Transcription: Shelly Manne - What Laurie Likes

Here's Shelly Manne playing a funk jam— What Laurie Likes, by Art Pepper, from Pepper's album Living Legend. This is really just to get you to listen to Charlie Haden— that's a bassist— who is AWESOME on this whole thing. The drumming is great too though. Longer transcription than usual, because Mr. Manne was kind, and this was an easy performance to write out.

I have a number of notes on this one: 

This isn't a mono-volume funk jam. At different times Manne plays a 2/2 funk groove, or a fast 4 groove, or running 8th notes, or he'll improvise on the cymbals, or on the hihats. Occasionally he'll play soloistic stuff on the snare drum. He always sounds like he's going somewhere— much of the time he's building or backing off. He's not waiting for the soloist to lead on that; he's making it happen on his own, acting as a conductor. 

The 16th note fills usually crescendo. I think a lot of us do that routinely, but it's not the only way to do it. A funk drummer might take more of a bam bam approach, with the fills at basically an even volume all the way through. That's stronger for maintaining the groove. You can hear that done greatly by Ndugu Leon Chancler, or crudely by Ginger Baker. Manne's fills usually crescendo, but they don't necessarily end with a big cymbal crash on 1. There are relatively few actual crashes here.

Manne often plays bass drum through 16th note fills. I've noticed several 70s LA guys do this— Jeff Porcaro and John Guerin, for example. I don't think this is just a carryover from jazz drumming. The music settles a little bit when you come off the cymbals, and playing the bass drum keeps the intensity of the groove through the fills. Something to think about when playing groove music. 

We're not hearing a ton of funk vocabulary; there are a few basic moves he uses again and again. The three-8th note RRL pattern, or even plain old RLRL played between the hihat and snare drum; a cinquillo rhythm on the cymbal when he's grooving. Much of this is not unlike things on my EZ Tresillo Orchestrations page, or what we get from my cut time funk drill.  

There's a lot of open hihat here, usually with a half-open sound, indicated with a tenuto mark. 

As a personal taste thing— to me many of the 16th notes are kind of gratuitous. The groove is strongest when he's just doing 8th notes and quarter notes. Drummers generally always want to go to double time, to the hand-to-hand stuff, to prove this is a jazz performance, and the result is... not that great. Here, even with a lot of improvising and playing around, the 8ths and quarters still sound better. And Charlie Haden doesn't need to play a lot of 16th notes to sound F— KILLER. We'll talk more about this another time.

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Transcription: Billy Higgins / Tears Inside

Tears Inside, from Pat Metheny's album Rejoicing, is such a favorite track of mine, I'm surprised we haven't done anything with it before. I did transcribe the drum intro for the forthcoming[!!!] Book of Intros. So to tie into that, here's Billy Higgins comping behind the first three choruses of Metheny's guitar solo. His playing on this record is one of the greatest things in recorded drumming, and this tune is like a textbook of medium tempo bop drumming— I hate to reduce it to that, because it's primarily a great work of art, but it's also educational.

Swing the 8th notes. Higgins plays his ride cymbal at a fairly even volume— generally without the accenting characteristic of many drummers' playing; and he tends to not be over-triplety in his swing feel. He flattens it out a bit. There's no hihat audible, but you can add it on 2 and 4 if you want. He does often play time on the bass drum— feathers it, in current parlance— and probably is doing that here. You can practice the page in one, two, or four measure chunks, or learn the whole thing like an etude.

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DBMITW: Ornette Coleman live, 1968

A little change in gears as we near the end of our little fund raising drive. A big thanks to the mighty few who have made donations and purchased books— if any of our other hundreds of daily visitors wants to show his or her appreciation, now would be a lovely time to do it. The big, special transcriptions will be up for a few more days, and I have one more big, cool, thing coming whenever I get around to finishing it.

So, while I work on some other things— two new books, a Europe tour, planting some hops, and dealing with a troublesome possum— check out this rare 1968 live cassette recording of one of my favorite Ornette Coleman bands, with Ed Blackwell on drums, and Charlie Haden and David Izenson on bass— I wish there were more recordings available of this group. One of these days I'm going to make a drums-sax-and-two-bassists album. Embedding is disabled, so click through to give it a listen:

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

Ornette live in '58

Here's something remarkable: Ornette Coleman recorded live in LA in 1958, just before his big national exposure in New York. The band includes the musicians in his famous quartet: Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins, plus Paul Bley on piano. They had all been playing together a lot at this point, but like the album from '58, Something Else!, it does sound on-the-cusp; after the famous, long-running gig at the Five Spot in 1960, the band just sounds bigger and more confident in their thing. Or, hell, maybe they sounded amazing in '55 and just started getting recorded better. Don Cherry sounds great here.



Tunes are:
1. Klactoveedsestene
2. I Remember Harlem

3. The Blessing
4. Free
5. Ramblin' (possibly my favorite Ornette Track ever, from Change of the Century)
6. How Deep Is The Ocean?
7. When Will The Blues Leave?
8. Crossroads

Daily best music in the world: Ornette live — 1973

I'll be out for a couple of days here— playing at the Jazz Station in Eugene tonight with flugelhornist Dmitri Matheny, attending a memorial service for my partner/wife's mother, and having my own birthday with family in Eugene— that's Monday the 27th, an excellent day to do something nice to support the blog, if you're so inclined...

...so here's a little listening for you: a bootleg recording of Ornette Coleman, from 1973. The band includes Ed Blackwell on drums, Dewey Redman on tenor, and Charlie Haden on bass. Ornette often had a second bassist, David Izenson, with him during this period, but I can't hear him here.

Part 1


Part 2

Billy's best

Here's some more essential Billy Higgins listening for you. I hesitate to declare anything the best— because a) the man played on over 700 albums, of which I have been exposed to, what, 5-7%? And b) what I know about “best”? But these are the records that were most influential to me. He's also on multiple albums— major works— with Cedar Walton, Mal Waldron, Art Farmer, Donald Byrd, Clifford Jordan, Eddie Harris, Charles Lloyd, and many others— enough that any two players might have completely different lists of favorites.

Ornette Coleman — Change of the Century
The Shape of Jazz To Come is more famous, but this one's my favorite of his records with Ornette. This is probably the track of his career, for me:




Don Cherry — Brown Rice
I've loved this since I found a derelict vinyl copy of it in the early 90s; for a long time it was as out of fashion as macramé. Charlie Haden is on this, and the next few...




Don Cherry — Art Deco
Lots of great medium tempo swinging here— for me this is kind of the record for modern bop drumming.




More after the break:

Charlie Haden 1937-2014

UPDATE: Haden remembered by some musicians who played with him.

Very disappointed to find out that Charlie Haden, the bassist, died yesterday— he's been one of my musical heroes for a long time, since I heard him on Ornette Coleman's records, and saw him play with Joe Henderson at the John Coltrane Celebration in LA in 1988. He had the most driving groove I ever heard, as well as an unusual rhythmic sense, and very open way of phrasing. And, of course, a distinctive country/folky melodic sense which the marketing people latched onto in his later years.

But for at least the first 30 years of his career he was generally categorized as a free guy. I figured out partly from listening to him that avant-garde music needs a strong, grounded bassist at its center— he was one of the great examples of that.

I'm also sorry he's gone because he's one of the last examples of a musician who everyone agrees is great, who is also coming from a somewhat technically limited place— an irrefutable example of how you can be great without being technically mind-blowing.

Dave Liebman, on his Facebook page, gives a nice remembrance:

“PASSING - CHARLIE: From Blanton to Pettiford to (Ray) Brown, Charlie Haden was the next step along with Scott LeFaro in re-defining the role of the bass. "Time, no changes" was his world, but he could deal with harmony very easily. It was his linear, highly melodic and counterpoint phrasing that was uniquely Charlie that found its home with Ornette. We recorded "My Goals Beyond" with John McLaughlin in the early '70s and Charlie is also on my recording "Sweet Hands" a bit later. Charlie's solos were invariably plainly stated, apparently "simple," obviously melodic, but most of all played with a passionate feeling and deep tone. We talked a few times in the past years about post polio syndrome (which several well-known people have encountered), trying to find someone, somewhere, who could treat it, apparently to no avail. He went down as a warrior, just the way he played.”

Also read memorials at Variety, and Salon, and NPR.

A very soulful piece of playing from Don Cherry's Brown Rice:



More music, and listening suggestions after the break:

DBMITW: wah-wah

Keith Jarrett — Mortgage On My Soul
with Paul Motian, and Charlie Haden rocking the wah-wah. We'll be playing this tune in Seattle this Friday:





More after the break:

Favorite albums: Billy Higgins

I guess I could've called this Higgins and Haden. These are four records from what is for me the classic phase of Higgins' career in terms of his sound- he's got that heavy-ish rivet cymbal and floppy snare drum sound, and is nice and present in the mix. The advances in recording technology since the classic Blue Note and Ornette records of the 50's and 60's really agree with him, and his delicate touch really communicates. There's also a sense of a new level of mastery in his playing- it feels as natural as breathing.

Pat Metheny - Rejoicing
With Higgins and Charlie Haden. Word is that Metheny wasn't thrilled with this record- he thought the band played better on other occasions. We'll have to take his word for it. It's hard to pick a favorite track from the first side; I think the wash of brushes on Lonely Woman is the star of the show, though. 

Don Cherry - Art Deco
Cherry and Higgins plus Charlie Haden and James Clay. One of the most relaxed and unpretentious drum performances ever- I wish more people would emulate that. Tunes include Cherry's Art Deco, Bemsha Swing, When Will The Blues Leave, Body & Soul, and The Blessing.

Joshua Redman - Wish
The Rejoicing band together again. I guess people don't dig Redman at this early stage of his career, but that doesn't matter- it's a great ensemble performance. Moose the Mooche is the standout, along with some nice originals I don't know the titles of. 

Don Cherry - Brown Rice
This is an older record than the others, and very much from the 70's- quite clearly- I mean to tell you there is no ambiguity whatever on that question- none. Like doing macramé at a Bahai temple while tripping on LSD, I imagine.

Audio after the break:

Old & New Dreams - 1980 lecture/demonstration

From Warren Senders at Running Gamak, here is audio and a transcript of a clinic given at Harvard by Old and New Dreams (Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell) during their 1980 tour. They speak in depth about Ornette Coleman's "harmolidic" method, and about making music in general.




A fun aside: it was during this tour that, in one of the more inspired programming moves ever, my brother's fusion group, Glider (or was it Glyder? Including Portland bassist Kevin Deitz and LA guitarist Richard Smith), opened for OAND at Perry's in Eugene. I think that was set up by Portland bassist Andre St. James. I had just started taking drum lessons a few months before this, and was learning the nature of  life as a drummer by shlepping my snare drum the mile and a half to school 3 times a week. 

Questions and answers about Ed Blackwell, who was getting dialysis treatment and was not present:

Dewey Redman: ...if the drummer, who is the lifeblood of the group, is not here…it would give it a different inflection with the drummer, because he is the lifeblood, sets up the rhythm, counter-rhythm, etcetera.

[...]

Audience Member: Question for Charlie: Eddie Blackwell is not here, and you are the rhythm section for the time being. What’s that like?

Charlie Haden: Hard!

Charlie Haden interview by Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus

As I mentioned, I'm doing a lot of thinking about Ornette Coleman, and happened to find this excellent, extended 2007 interview with one of my favorite musicians ever, Charlie Haden, by Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson.

In it Haden talks in depth about working with Ornette, Keith Jarrett, Old & New Dreams, and more. I've excerpted a few bits about the early days with Ornette, and about working with Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell and Paul Motian. Go read the entire thing at Do The Math. After that go to Four On The Floor to watch some great Ed Blackwell clips.

ORNETTE:
EI: Tell me about playing behind Ornette in 1958.

CH: I learned about the importance of listening playing with Ornette. We first played duo at his house, for days. I had never heard such beautiful melodies. He had his compositions written out with changes on them.

EI: There were changes on his charts?

CH: Yes, and he said to play on the changes until he left them, and then just follow him. At first I thought he meant he would play on the written changes for a little while, but then I realized he would be creating a new set of changes almost right away. So I discarded his changes and followed him.

Sometimes the changes he had for the written parts didn't always fit, so I would look for the right note, even if it wasn't the root of the tonal center.

EI: Dewey Redman told me once that he was looking at a piece of Ornette's music and thought he heard some changes in there. He asked Ornette what the structure was, and Ornette responded by putting a chord symbol on every eighth note! He made sure never to ask Ornette that question again.

CH: Yeah, NEVER ask Ornette about the changes!