Jazz musicians absorb tunes, spend time with them, nearly live with and in them. Getting to know a tune means internalizing its contours and chord sequence to the point where one can walk onto that no-bullshit-zone of a bandstand and tell a story through just joining up the notes. It’s what you work towards.
In British jazz that process also goes with a self-deprecating sense of humour. In particular, the songs get nicknames — sometimes punning, sometimes oblique, often childish and always funny. Alright, perhaps they’re only funny the first time.
So here’s a different sort of Spotify Sunday playlist. Normally, Night and Day contributors list their selections with the song names upfront (see here, for instance). Instead, by way of a Sunday challenge, I’m going to give you the songs’ nicknames and put the actual titles at the bottom. Here goes:
1) First up are two Detroit-born pianistic giants, Hank Jones and Tommy Flanagan. And what are they playing here?
It’s called : ‘The Photographer’s Song’
2) John Etheridge is a British national treasure. John’s biography is impossible to make short, he’s just played with everybody. Sting once gave an interviewer the short version of a John Etheridge bio :
“I never wanted to be a star, just a highly respected musician like John Etheridge”
Etheridge can light up a packed stadium, or play fascinating filigree stuff in a tiny front room. He’s mesmerising to watch, not just playing, when those improbably fast fingers fly. Watch him as he chooses a tune at a jazz gig. He looks up and down a list, studies it, uses the quiet moment to relax, because when he gets going, the adrenalin will be coursing everywhere. So I imagine him calling this one with a big smile to the other guitarist Vic Juris and to bassist Miroslav Vitous:
“Let’s play ‘The Cheese Song‘”
3) Where does a big band go after a gig? An Indian restaurant. And what would a member of the Ted Heath Band suggest? First, there’s the lager. And then:
‘Can we face the Dhansak?’
4) Here’s a tune played by a genial and much-missed US tenor sax player who came and settled in Essex :
Make way for:
‘The Ram’s Lament’
5) Just for contrast, and to hear some voices, here’s authentic Brazilian version, sung by Vinicius de Moraes, of
‘Emphesema’
6) John Dankworth worshipped Duke Ellington through his particularly British eyes. ‘Tonight I shall Sleep with a Smile on my Face,’ was the last tune Dankworth played in public
before his death last year. And, at the concert which went ahead on the evening after he died, he had been scheduled to play it again. But here’s the Dankworth Orchestra Orchestra playing another
Ellington Tune :
‘The Pub Song’
7) Adoptive East Londoner Kenny Wheeler is writing music in his eighties that is staggering in its freshness and melodic inventiveness. What’s more, he plays delightful Howard Hodgkin-esque games with the names of his tunes. The best-known of his numbers is played here by another great British musician, Iain Ballamy, with pianist John Donaldson. It’s nice that bassist Ray Drummond gets the sweet, low, last word on this Spotify Sunday.
The tune? Kenny Wheeler has been known to call it ‘Everybody owns this song but me’
And they are really called…
1) Someday My Prince Will Come
2) There is No Greater Love
3) Let’s Face the Music and Dance
4) There Will Never Be Another You
5) The Girl from Ipanema
6) Don’t Get Around Much Any More
7) Everybody’s Song But My Own
You can listen to the whole of the playlist here.
Sebastian Scotney has edited and run the LondonJazz website since January 2009.
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