Jazz Fusion & Progressive Rock

[Hot Ptah]

I alternated sides of Bird with Larry Coryell and the Eleventh House! Their first Vanguard album had an eyesore of a cover but was quite a good album. Randy Brecker was on trumpet and added a lot to the album.

Are we back on track now?

[GA Russell]

I'm sure that I've posted this before, so not to beat a dead horse, but my recollection is this:

What I call "jazz-rock" is the playing of jazz with a rock beat. That was the creation of Larry Coryell. (And I think that he should be in the Downbet Hall of fame because of it.) The first jazz rock record that I'm aware of was the self-titled album by Coryell's band The Free Spirits on ABC from I think 1966. It is a rock album by musicians who are obviously jazz fans.

Then Coryell recorded with Chico Hamilton and Gary Burton. He then recorded (released in '68 and early '69) two albums with Steve Marcus - Tomorrow Never Knows and Count's Rock Band.

At the time of the two Marcus albums, in England Manfred Mann and Mike Hugg formed Manfred Mann Chapter III and issued two albums, and Dick Morrisey formed If and issued four albums by that band's original lineup.

Soft Machine made its name touring with Jimi Hendrix in '68, and developed rapidly from a rock band to a jazz band. Their friends from the Wilde Flowers Canterbury group formed Caravan, which hit it big (relatively speaking) with their second and third albums from '70 and '71, If I Could Do It All Over Again, and In the Land of Grey and Pink. Those two albums put the Canterbury scene into gear.

Meanwhile, back in the States, Randy Brecker had left BS&T and formed Dreams with brother Michael. BS&T was founded by Al Kooper, who was inspired by listening to the horns on an album by The Buckinghams. It was BS&T's first album that was first called "jazz rock" to my knowledge, but that may have been more due to the Columbia Records publicity department than musical developments.

Anyway, as you can see from all of this, jazz rock was white music because rock was white music. Prog rock was also white music. Fusion was often black music, and was not based upon the rock beat that kids of the 60s did the jerk to (That's a dance, for some of you youngsters.).

[A Lark Ascending]

Anyway, as you can see from all of this, jazz rock was white music because rock was white music. Prog rock was also white music. Fusion was often black music, and was not based upon the rock beat that kids of the 60s did the jerk to (That's a dance, for some of you youngsters.).

I think if you are distinguishing jazz-rock from fusion you are right. Both prog and jazz-rock were largely white musics and appealled to kids like me who had virtually no cultural reference to black music. I can recally actively disliking soul music and not being very keen on blues rock. In American fusion you had a more pronounced funk element - Weather Report, Stanley Clarke etc. I had an album by Clarke - 'Children of Forever' or something similar - for about five minutes. Could not cope with it. My education in black music came via jazz.

I think that in the English version there was very much a case of independence-declaring. A group like Fairport were actively trying to create a music that was different to American rock. You see that at its most extreme in the Canterbury scene where the music very definitely aims for an ironic take on Englishness to set it apart from American rock. Henry Cow had virtually nothing of the black element in their music, substituting European avant classical.

In all of this McLaughlin was - or became - quite unusual. He was there at the heart of the Miles bands who upped the funk elements in fusion and has frequently expressed his love of that side of things.

Unfortunately (to my ears anyway), by the late 70s the jazz-rock movement in the UK had become more homogenised, becoming absorbed into the wider funk-based fusion movement. You see this in Soft Machine in particular whose last albums are almost by a different band (well they were a different band!) from even the SM of Third, let alone the SM of 1 and 2.

Edited April 16, 2009 by Bev Stapleton

[A Lark Ascending]

The Savoy reissues were great too. I got the Charlie Parker 2 LP set ("Bird/The Savoy Sessions") because it was the lead album reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine, which seemed much more important then, and much more geared toward music. It was very unusual for a jazz album to have that lead spot in the album reviews, with a big photo and everything.

And to top it off, I was reading Stereo Review, every issue, for the album reviews, and buying as many of their recommended albums as I could. Chris Albertson wrote those reviews. I thought he was a great music writer.

I think the music magazine coverage had a big influence in enabling us to cross genres in the 60s/70s. I used to religiously read Melody Maker and the New Musical Express. They had dedicated folk and jazz sections. I think I must have absorbed them without acting until about '75. I do recall very specifically buying records by Jarrett, Mike Westbrook, SOS (Surman-Osborne-Skidmore) and Stan Tracey after reading rave reviews in one or other of those.

I'm not sure how that works today - the only rock orientated magazine I read is Mojo and that is designed for greyhairs so does feature jazz reviews and articles. There must be some sort of mentioning - there are a wave of jazz bands in the UK like Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland who have a strong audience on the indie-rock scene as well as playing jazz gigs. If contemporary culture could escape from the tyrrany of niche-marketing and target audiences there would be more scope for all of this.

There is an interest in crossing genres today - think of they way bits of jazz or classical are sampled - but I'm not sure it leads to a fuller exploration. Kids I teach often tell me they like all kinds of music and show me their ipods with a bit of Mozart or Nick Drake or Ella. But I don't get a sense that most go beyond that. The difference is those who either grow up in homes where alternative music is played or who learn an instrument and come into contact with other types of music that way. There's a wonderful group in the East Midlands of the UK who play big band (in its broadest sense) jazz, made up of school kids - I think it's run by a relative of Brian Eno. They did a concert of one of Graham Collier's pieces a while back with Collier conducting or supervising.

They never-ending stream of young jazz musicians in the UK must be coming from somewhere!

Edited April 16, 2009 by Bev Stapleton

[Tom Storer]

I turned 16 in 1974, and under the influence of a musician friend of my older brother, began listening to records including Weather Report, Chick Corea's "Light As A Feather", and CTI albums. I quickly followed the thread back to Miles Davis and was soon listening to Bitches Brew, Big Fun, and Get Up With It. (That led back to Coltrane, and bebop, and following the Corea trail I also started in on Circle, then Braxton and the AACM in general, but that's not this thread's focus.)

I remember that Rolling Stone had a big cover story in 1974 about "Jazz-Rock," with articles on Mahavishnu, Weather Report, Return to Forever, Herbie Hancock and more. That's what it was called at the beginning, jazz-rock or "jazz-rock fusion," which eventually morphed to just "fusion." What seemed exciting, and this was as much a real development as a marketing tool, was the sense that something new was happening, something energetic, liberating, fun and beautiful.

That same feeling was there for lots of ECM's music at the time: Gary Burton, Steve Swallow, certain Corea albums and Keith Jarrett were there. The use of electric instruments, the "pastoral" lyricism to use Larry Kart's phrase, and the fact that you didn't have to pass a test on the bewildering world of "old jazz," all served to open doors for young people.

I also agree with what someone said above, that "jazz rock" was a misnomer for most of the Miles-derived early bands like Weather Report, RTF and the Headhunters. The rhythms there were more funk than rock.

During all this, I was completely unaware of "prog rock." Before plunging into jazz I had liked blues-rock with lengthy guitar solos--Hendrix, Clapton, Allman, etc. I switched allegiance completely to jazz, and things like King Crimson I considered just more rock, hence I wasn't interested. None of the English groups had any visibility at all, at least where I was. And to reply to one of the questions at the start of the thread, I would be surprised if many of the American "jazz-rock" musicians were influenced by prog rock. I could be wrong, of course.

[A Lark Ascending]

I would be surprised if many of the American "jazz-rock" musicians were influenced by prog rock. I could be wrong, of course.

I think that's true - though the influences did go the other way. I can recall the impact Mahavishnu had on the existing prog-rockers. I remember Phil Collins being interviewed around '72 and saying he wanted 'more Mahavishnu' in Genesis (ironic given the later direction of his career) and I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't influence Bruford's move from Yes to KC. Collins also played occasionally with a band called Brand X who were more in the American fusion mould.

I don't think US jazz in general has ever been very open to being influenced by jazz beyond the US and Latin America. Yes, it has taken influences from other musics (Sketches of Spain etc) but rarely from non-US jazz. I get the feeling that there is such an idea of jazz as an American music that there's never been a sense that there's much of interest to absorb. Most non-American musicians who have gained a profile in the States and had an impact have had to move there and 'go native' (Holland, McLaughlin, Shearing etc).

US rock or rock related music has always seemed more open to overseas influence.

Not a complaint. A (possibly mistaken) observation.

[Hot Ptah]

Another observation which I thought of, which I thought that Shawn might find interesting. I have been amazed at the iconic status given recently to some of the Miles Davis albums of the 1970-75 period. What I remember is that the young people I knew, who had listened to a ton of Hendrix and Sly Stone, and Zappa and Yes and King Crimson, and were open to just about anything, found many of those Miles Davis albums incomprehensible, and not very good. When Stanley Crouch calls that period a sell-out for Miles, I just don't agree. These Miles albums were not easy to get into for rock fans.

I am thinking of Miles at the Fillmore (the one with the titles Wednesday Miles, Thursday Miles, Friday Miles and Saturday Miles), On the Corner, In Concert, Get Up With It, and Agharta.

For some reason Jack Johnson was not as easy to buy or find, and was not as well known.

Big Fun was thought of as more listenable, as being less of an endurance test to sit through than the other albums.

Bitches Brew was known of, but not played that much by the people I knew in the mid-1970s. I remember seeing John McLaughlin and the One Truth Band live in 1979 (L.Shankar, Stu Goldberg, Fernando Saunders, Tony Smith and Alyrio Lima) and they departed from their rather mundane fusion to play a song which was supposed to be very specifically in the style of Bitches Brew. It sounded odd to everyone around me in the audience--people were talking out loud, "what IS this? how weird."

Something like Get Up With It is now called an amazing masterpiece, ahead of its time, etc. but at the time, it was thought of as almost a joke, a misfire by Miles, at least among all the young people I was coming into contact with, who were really into music.

Edited April 16, 2009 by Hot Ptah

[Hot Ptah]

I would be surprised if many of the American "jazz-rock" musicians were influenced by prog rock. I could be wrong, of course.

I agree with that, as most of them seemed to have no feeling for what made prog rock, or any rock, appealing to young people. The American jazz-rock musicians could have been much more popular if they had been able to develop more of a sense of that.

The exception may be Chick Corea, in the electric Return to Forever phase, in the Where Have I Known You Before, No Mystery, Romantic Warrior era. His synthesizer playing and the "cornball monumentalism" of his compositions (to steal a phrase someone used to describe Rick Wakeman of Yes in that time) seemed to me to come from Emerson Lake and Palmer and Yes, to some extent at least.

On the other hand, Corea stated in a print interview in the last year that he had never heard the Beatles' music until this past year, so who knows?

[Tom Storer]

How much prog rock was vocal-free? I've always considered that a big differentiator. With the exception of Chick Corea, fusion bands didn't do vocals. Even when Corea did have a vocalist, the lyrics weren't rock-like. Rock lyrics are usually topical, navel-gazing, or akin to poems in a teenager's journal, whereas jazz lyrics are usually romantic (in a sophisticated way, rather than with adolescent immediacy), linguistically clever or playful, or simply something of little intrinsic interest to drape notes over.

Writing the above, I of course thought of counter-examples, but in general, I think that's a fair description.

Edited April 16, 2009 by Tom Storer

[Hot Ptah]

How much prog rock was vocal-free? I've always considered that a big differentiator. With the exception of Chick Corea, fusion bands didn't do vocals. Even when Corea did have a vocalist, the lyrics weren't rock-like. Rock lyrics are usually topical, navel-gazing, or akin to poems in a teenager's journal, whereas jazz lyrics are usually romantic (in a sophisticated way, rather than with adolescent immediacy), linguistically clever or playful, or simply something of little intrinsic interest to drape notes over.

Writing the above, I of course thought of counter-examples, but in general, I think that's a fair description.

I agree with that, and I think that is part of what I meant when I said that the jazz-rock musicians had no feeling for what made rock appealing to young people. Even the strangest, most nonsensical lyrics in prog rock were acceptable at the time, because they were sung, and people wanted to hear that type of rock vocal at that time. Often the vocal section in prog rock was simple and catchy, and then they went off into more unusual music in the instrumental section.

Tony Williams tried to sing more rock oriented songs on the first Lifetime album, but no one seemed to like those vocals at all. Again, a real lack of feel for what the rock audience liked.

[A Lark Ascending]

How much prog rock was vocal-free? I've always considered that a big differentiator. With the exception of Chick Corea, fusion bands didn't do vocals. Even when Corea did have a vocalist, the lyrics weren't rock-like. Rock lyrics are usually topical, navel-gazing, or akin to poems in a teenager's journal, whereas jazz lyrics are usually romantic (in a sophisticated way, rather than with adolescent immediacy), linguistically clever or playful, or simply something of little intrinsic interest to drape notes over.

Writing the above, I of course thought of counter-examples, but in general, I think that's a fair description.

Long stretches of prog were vocal free - after Wyatt left the Soft Machine were totally vocal-less. Large stretches of King Crimson are also vocal free, certainly the 72-74 band where the few songs acted as islands to launch the (often improvised) instrumentals. The Pink Floyd of Umma Gumma, Atom Heart Mother and Meddle were a mainly instrumental band (Dark Side changed that and returned them to their earlier song based style).

I disagree that jazz lyrics are any better than rock lyrics - most vocal jazz is based on pretty trite lovey-dovey lyrics, no more sophisticated than the pseudo-Romanticism (large R) of prog-rock lyrics. There's a real danger of running into the 'jazz is for sophisticates, rock is for the undiscriminating/immature riff-raff' simplicities there. Are the lyrics of Escalator Over the Hill really any better than those of Genesis?

Maybe the difference is that jazz singers often pay scant attention to the lyrics meaning, just using them as vehicles to sing off (think Billie Holiday and those daft songs she recorded in the 30s); whereas prog-rockers often seemed to want to invest the (admittedly frequently daft) lyrics with some sort of portentous meaning.

But then Jon Anderson's lyrics for Yes were totally meaningless (except perhaps in his brain) - he seemed to just like the sound of the words, regardless of meaning.

Edited April 16, 2009 by Bev Stapleton

[A Lark Ascending]

There's also an interesting class battle at work in the criticism of prog-rock lyrics. The dominant critical voices in rock writing view rock as essentially working class (even though, I suspect, most of those critics are wannabee working class rather than real working class). Prog rock was essentially a middle class music by musicians who had stayed on at school after 15 and often attended public schools - the lyrics are full of literary allusions. Genesis lyrics reek of classical mythology and TS Elliot. Which, of course, is anathema to the standard rock critic.

Which is not an attempt to say there was anything wonderful in those lyrics - merely that they were no worse than other lyrics in popular music (and an awful lot of opera!). They just presented themselves as perfect targets to a particular critical mindset.

Edited April 16, 2009 by Bev Stapleton

[Hot Ptah]

I agree that jazz lyrics are often no more meaningful than rock lyrics. In their different kind of meaninglessness, jazz lyrics in the 1970s managed to alienate rock listeners, who were happy with a certain kind of meaninglessness, but not the jazz lyric kind of meaninglessness.

[A Lark Ascending]

Another observation which I thought of, which I thought that Shawn might find interesting. I have been amazed at the iconic status given recently to some of the Miles Davis albums of the 1970-75 period. What I remember is that the young people I knew, who had listened to a ton of Hendrix and Sly Stone, and Zappa and Yes and King Crimson, and were open to just about anything, found many of those Miles Davis albums incomprehensible, and not very good. When Stanley Crouch calls that period a sell-out for Miles, I just don't agree. These Miles albums were not easy to get into for rock fans.

I am thinking of Miles at the Fillmore (the one with the titles Wednesday Miles, Thursday Miles, Friday Miles and Saturday Miles), On the Corner, In Concert, Get Up With It, and Agharta.

For some reason Jack Johnson was not as easy to buy or find, and was not as well known.

Big Fun was thought of as more listenable, as being less of an endurance test to sit through than the other albums.

Bitches Brew was known of, but not played that much by the people I knew in the mid-1970s. I remember seeing John McLaughlin and the One Truth Band live in 1979 (L.Shankar, Stu Goldberg, Fernando Saunders, Tony Smith and Alyrio Lima) and they departed from their rather mundane fusion to play a song which was supposed to be very specifically in the style of Bitches Brew. It sounded odd to everyone around me in the audience--people were talking out loud, "what IS this? how weird."

Something like Get Up With It is now called an amazing masterpiece, ahead of its time, etc. but at the time, it was thought of as almost a joke, a misfire by Miles, at least among all the young people I was coming into contact with, who were really into music.

'Bitches Brew' was my first Miles album and nearly stopped my bothering with Miles. I hated it. It took over 15 years to click! I think you are right in pointing out how little that era of Miles impacted on the average rock listener. In the UK I'm not sure how available they were in the 70s but by the 80s only BB seemed to be easy to find. I waited a long time to get a copy of Live Evil - mid 90s, I think. In the neo-classical era of the 80s it was hard to find much enthusiasm for it - I recall being quite surprised to read Ian Carr's bio in the 80s and see it so highly praised. And Miles was still playing a variant of that music then. There's been something of a reappraisal of that period in the last ten years or so.

For me the real problem with that music - and, I suspect a real problem with many rock listeners tackling jazz in general - was they way it often sat on a single chord for a long time or alternated between two. The one track that did make a big impact on me was 'Spanish Key' but that has a point where the minor key mood spectacularly changes into a bright major passage. An awful lot of prog music was built on the colouristic effects of frequent key changes - think of all those multi-part tunes which changed key (and often instrumentation...electric bit...acoustic bit...back to electric bit) several times. Attuning yourself to what initially sounded like a long drone with the same instrumentation throughout took some doing.

And, thinking about it, maybe that's where Mahavishnu could break through. Not only did the look like a rock band with the guitar at centre, but many of their pieces were segmented that way. Think of 'Meeting of the Spirits' with its dark, energetic main passage and then the ecstatic, slowed down release.

Edited April 16, 2009 by Bev Stapleton

[A Lark Ascending]

I agree that jazz lyrics are often no more meaningful than rock lyrics. In their different kind of meaninglessness, jazz lyrics in the 1970s managed to alienate rock listeners, who were happy with a certain kind of meaninglessness, but not the jazz lyric kind of meaninglessness.

Most jazz songs were standards based. And those standards were not just sung by jazz singers. In fact I associated them with cabaret/MOR/supper club singers. They had no appeal at all, seeming to be Mum and Dad music.

I know that when I took a shine to Ella's voice I had to suspend my disbelief listening to the lyrics. And that was the 'Rogers and Hart Songbook' - Hart is normally held up as an exemplar sophisticated song writer. But to a 19 year old the lyrics sounded Tin Pan Alley and irrelevant to my world.

I like them now - but I wonder how much that is because they 'are' sophisticated, how much to me buying into the jazz view of the world.

[Hot Ptah]

Another observation which I thought of, which I thought that Shawn might find interesting. I have been amazed at the iconic status given recently to some of the Miles Davis albums of the 1970-75 period. What I remember is that the young people I knew, who had listened to a ton of Hendrix and Sly Stone, and Zappa and Yes and King Crimson, and were open to just about anything, found many of those Miles Davis albums incomprehensible, and not very good. When Stanley Crouch calls that period a sell-out for Miles, I just don't agree. These Miles albums were not easy to get into for rock fans.

I am thinking of Miles at the Fillmore (the one with the titles Wednesday Miles, Thursday Miles, Friday Miles and Saturday Miles), On the Corner, In Concert, Get Up With It, and Agharta.

For some reason Jack Johnson was not as easy to buy or find, and was not as well known.

Big Fun was thought of as more listenable, as being less of an endurance test to sit through than the other albums.

Bitches Brew was known of, but not played that much by the people I knew in the mid-1970s. I remember seeing John McLaughlin and the One Truth Band live in 1979 (L.Shankar, Stu Goldberg, Fernando Saunders, Tony Smith and Alyrio Lima) and they departed from their rather mundane fusion to play a song which was supposed to be very specifically in the style of Bitches Brew. It sounded odd to everyone around me in the audience--people were talking out loud, "what IS this? how weird."

Something like Get Up With It is now called an amazing masterpiece, ahead of its time, etc. but at the time, it was thought of as almost a joke, a misfire by Miles, at least among all the young people I was coming into contact with, who were really into music.

'Bitches Brew' was my first Miles album and nearly stopped my bothering with Miles. I hated it. It took over 15 years to click! I think you are right in pointing out how little that era of Miles impacted on the average rock listener. In the UK I'm not sure how available they were in the 70s but by the 80s only BB seemed to be easy to find. I waited a long time to get a copy of Live Evil - mid 90s, I think. In the neo-classical era of the 80s it was hard to find much enthusiasm for it - I recall being quite surprised to read Ian Carr's bio in the 80s and see it so highly praised. And Miles was still playing a variant of that music then. There's been something of a reappraisal of that period in the last ten years or so.

For me the real problem with that music - and, I suspect a real problem with many rock listeners tackling jazz in general - was they way it often sat on a single chord for a long time or alternated between two. The one track that did make a big impact on me was 'Spanish Key' but that has a point where the minor key mood spectacularly changes into a bright major passage. An awful lot of prog music was built on the colouristic effects of frequent key changes - think of all those multi-part tunes which changed key (and often instrumentation...electric bit...acoustic bit...back to electric bit) several times. Attuning yourself to what initially sounded like a long drone with the same instrumentation throughout took some doing.

And, thinking about it, maybe that's where Mahavishnu could break through. Not only did the look like a rock band with the guitar at centre, but many of their pieces were segmented that way. Think of 'Meeting of the Spirits' with its dark, energetic main passage and then the ecstatic, slowed down release.

All good points. Also, the music of Yes, ELP, Jethro Tull and the other prog rockers, for all of its complexity, was usually quite melodic, pleasant and tuneful--it made you feel happy and good, plus you were able to feel like your mind had been challenged, and you were up to the challenge, so that was further positive reinforcement.

On the other hand, the Miles Davis albums of 1970-75 were often, on the surface, dark, gloomy and unpleasant, and no matter how hard you listened with a deeply furrowed brow, you could not figure them out. So they made you feel lousy, and gave you negative reinforcement.

Also, this now seems odd in the CD era, where a single CD is 74 minutes long and multi-CD sets are common. People back then thought in terms of a single LP, with about 18 minutes on each side, or 36 minutes in total, for an album. There were a limited number of 2 record rock albums, but they were notable, and most listeners could name the few which seemed successful. Most of them seemed padded with filler, and could have been better if they had been a one record set.

In this environment, Miles Davis released many 2 record LP sets in a five year period. They all seemed really tough to listen to, for rock listeners, and there was just so much material there! There was no rock band putting out so many 2 LP sets at the time. So it all seemed like a mountain of weird, unpleasant, often boring stuff.

I listen to those Miles Davis albums now, and can see where he was coming from, and like most of them to some degree. But back then, I didn't know any young people who were excited about the new Miles Davis 2 record set coming out.

[A Lark Ascending]

On the other hand, the Miles Davis albums of 1970-75 were often, on the surface, dark, gloomy and unpleasant, and no matter how hard you listened with a deeply furrowed brow, you could not figure them out. So they made you feel lousy, and gave you negative reinforcement.

Interesting point. And given that from Romanticism onwards, western culture has given a higher rating to music that is dark and gloomy ('deep', addressing an artist's 'pain' etc) over that which is bright and optimistic ('childish', 'naive') it's not hard to see why those Miles records have cultural currency where much rock doesn't. Though there was plenty of gloomy prog...Van Der Graaf Generator, anyone?

[Hot Ptah]

I agree that jazz lyrics are often no more meaningful than rock lyrics. In their different kind of meaninglessness, jazz lyrics in the 1970s managed to alienate rock listeners, who were happy with a certain kind of meaninglessness, but not the jazz lyric kind of meaninglessness.

Most jazz songs were standards based. And those standards were not just sung by jazz singers. In fact I associated them with cabaret/MOR/supper club singers. They had no appeal at all, seeming to be Mum and Dad music.

I know that when I took a shine to Ella's voice I had to suspend my disbelief listening to the lyrics. And that was the 'Rogers and Hart Songbook' - Hart is normally held up as an exemplar sophisticated song writer. But to a 19 year old the lyrics sounded Tin Pan Alley and irrelevant to my world.

I like them now - but I wonder how much that is because they 'are' sophisticated, how much to me buying into the jazz view of the world.

Very true. I don't think any young people today can fully grasp how rigid the "generation gap" was at that time (to use a much overused phrase) when it came to music. Just about anyone over a certain age, was it 40, 45, I am not sure, hated all rock music and would literally not let it be played in their presence. Thus there was no rock music played in public spaces, certainly not as background music, or performed on American TV. If a rock band was playing on a late night talk show like Dick Cavett, that was rare, and talked about as an amazing thing, as if a space alien had appeared on the show.

At the same time, young people were pretty much united in their hostility toward older music, anything which came out after 1964. Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, those kind of guys, they were all over TV, and older people listened to them. So if they sang a song, it had to be bad. Then if someone like Ella or Sarah Vaughan sang the same songs, that was bad too.

Older acoustic jazz, including Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and anyone else, were lumped together with Dean Martin in the minds of many young rock listeners at that time. It took a somewhat brave soul to turn their back on their peer group and get into older, acoustic, mainstream jazz.

That is where the electric jazz-rock and fusion groups were different. They were loud, and would have been hated by the older generation if they had ever heard them. Young people could identify with them, both musically and culturally.

[.:.impossible]

A lot of these recent comments sound like y'all are talking about the jam bands of the nineties and their progression into this decade as mega-acts and festival headliners.

[7/4]

Boring jams that don't rock?

[.:.impossible]

...for all of its complexity, was usually quite melodic, pleasant and tuneful--it made you feel happy and good, plus you were able to feel like your mind had been challenged, and you were up to the challenge, so that was further positive reinforcement.

[Chalupa]

At the same time, young people were pretty much united in their hostility toward older music, anything which came out after 1964. Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, those kind of guys, they were all over TV, and older people listened to them. So if they sang a song, it had to be bad. Then if someone like Ella or Sarah Vaughan sang the same songs, that was bad too.

I just want to hijack this thread for a moment....

My Mother-in-Law is a Sinatra FREAK. A couple of years ago we were listening to the radio and Sinatra's version of George Harrison's "Something" came on and she started singing along. So I said,"I didn't know you liked the Beatles" and she said,"Well, I did before they got all WEIRD."

Carry on.

[A Lark Ascending]

My Mother-in-Law is a Sinatra FREAK. A couple of years ago we were listening to the radio and Sinatra's version of George Harrison's "Something" came on and she started singing along. So I said,"I didn't know you liked the Beatles" and she said,"Well, I did before they got all WEIRD."

You might want to go completely geekish on her and tell her 'Something' came off their last recorded album (though penultimate released!). So they were already weird!

I recall that Sinatra version in the charts over here along with a version by, I think, Shirley Bassey!

My dad hated pop music but he had time for the Beatles. Much of their music had an immediate melodic hook that linked with non-soul/r'n'b music. Whereas the Stones never made any sense to him.

[Shawn]

Boring jams that don't rock?

Haven't checked out Earthless yet I take it?

[7/4]

Not yet.

.