Tag: Stan Getz

Take five and all that jazz

take-five-jazz
Photo of sax player by Konstantin Aal www.unsplash.com

Warwick’s annual Jumpers and Jazz festival took me back to a day at the dentist in Maleny. I was lying prone, mouth jammed with all sorts of stuff. Soft, melodic saxophone music drifted down from the ceiling (with the poster of the Blue Mountains).
“Than Gltz?” I garbled.
Roger removed the suction hose “What’s that now?”
“Is that Stan Getz?”
“No, but good guess,” he said, replacing the suction hose.
“What’s your best guess?”
“Chrli Prker,” I choked out.
“No, not Charlie Parker – it’s Paul Desmond.”
“Ach, Dve bubck!” I replied and the conversation went on like that.

People who know I write songs often take a stab at my influences – is it Paul Kelly, Loudon Wainwright, Joni? Well, yes, but my first musical interest as a teenager (15) was jazz. Somewhere (probably in a box in the garage), are six Dave Brubeck quartet LPs. I have promised to will all such albums to my jazz-mad niece.

After I emerged from a childhood of listening to my parents’ records (classical, Scottish, opera) I discovered jazz.
First was pianist Phineas Newborn Jnr, who was famous for playing entire pieces with just the left hand. Then came the Modern Jazz Quartet, Brubeck, Oscar Peterson and so on. Then I discovered blues. But before I could truly get immersed in waking up one morning (with an awful aching head..Ed), along came the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Dave Brubeck and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond pioneered jazz in unconventional timings, headlined of course by the remarkable Take Five (1959). Despite the dire misgivings of his record company’s sales force at the time, Brubeck insisted it be released and was rewarded with an unlikely No 1 hit. In 1961, singer Carmen McRae also sang a version of Paul Desmond’s composition on the album Take Five Live. Ah, you didn’t know it had words, did you?

Take Five is a nod to the unconventional tempo of 5/4 (five beats to the measure), which means your drummer has to be masterful). Brubeck was interviewed in 1995 by Paul Zollo in his 730-page book, Songwriters on Songwriting. My well-thumbed copy reveals Brubeck telling Zollo how the record company’s sales people tried to cut Take Five off at the knees. They said it would not work because it wasn’t in 4/4 and people couldn’t dance to it. Moreover, they baulked at Brubeck’s album Time Out because it was all original tunes in odd time signatures.
“So I was breaking a whole bunch of rules. And then the album turned out to be the strongest selling album in years. So they were wrong!” he told Zollo.
“It’s still the most played jazz tune, maybe in the world.”
A few film makers agreed.Take Five was also used in movies including Mighty Aphrodite and Pleasantville.

Brubeck and Desmond may have pioneered 5/4 in popular music, but others picked up on it, namely film composer Lalo Schifrin. His thematic introduction to Mission Impossible is impossible, once heard, to remove from the ear. There are many others. Musician Dylan Ryche curated a Spotify playist of 48 songs in 5/4 dubbed – ‘Why not?’
Here you will find songs by Taylor Swift, Sting, Glenn Hansard, Jethro Tull, Radiohead, Sky, Blind Faith, Primus and that Andrew Lloyd Webber earworm from Jesus Christ Superstar, ‘Everything’s Alright’.
I’m not convinced that listening to multiple songs in 5/4 counts as entertainment, but the playlist shows that imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery.

My personal favourite 5/4 composition is multi instrumentalist and beatboxer Mal Webb’s re-creation of Geoff Mack’s Australian country standard, ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’. This required him to find 67 Australian place names with five syllables, in itself a giant task. You may have bumped in to Mal leading workshops or impromptu brass bands when we used to have big music festivals.

So last week when I was out walking along Warwick’s main street, I could hear Blue Rondo a la Turk (Brubeck), streaming out of speakers attached to street light poles.
Warwick’s Jumper and Jazz festival kicked off last Wednesday with volunteers dressing street trees in the ‘yarn bombing’ style. The statue of one-time Queensland Premier T.J Byrnes in the town’s main intersection was dressed in a multi-coloured shawl and beanie. A stage was erected in front of the town hall and jazz performers started doing their soundchecks. Jazz, as you’d know, don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
But musicians should never really be boxed in to any one genre. Just as rock bands relish the solos (lead guitar, drums, bass), so too jazz musicians will cheerfully improvise for 20 minutes or more.
If you have never heard of Miles Davis, have a listen on Spotify – you will be astonished. I have two Miles Davis albums, the 1959 album Kind of Blue, which contained the aforementioned So What – a classic modal jazz tune. In 1970 or so I bought the double LP, Bitches Brew which runs for 94 minutes but contains only six tracks. It is not easy listening (but it’s yours eventually, dear niece!)

Meanwhile, close to the wood stove
I’ve been trying to avoid using the word ‘meanwhile’ when I want to move on to something else. So this time I will say, in due course, we (the acapella choir, East Street Singers), contributed to the jazz festival. Jumpers and Jazz was not held in 2020 so this year it’s been a case of blowing the dust off the songbooks which contain tunes you’d all know – Bill Bailey, Chatanooga Choo Choo, Five Foot Two and so on. There are some pretty melodies in there by real composers (as opposed to self-taught songwriters). They include The Way You Look Tonight, Moon River and Blue Moon. Some of us have been on a steep learning curve for today’s shopping centre gig, but we have a really good teacher, Jill Hulme, who also arranged some of the songs.
The various Jumpers and Jazz activities, including live music, art exhibitions, tree jumpers tours, sheep dog trials, car rallies and steam train excursions, have drawn a lot of visitors to the town. Because we are outside the Greater Brisbane Covid zone we feel less constrained in crowds, although quite a few people are wearing masks.

While spending this week committing jazz songs to memory, I realised how seldom I use unconventional timing in my own songs.
Most are in 4/4, some in 3/4 (waltz time), 2/4 (think bluegrass) and occasionally 6/8 which is like a speeded up waltz.
Our bush band occasionally required me to to play jigs in 9/8 (Rocky Road to Dublin, Blue Rondo a la Turk), but in the main I avoid tricky timings.
I should have said it is not a new concept – classical composers like Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky and Mr Bach have been confounding conductors since the 19th century with various tempo changes. Celtic and eastern European musicians also relish dance tunes in odd time signatures.
So here’s one you all know – Pink Floyd’s Money (from Dark Side of the Moon). Now you can impress your friends by saying (learnedly) “that’s in 7/4, you know?”
Which reminds me of the time a musician friend posted a meme on Facebook, as a response to people complaining about the (Covid) times we live in.
“These are not difficult times”, it said “ 5/4,5/8 6/8,7/8 9/8,11/8 and 13/8…these are difficult times.”

Ten songs that influenced teenage me

ten-songs-influenced
Image (and research): Wikipedia

Most of my musician friends spend time on Facebook, so that’s why I probably saw so many of those ‘10 albums which influenced your musical tastes’ challenges. It is no surprise this diversion has become popular in the uncertain time of COVID-19 because it allowed us to yearn, just a little, for those carefree days when music helped shape our lives.

You can tell how much the ‘challenge’ means, as so many participants cannot leave it at 10. Ah, the warm feeling of remembering a relationship that budded and flowered, just as Cat Stevens released Tea for the Tillerman. Maybe you’d met a brown-eyed girl (called Rhonda); perhaps you lived in a town without pity. Or it really got you when Ray Davies wrote, ‘I’m not like everybody else’.

I walked in to the ‘challenge’ by posting an ironic observation that nobody had nominated me to do anything, My record producer friend Pix Vane-Mason popped up, asking about the music that influenced my teenage years.

It didn’t take long for me to break the rules and make my own mini-FOMM, with explanations and reviews (most just post album covers on 10 successive days, with no comment at all). A few people who saw the first entry were surprised to find I was a pre-pubescent jazz head. No 1 was Carmen McRae’s version of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’. The song version of Brubeck’s famous jazz instrumental (in 5/4 time) came out in late 1961, when I was about to turn 13. I’d not heard the original instrumental version (1958), but this set me off on an exploration of modern jazz.

In 1962, pop music began to intrude, starting with Cliff Richard’s ‘The Young Ones’ in 1961. In 1962, I quickly became impressed with Cliff’s backing band, The Shadows. Original and distinctive tunes like ‘Apache’ and ‘Flingle Bunt’ can still be heard on the radio today. Check out this 2017 version of the No 1 hit ‘Apache’ (1960) when Hank Marvin and the original members reunited for one final tour.

 

(There’s a prize for the first one to tell me which politician they think the drummer resembles. Ed)

In 1963, the fickle fifteen year old was torn between folk (there was a folk club in town) and the peer pressure to go with those brash young pop/rock groups from the UK. This was the year The Beatles penetrated the Kiwi consciousness.

I liked the two covers the Beatles did early on (A Taste of Honey and Till There was You) which hinted at the musicality to come. But the music I remember most from that year was a collection of trad folk songs by an extraordinary singer, Odetta. It was a hit record in NZ.

An incredibly eclectic mix of music came through the AM radio in 1964. The Beatles dominated the charts – five songs in the top 20 including numbers 1 and 2, and nine in the top 100. But they had to share Billboard’s top 10 with Louie Armstrong (Hello Dolly), Roy Orbison (Pretty Woman), the Beach Boys (I get Around) and Dean Martin (Everybody Loves Somebody). I really liked vocal harmonies so the Beach Boys almost always got my vote. But the jazz influence was still there, so even though it seems cheesy now, Stan Getz’s collaboration with Brazilian singer Astrid Gilberto, was, as Danny R said on FB, perhaps our first taste of ‘world music’.

Difficult as it was to pluck one song from the plethora of hits in 1965, I could not go past ‘Rescue Me’ by Fontella Bass. It was released a few months shy of my 17th birthday. I bought the record and played it to death. Nothing wrong with a good old fashioned teenage crush, eh! This was the year that brought us ‘King of the Road’, ‘I Can’t Help Myself’, ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’, ‘Downtown’, ‘Help’ and ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’, so there was a lot of competition.

(Rescue Me)

Aretha Franklin is sometimes mistakenly credited with this song, which was written by record producers Carl Smith and Raynard Miner (Bass claimed she co-wrote the song but was never credited). The other song that grabbed me in1965 was ‘I Got You Babe’ by Sonny and Cher (Cher also recorded ‘Rescue Me’ in 1974). What was that I said about teenage crushes!

Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Early Morning Rain’ was a hit for folk trio Peter Paul and Mary in 1965. A version by George Hamilton IV made No 9 on the country charts in 1966. This was the year Simon and Garfunkel emerged, suitcase and guitar in hand, also a beautiful song full of imagery (Elusive Butterfly of Love). But this was also the year of ‘Doobie Doobie Doo’ (say no more) and the Monkees, a manufactured band provided with catchy hits by a then-unknown Neil Diamond. For all that, folk/country music was starting to penetrate the pop charts courtesy of artists like Dylan, PP&M and Gordon Lightfoot. ‘Early Morning Rain’ covers prevailed for decades, including Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eva Cassidy and Australia’s Wendy Matthews, A great song is always just that, no matter the genre.

No 9 & 10 in music that influenced me as a teenager makes a reference to J.S Bach. I was raised in a household where classical music was always in the background. Mum played the piano and organ, so naturally enough, the Bach-inspired introductions to hit songs in 1967 (the year I turned 19), pressed all of the right buttons. The late Ray Manzarek, keyboard player with The Doors candidly spoke about the inspiration for the intro to ‘Light my Fire’, Bach’s Invention No. 8, BWV 779. Many piano players who ended up in rock bands had a classical background. So when the organ intro from Procol Harem’s No 1 hit ‘Whiter shade of Pale’ first emerged from the AM radios we owned in those days, the similarity between that and Bach’s Air on the G String was immediately identified. Matthew Fisher’s Hammond organ intro eased the way for Gary Brooker’s distinctive vocals and a global hit was born. Jim Morrison’s smoky vocals on ‘Light My Fire’ emerged from Ray Manzarek’s attacking organ intro.

Later, in my 20s, the classical/jazz influence continued with a love of 70s bands like Blood Sweat and Tears, Genesis, Sky, The Nice, the Moody Blues and Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

While Joni Mitchell’s songs (Both Sides Now and the Circle Game) were hits for Judy Collins and Buffy Saint- Marie in 1967, Joni’s first album did not appear until 1968 (when I turned 20). Little did we know, 19 albums later, what an incredible influence she would be for anyone with a keen sense of music, poetry and art.

My bad – I forgot to mention ‘Friday on My Mind’ (The Easybeats, 1966), selected as one of the best songs of the last 1,000 years by Richard Thompson, Here’s RT’s version.

In the Facebook posts I also neglected to mention a key influence on my songwriting, Ray Davies of The Kinks. Those well-crafted songs (e,g, ‘Sunny Afternoon’, ‘Dead End Street’, ‘Lola’ and ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’), stitched sardonic social comment into a fabric of catchy and rhythmic tunes. His songs lived on in my lizard brain until I picked up a guitar aged 27 and discovered the circle of fifths, just like Ray!