Busting myths in jazz history

[Joseph K]

Yes indeed. Although that does presuppose a certain amount of knowledge as to what sounds spontaneous and what doesn't, which of course we all have, although as you know it's the borderline cases that interest me most. I don't bring them up on this thread in order to prove a point about the perceptibility of unmediatedness, but to suggest that an experience of what a particular music is supposed to sound like (or what state of consciousness its creator(s) are supposed to have been in, to return to the topic!) isn't necessarily reliable as a quide to assessing a listening experience. Also: there are nearly always "middle men", aren't there? They might be the performers of a notated score, or they might be the rhythm section behind a Coltrane solo. (That's a spontaneous and unformed thought which might not hold much water.)

Nothing much to disagree with here. I don't see how a jazz rhythm section is like the performer of a notated score, since a jazz rhythm section is still improvising, even if its role is to accompany Trane or someone else. (As a side note to this it got me thinking how much of my favourite jazz subverted the soloist-accompanist kind of texture in favour of ones with greater equality like the Bill Evans Trio with Paul Motian and Scott LaFaro or the 'everyone solos-no one solos' textures of early fusion Miles and Weather Report). So I guess the difference between a jazz or other improvising musician would be that their legacy is recordings while for a composer working with notation it would be scores, which then requires the performers (what I termed 'middle men') to realise the music in some way. And then there are some people who do both I guess though that I wasn't attaching a value judgement when I said about the unmediatedness of jazz or other improv musics by comparison to notated music - it's just a quality of the music that could be a negative if done in an incompetent way (as I know only too well) or sublime if done well.

[Joseph K]

OK, I've read the article in the OP now. TBH, I'm not sure I agree with it. I think if letting a 'novice' listener know about the heroin addiction of jazz greats skews their opinion on the music, it says more about the social status of drugs than it does about music. But I guess it's taboo and tricky stuff to deal with unless you go into detail - but for Coltrane's development, for example, it's inseparable - it's a 'despite of/because of' situation with the recordings of Miles before he kicked the habit. While I don't think such biographical details are musically inconsequential at the same time I wouldn't overstate their importance. A good way of dealing with it would be to get quotes from musicians about it. The author of the article makes the point that bebop is the most virtuosic, fastest etc. form of jazz as if we didn't already know - this, despite the fact that some of its primary figureheads were on heroin! Anyway, in conclusion I think jazz is big and great enough to withstand letting people know about the habits of its main movers and shakers. I think perhaps the article is more concerned with how drugs are viewed in polite society than with anything strictly musical.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I think it's relevant how Bill Evans' trio performances invariably speeded up at the end of his life as the tune progressed, the cocaine, as opposed to his trio heroin peak. And how Ray Charles' Atlantic dates (heroin) were hard & needle sharp (not a pun), unlike his often anaemic 60s ABC output post 1965 when his drug of choice was all day gin in a Harvard mug. Each era had/has it's predominant drug, sometimes it's that's observable.

[Serial_Apologist]

Nothing much to disagree with here. I don't see how a jazz rhythm section is like the performer of a notated score, since a jazz rhythm section is still improvising, even if its role is to accompany Trane or someone else. (As a side note to this it got me thinking how much of my favourite jazz subverted the soloist-accompanist kind of texture in favour of ones with greater equality like the Bill Evans Trio with Paul Motian and Scott LaFaro or the 'everyone solos-no one solos' textures of early fusion Miles and Weather Report). So I guess the difference between a jazz or other improvising musician would be that their legacy is recordings while for a composer working with notation it would be scores, which then requires the performers (what I termed 'middle men') to realise the music in some way. And then there are some people who do both I guess though that I wasn't attaching a value judgement when I said about the unmediatedness of jazz or other improv musics by comparison to notated music - it's just a quality of the music that could be a negative if done in an incompetent way (as I know only too well) or sublime if done well.

I second that about instantaneity applying equally to accompanists and front line soloists in jazz and improv - the whole process of interactivity got a major boost with the coming of bebop, with its opening of textures by means of comping and expanded options for rhythmic and harmonic flexibility. Where Richard has admittedly got me thinking is in his pointing out that our means of assessing the spontaneity or the "degree of mediatedness" that can be inferred given that of the listener himself or herself - which relates back to the thread topic - is worth more thinking about from my point of view.

Tentatively I'm going to risk a charge of idealism by arguing that for how trustworthy such means of judgement might be the yardstick should be how much in touch the listener is with his/her intuition. This may be an enormous claim to make - it is clearly one that is unverifiable, for starters, and therefore not a good basis for establishing criteria other than ones that could be critically dismissed as purely subjective. There a counter-argument might be that those with an interest in establishing criteria have ideological/class interests vested in fixing normative criteria. And it could equally (?) be argued that subjectivity always applies in any case.

One of the charges directed at jazz and its following back in the 1960s became that of elitism: jazz in its avant-garde period had become divorced from its once wider public following was the oft-repeated charge - not just from populist newspapers and critics pedalling a new Capitalist Realist line, often older musicians who themselves had once been tagged rebels. This was one of the factors often cited behind the switch from venues hosting jazz to rock, and many jazz musicians themselves turning to rock to continue making a living. Often members of this very forum have rightly argued that far from generic factors it has been the concomitant aesthetics of commercialisation that have played the largest role in isolating quality musical education and those advocating for it by labelling their concerns as "elitist". But this has for several decades become a divided culture in self-destruct mode: distrustful of intuition while overlooking the degree of mediation involved in ideological/commercial inculcation, and the tropes and signifiers used to secure popular compliance.

[RichardB]

I think perhaps the article is more concerned with how drugs are viewed in polite society than with anything strictly musical.

Exactly. And, as you imply, the use of mind-altering substances can (like, to take a wildly different example, serial compositional methods!) map out unexplored musical territories which can then be further investigated without necessarily employing such means.

BTW I didn't mean to imply that a rhythm section is "like" a notated score except in so far as it consists of "middle men" who (in this case) influence what the soloist does, although of course in a completely unquantifiable way.

S-A: "how much in touch the listener is with his/her intuition"... well, there are a few slippery words in that formulation! Of course the degree of spontaneity in a musical performance is something we can learn to assess with let's say 95% reliability. But personally I find myself irresistibly attracted to the remaining 5%, and this too is the result of intuition first and foremost. I've just been writing liner notes for an upcoming release by the German reedman and composer Frank Gratkowski which really confronts the listener with the necessity to let go of identifying some elements as improvised and others not. I will flag this up when it comes out.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think it's relevant how Bill Evans' trio performances invariably speeded up at the end of his life as the tune progressed, the cocaine, as opposed to his trio heroin peak. And how Ray Charles' Atlantic dates (heroin) were hard & needle sharp (not a pun), unlike his often anaemic 60s ABC output post 1965 when his drug of choice was all day gin in a Harvard mug. Each era had/has it's predominant drug, sometimes it's that's observable.

Speed (Mandrax, barbiturates etc), would, with hindsight, become understood as a major factor in the shaping of the better-selling manifestations of the 1960s Blues Boom. "Too fast, man" was often a charge made by older Black blues people at some new white variants. Short numbers, minimal improvisation, too challenging for warped attention spans, more tracks per single/album, more saleability. Among the many factors feeding into the changed drugs ethos around 1966, McCartney and others would cite the mind-expanding properties of psychedelic substances in terms of increased potential granted for openness to wider musical and cultural influences already referred to by Watts, Leary and co: the capacity of LSD (in particular) to circumvent habitual thought patterns and instilled mental-cultural prejudices. I well remember reading Aldous Huxley's "Island", in which the reporter-newcomer questions the wisdom of the drugs on offer being told that "Moksha Medecine" offered a novice an envisionment of possibilities afforded by longterm meditational practices underpinning societal change. That period was interesting in charting the rapid transition of Psychedelic Rock into either the reference-ensaturated manifiestations of Prog Rock, Free jazz/free improv/experimentalism, or Fusion, jazz-rock and other. You made up your own mind which path to follow, assuming you weren't otherwise too time-consumed in political agitation!

[RichardB]

I think it's relevant how Bill Evans' trio performances invariably speeded up at the end of his life as the tune progressed, the cocaine, as opposed to his trio heroin peak.

This is very interesting though. I don't know the chronology of Evans's work at all really.

[Serial_Apologist]

S-A: "how much in touch the listener is with his/her intuition"... well, there are a few slippery words in that formulation!

Well ( or "So"!) - I've always held great store by Alan Watt's insight that out-of-touchness with one's inner capacities (for want of a better term.. there probably is one) is, first and foremost, a strategy dreamed up in mainly western religious traditions to sanction mistrust in human nature - one which is illusory in any case - (the body cannot be out-of-touch with itself, only thinking can be) - because it is a flat self-contradiction: how can one possibly trust in one's mistrust?! Instilling mistrust in the makings of the human spirit/psyche appears basic to the Judaeo-Christian tradition - a problem handed on from the disciples to provide a leading function for religion in insuring ensuing class societies against political change. The "in-touchess" may be there, rendered subconscious or half-acknowledged, "in bad faith", but ready to be triggered by clear thinking. One can see the latter, not in terms of mediation and its limitations (the famous "this medecine won't work if you think about a pink elephant while taking it" double-bind conundrum) but of the human capacity for understanding in the abstract as a natural conditional perspective arising spontaneously from what some Buddhists would call "the total mind".

Of course the degree of spontaneity in a musical performance is something we can learn to assess with let's say 95% reliability. But personally I find myself irresistibly attracted to the remaining 5%, and this too is the result of intuition first and foremost. I've just been writing liner notes for an upcoming release by the German reedman and composer Frank Gratkowski which really confronts the listener with the necessity to let go of identifying some elements as improvised and others not. I will flag this up when it comes out.

That's a very interesting creative area, one which has attempted to be addressed by people like Barry Guy and John Zorn trying to engineer strategies for keeping the terrain fresh by countering tendencies towards habitual thought patterns and responses, and improvising* groups such as Alterations, which Steve Beresford told me he thought was one of the most significant improv groups he'd been involved in to emerge from the period of abstraction. But ah - the dangers and traps of tropes and clichés! Your approach seems to hold out more fruitful outcomes.

[RichardB]

improvising* groups such as Alterations, which Steve Beresford told me he thought was one of the most significant improv groups he'd been involved in to emerge from the period of abstraction.

Hearing a R3 broadcast of Alterations in the 1970s was one of my most important formative musical experiences. I wish I still had my cassette of it because I would love to hear it again, but I've said this to several members of the group and they don't seem to have it either. For me it was an eloquent statement of musical freedom, the next step after the necessary tabula rasa of the "non-idiomatic" concept.

Instilling mistrust in the makings of the human spirit/psyche appears basic to the Judaeo-Christian tradition - a problem handed on from the disciples to provide a leading function for religion in insuring ensuing class societies against political change.

There you have it. Although of course before the Council of Nicaea there were many branches of Christian tradition which took a more mystical, intuitive and revolutionary line than what ended up being the orthodox "belief system" which was much more useful to the Roman overlords of the time, and their successors.

I remember Alan Watts's book on Zen Buddhism which again was deeply formative, but I never got around to his other writings. I really ought to put that right some time.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I think it's relevant how Bill Evans' trio performances invariably speeded up at the end of his life as the tune progressed, the cocaine, as opposed to his trio heroin peak. And how Ray Charles' Atlantic dates (heroin) were hard & needle sharp (not a pun), unlike his often anaemic 60s ABC output post 1965 when his drug of choice was all day gin in a Harvard mug. Each era had/has it's predominant drug, sometimes it's that's observable.

I went to two of Bill’s final appearances in the UK . I wasn’t conscious of any speeding up at all. Possibly more notes but that’s often a feature of playing live. The only thing one can say is that had he not been a cocaine addict he might possibly be still delighting us with his mastery.

[Joseph K]

Gary Bartz on drugs:

I think by drugs he's referring to mostly heroin. And he comes across as open and honest about it - at the end admitting what musical-perceptual advantage might be gained from experience with drugs, saying that any such advantage remains after the experience is over (which chimes with what Richard B said above) and that similar effects can be achieved with meditation, which I agree with.
Personally I never liked heroin, which I smoked from a pipe, since it would just make me fall asleep then vomit for hours after waking up. Stimulants on the other hand I greatly enjoyed owing to their enhancing effect on one's concentration and perception not to mention the incredible amounts of euphoria that could be involved. Cannabis depending on set and setting, but daily use i.e. addiction laid the ground for psychosis. Psychedelic could be nice albeit heavily muted for me owing to use of antipsychotics.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I went to two of Bill’s final appearances in the UK . I wasn’t conscious of any speeding up at all. Possibly more notes but that’s often a feature of playing live. The only thing one can say is that had he not been a cocaine addict he might possibly be still delighting us with his mastery.

"Yet, at a certain juncture, even flicking the switch no longer solved all the problems at hand. During his early months with the trio, La Barbera hadn’t noticed Evans’s drug use impacting the music, but things started to change after Harry Evans’s suicide. “Bill’s tempos began to rush, sometimes badly.” When he raised this issue with pianist, Evans got angry. “He went ballistic and said, ‘Just deal with it.’” La Barbera later concluded that Evans himself was frustrated, because he understood the impact his spiraling drug use was having, and didn’t have a solution for handling the consequences, musical or otherwise. But La Barbera adds: “I make this observation with 20/20 hindsight.”


There are stories of his (later) trio with Philly Joe Jones, with Philly speeding up and then Bill and so on. And I think one of his later bassists or certainly someone he auditioned refused the gig despite the prestige. His use at the end was industrial and a lot of the time he wasn't working, La Barbara taking wedding jobs to earn.

[Serial_Apologist]

I remember Alan Watts's book on Zen Buddhism which again was deeply formative, but I never got around to his other writings. I really ought to put that right some time.

The other book by Watts I would strongly recommend is "Psychotherapy East and West", where implicitly drawing on dialectics he touches on social and political implications. There he draws wrong conclusions, to my mind, ignoring the issue of class in favour of believing exclusively in insight. Such divisions would define the main differences between hippies (lifestylists) and yippies (political activists). Nevertheless his ideas were valid up to a point, and would have an influence on anarchist theory and practice; think the Antiuniversity of London, RD Laing and co. I happen to think celebrity consequent on the influence he exercised on New Age thinking turned his head somewhat in later life; his ideas became somewhat reductive and over-formulated in later writings and presentations. Youtube footage from the early 70s I won't bother the thread with gives a strong flavour of the man.

[Ein Heldenleben]

"Yet, at a certain juncture, even flicking the switch no longer solved all the problems at hand. During his early months with the trio, La Barbera hadn’t noticed Evans’s drug use impacting the music, but things started to change after Harry Evans’s suicide. “Bill’s tempos began to rush, sometimes badly.” When he raised this issue with pianist, Evans got angry. “He went ballistic and said, ‘Just deal with it.’” La Barbera later concluded that Evans himself was frustrated, because he understood the impact his spiraling drug use was having, and didn’t have a solution for handling the consequences, musical or otherwise. But La Barbera adds: “I make this observation with 20/20 hindsight.”


There are stories of his (later) trio with Philly Joe Jones, with Philly speeding up and then Bill and so on. And I think one of his later bassists or certainly someone he auditioned refused the gig despite the prestige. His use at the end was industrial and a lot of the time he wasn't working, La Barbara taking wedding jobs to earn.

I went to a gig that Bill did with PJJ at the Fairfield Halls - wasn’t really aware of any speeding up only of the latter’s overloud drumming which he eventually toned down. Also went to his final series at Ronnie’s - again I didn’t hear that speeding up - it was first rate musically. The one thing that sticks in my mind is he came on to a his own recording of the theme from MASH and played along with it as a warm up - even better than in the recording .
A member of my family had a personal connection with him and we had a couple of brief chats with him. I wasn’t conscious of any cocaine symptoms but of course heavy users tend not to exhibit those.How very sad it all seems now.

[Ian Thumwood]

Not sure drug taking should really be lauded in this chat room. Never done drugs and not really a bit consumer of alcohol but I think the Evans anecdote underscores the reality of drugs on performance and how this differs frim the user's perceptions. In the case of Bill Evans , I am really put off by his later stuff and always wondered how much was improvised and how much was premeditated. The later recordings are erratic but not in the way that makes someone like Bud Powell interesting.

It is a shame that the initial article had to pick up on drugs when there is so much more informed research about jazz which is 'good history writing and strips the narrative away from cliche into something that is more nuanced. Sometimes this room descends in to a kind 1970s Open University discussion group with more interest in things which are purely philosophical as opposed to real. I am much more inclined to listen to genuine analytical assessments than stuff which is subjective and will differ for each individual. This is especially the case where backed up with this like empirical data or good research. Sometimes this room is prone to too much beard scratching