You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Instrument Spotlight: The Saxophone - #73

Episode Date: April 13, 2018

Today, Peter and Adam discuss their favorite saxophone players and recordings. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Today we're going to put a spotlight on the saxophone. Oh God, why? It could be dangerous. It's a metal instrument.

We're going to put a spotlight on it. We don't want it to get too close, I guess. You're going to blind the audience, man. So the saxophone, this is a lot of fun because I think that there's no other instrument that's more iconic and more connected, specifically to jazz than the saxophone. I know when it was created by, I believe, Adolf Saxe, who was a Belgian gentleman, I am not looking at Wikipedia right now. That's convenient.

Yeah. I know it was created before jazz existed, I guess. That's true. But it's really the most closely aligned with jazz in terms of saxophone. There's some beautiful classical music, but it's a little bit limited to a certain French repertoire, I would say. and I mean if you think about every corny jazz poster you've ever seen it's usually like a cat with a saxophone or something like that Yeah we should put that on as the image for this podcast man that's right Yeah I think I think I know sacks developed it because brass instruments were getting so good and and so loud

That he I think the story goes he wanted something that would cut you know through in the in the bands So we have the saxophone and they cut through our bands let's put a little let's put a little spotlight on it And I think with these what's fun is if we just sort of talk about specific artists, maybe some recordings and sort of stylistic things. So why don't you kick it off with one of your favorite? Yeah, one of my favorite musicians of all time is the great Lester Young. He really defined what the tenor saxophone could be in a modern jazz sense. And my favorite recordings of him are with, it's a saxophone trio,

which was kind of common back in the day to have a trio of just piano, drums, and elite instrument. And he had a trio of Nat King Cole, Buddy Rich, and himself, and it was so swinging. I mean, you know, we talk about... How swinging was it? It was so swinging that I'm still swinging from... You talk about the two-feel, right? I mean, that band had a two-feel that would just snap your neck. It was so popping.

It was great. And his language, you know, was... Still feels contemporary. People still pull from it. I love it. I love his sound. that big, breathy, early tenor sound, really there wouldn't be, you know, a Sunny Rollins or Dexter Gordon or any of those cats without Lester Young.

Great. Good stuff, good stuff. Well, next I'm going to go in our spotlight on saxophone. I'm going to go and shine that spotlight specifically on Charles Parker. I've heard of him. Out of the Kansas City, Kansas region of our country. Not in there. Also known as Charlie Parker, Bird, Yard Bird.

and you know Charlie Parker is playing I mean just his look his use of the mostly alto saxophone although I believe he played a little bit of tenor there's a few recordings but really just Charlie Parker with the alto saxophone in terms of how he looked how he played that whole thing really typifies jazz saxophone bebop for sure and many other things but I mean just the consummate and iconic saxophonist so many great recordings you know the the all the great stuff with Dizzy, you know, that live recording from Toronto, which I believe is live at Massey, well, it's been released a whole bunch of different things. Under like 12 different names.

Yeah, but it was recorded live on stage actually by Charlie Mingus with a like real early kind of advanced real to real recorder or something. I mean, the sound quality is pretty good on that recording. It sounds similar to what we record now on stage to tell you the truth. Yeah, it's crazy. And I think it's Charlie Mingus, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, I believe. Dizzy Gillespie, great recording. I mean, but Charlie Parker was just.

you know, he seemed to really know how to phrase and just, you know, take the saxophone within the jazz idiom to even higher levels in terms of showing what it could do. You know, and really was just a master technically of the instrument, but in terms of sound. Now, some of the things, like if you hear the bird with strings, those recordings with, I guess it was Mitch Miller conducting arranging, like those corny kind of arrangements, but then the beauty of Charlie Parker's sound, he kind of showed a whole other side of the saxophone as well. Beautiful. Yeah, you know, we get asked sometimes, like, what defines beb? And I mean, I think Charlie Parker defined bebob. Absolutely. How would you characterize his bebop sound, like what he added to that genre? Well, I think, you know, I think, you know, outside of the saxophone, it was really sort of a rhythmic freedom. And a lot of times we think about bebop and sometimes maybe we teach it a little bit too rigid in terms of eighth notes, you know, do, but do, do, bed, da, da, da, da, da, bap, bap, bap, with an occasional triplet.

But really, if you look at the way Charlie Parker played, you know, outside of specific recordings that are notated and can appear to be like that, he played with a lot of freedom, a lot of stretching, a lot of 16th notes, flurries, and just, like, really cool phrasing. But, I mean, he kind of created a language. It wasn't just him, of course. Yeah. But, you know, his saxophone technique, and it's lent itself so well to that register and to that instrument that he was able to play that phrasing.

It was almost like you hear a language that someone speaks it so well and so eloquently, and it has so much to say and is on the perfect microphone. You don't care what they're talking about. It's just enjoyable to hear them say it. I'm always blown away by how much blues is in Charlie Parker's playing, too. Like, you know, it's bebop. I mean, there's still a lot of blues. Absolutely.

I mean, he came out of the Kansas City saxophone blues tradition, you know, and a lot of that is sort of the foundation of, I don't think there's any way you could pull that out of his playing. Well, speaking of the blues, we're going to jump ahead, and we're going to skip over some really great saxophone players, but one of the icons of this music is our next saxophonist, and that's the great John Coltrane. Now, I just watched an awesome documentary on Netflix. I heard about that.

Oh, man, if you haven't seen it yet, you've got to check it out. I got to see. Can I get your Netflix login first, though? Is that possible? Hell no. No, but it is great. It is, yeah, I don't want anything but, like, food and running shows on my Netflix queue.

Thank you very much. Exactly. No, the documentary itself, I forget the name of it, but it's going to be the only cold train documentary on Netflix, I guarantee. But it's really spectacular and it covers his whole life and what he did for this music and who he was as a person. And, you know, his playing is almost hard to describe because he really took jazz into an artistic realm that it hadn't been before and was on a mission to do that. in his mind he was on a mission from God to connect with God through jazz. It was really, really deep stuff. And obviously, his sound, his technique, you know, the way he used the blues,

even in really, really out music, very, very inspiring. One of my all-time favorite musicians, for sure. Absolutely. And then, I mean, you know, things specifically as far as saxophone, like we always think about John Coltrane, Charlie Parker. I mean, all these greats, even, you know, as pianists, sort of separate from their instrument, but another one that's kind of iconic and very much connected to his instrument specifically of the tenor saxophone in a very meaningful way, I think.

Okay, so for the last one, I was going to go even more contemporary, and then I'm going to kind of cheat on this one and pick a couple of people. These are all great saxophonists, and certainly not the only ones, but these are folks that I've seen playing live, even played with some of them, and I think are just great modern. and saxophone players. So first is Kenny Garrett, and then I'm going to say Joshua Redmond, Brand for Marcellus, and these are all kind of, and Chris Potter. They're all sort of the same generation, you know, not that far apart in terms of age,

and still doing their thing and really strong players. And like I say, there's so many more great players from this generation, too. But I think that those four really represent sort of the state of modern jazz saxophone in a lot of ways. Now, they're certainly younger, great younger players. You know, Comasi, Washington and stuff, but they're very much influenced by these four, I would say. Yeah, from my generation, I'd like to add, Seamus Blake, unbelievable. John Ellis, one of my favorite people.

Logan Richardson, another Kansas City saxophone. Yeah, a not Cohen. A not Cohen. Yeah, there's more known for clarinet, but I think a wonderful saxophonist. Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff going on right now in the saxophone. Yeah, for sure. So I think that's, we covered the saxophone from A to Z pretty much, right? Enjoy that.

From A to Zoot Sims, and you'll hear it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hear It podcast. If you liked what you heard, please leave a rating or review. Yeah, I liked what I heard. I'm going to leave five stars, but you guys can do whatever you want. Today's episode was brought you by Open Studio, Jazz Lessons from Jazz Legends. Check out our brand new All Access Pass. All Access. What is that? Like one or two courses you get?

Dude, I said All Access. It's access to everything. Every course, hundreds, thousands. tens of thousands of last. Wait, tens of thousands. Back up. Back up. Definitely hundreds. We're getting close to a thousand.

Everything from Christian McBride, Peter Martin, Romero L'Bombo, Gregory Hutchinson, Miles Davis, Meatlux, Lewis, Jellyroll, Morton. Just getting ridiculous. No. Some of those. The first couple, we've got them. Check us out. OpenStudionnetwork.com.