JAZZ
/ BLUES
The Rhythm & Truth Brass Band host the "Jazz-Blues Connection" at the Rex Jazz & Blues Bar, October 21. The
Band will feature Paul Reddick (The Sidemen), Kevin Turcotte
and guest bassist Rob Clutton with music that
reinforces the connections between the two musics and provides a good party to boot. Guests will include
Jackie Washington, Reg Schwager and Molly
Johnson.
The Jazz Blues Connection will explore the bond between jazz and blues. As Paul Neufeld relates in the following article, you don't often see the same fans frequenting both jazz and blues clubs. If you're a blues fan who has never visited the venerable jazz venue, The Rex, here's your chance. The workshop will be hosted by Paul himself, a Juno-Award winning jazz composer, co-leader and pianist of NOJO, leader and tuba player of the Rhythm & Truth Brass Band. He plays R&B with Grooveyard, blues with the Paulist Brothers, and jazz with the Paul Neufeld Trio.
It seems there is widespread feeling that blues music is a music of the heart and gut that transcends the need for thought and technique and that jazz
music requires too much mind to allow the heart any latitude. When I was younger I had some pretty strong feelings about blues and roots music being real music
and western art music being fake and contrived.
Bill Westcott, great early blues pianist and opera expert, made an interesting comment when he and I were
discussing the matter, and it turned me around a bit. He made the point that every musician who chooses to make a sound attempts to get as close to the sound they heard
in their head as they can.
All music is either completely contrived because of this, or the impulse that drives us to do this makes it all completely natural. It adds up to the same thing. None of it simply "happens" except that the musician has prepared him/herself to be able to accommodate inspiration when it comes. The man singing on Parchman Farm and John Coltrane are both making choices about what kind of sound they want to put into the world that wasn't there before. To see one as being from the heart and the other from the head misses the point of both. The greatest blues musicians have put lots of thought into what they are doing; the greatest jazz musicians have always played with heart. Robert Johnson practiced his tail off and told everyone he sold his soul - check out his songs; the guy knew a good story.
As proof that there is thinking in blues music one need only look at its diversity. If no one gave it any thought it would have died at conception.
Musicians would have said that here is a thing that works, let's not mess it up. Thankfully tons of great blues musicians have taken this intangible element which makes it blues, and shaped it into something fresh and personal. There are big differences between Big Bill Broonzy, Buddy Guy, Son House, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and B.B. King yet, we all know the blues when we hear it from these artists.
Both jazz and blues suffer for being described as from the heart or from the head. There are lots of examples of shucking and jiving blues musicians using lame musical pandering and trying to pass it off as genuine emotion. Tons of bad musicians who can't play anything except a 12-bar blues conveniently tell us that is all they really like. Because it is scary hard work to like Stevie Wonder or Duke Ellington or Bill Monroe and then try to play the stuff.
There are also lots of jazz musicians who have done enough work to know what scales fit over what chords and toss out boring, heartless music to people night after night because it is difficult to try and think about doing some thing that might hit you or the listener in some hitherto unknown spot.
Lots of jazz musicians should stop trying to play perfectly and just make a sound they never made before and not be afraid to go where it leads them. Conversely, lots of blues guys should look in the mirror and ask themselves if they are taking the easy way out. Are we as blues musicians doing enough to make this art form over in our own image? If your music doesn't have your life in it, why are you doing it? I will say that on occasion, I have been both of these guys. It is hard not to be at times, as both descriptions are of laziness, and we all fall into that sometimes.
All that aside, it is crazy to think that Mike Murley, Pat LaBarbara, Brian Dickenson, John Macleod and a literal host of other Toronto jazz greats don't play music that will hit you at every level - emotional, intellectual, and physical. Likewise, the great Toronto blues artists like the Sidemen, Colin Linden, and Jack DeKeyzer are giving us smart music to dance to and also hits you in the heart. I have the pleasure to work with both Vince Maccarone and Barry Romberg and they both drum with the same great mix of heart and mind in a way to give you all the stuff music is supposed to give you.
Duke Ellington said he listened for individuals in the music, not for styles. He was not so interested in bebop as he was in Charlie Parker. That is our goal within either blues or jazz - to be ourselves and to give an audience an honest take on our world. This means both the universal feelings associated with loss, joy, struggle, and gain that we all know from blues, and the abstraction of Ornette Coleman. We are hard pressed to say what Ornette's music means. It is abstract; it contains answers and questions to things we can't articulate. If we could talk about those things in any kind of a useful way, we wouldn't need any abstraction in our art. I contend that we do need it; language is not enough. The spiritual, physical, intellectual, and emotional complexity of our existence demands art of the earth and the spirit. I need to hear other folks singing about how hard it is to pay the bills; it lightens my burden and validates my experience. I also need people to make a noise that suggests the mystery that we all live within.
It is interesting how this blues versus jazz issue is viewed in such different lights. It seems only a small percentage of the population is very concerned about it. Your local library has many books that lump jazz, blues, and gospel music, sometimes even ragtime, all under the same heading. People who are not terribly in the know about this subject look at it as being all the same thing. The next level up from that are the listening fans who have a tendency to draw some hard lines about what is what. There are groups of musicians in this category as well. Above that level are the more catholic listeners and the more open-minded musicians who begin to care less about the distinctions and focus more on quality. Only good and bad music, as Duke said. This is at the level of discourse, however. The lines that are drawn in the clubs are quite hard and fast. Jazz and blues fans do not visit each others clubs. I simply do not see the same people, with a few notable exceptions, at the Silver Dollar and at the Top O' the Senator, at Chicago's or at the Montreal Bistro. This is a real shame. Musicians and listeners alike should make an effort to patronize both types of establishments and the musicians should make an effort to work together. It is many a jazz musician that could stand some nights honking out 12-bar after 12-bar and trying to make some music out of it. Likewise, blues folks could often stand to get thrown in the deep end of harmonic complexity and group interaction. We should take note of how outsiders think we are all the same and maybe try to live up to it a bit! Is there really such a great difference between the intentions of Don Pullen and Memphis Slim? The early musicians in the recorded history of these musics crossed over regularly, and many have continued to throughout the last century. The truth is that we need each other as a kind of check and balance system for this heart versus mind business, and to keep our respective art forms alive in every way. If we are to play vibrant, meaningful music we have to keep every element at as high a level as we can, as the greats in both jazz and blues always have.
- Paul Neufeld