Voyage on the Maiden

Well, let me first say that practice does pay off. I had a rather productive piano lesson last night, an hour long to make up for missing last week, but none of the time wasted and lot of pertinent discussion and practice on my playing at its current state. We talked about block chords, easing movement in the left hand, diminished chords, relevant minor chords, ...oh, many things. Even more to the point, we've got a road map for next week's lesson, which will also be an hour long, and it involves a lot of different themes and skills while working on Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage.

I recently purchased the CD of Maiden Voyage, and while I was unimpressed at first, I've been pleasantly surprised as the CD has grown on me. The title track itself I have always liked, and I think that while the MV voicings have become overused almost to the point of cliche, for a new pianist like myself, they lay a foundation of tonality that is easy to build on, because the chords range over a good portion of the register and include a seventh and what amounts to (I guess) some kind of suspended chord. What I mean is, the chords are really only useful in one context (playing Maiden Voyage and songs that sound like that), but in that context, they are extremely useful and reliable. (Of course.)

Because bashing out chords is, however, so one dimensional and not all that much fun and only improves one aspect of my playing, we also decided to try a different sort of Parker lick, so I'm going to have a go at Ornithology this week. I'm pretty sure I've got a recording of it around, pretty sure on one of my newer CD purchases, so I'm going to have at it pretty good this week. I mowed the grass Tuesday and don't have any plans for this weekend, and Mrs. S has a few things going on that she will be out of the house here and there, so this should be a big practice week for me and I hope to report a lot of progress between now and next Thursday when I run down next week's lesson in this spot. The only thing that will take some time away from practice is going through my CD collection and updating my list of songs that I have recordings for so I can listen and play along if necessary. That is not easy to maintain with the number of CD's I've been purchasing and what with trying to write reviews about them on amazon.com and, obviously, listen to them.

And something a bit off the track: We've had a traffic light installed at the entrance to our subdivision. There've been some accidents (a fatal one a month ago) and a lot of close calls, and the soccer moms on their cell phones can barely get in and out as it is, so the city deemed they deserved some help. I was against the light because I saw the issue to be more one of lack of driving skill than of needing to control traffic, but after two days, I now see this is a great advantage for me. Since I turn right coming out in the morning and left going in in the evening, I was required to make a stop (at the stop sign) coming out before I could go right, and could proceed if there was no traffic, else I had to wait for it. Coming home, I could proceed right through (turning left) if there was no traffic, but would often have to wait a while for traffic, or worse, for some dumbass to make a turn in front of me. Now, in the morning, if I'm coming out and the light is with me, I get to proceed right through and if it isn't, I'm no worse off than I was before, stopping, waiting for traffic, and then pulling out. So that's a plus. Coming back, I have it even better: I may have to stop for traffic, in which case after a while, I get an arrow, but if I'm lucky and there's no traffic, I can proceed right through any way. I can't see how I lose, other than the occasional time when I would have gone right through but I have to wait because somebody is pulling out and has the right of way. Say I save five minutes a week because of the light, that's over four hours of extra piano practice time a year! Groovy!

Meandering musings on things jazz

I had an occasion to listen to some live jazz music this weekend, but for various reasons, I was not able to take advantage of the opportunity. Instead, I was mostly stuck at home, and it provided me an opportunity to delve into a few of the new CD's I purchased for my rapidly growing collection. One that I listened to the most is one of the most classic of jazz classics: A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. I hardly know what to make of it. It went by so fast the first time, I felt sure it wasn't the 28 (?) minutes it said it was, so I listened to it again, back to back. Again, it seemed to me that the first track (listed at 7+ minutes) wasn't more than two minutes long. So, either the CD is altering the space time continuum, the liner notes are wrong, or it's just so good, you can't feel the time go by. It was weird, actually. I swear I thought maybe I passed out or somehow skipped one or two of the tracks or something. I guess ultimately, forgetting about time is what jazz (and all music, really) is all about. That, and waking up in the morning, going, (in a really really deep voice) "A love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme..."

After Coltrane, I put on Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage. The title track is really the only song on there that I like, but I'm going to write about that recording some other time.

Then this morning I was listening to volume two of Jay Jay Johnson, and that freaked me out for a simpler, less supernatural reason. I've been listening to a lot of trumpet music lately, and I was struck by how smooth Johnson is on the trombone that it sounded, in its phrasing, more like a trumpet than a trombone. Of course, he's not doing anything crisp and jumpy like Clifford Brown or Fats Navarro would, but on Old Devil Moon, I found his phrasing to be remarkably lively and similar to Mel Torme's, enough so that I wonder if Mel might not have been listening to Johnson before he stepped into the studio to make his Swings Shubert Alley recording.

And, over the weekend, I read about Louis Armstrong's recording of West End Blues, which will be 80 years old this Friday. I'll write about that later this week, I suppose.

I stopped practicing half-diminished chords because that wasn't going all that well. Instead, I decided just to do diminished sevenths with the bass note as the lowest note around the circle of fifths. Even that was not easy. I have a lot of basic things I need to work on, and with an hour long lesson coming up this week, I'm going to get my instructor to give me some ideas of what to work on - specifically. I thought there would be some kind of diminished chord exercises in one of my jazz chord workbooks, and I was surprised to find there was not. Now I'm thinking that such a thing might exist and I need to find it for my own benefit. Then I remembered, that's what my instructor is for. Teamwork.

Left to my own devices

My piano instructor has something going on this week, so I have another week all on my own to work on my piano playing. Yesterday I had one beer too many and couldn't really "practice" the piano, but with a whole other week to go before my next lesson, I didn't mind sacrificing one night, even if it is a night when I would normally be working very hard. It's not like I don't have a lot to work on. My instructor has asked that I be able to play any half-diminished, diminished, or augmented chord when it is just called out. He sensed I was having difficulty picking out chords when looking at a piece of music or playing a new song - and he is right, of course. It is probably my single biggest weakness. I had thought that as long as I played new tunes and played them with some proficiency, I would naturally get better at finding those esoteric chords in sensible arrangements and inversions, but my tendency to "stay safe" has made me unable to realize that sort of improvement. It makes sense then that my instructor just wants me to memorize the chords and work on putting them into songs once I have mastered them. Over the weekend, I started trying to play them, but again, I didn't work at it for very long. Since I don't have a lesson tonight, I'm going to try to create a lesson atmosphere and just work on those chords around the cycle of fifths. Should be challenging.

Interconnectivity

I suppose what has had me going all this time is the obvious and extensive interconnectedness of the jazz world. While I don't consider it particularly unusual that record companies would release the exact same recording under two (or more) different names, I am aggravated by how hard it is to find out that information. Yes, one could, I suppose, go through the playlist of every CD one is considering purchasing to see if it matches the playlist of a CD one already owns. That would be a start. And while I can't really imagine a scenario where two CD's would have a playlist of, say, five songs exactly the same name but different versions, I have seen CD's that have different playlists (slightly) but which are, in fact, the same recording. Confusing.

I think that is what makes the jazz world so unique. I mean, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna and Hall and Oates might team up to make a recording of a song or two, wherever and whenever there' s a dollar to be had or a benefit to attach one's image to, but you'll never hear Madonna sing on a Bruce Springsteem album and you'll never hear Eric Clapton playing guitar for Green Day, or something like that. But you will hear Clifford Brown playing for Helen Merrill. And Sarah Vaughn. And Art Blakey. And Jay Jay Johnson. And, and, and... Certain guys were everywhere. One could be forgiven for thinking that in the golden heyday of jazz, say the 1950's and 1960's, there were only about 150 people playing jazz music. I mean, seriously. This is probably why I missed the jazz boat. "Do you like Miles Davis, man?" "No, I don't dig that stuff, man." Well, guess what? Miles Davis made, like, a thousand albums a month back then, so if you throw him out of consideration, you've just thrown out a major portion of the music being made at that time. That, at least partially, is what happened to me, I guess. Anyway.

Since I've purchased 16 CD's in just the past three weeks (it will be a while before I get any more now, unless a big discount on something in my wishlist shows up on Amazon.com or e-bay), I've got them all piled in one place where I've been reading about them in my recordings guide, reading through the liner notes, and of course, listening to them. And it was last night as a bunch of Blue Note recordings came together that I noticed they had a lot of the same artists' names on them. Watch me as I go full circle here:

-McCoy Tyner plays piano on John Coltrane's Love Supreme along with Elvin Jones
-Elvin Jones plays drums on Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil with Herbie Hancock on piano
-On Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, Ron Carter plays bass
-Ron Carter also plays bass on Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil, with Freddie Hubbard on trumpet
-Freddie Hubbard also plays trumpet on Herbie's Maiden Voyage (ooh, that's one circle right there)

... and okay, I made my point. But I could go on and on if I wanted to do some research. (And some day I will.)

Again, I'm not saying any of this is bad or good or whatever. And now that I understand it and have had an opportunity to explore it somewhat, I think the chances of my continuing to duplicate CD purchases is pretty slim, unless I do so intentionally to get a different, or better, version of something I know I like. (Helen Merrill comes to mind.) Someday, when I have the time and the technology, I'm going to construct a massive timeline or "connectivity map" that conveniently illustrates all this interconnectedness, making it easier for the jazz fan to understand who goes where and what are the likely locations for having overlap in a CD collection, due to all these musicians playing and singing on each other's recordings. Today, I merely note it for convenience and future subject matter consideration (and reader comments?).

It happened again

It happened again.

I was listening to Volume One of The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson on the drive in to work this morning. I put it into the player last night on the way home from the local poker game (where I won exactly half a hand in two hours of poker), and because I live close to where the game is held, I only listened to one song last night, but I thought, that sounds familiar. But then I thought, hmmm, must be another version of a song I've heard before. I didn't think anything more of it, as I pulled into the garage and turned it off for the night.

So this morning, as I'm driving, I'm listening closely again and noticing that the trumpet player accompanying (trombonist) J.J. Johnson is really kicking it, so much so, I'm thinking, is that Miles Davis? Doc Severinson? Herb Alpert maybe even? I challenge myself to figure it out, and I listen carefully to that song and the next. I conclude that it must be Clifford Brown on trumpet and I decide to make that my "final answer" and I look at the CD cover.

Correct! I've won $32,000 and the chance to continue. It is Clifford Brown. Uh-oh. Clifford Brown. No wonder I thought I'd heard it before. Don't tell me. This CD is a duplicate of one in the complete Clifford Brown Blue Note recordings that I already own. Isn't it? ISN'T IT?!?! I glance at the CD cover again. Sure enough: Blue Note.

Son of a --!

I'm starting to get pissed off about this, I think. But as I'm listening, I'm thinking: you know, this sounds like I've heard it before, but not quite. Not really. Maybe it's not exactly the same as the Clifford Brown pressing. Then I think, maybe I just want to think that because I'm getting upset about having all these duplicate recordings. First thing when I get to work, before the drudge begins, I jump to amazon.com, open two or three windows and pull up J. J. Johnson Volume 1 and Clifford Brown Complete. I'm relieved to see that, while all of volume one does appear on the Clifford Brown set, none of volume two does. So, my ideas about having to finally bite the bullet and resell some CD's because my collection went from two duplicates to four were unfounded, although it did go to three, but I will, for now, be content to hold onto all of the CD's I have, for the collection's sake.

Just the same, I'm again starting to get upset about letting the Penguin Jazz Recordings Guide be my guide in purchasing jazz recordings because, let's face it, as a "guide", it sucks. As a "list", it is essentially one of a kind and indispensible, but it doesn't "guide" you anywhere except into a black hole of debt and duplication. I promise you, there is nothing in the entries about J. J. Johnson that says, "this is also available on the Clifford Brown Complete set", or "parts of this also appear on...". Plus don't forget, two of the four CD's in the Clifford Brown set also happen to be Volumes 1 and 2 of Art Blakey at Birdland, so IF in fact, both J.J. Johnson works were duplicated on the Clifford set, it would have been possible to buy that and dispense with buying both Art and J.J. So instead of buying eight CD's, you could buy four and have exactly the same "amount" of music. Now, if you pay $20 for a "guide", don't you think it should tell you that? At a minimum? I guess it's time to start a "duplicate CD's list". Maybe people will come to me for the information, instead of Penguin.

Look for that list, coming soon.

Moving On and the Real Purpose of Jazz

Okay, I'm somewhat recovered now. I've managed to listen to a few other CD's besides Helen Merrill these last few days, though I still let her sing me to sleep most every night. It was hard to put her aside, but I can't neglect my jazz education just for a woman. Well, not a recording of one, anyway. So, I went, in what I'm sure many people would consider, a completely different direction.

I've been indulging in the big band sound of Consummation by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis. Stunning piece of work, this. I couldn't believe it. The opening track starts slow and builds gradually, very gradually, but when it gets where it is going, it picks you up out of the chair, slaps you twice across the face, then stabs your pancreas so it can't inhibit the flood of adrenalin pumping into your lackadaisical bloodstream, and so, rather than let you die, your heart and lungs fuss to keep up and burn energy and pretty soon, you're so mighty and high you're wondering who Helen Merrill is and why you ever cared. Fortunately, Thad and Mel know humans can't take much of this, so they throw in a few ballads and blues riffs to keep you settled, including one of the most beautiful songs ever written, A Child Is Born. It's just a great CD.

Since Thad honed his chops working for Count Basie, it was easy enough to switch over to The Atomic Count Basie, which is every bit as good as Consummation. I've only just scratched the surface of this one, so I can't write about its effect on my pancreas just yet, but suffice to say the drive in to work in the morning goes very quickly with this in the player. The vocal version of The Late Late Show is also a nice touch showing up on a big band, swing recording like this one.

And so, I still haven't learned how to stride on You Took Advantage of Me because I decided to instead learn to play A Child is Born, so we have the big band boys to thank for that advancement - or lack thereof - in my repertoire.

Let me just mention here, too, that in addition to A Child is Born, Steve Swallow's Falling Grace also contends as one of the most beautiful songs ever written, in my book, and I find the fact that someone who listened to and was involved in as much music as I was growing up never heard either one almost as implausible as the fact that both come from the American jazz tradition. Why, oh why, didn't someone tell me about this music? Why did I have to wait forty years to learn what it seems everyone knows?

The injustice of existence. Jazz was made to overcome the injustice of existence.

My latest, arguably greatest discovery: Helen Merrill

The road to jazz knowledge continues to be frought with difficulty.

After eating too much curry at a curry cook-off at lunch yesterday (eight different kinds of curry, including coffee, dumpling, kimchee, spinach, strawberry, and three others), it is no wonder my stomach woke me at 2:45 this morning. Sleep was not an option. I've been listening to Helen Merrill with Clifford Brown the last two days, and I listened to it again to lull me to sleep last night. In the darkness before the dawn, I've spent the last half hour or so perusing my Jazz Recordings Guide and the Internet for Helen Merrill CD's. Lord, I'm in love with Helen Merrill. People who are familiar with her work will know what I'm talking about. I'm at a loss to explain her singing and song-stering, all I can say is, I really love to listen to her sing. The voice: so pure. The timing: unhurried but right on. The phrasing: impeccable and un-imitatable. What's that, two words invented already because I can't describe her and her singing?

Of course, the version of the CD I bought has only seven tracks and is a frighteningly short thirty two and a half minutes. That's why it is easy to imagine my consternation at finding a "complete" with Clifford Brown CD that has 19 songs. Son of a --! I have to say, this is where the Penguin Jazz Recordings Guide really fails me. It just doesn't tell you what's what, as I've pointed out before. Would it have been too much to ask for one line saying: "Helen's really good, so if you think you might like her, look for the "complete" recordings"? It would have saved me 11 bucks anyway, because, I have to have everything Helen Merrill.

I'm in love.

Oh, and yes, you better believe she's going on the Yoity Tot CD list. Right at the top.