Tubby Hayes Interview on Youtube (1960)

[Serial_Apologist]

Ah, T. Cooper - my nemesis! I'd forgotten about him (thankfully).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio3/MP7054550

Well disinterred, grippie!

[Serial_Apologist]

Even the vast majority of the comments made in the Youtube clips would probably be subject to revision if Hayes was alive today and I don't feel they are representative of the situation these days where most jazz musicians would not make these kind of distinctions between jazz recorded in different eras.

Ah, there sounds the voice of the committed postmodernist...

[Ian Thumwood]

SA

Don't really understand your comment but I don't feel that my comments are really that unusual. The Hayes clip seemed to illustrate, at the prompting of the interviewer, a position whereby the then contemporary aspects of jazz were seen as superior to what had gone on before. My point is that a lot of the best contemporary these days is informed by earlier styles of music and jazz musicians are not necessarily so sniffy about what happened within the music post-1945. This can involve the likes of Bill Frisell taking his cues from Eddie Lang and Charlie Patton or Steve Bernstein playing 1920's material as a launch pad for some pretty "out" improvisation. I don't think today's players have any reservations checking out these styles, especially as Hard Bop (as opposed to Post-Bop or Free-bop - call it what you want) or even Modal Jazz are increasingly seeming to offer little in the way that is fresh to my ears. This is hardly a surprise given the fact that it was been such a staple of jazz for 50-odd years.

The passage of time has shown Tubby Hayes to be too critical in his judgement and perhaps lacking in judgement but it would be unreasonable to critcise him for not having a crystal ball. As great as his work was, it was only mid-point in the 100 year history of jazz and of an age where critics, musicians and fans would have been less tolerant of what "jazz" actually was.

Hope this explains what I was trying to get across. Not saying that any style is better or inferior to the alternatives but the position taken by Hayes was suggestive that, in 1960, he believed this to be the case.

[Serial_Apologist]

SA

Don't really understand your comment but I don't feel that my comments are really that unusual. The Hayes clip seemed to illustrate, at the prompting of the interviewer, a position whereby the then contemporary aspects of jazz were seen as superior to what had gone on before. My point is that a lot of the best contemporary these days is informed by earlier styles of music and jazz musicians are not necessarily so sniffy about what happened within the music post-1945. This can involve the likes of Bill Frisell taking his cues from Eddie Lang and Charlie Patton or Steve Bernstein playing 1920's material as a launch pad for some pretty "out" improvisation. I don't think today's players have any reservations checking out these styles, especially as Hard Bop (as opposed to Post-Bop or Free-bop - call it what you want) or even Modal Jazz are increasingly seeming to offer little in the way that is fresh to my ears. This is hardly a surprise given the fact that it was been such a staple of jazz for 50-odd years.

The passage of time has shown Tubby Hayes to be too critical in his judgement and perhaps lacking in judgement but it would be unreasonable to critcise him for not having a crystal ball. As great as his work was, it was only mid-point in the 100 year history of jazz and of an age where critics, musicians and fans would have been less tolerant of what "jazz" actually was.

Hope this explains what I was trying to get across. Not saying that any style is better or inferior to the alternatives but the position taken by Hayes was suggestive that, in 1960, he believed this to be the case.

This is where we differ to the largest extent, Ian.

The point about innovations is implicitly that they represent "improvement" on what had gone before. This is in no way to denigrate what went before - merely to pint out that with the knowledge, the rules, the evolution of consciousness and the means available, Schoenberg would have recognized that whole eras of progress, art parallelling historic progress if you will, would need to have been undergone before composers were in any position to contemplate taking music beyond diatonic-based means of formal organisation; likewise jazz was not yet ready in Charlie Parker's time for steps into freedom from chord-change-based improvisation 50 years following Schoenberg's step over the abyss on behalf of the art music tradition.

Artistic revolutionaries often dissociate themselves from the work of their predecessors, apart from those they see as immediate torch-bearers: Monk, Mingus, Russell etc for the 1960s freedom lovers. This way they can draw attention to the importance they want to see others to see in their own, contemporary work, and for it not to have the past hanging around its neck. The point is surely what with the passing of time is maybe only gradually recognised as tacit from the past in what Armstrong, Parker, 'Trane et al took on board, owing to the difficulty of taking the new on board being inherent in what really is new. The past does not require acknowledgement by going back and dotting all the undotted i's and croossing the uncrossed t's, but by picking up where the present leaves off. Herbioe Hancock did not have to style-check Fats Waller, Earl Hines, Art Tatum, Willie the Lion Smith and Bud Powell, for instance, to enter some pantheon of eligibility to Jazz Heritage Inc. This is not to discount the old in the new, just to say that its presence is tacit, and should not require drawing attention to itself, just in the same way as all the major and minor keys - and more! - are tacit in twelve tone serial music.

It's just more economical that way!

If you get me...

[Quarky]

S_A - I'm sure that Ian will speak for himself - but your position appears to imply that innovation necessarily incorporates all that has gone before - so what is the point of listening to anything other than "cutting edge"? In other words if Schoenberg is listened to hard enough and long enough, than we will hear all that Brahms and Mozart had to offer.

Aren't we allowed to chill out sometimes?

And as for innovation, may be the best innovators recognise the roots of their musical discipline, and that by emphasisng the roots, then are then well placed to say what they have to say.

[Serial_Apologist]

Hi Oddball

Obviously I disagree!

S_A - I'm sure that Ian will speak for himself - but your position appears to imply that innovation necessarily incorporates all that has gone before - so what is the point of listening to anything other than "cutting edge"?

I don't see how what I wrote can be claimed to be saying that innovation incorporates all that has gone before - necessarily or otherwise.

In other words if Schoenberg is listened to hard enough and long enough, than we will hear all that Brahms and Mozart had to offer.

And, I'd argue, more, as well as building on the classics.

Aren't we allowed to chill out sometimes?

Why not? We have many, many old recordings to inform us on what was once cutting-edge, The Proms to put it on at affordable prices... and people like Ian to guide us!

And as for innovation, may be the best innovators recognise the roots of their musical discipline, and that by emphasisng the roots, then are then well placed to say what they have to say.

Well placed indeed!

[Ian Thumwood]

The more I listen to music, I find myself becoming more and more open minded about what is good or indeed what is important in music. This is the problem with the kind of Trad v Modern arguments presented in the clip as they are an indication of trying to prove yourslef to be fashionable by aligning yourself with the so-called "cutting edge."

With 50 years of hindsight, we can more readily appreciate that Tubby could have had no idea just how different jazz would have been even ten years later let alone in 2012. I agree with SA that "Great" musicians have innovated but it is equally true that there are "Great" musicians in all styles who haven't. The more I think about this position of always searching for the innovative and new, the less convinced I am by the strengths of the argument. The Hayes interview was diplomatic but gave an indication of the somewhat entrenched views of the time. Nowadays, I don't believe that these entrenched views would be reflected by many musicians and the differences between a player like Coleman Hawkins and Tubby are not as pronounced as they may have seen to be in 1960.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i tend to agree Ian .... and i think some rather small differences of approach were magnified out of all proportion in the 60s and 70s ..... now they seem pretty unremarkable ....

if i listen to the Ornette Coleman Trio at The Golden Circle it matters not a whit that they are 'harmelodic' in approach what matters is the tiotal conviction and attack of the music

[Serial_Apologist]

i tend to agree Ian .... and i think some rather small differences of approach were magnified out of all proportion in the 60s and 70s ..... now they seem pretty unremarkable ....

if i listen to the Ornette Coleman Trio at The Golden Circle it matters not a whit that they are 'harmelodic' in approach what matters is the tiotal conviction and attack of the music

Well to me a large part of enjoying music is what goes into making it work - well, OK. for me - and at the time, what's new is an important barometer of hope and progress in general, while stagnation and refuge seeking in past solutions moulded in different conditions speaks of a stranglehold of reaction. Most innovations do get taken on board over time, (pace those who find say Schoenberg or Braxton hard going), some take longer than others because of the magnitude of possibilities they offer to successors. This is surely different from magpie raids on history trying to make up for what is perceived as lacking in the vernacular of today, but one sometimes gets the impression from the way you guys talk that it would not have mattered one iota had jazz not evolved at all. Points at which art forms are in transition are always of fascination as illuminating historical progress - the contemporary juxtapositionings of, say, Byrd and Monteverd, (Here the secular replacing sacred narrative); JS Bach and CPE Bach; Mozart and Beethoven (the change from church and royal patronage to artists marketing their wares); Mahler and Schoenberg; Lester Young and Charlie Parker; Louis Jordan and Ray Charles; etc etc - points when the new emerges confidently from within the old without need for backward looking, reflecting, facing on, and even driving changes in the outer world.