The fifth post on My 100 Top Tracks
I listen to jazz more than any genre. Probably more than 60/70% of my listening is jazz. This isn't reflected in my top 100 tracks which are as much a timeline to my life as anything, and rock and pop dominated this from the 1970s onwards. But a few years ago I was talking to my son-in-law about music and I said I listened mostly to jazz, soul, and blues. He commented: 'That's where it all comes from', which I guess is the case. Most rock and pop comes from those genres.
I was at a party not long ago talking to someone about music and he said he played Prog Rock the most, which I have also a lot, and still do. I love Emerson, Lake and Palmer, for instance. When I said I listened mostly to jazz he said he found jazz very difficult to get into. It's a fair point. I was helped by the fact that my mum played jazz records when I was a kid, fairly old traditional stuff, Edith Piaf I remember and probably people like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday I am guessing. It helped get me started. But I was determined to get into something that I was curious about and was willing as a teenager to put the effort into jazz to find out what it was all about. Curiosity is a big part of music listening for me.
Miles Davis and John Coltrane have always stood out for me (more on Coltrane in a later post). Sometimes I'll be listening to a jazz playlist and a track will come on that I don't recognise and I'll think 'Wow, this is good', I look up who it is and it's invariably Davis or Coltrane. They just have something extra.
My favourite jazz album for a long time was A Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, featuring Coltrane on saxophone. For many, this is his best album. For others, it's the best ever jazz album. For others, it's the best anything album ever. I've listened to it so many times that I can't really much now. Also, I got curious about jazz that's a bit more challenging, asks questions, and makes you think and pay attention. (To be fair, A Kind of Blue probably did this at the time). So this is often stuff that's going off the track a bit, or onto a new track, and has ingenuity and difference about it. I like discovering music and anything a bit intelligent, that makes me think, experimental, exploring, breaking from norms. My partner will confirm this with a sigh.
When I first heard jazz fusion (jazz that mixes with genres like rock and funk) I was coming from a rock and pop background. While I thought jazz fusion was OK I thought if you're going to listen to, say, jazz funk, why not just listen to funk. But coming now from a jazz perspective I've got much more into it. It has a different meaning from that angle.
Recently artists like Donald Byrd, Lonnie Liston Smith, and Bobbi Humphrey, have been on play a lot. I also got into new young British jazz like Ezra Collective and Nubya Garcia and from L.A. Kamasi Washington who I saw live recently and was stunned. Even my partner who doesn't really like jazz that much loved his gig, partly because of his fusion of styles of the sort Miles Davis pioneered.
So, after A Kind of Blue, I got very into Miles Davis breaking with conventional jazz. His Bitches Brew album is the one talked about most in this vein. I first came across it in a book on great rock albums which confused me at the time. I really liked his In a Silent Way which I bought on vinyl as a teenager and played over and over. I have, for some reason, only recently listened much to albums like Tutu, Amandla, Jack Johnson, and Aura which break away from the confines of straight jazz to more fusion. His album On the Corner, really got me especially. Recorded in New York in 1972 and released that year, it has, as the title suggests, a bit of an urban ghetto feel. It has the coolest cover. It's funky, experimental, and free. For me, there's nothing pretentious about it. It's just someone trying to combine lots of stuff he's interested in and to do something new and different and that, in this case, will appeal to young black people who were into straight funk and rock, something Davis said was his explicit aim. It's kind of like the punk of jazz. When released it didn't list the musicians on the cover, extra punk. Ironically Davis doesn't play the trumpet a huge amount on it, and when he does it's with a wah-wah pedal. It was panned by critics and jazz fans at the time but gained support later and seems to me to anticipate developments in jazz and other genres to come. It was ahead of its time.
The opening title track On the Corner is the one I'm highlighting here (actually a 20-minute combination of 4 tracks in one). You have to sit and listen to it. It's no good in the background. I read someone say there's not much in the way of harmonies or tunes in the track. Some have suggested it can't be categorised as jazz. I've read others say it can't be categorised even as music. That seems tough but there are a lot of sounds coming in and out that you have to listen and go with. Things pop in and out and then other new things pop in and out and it's a joy to listen to. Picking them up makes me feel good. That's the main thing. It has, as well as Davis' trumpet, legends like John McLaughlin on guitar, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea on keyboards, and other interesting musicians from different musical backgrounds (including soul/funk). There are tablas and sitar; Eastern music had become popular at the time (and there is a world music feel to it). There's a steady repetitive dum-dum bass pattern all through, a sort of pulse rhythm, which must have been boring for the bass player to play but is persistent and lays the basis for the rest of the musicians to do their stuff. There's a clattering sound to the track and it feels like a jam, which it may well have been. The track just starts right up. I saw a review describe it as 'confrontational', another as 'assaultive', which it sort of is but in a good way. Some of the musicians who played on it were apparently quite negative about the direction Davis was going on the album. One review sees it as alienating. That's a bit harsh, because if you sit and listen carefully you get drawn in and it's enjoyable to listen to. Each time you listen you can hear something new.
I like discovering new music, as much as listening to the same old favourites over and over, and anything that stimulates my curiosity and musical interest. This album and track do that. It's astonishing and compelling. Good-quality audio picks out the bits and pieces. It helps to approach it with a sense of openness and fun; not my normal mindset. You have to concentrate (a bit) but it's worth it.
As a person, Davis wasn't a great guy. He was physically violent towards partners.