Talking Jazz: An Oral History

by Ben Sidran

"As you read, light bulbs switch that's what was going when she recorded that; now I can see where he got that sound."-- LA Weekly





43 Jazz Conversations





Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Hendricks, Max Roach, Betty Carter, Jackie McLean, Don Cherry, Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, Archie Shepp, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Keith Jarrett, Wynton Marsalis, and Jack DeJohnette-these are just a few of the jazz musicians whose conversations with Ben Sidran are recorded in this volume. In stimulating, personal, and informative discussions, they not only reveal their personalities, but also detail aspects of the performance, technique, business, history, and emotions of jazz. Newly expanded with previously unpublished dialogues with David Murray, Dr. John, and Mose Allison, Talking Jazz is undoubtedly the best oral history of recent and contemporary jazz.

Genres: Music, Jazz

536 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Cobertizo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuando hablamos del lado espiritual de la música, debo decir que Albert Ayler era una de esas personas que tienen una misión, había algo que tenía que hacer y dedicó su vida a eso. Cuando escuchabas su sonido te hacía sentir en un templo. Era lo que llamábamos un sonido góspel pero en jazz (...) Escuchar ese sonido te hacía correr un escalofrío por la espalda, como cuando escuché por primera vez a Ornette. Existe en ambos un sentimiento de familiaridad a pesar de ser la primera vez que los escuchas"

Palabra de Don Cherry

[Randall Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inside: Miles explains playing over and under chords instead of the actual chord – example: “a minor third up from the fifth of the chord”. Fletcher Henderson harmonized with major sixth chords and for the passing tones he used diminished chords. Lee Konitz when on the road played cassettes of Bird in half time. Sax players start on clarinet because being able to stop the squeaking creates great control when back on sax. Jazz grew out of piano-less groups where the harmony was implied and not constant. Early drummers were tap dancers first and for good reason. Early sax players had to have a big sound because of bad mic setups when they went to play. Horn players must play every day to keep their lips in shape. Rollins liked to play what came into his head – free form. Know when to bend, when to growl. Phil Woods wasn’t afraid to copy others and still isn’t – the key is a lot of hard work. Most jazz groups aren’t really in tune. The hard part when playing live is to maintain the discipline and the excitement (as well as the balance between control and surrender) while under pressure and tuning out various distractions. One of the hardest battles for a musician is over noise – both external and internal – both have to be dealt with for the musician to focus at the task at hand with peak awareness. Distractions away, muses can play… Miles learned to play with lots of space from Pres. On baritone sax use your tongue to articulate on your horn to keep it from being a legato rumble. Good music like good grammar has to have punctuation. Coming from a rock background, It’s a joy to be reminded in this book that Jazz artists are exponentially more concerned with racism, war & peace, inequality, and most intellectual pursuits than are rock musicians. And see that when the motivation has little to do with money then the joy of and creativity in intellectual pursuits becomes unbounded. My favorite quote in here on how one master motivated himself after hearing his competition perform: “Well there’s nothing they’re doing that’s out of my reach. All I have to do is apply myself, practice that’s the main thing and keep my chops up.” And it’s a great relief to hear from Herbie Hancock that not all musicians appreciate Wynton Marsalis’s turning of the established role of official jazz ambassadors from Billy Taylor’s highly successful encouraging and positive all inclusive approach into Wynton’s highly divisive elitist approach in which only Wynton gets the last word on all things jazz.

Ben asks great questions coming from his own deep music background and gets great answers from great subjects. A very fun read. Kudos…