Marc Myers on jazz geniuses

[Teasing the Korean]

15 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

I dunno. "Rare groove" always seemed to me to be a DJs category. Unless I have misunderstood you, the others are trends that are over 50 years old, and that notably don't form part of most incoming listener's diets unless they have really made the plunge. 

But DJs form a subset of the jazz audience, so their tastes are as relevant as anyone else's.  And lots of those DJs like other genres of jazz also,

Edited August 7, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[JSngry]

"Canon" severs the head, discards the body, and what the hell are you supposed to do with that if you want to walk about freely and joyfully, commune with a bunch of severed heads and ignore the stench of dead bodies?

I think not 

[Rabshakeh]

28 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

But DJs form a subset of the jazz audience, so their tastes are as relevant as anyone else's.  And lots of those DJs like other genres of jazz also,

But expert level jazz audience. If you can bring yourself to use those terms for Gilles Peterson (not that I am particularly against Mr. Peterson, who I think is a broad force for good in that he really is passionate about getting the word out). 

10 minutes ago, JSngry said:

"Canon" severs the head, discards the body, and what the hell are you supposed to do with that if you want to walk about freely and joyfully, commune with a bunch of severed heads and ignore the stench of dead bodies?

I think not 

I just want it to be a nice big pile of severed heads, so you can choose who you commune with from a basis of real choice. Too many people commune with the same old heads, and they're getting a bit worn and tatty.

[Teasing the Korean]

2 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

But expert level jazz audience. If you can bring yourself to use those terms for Gilles Peterson (not that I am particularly against Mr. Peterson, who I think is a broad force for good in that he really is passionate about getting the word out). 

What is an "expert level" jazz audience? 

[Rabshakeh]

Just now, Teasing the Korean said:

What is an "expert level" jazz audience? 

One that's passed all the tests and received expert level accreditation.

[Big Beat Steve]

An interesting discussion, but - apart from the fact that it has led FAR away from the question of the validity of the original "best" listing (debatable at any rate), it may not lead to any consensus just because there are SO MANY differnt stylistic islands of jazz that really ARE islands today because the common ground (that may have existed up to the hard bop era) just isn't there anymore with all that is lumped in under the "jazz" tag today.

@Rabshakeh: Since you brought it up: What DO "Rare Grooves" as a genre in itself mean to you anyway? I am certainly a bit older than you (and in the opinion of some may have "old fart" jazz tastes ) but when i became aware of the "Rare Grooves" bins in the record shop at the time this category all of a sudden was all over the place I browsed them casually here and there - and you know what ... my basic impression (apart from the fact that some of them indeed were a sort of DJ playlist sampler) was that many were just compilations that included tracks a wee bit off the trodden paths of the too well known. But to those in jazz who took a passably deep interest in the jazz style in question those "grooves" cannot have been all that exceedingly rare either. (Ha, are they part of the "expert level jazz audience", then? ) So those "Rare Grooves" merchants seemed to have lived on the fact the "Rare Grooves" listeners were fairly clueless in what there was in recorded jazz after all. A bit like with Northern Soul, another category that seemed to have been made up form a similar background. DJs from Northern UK club bases making up their playlists of fairly rare stuff. But rare enough for other soul collectors? And a misnomer in that it had nothing to do (except by geographic coincidence of the recordings) with Northern (e.g. Detroit/Motown)-based Soul as opposed to "Southern" (Stax/Memphis, for example?) Soul? All in all, marketing tags - yes, but styles of jazz??

 

[JSngry]

31 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

 

I just want it to be a nice big pile of severed heads, so you can choose who you commune with from a basis of real choice. Too many people commune with the same old heads, and they're getting a bit worn and tatty.

Where you really want to go is not with he heads, but the places they all live. It's not a ghost town, it's a spirit word, the difference being is it full-bodied current life or leftover past life.

Current corporeal condition is hardly the point!

[Rabshakeh]

17 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

@Rabshakeh: Since you brought it up: What DO "Rare Grooves" as a genre in itself mean to you anyway? I am certainly a bit older than you (and in the opinion of some may have "old fart" jazz tastes ) but when i became aware of the "Rare Grooves" bins in the record shop at the time this category all of a sudden was all over the place I browsed them casually here and there - and you know what ... my basic impression (apart from the fact that some of them indeed were a sort of DJ playlist sampler) was that many were just compilations that included tracks a wee bit off the trodden paths of the too well known. But to those in jazz who took a passably deep interest in the jazz style in question those "grooves" cannot have been all that exceedingly rare either. (Ha, are they part of the "expert level jazz audience", then? ) So those "Rare Grooves" merchants seemed to have lived on the fact the "Rare Grooves" listeners were fairly clueless in what there was in recorded jazz after all. A bit like with Northern Soul, another category that seemed to have been made up form a similar background. DJs from Northern UK club bases making up their playlists of fairly rare stuff. But rare enough for other soul collectors? And a misnomer in that it had nothing to do (except by geographic coincidence of the recordings) with Northern (e.g. Detroit/Motown)-based Soul as opposed to "Southern" (Stax/Memphis, for example?) Soul? All in all, marketing tags - yes, but styles of jazz??

That's basically it - a marketing tag. Exactly like Northern Soul. I understand the term to refer to a point in jazz - somewhere between soul jazz organ records and the more disco/funk oriented fusion - that were favoured by a set of DJs in the 90s, and which went down a treat with the audience's at that point. It's a marketing tag really. I'm slightly too young for it: I'm more Generation Spiritual Jazz.

I'm actually not opposed to concepts like "rare groove" and "spiritual jazz". They do help new audiences connect with and rediscover records that are off the beaten narrative track. But that's only been possible because the Gilles Petersons of the world are such keen evangelists.

Edited August 7, 2021 by Rabshakeh

[mjazzg]

My understanding of Rare Groove is similar, not so much a Jazz genre but more a Funk/Soul/US R&B crossover - James Brown at the source. I think Acid Jazz was the more Jazz genre but Jazz you could dance to, preferably at Dingwalls.  It came a bit later than Rare Groove but they ran concurrently for a while and probably shared audiences

Funnily I've never really thought as Rare Groove or Northern Soul as marketing tags more of club-derived scene descriptors.  The marketing came later, somewhat inevitably when record labels wanted to sell the scenes to those outside largely.

[JSngry]

These retroactive labels are like points on a ruler...how "long" something is has nothing to do with it actually being there to begin with...or, really how it even got there to begin with 

As a starting point, yeah, maybe necessary to get people to pay attention. But the sooner you can let go of any of it as a unique/specific "genre", the healthier you will likely be.

[Larry Kart]

I don't like lists. And I'll talk about stuff that tickles my fancy when and if it spontaneously does so -- as with that "Buddy Tate and His Buddies" album from a week or more ago.

 

OK, here's one: John Swana and the Philadelphians, Philly Gumbo Vol. 2 (Criss Cross) with tenormen Bootsie Barnes and Larry McKenna, a fine duo.

Barnes I believe is gone now. Swana is a fine trumpeter. Vol. 1, with only Barnes as the other horn, is  is excellent too.

[Rabshakeh]

41 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

I don't like lists. And I'll talk about stuff that tickles my fancy when and if it spontaneously does so -- as with that "Buddy Tate and His Buddies" album from a week or more ago.

 

OK, here's one: John Swana and the Philadelphians, Philly Gumbo Vol. 2 (Criss Cross) with tenormen Bootsie Barnes and Larry McKenna, a fine duo.

Barnes I believe is gone now. Swana is a fine trumpeter. Vol. 1, with only Barnes as the other horn, is  is excellent too.

Thanks! I'm always up for stuff like this.

[Larry Kart]

Another: Superb late Chet with the fine NDR Big band and excellent arrangements.

And another: Hicks fascinates me. At times he sounds fairly decorative (e.g the semi-florid upper register flourishes with which he typically ends phrases), but this is far from merely decorative playing. There's a cumulative force to it (rhythmic, melodic, harmonic) that sweeps one (i.e. me) away. Not utterly unlike Tyner in some respects but perhaps less formulaic -- not that there's anything wrong with McCoy's formulas by and large.

BTW, McCoy's playing on Coltrane's "One Down, One Up: Live at the Half Note" is out of sight.

[Chuck Nessa]

This might not be the best place to say this but I hate the narrowing of focus here - rarely any discussions of recordings before "hard bop" and its children. Back a couple of years we even had discussions about Clarence Williams, his tuba player and his bands.

 

[Larry Kart]

OK: Fascinating, and I believe fairly obscure, early Henderson.

[Chuck Nessa]

I was speaking of  this discussion - http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?/topic/26472-cyrus-st-clair/#comment-496849

[Larry Kart]

Love this somewhat ignored edition of the Ellington Band. Three CDs, handsome booklet, thorough annotations by Patrica Willard. A must for "Happy Go Lucky Local Parts 1 and 2."

Neverthless and why not?

11 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

I was speaking of  this discussion - http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?/topic/26472-cyrus-st-clair/#comment-496849

I was responding to your "narrowing of focus" remark by mentioning some recordings before "hard bop" and its children that I've recently been paying attention to. But that's just me.

[BillF]

7 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

This might not be the best place to say this but I hate the narrowing of focus here - rarely any discussions of recordings before "hard bop" and its children. Back a couple of years we even had discussions about Clarence Williams, his tuba player and his bands.

 

 

 

[Teasing the Korean]

18 hours ago, mjazzg said:

My understanding of Rare Groove is similar, not so much a Jazz genre but more a Funk/Soul/US R&B crossover - James Brown at the source. I think Acid Jazz was the more Jazz genre but Jazz you could dance to, preferably at Dingwalls.  It came a bit later than Rare Groove but they ran concurrently for a while and probably shared audiences

Funnily I've never really thought as Rare Groove or Northern Soul as marketing tags more of club-derived scene descriptors.  The marketing came later, somewhat inevitably when record labels wanted to sell the scenes to those outside largely.

There is value in retroactively created genres or descriptors.  It is easier to contextualize things in retrospect than it is while they are happening.

14 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

This might not be the best place to say this but I hate the narrowing of focus here - rarely any discussions of recordings before "hard bop" and its children. Back a couple of years we even had discussions about Clarence Williams, his tuba player and his bands.

Different listeners look for different qualities in music.  If we are going back to the 1920s, I'm more likely to find what I'm seeking in 20th-century classical music than I am in jazz.

[JSngry]

You're on the white twack, baby!

[Chuck Nessa]

53 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

There is value in retroactively created genres or descriptors.  It is easier to contextualize things in retrospect than it is while they are happening.

Different listeners look for different qualities in music.  If we are going back to the 1920s, I'm more likely to find what I'm seeking in 20th-century classical music than I am in jazz.

Yeah, early jazz is where guys like Stravinsky and Milhaud went for inspiration.

[Teasing the Korean]

12 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Yeah, early jazz is where guys like Stravinsky and Milhaud went for inspiration.

Exactly.

We all have different entry and exit points in and out of genres, and we all have different frames of reference.  

Edited August 8, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[JSngry]

After worlds collide, you can either go looking for the new old you or the old new you....or...just enjoy the new now and take it from there, because worlds are always colliding. The old you is never what you thought it was, and the new you can only be what you let it be.

[BillF]

1 hour ago, Teasing the Korean said:

If we are going back to the 1920s, I'm more likely to find what I'm seeking in 20th-century classical music than I am in jazz.

There go the Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens! 

[Teasing the Korean]

Just now, BillF said:

There go the Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens! 

I have them, and I've had them for decades.  I am rarely motivated to spin this stuff.  The fidelity doesn't help, but that was what they had to work with.  Not knocking them, just stating my own preferences.