Jazz As It Should Be

One of the problems which jazz students of our day have to overcome is the lack of impromptu, improvisational sessions between skilled musicians. Until the beginning of the 70s, students learned their licks from classic encounters between the greats, whose recorded interactions had as often been accidentally put on tape as not.

But at the heart of what might be advertised as big-band arrangements or scores for quartets were minimal head scores (that is, a simple and familiar melody backed by a series of riffs from the group) with maximum interplay between the stellar forces of jazz. The Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie albums are examples of formative influences playing off each other’s genius for the benefit of thousands of youngsters who, in their jazz training, listened to the spontaneous interplay between these two on the resulting recordings (often straining to hear entire sections which were underrecorded).

Without this marketplace of musical ideas, what might be called the ‘‘free enterprise system” of jazz, much of what we get today is overprocessed overprogrammed product devoid of humor, surprise, and that dynamic which comes from two musicians playing face to face and ear to ear. How could it be otherwise when individual musicians now record their parts in recording studios thousands of miles from their colleagues on a piece? The result is a whole generation of jazz players who are technically accomplished but lack the heart of human communication.

The other defect in the proving grounds of contemporary jazz is the lack of the extended solo album. Devotees of the MHS offerings in jazz know that the Society prides itself on issuing albums that allow extended listening to a single artist, the Art Tatum Masterpiece Series being a case in point.  But for the most part, many companies have replaced the extended conceptual playing of precision within a “group’’ sound that is often cute in the short run but not very good for the sustenance and edification of the upcoming apprentice. There is no subsitute for hearing a musician work his way through harmonic difficulties in the long haul of a 15-minute solo and keep our interest in the navigation.

Lenny Breau, with regard to the above complaints, left us a legacy that reminds us how satisfying it is to return to the roots of jazz. His finger-style guitar playing on The Living Room Tapes shines with the inspiration of a man filling up space with contrapuntal chords, rhythms, and stylistic variations. He and Brad Terry (on clarinet) work with each other, supplying shifting contexts of mood that make their joy in being with each other our joy.

But this is basically Breau’s album, even when he plays the master accompanist. His ability to switch from accelerated bass lines to lingering chords on “How High the Moon," to settle us into the muffled ‘“chuka chuka’ progressions that mimic Chet Atkins on the romantic “You Needed Me,” and to switch gears into a high country-style format on “The Claw’'—all of these are evidence that the training of good jazz artists still requires the singlehanded mastering of the standards, where you are alone with the audience, and your ideas and the performance of them. The other thing this album proves is that there are no unsalvageable cliches when inspiration and skill are applied. “Secret Love” here is about as far from Doris Day as you can get, and Breau revitalizes “Sweet Georgia Brown" with some delightful sweeping bass loops where you least expect them. His recent untimely death makes The Living Room Tapes all the more valuable for their preservation of that individualistic discipline that keeps jazz alive.