So, what’s not to love about acid jazz as a genre?
When the music broke out in the late Eighties, it was fairly well defined. The acts were either jazzy funk or soulful R&B. Then other influences crept in, such as hip-hop. It became more of a marketing term, which diffused the genre (as happens every time). Plus, some of the music was just not very good — either it was not truly funk or it was too-light smooth jazz.
But the best of it does seem to me to stand alone as its own genre.
On to today’s examples, but first a word about John Leslie “Wes” Montgomery. He was one of the greatest jazz guitarists of all time and had his own special approach. He used his thumb, rather than a pick, which gave him a mellow sound. He was also known for his use of block chords and octaves. [Block chords are when you play the notes of each chord all at once; octaves are when you play two notes that are an octave apart at the same time. If you go to this page on block chords and scroll down, you can hear the melody to "Stardust" played first simply and then with block chords.] All you really need to know is that this results in a fuller sound.
The other relevance is that Montgomery went from one level of quality in the late Fifties to another level by the late Sixties. He still played well, but his three best-selling albums on the A&M label were pretty lightweight.
Yesterday, I posted an example from Greyboy; it sounds like Marc Antoine is playing a six-string guitar in the style of Montgomery. Maybe I’m overreaching here, but I know that Ronny Jordan is heavily influenced by Montgomery. He even plays a Gibson, like Wes did.
The cut “The Jackal,” taken from Jordan’s Bad Brothers album (1995), is interesting for a couple of things. First, Jordan collaborates with DJ Krush on that album, which results in some very strong beats (always important to avoiding the “smooth jazz” tragedy). Secondly, we have vocals from poet/spoken-word-diva Dana Bryant. It’s kind of like hip-hop, but more akin to the poetry with jazz-backing of the Fifties.
Here’s another example from Sound Assembly from their 1996 album In the Pocket, which also features vocals that veer close to rapping. There’s a bunch of songs I have with straight-out rapping over live R&B/jazz, which is a subject for another day.
Ronny Jordan – The Jackal (The Illest Mix) — BUY
Sound Assembly – Deep — BUY
Tags: Ronny Jordan, Sound Assembly, Wes Montgomery, acid jazz, MP3s
4 Responses
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girish Says:
Pop View, I’m lovin’ this acid jazz series.
Block chords are when you play the notes of each chord all at once.
Actually, it’s even a bit more than this. It’s playing the notes of a chord and a melody note all at once. So that every time you play a melody note, you’re accompanying that note with the notes of a chord (played at once). Thus, when you’re playing a passage in block chords, you’re never playing a melody note just by itself; it’s always accompanied by a chord underneath, all of whose notes are being played at once.
I love the block chord sound, and my favorite block chord players are probably Red Garland and Bill Evans. Jessica Williams, one of the greatest of living jazz pianists, is also a killer block chord player, although she uses the technique relatively sparingly; she has many other things going on as well.
Thanks for that jazz lessons blog link. Very cool.
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girish Says:
And I may just steal the idea from you and do a block chord mp3 post at some point. Thanks.
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The Pop View Says:
From a recent article in The New Republic by David Haddu, “The Music of Starbucks” (sub. req.):
Simultaneously in the United States, the postwar atmosphere of sprawling conformity and eight-cylinder conservatism sparked in the offspring of the World War II generation a countervailing interest in all things bohemian. Dark little coffeehouses inspired by European cafés began to open around the country, and their music was part of their appeal. In Cambridge, the prototypal coffeehouse of the era, Tulla’s Coffee Grinder, had only a tabletop radio, but the thing was on all day and night, tuned to the Harvard station, which played a lot of bebop. Live jazz (or spirited approximations thereof) flourished in the coffeehouses that followed, the sax and bongo playing sometimes mixed with beat poetry or broken up by a few songs from a folksinger strumming a guitar.
This is the precursor to the songs I’ve posted here.
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Сandy Says:
Hi! I’ve always loved this type of music (hot jazz) although for years I had no idea what it was. What turned me on to it was interestingly enough the Beatles (McCartney’s) “Honey Pie” from the white album. In it he refrerences ‘hot kind of music’ and the ‘pace’ in the song is a classic ‘hot jazz’ characteristic.
I had the good fortune recently to meet a friends uncle who is in his 60′s, plays the banjo and is obsessed with hot jazz, ragtime, basically pre-1930 jazz/pop. He showed me the great site “http://www.redhotjazz.com” with which you are probably already familiar and we had some great conversation late into the night interspersed with him on his banjo and me on my guitar.
My first question is that since these recordings are for the most part out of copyright (not that it seems to matter much these days anyway), I was wondering if there was anyplace on the net which you knew of where they could be easily obtained. The hotjazz archive has streaming available which is pretty good, but I’d like to be able to burn CDs of some of this music so that it would be available at anytime and not tied to my computer.
Particular interest in Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven.
My second question is are you aware of any resources which list the top hits for years in the 1920s and thereabouts?
Thanks