the jazz box

Make Those Standards Your Own

Identifying where you first learned the standards and giving them your own signature

I have a pretty decent record collection. It includes a lot of singers doing their takes on standard jazz material and songs from the American Songbook. Flipping through the LP covers reveals Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Tony Bennett, Betty Carter, the Mills Brothers, Eddie Jefferson, Blossom Dearie, Anita O’Day, and Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross. That’s how I learned songs by Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Duke Ellington, and Johnny Mercer. When it came time to play these songs on my guitar, I already had a clear memory of the melody, the harmony, the form, and the lyrics. Whether comping for a singer, another instrument playing the melody, or stating the melody myself, I could easily follow the unfolding song, having done the listening for years in advance. The catch is, if I had only heard, say, Betty Carter’s version of "Something Wonderful" by Rogers and Hammerstein, or Sarah Vaughan’s rendition of "Speak Low" by Jimmy Van Heusen, then I might not know that the melody actually goes like this instead of like that.

This came up in a lesson recently in which my student and I were talking about practicing and building a repertoire. One of us mentioned "Almost Like Being in Love." Great song, we both agreed. She knew it from a recording she’d transcribed by Lester Young and Oscar Peterson. She played it beautifully. At the end she noted, "He does this turnaround." I heard it as just the way the tune always goes. I also heard it as a transcription of an improvised chorus, or at least an embellished melody, but not the original melody as written by Lerner and Lowe. We talked about the wonders and dangers of learning tunes this way, and I thought about it in the hours and days that followed. "How do I know that tune?" I asked myself.

I pulled and tugged at the contents of my over-stuffed bookcases, mining for the answer. Out came a songbook from my piano lessons when I was eight or nine years old. What a treasure! Along with all of the doodles and scribbles on the pages—the graffiti my sisters would leave as they accompanied me at the piano bench—I found the simplified versions of many of the standards I have come to hear and play in a multitude of variations over the years: "Autumn Leaves," "Moon River," and "Lullaby of Birdland." There it was: "Almost Like Being in Love" in a very simple piano arrangement, with the melody right there for all to see.

That’s where a song begins for a player—the facts are all there. Once you have that basic sense of the tune, then you can begin the joyful process of messing with it. Do you want to play it as an unaccompanied chord solo? Find the places where the melody sits on top of the chord as naturally as possible in your fretting hand. Find the most natural way to express that harmonized melody with your picking hand. If the melody seems impossible to grab from the chord voicing on which you’ve landed, try a chord inversion. The next thing you know, you’ll be reharmonizing the tune just to better accompany the melody. Maybe the substitute dominant chord would sound cool there. Maybe a tension on the minor chord will pull at some heartstrings. That will likely lead to some rearranging and discoveries of bass lines as you break away from the original root motion. Then there’s the melody: Do you want it to swing? Do you want anticipations? Do you want to shorten any of the phrases or lengthen any patterns? Do you want it all in a high or a low register? Or some of each?

At this point, you’ll be free to tell the melodic story in your own way, which is a terrific place to launch the song. If you’re playing with other people backing you up, then you might state the melody as simply as you can, followed by your thoughtful commentary on it. Your embellishments might well include some ideas you’ve by now surely heard from other performances of the same tune. You’ll be on solid ground if you know the essence of the tune, apart from the adjectives and judgments thrown in by others. I want to know how you feel about it while you’re playing, not what someone else told you about it, which they heard from someone else in the first place.

If you’re comping for someone, then your job is to throw in "uh-huh" and "yeah, man" in the appropriate spots in the telling of the song. Again, knowing the song in its essence is key. If someone tells you a story you’ve heard before, but you’ve never heard their side of it, you might nod along politely at the parts you know, but you’ll likely have a more significant outburst of some sort when the storyteller interjects some fresh information, some colorful form of expressing the point, or some hilarious telling of a detail. Go ahead and play along with the soloist by recognizing the brilliance of their storytelling that sets it apart from the original melody. You’ll recognize these embellishments because you know the original melody.

Your homework this month is to find Andy Griffith’s telling of Romeo and Juliet. Oh, and read Shakespeare’s version first if you don’t know the story in its original form yet. Enjoy your music collections—audio and written—and then find that music on your guitar.

Trio Energy

The wonders of playing in a trio

Consider the number three. A triangle is known as a stable figure. A table holds steady with three legs. Youngsters feel safe on a tricycle. Sometimes there’s no escaping a triangle, so strong is its energy. The Bermuda Triangle. A love triangle.

I find that playing a solo gig can be easier than playing a duo gig, surprisingly. But add a third voice and all is well. There are so many wonderful combinations of instruments that can be arranged into trio form, each one with its own uniquely creative possibilities. This month, we’re exploring the very traditional setting of guitar-bass-drums.

Trio playing can be one of the most rewarding experiences to share with fellow musicians. The musical conversations that take place within a trio can be surprising, stimulating, inspiring, neat, messy, light-hearted, thunderous, polite, or downright raucous. If we remember that it is indeed a conversation that is taking place in a performance, we stand ready to make some trio magic happen.

In a standard trio, typically, the guitarist states the melody, takes a solo, nods to the bass player for a solo, and then either takes the head out or gives the drummer a chorus or two before wrapping it up. Variations on that pattern commonly include trading fours with the drummer after the bass solo, or maybe giving the bass player the first solo.

Let’s zoom in a little on a fictional trio: The Deluge Three. It looks like they have “All the Notes We Know” up on the stand ready to play. The guitarist is playing a well-voiced chord-melody to state the theme, and skill- fully filling the held notes and rests in the melody with some brilliantly executed scales and re-harmonized chords. The bass player is hitting the roots in all the right places, as well as jumping on the chord tones in between, filling the time between melodic phrases with some dazzling and intricate arpeggios, and leaving no doubt as to the chord progression in play. The drummer is keeping the tempo right where it was counted off, even though he is busy filling in all of that space that he knows a trio is in danger of leaving.

Zoom out. What an exhausting conversation that was!

In a more experienced and thoughtful trio, each part becomes beautifully exposed, rather than smothered. Single-note lines by the guitar play- er are played over the simplest of bass parts, steadfastly keeping the time moving forward while the drummer concurs. They are listening, occasionally interjecting an agreeable statement with a kick or a slide. The guitar player confidently takes a breath, conscientiously considering his next phrase, knowing that the bassist and drummer are patient and on his side, nodding along and enjoying the story.

Just like a great film that requires you to think and feel and deduce, rather than tell you everything about each character and plot line, a great trio performance leaves listeners with implications of harmony by giving them just enough to go on without spoiling the fun of solving the mysteries for themselves. Just as the musicians need to trust each other in this form, they need to trust the listeners.

Listening to each other and responding appropriately in turn is the best thing we can practice, both in conversation and in playing jazz together. The trio format is a wonderful context in which to try out this exercise. The trust that develops can lead to more creativity in a trio. When Emily Remler was recording with Eddie Gomez on bass and Bob Moses on drums, she related to me these words of wisdom from Bob Moses: “Don’t worry, we’ll comp for you.” Indeed, listening to mindful drummers in a trio reveals a sense of melody and harmony in the choices they make.

I was in Boston-based, Japanese-born guitarist Tomo Fujita’s office recently, and we listened to a few tracks from his new CD, Pure (available from nimbit.com). Tomo’s blues roots meld nicely with a jazz sensibility. Throughout, the guitar lines are clear and tasteful, the bass (Will Lee) is simple, solid, and present, and the drums (Steve Gadd on the tracks that I heard; Bernard Purdie and Steve Jordan on other tracks) provide just the right fresh comments and grooves. The simple-yet-eloquent parts make a trio sound that works as a whole.

Other approaches you might want to experiment with include a more free-spirited musical experience in which the usual roles of time keeping, melody playing, and harmony defining get redistributed. This can be as exciting as a conversation with the best of friends that features profound metaphors, thoughtful wit, and exhilarating silliness. Things get taken up a notch. You’ll need to stay on your toes to keep your place. But in a generous gathering of musical minds, you’ll be allowed to lay out until you find your moment to speak up again. Listening makes it all possible.

Here is a short list of recorded trios to listen to and learn from. It’s hard to talk about jazz trios without thinking of our piano-playing friends, so I am including some piano trios here, too.

Pat Metheny: Bright Size Life; Jaco Pastorius, bass; Bob Moses, drums (ECM)

Jim Hall: Jim Hall Live; Don Thompson, bass; Terry Clarke, drums (Concord)

Emily Remler: Catwalk; Eddie Gomez, bass; Bob Moses, drums (includes some overdubbed parts but not on solo sections) (Concord)

Bill Frisell: with Dave Holland and Elvin Jones; Dave Holland, bass; Elvin Jones, drums (Nonesuch)

Mike Stern: Standards (and Other Songs); Jay Anderson, bass; Al Foster, drums (other musi- cians appear on selected tracks) (Atlantic)

Bill Evans Trio: Sunday at the Village Vanguard; Bill Evans, piano; Scott LaFaro, bass; Paul Motian, drums (Riverside)

McCoy Tyner Trio: Inception; McCoy Tyner, piano; Art Davis, bass; Elvin Jones, drums (MCA Impulse)

Tracing Roots (or “How Not to Be a Jazz Snob”)

Tracing the roots of jazz guitar

A certain semi-famous (formerly über-famous) pop star/folk musician recently said in my presence that jazzers are the worst when it comes to musical snobbery. “Heyyyyy, wait a minute…” said I in a mock deeply offended tone. One of my former students was there to make the save by quickly saying, “Not you, Jane.” Well, okay, then. But it seems it might be a good time to examine that notion.

If you’re a jazz cat yourself, maybe you need to answer these questions, too: Do you ever play fingerstyle? That has its origin in classical guitar. Do you ever use your right-hand thumb for bass notes? That’s kind of a country thing. Do you strum an acoustic steel-string sometimes? Folkie. Do you play a nylon-string? Classical and bossa nova.

I like the word “fusion.” I especially like it as a description of a musical style, including but not limited to the jazz-meets-rock music from the mid ’70s. That fusion spawned the work of guitarists Larry Coryell, John Scofield, Mike Stern, Allan Holdsworth, Larry Carlton, and a much longer list of players that followed their lead in their own way—some more jazz than rock, some more rock than jazz. There’s also the fusion of jazz and folk. Singers/guitarists Kenny Rankin, Janis Ian, and Joni Mitchell come to mind, along with the instrumentalists Alex de Grassi, Pierre Bensusan, and for heaven’s sake, Chet Atkins. Bossa nova is the result of the folk music of Brazil fusing with American jazz. Check out João Gilberto, Laurindo Almeida, and Gene Bertoncini for their individual statements on that. Bluegrass and jazz have fused all over the place. Guitarist Tony Rice embraces jazz on a steel-string flattop and was an integral voice in the “Dawg Music” created by mandolinist David Grisman. An update on that fusion has come by way of contemporary music from mandolinist Chris Thile and banjo virtuosos Béla Fleck and Alison Brown, the latter of which also adds guitar to her blend.

What we play and what we listen to are not always the same. I’ve found that if you talk to jazz guitarists and ask what they like to listen to, you’ll be surprised by the diversity of styles that comes up. Find out what they’ve practiced over the years, and a similarly wide range of material comes to light. A few summers ago, I prepared for a solo guitar recital (played entirely on my nylon-string, by the way) by working on a classical piece every day—first thing in the morning and last thing at night. The rest of the day was reserved for my repertoire practice, but the classical piece kept me centered on the instrument, inspired by the guitar arrangement, and physically ready to play.

My old jazz box has one pickup. It’s my main axe. I have a smaller version—my secondary jazz box, if you will—that I use for teaching. That, too, has just one pickup. I’ve had, at various stages in my playing days, guitars with two pickups. I really tried, honest. I just couldn’t get comfortable with any sounds other than finding that one right place to leave the switch and the controls. So, I found my guitar niche. But that does not prevent me from pretending to be Larry Carlton playing the solos to Steely Dan recordings while I’m driving (I also pretend to be k.d. lang and Barbra Streisand sometimes…).

It is getting harder and harder to find musicians who have not been touched in some way or another by at least a few styles of music. Music appreciation is a form of diversity awareness. If you trace our roots back far enough, we’re all related. Trace back our musical roots and you’re likely to find Louis Armstrong, blues, George Gershwin, Mozart, Bach, African drumming. In my early days of learning and listening to music, I wanted to know all about the artists that I looked up to. I was a pop-culture child in the ’60s. Singer-songwriters spoke of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Tony Bennett. So there I was, in the dusty record stores on beautiful summer days, finding the vinyl history of jazz standards to learn and memorize. Before Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, or Jerry Garcia took extended, spiritually gifted solo statements in the moment, John Coltrane was speaking his truth through his saxophone.

If, in fact, we jazz guitarists have created a reputation for being snobs, then it’s time to outgrow that image. Anyone playing honest music with their whole selves in it, devoted and sincere, deserves our ears, encouragement, and applause.

Olivia Rodrigo Rig Rundown