Re- GRGR(5) -- on Parker an

[David Casseres]

>...  Parker took the
>chords to Cherokee and "extended them upward from the root (the 1) past the
>usual extend of chords (the seventh tone) to the ninth, thirteenth, etc.,
>building these brand new chords from which new melodic choices were 
>possible.
>These new chords were then a "reharmonization" of the original tune. Then,
>Parker would improvise (or write) a brand new melody to go with the new 
>hormony
>(or vice versa) and have a new tune based on the structure of the original. 
>"Koko" was based on "Cherokee" in that way.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the 9th, 11th and 
13th chords were part of the standard vocabulary of swing.  They're 
certainly all over the place in the swing-flavored jazz guitar 
arrangements I learned at one time.  My impression is that the harmonic 
innovation in bebop started with the introduction of flatted-5th chords.  
The flatted 5th is radical because the 5th is the keystone of both 
European and (most) African scales, so a flatted 5th sounds really alien 
-- except that the inventors of bebop made it work.  By now Parker's 
music doesn't sound weird at all, though it sure still sounds masterful.

Putting a brand new solo melody over the chords of a song was established 
practice long before bebop, but those flatted-5th chords had a big 
influence on the melodic lines played over them.  A-and a lot of what 
made bebop sound different was the rhythmic structure of the melody, the 
famous "decomposition of the beat,"  breaking out of the 4/4 beat just as 
Louis Armstrong and a few others broke out of the 2/4 beat and made swing 
possible.

(It was a long time ago that I read about this stuff -- if I'm making a 
fooool of myself, someone tell me.)

> [good stuff deleted here]

>I've always felt that Pynchon's allusions to Parker and jazz here are one 
>way of
>seeing some unsentimental optimism in GR.  Bird finds a way of turning white
>exploitation of jazz on its head by expanding possibilities rather than 
>limiting
>them.  He "steals back" jazz by taking a dopey pop song and making it into
>sophisticated art on his own terms.

True in general but not so true about Cherokee, because it had already 
come a long way from being a dopey pop song; it was a standard 
straight-ahead swing instrumental by that time, a vehicle for all sorts 
of improvisation.



Cheers,
David