Horrible Pop Songs That Make Great Jazz Tunes

[GA Russell]

I must have a low threshold for old pop songs because the ones mentioned here don't bother me. I agree with Jim's point that often the hit version of a song is more irritating than the song itself.

That said, I enjoy Roland Kirk's version of I Say a Little Prayer for You a lot more than Dionne Warwick's.

[ep1str0phy]

On an operational level, thinking of a so-called "crappy pop song" generally arouses memories of an associated crappy recording (and vice-versa with "great songs" of any color and great recordings). So yeah, I would agree that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with, say, anything that Tom Jones sings, but whenever I think "Young New Mexican Puppeteer", I think cheese.

Like Otis Redding kills "Try A Little Tenderness", but, in certain hands, it can been an irredeemable, sentimental mess.

Edited December 2, 2006 by ep1str0phy

[danasgoodstuff]

I think "Bye Bye Blackbird" is pretty much a POS as written and/or performed 'straight' but I love what Miles did with it. Ditto for David Crosby's "Guinevere" and what Miles did with/to that.

[Jazzmoose]

Both Sides Now, Pat Martino

I object to that being called a horrible pop song.

[Jazzmoose]

Grant Green's take on Bacharach's "Wives and Lovers" (Matador) is interesting.

And "Wives and Lovers" definitely qualifies as a "Horrible Pop Song"!

I think of that as more of a "Grotesque Pop Song", but okay...

[danasgoodstuff]

This whole thread is kinda like saying 'Wow, there are things that are blue but round, or even fuzzy'...or, more literally, things can have sappy words but strong/interesting melodies and/or chord changes...why would that be surprising? It does show how far the dominant paradigm has moved away from Hot Lips Page's dictum that 'the material isimmaterial' when even posters here confound songs in the abstract with particular recordings of same

[ejp626]

This whole thread is kinda like saying 'Wow, there are things that are blue but round, or even fuzzy'...or, more literally, things can have sappy words but strong/interesting melodies and/or chord changes...why would that be surprising?

I was thinking that the definition of a horrible pop song was one that didn't have an interesting melody or chord changes, but that some musicians found a way to use it anyway. So that would break the category in two -- singers who found ways to bring sappy lyrics to life and musicians who enlivened the instrumental version of a poor tune.

But of course we all hear things differently. I really dislike Miles noodling away through Time After Time.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

It does show how far the dominant paradigm has moved away from Hot Lips Page's dictum that 'the material isimmaterial' when even posters here confound songs in the abstract with particular recordings of same

Was it Hot Lips Page who said that? I thought it was someone like Whitney Balliett.

But it IS true that things have moved on from those days. The material IS material nowadays. Different songs, or perhaps the well known performances of them, carry connotations that are tend to be unwelcome to performers of some types of jazz, though welcome to performers of other types of jazz. It isn't anything to do with what the chord changes are like (and it probably wasn't in Page's day, either).

These connotations, which have probably very little to do with the music AS SUCH, are tremendously important in conveying messages between musician and audience. A jazz musician who uses a lot of material deriving from R&B and Soul music is likely to be aiming to have an impact on people for whom those types of music are a strong preference, rather than people who don't like them. Eschewing those sources would be a good strategy for communicating with a different type of audience. The same could be said for material deriving from Swing bands (except Duke Ellington, an exception in many ways). How many Hard Bop players use material from the Webb, Hawkins, Hampton, Lunceford or Henderson big bands? Again, it doesn't seem that it's anything to do with the suitability or unsuitability of the music AS SUCH. There's nothing essentially different about, say, "Lester leaps in" and many Hampton numbers.

It's the connotations that count. Thinking that everything in music can be reduced to purely musical terms is a mistake.

MG

[Harold_Z]

Horrible songs are in the eye of the beholder.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Exactly. Different audiences, individually or in groups, view some connotations as positive or negative. I think it's the performance that gives a tune its connotations; this may or may not be the words that are sun, or the way they're sung. But they can also apply to an instrumental performance.

For example, "Flying home" must have severely negative connotations to Hard Bop musicians and fans; I think only Sonny Stitt made it a part of his book (and Stitt normally worked for a much wider aaudience than boppers). Only a few Hard Bop musicians have recorded it, usually in an album devoted to Swing number, such as Kenny Burrell's "A generation ago today". Other than that, I can only find recordings by Teddy Charles, Joe Pass and and Charlie Byrd/Barney Kessell/Herb Ellis. Clearly, the negative connotations arise from Illinois Jacquet's honking tenor solo on Hampton's 1942 recording, which is generally reckoned to have influenced a generation of R&B tenor players.

"Lester leaps in" suffers from no such negative connotations; indeed, Prez' position as a huge influence on bop musicians gives it a positive connotation to Hard Bop musicians and fans.

But actually, there's little to choose between the two tunes when you just look at the music, as far as I can see.

I feel sure that, when we talk about bad tunes, it's these connotations that we're really thinking about, not the music itself. And what a musician does, when he converts a tune that, for his audience, has negative connotations, is superimpose his own vision of the tune with such power that it overrides those connotations. In effect, the musician is redefining the tune. That's why there can be more than one "definitive" version of a tune. "Summertime" for example, has at least three definitive versions, as far as I can see: those by Duke Ellington; Booker T & the MGs; and Albert Ayler. The musicians are redefining the tune in their own terms; and for their own audiences (there may well be overlap between the audiences); none of them can take away the definitiveness of either of the other versions.

MG

Edited December 2, 2006 by The Magnificent Goldberg

[JSngry]

I think it's a drag when people "listen" to anything more than the music being played.

Case in point:

About 25 years ago, I did a re-harminization of "Close To You" (yeah, tha Carpenters song, but it's also a Bachrach song, and Bachrach is one helluva songwriter AFAIC). Couldn't get players to even try it just because it was a Carpenters song. So I finally took the tact of just bringing in the changes w/o the melody. Cats loved it. The I put the melody, which I had slightly rephrased to fit the reharmonization, to it. Immediate reversion to hating it just because it was a Carpenters song. Sorry, but that's just stupid.

We hear a lot of talk in jazz circles about "being in the moment" (which is a Romantic notion quite often more often honored in talk than in action, but that's another matter...). Well hell, if you got some good changes to play on, and a good groove to go with it, how "in the moment" are you if you can't get a 1970 AM radio hit out of your head and let it spoil your chances for happiness? Just how fucking "in the moment" are you then, Mr. Hip Jazzmuzishun?

The whole thing about not being able to shed extra-musical connotations is a surrendering to the powers that be. It's a self-imposed refusal to see life where life has been (often) intentionally downplayed, disguised, or distorted. It's letting them inside your mind and letting them decide what you can or can not have for yourself. I ain't letting nobody tell me what I can or can not have. If I want to have Masters At Work and Bird and Ayler and James Brown and any other g-damn thing I want, by god, I am going to have it, and I am going to enjoy it fully and without guilt. If you're really "hip", you know good music when I hear it, you know what functionality is, you know the difference between records and songs, and you know how to listen to levels other than those of the surface.

Somebody else can worry about "connotations" and all that shit. That's just an excuse to not deal with anything outside their own pre-construted box of a "comfort zone". Once again - how "hip" can you be if you're basing your "hipness" on what you keep out rather than what you can let in? How "hip" are you if you let The Man decide for you what you can claim for yourself and what you must reject? Open up your own freakin' mind and take what you're not supposed to have if you want it. That's the act of a true revolutioary!

Anything else is volunteered slavery.

Edited December 2, 2006 by JSngry

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I think it's a drag when people "listen" to anything more than the music being played.

Case in point:

About 25 years ago, I did a re-harminization of "Close To You" (yeah, tha Carpenters song, but it's also a Bachrach song, and Bachrach is one helluva songwriter AFAIC). Couldn't get players to even try it just because it was a Carpenters song. So I finally took the tact of just bringing in the changes w/o the melody. Cats loved it. The I put the melody, which I had slightly rephrased to fit the reharmonization, to it. Immediate reversion to hating it just because it was a Carpenters song. Sorry, but that's just stupid.

We hear a lot of talk in jazz circles about "being in the moment" (which is a Romantic notion quite often more often honored in talk than in action, but that's another matter...). Well hell, if you got some good changes to play on, and a good groove to go with it, how "in the moment" are you if you can't get a 1970 AM radio hit out of your head and let it spoil your chances for happiness? Just how fucking "in the moment" are you then, Mr. Hip Jazzmuzishun?

The whole thing about not being able to shed extra-musical connotations is a surrendering to the powers that be. It's a self-imposed refusal to see life where life has been (often) intentionally downplayed, disguised, or distorted. It's letting them inside your mind and letting them decide what you can or can not have for yourself. I ain't letting nobody tell me what I can or can not have. If I want to have Masters At Work and Bird and Ayler and James Brown and any other g-damn thing I want, by god, I am going to have it, and I am going to enjoy it fully and without guilt. If you're really "hip", you know good music when I hear it, you know what functionality is, you know the difference between records and songs, and you know how to listen to levels other than those of the surface.

Somebody else can worry about "connotations" and all that shit. That's just an excuse to not deal with anything outside their own pre-construted box of a "comfort zone". Once again - how "hip" can you be if you're basing your "hipness" on what you keep out rather than what you can let in? How "hip" are you if you let The Man decide for you what you can claim for yourself and what you must reject? Open up your own freakin' mind and take what you're not supposed to have if you want it. That's the act of a true revolutioary!

Anything else is volunteered slavery.

I hope you're not disagreeing with me Jim, because I was saying that some of the greatest players got away from the connotations by redefining these tunes in their own terms, which is what I think musicians SHOULD be doing. But at the same time, not to know (or perhaps not to care) what effect certain choices are likely to have on your audience is, in my view, unprofessional.

I think it's a mistake for musicians to limit the type of music they choose to play, as so many of them do. One thing I would really LOVE to hear is a modern band - McCoy Tyner's or Ahmad Jamal's groups for example, to make an album of New Orleans numbers like "West end blues", "Oh didn't he ramble", "Dr jazz", "Savoy blues" and so on. There's no reason why people should let these tunes drop, because there's scope within them for a musician to redefine them in a personal way; and to do so in a way that their audience can recognise that that is what's happening.

Time has moved on since the days of Hot Lips Page; in the thirties, audiences had no problem with Basie or Hampton playing "Twelfth Street rag". They certainly would have a problem with Ahmad playing it now, unless it was presented right. So if he wanted to do it, he'd have to be sure of how he wanted it to get over and know that he was capable of doing that. So I think audiences, and musicians, have lost a lot in the last 70 years or so. And the music industry, in dividing people into niches that they can market more profitably, is, I think, largely to blame. And not just the majors, though they have more influence; companies like Blue Note were as guilty as Columbia. But they had to survive, too.

MG

[ep1str0phy]

..and that was part of the revolution, no? Like Air Lore (like MG suggested, a modern band w/"old" tunes) was pretty much an AACM joint, and Lester Bowie was the preeminent trumpeter of the pre-Wynton generation (and afterward, in my estimation, although the situation gets more ingrained toward the 80's...).

But, on a different perspective, just because we're caught up in the connotations doesn't mean that we can't struggle. In fact, I think it might do a disservice to the struggle to say that subconscious predilections can be so easily subsumed--and we struggle against our prejudices, in everything, both because it's hard and because we want something else. But sometimes the hot-wiring is too strong to write off as simple close-mindedness, and then you can look for different ways to deal with it...

Brass Fantasy is a perfect example. Under a certain revolutionary structure, you can turn the tools of convention in upon themselves. Part of a reason that that group's revisionings are so potent is that we can't write the preconceptions out--and here are some cats telling us that what we think a song is is perfectly alright, so long as we know that, simultaneously, it can mean something else. And it's terrifically humbling knowing that, even if I still reel whenever I think of "Save the Best for Last", it's possible to take those same connotations and parse out the beauty, and maybe the art.

Not to whine about the idea that it's "too hard to open up your mind"--only that, while we're struggling to do so (and we can play the music, but we'll still be biting our lips trying not to grimace), there's something to be said for the confrontation itself. I'm with MG, at least, in saying that it's unprofessional to let prejudices shape your choices--now that's being a whuss.

Edited December 2, 2006 by ep1str0phy

[JSngry]

But, on a different perspective, just because we're caught up in the connotations doesn't mean that we can't struggle.

True, but it's like anything else - the more you do it, the easier it gets. And eventually, you do it without realizing it. Everything's copasetic until you run up against people who can't/don't/haven't/won't. But life goes on, and wasting time on people who can't/don't/haven't/won't is a game for young people who, statistically speaking, have more of it left to waste. And, by any reasonable standard, I've already lived over half of my life, so hey...

All I'm saying is that it's a learned behavior for most folks, that the time to start is now, and the time to stop is never. Carpe diem.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

But, on a different perspective, just because we're caught up in the connotations doesn't mean that we can't struggle.

True, but it's like anything else - the more you do it, the easier it gets. And eventually, you do it without realizing it. Everything's copasetic until you run up against people who can't/don't/haven't/won't. But life goes on, and wasting time on people who can't/don't/haven't/won't is a game for young people who, statistically speaking, have more of it left to waste. And, by any reasonable standard, I've already lived over half of my life, so hey...

All I'm saying is that it's a learned behavior for most folks, that the time to start is now, and the time to stop is never. Carpe diem.

Save me digging out my dictionary, 'cos it's late. What does copasetic mean? Somthing that gets to you at the Copacabana? Like, a liking for Barry Manilow?

MG

[JSngry]

Barry Manilow & copasetic? Hmmmm...I'm not that evolved yet...

Copasetic:

Copasetic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Copasetic, also spelled copacetic, means very satisfactory or acceptable. It is an unusual English language word in that it is one of the few words of unknown origin that is not considered slang in contemporary usage. Its use is found almost exclusively in North America, and has been said to have been first widely publicized its use in communications between the astronauts and Mission Control of the Apollo Program in the 1960s[1][2][3]. Its most likely origin comes from African American slang in the late 19th century. The earliest known usage given in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1919:

1919 I. BACHELLER Man for Ages iv. 69 ‘As to looks I'd call him, as ye might say, real copasetic.’ Mrs. Lukins expressed this opinion solemnly... Its last word stood for nothing more than an indefinite depth of meaning.

Another theory is that copacetic may have originated from Chinook Jargon, a trade language used in the Pacific Northwest to communicate between tribes, and European traders. The preposition "kopa" is very common in the language, and "Kopasetty" may have been used to mean "doing just fine". This theory is mentioned in an online Chinook Dictionary.[1]

David Mamet has written an article about its origins, although perhaps in jest.[2]

Copacetic may also be a derivation of the Hebrew phrase "Kol Beseder," which translates to "everything is okay."

References

1. ^ Greetings & Courtesies. Chinook Jargon Phrasebook. Retrieved on 2006-09-12.

2. ^ Mamet, David (October 2005). "Linguistic Anomalies For Shut-Ins". The Believer.

* http://homepage.mac.com/bem/CopaceticDefinition.html

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Cheers, Jim

MG

[Teasing the Korean]

"She loves you yeah yeah yeah"

I can never decide if this is one of the best pop songs ever or one of the worst.

Gary McFarland does the definitive version of this ditty (originally done by a forgotten beat group) on his Verve album "Soft Samba." The album also includes three other songs by said beat group. I hope they're grateful that he chose to immortalize them...

[Bright Moments]

kenny dorham - mack the knife

[Edward]

I must have a low threshold for old pop songs because the ones mentioned here don't bother me. I agree with Jim's point that often the hit version of a song is more irritating than the song itself.

That said, I enjoy Roland Kirk's version of I Say a Little Prayer for You a lot more than Dionne Warwick's.

Do you like Roland Kirk's version more than Aretha Franklin's?

Harry Connick, Jr. performs a great solo piano (without vocals) version of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Ole Oak Tree" on his album, 30.

[JSngry]

That said, I enjoy Roland Kirk's version of I Say a Little Prayer for You a lot more than Dionne Warwick's.

Do you like Roland Kirk's version more than Aretha Franklin's?

Call me crazy, but I like Dionne's version every bit as much as Aretha's, albeit for entirely different reasons.

The Warwick/Bachrach partnership was a spiritual thing, if it's allowable to consider the possibility that "suburbia" can be spiritual. And if that's not allowable, then that raises some pretty serious issues...

[Soul Stream]

I'm not sure why anything about a Dionne/Bacharach/David collaboration should be in question. They've made hands down some of the best music ever. Those songs are mini-masterpieces to say the least. A triumph of songwriting, lyrics and voice.

[JSngry]

I'm not sure why anything about a Dionne/Bacharach/David collaboration should be in question. They've made hands down some of the best music ever. Those songs are mini-masterpieces to say the least. A triumph of songwriting, lyrics and voice.

Totally agreed. But you get some people who will insist that Aretha's version is "more soulful", to which I counter that there are all kinds of soul, and that failure to hear/feel/recognize that is indicative of some sort of cultural parochialism which might be understanable given the world in which we live, but which nevertheless must be overcome if we wish to realize the fullness of our humanity, and therefore be able to transcend its limitations.

[Jazzmoose]

Hey, don't look at me; I heard soul in Talking Heads version of Take Me to the River...

[GA Russell]

That said, I enjoy Roland Kirk's version of I Say a Little Prayer for You a lot more than Dionne Warwick's.

Do you like Roland Kirk's version more than Aretha Franklin's?

Edward, it's been years since I've heard Aretha's version. Thanks for the reminder! Comparing Aretha to an instrumentalist is a bit like apples and oranges, but I'll say that Aretha sings it straight while Roland plays it as a gag.