Jazz for aficionados
For the sake of contrast: Sonny Rollins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLFlJIqiMLc Pharoah Sanders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuaLidIjAw0 Phil Woods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE9-jK_kSOo Booker Ervin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkjNOS0igXY
|
Contrasts indeed! Well, let’s contrast 😊 First, one should look at the song’s lyrics. For me: melancholy, tenderness, feeling of the blues (obviously, “You don’t know what love is/Until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues”). Should be played as if spoken. Is the player telling the story of the song? Sonny: Love Sonny. Love that sultry, velvety tone and it mostly works for me, but gets a bit notee (notey?). Pharoah: Great! Incredibly expressive owing a lot to Trane’s approach to that melody and Trane’s tone. He doesn’t improvise and sticks to playing the melody. Said it all with just the melody. Love that. Phil: I normally love Phil Woods, but this is not my cup of tea. Way too many notes (notey?) and no tenderness at all. Yuck! In fairness, the tune is one of those tunes with a chord progression that is really satisfying for players to improvise over. Sometimes leads to over playing. Booker: I like it, but not nearly as much as Sonny’s version while having similar tone concepts. My favorite and the classic. Beginning to end, like someone speaking about a lost lover. Pretty amazing. Trane really was a genius: https://youtu.be/YHAKe26KqG4?si=R3DSVNrAprv_G6h0 You don’t know what love is You don’t know how lips hurt Do you know how a lost heart fears You don’t know how hearts burn You don’t know how hearts burn
|
For me, Pharoah’s version is the most immediately appealing but is it too rapturously beautiful? Does he skate around the anguish ? Is Coltrane more courageous ? More obsessively driven to wring out every nuance? As always, I find Rollins rather inscrutable. That’s not the right word, exactly. I always get the sense his intellect is more involved than his emotions but of course, I can’t know this for a fact. I don’t know how else to describe what sounds to me like detachment/aloofness. Maybe it’s me who lacks the sensitivity to pick up on what he’s expressing. |
Interesting. Detached or aloof are probably the last two characteristics I would think of. I find his playing to be very direct and committed. The beauty of music in that it can cause different reactions. (Btw, one of the few players who can improvise without piano or guitar and the harmony of the tune remains always clear). |
