{"id":1466,"date":"2019-12-24T14:52:18","date_gmt":"2019-12-24T18:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/?p=1466"},"modified":"2020-01-07T17:28:05","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T21:28:05","slug":"the-state-of-the-blues-part-5-an-excerpt-from-shirley-horns-solo-on-what-would-a-woman-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/2019\/12\/24\/the-state-of-the-blues-part-5-an-excerpt-from-shirley-horns-solo-on-what-would-a-woman-do\/","title":{"rendered":"An excerpt from Shirley Horn’s solo on ‘What Would A Woman Do?’ (The State of the Blues, part 5)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The great jazz vocalist and pianist Shirley Horn was best known for her unmistakable vocal sound, her ability to re-invent songs, often at unusually slow tempos, and her ability to accompany herself on piano. She also showed herself to be an equally distinctive jazz piano soloist on the few piano instrumentals she recorded.\u00a0 Horn’s recording of ‘What Would A Woman Do’<\/a>, from Curtis Lewis’ ‘Garden of the Blues’ suite on her album of the same name, is a six-chorus piano solo at a moderately slow tempo that doesn’t (as far as I can tell) begin with or refer back to a composed melody.\u00a0 (Horn seems to be the only artist to have recorded the tune.) I’ve chosen to transcribe the second and third choruses of this solo because they are a model of a number of concepts that make the playing of Horn and her jazz piano contemporaries, such as Wynton Kelly, so swinging.\u00a0 In the first six bars of the solo we can hear a conversation between the ‘calls’ in Horn’s left hand chords and the ‘responses’ of her right-hand phrases.\u00a0 Although her left hand takes on a more supportive role at other points in these two choruses when the right hand line becomes more continuous (such as m.7-8 and 10-11 and 16-17), her use of left hand voicings constantly creates a slower-moving inner line which is just as melodic in its own way as the more active line in the right hand.\u00a0 Whenever the left hand moves during breaks between right hand phrases, as at m. 21-22, the distinctive voice leading in Horn’s left hand creates meaningful melodic movement.\u00a0 \u00a0The connection between Horn’s left hand comping and her melodic phrases in the right hand during this solo has the same breathtaking balance of melodic strength and contrapuntal independence that can be heard in her piano\/vocal performances.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The great jazz vocalist and pianist Shirley Horn was best known for her unmistakable vocal sound, her ability to re-invent songs, often at unusually slow tempos, and her ability to accompany herself on piano. She also showed herself to be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1466"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1473,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions\/1473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}