Since I began this first day back of working with my students here at FSU, I feel obligated to share two experiences that happened to me over the last two weeks that were really ONE experience that completely reinforced a deep truth as it pertains to the core rhythm of our music we call Jazz. After one of our performances at The Blue Note Tokyo last month, I was ready to get back to the hotel and get some rest, but our manager Dee Askew asked if I would come along with her and Dee Dee Bridgewater to the club Body and Soul for a jam session. Although I was tired, I said I would go. That turned out to be one of the most important decisions Ive ever made in my life as a musician who is always trying to learn, understand more, and get better. Before I got up to play, I was sitting and listening to the musicians which included our Reggie Thomas on piano and Dave Gibson on drums. All of a sudden, this young Japanese violinist who looked to be in her late teens, started to play on a blues. She was confident and serious. As she played, she began to do something rhythmically that absolutely knocked my socks off and floored me with its basic fundamentalism. She played an endless succession of eighth note triplets. The TRIPLET!!! This young woman, in those few measures of eighth note triplets, swung as hard as anyone I had ever heard in my life (!!!) and thats a lot of people. It hit me again like a ton of bricks that this is what makes this music swing. The TRIPLET, and derivatives of it. Study and analyze the music of all of the musicians who really swing, those that have that hump and beat in their swing, (Basie, Duke, Ray Brown, Miles, Sweets, Dizzy, Ron Carter, Monk, Bird, Cannonball, Herbie, Philly Joe Jones, Cobb, Tony, Al Grey, Paul Chambers, Sarah, Ella, Carmen, Cleave Eaton, Oscar, Art, Clark, Wynton, McBride, Kenny Kirkland, Trane, J.J., Getz, Chet, and this list goes one) and you will hear that underlying TRIPLET and in a lot of cases its a straight in your face TRIPLET or a subtler derivative of it. This young Japanese violinist almost had me screaming in that club that night as she swung so good and I could hear through her all of the names I mentioned above. But what really drove this realization home further and put those nails in the coffin again, since this was something I figured out years ago, was when I put on a Ray Brown CD I bought that I thought I had but didnt. Its Some Of My Friends Are Singers.....guest vocalists are Diana Krall, Dee Bridgewater, Marlena Shaw, and others. As I was driving back home from Ameoba Music in LA after buying the CD, I put it on and began listening to the first track which is I Thought About You featuring Diana Krall on vocals with Ray on bass, Geoff Keezer on piano, and Greg Hutchinson on drums. On the upbeat, BEFORE the downbeat is even played, Ray Brown plays a pickup right out of the three eighth note triplet! And in bar two, on beats three and four, he plays full triplets on each beat and proceeds to give a textbook example of how to swing and that understanding how to use the triplet, and FEELING WHEN to use it, is what will make one swing without question and with absolutely unquestionable authority. When I didnt think the tune could possibly swing any harder, when they get to the tag on the Db7sus chord, at 4:20 for over two FULL measures, Brown plays an endless succession of eight note triplets for NINE BEATS!!!! I had to pull the car over it was such a deep revelation and even deeper understanding once more of what swing really is. The young woman in Japan, who probably wasnt even born when Ray Brown left this earth, and Ray Brown himself, both proved what a lot of us know but rarely discuss, and especially in our roles as jazz educators and bandleaders, and that is what really makes someone swing. As the director of the swingingest jazz orchestra in history, this is something that I know, but also something I should know and better know. The body and ears tell us whats really up and from the time I first heard the Basie orchestra, I knew they were swingin harder than all of the others. Not that the others werent swingin, it was just obvious that Basie figured out a little something else. This is not even up for debate as far as Im concerned. And its my lifes mission to make sure that we always are continuing to swing as deep and hard as CBO always has. This rhythm, the triplet, if understood, and most importantly FELT, then played a certain way, might not guarantee successful swingin all the time for some, but for those who really get what Im saying here, trust me, deal with it honestly like Basie did, like Mr. Brown, like that young woman in Japan, like Miles, Sweets, CT, Christian McBride, Wynton, Sonny Payne, Diz, Dee Dee, Jon Hendricks, Rodney Jordan, Russell Malone, Benson, Will Matthews, Wycliffe, Marcus Roberts, Branford, Tain, Joe Henderson, Freddie, James Leary, Clarence Banks, Billy Childs, and others, and you will discover a level of euphoria and spiritual delight seldom experienced anywhere else in this realm of life. And to top it off, youll arrive at a higher level of technical mastery. Yes, swing. Its that deep.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 22:47:03 +0000
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