Zappa & Jazz

[James]

"Jazz from Hell - His Bizarre Relationship with Jazz"

Charles Shaar Murray celebrates and explores the relationship between jazz and the music of Frank Zappa. The series was made to coincide with the tenth anniversary of Zappa's death (4th December 2003).

Frank Zappa is usually thought of first and foremost as a rock musician and band leader, albeit a pretty unusual one! Zappa said he didn't like jazz; he complained of its endless 'noodling' and famously said that 'jazz is not dead, it just smells funny!'. However, much of his music shows a jazz influence, his recorded work features some of the most dazzling improvisers of their time (Ian Underwood, Sugar Cane Harris, George Duke, Bruce Fowler, Mike Brecker etc) - not to mention the virtuosic guitar playing of Frank himself, and his music has in turn influenced contemporary jazz.

Shaar Murray (an acknowledged expert on the subject, and regular presenter of BBC 3's Jazz File) is joined by a host of the bandleader's ex sidemen to take an entertaining look at Zappa and jazz. The following Zappa alumni have been interviewed exclusively for this series: Arthur Barrow, Adrian Belew, Mike Brecker, George Duke, Bruce Fowler, Ralph Humphrey, Tommy Mars, Patrick O'Hearn and Don Preston. Plus there are archive recordings of Zappa himself.

The second programme focuses on the role Zappa's star sidemen played in creating his unique music. As a bandleader Zappa was like Ellington in the way he assembled groups of virtuoso musicians and then wrote compositions for them to play which would highlight their individual strengths. He always wrote pieces which allowed his sidemen to shine.

Charles Shaar Murray concludes the series by focusing on Zappa himself as an improviser. As a guitarist Zappa changed and developed over time. As an soloist, he was always stretching himself; in live performance, each extended solo was an opportunity to create something new.

https://www.youtube.com/v/0hpcWPxBzpI

[escher]

james do you remember what are those pieces at 24:40 and 34:12 in the video?

[escher]

At 24:40, Echidna's Arf (Of You) playing into Don't You Ever Wash That Thing? (from Roxy & Elsewhere, 1974)
At 34:12, Moggio (from The Man from Utopia, 1983)

thank you very much, and by the way a very interesting video.
About that, I've often wondered if the fact that when improvising he preferred alway to play over static vamps and he didn't like to play over changes was because of its difficulty.

[escher]

Zappa's music was often tight, difficult/complex, so it was a nice contrast to open things up little come his solo time. To focus on the guitar (tone/attack). As the video indicated it was more of a preference, I'm certain he could have soloed over changes more than he did if he wanted to, but he probably felt it was too restricting for his approach, too set, too motoristic .. of course it can be just as difficult to improvise WITHOUT changes guiding you .. as the focus is more on you, and more weight is placed on your shoulders to do something musical, nothing guiding you or framework to work within, hide behind or lean on. He preferred a freer/searching approach. As the video also indicates his approach was more middle-eastern, raga influenced (while his phrasing/style firmly rooted in the blues) .. an interaction between the soloist and the drummer (who would fuel Zappa and keep him going.) Besides, there is a fair share of soloing through changes within his recorded output too, mostly from the jazzers within his bands who preferred to do that.

yes, but the video is also a celebration of zappa, and I'm ok with that but that doesn't mean that everything they said in it it's the truth. In my experience is much more difficult to play over difficult changes than on a static vamp like on Watermelon

[jochanaan]

Actually I can say with great confidence that the video is 100% accurate and truthful .. including the criticism from some of the players from his various ensembles that didn't like his approach .. who felt as a soloist he would meander so much, go on for too long, too abstract .. . And that it was a hit & miss affair .. sometimes he would dazzle his audience, other times he would bore them to death. So the approach does present challenges. Zappa himself often stated that he never liked any of his own solos much. Watermelon is often cited as one of his finest solos, and with so little (as material) .. it almost sounds thorough composed, and it certainly has emotional resonance. In fact, the entire Joe's Garage series was largely etched out over the space of a weekend impromptu style .. which is pretty amazing.

That's always the danger in jazz, especially in free form jazz a la Miles, Pharaoh Sanders or Sun Ra.  It's very hard to be totally "on" for every gig or session; but the great ones seem able at almost any time to come up with something that works.

[San Antone]

Zappa And Jazz
By Ed Palermo

Ed Palermo - great guy.  Old friend from my NYC days.  He arranged and recorded one of my songs for his latest album, which is otherwise devoted to Zappa.

Good read.

[San Antone]

Cool. 

Palermo's Big Band Zappa albums are fantastic, better than all of the posthumous Zappa Family Trust releases I have heard, with the exception of Civilization Phaze III and perhaps Dance Me This (coming out next month), but these were the last albums FZ finished himself.

I'm sure FZ would have been proud of Palermo's BB albums, and FZ experimented with Big Bands throughout his prolific career, in fact his last touring group (1988) was a stellar big band ..

I still have to get the latest EPBB one "Oh No! Not Jazz!!" (which feat. a disc of Palermo's own compositions), I've heard/read it is really good.

Yeah, that's the one with my song ("Moosh"), I had forgotten it was a 2-CD disc with one being Zappa and the other his stuff, with the exception of my one track.   I wish the family estate felt more like you.  Ed and I used to play together quite a bit, with a guitarist, Bruce Whitcomb (lost track of Bruce).  Ed's got several of my tunes in his book.

BTW, welcome back.

[San Antone]

From Ed's website:

For a variety of reasons, I have decided to stop using Frank Zappa's name in our concert and night club advertising. For one, it's common knowledge at this point that the Zappa Estate frowns on it, so part of my decision is to hopefully placate the estate, though it was never my intention to capitalize on FZ's name and fame. It was strictly to inform the audience of the material they would hear at the shows.

[Purusha]

Zappa's guitar training begun very late, and as far as i know he mostly taught himself to play the blues. I personally think he saw himself first and foremost as a composer and only later considered the possibility of becoming a guitar player due to his relatively rapid progress (owning entirely to his natural talents). No doubt he could have become a great virtuoso had he received are more complete training but as it is i think his soloing was limited by what he could do. Not to say he didn't make a great account of himself, considering he has the distinction of being one of the very few rock musicians who could "swing" in the full sense of the word (the only other i know that could do it was Jimi Hendrix).

Personally, to me Frank Zappa is like the "Mozart" of rock music. All of his music just flows out of him effortlessly, without there being anything mechanical or "technical". Even his avant-guard stuff is incredibly natural and intuitive, at least to my ears. To me, he is without a doubt the greatest rock musician that ever lived, despite the fact i find his "humor" to be rather abhorrent. One wonders how far he could have gone with a better artistic upbringing.

[San Antone]

For me, Zappa is one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century; bar none.

[San Antone]

Geoff Wills takes a look at Zappa's widely assumed antipathy for the jazz genre. Along the way, he throws up

Doesn't sound very promising ...

[bob_cart]

Came here thinking it'd all be just Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and the gang to find a topic about Zappa in the first 2 minutes of looking at the forum. Thanks for article, very nice. Zappa was a brilliant man.

[jochanaan]

My guess is that Zappa was not opposed to jazz itself, but rather to those "purists" and "traditionalists" that wanted (and want) to keep jazz a "pure" art form, that is to say, static.

[Karl Henning]

His general objection to phoning it in, whatever the genre.

[jochanaan]

His general objection to phoning it in, whatever the genre.

An objection he shares with many of us.

[Karl Henning]

Forsooth!

[Karl Henning]

In August 1969, to the dismay of many fans, Frank Zappa disbanded the original Mothers of Invention. Feeling constrained by the musical abilities of certain members, he cleaned the slate and set about assembling a new group. Hand-picking superior talent from a variety of musical genres, by 1970 the second incarnation of the band was unleashed.

This film focuses on the sophomore Mothers, looking too at the very different projects that book-ended their brief existence; Zappa had incorporated ideas from free jazz and fusion into his music to produce three eccentric albeit influential solo albums. As the new decade dawned and the musical landscape shifted this prolific but often-overlooked period in Frank Zappas career remained a pioneering era for a modern day composer who often confounded both audiences and critics, but who refused to compromise.

Featuring rare footage, archive and exclusive interviews, contributions from many who worked alongside Zappa during this period, rarely seen photographs, and a number of other features which all at once provide for the first documentary film to tackle this phase in the Zappa legend. Includes new interviews with; George Duke, Aynsley Dunbar, Don Preston, Jeff Simmons, Mark Volman, Max Bennett, Sal Marquez, Ian Underwood plus 200 Motels director Tony Palmer, biographers Ben Watson and Billy James and Mojo Magazines Mark Paytress.

Who wrote this text?  TIA.

[Scion7]

Who wrote this text?  TIA.

I don't know, but they got part of it wrong.  The major concern of the break-up of the first group was financial - Zappa was not reaping enough reward from his royalties to carry such a big group.  He was also tired of the complaints of Gardner and Black about their salary and demanding a per deum, etc.  He also wanted to work in a small-group combo (Hot Rats band) as a change of pace.

While there was excellent talent in the "Turtles" Mothers, they didn't show much of it on record.  Any of the original Mothers albums were better than theirs, and they can't stand up to masterpieces like "One Size Fits All" or "The Grand Wazoo", for example, either.   

I think this is a typical promo-piece.

[Karl Henning]

I don't know, but they got part of it wrong.  The major concern of the break-up of the first group was financial - Zappa was not reaping enough reward from his royalties to carry such a big group.  He was also tired of the complaints of Gardner and Black about their salary and demanding a per deum, etc.  He also wanted to work in a small-group combo (Hot Rats band) as a change of pace.

You underscore part of my question about the source;  there's certainly some "English" on that shot . . . .

[Scion7]

Agree completely.
Although only Don and Ian could "read" music, Zappa's rehearsals and demands had turned the original Mothers into an excellent instrumental combo.  That might have tired on his nerves after a few years, who knows?  In interviews he was ambivalent in his statements at the time (for those of us that were 'there.')  Black wasn't on a level with a Dunbar or a Thompson, naturally, but he played the music after being instructed enough.  And that version of the band was not playing the poly-rhythms that Frank later adapted in the music.   Still, that matters little when an album like UNCLE MEAT or BURNT WEENIE SANDWICH was made.   :-)