BH

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Hey Bobby, its me again.

I'll post this out of the goodness of my heart. I await your comments.

Alan, we had this discussion before if you remember: I learned a very similar movement from the Mickey Baker books (IIRC) in the 90ies and have been using it since then all the time:

F7 - Gm7 - Abo *) - F/A

so the second chord is different and there is more chromatic voice leading (it is actually the movement from I to II via diminished like e.g. in Embraceable You the other way round).


BTW There are actually people teaching in Youtube videos (not you, Alan) that Thelonious invented the chromatic melodic line from major third up to the fifth and the other way round **) in Blue Monk.

Which means that those people never heard e.g.the Basin Street Blues:

It is actually an old blues piano cliché that e.g. the Godmother of Bebop***) used when she remembered her early days and played those chromatic thirds:

*) or rather G#o when going up

**) The cliché does not only work for dominants but also for major chords where a bebopper would harmonize it as Gmaj7 - Am7 - A#m7 - Bm7 as taught by Barry Harris according to Tomasz Bia?owolski somewhere in his Barry Harris videos funded by the state of Poland (Tomasz Bia?owolski is one of those guys like Shan Verma that went to every BH workshop when Barry was in Europe).

***) MLW later was BTW the best friend of Pannonica de Koenigswarter, neé Rothchild, in whose house Monk and BH lived.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Alan, we had this discussion before if you remember: I learned a very similar movement from the Mickey Baker books (IIRC) in the 90ies and have been using it since then all the time:

F7 - Gm7 - Abo *) - F/A

so the second chord is different and there is more chromatic voice leading (it is actually the movement from I to II via diminished like e.g. in Embraceable You the other way round).


BTW There are actually people teaching in Youtube videos (not you, Alan) that Thelonious invented the chromatic melodic line from major third up to the fifth and the other way round **) in Blue Monk.

Which means that those people never heard e.g.the Basin Street Blues:

It is actually an old blues piano cliché that e.g. the Godmother of Bebop***) used when she remembered her early days and played those chromatic thirds:

*) or rather G#o when going up

**) The cliché does not only work for dominants but also for major chords where a bebopper would harmonize it as Gmaj7 - Am7 - A#m7 - Bm7 as taught by Barry Harris according to Tomasz Bia?owolski somewhere in his Barry Harris videos funded by the state of Poland (Tomasz Bia?owolski is one of those guys like Shan Verma that went to every BH workshop when Barry was in Europe).

***) MLW later was BTW the best friend of Pannonica de Koenigswarter, neé Rothchild, in whose house Monk and BH lived.

Maybe I should apply at a university to teach jazz history hahahaha.

I met this unbelievably good young hard bop and soul jazz pianist who admitted that he doesn't know much music beyond jazz, but what really shocked me that he never ever had heard the old African-American spiritual "Go Down Moses". IIRC when I was 12 years old or so we were singing that song in school ...

Sorry for getting a little bit off-topic but let's not forget that Barry's mother played piano in church and that Barry for sure knew about the history of music and not only jazz.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

^ There is a video somewhere on Youtube (that I cannot find ATM, FCK AI search engine) from a Barry Harris masterclass (London IIRC) where Barry refers to blues clichés as "swear phrases".

[Bobby Timmons]

^ In Chris class he teaches strictly BH material. There are no blues scale or licks at all! I like BH a lot but it's not like it's the be all and end all approach. I loves me some blues scale and licks mixed in.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXMe5NBjX7M" target="_blank">

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

^ In Chris class he teaches strictly BH material. There are no blues scale or licks at all! I like BH a lot but it's not like it's the be all and end all approach. I loves me some blues scale and licks mixed in.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXMe5NBjX7M" target="_blank">

I wasn't talking about blues scales. I was talking about blues clichés (gospel also). At highschool Barry was in friendly competition with Berry Gordy of later Motown fame for the title of the best boogie-woogie piano player BTW. And I guess he was talking about players like Bobby Timmons and Horace Silver and their style in opposition to the art of Bud Powell. (Disclaimer: I love Bobby Timmons, one of my first jazz records was and still one of my favorite records is Cannonball's "Live at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco".)

EDIT: That Cannonball Adderley record is actually called "The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco".

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Barry live with Cannonball before he left and was followed by Bobby Timmons.

[Bobby Timmons]

I wasn't talking about blues scales. I was talking about blues clichés (gospel also).

Well I likes me some blues cliches thrown in there. And incidentally there's no blues scale in Chris class either.

This guy is mad. Writing off blues scale because some jazzers who play jazz blues don't use it. Many great jazz blues players do use it and it sounds great. Bobby Timmons, Oscar Peterson, Charlie Parker, Kenny Burrell. That's just silly.

[pamosmusic]

This guy is mad. Writing off blues scale because some jazzers who play jazz blues don't use it. Many great jazz blues players do use it and it sounds great. Bobby Timmons, Oscar Peterson, Charlie Parker, Kenny Burrell. That's just silly.

Hmm.

I've been thinking about this a lot. I'm still super deep into all my Jim Hall stuff and just put together a big PDF on blues gestures he uses, and it's interesting that he doesn't flat out use the blues scale much, but he uses some stuff that sounds a lot like it. I think probably the trap is that folks learn the blues scale as kind of a cure-all and don't learn much about what the notes in the scale like to do. So it's interesting to look at licks people play that have that blues-scale sound and see what's going on in them.

Jim for example leaves the b7 out a lot. So he's all over that 1 b3 4 b5 and 5, but doesn't come up to the b7. He doesn't descend it from the root much either ... if he's descending from the root in his blues vibe, he's just running down the dominant scale most of the time. I don't really buy that the blues scale isn't in blues stuff, but I think the way it's taught (or not taught) blinds people to how interesting blues vocabulary can be, even in that form.

[Bobby Timmons]

I agree. Teaching blues scale as if it's the main or only device you need is misleading.

What good and competent players use, to me, comes down to aesthetic choices. Some guys sound more jazzy, some more bluesy. I would never want to write off the bluesy element in my jazz playing, including blues scale.

[pamosmusic]

Other things to notice:

Sonnymoon for two … descends from the root, but its minor pent with no b5

Bags Groove … descends from the fifth, but through the root and again no b5.

Nows the Time … does have the b5 but it’s just bounced off like a quick turn, does descend through the root but also just bounces down to the b7 and back.

No 1 Green St … b5 but it’s all in that cell between 5 and root again.

Interesting stuff. Not sure what it means.

[Bobby Timmons]

It means pent is a thing too?

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

It means pent is a thing too?

Barry was actually into pentatonics for a while. Ask the bot for the Ted Panken inteview.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

^ In Chris class he teaches strictly BH material. There are no blues scale or licks at all! I like BH a lot but it's not like it's the be all and end all approach. I loves me some blues scale and licks mixed in.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXMe5NBjX7M" target="_blank">

This is the full concert from Spanish TV:

Barry Harris

(Play button is in the lower left corner)

[Bobby Timmons]

BH in straight ahead mode is often too vanilla for me. I don't care how much rhythm there is, I need note complexity! I'm mad at rhythms!

[pamosmusic]

I’ve been transcribing Wayne on this recording (his solo is ridiculous and starts around 5:40), but Bobby absolutely demolishes this tune. Seven minutes, probably twenty five choruses. Starting at 10:00 on the dot if it doesn’t cue up.

[Bobby Timmons]

Yaz. BT! He has such a cool style. He was known as a soul jazz player but he was so good linearly. Cool mix of blues and bop.

To honor BT as my screen name, I'm thinking of making blues scale the main scale I practice for single note and have all other scales be complementary.

[pamosmusic]

Steal some of that vocab, my dude

[Bobby Timmons]

Ok, I will go jack 1 lick right now.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

This rocks. Louis Hayes and Sam Jones rock. Hal Galper calls it the "Big Beat" when he describes his time with Cannonball.

[pamosmusic]

Ok, I will go jack 1 lick right now.

Which one?

[Bobby Timmons]

11:02 - 11:04. Gonna keep copping stuff.

[Bobby Timmons]

In Chris class today he taught us Echols stuff, the elevator.

[Bobby Timmons]

The Echols master class was epic!

[Bobby Timmons]

Does anyone know of a comprehensive BH single note syllabus? I'm really digging Chris class and want to assimilate the breadth of it on my own time to benefit more from the classes.