Rehearsing The Blues

In Motian (RIP Paul Motian)

Paul Motian, who died today at the age of eighty, was the first jazz drummer I ever heard, on Bill Evans's Sunday At The Village Vanguard. I never tried to incorporate his style into my own as a drummer  - it was too personal, too close to his own personality and history for me to try to emulate. Now, I'm glad I chose the way I did. Hindsight would have only made me cringe at how badly I would have approximated one of drumming's greatest artists.

For several months, I've toyed with the idea if writing a piece on Motian and Roy Haynes. Two of, when I first came up with the idea, the last living drummers from the 1940s and 1950s, their styles have evolved drastically over decades of experimentation. Play a Bill Evans record and a Jakob Bro record to a young jazz fan, and I'll bet he'd be puzzled by the obvious similarities between two drummers who are seemingly as obviously different.

Motian, in the 1970s, discarded the airy lightness of the 1960s, just as he had discarded the more conventional approach he had in the 1950s. But he never lost the space in his playing. Getting rid of the soft, light touch of his work with the Bill Evans trio cut away only distractions from his musical essence - none of the essence itself. I think of Paul as a minimalist player, one who used very few notes, but this is not in fact the case. He could often be a very busy player, filling a track with myriad sounds from his drums and punching out driving, wave-like solos.

It was his individual notes, the strike of a stick or a brush on drumhead or cymbal, that were minimal. There is no baggage on a drumbeat from Paul Motian, no needless whisper of the brush bristles, no rattle from a too-loose snare. Every note was chosen carefully to fit with every other note, but also to stand alone. Few drummers, old or young, can say as much for their own playing. Paul was no minimalist - he was a detailist, and as with a great poet or a great painter (of whatever style), specificity and care in the creation of one's art can only enhance it. Paul Motian not only enhanced his own playing this way, but the playing of dozens of other musicians, on dozens of records. Thankfully, we still have these - and the ability to click "repeat," over and over and over. RIP, Paul - you will be missed.

The Jazz Internet, Part 1: Josh Jackson

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This is the first installment in a series of interviews with jazz critics and bloggers on the topic of the internet as a medium for jazz writing.

Josh Jackson, of WBGO, is a bit of an anomaly in this series. He doesn't write about jazz, he broadcasts it, and his view of the internet as a medium for jazz is therefore very different from the rest of my interviewees. But it's an interesting view, and an essential one. The transition from radio to the internet is complex, and many of its facets translate into the wider internet transition of the jazz community. Read on:

JW: Josh, your work for WBGO (including Live At The Village Vanguard with NPR and The Checkout) obviously relies on the internet a good deal, for streaming audio, etc. A good place to start this interview off might be just for me to ask for your own perception of how the internet has shaped your work in jazz, both in terms of how and what you can produce.

Roundup #6 (Hip-Hop, etc.)

^Exile

Jay-Z & Kanye West, Watch The Throne

When I first heard Jay-Z and Kanye West's collaboration, Watch The Throne, a day or two after its release, my initial reaction was boredom. A few months later, my feelings are strikingly similar, with very few changes. In all, the record strikes me as two very good rappers telling the world how good they are. If this doesn't sound much different from any of Jay-Z or Kanye's previous output, consider this: instead of creating a fascinating blend of two distinct styles complete with distinctive production and cadence, Watch The Throne is, for the most part, a series of similar-sounding tracks made by a variety of producers, over which two of the greatest rappers in the world brag about how rich and awesome they are, seemingly not noticing any changes in the song they're rapping over or the overall flow of the album. Two notable exceptions are "Lift Off," which features Jay-Z's wife, Beyoncé, and "Otis," which "features" (a creative way of saying "heavily samples," a term also used for Marvin Gaye on the album’s last track) Otis Redding. Both tracks are distinguished by more personal production - instead of just being a Lex Luger beat with an ominous and repetitive loop over it, we get heavy, swirling synth sounds and thick beats reminiscent of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. West is at his swaggering best on "Lift Off," bending words with that distinctive voice and creatively using auto tune and melody. Jay-Z sounds good, too, but part of the reason this song is so good is that it sounds more like a Kanye track featuring Beyoncé and Jay-Z than a collaboration. That's in contrast to "Otis," which has catchy and energetic production complemented by the swaggering rhymes of the two rappers - it's the one point in the album where their boasting sounds both self-aware and true. "New watch alert," Jay-Z spits, and the idiocy of such a statement is there, as well as the awe that accompanies the offhand statement of such privilege as fact. West is in great form, his voice growling like it's 2006 again. These tracks are worth a lot - but they aren't worth the price of this entire, mostly empty album.

Why Aren't We Talking About... Don Sleet's "All Members"?

Who was Downbeat's trumpeter of the year from 1956 to 1958? Was it Miles Davis? Chet Baker? Dizzy Gillespie? Lee Morgan? Clark Terry? Nope, it was Don Sleet, who recorded just one album, in 1961, and who died in 1987, at the age of 48.

Roundup #5 (Jazz/Hip-Hop)

^ Casey Veggies

James Carter, At The Crossroads (Decca/EmArcy)

There’s no doubt that At The Crossroads, the new James Carter organ trio album on Emarcy, is competent, interesting and well-recorded. I want to give it a good review, believe me. And far be it from me to tell anyone how to make their music. But the fact is that an album like At The Crossroads is a step backwards for organ trio music. 1958 was a great year, don’t get me wrong, but it’s 2011, and we’ve already had Larry Young show us what the potential of organ-based music can be. Before 1964, At The Crossroads was the epitome of funky, hard-driving hard-bop. But, as I said, it is definitely no longer before 1964.

Do you want an album that will take you back to the good old days? This is it. But if you want to hear what an organ trio can really do, buy Into Somethin’ or Unity by Larry Young.