**** When I posted this brother Clarke a year or so ago, everyone started cries of outrage, boo!!!, hiss!!!! etc....... even worst than with the Bey Sisters.
Now he is beloved by all. Go figure. ****
I recently mentioned how much I love Elis Regina for the absence of affectation in her singing. Rachel Ferrell’s singing is the opposite of that. I seem to recall that the issue back then was not Clarke; it was Ferrell herself with her over the top vocal histrionics. From the archives:
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/jazz-for-aficionados?page=39Also in that page from the “archives” can be found commentary about how musical tastes change over time. So true. Back then (the archives) this comment (re Wynton) would have been unthinkable:
**** Greatest Jazz trumpet players? The list would have to be very long for him to be on it. ****
There was a time that ANY criticism directed at Wynton’s jazz playing was met with a lot of resistance. Rok, not picking on you, but just using this to make a point about the “old vs new” (old timers vs newbies) issue and that of changing tastes.
If anyone of us thinks that our individual assessment of a jazz artist’s ultimate worth or standing in the grand scheme of things (overall history of the music) is not influenced to some degree by what that that artist REPRESENTS in ways other than strictly musical I think we would be kidding ourselves.
**** But he is so much more to jazz than a trumpet player ****
Exactly.
As nsp pointed out:
**** We all hear differently , have different life experiences and come from different backgrounds. ****
Music from different eras represent different things to each of us due to the above. A certain era in the music’s history may give us a sense of nostalgia. It may remind us of what our parents listened to (could be a negative or positive) or what was going on in society as a whole at the time which may be something that has special significance to us.
We all know that jazz is sadly less popular today than it was in the past. However, I submit that if one considers today’s level of overall activity in jazz to that during its heyday, the number of players making “significant contributions” (to quote Rok again) to the music and who are pushing the envelope of its evolution is, percentage-wise, about the same as it ever was. As has been pointed out many times jazz evolves whether we like where it’s going or not. Some of us like where it’s going and some of us don’t; this based on the factors mentioned above. Nothing wrong with not liking where it’s going or with being “stuck” (I don’t mind) in a certain prior era. I think the important thing is to not be dismissive of the current era and its great players as necessarily “inferior” to those of the past when in many cases it is a matter of their being different and appealing to a different sensibility. Imo, to not appreciate and embrace this simple fact is, ironically, to not understand something very basic about what the art form is about.
Players like Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, Joe Lovano and others are phenomenal musicians who in some ways are or have taken the music to places that the greats from the past never did nor could have and I frankly don’t see the point in always comparing the new to the old at the expense of appreciating what it is that the new are bringing to the table. Again, re the issue of what players REPRESENT:
**** Miles once said, there is nothing a person can do on trumpet that Louis Armstrong has not done already. This means, making a significant contribution gets harder as time goes on. ****
It probably does get harder, but it continues to happen. However, Miles’ admiration for and understanding of Armstrong’s huge contribution as one of the grandaddies of jazz and all that this REPRESENTS caused him to utter one of the biggest bits of hyperbole ever. We all know how great Louis was. His playing was like a distillation of all that is what jazz is ultimately all about: telling a story with music and he did it with a simplicity (“absence of affectation”) and swagger that still sets the standard for some. But, the truth is that there is much that players have “done on the trumpet” since Louis that he could not even get close to doing. He couldn’t have played bebop like Dizzy, nor the blues like Lee Morgan nor abstract like Miles himself. It sounds nice to suggest that he did, but it’s not so. Music reflects the time of its creation and in many ways it was a simpler time back then.
Rok, send me the royalties bill for quoting you so many times 😊
