We rolled in from a splendid dinner at the pub last night and I put on Coltrane’s “My favourite things” (as you do, late night with the wood burner going and something peaty in a glass *). My friend said, “Is this jazz?”. Yes, I said, this is jazz.
But it’s an interesting question. So I ask the Massive, what is jazz?
* Lidl Ben Bracken Isley since you’re asking. Sensational at cheap money.
You could scarcely have found an album that was so unequivocally jazz.
Queen’s Jazz?
The answer is Thelonious Monk
If you have to ask, you’ll never know.
😉
That sounded like a song lyric, Tigger.
In fact it’s a quote from Jazzy Potter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtvgXAykIac.
One thing we can say for certain about jazz…..
I thought it was Louis Armstrong…
Posting Duke Ellington doing “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing” on a thread inspired by John Coltrane is actually pretty good fighting talk by KFD. I’d even call it passive aggression if he wasn’t such a nice guy.
You are very kind, Hawkfall!
Incidentally, how can we possibly understand jazz without a visit to a Jazz Club?
And we’ll never understand jazz without some help from a poet or two. Here’s Langston Hughes in 1958.
Ironic that it’s an all-white band.
And by way of total contrast, here’s another bard, that great jazz fan, The Glumster from Hull, Philip Larkin.
Jazz is so international these days. Time for a visit to Belgium.
After spending an afternoon in the local library, many, many years ago, ploughing through Philip Larkin’s book of reviews on Jazz, I came to the conclusion that the Jazz he listened to would the be Jazz I wouldn’t listen to.
I must get a second-hand copy of it to see if I’ve sufficiently achieved my ambition!
I will respectfully disagree on the basis that the 4-cd Proper box set Larkin’s Jazz is tons of fun and more or less fills in the dots for me from Louis Armstrong and Bix Biederbecke to bebop, without big band that I really struggle with.
Fair enough.
I couldn’t quite get over his loathing (as I remember it – this was ‘one’ rainy afternoon in the local library!) of John Coltrane.
Now, I’d seen pictures of Coltrane by this time, and I had the picture of Larkin on the cover of the book to refer to.
Thin evidence, for sure, but I reasoned the beautiful one of the two might be the better bet.
This might help you. Ben Castle, with an explanation from Matt Berry.
These days? Any old din with an asymmetric rhythm section, horns and keyboards. Especially if you want a long listing for the Mercury Prize. An alice band and horn rim specs are compulsory for any guitarist, if there is one.
An Alice band? Last time I played jazz, I wore an Alice band. The other band members threw bits of Limburger at me until I put the rest of my clothes back on…
…Jazz, eh?
“Lidl Ben Bracken Isley” distilled by the Isley Brothers? 😉
Anything that makes my wife scream ‘Turn that off!’
Gosh! She must be extremely tolerant. In my house, multiple genres, including Classical, elicit that response.
😄
“Jazz ain’t nothin’ but a blues quartet fallin’ down a flight of stairs” – Otis Lee Crenshaw.
Does this help?
Actually, yes it does. Though after 1970 it makes my brain explode, particularly with”No Wave Noise Music”; possibly the least helpful genre title of all time.
Perhaps this explains it:
It’s all the right notes, but not necessarily played in the right order.
I know if it’s part of the London Jazz Festival there’s a pretty high chance it ain’t jazz. (Last night’s offering, Seun Kuti and Egypt 80.)
You’re right of course @Murkey. But I can understand why they do that.
Having a more eclectic programme will perhaps attract punters put off by the J Word.
Our excellent Stockholm jazz club, Fasching, also books (or sublets to other promoters who have booked) reggae, folk, world music, singer songwriters and progressive rock.
https://www.fasching.se/?date=0&artist=all&view=default&c=4
James Yorkston, Nina Persson and the Second Hand Orchestra sold out two gigs on the same night. Not jazz at all.
I checked, This evening the excellent Anna Järvinen is playing.
Surprise people with the acts you book!
There are magazines that may reveal something.
Coming soon to a hedgerow near you.
This*
*Ask the same question tomorrow and the answer will be different. It’s a moveable feast.
That’s a very good answer, Mr Squeezer.
It’s a very personal thing but, for me, it must swing or have some kind of loose-limbed rhythm and involve improvisation on the melodic instruments. Having said that, some of Miles Davis’ more dense jazz-rock albums, eg Agharta, use rhythms that could not be described as swinging or loose-limbed. So perhaps the most critical element is improvisation?
Bing ‘n’ Satchmo explain it all:
Reading the Tony Hancock thread made me think about how much jazz and jazz musicians appeared on British radio and TV in the 60s and 70s.
And how the jazz community were portrayed. Were the jazzheads of 64 the butt of many jokes?
That question led me to this informative article on the BFI site.
https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/five-jazz-moments-british-tv
It mentions this rather unexpected appearance by Courtney Pine on Dr Who.
It also names Jazz 625 which was THE Number One UK Jazz TV show.
Fill your boots! Lots of complete programmes on the Tube.
I find the 1960s audience as interesting as the artists. All very smartly dressed in suits and ties and listening very intently. They could be in church!
Was I watching these magnificent shows in 1964? Was I hell!
My listening was all Liverpudlian beat groups with long hair and guitars.
I used to accidentally catch the odd Jazz 625 show back then, even enjoyed some of them, but it was not what I was interested in as a ’60s youth.
Probably it was the suits and ties of both musicians and audience. And the serious po-faces on the audience. Reminiscent of the folk clubs and classical recitals of that era.
Just under a fortnight ago I went to a jazz gig featuring a couple of ’60s stalwarts, Henry Lowther (trumpet) and Dave Green (string bass). All standards played very well in a quartet setting with piano and drums.
Dave Green was in the house band for a lot of those Jazz 625 concerts, backing US artists over here. Possibly Henry played on some too. I recall seeing him in a brass section on a John Mayall club gig in the late ’60s. When Mick Taylor was Mayall’s guitarist.
I went to see Mark Kavuma & The Banger Factory last night at the QEH, launching his new double album Magnum Opus.
Very diverse, with sometimes a quartet or a 6-piece increasing in various ways at various times to a 14-piece with lots of percussionists and a few singers along the way, but all jazz (a few things only just, in the R&B direction).
From
at one extreme to
That’s a reminder that I should be getting that Mark Kavuma. Thanks.
Mark Kavuma features on this excellent playlist that I made from @Mike_H‘s 25 Recent(ish) Jazz Purchases.
Give it a try! There’s considerable variety but it is rarely an agonising squawk out.
Stockholm’s Fire! Orchestra are unlike anything I’ve heard.
The sort of band where there are sometimes more people on stage than in the audience.
Yep, I have the other Mark Kavuma albums and of the adjacent Kansas Smitty’s (their last (final?) album was my album of the year). They haven’t played since lockdown and they’re all so busy now, I can’t ever see them getting back together. The drummer is the son of my mastering engineer pal.
He was there on a few numbers on Sunday. There were three different drummers as the evening progressed.
I think there are three different drummers on Kavuma’s three* different studio albums, so that’s fair enough. I’ve seen him drum on tunes from all of them.
(*) there were a plethora of lockdown-era albums, too, in various duo formations.
The Artie Zaitz one with Kavuma featuring William Cleasby “Back To Back” is a good one. Two keyboards plus drums.
Jazz is (or perhaps was) a sub-culture as much as anything else. As this wonderful documentary about the London jazz scene is the 50s/60s shows:
I’ve started listening to jazz in the last few years. Very quickly realised that I’m only just skimming the surface and there’s so much to discover. I may never fully ‘understand’ it but I like it!
Trying to “understand” it* is just wasting mental effort, in my opinion. Just listen.
*Or just about any other artistic endeavour, for that matter.
Dixieland, New Orleans Jazz, Swing, Big Band, Bebop, Hard Bop, Post-Bop, Straight Ahead, Latin Jazz, Soul Jazz, Jazz Funk, Folk Jazz, Jazz-Punk, Jazz Rock, Jazz Fusion, Free Jazz, Afro-Jazz, Spiritual Jazz, World Jazz, Hot Jazz, Cool Jazz, Smooth Jazz, Ambient Jazz, Avant Jazz etc. etc.
Jazz is possibly the broadest of broad churches.
That’s a stupendous list, @Mike_H. And it’s not even complete.
I’d say, for example, that Nordic Jazz is a sub genre with its own sound.
Just a few names off the top of my head…
Jan Johansson, Jan Garbarek, Esbjörn Svensson Trio, Jan Lundgren, Monica Zetterlund, Jaga Jazzist, Radka Toneff, Tord Gustavsen, Froy Aagre, Maridalen, Espen Eriksson Trio, Oddjob, Goran Kajfes Subtropica Arkestra, Isabella Lundgren….
But you are so right.
J The best advice is: listen and enjoy
These labels are just signposts to point us in the right kind of direction.
Does chamber jazz exist outside the fertile mind of publicists and agents?
MJQ? Shirley they defined the term?
Defining terms is soooo not jazz daddio.
Does that mean:
MJQ aren’t jazz;
Chamber jazz isn’t jazz;
I’m not jazz;
Or all of the above?
MJQ are jazz.
Chamber jazz is jazz.
You are prog.
Prog can also be jazz.
To answer your question @retropath02, chamber jazz most certainly does exist.
I’d use it to describe jazz music which is calmer, more introspective and less squawky . Music that is more for listening than dancing.
The wonderful Mare Nostrum trio fit this category rather well.
The wing of jazz’s enormous delapidated mansion that includes The Necks might be chamber jazz.
They’re in the ambient annex. Watch out for loose floorboards.
Huzzah!
Originally, jazz was played by people who could not afford to learn how to read sheet music and led chaotic, hand to mouth lives. They learnt to play by ear. When they joined a ‘group’, personnel changed frequently. They had to listen and respond to each other’s quirks, often at a moment’s notice.
It’s remarkable they produced anything coherent at all, let alone as soulful, as beautiful and as moving as they did.
Jazz musicians and Jazz music are astonishing
Excellent comment, @Tiggerlion. You’ve really hit the nail on the head there.
Remarkable indeed!
I’d argue that the same can be said for other musicians playing in a genre with a strong oral tradition. Folk, blues, country, bluegrass, gospel….
Weird, isn’t it? “Musically illiterate” sounds so pejorative.
There are so many wonderful musicians who have played all their lives without ever learning to read a single note of music.
I’m going to take a stab at a definition from a musician’s perspective. To me, things I call jazz usually have the following five elements in common:
1) Instrumentation: Solo or in combination keyboards, brass and rhythm section. Woodwind and violin were once common elements but less common now. My point here is that, while a string quartet or lute is capable of playing jazz, it is less likely (I know there are exceptions that prove the rule etc, like that jazz bagpiper/ist/ophile).
2) Blues influence on melody (the blue notes such as the flattened thirds, fifths), harmony (non-diatonic use of 7th chords, 12-bar blues structures and their evolution) and rhythm (dotted 8th notes for swing etc).
3) Improvisation as a fundamental component. I can’t really think of anything I’d consider as jazz to be written out as a strict score to be followed as per classical music. I’d probably consider this to be more contemporary classical. Improvisation is the key purpose of most jazz.
4) In improvisation, a strong connection between the notes played and the harmonic scaffolding of the music (in contrast to rock and blues, for example, where the improvisation is usually painted in broad brush strokes over the top). This is known as ‘following the changes’.
5) Complex harmony based on 7th chords, with regular use of chord extensions (9ths, 11ths, 13ths) and alterations (flattened or sharpened 5ths), and non-diatonic harmony (i.e. not derived from the major scale).
I like it. Not going down rabbit holes but re. (4) This is generally true but Miles Davis rethought it with Modal jazz where solos are based on scales related to the chords rather than the chord itself. And made the most popular jazz album ever.
It’s this extended harmonic language which adds to the jazzyness if you like. Then players deliberately play notes outside the scales to make it more weird. Looking at you Ornette Coleman. Or substitute other chords for the ones in the song, then use scales based on those chords. Brilliantly though. I love a bit of out.
Thanks for these very useful comments @Podicle and @Twang.
The point about “following the changes” is way over my head as are Twang’s comments abut what Miles did on Kind of Blue.
But that at least encourages me to give the album a new listen, which may increase my understanding. Of course, as a layman, I don’t need to understand all the technical stuff to enjoy the music, but it doesn’t do any harm to try.
Of course, no need to know the theory behind it to enjoy it. Interestingly some old school jazzers in 1959 thought Kind of Blue was rubbish and wasn’t jazz at all, and later probably the same people thought Ornette Coleman couldn’t play when he released “The Shape of Jazz to Come” (cheeky title), so alien were the new sounds.
Thanks KFD. I’ll try to explain a little more, as it is a simple concept hidden under lots of jargon. Someone is ‘playing the changes’ when improvising if you could remove all other instruments and still hear the background chords (or ‘harmony’)in your head. They are targeting notes from these chords, so implying the chords when they play. This is common in country music (albeit with much simpler harmony) and quite rare in blues/rock where players will usually play the same scale/notes (in key), regardless of the underlying chords.
Modal jazz is a little more complex, but I’ll try to explain it in case it helps you enjoy the music a bit more.
Our Western brains have been normalised to Diatonic harmony, i.e. that deriving from the Major scale (Do, Re, Mi etc). When we hear a piece of music, our brains very quickly figure out its key centre (all it takes is two chords!) and we expect certain tensions and resolutions in the music away from and towards that key centre.
Let’s think of a song: “Row Row Row Your Boat”. The song meanders around, increasing in musical tension until “Life is but a..” and then on “dream” it all resolves home. Or “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You”. As Elvis sings that line, your brain is willing him to get back to the root note on the “you” and resolve the tension. This is why we can sing along with hymns, folk songs and nursery rhymes, even if we’ve never heard them before: our brains ‘know’ what’s coming next.
Composers play around with these expectations. Dreams by Fleetwood Mac implies a certain key centre but never actually comes home to it, giving that dreamy, unsettled, vibe. Or composers may add in chords from another key centre, creating even more tension before finally resolving home.
In modal jazz, all this goes out the door. When you hit a chord, you pretend that none of the chords before or after exist and that that chord exists in isolation, and you improvise accordingly.
Now let’s listen to So What, the first song off Kind of Blue. It starts off with 8 bars of D minor (Dm7 actually). After those 8 bars, it suddenly lurches into E flat minor for 8 bars, and everything shifts as if the Dm never happened. This is really jarring because there is no context in Diatonic harmony where those two chords can be next to each other. Listen to the solos, and as it shifts between the chords, the soloists just shift with it. There is no key centre for them to resolve home to. The chord they are playing at the time IS the key centre.
Thank you so much for such a lucid explanation @Podicle.
The Mac’s Dreams was a good example. We lay listeners can’t explain what’s happening musically but we can feel that vibe you describe.
After reading your comment, I wanted to listen to So What and found this excellent live clip.
Nice work @Twang. You really launched us off on a fascinating journey of discovery.
Thanks Twang. I was specifically trying to make my definition inclusive of Modal jazz without using the term! Modal harmony is almost the ultimate version of playing the changes, as you have to completely erase the previous harmonic context and concentrate just on the chord of the moment.
True. Great isn’t it!
I can find myself leaning towards a definition of Jazz as ‘black American classical music’ until all of the exceptions pop up that contradict that ( 3 particular faves of mine being Art Pepper, Gerry Mulligan & Stan Getz – not to mention that drummer Buddy Whatshisname), but a truism that does seem valid about what is a Jazz musician in this day & age being ‘ a Jazz musician is someone that puts a $5,000 horn in a $500 car & drives 50 miles for $5 gig’.
The number of top drawer players (some world class) I’ve seen at my cherished local venue playing in front of sometimes as few as 11 people indicates there’s more than a grain of truth to that gag.
Yep.
Not quite as bad, but all those years of study and practice (and the money spent on instruments etc.) and you end up in a 5-piece band playing to a room of 40 people or less at £10-15 a head. Once a month.
Thank heavens for those day jobs.
Before the pandemic, my covers-band bass-playing pal wouldn’t play any gig that didn’t pay at least £50.
Now he’s retired completely. Doesn’t gig at all.
That’s a great gag @Junglejim and it’s certainly sometimes true.
But what is heartening is that if you came to a gig at Fasching, you’d see some fairly healthy audiences. Not just a lot of ageing beard-stroking blokes, but many young people (and not just blokes) who are giving the artists a verý warm reception.
Swedish audiences in general are great listeners. And the Fasching crowd are the best of the bunch.
I don’t want to paint too rosy a picture but jazz is definitely alive and kicking,
The monthly jazz night at my local music club is always heaving.
I liken it more to surfing: people do it for personal enjoyment rather than performance. For a great jazz musician there is an adrenaline rush and thrill that comes from improvising with other great musicians. One of my favourite jazz albums is Miles Davis’ Live at the Plugged Nickel box, recorded in a small club in 1965. By the end of each set you can almost identify each of the 20 individual audience members from their comments and applause. This is why Miles went electric at the end of the 60s. He saw the rewards that rock bands were getting with comparatively little talent, and he wanted in.
Thanks for mentioning that Plugged Nickel album @Podicle.
I wanted to know more and stumbled across this.
https://keyboardimprov.com/revisiting-miles-davis-at-the-plugged-nickel/
“Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock have given us priceless insight into what the group was doing at the time the recordings were made in the Chicago club The Plugged Nickel on December 22-23, 1965. Shorter and Hancock tell us that they, along with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams, felt that the group’s playing was getting a little stale. So they made a plan: during their stay at the The Plugged Nickel, they would play a kind of “anti-music,” whereby each of them would play the opposite of what they would normally play. To go against their usual musical impulses to see what would happen. When Miles told them at the last minute that Columbia Records would be recording their sets at the club, they were surprised but decided to stick with the plan. Of course they didn’t tell Miles what they were going to do!”
This is also interesting:
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/miles-davis-the-complete-live-at-the-plugged-nickel-by-c-michael-bailey
“When Miles brought his second great quintet to the Plugged Nickel in Chicago shortly before Christmas 1965 for a two night engagement, the quintet had already been recording together for a number of years. So, it is interesting, that with the exception of “Agitation,” Davis chose rather to concentrate on radical explorations of his old band book. “Walkin,'” “My Funny Valentine,” “I Fall In Love Too Easily,” “If I Were a Bell, “Stella By Starlight,” and “So What” dominate the sets and are presented in multiple forms.
All of the performances have characteristics that were turning from transitional to Davis status quo. The tempi tended to be fast, different time signatures were employed in each piece, the arrangements were less about the head and more about the solo body of the songs. All of the pieces performed at the Plugged Nickel were a look at the old stuff through radically different glasses, glasses that Davis had been working on since the dissolution of the first great quintet and sextet in 1958.”
Miles wasn’t the only jazz musician who wanted in on the big money that the rock bands were making. Jack Bruce, Ginger Bake and Jon Hiseman’s Coliseum all spring to mind. From small clubs, the jazz musicians were going over to the Filmore etc.
PS. I’ve just remembered that when Miles visited Stockholm in 1960 he played sold out gigs at Konserthuset which was probably the largest venue in town.
So he was already doing quite well on ticket sales. But perhaps not on album sales?
Just checked. Sketches of Spain went gold in 1960.
Re: “…when Miles visited Stockholm in 1960 he played sold out gigs at
Konserthuset, which was probably the largest venue in town”
Hmmm that’s an interesting one. Was it? It may have been.
Johanneshovs Isstadion (now Hovet) was opened in 1955 and was/is much larger, but I don’t know whether it was used for concerts back in the 1950s. The earliest concerts I know of at Johanneshovs Isstadion were the Beatles famous gigs there in July 1964.
That’s a good question, @DuCo01. When exactly did the use of sports arenas for rock concerts begin?
One thing’s for certain. The sound systems were woefully inadequate in the early days.
I don’t think that a jazz band at a sports arena was really an option in 1960.
And I suspect the Miles Davis Quintet’s arrival at Arlanda did not generate quite the same level of excitement as the Fab Four’s return to London.
Those 60s jazz fans were a very serious, restrained bunch.
Possibly the first was The Rutles at Che Stadium.
It’s shameful that the Rutles’ historic performance is so neglected by historians.
I’ve googled and most sources cite the Beatles at Shea Stadium as the first arena gig anywhere.
Those fans were really ripped off. The sound system was a joke.
These two pages on the history of amplification make for an interesting read.
https://pro.harman.com/insights/av/the-history-of-live-sound-part-1/
https://pro.harman.com/insights/av/the-history-of-live-sound-part-2/
By the time of the Woodstock Festival, thigs had improved enormously.
“Bill Hanley – The Father of Festival Sound
Around this same time, American audio engineer Bill Hanley was experimenting with his own custom-built PA systems. Not satisfied with common PA speakers of the time, Hanley designed his own speaker boxes by combining Altec Lansing cinema horns with JBL D130 15-inch drivers. In 1965, Hanley provided the sound system for the inauguration ceremony of President Lyndon B. Johnson. That same year, Hanley’s system was used at the famous Newport Folk Festival where Bob Dylan stunned audiences with his first electric performance.
In 1969, Woodstock Festival organizers were struggling to find someone who could provide an adequate sound system for their projected audience of 200,000 people. Bill Hanley jumped at the opportunity to showcase what his custom speaker systems could achieve for large concerts. At Woodstock, Hanley built a massive system using his custom Altec-JBL speakers on two levels of scaffolding and augmented the main system with satellite speakers around the festival grounds. Hanley utilized Macintosh and Crown amplifiers to provide an unprecedented 10,000 watts of power to his speakers. Much has been written about the chaos that ensued at Woodstock, but Hanley was proud to state that the only things that didn’t fail during the event were the water supply, the stage security, and the sound system.”
Macintosh are still making amplifiers (for people with big houses and deep pockets).
Do they still make Rolos too?
Macintosh just recently bought by Bose.
That’s a stadium gig, not an arena gig.
The Beatles played arenas on their 1964 North American tour.
I’m afraid I don’t know the difference having never attended either apart from Wembley Stadium for CSNY fifty years ago.
Well arenas are indoor places normally used for basketball/ice hockey. Typically 15-20,000 capacity. Stadiums are (mostly) outdoor 50-80,000 or so
Thanks @dai. That is an important distinction. Here in Stockholm the word “arena” is usually used for both sizes
The Avicii Arena (formerely the Globe Arena seats 16,000).
Next door to it is the Tele2 Arena . It’s outdoors and seats 40,000
Yes I probably should have said I was explaining from the North American standpoint, so I am not necessarily fully correct 😉
I saw The Stones in Globe Arena (Globen?) in 2003, and then 2 days later in Cirkus which is neither a stadium nor an arena 🙂 they played the big place too @kaisfatdad
You saw the Stones at Cirkus, @dai?
Lucky you! It’s not every day they play in a smaller venue like that. I understand you are something of fan, so that must have been quite an evening.
I’ve been there many times and it’s an excellent venue.
Yes, lovely venue. A very memorable night. Not just The Stones but an absolutely torrential rain storm when we were leaving.
Going down a bit of Miles David rabbit hole here. But this article is excellent on what was happening with Miles in 1970.
https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/how-miles-davis-put-together-the-greatest-rock-n-roll-band-you-ever-heard
The greatest jazz musician on the planet and he’s playing support for rock artists! That feels a little odd.
“Another factor that focused Miles’ mind at the beginning of 1970 were his live performances during which he supported famous rock acts. Miles had realised that with the release of Bitches Brew coming up in April, going on the road with rock bands was the only way for him to reach a new and larger audience. And so by March, Miles’ sextet was supporting acts such as The Grateful Dead, Neil Young, and Laura Nyro. (Some of the results can be heard on three live albums, the above-mentioned It’s About That Time, plus Black Beauty, recorded on 10 April, and Miles Davis At Fillmore, recorded during 17-20 June.)”
I got The Stan Tracey Quartet’s “Under Milk Wood” CD on Saturday (£1 chazzer, alas in the appalling ‘cartoon’ sleeve’ from 1976 rather than with the brilliant original ‘forest’ version of 65 – such carnage was evidently not limited to rawk, the reprinting of books and football programme design).
Doesn’t tell you much about “Under Milk Wood”, could be called anything really, but it is rather good, and Tracey, on the insistence of Sonny Rollins it would seem, played on the following year’s “Alfie” soundtrack. Pretty much all of those British films of the 50s and 60s had a Jazz soundtrack.
He’s white! My natural inclination is (i) Great label (Columbia in 65 will certainly do, but usually Blue Note or Impulse!), (ii) Great sleeve design (see above – those Blue Note sleeve are my favourite artworks full-stop), (iii) Golden Age (65, yes), and (iv) must be black, although this final criteria is more far important when it comes to the Blues.
Obligatory but can blue men play the whites?
Thanks @deramdaze. I’m a great fan of Dylan Thomas but I’d never heard of this Stan Tracey album. It was rated by the Guardian as one of the great moments of British jazz.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2010/nov/11/stan-tracey-under-milk-wood
British jazz musicians were now finding local inspiration rather than cloning American compositions.
“The British DJ Gilles Peterson (with his Impressed series of reissues) and a raft of small indie labels have extensively documented this development now, and the 60s and 70s saw the UK jazz scene on a remarkable roll, with Dankworth, pianist Michael Garrick, bandleader/composers Mike Westbrook, Mike Gibbs and the South African Chris McGregor, and many others generating new music that no longer sounded like a clone of an American model.”
And would you believe it? At the age of 84, Tracey produced another suite inspired by Dylan Thomas. This time A Child’s Xmas in Wales.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/nov/24/stan-tracey-childs-xmas-review
‘Starless and Bible Black’ from ‘Under Milk Wood’ is one of my favourite tracks ever.
Here’s a good BBC documentary on Stan Tracey. If I recall correctly, he tells how he wrote ‘Under Milk Wood’ on the night bus home from Ronnie Scott’s, where he was the house pianist in the mid 60s.
You’re quite right @Jazzjet. John Fordham mentions that in his 50 Great Moments article that I posted above.
He also writes:
“Sonny Rollins, who often worked with Tracey in his years as house pianist at Ronnie Scott’s in the 60s, once asked: “Does anybody here know how good he really is?” It took a long time for that question to be answered in the affirmative, with the disillusioned pianist almost quitting the business in the next decade, before being rediscovered by a younger generation of players who pulled him back to the bandstand.”
Thanks for the documentary.
That great jazz can be inspired by listening to something so British as a Dylan Thomas radio play is rather wonderful. It’s further confirmation of what Mike wrote about jazz being the broadest of broad churches.
Or, as we’re in Wales, the broadest of broad chapels.
The Jazz 625 – The British Jazz Explosion from 2020 is on the iPlayer again. Features Sons of Kemet, Nubya Garcia, Kokoroko, Poppy Ajudha, Matthew Halsall, Moses Boyd and Exodus and Ezra Collective, and is well worth 90 minutes of your time.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pjds/jazz-625-the-british-jazz-explosion
Overseas JazzAWers PM me for ‘help’
Nat Birchall?
Interviewed briefly but I don’t think he was filmed playing.
No, I just skipped to the end credits and he’s not listed.
Blimey, lockdown was a long time ago.
That’s a shame. The man should be knighted for services to Jazz and Dub Reggae.
That is a thoroughly wonderful idea, Tiggerlion, and completely in keeping with the times.
A few well-deserved knighthoods for long and devoted service to jazz and reggae!
Winston, Lord Burning of Spear
Lord John of Mahavishnu
Lord Linton Kwesi of Brixton
Lady Stacey of Kent
Of course, I can’t imagine for a second that Linton Kwesi would go anywhere near the Palace.