TT 444: Standard Issue
the core repertoire in debate
For a fresh website, Everything Jazz, I quickly go into the debate concerning standards: Are they allowed to be recorded any more? Starring Bill Charlap, Phil Freeman, and Cecil Taylor:
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Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) had a column in Down Beat back when Cecil Taylor recorded “This Nearly Was Mine.” While praising Cecil’s interpretation, Baraka trashed the tune itself as “terrifyingly maudlin.” Cecil’s response? “Doesn’t that fool know I recorded that tune because I LIKE it?” This tidbit is cited in Phil Freeman’s excellent (imho) biography of Taylor, as well as Joe Goldberg’s ur-text, Jazz Masters of the Fifties. The same album, The World Of Cecil Taylor, has an exquisite rendition of “Lazy Afternoon.” Although Cecil’s renditions of these standards may have been heard as subversive by the avant garde renegades of the early’60s, it’s apparent that he thought otherwise.
I'm a big fan of absolutist stances in music, even when I personally think they're a bit goofy. In some ways that's the best Charlap album of them all, even though it's almost defiantly common-practice tunes; on the other hand, I've heard plenty of all-originals albums that are quite a bit less inventive. Still, who doesn't love a good debate. Go Phil.