Now play Cherokee!

[Ian Thumwood]

Ian Carr was totally correct. It is one continuity. I don't think the optimism of the 1960's repudiating the past was any different from what went on in the 1920's in the States especially when you consider things such as the Harlem Renaissance. Reading the Magee book about Fletcher Henderson made me realise just how linked an record label like "Black Swan" was to Black American identity and the seeds of the civil rights movement. Jimmie Lunceford's partner, for example, was the daughter of W. E.B. Du Bois and would have been all too aware of try to achieve the betterment of his people just had James Reece Europe twenty years beforehand. Jazz has always had the relationship but because the culture does not have such strong roots in this country, it is easy to understand why SA may have believed this at the time.

I don't see the likes of jelly Roll Morton / Horace Silver / Count Basie / Ornette Coleman / Ian Carr / Joe Harriott as playing a different kind of music. It's all jazz even though they don't sound the same. There has been great and not so great jazz throughout it's history.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

49 years ago today! The greatest ever jazz concert in Britain?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBU3JymeuPU

I dunno - but the youTube clip inspired me to order the CD, so Ta!

[cloughie]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXBaDNbO0Lc

[Ian Thumwood]

Cloughie

I this I'll have to stick with Ray Noble's original tune! The bizarre thing about "Cherokee" is that it was part of a suite of music named after North American Indian tribes composed by Noble but I'm not aware of ever hearing any of the other compositions.

I suppose that this must be the most famous recording of the tune:-

It's strange just how Charlie Barnet is so neglected these days despite having one of the first big bands to be influenced by Ellington. The chart for "Cherokee" is pretty good and was written by Billy May who was hugely talented yet got his head turned by Glenn Miller after which he had little connection with jazz. I love Barnet's jump style alto which reminds me a bit of Pete Brown. There is another score called "Wings over Manhattan" which I recall as being pretty sophisticated by the standards of the day.

The difficulty that I have with the tune is that after hearing Charlie Parker's solos on the same changes ("Ko ko", the tune rapidly became redundant. The solo is flawless and no other version afterwards is desirable or necessary because nothing else could be said with the tune. I have a Chet Baker CD where he plays this in a quintet with Stan Getz but under the title of "Half breed apache" and I think few recordings demonstrate so effectively how quickly bop became safe with players simply running the changes with little interest in the architecture of the solos. It is the ultimate contrast to Parker's masterpiece of creativity and coupled with the kind of Wardell v Dexter blowing sessions that were popular around this time reduced the music to playing scales rapidly over a set of changes. Small wonder why Ornette Coleman sounded so fresh when he arrived on the scene even though it is not difficult to hear just how much more he is connected to a genius like Parker as opposed to the jam session orientated / unthinking kind of improvisation that marks some of the least inspiring bop / Modern jazz of the early 1950's. "Cherokee" is almost bop's answer to earlier tunes like "Tiger Rag" or "Clarinet marmalade."

[Ian Thumwood]

Barnet's "Wings over Manhattan" - the Ellington influence is far more pronounced than I recollected. It sounds like something that the Duke could have recorded circa 1940/1. I'd forgotten just how good this band was:-

[cloughie]

Cloughie

I this I'll have to stick with Ray Noble's original tune! The bizarre thing about "Cherokee" is that it was part of a suite of music named after North American Indian tribes composed by Noble but I'm not aware of ever hearing any of the other compositions.

Ian - my response was with tongue very much in cheek - I'm currently looking at shanties and this is one I particularly like, but in my background reading it is interesting to look at the role of shantymen who were around in the age of sail and how their 'verbal improvisations' worked, and as they worked in the C19th, maybe their role in the evolution of jazz cannot totally be written off.
Also whilst Billy May may have disappointed you in the direction he took there were few arrangers who had his skills!

[Serial_Apologist]

Ian - my response was with tongue very much in cheek - I'm currently looking at shanties and this is one I particularly like, but in my background reading it is interesting to look at the role of shantymen who were around in the age of sail and how their 'verbal improvisations' worked, and as they worked in the C19th, maybe their role in the evolution of jazz cannot totally be written off.

I wonder who might know about this. John Surman, who's used sea shanties quite a lot, maybe...

[Ian Thumwood]

Cloughie

There was a good chapter about Billy May in the Gene Lees book "Arranging the score" which also looked at composers as diverse as Robert Farnon, Gil Evans, Kenny Wheeler and Bill Challis. There are few writers who capture the world of jazz in the 50's and 60's as well as Lees but this book demonstrates just how conservative he ultimately became. There is a comment about hating Gil Evans' later big band which used rock influences and synthesizers as well as electric guitars and he then mentioned about country and western musicians emerging as offering effective writing skills where jazz no longer seemed capable of doing this anymore. As much as I liked his writing, the opinions expressed within the book seemed to suggest a disenchantment with contemporary jazz.

I agree that Billy May was extremely talented yet the early scores written for Charlie Barnet's Ellington inspired band probably represent the only point where he was closely involved with jazz. He went on to make his name with Glenn Miller which is almost unforgiveable and later formed a highly recognisable band of his own with "slurping" saxes which I found almost unforgiveable. I think he could use elements of jazz within his 1950's work yet the music seems divorced from where jazz was. His music seems a bit like the Sauter / Finegan orchestra which performed highly individual arrangements expertly orchestrated . The same could go for anything May later produced in the 1950's / 60's which clung on to being popular music rather than continuing in the spirit of where jazz writing for larger ensembles way heading at the time. I think May was extremely talented and perhaps one of the most technically gifted of the arrangers writing for big bands in the post-war period. However, I think he was typical of the kind of artist favoured by the ultra-conservative Capitol label although more original than a band led by Ray Anthony which blended Miller-style arrangements with Harry James style trumpet to producing something excruciatingly horrible.

The problem with big bands is that they do not necessarily play jazz. For me, it has always been the jazz element that appeals and therefore I tend to look down on those bands who don't play jazz. In the case of Billy May, I think he was extremely talented and could clearly turn his hand to some very clever and sophisticated arrangements but the music has not aged well in my opinion.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...well but never off the radio [Light programme]