[Dixielandjazz] When jazz meets country

[Robert Ringwald]

When jazz meets country

Jazz Finds a Country Home
by Will Friedwald
Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2011
Sad to say, the most famous anecdote about the relationship between jazz and country
music involves Buddy Rich on his deathbed in 1987. Before his final surgery, the
story goes, the legendary drummer was asked if there was anything he was allergic
to. Without missing a beat (he never did), he responded: "Yeah, country music."
Even today, the singer-songwriter Anna Wilson says, "There are two kinds of people
out there: Those who believe that there could never be any common ground between
jazz and country music, and those who know that they've shaken hands, at least, in
the past."
Ms. Wilson's new album, "Countrypolitan Duets," is one of five recently released
records that aim for common ground between the two venerable American music traditions.
The most high-profile of these is "Here We Go Again," the second recorded meeting
between two dominant figures in each medium, Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis. But
Ms. Wilson's album also boasts a pantheon of Nashville stars both classic (Ray Price,
Kenny Rogers) and contemporary (Lady Antebellum, Rascal Flatts). Also new on shelves
are two mostly instrumental sets by musicians on the east (Bucky Pizzarelli's "Back
in the Saddle Again") and west coasts (Cow Bop's "Too Hick for the Room") that are
deeply inspired by the Western Swing of the 1940s. And the most unlikely of them
all, "Pretend It's the End of the World," by saxophonist Bryan Murray, explores the
conjunction of Merle Haggard and Ornette Coleman.
All of these albums (except, notably, the last) feature female vocalists. Norah Jones,
whose style is rooted equally in Texas and the Downtown jazz scene, is a perfect
foil for Messrs. Nelson and Marsalis, while Cow Bop spotlights a singer identified
only as "Pinto Pammy." Rebecca Kilgore, whose vocals are the major asset on Mr. Pizzarelli's
two country albums, said that singing country music requires "an entirely different
approach than jazz singing. It's not about improvisation or phrasing -- it's about
emotion, and telling a story above all."
One of the major living jazz singers, Ms. Kilgore had sung in her adopted hometown
of Portland, Ore., with a Western Swing group called Ranch Dressing some 30 years
before contributing to Mr. Pizzarelli's country albums. "It was a constant struggle
between the jazz players and the country players," she recalled. "The jazz guys could
read the music properly but weren't familiar with the songs, and the country guys
couldn't read that well but they knew the idiom." Both factions, including pianist
Monty Alexander and steel-guitar specialist Tommy White, work together beautifully
on Mr. Pizzarelli's album, with Ms. Kilgore's mellifluous voice resonating like a
honky-tonk angel even when singing "Hard Life Blues."
Ms. Wilson, who is appearing at Joe's Pub on Wednesday, described the rhythm of jazz
as "very push and pull. Country music doesn't do that; country songs are there to
tell you a story."
She's in a unique position to make the comparison: Best known as a Nashville songwriter
who has written for most of the contemporary artists who appear on her "Duets" album,
Ms. Wilson characterized her own singing as jazz. But for "Countrypolitan," her first
album of standards, she has taken 10 country classics and arranged them in a swing-band
fashion -- Willie Nelson's "Night Life" here sounds more like a Count Basie blues
riff.
Cow Bop's "Too Hick for the Room" is even more steeped in the country-swing idiom,
with guitarist-leader Bruce Forman and guest pianist Roger Kellaway deftly interweaving
bebop licks into familiar country airs like "Tennessee Waltz." Most tracks, like
the Bob Wills signature "San Antonio Rose" (which drops hints to Monk's "Straight
No Chaser") are played in a danceable two-beat that rocks throughout.
Released last year, Mr. Murray's "Pretend It's the End of the World" (under the name
Bryan and the Haggards) is an album of Merle Haggard songs played by two saxophones,
guitar, bass and drums. It comes from a different place entirely. Unlike Messrs.
Pizzarelli and Forman, Mr. Murray builds on the differences, rather than the commonalities,
of jazz and country. As he put it, "This music is the opposite of what the contemporary
jazz players look for, which is super complicated, with odd meters and tons of chord
changes."
Unlike most modern jazzmen, who often address a pop or rock song by reharmonizing
it to make it more "jazzy," Mr. Murray makes the medium of jazz simpler. "It's like
playing an Ornette Coleman tune, where you have no changes and can just open up,"
he said. The album's title comes from "Sing Me a Sad Song," and underscores how Mr.
Haggard's saloon tunes (like "Swinging Doors") are among the saddest in all of recorded
music. In interpreting "Swinging Doors," "Lonesome Fugitive" and other Haggard classics
from a free-jazz perspective, Mr. Murray makes them sound not merely heartbreaking
but positively apocalyptic. The "end of the world" indeed.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
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