PRACTICE PORTAL

What is it about women that inspire men to write such incredible music? never mind… i’ve been listening to “Kathelin Gray” by Ornette Coleman over and over again. what a beautiful melody. what i enjoy so much about Coleman’s music is its conversational quality. his phrases expand and contract- they breath as Coleman breathes. he’s accompanied here by Pat Metheny on guitar, Charlie Haden on bass and Denardo Coleman playing drums. I wrote a sketch below. the biggest difficulty in transcribing it is notating it rhythmically. i thought about not including a time signature at all- i’ve seen this song written out in 3/4. since the whole band plays freely (Metheny dovetails the melody, Denardo Coleman lends splashes of sound mostly as color and texture, but also to provide a little propulsion, and Haden outlines the harmonic underpinnings to Coleman’s line) a transcription could turn out many different ways rhythmically, but i think the most important aspect to highlight is how the phrases fit together. this to me is the element that makes playing Ornette Coleman’s music so appealing. there’s such a beautiful logic in how each phrase blurs into the next in quirky and subtle ways. this song in particular invites a performer to inject his own personality into it, to breathe life into it… the effect of this way is playing is to make the song sound as if it’s being composed on the fly. there’s obviously a lot of preparation involved but there’s still wide latitude in the direction the lead, and consequently the rest of the group, can take…

I heard Charles Lloyd play “Hommage” in Los Angeles with Cedar Walton, David Williams and the one and only Billy Higgins many, many years ago. Aside from being one of most stylish cats i’ve seen on a bandstand, Lloyd blew some fifteen or twenty inspired choruses over this tune. “Hommage” has a blues quality to it, somewhat along the lines of “Mr. PC”. toward the end of the head the rhythm section plays and ostinato figure, emphasizing beats two and four while the lead riffs over it. it serves as a reservoir to build energy for push into the next section. the ostinato is on the five chord, but instead of going back to the one, it moves to the two chord, which cranks up the energy another notch. Lloyd was incredible but the catalyst was Higgins, who found unique, funky ways set up successive choruses. he rarely did it with volume, the most obvious way. rather he used subtlety, understatement and an incredible psychic energy that could be felt throughout the club to push the proceedings to ever higher levels… he possesed the same quality that i felt with Sonny Rollins when i heard him here in Tokyo a few years back. he’d lost a lot of the power in his sound but the bigness of his aura and the power of his beat, even in the huge concert hall where he performed, was reeeeeediculous…

ORNETTE COLEMAN- KATHELIN GRAY (mp3)

CHARLES LLOYD- HOMMAGE (mp3)

Here’s a great song by British multi-instrumentalist, Victor Feldman. “New Delhi” was featured on the record, CANNONBALL ADDERLEY QUINTET PLUS, with Cannonball and Nat Adderley on the front line, Louis Hayes on drums, Sam Jones on bass, guest pianist Wynton Kelly, and Feldman on piano and vibes. “New Delhi” is a 32 bar AABA song featuring an ostinato bass line under the melody. the background rhythm is repeated through the melody by everyone but the lead voice. Nat Adderley, on cornet, plays the melody on the A sections and Feldman takes over on vibes through the bridge. the band then starts in with the straight up swing for the solos, moving back to the ostinato figure in the bridge. the blowing progression is a little different from that of the melody. it keeps the AABA form but each A section is an eight bar blues progression. so here you go, enjoy. thanks to Bbebop at PostBop.com for the request…

VICTOR FELDMAN- NEW DELHI (mp3)

In an earlier post i talked about setting two soloists side by side, performing on the same song, in order to do a little comparison and contrast. Pepper and Adderley seemed like a good pair to begin with. but before getting into things, lemme throw this out there: perhaps the title of Pepper’s disc (ART PEPPER MEETS THE RHYTHM SECTION) suggests a little about his solo on “Star Eyes”. Pepper seems quite restrained on this cut. perhaps it’s due to the fact that this was a one-off recording. i’m not  sure if he’d ever played with, or even knew personally, Garland, Chambers or Jones, and from what i’ve read, this session came as a surprise to him. he was also caught up in his habits and hadn’t been musically active for several months up to that point. just imagine waking up one morning with no idea that later in the day you’d be in the studio playing with the legendary Miles Davis rhythm section, arguably the hottest trio of their day! more than a few musicians would absolutely freeze up. not to make excuses, but given the circumstances, Pepper provides a beautiful, although tentative, performance. but still, i can’t help feeling that he is a sideman rather than the leader. Adderley, on the other hand, recorded his version of “Star Eyes” on his record THE CANNONBALL ADDERLEY QUINTET PLUS with his working band featuring brother Nat on cornet, Sam Jones on bass, drummer Louis Hayes, special guest Wynton Kelly on piano, and Victor Feldman on vibes and piano. unlike Pepper, Cannonball sounds totally at ease with his bandmates- he brings off his two choruses with great style. but really, i can’t ever recall a time hearing Adderley when he didn’t sound incredibly poised and confident. in my opinion, Cannonball’s take is the better of the two but given the very different circumstances of these recordings, it’s rather unfair to compare them… and in another quick aside: being born in Los Angeles and raised in Northern California, i tend to wear my irritation on my sleeve concerning the narrow attitudes toward West Coast Jazz. it has with a few exceptions, been routinely stereotyped as commercial and blasé. when i listen to someone like Pepper for example, i hear a deep, emotional undercurrent hiding behind what can be referred to as a characteristically west coast sound and style… i’ll concede that quite a bit of music that’s come out of California has been forgettable- the same can easily be said for  some east coast stuff. but let’s never forget that the west coast, along with the easy-listening aesthetic, also spawned or nurtured musicians like Mingus, Dolphy, Don Cherry, Dexter Gordon, Chico Hamilton, Bobby Bradford, John Carter, Harold Land, Teddy Edwards,  Hampton Hawes,  Gerald Wilson, Sonny Simmons, Sonny Criss, Aurthur Blythe, James Newton, Billy Higgins, Horace Tapscott and David Murray, to name a very few. the west coast has never had one sound or style, and many of the above named musicians have left indelible fingerprints on the music. okay, i’m off the soapbox…

with all that said, the glaring fact is that these two artists interpret this music from unique cultural  and stylistic vantage points: Pepper, a young white saxophonist, coming up in Los Angeles, was affiliated with the likes of Chet Baker, Shelly Manne and Gerry Mulligan, all of whom were exponents of a “cool(er)” jazz style, while Adderley, a young Black saxophonist up in New York by way of the south, was aligned with many of the major hard bop’s leading exponents. LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) writes at length about his opinions on the differences between hard bop and cool jazz in his great resource, BLUES PEOPLE. in a nutshell, he feels that the cool players tended to, intentionally or subconsciously,  supress the overtly Black elements of jazz style while the hard boppers tended to do the opposite.

the thing that jumps out at me first when listening to these recordings is how different Pepper and Adderley sound. Pepper’s sound, is for the most part, unadorned. very little vibrato with light articulation. his sound, to me has a delicate, brittle, acidic edge to it. Adderley’s sound, on the other hand,  has an unrestrained, romantic quality to it. he incorporates a generous vibrato, heavily articulates his phrases. his sound is sweet and syrupy, and has an overt blues orientation.

the feel of each soloist is also very different. Pepper’s understated lope is contrasted by Adderley’s deep bounce. Pepper’s solo, in this respect typifies what some dislike about the rhythmic concept of many “cool jazz” musicians. he doesn’t really dig in to the beat but rather seems to float slightly above it. he seems to keep himself at arm’s length.  Adderley grabs on and doesn’t let go. he rides the beat as well as reinforces  it with a hard articulation.

rhythmically, Pepper generally expresses his lines using eighth notes with occasional triplet figures. Adderley is more varied. he alternates his eighth note figures with sixteenth note runs, triplet patterns and lots of syncopation.

both improvisers approach “Star Eyes” with concepts rooted in the innovations of the previous generation of jazz musicians. much of their language is similar. i think the biggest difference is in their stylistic attitudes. although i dislike labels like “cool jazz” or “hard bop”, the adjectives in them do roughly describe the styles of Pepper and Adderley respectively. Pepper, in this recording, is more at a distance, more reserved in his blowing, while Adderley is much more blues-based, assertive and confrontational. hearing these two great players, who were only three years apart in age, side by side shows how varied personal styles can be….

ART PEPPER

SOLO FROM STAR EYES (mp3)

CANNONBALL ADDERLEY

SOLO FROM STAR EYES (mp3)

Freddie… the picture pretty much says it all. he played his solo over “Birdlike” just like he looks here: confident, virile and slick. he spins out chorus after seemingly effortless chorus filled with great ideas, swing and that awesome SOUND…

FREDDIE HUBBARD

SOLO FROM BIRDLIKE (mp3)

Here’s a transcription of Herbie Hancock’s solo on the song “Delores” from the Miles Davis record, MILES SMILES, which along with his other recordings from middle and late 60’s, set a standard for post bop jazz that few have matched. the rhythms in the music are similar to styles that preceded these recordings, but most everything else- the group’s approach to melody, harmony, ensemble playing, improvising, etc. has been sublimated. the connections are there but they’re expertly disguised. not quite in but not totally out, this group successfully walked the fine line between order and the void. because of this, these recordings, 50 years later, still taste fresh and creamy. my only gripe about these records is that the horns, almost without fail, step on Herbie’s right hand forays to bring back the melody. i always find myself mumbling, “let him blow, Miles, let him blow…”

HERBIE HANCOCK

SOLO FROM DELORES (mp3)