[Dixielandjazz] Hot (?) Jazz

[Donald Mopsick]

Mike wrote:

>>Any form of jazz that you can mention has "hot" tunes, as well as laid
back tunes, ballads, and many more types of arrangements.<<

True enough, Mike. However I like "hot jazz" to describe pre-WWII swinging
and stomping music in general because that's the descriptor most often used
by the musicians of that era, and it's a good way of differentiating from
the later "cool" jazz of Miles Davis.

I've been told by those who know that in the 1920s and '30s, jazz players
of both races, when on the road and in a strange city and looking for a
local place to sit in after the big band dance or gig, would not ask
"Where's the jam session?" They would ask, "Where do they play it hot?" or
"Where are the hot men?' No, they weren't looking for a gay bar, wrong
decade.

Think of the sound of Louis Armstrong's cornet and later trumpet.
Emotionally, Lois wore it on his sleeve. He was playing directly from his
heart and soul, and there was no doubt about what he was feeling. That was
his appeal: a raw, unfiltered, authentic laser beam of a sound that some
have likened to the sun beaming down from the sky. Also, think of the
syncopated rhythm that was new to most white people: again, the way people
described it then was "hot rhythm."

Now fast forward 20 or 30 years to Miles Davis. Yup, there's still heat in
there, but it's subdued, sophisticated, in a word, cool. Hip. "In the
know." Jazz writers of the 50s began to refer to knowledgeable fans as the
"jazz cognoscenti." The older "hot" style was actually put down by hipsters
as "corny" or "from the sticks." Gone was the hot Bessie Smith/King
Oliver/Louis Armstrong bent-blue-note tonality in favor of a much cooler,
even-toned, eight-note and scale-based bebop. Yeah, I can syncopate, but
I'm so much cooler and hipper, and I play more interesting harmonies based
on Impressionism.

Ted Gioia wrote a book about this, "The Birth (and Death) of the Cool" in
which he cites Lester Young as the originator of cool in
jazz.<http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Death-Cool-Ted-Gioia/dp/1933108312/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375731795&sr=1-1&keywords=gioia+cool>

Think of Chet Baker's voice. Minimal vibrato like Miles and his own trumpet
playing. Open up a vein and let the heroin in. So cool as to be almost
comatose. That was the sensibility of the 50s. Granted the hard boppers
like Art Blakey, Adderly brothers, Horace Silver, etc. had a lot more blues
feeling and heat, but the word "hot" to describe a form of jazz was
definitely not a good choice for them, it belonged to the past and
Armstrong.

So, if kids interested in old jazz want to call it hot, who are we to argue
with them? It's theirs to inherit anyway. They could have come up with
something completely misleading, like "smooth jazz" or "acid jazz" which as
you know ain't no kinda jazz at all.

mopo
-- 
http://about.me/donmopsick