Now we’re back to small-group jazz, which has dominated since the mid-1940s or so. The group may be as small as a piano trio – bass, drums, and piano – but is more typically a quartet, quintet, or sextet. You fill out the group with a trumpet, trombone, or saxophone (generally alto or tenor), or some combination thereof. Of course we’ve also got guitars, which can substitute for piano or supplement it, vibraphone, other horns (flute, clarinet), and in some cases add Latin percussion to the rhythm section.
The blues we’re going to listen to in this post are bebop, or bebop-affiliated, in style. They’re after the swing style, but not quite to where Miles Davis had arrived with “All Blues.” And, like “All Blues,” they don’t (quite) sound like a blues unless you listen very carefully.
Charlie “Bird” Parker: Blues for Alice
Charlie “Yardbird” Parker was from Kansas City and is one of the progenitors of the bebop style, some say he was the chief instigator. He was first and foremost a supremely gifted musical thinker, a virtuoso player of the alto saxophone, a superb improvisor, and an inventive composer of bebop tunes. He was also a drug addict who died in 1955 at the age of 34. It’s that combination, musical genius and drug addiction, that is the stuff of which obfuscating legends are so easily constructed.
“Blues for Alice” is one of those blues that may not sound like a blues and unless you pay careful attention. Why is that? The basic blues form requires only three different chords, which are often fleshed out to five or six or so. “Blues for Alice” has 17 chords. It’s like you have your basic hamburger sandwich consisting of the burger, a bun, and a dab of catsup. Then you elaborate on that with cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, some pickles, and of course a “special sauce.” But it’s still a hamburger sandwich built around the burger and the bun. They’re still in there, but their taste and texture have been embellished by other tastes and textures.
Here's “Blues for Alice.” The recording is early, but there’s no information about it on YouTube.
We start with a quick four-bar introduction from the piano. Bird plays the head (melody) starting at 0.05 and going to about 0.25. He starts bar five of the form, the first major structural change at about 0.11 and the second change, bar nine, comes at 0.17. He then launches into a solo, playing three choruses. Listen for the fast figure he plays in the last section of each chorus; those “double-time” passages are typical bebop. The trumpet solo starts at about 1:15 and runs for two choruses. Notice the rapid flurry of notes in the middle of the second chorus – a different kind of construction from what Bird did. I’m conjecturing it’s Miles Davis, but I don’t really know. The piano takes two choruses starting at 1:49 and then we return to the head to finish it.
Here’s a live performance of “Blues for Alice” by Rahsaan Roland Kirk, one of the most dynamic performers I’ve ever seen. This is from 1967. I invite you to provide your own commentary, or perhaps you should sip some coffee, tea, scotch or tequila, as you fancy.
Oh crap, that didn’t work out. I gotta’ tell you a thing or two; but I’m not going to mark 4-bar sections for you. For that you’re on your own. Rahsaan plays the melody on the tenor sax, and then switches to manzello – a kind of soprano sax – to begin his solo. He then switches back to tenor sax. What’s that he’s doing Playing the manzello and tenor at the same time? Isn’t that illegal, or at least perverse? No. Starting at 4:56 Rahsaan trades fours with the drummer for three choruses. Notice that he switches from manzello, to tenor, and then plays both for his last four bars. At the point we’re back at the head.
Now, do some simple math. The blues is a 12-bar form. We’ve got two musicians who are trading four-bar phrases back and forth. Here’s how that works out:
(1) Rahsaan, drummer, Rahssan,
(2) drummer, Rahssan, drummer,
(3) Rahssan, drummer, Rahssan.
If you listen you’ll hear that Rahsaan is at the correct section in the progression each time through.
Thelonious Sphere Monk: Mysterioso
In the 1960s, when I was born, mainstream print publications took the arts seriously, covering and promoting exceptional contemporary talents across all styles of music. Thus did Thelonious Monk wind up on the cover of TIME magazine, for example pic.twitter.com/joI4QBMNxl
— Alex Jazzman (@venencia_alex) April 22, 2022
Monk hard to classify. He’s generally associated with bebop and hard bop, one of bebop’s descendants, which makes sense given his active years, 40s and into the 70s, but his playing style tends to eschew the fleet lines more typical of bebop. However, he called on bop’s harmonic inventiveness and was comfortable in bop settings. He contributed many tunes to the standard jazz repertoire, including “’Round Midnight.” “Blue Monk,” “Epistrophy,” “Straight, No Chaser,” “Ruby, My Dear,” “In Walked Bud,” and “Well, You Needn’t.” Oh, but you do.
He first recorded “Mysterioso” in 1948 with Milt Jackson on vibraphone. This is another one of those – you guessed it – blues tunes that doesn’t sound like the blues. The melody simply isn’t based on standard licks or any other kind of standard licks. It’s based on successive pairs of notes spaced at a wide interval. As a result the bottom notes in each pair tend to be heard as one melodic line while the top notes are heard as another line, staggered half a beat away from the first. It’s an utterly captivating conception. Is it one melody built on wide intervals, or two melodies, staggered in time and far apart in pitch? One sound stream or two?
We’re in a medium tempo. Monk starts with a four-bar introduction and then plays the head along with Jackson. Jackson takes the first solo, one chorus. Liston to Monk’s spare comping. Monk takes a chorus and we’re back on the head. (Notice I didn’t mark the subsections of them.)
Listen to how the melody is handled on this recording:
In the first chorus the Muldrew Miller, the pianist, plays the lower notes in those wide-interval pairs while the vibraphonist, Bobby Hutcherson, plays the upper notes. In the second chorus Steve Turre, trombone, enters on the lower notes and Woody Shaw, trumpet (it’s his recording date), enters on the upper notes. Then we have solos. Everyone non-drummer – trumpet, trombone, vibes, piano, and bass – gets some, so this performance lingers for a while.
Charles Mingus: Goodbye Porkpie Hat
Charles Mingus was a bassist, composer, and bandleader whose life, like Monk’s, spanned the bebop era. And, like Monk, he was in it, deep in it, but not quite of it. He had his own thing going, partly swing, partly crazy-ass avant-garde, and all Mingus.
“Goodbye Porkpie Hat” is a blues from the album, Mingus Ah Um. It’s an elegy for the swing-era tenor saxophonist, Lester Young, who wore a porkpie hat. Need I tell you that this is one of those blues that doesn’t really...OK, you got this, you don’t need me to tell you.
So, listen closely. It starts right on the melody, slow and stately, played in unison by saxophonists John Handy and Booker Ervin. Listen to what happens from roughly 0.51 to 0.56, which is the 12th bar of the blues form. What ordinarily happens in the final bar of a tune – any tune, blues, rhythm changes, whatever – is that the melody comes to rest, generally on the tonic (the “home” tone of the key). This melody keeps on moving through the measure, slowly, but its moving – and in six over the four beats in the bar. It doesn’t come to rest. Nor does the harmony resolve. I just turns around to the beginning and John Handy moves smoothly into a sax solo. Listen to his lovely flutter tonguing at 1:46. Then there’s this lovely passage at 2:15 where Handy works a note and Mingus strums a responsive support, and then Handy launches forth. Are these guys telepaths or what? Back to the opening melody, twice through. It ends on a cry on tenor over bass strumming and tremolos in the piano.
That’s not the only blues Mingus wrote. But then “Mysterioso” isn’t Monk’s only blues, nor is “Blues for Alice” Bird’s only one. They’ve written passel of blues, because the blues if fundamental to jazz. Some blues are more traditional, some stretch the tradition, others leave the tradition behind, yet still manage to be blue and blues.
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This is the fifth post in my series, “Tell me about the blues.” The series is tagged with the label, tell me blues.
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