Re- GRGR(5) - More Parker

WillL at fieldschool.com WillL at fieldschool.com
Wed Nov 20 23:13:30 CST 1996


Date	11/20/96
Subject	Re- GRGR(5) - More Parker
>From	WillL
To	Pynchon List

Re: GRGR(5) - More Parker

Some responses to the responses to my Charlie Parker post:

1.  Flat fives surely were a major bebop device, and chords that included
ninths, etc. were in use long before bop.  What I was talking about the process
of reharmonization that bop perfected, a process they applied to all sorts of
standard tunes (most notably, Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm").  They didn't must
include other scales tones in the chords they played, but they would look at
those other scale tones as outlining or suggesting whole new harmonies and chord
patterns that opened up the improvising to "allow" notes that previously would
have been considered dissonant.  For instance, if you look at the chord changes
in The Real Book (the Bible of jazz "fake" books) for Parker's "Confirmation,"
not only will you see an e minor seven flat five and a minor seven flat five,
but you'll also see that Parker has created whole chord patterns that make
serpentine the original structure/source of the song:  "How High the Moon."

2.  Didn't mean to mock the pre-bop versions of "Cherokee" done in the swing
bands.  The lyrics are just so painfully patronizing, it's irresistable to savor
the fact that THAT TUNE, amidst all the others (like "How High . . .") has been
mythologized as THE birth canal of a revolutionary music.

3.  I agree with the comment that John Coltrane's 1960-67 versions of "My
Favorite Things" were another great example of a jazz musician making great art
(a whole meal) out of a white guy's fluffer-nutter sandwich.  With Trane, the
trick was not to make "Things" more harmomically complex but to make it simpler
-- stripping it down to its essence, to what was really beautiful about it. 
Among other things, Coltrane played only the first part of the song for 95% of
his performance, leaving that last part ("When the dog bites, when the bee . .
") to be played only once, at the very end, making the tune into a kind of
chant, an incantation.  I have no idea if Coltrane saw the act as any kind of
politics (I doubt it -- he was more interested in matters of the spirit, though
he did record a politically motivated song called "Alabama"), but it seems
impossible not to see this as another reclamation or conversion of the master's
property by the master musician.

5.  Jazz musicians have done this with show tunes over and over again -- check
out Miles Davis' "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" or "Someday My Prince Will
Come" (from, oy, Snow White).  Pynchon is in good compnay doing it himself --
rewriting "Bye Bye Blackbird" and "Auld Lang . . . [can't spell that new year's
Eve tune, sorry]."  Maybe you could see much of GR as a kind of reharmonization
of other sources -- guidebooks, history books, cartoons, German movies, fairy
tales, all twisted back on themselves to bite their original authors on the ass
 . . .

- Will Layman





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