All that jazz revisited

Or: I don’t know much about music but... – a nonfiction story

I wrote and published this article in July 2023. Since then, I have spent two years learning to play the alto sax, and learning a certain amount of theory alongside it. I think that as a result, my undestanding of what jazz soloists are doing during an improvisation has become rather more sophisticated. For example, whereas two or or more years ago I might describe a soloist as “going mad”, today I should be more likely to recognise that he or she is playing an arpeggio, or part of a scale, or even simply two notes a tone apart very rapidly. However, I haven’t updated the article because I believe it has stood the test of time. If this is the first time you’ve encountered it, I hope you enjoy reading and listening. And if you came across it the first time, I hope this proves to be a pleasant reminder.

“Jazz? You like jazz?”

I was talking to a friend of mine at college. He was 16, I was 16, and I couldn’t believe that anyone less old than a fossil would like that kind of music.

Image by Garik Barseghyan from Pixabay

“But it’s just a mess, a cacophony, with no rhyme or rhythm. From what I’ve been subjected to, it’s based on the principle ‘Any note will do’.”

“You’re wrong. You just haven’t heard the right kind of jazz. Come back with me after classes. And I’ll play you some jazz you will love.”

I took him up on his offer, thereby embarking on, so far, a decades-long exploration of the world of jazz.

The record he played me, which I then went out and bought, was called Coming Home, Baby, by Herbie Mann, from the album Herbie Mann Live at the Village Gate. Herbie Mann was a flautist and, as I was soon to discover, Coming Home, Baby was his signature tune.

And that brings me on to one of the things I love about jazz. The way in which different artists, and even the same artist, can revisit and reinterpret a number in many different ways. To give you a taste of this, compare these two versions of Lily Was Here. Both feature the saxophonist Candy Dulfer, but the mood of each is subtly different. In the first, despite the sombre, enigmatic tone of the video, Dulfer’s sax solo, which starts at around one minute and thirty seconds, is exuberant. She takes flight, but despite deviating from the tune and the speed of the other players keeps to the underlying timing and beat.

In contrast, this second version strikes me as being more subdued, more sombre in tone, despite the exuberance of both Dulfer and Culbertson:

It is worth pointing out – as if it needed pointing out – that Dulfer is clearly enjoying herself. Indeed, both musicians are. They each give me the impression that they’re not exactly certain what the other one will do, and delight in that unknowing. They bounce off each other, each picking up their cue in turn.

When I listen to jazz, I find myself being carried away. It’s very visceral for me, especially when the soloist suddenly takes off. I can think of few better examples of this than Herbie Mann’s interpretation of Watermelon Man. At two minutes and twenty five seconds Mann launches into an improvisation that leads, at three minutes and five seconds, into an explosive efflorescence of sound in which he is going at a rate of knots while the horns, previously unheard, punctuate the rhythm leading, eventually, into a trumpet solo.

The interesting thing for me about that trumpet solo is that many of the notes are the same, yet it is by no means boring because while the same note may be repeated over and over, it’s subtly different each time¹.

In all of these jazz numbers, musicians extemporise, but always within a structure. Once you’ve listened to the soloists’ slots in a number, play it again, but this time focusing on the background instruments. What is the pianist doing? How about the bass player. Listen again, and again, and again.

As you may have gathered, jazz, at least for me, is partly a forensic affair. I find that I need to listen to a number several times, each time focusing on a different instrument. It’s astonishing how rich some of these records are. A few years ago I listened to a record I’ve listened to intently for years, and still heard something I had never heard before.

And once you’ve listened to each instrument in turn, listen again to the number as a whole, but this time differently. Note how the players are separate, but together in their separateness.

Listening carefully, aurally scrutinising, often leads to sudden realisations. “Wait! What happened there?” you exclaim. On playing and replaying that section or the whole piece you realise what it was: somehow someone is playing off the beat. This is known as syncopation, and is exemplified by Steve Gadd’s drumming in this number:

Syncopation provides a layer of excitement. It’s like having a touch of chilli sauce in a salad: it jolts you, in a good way, because it is so unexpected and, therefore, unanticipated.

Here’s another thing: with all these players doing their own thing, how does the lead player bring the others back to the main tune? I saw Herbie Mann at Ronnie Scott’s in London once, and he brought the others back with a simple hand gesture². In some of his records, Mann brings the others back into line by quietly playing a tune until the rest seem to realise what he’s doing. You can hear him do this at around 6 minutes in his (rock) version of the Rolling Stones’ Bitch. This video starts at that point, but a warning: the mellowness only lasts for a few seconds before they all go mad again!

Returning to my jazz beginnings, the number my friend played to me was this one. Listen to how long the double bass and percussion introduction is, how the flute comes in gently and then does its own thing. It’s a really long introduction, and the whole thing lasts for over eight minutes – this in an era (1961) when the average pop song was around three minutes long or less.

This record also introduced me to an instrument I hadn’t heard of before: the vibraphone, or vibes. It’s a metal version of the xylophone, but far more mellow. You can hear it in this number once Mann has finished his solo. Incidentally, the humming you can hear is the vibes player singing along to his own tune!

For a completely different interpretation, listen to Mann playing it in Standing Ovation at Newport, recorded in 1965.  There is a lovely interplay between the vibes and the piano (the latter played by none other than Chick Corea). This time the line-up includes two trombones.

After they’d finished, there was a standing ovation, and so as an encore they played a shorter version of Coming Home Baby that was, I believe, completely improvised and, consequently, very different. It comes in straight after the main rendition. At one point the crowd is clapping the beat of the music. However, the claps reached Mann a second too late, so they were completely out of time. Mann described how he had to concentrate really intensely in order to keep to time:

And now, just to round things off, contrast that version with his disco-like version of the same song:

I hope this article has given you a hint of what is so exciting about jazz. It’s full of surprises, and far from being a form in which “any note will do” it’s one that requires one to be a consummate musician to pull off³.

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1. Cf “I know, I know etc” in Ain’t No Sunshine, by Bill Withers

and also Chick Corea’s piano work in Standing Ovation at Newport (see below).

2. [2] Ronnie Scott’s was an experience in itself. Scott told some really lame jokes. Example: [This was the era of sit-ins and love-ins] “I asked one of our waitresses if she liked Dickens, and she said she’d never been to one.” A member of the audience, probably a plant but I’m not sure, shouted out, “Oh, you’re really funny; my sides are splitting; ouch, there goes another rib!” Scott responded with: “If you want me to be really funny lend me that suit you’re wearing. Somewhere in London there’s a Ford Cortina with its seat covers missing.”

3. If you enjoyed this post then you may also enjoy reading the enhanced version, in which Brad Kyle and I collaborated. It’s my original post (this one) plus Brad’s annotations about the players, connections and history. Here it is:

🎷Brad, Terry, Herbie Mann, and All That Jazz: Improv Reflections on the Uniquely American Music🎺🎶