The Worst Jazz Solo of All Time

[JSngry]

Delightful!

[Dan Gould]

I find him and his face as eminently punchable as the dude in Whiplash or that asshat bari player with the pink hair. YMMV.

[jcam_44]

I watched it yesterday. I don’t carry the anger that Dan does. That’s not healthy. Theoretically Adam knows his stuff. It was a pretty bad solo and I don’t know why the alt take was released but you can see what the soloist was trying to do, even if it was poorly executed. As someone who struggled with music theory and am not nearly as well versed in it as Adam, I do find appreciation for his videos. That goes for Rick Beato as well, but I don’t consume everything they do either. 

[Late]

I thought maybe he'd mention Cecil Payne's solo on "The Big Head." I love that one note solo. 

[danasgoodstuff]

Good analysis, only mildly annoying dude.  And hardly the worst solo ever, as he says towards the end. I've played worse and so have any number of name musicians  and it's an alternate, so they knew it wasn't good and the master, at least the snippet they played, sounds far better. As he also says towards the end.

[JSngry]

I'd find him annoying but for the fact that he always gets it right. I mean, when I first started watching his stuff, I was like, ok, dude, first time yo get it wrong, I'm going off on  I figured that would be forthcoming, but no...not forthcoming. The dude gets it right.you.

Plus, the really delightful thing about this episode is that it's not a critique of the solo nearly as much as it is the smug, lazy-thinking behind all the internet buzzjockeys who are apparently delighting in calling out the "worst"-ness of this particular solo.

I had missed all of that net noise, but that's hardly a surprise. What did surprise me was to find out that the guy who played this solo  is the same guy who played on "In The Still Of The Night" - that solo has long fascinated me for many of the same reasons highlighted in this video here. For years, I've been wondering who THAT guy was, how did THAT get there? It's otherworldly, the pitch and the there-ut-not-there timing, very...."atmospheric".

And, as pointed out - it's the say guy who played "the worst" solo of all time playing at the same session. And that record is considered a class of greatness.

The video is not about bad playing -it's about understanding what you hear and having - or not having - a real sense of history and context with which to have a justifiable, meaningful opinion about it. I think it's excellent, and representative of the type of clear-headed 360 awareness that is needed now more than ever.

Plus - the dude advocates for Illinoins Jacquet, Red Prysock, Big Jay McNeeley, and Elliot Carter, all under one roof. How can I not love that?

9 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

...that asshat bari player with the pink hair.

Oh yeah, Leo P! Grace Kelley's frequent partner in crime. He gets a callout as well, for being a modern-day practitioner of one-note soloing.

[Dan Gould]

How did he miss the fact that, to start with, its not a jazz solo at all?

I mean the ignorance starts with the internet hearing a horn play one note over and over and declare it to be the "worst jazz solo ever". It may come straight out of Jacquet but by 1956 it was R&B from start to finish.

[JSngry]

2 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

How did he miss the fact that, to start with, its not a jazz solo at all?

I don't think he missed that at all, but the claim was "the internet's", not his, and his gentle but through evisceration of how foolish "the internet" was about all of it took precedence over calling out the obvious.

I mean, his discussion could have been about how "this is not jazz at all, here's why", but then it becomes a very insular nerdy turf war thing. That would have been a very boring, quite possibly trite, discussion. Becuase of yeah, obvious, thanks, Professor Pedantski!

Instead, it points out that there are claims being made that are intellectually lazy, musically unsound, and altogether harmful to the collective consciousness. a ginormous All You People Are Talking All This Shit And You Don't Know ANYTHING about What You Are Saying, NOTHING!!!! About ANY Of It!!!!!

That discussion was pretty fun, imo!