[78-L] Fw: The 5 most influential 78s ever/ Charlie Parker

[fnarf at comcast.net]

From: "Francesco Martinelli" <francesco.martinelli at gmail.com>
> My questions remains unanswered, or rather you subtly change categories 
> between jazz  styles and other genres:
> 
> > "The general public, being less sophisticated but probably very honest in 
> > their more conservative taste, wouldn't follow beyond the point at which 
> > *tonality* was left as THE base of musical activity, and turned their 
> > minds and ears to more accessible and listenable GENRES."
> 
>  (my emphasis). In other words, the great unwashed turned to rock'n'roll
>  because of Charlie Parker.

Oh, no! This can't possibly be true, for a simple reason: the roots of rock'n'roll go back much farther than once believed. Charlie Parker and early rock'n'roll are in fact CONTEMPORARY. Genres are always like that; there's stuff going on at the margins, off the Billboard charts or their contemporary equivalent, and genres typically extend much further in time, both forwards and backwards, than their appearance in mass popularity would suggest.

I think a record like Parker's stands out because it was so sudden. Sure, bop has antecedents like any other kind of music, but that record did really signal a new idea. Compare this to "what's the first rock'n'roll record" or "what's the first big band record", the answer to which is "well, that depends on what you mean". Even when people generally have agreed to agree on a starting point, that's more to forestall the repetitive and confusing argument. Even worse -- what's the end point? Everybody in the universe didn't stop what they were doing and start playing like Parker the day "Ko Ko" came out. When did, say, Ellington's band stop being a vital inventive force and start being a revivalist, commemorative, old-fashioned one? Was it 1934, 1944, 1954, or 1964? 

I like to think of genres of music like strands of wool in a skein of yarn. The more you start looking at what distinguishes them, the harder they get to tell apart. Obviously Louis Armstrong was doing something very different in 1925 than David Bowie was doing in 1975, but the demarcations are arbitrary and agreed-upon -- not just their placement but their number.

> why
> the "new swing" of the 80's for example is not nearly as good as the
> originals of 40 or 50 years before? Or you listen to the Cherry Popping
> Daddies and you enjoy it like Basie?
 
That is a fantastic question! 

I think it's because the one is a group speaking in a language not their own, while the other is speaking in one that is not only their native tongue but one they had a hand in inventing. Also, Basie's band in the 30s wasn't familiar with The Rolling Stones, who weren't born yet, while the Daddies, or Pink Martini, or Brian Setzer, cannot unlearn the later ways of hearing. No matter how proficient they become, they are still imitating something, not creating something. And they can be fun. But they're not inventing a world like Basie was -- and this is true even if the individual players are better (which they sometimes can be). Musical invention doesn't have anything to do (usually) with skill.

-- 
Steve.