What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: Insights and Opinions from the Players

By Batt Johnson and Wynton Marsalis

There is no better authority on jazz than the creators, educators, and writers who have made this enigmatic musical style a major force internationally as well as in American history.

The answer to the question what is jazz? is as complex and diverse as those involved in it. This book takes the question to noted musicians, scholars, and composers, creating a documentary style of oral history that makes you feel as if you are actually in the room as they put the sounds they know as music into words.

The ideas from these authentic, personal voices of authority provide a unique perspective that will enlighten the novice and stimulate the professional.

Ron Carter, Bassist-Because they are improvising does not necessarily mean that it is jazz

Buddy Rich,Drums-Trane to Bird, Diz to Miles,
all in the family of jazz, just different children.

Ray Charles, Singer/Pianist-Jazz is the freedom to do what you want
within the confines of the chord structure.

Milt Jackson, Vibraphonist-"The era of bebop represents jazz to me.

Chet Baker, Trumpet-Paris
Jazz is a hard swinging rhythm section with
everybody playing with the same time feeling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 26, 2000
• ISBN: 9781462081776

Book preview

WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED JAZZ ?

Insights and Opinions from the Players

Batt Johnson

Foreword by Wynton Marsalis

Writer’s Showcase

San Jose New York Lincoln Shanghai

What Is This Thing Called Jazz? Insights and Opinions from the Players

All Rights Reserved © 2001 by Batt Johnson

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

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Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Keeping a National Treasure Alive

Foreword

What Jazz Is—and Isn’t

WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED JAZZ?

Introduction

Africa: Its Musical Culture

New Orleans—New Sounds

Jazz in Its Infancy

Percy Heath—Bassist, New York

Percy Heath

Idy Diop—Percussionist, Dakar, Senegal, West Africa

John Abercrombie—Guitar, New York City

John Abercrombie

Abdu Ahrakman Diop—director, Senegalese Conservatory of Music Senegal, West Africa

Mr. Abdu Ahrakman Diop, director, Senegalese Conservatory of Music Senegal, West Africa

Chet Baker—Trumpet, Paris

Chet Baker

Richie Beirach—Piano New York

Richie Beirach

Joanne Brackeen—Piano, New York

Joanne Brackeen

Randy Brecker—Trumpet, New York

Randy Brecker

Ron Carter—Bass, New York

Ron Carter

Ray Charles—Pianist and Vocalist,

Ray Charles

Larry Coryell—Guitar, New York

Larry Coryell

Herb Ellis—Guitar, New York

Herb Ellis

Herb Ellis—Guitar, New York

Sonny Fortune—Soprano Saxophone, New York

Sonny Fortune

Jimmy Heath—Soprano and Tenor Saxophone, New York

Jimmy Heath

Milt Jackson—Vibes, New York

Milt Jackson

Elvin Jones—Drums, London

Elvin Jones

Barney Kessel—Guitar, New York

Barney Kessel

John Woelz—Piano and Music Theory Teacher, New York

Buddy Rich—Drums, New York

Buddy Rich

The Author

Dedication 

I dedicate this book to my wife, Lisa Aldisert. I applaud her strength and courage. When I made the decision to go to Africa to perform research for this book, she unflinchingly volunteered her services. We were completely unaware of the living conditions or the political landscape in Africa at the time; fortunately, today it remains one of our most memorable trips.

Everyone should have a Lisa in their lives. Someone who can look into your soul and help you heal it, someone who can make you feel like you can accomplish the impossible, someone who makes a difference. This is dedicated to someone who has the depths of the ocean and the achievements and aspirations beyond the heavens. I thank you for your inspiration; I thank you for being you.

Batt Johnson

Acknowledgments 

I thank the following people for their contribution to the development of this manuscript: Lisa M. Aldisert performed the West African interview translations from English to French; Barbara Lacher translated the West African interviews from French to English; Bonita Walker transcribed and typed the original manuscript; Robert L. Aldisert, Esq. transcribed the music from the musician’s interviews; Andrea Adovasio typed the original proposal and manuscript; Laura Poole performed the final edits.

Special thanks to New York jazz radio legend Pat Prescott; Terrence Blackbyrne, Esq.; Maurice Cullaz, Jazz Hot Magazine, Paris; Gilles Guantrin, Sonopress Records, Paris; Claude Nobs, creator of the original Montreaux Jazz Festival-Switzerland; Vice President Ken Glancy, RCA Records UK, London; and to my sisters Connie and Gloria for giving me the gift of music and in particular the gift of jazz.

Most of all I thank the many talented and giving musicians and educators who took the time to give me their unique stories. Now the world can enjoy the sounds these important musicians know as music that they have put into words.

Keeping a National Treasure Alive 

The late, great jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie was a patient at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center many times before his passing in early 1993 from pancreatic cancer. His wish was to have The Dizzy Gillespie Cancer Institute at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center established and provide free medical assistance to jazz musicians in need.

I was fortunate enough to have shared the stage with Dizzy several times. I had many telephone conversations with him about an interview for this book. The interview was always preempted by a trip to Europe to play. After his death, I arrived three hours early for his memorial at the Cathedral of St. John The Divine in New York City, and was not surprised at the massive turnout.

Dizzy expressed two wishes to his family in his last days. One was to have a memorial in his name at his Hospital - Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, and the other was to support his great passion in life - jazz and jazz musicians.

If you would like to make a contribution to the Dizzy Gillespie Memorial Fund, send your check to The Dizzy Gillespie Memorial Fund, c/o Englewood Hospital and Medical Center Foundation, 350 Engle Street, Englewood, New Jersey 07631.

Foreword

What Jazz Is—and Isn’t 

by

Wynton Marsalis

To many people, any kind of popular music now can be lumped with jazz. As a result, audiences too often come to jazz with generalized misconceptions about what it is and what it is supposed to be. Too often, what is represented as jazz isn’t jazz at all. Despite attempts by writers, record companies, promoters, educators, and even musicians to blur the lines for commercial purposes, rock isn’t jazz and New Age isn’t jazz, and neither are pop or third stream. There may be much that is good in all of them, but they aren’t jazz.

I recently completed a tour of jazz festivals in Europe in which only two out of ten bands were jazz bands. The promoters of these festivals readily admit that most of the music isn’t jazz but refuse to rename these events music festivals, seeking the aesthetic elevation that jazz offers. This is aesthetic name-dropping, attempting to piggyback on the achievements of others and duping the public.

All the forces at work to blur the lines deplore the purist ethic in jazz but try to capitalize commercially on the aesthetic reputation of jazz. In other fields, purism is considered a form of heroism—the good guy who won’t sell out—but in jazz that purism is incorrectly perceived as stagnation and the inability to change. Therefore, those who are most lauded by the record companies and writers and promoters are those who most exploit the public. The major obstacle facing this generation of musicians is finding out what makes something jazz.

My generation finds itself wedged between two opposing traditions. One is the tradition we know in such wonderful detail from the enormous recorded legacy that tells anyone who will listen that jazz broke the rules of European conventions and created rules of its own that were so specific, so thorough, and so demanding that a great art resulted. This art has had such universal appeal and application to the expression of modern life that it has changed the conventions of American music as well as those of the world at large.

The other tradition, which was born early and stubbornly refuses to die, despite all the evidence to the contrary, regards jazz merely as a product of noble savages—music produced by untutored, unbuttoned semiliterates for whom jazz history does not exist. This myth was invented by early jazz writers who, in attempting to escape their American prejudices, turned out a whole world of new clichés based on the myth of the innate ability of early jazz musicians. Because of these writers’ lack of understanding of the mechanics of music, they thought there weren’t any mechanics. It was the they all can sing, they all have rhythm syndrome. (If that was the case, why was there only one Louis Armstrong?)

That myth is being perpetuated even today by those who profess an openness to everything—an openness that in effect just shows contempt for the basic values of the music and of our society. If everything is good, why should anyone subject himself to the pain of study? Their disdain for the specific knowledge that goes into jazz creation is their justification for saying that everything has its place. But their job should be to define that place—is it the toilet or the table?

Musicians have struggled with the problem of creating the sound of jazz in preconceived notes, rather than in on-the-spot improvisation, in tones that have been pondered and edited until the writer is satisfied. This doesn’t mean that the individual piece won’t be reworked every now and then while still remaining in progress. (Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus were noted for this.) When jazz singers or instrumentalists take over a song, they use all of the sophistication Louis Armstrong first brought to a very high level of craft, virtuosity, and feeling. This is the classical form of jazz performance: When improvisation works so well that it can stand on its own as composition. This kind of improvisation is what jazz musicians raised to an art through deep study and contemplation.

Duke Ellington exemplifies a mastery of the relationship ofknowl- edge to development. He was present almost at the beginning of jazz; his career spanned five decades of continuous and unprecedented musical development: he continuously proved that no one was more capable of translating the varied and complex arenas of American experience into tone. His recorded legacy gives us the most accurate tonal history of the Twentieth century. Ellington developed the implications he heard in the lines and phrasing of Armstrong’s improvisations, and he expanded on the compositions and arrangements of everyone around him, including Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, and Fletcher Henderson.

Ellington compositions, like Such Sweet Thunder (1957), Suite Thursday (1960), and Anatomy of a Murder (1959), all show how well he mastered the integration of rhythm section and band; these extended pieces prove that he is one of the great musical thinkers as well as one of the great masters of musical form. Integrating the rhythm section and the rest of the band is not a simple job, and I believe the jazz pieces of concert composers are almost always failures because they have not mastered that idea. Concert composers must accept the fact that a rhythm section is part of the sound in a very different way than anything in European music; but they settle for corny syncopations, which only partly suggest the range of force and impetus provided by the rhythm section.

Genius always manifests itself through attention to fine detail. Works of great genius sound so natural they appear simple, but this is the simplicity of elimination, not the simplicity of ignorance. This kind of intricacy is abundantly evident in these late works. Not only are difficult form schemes arrived at and executed harmonically, melodically, rhythmically, and texturally, but Ellington also successfully manipulates interrelated dance moods and tempos that imply a totally innovative vision of form as it applies to movement. Even more amazing than the complexity of these pieces is the fact that we can still hear quite clearly the sound of the early New Orleans polyphonic style that attracted Ellington to jazz as a young man.

Jazz commentary is too often shaped by a rebellion against what is considered the limitations of the middle class. The commentators mistakenly believe that by willfully sliding down the intellectual, spiritual, economic, or social ladder, they will find freedom down where the jazz musicians (i.e., real people) lie. Jazz musicians, however, are searching for the freedom of ascendance. This is why they practice. Musicians like Art Blakey, Sarah Vaughan, Elvin Jones, Max Roach, Sweets Edison, and Betty Carter all rebelled against the idea that they should be excluded from choosing what they want to do or think, against being forced into someone else’s mold, whether it be the social agendas of the conservative establishment or the new fake liberal establishment of which many well-meaning jazz observers are part. They feel knowledge gives them choice; that ignorance is bondage.

The major obstacle facing the current generation of musicians is finding out what makes something jazz.

WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED JAZZ? 

Insights and Opinions from the Players

Introduction 

The persistence, curiosity, and intelligence of the New York City jazz radio audience inspired me to write this book. I was a broadcaster on the legendary, internationally recognized WRVR-FM, the most lis- tened-to and admired commercial jazz radio station in the country. My listeners were starving for jazz and were quite vocal about it. I got telephone calls from my audience frequently, asking why certain types of music they deemed not to be jazz were being programmed. To provide them with a more insightful, authentic answer, I thought that I would go to the players and creators themselves for their definition of jazz. The result is a platform from which these important musicians have spoken. Jimmy Heath, who played with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Hancock, and many more, said, I’ve been waiting for years to answer that question. I’ve been thinking about it for about thirty some years or longer.

This book is as thought-provoking for the musicians as it will be for the readers. For example, in my interview with saxophonist Sonny Fortune, who once played with Miles Davis, Buddy Rich, and George Benson, and others, he said, I’ve never before thought about some of these questions you’re asking me. He then went on to talk about his instrument, invented in Belgium in 1841 by Adolph J. Sax, and how it became such an integral part of jazz music:

Jazz went through a period when people were trying to put dignity into it. Black folks had to prove that they were not savages. They thought we were people climbing out of trees, etc. This rubbed black people in a strange kind of way, making it very important to prove otherwise, which probably accounted for the reaching for European instruments. These instruments are at a high level, so you have to be of a high level to play them. So we played them to prove that we were intelligent.

The interview/documentary style format lets the personal and authentic voice of the individual come through to you with force and immediacy, almost as if you were in the same room listening as these conversations were taking place. Much like the improvisational nature of jazz itself, the people interviewed improvise and weave their own patterns of thoughts and opinions, providing us with insight into topics ranging from segregated jazz bands and the origins of bebop, to the process of composing jazz and musings about the future of jazz.

The interviews vary in their level of technical complexity. Some, like my interview with Percy Heath, one of the original members of the Modern Jazz Quartet who also played with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Dizzy Gillespie, offers an engaging discourse of jazz in layperson terms:

If its going to be jazz, the music must have a connection with the development of the art form in America from the beginning. From the cries of the slaves in the field expressing anguish to the happy singing slaves. It has to have that feeling of the church, gospel music, New Orleans music, the Chicago sound, and the other sounds of development of the music.

This book took enormous amounts of time, travel, constant telephone calls, missed, opportunities, and expense to create. I enjoyed interviewing legendary drummer Elvin Jones, who once played with John Coltrane. Backstage at London’s world-famous jazz club Ronnie Scott’s, Elvin offered insights into the life of the jazz musician and sticking to your art verses being flexible to feed your family:

We had to make a living. We would go to work the studios for a while; we worked in Birdland, up and down 52nd Street if we could, and whatever else. So it was a natural sort of tendency to be as versatile as possible, because it is just simply a matter of survival and trying to make a living, that’s all. Some people were more fortunate than others. Some guys got on staff on CBS, NBC. Well, my brother [pianist Hank Jones] was one of them. He worked on CBS staff for about 20 years; Thad [trumpet/coronet Thad Jones], Hank, and a lot of other musicians as well.

My interview with Chet Baker took me to a section of Paris I never knew existed. It resembled a Little Morocco with its small, dark, cobblestone streets and women with veiled faces, an adventure within an adventure. Chet said:

I think jazz is a hard swinging rhythm section with everybody playing the same time feeling and popping the time at the same point together, on every beat, some cats like Dexter [Gordon], Johnny Griffin, Wayne Shorter, or George Colemen. As they play lead lines against the chord progressions that are going on behind them and the rhythm, they are looking for ways to play some kind of swinging, beautiful harmonic idea in time and make it swing in perfect time with

the rhythm section. He’s inventing these lines as he goes along. I think that’s jazz.

One of the most interesting of all the interviews was on the West African leg of one of my research trips with a French-speaking African percussionist named Idy Diop. The interview was conducted with my wife, Lisa, as interpreter and intermediary. This is his response to my question about writing African composition:

Africans feel their rhythm. We have no need to write. When we see writing paper with measures, we say to ourselves, Oh, these are false problems. We throw away the paper, and we play the rhythm. But the people who write their music are not more intelligent than the African who doesn’t write.

Other interviews, such as that with trumpeter Randy Brecker (who played with the Brecker Brothers, Art Blakey, and the Mingus Dynasty Big Band), and John Woelz (a keyboard player and theory teacher), are more technical. They delve more into the technical elements of jazz. In some of the interviews, the musicians played several bars of music to emphasize their point.

What is this thing called jazz? A feeling, a music, a culture, a science, or just a word or name? Jazz is all of these things and more. In Frank Tirro’s book Jazz: A History he states:

1917 was a landmark for jazz because it marks the date of the first recording by any musical group in which the word jazz is used as a descriptive qualifier, and it is the year in which the word jazz first begins to appear regularly in print. The first occurrence thus far uncovered was in the

March 6, 1913 issue of the San Francisco Bulletin, where it is written:

The team which speeded into town this morning comes pretty close to representing the pick of the army. Its members have trained on ragtime and ‘jazz’.

Tirro also said, "Walter Kingsley, writing for the New York Sun on August 5,1917, offered his readers a little musical history following the headline, Whence comes jass? Facts from the great authority on the subject:"

Variously spelled Jas, Jass, Jaz, Jasz, and Jascz. The word is African in origin. It is common on the Gold Coast of Africa and in the hinterland of Cape Coast Castle. Jazz is based on the savage musician’s wonderful gift for progressive retarding and acceleration guided by his sense of swing.

"Jazz, or its immediate antecedent, was actively being performed across the country in the years before 1917. The name seems to have come into common usage in the years 1913 to 1915, according to jazz musicians of that period, and the exact derivation of the word ‘jazz’ is totally unclear. It may have been used originally as a minstrel or vaudeville term, but it may also have had African or Arabic origins. That it was possibly associated with the sex act, for which the word is used in slang as a synonym, has been suggested by a number of writers; and a particularly intriguing possibility, because of the French culture ofNew Orleans, is a derivation from the French verb jaser, which may be translated-to chatter or have an animated conversation among diverse people."

The more research I complete on this subject, the more interesting the answers become. I hope you find the insightful information these important musicians are offering valuable and contribute to your knowledge and appreciation of jazz.

Trane to Bird, Diz to Miles, all in the family of jazz, just different children.

Africa: Its Musical Culture 

A Brief Look at Africa and Its Contribution to Jazz

Because of extensive archaeological work by Dr. L. S. B. Leakey in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, it is believed that the human race was born in Africa. For centuries it was known as the Dark Continent. Africa is now known as the place humankind first received light. Ancient Africans were considered primitive, but it is now known that they are creative contributors to Egyptian civilization and builders of powerful communities.

Africans were the leaders of the world for over 600,000 years. They were the first to use tools, paint pictures, plant seeds, and worship gods; many believe that they were the first to make music. Music was an important part of everyday ancient African life, as it still is today. With such a historically rich musical background, it is surprising to discover that African music and most African languages are not written or read, but instead are only spoken and played. It is the griot, or storyteller, who passes on African traditions, stories, history, culture, and song. In my interview with West African drummer/percussionist Idy Diop, he said, The one who sings is called a griot. The griot is one who sings praise; he is the one who knows practically everything about the history of our ancestors.

Most African compositions are played, sung, chanted, clapped, or stamped and have been handed down for many generations. The music is often performed in a group with everyone participating. This is unlike the Western world, where the artists perform on a stage while the audience listens, sometimes quietly, in preassigned numbered seats.

In some African music, there are tones that cannot be written by using standard Western musical notation because symbols do not exist for some of these sounds. European classical music is written based on the range of the instrument. In much of the African music, sounds and instruments are made to replicate the human voice. Many of these musical tones are derived from African speech inflections and song. These tones are referred to as blue notes (see pentatonic scale). Blue notes are named from the mournfully sad tonal qualities of the major and minor thirds of the scale. These notes were sung by the African slaves as they grieved for the homeland they were forced to leave behind as they picked cotton and dug in the soil to plant crops to help build a new country called America. This note, or series of notes, are a critical link between Africa, jazz, and all of the popular music in between.

Much of the African music contains notes between our notes. For example, we have no notes between B and C or between E and F. (A BC D EF G A. The spaces represent whole steps, the letters next to one another are half steps.) True, we have names for these notes. Ascending it is BC (or B sharp and C flat), and EF (E sharp or F flat). But when looking at the piano keyboard you will see that B sharp and C flat are the same note and E sharp and F flat are the same note. African music often has notes between our BC and EF. Some of this stems from verbal dialects, some from the seventeen tone Arabic scale, but most of these sounds come from the multitone complexities of African music. In my interview in Dakar, West Africa, Abdul Ahrakman Diop, the director of the Senegalese Conservatory of Music