Jazz fans,
What are your thoughts on the said topic? I’ve been getting into cool jazz lately and I’m having a hard time appreciating the bass and drum solos in some. In most songs I hear them I usually just ‘tune out’ and wait for it to end.
My favorite Bill Evans track, “Nardis” has a 2 min 35 sec bass solo out of a 5 min 51 sec song in the recording I have and I wonder, does it have artistic merit or is just Evans saying “hey let’s give Chuck a shot at the spotlight”?
At the same time, I don’t think these solos would be there if the artists didn’t think it contributed to the song. Is there something I’m missing? Do you have to be bassist/drummer to appreciate them?
It’s sort of a musician thing. In my old band, everyone got solos except the bass and the drummer. Got to the point where the drummer would yell at the band that he wanted 12 bars in the solo to “let it out,” and the bass player just sat over in the corner, with this dumb look on his face…
Cool jazz (are you sure you’re not confusing that with “Smooth Jazz,” such as Kenny G?) is trying to be different.
I’ll leave you with this:
A man goes to a pacific island for vacation. As the boat nears, he notices the constant sound of drumming. As he gets off the boat, he asks a native how long the drumming will go on. The native casts about nervously and says “very bad when drumming stops.”
Later that day, the drumming is still going and it is really starting to get to him. So, he asks another native when the drumming will stop. The native looks as if he’s just been spooked. “Very bad when drumming stops,” he says, and hurries off.
After a couple of days with little sleep, the man heard the drums stop abruptly. He grabbed the first native he saw, slammed him up against a tree, and shouted, “What happens when the drumming stops?!”
The native replied, “Bass solo.”
I don’t think anyone would consider Bill Evans smooth jazz. I think he died before it really came about actually. I’m not quite sure what you mean by “cool jazz is trying to be different”.
But I have no trouble believing those solos are a masturbatory, musician thing.
What I mean is they’re trying to break out of the pop song formula of intro, verses, chorus, guitar or piano solo, verse, chorus, fade. Long drawn out solos are rare in pop music of today, and musicians seem to appreciate the chance for someone who is not ususally in the spotlight to get a chance to show off a bit.
Yeah. Masturbatory. Great way to describe it. I know I sure felt good when I finished a keyboard solo and the rest of the band smiled or gave me a “thumbs up.” But when the audience applauded, now that was near orgasmic…
That’s a great joke!
I play bass and I HATE bass solos in jazz - they absolutely kill the impetus of the performance. Everything slows down and there is 1 minute of low, dull plunking.
OTOH, drum solos can be ok if they’re more than just frenetic bashing. Think of the marvelous journey Joe Morello takes us on in “Take Five”.
Since one of the distinguishing characteristics of cool jazz is a certain looseness between the rhythm section and the lead instruments, I’m not even sure I understand how a bass or a drum solo would work in a cool jazz context.
Shelly Manne contributed a great deal to the Cool School in its heyday and as far as I’m concerned his drum solos were as tasty as it gets. Never flashy or complicated.
My favorite album of his where his solos are noteworthy would have to be the music from the TV series Checkmate (which was written by none other than John Williams!). There’s also a set on Contemporary of “Shelly Manne and his Men” at various clubs.
There’s also an unusual album where his flair for odd percussion instruments is spotlighted. The title is something like “The Sound Effects Manne.”
He worked with a number of competent bassists as well. Monty Budwig comes to mind.
If it’s Joe Morello and Gene Wright, fine. Anybody else, no.
There are a couple of vids on YouTube of “Take Five”, both from '61 and both different.
Rico, the only reason I came into this thread was to tell that joke, and what do I find?
This board is amazing.
I’d check some of the Art Blakey stuff, definitely better than Brubeck’s band. He has some of my favorite post bop drum solos.
My personal take on drum and bass solos is that they should only be trading 4’s or 8’s. (although a good bowed bass solo is as good as anything else). I will agree that multiple choruses of drum solos are hard to listen to.
I never found a Percy Heath solo boring.'Course if you had a chance to hear him in a small venue the tone was so much better than some early “hi fi”.
I’ve always understood “cool jazz” to mean players like Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Dave Brubeck, etc - jazz that is predominantly melodic and not as experimental as Bebop.
I also hate bass solos, and I play bass myself. I think they break up the flow of the song, and I agree that they should be reserved for trading 4s. A good jazz bassist will be “soloing” all the time - with unique improvisational lines behind the melody. He doesn’t need to be at the forefront.
Question for the posters so far…how many of you are coming from an era of jazz as the music of the time vs. born into R&R and picking up an earlier generation’s music?
Not exactly. Cool Jazz did a lot of what it sounded like. While everyone was cranking out Hard Bop from the '40s and '50s, Miles thought if he kept a slower tempo he could do all sorts of new things. Cool jazz, then, has nothing to do with experimentation or melodies or whatever, it just has to do with slowing everything down and slowly building musical ideas. It took a lot of the “Try dancing to this!” mentality that Dizzie and Charlie often found themselves in, not to mention Brubeck. It also followed up on the trend of jazz being intellectual music, as you had to really try to hear cool jazz at first.
Basically, it comes down to playing your instrument hot. Louis Armstrong probably built that role, notes so fast you couldn’t even count them. Well, what’s the opposite of that? Playing it cool.
And I have no opinion on bass solos, except that Mingus can do whatever he wants and it sounds all right to me. And I’m 19, so I have no real world jazz experience, just as I haven’t experienced any other kind of musical movement.
I would fall well within the latter category. I think some of this music is truly timeless.
I’m from the period when Cool Jazz was still the new wave in jazz music. If you accept that “The Birth of the Cool” coincided with the release of Miles Davis’s album of that name in the late 40’s, then the build-up to that album’s release would have taken a year or so of gestation in the minds and horns of Miles, Mulligan and Konitz and the arrangements of Gil (not to be confused with Bill) Evans, who had been an arranger with the Claude Thornhill band. There’s all manner of speculation as to who the real father of the style would be. But it’s generally considered to have been in the efforts of the nonet that Miles experimented with and soon disbanded after the album’s release that the more written and melodic aspects of the style were formed. If you have yet to hear that album, it’s a must and not just for its historical significance.
Early on, the Cool School became synonymous with the West Coast School while the Hard Bop and other offshoots of the Bebop of Parker and Gillespie and Monk were making headway in the east. Oddly enough, Miles also played a role in that style as well.
In any case, the early to mid 50’s marked the period when the dominance of Cool was most obvious. And the rumor that Bossa Nova was being born in Brazil as a mimicry of the West Coast style with Latin overtones has its origin in that same period. So while the US was being assaulted with the early versions of Rock by way of Rockabilly and R&B, other countries were picking up on the softer sounds of Cool Jazz. It was a hectic period that only got more hectic in the 60’s when Rock established the dominance it has maintained through all its flavors ever since.
But I’m “lost in the 50’s” if that matters.
Nicely described - thanks!
I come from rock but love jazz. I think of Cool Jazz as Zeldar describes it here. As for solos - I have no hard and fast rule - for me, a key is whether the drummer keeps the beat, typically on the hi-hat for jazz. If they just depart and head out there with no obvious anchor point, I hate that - same with rock drum solos.
I have a wonderful CD of Red Garland, Live at the Prelude Vol 1. The drummer, Specs Wright, does some wonderful, tasteful breaks throughout. I much prefer a quality fill like that, that serves the song, over any one solo…