What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Ian Thumwood]

Listening now, though soon I'll have to pause it and resume later. Ok, I'm five minutes in and I'll say: he doesn't sound too modern. It'll be interesting finding out how he turns the Bee Gees into jazz though!

Much of my favourite jazz is on guitar also (John McLaughlin, Allan Holdsworth, Kurt Rosenwinkel etc.). BTW I don't think people these days are necessarily better technically than Tal Farlow - he was quite formidable, could play some really up-tempo tunes...

Joseph

I think that the problem with jazz guitar for me is the issue of how closely they resemble rock / fusion. There is a tendency to bring out the worst in taste. Probably the best case of this in my experience was Frank Gambale with Chick Corea's group about twenty years ago. It was dreadful and a local critic slaughtered the gig in the local newspaper describing it as a lot of noise for no purpose. I haven't listen a lot to Allan Holdsworth as I am not a fan of fusion. The same goes for John McLaughlin who I have seen live at two gigs. He has always struck me as flashy. Technically he is an incredible musician and I appreciate his less showy Indian-fusion work yet he leaves me a bit cold. He is not an emotional experience to listen to. There are a number of players like McLaughlin / Coryell / Carlton / Ritenour who I am sure are good yet are too akin to fusion to interest me. The latter two tend to bleed in to Smooth Jazz too which is a no go area for me!

I have also seen Kurt Rosenwinkel in a group with Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman which under-whelmed me at the time. I find all three of these musicians have a tendency to be bland or hit and miss. The quartet with Mehldau and Metheny was another groups I saw at Vienne and it was the least interest project I have heard Metheny involved in. It was not too engaging but I think that is the main problem with Mehldau. More fun to watch him playing than to listen to the music he produced. I think he has the misfortune to have been copied by so many inspiring pianists that the style is now ubiquitous. He is probably one of the most influential musicians to have come out of jazz in the last 25 years. Rosenwinkel seems to get more attention from other guitar players than people not familiar with the instrument. There seems to be a bit of a geeky element about his playing.

I haven't listened to Farlow for a while so I will have to re-visit his playing. I am mainly familiar through his work with Red Norvo's trio. Of that ilk, I think Russell Malone is probably the best of the bunch in this idiom today. I have seen him a few times and always felt he was slightly under-appreciated and the best thing about Diana Krall's group of the time. It would have been interesting to have heard him with some of the giants. You could also add players like Peter Bernstein to the list and obvious Pat Martino too. I love PM's last album which I was only playing last week. This is a really great disc and really works against SA's argument about a musician not being "now" as this is of now importance when the results are as good as this. Effectively, it is a record which could have been made any time between 1960 and today. It is quite interesting to hear more "modern" players like John Abercrombie rave about him.

I stumbled upon Andy Brown by accident. He is a mainstay of the Chicago scene. I find his playing unfussy and swinging although in the bop / straight ahead tradition which like. Sometimes you just need to hear a guitar played with a pure tone and no effects and in a bop context. If it is good, it is unimportant if it is "now."

[Joseph K]

Joseph

I think that the problem with jazz guitar for me is the issue of how closely they resemble rock / fusion. There is a tendency to bring out the worst in taste. Probably the best case of this in my experience was Frank Gambale with Chick Corea's group about twenty years ago. It was dreadful and a local critic slaughtered the gig in the local newspaper describing it as a lot of noise for no purpose. I haven't listen a lot to Allan Holdsworth as I am not a fan of fusion. The same goes for John McLaughlin who I have seen live at two gigs. He has always struck me as flashy. Technically he is an incredible musician and I appreciate his less showy Indian-fusion work yet he leaves me a bit cold. He is not an emotional experience to listen to.

I beg to differ. Both McLaughlin and Holdsworth can be extraordinarily powerful and moving - try the former's 'Devotion' (the title track) - hardly any other music summons such feels of awe and profundity, and try Holdsworth's 'Low Level, High Stakes', which is staggeringly beautiful, its harmonies are lush and colourful and Holdsworth's solo is masterfully paced and sublimely lyrical... again, have to say that Holdsworth flies like no one else, as does McLaughlin.

Seems to me you're sadly missing out on many of the pinnacles of jazz in dismissing fusion. Not sure where I'd be without In a Silent Way or Bitches Brew, just for starters...

There seems to be a bit of a geeky element about his playing.

… just because he's good at Coltrane changes tunes?

I stumbled upon Andy Brown by accident. He is a mainstay of the Chicago scene. I find his playing unfussy and swinging although in the bop / straight ahead tradition which like. Sometimes you just need to hear a guitar played with a pure tone and no effects and in a bop context. If it is good, it is unimportant if it is "now."

Yeah he's ok. Like that guy Pasquale Grasso.

[Serial_Apologist]

I beg to differ. Both McLaughlin and Holdsworth can be extraordinarily powerful and moving - try the former's 'Devotion' (the title track) - hardly any other music summons such feels of awe and profundity, and try Holdsworth's 'Low Level, High Stakes', which is staggeringly beautiful, its harmonies are lush and colourful and Holdsworth's solo is masterfully paced and sublimely lyrical... again, have to say that Holdsworth flies like no one else, as does McLaughlin.

Seems to me you're sadly missing out on many of the pinnacles of jazz in dismissing fusion. Not sure where I'd be without In a Silent Way or Bitches Brew, just for starters...



… just because he's good at Coltrane changes tunes?




Yeah he's ok. Like that guy Pasquale Grasso.

Ian enjoyed this clip when I posted it here a year or so ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJxt97L6KXw

Ant's own trio playing "Satellite" follows automatically straight afterwards, with any luck.

As for "fusion", there's fusion-for-sure and there's a midpoint between it and post-bop that makes boundaries between acceptable and unaceptable categories virtually impossible to delineate. How about Mike Walker - one of the best post-McLaughlin/Holdsworth guitarists anywhere in the world in my view; but is he "fusion" or not?

[Joseph K]

Ian enjoyed this clip when I posted it here a year or so ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJxt97L6KXw

Ant's own trio playing "Satellite" follows automatically straight afterwards, with any luck.

I'll check it out ASAP.

As for "fusion", there's fusion-for-sure and there's a midpoint between it and post-bop that makes boundaries between acceptable and unaceptable categories virtually impossible to delineate. How about Mike Walker - one of the best post-McLaughlin/Holdsworth guitarists anywhere in the world in my view; but is he "fusion" or not?

Yes, it's a bit absurd dismissing fusion because there are many different types of fusion, some of which as you say sort of blend with post-bop. McLaughlin/Corea's 'Five Peace Band' album is an example of that. I should check out Mike Walker.

[Ian Thumwood]

I agree about Mike Walker who is one of the country's finest jazz musicians.

The problem with Fusion for me is on four levels. Firstly, I think at it's worst it can seem divorced from purer styles of jazz and more akin to Rock. I feel a lot of fans of this music are probably coming out of something like Heavy Metal and looking for something a little more challenging. The other problem stems in from this and that is the studio production values. The "best fusion", to my mind, is where it owes a lot to jazz such as Herbie, Miles late 60's / 70's and the freer stuff by the likes of Terje Rypdal .i.e. Where the improvisation and creativity is paramount.The tracks by Holdsworth are lushly produced and the whole sound is almost too "shiny." These production values do make this stuff sound old-fashioned and dated. There is an over reliance upon synthesisers too. Thirdly, more than any other style of jazz, it is prone to poor taste and errors of judgement. A lot of it has not stood up well to the test of time. Finally, there can be a tendency to show off. Virtuosity seems paramount . I find John McLaughlin really guilty of this and I feel his playing over comes too close to shredding for me taste. There are things where he has gone in to a purer jazz context and edited down his playing but the records he is most famous for leave me cold.

I have some stuff in my collection which could be called "fusion" or at least comes pretty close. I don't dislike all of it yet I think can sink lower than a lot of other styles of jazz. When the oeuvre bleeds in to stuff like Smooth Jazz, Nujazz or any of the other styles than are all the rage for 5 mins, I rapidly turn off.

[Joseph K]

The tracks by Holdsworth are lushly produced and the whole sound is almost too "shiny." These production values do make this stuff sound old-fashioned and dated.

Slightly weird that you should say this, considering you also said 'if it is good, it is unimportant if it is now'. Also sounds like you're taking recourse to criticising the production values because you can't comment on the music itself.

I also note your snobby dismissal of rock, or where you perceive fusion's fans come from.

Isn't it weird that no one bats an eye-lid about Coltrane tearing it up and down his instrument at the speed of light, but McLaughlin is 'shredding'... I think there's almost an inverted snobbery regarding what a guitar should sound like.

[Stanfordian]

'Plus' - Canonball Adderley
Cannonball Adderley with Nat Adderley, Wynton Kelly, Victor Feldman, Sam Jones & Louis Hayes
Riverside (1961)

[Joseph K]

Ant Law - Airegin, which SA posted up thread.

[Jazzrook]

Dexter Gordon Quartet playing 'Lady Bird' in Belgium, 1964:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=r0vhqDCy9eQ

JR

[Serial_Apologist]

Slightly weird that you should say this, considering you also said 'if it is good, it is unimportant if it is now'. Also sounds like you're taking recourse to criticising the production values because you can't comment on the music itself.

I also note your snobby dismissal of rock, or where you perceive fusion's fans come from.

Isn't it weird that no one bats an eye-lid about Coltrane tearing it up and down his instrument at the speed of light, but McLaughlin is 'shredding'... I think there's almost an inverted snobbery regarding what a guitar should sound like.

The way I understand detractors' use of the term "shredding" is in describing "flashing up and down the fretboard" (the self-effacing John Etheridge's description of his own playing when he became Allan Holdsworth's replacement in Soft Machine!) in a manner devoid of anything other than visceral physical energy, yielding no musical interest, whereas we could all (?) agree that the information abundance in Coltrane, Paul Dunmall or, on piano, someone like Keith Tippett improvising, arises from the impossibilty of confining the amount needing to be said within orthodox harmonic frameworks. For me (for what it's worth!) the latter separates the high energy of free jazz from "shredding" in a rock context amounting to no more than a primal scream workout; jazz sophistication consists (I would argue) in its capacity for integrating the three main levels of artistic expression: physical, emoptional, intellectual.

Returning to the controversy as to what separates Fusion from other forms of post-bop jazz, Ian points critically to uses of synthesisers and over-glossy surfaces. Certainly the technology audibly in use in fusion can help to date it, though since the early 2000s it has been noticeable how willing some groups or individual participant are ready to re-introduce for example wah-wah guitar pedals, the physically unweildy Fender Rhodes electric piano with its propensity for breaking down, and add-ons such as ring modulators reproducing the early 1970s Jan Hammer distortion effect - undoubtedly, I would think, for their unique non-standardised sonorities and the latter's association with a time when musicians were making highly innovative use of still then relatively primitive new technologies to advance specific parameters of the music, before commercial pressures predominated. And as Ian Carr said somewhere, synths and electronic keyboards, besides being more dependable than acoustic pianos which need expensive re-tuning, are more easily portable for touring purposes, add new expressive and allusive sound colours in their own right - (the same chords sound different) - and when pluggable-in are less dependent on house PAs, which can be limited to a single mike for announcements and a singer, if there is to be one.

One of the earliest charges against jazz-rock from purist critics in the 1960s was that the rock beat, or rock rhythms (which can more than just the shuffle beat and the eight feel), are less flexible or versatile than the swing beat, and more prone to boxing the soloist within such confines, restricting his or her freedom to move far beyond resort to cliché. I myself find the tendency of a good many jazz-rock drummers to constantly re-iterate the back beat, regardless of (and to the frequent detriment of) whatever is going on upfront - undoubtedly re-inforcing of the view of those who feel jazz-rock rhythms as stultified and stultifying. Yet it's worth remembering that in the first place it was jazz drummers trying to inject some jazz variability into otherwise mundane proceedings, at the same time as making a living in a scene in which British bands were making a hit by introducing American audiences to their own music, who, by way of more sophisticated rock drummers such as Mark Bonham, contributed to the elaborated techniques top Americans such as Jack deJohnette and Billy Cobham injected into the initial phases of fusion in the early 1970s. As Ian Carr said in "Music Outside" there are many interesting ways in which rock rhythms can be broken up and reconfigured spontaneously to prompt chance juxtapositions that open out the field; and John Marshall, one of our guys, said in so many words in agreement with my charge about limited backbeat-dominated jazz rock drummers, the main thing is to be able to hold the rhythmic pattern (of rock music) in (the performer's and listener's) mind while at the same time being able to interact with the soloist - or whatever is going on in between, he might well have added - which would bring in polyrhythmic superimpositions, using all the resources fusion affords - new timbres; the availability of sounds reproducing a big band so skilfully employed by Weather Report, The Mothers of Invention, and Parliament, at its best.

With fusion there is always the danger of standardisation and growing reliance of formula, partly under the simulationary pressures of increasingly user-friendly technological devices and instruments, and the inescapable fact that fusion sold more successfully than any previous form of jazz excepting big band swing in the 1930s and early 40s. What fusion lost was the intimacy proper to jazz that - arguably - finds its most salient responses, socially speaking - for me is a big part of what it's all about - in small venues; does anyone else on here find the phenomenon of small group acoustic jazz on the big stage considerably less engaging than the music when experienced in close proximity in pubs and small clubs?

But there again, there was that solo Keith Tippett set in Bristol's Colston Hall, somewhere around 1990: one guy alone, onstage, opening for Prime Time, listened to for an hour by a full house in rapt pin-drop attention. Maybe I'm just talking a load of.............. But I think my arguments re fusion still hold.

[Joseph K]

the main thing is to be able to hold the rhythmic pattern (of rock music) in (the performer's and listener's) mind while at the same time being able to interact with the soloist - or whatever is going on in between, he might well have added - which would bring in polyrhythmic superimpositions, using all the resources fusion affords -

Yes, this is it, in a nutshell. One of the great interests of jazz fusion is its rhythm, and the way people like Tony Williams and Jack DeJohnette juggle rock rhythms with swing. If you listen to something like the Cellar Door Sessions, everyone sounds funkier (IMO) than actual funk, owing to the awesome swaggering mixture of such rhythms.

With fusion there is always the danger of standardisation and growing reliance of formula, partly under the simulationary pressures of increasingly user-friendly technological devices and instruments, and the inescapable fact that fusion sold more successfully than any previous form of jazz excepting big band swing in the 1930s and early 40s. What fusion lost was the intimacy proper to jazz that - arguably - finds its most salient responses, socially speaking - for me is a big part of what it's all about - in small venues; does anyone else on here find the phenomenon of small group acoustic jazz on the big stage considerably less engaging than the music when experienced in close proximity in pubs and small clubs? .

Not sure why you think with fusion there is a danger of standardisation and formula, any more than with any other kind of jazz. Also interesting that you say fusion 'sold' more, i.e. that you use the past tense; perhaps Bitches Brew outsold Kind of Blue at the time, but I am fairly certain more people have bought the latter these days.

Also, I can tell you that I enjoyed seeing fusion maestro Allan Holdsworth in the small Wolverhampton club Robin 2 much more than I did Wayne Shorter's acoustic quartet at the Barbican, so I am not with you when you say fusion lost intimacy.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, this is it, in a nutshell. One of the great interests of jazz fusion is its rhythm, and the way people like Tony Williams and Jack DeJohnette juggle rock rhythms with swing. If you listen to something like the Cellar Door Sessions, everyone sounds funkier (IMO) than actual funk, owing to the awesome swaggering mixture of such rhythms.

Funnily enough, it was acquiring the Cellar Door sessions (or lt least the parts of them constituting sides 3 and 4 of the "Live-Evil" double LP) that broke me into free jazz, largely on account of the rhythmic complexity, but also that of the co-existant accumulation of elements associated with the mounting euphoria making it quite clear that the only way for the music to reach its apotheosis was by breaking free, in one of the truly great, musically orgasmic moments of all music.

Not sure why you think with fusion there is a danger of standardisation and formula, any more than with any other kind of jazz. Also interesting that you say fusion 'sold' more, i.e. that you use the past tense; perhaps Bitches Brew outsold Kind of Blue at the time, but I am fairly certain more people have bought the latter these days.

Correction there - what I meant was that in the 1970s fusion was selling more than any previous jazz at the time of its release. Sure, "Kind of Blue" continues to outsell. I think fusion was more prone to standardisation because all art forms that become at the mercy of the commercial market tend to fall into preordained predictability. This did happen though to a lesser extent with the hard bop revival of the late 1980s/90s too. Its what Richard Barrett and I have coined "capitalist realism".

Also, I can tell you that I enjoyed seeing fusion maestro Allan Holdsworth in the small Wolverhampton club Robin 2 much more than I did Wayne Shorter's acoustic quartet at the Barbican, so I am not with you when you say fusion lost intimacy.

Well, see, that just underlines what I am saying about the intimacy of the circumstances, though maybe I went a bit far, thinking as I was in terms of fusion being stadium rather than intimate club. I saw Holdsworth in St George's in Bristol - a place often chosen by Radio 3 for outside concert and occasional jazz-type broadcasts at one time. How big is Robin 2, Joseph? St George's is a wonderful venue for music of almost any kind, with a fantastic not-over-resonant acoustic - an historic 18th century church of the square type with surrounding wooden balcony supported on classical pillars: great for listening upstairs or down - not quite a large concert venue of the Colston Hall or Barbican type, but larger than your average pub, club or art centre. By that stage fusion was no longer the eardrum shattering Herbie Hancock's Headhunters had been in 1974, or the sound barrier-busin gale of energy of Mahavishnu as seen at Colston Hall around the same time.

BTW I saw Shakti in the main theatre in Southend-on-Sea somewhere around 2001. "I'm going to complain to the organisers about the programme", I told my mate, "there's no mention of the make of the joss sticks"!

[Stanfordian]

‘Inner Urge’ - Joe Henderson
Joe Henderson with McCoy Tyner, Bob Cranshaw & Elvin Jones
Blue Note (1964)

[Jazzrook]

Archie Shepp with Chet Baker, Horace Parlan, Herman Wright & Clifford Jarvis in 1988, two months before Chet Baker died in Amsterdam

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=cndWkFCXrTo

JR

[Joseph K]

Canadian guitarist Sonny Greenwich with Fred Henke(piano); Ron Seguin(bass) & Andrew White(drums) live at Sweet Basil, 1987:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=ZpY3Qo07RW8

JR

Just listening to this now.