Just wanted to submit some friendly criticism, for whatever it's worth (probably not much!). The lumping together of all “African” culture is something jazz musicians do a lot and it is a deeply inaccurate practice from both cultural and musical perspectives. It was a specific subset of African music that arrived here in the United States of America which did rely on a steady beat, at least some of their musical genres did, but in other parts of the new world there were African slaves that arrived with very different concepts of musical pulse and time. If it’s of interest, “The World That Made New Orleans” and “Cuba and its Music”, both by the one and only Ned Sublette, dig deep into these matters!
Hi Ryan! You are touching on a very important point. Indeed, my lack of knowledge of Cuban and other "Latin" diaspora music is a big blind spot. This past year I have been reading Sublette's CUBA AND IT'S MUSIC and Chris Washburne's LATIN JAZZ and talking to musicians involved in that world. Sublette calls Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" Cuban...no qualifier, simply "Cuban." I'm not quite ready to sign-off on that, but I'm thinking about it. If I ever produce my big book on jazz piano I need much more training in this area of the repertoire.
FWIW, in the final piece, the sentence saved from the old lede was, "Armstrong was surely not truly the first to use behind-the-beat phrasing; the practice runs back through the Afro-Latin diaspora."
I find the unbelievable variety of music and culture that arrived in the New World from Africa, and the way in which it influenced the subsequent hybrid musical genres (i.e. Jazz, Guajiro-son, Samba, Tango, etc...), to be endlessly fascinating!
Was reminded of this quote from the new Henry Threadgill book: "..You can't explain art. It simply doesn't work that way. .. I find that the less I say about my music, the better. If I say anything, it tends to be oblique or oracular: words meant to jar the listener out of the complacency of expectation." Somehow still finding Easily Slip Into Another World's 400 pages of Threadgill "not explaining his art" a thrilling page-turner to be sure.
No question really, just another book recommendation.
The first lede may not have been right for The Nation (or maybe even for an article focused on Satchmo), but I'm glad it found a place here - I love that kind of stuff!
YES, on several counts. First, I've been working on Armstrong's classic hot 5's and 7's it seems like my whole life. I bought a book of transcriptions in my early teens back in the 1960s and there's a wealth of wisdom and knowledge in them. Also, they're a b*tch to play, the time, the time. And you're right, he still had it in the 50s and 60s. My favorite track is an a capella thing caught during a recording session for something called "Laughin' Louie," a novelty item of little interest. He played this beautiful etude, yes, we can call it that, that he'd been practicing since forever. Graceful time, ending on a glorious high F (G in trumpet key).
Second, my good buddy, Charlie "Blues People" Keil took bass drum lessons from Gus Helmecke when he was a kid in Darien, CT. Helmecke had played bass drum for Sousa's band and was the highest paid member of the band, even more than the star cornet and euphonium soloists. Why? Because he drove the band. Charlie told me that all the black drummers would go to see Sousa when he was in town so they could see and hear Helmecke. He had schtick, too.
Charlie's been publishing on the groove trail since 1966, when he published "Motion and Feeling through Music" in the (august) Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. He took direct aim at orthodox thinking on these matters (e.g. Leonard Meyer's "Emotion and Meaning" in music) and argued for the importance of embodiment and actual performance, you know, music as experience, not music as theorized. You can find that article here: : http://www.jstor.org/stable/427969
In 1995 he updates three decades of research into the groove, "The Theory of Participatory Discrepancies: A Progress Report," Ethnomusicology (1995), http://www.jstor.org/stable/852198
[Shameless plug]
More recently I've edited a collection of his informal pieces, and one or two of my own, in Playing for Peace: Reclaiming our Human Nature (2022). From the table of contents:
Thriving and Jiving Among Friends and Family: The Place of this Volume in the Peace Series
Common Glad Impulse
What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun?
Paideia Con Salsa
Dance to the Music: The Kids Owned the Day
Jamming for Peace
The Hungry March Band helps Hoboken Celebrate Public Control of Its Waterfront
Peace & Joy Unlimited: The Festive in Everyday Life
Oh, I forgot. On the Armstrong transcriptions, if you look at the copyright dates on them it's clear that they were done very soon after the recordings came out. I assume they went on sale at the time, no other reason to transcribe them, not back in the 1920s.
As a longtime journalist, writer, editor, and, now, literary biographer, I applaud your advisors and ultimately you for ejecting your click lede. Too digressive, expository, and distant from the core Armstrong story. Carry on.
Howdy Ethan, I'd love to have a conversation with you some time about clicktracks - I would ardently disagree that they are commonly used in record production. Except in film soundtracks, where they are obviously needed. But...the matter of how and where individual musicians emphasize the beat, that's so interesting and I've come to realize that where a person puts the beat makes a huge difference, maybe the principal difference, in how much I enjoy a performance. There are some players who have such a secure sense of rubato that they can make you feel like there are about 12 minutes between one eighth note and another, and yet they come down right in the center of the beat somehow, to me it's pure magic. People I would offer as examples are Billy Preston, Taj Mahal, classical player Samuel Sanders, and OMG Brian Blade. Is it possible that Brian Blade is always a micro-second ahead of the beat? His work with Wayne Shorter really blows me away. Without a Net is incredible. Anyway, am I delusional here, or do you know what I'm talking about? Your ears are much better than mine and I'd love to know what you think.
Right on! I too admire Brian Blade of course. He's very exciting, but I don't think he's ahead of the beat really. I'll have to have another listen. At any rate, beat placement is a big part of everything, that's for sure.
Blade has this, um..." float-y, wide beat" , imho. Whether he's playing at a tempo that's dirge slow or light speed fast, the "feel" is...spacious, yet rooted...
I was just talking to the great artist Cbabi Bayoc (his art ended up the cover of Prince's The Rainbow Children and he's done some work for Peter Martin including the cover art for his newest album, which I am now lucky enough to own the original of… :o ) in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago and he told us that how for him, it's the process that matters. Once he creates a piece, it's out there and he's not precious about it at all. Many of us, myself included, have a hard time letting go, especially if we think it's a great idea. Maybe it is, but maybe it doesn't belong where we think it does. Your initial lede for the article is probably a case of this. OTOH, sharing it on your blog with us is a great place for it.
Thanks for sharing these perspectives, Ethan. In his book "A Work in Progress...on Being a Musician", Chick Corea wrote, "But for my personal tastes, the best grooves in music can never be attained using a metronome or mechanical click to guide the music's rhythm and tempo." (extract from the chapter entitled "Making Time", pages 37 and 38). Indeed. The work of Billy Higgins and Mickey Roker could never be reduced to a mechanical click. Their art is sublime -- not so obvious.
Stuart Troy, my late husband, was a big fan of early Armstrong and we had Hot 5 and Hot 7 records, I do believe, and passed them on to someone who would appreciate them. I do have a memory of listening to them with him.
I am fascinated how modern beatmaking (i.e. everything that came after Dilla) works very hard to make it sound like things are out of time/there is no metronome. I shamelessly do it all the time. All the while of course there is a click, folks are just dispacing beats in ingenious ways. So great!!!
“Ethan Iverson finds his click” vs “Ethan Iverson feels his click”
Couple other thoughts I am parked underneath the marquee of Stanford theater in Palo Alto, California a nonprofit that restores and shows old movies such as last month “Frankenstein”. (“it lives” or a paraphrase— popped into my mind as I read your lede) I’m digressing, but Frankenstein’s actually the composer, not the song. The scientist not the doctor. James Shapiro, at dartmouth in early eighties we were actually his first class after getting his to graduate degree and it was Marlowe not Shakespeare said that if you write a paper and cannot come up with a clever title, that you have not really written much of a paper. I wrote one called “synchronicity of the devilry” about Faust and he changed change it to “synchrony of the devil”.
Oh, and I interrupted Mads Tolling with Tammy Hall and Marcus Shelby at SF Jazz second stage to shout out that “Wichita Lineman” was actually about Texas not Kansas. As is Tammy Hall. And it turns out they changed the lyric to be more listener- friendly, but not truthful. Title, not just lyric.
Lastly —ha! — Duffy barking madly, passenger seat reminds me of the idea that “God” is not just “dog” spelled backwards, but a typo.
Ethan, this is fantastic. The Armstrong text is fun for music insiders, but the lesson on "killing your darlings" is so valuable for anyone who creates, and I loved getting a glimpse into how that worked for artists like Brahms and Mark Morris.
Here's an observation about your playing: I've always been struck by the concision in your solos. On albums such as Common Practice, you come in, say what you have to say, and then get out of the way, which makes me think of older players who just had to play shorter solos because of the limits of recording technology—Bud, Bird, etc. It's totally different from the style of soloing on, say, Miles at the Plugged Nickel. I'd always thought, Iverson is the last guy to play a long, drawn-out blues; it's just not his style. And then that's exactly what you did with At The Bells And Motley! I love it, but it sure was a surprise.
Just wanted to submit some friendly criticism, for whatever it's worth (probably not much!). The lumping together of all “African” culture is something jazz musicians do a lot and it is a deeply inaccurate practice from both cultural and musical perspectives. It was a specific subset of African music that arrived here in the United States of America which did rely on a steady beat, at least some of their musical genres did, but in other parts of the new world there were African slaves that arrived with very different concepts of musical pulse and time. If it’s of interest, “The World That Made New Orleans” and “Cuba and its Music”, both by the one and only Ned Sublette, dig deep into these matters!
Hi Ryan! You are touching on a very important point. Indeed, my lack of knowledge of Cuban and other "Latin" diaspora music is a big blind spot. This past year I have been reading Sublette's CUBA AND IT'S MUSIC and Chris Washburne's LATIN JAZZ and talking to musicians involved in that world. Sublette calls Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" Cuban...no qualifier, simply "Cuban." I'm not quite ready to sign-off on that, but I'm thinking about it. If I ever produce my big book on jazz piano I need much more training in this area of the repertoire.
FWIW, in the final piece, the sentence saved from the old lede was, "Armstrong was surely not truly the first to use behind-the-beat phrasing; the practice runs back through the Afro-Latin diaspora."
Thanks for comment!
I find the unbelievable variety of music and culture that arrived in the New World from Africa, and the way in which it influenced the subsequent hybrid musical genres (i.e. Jazz, Guajiro-son, Samba, Tango, etc...), to be endlessly fascinating!
Was reminded of this quote from the new Henry Threadgill book: "..You can't explain art. It simply doesn't work that way. .. I find that the less I say about my music, the better. If I say anything, it tends to be oblique or oracular: words meant to jar the listener out of the complacency of expectation." Somehow still finding Easily Slip Into Another World's 400 pages of Threadgill "not explaining his art" a thrilling page-turner to be sure.
No question really, just another book recommendation.
It's on my list! thanks!
The first lede may not have been right for The Nation (or maybe even for an article focused on Satchmo), but I'm glad it found a place here - I love that kind of stuff!
thanks mucho!
YES, on several counts. First, I've been working on Armstrong's classic hot 5's and 7's it seems like my whole life. I bought a book of transcriptions in my early teens back in the 1960s and there's a wealth of wisdom and knowledge in them. Also, they're a b*tch to play, the time, the time. And you're right, he still had it in the 50s and 60s. My favorite track is an a capella thing caught during a recording session for something called "Laughin' Louie," a novelty item of little interest. He played this beautiful etude, yes, we can call it that, that he'd been practicing since forever. Graceful time, ending on a glorious high F (G in trumpet key).
Second, my good buddy, Charlie "Blues People" Keil took bass drum lessons from Gus Helmecke when he was a kid in Darien, CT. Helmecke had played bass drum for Sousa's band and was the highest paid member of the band, even more than the star cornet and euphonium soloists. Why? Because he drove the band. Charlie told me that all the black drummers would go to see Sousa when he was in town so they could see and hear Helmecke. He had schtick, too.
Charlie's been publishing on the groove trail since 1966, when he published "Motion and Feeling through Music" in the (august) Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. He took direct aim at orthodox thinking on these matters (e.g. Leonard Meyer's "Emotion and Meaning" in music) and argued for the importance of embodiment and actual performance, you know, music as experience, not music as theorized. You can find that article here: : http://www.jstor.org/stable/427969
In 1995 he updates three decades of research into the groove, "The Theory of Participatory Discrepancies: A Progress Report," Ethnomusicology (1995), http://www.jstor.org/stable/852198
[Shameless plug]
More recently I've edited a collection of his informal pieces, and one or two of my own, in Playing for Peace: Reclaiming our Human Nature (2022). From the table of contents:
Thriving and Jiving Among Friends and Family: The Place of this Volume in the Peace Series
Common Glad Impulse
What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun?
Paideia Con Salsa
Dance to the Music: The Kids Owned the Day
Jamming for Peace
The Hungry March Band helps Hoboken Celebrate Public Control of Its Waterfront
Peace & Joy Unlimited: The Festive in Everyday Life
Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/4p67bahh
Barnes & Noble: https://tinyurl.com/5vjf3kjt
nice comment and thanks for info!
Oh, I forgot. On the Armstrong transcriptions, if you look at the copyright dates on them it's clear that they were done very soon after the recordings came out. I assume they went on sale at the time, no other reason to transcribe them, not back in the 1920s.
As a longtime journalist, writer, editor, and, now, literary biographer, I applaud your advisors and ultimately you for ejecting your click lede. Too digressive, expository, and distant from the core Armstrong story. Carry on.
I hear you!
I disagree
Howdy Ethan, I'd love to have a conversation with you some time about clicktracks - I would ardently disagree that they are commonly used in record production. Except in film soundtracks, where they are obviously needed. But...the matter of how and where individual musicians emphasize the beat, that's so interesting and I've come to realize that where a person puts the beat makes a huge difference, maybe the principal difference, in how much I enjoy a performance. There are some players who have such a secure sense of rubato that they can make you feel like there are about 12 minutes between one eighth note and another, and yet they come down right in the center of the beat somehow, to me it's pure magic. People I would offer as examples are Billy Preston, Taj Mahal, classical player Samuel Sanders, and OMG Brian Blade. Is it possible that Brian Blade is always a micro-second ahead of the beat? His work with Wayne Shorter really blows me away. Without a Net is incredible. Anyway, am I delusional here, or do you know what I'm talking about? Your ears are much better than mine and I'd love to know what you think.
Right on! I too admire Brian Blade of course. He's very exciting, but I don't think he's ahead of the beat really. I'll have to have another listen. At any rate, beat placement is a big part of everything, that's for sure.
Blade has this, um..." float-y, wide beat" , imho. Whether he's playing at a tempo that's dirge slow or light speed fast, the "feel" is...spacious, yet rooted...
The French bake it in with "inegale", which is why French baroque music is the sexiest music out there.
I was just talking to the great artist Cbabi Bayoc (his art ended up the cover of Prince's The Rainbow Children and he's done some work for Peter Martin including the cover art for his newest album, which I am now lucky enough to own the original of… :o ) in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago and he told us that how for him, it's the process that matters. Once he creates a piece, it's out there and he's not precious about it at all. Many of us, myself included, have a hard time letting go, especially if we think it's a great idea. Maybe it is, but maybe it doesn't belong where we think it does. Your initial lede for the article is probably a case of this. OTOH, sharing it on your blog with us is a great place for it.
thanks much and nice comment
Thanks for sharing these perspectives, Ethan. In his book "A Work in Progress...on Being a Musician", Chick Corea wrote, "But for my personal tastes, the best grooves in music can never be attained using a metronome or mechanical click to guide the music's rhythm and tempo." (extract from the chapter entitled "Making Time", pages 37 and 38). Indeed. The work of Billy Higgins and Mickey Roker could never be reduced to a mechanical click. Their art is sublime -- not so obvious.
certainly true!!!
Stuart Troy, my late husband, was a big fan of early Armstrong and we had Hot 5 and Hot 7 records, I do believe, and passed them on to someone who would appreciate them. I do have a memory of listening to them with him.
A nice memory, Jane!
I am fascinated how modern beatmaking (i.e. everything that came after Dilla) works very hard to make it sound like things are out of time/there is no metronome. I shamelessly do it all the time. All the while of course there is a click, folks are just dispacing beats in ingenious ways. So great!!!
it is a profound science. Thanks for comment
“Ethan Iverson finds his click” vs “Ethan Iverson feels his click”
Couple other thoughts I am parked underneath the marquee of Stanford theater in Palo Alto, California a nonprofit that restores and shows old movies such as last month “Frankenstein”. (“it lives” or a paraphrase— popped into my mind as I read your lede) I’m digressing, but Frankenstein’s actually the composer, not the song. The scientist not the doctor. James Shapiro, at dartmouth in early eighties we were actually his first class after getting his to graduate degree and it was Marlowe not Shakespeare said that if you write a paper and cannot come up with a clever title, that you have not really written much of a paper. I wrote one called “synchronicity of the devilry” about Faust and he changed change it to “synchrony of the devil”.
Oh, and I interrupted Mads Tolling with Tammy Hall and Marcus Shelby at SF Jazz second stage to shout out that “Wichita Lineman” was actually about Texas not Kansas. As is Tammy Hall. And it turns out they changed the lyric to be more listener- friendly, but not truthful. Title, not just lyric.
Lastly —ha! — Duffy barking madly, passenger seat reminds me of the idea that “God” is not just “dog” spelled backwards, but a typo.
Scientist not the monster.
Ethan, this is fantastic. The Armstrong text is fun for music insiders, but the lesson on "killing your darlings" is so valuable for anyone who creates, and I loved getting a glimpse into how that worked for artists like Brahms and Mark Morris.
aw thanks so much!
You had me at click. I liked the old lede, but I get the Armstrong story should appeal to a broader readership than frustrated drummers.
hah! Yes I know just what you mean!
Hi Ethan. So, Silence in music. A fascinating area of enquiry and I’m not even going to mention 4’ 33’ ......
I don't have anything wise to say, but much of the time I really appreciate music with ample space. Thelonious Monk comes to mind...
Here's an observation about your playing: I've always been struck by the concision in your solos. On albums such as Common Practice, you come in, say what you have to say, and then get out of the way, which makes me think of older players who just had to play shorter solos because of the limits of recording technology—Bud, Bird, etc. It's totally different from the style of soloing on, say, Miles at the Plugged Nickel. I'd always thought, Iverson is the last guy to play a long, drawn-out blues; it's just not his style. And then that's exactly what you did with At The Bells And Motley! I love it, but it sure was a surprise.
Nice observation! Perhaps in the future I will be be playing longer solos -- when I have more to say ...
Yes, it is. You brought it to me.