The Worst Labels and Jargon in Jazz

Physicists are forced to concede that they can know either the location or the speed of a particle. They can't know both because the very act of looking changes the particle's behavior. 

The way scientists freeze frame electrons is the way categories have been imposed on every art form. In jazz, categorizing is a lazy shorthand that ignores the mutability of the music-and the musicians. Apparently, critics don't have the time to explain that Player X usually plays Standards and tends to improvise melodically, while player Z plays mostly originals, is less concerned with chord changes and more often plays modally. Instead we say this one is a "smooth jazz" player and that one an "avant-garde" player. Seldom does the fact arise that players change over their lifetimes, passing from one category to another-Grover Washington, Jr. and Donald Byrd, for example. 

Unfortunately, labels seem to have an unlimited shelf life. Once coined and adopted, generations of critics fall back on them and they stick like corroded trumpet valves. I grudgingly acknowledge their existence, but am happy to write about a few that particularly irritate me.

Dixieland Jazz. Cramming the music of the likes of Oliver, Keppard and Bechet into one category is ridiculous anyway. But with the relentlessly tenacious mythology of the Gallant South, the word 'Dixieland' grows especially egregious. The popularity of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB) probably provided the impetus for its wide use and god knows their racial views were suspect. I know the phrase was taken up by Bechet and other black musicians early on, but if you say to me "Hey, it was good enough for Louis Armstrong to use," I would say it's probably a case of his understanding that on some occasions, using shorthand could make his life a little easier. Promoters of the phrase "Dixieland revival" latched onto a handy marketing device.

Be Bop. I guess it was good for branding purposes, as such catchphrases are in the world of commerce-Coca Cola, Alka Seltzer, Finger Lickin' Good. But the disparity between the serious nature of the music and the phrase attached to it is palpable. An exception can be made for the trickster Dizzy Gillespie, who was as serious as they come, but who knew how to work wordplay into the music (ooh bop she bam, etc.).

Hard Bop. A ludicrous title. There was no harder bop played-in any sense of the word-than that played by Bird, Diz, Fats Navarro and company. If anything, hard bop took its foot off the pedal more often than Bop.

New Testament and Old Testament Basie bands. I haven't found anyone who knows who pinned these labels on the Basie bands pre and after the early 1950's. Why it stuck, I don't know. I'm not saying that jazz is the enemy of the bible-although it certainly has often been seen this way. Let's just say I believe in the separation of church and the jazz estate.

Cool Jazz. First of all, all jazz is cool, no matter how hot it gets. Second of all, this label is used to differentiate East Coast from West Coast jazz, which is ridiculous. A lot of musicians were burning on the West Coast, while Miles, Gil Evans and company were creating the music specifically called Cool in New York City.

Neo Bop, Post-Bop, Neo-Swing. Putting neo- or post- in front of anything demonstrates a chilling lack of imagination. 

These locutions are now, happily, in the Dust Bin of History:

Licorice stick (for a clarinet). In the film "Song of the Thin Man", I actually heard Keenan Wynn refer to the instrument as a Jew Stick.

Skins/Tubs (for drums), Popsickle Stick (a reed player's reed). 

Hot Lick, Oh, Daddio, Real Gone, Wig Out, Solid Sent, Moldy Fig.

Tacking "-ville" on the end of anything, is, like, hicksville, dullsville, squaresville.

                                               

Smash Arts Akron: New Evidence Unearthed

The Institute

While this is not our first foray into interdisciplinary art exploration, we at the Institute are aware that our preoccupation with novel perspectives on jazz tonsure has left us open to charges of artistic parochialism. Our core mission of advancing jazz historiography remains intact. However, we made the decision to expand our vision and have undertaken an investigation into a phenomenon that has recently come to our attention: Smash Arts Akron. 

We are aware that graduate students in Harvard's Department of Museum Studies have been sifting through and dissecting the work forged in the studios of Smash Arts Akron, but even their rabid attention has failed to unearth a great deal of valuable cross-artistic detritus. Our own research has uncovered evidence of a hitherto unknown musical component of this visionary group. I'm proud to announce our preliminary findings.

The first evidence of an interdisciplinary aspect of the Smash group's opus arose from a close examination of the above photo. Notice that each person in the photo is looking in a different direction. In music, we call this a Polyphonic Grouping and its use has been traced to the early days of multi track recordings in jazz. The woman on the left is holding sheet music and electronic magnification shows watermarks identifying it as the original Dave Lambert vocal chart for the unreleased Gil Evans/Charlie Parker "Bird with Voices" recording.

Close examination of the above clearly shows that the subject of the photo is not drinking, but is blowing into the bottle; further, that he is using the one-handed bi-liter grip first employed by Lester Overholt on a 1928 Red MacKenzie Blue Blowers session. 

The above "objets," which we conjecture were carved by Buddy Bolden's first wife's brother-in-law, were part of a schema used in place of the Western musical notation system of notes, rests, and clefs. The 5-5-5 matrix was an allusion to the 5 square block area of the Treme Dstrict of New Orleans where the system was first developed. We speculate that the tops of the objects represent an nascent form of Tweeting.

The above is the unfortunate aftermath of an impromptu jam session organized by Sol Hurok, 

involving members of Smash Arts Akron and Charles Mingus.  

The complete results of our research are in the process of being peer-reviewed at the Journal of Jazz Epiphenomena and will be released on the final Tzolkin of the Haab.

Carla Bley's Escalator Over The Hill

Escalator Over the Hill (EOTH) distills a corner of the counter-cultural energy of the early ’70s. Politics is fodder for satire here, but the main theme is psychic disruption. This three-record set is a response to the question begged by the title: how effectual can any mundane machine be in o’ertopping the hill and reaching what lays beyond?

Jazz composer Carla Bley is the heart and soul of this recording. She describes the process of putting EOTH together as “run-and-gun” –a grassroots effort that took three years (1968 to 1971) to put together. No major label was interested, funding for the project was minimal, and participants included well-known musicians and people who, at the last minute, were literally pulled off the street.

EOTH is composed of a number of “scenes,” with different groups of instrumentalists and vocalists representing overlapping (and sometimes completely disparate) genres, from Kurt Weill-esque theater music, to free jazz, big band, rock, classical vocalizing, and Indian-like music. The actress Viva, of Andy Warhol fame, narrates. Jack Bruce appears on bass and takes the biggest load of male vocals. Don Cherry, John McLaughlin, Linda Ronstadt, and many others all have parts to play.

Although Bley and lyricist Paul Haines initially called it a “jazz opera,” there is no dramatic arc, per se. In the end, they labeled it a “chronotransduction.” “Chrono” is time, and “transduction” is a biological process where a cell converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another. The organizing principal here is the way the words of Haines are transduced by Bley into music. To some degree, the lack of dramatic impetus makes EOTH chaotic. But it’s sometimes a glorious chaos.

For my money, the composition works best when it doesn’t take itself too seriously. A lot of the libretto feels pretentious, and Bley’s responses sometimes follow in kind, weighing things down. However, when a lighter quality arrives and the libretto grows sparse, the results are enjoyable, sometimes even riveting. My favorite section is the “Desert Band,” which manages to evoke shifting sands, mirages, and oases. The group includes Bley (organ), Cherry (pocket trumpet), Souren Baronian (clarinet), Leroy Jenkins (violin), Calo Scott (cello), Sam Brown (guitar), Ron McClure (bass), and Paul Motian (doumbec).

Most of the album was recorded in one location, but sometimes, when musicians couldn’t make it to New York, audiotapes were shipped elsewhere for the dubbing of new tracks. It was a clunky process but, in a way, it presaged the coming digital era, when physical presence became unnecessary for international, even real-time musical collaboration.

Symbolic of the vibe of EOTH is that side six of the original LPs ends in a “locked groove.” The final track “…And It’s Again” continues infinitely on turntables. For the later CD reissue, the hum is allowed to play for almost 20 minutes before slowly fading out. Maybe that’s cheesy, maybe it’s not, but it is an artifact of the energy of the era.