Joshua, Im a sax player, and I prefer Dex over any other tenor player as well. Trane was undoubtedly a genius, but what made him so popular was his modal playing was easier to fake by young musicians. When I was a teenager I used to do it all the time. Trane use to play a lot of modes because they gave him a lot of room to experiment with his ideas. But youngsters like myself used to use them to play complete nonsense. And a lot of the time, unless a person was a seasoned jazz fan, people didn’t know the difference. That’s why to this day, if someone tells me they’re into avant garde, before I’ll accept them as a serious musician, I want to hear them play some straight-ahead jazz, or bebop, first. But another thing that made Trane so popular was his sound represented more than just music, it also made an aggressive political statement. It catered to the pan-African sentiment that was so pervasive in the Black community during the sixties. . But Dex is where Trane came from, and fake Dex, a person would see through you by the second bar. Dex was the Charlie Parker of the modern tenor saxophone. His deep, resonate tone, and aggressive attack defined an entire era. One of the reasons that I dont like smooth jazz, or what I call bastard jazz, is because the sax players are so wimpy sounding. They sound like their weeping into their horns - and I’m becoming more hostile toward it by the day, because unfortunately, Im beginning to think they represent a metaphor for contemporary manhood. You just don’t hear any fat, husky, and aggressive tenor saxophone playing anymore: . A SWINGIN’ AFFAIR I was told as a child Blacks had no worth, Not a nickels 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 chordsThe keyboard played, And danced around each note; Then shuffled em Like a deck of cards, And didnt 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 Rouses style. He took a Scrapple From The Apple, Then went to Billies Bounce, The rhythm section, now on fire, But he didnt 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, Dexters, 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. . youtube/watch?v=mMq8kp1nfso
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 22:47:52 +0000
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