You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 5 Old Tracks That Aren't Corny - #39

Episode Date: March 10, 2018

Peter and Adam discuss 5 of their favorite old tracks. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Menace and I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Today we're going to give you five old tracks that aren't corny. That aren't corny? No, that are not corny. Okay, good. Because I thought you said five old tracks that are corny, and I was like, why are we wasting time on a podcast giving them corny tracks?

Okay. Yeah, and we're not going to, as usual, give them anything outside of our brilliant insights into these. Hey, that's a lot. That's right. So let's jump right in. Now, these are tracks. Basically, we're talking about recordings. Specific recordings that are known that some people might think are corny,

that really are not corny, right? So I'm going to start it off with Lewis Armstrong, West and Blues. That's a good choice to start it off with. So, I mean, to me, actually, I would say from a sound standpoint, there's nothing that Lewis Armstrong that I ever heard him play on recordings that was corny. actually. Now some people think because of like the way he talked and did interviews and especially people that don't totally understand New Orleans and

the era that he came up in but in some of the movies that he was in because of the way that African American actors were and musicians were marginalized in early Hollywood and stuff that they think he was corny but I'll tell you that that track I mean considering it sort of ushered in this this modern area I mean didn't create jazz but it was really like what they I guess call like the first great recorded jazz solo and stuff. I mean, it really holds up in a way that actually the rest of the playing on the track is good, but it's a little corny, a little corny. You know, I mean, good. I mean,

by those, very modern by those days standards. But I mean, Lewis Armstrong's solo is like still just so advanced and not corny at all. Absolutely. So I'm going to go with my first choice is Duke Ellington's East St. Louis, Tudaloo. Now, some of you are saying, like, how could anything Duke Ellington has ever done be corny. But, you know, I mean, when you go back to this early jazz era, to the swing era, some of it doesn't have that, you know, doesn't have a relevant feel. But this song, for whatever reason, the arrangement, it feels so modern to me. I mean, it really shows the brilliance of Duke and how he made so much timeless music.

I mean, but this in particular is something that I think has stood the test of time and, you know, could be relevant today. I mean, I think Steely Dan recorded this in, like, 1976 or something. Well, you know what, I'm going to be a little controversial here. I know I said I never heard Louis Armstrong play anything corny. Some of Duke Allington's music to me, especially that really early stuff, sounds a little corny. A little dated. You're a dance band in a specific era.

Yeah, I mean, it's very high quality, but, I mean, I agree that, you know, that East St. Louis is too loose. It's just like it's so relevant and modern and timeless, you know. Timeless, exactly. Okay, so next, I'm going to go with Jelly Roll Morton's King Porter Stomp. Now, this, I think a lot of people, if they're not being politically correct, would say they think everything Jelly Role Morton played was maybe very skillful, but very corny. And a lot of people just don't sort of understand. Well, you know, I shouldn't even say that, because I don't want to sound pretentious. I mean, you like what you like.

Some things are corny, you know. Right. No big deal. But to me, you know, what that represents, what that track represents, the way that he played it, the way he played it, the way he. It's really like a composition and an arrangement with a little bit of improv in it, but that bridge between New Orleans Stride, St. Louis Ragtime and what became modern jazz is just brilliant. I mean, it's what he plays is great. But the feel and the swing, like even though there wasn't really like a straight-for swing yet, but like he pushed it ahead of like the ragtime and stuff. And I just, I love that groove.

Now this one is from an era that's a little bit more modern than the ones we've been talking about. But I feel like this song gets a bad rap because of how often it's been played at brunches. Wait, I love brunch. I know. I've played it at brunches. I'm all about the brunch. This is, of course, Antonio Carlos Joe Beam's masterpiece, The Girl from Ipanema. I mean, this is like such a famous song at this point.

They played at the Olympics, right? Yeah. Oh, you're going to... No, no, just a little background music because that's where it usually played. Keep going. Yeah, so if you put this song in the background of anything, you sound a little bit more sophisticated. When I play the girl from Ipanema, I like to close my eyes, put my head down towards the keys. Oh, thank you.

Imagine I'm on a beach somewhere in Brazil. Okay, now we are getting corny. We're officially getting corny. I thought you were going to say Sarasota on the beach, but that's good at Brazil. That actually did get a little corny, but that's on us. That has nothing to do with the tune itself. No, you know, this is such a well-known tune. I was saying, like, you know, you got Giselle Boonchin at the Rio Olympics walking across the stadium to it.

It's an iconic thing and it's been overdone, definitely. But the original recording of this, man, is so cool. I mean, it really, that era of early, when Basanova Cray's first hit America, this is such a cool track. I don't think it's corny at all. I agree. Not corny. We're going to mark that one as no corn.

Okay, I think we're up to number five. And, you know, we're limiting ourselves to five non-corny tracks today. And I'm going to say Night in Tunisia. And we're kind of, I'm sort of jumping there because the girl from Impanima, it's this similar thing is like it, it harkens to a certain area where some people could think it's corny because, you know, certain types of music and international locales are trying to be applied somewhere else. Right. But the foundation of the music that Dizzy wrote in that, of that composition, and really like, it does kind of transport you somewhere. And it's a little bit of a funny thing because we think about it as Latin jazz. Right.

And I'm pretty sure that Tunisia. is not in the Latin American continent. Not the last time I looked at it as well. Yeah. But somehow it just works and it's like, you know, Disney. I mean, I've ever seen him play like in kind of mid-80s when I was in high school, maybe even still middle school, play live here in St. Louis. And it was such an amazing thing.

And of course he played that. I mean, that was like his hit. Right. And I mean, it wasn't corny then and it wasn't corny. The different times I heard it live on all the different recordings. Shaka Khan singing it. I don't think that's corny. You know, it's, I think it's killing, you know.

So there you go, five old tracks that still aren't corny. I don't know how long this podcast can be online. Maybe they'll become corny, but right now they're not. Maybe our podcast will be one day five old podcasts that are no longer corny. Let's hope that that's the case. We hope so. If you have ideas for corny podcast, I mean, if you have ideas for topics for us to cover, please leave them in the comments.

If you like what you hear, leave us a rating. You know, we try to provide the best online content for, jazz education here at You'll Hear It. We do it in a sophisticated way as you can tell. Not corny. Not at all corny. That's it for today's episode of You'll Hear It. We'll be back tomorrow, but if you need more information,

you can go to you'll hear it.com.