Thinking in Jazz

by Berliner, Paul F.

  Emily Remler recalls going “through just such a frustration. I’d go to a session, not be able to express myself on guitar, and cry afterwards—I was so miserable. My technique was lousy, and my time was bad. My time was bad basically because I couldn’t get to the phrases in time.” Remler’s frustration led to an intensive practicing binge known among musicians as woodshedding. She withdrew temporarily from the jazz community and subjected herself to a musical discipline that necessarily carried over into other aspects of her lifestyle. “I played and practiced the guitar constantly, five hours a day. At one point, I went down to the Jersey shore and locked myself in a room for a month. I lost twenty pounds, stopped smoking, and became a serious guitar player. It took a lot of muscle building to reach the point where I got a really strong and full sound on the guitar. I practiced my tail off trying to play octaves and different things to build up my muscles.” After months of practice, Remler began to overcome her problems. Eventually, she developed a “reservoir of technique” that she was able to “tap” for many years.

  Beyond developing the control to use vocabulary patterns instantly and “in time,” artists typically pursue the goal of mastering them in all keys. “Maybe you would work on a phrase to fit one chord, or maybe you would work on something to fit the whole bridge,” James Moody says, “but to use something in playing chorus after chorus, you must learn it in all keys.” Performers like Art Farmer and Kenny Barron possessed early musical gifts that enabled them to transpose phrases without great effort. Fred Hersch similarly “never had to work at it specifically.” He states that, from years of piano study, “I just had the kind of ear and the kind of facility [to] play what I heard around the cycle of keys if I wanted to.”

  On the other hand, John McNeil initially “couldn’t even play ‘Happy Birthday’ in all the keys to save my life. [I decided] to really work at this, [practicing the] licks I’d learned from records in every key for two or three months or so.” The period was a very discouraging one for McNeil. “I just couldn’t seem to get on top of it; every time I took a phrase in a new key, I’d make different mistakes.” Although this learning process involves “a very gradual process of getting better for some,” in McNeil’s case, it was just the opposite: “One day, after all the struggling, I suddenly found that the phrases just seemed to fall into place in every key, and I no longer had to work on those things anymore.” The dramatic transformation of McNeil’s abilities was like being in “a fairy tale” to him and remains “very vivid” in his memory.

  Through the rigors of transposition exercises, artists develop intimate knowledge of the characteristics of their vocabulary: each phrase’s precise length, its particular on- and off-beat character, its harmonic complexion, its contour profile, its intervallic structure, and its span. Accessible at every pitch level, in each key, and in any octave, a figure not only acquires different timbral qualities with distinct effect and meaning, but it can be readily appended to the beginning or ending of other figures to create longer formulations. In motor terms, control over each version’s unique fingering patterns increases its compatibility with those of prospective adjoining figures and, through physical ease of movement, encourages particular couplings. Complete fluency represents an ideal for musicians, however. Many eventually find that the fingerings associated with particular phrases remain easier for them in some keys than in others, and they tend to favor the performance of the figures accordingly.

  As their abilities develop, the field of approachable models continues to open up before youngsters. Arthur Rhames led off his early training by copying B. B. King’s blues solos. This experience, followed by six years developing proficiency as a guitarist, enabled him to absorb John McLaughlin’s more technically demanding, intricate jazz improvisations. When Tommy Flanagan’s hands grew large enough to cover the span of a “tenth” on the piano, he could copy, at last, the special chord voicings of his favorite pianists. Earl Hines experienced comparable breakthroughs.34 John McNeil eventually assimilated rapid chromatic figures within Miles Davis’s performances that had baffled him initially.

  Meaningful improvements in the expressive use of the language of jazz follow a musician’s increasing physical comfort and dexterity in negotiating a musical instrument. After Walter Bishop Jr. adapted the fingerings of classical music technique to the lines he “wanted to play in jazz,” he gained the freedom to play particular “melodic runs” ascending, runs that his previous technique had restricted him to playas descending patterns. Specifically, learning to move the thumb of the right hand under the extended fingers’ as they climb higher to the right on the keyboard enables the pianist to achieve “a longer ascending hand position” with increased possibilities “for melodic range and contour.”35 For many instrumentalists, the mastery over new, alternate fingerings can suggest new combinations of vocabulary patterns that were previously too awkward to adjoin in a single flow of movement. Improved control also enables horn players to extend former patterns into higher parts of an instrument’s range, allowing them to conceive new melodies there.

  When Fred Hersch assimilated one teacher’s “choreographic concept” of piano performance, learning to “play up off the keys with loose hands and caressing the keys rather than bearing down on them,” his touch imbued solos with new subtleties of dynamic contrast. For saxophonist Jeff Morgan, it was not until he adopted a routine of practicing six hours a day that he began to feel that the instrument was truly a part of him and that he could improvise with great freedom. For the first time, he was able to experience what he had often heard Barry Harris describe in his workshops as the expressive feeling of actually “talking” with the patterns he played.

  Mastery over particular technical features of performance increases both the nuances of musical sound and the artist’s ability to express emotion. Over a four-year recording history, Booker Little mastered infinitesimal valve depressions for ornamenting pitches with refined microtonal scoops that added pathos and distinction to his language use. In Harold Ousley’s case, the goal has been to cultivate qualities of sound characterized by their “sheer beauty.” He uses the “essence of Gene Ammons’s sound” as a source of inspiration and is “still striving to reach the level of beauty” he discerns in Ammons’s playing. “Due to the law of infinity, sound can be improved and improved and improved. So, I’m constantly striving to improve my sound to get to the point where the sound is so beautiful that when people hear it they’re caressed; their souls are inspired and nourished just by the sound itself. I’m working toward a style that would leave people on a plane with a feeling of complete elation.”

  Because of the constraints that improvisers’ abilities as instrumentalists place upon the realization of musical ideas, many advocate formal study with classical musicians who can share with them the most advanced academic methods of musical training. Barry Harris attributes his facility as an improviser in part to his early study of classical music and, in more recent years, to his study of a remarkable technical method for piano developed by master teacher Abby Whiteside. Harris continues to hone his skills as a private student with Sophia Rosoff, another disciple of Whiteside’s. He also satisfies his varied musical interests by participating in a classical music recital class conducted by Rosoff, assuring it a regular place within his own demanding schedule of jazz teaching and performance.

  Just as technical training received outside the jazz community affects the dialogue between improvisers in their own language, it exposes them to various features of other music systems. If absorbed, the features assume a distinctive place within the vocabulary of improvisers and enter the stream of the larger jazz tradition. One trumpeter periodically incorporates melodic patterns from Bach into his storehouse, and pianist Cedar Walton once told John Hicks that he had derived some ideas for chord voicings from his analysis of Beethoven sonatas.

  Some artists cannot initially afford the technical training associated with classical music. Or, as described earlier, they simp
ly choose to teach themselves musical instruments. Many augment their efforts with information gleaned from friends and from teachers of varying quality at neighborhood music centers. Learning without skilled instruction can lead potentially to idiosyncratic performance techniques and unique stylistic traits, both highly vaued in the jazz tradition.36 Or it can produce poor performance habits that eventually demand correction. Art Farmer was initially a self-taught trumpeter who did not receive instruction in even such fundamental practices as warming up before playing. After Farmer graduated from high school, his prodigious talent initially compensated for his deficient foundation, but the physical demands of an engagement at the Apollo Theatre exhausted his endurance. Playing six- to seven-hour shows seven days a week, he was performing with insufficient air support and excessive pressure on his lips. This eventually caused a tooth “to drop down” and lacerate his lip, bringing his professional life temporarily to a standstill. Refusing to be defeated by the experience, Farmer worked as a janitor in a theater, where he earned barely enough to support himself, and, at the recommendation of legendary trumpeter Freddie Webster, studied with a private trumpet teacher to acquire the “proper technique.” It required two years of training before he could resume his musical career.

  The physiological requirements of jazz performance occasionally lead improvisers to consult various experts on the fringes of the jazz community. Among them are the “chop doctors,” who, in the years before there was a performance medicine specialty, attended to what is known as the chops, the combination of physiological structures integrally linked to playing technique, which can be strained in musical performance. The chop doctors had “their own different approaches—certain exercises and practice routines to help musicians get their chops back.”37

  To address more general issues bearing on the body’s performance, some improvisers study with dance teachers, physical therapists employing relaxation techniques such as the Alexander method, advocates of meditative practices associated with yoga, or proponents of various Eastern religions. Others seek similar ends by regulating their diets or using drugs for relaxation or stimulation. One trumpeter who had noticed the teeth formation of his idol went so far as to have a dentist file down and slightly separate his own front teeth in the hope that this would “free up” his air stream. (The results were inconclusive.) Another player’s performance was immeasurably improved when, after years of difficulty, a skilled dentist replaced the player’s poorly fashioned dentures with a set that fit properly. Such problems are not uncommon among musicians whose incomes, often but at subsistence level, render standard medical care and health insurance beyond their means, or among those who neglect their health while traveling the road band circuit.

  Regardless of the complexity of maintaining their physical well-being, many improvisers remain preoccupied with improving their technical proficiency because they are greatly dependent on instrumental performance for the assimilation of jazz vocabulary and its expressive use.

  FIVE

  Seeing Out a Bit

  Expanding upon Early Influences

  It all goes from imitation to assimilation to innovation. You move from the imitation stage to the assimilation stage when you take little bits of things from different people and weld them into an identifiable style—creating your own style. Once you’ve created your own sound and you have a good sense of the history of the music, then you think of where the music hasn’t gone and where it can go—and that’s innovation.—Walter Bishop Jr.

  Many beginners select as their exclusive idol one major figure in jazz. They copy that idol’s precise vocabulary, vocabulary usage, and tune treatment, striving to improvise in the idol’s precise style. Progress toward such a goal is necessarily gradual; at times, it is barely evident to the aspiring performer. In many cases, it is through encounters with veterans that they notice signs of significant advancement. Bobby Rogovin remembers his astonishment and pride the day a friend of trumpeter Donald Byrd burst into Rogovin’s practice studio and called out Byrd’s name, having mistaken Rogovin’s performance for that of his mentor. A saxophonist once received unexpected praise when musicians, having heard his improvisations filter through the walls of a neighboring apartment, inquired about the title of the Charlie Parker recording they thought they had just overheard. One anecdote that epitomizes a student’s awareness of his own success concerns a young artist—a skilled “copier”—who once approached his idol on the bandstand during the latter’s uninspired performance and declared with irony, “Man, you ain’t you. I’m you.”1

  Although encouraging students initially to follow a particular musical master and acknowledging the discipline required of faithful understudies, seasoned improvisers ultimately view such achievements as limited. Curtis Fuller feels that it is “great for a musician to walk in the shoes of the fisherman” because imitation is a great compliment, but, he cautions, “I wouldn’t want to lose my personality or shut down my development that way.” Otherwise, he says, “I wouldn’t have enhanced what’s been done before. I would rather be an extension than a retention.”

  Direct counsel reinforces this view within the jazz community. It helped to be in an environment with “Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Oscar Pettiford, and others who were so creative and like-minded,” Max Roach admits. “We had all been instructed that to make an imprint of your own, you had to discover yourself.... We fed off of each other, but encouraged each other to do things that were individual.” Everyone studied “the classics, like Bud studied Art Tatum;” but they were aware of the “danger of concentrating so much on someone else’s style that it was becoming predominant” in their own playing.

  Some view too close an imitation of a master as an ethical issue. Arthur Rhames stopped trying to duplicate “exactly what other artists played” because he realized that “they were all playing out of their experiences, their lives—the things that happened to them.” Even though he could “relate in a general way to most of it;” he decided that jazz performance is “too personal” to try to duplicate exactly what other artists “were saying.” There was, moreover, the spectre of imitators deliberately or inadvertently taking credit for musical ideas not original with them, or exhausting the professional jobs their mentors might otherwise have acquired.2 “He’s living on Eddie Jefferson,” George Johnson Jr. heard people say of him after he had absorbed his mentor’s style. This did not really “hurt” Johnson’s feelings at the time, because he was glad that others could relate him to “somebody.” At the same time, he knew that he could not keep singing Jefferson’s material because people would conclude that he was merely a “mimic:”

  Ultimately, Max Roach recalls, it was only after aspiring players had devoted years to developing their “own musical personality” that experts began “to look at you, to single you out and select you for their bands.” Lester Young and others in Roach’s early circle advised artists with cleverly rhymed aphorisms like “You can’t join the throng ‘til you write your own song.”

  One of the ways in which learners modify an initial mentor’s influence is by studying the styles of other artists, a practice that is a natural outgrowth of their growing appreciation for the larger tradition of jazz. Barry Harris and his peers each had a particular idol, but as they grew they began “to see out a little bit.” Suddenly, they stopped “idolizing” and listened “to all the giants.” They realized that their tradition was “bigger than Bird, bigger than Bud Powell, much bigger than any of them:” Even the greatest artists “hadn’t done it all.” Some youngsters, not intent upon exclusive apprenticeships, adopt this perspective from the start, absorbing features from different mentors through saturated listening, aural analysis, and transcription.

  Discovering the Larger Jazz Tradition

  As their understanding expands, students learn that during particular periods in the history of jazz the innovative practices of outstanding soloists and bands drew a strong following, eventually influencing artists across the jazz
community’s national network. There arose distinct but interrelated performance schools, known also as idioms or style periods. Labels include New Orleans jazz, a reference to the turn-of-the-century style named for the locale of its originators; swing, a description of the practices of the big bands and small ensembles during the thirties;3 bebop, a possibly onomatopoetic term from the forties based on a characteristic rhythmic pattern of the idiom; hard bop, a fifties development of bebop; free jazz, a phrase of the late fifties and early sixties reflecting the ideological rejection of former jazz conventions; and fusion, a particular blend of rock and jazz. Each movement “had its particular giants. In the bop thing, Bird and Dizzy were the originators, and the hard bop school has its certain giants. They all have stylistic differences” (AR).

  As new personal and regional performance styles spawned rapid changes in the language of jazz, successive generations of learners considered an ever increasing range of models. In Doc Cheatham’s view, “up until Dizzy” there were really only two basic jazz styles: the New Orleans style and the Western style. If a player “could get one style, they would be happy.” Joe Oliver was one of the chief proponents of New Orleans jazz and “everybody was copying after him.” In St. Louis, he adds, “there were also great trumpet players” like Charlie Creath, whose Western style differed from the New Orleans style; “everybody tried to copy off Charlie Creath.” Since Dizzy Gillespie and others in the bebop movement, however, there has been a perpetual blossoming of styles. Clark Terry, Fats Navarro, and many others have been innovative “‘cause everybody’s thinking differently now,” Cheatham explains. “Everybody’s trying to think of something that the other guy hasn’t done:” He considers the new styles to be for “the young kids” who find them “easier to keep up with” than he does. “Because they’re born in these different styles, they can pick them up right away, one after another. And it’s going to continue like that,” he emphasizes.