a loose canon
The other night, playing at a jazz club on the Riverwalk, the group I was leading hit a funny groove. We pulled out some of our favorite recentish tunes, "The Boy is Mine" (Brandy & Monica), "It's Gonna Be Me" (NSync), "Movin' On Up" (from "The Jeffersons"), and several others that aren't considered standards from the Golden Age of American Music, but which are great raw material for a jazz journey.
We then kept going, into territory we hadn't done before: someone suggested we do "We Will Rock You," and we did, as a jazz tune. Then we went straight into "Careless Whisper," George Michael's best tune. Keep in mind that these things weren't done in the latter Miles Davis style, as pop instrumental sendups, but rather in the former Miles Davis style, reconditioned as real jazz tunes, with swing or bossa beats, instrumental improvisation, the whole bit.
That got me to thinking about how jazz musicians think about standards. The common thinking is that we mainly do stuff from the golden age because it was better composed and more rewarding, more romantic, with more intelligent and well-crafted lyrics, and all that. But really, now: take away George Gershwin's brilliantly simple music, and how good are Ira's lyrics after all? Someone like Wynton Marsalis, who often claims that the lyrics of old made more room for grown-up relationships and true romance between man and woman than do ones of our day, would have a hard time facing Ira against, say, Joan Baez, Dar Williams, or for that matter Reba McIntyre.
And, now that you mention it, jazz musicians don't really mine the trove of pop songs from yesteryear as much as we mine the trove of Broadway and movie musicals and Disney. If Miles had done in the 80s what he did in the 50s, he'd have been doing "Somewhere Out There" (from An American Tail) and not Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time."
So, we do stuff like Cole Porter's tunes from Red, Hot, and Blue and Gershwin's tunes from Porgy and Bess. You hear "Night and Day," "Summertime," "Someday My Prince Will Come," and occasionally stuff like "Surrey With the Fringe on Top." (Miles did killer versions of all those.) Where do you ever hear a jazz musician performing Andrews Sisters or Glenn Miller? "Rum and Coca-Cola," "Dream (When You're Feelin' Blue)," "It's Been a Long Long Time (Kiss Me Once and Kiss Me Twice)," "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree," "In the Mood," "Moonlight Serenade," all were huge huge hits that are still impressed on the American heart, and all are absent from the jazz bandstand.
So, when we do "Beauty and the Beast," "Never Had a Friend Like Me," and "Rainbow Connection," that's the stuff — less immediately popular but longer lasting — that puts us in touch with what jazz musicians were doing generations ago. On the other hand, we're in a great era for pop, when NSync can do songs that make rewarding sambas, Destiny's Child puts out stuff that Benny Goodman would have loved to get his hands on ("Bugaboo"), and at least a few jazz musicians out there are taking off the blinders and doing once again what every artist should be doing in the first place, each in his own craft: visiting the melodies and lyrics that are the soundtrack of our lives, and cracking them open to find riches.
We then kept going, into territory we hadn't done before: someone suggested we do "We Will Rock You," and we did, as a jazz tune. Then we went straight into "Careless Whisper," George Michael's best tune. Keep in mind that these things weren't done in the latter Miles Davis style, as pop instrumental sendups, but rather in the former Miles Davis style, reconditioned as real jazz tunes, with swing or bossa beats, instrumental improvisation, the whole bit.
That got me to thinking about how jazz musicians think about standards. The common thinking is that we mainly do stuff from the golden age because it was better composed and more rewarding, more romantic, with more intelligent and well-crafted lyrics, and all that. But really, now: take away George Gershwin's brilliantly simple music, and how good are Ira's lyrics after all? Someone like Wynton Marsalis, who often claims that the lyrics of old made more room for grown-up relationships and true romance between man and woman than do ones of our day, would have a hard time facing Ira against, say, Joan Baez, Dar Williams, or for that matter Reba McIntyre.
And, now that you mention it, jazz musicians don't really mine the trove of pop songs from yesteryear as much as we mine the trove of Broadway and movie musicals and Disney. If Miles had done in the 80s what he did in the 50s, he'd have been doing "Somewhere Out There" (from An American Tail) and not Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time."
So, we do stuff like Cole Porter's tunes from Red, Hot, and Blue and Gershwin's tunes from Porgy and Bess. You hear "Night and Day," "Summertime," "Someday My Prince Will Come," and occasionally stuff like "Surrey With the Fringe on Top." (Miles did killer versions of all those.) Where do you ever hear a jazz musician performing Andrews Sisters or Glenn Miller? "Rum and Coca-Cola," "Dream (When You're Feelin' Blue)," "It's Been a Long Long Time (Kiss Me Once and Kiss Me Twice)," "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree," "In the Mood," "Moonlight Serenade," all were huge huge hits that are still impressed on the American heart, and all are absent from the jazz bandstand.
So, when we do "Beauty and the Beast," "Never Had a Friend Like Me," and "Rainbow Connection," that's the stuff — less immediately popular but longer lasting — that puts us in touch with what jazz musicians were doing generations ago. On the other hand, we're in a great era for pop, when NSync can do songs that make rewarding sambas, Destiny's Child puts out stuff that Benny Goodman would have loved to get his hands on ("Bugaboo"), and at least a few jazz musicians out there are taking off the blinders and doing once again what every artist should be doing in the first place, each in his own craft: visiting the melodies and lyrics that are the soundtrack of our lives, and cracking them open to find riches.
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