Jazz and the Ambiguity of Influence, Pt. 17: Tired Jazz Conventions
My brother is a gigging musician in the Quad Cities, which straddle the Mississippi River, with two each in Illinois and Iowa. So he's got lots of musician jokes. My favorite goes something like this. An explorer is deep in the jungle when he hears the sound of drums. Suddenly several tribesmen come running with a look of wild fear in their eyes. What's wrong, asks the explorer? What follow drums is bad, very bad, they said. What happens, he asked? What could be so horrible? Bass solo! they said.
Lol and amen to that. How many times have I been to a concert or gig where a song is really cooking along and then suddenly the bottom drops out because it was now the bass player's "turn" to take a solo. And not just live gigs. I remember getting the box set for Monk's 60s recordings and then not listening much because so many of the songs just featured the "head" (the main melodic statement) and then everyone just taking solos, even in the same order, until the track finishes up with a restatement of the head. So, two things going on here: the trouble with bass and drum solos and then the convention of all musicians having to solo.
The main problem with the bass solo is that they are comparatively inaudible.* And it's very unaesthetic for a song to be going along at one volume and then just shift to another volume level with no transition or logic. I discussed this in my essay on Miles, noting that he always thought in terms of the song as a whole. He wasn't going to just settle for a string of good solos if the whole thing didn't cohere. It's not acceptable to let the air out of a tune just so the bass player can do his thing. Now, there's a couple ways a bass solo can actually work. First, make sure that the piano or guitar "comps" along with the solo. They can provide a harmonic and rhythmic touchstone for the listener, and the player too. Second, the bass player needs to resist the urge to show off their chops with insanely fast runs all up and down the fret board. Because of the audibility problem and also because all or most of the band is laying out, you need to play clearly shaped figures if you want to draw the listener in. As for the drums, audibility is not a problem, but why do jazz drummers insist on playing solos that have no recognizable pulse or pattern? It's a rhythm instrument! Look, I like abstraction as much as the next guy, but I guarantee you, whenever a drummer does play with a pulse, the crowd goes crazy. We saw Ginger Baker perform a few years ago in Boston with a small group that also featured an African drummer. All their solos grooved, and it was a most enjoyable concert.
As for everyone always needing to take a solo, well, I certainly grant that above all, jazz is an improvisor's art form. That's why jazz has been called "the sound of surprise." Without improvised solos it can hardly be said to be jazz. Though I overstate: through-composed pieces can definitely qualify. I also concede that when it's actually working, the everybody-takes-a-solo thing can be exciting, especially when things are competitive and each player tries to outdo the others in terms of invention and dynamism, or at the very least, hold his or her own so as not to get blown off the stage. I'm thinking of the Jazz at the Philharmonic road show of the 40s, where the playing was always hot and the audiences where primed to egg them on. So, yes, the "jam session" approach can work. I've cited Coltrane's Blue Train as a record where each song is structured around multiple solos, but which works because a) everyone is on fire and b) they each pay attention to shaping their improvisations in compositional ways. If you play your solo so it fits and elevates the essential feel of a song, that really helps. Kind of Blue features this kind of composed-in-the-moment aesthetic, and it succeeds, to say the least. But this approach to things relies on lightening-in-a-bottle inspiration. Fortunately back in the Blue Note years, even when recordings took a jam session approach, the soloists were inspired more often than not.
A closely-related problematic convention is audience clapping after every solo. What has happened is that what started as a spontaneous reaction to particularly inventive or energetic solos has been codified into an expectation and requirement, one which comes across as dutiful when the solo in question wasn't even that good. But you can't clap for some and not for others so it's like a participation trophy. Admittedly, it's better than country music, where they clap before the solo, but the situation is still not optimum. When the solo actually is exciting, audience response helps take things to a higher level. So I don't want to lose it. But some discernment is in order. Sometimes it's even best not to clap for an excellent solo if the player has established a specific mood that can be handed off to the next player to enable the song to come off as a unified whole. There are times when it's better to listen than to clap. But to get the entire audience on the same wavelength in this regard is a big ask.
The clapping convention can also lead to players fishing for applause. Many times I've heard soloists play solos that are formless and directionless, but at the very end they play something like an easily understood blues lick and everyone claps. Maybe they are clapping out of relief that at last something made sense? This is not just a jazz problem, however. It's actually codified into classical composition. The reality of this hit me with force when I went to a concert with the legendary Emerson Quartet in NYC many years ago. As they moved into the 4th movement of a piece the composition shifted to very fast patterns and a major increase in volume. So they finish with the big flourish and everyone in the audience goes crazy. It's so predictable. Basically everything that came before is rendered irrelevant by this concluding showboating. And the vast majority classical compositions do this. It's a cheap trick!
Ultimately, I think jazz is a music best suited for nightclubs, a space intimate enough to catch all the nuances of the music and informal enough so that conventions don't predominate. Let's consider these in order. The quality of listening really impacts performance, even if no audience member is making a sound. This sounds mystical, but I'm convinced it's true. Mathematically, the best way to get 100 percent of the audience in the same zone is in a club. Consider the Village Vanguard -- seating capacity 130. That's not a lot, but all the giants of jazz have played there, and most of the greatest live recordings have been taped there. There's some magic happening there, and the small size is a key ingredient. This is where my problem with the biggest trend in jazz comes in. It seems like the new convention is put all the emphasis on big jazz festivals. At these, unless a band is really in the zone, the audience energy and attention is going to be all over the place. It works best when the bands focus on groove-based music, but being jazzers, a lot of them can't resist going all in on complexity.
A place like the Village Vanguard really only has one convention, which is respectful listening. No one is going to be talking through the performance. Otherwise it's informal, with cocktails and so on. Before I sign off, I want to mention another mode of jazz listening, that represents its own ideal. This is found in the kind of club where people actually talk during the music, which creates a real party atmosphere. It's hard to carry it off just right, but I experienced this situation during my years in Denver in the 80s. There was a club called the El Chapultapec where all the best Denver jazz players played.** My friend Joe Bonner was one of them. And when big names were in town for a gig they often would come to the 'Pec and sit in after their concert. So the way it worked was if you wanted to do serious listening you would stand close to the band and get dialed in. Otherwise people were socializing and sort of half listening. But the mood in the room would shift with the playing and sometimes when things got really cookin' the attention would turn fully to the band and things would really take off. There were no rules and there were no enforcers, and these were some of the best jazz nights I ever experienced.
* This is a big reason why Miles Davis and others went electric. Easier get all the levels right.
** In Chicago, the go-to jazz joint The Green Mill has this vibe, too.
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