Jazz for aficionados

"I Knew the Real Charlie Parker" - Sonny Rollins (youtube.com)

Fantastic and important commentary by Sonny!  Very important for context in the understanding of this music.  Thanks, acman3!  
 

I’m a little late with commenting on Alex’s great post on the origin (?) of the great tune “Nature Boy”. Great story about one of my favorite songs. Thanks, Alex.

The story of how Nat Cole came to have the song is fascinating. Ahbez was clearly a very interesting character and his lifestyle was in keeping with a pre-hippie movement in California (of course) in the 1940’s whose members were referred to as “The Nature Boys”. The reason for the question mark above is that there is a bit of controversy surrounding the origin of the song. Ahbez was actually sued by Yiddish songwriter Herman Yablokoff for allegedly plagiarizing the melody of one of his songs. They would eventually settle the matter out of court. I thought it might be interesting to listen to both songs and compare. Personally, I am of two minds about it. Does Yablokoff have a valid claim? As music lovers we tend to be romantics and sometimes believe in notions such as the idea that a melody should not be “owned”, or that if a similar melody is composed and it bears similarity to another copywrited melody if there was no deliberate attempt to copy that the original should not protected. I’m not sure. Whether intentional or not should not a composer’s “product” be protected just as any other patented product is? What do you think in this case?

This is my favorite version by Nat Cole (Check out the guitar of Oscar Moore!):

https://youtu.be/Iq0XJCJ1Srw?si=Md7MEdQLk7d0Fby

This is Yablokoff’s song “Schvayg Mein Harts”. Skip past the long “introduction” and to the 2:00 mark. Interesting:

https://youtu.be/uT7GcjBnWaw?si=jppRbdIvBhJ-VpYI

On a more personal note:

I often ride the NYC subways. It is not uncommon to hear performers, music and otherwise, perform on the subways to earn some money. On one of the subway lines that I used to ride I would often hear the same VERY colorful elderly gentleman play alto saxophone. He always played the same song….”Nature Boy”. He sounded pretty good, but he would always play the same “wrong” note in the melody. One of the things that gives that great melody such a distinctive and almost exotic sound is what happens when the lyric goes “They say he wandered very far,…..”. The melodic movement to “far” is a downward half step. Like going from a white key to a black key on a piano. That gentleman would instead go down a whole step which gives it an almost bluesy sound. After hearing him do this on at least five or six occasions I had to ask him. As I handed him a few dollars I said to him: “It sounds really good, man, but you know that spot in the tune where it goes down a……” He interrupted me and seeming a little annoyed said in a gravelly voice “I know, I know man, but I make more money that way!” Cracked me up.

@frogman 

As I handed him a few dollars I said to him: “It sounds really good, man, but you know that spot in the tune where it goes down a……” He interrupted me and seeming a little annoyed said in a gravelly voice “I know, I know man, but I make more money that way!” Cracked me up.

So, in the context of the Sonny Rollins video, this guy knew how to inject entertainment into art at just the right place in the tune...

@acman3 

Thanks for posting the Sonny Rollins links. Both were good and I subscribed to both of their channels.