robertoart

I do take what you say seriously, and I do respect your social history and achievements within the music. I am questioning what you said though. I don't believe the recorded work by Eddie Diehl justifies your position - that you have further elucidated. I find the idea that Eddie Diehl had a sound and musical opus big enough to co-exist with Tyner/Jones and Larry Young/Jones - in any way comparable to Grant Green, almost offensive to the principle of the musicians who chose to work with Grant. That you suggest Grant Green is held in over-regard because of the so-called romantic legacy of substance abuse, even more so. I am also suggesting that the decision by Grant Green to use electric instruments and play groove based music, was also an artistic decision that related to the changing music around him, as well as his ability to contribute to it. In regards to the narrative of this thread, there is nothing in these records he made (the funk ones), that suggest insincerity or unprincipled manoeuvres (made for popularities sake alone). As has also been pointed out in this thread, they probably weren't made for 'you' as an audience. It would have been retrogressive, conceptually, for him to have begun exploring 'chord-melody' at this point in time. With the reality of Black music the way it was. The direction he took with the funk albums was every bit as logical as the way Hancock ran with the more radical funk of the In A Silent Way/Bitches Brew sound towards the Headhunters. I am saying also that Grant Green 'was' a MF and he 'was' trying. He just wasn't trying to be Joe Pass. So yes, if you think not being concerned with extending the trio/standards format is lazy, well and good. I don't, compared to finding musicians who have a vision for 1969 instrumental music, working the guitar into the front line of that music without recourse to Hendrixisms - and organising the style and arrangements that will fill clubs and create the atmosphere you can hear on Alive and Live At The Lighthouse. You just don't know Eddie's playing then. And I don't blame you. He doesn't record well and hates recording. There was a Hank Mobley record, Thinking of Home. He was OK, but sounded a million times better with just me and him jamming, which are hours and hours from the 80s, but never recorded, and live gigs I was at. The best stuff was a trio at Vassar with Jimmy Cobb and Bill Crow (but he hated it and wouldn't make me a copy) but more so a duo gig with Red Mitchell at Bradley's that Steve Berger recorded. I told him he should put that out. He actually agreed but thought Mitchell's widow would be hard to deal with or something. Bullshit. Eddie just doesn't like hearing himself on recording. I can relate. But that doesn't help my case here. Don't know what else to say. Ask other guitar players. You're not gonna sway me on Grant so let's agree to disagree. He sounds good and live and let live. Ok. Well maybe he should have recorded more in the sixties. He might have had a better sound by the time he got to record with Hank Mobley and Reuben Wilson. Ha ha. Maaaaaaa!!! He won't stooooooooppppp!!!! It's a human cry from the wilderness.

I do take what you say seriously, and I do respect your social history and achievements within the music. I am questioning what you said though. I don't believe the recorded work by Eddie Diehl justifies your position - that you have further elucidated. I find the idea that Eddie Diehl had a sound and musical opus big enough to co-exist with Tyner/Jones and Larry Young/Jones - in any way comparable to Grant Green, almost offensive to the principle of the musicians who chose to work with Grant. That you suggest Grant Green is held in over-regard because of the so-called romantic legacy of substance abuse, even more so. I am also suggesting that the decision by Grant Green to use electric instruments and play groove based music, was also an artistic decision that related to the changing music around him, as well as his ability to contribute to it. In regards to the narrative of this thread, there is nothing in these records he made (the funk ones), that suggest insincerity or unprincipled manoeuvres (made for popularities sake alone). As has also been pointed out in this thread, they probably weren't made for 'you' as an audience. It would have been retrogressive, conceptually, for him to have begun exploring 'chord-melody' at this point in time. With the reality of Black music the way it was. The direction he took with the funk albums was every bit as logical as the way Hancock ran with the more radical funk of the In A Silent Way/Bitches Brew sound towards the Headhunters. I am saying also that Grant Green 'was' a MF and he 'was' trying. He just wasn't trying to be Joe Pass. So yes, if you think not being concerned with extending the trio/standards format is lazy, well and good. I don't, compared to finding musicians who have a vision for 1969 instrumental music, working the guitar into the front line of that music without recourse to Hendrixisms - and organising the style and arrangements that will fill clubs and create the atmosphere you can hear on Alive and Live At The Lighthouse. You just don't know Eddie's playing then. And I don't blame you. He doesn't record well and hates recording. There was a Hank Mobley record, Thinking of Home. He was OK, but sounded a million times better with just me and him jamming, which are hours and hours from the 80s, but never recorded, and live gigs I was at. The best stuff was a trio at Vassar with Jimmy Cobb and Bill Crow (but he hated it and wouldn't make me a copy) but more so a duo gig with Red Mitchell at Bradley's that Steve Berger recorded. I told him he should put that out. He actually agreed but thought Mitchell's widow would be hard to deal with or something. Bullshit. Eddie just doesn't like hearing himself on recording. I can relate. But that doesn't help my case here. Don't know what else to say. Ask other guitar players. You're not gonna sway me on Grant so let's agree to disagree. He sounds good and live and let live. Ok. Well maybe he should have recorded more in the sixties. He might have had a better sound by the time he got to record with Hank Mobley and Reuben Wilson.

Oh no, I didn't mean to comp or not to comp was an idealogical choice, I meant that when Grant returned to recording and therefore a higher profile in music, for him to have focussed on advancing his chordal harmony (in the sense I think that fasstrack was meaning) would have been irrelevant to his intentions to play over propulsive bass lines and vamps. Yes it would have been great to hear him interact on some of those later recordings the way a keyboard master like Hancock does over funk vamps, but instead Grant just does his comping not dissimilar to the way he worked on the organ albums. I also mean that to move from being a changes player to a groove player with electric instruments was a conceptual choice for someone with Grant's hard bop legacy. And he approached it in a passionate and deliberate way, very different to older musicians like Lou Donaldson whose records had a softer edge than the vibe you get from Grant Green funk albums. That's what I mean. And I think he worked on his playing to make this vision work as well, I don't think it would have been like simply 'putting on a new jacket'. Yes re-the Hall/Evans interactivity. Grant never had that, and I don't think many guitarists who weren't on the other side of Hendrix (ie McLaughlin, Coryell) could have interacted either in post-Miles territory (as you said earlier). The third streamy players just weren't going to work (soundwise) with electric instruments, whereas someone like Grant did have the sound, but not the Harmonic language. One thing I would like to have heard were trio gigs Blood Ulmer did with Larry Young in the early to mid 70's. This would have been interactive for sure! And not in the McLaughlin Coryell way.

OK, you got me--shit called where shit is laid. I put some Grant on while reading through this thread and came across this: ...and it's pretty solid, interactive organ trio comping. I was remembering, probably a little too tiredly, the frequent occurrence of stuff like this: -which is one of my favorite performances of all time. He does comp on a lot of blues, some slow burners, and the occasional uptempo piece, but I am a little perplexed by the fact that he tends to sit out comping duties on a lot of the more complex standards tunes on his own albums. Yes, you don't need two comping instruments on every single track (especially on stuff like Street of Dreams where you have three of them at the band's disposal), but Grant's comping--propulsive as it is--is nowhere near as coloristically or rhythmically sophisticated as, say, Jim Hall (or Wes, for that matter, who made a similar "commercial" turn later in life). Yes that's true re=Hall and even Wes for that matter. Wes comped more with a full chord sound on his organ dates. But Melvin Rhyne had a much 'thinner' sound than the organists Grant played with. Except maybe Billy Gardner.

True, about Hendrix, who couldn't play swing in the literal sense of it, and he couldn't play changes, but he often gave you the impression he was, because of his wonderful gift for using those triad shapes he inserted into his improvising. I love Villanova Junction though, and the later Billy Cox bands.

He didn't not play chords. He was always playing with keyboards, he didn't do a piano/guitar duet lp, but still. He is playing chords on Search For The New Land on some of the tunes. He is very interactive with Patton. Actually, guitar wise, who was really playing full bodied chordal work with piano in the 60's anyway? And if they were, they didn't have the conception of Hancock, that's for sure.

Grant comped on all his organ records, his own and others. Patton Young etc. He just didn't do it much on piano dates. It would have been interesting if he had of gone on the musical journey John Patton took, and been required to function more in that context. But he didn't, he did something else with his music. Blood Ulmer and Jimmy Ponder provide guitar playing that works with the Tyner harmony Patton was exploring. Ted Dunbar and Calvin Keys also sound like an extension of this as well. I prefer the Lifetime stuff with Ted Dunbar actually. Sonny Greenwich has this sound as well, but I don't think chordal work was as important to any of them as much as the sound of their lines. Larry Coryell's duet with Elvin Jones is a favourite of mine, as well as Jam with Albert.

I do take what you say seriously, and I do respect your social history and achievements within the music. I am questioning what you said though. I don't believe the recorded work by Eddie Diehl justifies your position - that you have further elucidated. I find the idea that Eddie Diehl had a sound and musical opus big enough to co-exist with Tyner/Jones and Larry Young/Jones - in any way comparable to Grant Green, almost offensive to the principle of the musicians who chose to work with Grant. That you suggest Grant Green is held in over-regard because of the so-called romantic legacy of substance abuse, even more so. I am also suggesting that the decision by Grant Green to use electric instruments and play groove based music, was also an artistic decision that related to the changing music around him, as well as his ability to contribute to it. In regards to the narrative of this thread, there is nothing in these records he made (the funk ones), that suggest insincerity or unprincipled manoeuvres (made for popularities sake alone). As has also been pointed out in this thread, they probably weren't made for 'you' as an audience. It would have been retrogressive, conceptually, for him to have begun exploring 'chord-melody' at this point in time. With the reality of Black music the way it was. The direction he took with the funk albums was every bit as logical as the way Hancock ran with the more radical funk of the In A Silent Way/Bitches Brew sound towards the Headhunters. I am saying also that Grant Green 'was' a MF and he 'was' trying. He just wasn't trying to be Joe Pass. So yes, if you think not being concerned with extending the trio/standards format is lazy, well and good. I don't, compared to finding musicians who have a vision for 1969 instrumental music, working the guitar into the front line of that music without recourse to Hendrixisms - and organising the style and arrangements that will fill clubs and create the atmosphere you can hear on Alive and Live At The Lighthouse.

Well they did share something deep on a formal level. Strong clear tone, heavy use of be-bop chromaticism, sure. The deeper the space Raney presented on record with harmony-melody, was matched by what Green alternately presented in blues feeling and rhythmical slipperiness. However, to say that Grant Green idolised Raney (and thereby infer he studied his lines in more than a cursory way) is a different matter. Green did say he spent many hours studying Charlie Parker. And he obviously did the same with Sonny Rollins. It's a similar call perhaps to the arguments about Hancock that often emerge here. ie. Raney-Green as opposed to Hancock-Tristano/Evans. Raney was on record when Grant Green was still learning in St.Louis. And Grant Green didn't/couldn't listen to records when he was still learning in St.Louis? Isn't that when guys tend to do that a good deal? Also, aside from the obvious trait of bluesiness, Green sounds a whole more like Raney than he does like Bird, IMO. Also to idolize is one thing, to dig is another. I said that Green quite likely dug Raney. No I'm saying that it is certainly possible Green studied Raney on records. Not that he did or didn't. He does sound like Rainey more than he does any other guitarist I think that also. Even moreso than he does Kenny Burrell. Yes he does also sound more like Rainey than Parker to a certain extant as well. I have read fasstrack say Grant Green idolised Jimmy Raney. Just wondering whether it is a speculation based on listening, or perhaps from another source. Eddie Diehl perhaps, who obviously knew and played with Grant Green.

Well they did share something deep on a formal level. Strong clear tone, heavy use of be-bop chromaticism, sure. The deeper the space Raney presented on record with harmony-melody, was matched by what Green alternately presented in blues feeling and rhythmical slipperiness. However, to say that Grant Green idolised Raney (and thereby infer he studied his lines in more than a cursory way) is a different matter. Green did say he spent many hours studying Charlie Parker. And he obviously did the same with Sonny Rollins. It's a similar call perhaps to the arguments about Hancock that often emerge here. ie. Raney-Green as opposed to Hancock-Tristano/Evans. Raney was on record when Grant Green was still learning in St.Louis that's true. So if he was studying Parker and Rollins perhaps he paid attention to Raney as well. What is clear, is that outside the song choices he made on his organ sessions, when he played with piano, he often relied on re-interpreting songs and arrangements from record by more famous players (and different instruments) from the time immediately preceding him. So he obviously had a learned and deep attachment to the records of his day.

To compare Eddie Diehl's playing to Grant Green in terms of quality is laughable. Sure, the recent playing I saw of Eddie Diehl on the documentary is brilliant and unique, but it wasn't during the time Grant Green walked the earth. And by what authority do you have that Grant Green held Jimmy Rainey in hero status. Something I have read you state more than once. The only source I have is a quote he has tossed off to a liner note writer (or maybe a Downbeat article). Get real. Grant Green doesn't come across to me as a lazy musician. Just because he stopped making albums with changes playing. The level of commitment and focus on the song selection and groove of his funk albums is far beyond anything any artist does who is not following his muse. Carryin On and Green Is Beautiful are great Grant Green albums. I think the changing social/cultural conditions for Black music allowed Green to focus on aspects of his playing that were already considered an integral part of his gift anyway. Same as they did for Herbie Hancock. Having a drug problem and having to travel the US for gigs outside the confines of the first class concert halls might sap some energy and make Grant Green look less productive than he was. As to Allen Lowe's "I spent 5 years showing that there are other ways into the blues for jazz people than through the top 40 or Lincoln Center" well so have whole generations of players for whom the sound and feeling of the blues is intrinsic, even if blues forms were not always used. From the most radical to the most conservative. This thread on Herbie Hancock illustrates that, from his most radical to his most corny music. Maybe you assimilated the blues and jazz traditions from different directions, as you often mention the white blues players as your earliest influences, while your jazz influences are more directly black perhaps. So maybe reconciling the two is your own personal journey. I don't think it's ever been a 'thing' for the players I've listened to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og-L9A1knsg&feature=related See, I knew this would be his best look!

Bill Evans couldn't have done it.

very, very cool look. not enough chest hair it's all over.

Reaching out in acknowledgement to a commercial audience I would have bought the 45. If only I'd known.

Well in terms of the social/cultural implications of modality, the Coltrane/Tyner parallel fourths pentatonic approach is the precursor of the Afro-centric movement as much as the Coleman melody-centric approach. That players like Liebman, Brecker et.all. were formally captured by this sound, is well documented in the very interesting Liebman interviews posted recently. In contrast to this, I have always understood the Davis/Evans approach to be aligned closer to European sensibilities. And that is always the way the arguments seem to resolve beyond the purely formal. The excellent nuances of the arguments here notwithstanding.

I think that in music in general (with obvious historical-stylistic exceptions) and in jazz with particular and arguably unique detail and force, one of the main things is that any one of the four (or more?) parameters -- melody, rhythm, harmony, and timbre --can be transformed into the other(s) tout de suite. That is, what is and/or seems to be primarily or exclusively a harmonic event can be revealad to be a rhythmic one etc., etc. -- and round and round we go. Is Bechet's timbre or Lester Young's a matter of timbre per se, or is it interactive with and more or less inseparable from their rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic acts? In jazz at its strongest nothing is clothing, everything is language and structure. What's the Blues in Jazz? Language, structure or clothing?

BTW did anybody really care what the music in Round Midnight was like. Wasn't that movie just an excuse for the French to pat themselves on the back for their outstanding historical 'ethics', and for Dexter Gordon to tell a few funny jokes.

Translated, this simply means "He started making music for which I was not the intended audience". No argument there. However, other mainstream artists who were in the same position as Hancock chose to honor their roots. I don't begrudge him the choices he made, I just don't have the same respect I would have had for him if he'd stayed the course. "Roots"? Which roots are we talking about here? Seems to me that making music for a R & B audience and/or a "crossover" audience was in the mix from the git-go. Also seems to me that as opportunities presented themselves, Herbie capitalized. Initiative and ambition are roots too! I say it still comes down to, "I don't really like Disco or Techno or Whatever, so Herbie "sold out" when he decided to explore those avenues and had success doing so". Not that it was all good, it wasn't. But it was not good because it was not good Disco or Techno or Whatever, not because it was Disco or Techno or Whatever. This notion of "selling out"...it exists, but it's not nearly as black-and-white as a lot of people want it to be. We'll have to agree to disagree on the meaning of "roots". To me, it means where someone came from. In a musical context, the genesis of one's artistry. Frankly, I don't see what Herbie did as being that much different than what Rod Stewart did when he started singing standards. Sell out? To each his own. The only person who knows for sure is the one who made the decision. The rest of us can only speculate. Wrong. Hancock was working across genres within Black music. Stewart was just ...

Mark -- I feel I was wrongish in that review in pointing so much toward Coltrane (pianists are by and large pianists, no?), and certainly I was off about McCoy, whose finest work was yet to come. Herbie the accompanist with Miles et al. was something else, but I admit to never having been that interested in most Herbie piano solos (an exception would be one track on that terrific Blue Note Bobby Hutcherson quartet album with Albert Stinson and Joe Chambers) because they so often seem to ... I don't know, rather pre-determined and "glassy" to me. The concept, so to speak, and the execution seem to separate; not much sense of in the moment (but I can see where that might be a partial goal on his part). The electronic Herbie is a whole other ballgame, I would say. P.S. OTOH, about McCoy, weren't the glories to come in good part because he stepped away from his version of patterned glassiness and became much more rhythmically and harmonically turbulent and in the moment? (Albeit, in later McCoy rhythmic and harmonic turbulence were essentially one.) I understand the idea of "glassiness" but would suggest that relates to Herbie's impressionistic touch and harmony. Perhaps your aesthetic tastes lay elsewhere and "Speak Like a Child" in particular emphasizes the qualities you respond to the least, which are also italicized by what Jim identified earlier as an unusually gauzy recording mix for Blue Note. Is it a coincidence that you have always had issues with Bill Evans who has similar impressionistic qualities and who influenced Herbie in those areas?)The disconnect you feel between concept and execution might be a registering of the intellectualism in Herbie's playing that to you sounds too on the surface and thus hits you as overly pre-determined. Forgive the armchair deconstruction of your analysis. I don't hear it this way at all. For me Herbie is one of the most truly spontaneous improversers in jazz. When he starts a solo, to a degree unusual even in an art based on in-the-moment invention, you really don't know what's about to happen. Now, obviously, he's incredibly studied on some level and has a language that he employs, but he is in no way a "lick" or "pattern" player" in the sense of constructing solos out of pre-practiced materials or applying them in an overly studied way. (Which is not to say patterns don't sometimes crop up as they do in everybody's playing.) Miles used to tell the guys, "I pay you to practice on the bandstand." I think Herbie exemplifies that quality in the best sense. For me, Hancock's achievement was to reconcile a bunch of previously disparate pianism -- impressionistic harmony and refined touch of Bill Evans, swinging momentum of Bud Powell, drama of Ahmad Jamal, funkiness of Horace Silver and ebullient bounce of Wynton Kelly and Red Garland. That synthesis then becomes a new and highly influential template, enriched by Herbie's own newly advanced harmonic palette, his linear invention, his rhythmic independence and, again, his spontaneity. I'm in no way claiming his infallibility. I recognize the track record gets less consistent in more recent decades, the issues of taste, etc. I also know a good many people, including some great musicians, who respect Herbie more than they love him and who have never been as emotionally moved by his work as they are by, well, McCoy for starters. I also recognize that someone's weaknesses are often lodged inside their strengths and vice versa. I'm just just trying to articulate what it is that I'm responding to, and with Herbie it's a lot. At his frequent best I find him more stimulating and satisfying than any other pianist in the contemporary post-bop idiom. There is also a remarkable diversity, an adaptibility, that's worth noting. Here are two sideman appearances that illustrate the range. I think he sounds great in both on every level but would particularly note the variety of phrasing and rhythm and the spontaneity elements since that's what started all of this in the first place. As always, everyone's mileage may vary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CXsIMakAJo Some of the most insightful stuff I've read about Herbie Hancock.

Very funny story. Really humanises these giants.

That's a word used to describe what is more commonly known as the bridge. I think Monk might have used it too. I've heard it a few times over the years, but not too many. I thought it was either a turnaround or the bridge. Thanks for the confirmation.

Actually it's just coming to light now. They were mostly whites only, Allen Lowe is investigating

Very great and interesting read. Especially Melvin Gibbs take on Sharrock and Last Exit, Ornette ect. He says he will not say much about Last Exit 'beyond this', and then goes on to talk his head off Obviously he was enjoying the chance to discuss the music.

Here is a meaning I found at a contemporary slang dictionary for the term 'bait'. Reminded me of the title 'Good Bait', that I figured probably wasn't about fishing. bait 1. adj. To describe a location as unsafe, or high profile. Usually refers to the danger of being caught by police. "I ain’t smokin’ here, this place is mad bait." Another term I often wondered about is the word 'channel' that George Braith refers to in liner notes, when talking about one of his compositions. I assume he is referring to the turnaround in a chord progression , but it is something I have otherwise not heard used anywhere else.