How to listen to jazz, part 1

I first met Blaine online on the 1UP community site about 20 years ago, we’ve never met in person, but I considered him a friend. Thankfully he, and many of my 1UP friends were still in touch thanks to social media. A long time ago he said that he couldn’t stand jazz music. Blaine, and I were both were fans of heavy metal. That’s how I knew he had good taste in music. I told him that I used to think the same way, even when I played jazz music in the school band. Then I learned how to listen to jazz, and everything changed. I said that there were jazz songs that he might enjoy, and someday I would write a blog explaining how to listen to them. I didn’t think it would take so long to get here.

This blog was more than a decade in the making. Not because I didn’t know how to approach the topic, but rather because I wanted to make Cuphead illustrations to go along with it. It took me a long time to get motivated to complete the handful of drawings that I did. They weren’t as good as what I wanted, but they got the message across. Cuphead, and jazz music went hand-in-hand. The 2017 video game by StudioMDHR was a love letter to the golden age of American animation, and the jazz music from that period. It was a way that I could communicate the different types of jazz to my friend, but also help share its history to anybody visiting this blog. Before I talked about specifics I wanted to give a big picture view of the movement.

You might know that jazz was considered the premier American art form. To put it succinctly jazz music was born as a post Civil War response to popular music. It was the first time that the Black experience, and African-Americans were driving the musical direction in the country. Yet jazz had more meaning than that. It was a movement that started at the end of the 1800’s and shaped American culture through the early 1900’s. Jazz was not just a musical style, but it helped frame the rapidly evolving nation. It was the soundtrack to industrialization, the growth of cities, and the boom in income inequality. It scored the changes in fashion, dance, art, and architecture. It was also the type of music that was used for the earliest black, and white cartoon stars like Felix the Cat, Coco the Clown, Betty Boop, and Popeye the Sailor. They were the templates that Cuphead drew from. Musical formats often went hand-in-hand with changes in society. Jazz was a way of explaining the birth of the 20th Century because it represented so many things all at once.

The thing that I never agreed with from many of my teachers, and art critics was that jazz was the only original American art form. When I was in college I argued that Hip Hop was the second cultural art form that came exclusively from the USA. Some believed that rock and roll was also an original American art form, yet that wasn’t entirely true. Rock had cross-pollinated with British music thanks to both US, and UK kids listening to American blues records. Hip Hop was a different beast entirely. It was born exclusively in New York City in the early ‘70s by combining a shared language from the boroughs. It was a response to the unequal reality that whites, and colored people experienced post WWII.

Hip Hop rose from the broken promises of the civil rights movement, just as jazz grew out of the broken promises of reconstruction. If Art Deco was the visual style that framed jazz, then graffiti was the visual language of Hip Hop. The b-boys, b-girls, introduced a new form of “break” dance. The emcee replaced the band leader, or singer. They had a new rhyming song style called rap. The DJ, and their records replaced traditional instruments as the source of music. All four of these elements combined were the foundation of Hip Hop. As far as video games went I argued that Jet Set Radio was the greatest Hip Hop game ever made. It captured all four elements better than any other title. But I digress…

I didn’t enjoy jazz for most of my early years because it didn’t sound like music to me. It sounded instead like a bunch of musicians noodling around with their instruments. As if they couldn’t agree with the tempo, the chords, or the style that they were performing. It lacked the structure of rock, funk, soul, country, metal, ska, or even classical music. These were formats that made sense if I randomly turned to those stations on the radio. I could understand liking or not liking these types of music. Jazz was just highbrow “artsy-fartsy” music as far as I was concerned. I didn’t follow it for the longest time, and didn’t have interest in learning why. It was a bias that I had for most of my musical education. I was in elementary school when I started playing music. I joined the school orchestra around the age of eight. I started off playing cello, and quickly progressed. The instructors saw my ability, and they got me private lessons. I was adept in playing in the full orchestra, as well as in the smaller chamber groups, and even quartets. In high school the jazz band needed a bass player, and our orchestra director asked if I could fill in. That was when I started playing jazz.

I played in orchestras for Long Beach, Cerritos, and Cypress colleges. I would play in the Long Beach City College jazz groups on, and off, depending on if the director needed a bass player. I didn’t necessarily like playing some jazz songs. They were musically unlike everything I had been taught. I was exceptionally good at reading notes. This helped me sight read pieces in orchestra for either instrument. Jazz music however would sometimes have few notes, and instead be nothing but chord changes. This baffled me, it also baffled the director. He would ask why I was great at some pieces, and not others. I told him I could read music, but letters meant nothing to me. I never studied musical theory in school. I knew nothing about chords, chord progressions, or what went into major or minor keys. I just read the notes. After more than a decade playing in the orchestra I knew what I was good at, and it certainly wasn’t jazz. I became very snooty about my tastes in music. Then one day I was humbled by an accordion player.

In college orchestra we were sometimes asked to be accompanists for recitals. This was often at the end of the semester. We were supporting the music majors leaving our school to pursue their degree as composers or professional musicians. I had the great fortune of playing with dozens of talented musicians that did become professionals in orchestras, studio groups, and their own bands. Some became teachers, some worked in the entertainment industry for companies like Disney, and Universal. At least one person that I knew became a national advisor to the arts, and worked in DC for many years. I respected all of these people. Then one day we had a soloist that was going to play the accordion. I couldn't care less about the instrument, or the music that was about to be played. All my life I was taught that the accordion was a joke instrument. It didn’t have the pedigree of a classical instrument. The violin, viola, cello, and bass were highbrow to me. The accordion did not have that same reputation. In pop culture it was often used as a punchline. Weird Al Yankovic, and Judy Tenuta both used the accordion to great comedic effect.

The soloist for our chamber recital explained that she was a composer, and a piano major. For her recital she decided to instead play the accordion. She explained that the vast majority of accordion music was mainly transcribed from piano arrangements. Actual music composed for the accordion was rare, but could have as much depth, and complexity as any orchestra piece. I scoffed at the idea. She said she would be performing a movement from a composer named Eugene Ettore. He had created several original pieces for the accordion. The selection from the Manhattan Concerto would be featured that afternoon. Since we were not performing with her I was already mentally checked out. I sat with the orchestra, and closed my eyes. I waited for the torture to begin. A second later I sat up, and paid rapt attention. The recital hall was filled with sounds that I never could have imagined. There were tones, overtones, melodies, and harmonies playing in unison from her instrument. It was a wave of sounds that was hard to describe. A wonderful type of music that I had never thought possible. The closest I could describe the sound that the soloist achieved was somewhere between an organ, and choir. The accordion sounded like a living instrument that took deep breaths, and sang with many voices all at once. At that very moment I realized that I knew even less about music than I thought.

After 15 years of playing all over Southern California I had plenty more left to learn. This was true for the music, instruments, and formats that I didn’t understand. It saddened me that there was not a recording of that recital that I could play for you. I was convinced that it would make for a phenomenal soundtrack to a video game. I searched online to see if the Manhattan Concerto in its entirety had ever been recorded. I could find no evidence of it, aside from sheet music, and reports of performances on the east coast. I did eventually track down recordings of other Ettore songs from Rita Barnea. She was one of Ettore's students, and had become an accordion instructor as well. In this clip she talked about Eugene Ettore, and played the first movement of Manhattan Concerto. The thing that I discovered was that the accordion was very difficult to record, and mix correctly. Even on Mrs. Barnea’s recordings you only got a fraction of the tones that the instrument produced. The video itself did not do justice to the depth of sound that I heard in orchestra some 30 years ago. If I was wrong about the accordion, then I was certainly wrong about jazz music. The problem was I didn’t know where, or how to begin. Surprisingly the answer would come to me in the form of a banjo.

If the accordion was at the bottom of the respectable music pyramid, then the banjo was right next to it. Comedian Steve Martin often used it in his early days as a stand up. The banjo was synonymous with inbred hillbillies, no part in thanks to the 1972 film Deliverance. It had been used as a punchline in jokes for decades. Yet at the same time there were musicians introducing it into modern progressive jazz. My old neighbor was a latin, and jazz musician. He knew I was a bass player. He recorded years of jazz specials on his VCR (ask your grandparents). In the mid-‘90s and lent me a tape of the 1991 Jacksonville Jazz fest. He said there was a bass player named Victor Wooten that would blow my mind. I had grown up listening to Bootsy Collins (the James Brown band), Paul McCartney (the Beatles), John Entwistle (The Who), Chris Squire (Yes), Geddy Lee (Rush), Lemmy Kilmister (Motorhead), Cliff Burton (Metallica), Robert Trujillo (Suicidal Tendencies), Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers), and Les Claypool (Primus). I assumed that I had heard the best of the best. Again it turned out I was terribly ignorant.

The particular group my neighbor wanted me to listen to was Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. I found out later that it was band that was not supposed to exist. It featured the best musicians from their own respective genres. Béla Fleck was arguably the best modern bluegrass musician. His skills on the banjo were amazing. He was known for his virtuoso playing not only in traditional bluegrass music, but also classical. He was experimenting with new sounds, and created an electric banjo. Howard Levy was known in blues circles as the “man with two brains.” He could play piano, and harmonica equally well. The contrasting melodies, and harmonies he performed simultaneously sounded like they came from two different people. The drummer of the group was a time traveler named Future Man. He had converted a midi guitar into a a drum kit with dozens of other sound effects. His birth name was Roy Wilfred Wooten, his little brother Victor was considered the best progressive electric bass player in the 20th century. These musicians crossed paths one day, and played a show together. It was supposed to be a one time thing only to realized that they complimented each other very well.

These talented musicians decided to form a band. The sound they created hit like a tsunami at the Jacksonville Jazz fest in 1991. Their breakout jazz tune the Sinister Minister featured one of the greatest bass solos of all time. This band would be the one to get me interested in learning more about jazz. I’d like you to listen to the song, and try to figure out what made it unique. Then in the next blog I’d like to explore why jazz was different from other forms of early 20th century music, and my tips on how to listen to it. I hope to see you back for that. Were there any genres of music that you didn’t understand at first? Or some song that grew on you over time? Tell me about it in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!