bilgewater

I would agree on the crucial significance of pop music rhythms over that of verse-chorus-bridge-style pop songs. This has been important since at least the late Sixties (cue up the rock shuffle on Miles Davis' Jack Johnson) and then all kinds of important jazz-rock-funk fusion headlined by his (former) sidemen in the 1970. That seems beyond debate as a descriptive matter. Of course hip hop (broadly understood) is the central popular music of our age and it has had an appropriately profound effect--in certain corners--on contemporary jazz rhythms, production styles (sampling), song form itself. For me, the likes of Jason Moran, Karriem Riggins, the jazz-r&b Soulquarian connection, Robert Glasper are crucial here as innovators. We needn't linger too long over Wynton Marsalis' on-brand denunciation of rap as "ghetto minstrelsy." Because I have Joni Mitchell's music on my mind, her songs often seem an especially friendly carrier for the modal jazz heritage--as suggested by Herbie Hancock's Mitchell album. And that modal heritage--in the sense of a friendliness toward hovering 11th chords, stacked chords, evasion of harmonic resolution, lots of sus chords, non-diatonic melodies--can then be spliced on top of post-rock beats. That's kind of what I hear when the likes of Brad Mehldau and Robert Glasper both take on Radiohead songs with their simple melodies and haunting shifting harmonies. Glasper covers Radiohead with beat box accompaniment. Mehldau trio does Radiohead. Cecile McLorin Salvant sings The Beatles. So I wonder at what point, if ever, one will go to a jazz jam session and someone will call... "St. Thomas" with heavy calypso; everybody getting happy... "Edith and the Kingpin" by Joni Mitchell; slow and straight; everybody getting real... and then "Ma Vie En Rose" as a bossa nova; remembering the legends... and then "Round Midnight," like Carmen McRae; saluting royalty... and then "Red Clay," with Hubbardian fire; modality with blues power... and then "Almost Like Being in Love," swinging Nat King Cole version; was it really easier to be in love then?... and then "Lush Life," at a Shirley Horn dirge tempo... ok, maybe not... and then ""Love's in Need of Love Today" straight to bring on the tears, I must change my life... and then "Yardbird Suite," to remind us of what this music's Mozart gave the world... and then "Exit Music" by Radiohead... and then "Muskrat Ramble," jail-breaking the whole darn carceral system after first asking: "does anyone remember laughter?" don't forget to tip your servers!

Because the last comment moved away from the Joni Mitchell particularity, let me say that another thing that inspired me here was thinking about what gets played at jazz jam sessions. I was in attendance at a strong jazz sessions of pros and conservatory students a few weeks ago. Lots and lots of jazz vocalists. Pretty much all of the tunes that were called by a new person--of whatever age--on the stage were written pre-1960. Occasionally there was a more obscure show tune or a Sondheim piece and the younger conservatory vocal grads passed out lead sheets to help the old-timers. I love "Body and Soul" and "Summertime" and "Take the A Train" as much as the next jazzer, but there's also (in my opinion) something to be said for replenishish and extending the common core, the standard repertoire, what can be "called" at a jazz session and not only get incomprehending looks and a need for lead sheets. This is part of the genius of that most celebrated jazz vocalist, Cecile McLorin Salvant: she builds up the standards repertoire by digging up songs that no one knows or does by the likes of Jelly Roll Morton (that very long prison song she famously did at Lincoln Center) or bringing back to prominence ancient tunes like "Nobody" (identified with Bert Walker c 1910).

I'm eager to hear thoughts on the place of Joni Mitchell's music and influence within the decades-long movement to find new jazz vocal repertoire (or instrumentals based on vocal songs) from outside the jazz canon, notably outside the "great American songbook." The movement really came on my radar with the rise of Cassandra Wilson and her movement from a decade of virtuosically singing older standards along with new non-pop jazz with M-Base collective to circulating startling arrangements of "new standards" on her albums Blue Light Til Dawn (1993, including songs by Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and Robert Johnson) and New Moon Daughter (1995, including songs by U2, Neil Young, and Son House) and ever after. After Cassandra, the deluge. Because she is such a refined and captivating singer, collaborates with brilliant musicians, and because she reached a big audience, the floodgates opened. But as the floodgates opened, to what rock-era songwriters did jazzers--esp jazz singers--turn? I'm curious if folks think there was something distinctly amenable to jazz interpretation (expanding the harmonic palette, ornamenting the melodies, introducing counter-melodies, completely changing the rhythm and groove) in Joni Mitchell's songs as compared to those she considered her songwriters inspirations and peers--notably Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen--and those who were her contemporaries or near-contemporaries as singer-songwriters (say, David Crosby, James Taylor, Carole King, or for that matter, the Beatles, British Invasion bands). Jazz musicians may like Joni Mitchell because the admiration is reciprocated. It's easier to like someone when they like you back, right? She has always named Miles Davis as her musical hero, her fave Miles band as the second great quintet, and her favorite album as Nefertiti. And of course she collaborated at length with Jaco Pastorius, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Brian Blade, along with Tom Scott and the LA Express. (And Hancock's 2007 album of interpretations was a watershed.) These factors distinguish her recording career from those of Dylan, Cohen, Crosby, Taylor, King et al. But the question is: what is about these compositions (esp. in her first recording decade) as such that speaks to some later jazz musicians (not only vocalists)? What is it about her harmonic sensibility, the character of her melodies, her phrasing, her lyrics? I'm writing a book on these and other Mitchellian topics. Or, perhaps, am I so lost in Mitchell-land that I've missed the forest for the trees and there is in fact a strong tradition of jazz interpretations of Dylan, Cohen, et al, in the post-Cassandra-Wilson era of "new standards"?