LaFaro

[Guest youmustbe]

Steve Kuhn gave me the demo he did in 1960 with Scott LaFaro and Pete LaRoca.

Don Friedman just game the demo he did around same time with Scott and Pete.

On Don's. the solo Scott LaFaro takes on Green Dolphin Street is so breathtaking in the sense that somebody in 1960 could 'think' musically like that! It's on another level...a level that has nothing to do with jazz, even though it is in a jazz format.

I was too young to catch him live.

[Chuck Nessa]

Back in the day most of my musician friends thought he was a "cheater" for lowering the bridge. I do know you could not hear his instrument in person without a mike. Often wondered if his bandmates ever heard his playing.

Please explain what is so "breathtaking" and what elevates his playing "beyond" whatever.

Then tell me what you smokin'.

[Guest youmustbe]

Just the notes he chooses, which are 'not jazz' but are part of the 'concept of jazz'. Like 'Why didn't anyone think of approaching a solo on these changes like this?'

It's like when Keith Jarrett does something within a 'jazz format' but is not 'jazz' but then again it is.

Or some of the things that Prez did even going back to 1936 sides. Amazing stuff Prez did even late in his life which people thought that he had lost it or was goofing off but is actually beyond the stereotype of what a 'jazz solo' should be.

You know it when you hear it!!!!!! I guess.

Like Gunther Schuller said in a conversation I had with him about Ornette, Scott etc. Scott was not 'just a jazz musician'. No pejorative intended toward jazz or jazz musicians.

Another I was too young to hear live , Ornette at the Five Spot as well as Booker Little.

[Chuck Nessa]

Just the notes he chooses, which are 'not jazz' but are part of the 'concept of jazz'. Like 'Why didn't anyone think of approaching a solo on these changes like this?'

Which notes are "not jazz"? I'll tell all my friends to avoid 'em.

[John L]

Just the notes he chooses, which are 'not jazz' but are part of the 'concept of jazz'. Like 'Why didn't anyone think of approaching a solo on these changes like this?'

Which notes are "not jazz"? I'll tell all my friends to avoid 'em.

Didn't the Lincoln Center recently issue an easy reference guide on this subject?

[Chas]

Back in the day most of my musician friends thought he was a "cheater" for lowering the bridge. I do know you could not hear his instrument in person without a mike. Often wondered if his bandmates ever heard his playing.

I can only imagine what these friends of yours thought of flugelhornists...

Outside of some strange machismo ( "real men don't need close mic'ing" ) why would anyone criticize La Faro for using a lower action if the choice was made for artistic reasons having to do with a preference for speed and tone over volume ?

Steve Kuhn gave me the demo he did in 1960 with Scott LaFaro and Pete LaRoca.

This is out on a Japanese CD that runs about 29 minutes . Decent sound and good playing , especially on Bohemia After Dark and on the alternate take of So What . Hard for me to recommend a disc that costs more than a dollar a minute though .

[Larry Kart]

Far be it from me to explain what You Must Be is saying, but I think I understand and agree with him. Within what guys who were thinking within a "changes" framework at the time were thinking and doing, LaFaro made lots of harmonic choices (notes and phrases) that were without much if any precedent in jazz this side of, say, Bob Graettinger -- and unlike Graettinger, those choices weren't intended to (and didn't) sound weird, just right and new, and they also managed to link up well with what the other people who were playing with LaFaro were doing. The stunning nature of the best of LaFaro remains so for me; yet what he did was also, though this sounds contradictory, very much of its time and place (and also, arguably, a bit "precious"). The best evidence of this probably is the way LaFaro sounds with Ornette. Without the relative stability of framework that Bill Evans gave him (i.e. LaFaro always knew that harmonically and rhythmically he'd be to the "outside" of Evans if he wanted to be) -- or to put the other way, within the at once more fluid and more basic world of Ornette -- LaFaro's inventions just don't "speak" very well, don't have that "I'm pushing way off from this" quality that his language relies on. On the other hand, though I don't recall the source, I believe that Ornette has said (surprisingly to me) that LaFaro was his favorite bassist.

About the weakness of LaFaro's sound in a club without a mike, I don't have any personal experience but that certainly sounds likely. I did hear Red Mitchell in a club in about 1962, though (Mitchell being one of LaFaro's precursors), expecting something "booming" from the way Mitchell sounded on record, and he was almost inaudible. About the "cheating" thing -- if I had to choose, I'd pick Wilbur Ware over LaFaro, but I don't have to choose. Also, LaFaro certainly wasn't trying to trick anyone by setting up the instrument the way he did; he was going for something he wanted to hear. As for whether the other guys on the stand could hear him, the interaction on the Evans Vangaurd recordings makes it clear that Evans and Motian could pretty well, somehow -- if not, they were mind readers.

Another thing about the time and place aspect of LaFaro -- while his influence was vast for a good long time, affecting many thousands of bassists around the world, I don't even need all the fingers of one hand to count the players who were influenced by him or in the same bag right alongside him whose playing IMO had the quality of genuine, febrile ecstasy that was the rationale for the whole thing: the young Gary Peacock, Albert Stinson, and Russell Thorne.

[Guest youmustbe]

Yes, time and place. Just like Blanton 20 years earlier, Scott, as Gunther Schuller said to me

'Dropped out of the sky."

Russell George told me he used to practice with Scott and that Scotty's bass had a true sound from top to bottom.

BTW Chuck. You seem to be as much a curmudgeon as I, if that's at all possible.

[Shawn]

Back in the day most of my musician friends thought he was a "cheater" for lowering the bridge.

I've heard the same thing about guitarists that scallop the necks on their guitars...or those who use sweep picking techniques. I don't really view that as cheating, if it helps you create the end result you're after then that's all that's important.

[Dan Gould]

BTW Chuck. You seem to be as much a curmudgeon as I, if that's at all possible.

Is this what is meant by "damning with faint praise"?

[gslade]

Just the notes he chooses, which are 'not jazz' but are part of the 'concept of jazz'. Like 'Why didn't anyone think of approaching a solo on these changes like this?'

Which notes are "not jazz"? I'll tell all my friends to avoid 'em.

Didn't the Lincoln Center recently issue an easy reference guide on this subject?