Re- GRGR(5) - More Parker

[davemarc]

Having greatly enjoyed the jazz commentary going on here, I'd like to enter
the discussion by sticking up for the Broadway tune "My Favorite Things" as
it's written--something I never thought I'd do.  

Will writes that the Coltrane versions of MFT comprise "another great
example of a jazz musician making great art (a whole meal) out of a white
guy's fluffer-nutter sandwich."  Yet I think a sound case can be made that
the Coltrane versions are perhaps not-so-great and the Rodgers/Hammerstein
version is not-so-slight after all.  The original MFT works extremely well
within its context in musical theater.  It's an artful (or at least
well-crafted) theater piece sung to calm anxious children.  It's hardly the
first song I'd play on my stereo, but it's an outstanding example of work by
a expert musical theater team.

I also admire Coltrane's MFT--I'm much more likely to play that on my
stereo--but confess that I've "maxed out" on it for long stretches.  Even
McCoy Tyner, a great musician in his own right who played MFT with Trane on
various occasions, has complained (to me and others) that the solos were too
damn long.  I think he's got a point.  Coltrane's (schnitzel-and-) noodlings
certainly build into that "whole meal," but sometimes it's a crisp apple
streudel (or even a touch of a trifle) that really hits the spot. 

As for the overall tendency to claim that African American jazz players were
somehow politically subverting "white" music by using it as the foundation
of their own, more complex, musicmaking, I don't dispute that there is a
grain of truth in that--though I think it might be more accurate to look at
it as "cultural" rather than "political" subversion.  But the grain of truth
shouldn't be romanticized to the degree that it overshadows other important
considerations:  lots of the myriad "white" tunes adopted or adapted by jazz
musicians (including the majority of the ones cited so far on this thread)
are indeed great tunes that actually contrast the bulk of contemporaneous
popular tunes, the original tunes appealed to jazz musicians on their own
merits (musical as well as economic and practical--"everyone" know them),
a-and many of the jazz musicians, including beboppers, were not even
dark-skinned.  There was a lot of cross-cultural musical "building" going on
here.  As a matter of fact, it's still happening.  

davemarc