You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Tracks That Give Us Chills

Episode Date: March 26, 2019

Today, Peter and Adam give a list of 7 goosebumps-inducing moments in jazz tunes. You can listen to each of them on our playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/user/12741112/playlist/77eAvTGEDOI7nrRMGY82HL?si=CjWZm-YMTpe8XUt2hTYrXQToday's episode is sponsored by the Oxford American. The Oxford American is a magazine dedicated to documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South. Its award-winning annual music issue comes with a CD sampler and digital download - a must-have for any serious music fan. Recent issues have featured Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk, John Cage, and John Cage. Visit https://www.oxfordamerican.org/yhi today for a special subscription discount!Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. What's up? Is it cold in here? It's cold in here, and I got the chills, bruh. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you.

Today's episode is sponsored by The Oxford American. The Oxford American is a magazine dedicated to documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South. Its award-winning annual music issue comes with a CD sampler and digital download. It's a must-have for any serious music fan. Recent issues have featured Nina Simone, the lonious monk, John Cage and John Coltrane. visit Oxfordamerican.org slash YHI. Today, that's Oxfordamerican.org, forward slash YHI, YHI, as in you'll hear it. And I mean, you said featuring John Cage and John Coltrane.

You had me at that. I know, right? Any magazine that features those two Johns is all right with me. And they can write about it in the kind of intelligent way that the Oxford American does. Was John Cage from North Carolina as well? Is that what the connection was? I don't know, actually. That might have been the North Carolina issue.

I have not read the article about John Cage, but. Interesting. We'll be doing that. So, all right, we alluded to some chills today. Yes. And that's because we're talking about seven tracks that give us chills. Yes. And by that we mean like goosebumps, like the hairs on your, on your neck stand up.

That's right. And I mean, the tracks are all great, but we're even talking about specific moments. Right. We're breaking it down for you. Maybe we should call it seven moments. Should we call an audible and change it? No. I don't know.

No, I'm down. Let's do it. Okay. Seven moments. They give us chills. Seven moments on tracks. Wait. Yeah.

Okay, we'll just do moments. Yeah, for people to hear our thought process of the production of this, I think is exciting. Oh, it's enlightening. It's enlightening. Okay, so these are those kind of moments where you're just like, damn. I mean, just like you're happy to be alive. And I mean, you know, the wonderful thing about, one of the wonderful things about jazz, this music that we call jazz, is that these moments can come at any time.

It's, you know, there's like, you know, great piece of classical music by Beethoven or by any of these great composers. There's these wonderful moments, and we know they're coming, and it's great to experience to them. In jazz, on a recording, you get a similar thing because we listen to them over and over again, and you know those moments are coming. But then on the live gig, they can come at any time. That doesn't mean they always come, but when they do, it's like, ah, you know, pinnacle. We're going to the mountains up. As a musician, as someone who we're really painting time, right, with sound.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I just made that up or now. Yeah, yeah. But I feel like it's part of our responsibility to create these kind of moments. That's what we live for, right? I think NPR calls them driveway moments or something like that. What are these? You'll hear it moments.

Oh, I like that even better. Seven tracks that you'll hear it. But these are our favorite ones, and some of our favorite ones. There's a ton of it. I mean, every great record has multiple dozens of these kind of moments, but these are some that we talk about all the time. Yeah, and this is a little bit random. Like, we did not go through this and say, okay, we need to cover this. These are just sort of top of our mind today.

Yeah. So we can, this might be fun to revisit at some point, too, because we didn't, like, try to hit every single error or anything. thing. Yo, and go to you'll hear at dot com and share your favorite moments from your favorite records. Nice, nice.

Maybe we could do a part two with our listeners' favorite moments. And do we have a Spotify playlist with these and tracks include? There is a Spotify playlist. Check the description for the link to the Spotify playlist.

And yeah, you know what we need? We need a You'll Hear at Spotify account because right now we're just kind of going off of mine. Really? Yeah. You got a problem with that, man? No, I mean, but like, share.

We could have like a nice curated collection of, all right, let's do that. Okay, let's do that. Okay, our first moment is Tintendendale. We've talked about this before. We have.

Yeah. And this is such a wonderful moment, and it's become our go-to explanation for what is swing. Yeah. When we get bogged down with trying to describe how to swing, you know, it's like, what is that old phrase when it's like, you know, that guy was such a snappy dresser. If you looked in the dictionary under snappy dresser, there's a picture of him, you know. So if you look in the dictionary under swing, there is a link to this track. And there's an old saying, too, don't explain it. show it. That's right. And this is one of those things.

There's another old thing. If you got it, flaunt it. No, but this is one of those things that it's hard to explain. Right. But it's easier just to hear it. So let's hear it. What? Double snake face. What is going on? I want to just, I'm going to back that up even more. Back that thing up. Because it's in that, it's in that sort of

Latin groove for a while. We're going to go back. 12.8. Oh, man. It just feels so incredible. That's just nasty. You got to listen to the whole thing. What I love, he goes into this kind of whole tone thing. Yeah. He's already, he's already, he's already, he's already kind of hinting at the swing. I mean, he's always kind of swing.

I mean, yeah. I'm getting chills. I'm serious. I'm getting chills. This passes the test. Can we just give a shout out here to Ray Brown? Listen to what Ray Brown does. The first moment of the swing, he plays three of the roots in a row. Yeah.

Just boom, boom, boom. Three solid quarter notes. Simplify and isolate, my friend. Ray Brown's like, what is this chord? Is this a G or something? I'm just going to play three Gs in a row. He's just, I mean, him and Ed Thickpen are locked in in a way that is so natural. Like, it's not a robotic kind of locked in.

It's just like a locked into the time, locked into the feel more than even the time. They're locked into both, but they're just locked into that feel. And it's such a cool moment because it's just the drama of the whole arrangement. And I encourage you if you haven't heard this track, you know, to really check it out from the beginning. It's kind of ridiculous that we're just jumping to these places. But it gives you a little bit of a taste. The whole thing is like the drama. that's built up to this moment that makes it even more

satisfying. Look, they could have come at the beginning and swinging like that, no problem. But it's the build up to it. Yeah, go through our Spotify playlist, listen to the whole track, because all of these are much better in the actual context, but still actually on the It's pretty good, man. Exactly. So our number two here is one that I picked, and this is

this was such an obvious one we were talking about this. Yeah, you really got one obscure on this one. Yeah, right. Is this even on Spotify? This is one of the most iconic moments in the history of jazz for sure. It's used in countless you know, like commercials and films and everything. I mean, it's one of the best feeling times ever.

This is Miles Davis and Kind of Blue. So what? Right before the trumpet solo. Again, that transition, you know, going from another groove to swing, always effective. I mean, a lot of our moments here are transitions from grooves, but that's what's so great about, you know, using these different colors in your arrangements

or in your playing is that they create these special moments and that sizzle on the symbol, that crash, just, and it lingers. So in those are first two examples here, there's definitely the symbol, the stick on the ride symbol between two masters, Jimmy Cobb and Ed Thickpan is a big part of both of these. So that's something to note. But yes, to your point of like the transition,

like these are times when we always want to think about in arranging, in soloing that and how we play tunes are big moments to take advantage of. We always want to think about where we're going and I can't wait to take it to the solo. Think about those transitions because those are, end up being the moments that can be so amazing. amazing and satisfying. And like Bill Evans does an interesting thing because they go to this new feel for the first time. It's all been building up to this and you're walking. So you've got something. He kind of almost harkens back with those same voicing. He hints. And hints at the melody going backwards, which kind of bridges it together nicely. Another common commonality is two of the most swinging bass players in music history right here. Paul Chambers and Ray Brown. It doesn't hurt. Doesn't hurt. Yeah. So check out so what if you haven't heard it before. Yeah. Yeah. It's on a if you can find it. You can find it anyway. Kind of blue. All right. For our number three, we have another. iconic moment. This is not going to be a surprise to anyone. This is from

Amad Jamal's Live at the Pershing. This is Point Sienna. Why does everyone always say live at the Pershing? That's correct. Persian? I always thought it was Pershing, but that must be a St. Louis thing because we have Pershing Avenue down here. But Pershing, I believe, is correct. I mean, if you know this track, you know what moment

I'm talking about, because it's the ultimate causer of chills and stank face. They're just grooving along here in the, what we called the Pointeena group. Like literally what it's like, it's not a tissue, it's a Kleenex. I know, yeah. How many drummers have you leaned over to right before starting a tune? Be like, uh, Poinsiana groove.

Right. You don't even have to eat this by Poinceana, like the tune or the groove. No, it's the groove. Yeah, the groove. Let's back it up a more. Vernier. So elegant to win this. I mean, I just, I've heard this a million times.

I just got little chills. It's always good. You know what this is for me too? Transition again. It's a transition, but it's all Vernal Fornier that pop on beat four right before it comes in. And then, of course, the groove. All of the stuff he's doing busy. Let's hear that one more time.

And the transition is really from the two grooves, which is easy to think they're playing the same groove and he's just going to assemble, but it's not. Because now it's a little more backbeatish. And that line, I mean, this album to me is a precursor of modern hip-hop. Like there's just these grooves, these moments, these beats almost that they're creating really.

And I mean, structurally, really influenced and informed a lot of Miles Davis's work around the same period all the way through, you know, certainly kind of blue. And then the later quintet is very informative of that. Speaking of Miles Davis. Oh, we have another Miles Davis? We have number four.

We're going Miles Davis. That's what I said. We didn't plan this out to try to be politically correct and hit all the right people. We just, we basically came up with the seven first tracks that gave you and I chills, four and three. And we had a little bit of overlap, but we said, you know what? So what? Well, that was number two. So what?

Stella by Starlight from My Funny Valentine? Yeah, live 1964 at the Philharmonic, New York. City. This is another you know, you got to hear it all building up the solo, but when he goes up to this almost an overbrado on that. And that moment just typifies Miles during this period, doesn't it? I mean, it's so

just the iconic, he's cacking a little bit. Yeah, he's cacking when he first goes up there, yeah. Going for it, and he has that groove that's just undeniable and what the band is doing behind him. Yeah. And this, I mean, there's a bunch of chill, gives me chills kind of moments and it's the very beginning of this track, the

intro from Herbie Hancock, I mean, the very first notes that he plays, really, like, I've thought about, I mean, I've heard it a lot, too, although I don't even listen to this all the time now. I know it so well. I learned it when I was young. Like, it's informed almost everything I do when I sit down at the piano and play the introduction. Really? Because it, like, it's so beautiful. It sets the tone and it sets the bar so high.

It's like not that we have to play like he does, but if we're doing a piano intro, like, you got to bring it. Because it's the first thing that's big. And you know there's some great stuff going to be played after, you know? I think we should take an aside and listen to a little bit of this intro. Yeah, and it's nothing like crazy or anything. Did you hear that Miles, there was like a ghost of him playing it first before he actually played it on there because of the way it was master, the tape was sitting on there

that was bleed through on there, yeah, from how it was recorded like. Very interesting. Yeah. Man, that is so great. And the intro was so killing. Yep. Those two records, so My Friendy Valentine and Four and More are both from the same concert.

All right, what we got next? Okay, one, two, three, four. That was four. This is number five. So we've got John Coltrane, Johnny Hartman, Lush Life. this I kind of highlight, again, the whole track could have be, gives me chills, but especially the beginning of John Coltrane solo. Again, let's listen to the drums, have a nice, another master drummer, seems to be a part

of the situation. Interesting. Here we go. Small dive and there will be while I rot with the rest of those whose lives are. And you're right. his playing on this record is underrated. Oh, man, his brushwork. You know, I mean, when I was younger, I played and worked with

and just hung a lot with Brian Blade, and he was so into Elvin Jones. Like, he's somebody who really channeled that kind of brushwork, I think, in a really interesting way. I mean, you got Tony Williams, of course, on that same period. You know, Jimmy Cobb's so many different. But, I mean, yeah, I think Elvin's brushwork on there. And he just sort of sets it up, like some of these other tracks. I think Coltrane, just that sound.

and playing some kind of crazy stuff, but it's just so pretty. So many notes at the beginning of the solo on this beautiful ballad, you think, oh, it's too much, but nah, no, it's not. All right. Our next one is a little more moderate. It comes from Brad Meldow's Art of the Trio,

volume four live at the Village of Vanguard. This is an original tune. I think it might be the only original on the record, but it's really great. It's a super long track. I mean, it's a live track. But there's a moment that happens right in the middle, and it's about 45-second long,

45 seconds long, again, where they changed grooves. a couple of times and each time always gives me chills. Let's check it up. Rossi. Yeah. Larry Grenadier and Horneuxi. I mean, they were, you know, what you don't hear is that they were in that dotted quarter time. Yeah.

And that's when they started swinging it and they go effortlessly, effortlessly back to, you know, the walking thing. And it's just so incredible. So we know almost every one of these moments is at a transition point. Really important to note. I think so. I mean, the Miles one was kind of at the pinnacle of the solos. That was a unique one. But the rest of them is very interesting.

It's like the beginning of solo, or a change of time or going from one groove to another. But I think that record, too, is probably the pinnacle of that trio of Larry, Jorge. Is that volume one? Volume four. Volume four. I mean, it's when they had been playing together for a long time,

and they recorded a bunch of them already, and it just is a culminate. I remember when they did the first one, they called it Volume One. I was like, wow, that's pretty cocky of you there, buddy. That turned out pretty good, though. All right, for number seven, we're really going to the mountaintop on this,

in my opinion. just to a moment on a solo that from Louis Armstrong, this is I got a right to sing the blues. Kind of a corny tune. But what he does with this, and this is the OG version, like this is the old one. I want to look in a second. No, I won't.

I don't even care. But it's the older one. He did one later. I was going to say the 30s, 40s. I don't know. It's old, old school. But the whole thing about this is just what he plays. And can we play it a little bit before?

But when the band braids, again a transition and he starts to solo and like you got to keep in mind like how corny stuff was being played during this time period and the way that he plays we've talked about this before with with pretty much all of his solos like he was so ahead of his time but just in terms of like standing the test of time and just some beautiful like the phrasing the freedom the swing the feel his confidence within that the musicianship the tone of the whole thing the best yeah here we go and what he sings the melody before it's incredible like his phrasing

and harmonies like super advanced. But then when, I mean, this is the moment right when they break. Did he just make a one, one help note swing a little bit? Yeah, yeah. He literally plays a whole note over two bars and it's swinging. And then he goes into the next, and then he's,

we got to go back here to again. I know, no, no. But then when he starts soloing, like, I mean, obviously he's the one pushing, if you hear the whole track, pushing everybody to swing. But he starts soloing. He starts floating above the time.

I've never heard this. I think he uses that vibrato to make this whole note swing. Yeah. That's insane. That just swings harder than what they're doing. Chills. And then this break. Dang.

And then goes right back to floating. So it's like he goes into that real traditional New Orleans kind of break thing and then goes right back to floating over the time. I mean, you know, I really think that he set the tone phrasing-wise for singers, for horn players, for everybody. I mean, it was a life full of giving people chills for sure. It's almost like, you know, jazz or whatever they were calling it then or, you know, could have devolved into some kind of corny dance music. And he just, like, you know, elevated it, elevated the game for sure.

For real. Well, let's do a little bit of a review here. And I'm going to give people the timestamps so that if you're going to our playlist, which you can find here in the description on Spotify, you can find these exact moments. But I encourage you to listen to the whole thing and, you know, experience it for yourself. So our first one was Tintendale. happened at three minutes and four seconds. And then we had, that's Oscar Peterson. Yeah.

What record? I always forget the record. That doesn't matter. I mean, it does matter. It's on the playlist. Yeah. And then so what from some record I never heard of. And that's it.

That's a one minute, 30 seconds. Point Sienna, Amad Jamal, Live at the Pershing at 209 is when that groove changes. Stella by Starlight at 414, Miles plays that incredible lick very emotionally. Lush Live from John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, three minutes and 10, is when Coltrane starts solo. Nice pass from Brad Meldow, live at the Village Vanguard, sorry, Art of the Trio, Volume 4, Live at the Village Vanguard. It's a 30 second section starting about 10 minutes,

is when they changed that groove a couple of times. And then Louis Armstrong, I got a right to sing the blues at one minute and 50 seconds. And the whole track is only three minutes long. But like he sings the mallet and then there's that little instrumental segue and then bam. Cool. Yeah. Man, that's good.

This is fun. This is fun. So send us yours go to You'll Hear dot com and let us know your favorite moments that give you chills. That's right. Yeah, yeah. And don't forget that for a limited time, you'll hear it listeners can subscribe to the Oxford American for only 25 bucks. Bam. Visit Oxfordamerican.org

forward slash YHI to subscribe today. That's like just five of your little fancy coffees, my little fancy coffees? Yeah, buddy. At that place you go, we're not saying because they're not a sponsor. We're not mentioning any other non-sponsorses. We kind of have competing coffee sponsorships here. I mean, you, yeah, you have the blueprint and I have the sump.

We just said we're not mentioning that. We're not endorsing anything. I'm just saying. Adam likes a superior coffee in the beer. I just said it's five of those, though. They're pricing. Five? Yeah.

Oh, it's like two. Oh, okay. Well, until tomorrow. You'll hear it.