Jazz for aficionados

home-boy

Chuck Berry is another "home boy", he had the "Juke Joints" overflowing. If a guy wanted to see any girls, he had to follow the Blues, because there were very few ladies where you heard Miles and Trane. The best way to find the ladies was to follow Chuck Berry; where ever he was, the joint was over flowing with females.

There was so much live entertainment in St. Louis at that time, that it was hard to decide where to go. I'm going to find more local jazz from that era, and you come back with "The Delta Blues".


Enjoy the music.

Rok, here we go with some more St. Louis jazz. Peanuts Whalum is the guy I know about; could he blow, he had one of the best jazz bands in St. Louis; that might be stretching it a bit, but it didn't cost an arm and leg to see him; that was when I had to darken my top lip and wear a hat to look older when I went to the clubs.


              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBJGQ6FlEdY



              http://jazztimes.com/articles/17480-hugh-peanuts-whalum-hugh-peanuts-whalum


Enjoy the music.

Hi Orpheus - I am not "cleverly evading" anything.  You are either willfully misunderstanding, or refusing to understand, however you like, what Frogman and I have said.  As for me, I did not say that "I" or "you" have to practice improvisation.  I said that ANYONE has to practice it.  All of those jazz greats you have mentioned spent enormous amounts of time practicing improvisation, just like anyone has to practice any activity to get that good at it - this is what we have been trying to get through to you.  And they continue to practice it throughout their entire career - just like, for example, a Kobe Bryant works on all his moves every day - he doesn't always know which one of them he is going to whip out at any given time in the real game - he often improvises that on the court, in the moment.  But he can only do that because he has practiced it all over and over and over and over, and he is thinking in the moment about what he is going to do.  Same with a jazz improviser.  What they are doing in performance is not random in any way, shape, or form.  It is very consciously thought out, in the moment, based on all the work they have done.  Spontaneous?  Yes.  Thoughtless?  No.  It is a process they constantly work on - how do you think they got so good at it, and continued to get better?  Work! Effort!  Practice!   Did they take some days off sometimes?  Yes!  I myself have taken an entire month off the instrument several times during the summer vacation, when my face really needed the break (though it takes at least a couple of weeks after that for a brass player like me to get back into shape again, so that's hard to find time to do). I believe that you never heard your friend practicing, as in actually playing his instrument in your apartment, that summer.  But you are fooling yourself if you think he never did any kind of practice.  For one example, a large part of any musician's practice is mental, and this would be especially true of an improviser - they are constantly thinking about things they could try, and how they would work out in a given context (you yourself brought up the concept of things they wished they could do, and I tried to explain a couple of things that could be meant by that without knowing the actual quotes).  I guarantee your friend was doing some of that that summer, even if you never actually heard him play a note.  There are many things one can and does practice without the instrument, especially when they involve thinking about musical ideas - you often do not need to physically play to be able to work them out in your head.  But since you don't want to/refuse to speak that language, you cannot truly understand this, and I honestly don't know how I can explain it any better given that.  Perhaps Frogman could give it a stab again.  

Learsfool, who am I to believe, you or my lying eyes? How many times do I have to tell you that the man was living with me? How many jazz groups have you played with? Is it ever possible for you to say, "I don't know"? Just because you and the Frogman say a thing is so, does not mean that it is, "It ain't necessarily so".