Jazz of the 90's
To understand this post, read "Blindfold Test: Jazz of the 90's" first.
Track one was Branford Marsalis, Reginald Veal, Jeff "Tain" Watts: "The Dark Keys" from The Dark Keys.
Track two was Paul Bley, Evan Parker, and Barre Phillips: "Variation One" from Sankt Gerold.
As I said in the previous post, I'm not fit to judge what are the best albums of the 1990's. All I guarantee is that these two albums are worth studying.
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There was very little Branford in D:O!'s final tabulation: in fact, the only mention was Crazy People Music on Nate Chinen's list. This was only to be expected, since the wonderful D:O! site focuses on free jazz, and its readers would probably be generally not interested in the music of the Marsalises and other players who made such a point of bringing back earlier styles of jazz. Further, Branford is a bit of a loudmouth who has said dismissive words about Cecil Taylor and 1970's jazz in general. If you love the kind of music that is hosted at D:O!, it is only natural to be skeptical of him, his brother Wynton, and other musicians associated with that circle.
Towards the end of my afternoon with Stanley Crouch, Stanley played me a long cut off of a 1992 Wynton Marsalis album called Blue Interlude. It was pretty good: It's not an album I'll study, but I certainly enjoyed listening to it, especially during a burning Marcus Roberts piano solo. After it was over, Stanley said to me:
This record is a masterpiece, and it was totally ignored by the critics. I told several of them, "If this was a David Murray album, you would have made it album of the year."
Now, it is not my intention to start a "Wynton Marsalis vs. David Murray" argument. For me, they are both great instrumentalists who require the right context (I like Murray best with the World Saxophone Quartet and Wynton best when Jeff Watts was drumming.) And I am not claiming "instant masterpiece" status for Blue Interlude.
BUT
It is impossible to say for sure, but Stanley just might be right (that if you added some Murray sax solos to a Wynton album and put it out as a Murray album, it would be a critical success). Looking over all those D:O! lists reminds me of how polemical the 90's was, as the Marsalis-Crouch conservative axis battled the downtown avant-garde represented by musicians like David S. Ware and John Zorn. There were a lot of silly words tossed around by both sides to the detriment of their own.
The conservative side had the money, and at the decade's close they actually got to plead their case with the epic Ken Burns' TV series, Jazz. Naturally, the jazz scene could only take so much hubris and the conservative side's decline from tough young turk to middle-aged ineffectual was hastened by the Burns show. (I have never seen it, but I understand that Burns would have been better off covering the music only up until 1950 or so. Probably no one would have had a problem then.)
The avant-garde side, while never accumulating cash and power the way the other side did, did pull off a truly unexpected coup in the 1990's: they got the rock kids! Not so many compared to the rock world in general, of course, but enough to begin a serious contingent of those that love noise-rock and noise-jazz in equal measure. Instead of Ken Burns, their side got to have minor victories like Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore ranting about the top ten free jazz records from the jazz underground.
(Digression: Moore's piece is from 1994, when it was published in the Beastie Boys' own magazine, Grand Royal. That same issue also had the infamous Bob Mack/Ted Nugent interview, the one where Mack's first question to the rock star is: "What was up with Damn Yankees? [A superband that Nugent was a member of.] They were pretty lame." Glorious Noise has scanned the interview , and really, there is nothing finer.)
I enjoy Moore's piece, but raise my eyebrows a little bit when he mentions Wayne Shorter only in passing as related to brother Alan:
"Where Wayne was fairly contemporary (though eclectic as a muh'fuck) Alan was strictly ill and has two obscuro LP's worth hunting down: "Orgasm" (Verve V6 8768) and "Tes Estat" (America AM 6118)."
Wayne has a history of being dissed by the avant-garde: Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka) wrote in 1968's Black Music that Wayne
"..has never really 'streched out' as far as his early promise seemed to demand. I still think that in 1959, Wayne was playing as strong as Coltrane, but perhaps the weight of those two steady gigs (with Blakey and Miles) boxed him in more than his health called for."
And in the current issue of the Village Voice, avant pianist Matthew Shipp says of the David Ware quartet (of which he was a member),
"Despite the fact that people like Gary Giddins and Francis Davis were into that band, the mainstream of jazz fans never got into it. The people that would go out to see the Wayne Shorter quartet, which I think our quartet is infinitely superior to, would not come out to hear the David S. Ware quartet."
Wayne Shorter was "fairly contemporary, but not as ill as Alan Shorter" - Wayne was "boxed in by Miles Davis" - David S. Ware is "infinitely superior to Wayne Shorter": these are truly uninformed assessments that happily go into the fool's ring and hang out along with the worst of Wynton, Branford, and Crouch.
If I have lost anybody at this point, let me clarify: Wayne Shorter is one of the greatest players and composers of jazz music. At least two of his own records, Ju-Ju and Speak No Evil, (both from 1964) are among the very finest jazz records ever. Many regard the Shorter-editions of the Art Blakey (1959-'64) and Miles Davis ('64-'70) bands to be the leaders' best. As far as "boxing in" goes, the Miles records have the most unfettered Wayne on tape. In the 1970's and 80's, Shorter co-led the greatest fusion band, Weather Report. His current quartet is weird and abstract, and not at all "mainstream." It is fine not to like the current quartet - not everybody does - but to call anything else going at the moment "infinitely superior" grates not just because Wayne's current band is in the trenches, going for it, but because the word "infinitely" suggests that Shipp has no respect for any of Wayne's profound contributions to the music.
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According to the D:O! lists, the avant side won the battle. Maybe that's true, although I would give it twenty more years to be certain. My suggestion for those who love intense jazz but don't like the rhetoric of the conservative axis is not to underrate Branford Marsalis with Jeff "Tain" Watts.
Branford has played a lot of different types of jazz horn, and not all of it is to my taste. I'm a little uncomfortable when he deliberately plays in an older style, like copping Ben Webster for a ballad or doing the Keith Jarrett American Quartet on "Lykeif" from The Dark Keys. But when he burns down some uptempo with Watts storming alongside him, it is really serious and distinctive music.
Dave King hipped me to The Dark Keys. When TPB was signed to Columbia, I discovered that album and the rest of the Branford catalog in some unguarded file cabinets in a hallway of the huge SONY building. I don't think I stole them, exactly, but at any rate they are all on my home shelves today. I agree with Dave's assessment that The Dark Keys is the best of the bunch. A standout track is "Sentinel," which is a fine old-style tenor battle with Joe Lovano. I've spoken to some who think Branford wins, and to some who think Joe wins. It's awfully close, at any rate. There is also a fun guest appearance by Kenny Garrett on "Judas Iscariot."
The excerpt from the title track I posted has some really outstanding drumming. One night I saw the Branford quartet with Joey Calderazzo, Eric Revis, and Tain at the Village Vanguard. Tain's playing on the Kenny Kirkland song "Lonjellis" was so intense that later on I could not get to sleep.
Of course the reason I played this as a blindfold test is my suspicion (not unlike Stanley's about Blue Interlude) that if I told a Thurston Moore acolyte that this was a rip of a rare dead free jazz saxophonist and a South African drummer on a defunct label that only released four records they would love it, but if I told them that it was Branford Marsalis (musical director of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from 1992-95) and Jeff Watts on Columbia they would not be interested.
When I saw the Branford quartet at the Vanguard, the music was dense, complicated, and swinging, and the audience was totally receptive and digging it. Not only that, but that place was packed with not just the same "white men jazz fans" but a mixed race crowd including multitudes of beautiful women and even some celebs (Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke). I ask all who care about jazz, is that atmosphere really what we don't want to encourage?
Bonus track: Here is the first two choruses of "Cherokee" from the same record, re-titled as "Schott Happens." You can hear the fine bassist Reginald Veal a little bit better here. (Not enough bass is often a problem with Branford's band, live or on record - they want to use as little amp as possible, but on the other hand, they are playing with Tain.)
Download Schott_Happens_excerpt.mp3
I particularly like Branford's phrasing on this track: nothing starts or stops quite where you expect.
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While my relationship to Branford's output is clear - I like some things, dislike others, and will never sound like any of it - my relationship to Paul Bley is tormented and Oedipal. After gorging myself on his records in high school, I turned against him and stopped listening for many years. Then, in 2002 in Spain, I saw Bley and Lee Konitz give a duo concert. The duo was ok, but when they each played solo it was really great. The highlight was Bley's version of "Confirmation," which gave me another sleepless night. I thought I was getting some shit together, but Paul Bley could still cut me into pieces, no question.
Bley brags endlessly about never practicing or rehearsing, and unfortunately many of his records show it. However, his left hand, which used to be of normal competence, has grown by leaps and bounds since about 1990. I talked to him about it a little bit in Spain, and he said that he had began showing his left hand "compassion" (beautiful word) by making it always start every performance for several minutes. It was true: the duo gig began with just left hand. I bought Sankt Gerold to check his development futher, and was amazed at how great an album it was. Certainly his left hand is totally throwing down the heavy by this point. (Try the fast solo piece, track six.)
Sankt Gerold is free music. There are no heads or forms. They just stop and start. Unlike the "energy" free music that features on Thurston Moore's list, this is free music that explores harmony as much as anything else. Bley is one of the true original architects of this kind of "deep listening free music." (His trio records from the sixties are a crucial body of music that is underrated by the jazz world overall.) Evan Parker and Barre Phillips are Bley's children in this way, and they are on top of their game to play with the master on Sankt Gerold. Parker has a wonderful sonority, and Phillips has huge ears. (Those ears are a big asset on what is probably the best Ornette Coleman record of the 1990's, the soundtrack to Naked Lunch, which has a couple trio pieces with Ornette, Phillips, and Denardo Coleman.)
For all his faults, which are numerous, Bley can immediately make interesting music out of anything, anywhere, anytime. On the excerpt I posted, track one, he uses "extended piano technique" like a master. Does Bley need to think much about playing the piano strings like a muted harp? I highly doubt it. He just reaches in and is immediately burning.
"Deep listening free music" is fraught with danger. One thing that can sink the music like a stone is when everybody imitates each other. On this bonus excerpt from track five, Parker, Bley, and Phillips are on the line: it is almost too "together." Nonetheless, since these are heavyweights of free music, it remains delicious, not didactic.
Download Variation_5_excerpt.mp3
One of the many remarkable statistics concerning Paul Bley is the list of saxophone players he has played with: Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, John Gilmore, Albert Ayler, and Evan Parker. Surely no other musician can offer up a similar list. Bley's autobiography, Stopping Time, is highly recommended, although undoubtedly full of lies.
On the D:O! lists, there is not much Bley. Not Two, Not One is pretty good (on Chinen's list) and Bebop Bebop Bebop Bebop (on Darcy's) is in its weird way extraordinary (Bley playing his ass off on the music of his youth against a clomping rhythm section), but there's no doubt Sankt Gerold should be better known. (I have yet to hear Time Will Tell, which has the same musicians.)
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My own polemic is this: I believe that the tributaries that these two trios from 1996 represent are equally important considerations for the young improviser today. It hasn't really happened yet -- Joe Lovano comes closest -- but when players can eat up "Cherokee" with Jeff Watts and create free harmony with Barre Phillips at an equal level, that will really be something. The fact that one trio is all black and one all white means something, too: not that the races should stay apart, but that due respect for each stream is important. How many times have I wanted to tell a young black pianist, "You should check out some Paul Bley," and similarly to a young white pianist, "How would you sound if you had to play with Jeff Watts?"
Track three was Pat Zimmerli, Ben Monder, Stomu Takeishi, and Satoshi Takeishi: "Don't Stop" from Explosion :
Track four was Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mark Turner, Ben Street, and Jeff Ballard: "Use of Light" from The Next Step:
Whereas the older trios are not dealing with much in the way of written structure, my two peer selections show off elaborate compositions. Compared with either traditional or free jazz, most of the interesting music coming out of my age group - those born between from, say, 1965 to 1975 - is extremely composition based, or at least conceptual in nature. In TBP, composing and arranging is featured more than "blowing," a paradigm that lives next to indie rock but also goes back to earlier jazz (and a paradigm that seems to really stump some of our critics).
It's not just in TBP, either, but (to name just those who are friends, but of course there are many more) Jason Moran's Bandwagon, Brad Mehldau, Guillermo Klein's Los Guachos, Happy Apple, Bill McHenry, Fly, John Hollenbeck, Craig Taborn, Ben Monder and Benoit Delbecq all build their music from the ground up, with either a swing beat or total freedom being merely possibilities, not givens -- in fact, often both are avoided. (One result is that a lot of us don't care whether you call the music "jazz" anymore or not. I'm going to keep using "jazz" here but if you took it away from me, I could still get what I needed done.)
Most of these associates were just beginning to make albums in the 90's; there's very little of their work on the D:O! lists. I selected Pat Zimmerli and Kurt Rosenwinkel to spin and chat about.
(Apologia: Of course there are many forerunners who began searching out the ways to play jazz beyond swing or freedom: a partial list includes Tim Berne, Bill Frisell, Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman, and Dave Douglas. Joe Lovano, underrated on the D:O! lists, was visionary in how to place his surreal swing in with any group of players, regardless of style -- he's someone that the entire peer list above could work with as a guest. Another forerunner is Django Bates, whose masterwork Winter Truce (and Homes Ablaze) is from 1995 and would be the first record I would put on my top ten of the 90's. Unfortunately, of all my peers, only Dave King and Craig Taborn spent serious time with Django's music when young. Interestingly, Branford and Django were born in the same year, 1960. See this post for more on Django Bates.
At this point I would also like to apologize to any friend who feels mis-represented or boxed in by my analysis. Hopefully I will not get any angry phone calls this week! This is just some ranting on a blog, not an authoritative text.)
Some of my pieces for TBP have polyrhythms like 5:4 and 7:8. I first learned about those rhythms from Pat Zimmerli, the composer of "Don't Stop," which features fully notated Elliot Carter-level polyrhythmic complexity. Zimmerli is also the only musician I know about who built a whole world of jazz music on the post-Schoenbergian combinatorial hexachord twelve-tone system. Back when I was 21 or so, I actually learned the longish Milton Babbitt piece "Whirled Series" for saxophone and piano with Pat. Babbitt harmony + Carter rhythms + jazz saxophone = Pat Zimmerli. He also has a love of muzak and pop music like Journey, and in fact, "Don't Stop" actually uses the bass line of "Don't Stop Believing." Pat has not kept the twelve-tone or polyrhythms up (his current music is conservative in comparison) but I would hate for his manically extreme 1990's output to be forgotten.
The disc I posted from, Explosion, has the best compositions but suffers from an uninspired recording quality. Better sonically is the follow-up, Expansion, from which I'll offer a bonus track. The first 4 minutes of "Sand" shows that Pat added the Indian drone to Elliot Carter rhythms, Milton Babbitt harmony, and jazz saxophone. The song is 14 minutes in length, so you are just hearing initial unison presentations of the material over Bb. (By the end, the polyphonic net has widened.) It may sound like the rhythms are rubato or free but I assure you they are not.
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Mosaic has recently put out fancy CD sets of previously released and unreleased live tapes of Dexter Gordon and Charles Tolliver. Without hesitation, I nominate the Kurt Rosenwinkel quartet with Mark Turner, Ben Street, and Jeff Ballard to be their next live archival project. For many of us, seeing that band live at Smalls was an important weekly ritual. The studio records are good, but I think the right live release (there are plenty of tapes around) could help write the history of jazz in the 1990's with a little more clarity. A couple of nights had Turner almost levitating out the ceiling on something like "Cubism" or "Synthetics," and Street and Ballard could get to a scary level of earthy intensity. I've played with those two together a lot and it takes some guts, like playing with tigers.
One of the reasons I was defending Wayne Shorter earlier is because his compositions feature memorable, singable, surreal melodies placed atop unique chord progressions. Kurt is Wayne's child in many ways, picking up some of that compositional style with a further taste of modern pop sensibility. "Use of Light" has a long, haunting, non-repeating tune which can never quite be predicted - or once heard, forgotten.
As a bonus track, I'll offer the head of Kurt's "Zhivago," which is dangerously catchy. TBP certainly owes something to Kurt for being so unashamed of good melody played clearly. They used to complain of jazz, "Where's the melody?" (There's even a book by that title by celebrated jazz critic Martin Williams.) Of course, that question was always uninformed, but the idea of a "clear, repeated theme played without ornamentation" is something new to this music, and began in the 1990's.
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Speaking of my peers and great melody, Guillermo Klein's Los Guachos are mid-point through a two week stand at the Village Vanguard. I've heard them the last two nights and it is just as great as ever -- maybe it's even better than ever. If you live in New York and care about interesting music, for gods' sake, go. Sit close to Jeff Ballard and Richard Nant if you can. (DTM: Reid Anderson interviews Guillermo Klein.)
