Jazz Humor

Submitted by jim on Wed, 11/03/2004 - 09:13
Tags: 
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • Technorati

0dysseus pointed me to the work of Jeff Fitzgerald, Dean of American Jazz Humorists®, here tackling the famous Ken Burns documentary:

As pleased as we all were with Ken's monumental documentary, in that it got a lot of people talking about jazz who wouldn't otherwise, there is the general sense in the jazz community (located off I-64, near the Cracker Barrel) that Jazz may have missed the mark a little when it comes to a complete and thorough examination of the music and those who created and prospered it. In fact, out of the entire twenty hour documentary, I came away with only three salient points:
  1. Apparently, Louis Armstrong was very important.
  2. There was a time when black folks weren't particularly well-liked in this country.
  3. Duke Ellington.

[snip]

First and foremost would be a personal complaint, the oversight of Johnny Hartman. His luxurious baritone is perhaps one of the finest vocal instruments in the history of jazz. Woefully under-recorded (his voice was so smooth, it slid right off of most vinyl records. Advances in digital recording came too late, as Hartman died in 1983), his best work came with John Coltrane on the classic album John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. To this day, Hartman's voice has an almost mystical seductive effect on women. Give me a bottle of wine and a Johnny Hartman record, and I could get k.d. lang's bra off (and then put it right back on, because I'm just trying to prove a point).

Yes, in case you were wondering, he does have a column titled, Pianist Enlargement.

RosieCotton11/03/2004

I don't give a monkey's about Jazz, although I enjoy listening to it, but I wanted to share this quote from the article. "...jazz fans (which are a lot like regular oscillating fans, except that they swing harder and are much cooler)..."

jim11/03/2004

... then there's the this bit on Miles Davis from Fitzgerald's piece on the trumpet and cornet:

A player of particular note emerging from this period was the great Miles Davis, who resisted the blazing, high-register acrobatics exhibited by other players and favored a sparser, more intimate sound. Often accused of lacking technical faculty, Davis responded to critics either by flipping them the finger or pretending not to understand English (which is where his brilliant Sketches of Spain came from, maybe). Davis understood that the space between the notes was sometimes just as important as the notes themselves. But he also understood that too much space between the notes, and people would think that the concert was over and go home. This is partially why he is considered a genius today.

jim11/03/2004

Finally, you should probably click through if for no other reason than to read the "giant lollipop of the apocalypse" paragraph.