FOUR
Getting Your Vocabulary Straight
Learning Models for Solo Formulation
When you’re very young, you don’t have the harmonic knowledge to create solos yourself, so you begin by copying things that sound good in other people’s:v solos.—Benny Bailey
I decided the best I could do would be to write the solos down, note for note, and line them up with the harmony of the song, analyzing the notes according to the chords that were being played. Then I would learn, “Well, you can do this at this time. You can do that at that time.” It was like getting your vocabulary straight.—Art Farmer
Just as children learn to speak their native language by imitating older competent speakers, so young musicians learn to speak jazz by imitating seasoned improvisers. In part, this involves acquiring a complex vocabulary of conventional phrases and phrase components, which improvisers draw upon in formulating the melody of a jazz solo. Complete recorded improvisations also provide models. Saxophonist Jerry Coker absorbed a storehouse of solos during his grade school years, simply because his parents played their favorite recordings so frequently at home.1
George Johnson Jr. developed the early habit of singing with his father’s prized Eddie Jefferson recordings. By his teens, he had memorized Jefferson’s unique interpretations of instrumental improvisations. Wynton Marsalis once warned me good-humoredly, “Look out for my young brother. He’s only three, but when I call home from the road, he can already sing some of Miles’s solos over the phone!”
Once youngsters develop a serious interest in jazz, they complement haphazardly gained knowledge with deliberate effort to master the performance styles of great improvisers. Applying their earlier method, many initially continue to memorize solos by singing or whistling them. For Tommy Flanagan, whose family piano and record player were in different rooms, this was a necessity. For Bud Freeman and his friends, it was largely a social activity.2 Similarly, years later, Melba Liston and her companions hung out at one another’s homes “listening to records together, humming the solos till we learned them.” This is a beneficial approach from a number of different standpoints. Cultivating an aural grasp of a solo before its reproduction with musical instruments avoids unnecessary guesswork when playing an instrument that might frustrate technique or exhaust endurance. It also trains the voices of students and gives them a grounding in what are for improvisers essential linkages among voice, ear, and instruments.
Some musicians, when learning new solos from recordings, can imitate consecutive patterns with the ease of “catching a ball and throwing it back” (CP). More typically, they commit endless hours to the task.3 With each replay, they reinforce the memory of previous musical fragments, and they work on matching the next several pitches by singing or playing them. Tommy Flanagan recalls sudden displays of virtuosity by musicians like Art Tatum. “I’d say, ‘Wow, what was that?’ and I’d put the needle back to that spot.” To master technically advanced passages, many divide them into “smaller parts,” just as they might learn “long words by studying their syllables separately and recombining them” (HO). Others copy “the principal pitches in a long melodic run,” then try repeatedly to match those blurred intermediate pitches that had eluded them (KB)—until a weary voice from another part of the house protests, “Haven’t you learned it yet?”
Early record players had controls enabling listeners to slow a record’s speed by gradations until they could catch a particularly fast passage, albeit at a lower pitch, transposing the retarded phrase into its original pitch immediately thereafter. Those lacking such equipment slowed the turntable by applying slight finger pressure to the record (HO). Tape recorders with half-speed controls, which drop the pitch a complete octave, are an additional help, as are recent compact disc players, which allow for the repeated play of isolated passages. Adopting an alternative method, Gary Bartz acquired a stock of Parker solos simply by playing along with the recordings at normal speed “all day long, day after day,” circumventing the role of vocalization as mediator.
Once absorbed from recordings, solos sometimes pass from one aspiring artist to another. The dynamics of the exchanges are themselves instructive, as in the teasing interplay between trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Shavers. “Why don’t you go steal your own shit, instead of getting Roy [Eldridge] secondhand?” complained Shavers before indulgently teaching Gillespie the solos that Shavers himself had memorized from recordings.4
Once musicians have learned a solo’s discrete phrases, they seek to reconstruct the whole solo, performing it along with the recording from memory. Initially, youngsters are satisfied to anticipate the proper sequence of figures and approximate their phrasing, but as they gain greater confidence, they listen more intently to the recording artist, playing and regulating their parts accordingly. With practice, musicians come to penetrate more deeply into the solo, hearing the music as if their ears had developed greater powers. An illusory transformation occurs: the solo seems to ensue more slowly, presenting, paradoxically, ever finer yet enlarged details. Within a phrase, each pitch reveals its individual character, its own articulation, inflection, timbre, dynamics, and rhythmic feeling. Eventually, students anticipate and re-create the solo’s every nuance, blending their performance of the solo inextricably with all the other parts emanating from the recording. Breathing together, following the same line of musical thought, and experiencing the same sense of urgency and shades of feeling that motivated the soloist’s initial expression, young performers become engaged in an intimate union with their idols. This thrilling experience assured one student that, because he had acquired “the understanding and the technique to perform some of the greatest musicians’ ideas,” it would not be “too long” before he would be able to improvise his own solos.
Ultimately, many strive to duplicate the subtle features of the improvisation without the recording, a feat that some pursue even further by transposing and practicing particular solos in every key. The improvised solo is so integral to the jazz tradition that mastering respected s can be almost a rite of passage for a youngster. Communities that appreciate jazz afford youngsters considerable status when they demonstrate their prowess. Fellow students at Harold Ousley’s high school treated him “like a superstar” when he performed Lester Young’s solo on “D.B. Blues.” Other musicians report similar experiences.
Transcribing Solos and Re-creating Them in Public
Whereas many musicians learn solos essentially by ear, others find it useful to transcribe solos, rendering them as closely as possible in conventional Western music notation. For this task, musicians typically use their instruments as tools. After learning to perform a recorded solo, they translate each phrase’s finger patterns into the letter names of notes; they then write them on the staves of music manuscript paper. While in junior high school, Melba Liston transcribed the classic Coleman Hawkins solo on “Body and Soul” and copied it “so many times” for young saxophonists that she could eventually “write it out by memory.” David Baker’s high school band leader also “wrote out” and taught students to sing classic jazz solos.5
Published solos have been available at least since the twenties. Melrose Brothers of Chicago established an early prototype with its two 1927 collections of Louis Armstrong improvisations, 50 Hot Choruses for Comet and 125 Jazz Breaks for Comet.6 Similar publications of performances by Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, and other masters have increased over the past few decades, as have those appearing along with analysis in scholarly articles and theses. Since the mid-thirties, specialized trade magazines such as Metronome and Down Beat have also featured transcribed solos, accompanied in some instances by brief discussions of their merits. Enthusiastic learners spread the influence of these publications among their circles. Baker brought an early book of Gillespie solos to his band leader, who selected material from its contents for the band and featured it during halftime performances at football games.
Com
mercial arrangements of compositions played by swing bands provide yet other sources for solo transcriptions. Sheet music versions of Duke Ellington’s “The Creeper” and “Birmingham Breakdown” published by Gotham Music Service in 1927 are important examples.7 Benny Bailey recalls others:
They were just like the records, and whole solos were written out. They had all of Basie’s tunes, and they were very big in those days. You could get almost all of the things that Woody Herman’s band was playing. I think they still sell them to rehearsal bands. There was one popular thing, “Tuxedo Junction”—the biggest thing that Erskine Hawkins ever did, really—and Dud Bascomb’s solo is an important part of it. There were other classics like Roy Eldridge’s solo on “Rocking Chair,” Bobby Hackett’s solo on “String of Pearls,” and the solos that Thad Jones played with the Basie band on “April in Paris” or “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
Although experienced improvisers regard the published materials as valuable learning aids, they caution youngsters about becoming too dependent upon them. Without comparing transcriptions to the original recordings, students cannot determine the accuracy of the transcription work or its reproduction. Moreover, however useful they may be for accomplished musicians who can interpret them, all transcriptions are reductive or skeletal representations of performances and provide learners with little information about fundamental stylistic features of jazz. Finally, if students rely upon publications rather than recordings as sources, they deprive themselves of the rigorous ear training that traditionally has been integral to the improviser’s development.
Typically, musicians learn a repertory of complete recorded solos that they practice as musical etudes and perform periodically for friends during informal sessions. Among the various improvisations that Wynton Marsalis learned was John Coltrane’s famous solo on “Giant Steps,” which he “practiced every morning” at a particular stage in his development.8 A few conventions encourage the public re-creation of recorded improvisations. When bands play stock arrangements, they may play the solos written off the recordings. “If a band had an arrangement of ‘String of Pearls,’ “ Benny Bailey says, “you almost had to play Bobby Hackett’s solo. It’s a beautifully constructed solo which fits the tune. It helps the tune somehow, and it’s part of the whole picture. If you played any other solo, it would take away from the tune.”
Whether transmitting solos through written or oral means, such practices have considerable precedent in the jazz tradition. Just as early admirers of Joe Oliver re-created his recorded solos (ex. 4.1), Wynton Marsalis, in a 1984 appearance with Sarah Vaughan and the Boston Pops Orchestra, played the tasteful solo in “September Song” that Clifford Brown had recorded with Sarah Vaughan in 1954. The transmission and performance of solos associated with particular pieces sometimes become part of a band’s performance tradition. At times, successful solos even find their way into the arranged parts for entire instrumental sections.9
Beyond the practice of re-creating outstanding solos as an integral feature of compositions, artists in the tradition of jazz vocalese often treat the melodies of their favorite improvisations as new tunes and compose lyrics to them. George Johnson Jr.’s experience casts light on both dimensions of the practice. Years after copying Eddie Jefferson’s recorded renditions of famous solos, Johnson received training from Jefferson on the bandstand, where the two sang his material as duets, “the same lyrics, note for note.” Eventually, Johnson learned to create vocalese texts himself.
Once I’ve learned a solo, I put my words to it. It’s like telling a story. It’s like talking, carrying on a conversation. I love to talk about things.
When I wrote the words to Bird’s solo [in “Chi Chi”], I didn’t know much about him, but everyone talked about Fifty-second Street, and I knew it was unique, so I wrote:
Remember 52nd Street,
the sounds were unique.
Yes,
the music had a message,
you see.
And I knew what it was like when Bird hit the scene, so I wrote:
Bird hit the scene,
he was so melodic,
his music swept the nation,
in fact;
Everybody started boppin’
when he came along.
Just listen
to the rhythm.
He took
the people
by surprise.
He opened
their eyes
in some
other type of
musical things.
Bird loved to play
and his music
will live
forever and forever,
in fact;
Charlie Parker
is the reason
I am singing
this song;
Just listen
to the
rhythm
flow.
So, all I actually did was to tell the story of what I heard through other people and what I read about Bird.
Praising the great soloists is a common subject for lyrics. Vocalese composers derive others from their personal lives, such as encounters with love, and yet others from the abstract moods and themes that improvisations suggest to their creative imaginations. In discussing the context for some of his composing, Johnson states:
After I recorded Pharaoh Sanders one night on my little tape recorder, I took the tape home and played it for a week and wrote the words to Pharaoh’s and John Hicks’s solos. Pharaoh’s music is peaceful and very spiritual. It’s always talking about love. That’s just what I felt; that’s the story I felt him saying. As I listened to the tape, I also kept hearing the word freedom in the solos, so I wrote:
You got to have happiness,
you got to have freedom.
We got to spread love and joy.
We got to have freedom.
Confusion is everywhere
because no one gives a care.
Pure freedom, freedom.
Tell the world:
freedom.
So, go tell the world.
You got to go
and tell the world.
So, hurry,
spread the news;
You’ve got to have happiness.
You’ve got to have freedom.
In shaping words to a soloist’s intricate melodic-rhythmic patterns, vocalists like Johnson and his mentor bring to full circle the influence of language upon music suggested earlier, underscoring the constant cross-fertilization of ideas between jazz singers and instrumentalists.
Like vocalese performers, instrumentalists may occasionally pay tribute to the composers by playing or even recording personal interpretations of famous solos, treating them as the heads of tunes and the basis for their own improvisations. For the most part, the jazz community contains public re-creations of solos through its tacit assumption that improvisations belong to the creators. Generally, a performer “couldn’t play someone else’s solo note for note; that just wasn’t considered cricket” (RR).10 This attitude limits the practical value of developing a large reserve of complete solos as the basis for an initial vocabulary.
Learning Discrete Patterns from Recordings
There is no objection to musicians borrowing discrete patterns or phrase fragments from other improvisers, however; indeed, it is expected. Many students begin acquiring an expansive collection of improvisational building blocks by extracting those shapes they perceive as discrete components from the larger solos they have already mastered and practicing them as independent figures. They acquire others selectively by studying numerous performances of their idols. For some musicians, this is the entire focus of their early learning programs.11
Securing a repertory of discrete patterns offers a clear advantage to young performers whose mastery over their instruments is insufficient for copying solos in their entirety. Correspondingly, “a whole solo can be just too much to take in at once. Little sections or melodic fragments” are more easily abs
orbed (ER). As youngsters cultivate their tastes and become more discriminating, they also find that the phrases of solos differ in quality, some not warranting the time and effort involved in acquiring them. Finally, whereas analysis of complete solos teaches students about matters of musical development and design, analysis of discrete patterns and melodic cells elucidates the building blocks of improvisations and reveals commonalities among improvisations that are not necessarily apparent in the context of larger performances.
At the same time, this approach involves its own distinct challenges, some akin to learning a second language. Just as the beginning foreign language student finds that the cadences of fluent native speakers frequently blur the audible boundaries between and among words, phrases, and sentences—confounding the student’s ability to understand them—rapid, dazzling jazz improvisations may also initially sound seamless to beginners. As elaborated later, the fact that improvisers subject the components of their improvisations to different interpretations and transformations in performance compounds the already challenging task of identifying the components and their precise distinguishing boundaries. Only immersion in the music’s oral literature and the assistance of fluent speakers of jazz enable learners to grasp the actual components and their variants that improvisers use to construct complex musical statements.12
Veterans refer to the discrete patterns in their repertory storehouses as vocabulary, ideas, licks, tricks, pet patterns, crips, cliches, and, in the most functional language, things you can do. As a basic musical utterance, a thing you can do commonly involves a one-measure to four-measure phrase.13 Depending on the artist’s treatment of material, however, an idea or crip can range from such simple formulations as a sustained or repeated pitch, or a short rhythmic figure reminiscent of those of early jazz solos (exx. 4.2a-b), to an elaborate melodic phrase characteristic of later performance styles (exx. 4.2c-d). Tommy Turrentine points out that, in fact, “you can play a crip for thirty-two bars if you want to. Some do it.” Ultimately, as Harold Ousley says, the “set phrases that musicians practice and perfect” provide readily accessible material that meets the demands of composing music in performance. “The old guys used to call those things crips. That’s from crippled,” Turrentine elaborates with characteristic wit. “In other words, when you’re playing a solo and your mind is crippled and you can’t think of anything different to play, you go back into one of your old bags and play one of your crips. You better have something to play when you can’t think of nothing new or you’ll feel funny laying out there all the time [he laughs]. That’s all I play is crips [laughs again].”
Thinking in Jazz Page 15
