Canonball & Trane

[jazzbo]

I just don't find anything Cannon has done "boring." There's lots of music that bores me, but his work isn't amongst them.

It's a personal thing I guess!

[marcello]

well, Jim, I tend to think it sounds better on paper and in theory than in practice - and I saw/heard lots of it in those fallow days of jazz in its between years, especially around NYC which was really suffering jazz-wise between, say, 1968-1975.

I heard the Cannonball band quite often in that peroid because I worked in a club that hired them often. Their energy level was really quite high. "In practice", they worked and communicated very well indeed.

Edited January 15, 2006 by marcello

[AllenLowe]

Jim - more interesting music, period. Not something that makes its musical point in the first 30 seconds and than relies upon hip cliches and references that are/were already out of date.

Jazz musicians, through their own particular and peculiar techniques, have liberated many forms of music, from Broadway show tunes to novelty Tin Pan Alley pieces - they liberate them by taking them out of their common context and showing that their is more to the pop dream than repetition and formula. That's one of the things that makes jazz so advanced and interesting, at least to me. If I want to hear funk/blues in its most basic form I will not listen to a jazz musician like Cannonball who is, let's face it, over-quallified. I want to hear musicians who know how to express these forms, whose technique is more purely a function of their style, and there's lots of 'em who do/did it better than Cannonball.

Liberation of a form does not necessarily mean that the original form is inferior or even suffering from a kind of imprisonment - it is simply the act of showing that there are new possibilities within that form. This is something jazz musicians have always done; just as certain novelists liberated the form (which does not imply that there is a problem with, say Dickens, only that it is a new day) - jazz musicians thrive on the renewal of older and dated forms -

Edited January 15, 2006 by AllenLowe

[marcello]

That's where we differ here; Cannonball , to me, he had a style all his own.

[AllenLowe]

"Maybe you had to hear and see the impact that this band had in a club that had a mainly black clientile, to see the "sociological theory in practice". "

well, maybe we have to watch Kenny G's audiences, amongst the happiest and most content we will ever see.

This does not really prove anything at all -

[AllenLowe]

I never said he did not have a style. I just find his playing at that late stage in his career to be less interesting than at some other stages.

[JSngry]

"Maybe you had to hear and see the impact that this band had in a club that had a mainly black clientile, to see the "sociological theory in practice". "

well, maybe we have to watch Kenny G's audiences, amongst the happiest and most content we will ever see.

This does not really prove anything at all -

I think it proves that there is genuine communication going on. It's pretty easy to mock a Kenny G audience, most of whom we'd rather not spend any time with under any circumstances; less so a Cannonball audience...

And I know what you mean about jazz' liberational qualities, but I look at it like that's just one quality that jazz can have. It can also be, in the right hands and in the right circumstances, and extremely comfortable "social" music as well, and for that, it needs nothing more than to just be what it and its audience both are. I'm not at all bothered by that, and actually think that the overall health of the music is served by having that "social" sector of the music functioning as actively as possible. Like the macrobiotic cats say, the bigger the front, the bigger the back.

Sometimes just being able to connect with your own natural self is all the liberation you need. Be it Cannonball or Kenny G, the possibility does exist that there's no communication going on in some cases simply because the message has no real relevance to us. But that doesn't make the communication that does exist any less valid, nor does it mean that those who do get communicated to by those musics are gullible or unsophisticated (I hate to say that about a Kenny G audience, but if I'm honest, I'm going to have to admit that there ae fans of his who are otherwise rational, intellegent human beings. But I still wouldn't want to spend any time with them ).

I really do think that "jazz criticism" as a whole would be better served by starting on the inside and working outward, at least in terms of why certain things have been so popular in certain communities. Cannonball, Lou Donaldson, Gene Ammons, the Crusaders, none of these people were as popular as they were because they "dumbed down" their music. There's more to it than that. That music had a flavor, and it was the flavor of everyday life for the people who dug it. And out of that flavor came the more "refined" (in the eyes of the "outside world") flavors. It's not the other way 'round! It was made for "them", not for "us". Those of "us" who dug it soon discovered a world that many "jazz fans" don't come into contact with on a social basis, a radically different world than that of the "hardcore" jazz world, but those two worlds have a helluva lot more in common than they have differences.

You already know this, dude, you have to know this. Like the Dexter thing, you're opinion is perfectly valid, but your "sociology" is a little skewed, I think. Certainly not malevolently so, as you have been accused of, but I wonder if you've ever enjoyed a fine bottle or twenty of Champale or made love to Major Harris?

Well, not actually to Major Harris...

Edited January 15, 2006 by JSngry

[marcello]

"It can also be, in the right hands and in the right circumstances, and extremely comfortable "social" music as well, and for that, it needs nothing more than to just be what it and its audience both are. I'm not at all bothered by that, and actually think that the overall health of the music is served by having that "social" sector of the music functioning as actively as possible."

We better hope so, to keep this music alive.

The people in this particular club, on Saturday nights especially, came dressed to the nines and ready to have a good time. The women came in furs, even if it was just a collar fur, the men wore suits and the hippest shoes. they were mostly working class people who cam in with groups of other that maybe were members of their social clubs or churches. Going to clubs, and digging this music, their classical music, was a part of the fabric of their lives. To tell you the truth, when that audience went away, it was the start of the bad days that Allen refers to.

They spent their money and were happy to have some entertainment. They didn't just wag their heads and shout encouragement to the band. Yes, there was plenty of that but they also appreciated the more heady music too.

I remember once when Eddie Harris played there; after he played a series of songs that were quite advanced, almost avante-guard, he announced: " Now that I've played something to feed your mind, I'll play something to feed your soul", and got their asses groovin'.

Edited January 15, 2006 by marcello

[johnagrandy]

well, maybe we have to watch Kenny G's audiences, amongst the happiest and most content we will ever see.

This does not really prove anything at all -

[(I hate to say that about a Kenny G audience, but if I'm honest, I'm going to have to admit that there ae fans of his who are otherwise rational, intellegent human beings. But I still wouldn't want to spend any time with them ).

Skerik and Dillon have an antidote for Kenny's Koolaid: http://www.thedeadkennygs.com/

The ONLY "proper jazz venue" show I've been at in easily 10 years where people were actually dancing was Sco's unit a few years back at Kuumbwa. All the deadheads were in the back trippin' and groovin'. The worst I've seen was Brad Mehldau, where he went into a physical tirade because someone sat cross-legged too close to him. What a doofus.

A sad statement on jazz as a social music.

As for jazz in symphony halls, recital halls, opera houses, etc. WHAT IS THE POINT ???? No one is comfortable, including the musicians.

"America's Classical Music" ... do we really need any more of that ?

That's why a lot of very talented young jazz instrumentalists are getting into the jam band scene: it's not just the money, it's also the party atmosphere ... it's groovin' with the audience, pass the j's on stage, the pretty girls doing their thing ... whatever ...

[Peter Friedman]

I believe that to some extent it relates to the style of music you first heard and associated with that musician. I got the sense that in Tom's case, he heard Cannonball playing Jazz-Funk live early in his listening experience. But for many of us who heard Cannonball both live and on records playing the style of music associated with his Savoy, EmArcy, & Riverside periods, the later Jazz-Funk music he played was a big letdown. My first exposure to Cannonball was when I heard his deeply bluesy playing on "Hear Me Talkin" To You " on Savoy in the 50's.

Remember Cannonball played a very soulful, funky type of music that resonated with many people on a large percentage of his Riverside recordings, and his EmArcy/Mercury records too. It was when in the 70's that he decided to go with the trend of that time period and go in the direction where he could do better financially that he lost me. As Allen said, he had every right to better himself financially, and it was up to him, certainly not me, to decide the music he chose to play. However, it my choice as to whether I found Cannon's Jazz Funk musically satisfying and the answer was clearly NO. The word monotonous comes to mind.

This is a matter of personal taste, but I would pose the following question. If one had to take their five or six favorite Cannonball recordings to the proverbial desert island with them, which ones would they be?

[JSngry]

This is a matter of personal taste, but I would pose the following question. If one had to take their five or six favorite Cannonball recordings to the proverbial desert island with them, which ones would they be?

Black Messiah & Mercy Mercy Mercy would definitely be two of them. Live in New York would likely be the third. In Chicago, yeah, no doubt. After that, probably Inside Straight and a player or two to be named later.

Frankly, the Riverside (& Mercury) material is a lot less heterogeneous in style than either the Capitol or Fantasy material. The latter no doubt are not without "problems" from a "pure jazz" standpoint (and some are just too... blatant (overall) to do anybody any lasting good), but a lack of diversity sure ain't one of 'em. And who wants to be on a desert island without some variety?

And in my earlier posts about the "social" aspects of Ball's later music, I'd like to make it clear that I'm in no way impugning the character or taste of those who find it boring or whatever. What I do find to be perhaps a little curious is the implicit notion that this music is in fact boring or banal or whatever. when in fact it's far more likely that it's just telling a story to and for an audience that one feels no real personal connection with. Why not just say that the music's not relevant to your lifestyle rather than dismissing it as somehow unworthy, or that for your wants/needs, "liberating" it is more likely to bring it onto your personally relevant turf than it would otherwise be?

That's honest enough, I should think (and I say this as somebody who tends to have one foot on each side of the line when it comes to this "populist vs progressive" stuff. Sue me!). But when you take a man of obviously equal parts sophistication & earthiness such as Cannonball and dismiss his ability to connect, truly connect with "the people" as basicallly being the result of little more than playing simple and boring music (for simple and boring people?), I think there's a lot that's being overlooked and not considered. Why that is is not for me to say, but I sincerely doubt that the matter is as simple as Cannonball selling out to make some bucks. I really doubt that it's that simple...

Suggested reading: Freddie Roach's liner notes to All that's Good, another album of boring and simple music for and about boring and simple people...

Edited January 15, 2006 by JSngry

[jazzbo]

I just don't see Cannon jumping tracks to play the funky music of the late sixties and seventies. . . . It seems to me to be just a continuation of the music he had always been playing in many ways. To me it seemed he'd always sort of been dipping toes nto the many differnt pools of music that his black audience would soak in, and he continued to do that in the Capitol period. Seems to me as Jim says above the variety was there seeping in from the beginning of the leader dates and the tendency just flowered.

On my desert island I'd like to have say . . .as many of the Savoy sides as I could squeeze in, especially perhaps the Kenny Clarke led ones. . .. Cannonball's Sharp Shooters. . . Them Dirty Blues. . . Live in New York. . . Live at the Club . . .Plays Zawinul (really, this is a great compilation). . .Money in the Pocket (ditto). . . Black Messiah. . . . maybe even Lovers. . .. Man it's hard to limit myself, I just rotate all my Cannonball quite often. He's always both stimulating and soothing for me.

[JSngry]

Yeah, I think that in Cannonball we have a person who genuinely and unabashedly loved life, and by extension, people. I really think that he wanted to appeal to all types of people because he genuinely dug all kinds of people. Which is not to say that he wasn't hip to the way things were (or could get), just that in the end I think he probably saw it all as part of the same "human condition" that he himself was a part of. Those monologues - that's all love there. No doubt, a "man of the people" in the truest sense.

And he programmed his band accordingly, it seems. The Zawinul bio has Joe talking about how him & Walter Booker would often get totally pissed at Nat - often to the point of threatening to quit the gig - because Nat wanted to play all straight-ahead and down-home stuff, and they wanted to stretch everything out. But Cannon, it seemed, wanted all of it, no doubt in part because it was good business, but also just because he was that kind of guy.

That comes through in his music, I think. Whatever it is, no matter how "commercial" the setting, I never hear the sound of a man condescending, not even slightly. That's a rare quality, actually, all things considered, and I think that's what made some of the material that was objectively banal take on a spirit that got people going. The material wasn't always the message, dig? It was just a vehicle with which to project the message, the spirit, and, gawrsh! the love.

Granted, it didn't always make for "great music", but then again, "great music" doesn't always make for "great times". "Great musiic" ain't always all it's cracked up to be. Neither are "great times", but the point is that there's room for both - should be room for both - in a well-balanced lifestyle, and in both instances, the situational sacrificing of one for the other is not always such a bad deal. Worse things can happen.

Just my opinion.

Edited January 15, 2006 by JSngry

[JSngry]

[AllenLowe]

I think my sociology is fine - we may have a certain critical disagreement here, and I wish Larry kart would step in as, in these kinds of situations, he usually has something important to say - there is a fine line between the kind of entertainment/good music you guys are referring to and bad music, and I'm not so far from it as you think. I came of age musically working with organists like Bobby Buster in New Haven, also his brother Eddie, as well as a great organist from Jersey named Richie McCrae who seems to have disappeared; also did a few gigs with Jeff Palmer, though those were of a much different nature. Yeah, in the clubs where Bobby used to play people were always having a good time, and sometimes the music was great and sometimes it was piss poor (bad drummer, bad guitarist, some mediocre element) - and people rarely distinguished between the two; unfortunately the musicians were so jaded as to not really give a shit as long as they were paid. But the socio justification for music is just not good enough for me, not good enough from a critical OR personal standpoint. What you're really saying is that, because the music serves a community function it is above criticism as long as the people are enjoying it. I believe this is really unfair and unfair to the music as well - each performance deserves it's own attention, and not some kind of overall social justification. I was attacked in the Dexter thread for smething I never really said, that drugs were bad for musical performnance - and here you sem to be saying that I reject the communal aspect of the music, which I certainly do not. I reject specific music and specific performances. like the one I heard from Cannonball more than 30 years ago -

[JSngry]

What you're really saying is that, because the music serves a community function it is above criticism as long as the people are enjoying it.

I'm saying no such thing. I'm simply saying that the criteria for critical evaluation, including relative "worth" of the music, are different for "social" music than they are for "art" music. Different means, different intents, but absolutely, you can get shit or gold either way. How you determine which is which, though, that's where "conventional critical wisdom" often fails.

Put another way - I've played "Mr. Magic" in situations where I felt as if I was being mortally punished for unspeakably vile acts from some previously life that I had no consccious knowledge of whatsoever.

I've also played "Mr. Magic" in situations where I felt as if it was the most naturally and gloriously right thing that I could be doing with my life.

It was the same song in all instances, and, at times, the same band. But it wasn't the same situations.

So, it's a nifty little ditty piece of whatever that can be either the cliche from hell or a blessing from above.

Critically evaluate that.

[Larry Kart]

Thanks, Allen. I've been holding off in part because I don't know except in passing any Capitol-era Adderley, in part because I couldn't quite see where Jim was going with this. That is, I could see pretty clearly what he was defending and why he liked it (almost everyone with blood in his veins who hasn't been living under a glass bell likes, even loves, some or even a lot of the sorts of music that Jim is talking about), but I couldn't quite make out the rationale that was running alongside or underneath what he was saying, especially when he brought Kenny G and his audiences into the picture.

About Jim's "them" and "us" thing a ways back -- "Cannonball, Lou Donaldson, Gene Ammons, the Crusaders, none of these people were as popular as they were because they 'dumbed down" their music. There's more to it than that. That music had a flavor, and it was the flavor of everyday life for the people who dug it. And out of that flavor came the more 'refined' (in the eyes of the 'outside world') flavors. It's not the other way 'round! It was made for 'them,' not for 'us' -- my experience has been that in addition to Jim's "them" (this music's ["natural"?] social audience) and Jim's "us" (i.e. "jazz fans") there's a significant and often crucial second "them": the musicians themselves and their desire to play music that they find sufficiently interesting and rewarding so that their work is something more than bricklaying with horns. "Interesting" and "rewarding" are loose terms, of course, but we all pretty much know what we're talking about here, right? In all music there are formulas that lie close to hand and that more or less work in terms of reaching an audience, and some of these formulas -- on the right night with the right crowd and the right band -- can genuinely fill up a musician's soul. But some types of music, maybe most or even all types of music, tend to generate (virtually internally to the music, perhaps) musical events that appeal (or may appeal) to the previously mentioned standard and to another one too -- one that piques the interest of music-makers of the highest skill and subtlety, music that they will go out of their way to play of their own free will, if only because they find it so damned INTERESTING.

Some quotes: Ralph Ellison on the adolescent Charlie Christian in Oklahoma City: "He had heard the voice of jazz and would hear no other." Charles Rosen on the fact that Mozart's music was "a dogged presence" on concert programs in Paris in the early 19th Century, even though, according to the author of the authoritative book "Listening in Paris, " "Mozart's symphonies and operas were roundly denounced in the first decade of the century." To which Rosen says: "If Mozart was disliked by the public and roundly denounced by critics, how can we explain his 'dogged presence' on musical programs? The answer is that the music which is performed is not so much the works that the public wants to hear as as those that musicians insist in playing. Public demand counts for something, of course, but a musician's life is often enough hard, disagreeable, and monotonous, and it would be intolerable unless he could play the music he loved. This not a question of elite preferences, but of professional ideals, a subject that the history of reception deals with very badly." And the sociology of reception doesn't deal with it very well either.

Finally, and for the time being, in light of this from Jim -- "I'm simply saying that the criteria for critical evaluation, including relative 'worth' of the music, are different for 'social' music than they are for 'art' music. Different means, different intents, but absolutely, you can get shit or gold either way -- I'd ask: OK, you're in a musical situation that you think of as "social." How in fact do you tell the difference between "shit or gold" there versus how you tell the difference in an "art" music situation? I'm not being perverse in asking this, I hope. Instead, I'm thinking that in practice, especially from the point of view of the men and women who actually are making the music, the "means" and "intents" involved tend not to be as different as Jim seems to suggest, that in both realms it pretty much boils down to issues that are more or less aesthetic. I'm thinking in particular of Jim's account of how good it can feel, sometimes, to play "Mr. Magic" and guessing that while there had to be a good vibe coming from the crowd on those occasions, there also was good contact being made with the music by the band and some sense that in the good vibe coming from the crowd there was an implicit recognition of what was happening on the stand. So, yes, it was in some sense close to a uniformly communal experience, but a key component of that communal feeling had an aesthetic basis.

One more thing that may underlie much of the above: As sociologist-jazz pianist Howard Becker has pointed out, while professional musicians of any and all stripes may want to think of themselves as artists, they belong functionally to "a service occupation" -- that is, one in which "the worker comes into more or less direct contact with the client for whom he performs the service and one in which the client is able to direct or attempt to direct the worker at his task and to apply sanctions of various kinds, ranging from informal pressure to the withdrawal of his patronage."

[JSngry]

Finally, and for the time being, in light of this from Jim -- "I'm simply saying that the criteria for critical evaluation, including relative 'worth' of the music, are different for 'social' music than they are for 'art' music. Different means, different intents, but absolutely, you can get shit or gold either way -- I'd ask: OK, you're in a musical situation that you think of as "social." How in fact do you tell the difference between "shit or gold" there versus how you tell the difference in an "art" music situation? I'm not being perverse in asking this, I hope. Instead, I'm thinking that in practice, especially from the point of view of the men and women who actually are making the music, the "means" and "intents" involved tend not to be as different as Jim seems to suggest, that in both realms it pretty much boils down to issues that are more or less aesthetic. I'm thinking in particular of Jim's account of how good it can feel, sometimes, to play "Mr. Magic" and guessing that while there had to be a good vibe coming from the crowd on those occasions, there also was good contact being made with the music by the band and some sense that in the good vibe coming from the crowd there was an implicit recognition of what was happening on the stand. So, yes, it was in some sense close to a uniformly communal experience, but a key component of that communal feeling had an aesthetic basis.

Not a perverse question at all, Larry.

In a "social" situation, it's gold when a mutually enjoyable dialogue of communication, exchange of energy, whatever, is established and sustained. The nature of the material really doesn't matter. It can be a one chord vamp with a simple beat, the basest of raw material, but if you're feeling it, and the crowd is feeling you feeling it, and if you're playing it like you mean it because you do in fact mean it (at that particular moment, anyway), then it's gold. Anything one of those ingredients not being in effect in full force, and the likihood of shit increases proportionally.

An "art" situation is a different dynamic. there, you're playing material that you feel is valid in and of itself. You can play the shit out of it, it goes totally over the audience's head, and you still feel good about it. Of course, you feel better if they dig it at least a little, you want them to dig it, but it's in no way a prerequisite.

Of course, tehr's all sorts of "in-betweens", and some cats will take an "art" attitude towards a "social" setting, and vice-versa. There are no hard-and-fasts. Which is why Cannonball's later bands were so cool, imo. They played it all, literally, and they played it all like they meant it. I'm sure there were off nights (how could there not be?), but overall, this was a setting in which "it's all good" seemed to be a genuine reflection of their outlook on life, not a cynical credo of condescesion.

Take Roy McCurdy's playing on "Mercy Mercy Mercy". It's a simple enough tune, simple but truly soulful the waay the Adderley's & Co. put it across. It would have been real easy for McCurdy to have just kept a beat, and it would not have been inappropriate. But he doesn't do that - he drops in little things here and ther that, while they don't make the simple complex, definitely keep it alive and breathing. He definitely doesn't sound bored or cynical. He sounds like he's tiinking that this is this tune, and hey, it is what it is, and I can get a groove on it. Simple, right?

Wrong! A lot of guys would get all impatient and either overplay or passive-aggressively underplay or, worst of all, agressively and contentiously play it totally straight. Drama for the sake of drama, dig? Not my idea of a good night at the office...

Now, part of McCurdy's ability to function in such a groovy manner on a tune like this (and the many more that followed) was his natural temparment. But I'm also guessing that he was cool with it because he got to play all types of shit with that band in the cours of a night's work. Other than short festival/concert package type gigs, Cannonball's bands were well-known for presenting a greatly diverse set of material over the course of an evening. So there was a "give and take" that set up a mutual trust between band and audience, and also within the band itself. And trust does indeed breed love.

Now, I'm in no way claiming that the latter-day (or any day, really) music of Cannonball Adderley was "pushing the music along" or anything like that. But so what? The music was being pushed along anyway. What a Cannonball gig provided everybody, band and audience alike, was a place for everybody to get a little bit of what they wanted, comfortably get some things that somebody else wanted, and, quite possibly for many, a little taste of something you'd not get elsewhere, if only because you'd not know that it existed.

"Popularizing"? Maybe. "Populist"? Definitely. But again, I've got no problem with that if that's who you are. And I really do think that that's who and what Cannonball was - not a hard core New York be-bop alto whiz, but a down-home, highly sophisticated Southern cat who deeply enjoyed the simple things in life and the complex in equal, truly equal, measure. Those who knew him best portray him in this light, and I think that that's what his latter-day music represents.

If it were that "common" a combination, the world would be full of Cannonball Adderleys, and we'd all still be going out to hear music for reasons as much "social" as "artisitic", and we'd be rubbing elbows in those clubs with hipsters and doctors, pimps and lawyers, hookers and school teachers, musicians and bus drivers.

Are we?

[Larry Kart]

Jim, your account of what Roy McCurdy is doing on "Mercy Mercy Mercy" sounds to me like you're making the same point I was trying to make -- that however conditioned things might be by the communal setup in a "social" music scene, it finally comes down to acts and judgments of how to act that are as much aesthetic as they are anything else -- e.g. "But [McCurdy] ... drops in little things here and there that, while they don't make the simple complex, definitely keep it alive and breathing." Likewise, I think it's safe to assume (at least up to a point), that those in the audience who dug that tune were picking up on, or at least feeling on some pretty significant level, those "little things here and there" that McCurdy was dropping in. That is, your "dialogue of communication, exchange of energy, whatever, is established and sustained" primarily by musical means, though non-musical gestures and assumptions can frame and amplify them. For example, James Brown's cape thing is cool, but would we care about it if he and his band weren't together musically? Now I could see someone arguing that the cape thing and Brown's music are really one thing, that they're two sides of a single ritual (or "ritual"), but I'm just a boy from the suburbs, what do I know?

Time for the Bear game pretty soon. See you on the other side.

[JSngry]

Jim, your account of what Roy McCurdy is doing on "Mercy Mercy Mercy" sounds to me like you're making the same point I was trying to make -- that however conditioned things might be by the communal setup in a "social" music scene, it finally comes down to acts and judgments of how to act that are as much aesthetic as they are anything else

Well, yeah. I wasn't aware that we were in disagreement on that. Not at all.

What I am in disagreement with is Allen's essential position (as I'm reading it, anyway. Allen, correct me if I'm wrong) that the music was inferior in both intrinsic merit and actual execution, that there were either no such aesthetic judgements being made, or, if there were, that the ones that were made were not of a sufficient quality to warrant respect and/or enjoyment.

And, yeah, I do disagree with that. I'm not in any way suggesting that he should enjoy them, just disagreing with the notion that there was an iinherent "inferiority" to the whole thing. Maybe on the night that he heard them that was indeed the case. Everybody goes through the motions from time to time, and with material that is all but totally dependent on fuuly engaged personal input to really come alive, the lack of such input can make for some dreary goings on. But there's enough evidence, both recorded and anecdotal, to suggest that the type of, as you put it, acts and judgements to which I refer were in fact being made as a matter of course overall, and in such a way that they were mutually beneficial to all concerned. And that's something I have a huge amount of pwersonal and professional respect for.

Although, I might add that in a truly comfortable "social" or "art" setting that the notion of "how to act" (and I know, I think, that you mean musically) is not a factor, at least not consciously. The best of all worlds, for me anyway, is when the notion of "art" and "social" are not even considered and it all becomes one and the same. Love it when that happens! But to get that on a regular basis requires a cultural dynamic (from musician's goals to audience expectations to the abilty to keep a working, touring band) that is almost gone, if it's not alrready gone. More's the pity.

Edited January 16, 2006 by JSngry

[Peter Friedman]

One factor in this discussion that has been basically ignored it the time period of the 70's for jazz. That was a period when we saw many jazz musicians getting into the jazz-funk bag. The electric piano and bass were becoming fairly common, and the music itself was aimed in many cases toward a more commercial goal. Straight ahead jazz was not doing as well as it had in the 50's and 60's.

It is within this context that Cannonball's music changed in the way we have been discussing. Does it therefore not seem logical to recognize that Cannonball's "new direction" was not something he just happened to decide to do internally, but rather was influenced by what he observed happening around him with other musicians as well as in the larger jazz scene.

it is interesting to me to observe that many of the established musicians who played a role in the jazz funk realm eventually left that approach and gave up their electric pianos, etc. and returned to a more straight ahead style of playing.

[JSngry]

Does it therefore not seem logical to recognize that Cannonball's "new direction" was not something he just happened to decide to do internally, but rather was influenced by what he observed happening around him with other musicians as well as in the larger jazz scene.

Well, yeah, sure. But I think that it would be a mistake to label such a move as strictly commercial, simply because there were so many different ways that these "new directions" took throughout jazz, from the cynical sell-out to the actual creative exploration of the possibilities of the new instruments, rhythms, and song forms. I believe that Cannonball's moves were closer to the latter than the former, although, as seemed to be his wont from the beginning, he pretty much trod a middle ground, not shunning the "experimental" (Zawinul's claim that the Adderley band of the late-60s was playing "hiipper music than Miles'" might not be the idle boast it at first appears, although the records get in the way of an objective evaluation), but always keeping one foot planted firmly in what was happening "down here on the ground".

You didn't see Cannonball covering R&B pop hits of the day, nor did you see him adding electric guitars and basses just for effect (in fact, I don't think that he ever had an electric bassist in his working band, which is something to think about...). He created (or, more accurately, facilitated) the creation of a repertoire, style, and sound that was unique to him and his band. And the monologues that he used to deliver this new material set a "tone" for it, gave it context, made it more plausible as a genuine musical expression rather than a device.

And I don't think that he was influenced strictly by what was, as you say, happening around him with other musicians as well as in the larger jazz scene. I think that he was influenced by what was happening around him in America in general, and in the African-American community in general. He was a "jazz musician", sure, but that was just a part of wht he was. This was a guy, remember, who had always "played for the people", and being a "populist" was nothing new for him, not at all. So it makes sense to me that as the "populace" changed that he would move likewise and to keep finding a way to have something personally relevant to add to the landscape. His success and popularity all through his life suggests that he succeeded.

And frankly, I don't think that what he did is nearly as cheap or as easy as it might appear. He always kept a high-level quality of player in his band, and he didn't switch to just one bag at the expense of all others. When I saw him in 1974, the sets covered pretty much everything from "down home" blues to funk to semi-free to burning straight-ahead. Hits were played (including "Work Song") and new material was introduced. And most significantly of all, I think, all of it, all of it, sounded and felt like Cannonball. It's not like the funky stuff suddenly took on the flavor of an annoymous bar band doing a generic James Brown imitation or anything. It was all "characteristically Cannonball" in sound and feel. and the audience, which was large and diverse. dug it all. Some segments dug some portions more than others, sure, but nobody left until the night was over, dig? A pretty diverse cross-section of people was being reached and made happy with a night's work of mostly original (to the band, anyway) music, the sole exception being a burning version of "Autumn Leaves".

No, it's too easy, I think, to dismiss all this as crass commercialism. Crass commercialism is when you take whatever is selling at the moment and crank out endless variants of it w/o adding anything personal to the mix. That's nothing new to jazz, and not just in the wake of Rock & Soul. Besides, "commercial" is not necessarily a dirty word. It only means that you're trying to create something that other people want to spend money on. Beyond that, tere's as many varieites of "commercialism" as there are people practicing it (and anybody who puts music into the general marketplace is practicing it, make no mistake). Cannoinball's commercialism had integrity, I believe, because he created/facilitated music that had himself in it.

Just as he seemed to enjoy putting himself in the middle of a party off the stand, so he enjoyed the same thing on it. What good is throwing a party if nobody comes? Now, you can get people to come by offering them whores and free booze, or you can get them to come by finding a way to entice them into your world on their terms, which is how Cannonball did it. No small feat that, regardless of how one feels about "their" terms.

it is interesting to me to observe that many of the established musicians who played a role in the jazz funk realm eventually left that approach and gave up their electric pianos, etc. and returned to a more straight ahead style of playing.

Sure, once it became "commercailly viable" to do so...

Myself, I feel that "All Blues" & "Mercy Mercy Mercy" are both equally commercial these days. If anything, it's more commercially risky to play the latter in a jazz club today than it is the former. Tell me that's not perverse!

[Peter Friedman]

Jim,

It seems as if one of your last comments indicates you are agreeing with me. You agreed that when it became commercially viable most musicians switched back to playing straight ahead jazz. That would indicate that they were going back to the music they preferred to play, and that the move to jazz funk was done primarily to pay the bills.

I agree that Cannonball was a man of the people, but many of the soulful tunes that became popular during his early days on Riverside were very accessible and reached the people. I remember going to hear Cannonball live in the period when "This Here","Work Song", and "Dat Dere" were new and popular. The place was packed with a highly enthusiastic crowd.

The question of what influenced him to move quite a bit further into the jazz funk realm is an interesting one. You make some good points, and I would concede that there may have been a variety of factors involved, but would maintain that the commercial element was a very important one.

[Chuck Nessa]

So............I guess this is the wrong place to say Cannon gives me the heebie jeebies and I only enjoy him in very small doses and in contexts where I can't avoid the irritation.

[AllenLowe]

better late than never -