JSngry

Mark Stryker used to write for Cadence? Nice...

Tell me about Ben Johnston, please?

Stop it Chewy, you'll NEVER gig a jazz-ed gig thinking like that! You can, however, make a jam that can get used by TCM. I'm takin' that MadTed money!

Backpack!

Ok, not to be too flip, so let me pull it back in just a little bit. Of course there were esthetic considerations (and in Tristano's case, a, for lack of a better phrase, systemic imperative). But - implicit in the "self-determination" of the musical esthetic was a financial element that was more than an afterthought. For Dizzy, he was a good enough businessman to realize the implications And Bird was a shrewd enough, uh...consumer to do the same. Money is not a dirtty word in the creative process.

Ok, sure. I don't recall Dizzy talking about how people were like, hey, why don't we get some of this bread and write our own lines, my bad.

Has it stopped raining? If so, yeah, sure.

Yeah, the vernacular is funny like that. I always cringe when I hear it and use it. But you know how it's so fashionable today for people to say "come with", like "we're going to lunch, wanna come with? That gives me the creeps too, and I try not to use it. But "reharm" in a musician's environment is just cutting to the chase. And for me, as somebody who can NOT ype, it's a few keystrokes. But yeah, in a civilian context...it's potentially creepy, and the more civilian the context, the creepier it can get.

Why would there need to be a need for one, it's already got "walk" in it. Other than that... The point, such as there is one, is just that "reharmonize/reharmonization" is perfect. "Contrafact" is silly, a noun with NO direct/natural connection to the act itself. It's a word that only somebody who needs a word to teach/pontificate with has a need. And it really is ignorant in that it makes no reference, direct or interfered, that the real genesis of this thing was/is to get a few extra pennies, and if they were lucky (and the publishers always were) dollars. Who gets money from Donna Lee? Not the writers of Indiana. Plus, if we swallow whole the notion of jazz improvisation being "spontaneous composition" (and that's in some ways for some players truer than is "romantic" enough to be a compliment), then damn near every jazz solo on changes, including original changes(!), can then be considered a "contrafact", and I mean, really, who needs that kind of thinking? Hey, I'm not improvising, I'm CONTRAFACTING!!!

I like reharm(onization) because it needs no further explanation (unless, of course, you don't understand what harmony/harmonization is, in which case, that's on you, if you want to know, it's readily available knowledge). What's a "reharmonization"? Duh - it's exactly what it says it is. Exactly, the noun and the verb reinforce each ohther. Now, "contrafact", just what is that, exactly? What is the verb to go with this noun? Hey everybody I just contrafacted the "I Got Rhythm" chord! Well, isn't that special! You could just be a grown up and say "rhythm changes", or "All Of Me changes" or, "Things changes", that's all you need to say. You don't need a special word for it, you juist call it waht it is. Well, I guess now we have a word for it. Thank god I'm probably never going to be on a gig where some respectable young schoolboy puts a chart in from of me and makes sure to let me know that this new piece of music is a contrafact on Stella changes, like I need to know that because if I wasn't told, it would have gone on for 10 minutes and I'd never have figured it out, my god, you ARE clever, the melody was SO fresh that I completely did not notice the changes. Good job! C'mon, seriously? I'm with Chewy on this one, 100%.

Yeah, that's what I said. A reharm is just that - a reharmonization of an existing melody. See now, with this "contrafact" thing/word/bullshit there's language happening instead of music. Too much math for R&B.

It's useful, but neither useful nor necessary to/for anybody who would actually do it. But now, Pandora's bottle is out with Jeanie, so much for a natural inclination just being done without being mindful of it having a formal name. Doing a thing is not the same as consciously doing a named thing, instinct corrupted by (at least) one degree of separation if/when that happens. Oh, look at me, I've made a CONTRAFACT!!!

Wow dude, that's a bit, uh...extreme. The issue is not "alcohol", it's drugs in the alcohol. If you have kids old enough, ask them if they've heard of such a thing. Mine have. And perhaps not surprisingly, both of them (they're 32 & 28 now) had a reaction when this "controversy" began, and both of them certainly said that that song had been kinda creepy to them for a while now. My daughter even used the exact word "rapey" (clearly she's been weaponized!!!!!), and she told me of "friends" who have indeed been drugged or otherwise date raped. Knowing enough to know that "friends" may or may not be a euphemism for self, I listened and did not try to give her a music history lesson in an attempt to shut her up. Fascinating bullshit indeed!

right...so the lyric "hey, what's in this drink?" won't relate to anybody's real life experience as being rapey. And if it does, they're wrong for feeling that way and need to be educated. It's not the song's fault that times have changed, so these thoughts are wrong, don't have them. Men will define seduction, men will define rapey, women will not have a say (much less a voice) on any of this, times will change, songs won't, get over it. All rightie, then. Let freedom ring!

I don't like the word. I understand it, but I don't like it. For one thing, it makes it seem that doing this practice was always an intellectual endeavor rather than sometimes an economic one. Chord changes are not eligible for copyright. Melodies are. You - or somebody - can get paid for a melody. And, as already stated, I really wonder how many people who have done this thing used that word. Nobody I know has, but now that we got schools teaching people how to make a jazz noise, maybe that's part of it now. Funny thing, though. The practice of writing new changes to an existing melody has a simple word that is immediately understandable - reharmonization (or if you're a hipcat Daddy with a sheepskin beat, "reharm". That's easy enough.

Full quote, please - " arguably rapey ", and that's apt. Arguably indeed, that's an accurate description. And yes, it's a legitimate discussion. I've been fascinated/repulsed by watching a lot of PD B-movies from the 30s and 40s and seeing just how degrading the African-American stereotypes were. You know, if you look at the "mainstream" films from that era that have remained in the public's eye today, you will see these stereotypes, but they are, mostly, "refined" compared to what else was going on in the movies in those days. I've seen outright "coon" type behavior dumbed down even further than it already was. Then you look the actor up on IMDB and you find out, oh, this guy was a legit actor, college-educated, skilled in this and that, but here they are playing this imbecilic infantile adult-boy/girl whose only purpose in the life is to amuse and otherwise serve the white folks. And that's all they ever did, this type of role, and there were more people to play them than there were roles, so everybody shows up in just a handful of movies, But cumulatively....wow. There's a LOT of this and other stuff in these type films that would so not fly today, not even get off the ground. In many ways, it's almost an underground genre. "Hollywood" wanted no part of it because it's very seldom "top-shelf", but if you want to better understand just how deeply ingrained all this casual racism/sexism/every other -ism (and all the cumulative sensitivity/hostility to it) is ingrained in the collective cultural consciousness, it behooves you to take a dip in the deep, deep, deep waters of the castaway movies of our cultural legacy. I once heard it said that the real objection to "Amos & Andy" wasn't that it wasn't funny in itself, almost everybody agrees that it was. The objection was the lack of any further type of characters in the culture to provide context for the buffoonery. It's worth looking at some of the survivin examples of so-called "Black Cinema" to see how true this rings. Whatever else there is there, there is the opportunity to see men and women being other things than servants and buffoonish sidekicks. And we know that black people in America, especially in pre-integration days, had multi-faceted communities with professional classes. And we know that rail porters weren't just there to shines you shoes, carry your backs and just say yassuh, there were there to make money for their families, and often to get their kids into and through college. Real life not at all represented by "Hollywood". Probably not very many people today recall just how radical Sidney Poitier was in his time..yes we have come a long way, but there is further still to go and we do run the risk of looping rather than progressing, that is why debate is imperative - debate, not stifle. And women? Tell me again how women have always been free to be who they want to be and to think as they want to think without male judgement/imposition. Was I taking a nap when that world existed? None of the modern sensitivities, nor the resistances to them, are the result of anything sudden. This is an inevitable pivot point of a long-running cultural evolution. We'll see how it proceed, because it will proceed. The biggest mistake we can make is to wonder "why now?". Personally, I'm surprised it's taken this long to get here! And oh btw - I occasionally relax and unwind with the AccuRadio app. This season, they have an entire channel dedicated to nothing but apparently all the different versions of "Baby It's Cold Outside". So all this banophobia that was in the air, relax, we are still a free people, and where there's freedom of controversy, there's freedom of profit. Same as it ever was.

Chuck Wayne soudnin' GOOD! I don't about your turf, but down here, Savoy 78s are often in the piles, not the bebop ones, but the R&B ones and the swing combo ones. I hardly buy any 78s no real player, no real storage, but I do like to look, and some real niche stuff, like Myron Cohen 78s on a Yiddish label, I was THIS close to getting those and then thought twice. The most hyped I ever got was finding "Greenbacks" on a red/black Atlantic 78, in some ways my favorite Ray Charles record of them all. Broke it on the way home from the store, turned back around and went back for another one (yes, this was a warehouse or records, probably got inventories from juke box operators, radio stations, every place imaginable. They had a bigger Jazz 45 section than a lot of places had jazz LP sections, and only most of them were promos. Anyway, they still had that second copy of "Greenbacks". I got home with it, but dropped it befopre it got on the turntable. I've kept the label nailed inside my closet door ever since, kind of like a horseshoe, only not. 78s got a sound like none other. I don't collect them (well, not really), but if anybody wants to hang and play theirs, hey, gimme a time and place. I'll be there.

I picked this up from Berkshire (thanks for calling it out!). Started playing it this afternoon. Very much enjoying it, although it's not something that is going to benefit from the "one and done" plan I had for it. There's a lot there. And also, I don't think it benefits from an "all at once" listening attempt either. Smaller does, instead, not because it wears down, but because there a lot to digest at any one time. And it's not all microtonal, it applied microtonality, only when it's "integral to the story" as they say.

Bunny, not Benny, but otherwise, yes, "small group swing" should work for every occasion (except, of course, when it's solo, duo, trio, quartet/quintet, and/or big band. Don't worry about being "way" behind, that's just chronology. I was born way behind, and you'd at least 30 years younger than me. Most people alive today were born way behind. But that's not a problem if you view it as an opportunity, an adventure, a challenge, something other than a permanent un- remediable condition! I mean, you already got today to dig into, as well as the music from your youth and approximately a generation before you. The people in this category are pretty much all dead now, and have been for a while now. They were probably dead when you were born, and not just recently. So forget about getting it all, not enough hours in a day, much less a lifetime. But do get this - so many of these dead motherfuckers could really, really play. If you don't get hit by Louis Armstrong, I don't want to hear how much you dig Lee Morgan, because that's just a basic emoptional reaction, not a fully formed, nuanced awareness. I mean, everybody got a basic gut reaction, it's wonderfully human, but also supremely mundane it its commoness, it's not enough to get old on. At some point we're all going to be dead motherfuckers, so don't die not knowing as many badass motherfuckers as you possibly can. And that's what's fun, right, hearing some badass motherfuckers bringin' it. The shit that happened before anything you really know now, you gotta love the badasses there, too, because being a badass then meant the same thing it does now. This has always been the name of this game. You know it when you hear it, no matter how old it is.

Barney Bigard's on Blue Note:

Who is Barney Bigard? Barney Bigard was no "some guy/oh, that guy"! Start buying some Ellington 78s? or some Louis Armstrong LPs? Ok, that Louis is a 78...so go find it. And live for flipping it over!

Dude, you've been away for a bit of a while, what's up?!?!?!

The Verve reissue program at that time, hell, the whole label, really, was a bit of a mess. This was their first attempt(?) at doing an organized "from the vaults" series, and although it worked in terms of valuability, I get the sense from the packaging/etc. that it was a pretty loose project. At least it was an attempt at a series rather than just the odd drops here and there that the label had devolved to. The Gil album, remember, had a tune mistitled, and in two cases, they released rough rhythm section jams that Gil then had "banned" from any further issuance. He was vocal about that right from the beginning, too, complaining about it in an otherwise sanguine DB interview. Fortunately for us all, Verve regrouped and set about putting together all those (mostly) marvelous 2-fers.

I used to think that Louis was joking when he propped these guys...I get it now, I think. It swings within itself, and no matter how corny it is outside itself, it still swings inside itself. That's what counts. I finally get it.