Giant Steps

Jazz:
it’s not just art–it’s knowledge

My father introduced me to jazz as a child, so I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t love it. I’ve even refer to it as noise, but they hear it as only noise, because a master jazz musician, like John Coltrane in this case, can play faster than they can think. That’s why, for the most part, jazz is a thinking man’s music.

The key to listening to jazz is to listen to the keyboard player. He can play up to ten notes at one time in a chord. So the reason that the horn man is playing at break-neck speed is because he’s playing all of the notes that the keyboard player is playing, but only one note at a time–and he may have less than a half a beat to get the notes that he selects from the chord in. In addition, he may be adding extra (grace) notes for color.

For example, the first two chords in the tune, Giant Steps, above is Bmaj7, then, D7. A Bmaj7 includes the notes B,D#,F#,A#. Then he goes to D7, which is D,F#,A,C. So when the horn man is playing, he has to see the chord, know exactly what notes are a part of that chord, and then play the notes in a meaningful manner within one bar. And when the music and chords are flying past at break-neck speed, that can be an awesome task. That’s what makes jazz one of the most technical and formidable art forms the world today–and the ability to pull it off is what makes jazz musicians so great.

The average jazz musician easily spends twice the amount of time learning his craft than a heart surgeon spends learning to replace a heart. But that’s understandable, because a heart surgeon can only repair a heart, while Trane could either make it either swell, or break it, depending on his mood.

So now that you understand what’s going on, lets take a moment to listen to Trane beat-up the progressions to “Giant Steps”. And take pride in what you’re hearing, because it speaks of you–your soul, your talent, and your potential.

Eric Wattree

Dexter Gordon Documentary -

A SWINGIN’ AFFAIR

I
was told as a child
Blacks had no worth,
Not a nickel's worth of dimes.
I believed that myth
'Til Dex rode in
With his ax
In double time.

His
horn was soarin',
The changes flyin',
His rhythm right on time;
My heart
Beat with the pleasure
Of new found pride,
Knowing,
His blood
Flowed through mine.

Dex
Took the chords
The keyboard played,
And danced around each note;
Then shuffled 'em
Like a deck of cards,
And didn't miss a stroke.

B minor 7 with flatted 5th,
a half diminished chord,
He substituted a lick in D,
Then really began to soar.

He tipped his hat
To Charlie Parker,
and quoted
Trane with Miles,
Then paid his homage to
Thelonious Monk,
In Charlie Rouse's style.

He took
a Scrapple From The Apple,
Then went to Billie's Bounce,
The rhythm section, now on fire,
But he didn't budge an ounce.

He just
dug right in
to shuffle again,
This time
A Royal Flush,
Then lingered a bit
Behind the beat,
Still smokin'
But in no rush.

Then he
doubled the time
just like this rhyme,
in fluid 16th notes,
tellin’
Charlie and Lester,
“your baby boy, Dexter's,
on top of the
bebop you wrote."

Wailin'
like a banshee,
this prince of saxophone,
His ballads dripped of honey,
His Arpeggios were strong.

Callin' on his idles,
Ghost of Pres'
within in the isles,
smiling at his protege,
At the peak of this new style.

His tenor
Drenched of Blackness,
And all the things we are--
Of pain, and pleasure,
And creative greatness
Until his final bar.

Eric L. Wattree

BLACK MAGIC-- Miles Davis and John Coltrane--SO WHAT - LIVE

MILES

We knew him as Miles,
the Black Prince of style,
his nature fit jazz to a tee.
Laid back and cool,
a low threshold for fools,
he set the tone
of what a jazzman
should be.

Short on words,
and unperturbed, about
what the people thought;
frozen in time, drenched
in the sublime,
of the passion
his sweet horn
had wrought.

Solemn to the bone,
distant and torn,
even Trane could
scarcely get in;
I can still hear the tone
of that genius who mourned,
that precious note
that he couldn't
quite bend.

Eric L.Wattree

BLACK MAGIC--Sonny Stitt - Lover Man

Some of the greatest minds I’ve ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lot of ghetto liquor stores. At their feet I embraced the love of knowledge, and through their tutelage defined self-worth in my own terms.

These were the “Eulipians”—writers, poets, musicians, hustlers, and uncommon drunks—shade-tree philosophers, who contemplated the fungus between the toes of society. And without apology, these visionaries danced with reckless abandon, unfettered by formal inhibition, through the presumptuous speculation of the ages.

While these obscure intellectuals stood well outside the mainstream of academy, I watched with astonished delight as they and their students sang, scat, and scribed the thrust of their philosophy into the mainstream of human knowledge. And as one such student, I fully embrace and promote their creed, that knowledge is free, and thus, will transcend attempts to be contained through barriers of caste and privilege, leaving man's innate thirst for knowledge, free to someday overwhelm his lust for stupidity.

Meet Sonny. He wasn't all that big on bling, but he damn sure knew how to keep it real.

Eric L. Wattree