Frame for the Blues

Drown in My Own Tears – Lulu with Jeff Beck

YouTube:

Lulu (vocals); Jeff Beck (guitar); Peter King (saxophone); Jon Cleary (piano); Ian Jennings (bass); Marc Mondesir (drums)

Mixed by John Porter Recorded live at Abbey Road Studios, London, England, March 13, 2002

From Martin Scorsese presents "The Blues: Red, White & Blues"
Directed by Mike Figgis.

Voodoo Blues

The #captivating vibe of Bourbon Street in New Orleans Xx pic.twitter.com/llvFvaKAgF

— Roz Gray💙⚽️🐦🐦🐦 (@RGray46) April 13, 2025

The United States of the Blues: On the Crossing of African and European Cultures in the 20th Century

I've uploaded an article from 1993. You can download it at Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/128441180/The_United_States_of_the_Blues_On_the_Crossing_of_African_and_European_Cultures_in_the_20th_Century

Title Full Citation, Abstract, Contents, and Introduction below.

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Full Citation

The United States of the Blues: On the Crossing of African and European Cultures in the 20th Century. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, 16(4), 401-438, 1993. DOI: 10.1016/1061-7361(93)90016-K.

Abstract

European-American racism has used African America as a screen on which to project repressed emotion, particularly sex and aggression. One aspect of this projection is that whites are attracted to black music as a means of expressing aspects of themselves they cannot adequately express through music from European roots. Thus twentieth century expressive culture in the United States has been dominated by an evolving socio-cultural system in which blacks create musical forms and whites imitate them. It happened first with jazz, and then with rock and roll. The sexual revolution and the recent floresence of blacks in television and movies suggests that white America has had some success in using black American expressive forms to cure its affective ills. The emergence of rap, from African America, and minimalism, from European America, indicates that this system is at a point where it is ready to leave Western expressive culture behind as history moves to the next millennium.

Contents

1. Introduction 402
2. Patterns in Black and White 402
3. The Socio-Cultural System of North American Cultural Crossing 408
3.1 The Cultural Psychodynamics of Racism 409
3.2 Tertium Quid: The Artist and Negative European Identity 411
3.3 Transformed from Africa, the Blues 413
4. Crossing in the Twentieth Century: Blues Train to the Future 415
4.1 The Blues: "Trouble In Mind" 416
4.2 Jazz: "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" 417
4.3 Rock: "Roll Over Beethoven" 419
4.4 Rap: "U Can't Touch This" 421
4.5 The Pattern So Far: "Freedom Over Me" 424
5. The Post-Western Future 426
Notes 428
Acknowledgements 434
References 434

Introduction

It is generally assumed, without question, that the United States of America is a Western nation, that it's culture is derived from Europe, as opposed to the various cultures of Asia, the Near East, and North Africa. There may be some differences from Europe, things which ever-anxious Americans can claim as their own, but the dominant character is European. In matters of intellectual and scientific culture this is largely true. Despite the birth of modern democracy in the American Revolution, I think we need to concede the point in political matters as well. Modern democracy may first have flowered in North America, but it has deep roots in Europe.

When we turn to expressive culture matters are quite different. In some expressive domains, literature, architecture, and perhaps even painting, the European influences dominate. But in other domains the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa have had a profound, even a dominating, influence. Sport is one such arena (Ashe, 1988, cf. Early, 1989, pp. 115-195, 208-214). Religion is another. With its dramatic conversions, speaking in tongues, vigorous song, and theatrical preaching, the fundamentalist strain of American religion took the impress of African America almost two centuries ago (cf. Bloom, 1992, pp. 48, 238; Philips, 1990, p. 231, Williamson, 1984, p. 38). Throughout the nineteenth century minstrel shows carried the African influence in comedy, song, and dance (Chase, 1966, pp. 259-300, Crouch, 1976, Handy, 1941). This influence came to full flower in American popular music of the twentieth century, where the African-American element drives the train. Whether or not that influence has been so profound that we should remove the United States from the honor roll of Western nations is not clear to me - though I think it a reasonable possibility.

As I see it, this is the situation: The United States is a multicultural society.1 While the citizens all function within a single economic and political system, the cultural system is plural. That cultural pluralism is part of a social dynamic which generates cultural crossing in the expressive domain. Through the course of this century European Americans have been continually remaking their expressive culture according to African-American models. There is nothing in the national identity of the United States which is more important than this African making and European remaking (cf. Morrison, 1992).

The goal of this essay is to explore the way African and European cultural elements have interacted in the twentieth century United States. While, as I've indicated, that interaction extends beyond music, that is where the interaction has been most fruitful. That is where I'll concentrate my attention - though at the end I'll turn this magician's hat of an argument upside down and start pulling out some more general conceptual rabbits. To establish a sense of the cultural difference between black and white America I begin by comparing jazz and classical music. Then I move on to consider the psycho-cultural engine which drives the interaction and cultural interchange between European and African America. After that we examine the track that engine has traveled during this century. The essay ends by arguing that this train has already taken us into the beginnings of a post-Western world.

Kwak Dakung, relaxed and in the pocket on a classic blues: "Now's the Time"

It's time for some blues, Pharoah Sanders on tenor

John McLaughlin plays the blues, "Straight No Chaser"

258,440 views Premiered May 7, 2021
Guitar icon releases exclusive video to raise awareness and funds for COVID relief in India, asking all to donate to Project Hope (www.projecthope.org) today.

Musicians: John McLaughlin (Guitar); Roger Rossignol(Piano); Jean Michel. ‘Kiki’ Aublette (Drums,Bass); Nicolas Viccaro(Drums)

John McLaughlin has made no secret of the musical and spiritual debt that he owes to the people and nation of India. Whether explicit (the unprecedented east/west hybrid of his beloved Shakti ensemble) or implicit (the daring rhythmic structures he transmitted via the Mahavishnu Orchestra), India has exerted a gravitational pull on McLaughlin’s life and music, and his gratitude is boundless.

Now, with India suffocated by a rampant outbreak of the deadly COVID-19 virus, McLaughlin is asking all of us to give just a little in support of relief efforts there. To encourage donations to the global health and humanitarian organization Project Hope (www.projecthope.org) -- who are providing essential supplies and personnel to the Indian people -- he has gathered a group of musician friends in Monaco to film an exclusive version of Thelonious Monk’s immortal blues “Straight No Chaser.” This fiery performance is his humble offering, a beacon beaming out to his many admirers with the hope of helping to offset the terrible blight now ravaging India.

Captured live, the performance features McLaughlin alongside pianist Roger Rossignol, bassist JM Kiki Aublette, and drummer Nicolas Viccaro, investing Monk’s timeless, knotty blues theme with an innovative spark and infectious abandon. Through his improvisation, alternately soaring and keening, McLaughlin delights in paying tribute to Monk’s deft rhythmic constructions and cunning use of dissonance. His compatriots are with him at every step, resulting in a conversational, refreshingly human treatment of this timeless standard.

“The world is in dire straits,” McLaughlin implores, “but India is just catastrophic: People dying outside hospitals because there are no beds, there is no oxygen. We recorded this video thinking of them. It is our gift to you in the hope that you will make a small gift.”

Betty Boop, Cab Calloway, and "St. James Infirmary"

A somewhat more recent version of "St. James Infirmary."

Blues revival in Mississippi Delta brings "Kingfish" to music scene | 60 Minutes

Thanks to my friend, Ken Drumm, who tipped me to this program. You can find out more about Ken in my current 3QD piece, On the Road with the Out of Control Rhythm and Blues Band. 

Playing the blues @ 3 Quarks Daily with Out of Control

I’ve got a new post at 3 Quarks Daily:

On the Road with The Out of Control Rhythm and Blues Band, https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2023/11/on-the-road-with-the-out-of-control-rhythm-and-blues-band.html

It’s an expansion of a post from about two weeks ago: On the road and Out of Control [It’s the blues]. I'm the trumpet player at the lower left in the video above.

Both posts are built on incidents which I recount in varying levels of detail.

One incident that didn’t make the cut happened when we held auditions for a new guitarist. We put an advertisement in the local entertainment weekly, The Metroland, and prepared audition tapes for those who wanted to tryout. I think we had, say, three tunes on the tape, different kinds of tunes. They had to learn them for the audition. Beyond that, we wanted to see how they soloed.

I forget how many dudes tried out, but one guy didn’t take us seriously. He showed up with beautiful equipment, twin cream-colored Marshall amplifiers, with gold plated fittings on the amps and his guitar. But he hadn’t looked at the audition tape. He just wanted to jam a blues in E. I forget whether we indulged him, but he didn’t get the gig. If we’d had a lever that opened a whole in the floor and sent him packing, we’d have pulled it quick.

A somewhat different incident happened while we were performing at The Blockhouse Beef and Brew in Schenectady, which was a hangout for a gang of biker Vietnam veterans. The place didn’t have a stage; we just set up on the floor in a corner. We were playing some tune, I forget which, and I was playing the trumpet, I think on some back-up figures (as opposed to a solo). Suddenly I felt someone stroking my inner thigh. I looked down and saw a woman kneeling in front of me, stroking my thigh. As I looked up I saw her boyfriend standing behind her. “Danger Will Robinson! This does not compute!” I had no idea what was going on, but it seemed like there was some potential for harm. Fortunately nothing was going on. Just some chick who wanted to stroke my thigh.

Go figure.

Finally, here’s an incident I published in my book, Beethoven’s Anvil (pp. 93-94):

A number of years ago I was playing trumpet with a rhythm and blues band in a bar in downtown Albany, New York. It was two in the morning and we were exhausted at the end of a five-hour gig. My chops were shot.

We decided to play one more tune, “Stormy Monday.” Normally I didn’t solo on that tune; however, it is a slow blues, and I dearly love a slow blues. So despite my exhaustion, I decided to take a chorus—one cycle through the tune. I started playing simple figures in the lower-middle register and then elaborated on those figures and moved to the upper register. I hit my climax at the penultimate bar of the chorus, as anticipated, and was ready to stop playing. But, the rhythm section wasn’t playing concluding riffs; they clearly expected me to play another chorus. If I’d had any sense I'd have ignored them and stopped. My lips were crying out in pain; if I played much more my lip muscles would surely fail.

I didn’t like the idea of following a good chorus with a mediocre one. I couldn't remain in the trumpet’s difficult upper register, nor could I drop back to the middle register and then build back up—the two most obvious options for constructing another chorus. In a split-split second I decided “oh, what the hell” and did a Sonny Rollins, dropping to the middle register, growling and flutter tonguing to make the nastiest, bluesiest sound I could. Another power had entered my playing. Captain cat went on the prowl and the music went into overdrive. Solid.

As the band stood around after the gig, several people came up to me and chatted, touching me on the forearm on their way out. But it wasn’t me they wanted to touch. It was the power that emerged during that second chorus.

Perhaps I’ll gather some more anecdotes and spin another post out of them.

"Inside these Walls" by the Out of Control Rhythm and Blues Band

I can't believe that I haven't already put this on New Savanna, but I've done a search, and it's not there. So here it is.

It's performed by the Out of Control Rhythm and Blues Band, which I've just blogged about. The band recorded it in 1996, well after I'd left (in about 1990). It's by Rick Rourke, alto and tenor sax, and backup and lead vocal. He wrote both the tune and the lyrics. It's autobiographical in nature but, like all good art, has wide appeal. I did the photographs.

On the road and Out of Control [It’s the blues]

The road was generally somewhere in the Capital District of upstate New York. Think of it as a bunch of towns and small cities centered around Albany, the state capital, Troy, where I lived at the time, and Schenectady, incidentally, where my grandfather had his first job in the United States, and where the band rehearsed in the basement of a photography studio in a somewhat sketchy part of town. The studio was owned by Rick Siciliano, lead vocalist and drummer for The Out of Control Rhythm and Blues Band. I played with the band from about 1985 to 1990 or so.

What a time we had, the tunes, the gigs, the stories, the women – at least for Rick, the rest of us, not so much. There’s no logical way to tell the tales, so I’ll just let ‘er rip and hope for the best.

I gather the band started as a Blues Brothers cover band, which was itself something of a cover band. “Cover band?” you ask. A band that plays, that is, covers other bands’ tunes. But you can’t play three sets a night on the Blues Brothers repertoire, so the guys had learned a bunch of other tunes by the time I joined. Even had an original, “Baby Tell the Truth.”

I signed up to be the substitute trumpet player. When the regular guy couldn’t make it, I’d get the call. I forget just how the audition process went, but it’s not like there were 30 trumpeters lined up to get the gig. Fact is, the time when trumpet was king was long gone by then so there weren’t many trumpeters, period. I forget just how I learned the tunes, but there were no charts. Perhaps Cris Cernik, keyboardist and den leader, or Ken Drumm, saxophone and business manager, got me a set of rehearsal tapes. Whatever. I just listened and learned by ear, like all real musicians play, except for classical cats and other advanced miscreants.

Anyhow I soon became the one-and-only full-time trumpeter for the band. We played the majority of our gigs in the Capital District, but we did venture out on occasion: Glens Falls (I once saw Mike Tyson fight there), a wedding in Wilton, Connecticut (quarter of a mile from Dave Brubeck’s place), Montauk (unverified rumor has it that Jann Wenner heard us; if so, he didn’t put us on the cover of his magazine), another wedding at a compound in the Adirondacks where sound man extraordinaire Jim Boa miked my trumpet so I could stroll among the revelers, Americade at Lake George, 25,000 middle-age bikers including Malcolm Forbes in full red, white, and blue leathers with his Capitalist Tool balloon, and Montreal in the dead of Winter, where it seems like half the blues guitarists in town lined up to sit in with us at a local jam, which was after our regular gig, playing in white tails for dancing at a GE Plastics marketing convention (Bo Diddly had to borrow a guitar from us because, you know, airlines).

We got around. But as I said, mostly to clubs in the aforementioned Capital District. Saratoga Springs was at the northern edge of the district. One of our favorite clubs was there, the Metro. It was owned by Peter Paquette, former art instructor at Skidmore College who dressed a bit like Don “Miami Vice” Johnson as I recall, and had three venues: the downstairs bar, where we played; a disco behind that, where Steve Rosenbaum DJed (I’ll get to him in a moment); and an upstairs room with a bar, tables with table cloths (but no food), and a jazz trio (classy). This video will introduce you to five members of the band (out of seven) and to the Metro as well:

That’s Steve Rosenbaum narrating the video. He started Our Town Television after he graduated from Skidmore and did a story about us. We returned the favor by playing his wedding, to Pam Yoder. [Somewhat later they moved to NYC and did an award-winning documentary on 9/11, among many other things.] The gig in the video, that was filmed in the downstairs bar at the Metro. We’re playing “Flip, Flop, and Fly,” originally by Big Joe Turner in 1955, covered by various other artists, including The Blues Brothers. And they conveyed it to us, and a gazillion other garage bands as well.

Why was the Metro one of our favorite clubs? The venue was nice, a bit larger than most of the bars and clubs where we played. Management – Peter Paquette – was cool, and so was the staff. The crowds were into the music. On a reasonable night they’d get up and dance, pretty important when the music is basically dancing music. On a good night, well, that’s something else indeed. Remember at the end of the video (about 3:19) Rick Rourke (saxophone and back-up vocal) says: “It’s the closest you can get to really being feeling totally happy with yourself.” That’s the truth. That’s why we liked the Metro. Often enough, though perhaps not 50% of the time, that’s how it was.

For my money, though, the best gig we ever played was at a scrappy sports bar in North Troy. What I remember is that, more than at any other gig we played, the crowd generated energy – whatever you want to call it – more than enough to answer ours and then some. All we did was surf the energy flow, direct it here and there. Front and center was Lenny, a fan, long hair, leather jacket, wallet on a chain, blue jeans, scruffy boots, and, you know, what I see in my mind’s eye is Lenny dancing on top of his Harley while spinning it around the dance floor shooting laser beams from his eyes and lighting up the crowd. I don’t think that actually happened, doesn’t seem physically possible, does it? Metaphysically, yes. Actually physically, no. But one can never tell about these things.

Then there was that New Year’s Eve wedding in the Berkshires. Rick and I drove together. There was just enough snow to touch off the Winter Wonderland vibe, but not so much as to make the driving treacherous. I loved wedding gigs, though many of the guys in the band seemed to be skeptical, perhaps because they didn’t like the idea of being a wedding band. But we weren’t a wedding band, and Ken made that clear when he booked the gig. We play our regular repertoire, no chicken dance, but we’ll learn a tune for the bride’s first dance. We do jazz-lite for the reception. That’s it, and you pay us an arm and a leg for the privilege. So the people were serious about dancing, and you always had three, maybe four, who knows, generations out on the dance floor.

Anyhow, this gig was at one of those places known as cottages by the people who built them, but to you and me they’re mansions. Most of them are no longer private residences, too costly to maintain. This one was an event venue. I don’t remember much about the place, but there was a lot of dark wood paneling.

As part of the deal we agreed to let the groom’s good buddy sit in on harp – that’s blues talk for harmonica, why, I don’t know. We were a bit iffy about this, because who the hell knew whether or not good buddy could actually play, but they’re paying the bill, so what choice did we have? It’s not like we’re Buddy Guy or the Rolling Stones. We’re just a bunch of kick-ass local guys. Anyhow, buddy shows up with a case full of harps in every damn key, which could be a good sign or it could mean he just had some spare change and no sense. But when he took out his bullet mike, we began breathing again. A bullet mike is a small mike you can cup in your hand right against the harp. He knew what he was doing.

A good time was had by all – though they did stiff us a bit on the meal. Oh well.

Finally, I guess I should tell you about opening for B. B. King at the Palace Theater in Albany, New York. Obviously, it’s a special gig. Perhaps some might even say it’s an honor. But that’s not quite right the connotation. Honor? It’s a gig. The thing is, it’s not as though being local guys opening for one of the all-time greats somehow exempted us from actually having to show up and play our assess off. No, whatever else it is, it’s a gig like every other gig. You have to play the music, no matter what the venue or how big the crowd, you have to PLAY, otherwise what’s the point?

And that’s what we did. We opened with The Running Blues, which has a horn line that’s high wide and screaming. Since I play the trumpet – about which Garrison Keillor has said, “Now there’s an instrument you can really embarrass yourself with” – it was up to me to put it over. Things were going great until the very last note, a high one. Nothing came out of the horn. Not a damn thing. Did I panic? Hell, no, couldn’t afford to. Besides, Chris over there was cranking it out on the Hammond B3 with the whirling Leslies, he covered the note. No one (in the audience) new that the trumpeter choked. Looked like I was wailing away. The gig went fine.

Afterward we got to meet the Beale Street Blues Boy Himself. Us and about 50 middle aged matrons in flower print dresses and wide going-to-church hats. B.B. had a good word for every one of them. Us too.

There are other stories I could tell you, lots of other stories. That’s enough for the moment. But I want to say something about the band itself, who and what we were. Above all else, and here I’m dead serious, we were musicians, making music together. Nothing else counted. Outside of the band, we were very different. Some of us were college-educated, some not. Blue collar, white collar, irrelevant. Every one of us had some clothes that were band clothes. We didn’t wear uniforms – except for that time when GE Plastics bought us white tails because someone had the silly idea that all those salesmen would actually dance without any women to dance with – but we did dress for gigs, each according to our own style. There was no formal leader. We all got paid the same. Sometimes we paid the roadies more than we paid ourselves. Why? Because they had to work longer hours, that’s why.

Now, I say “we,” but it was Ken who did it. He was the business manager. We didn’t hold a band meeting about it. Ken just did it, we all knew he did it, and we were fine with it – at least I think we were.

There were lots of tacit understandings going on. Had to be. No other way to make things work. Were there tensions and troubles? Of course, we’re human. But we worked it out. Why? For the music, that’s why.

“It’s the closest you can get to really being feeling totally happy with yourself.”

E pluribus unum.

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For more news of the blues – it's tacky, I know, so sue me – check out these posts.

New posts at 3 Quarks Daily [AI, Mind Hacks, Blues&Jazz, Kids&Dance]

I’ve posted some articles at 3 Quarks Daily in the last few months:

Beyond Artificial Intelligence

From the opening:

I’m stumped. I’ve hit a wall. More than one most likely.

I don’t know how to think about artificial intelligence. Well, that’s a rather broad statement. After all, I’ve done quite a bit of thinking about it. Six of my most recent articles here at 3QD about been about it, and who know how many blog posts, working papers, and formal academic papers going back for decades. I’ve thought a lot about it. And yet I’ve hit a wall.

Mind Hacks R Us: The Psychedelic Computer

From the opening:

During the last half of the 20th century various groups of insiders and outsiders adopted mind-altering drugs and computer technology to create cultural spaces in which we imagined and realized new venues for the human mind. These spaces engaged fundamental issues of freedom and control, of emotion and reason, which have bedeviled humans everywhere, and elaborates them in the through modern science and technology. The psychoactive drugs which, in some sense, free us, have been synthesized through laboratory techniques we have invented, but only recently. The computers which extend our powers of control and order in often surprising ways embody logical forms that date back to Aristotle but where only recently brought to fruition in the late nineteenth century work of George Boole and others. Science and technology thus provide us with objective physical touchstones for the otherwise abstract powers and activities of our hearts and minds.

Black, White, and Blues: Notes on Music in America

From the opening:

When European colonists and used West African tribesmen and their descendants as slaves, they had no intention of learning anything from them or of adopting their ways. Their intention was simply to secure a source of cheap and tractable labor. But they were struck by the musicality of their slaves. And that musicality was to have a profound influence on their descendents and, in time, on peoples around the world. Let’s take a quick look at some moments in this centuries-long process of miscegenation, mutation, and cultural transmogrification.

Children in Search of the Dance, Some Informal Ethnographic Analysis

From the opening:

Some years ago I went to a concert by the Gordys, a local group in Hoboken, New Jersey, that performs an eclectic mixture of folk, rock, and klezmer music. The performance had been an annual event and this was, I believe, the 11th or 12th such concert. The concert was held at 7 in the evening in Frank Sinatra Park, which is located on the Hudson River in full view of Manhattan.

I’d been to a previous Gordys concert two years ago and knew how it would go. In particular, I knew that there’d be lots of families with children and that, near the end of the concert, when they went into klezmer mode, there would be dancing. That’s what interested me this time, the dancing. I wanted to see what the kids did.

This is a photo essay.

“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”, old style, new style

This is one of my favorite tunes, ever. Don’t even know if I recognized it as a blues when I first heard it. Do you? Don’t count it out, no fair!

Here’s the original version, from 1959, on Mingus Ah UM:

It opens with John Henry playing the melody for a chorus, then going into a solo on tenor sax. Listen carefully to what happens at bar 11, starting at about 0:51. There’s a slow descending line, six notes (a pair of drag triplets). Think about what’s happening. This is the last bar of the melody. That’s when a melody comes to rest. One might expect the melody to be one long note at this point. But, no, that’s not what we’re hearing. We’re hearing a moving line. Maybe it will come to rest at the middle of the bar. No! It’s still moving. Where’s it going?

That’s a very good question. Where is it going? It keeps on moving to the end of the bar, and then Handy launches into his solo at 55:00. The melody doesn’t end, at least not properly.

Given that this tune is an elegy to Lester Young, known as “Pork Pie Hat” because that’s the kind of hat he wore, one wonders if there isn’t a kind of symbolism there. Yes, he’s dead, it IS a blues after all. But the melody (soul) lingers on.

Anyhow, THAT’s the signal feature of this tune. It doesn’t end. The melody doesn’t stop, nor does the harmony resolve to the tonic, as it normally would. Rather, it heads right back to the tonic that opens the tune.

Handy’s solo is slow and stately throughout. Notice that he opens his second chorus (c. 1:48) by flutter tonguing (or perhaps very soft double-tonguing) on the opening note of the melody and continuing that for four bars. He concludes after two choruses and we return to the melody (c. 2:40). He plays a single chorus and then another. Now you can hear very clearly how the final bar of the melody leads right back to the beginning (at c. 3:35). This time Handy is joined by Booker Ervin, also on tenor sax. They conclude this second time through at c. 4:30. Listen to what happens at the very end.

Unresolved.

Now we have a very different version, from May 2022 at the Blue Note in New York City. We have the melody stated by Stanley Clarke on bass (starting at c. 0:17), with Cory Henry providing keys/synth backing. I don’t know who the rest of the players are. Cameron Graves (keys) and Jeremiah Collier (drums) are listed on the video. Another video from the same gig lists Emilio Modeste on tenor sax.

Cowell plays freely, no fixed tempo, embellishing the melody, finishing at 2:00, when the band kicks into a fixed tempo. Cowell plays the melody again, starting at 2:33, shadowed by the tenor sax. Listen to the vigorous drumming. Now the volume drops dramatically, c. 3:40, to finish out the melody, with both organ and sax shadowing. Now we have a sex solo. Listen to how the background changes up from moment to moment. This performances is very different from Mingus’s.

Cory Henry at 7:40 on keyboards. You can do your own commentary. Back to Cowell at 10:22. Listen to the deep lines from keyboards behind Cowell’s solo. Sax comes back to help finish it out.

I should note that the bass is not normally a front-line instrument, but this is Stanley Cowell. Putting him in front requires adjustments, with much of the bass-slack being taken up by keyboards.

Blues @ 3 Quarks Daily [East Asian style]

I’ve taken eight examples from my current series on the blues and written an article for 3 Quarks Daily:

Tell me about the blues, 3 Quarks Daily, April 25, 2022
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2022/04/tell-me-about-the-blues.html

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The blues has long since made its way around the world. I’ve got two examples from East Asia. The first is a 2014 edition of the Big Friendly Jazz Orchestra (BFJO) from Takasago High School in Japan. They’re playing a Basie tune, by Frank Foster, which I examined here. That was the Basie Band in 1959. I’m guessing that the parents of most of these Japanese students (notice that most of them are young women) weren’t even alive then.

Blues In Hoss’ Flat (Frank Foster) / BFJO 2014 team Ota, with Guest Players

They’re not all high school students. There are some adult ringers. Listen to their ensemble work. How tight! I'd like to think of Frank Foster is grinning from ear while listening to this performance.

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This one, from Korea, is a bit more recent, 2019. Kwak Dakyung is sitting in on a blues jam. She appears to be about 10 years old here. I devoted a post to her about a year ago.

[윤아트홀] Blues Jam - 곽다경 (재즈 트럼펫 / Jazz Trumpet)

The first tune is a minor key blues. It appears to me that her father (the bass player) just tossed her into the fray, leaving it up to her to figure out what to do. Listen to her testing things out during the guitar and piano solos, figuring out where things lay. Now she’s got it, 3:23. Now she dialogs with the guitar, 4:31. Now we pick up the tempo, 5:49. But you don’t need me to point out what’s going on, do you? She’s still figuring it out.

But then aren’t we all?

Here's a blues playlist I put together at YouTube, though some non-blues tunes managed to slip in.

Tell me about the blues: Trane, Ornette, Hannibal

Where have we been? We started with Old School jazz, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Henry Allen. Then we zipped ahead a couple decades to hear the very different blues of Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, and Frank Foster, blues shorn of much of the funk, but not the juice. The juice is always in the performer, not the specifications of the tune. Then we went back to fill-in the interval. Duke Ellington and Count Basie aren’t so far from Louis Armstrong but they work with the full force of a big band and so have more sonic resources and have to devote more attention to scheming out the course of a performance.

Then Charlie Parker showed us what happens when you fill the blues up with a zillion chord changes. Can you push that any further without the form collapsing in on itself? Monk increased melodic angularity to the point where the melody split into two streams. Mingus turned the form back on itself into an endless loop. How does it end? Miles washed all that away in the radical simplification of “All Blues.”

Now we’re going to continue on with John Coltrane’s “Mr. P.C.”; jump off the deep end – well, not quite – with Ornette Coleman’s “Broad Way Blues”; and become a snake swallowing its own tail with Hannibal Lokumbe.

John Coltrane: Mr. P.C.

John Coltrane is a tenor saxophonist who came up in the late 1940s on through the 1950s and apprenticed with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis. That is to say, he came up as a bebopper, learning that style inside-out. Through his work with Davis he got ready to move on. That’s what we see him doing in “Mr. P.C.”, from his Giant Steps album, which was released early in 1960. He’s poised at the precipice.

Giant Steps came out at roughly the same time as Kind of Blue (Miles Davis), on which Coltrane played. The title tune, “Giant Steps,” is known for its difficult chord changes to be taken at a furious tempo. “Mr. P.C.” – named after Coltrane’s long-time bass player, Paul Chambers – is just as fast, perhaps faster, but the chord changes are more tractable. It’s a 12-bar blues in a minor key, which is common enough, but not so common as blues in a major key (though we should keep in mind that the blues tonality, if you will, is neither major nor minor, but something else). The fact that it is in a minor key puts it within the ambit of the modal jazz on Kind of Blue and which Coltrane would embrace whole-heartedly soon thereafter.

Let’s listen:

Coltrane starts right on the melody, which takes a standard blues form:

1) The first 4-bar phrase consists of a 2-bar phrase that goes up and then comes back down (bars 1 & 2); it is followed by a 4-note phrase in the third bar, which alternates on two pitches.
2) The second 4-bar phrase repeats the opening 2-bars, but transposes them up, to follow the shift in harmony (bars 5 & 6); it is followed by the same phrase we heard in bar 3, and on the same pitches.
3) The phrase in bars 9 and 10 is different from the one in 1 and 2, 5 and 6, but return to that same 4-note phrase in bar 11.

Easy-peasy.

Coltrane plays the melody twice and them launches into a solo (0:22). Listen closely for phrases that he repeats at various points in the solo. Listen as well for the parts where he hangs on a dissonant note (e.g. 0:28, 0:43, 0:49, etc.) and where he plays little (and not so little) runs that go chromatic (e.g. 0:34). There’s a nice cry at 2:26. In the next chorus plays rapid arpeggios (starting at 2:37) down and up and down and up for eight bars or so; there are more rapid runs in the next chorus (starting at 2:53). He’s building up a head of steam. Trane finishes his last chorus with the melody (3:18). He’s signaling that he’s done. Now Tommy Flanagan gets a piano solo – forgive me if I don’t offer some play-by-play; I’m burnt out. At 4:54 Trane starts to trade fours (that is, four bar phrases) with the drummer, Art Taylor. We return to the head at 6:25, for two choruses, and we’re out.

Ornette Coleman: Broad Way Blues

Ornette Coleman is an alto saxophonist and is Coltrane’s contemporary, a couple years younger. But, while Trane was based on the East Coast, Coleman matured out West, in Los Angeles. Nor did he apprentice in bebop. He created his own apprenticeship. Thus when he came East in 1959 no one knew what he was doing. He played a plastic alto sax and his compatriot, Don Cherry, played a funny looking little pocket trumpet. Are these guys for real, playing toy instruments and music that don’t make no sense no how. Sheesh! Yes, they’re for real. Some people dug them strait off, others had to warm up, and some never did.

He recorded “Broad Way Blues” in 1968 on New York is Now. It’s not a blues in any conventional way of thinking about such matters. And yet, in a somewhat less conventional way, it’s as all blues as “All Blues,” if not more so. Why don’t you give it a listen and see if it makes sense to you:

Make sense? Yes? No? Maybe? Or perhaps you did not try to make sense of it and it just sounded wonderful, though perhaps a bit sideways.

It sounded that way to me. When I tried to count it out, I got lost. So I looked at the sheet music. 22-bars long. That’s not a blues form, it’s not a 32-bar standard, it’s not made of 4-bar phrases (adding up to, say, 16 bars). And there are some bars in there that don’t count out to four beats; they’re in six. When solo they – Dewey Redman joins Ornette on tenor – time undergoes a different discipline, courtesy of Elvin Jones.

Let’s take it easy. I’ve been doing this for a while and my brain is running low on the neuro-transmitters that make for quick shifts of concentration. So I’m going to minimize my attempts get timings for you. But I’ll do this much: The melody starts at the beginning. That descending line at about 0:13 – the first one in the tune – is in six. We play a quick cyclic flurry across the bar and land on two quarter notes to end the first part of the head. We return to the opening figure at about 0:17, at bar 14, to begin the second part of the head. The descending line at 0:21 is in 6. We jump to come down in the next bar, up for a bar, and down for two. We’re at the end of the head. Starting at 0:28 we go around again, then into solos, where everything is up for grabs.

So listen and grab some why don’t you. Coleman is endlessly lyrical, no?

Tell me about the blues: Bird, Monk, Mingus

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.

Tell me about the blues: Count Basie, Duke Ellington

Now that we’ve seen some very different kinds of blues in jazz idioms – more or less traditional and more modern – let’s look at blues in Swing Era big band music.

Now that I’ve laid out the basic 12-bar form in the two previous posts I’m not going to spend so much time on that.

As you probably know, a standard jazz big band consists of a rhythm section plus saxophone, trumpet, and trombone sections. The rhythm section almost always has bass, drums, and piano. It may also include a guitarist and, in some bands, a Latin percussionist or two. Some bands carried a vocalist or two as well. The saxophones frequently doubled on other instruments, such as flute and clarinet. Ellington always had a clarinetist who only played clarinet.

Though we tend to think of jazz as being organized around improvising soloists, that’s not how big band jazz worked. It was as much a vehicle for composers and arrangers as for soloists. Soloists are assigned to play specific choruses in an arrangement in a way that allows the arrangement to have a coherent and compelling shape, often/usually culminating in a “shout” chorus near the end.

Count Basie: One O’Clock Jump, Blues in Hoss Flat

Let’s look at Count Basie’s first recording of “One O’Clock Jump” from 1937. It was to become his theme song. The Wikipedia article lays out the basics:

The melody derived from band members’ riffs—Basie rarely wrote down musical ideas, so Eddie Durham and Buster Smith helped him crystallize his ideas. The original 1937 recording of the tune by Basie and his band is noted for the saxophone work of Herschel Evans and Lester Young, trumpet by Buck Clayton, Walter Page on bass, and Basie himself on piano. The song is typical of Basie’s early riff style. The instrumentation is based on “head arrangements” where each section makes up their part based on what the other sections are playing. Individuals take turns improvising over the top of the entire sound.

The stuff about riffs and head arrangements is important. They just made this stuff up and, over time, figured out what to do with all those instruments in one organization. In the process some musicians came to specialize in writing arrangements for bands.

The tune starts out with the rhythm section, bass, drums, and piano (Basie), on a short vamp. The tune, that is, the blues form, starts at roughly 0:11. Notice that the guitar also enters, playing on every beat. That’s Freddie Green, who played with Basie for years. The second chorus starts at 0:28 – for those keeping track. The change should be obvious even if you aren’t counting bars. That’s followed by a tenor sax solo, which sounds like Lester Young, with backing riff by the trumpets. Then we have a trombone solo, with saxophone backing riffs. Another sax solo, now trumpet – notice how the backing riffs change from chorus to chorus. By this point we have a moderately thick texture. It thins out at 1:53 for piano, bass, and drums for a chorus. Now we bring the band back on riffs. Finally, the saxes have the standard melody at 2:27. That’s followed by another riff chorus and we’re done. This arrangement doesn’t have a proper shout chorus.

Think about that. We are over two-thirds of the way through the tune before we get the melody. Maybe the melody isn’t the point. It's mostly a way of attaching an identity to the tune. What’s important is the play between the various voices, soloists, and sections of the band.

“Blues in Hoss Flat” is from a 1959 album, Chairman of the Board. It’s by Basie, and tenor saxophonist and arranger, Frank Foster (we heard him in the previous post).

This one starts with the full band, no sneaking up on things with just the rhythm section. We’ve left the riff style behind. This was arranged from top to bottom, start to finish, by Frank Foster.

The tune starts at 0:07. Do you need me to tell you what’s going on? No, I didn’t think so. You can hear the call-and-response easily enough – typical of the blues. Now a trumpet solo, enter a sax soli with trumpet responding, then a trombone solo in dialog with trumpet figures. Time to calm things down (1:29) and then start building. Now the trumpets take it, 2:11; we’re at the shout chorus (hear Basie comping in the background) – ‘cause that’s how Frank likes to do things. Whew! Let’s calm things down as we take it to the end. Joe Newman ends it with some plunger work on the trumpet.

By 1959 bebop had been in the ascendent for over a decade and a half, and we’re heading toward modal jazz – Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue came out in ’59 as well. But Basie is playing pretty much the same style he had in the 1930s, though the arrangements had become more complex. That’s what he knew and liked, his fans too. Good enough.

Duke Ellington: C Jam Blues, The Mooche, Blues for New Orleans

What could be simpler than the melody for Duke Ellington’s “C Jam Blues?” We have just two pitches. This was recorded in 1942:

We start with just the rhythm section. Wellman Alvin "Junior" Raglin is playing bass, Sonny Greer on drums, and Ellington on piano. He starts right on the melody. In the second chorus (0:13) Ellington passes that two-note melody to the sax and plays backing figures. We get Ray Nance on violin for the third chorus. That’s probably Rex Stewart on cornet for the next solo. Then Ben Webster gives us a tenor sax solo followed by “Tricky” Joe Nanton on trombone. listen to that vocal style; it’s why they called him Tricky. Nanton and Stewart are playing with mutes. Barney Bigard takes a four-bar break on clarinet (1:50), then the band starts coming in as Bigard continues. We’ve got the full band at 2:21, with Bigard continuing, to take it out.

“The Mooche” is not a 12-bar blues, but it oozes blues from every pore. Call it an extended blues. This recording is from 1928 and it exemplifies Ellington’s so-called “jungle” style. That style is uniquely Ellington’s; it’s what made him famous.

Just listen to the tonal colors, the shimmering clarinet on top, Bubber Miley on plunger-muted trumpet in the background, to open. Sounds like the drummer (Sonny Greer) is playing temple blocks. Now we change it up (0:46), with trumpets playing the top line. It goes to the clarinet (Barney Bigard), in the lower register (1:10), with Lonnie Johnson answering on guitar. Then Baby Cox does a nasty vocal (1:30) and Bubber Miley returns (1:54), with answers from Johnny Hodges on alto sax. We go back to the beginning (2:17) and start fading to the end at 2:51.

Tell me about the blues: Did they originate in New Orleans?

In a recent post Ted Gioia considers the possibility that the blues originated in New Orleans. After considerable discussion:

All this is significant and enlightening, but insufficient to prove that New Orleans was the birthplace of the blues. But it does suggest that blues was a significant ingredient in its commercial music scene at a fairly early stage. My considered judgment is that New Orleans was the source of “blues-inflected jazz”—but that’s a very different claim than citing it as the home of all blues. And as all the available evidence shows, early jazz borrowed ingredients from every imaginable source—military music, spirituals, opera arias, etc. The fact that an idiom showed up in a New Orleans jazz performance is no proof that it was invented in New Orleans.

After further discussion of just how the blues wound up in New Orleans and how innovation spreads he says:

My assessment of the totality of this evidence suggests that the blues has very old roots, originating with performers who found new ways of playing African-inflected music in the New World—but typically in rural areas where they could remain immune to many of the influences linked to commercial trends in American music. The blues style eventually became urbanized in the closing years of the 19th century, and New Orleans was probably the first city where this style of music rose to prominence. It almost certainly arrived there as part of the larger migration from country to city—just as it later participated in the ensuing emigration of African-Americans from South to North. The idea that this path of dissemination went the other way around—with city musicians from New Orleans relocating to remote sharecropper plantations—is much harder to accept. That simply wasn’t the way people moved in those years.

* * * * *

This is the fourth post in my series, “Tell me about the blues.” The series is tagged with the label, tell me blues.

Tell me about the blues: All Blues, Footprints, Simone

Now that we’ve listened to a bit of Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Reds Allen, it would seem logical to move ahead in time, just a bit. That is, to take a historical approach. Perhaps the logical thing to do would be to look at Count Basie and Duke Ellington. That would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. It gets us into the Swing Era, which it the next major style, and big bands. But that’s not the logic I have in mind. Oh, we’ll get around to Basie and Duke soon enough, but want to jump ahead several decades, to mid-century.

Why? To give you a sense of just what can happen to a musical form over time, to give you a sense of scope and boundaries of the blues.

All Blues

“All Blues” doesn’t really sound like a blues, not a down home, dyed in the wool, old time blues. But it IS a blues, it really is, it says so in the title – but we already know that’s not a sure indication, don’t we? Moreover it’s on an album called Kind of Blue, the best-selling jazz album of all time and, for that matter, one of the very best. Think of it as a modern high speed “bullet” train, like they have in Japan, in contrast to one of those old trains pulled by a steam engine. But it still runs on two rails.

Miles Davis released the album in 1959. He’s credited with “All Blues.” The musicians on the date are stellar: Davis on trumpet, Julian “Cannonball” Adderley on alto Sax, John Coltrane on tenor sax, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb. Let’s listen to it before figuring out why it’s a blues. The tune proper starts at about 0:19 with the entrance of the trumpet:

It sounds sleek and modern. Notice, first of all, that it isn’t in 4/4 time, which is standard for the majority of jazz tunes, blues as well. It’s in 6/8, giving it a lilting feel.

It starts with an intro consisting of a piano tremolo and a repeating bass line, called an ostinato. Then the two saxes enter in harmony, playing a line that mirrors the bass line. The trumpet enters at 0:19, playing a simple line that alternates between only two pitches; the bass and saxes continue as before. Four bars later, at roughly 0:29, things change. The harmony changes – as the blues form dictates – and the trumpet joins the saxes in a simple moving line for two bars while the bass continues as before. Then it’s back to the initial pattern, both saxes and trumpet, for two bars. The bass continues. Everything changes nine bars into the form, at 0:42.

Of course the harmony changes. The saxes have a different line, but a simple one; same for the trumpet. Not only that, but the bass drops the ostinato it had been playing since the beginning, but only for two bars. In bars 11 and 12 the bass returns to the ostinato and the harmony changes accordingly; the trumpet and saxes harmonize on a simple melodic phrase.

So, while “All Blues” doesn’t sound like either “St. Louis Blues” or “Muggles,” it does follow a 12-bar structure that is divided into three different 4-bar phrases. It IS a blues, albeit of a different kind.

That first chorus is followed by a 4-bar interlude where the saxes mirror the bass, as in the introduction, but the trumpet drops out. Then we have another full chorus, as before. That’s followed by another 4-bar interlude. Miles enters at roughly 1:46 for the first solo. The bass continues its ostinato. Miles plays four continuous choruses, no interludes between them. Then:

• a 4-bar interlude, four choruses by Cannonball Adderley on alto sax;
• a 4-bar interlude, four choruses by John Coltrane on tenor sax;
• a 4-bar interlude, four choruses by Bill Evans on piano, and finally:
• a 4-bar interlude, and we return to the tune, playing it twice as in the beginning;
• there’s another 4-bar interlude, and Miles does a very simple solo for one last chorus – it could almost be mistaken for a vamp.

Here’s another version of “All Blues.” It’s from a live performance in 1964 in Milan. Except for Miles, the personnel has changed: Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on drums. It’s at a much faster tempo than the previous version. Shorter mirrors the bass, then Miles comes in on the melody, playing more freely. You can figure out the rest if you wish.

Footprints

Let’s look another of these sleek modern blues in triple time. This is Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints” from Adam’s Apple (1967). Shorter is playing tenor sax, with Herbie Hancock on piano, Reggie Workman on bass, and Joe Chambers on bass. I’m not going to go into the level of detail I did for “All Blues,” but I will note that it is in 6/8 time and has an ostinato bass, except for bars 9 and 10. That bass line is part of the composition.

Here’s another recording of “Footprints.” This is with Miles Davis, again in 1967, Miles Smiles. Ron Carter is on bass, Herbie Hancock on piano, and Tony Williams on drums. Notice the faster tempo. But we have the same ostinato bass line; as I indicated, it’s part of the tune.

Here Wayne Shorter is playing a duet with bassist Esperanza Spalding in 2013. Shorter starts and Spalding picks up with the ostinato. Notice how she elaborates on it.