[78-L] The 5 most influential 78s ever

[Chris Zwarg]

At 12:02 31.10.2008, you wrote:
>About KO KO Charlie Parker:
>
>Found this somewhere on the web:   It largely underlines my motivation
>of including this record in my major 5 list:
>
>Charlie Parker's recording of Koko is an extraordinary creation.the
>sound of boundaries being busted and rules being broken, of a genius
>improviser tearing up the rulebook with ferocious virtuosity.
>
>Koko was one of the recordings by Parker in late 1945 that
>revolutionised jazz, along with Billie's Bounce and Now's The Time.
>This was the first time that the wider public got to hear the radical
>new approach to jazz that the beboppers were pedalling, and these
>recordings became as influential as Louis Armstrong's 1920s Hot Fives
>and Hot Sevens in shaping the future direction of jazz.
>
>All of the pieces that Parker and his band recorded in 1945 were
>ground breaking, but Koko was the most shocking. His technique at this
>speed is mind boggling, and contemporary players were simply stunned
>at his mastery of the alto saxophone. But over and above sheer
>technique Parker created lines of great beauty and melody, with
>astonishing facility. His lines are logical, surprising and endlessly
>inventive.
>
>Other aspects of Parker's revolutionary approach are brilliantly
>showcased on Koko. There is his tendency to play phrases of odd bar
>lengths - three-bar, five-bar and seven-bar fragments mingle with the
>standard two- and four-bar phrasing common to jazz. Then there's his
>astonishing rhythmic invention. His lines are full of surprising
>swirls and eddies, unexpected twists and turns, as melodic motifs are
>picked up and hurled in new directions like a cork in a fountain.
>Parker had a distinctive tendency for downward moving lines, but there
>are always surprises, big leaps to upper non-chord tones that were
>unheard of at the time - 9ths, 11ths and 13ths are often emphasised
>over standard harmonies.
>
> But Koko is not the kind of music one wishes to hear often. It is
>disturbing, in the way that some of Schoenberg is disturbing.

OK, agreed. But by this explanation, I find it difficult to call Parker's record "influential" in the same way Caruso, Elvis or the ODJB were - unless you are also talking of "negative" influence in terms of popularity and record sales. After be-bop, jazz never again was a mass-compatible music (unless you are talking about dixie and swing revival bands). In this way, the comparison to Schoenberg is perfect - he did the same for "classical" music in the widest sense of the term. The non-specialist part of the public will usually think of pre-bop music when they hear the word "jazz", just as they think of (conceptually) pre-Schoenberg compositions when they talk about "symphonic" or "operatic" music, and the latter fell out of fashion as a *contemporary* and popular art form, becoming a "highbrow" and/or nostalgic niche product, around the time Schoenberg published most of his works, just like jazz fell similarly out of fashion in Parker's heydays and never recovered against the myriad of rock- and r&b-related forms that followed.

Chris Zwarg