Straight, No Chaser

Last year I made a diagram of the Sonny Rollins tune Oleo, using coloured rectangles to show the straightforward 'rhythm-changes' harmony, and overlaying them with a lattice of diagonal lines encoding the irregular rhythm. Another tune in the same vein is Straight, No Chaser. Here Thelonious Monk takes a well-known harmonic outline - the 12-bar…

Barbara and Beatrice

Today I am going to compare two poignant instrumental tunes, each named after the composer's wife: Barbara by Horace Silver, and Beatrice by Sam Rivers. Both musicians were born in the 1920s, and lived well into this century. They wrote these pieces in mid-life, during the great flowering of jazz in the 1960s and 70s.…

These two songs will probably outlive four movies

It was just a feeling at first. Listening to Carmen McRae singing Invitation I was reminded of another lovely song: Speak Low by Kurt Weill. You don't need to dissect the music on a technical level to notice a kinship of mood and style. As soon as I compared the life stories of the respective composers, it all…

‘So What’ Solos: an irreverent analysis

From time to time I will be analysing a jazz tune or performance. I won't be overly dry or academic about this, nor overly reverential. Where (thanks to my excellent teachers) I can find a technical analysis which fits the way I hear the music, I will share it with you. Sometimes I may simply…

Oleo

Oleo is a bebop tune by Sonny Rollins, as mischievous as anything that flew off the reed of Charlie Parker. Clearly on a mission to weave an interesting new tune around the overworked chords of I Got Rhythm, Rollins deployed shifting, syncopated patterns, with short and long phrases, gaps where you don't expect them, and…