Re: what is soul? (was RE: what is jazz?)

From: Steve Catanzaro (stevencatanzaro@sprintmail.com)
Date: Mon May 22 2000 - 20:49:03 MET DST

  • Next message: Elson Trinidad: "Re: what is soul? (was RE: what is jazz?)"

    > That said maybe you should tally up all the greatest Blues, Soul, Jazz and
    > Funk artists, look at the culture they grew up in and then listen to what
    > they're singing about.
    >

    OK, well, let's look at jazz, for instance. Duke Ellington is probably the
    greatest jazz artist. "Black Brown and Beige" may be the most soulful jazz
    music ever written. He grew up as the pampered son of a middle-class butler
    and doting mother in Washinton D.C... He probably ate more cavier and smoked
    salmon pate by the time he was 12 then I've ever had in my life.

    Sidney Bechet, I think, came from a relatively well-off Creole family (more
    dentists!) Bix Beiderbecke was from a supremely middle class neighborhood in
    Davenport, Iowa. Count Basie's dad ran the estate of a very rich family in
    Red Bank, NJ, which was then a popular resort town.

    Your great pianists, Bud Powell, James P. Johnson, Willie the Lion, Art
    Tatum, Monk, etc, were by and large formed by the Harlem Renaissance.
    Combined with figures like Mingus, Sonny Rollins, etc., they were not rich
    certainly, but they came from metropolitan homelives that afforded them
    pianos, classical training, affiliation with youth orchestras and the like,
    and heavy doses of gospel music. I doubt any of 'em ever picked one single
    cotton plant.

    As we've said, Miles Davis' dad was a prominent dentist. Bill Evans was
    middle class. Ditto Herbie Hancock, with an engineering degree from Grinell.
    As far as I can tell, they don't grow possum or cotton in Norwalk,
    Connecticut, where Horace Silver grew up, and they ain't NO ONE funkier than
    him. As for Wayne Shorter... I just have a hard time believing someone who
    went to Arts High School and graduated NYU was in cotton picking mode very
    much. Pharaoh Sanders' dad was a high school music and math teacher in
    Little Rock Arkansas. Until Coltrane was 13, his family was pretty
    average... his dad was a tailor, his grandparents were AME preachers, and
    his mom studied music at Livingston College.

    So, while not to denegrate the accomplishments of those remarkable artists
    who did grow up dirt poor...Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia
    Jackson, Dizzy Gillespie, etc... there are enough middle class hard rockers
    to show that poverty is probably INCIDENTAL, rather than ESSENTIAL, in
    producing soulful music.



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