Review: The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins

I've been reading The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins, edited by Sam V. H. Reese, and can recommend it to anyone, musician or otherwise, who has appreciated Sonny's very significant contributions to jazz. For the insight and enjoyment you will get from this book, it's a real bargain at $16.16 (paperback), or $11.99 (Kindle).

Reese's book presents selections from an archive that the New York Public Library purchased from Sonny in 2017, and that was more recently opened up to researchers. The total amount of material in the archive is immense - the NYPL catalog lists it as 73.43 linear feet (click the link for a complete listing of material in the archive). Included are notebooks that Sonny kept from 1959 to 2010. The NYPL catalog describes the writings:

Rollins's writings offer an extremely rare look into a jazz musician's thought processes regarding his art, personal development, career, and daily life. Mostly written on lined yellow legal pads, they contain reflections on personal and musical growth; his opinion of his and his band members' performances; notes on practice methods, saxophone issues and fingerings; sporadic journal entries; social and political observations; drafts of letters and essays; and drawings and sketches. 

To this list of topics, I could add, from Reese's book:

• Notes for an envisioned sax method book
• Some of Sonny's practice routines
• Harmonic/melodic improvisation techniques and observations
• Self-improvement outside of music: exercise, yoga, diet, vocabulary, learning Japanese, reading lists, self-evaluation
• Deep thoughts on human behaviors
• Music of other cultures
• Social commentary: value of jazz to society; environmental degradation; destructive effects of American capitalism/greed/consumer culture. 
• Dental worries and medical notes
• Favorite music recordings and films

The NYPL catalog lists the notebooks as 3.62 linear feet, in six containers. Reese's book is 176 pages, of which about 150 pages are Rollins' writings. It must have been quite a task to read through the original material and to decide which excerpts to include!

It's not clear to me exactly how Reese decided which material to excerpt for his book. It seems to me that he was thinking of readers who were not necessarily musicians (there are no notated musical examples in the book), and that he tried to provide interesting samples of the many disparate topics listed above. If that was the intent, I'd say he did a nice job.

As a jazz/sax person, I was especially interested in musical detail and sax-specific topics. There is certainly some of that in the book (though nothing in musical notation). However, Sonny's writing is not always clear. In many cases, he was apparently writing for himself, not for future readers. Some of it I could puzzle out, some I could not. For example,

Today, hear for the first time, the theoretical designation of B♯ and the aesthetic realization of it join and yoke as the inner mental hearing of F♯ rejects it as a major 7 of the preceding F♯. Not so with the thinking of E♯!!

Sentences like the one above are pretty much impenetrable, though I’m sure they made sense to Sonny when he wrote them. In some places, explanatory footnotes might have been helpful; Reese could have consulted a saxophonist colleague for annotations, if he is not himself a player.

A few useful items that I gleaned:

• On Sonny's tenor that he called "Betsy," the best-sounding fingering for C was bis Bb plus side C. "Betsy" was probably either a Selmer Mark VI or a Buescher. I checked this out on a number of different horns, and it works great on Mark VI tenors; on other horns not so well.
• He apparently used the side D key for 4th-line D fairly often.
• Some cool ideas for superimposing triads, that I might try out. 
• Sonny's concept of tongue position.
• Consciousness of overtone content in tone production.

If you are interested in a more specifically musical look at material from Sonny's archives, I can suggest an article in the Winter 2023 Journal of Musicology by Benjamin Givan, titled Sonny Rollins’s Musical Thought: Rhetoric, Reticence, and Reality. It’s free, just click the link. This is a scholarly article, aimed at musicians and musicologists.

In Reese's book the selections are in Sonny's own words. In Givan's article you will find more concrete musical detail from the archive, along with Givan's comments, written in scholarly jargon, not necessarily in Sonny's own words.

 

However, I have to mention a caveat regarding this article. Givan presents a lot of musical detail from the archive, but does so as part of making a case for an overarching assertion: that over the years, many jazz musicians have made public statements that have fostered the common misconception that skill in jazz improvisation comes from untutored/natural/intuitive talent. These statements avoid mentioning the technical work that the great players must do, to achieve control of their instruments and facility with musical thinking. To this extent I agree, but Givan goes further. Here is the introduction to his article:

In interviews, jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins has described himself as a “primitive” or intuitive musician. Manuscripts in his personal archive dating from the 1960s indicate that this is not true. During this period, he closely studied several published instrumental primers and handwrote many highly systematic practice exercises using staff notation, along with much technical and introspective prose commentary. In a holistic quest for self-knowledge, he also read a wide variety of literature, including texts on music theory and acoustics, works on human anatomy and the physiology of breathing, and esoteric theories of pitch and color. The contradiction between Rollins’s claims to rely on subconscious knowledge and his extensive private engagement with written, self-analytical modes of musical conceptualization reflects a recurrent tendency among early generations of jazz musicians, noted by pianist and educator Billy Taylor, to publicly deny the actual extent of their own conscious, technical musical knowledge.

Givan seems to believe that artists' "reticence" to publicly mention technical matters has some root in Black culture. He follows his introduction with this quote from Zora Neale Hurston:

What is actually known about us? Very little. Certainly little that we do not wish to tell. Because we do not refuse to answer questions does not mean that we welcome probings. We are a polite people. So we say something, and usually what we say is what is expected of us, rather than the truth. 

In my opinion, the popular misconception of the "natural" jazz genius has a simpler explanation, that does not need to resort to any such characterization of Black culture. Both interviewers and interviewees knew that their readership would not be musical specialists. The interviewers themselves were often non-musicians. They asked questions that were not meant to elicit technical answers. The musicians being interviewed and quoted were likewise directing their answers to the general public, not to a readership of skilled musicians. Modesty may factor in. Another factor might be the writer’s idea of what makes for a good story.

At the same time, it is absolutely correct to say that improvisation involves a basically intuitive approach. It's mystical, in a way. It was no different for Bach and Mozart, who were known to be great improvisers in their time. 

In any case, I think Givan's article would have been just as valuable, or more so, if he had just stuck with presenting and commenting on the musical examples in Sonny's archive.  

Givan's article provides some of the more specific musical information that is missing from Reese's book. In his effort to prove that Sonny really did have a deep concern for technical detail, Givan shows, in musical notation, a number of specific musical patterns that Sonny practiced. Some other interesting musical points covered in this article:

• To what extent Sonny utilized Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns 

• How Sonny conceived of using patterns (not necessarily patterns from Slonimsky) in soloing

• Sonny's investigation of superimposing triadic shapes on other chords

• Sonny’s exploration of how Isaac Newton, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, and Don Cherry each conceived of an equivalence between pitches and colors

• Sonny's work with overtones, growing out of his use of Sigurd Rascher's Top Tones book

Both the Reese book and the Givan article are very much worth your time. But Sonny should have the last word here, right?

Review: "The Leak Light Speaks" by Tom Levitt

The Leak Light Speaks is subtitled, "Saxophone Purchase, Assessment, Set Up, Repair, Overhaul, Customization and Reflections on Jazz Education outside of Academia." Quite a list of topics! Author Tom Levitt offers us the benefit of his experience on these subjects, in a writing style that one might even call poetic at times. The book is aimed at his fellow saxophone enthusiasts, and in particular at those who might be interested in DIY (do-it-yourself) repair and customization. I've been playing for over 50 years; I learned some things, and had a fun read along the way.

For the uninitiated, I should explain that a "leak light" is a light dropped by a woodwind repairer into the body of the instrument, in a darkened room. When a pad is closed, there should be no light leakage visible around the outside rim of the pad. Thus, the leak light is a speaker of truth, so to speak.

Before I get into the content of the book, I have to say that it could have benefited from some proofreading and improved organization. But I'm willing to forgive a lot with a self-published book - I have to respect the sincerity of the project, and the effort that the author put into it.

A short anecdote: When I was in college in the 1970s, I attended a week-long summer jazz workshop put on by National Stage Band Camps (predecessor to the Aebersold summer workshops). The faculty included John LaPorta, Marian McPartland, Lou Marini Sr., and some other great teachers. I played in a big band class taught by trumpeter Wes Hensel. At the end-of-the-week final concert, he had me take a long tenor solo on a very fast "rhythm changes" tune in 5/4. I was in way over my head, but got through it somehow and survived. That did a lot for my confidence going forward. I also had an arranging class with Wes. What stuck with me from that class was something he told us on the last day: "If you remember nothing else from this class, remember that clarity is the magic word." Wes was talking about arranging, but that advice applies to all creative endeavors. I've used that line quite a lot in teaching, over the years.

In The Leak Light Speaks, Levitt's writing is great on the level of his sentences, but the book's format is short on clarity. If he ever decides to revise this book, it would help his readers if the chapter divisions and subheadings were visually clarified, the Table of Contents revised, and the spelling checked.

Here are the main sections of the book and page numbers as they should have appeared in the Table of Contents:

Introduction  7
Perspectives on the Saxophone   11
Repair, Overhaul, and Customization  89
Journey to the Centre of the Saxophone  121 [the author's personal history with the sax]
Saxophone Study and Formal Education  137
The Customized Saxophone  155  [a summing-up]

The second and third sections above are the longest, centering on practical advice.

The book's factual advice concerns how to find a decent saxophone in need of work, but with potential, and turn it into a superior instrument through DIY repair and customization. Candidates can be found on eBay, but the buyer needs to know what to look for. Levitt considers the Yamaha 23 to be the standard by which other student-level horns are measured (I agree). For sturdy build, the Bundy II can be taken as a standard (I agree). These, or quality-equivalent horns, would be the place for an aspiring DIY sax repairer to start.

Levitt discusses "stencils" - i.e., horns made by a manufacturer to sell to another company, which then in turn puts its own name on the horn. One prime example is the Vito 7131, which was actually made by Yamaha, and is equivalent to the Yamaha 23. Stencils have been produced by various manufacturers since at least the 1920s. Tracing different stencil producers and labels is difficult and convoluted. Levitt lists quite a few, but a better list is here: https://bassic-sax.info/version5/vintage-saxes/stencil-saxes/stencil-saxophone-names-links/.

Regarding modern student saxophones, Levitt is disparaging of many of the current super-low-end offerings, saying that they are sometimes made of soft metal, are easily damaged, and are almost impossible to keep in good repair. I agree. Some of my students have had discouraging experiences with low-end horns that their parents bought, trusting that they would be usable. Caveat Emptor. If you are shopping for a student horn, you need to do some research, and talk to someone knowledgeable, who can make a good recommendation. IMO, the last thing you want is a brand-new $250 Amazon horn.

(On the other side of this argument, Stephen Howard, a respected sax technician, states that some of the cheap Chinese horns aren't too bad, and that he believes quality is improving. See this article. But again - if you are buying, be very, very careful.)

Personally, I am not a DIY repairer, beyond easy minor adjustments and pad replacement.

Nevertheless, it was informative to read through the advice on repair and setup. If you are interested in acquiring this skill, Levitt's book could be quite helpful. The aforementioned Stephen Howard also has a nice book out on sax repair, Haynes Saxophone Manual. Howard's book is clearly written and presented, but goes into somewhat less depth; when a particular repair seems too complicated for the average reader, Howard simply tells the reader to take it to a pro repair shop (that's what I do). Levitt's readers are encouraged to take more chances, in the pursuit of self-education.

The Leak Light Speaks covers some subjects that might raise some eyebrows - e.g., DIY lacquering, making DYI plasticover reeds, and "rigidifying" soft-metal horns, all using polyurethane (Varathane). Also, if I read it right, refinishing/rigidifying horns with white glue...I have to assume that Levitt has tried all of these techniques.

In the section titled “Journey to the Centre of the Saxophone,” the author relates some autobiographical stories about how he developed his interest in saxophone playing and repair, and about some of the characters he met along the way. Levitt ends the section with philosophical comments on jazz saxophone playing and the artistic life.

In “Saxophone Study and Formal Education,” Levitt discusses the way jazz musicians were educated in the early history of jazz, contrasting it with the “artificial jazz milieu” that he sees in university jazz education programs. He is not keen on the value of “formal” education, as it applies to playing jazz. He prefers the DIY approach. Many musicians would take exception to this. It is true that the only way to acquire the tools of jazz improvisation, really, is through self-education. But it is also true that “formal” education can open a lot of intellectual doors. Levitt considers this question from the viewpoint of the artist/philosopher. This section includes some practical suggestions for practice routines, all perfectly reasonable.

The last section, “The Customized Saxophone,” is a summation of the main points of the book, with some final words of encouragement for the DIY repairer/customizer.

Considering the practical information in this book, the entertainment value of a good read, and the inspirational words of artistic encouragement, this book is well worth the $10.00 that it costs on Amazon. Thanks to Tom Levitt for writing it!

Review: Charlie Parker Omnibook, Volume 2

Jazz education has come a long way in the last 50 years. With so many theory methods, patterns books, playalongs, fakebooks, and solo transcriptions now available, it may be hard to imagine that there was a time when we had very few of these. The recently-published Charlie Parker Omnibook Volume 2, with 60 solo transcriptions, is a valuable addition to our educational resources. Big thanks are due to the transcriber, Chris Stewart.

Some personal history: When I was in 7th grade in the 1960s, playing tenor in the school jazz band and just beginning to listen to recordings by the great players, I discovered that my local public library had a record listening station, and a number of Charlie Parker's Savoy and Verve recordings. I used to do my homework with the headphones on, and have been a fan ever since.

In college in Portland, Oregon, when I was finally getting serious about music, one of the few sources for transcriptions was old Downbeat magazines. There was an archive of back issues at the public library. I was thrilled to find transcriptions of Parker's "Now's the Time" solo and Coleman Hawkins' "Body and Soul." I learned a lot from those two solos alone.

A digression: When I was in the library digging through old issues of Downbeat, I got into a conversation with another student who I met there. He told me a story about his dad, who had been a trombone player in New York in the 1940s. One day his dad decided to go sit in at an open jam session. When he got there, Charlie Parker was on stage, with some other heavy players. Dad was understandably intimidated. He took his trombone out into the hallway, and started playing along softly, facing the wall. As he was playing, someone grabbed him by the collar and marched him onstage. The guy who grabbed him was Parker.

Anyway, when the first ("Volume 1") Charlie Parker Omnibook came out in 1978, it was a great gift to jazz education. I used the transcriptions for sightreading and for analysis, and have used the book in teaching ever since, with any jazz-oriented student who is ready for it.

With most students whose reading and theory skills are sufficient, the first solos we study are 5 blues tunes, all in concert F - Now's the Time (two takes), Au Privave (two takes), and Billie's Bounce. First we play the transcription together, and practice the rough spots (listening to the original recording helps a lot). Then I go through the solo measure by measure, noting the devices that Parker uses in playing a blues. As we go through these 5 solos, many of the same devices occur repeatedly. As I see it, here are some of the benefits of this approach:

1) Blues is at the heart of jazz. Students need to understand blues instinctively, intellectually, and emotionally. Parker was a brilliant blues player. Just being exposed to his music is important.
2) The student will hopefully pick up something of his thought process, consciously or unconsciously (that's a good reason to study Bach and Mozart, too).
3) The solos are pretty technical in spots, and are great reading practice.
4) Analysis will help students' understanding of music theory in general.
5) They will hopefully pick up on some of the devices that make a blues solo work.

(This post has an analysis of Billie's Bounce, as I might approach it at a lesson.)

As fond as I am of the old Volume 1 Omnibook, it has some imperfections. The notation is sometimes not exactly "proper" (e.g., use of accidentals). The chord symbols sometimes seem to be intended to reflect Parker's apparent thought process (e.g., chord substitutions), but at other times seem to be intended to reflect either what the band is playing, or what the changes are "supposed" to be. In other words, the reasoning for the chord symbols seems to be inconsistent. The transcriptions, by Ken Slone and Jamey Aebersold, are very good, but there are a few wrong notes and rhythms here and there, if you are picky.

Bb, C, and bass clef versions of the original Omnibook are available, but the fingerings and pitches of Parker's solo lines are native to the alto sax. When transposed for Bb instruments, the licks do not sit as well on the horn. Also, range can be a problem; some notes or phrases need to be moved up or down by an octave in order to fit in the normal range of the sax. This can interfere with the original flow of the phrases. The Bb book works better for clarinet than for tenor, as the clarinet has a wider range. Sometimes I think tenor players would be better off using the Eb book, though of course that puts the songs in a different key than the one in the original recording. This issue applies to volume 2 as well.

As Chris Stewart notes in his preface to Volume 2, the original Omnibook does not show articulations; also, the choices of tunes are heavy on blues and "rhythm changes" tunes. The lack of articulations doesn't really bother me, and the tune choice is not really a flaw; it's just the nature of the book.

When the publication of Volume 2 was announced a few months ago, I ordered a copy right away. I've played through all the tunes in the book (but of course not at the original tempos).

Here are some features that I noted in the Volume 2 Omnibook:

1) As mentioned, the song choices are not so heavy on blues and rhythm changes, but include more standards. That's a welcome addition.
2) Volume 2 includes articulations (Volume 1 does not) - in fact, Stewart has included pretty much every articulation that he could. I've only "proofed" a couple of the volume 2 tunes for articulations. As nearly as I can tell, Stewart is mostly right, though in a few places the indicated articulations may be arguable. In fairness, he probably has better sound equipment than I do, and obviously has a great ear. I do find that the articulations tend to clutter the visual aspect of the transcription. The inclusion of articulations is OK with me; it's just a choice he made in an effort to be more accurate. As the saying goes, it's a feature, not a bug.
3) Rules of "proper" notation are followed more consistently than was the case in Volume 1.
4) Growls are shown!
5) Stewart has indicated wherever he thinks Parker is using a side D fingering for 4th line D. If he's right, Parker uses it quite a bit. I think some of these indications may be arguable. Also, unless I overlooked it, I don't see any indications that he used side C for 3rd space C or for C above the staff (I know Volume 1 pretty well, and have noticed some spots where Parker probably used side C, though it's not indicated in that book).
6) Chord changes seem to be chosen much as they were in Volume 1. That is, it is not always clear whether they are intended to reflect what Parker was playing, or what the pianist is playing.
7) One factual goof: The tune listed as "They Didn't Believe Me" (Jerome Kern) is not that song, but rather "Irresistible You" (Gene DePaul), as per Lawrence Koch's Parker biography, Yardbird Suite (pp. 262-3).

Steve Neff has posted an excellent review of Volume 2, worth checking out. He also has posted youtube links to all the songs in the new Omnibook.

I'm truly grateful to Chris Stewart for putting together this great product! If you enjoyed the old Omnibook as I have, you'll find many more years of enjoyment in the new Omnibook Volume 2.

If you would like to order either the original Omnibook or the new Volume 2, links are below for the Eb editions. If you order through these links, this website will receive a small cut (thanks!).

Charlie Parker Omnibook Volume 2:



Charlie Parker Omnibook Volume 1:

Review: "Choro: A Social History of a Brazilian Popular Music"

Since this blog is primarily aimed at jazz players, I am guessing that some readers may have some familiarity with choro, others perhaps not. Choro is a Brazilian musical genre that - like jazz - began to take shape in the late 1800s, evolved stylistically over the years and through several periods of popularity, and continues today. It has always involved an element of improvisation, and incorporates Afro-Brazilian rhythms. Choro as performed today may take a form that is traditional (that is, retrospective to some earlier period in its evolution), or may take a more modern direction.

Here is Anat Cohen and the group "Choro Aventuroso," with a modern take on the 1937 standard by Severino Araujo, "Espinha de Bacalhau":

Although this book came out in 2005, I had not gotten around to it until just now: Choro: A Social History of a Brazilian Popular Music, by Tamara Elena Livingston-Isenhour and Thomas George Caracas Garcia. It's a well-written and well-researched account of the origins of choro and its evolution over the last 150+ years, with particular regard to the place of the genre in Brazilian culture, including a discussion of the role of historical Brazilian attitudes towards race and popular music.

The book is meticulously organized, which makes a review pretty easy. Here are the chapter titles, with a few comments on the contents:

1) Introduction

An overview of the book. Describes the defining features of choro in terms of style, melodic characteristics, bass, rhythm, and spirit ("malicia").

2)  Race, Class, and Nineteenth-Century Popular Music: The Modinha, the Lundu, and the Maxixe

These were the musical antecedents of choro. The modinha, a sentimental song genre, contributed lyricism to Brazilian popular styles, and contributed the basic instrumentation to choro: the "terno" of guitar, flute, and cavaquinho. The lundu was an African-influenced rhythmic dance and music style; the maxixe was a popular dance and music style that began in the 1870s. "Some believe the maxixe to be the link in the stylistic continuum between the old lundu dance and the modern urban samba."

3) The Roda de Choro: Heart and Soul of Choro

The "roda de choro" is a informal gathering to play music - a jam session - a tradition that began long before choro reached the "respectability" of recordings and radio broadcasts. The roda de choro is still an essential part of the choro ethos. A quote from Villa-Lobos biographer Vasco Mariz: "The chorão [choro devotee] had a deep feeling for spontaneous improvisation. He would put his entire soul into playing. He had a true religious feeling for the cult of choro, in which one lives to play, compose, and sing."

4) From Plantation to the City: The Rise and Development of Early Choro in Rio de Janeiro (1870-1920)

Many black musicians received musical training as slaves, in order to serve in plantation bands, which were a status symbol for the owners. After Brazilian emancipation in 1888, former slave musicians moved to the city, combining their talents with city musicians. It was in this period that the music and the term "choro" developed. Although many musicians today believe that "choro" derives from "chorar" (to cry), the authors believe it derives from "choromeleiro," a type of ensemble in colonial Brazil.

In Rio de Janeiro, choro developed as a middle-class music. "The middle-class aspects of choro practice were several...in order to be able to buy an instrument, whether, flute, cavaquinho, or guitar, one had to have at lease a modicum of disposable income. Secondly, the locations where choro gatherings took place were characteristic of middle-class dwellings and venues..." In this environment, choro developed as a primarily instrumental music, based on the form and harmonic structure of the polka, played by terno-type ensembles, wind bands, or piano. Early published choros were called "polca serenata" or "polca ligeira"; the first use of the term "choro" in published music was in 1889. This chapter includes sections on several of the most important figures in early choro: Chiquinha Gonzaga, Ernesto Nazaré, and others.

5) From the Terno to the Regional: The Professionalization of Choro

The terno, a trio of flute, guitar, and cavaquinho, was the original core choro ensemble. With the advent of silent films (requiring theater musicians), followed by recordings and radio, professional groups were formed. Choros were written in a more technical style, to show off the virtuosity of the musicians. Groups were larger (this was the period when the pandeiro and seven-string guitar came to be a standard part of the ensemble); these groups were called "regionals." The career of the legendary choro composer and bandleader Pixinguinha began in this period, c. 1915. Under the regime of dictator Gétulio Vargas (1937-1945) choro was encouraged and promoted by the government, particularly on the radio, to instill a sense of national identity and pride.

6) The Velha Guarda in the New Brazil: Choro in the 1950s and 1960s

"Velha guarda" means "old guard." As American and American-influenced music increased in popularity in Brazil in the 1950s, choro came to be regarded by the general public as a music of the past. Bossa nova emerged in the late 1950s as a music of "modernity." In the 1960s, increasing social awareness led to an increased interest in "samba de morro" (samba of the favelas) and other "roots" music. "Choro is conspicuously absent from the cultural resistance movement even though it had been strongly accociated with Brazilian nationalism since the 1920s." The authors give several reasons for this: that "as an instrumental genre, choro could not serve as a vehicle for protest lyrics"; that as a middle-class music, "choro was not associated with an oppressed class of people"; that "the Americanized style and instrumentation in the late 1940s and 1950s had come to be viewed as mainstream music without political value."

At the same time, however, "velha guarda" figures such as Garoto, Jacó do Bandolim, and Waldir de Azevedo were pushing the choro genre towards "increasing professionalism," and adding new compositions to the repertoire.

7) The Choro Revival

The 1970s saw a return of popularity of choro among young musicians and listeners, including rodas de choro, and competitions with awards. The military government of 1964-1985 played a role in supporting the choro revival; as a mostly instrumental music, choro did not have a protest content. The authors discuss the nature of musical revivals generally, and why a choro revival came about at that point in time. This choro revival ebbed in the 1980s.

8) Contemporary Choro

"By the late 1990s, choro had rebounded with a force that still shows no sign of weakening." This chapter considers stylistic trends, choro publications, pedagogy, choro on the Web, and choro abroad. A description of then-current (2005) activity presents a snapshot of the revival at the time of the book's publication.

9) Choro and the Brazilian Classical Tradition

The Brazilian classical music culture before the 1920s looked to France and Italy for a stylistic model. Beginning in the 1920s, Brazilian composers began to look to their own rich national musical traditions, including choro. Co-author Thomas Garcia is a guitarist and Villa-Lobos scholar, and Villa-Lobos' work is covered in some detail.

If you are interested in learning more about this music, I highly recommend Choro: A Social History of a Brazilian Popular Music. Click on the link, and you can order it from Amazon. It's been especially valuable to me, since I don't read or speak Portuguese; I haven't seen a better English-language book on the subject.

Far more importantly, though, you need to listen to this music. The history of recorded choro is on Youtube, and plenty of great contemporary performances. Here are just a few tracks, to get started:

A broadcast featuring some great players, playing Jacó do Bandolim's "Noitas Cariocas":

A backyard party, with Romualdo Costa (sax) and Leo Lima (accordian) playing "Espinha de Bacalhau":

Yamandu Costa and Dominguez, playing Pixinguinha's "Lamentos"

A classic video - Armandinho with the group Epoca de Ouro, playing Jacó's "Assanhado"

"Theft! A History of Music" - A comic book must-read

"Theft! A History of Music" is a monumental, very cool graphic-novel presentation of music history, changing music media, borrowing, and copyright law, created by James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins, professors of law at Duke University. In 251 pages, it covers 2000+ years of music history, from Plato to rap.

You don't want to miss this.

Click here to view online, get a free download, or purchase a hard copy.

Here's a clip from the book's web page ("fair-use"!!):

The history in this book runs from Plato to Blurred Lines and beyond. You will read about the Holy Roman Empire’s attempts to standardize religious music with the first great musical technology (notation) and the inevitable backfire of that attempt. You will read about troubadours and church composers, swapping tunes (and remarkably profane lyrics), changing both religion and music in the process. You will see diatribes against jazz for corrupting musical culture, against rock and roll for breaching the color-line. You will learn about the lawsuits that, surprisingly, shaped rap. You will read the story of some of music’s iconoclasts—from Handel and Beethoven to Robert Johnson, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Ray Charles, the British Invasion and Public Enemy.

 To understand this history fully, one has to roam wider still—into musical technologies from notation to the sample deck, aesthetics, the incentive systems that got musicians paid, and law’s 250 year struggle to assimilate music, without destroying it in the process. Would jazz, soul or rock and roll be legal if they were reinvented today? We are not sure. Which as you will read, is profoundly worrying because today, more than ever, we need the arts.

See the video below for a lecture on the subject by co-author Jennifer Jenkins. I'd recommend that you read the comic book first, though.

Combo Projects! "Charles Mingus - More Than a Fake Book"

My Saturday adult combo class has finally finished our latest long-term project: playing through all 55 tunes in the collection, Charles Mingus - More Than a Fake Book. We started in December 2014, and read through one (sometimes two) tunes each Saturday. Some tunes had to be carried over for a second week for us to come close to dealing with them. We missed a few weeks due to vacations. Now, in May 2016, some 70 weeks later, we can say we at least "attempted" all 55 tunes.

I can enthusiastically recommend the Mingus book. The vast majority of the tunes are interesting, fun to jam on, and (mostly) playable by reasonably experienced players. They range from simple to complex. The charts are nicely done - with only a few exceptions, they are clear, without too many typos. Each composition is accompanied by informative text: first recordings, personnel, assorted anecdotes. Only a few of these tunes have made it into the more mainstream fakebooks, and many of them deserve to be more widely known and played.

BTW, if you've ever wondered about the correct changes to "Goodbye Porkpie Hat," you'll find them here.

We're still cycling through the jazz standards "list of shame," now expanded to 150 must-know tunes. In addition Mike, our guitarist, has made up a list of must-know ballads for us to work through.

For our next project, I'll be bringing in some of my favorite bossas and sambas, that are not among the 10 or 15 overplayed ones that you find in American fakebooks. We're starting with a few Roberto Menescal tunes (check this website). I don't think we'll undertake the complete works of Jobim or Menescal or Ary Barroso; that would be a bit much for us. I'll just bring in 20 or so less-known classics, and we'll work on our bossa/samba groove, one tune per week. That should keep us busy for a while.

Review: "Long Lost Blues: Popular Blues in America, 1850-1920," by Peter C. Muir

Long Lost Blues is a state-of-the-art history and analysis of early published and recorded blues, with an emphasis on blues published in sheet music form between 1912 and 1920. Muir presents a detailed, well-researched historical account and, for musicians, some perceptive musical analysis.

The book includes 98 musical examples; sound files for all of them can be listened to on the author's website.

For those who feel that “folk blues" is somehow more “authentic” than the published blues influenced by Tin Pan Alley, Muir makes the point that composers of early published blues often drew heavily from folk sources. In the absence of any sort of recorded documentation of early folk blues, and very little early field research, sheet music compositions can provide useful information on the early development of the “blues” genre. And in any case, published blues is an interesting genre in its own right, that strongly influenced the subsequent development of American music.

Here is a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of Long Lost Blues:

Chapter 1: The Popular Blues Industry - Details the early development of the popular blues industry (“popular blues” is here defined as music that was titled and commercially presented as “blues”), beginning seriously around 1912, and gathering momentum in subsequent years. By the end of 1920, 456 “blues” compositions had been published. Presentation to the public took the form of sheet music and recordings, as well as performances in musicals, minstrel shows, and vaudeville.

Chapter 2: The Identity and Idiom of Early Popular Blues - Early blues songs were influenced to a greater or lesser degree by the “genes” of folk blues and Tin Pan Alley; instrumental compositions generally showed some ragtime influence. The author lists and explains five categories of vocal blues: Relationship Blues (the most common), Nostalgia Blues, Prohibition Blues, War Blues, and Reflexive Blues.

The relation of blues to the “fox trot” dance craze and to swing beat is explored. Five “distinctive components of the blues idiom” are listed and discussed: the 12-bar sequence, blue notes, the “barbershop ending,” the “four-note chromatic motif,” and the inclusion of the phrase “I’ve got the blues” or a variant.

Chapter 3: Curing the Blues with the Blues - This chapter is an investigation of the historical use of the word “blues,” particularly in regard to music, and the idea that blues (and other types of music) can be therapeutic. “Neurasthenia” was a fashionable disease in late 19th-century America. It was thought to be a sort of nervous exhaustion cause by the stress of modern civilized life, and was commonly called “the blues.” 19th century sheet music songs were presented as “a cure for the blues,” long before the appearance of the 12-bar blues form. The early 20th-century 12-bar blues tunes were generally thought of the same way.

The author proposes the terms “homeopathic” for slower blues with mournful themes (treating the player’s and listener’s “distressed state of mind with distressed music”), and “allopathic” for faster, more cheerful tunes (treating “a depressed mood with lively music”). By this measure, much folk blues is homeopathic, while the popular blues discussed in this book is generally more allopathic. Many specific examples are discussed. 

Chapter 4: The Blues of W. C. Handy - Muir discusses Handy’s 26 blues tunes from both a historical and an analytical perspective, focusing particularly on those written between 1909 and 1917.

Handy was probably the most prominent figure in the world of early popular blues, influential enough to deserve a chapter devoted to his compositions. His “Memphis Blues” (1912) was what we might call a “breakout hit.” In Muir’s words, “it was this work more than any other that introduced the genre of blues to mainstream popular music.” Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” (1914), though initially slower to catch on, did much to codify the elements of what we know as “blues” today.

Chapter 5: The Creativity of Early Southern Published Blues - Southern published blues were “geographically and culturally closer to the folk sources of blues.” Muir examines the melodic and harmonic makeup of several of the earliest published southern blues in some detail: “Baby Seals Blues” (1912), “Dallas Blues” (1912), and “1913 Medley Blues” (1912). A number of other southern blues up to 1920 are also discussed; sections of this chapter also cover the blues compositions of Euday L. Bowman, George W. Thomas, and Perry Bradford. 

Chapter 6: Published Proto-Blues and the Evolution of the Twelve-Bar Sequence - This chapter in particular spoke to my own personal interests, and began to answer a difficult question: How did blues evolve?

To a modern musician, “blues” is not defined as simply as “any tune that calls itself a blues.” I think of a blues as a song with a particular 12-bar chord sequence (or variation thereof), blue notes, perhaps AAB lyrics, and as being recognizably part of what has become a deep, century-long tradition. So - where did that chord sequence come from? 

This last chapter includes sections on:

 “Development of the Blues Song”  - Discusses the history of American songs dealing with the word “blues,” and how the term came to describe an African American genre.

“The Evolution of the Twelve-Bar Blues Sequence” - The 12-bar chord pattern may derive from any or all of these: “The Bully Song” (pre-1894), “The Ballad of the Boll Weevil” (c. 1892?), “Stagolee” (c. 1895?), “Frankie and Johnny” (c. 1899?) and a number of popular songs by Hughie Cannon with harmonic schemes that are “Frankie and Johnny” - related, including the very popular “Just Because She Made Them Goo-Goo Eyes” (1900). Muir offers his opinion on how these songs may have evolved into the sequence we recognize as “blues.” There may not be any final answers here, but there is a lot of great information, and some well-considered speculation.

I enjoyed this book immensely, and recommend it to anyone interested in looking into the origins of blues. You can order it from Amazon; here's the link.

After reading this book and a few others about early blues (see this review), I’ve refined my view of early blues a bit. As a musician who has played many sorts of blues over the years, I have some thoughts to share about blues changes, blue notes, and blues scales - but I’ll save that for another post.

Review: "Creating Jazz Counterpoint: New Orleans, Barbershop Harmony, and the Blues," by Vic Hobson

It must have been tough to come up with a title - in just 129 pages (with 43 musical examples), this book covers a lot of ground.

The short version of the title, Creating Jazz Counterpoint, refers to one of the central questions considered in the book: How did the polyphonic instrumental texture of early New Orleans jazz develop? The full title, Creating Jazz Counterpoint: New Orleans, Barbershop Harmony, and the Blues, provides more specific reference to the subject matter, but still does not adequately convey the wide range of historical, biographical, and musicological material that is presented.

This book is the result of Vic Hobson's extensive research into early jazz and blues, using source material that included 1930s-1940s interviews (published and unpublished) with musicians of the early 1900s, the archived music of the John Robichaux band (active in New Orleans from 1877 to the 1940s), published sheet music, and public records. While endeavoring to answer some questions about the early development of jazz and blues, Hobson provides us a fascinating view of the New Orleans music scene in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

"Creating Jazz Counterpoint" is divided into nine chapters; each chapter is a sort of separate essay. Hobson's writing is quite readable, although the information is dense. Here is my attempt at a synopsis of each chapter, necessarily missing a lot of the detail:

Chapter 1: Jazzmen - Discusses Frederick Ramsey's 1939 book Jazzmen, which presented trumpeter Bunk Johnson as a living link to the legendary jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden. Bolden had left no surviving recordings. Bunk claimed he had played in Bolden's band, and Ramsey believed that Bunk's style very likely was similar to Bolden's. Critics have long questioned Bunk's reliability. Using Ramsey's notes and other sources, Hobson concludes that Bunk's information about history and about Bolden's playing style was basically reliable. In this chapter Hobson also proposes the idea that New Orleans counterpoint derived from barbershop quartet practices, and jazz/blues harmony from the intersection of barbershop harmony with blues tonality.

Chapter 2: The Bolden Legend - Considers available information on Buddy Bolden, including interviews and period documents, to assemble a likely Bolden chronology. Examines the tune, "Buddy Bolden's Blues," recorded by Jelly Roll Morton in 1939. This tune (aka "Funky Butt") is essentially the same as "St. Louis Tickle" (1904), both apparently deriving from "Cakewalk in the Sky" (1899). Morton recalled hearing the tune in 1902. As Morton played it in 1939, this tune included the progression Idom to IV to #IVdim, which has both barbershop and blues elements. However, it is an open question whether Morton's 1939 recording accurately represents the harmony as it was played circa 1902.

Chapter 3: Just Bunk? - Further investigates whether Bunk Johnson was a reliable source of information about Bolden's style, concluding that while the dates supplied by Bunk were several years too early, his information regarding Bolden's style is probably accurate. Bunk was most likely born in 1884, and appears to have played with Bolden beginning in 1902 or later.

Chapter 4: Cracking Up a Chord - In the late 19th century, barbershop singing was a popular pastime in the African American community. Characteristic barbershop harmony included frequent use of secondary dominant chords, and diminished chords containing the tonic note. Melodically, blue notes were in use in popular music, and barbershop harmony worked well to harmonize minor-third/major-third blue notes. Hobson cites much evidence that barbershop singing was quite popular in New Orleans, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Chapter 5: Bill Russell's American Music - Russell was co-author of the "New Orleans Music" section of Ramsey's "Jazzmen." Russell believed, with good reason, Bunk's assertion that he had played with Bolden, and encouraged Bunk to record. Hobson points out Bunk's use of the tonic diminished chord, a barbershop device. Both Bunk and Louis Armstrong excelled at the "second cornet" role in a typical New Orleans ensemble (second cornet played/improvised a counterline to the melody). Examining several tunes that were said to be in Bolden's repertoire ("Careless Love," "Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor," Mamie's Blues"), as played by Bunk Johnson, Jelly Roll Morton, and other early New Orleans players, Hobson points out the use of both barbershop harmony, and blues tonality.

Chapter 6: The "Creoles of Color" - Examines the role of sheet music in spreading the popularity of blues and pre-blues tunes (Hobson's research draws on the Robichaux collection, an archive of the repertoire of one of New Orleans' leading bands, active from 1877 to the 1940s). Songs considered include "I Got the Blues" (1908), "Just Because She Made Them Goo-Goo Eyes" (1900 - uses a 12-bar blues progression), and W. C. Handy's "Memphis Blues" (1912), "Jogo Blues" (1913), and "St. Louis Blues" (1914). Handy claimed inspiration from an 1892 experience hearing folk blues; Handy also knew barbershop harmony. This chapter also includes an account of the musical life of clarinetist Alphonse Picou; regarding Picou's version of "High Society," Hobson says, "The sheet music as performed by John Robichaux shows the clear imprint of barbershop harmony."

Chapter 7: The Original Dixieland Jazz Band - Considers recordings by the ODJB made in 1917 (the first recording of a jazz band), pointing out barbershop harmony elements. Quotes Nick LaRocca (cornetist/leader) as saying that his use of countermelodies was inspired partly by his boyhood experience listening to counterlines in French opera, as well as his early experience with vocal harmonizing.

Chapter 8: New Orleans: Capital of Jazz - Further considers dates for Buddy Bolden, citing reminiscences of Bolden's fellow musicians. Concludes that Bolden did not lead his own band until about 1900. Describes the changing role of instruments in a typical New Orleans band in the early 20th century, with violin being replaced by cornet (sometimes clarinet) as a lead instrument. Bolden may have played a "second" part on cornet. Playing harmony using secondary dominant concepts would have introduced notes that, played separately, would have come across as blue notes. Touches on the development of the "jazz soloist," driven largely by Louis Armstrong in the 1920s (Armstrong had played second cornet with King Oliver's band).

Chapter 9: The Blues and New Orleans Jazz - This short chapter sums up "How the blues became a part of the repertoire and tonality of jazz." Quoting Hobson,

Barbershop cadences give rise to specific harmonic progressions and particular voice leadings that are associated with the blues. It was through the application of these cadences and voice leadings to their instruments that the musicians of New Orleans developed New Orleans-style jazz.

Hobson makes a convincing case. Of course, secondary dominants were present in all sorts of music available in 19th-century New Orleans - classical, Sousa marches, instructional etudes, and I'd imagine hymns also (I'm no expert) - not just barbershop. But I'm willing to believe that in the social circles where jazz and blues developed, barbershop could have been a primary influence in establishing the use of dominant I and IV chords, which accommodate blue notes in a blues progression.

If you are interested in current scholarship about early jazz, and some interesting, well-researched biographies of early jazz figures, you should check out Creating Jazz Counterpoint: New Orleans, Barbershop Harmony, and the Blues. Highly recommended!

Strictly by coincidence, today is Mardi Gras, and it only seems right that I post this while there are still a few hours left in Fat Tuesday. Here's Jelly Roll Morton to wind it up:

Combo Projects! "Thelonious Monk Fake Book," "Just Gershwin Real Book," "Charles Mingus - More Than a Fake Book"

I've been coaching a jazz combo class on Saturday mornings for longer than I can remember - at least 25 years. The personnel have stayed pretty constant. Every five years or so, a bass player will move away or something, but we have some great continuity. Two of our current members were also founding members (Ralph on trumpet, Bob on bari).

We've had a few long-term projects. The first was my "List of Shame," a list of tunes that no self-respecting adult jazz improviser should ever have to read again (e.g., Take the A Train, All of Me, etc.). That list turned into my list of 100 Must-Know Jazz Tunes. Currently, every Saturday I will call two of these tunes, with reading strongly discouraged.

A couple of years ago we took on another project: playing through every tune in the Thelonious Monk Fake Book. The "Monk Book" is a collection of 70 Monk tunes, published by Hal Leonard. At the rate of one or two tunes per Saturday, this took us some while. We eventually completed the project, and had a lot of fun doing it. We played some tunes better than others, but we did check them all out. "Brilliant Corners" and "Trinkle Tinkle" were particularly challenging, but we gave them our best effort.

I can recommend the Thelonious Monk Fake Book as a well-researched collection of most of Monk's compositions. Chord changes are clean and jazz-friendly.

With that project finished, we then took on the Just Gershwin Real Book (Alfred Publishing). This book has charts for over 100 George Gershwin compositions, including the great tunes we all know, as well as a very large number of lesser, obscure ones. At two tunes per week, we are about a week or two away from finishing that project.

I can recommend the Just Gershwin Real Book as an extensive collection that will give you a sense of Gershwin's writing and the nature of his output, with a few hidden gems that you may not have known, along with many that are not exactly George and Ira's ticket to everlasting glory. The chord changes are not always clearly stated - the editors seem to have followed the path of omitting the original piano arrangements, but nevertheless trying to replicate the piano arrangements with chord symbols. This quite often results in charts that are cluttered with extraneous and non-functional chords. We got a lot of practice in editing charts on the fly - figuring out which changes to disregard, while sight-reading. It's a great collection, but not completely jazz-friendly.

It looks like our next project will be Charles Mingus - More Than a Fake Book, a collection of 55 Mingus pieces. This is a great product. Transcriptions are excellent; former Mingus sidemen were involved in the project. Lots of informative notes and Mingus lore are included.

This should keep us busy through 2015.

Review: "Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker," by Stanley Crouch

“Long-awaited” is the descriptive term that reviewers repeatedly attach to Stanley Crouch’s new biography of Charlie Parker, "Kansas City Lightning." Beginning in the early 1980s, Crouch taped interviews with a number of Parker’s early associates, including Bird’s first wife, Rebecca Ruffin; Jay McShann; Buster Smith; Gene Ramey; and many others. Finally, in 2013, Crouch organized this material, along with previously known Parker history, into "Kansas City Lightning," which covers Parker’s life until about 1940. A second volume is anticipated.

However, Crouch was not content to produce a simply factual biography.

The reader will be immediately struck by two aspects of this book that one would not normally expect from a biography: First, the writing style that Crouch chooses to employ is not just florid, but over-the-top florid, in a vernacular idiom, often in street talk. Secondly, the narration often veers away from biography, into tangential historical material (e.g., railroad history; Jack Johnson; Sherlock Holmes; Chicago gangsters; American music from minstrels to ragtime). It’s enough to make most reviewers wonder what the heck Crouch was trying to do.

Check out these excellent reviews. You can feel the effort the reviewers had to expend, to make sense of Crouch’s mode of narration:

Matt Schudel, in The Washington Post

Stuart Klawans, in The Daily Beast

Dwight Garner, in The New York Times

Here’s my take: Crouch's digressions are obviously meant to put the biographical details into a comprehensive cultural/historical setting. The real significance of Parker’s life story is in the context of American culture. It goes in both directions: Understanding his world helps us to understand the development and significance of his art. At the same time, his art has taken its place in the ongoing development of our present cultural world.

Why the over-the-top florid writing style? I think the explanation is in an NPR interview that Crouch gave with Tavis Smiley: 

Crouch: ...there always is a bittersweet version of an epic hero in mythology. Charlie Parker is as close to a super hero as someone can be because the way he could play was on a super hero level. But that didn’t mean that he was a perfect person because Odysseus, Achilles, all of these people, they’re very gifted, but they’re also very screwed up [laugh]... 

The key here is Crouch’s analogy of Achilles and Odysseus to Charlie Parker. Today we see Charlie Parker as a nearly mythical figure - a “super hero.” The interviews that Crouch collected are as "factual" as reminiscences could be, fifty years later. Crouch, while presenting this "factual" material (OK, he does seem to invent some dialog, and often presumes to describe Charlie’s thoughts), sets himself up as an epic bard (like Homer, or maybe a Kansas City old-timer), and chooses his narrative voice appropriately. I’m sure Crouch knew that this would annoy some readers and reviewers, but if you look at this book as a long yarn spun by a colorful storyteller, it makes a very entertaining read. 

As far as nut-and-bolts musical analysis goes, this book doesn’t have a lot. Musicians will find better specific information in the biographies by Lawrence Koch (Yardbird Suite) and Carl Woideck (Charlie Parker: His Music and Life). Crouch does include some nicely written descriptions of the creative process in jazz, that are accessible to the average reader. As well, he explains the influences of Lester Young, Buster Smith, and Chu Berry on Parker’s style in layman's terms.

Although Stanley Crouch is a musician (drummer) as well as a writer, he does not always nail it, when it comes to the saxophone. I can say this, because I’m a sax player. For example,

“[Charlie] had long since mastered the physical challenges of playing - the pain of the lips, the tongue, and the teeth; the fatigue of the fingers, and the limitations of the lungs...”

As someone who has been playing for over 50 years, and taught many hundreds of students, I can assure you that this passage is more than a little overstated. But of course, it’s really just Crouch’s chosen prose style. There were a few other questionable saxophone-related statements that perhaps should have been fact-checked - but these are minor quibbles.

This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Charlie Parker went from being a clueless kid to becoming the brilliant creator of a musical style that is still fundamental to jazz. It’s quite informative, written from a unique perspective, and a lot of fun, if you are willing to accept Stanley Crouch on his own terms.

Link: Stanley Crouch bio on Wikipedia

And Happy New Year!

Review: Hal Leonard "Real Book" Vol. 5

So let's think back...why was the old Real Book so successful? I mean the original bootleg one, produced by two Berklee students in 1975. Here's why: because it was so much better than the shoddy fakebooks we had before that. We liked the old RB because:

• It included mostly great tunes that were a core part of the standard jazz repertoire, with very few "filler" tunes; 
• It had mostly (not entirely) correct, jazz-friendly chord changes; 
• It had nice calligraphy that you could read in dim club light;
• Although it was a money-making effort, the old RB was produced with respect for the musicians who would be using it. 
• The kids who produced it pretty much knew how to produce a practical yet accurate chart.

What did we not like about the old RB? The inaccuracies, in a few cases egregious, and the fact that it was a pirate product, that did not respect copyright (at least that's how I felt, although many musicians couldn't care less about copyright).

So how does the new Hal Leonard "Real Book" Vol. 5 compare? I'm sorry to say, not very well. Why not?

• Many of the tunes can only be described as "filler";
• The changes are often not presented in a jazz-friendly way;
• There is an unacceptably high percentage of errors, most of them preventable, if the company had cared enough to edit the book properly;
• It's a money-making effort all right, but without sufficient respect for the musicians who will be using it;
• And the "World's Largest Print Music Company" in many cases did not seem to know how to produce a practical yet accurate chart.

Positive features: A readable font that mimics the calligraphy in the old RB; and copyright is respected.

Please see my review of Hal Leonard RB Vol. 4 - critical, but polite, I think. Many of the observations about that volume hold true for this one as well.

For this review, I am feeling less generous. This big company should know better.

Except for the respect of copyright and the nice font, this book is a throwback to the bad old days of fakebooks that were full of filler, full of errors, and that required informed interpretation to be useful to the average jazz musician. I don't want to spend too much time on specific cases, but here is a representative example:

The chart for "Anything Goes," like many charts in this book, uses changes that seem to have been copied straight from the original sheet music. In most old sheet music, chord symbols were an afterthought, added to a composed piano part. Changes are often harmonically superfluous; or in the absence of the piano arrangement, need to be carefully voiced to make sense. In the old days, we developed the skill of knowing how to handle these sorts of charts - when to ignore changes, or when and how to rearrange them in a more practical way. Musicians who are accustomed to "modern" lead sheets often don't know how to do this reworking, or have no patience for it. The better, more jazz-oriented charts of the last 40 years (e.g. the old RB, or charts in Aebersold playalongs) took care of the simplification process, taking the burden off the end user. (See this post for comments on how to create a good chart.)

The "Tune-Dex" fakebook of 1949, one of the very first fakebooks, consisted of lead sheets that just copied the chord symbols from the original sheet music, as was apparently done in this Hal Leonard chart for "Anything Goes." As a matter of fact, this HL chart is almost exactly like the Tune-Dex chart of 1949 for "Anything Goes," in the details of its awkward chord placement.

In fairness, a number of the charts are better conceived.

Next, a word about the tune choice in this volume. Out of 400 tunes, I'd say about 80 might be useful. By what stretch of the imagination should a "Real Book" (i.e., a purportedly practical, jazz-oriented fakebook) include:

"Aquarius" (yes, that one)
"The Beat Goes On"
"Billie Jean"
"Dragnet"
"Smooth Operator"
"Somethin' Stupid"
"What's New Pussycat?"

As with HL RB Vol. 4, there are also some extreme retro "trad" tunes like "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles," some moderately interesting second-tier bebop, and some forgettable fusion tunes.

Hal Leonard has attached the name "Real Book" to about as many products as it could (Bluegrass, Christmas, Dixieland, Rock, Blues, Worship). In this usage, "Real Book" just means "fakebook," nothing more. The term formerly referred to a product that was by and for jazz musicians, produced with a healthy respect for the people who would be using it. Now it's just a term that is being mined to confer some credibility.

BTW, "Star Eyes" is just about always played in Eb, not F. Don't use this chart.

Apparently, HL's "Real Vocal Book" has editorial problems also. Check out this Amazon page, and scroll down to read the customer review from "PianoJazzMan," including HL's reply.

I guess I won't be publishing anything through Hal Leonard any time soon. But darn it, we should be honest.

Review: "Charlie Parker: His Music and Life," by Carl Woideck

Carl Woideck’s Charlie Parker: His Music and Life has long been one of my two favorite Parker books, along with Lawrence Koch’s Yardbird Suite (previously reviewed here). In different ways, each book combines biography with in-depth musical analysis.

Woideck’s book begins with a concise “Biographical Sketch,” and follows with an analysis of Parker’s stylistic development, marked off into chapters covering 1940-43, 1944-46, 1947-49, and 1950-55. Appendices include a selected discography, and four solo transcriptions.

The 48-page biography chapter is well-researched, describing both Parker’s musical and non-musical life. Woideck addresses some Bird myths - as the book jacket reads, “setting the record straight where possible.” Parker’s drug use, not an irrelevant factor in both his musical and non-musical life, is dealt with realistically. Although this section is nicely done, I get the feeling that for Woideck, it was a sort of obligatory part of the book, and he would just as soon get on with the analysis. As he writes at the end of the bio, “That leaves us with the music, which is as it should be.”

The musical chapters comprise the real subject of this book. The Koch book covers a lot of biographical and discographical detail, with some analysis along the way, and a 32-page appendix that digs into the technical details of Parker’s music. Woideck, while also presenting his material chronologically, deals primarily with Parker’s style, rather than spending time on the minutae of Bird’s performances and recording history. The two books complement each other nicely.

Some of the particular angles, or points made, in Woideck’s book:

1) Parker was a great student of the jazz of his day. Notably, he studied Lester Young's recorded solos.

2) Parker had a unique ability to integrate advanced (for his era) theory concepts into his playing in an organic, natural way. Theory immediately became practice.

3) In the 1950s, Parker seems to have had difficulty in expanding his musical frontiers; in this period his performances seem “formulaic.” He aspired to expand his knowledge of the European classical tradition, but was not able to realize this ambition.

Woideck makes interesting, often astute, observations throughout the book. For example:

1) Parker has been quoted as saying he was “impressed by Bach’s patterns.” Woideck points out the similarity of some of Parker’s phrases to Bach’s solo pieces. I have to agree. Play through some of Bach's cello suites, and see what you think.

2) Woideck cites a pattern that Parker plays in a 1952 recording of “Rocker,” that seems to have been borrowed from Nicholas Slonimsky’s Thesaurus Of Scales And Melodic Patterns. Slonimsky’s book became famous among jazz musicians later, in the 1960s, when John Coltrane used some of its patterns as source material for solos. Woideck finds only this one example from Parker, but his early use is significant.

3) It’s interesting to speculate on how much of Parker’s improvisations may have been prepared in advance. Woideck traces the development of Parker’s approach to the bridge of “Cherokee” over a period of years. Parker’s treatment of the bridge's II V sequences seems to have started as “Tea for Two” quotes, over time becoming increasingly embellished and varied, as a sort of “work-in-progress,” ultimately becoming a Parker trademark. Woideck also cites the 1946 recording session that produced “Night in Tunisia”; Parker used “nearly identical” solo breaks on all three takes (this is the excerpt issued as the “Famous Alto Break”). Of course, prepared or not, it’s still stunning, and advanced for that era.

I do think that when Woideck repeatedly states that Parker’s creativity ebbed in the 1950s, he may be overstating the point a little. He asserts that Bird settled into a “lick-based,” “formulaic” approach. As I see it, Parker’s approach had always been “lick-based.” It was part of his style, and his genius, that he could vary the licks, and their rhythmic placement, in countless ways. Also, I think it’s undeniable that Bird produced some transcendent work in the 1950s. If there is some validity in Woideck’s assertion, it is perhaps largely a reflection of the recording situations that Ross Russell placed Parker in, and of the fact that Parker often toured as a “single,” without his own quartet as a support group.

In an appendix, Woideck presents four transcribed solos: “Honey and Body” (a medley of “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Body and Soul”), “Oh, Lady Be Good,” “Parker’s Mood,” and “Just Friends.” It’s a great selection of solos, and the transcriptions are nicely done. Unfortunately for alto players, the solos are shown in concert key, not transposed for Eb instruments. This will work for pianists and guitarists, but sax players will miss seeing how the notes lie on the instrument with which the solos were created. I’m sure that this was a difficult judgement call by the author.

All in all, a fine piece of scholarship, and a must for all ornithologists.