"Misty" - WHY?

[Gheorghe]

4 minutes ago, EKE BBB said:

I’m curious on who that Eastern Europe sax player was! 

His name is Nicolas Simion (we really don´t say Nicolas since in România it´s "Nicolae", but I think he changed it into Nicolas since this sounds more common for western europeans and anglo-americans. 
Yes, as I say, I didn´t know him, he came on stage and played......oh boy......it was fantastic, 

[EKE BBB]

39 minutes ago, Gheorghe said:

His name is Nicolas Simion (we really don´t say Nicolas since in România it´s "Nicolae", but I think he changed it into Nicolas since this sounds more common for western europeans and anglo-americans. 
Yes, as I say, I didn´t know him, he came on stage and played......oh boy......it was fantastic, 

Thanks for the reference! Never listened to (or even heard of) him.

[Niko]

56 minutes ago, EKE BBB said:

Thanks for the reference! Never listened to (or even heard of) him.

he's great... when I was a kid in Cologne in the 90s, I once recognized him on the street... he wasn't used to being recognized on the street by 17 year old fans... 

[Teasing the Korean]

The Mastersounds recorded "Misty," but it went unreleased (I think) until it showed up on an exotica album with overdubbed exotic percussion.

[Gheorghe]

On 25.11.2021 at 9:12 AM, Niko said:

he's great... when I was a kid in Cologne in the 90s, I once recognized him on the street... he wasn't used to being recognized on the street by 17 year old fans... 

oh, that´s nice ! 
I got to know him in the late 80´s just when he came to Austria.  If I remember right, he had stayed some time in Ungaria where he had bought some book about old transilvanian folk music , I think once he said he wants to do something with that stuff, some kind of Béla Bartók but from another point of view. In Eastern Europe it was not unusual to combine eastern european folk music with so called "jazz". I think after playing much "standard" jazz he wanted to do something else, and to dig back into the folk roots.

The strange thing is that on one of the two Graham Moncur albums for BN (I think it´s the one with Shorter on it, maybe it´s titled "Some Other Stuff"...... and the first tune sounds exactly like some folk music from România. A bit like those fanfare music  from Transsilvania or Bucovina. Graham Moncur III may never have been in RO, so..... who knows from where he got that inspiration ???? I spinned it once and my wife came in and said what´s that ? Thats romanian music...." 

 

[Shrdlu]

That is one tune that I would never play, even at a blowing session. Add "There Will Never Be Another You" to that list.

[Gheorghe]

2 hours ago, Shrdlu said:

That is one tune that I would never play, even at a blowing session. Add "There Will Never Be Another You" to that list.

I wish I could do the same on blowing sessions, but I can´t afford to. If we play a set of our program (which sure not includes "Misty" "Another You" "All the Things You Are", "Tenor Madness, Green Dolphin etc. ) and the second set is a jam I´m supposed to support the players who might call those tunes. 

If I can´t stand it, I´m free to leave the stand, get out of the club, take a breath and a cigarrete (please no "No Smokin´" discussion here ) , get back and play some more. But I don´t do this if some newbies want to play those basic tunes because I want to encourage them and support them. 
I leave to have a cigarette or a non alcohol beer  if someone thinks he might change completly the course of the musical style of the evening. I´m not going to play "funk" on an old upright piano, if the guitar players get in exthase....., let them do there thing until they get tired of it .

Before the lockdown there always came a male singer who wanted to sing "All of Me" but couldnt sing in time, he made a stupid opera area out of it. Then he called some tune I don´t like, some funk in E natural where at one points the refrain is an endless "I know I know I know I Know...." , well a guitar player played some heavy rock phrase to it, but there is nothing for me lest to "fill in".  I don´t like the tune. Don´t misunderstand me, I like electric jazz and funk, but not at an acoustic jazz jam-session, but on adecvate occasions (I played electric for many years, but not on an old honky tonk piano, and not on jam sessions, but with an organized group....

[Teasing the Korean]

3 hours ago, Shrdlu said:

That is one tune that I would never play, even at a blowing session. Add "There Will Never Be Another You" to that list.

What's so bad about them?  I know "Misty" is (or was) over-played, but that's not the song's fault.  What if someone requested either of them?

Edited December 1, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[Shrdlu]

Ha ha. E natural.

When I was 16, a friend and I used to have a blow at lunchtime at school.  He had a Fender guitar and was into rock. I played the alto saxophone then. Rock musicians play everything in E, so I had to play in the alto's C#. Good practice.

That whizzbang thing that Jimmy Dorsey used to play (it's on Youtube) is in concert E. What a technician he was.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Shrdlu

[JSngry]

If you played in funk/rock bands, you learned to play in funk/keys keys, which were usually driven by the open-string guitar keys - E, B,, G, D, and A

Same thing in blues bands.

Not so in jazz.

That Db in swing days, still figuring that one out. Used to play with certain dance bands that uses old stock charts and that was unexpected, to say the least.

What was really wonky was playing in a rehearsal group that had all the old Dave Pell Octet charts....talk about wonky keys!

[Kevin Bresnahan]

6 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Before the lockdown there always came a male singer who wanted to sing "All of Me" but couldnt sing in time, he made a stupid opera area out of it. Then he called some tune I don´t like, some funk in E natural where at one points the refrain is an endless "I know I know I know I Know...." , well a guitar player played some heavy rock phrase to it, but there is nothing for me lest to "fill in".  I don´t like the tune. Don´t misunderstand me, I like electric jazz and funk, but not at an acoustic jazz jam-session, but on adecvate occasions (I played electric for many years, but not on an old honky tonk piano, and not on jam sessions, but with an organized group....

I know. I know. I know.... sounds like "Ain't No Sunshine" (great tune by Bill Withers). But that's written in A.

[Teasing the Korean]

6 hours ago, JSngry said:

That Db in swing days, still figuring that one out.

I think that some piano players liked Db for the visual cues.  You get the five notes of the pentatonic scale on the black keys, you get the safe spaces provided by C and F, and you more or less avoid E and B, at least if you are playing in a major key with a semi-conventional harmonic structure.  Of course, all the notes show up sooner or later.

[JSngry]

Interesting!

[Daniel A]

Yes, Db is a pleasant key for a piano player. Didn't Oscar Peterson do The Girl From Ipanema in Db instead of F, BTW? 

For reasons I have not analyzed I find Eb to be one of the most comfortable keys to play in (on piano). 

To instead mention under-played tunes, there is a fantastic tune in a hard key, Richie Powell's 'Jacqui' :

It has an AABA form, where the B section is a blues in... B! 

And now when you got me started... It can be really refreshing to play over-familiar tunes in new keys. I am fortunate to have some skilled musicians in the neighborhood and we usually jam for an hour or two on Sunday afternoons in one of the guys' basement. 

Last time, we played Buster Williams' 'Firewater' which ends on a minor Eb chord. We vamped the two last bars a couple of times, and then it felt natural to segue into something else, which happened to be Maiden Voyage, but played in Eb rather than D. The change of key really made the whole tune sound so different, fresh and with a lighter character. 

[Gheorghe]

12 hours ago, bresna said:

I know. I know. I know.... sounds like "Ain't No Sunshine" (great tune by Bill Withers). But that's written in A.

Yes, that might be what he called, I remember it was something with Sunshine, but that´s definitly not what I want to play, neither in E nor in A . 

10 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I think that some piano players liked Db for the visual cues.  You get the five notes of the pentatonic scale on the black keys, you get the safe spaces provided by C and F, and you more or less avoid E and B, at least if you are playing in a major key with a semi-conventional harmonic structure.  Of course, all the notes show up sooner or later.

I didn´t notice that. Usually I don´t look at the keys if I play them. I didn´t know that there are "safe spaces" on the piano. The reason I "avoid" E is more that there is not so much repertory of music composed in E in the music I play. 
When I played with a jazz-rock and funk oriented  electric group, I really dug the key of E, no problem with it. The key of H I think is more found in classical music, but I´m not a classical trained person. 

 

10 hours ago, Daniel A said:

Yes, Db is a pleasant key for a piano player. Didn't Oscar Peterson do The Girl From Ipanema in Db instead of F, BTW? 

For reasons I have not analyzed I find Eb to be one of the most comfortable keys to play in (on piano). 

To instead mention under-played tunes, there is a fantastic tune in a hard key, Richie Powell's 'Jacqui' :

It has an AABA form, where the B section is a blues in... B! 

And now when you got me started... It can be really refreshing to play over-familiar tunes in new keys. I am fortunate to have some skilled musicians in the neighborhood and we usually jam for an hour or two on Sunday afternoons in one of the guys' basement. 

Last time, we played Buster Williams' 'Firewater' which ends on a minor Eb chord. We vamped the two last bars a couple of times, and then it felt natural to segue into something else, which happened to be Maiden Voyage, but played in Eb rather than D. The change of key really made the whole tune sound so different, fresh and with a lighter character. 

Yes, Oscar Peterson played "Ipanema" in Db. Anyway, that album "We get requests" is one of the very very few Peterson albums I have and can enjoy if I´m tired and want some easy listening stuff...

[Teasing the Korean]

6 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

I didn´t notice that. Usually I don´t look at the keys if I play them. I didn´t know that there are "safe spaces" on the piano. The reason I "avoid" E is more that there is not so much repertory of music composed in E in the music I play. 
When I played with a jazz-rock and funk oriented  electric group, I really dug the key of E, no problem with it. The key of H I think is more found in classical music, but I´m not a classical trained person. 

Note my use of the word "some."  I was not implying that I fall into this category, not that I play much these days in any key, Db or otherwise.

[Shrdlu]

The well-known Billie Holiday video performance of "Fine And Mellow" runs at the wrong speed and sounds in E. There is no way that they would have played that in E, so, which was it: Eb or F? Gerry Mulligan's solo solves that. He plays the third note of the scale at the top end of his baritone, and you can see that he's playing his top E (concert G), so the key is Eb. I hope someone speed corrects that someday.

There is an Ahmad Jamal video, with Israel and Vernel, playing "Darn That Dream". The sound is out of synch with the video, and it drives me nuts. The piano hits a phrase when his hands are up, and Vernel's hi-hat goes down on the wrong beat. I found another copy of that where everything is in synch.

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, Shrdlu said:

The well-known Billie Holiday video performance of "Fine And Mellow" runs at the wrong speed and sounds in E. There is no way that they would have played that in E, so, which was it: Eb or F? Gerry Mulligan's solo solves that. He plays the third note of the scale at the top end of his baritone, and you can see that he's playing his top E (concert G), so the key is Eb. I hope someone speed corrects that someday.

It's F, unless you know a way to get a tenor Ab to do that shake the way Ben does, in which case, please share! Otherwise, that's a tenor Bb (or a tenor A if you really want to get unmentionaably personal with the horn).

Anyway, I daresay that added all together, I've probably played more blues in E than in F. Blues bands tend to guitar keys, jazz bands don't. Each has its unique flavor, as befits the musics.

[Shrdlu]

No. It is certainly Eb. Gerry Mulligan plays the third note of the scale, top E on the baritone, which is concert G. That fixes the keynote as Eb. The top keys are exposed on the coil of a baritone saxophone.

[JSngry]

So how does Ben do that shake on a tenor Ab?

Give me a fingering for that, please. I can do it on a tenor Bb all day long. But on an Ab?

[Shrdlu]

Furthermore, the whole show is running a half-tone sharp. Monk plays "Blue Monk" in Bb - you can see him hitting a Bb key - but the piece sounds in B.

At the end, Pee Wee Russell and Jimmy Giuffre play a blues in Bb, and once again, it sounds in B.

I assume you mean the tenor's Ab, not concert pitch. A trill on Ab to A, or Ab down to G, is a piece of cake.

[JSngry]

55 minutes ago, Shrdlu said:

I assume you mean the tenor's Ab, not concert pitch. A trill on Ab to A, or Ab down to G, is a piece of cake.

Yes, as stated repeatedly. That shake is done on a tenor Bb, which in the key of Tenor G is the "blue note" flatted third.

And it's not a trill, it's a shake. Tenor players all over the world do it as Ben does here. Dexter was also well known for it. You finger an A in the left hand, put all three fingers down in the right, use the right hand Eb key, and then work your jaw and throat to shake the sit out of it. For that matter, Phil Woods used it a lot on alto, and there's a few YouTube videos about how to do it. They didn't have YouTube when I was learning, so I had to go to the old guys to show me how it worked. Not all of them were willing, btw!

If the actual key of this particular performance is concert Eb, that's tenor F, and the blue note/flatted third is an Ab. I've learned a lot of way to make different notes do different things, but a shake like that on an Ab is not one of them. Nor have I really noticed any other saxophone player doing it on an Ab. Not saying it can't be done, just saying that I don't know how to do it. That's why I'm asking you for a fingering, if you have one.

Billie's OG key was F. Maybe she dropped it a whole step as she aged. But that's not my concern. Figuring how to shake an Ab the same way you do a Bb is.

[medjuck]

39 minutes ago, Shrdlu said:

Furthermore, the whole show is running a half-tone sharp. Monk plays "Blue Monk" in Bb - you can see him hitting a Bb key - but the piece sounds in B.

At the end, Pee Wee Russell and Jimmy Giuffre play a blues in Bb, and once again, it sounds in B.

I assume you mean the tenor's Ab, not concert pitch. A trill on Ab to A, or Ab down to G, is a piece of cake.

Wasn't it originally broadcast live?  I presume it was in tune then.  I guess the kinescope made at the time was slow (or would it have been fast?) 

[Shrdlu]

Check the key signature in the transcription: three flats.

By the way, I also play the tenor saxophone.

[JSngry]

Yeah, I saw that one. And I don't give a damn about the "real" key nearly as much as I do finding out how to do the same thing to a tenor Ab as I can do to a tenor Bb. Can you help with that?