Jazz for aficionados

James Carter’s Giant Steps:

My point was that Carter can play GS anyway he wants to play it. That’s what Jazz is all about, individual freedom. Freedom from the written page.

from the notes of THE FATS NAVARRO STORY
they are discussing Fats replacing Dizzy in the Eckstine band.

Fats played his book and you would hardly know that Dizzy had left the band. "Fat Girl" played Dizzy’s solos, not note for note, but his ideas on Dizzy’s parts and the feeling was the same and there was just so much swing.

Same with GS. It out there for all to play. As I sit here, you-tube is playing Ahmad Jamal doing ’Poinciana’. It’s the one at the Olympia in Paris. Great stuff. But, it’s not the one he played at the Pershing. Does not have to be, and maybe it shouldn’t be.

Cheers

Pjw, those are two of my favorite vocalists. Since nobody has posted him, I totally forgot how fantastic Johnny Mathis was, and Etta Jones is a favorite since "Don't Go To Strangers"


        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwdeska8H-Y


She puts so much feeling into that song.

And the winners are, Don't go to strangers and Lenny Welch.

Cheers

pjw, thanks for the clip. Great stuff. He does a great job of explaining the harmonic details of the tune. I applaud your inquisitiveness about all this; it all adds a great deal to the appreciation and enjoyment of the music. There are so many different layers to this music and the experience of listening to it.

I think that James’s organ/drums duo does more than play the tune “adequately”. They are really good rhythm players. It’s all a matter of degree. Do I think they are as swinging and nuanced as some others? No; but they are certainly good. Just my opinions. Check out Peter Erskine on the Brecker/Mintzer clip. Amazing.

You write that in that Flanagan and Taylor were replaced on two songs, GS and Naima. I don’t know about Taylor, but Flanagan’s performance on GS is the stuff of Jazz lore, but not in a good way. He really struggled with the tune’s changes, is very tentative and actually stops improvising and just comps for the last several bars. He just could not cut it. Much has been written about all this. Playing over changes that intricate and FAST was something that even the best players at the time were not used to and some were never able to do it.  Some didn’t even try. I don’t know the dates of those alternate takes, but if they are from a later date (even just a day or so) then the reason for the change is pretty obvious.

Trane practiced incessantly and worked on all these harmony techniques methodically in order to expand his musical vocabulary. None of it happened by accident. He was always searching for new sounds and new techniques and hanging with Monk, being the great individualist that he was, was probably very appealing to Trane. It’s interesting to me that, in a way, there is a similarity to both of their general rhythmic feels. Not what could typically be called smooth and laid back, but a little angular even jagged instead. Great question, btw. Regards.

**** My point was that Carter can play GS anyway he wants to play it. That’s what Jazz is all about, individual freedom. Freedom from the written page. ****

Of course he can. And it can also not be very good, or may even suck, as a result. The whole idea of “individual freedom” at all cost has been used as a fallback position for justification of a whole lot of mediocre or even bad playing; just look a some of the “out” or avant garde stuff. Not saying that JC is mediocre at all, he’s a great player in many ways. Just saying that something like Giant Steps is not where he excels.

Honoring the changes of a tune is sacrosanct in Jazz and this is not just opinion. That doesn’t mean that there can’t be a lot of “personal freedom” within the confines of the tune’s structure (includes the changes). That is the whole idea behind what players like Trane strived for. He stretched the harmonic boundaries. However, that “stretching” is an organized and logical “extension” of the harmony; never a free for all. It is not that hard to tell when a player is “stretching the boundaries” and when he’s just doing what jazz players simply refer to as bullshi##!ng one’s way through the changes. The changes to GS are a bitch.

I must say that I find contradiction, and irony, in the fact that you can acknowledge that players “avoid GS like the plague”, but then you dismiss the importance of the very reason that they avoid the tune.... honoring the changes.

I think that nsp’s post on the matter is really on the money. Regards.