There is an unusual clarity we feel under duress. Like feeling death’s door is near, and the world flashes before you. I’m sure many of you are feeling it. I’m feeling it in my own conversations and instant messages, as well as in broadcast interviews and speeches. Certain people are putting on their game face and showing great compassion, sincerity and depth while others are talking out of both sides of their mouth and showing their true colors.
(And it ain’t a pretty sight..)
I’m also feeling the hair rising in my neck towards the language patterns of certain politicians, who struggle to say the same words over and over again in different ways from a teleprompter, as if it’s been dictated from them from an evil source. Like an idiot not realizing he’s speaking in tongues…
(Y’all know who…and it ain’t Voldemort)
SOS!
DD
But let’s take time out and lighten the mood, shall we?
Too much of a burden to carry on with this for more than two paragraphs…)
Continuing on…
Jazz musicians are highly sensitive to language, rhythm and understand it intuitively. Dad was trying to communicate all this valiantly to those who would listen carefully. He was a master of poly-rhythms and rhythmic displacement that few others have understood or been able to achieve.
He also was an expert in choosing exactly what to say, ^ what to leave out
(^AND)
Maybe give ^ back later, given it was subtracted. Timing and accent is the stuff of language – music, poetry, speeches or comedy.
I find myself riffing lately in language patterns with my close friends when chatting on Facebook. For example, with one of my closest, dearest friends I found myself riffing in 5/4 (with accents in 3), and contemplating double meanings:
As YOU are my friend
As you ARE my friend
As you are my FRIEND
(My poly-rhythmic concept kinda’ sucked before. So I guess I’ll think less, and do more…)
And field this short and Dangerous word-play
What about Vegas?
The NERVE of you!
(I get no respect, I tell ya…)
Kew, the drummer, G..)
I’ve been lucky in terms of people to talk to. As the son and brother of legendary jazz guitarist players, I was privy to knowledge and insight that is likely enviable to others. Words delivered from my personal jazz angels directly to me. Conversations with my brother – though few and far between – stuck like ketchup to my shirt. And he loved to embarrass me, thats for sure (Big brothers always do). But there was a lot to Doug Raney. It’s just he voiced through a New York tough guy street accent that could make you underestimate his intellect. He was a very direct type of person:
Served up straight ahead –> New York style,
“You know what I’m sayin’, man'”?
rather than
Overly stuffed and verbose Mid-Atlantic,
“vis a vis, ergo & tou-che“
Cue the twinkly eyes…
1979 was an interesting year. Dad was enjoying probably one of his longest periods of sobriety and working frequently. And he was living in a great apartment in the Village in New York City. His girlfriend at the time was uber poet & therapist to the jazz stars, Cyra Greene, who lived just a stone’s throw away from Jim Hall. Unfortunately, given Hall had kicked the habit many years before, Dad felt like Jim had marching orders not to come visit him. Guess someone felt he was a bad influence, musical ones notwithstanding.
(“Tawk amongst yourselves: ‘Those who live in Glass Houses’, discusss...”)
I’ll never forget the conversation I had with Dad and Cyra concerning Doug at that time. A friend called Dad and said excitedly:
“I didn’t know you played with Chet Baker”??
and my father, (with pride) said,
“No that’s not me. It’s Doug“!
He was referring to the beautiful studio album, The Touch of Your Lips with Chet Baker, Doug and NHOP and was one of four recorded in 1979 with the trio. Three separate live albums from the famous Jazzhaus Montmartre were made from just one night of music:
- Daybreak
- Someday My Prince Will Come
- This Is Always
(Incredible as it was fortuitous, for most of us, perhaps not all of us)
In 1984, I had lost my job and moved down to Louisville with Dad and Ola Miracle to get my playing together. He mentioned a conversation he had a year or so before I arrived,
“Hey Jimmy, I have this recording of a guitarist that I’ve never heard before. Is that you ??”
(plays excerpt)
“No, that’s not me. It’s Ronnie Singer! Can you get me a copy”?
(He got it. As would the rest of you, several years later)
During that same time in ’85, he mentioned first hearing the Getz – Raney bootleg from Birdland in 1952, produced by “Fresh Sound Records” (Not so fresh, IMHO. To many of us, they are the great vulture capitalist of the jazz record industry). Dad always thought that the record was most representative of how he really sounded. Sound quality notwithstanding, I tend to agree. He is just flying on that record.
The guy who gave it to him was none other than John Scofield. Funny story about that. On a lark, I sent him an email to confirm the story about him giving Dad the Birdland Bootleg CD. He didn’t remember the event, so I thought perhaps I created a fish story. But as it turns out later, out of the blue someone sent me a letter that completely confirms this story from Dad’s own hand.
John and I had a neat correspondence for a minute about things concerning Doug and Dad. He did confirm a story about him and Doug jamming on the same guitar at a famous club in Copenhagen, La Fontaine. He also related some conversations he and Pat Metheny had about Pat’s ambivalence towards his concerts showing up on YouTube, but then running into Dad’s video playing “Billie’s Bounce“. That – in the end – perhaps makes it worth it.
Jon ….Thought i’d share this with you….got an email from Pat Metheny ….hadn’t spoken in a couple years ….a nice hello what’s up email…he included this….”ps — like everyone else, i am mixed about the you-tube-ization of everything — especially anything that i am actually in…(!)but…everything now and then you hear/see something that is incredible….you may have seen this before but i just listened to it about 4 times in row…wow, what a bad dude he was…”
It’s a link to your Dad’s Billies Bounce
He’s still knockin’ us out!!
JScofield
(Calling all guitars. Calling all guitars. Be on the lookout for a killer solo…)
My father really had a way of teaching that again brought the analogy of the language of jazz home. He goes into some detail on that in a YouTube video I put up some years back (see my Teachings & Writings tab On “Scales and Improvisation”). In discussing creating meaningful solos from scales he says,
“In the last analysis, is here (points to ear). Your ear guides you or fails to guide as E.B. White says about prose. And all the rules of grammar and syntax ain’t gonna help if you don’t hear it.”
He could really be witty too. Later on the same video he makes this funny quip about misguided students on the “originality” issue and the analogy to learning music as the same thing as learning to speak,
Everyone imitates. Or else we’d all be beating on hollow logs, right? You imitate from the moment your born. You’re imitating your mother’s speech, your father’s speech and so on and what you hear… I often… student’s back when I taught they would say, ‘I don’t wanna (imitate) I wanna be original!” (Dad to them) But you can’t play! C’mon. Learn how to play first then worry about that!
His artistic ventures, once his ears began to fail him also nurtured his language wit and he was quite adept. Read this hilarious story of his called, “How I Became a Living Legend” published on the site some years back.
On Conversations with Myself…
Pervasive Evans musical influence aside, I have been engaging in the ultimate effort of “self-improvement”. In the last year I have made an audio diary of myself nearly every day where I get into the nuts and bolts of my own personality. I call the method the “5 cent therapist” (see below)
(My brother always said I was ‘like Charlie Brown. You always have a dark cloud over you, Jon‘…”
(Rats…)
It has definitely been an interesting experience to get that deep into oneself. I have never been able to meditate but I can literally talk myself to a frenetic creative focused place. The results can be dangerous I tell you, especially in light of the current pandemic. Am I going quackers?
(Seriously, do I have a pun-asitis?
Can this be cured by putting the little pun-aside?)
As a result of these “self-jam sessions”, Conversations on Facebook Messenger feels like a ouija board. I have been finding these conversations with friends incredibly fun, creative and rife with symbolism and date coincidences. Here’s one I uncovered this date anomaly recently:
Tune: "Lee" by Jimmy Raney Played on: Breaking Bad Broadcast 5/30/2010 (season 3, "Abiquiú" ), Episode 11, Act IV (Kitchen Scene) Rocketman Release 5/31/2019 (9 years later) I see on airplane movie on way home on 8/29/2019 (90 Days later and Doug's Birthday) Scene: Father tries to teach son, Elton about "real music" and plays "Lee" to him (my Mom)
(Calling Attila Zoller… need an Astrology reading…)
Yeh man!
Speaking of puns, through the medium of time -> Numerology ain’t that far behind…
The featured image for this blog post was used with kind permission from the artist, Davide Guccione. Please visit his site to see and support his wonderful jazz themed work here:
