Jazz Covers: Gil Evans and Jimi Hendrix

The Gil Evans Orchestra: Voodoo Chile
[purchase] 

I’ve written about the cover of “Little Wing” that is on this album (or, at least some versions of it) a couple of times, as well as mentioning seeing the Gil Evans Orchestra at a free outdoor concert in Florence in 1981, which was great, but I really don’t remember whether they played any Hendrix that night. I knew enough about Evans in 1981 to know that he was worth seeing, especially at that price, but not enough to really know about the music. Except to remember that I really enjoyed it. 

Gil Evans, a pianist and composer, is probably best known as an arranger, particularly for Miles Davis, after whom Evans named a son. Although his career was mostly in the jazz world, Evans’ musical tastes were broad, and he was a particularly big fan of Hendrix. In fact, Hendrix was scheduled to record and perform with a big band led by Evans, but Hendrix’s death prevented this intriguing combination from coming together. Instead, in 1975, Evans released an album of Hendrix covers, all done with an unusual 19-piece big band, including, among others, Hannibal Marvin Peterson, Lew Soloff, Pete Levin (brother of Tony), David Sanborn, John Abercrombie, Ryo Kawasaki, Tom “Bones” Malone, and Howard Johnson. 

The songs are, of course, great, and the arrangements, by Evans and other members of the group, are inventive, interesting and sometimes unexpected. For example, the version of “Voodoo Chile” controversially begins with tuba master Johnson sounding like he’s playing the kazoo, before the orchestra weighs in. And while Johnson takes a tuba solo, there’s no lack of guitar wailing, It’s a polarizing take, but certainly one that makes you think. 

The Gil Evans Orchestra also backed Sting (who started his musical career as a jazz bass player) on his excellent, more rock-oriented cover of “Little Wing,” featuring a great guitar solo by Hiram Bullock, a regular Evans collaborator and former member of David Letterman’s band. Sting and Evans performed together in Italy, in a performance that was released as a live album.

Jazz Covers: Spyro Gyra

purchase [ Vinyl Tap ]

My previous post, I interpreted the current theme as covers of a jazz classic. Here, a jazz band (well ... jazz-fusion) doing covers of music from the 70s.

One of my favorite jazz-fusion groups is Spyro Gyra. Their music is kind of easy to listen to - not the kind of jazz that requires you to work hard. And while I recognize that there is a place for that kind of musical experience, it's generally not my favorite experience: I prefer accessible melody.

I don't keep track of what most bands are doing on an ongoing basis and I had my doubts that they had ever done any covers - mostly not their "thing". But wait ... no ... There's their <Vinyl Tap> album: all covers in their jazz/fusion style. The band has been around in various configurations since 1974, and this collection from 2019 was their 31st.

A number of prominent reviewers express scepticism that the band could pull off an album of covers - but they do. Remarkably well. All of them filled with unexpected notes- the essence of jazz.

And, while you really should go out and get yourself a copy of the whole album, we can give you a handful right here. And then maybe you'll head out a buy it for the rest.

Jazz Covers: Take 5

 

purchase [Time Out]

In 1958, the Dave Brubeck Quartet did a tour of EurAsia that was sponsored by the State Department. Their trip included a stop in Istanbul, from where I write my posts to SMM. I was only 3 back then, but some time in the mid 1960s, my parents added <Time Out> to their record collection, so I would have been listening to it at around age 10 (in Istanbul even back then).

Brubeck was affected by the music he heard in Istanbul such that their 1959 <Time Out> album makes much use of time signatures that could be Turkish. Not only does music from Turkey (and points east) use "non-standard", tricky time signatures, but also a musical scale that is based on Arabic music, where - instead of the 12 notes of a Western octave- there are 53 "koma". For most of us, music in school taught us about standard Western time signatures like 6/8 or 3/4 or 4/4 - what dominate rock and pop and even much jazz in addition to classical music. Turkish music makes use of these, but also more complex rhythms like 5/4 or 7/4 and 9/8 and more.

It was this influence that powered Brubeck and Paul Desmond when they wrote Blue Rondo a la Turk and Take 5. The 5 in the name is the 5 from the 5/4 rhythm.

Wikipedia informs me that Take 5 is "the biggest-selling jazz single ever", so it's no surprise that there are more covers than you can shake a stick at. The article also notes that the song brings in royalties of over $100,000 a year.

Jazz Covers: Keith Jarrett-My Back Pages

Keith Jarrett: My Back Pages
[purchase] 

Over at Cover Me, in honor of Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday earlier this week, the staff, including yours truly, contributed to a long feature ranking the 100 “best” Dylan covers (although we actually wrote about 124, because while many people see a relationship between music and math, bloggers get to do pretty much whatever we want). 

The way that Cover Me “Best Covers” pieces work is that the editors put out a call to the staff for suggestions, and they gather them, add ones they like, and then choose how many to feature. For the Dylan piece, we submitted well over 200 suggestions, which only scratches the surface of the covers out there. Then, once the poobahs come up with the final list, staffers write up the blurbs for each song, the editors rank the covers and the piece gets posted. Like many of my fellow writers, I suggested a whole bunch of really excellent covers, but not all of them made the final cut. 

One of those that didn’t make it was today’s featured song, a cover of “My Back Pages” by Keith Jarrett. I was kind of disappointed, because I hate rejection and because I think that it’s a great cover, but I used my considerable influence here at Star Maker Machine to suggest a “Jazz Covers” theme that would let me highlight the song. (Although it seems that the description posted of the theme calls for covers of jazz songs, which considering how jazz seems to consist, in large part, on interpretations of “standards,” doesn’t make all that much sense to me. But I suggested the theme, and this is what I meant…) 

I have to admit that when I first heard this song, I believe from a cassette (!) that I nabbed from a discard pile the summer that I worked at Atlantic Records, I thought it was great, and had no clue that it was a Dylan song. First off, as I mention somewhere in the Cover Me piece, my knowledge of Dylan songs was, for a long time, really limited to his most famous songs, and it was only years later that my appreciation of his work increased and broadened. So, at the time I heard this cover, I didn’t recognize the title. If you had said, who wrote the song with the lyric “but I was so much older then/I'm younger than that now.” I might have been able to name the writer. Although I also might have thought that it was The Byrds. But Jarrett’s cover is an instrumental. 

Second, honestly, the music sounds very, very different from Dylan’s (or The Byrds’ for that matter), and you kind of have to know what you are listening for. So, now that I know that it’s a cover, I can (sort of) hear it. That all being said, it is really a beautiful song in its own right. It features a 23 year-old Jarrett on piano, still relatively early in his career, accompanied by the brilliant Charlie Haden on bass and Paul Motian on drums, and was recorded live at Shelly’s Manne-Hole in Hollywood, California in August, 1968, only four years after the original was released on Another Side of Bob Dylan. 

As Motian recalled, 

In those days I think I owned about ten albums by Bob Dylan, and the Beatles and all that. I listened to all that shit, man, that shit was strong. That influenced Keith, it influenced all of us, especially Keith, and the music he was writing too. So we were getting into other areas. We’d never play semi-rock and roll kinds of things with Bill Evans, never. But with Keith that was the times, you know? We’re talking about the very late sixties and the early seventies. 

Jarrett went on to join Miles Davis’ band, and then became one of the most heralded pianists in jazz, as a solo artist, a leader, and as a part of small groups. With Haden and Motian as well as saxophonist Dewey Redman, he formed what was called the “American quartet” while simultaneously playing with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson, and Jon Christensen (the “European quartet”). His collaborations with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette (one of my favorite drummers), for albums of standards and originals, are also incredible. Jarrett also wrote and performed classical music, plays a bunch of other instruments, and even was a musical guest on Saturday Night Live, back when it was more common for the bookers to look beyond the pop charts for guests. 

Unfortunately, Jarrett had a series of strokes in 2018, and can no longer perform.