Say Ah

Ben Ratliff: Listening with Bob Brookmeyer

Really great stuff in there:

Born in Kansas City. Mo., in 1929, Mr. Brookmeyer had a largely unhappy youth that coincided with the killer years of Kansas City swing, when Count Basie was the North Star. He first heard Basie at the Tower Theater in 1941, at a Sunday matinee between showings of western movies, with his father.

"I melted," he said in his low, rumbling voice. "It was the first time I felt good in my life. I was not a very successful child."

[…]

"New Orleans was a whole other feel, but Kansas City was concentrating on the smooth, rhythmic 4/4," he said. "That was everything. There was what you might call a coolness — that's an awful word — a subtlety, and a strength that didn't hit you over the head. Long beats on the bass. Drums really concentrating on cymbals, making a smooth patina."

Basie himself was the key to all this. "He had supernatural powers," Mr. Brookmeyer said. "He didn't evince a lot of effort. Whereas other people seemed to take music and pound it into the ground — bounce it off the earth — Basie came from under the crust of the earth and through your feet."

[…]

Bill Harris had an overpowering voice on his own, I said. Was he too large a presence for a big band, too disruptive?

"I wouldn't say disruptive," Mr. Brookmeyer corrected. "He was influential. His sound was highly emotional. His personality was so strong that he guided the band a lot. As a trombonist in a big band, you're in the middle of everything. You learn how things are made. My old joke is that saxophonists get all the girls, trumpet players make all the money, and trombone players develop an interior life."

Except that if you've studied with Brookmeyer, you know what's coming next...

Back in New York in the early 80's — which was also when he started his teaching career in earnest — he began to question the entire established language of jazz performance, but especially solos, which he had come to regard as "ritual gone mad."

"My first rule became: The first solo only happens when absolutely nothing else can happen," he explained. "You don't write in a solo until you've completely exhausted what you have to say. If you give a soloist an open solo for 30 seconds, he plays like he's coming from the piece that you wrote. Then he says, 'What the hell was that piece that I was playing from?' And the next 30 seconds is, 'Oh, I guess I'll play what I learned last night.' And bang! Minute 2 is whoever he likes, which is probably Coltrane."

It's important to take all this with a grain of salt. When Brookmeyer is writing for a soloist he likes -- for instance, Clark Terry ("El Co"), Gerry Mulligan ("Celebration Suite" -- Jeru's big shoes are more than adequately filled by Scott Robinson on the recording), Till Brönner ("Tah-DUM!"), or, naturally, himself ("American Tragedy") -- his rule about "the first solo only happens when absolutely nothing else can happen" goes straight out the window.

It's more a matter of deciding when he can trust a soloist to advance the musical narrative unassisted, and when they require more guidance -- deciding when and where and how to "keep your hand on the soloist." And with the soloist outnumbered 17-to-1, you, the composer-bandleader, have access to a lot of different ways of manipulating the soloist -- from subtle, subliminal cues to throwing them into shark-infested waters and making them fight for their lives.

This bit from near the end nicely encapsulates the most important thing I learned from Bob:

Mr. Brookmeyer talked about the qualities of music that are important to him. "How do you begin to speak to the listener?" he began. "The listener doesn't have to like the process, but he needs to be in the process, to make the trip with you.

"In the 80's," he continued, "I began to wonder how long I could extend my musical thought and still not break the relationship with the listener, not put the listener to sleep. When I became a teacher, I realized that everybody writes too short. You've got to finish your thought."

Don't miss the audio excerpt where Bob talks about Basie -- it's under the "Multimedia" heading in the left-hand column.

Also, Bob's playlist reminds me that I desperately need to blog about the most-criminally overlooked reissue of 2005. Unfortunately, it's crunch time for me (Pulse gigs are coming up, of which more soon), so blogging will be thin on the ground for the next few weeks.

In the meanwhile, if you haven't already, please partake of the Secret Society audio clips on the right-hand side. Listen, share, burn, host 'em on your own blog... that's what they're there for.