[Dixielandjazz] Multiple choruses - was notes

[Steve barbone]

"LARRY at <sign.guy at charter.net> wrote (polite snip)
 
> I think everyone agrees more or less with the idea it's what you do with the
> notes that counts but there are limits.  I would have a problem with anyone
> who would take 17 choruses on a tune.

Others do also. Even that fast fingered, many note, master bopster Charlie
Parker was quoted as saying: "Any more than 4 choruses and you are just
practicing."

Perhaps guys like Rollins and Trane could keep going as infinitum because
they were so heavily practiced on scales and chord permutations. What we
call ideas may well have been practiced as patterns for 8 to 12 hours a day
for many years. 

Rollins was quoted as saying something like: "The only trouble with gigs is
that they get in the way of my practice."

And Miles who said to Trane after Trane told him he was having trouble
figuring out how to end his solos. "Just take the f****** horn out of your
mouth." 

And yet, sometimes extended solos work beautifully. E.G. Paul Gonsalves 27
chorus Tenor Sax solo on Diminuendo & Crescendo in Blue with Ellington at
Newport in 56 or so. He did repeat ideas, but nobody there cared because a
very sexy blond got up and gyrated through about 25 of them much to his and
the  audience's delight. The audience went crazy and it became the defining
moment in the resuscitation of Ellington's flagging career.

Producer George Wein asked him to calm things down fearing a riot. Ellington
laughed and said "Don't be rude to the artists, George." But then he took a
piano interlude after Gonsalves and did indeed calm things down. The episode
was pure magic at the time and you can hear it on the album. Today's jazz
performers don't that kind of audience reaction anymore, rock bands do.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone