GRGR(4) Mr Bird, he dead (long)

[nconaty at juno.com]

I went to the books 'cause I thought TRP got it wrong. '39's too early, I
thought. Looking at Gary Giddin's _Visions of Jazz_ I saw that Parker had
made a trip to NYC in 1939 ----
Bird: "I remember one night before Monroe's I was jamming in a chili
house on Seventh Avenue between 139th and 140th. [Giddins IDs it as Dan
Wall's] It was December 1939. Now I'd been getting bored with the
stereotyped changes that were being used all the time at the time and I
kept thinking there's bound to be something else. I could hear it
sometimes but I couldn't play it.
"Well, that night I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found
that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and
backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing
I'd been hearing. I came alive."
So, this 'drive fast maybe get there for the last set' isn't Slothrop
thinking. No one knows Bird will discover his wings tonight.
Obviously Pynchon is familiar with this quote and 'I came alive'. Funny
he adds "(his trip, by '39, well begun: down inside his most affirmative
solos honks already the idle, amused dum-de-dumming of old Mister fucking
Death he self)"

demisemiquaver - quaver is a British term for a quarter note. semiquaver
= eighth note

"say it very (demisemiquaver) fast in a Munchkin voice" and you won't be
in Kansas City anymore Toto. (If you say it loud enough you'll always
sound precocious)

"coming out of Dan Wall's Chili House and down the street - shit, out in
all kinds of streets ... out over the airwaves, into the society gigs,
someday as far as what seeps out hidden speakers in the city elevators
and in all the markets, his bird's singing, to gainsay the Man's
lullabies" 
Everyone wants to sneak in a bebop lick at the society gig. And those
phrases have become enough a part of the common vocab that they are heard
in elevators. Talk about your Max Weber 'routinization of charisma'.
(Speaking of routinized charisma there are three charismatic leaders in
this section Bird, Red and JFK.)
(I even heard a Musak version of Zappa's 'Peaches En Regalia' once, but
that's another story)
"My Favorite Things is playing again and again, but it's by Julie Andrews
and not by John Coltrane" - This Is Hell - Elvis Costello
Giddins: "Parker was the only musician after Armstrong to influence all
of jazz and almost every aspect of American music - its instrumentalists
and singers, composers and arrangers. By 1955, his innovations could be
heard everywhere: in jazz, of course, but also in rock and roll, country
music, film and television scores, and symphonic works. Parker altered
the rhythmic and harmonic currents of music, and he produced a body of
melodies - or more to the point, a way of melodic thinking - that became
closely identified with the idea of jazz as a personal and intellectual
modern music."

"subvert the groggy wash of the endlessly, gutlessly overdubbed strings"
Maybe so, but it was his choice to record with strings. (Part of the
appeal was to get the big budget approval - 'Daddy loves me enough to
record me with strings') Billie Holiday had the same ambition which
resulted in 'Lady in Satin'

"So that prophecy, even up here on rainy Massachusetts Avenue, is
beginning these days to work itself out in "Cherokee," the saxes
downstairs getting now into some, oh really weird shit. . . ." So it is
prophesy, here not influence. The same night Bird is discovering The Way,
by some sympathetic magic, possibly at the same instant,
synchronistically, this band is diggin' into the changes and accompanying
Slothrop as he gets into some, oh really weird shit.

After all 1939 was the year Coleman Hawkins 'invented' the saxophone with
his famous solo on 'Body and Soul'. Before that the trumpet was king of
the band and sax solos were not significant enough for Bird to have
something to rebel against.

-Neil







___________________________________________________________________
Get the Internet just the way you want it.
Free software, free e-mail, and free Internet access for a month!
Try Juno Web: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj.