Tag: bebop

Joshua Redman Ending on On The Sunny Side Of The Street

Joshua Redman and Christian McBride play this ending on the tune “On The Sunny Side Of The Street” from Redman’s self-titled 1993 debut album.

Joshua Redman and Christian McBride on “On The Sunny Side Of The Street” (concert pitch)

Bars 1 and 2 have clear elements of the common bebop language:

  • syncopated rhythm with a pickup beat
  • eighth note lines that outline the harmony
  • chromatic passing tones and enclosures that lead to harmonic tones on strong beats

The second half (starting with the C on bar 3) quotes the classic Strayhorn/Ellington ending on “Take The “A” Train” (originally recorded in 1941)

The final bit of vocabulary (beat 3 on bar 4) I first heard on the tune “Four” from Miles Davis’ Blue Haze (1954). I don’t know for sure whether that is the earliest recorded use of the phrase, but I’ve heard it used often. I particularly like the surprise harmonic substitution by the bass moving down a tritone from C to F#.

 

Listening
  • Joshua Redman, “On The Sunny Side Of The Street,” Joshua Redman, 1993
  • Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, “Take The “A” Train,” Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band, 1941
  • Miles Davis, “Four,” Blue Haze, 1954

Hank Jones on Confirmation

Lots of great vocabulary in this short excerpt from Hank Jones over the A section of Charlie Parker’s tune Confirmation. Major ii-V, minor ii-V, chromatic approach tones, and more! (Listen to Hank Jones play it on the album Bop Redux)

A great tune to learn, and a great pianist to study. Enjoy!

Update: A previous version of this post included a link to the video in instagram. The video is now hosted on Vimeo

Hank Mobley on This I Dig Of You

Hank Mobley tends to be a polarizing figure. He was famously called the “middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone” by jazz critic Leonard Feather positioning him between “heavyweights” such as John Coltrane and Coleman Hawkins, and “tonal lightweights” like Stan Getz and his ilk.

Feather clarified his position in the 1968 Mobley bio for Blue Note:

Hank is the middleweight champion because his sound, as he once put it himself, is “not a big sound, not a small sound, just a round sound” and because, while fads and fancies change, he has remained for some 15 years a consistently successful performer, working almost exclusively as a sideman except on records, and retaining a firm, loyal following.

As I listened to Mobley for this transcription, the word that came to mind to describe his sound was unencumbered. Putting aside tonal characteristics, I find his vocabulary to be firmly based in the bebop idiom, rhythmically inventive, and original.

In his current Blue Note bio, Mobley is credited as a pioneer of the hard bop sound, described as “jazz that balanced sophistication and soulfulness, complexity and earthy swing,and whose loose structure allowed for extended improvisations.”

Applying those descriptors to Mobley’s sound seems fitting to me: sophisticated, soulful, complex, earthly, swinging.

Here is Hank Mobley soloing over his own composition, This I Dig Of You.

 

 

Transcription Tuesday: Donald Byrd on “On It”

Donald Byrd’s solo on Elmo Hope’s “On It” is a particularly clear example of the hard bop aesthetic. Over the 12-bar blues structure Byrd deftly incorporates both bebop vocabulary and elements of the blues language.

For this transcription, I’ve included three versions—For C, Bb, and Eb instruments. You can flip through them using the arrows.

Update: a previous version of this post had the transcriptions in the wrong key. This should be fixed now.

Transcription Tuesday: Sonny Rollins on St. Thomas

Sonny Rollins is known for his motivic development and this excerpt from his solo on “St. Thomas” is one of his most famous recorded examples.

Ted Gioia writes in The History of Jazz that:

“Rollins excelled in using these [simple musical motives] as thematic material—restating them, varying them, elaborating on them—a jazz equivalent of the development section in sonata form.”

Beginning with the short two-note motive, Rollins masterfully uses all three of these methods—restating, varying, and elaborating—to tell an engaging and original story.

Sonny Rollins on St Thomas