[78-L] Jazz myths [was Christian question]

Joe Scott joenscott at mail.com
Fri Dec 20 10:56:43 PST 2013


More jazz myths part 2:

All jazz must swing (define swing however, and there's some real jazz that doesn't, and nobody in 1917 got any memo that "swing" would become a buzzword much later and therefore they'd better pay attention to that)

Early jazz sounded like the Hot Fives (if it had, how could they be as important as everyone says they are?) so if you're Wilbur Sweatman, the Hot Fives is what you should compare to or you're inauthentic

The first interracial jazz session had Jelly Roll Morton on it (e.g. A. Baquet and Durante 1919)

Jelly Roll Morton popularized riffs (already around in sheet music in 1919), or Basie invented riffs, or Jelly Roll Morton did much of anything

Louis Armstrong invented the solo, which made jazz more jazz (he didn't, and early on part of what made jazz distinctive music was the opposite: that people were improvising at the same time)

Guitar solos became popular around Charlie Christian's time (Eddie Lang etc.)

Thelonious Monk invented bebop piano (he contributed, but most of the bebop piano that's been most praised doesn't sound much like his preferred approaches)

Charlie Christian invented bebop guitar (his approaches to phrasing were taken up in it as they were in '40s guitar much more generally, but he died too soon to play any bebop guitar himself)

Charlie Parker popularized bebop (Dizzy Gillespie did)

Miles Davis was an important early bebop trumpeter (the greats as of 1946 were Gillespie, Fats Navarro, and Howard McGhee, and at the time Miles finally got more agile, about 1949, Red Rodney e.g. was better at pure bebop a la Dizzy than Miles was)

Joseph Scott


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