History of Jazz 2 Test 3, Chapter 17

Catalysts for Acid Jazz

1. Hip-hop musicians had to start listening to jazz. Early examples include Digable Planets and A Tribe Called Quest, who started sampling their parents' Blue Note recordings. In 1994, Us3 had a big hit with "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)," a transformed version of Hancock's "Cantaloupe Island." Blue Notes' sales rose. 2. Jazz musicians had to find a way to use hip-hop. The financial incentive was very clear. Older jazz soloists were put together with hip-hop tracks. Branford Marsalis's fusion group, Buckshot LeFonque, employs both a rapper and a turntablist.

Return to Forever

Band formed by Chick Corea that was modeled on the Mahavishnu Orchestra's style as a way of discovering an artistically and commercially viable mode of fusion. Folded in 1980, after which Chick Corea simultaneously ran his "Acoustic Band" and "Elektric Band".

Headhunters

Band formed by Herbie Handcock after leaving Davis in 1970. He followed up on his fascination with synthesizers and formed an experimental group that played postbop music. When the band struggled, Hancock—inspired by James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, and Tower of Power—turned to funk. The 1974 album (named after the group) produced the hit "Chameleon," consisting of a bass line, clave, a couple of chords, and layers of electric keyboard sounds. Later, Hancock effectively combined the complexity of jazz with the simplicity of funk grooves Thrust (1974) and Man-Child (1975). Then in the early 1980s he heard some hip-hop tapes by the group Material. He added a melody and released it as "Rockit" in 1983.

Emergency

Band formed in 1968 by Miles Davis' drummer Tony Williams, British guitarist John McLaughlin, and organist Larry Young which revived the organ trio setting—this time including more of a harmonic, improvisatory, and timbral edge that pointed the way to the basis for jazz-pop fusion.

Weather Report

Band that was the longest lived fusion group (15 years) as well as one of the most artistically and commercially successful. It also centered on Davis alumni, in this case Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter. The band's 1976 recording Heavy Weather was a best-seller and featured "Birdland," a Zawinul composition. The band moved away from free-jazz improvisation and textures to African American pop (or "Afro-pop") grooves during the mid-1970s when they hired an electric bass player, Jaco Pastorius.

Sting

Bassist and Singer who recruited many jazz musicians to play in his solo band after breaking up his hit band The Police.

Yusef Lateef

Bebop saxophone player and flutist who made an album called Part of the Search, exploring his memories of black radio hits, from Billie Holiday and Jimmie Lunceford to Ray Charles and the Five Satins, replacing the silences between tracks with station-tuning static.

Bitches Brew

Landmark Miles Davis album that launched jazz-rock fusion. Davis liked to leave lots of room for his band to improvise textures in a context of "controlled freedom." By the end of the 1960s, Davis was playing with large ensembles of young musicians and with doubled or even tripled rhythm-section instruments to create a dense but light texture in a style he insisted was "black" more than rock. The album proved Miles's claim to Columbia record executives that he would sell more if they stopped marketing him as a jazz man. Although it could never be considered a "commercial" album because of the length of each piece (even after post-production editing), the considerable levels of harmonic dissonance, and dense textures.

Americana

Broad musical style that incorporates "American" genres such as jazz, rock, country, American classical, and folk together. Guitarist Bill Frisell was a notable user of this style.

Slash Chords

Complex extended chords in which the bass root is a note not normally part of the triad (e.g., an A major chord with an F root, written as A/F and spoken as "A-slash-F").

Acid Jazz

Fusion of soul jazz and hip hop that comes from the English "rave" scene. When DJ Chris Bangs decided to play an alternative to the usual repetitive, bass-oriented, hypnotic electronic music for dancers, he used soul jazz tracks. This was a pathway for young people into the jazz tradition. This style revivified soul jazz, which had been pushed to the fringes of critical attention during the period of Coltrane, Mingus, and Coleman. Though some viewed soul jazz as trivial and too commercial, it persevered.

Pat Metheny

Guitar player who originally studied Wes Montgomery's techniques but was also influenced by the music of Dylan, the Beatles, the country music of Waylon Jennings, and bossa nova.He made his first recording in 1975 with Jaco Pastorius (Bright Size Life). His sound is warm and rich, with broad melodic lines, which he plays on often electronic but jazzy original compositions. He composed with pianist Lyle Mays, with whom he started his namesake Group in 1977. For his generation, he reclaimed the guitar for jazz. He also recorded free jazz in 1985 with Ornette Coleman (Song X), adding to its "harmolodic" texture.

George Benson

Guitarist who embraced smooth jazz. "Breezin" (1976) from his album of the same name was his biggest hit.

Koln Concert

Keith Jarrett's greatest solo piano concert, which is a double LP and is one of the best-selling jazz recordings of all time even though, according to Jarrett, the piano was wrong, the food was wrong, and he hadn't slept in two days. Inspiring a number of New Age pianists, this recording was noticed by non-jazz fans who were attracted by the mixes of jazz and gospel, folk, and other kinds of music. Had simpler, less dense harmonies and influential melodies.

Jan Hammer

Pianist in Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Joe Zawinul

Pianist who was an Austrian World War II survivor and the mainstay of Weather Report. He came to the United States in 1959 and most notably joined Cannonball Adderley's 1960s soul jazz band as the only white musician. After this, he started to use the electric piano in the mid-1960s after hearing Ray Charles. He used it to compose Adderley's biggest hit, "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" and mastered the synthesizer. With the synthesizer, he even created his own timbres, which he preferred to the instrument's presets.

Song for Bilbao

Piece by Pat Matheny from his 1982 album Travels that embodies his fusion style. Features Michael Brecker on saxophone.

Charles Lloyd

Saxophone player who formed one of the first jazz-pop fusion bands. The band featured a young Keith Jarrett and Jack Dejohnette playing within the loose cultural boundaries of the San Francisco performance scene, in which jazz intermingled with other popular music genres like rock.

Miles Davis in 1968

Miles Davis had grown tired of postbop jazz. He was looking for a simpler, less abstract style, which he heard in the Chicago blues of Muddy Waters. Davis electrified his rhythm section by bringing in Dave Holland on electric bass, and Chick Corea on electric piano. He also renewed his off-and-on collaboration with Gil Evans. The results can be heard on "Filles de Kilimanjaro" (1968), which is characterized by a combination of bass ostinatos, modal jazz, and floating harmonies over a steady beat. In his promotion of the album, Davis was careful to claim that referring to his music as jazz was old-fashioned.

Cantaloupe Island

Much covered piece by Herbie Hancock that has a rollicking rhythm created by the contrast between the underlying four-beats-to-a-bar meter and the marvelously distinct piano vamp that was more difficult to execute than it sounds. This performance was the thirteenth take. The piece makes for an interesting contrast with Horace Silver's "Song for My Father," also recorded for Blue Note in 1964 (four months later), though Hancock sounds more modern—in part because he uses advanced harmonies and a keyboard touch that suggests a cooler, clearer attack as compared with Silver's aggressive style.

Rock and Roll

Music that grew out of R&B and that became popular in the 1950s with the rise of artists such as Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry,

World Music

Musical genre defined largely in response to the sudden increase of non-English-language recordings released in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s

Funk

Musical style centered on layering that is more independent than in rock, allowing each player to play more inventively: drummers had to switch to a groove from swing; bassists could play more syncopated lines; and soloists played lines that fit into the overall texture. Had loop, groove-based textures played by the rhythm instruments. Allowed for both more sophisticated, chromatically colored harmony and modal playing, since it often featured long stretches of one chord. It was dance music, allowing young musicians to explore sophisticated jazz harmony while the dance beat held the audience's attention.

Jan Garbarek

Norwegian saxophone player who became fascinated with Coltrane's use of Third World music in the 1960s. He became a jazz ethnomusicologist, learning folk songs and using them in his music, which he refused to call jazz. He is perhaps the best international example of a jazz fusion artist.

Singer-Songwriters

A term used to describe music artists or groups who not only perform songs but write the songs that they perform.

In a Silent Way

Album made by Miles Davis after Davis added the electric guitar of John McLaughlin. It was made partially over a surreptitiously recorded E major chord (a simplification of Joe Zawinul's original chord progression), catching the spontaneous interaction of a group who thought they were in rehearsal.

Phish

Alternative/Jam band that is a more contemporary version of a band devoted to open-ended improvisation, but it is not a jazz band. Led by Trey Anastasio

Soul Vamp

Another name for the ostinatos that form the backbone of soul and funk.

Paul Simon

Artist who was originally a rock/pop musician and began to incorporate jazz styles when he went solo. "Still Crazy After All These Years" is perhaps his biggest hit to incorporate jazz themes.

Billy Cobham

Drummer in Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Jaco Pastorius

Electric bass virtuoso known for his tenure in Weather Report. He removed the frets from the standard electric bass and created a singing sound on the instrument. To seal his claim on the jazz tradition, he played an unaccompanied version of the notoriously difficult "Donna Lee" on his first album. In Weather Report, he played melodic lines like a guitar player and attracted a young white audience. After a few years with Weather Report, he started using drugs heavily. By 1982, he left the band and died four years later.

Medeski, Martin, and Wood

Jam band publicized by Phish that started by classical pianist John Medeski. Starting out as a piano trio in New York, they started to tour in the early 1990s, playing on the same gigs as rock bands like Los Lobos and Dave Matthews. Medeski soon started playing an array of electronic keyboards, each with its own amplifier. Medeski does not like the term "jam band," but it fits his group's music. It builds on grooves of earlier fusion groups. The group also places their recorded concerts on their website. Many of the recordings have been shaped by hip-hop artists.

Oregon

Jazz fusion group formed in 1970 that is a breakaway group from the Winter Consort. Includes composer Ralph Towner. Each musician plays a number of instruments: Towner mainly plays six- and 12-string guitar, but also performs on piano and even French horn. Bassist Glen Moore also plays violin and flute; Paul McCandless, oboe (rare in jazz); and percussionist Colin Walcott, tabla and sitar. The band exemplifies serene, intricate, and interactive New Age jazz.

Paul Winter Consort

Jazz fusion group notable for taking on the entire earth as a resource. The leader soon began using wolf howls and the singing of humpbacked whales as sources on recordings such as Common Ground (1978). He has also recorded in sacred spaces and in the wilderness.

Jazz in 1967

Jazz was in crisis; Coltrane died, clubs were closing, concerts were drying up, and the press was starting to take rock more seriously. Young jazz musicians needed to adjust to the change: something needed to be done to bridge the gap between jazz and pop.

Mahavishnu Orchestra

Jazz-rock fusion band that provided a template for other musicians, unlike Bitches Brew. It was created and led by John McLaughlin, a British guitarist influenced by black bluesmen as well as 1960s rock, among other music genres. His first two commercially successful albums—The Inner Mounting Flame (1972) and Birds of Fire (1973) showed fusion's competitiveness against rock. The music was loud, fast, virtuosic (raising the bar for rock guitarists), intense, and distorted, much like concert rock and unlike club jazz. It was also inventive, with complicated meters inspired by tala, often in odd-numbered meters and slash chords—triads over bass roots outside the chord, resulting in dissonant harmonies.

Smooth Jazz

Style of jazz consisting of an inoffensive blending of jazz and upbeat R&B and funk that dates back to the 1960s and 1970s with Wes Montgomery's covers of Beatles songs produced by Creed Taylor. Taylor's CTI Records recorded George Benson, among others, in an easy-listening atmosphere. It did away with the real-time interactivity of jazz by using pop-music recording techniques of overdubbing layers of music one at a time. The music was driven by radio. The audience was affluent African American professionals. By the late 1980s, a new category of radio emerged called "new adult contemporary," "jazz lite," "quiet storm," or "smooth jazz." The target audience was affluent twenty-five- to forty-four-year-olds who wanted something less abrasive than rock but did not want to make the leap to jazz. In 1987, Billboard introduced a "contemporary jazz" category for this music.

Michael Brecker

Tenor saxophone player who played on "Song for Bilbao" and was an early adopter of guitar-synthesizer technology that merged guitar sounds with keyboard or horn sounds. One of the first people to play an electric wind instrument.

Hip-hop

The latest style of music to inform fusion. Starting in Brooklyn during the 1970s and spreading worldwide in the 1980s, it did not have much impact on jazz musicians (Hancock's "Rockit" is an exception) and, unlike jazz, was countercultural, youth-oriented, and in touch with black street life.

Chuck Mangione

Trumpet player who embraced smooth jazz. "Feels so Good" (1978) was his biggest hit.

Steely Dan

Rock band that incorporated jazz themes and styles into some of its songs. Formed and led by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. Its songs have more complex chords than other rocks songs and often go beyond the standard triad to achieve thicker and more lush sounds.

Wayne Shorter

Saxophone player who played in Miles Davis' second great quintet as well as leading his own postbop groups. He recorded copiously and recorded many compositions. Was a cornerstone of Weather Report with Joe Zawinul.

Kenny G

Saxophone player who was the face of smooth jazz. He is the best-selling maestro of smooth jazz, although some jazz musicians consider his music "lame noodling." "Songbird" was his most notable piece.

Herbie Hancock

Piano player who created a postbop style which was a popular, relatively simple funk-jazz mixture that was held together by extended, syncopated bass lines. Chameleon-like, he keeps several careers going at once: postbop pianist, 1970s funk pop performer, 1980s hip-hop fusion artist, and duo pianist as likely to play acoustic jazz as R&B. He played classical music as well as R&B in his youth and learned a bluesy jazz style by listening to Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans to develop a good ear for harmony. He had an early hit with "Watermelon Man," which was recorded by Mongo Santamaria. In the 1960s, he composed and played modal pieces like "Maiden Voyage" and slash chord-based pieces such as "Dolphin Dance."

Keith Jarrett

Piano player who is an idiosyncratic performer, who vocalizes and gyrates while he plays, and is notoriously intolerant of distractions during performances. Nevertheless, he has a wide audience. Born in Pennsylvania, he was a classical music prodigy. He played with Art Blakey's Messengers, Charles Lloyd, and Miles Davis. Even though he hated fusion and electric music in general, he liked what Miles was doing. Eventually formed the Standards Trio with DeJohnette and Peackock that played tin pan alley tunes.

Chick Corea

Piano player who played in Miles Davis' original electric bands and helped pioneer jazz-rock fusion. A Boston native, he learned jazz by transcribing the voicings of Horace Silver and the solos of Bud Powell. After leaving Davis in 1970, he joined Anthony Braxton for six albums, after which he began to find free improvisation alienating. He formed Return to Forever in 1972. After hearing Mahavishnu, he wanted to play and write more dramatic and intense music. He started playing synthesizers and hired guitarist Bill Connors and then Al DiMeola, a technically spectacular player.

Spain

Piece by Return to Forever that notably had a long extended intro based on a classical piece from 1939 "Concierto de Araujuez" by Joaquin Rodrigo.

Why do we Try?

Piece by Robert Glasper. Before he recorded Black Radio, Glasper knew he would have to establish his jazz cred. In a sense, he purposely did what John Coltrane inadvertently did in proving himself a magnificent jazz saxophonist before embarking on the avant-garde. Other jazz musicians have adopted rock and R&B themes, but often press them into a conventional jazz setting, sometimes with new harmonies to facilitate improvisations. Glasper's approach is more radical and more respectful.

Teen Town

Piece by Weather Report named after a Miami neighborhood. Pastorius plays bass and drums over an ambiguous chord progression of major triads. It sounds improvised but is mostly composed. Much of the performance is in the form of dialogues between Pastorius and Shorter and Pastorius and Zawinul. The dialogue opens up near the end of the piece, a section that is extended in live performance.

Chank

Piece from 1998 by guitarist John Scofield, who played with Miles in the 1980s, and MMW. Scofield plays with a distorted blues sound and usually with a neo-funk groove. He came to MMW because he was "bebopped out." The piece is a tribute to James Brown's guitarist. Scofield's part was a James Brown-like rhythm line. The form is also derived from Brown's practice: a modal A section followed by a bridge where each soloist can play as long as he or she wants. The album sold well, jump-starting Scofield's career.

Teo Macero

Producer who Miles Davis came increasingly to rely upon post-production to effect his later albums. He edited what he saw as the raw material produced in the studio. Much like the Beatles' George Martin, he was given a free hand to edit and recombine the hours of recording made in the studio to make two long tracks for In a Silent Way that established a satisfying, persistent groove.

Jazz-Rock Conflict

Rock arrived at the very moment when jazz pushed toward the seeming anarchy of the avant-garde. Rock fans dismissed the older style of pop song as arty, old-hat, and dull, while jazz musicians, already leaving Tin Pan Alley song behind, derided the new rock tunes as simplistic and childish.

Obstacles for Jazz Musicians

Youth: The young, relatively well-off baby boomer generation wanted to listen to musicians who were also young, not older jazz musicians who had been honing their art for decades. Electronics and recordings: Amplifications and electronic manipulation of sound produced a whole new range of timbres with which jazz musicians found it difficult to keep pace. Rock depended on studio production techniques, something that many jazz musicians disdained, believing that recordings should re-create the live sound of a band. Rhythm: By the 1960s, rock was played in an even-eighths groove as opposed to a swing groove. Many jazz musicians refused to adjust on aesthetic grounds, or found it difficult to adjust even if they wanted to. Groups: Rock focused on the group in contrast to jazz, which focused more on each contributing musician. Jazz eventually developed a group-oriented creative process. Virtuosity: Since the time of bebop, jazz musicians had been expected to have a high level of virtuosity. Earlier rock musicians disdained this capability in favor of a "do-it-yourself" ethic of folk and blues, which shifted focus from the individual musicians to the band, song, and songwriter.