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Jazz Standards you never get tired of


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14 minutes ago, danasgoodstuff said:

How many people know those tunes now.  Make more sense to play current tunes from movies or musicals.

 Think again of the music written by the composers  sgcim cited above and ask yourself what if what any current tunes from movies or musicals might be similarly memorable, even to the audiences of today. This is not necessarily to advocate the music of those older composers as material that today's improvisers should favor; rather it points to my suspicion that "current tunes from movies or musicals" don't offer much material that makes for meaningful memorable variations.

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3 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

 Think again of the music written by the composers  sgcim cited above and ask yourself what if what any current tunes from movies or musicals might be similarly memorable, even to the audiences of today. This is not necessarily to advocate the music of those older composers as material that today's improvisers should favor; rather it points to my suspicion that "current tunes from movies or musicals" don't offer much material that makes for meaningful memorable variations.

Well, there are several different considerations in play there, I'd say.  The nature of the tunes themselves - are they musically suitable for this use?  I'd guess that some are.  Do audiences know them?  Yes, my experience in record stores and libraries tells me that movies are culturally central to many people.  Do they want to hear them jazzed?  Maybe, maybe not.  I'd say it's a better bet than trying to find something new to say on GAS canon tunes and then finding an audience for that.

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28 minutes ago, danasgoodstuff said:

How many people know those tunes now.  Make more sense to play current tunes from movies or musicals.

How many "hit" tunes come from musicals anymore?  What was the last Broadway "hit" tune?  "One Night In Bangkok" perhaps?  That actually made the charts and got a lot of radio airplay back in the day.  i can't imagine jazz musicians being in a rush to record an instrumental of that, though.  And about the only "hit" songs from movies recently seem to come from Disney movies.  Does any one even remember which songs won the "Best Song" Oscar for, say, the past 10 years (other than parents who had small children and will never be able to "Let It Go").?

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50 minutes ago, duaneiac said:

How many "hit" tunes come from musicals anymore?  What was the last Broadway "hit" tune?  "One Night In Bangkok" perhaps?  That actually made the charts and got a lot of radio airplay back in the day.  i can't imagine jazz musicians being in a rush to record an instrumental of that, though.  And about the only "hit" songs from movies recently seem to come from Disney movies.  Does any one even remember which songs won the "Best Song" Oscar for, say, the past 10 years (other than parents who had small children and will never be able to "Let It Go").?

Yes, the culture has changed.  But it may not have ever been quite what it's been made out to be either.  I'm underwhelmed by the Frozen music, but I like Colors of the Wind and enuff other Menken that I think a decent album could be made of it.  I've never done more than just play through the melody myself, so it might not be much of a jamming vehicle but then that might not be the right approach anyway.  Doing 3rd rate versions of Charlie Parker Plays Coe Porter is a dead end, that I'm sure of.

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55 minutes ago, duaneiac said:

How many "hit" tunes come from musicals anymore?  What was the last Broadway "hit" tune?  "One Night In Bangkok" perhaps?  That actually made the charts and got a lot of radio airplay back in the day.  i can't imagine jazz musicians being in a rush to record an instrumental of that, though.  And about the only "hit" songs from movies recently seem to come from Disney movies.  Does any one even remember which songs won the "Best Song" Oscar for, say, the past 10 years (other than parents who had small children and will never be able to "Let It Go").?

Broadway once represented the height of American pop songwriting, but now it is nothing but a tourist trap.  The last thing I would do on a trip to New York would be to see a Broadway musical.

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2 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Broadway once represented the height of American pop songwriting, but now it is nothing but a tourist trap.  The last thing I would do on a trip to New York would be to see a Broadway musical.

Broadway was always a hustle, internally and externally.  But it used to be a more interesting one.

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Out of curiosity, I looked at the list of the Academy Awards' Best Original Song winners & nominees.  There are only 2 winners since 2000 that I would definitely know:  Bob Dylan's "Things Have Changed" (2000) and the aforementioned "Let It Go" (2013).  I might recognize "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp" (2005) if I heard it again, but I'm not sure.  Almost every other song from those years -- even from movies I saw -- is a total blank.  I don't know if any of the other Oscar winners were a hit, but they meant zippo to me.  Admittedly, I am older and have not seen a lot of the movies the nominated songs come from -- haven't even heard of some of the movies.

Out of more curiosity, I looked through the list to see what was the last year I knew all of the nominated songs.  As further proof of my old fogeyhood, I had to go all the way back to 1984.  Without checking, see if you can guess which of these 5 nominated songs won the Oscar that year:

"Against All Odds"

"Footloose"

"Ghostbusters"

"I Just Called To Say I Love You"

"Let's Hear It For The Boy"

It may be significant that in 2005 and 2008 the Academy could only scrape up 3 songs to nominate -- and two of 2008's songs came from one movie, Slumdog Millionaire.  In 2011, there were only two nominated songs!!  Imagine how much it must have stung to be on the losing end of that!  Sorry, Sergio Mendes, but you should have known better than to go up against the Muppets.

 

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All I know is I just got a grant from NYC for 5K to play a concert whose theme is the influence of musical theater on Jazz, and I'm not going to play one tune from any of the 40 musicals that I've played in the pit band for for the last ten years, because they don't lend themselves to jazz well, and suck also.

The only tunes I'm going to play are some of the tunes people mentioned in this post that came from shows.I re-harmonize them to the ideas of the masters of harmony I've studied, like Oliver Nelson, Gene Puerling and Bill and Gil Evans.I'll make an announcement where and when the concert is going to be held at a later date. Thanks to Clifford Thornton it will also be announced in The Jazz Record.

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6 minutes ago, sgcim said:

All I know is I just got a grant from NYC for 5K to play a concert whose theme is the influence of musical theater on Jazz, and I'm not going to play one tune from any of the 40 musicals that I've played in the pit band for for the last ten years, because they don't lend themselves to jazz well, and suck also.

The only tunes I'm going to play are some of the tunes people mentioned in this post that came from shows.I re-harmonize them to the ideas of the masters of harmony I've studied, like Oliver Nelson, Gene Puerling and Bill and Gil Evans.I'll make an announcement where and when the concert is going to be held at a later date. Thanks to Clifford Thornton it will also be announced in The Jazz Record.

Congrats, sgcim!  :tup  That sounds like a very worthwhile project.  I hope there might be a way for those of us not in NYC to  hear some of the music you select & perform for this concert :)

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4 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Please enlighten us:  Which area of music is not a hustle?

Other than playing at home for your own amusement, they all are.  Don't think I implied otherwise.

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

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They bring a breath of fresh Air to this material, but that's them not the material.  Any material can be done well or poorly.  I'd answer this thread's question by saying it's not the material - there's no material that guarantees an interesting performance.  Some may up your chances a bit, but that's all.

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26 minutes ago, danasgoodstuff said:

They bring a breath of fresh Air to this material, but that's them not the material.  Any material can be done well or poorly.  I'd answer this thread's question by saying it's not the material - there's no material that guarantees an interesting performance.  Some may up your chances a bit, but that's all.

I posted that in the context of this thread to show that there are other "standards" in jazz than those of GAS Inc. That bunch just ain't gonna let it go, ever...except maybe when/if it all goes PD, and even then, I bet they find a way.

And also, I think it's pretty funny that Air got this stuff together while working as a pit band!

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"core curriculaum" to me translates as THIS is what EVERYBODY needs to know because it is EVERYBODY'S heritage. "Heritage" to me means yes, this is in your background, you, everybody, and anything else is supplemental.

And clearly, it's not. I reject the notion, implicity, immediately, and totally.

Exposure is one thing, brainwashing, something else entirely.

Again - WHY DO YOU WANT TO BE A JAZZ IMPORVISOR?

If you have to relay on a "core curriculum" to tell you that, maybe do something else with your life, seriously.

 

You know what the "core curriculum" ought to be? Getting you and a buddy's ass into an inherited Vette and then driving cross-country to pick up gigs in whatever town you're in and interacting with the locals. Do this until you get cancelled, and THEN start trying to play in school.

Just decide in advance which one of you is going to be called "Buz" because you're the only one that's going to make it all the way through.

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2 hours ago, JSngry said:

"core curriculaum" to me translates as THIS is what EVERYBODY needs to know because it is EVERYBODY'S heritage. "Heritage" to me means yes, this is in your background, you, everybody, and anything else is supplemental.

And clearly, it's not. I reject the notion, implicity, immediately, and totally.

Exposure is one thing, brainwashing, something else entirely.

Again - WHY DO YOU WANT TO BE A JAZZ IMPORVISOR?

If you have to relay on a "core curriculum" to tell you that, maybe do something else with your life, seriously.

 

You know what the "core curriculum" ought to be? Getting you and a buddy's ass into an inherited Vette and then driving cross-country to pick up gigs in whatever town you're in and interacting with the locals. Do this until you get cancelled, and THEN start trying to play in school.

Just decide in advance which one of you is going to be called "Buz" because you're the only one that's going to make it all the way through.

To take this further...  I think there are really two questions intermingled here.  One is the "heritage" piece which is important, and those old show tunes are an important part of that and always will be.  Jazz as heritage - African American specifically, and American more generally - is important and worth commemorating!  If jazz as a heritage is important to you then you have to engage with the GAS.

But there's a second aspect, that of people engaging with jazz as music that they listen to or perform.  And there, the GAS absolutely not a "core curriculum".  It's just one way people engage with the music, and much less so than in the past.

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It's the people playing today that will (or will not) leave "heritage" for tomorrow.

IMO, the more they can create rather than re-create, the more likely to succeed than not they will be.

Unless, of course, we brainwash enough people - players and civilians alike -  into thinking that there is only "one way" to do this thing.

"Core curriculum"...that's like "canon", a trailing indicator, and at what point of the dog chasing its tail does the dog catch it? And then what?

The dog is fucked, that's what! :g

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18 hours ago, sgcim said:

All I know is I just got a grant from NYC for 5K to play a concert whose theme is the influence of musical theater on Jazz, and I'm not going to play one tune from any of the 40 musicals that I've played in the pit band for for the last ten years, because they don't lend themselves to jazz well, and suck also.

The only tunes I'm going to play are some of the tunes people mentioned in this post that came from shows.I re-harmonize them to the ideas of the masters of harmony I've studied, like Oliver Nelson, Gene Puerling and Bill and Gil Evans.I'll make an announcement where and when the concert is going to be held at a later date. Thanks to Clifford Thornton it will also be announced in The Jazz Record.

Congrats!  I hope it will be recorded or streamed!  How big of a group are you using?  Are you arranging?

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4 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Congrats!  I hope it will be recorded or streamed!  How big of a group are you using?  Are you arranging?

Thanks. Originally I was going to do a solo performance, because the grant was worded misleadingly, but it will either be G,P,B &D or G,B &D, depending on whether the P wants to learn my arr's and some new tunes. I don't know if they're going to record or stream.

18 hours ago, duaneiac said:

Congrats, sgcim!  :tup  That sounds like a very worthwhile project.  I hope there might be a way for those of us not in NYC to  hear some of the music you select & perform for this concert :)

Thanks. I don't know if they're going to record or stream it.

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1 minute ago, sgcim said:

Thanks. Originally I was going to do a solo performance, because the grant was worded misleadingly, but it will either be G,P,B &D or G,B &D, depending on whether the P wants to learn my arr's and some new tunes. I don't know if they're going to record or stream.

Cool!  Keep us posted. 

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