GRGR(4) Cherokee, Bebop, Race and Jazz

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

Thank you very much for your detailed clarifying information!

Is there a CD, on which I could hear Charlie Parker & Chet Baker playing 
together? Listened a lot to both of them, but didn't know of their 
collaboration.


Best, Kai




Darcy James Argue schrieb:
> [sigh]  Some clarifications:
>
> Michael Arnowitt wrote:
>
> > 10) Cherokee and Charlie Parker? (63.22-64.7) Ok, anyone want to go
> >     into Charlie Parker's history and the development of bebop? Ditto
> >     for how bebop takes an existing song and transforms it (I have
> >     been told that it is something to do with transposing but changing
> >     the harmonic relations at the same time - does this mean it
> >     actually falls into line as a transform along the lines of thsoe
> >     used by the serial composers i.e. a perm of the scale?).
>
> No.  Not "transposing but changing harmonic relations."  Bebop made several
> departures from the mainstream jazz of the time, including stretching the
> harmony by _emphasizing_ the upper partials of the chords (ninths,
> elevenths, thirteenths) and altered tones (flat fifths, flat ninths, sharp
> ninths, etc), further chromaticizing the music with approach tones etc.,
> starting and ending lines in unpredictable spots, and making liberal use of
> unpredictable accents, delaying resolutions (continuing to play lines that
> fit the old chord even after the band has moved on to a new one), playing
> over the barlines and breaking out of squarish four-bar phrases, and so on.
>
> What does this mean for a song like Cherokee?  Well, originally it was a
> slow ballad.  Bird had the rhythm section play it at four times the original
> tempo, but keeping the chords and melody moving at their original tempo.
> This allows for the excitement of playing a very fast tempo, but still gives
> the soloist a lot of space to stretch on the "A" section of the tune, which
> has very simple diatonic harmony.  The bridge or "B" section of the tune is
> notoriously difficult, because it moves quickly through some remote keys
> that many jazz musicians at the time -- hell, many jazz musicians _today_ --
> were not that familiar with.  It starts in the key of B (the "A" sections
> are in Bb) and descends by whole step through A, G, and F, before finally
> modulating back to Bb for the final "A."
>
> At the time, musicians were blown away by Charlie Parker's ability to
> navigate that bridge at a breakneck tempo.  There is an early recording of
> Lester Young playing an uptempo version of the tune, but he elects not to
> solo on the bridge.  Parker also manages to transform a pretty lame popular
> song into a virtuosic tour-de-force.  At one point Parker recorded a piece
> called "Ko Ko" -- a fascinating composition that at first seems to have
> nothing whatsoever to do with "Cherokee."  The tune itself is played with
> just trumpet, alto sax and drums, no bass or piano, and it's very angular
> and unpredictable. Immediately after playing the head to "Ko Ko", the bass
> and and piano come in and Bird solos on the chord changes to "Cherokee."  It
> might be this particular transformation that Pynchon was thinking of.
>
> > 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.
>
> Except these aren't "brand new chords" and no "reharmonization" has taken
> place.  Listen to Bill Evans play "When I Fall In Love" (on _Portrait In
> Jazz_) -- _that_ is a reharmonization.  New root motion and new chord types
> underneath the original melody.  Playing off the upper partials of the
> existing chords is not really reharmonization, per se.
>
> > Then, Parker would improvise (or write) a brand new melody to go with the
>  new
> > harmony (or vice versa) and have a new tune based on the structure of the
> > original.  "Koko" was based on "Cherokee" in that way.
>
> The only thing that links "Ko Ko" and "Cherokee" is the chord sequence for
> the solos.  One of the things that makes "Ko Ko" so unusual is that the form
> of the tune itself has nothing to do with the form of the blowing section.
> Anyway, this Michael is probably thinking of something more like
> "Ornithology," where Parker wrote a new melody based on the harmony to "How
> High The Moon," or one of the many tunes he wrote based on "I Got Rhythm."
>
> Will Layman wrote:
>
> > It's the racial and political implications of this that fascinate
> > Pynchon most,though (though his Slothrop is another musical seeker, chasing
> > that Blues harp down the toilet, finally learning how to bend those blues
> > tones by the end). The history of swing was, needless to say, one of
> > considerable exploitation.  As fast as black jazz musicians could create
>  jazz
> > in the teens and 20's and 30's, white bandleaders were there to cash in. 
>  From
> > Paul Whiteman to Glenn Miller to the Dorseys, the bold sounds of Fletcher
> > Henderson and Don Redman and Duke and dozens of others were watered down and
> > sold to the American public in blanched form.  It's said that part of what
>  the
> > boppers were doing was not only breaking out of the harmonic and rhythmic
> > confines of swing but also creating a music so complex that the pretenders
> > couldn't understand it and then steal it.
>
> This is, indeed, the conventional wisdom RE: jazz history.  And much of it
> is misleading and untrue.  The first jazz record was made by a white band
> (The Original Dixieland Jass Band) not because of racial prejudice, but
> because the black bands refused to record.  They were worried their rivals
> -- we're talking the other black bands here -- were going to steal their
> stuff.  White musicians like Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer (who both
> played in Paul Whiteman's band) were not trying to "steal" jazz or "water it
> down" -- they just heard some music that really moved them, and their sin
> was having the balls to think they could learn to play it.  And some of them
> played it very well.  Louis Armstrong (among others) had great respect for
> Beiderbecke.  Lester Young's two biggest influences were Frankie Trumbauer
> and Jimmy Dorsey.  Charlie Parker checked out a lot of Artie Shaw, and of
> course he hired white musicians like Red Rodney, Chet Baker and Al Haig to
> play in his band (so much for the idea of Paker and Gillespie creating bebop
> in order to keep white musicians off the bandstand).  Yes, many hits of the
> swing era made famous by white bandleaders (Goodman, Miller, Dorsey) were
> written by black writer/arrangers like Fletcher Henderson, Sy Oliver and
> Eddie Durham.  But white arrangers like Bill Challis and Will Hudson were
> writing for Fletcher Henderson, Jimmie Lunceford, etc., as well.  And
> regardless, the relationship between white bandleaders and black
> writer/arrangers was not universally exploitative.  Sy Oliver was making
> $2.50 a chart from Jimmie Lunceford.  When Tommy Dorsey hired him (in 1939),
> he said, "Whatever Jimmie Lunceford is paying you, I'll pay you $5000 a year
> more.  And if you'll give me a year, I'll rebuild the band any way you want
> it."  Dorsey also gave his writers full credit for their compositions and
> guaranteed their publishing rights -- unheard of at the time.
>
> As far as the part of "being sold to the American public in watered-down
> form" goes, the author of the above makes it sound like Duke Ellington was
> some sort of unknown cult figure, appreciated only by blacks and a handful
> of your hipper white cats.  Give me a break.  As Gene Lees notes, "Duke was
> a national celebrity before the '20s were ended, was invited to the White
> House in 1931, and traveled to engagements by private railway car."  "Mood
> Indigo," "In A Sentimental Mood," "Satin Doll" -- those were _hits_,
> fercrissakes.
>
> None of this is to claim that racism did not rear its ugly head in jazz.  I
> most surely, sadly did.  But, given the racially charged climate in which
> the music developed, it is remarkable to what degree jazz musicians of all
> colours were able to transcend all of that bullshit and just get together
> and _play_.
>
> Apologies for the rant.  This is a topic close to my heart.
>
> - Darcy
>
>
> ------
> djargue at sprint.ca
> Montreal, QC
>
> "But what can be done about it if the single and direct purpose of any
> intelligent person is to chatter, that is to say the deliberate pouring of
> emptiness into the void?"
>
>                                 - Dostoevsky, "Notes from the Underground"