Part of Parker\u2019s mystique was that, rather than actually performing Lester Young\u2019s solos, he incorporated older player\u2019s concepts into an improvisational language all his own. However, as Charles Mingus relates in his essay \u2018What Is A Jazz Composer?\u2019<\/a>, it was something of a tradition among the older players of the swing era for great recorded solos to be played note-for-note in live performances, sometimes by the players who had originated them.\u00a0 Mingus communicates a level of respect for this tradition, even to the point of questioning younger players\u2019 ability to \u2018repeat anything at all\u2019:<\/p>\n \u2018When I was a kid and Coleman Hawkins played a solo or Illinois Jacquet created [his tenor sax solo on] \u201cFlyin\u2019 Home,\u201d they (and all the musicians) memorized their solos and played them back for the audience, because the audience had heard them on records. Today I question whether most musicians can even repeat their solos after they\u2019ve played them once on record. In classical music, for example people go to hear Janos Starker play Kodaly. They don\u2019t go to hear him improvise a Kodaly, they go to hear how he played it on record and how it was written. Jazz was at one time the same way. You played your ad lib solo, you created it, and if it was worthwhile, then you played it in front of the public again…Today, things are at the other extreme. Everything is supposed to be invented, the guys never repeat anything at all and probably couldn\u2019t. They don\u2019t even write down their own tunes, they just make them up as they sit on the bandstand. It\u2019s all right, I don\u2019t question it. I know and hear what they are doing. But the validity remains to be seen -what comes, what is left, after you hear the melody and after you hear the solo.\u2019 (The ellipsis represents a transition I\u2019ve made to an earlier section of the essay, which I read as a response to the section I quoted first.)<\/p>\n Mingus seems to be referring to a tradition of improvised solos from recordings being performed more or less exactly as they were recorded, \u2018because the audience had heard them on record\u2019 and wanted to hear them the same way again.\u00a0 This might be called ‘the literal approach’ to performing recorded solos.\u00a0 In his book Creative Jazz Improvisation<\/em>, which has with good reason become a standard jazz education text, Scott Reeves writes that \u2018transcribing and practicing improvised solos by master jazz musicians helps the student of improvisation assimilate the vocabulary and style of these artists in much the same way that children learn to speak by imitating their parents\u2019. \u00a0One possible interpretation of Reeves\u2019 parent-child metaphor, and Gene Ramey’s Charlie Parker story, is that improvisers in earlier stages of development learn recorded solos and abandon this practice in their mature years – although the profusion of mature improvisers such as Ethan Iverson<\/a> and James Mahone<\/a> who publish their transcriptions on the internet suggests otherwise.\u00a0 Reeves also mentions three ways a solo can be learned (by learning it aurally, by writing it down, and by learning it from a published transcription) and adds: \u2018After practicing a transcription, create your own improvisation on the tune, incorporating elements of the artist\u2019s style.\u2018 \u00a0 This reflects a fairly common view through the jazz education world that learning improvised solos from recordings is an early stage in a player’s artistic development. \u00a0Reeves’ comment suggests a two-step process, where the literal approach to performing a recorded solo leads directly to a spontaneous and original improvised solo.<\/p>\n This eminently logical view is supported by a number of recorded examples where literal performances of transcribed solos have a mechanical quality and lack the spontaneity of the original version.\u00a0 For me, some of the music of the 1970s group <\/span>Supersax<\/a>, and the Lambert, Hendricks and Ross album \u2018Sing A Song of Basie\u2019, where they perform Count Basie Orchestra arrangements complete with their original solos and no new improvisation, falls into this category.\u00a0 However, there is also a tradition, less well documented in the literature of jazz education, of great improvisers in their prime years re-creating existing solos with an attitude of simultaneously challenging and revering the original.\u00a0 In both Louis Armstrong\u2019s 1938 re-creation of <\/span>King Oliver\u2019s 1923 \u2018Dippermouth Blues\u2018 solo<\/a>, and Ella Fitzgerald\u2019s 1945 re-creation of Illinois Jacquet\u2019s 1942 \u2018Flying Home\u2018 solo, we can see one jazz master\u2019s deep admiration for another\u2019s achievement expressed through a deeply imaginative revision of the earlier solo. \u00a0The fact that Fitzgerald and Armstrong recorded these tunes fairly early in their century-spanning careers suggests that taking the revisionist approach to performing a recorded solo might be a developmental stage between literal imitation and more spontaneous originality. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The soundtrack to the TV series Boardwalk Empire <\/i>includes a performance by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks of the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra tune \u2018Sugarfoot Stomp\u2019.\u00a0 The original 1925 Henderson version of \u2018Sugarfoot\u2019<\/a> featured a young Louis Armstrong and was an early re-working of \u2018Dippermouth Blues\u2019, which\u00a0Armstrong had recorded with King Oliver in 1923.\u00a0 In \u2018Sugarfoot\u2019, Armstrong re-created Oliver\u2019s original trumpet solo from \u2018Dippermouth\u2019 with a number of revisions, including taking a high A that Oliver had played briefly near the end of the solo and making it a long, sustained note that demonstrated Armstrong\u2019s prodigious range.\u00a0 Armstrong continued to respectfully and ingeniously revise Oliver\u2019s solo in a version of \u2018Dippermouth\u2019 with his big band in 1936<\/a>.\u00a0 Although Armstrong\u2019s revisions in many ways demonstrated the strides that he had made in his playing beyond the technique of his former employer Oliver, Armstrong also chose not to try and imitate Oliver\u2019s use of the mute, and so he was in a sense adapting the solo to a different instrument, the straight (unmuted) horn.\u00a0 (The choice was not without deliberation: in Terry Teachout\u2019s Pops, <\/i>Armstrong\u2019s first wife Lil is quoted saying that Armstrong \u2018spend a whole week trying without success to imitate Oliver\u2019s \u2018wah-wah\u2019 muted inflections on \u2018Dipper Mouth Blues\u2019.)\u00a0 It was perhaps this \u2018handicap\u2019 that Armstrong gave himself which prompted some of his imaginative additions to the solo.\u00a0 When laid horizontally next to Oliver\u2019s solo, Armstrong\u2019s 1936 \u2018Dippermouth\u2019 solo, besides changing the long \u2018A\u2019 from \u2018Sugarfoot\u2019 to a series of repeated high notes (a move that was becoming one of his trademarks), Armstrong also makes ingenious use of filling the pauses Oliver left with eighth note movement that was highly modern for its time and exhibits the chromaticism which would later be associated with the bebop movement. \u00a0(While most audio files of the King Oliver ‘Dippermouth’ sound like the tune is in the key of B, my guess is the key has been lowered by the age of the recording, so I have transposed his solo to C, the key of Armstrong’s ‘Dippermouth’ version of 1936. \u00a0The small notes at the beginning of the Oliver solo are meant to show the range over which he bends the initial note through embouchure and mute.) In her version of \u2018Flying Home\u2019 from 1945<\/a>, Ella Fitzgerald re-creates the iconic Illinois Jacquet solo from the original Lionel Hampton recording<\/a> that Mingus refers to in his essay.\u00a0 Fitzgerald’s \u2018Flying Home\u2019 solo indicates her close study of bebop melodic concepts, particularly through the way that she introduces more eighth note motion than the original, more chromaticism, and more use of upper chord tones such as the ninth and thirteenth.\u00a0 Fitzgerald\u2019s \u2018Flying Home\u2019 also exhibits her ability to deftly incorporate quotes into her improvising; she concludes the chorus here with \u2018Merrily We Roll Along\u2019, but a later section of the solo also uses \u2018Yankee Doodle\u2019. \u00a0(Fitzgerald’s version seems to be in the key of G, but I have transposed it to A flat, the key of the original version by the Lionel Hampton band.)<\/p>\n Armstrong’s revisions to the ‘Dippermouth’ could arguably be called improvements and are in line with his many recorded quotes where he openly admits his technique was superior to Oliver\u2019s.\u00a0 However, Armstrong\u2019s revisions of Oliver\u2019s \u2018Dippermouth\u2019 solo show clear respect for the man Armstrong called \u2018my hero and my idol\u2019 by clearly preserving the outlines of Oliver\u2019s phrases. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, alternates throughout the chorus shown here between playing four bars of Jacquet\u2019s solo and introducing four bars of her own very different and bop-influenced ideas – an approach which suggests that her desire to challenge Jacquet was perhaps equal to her desire to honor him.<\/span><\/p>\n Sonny Stitt’s versions from 1958<\/a> and 1963<\/a> of Charlie Parker\u2019s \u2018Koko\u2019 solo from 1945<\/a> shows how the tradition of performing classic recorded solos continued into the later years of the bebop period. (There is an argument to be made that we are still, in some senses, in that era today.)\u00a0 In much the way that Fitzgerald simultaneously recalls and updates Jacquet’s, one can hear Stitt thoughout his longer solo constantly weaving his own phrases in between those of Parker, as well as personalizing the Parker phrases.<\/p>\n Between Stitt’s versions of Koko, Sonny Rollins began his solo on a live version of Lady Bird in 1959<\/a> with two choruses of Charlie Parker’s solo from the recording of Half Nelson with Miles Davis where Parker plays tenor<\/a>.\u00a0 In his book Thinking In Jazz, <\/em>Paul Berliner points out that Parker made a similar kind of tribute to Armstrong in his solo on the 1949 recording of his blues Cheryl<\/a>, where he quotes seven measures of Armstrong’s intro solo on West End Blues<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dexter Gordon made an homage to Parker on The Jumpin’ Blues<\/a>, a tune on an album of the same name recorded in August of 1970 (which contains pianist Wynton Kelly’s last solos on record before his death in 1971).\u00a0 The original version of ‘The Jumpin’ Blues’ was recorded by The Jay McShann Orchestra in 1942 and contained one of Parker’s first recorded solos<\/a>.\u00a0 Gordon’s solo on his 1970 version begins with a quote of the first three measures of Parker’s solo, which then becomes a motive that Gordon develops through his first chorus.<\/p>\n As the availability of transcribed solos proliferates, the number of questions about how they should be used increases as well.\u00a0 Should transcribed solos be used only as an exercise for aspiring players?\u00a0 Is the process of creatively adapting an existing solo by a jazz master a valuable process for improvisers at all ability levels, or is it a task at which only the most proficient players can succeed?\u00a0 Is the proliferation of notated solos in books and on the internet endangering the process of learning solos by ear, as Armstrong, Fitzgerald and Stitt almost certainly did?\u00a0 Is it still possible to take a creative revisionary approach to performing solos by jazz masters, as Armstrong, Fitzgerald and Stitt did?\u00a0 I encourage anyone reading this entry to respond in the comment section with their thoughts on these or any other related questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a 2013 interview with Charlie Rose, Yankee pitcher and five time World Series champion Mariano Rivera was asked how he prepares to face a particularly difficult hitter: Rose: Tell me about studying for a hitter.\u00a0 How do you study … Continue reading ![\"King](\"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/files\/2014\/01\/King-O-Louis-A-JPEG-891x1024.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Illinois](\"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/files\/2014\/01\/Illinois-Jacquet-Ella-Fitz-737x1024.jpg\")
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