petals

SW: How do you think different jazz giants have affected and influenced modern musicians?

CM: Mmmkay, uh… well, I mean, we’ll start with Louis Armstrong. There wasn’t such a thing as jazz improvisation before Louis Armstrong. He really defined what jazz improvisation was, in specifically in one cadenza- West End Blues, which we had listened to. There are several aspects of Louis’ that are important. Harmonically, he did things… he played notes that had not been thought of to play- he was boldly trying new things. He played probably more notes; and this relates to kind of another aspect of his influence, and that was on trumpet- he played higher notes on the trumpet than had been played before. Classical composers heard Louis Armstrong’s recordings and said, “Oh, you mean we can write that high?” And much to the grin of classical players, the range of the trumpet went up because of Louis Armstrong. And then, just his sheer command of the instrument; strength- very strong player- they talk about recordings where he would have to stand in the next room while the band was around the microphone, and he’d go out in the hall and play. In those days, the recording technology, they’d just have one microphone for everybody- kind of like a big horn and they’d all kind of aim at it, and he’d be in the next room to balance the sound. So, as far as trumpet, he just gave us a whole new concept of what could be done on trumpet. And, you know, people saw, not only what he did, but his innovative style of trying new things on trumpet, and that was influential, because people just keep trying to do new things on their instruments. That was kind of an African influence, actually, this whole idea of doing things individually on your instrument that kind of set you apart, and he totally followed in that tradition. And then, a major innovation, I think, aside from just the instrument, the two major innovations would be this harmonic idea where he was playing more notes in the chord than had been used before, and partly because of his facility on trumpet he was able to get around to do that. And then the other was rhythmic- it kind of gets taken for granted now listening to Louis Armstrong, I think, this rhythm that he has achieved; because so much has gone since that… but, its hard to believe, when you listen to it, that these sounds, the way he played rhythmically had not happened before. He had a way of manipulating the groove of the music to suit his emotions and create tensions and releases that were not there before. And he was just a master of it, rhythmically- very important. The next really influential musician was a guy named Kenny Clarke, he was a drummer, and he was the guy that made Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie famous- because he started playing on his drums accents in different places, and it was a rhythmic development, and it was later called bebop. But because of what he did rhythmically, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker started adding dissonant notes on the places where he would hit drum beats that weren’t expected. And so we developed a rhythmic, which led to a harmonic, development-