about why I like it. Good call.

[Kory]

Listening to Shorter's "Etcetera" here at work. Liking it more than I did on first listen. It's pretty good, just not as good as the few albums before it. Especially "Juju" :drool:

[Wolter]

Eummy, that guide was perfect. Full marks! Also:

In a way it's the post-punk of jazz--

This explains a lot about why I like it. Good call.

And it intrigues this not-normally-a-jazz-fan person.

[Kory]

Eummy, that guide was perfect. Full marks! Also:

In a way it's the post-punk of jazz--

This explains a lot about why I like it. Good call.

And it intrigues this not-normally-a-jazz-fan person.

It is time.

[eumaas]

I'm dividing this post into two parts.

I won't be posting the second part until Matey actually says he's read the first part.

I'm recommending one to two albums each from each category as best intro:

Freebop
Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come

Impressionism
Eric Dolphy - Out to Lunch

Abstractionism
John Butcher - Fixations (14)
John Zorn - The Classic Guide to Strategy

[eumaas]

Well, I'm going to go ahead and work on Part Two since Matey's busy with exams anyway. Oh, and here's the single best intro to Ornette Coleman:
[youtube][/youtube]

Master melodist.

[Flex]

An observation: The alternate take of "Solitude" on Money Jungle is one of the most beautiful fucking things ever.

[matedog]

I'm dividing this post into two parts.

I won't be posting the second part until Matey actually says he's read the first part.

I'm recommending one to two albums each from each category as best intro:

Freebop
Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come

Impressionism
Eric Dolphy - Out to Lunch

Abstractionism
John Butcher - Fixations (14)
John Zorn - The Classic Guide to Strategy

Read.

[eumaas]

This is part two of my survey of avant-garde jazz subgenres. Here I cover just expressionism. I'm doing my guide to postmodernism and restructuralism in a third post.

Expressionism
This is the high energy, skronky, often spiritually-themed free blowing that most people associate with free jazz and the avant-garde. The solos of Albert Ayler epitomize this style: shrieks, squeals, slurred pitch contours in place of melodies, honks, and growls. It's where the soloist basically blows his (and sometimes her) guts out through the horn. Of course, you can play expressionism on any instrument, but it's associated especially with the tenor saxophone as that was the primary instrument of Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, and John Coltrane (who helped inspire the genre but only started playing it in 1965).

What differentiates it from abstractionism is that the noises generated are not treated as discrete units and working analytically. It's not about breaking things down and manipulating them, but about expressing an ecstatic state in the player and producing one in the listener.

In this regard it has affinities to the kinds of wild trance blowing that Sufi musicians practice--indeed, Ornette Coleman in one of his woollier phases played with the Master Musicians of Jajouka, and Pharoah Sanders collaborated with the Gnawa Masters, both of whom reside in Morocco and practice mystical Sufi Islam with roots in pre-Islamic culture. Actually, the Master Musicians of Jajouka still practice a Panic rite where goat-skins are donned; their musical tradition is thousands of years old. Both the Gnawa and Jajouka musicians use their ecstatic trance music for healing as well as prayer, and it's clear that Albert Ayler (who, inspired by Coltrane, more or less originated the genre), John Coltrane, and Pharoah Sanders all saw (and still see, in the case of Sanders) their music as spiritual trance music for healing, peace, unity, etc. Just look at the song and album titles: Spiritual Unity, Meditations, Ascension, Music is the Healing Force of the Universe, Karma, Tauhid (Arabic for unity)...

Of course, not all expressionists were into that bag. Archie Shepp's content was primarily political from the 60s to the mid 70s, and Peter Brotzmann's early work had a political edge as well, though his second entry in the albums list below, despite its title (Brotzmann has great flippant titles: Nipples, Fuck de Boere, My Balls Your Chin, etc.), has a lyrical mood that puts it in the ecstatic trance tradition.

Representative albums:
Albert Ayler - Spiritual Unity
(Foundational document. Must have. Any Ayler, aside from his two R&B albums New Grass and Music is the Healing Force of the Universe, is representative. Also, see Ayler footnote. Most of Ayler's albums are in this vein. I'm really fond of Gary Peacock's bass playing on this album.)
Albert Ayler - Live in Greenwich Village
(I'm putting this one here because it sees some shift in Ayler. He's still pretty much doing the same thing, but the larger ensemble brings out the commonalities with dixieland collective improvisation. Features my favorite Ayler song, Truth Is Marching In.)
John Coltrane - Stellar Regions
(Turbulent beauty. I can't recommend this highly enough. Shows how expressionism can be gorgeous. Much more meditative and laidback than most of his late period records. Alice Coltrane on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Rashied Ali on drums. Also, see my footnote on John Coltrane.)
John Coltrane - Live at the Village Vanguard Again!
(Not to be confused with his 1961 Vanguard albums, this is a recording of his latter day group--the above lineup plus Pharoah Sanders on sax. I chose this one over the Seattle or Japan sets as it's shorter and thus easier to digest.)
John Coltrane - Interstellar Space
Peter Brötzmann/Hamid Drake - The Dried Rat-Dog
Milford Graves/John Zorn - 50th Birthday Celebration
(The three albums above are all reeds/drums duos residing in solid expressionist territory--very much in the ecstatic trance tradition. Try playing these three together with the album Apocalypse Across The Sky by the Master Musicians of Jajouka--fits together perfectly. Zorn doesn't usually do the expressionist thing, but Graves, who played with Ayler, brings it out in him. Contrast these sax/drum duos with Jimmy Lyons/Andrew Cyrille - Something in Return, which is an album in the impressionist vein.)
Pharoah Sanders - Karma
Pharoah Sanders - Jewels of Thought
Pharoah Sanders - Summun, Bukmun, Umyun (Deaf, Dumb, Blind)
(These aren't representative of classic expressionism in that most of Sanders' albums as a leader are really about two things: 1. modalism--simple tonality based around three chords at the most, and 2. groove. That gives them a sort of radio-accessibility, and indeed "the Creator Has a Master Plan" was actually a radio hit. While there is some screechy free blowing on this, a lot of it is basically astral afro-groove. You can see here where expressionism shifts into a new genre, cosmic jazz. If you enjoy these, you might like Alice Coltrane's solo records as well--Ptah the El Daoud, Journey in Satchidananda, etc... all of those are in the same groove-based spiritually-themed modal jazz bag.)
The Peter Brötzmann Octet - The Complete Machine Gun Sessions
(The classic landmark recording of European free jazz, and the roots of European abstractionist improv. Pretty much everyone who participated in this recording and the next album became leaders in the style. Absolutely essential.)
Peter Brötzmann - Nipples
(Also a classic. Well, from what I remember--I unfortunately don't own it, but had it on [LEGAL!] mp3s years ago and listened to it all the time. You can hear the genre start to morph into abstractionism here. More Nipples, from the same session, may also be worth picking up--I haven't heard it.)


FOOTNOTE ON ALBERT AYLER:
I'd also like to recommend his album Love Cry. While it doesn't have as much expressionist blowing as Spiritual Unity or Greenwich or any number of his non-R&B albums, it does have his songs stated in their clearest form together with some strange tonal improvisation. Rhythmically, most of it varies between an older quarter-note form of swing like you'd find in early jazz, and straight rhythms you'd find in classical or west European folk. To my ears it sounds like a strange combination of late Renaissance/early Baroque music and dixieland. There is some freer blowing on the second side (so to speak), but the tracks on the first side are just plain strange--while being conventionally tonal. The electric harpsichord certainly doesn't make it any more normal.


FOOTNOTE ON JOHN COLTRANE:
As I said above, while he didn't come to play this music until 1965, he did inspire it with his pushing of the modal jazz form (that's jazz based around one or two tonal centers rather than a chord progression--so you might base something on the note E rather than a complicated progression of chords) with chromaticism (the use of all twelve notes instead of just notes from the chord, scale, or mode). Basically, he would have a very simple tonal center laid down as a drone while he freely played all twelve notes of the chromatic scale over it. McCoy Tyner, the pianist of his classic quartet, would superimpose chords over this simple center, which gave it the sense of chordal movement without actually creating a chord progression.

Coltrane was involved in the landmark modal jazz recording Kind of Blue, but rather than explore jazz-like ways of using modalism, he was inspired by Hindustani Classical Music (he even named his son Ravi after Ravi Shankar). So he began to push the form into non-jazz directions. His recording of My Favorite Things reinterprets the tune as a jazz raga waltz, and is probably his modalism at its most melodic and radio-accessible (yep, this one was a hit too--hard to imagine avant-garde jazz being a radio hit now, huh?). In that recording he more or less sticks to diatonic (notes in the scale/mode) playing with some chromaticism (notes out of the mode).

To hear where Coltrane inspired expressionism, though, you have to go to his 1961 Village Vanguard recordings. This is where he (along with Eric Dolphy, who played with him on these dates) was accused of making "anti-jazz." Some of this music is scattered across several albums. The best way to get it, though, is to just grab the boxset (The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings). Here you can hear the strong presence of a droning tonal center (contrabassoon and tamboura [incorrectly marked as oud] provide explicit drones for some tracks) with ecstatic chromatic playing over top.

This is wild and free but not wholly skronky--it stands somewhere between Ornette Coleman's melodicism and Albert Ayler's pure screaming. Dolphy's playing still adheres to his impressionistic post-bop more or less, but he does go further out and plays it a little woollier. This also features the classic quartet in various permutations: McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison or Reggie Workman on bass, and Elvin Jones or Roy Haynes on drums. The guest musicians (Garvin Bushelll on contrabassoon & English horn, Ahmed Abdul-Malik on tamboura) add a lot of texture and color to the proceedings as well.

(Another good example, though less wild, of Coltrane's modal period is his Africa/Brass, also recorded in 1961 with Dolphy. The best way to get this is the two disc set The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions. The droning modal center is very obvious on these recordings, plus you can hear how the brass section (arranged by Dolphy and Tyner) imposes chords over it without actually creating vertical harmony.)

[eumaas]

Short list:

Expressionism
Albert Ayler - Spiritual Unity
John Coltrane - Stellar Regions
Pharoah Sanders - Karma
The Peter Brötzmann Octet - The Complete Machine Gun Sessions

[eumaas]

Probably should've put something from Archie Shepp (Four for Trane, Fire Music) on the long list, but while he tore it up live apparently, his playing on record seems like a combination of impressionism in the heads, and expressionism mixed with swing tenors (Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins) in the solos. I see Shepp lumped in with expressionists all the time, but I kinda feel like you could make a good case for him being an early postmodernist because he blends genres. I mean, his albums like Attica Blues and the Cry of My People are definitely postmodernist--there's R&B, gospel, funk, and string music on those.

Anyway, my favorite Archie Shepp record is actually his duet with Mal Waldron (piano): Left Alone Revisited, their tribute to Billie Holiday. Barring a few shrieks and squawks, his playing is pretty much straight-ahead, conservative even. His sound, though, is like a deteriorated Ben Webster. I absolutely love it--probably the most vocal sound on the sax. Ayler's sound was pretty vocal too, but a little unearthly, while Shepp's is pretty much on the money and just as raspy and haggard as his actual voice.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that Expressionism is also called the Energy School and Fire Music (named after the Shepp album).

[Flex]

At the record store today, playing Braxton's For Alto right now. A guy just complained that Braxton "should stop noodling around and play some real music." I'm a little pissed.

[Wolter]

At the record store today, playing Braxton's For Alto right now. A guy just complained that Braxton "should stop noodling around and play some real music." I'm a little pissed.

What a douchecannon. I was just listening to that this morning, btw. I thought it was phenomenal.

[eumaas]

At the record store today, playing Braxton's For Alto right now. A guy just complained that Braxton "should stop noodling around and play some real music." I'm a little pissed.

If I recall correctly, that album is almost wholly composed, not improvised. I'm not sure if you can noodle a composition.