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.
This made me go back and look at the interview you did with Keith Jarrett when he talks about the Standards Trio: "In the beginning, I sat down at dinner with them and scared the shit out of Gary by saying, “Well, we’ll do the things like ‘All the Things You Are.’”
“What? What? What? Why would we do that?”
But I explained that we all had experience as leaders, and I said, “You both know what a privilege it is to be a sideman. What if we were all sidemen? In the music itself?”
... I'm not sure the anti-Standards folks get how much potential for freedom there is to be found in those familiar forms. (Should we not play the blues anymore either, since it's "been done"?)
I agree that it can be a terrific experience to hear a standard re-worked, re-conceived. I went to a fair number of Cecil Taylor gigs when I first moved to NYC in the late '70s, and yes they all did start sounding the same, all due respect to his true genius. Never thought about it before, but at this point the attitude of the past, as in - we're going to judge how good a musician you are, how inventive, how deep, how thoughtful, how innovative - by how you interpret the standard repertoire (the stance of the classical music community), is morphing into : if you do a jazz standard, we're considering it a cover. A great producer once told me that no one should ever do a cover unless they can do a better version of it than the original, a very tough thing to do. Seems to me that rather than dispense a lot of hostility toward people who do it one way or the other - make it up yourself or interpret others' work - how about "You do you"? Then we'll all decide who we want to listen to and who we don't. And btw dude: it's THIS Nearly Was Mine! A great song.
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.
This made me go back and look at the interview you did with Keith Jarrett when he talks about the Standards Trio: "In the beginning, I sat down at dinner with them and scared the shit out of Gary by saying, “Well, we’ll do the things like ‘All the Things You Are.’”
“What? What? What? Why would we do that?”
But I explained that we all had experience as leaders, and I said, “You both know what a privilege it is to be a sideman. What if we were all sidemen? In the music itself?”
... I'm not sure the anti-Standards folks get how much potential for freedom there is to be found in those familiar forms. (Should we not play the blues anymore either, since it's "been done"?)
I agree that it can be a terrific experience to hear a standard re-worked, re-conceived. I went to a fair number of Cecil Taylor gigs when I first moved to NYC in the late '70s, and yes they all did start sounding the same, all due respect to his true genius. Never thought about it before, but at this point the attitude of the past, as in - we're going to judge how good a musician you are, how inventive, how deep, how thoughtful, how innovative - by how you interpret the standard repertoire (the stance of the classical music community), is morphing into : if you do a jazz standard, we're considering it a cover. A great producer once told me that no one should ever do a cover unless they can do a better version of it than the original, a very tough thing to do. Seems to me that rather than dispense a lot of hostility toward people who do it one way or the other - make it up yourself or interpret others' work - how about "You do you"? Then we'll all decide who we want to listen to and who we don't. And btw dude: it's THIS Nearly Was Mine! A great song.
My mistake about the title