An experiment in Jazz Listening (some revisions 2/14)

Today I'd like to try an experiment. For decades Broadway show tunes were the backbone of every jazz musicians repertoire; from dixieland to swing to bebop and the birth of the cool and onwards. What I'd like to do here is take a song and show how various musicians have interpreted it, from a very strict interpretation that sticks close to what the composer wrote all the way through to one where the song completely comes apart.

I've chosen "I didn't Know What Time It Was" by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart to be the test case here. It was Written in 1939 for the musical "Too Many Girls". It is the epitome of the Broadway show tune turned jazz standard.

We'll start off with Trudy Erwin dubbing for Lucille Ball in the 1940 movie version:



This is a very straight forward version. It's a show tune after all and this is a Hollywood product. (As a side note here, it was on the set of this movie that Lucy met her future husband, Desi Arnez, seen at the end of this clip.)

Ok, so now we know the song, we've heard Lorenz Hart's lyrics lets see what can be made from this. Well one thing that can be changed is how the song is sung. So the phrasing can be changed. In this next example things are still very straight forward, the only real changes, apart from a richer orchestration and the dropping of the introduction, is Doris Day's seductive phrasing.



So now we should have a good feel for the tune and some options on how it can be performed. Next Billie Holiday backed by Ben Webster(ts), Harry "Sweets" Edison(t), Jimmie Rowles(p), Barney Kessel(g), Red Mitchell(b), Larry Bunker(d) and Alvin Stoller(d).



The first important thing to notice is how the song now swings. Things are no longer so straight forward rhythmically.

The next video is Art Tatum playing the song as a piano solo. Through the first chorus he introduces and sticks quite close to the melody so that we can recognize what we are listening to. After that he uses it sparingly while he plays with the changes losing the melody completely until he brings it back in the end sounding as if it has been broken by the experience, never to be the same.



This is pretty much standard practice by Jazz musicians. What is interesting is that as time went on, from the 1920s to the 1950s, more and more the melody, the chords, the rhythm of the song would become more open for expression, for exploration. The more open things became the less important it became to stick close to the original song.

To better illustrate this the next video is Charlie Parker from his Parker with Strings album. Parker, one of the founders of Be Bop is backed here by a VERY straight sounding string section (making this album his most controversial recording among jazz fans). The string section, for all it's cloyingness, knows how to sit back and not get in his way during the solos, just following the chord changes to keep up with him.



Dave Brubeck with Ron Crotty on bass and Cal Tjader on percussion change things up by playing the song in what seems to be 7/8 instead of the original 4/4 of Richard Rogers:



If you go back to the previous examples and count, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, you should easily find the beat. With the example above we will have to count to 7, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 etc.... which makes quite a large difference.

Currently pianist Brad Mehldau has a recording in 5/4 but there is no YouTube video for it.


Moving on McCoy Tyner in this next recording breaks the song down even further (back in 4/4) It's still recognizable at times in the beginning and end but is no longer clearly stated.


I'm going to end this with Albert Ayler's 1962 recording. No longer is the tune even recognizable. Ayler doesn't feel any need to remind his listeners from the start what he's playing, they are expected to keep up with him not the other way around. It's not until between 2:20 and 2:30 in that he even bothers to state the melody in any form at all. He plays with coming back to it around the 5:00 mark but this quickly disintegrates. It's hard to even tell if the chords are still there anymore.