Essential Viewing
- Thread starter charlie
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charlie
Real Bebopper
Music: Bud Powell, Niels Henning Ørsted, William Schiøpffe
Speaker: Dexter Gordon
Camera Manuscript Instruction: Ole John, Jørgen Leth, Jens Jørgen Thorsen
stop and watch this short “documentary” about Bud Powell
Transcript:
“This is Bud Powell. The amazing Bud Powell. Pianist, Composer, Innovator.
…
*I’ll Keep Loving You - Bud Powell plays*
…
World-Famous pianist, Art Tatum, once told Bud:
‘Yea, you can play Bud, but where’s your left hand?’
and as you will shortly see, Bud’s left hand is… very very big.
Same Bud Powell one time at the Apollo Theatre in New York, marched to the microphone and grandly told the audience:
‘George Shearing is making $3000 per week, while I’m working for scale, a contradiction.’
[Bud] ‘Is that alright?’
Yes, I remember Bud, in the early 40’s when I first came to New York, Bud was working with the big band of Cootie Williams. Later, I met Bud at Mittens Playhouse, where all the Bebop musicians gathered. Including Dizzie Gillespie, Thelonius, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterford. And it was from here that Bud really got into stride, and became a very productive composer. Several tunes such as Bud’s Bubble, Audrey, Cecilia, Bouncing with Bud. Bud innovated on the piano. The ideas of the new music, new at that time… and he became the model for all pianists since.
The Amazing Bud Powell.”
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charlie
Real Bebopper
and self-teaching
with Harry Evans Supervisor Musical Education Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Directed by Louis Cavrell
Transcript: [Bill] "I believe that all people are in possession of what might
be called a 'universal musical mind'. Any true music speaks with this
'universal mind'; to the 'universal mind' in all people. The understanding
that results will vary only insofar as people have or have not been conditioned
to the various styles of music in which the 'universal mind' speaks.
Consequently, often some effort and exposure is necessary in order to
understand some of the music coming from a different period, or a different
culture than that which the listener has been conditioned. I do not agree that
the laymans opinion is less of a valid judgement of music than that of the
professional musician. In fact, I would often rely more on the judgement of a
sensitive layman, than that of the professional, since the professional,
because of his constant involvement with the mechanics of music must fight to
preserve the naivety that the layman already possesses."
As they say on television, "Hello there". My name is... uh.. Steve Allen, and
I'm here to tell you about another piano player. Merely as music lover, as a
listener, I enjoy the piano of Bill Evans. But in my capacity as pianist, and
composer too, I'm enourmously impressed by the scope of his achievement. He's
much more you see than just another good 'Jazz Pianist', although he's
certainly that. But I say he is a force, an influence. There are certain jazz
pianists, I guess Erroll Garner would be the best example to make my point, who
are an art form unto themselves. Uh.. Garner is brilliant, you know that, but
if you deliberately copy his style. For example *begins playing*, it always
comes out sounding a little like a 'put-on'. You know when actors or comedians
turn around and say, 'Judy Judy Judy, I'm Cary Grant and I love you." That sort
of thing. It always sounds like you're kidding rather than doing anything
serious. But Bill Evans, by contrast is a serious influence, and therefore it's
not surprising that he is also an educator, and very much a philosopher too.
And yet, despite this strong influence he has, particularly on a young
generation of musicians, I think the last thing that Bill would wish to do is
create a group of young pianists that play in his style. He argues in fact that
style, for better or for worse, eventually comes of itself; out of that
mysterious interior well of inspiration which I guess nourishes everybody to
one degree or another. It's much more important, Evans feels, to master
fundamentals: both in theory, so that you understand what you are doing, and
then in active practice, developing ones musical muscles. Not just in technical
facility, but the brain connection with the arm muscle so to speak. Developing
that facility to the point where the subconscious mind can take over the basic
mechanical task of playing, thus freeing the conscious to concentrate on the
spontaneous creative element that distinguishes the best jazz and i guess the
best in perhaps all human activity. Now, if that sounds like nonsense to you,
if you're a non-musician let's say, you'll be familiar this separation of
jurisdictions with such common experiences as driving your car. You remember
when you learned to drive. You first consciously learned the separate
movements. Turning the key and pulling... y'know whatever you did. And then you
gradually, relegated all of that movement, all of that individually willed
movement, to the subconscious, which then took over the machine and which
should be made to pay the traffic tickets I think, if we had things running
right. But anyway, your sub-conscious eventually drives around town while your
conscious mind engages in conversation, or listens to the radio or that sort of
thing. Now so often we know nothing of an artist, in various fields, except
what he produces. Well the film now will introduce you to Bill Evans, the man,
as well as Bill the piano player. So here he is, chatting with his brother
Harry Evans, who himself is a music teacher in Baton Rouge, Lousiana.
[Bill] "I think that Jazz is very seldom in its true state as presented to the
average public. They do have an idea of Jazz which isnot quite true. But the
way that I feel about it, is that it is the only form of art that in the way
America has created and given to the world in this century, or the past few
centuries I'd say. But I think it's more of a revival in a different form of
what went on in classical music before. In other words, in the 17th century
there was a great deal of improvisation in classical music, as you know. And
because of the fact that there were no electrical recording techniques, or
anyway to permanize or to catch music, and to record it, the music was written
so that it could be permanized that way. And uh so, slowly but surely, the
writing of the music and the interpreters of the written music gave way to more
and more interpretation, and more and more [...] composition, and less and less
improvisation, until finally improvisation became a lost art in classical
music, and we have only the composer, and the interpreter. So the composer
even, very seldom improvised, or didn't have to, say around in the late 1800's
or turn of the century. But Jazz in a way has ressurected that process, which I
call the 'Jazz Process'. Now jazz as we tend to look at it, is a style, but I
feel that it's not so much a style, as a process of making music. It's the
process of making one-minutes' music in one minute time. Whereas when you
compose, you can make one minutes music and it takes three months, to compose
one-minutes' music. Now that's the only basic difference. Now it so happens
that because of historical circumstances and where Jazz was born or whatever,
came up from Mississippi and American Music and the American Culture and all,
we think of Jazz as a stylistic medium now. And in a way it is, but I think we
must remember that in an absolute sense, Jazz is more of a certain creative
process of spontaneity, then a style. Therefore you might say that Chopin, or
Bach, or Mozart or whoever was able to improvise music, that is whoever was
able to make music of the moment, was in a sense playing Jazz and we leave
style out of it. And that's the way I feel about it in an absolute sense. I
would like to say is that, one of the most thrilling things about Jazz as a
spontaneous creative process, is for instance in recording it, and later
hearing oneself and being so surprised at what has happened, and it might be
interesting to note that any good teacher of composition, that is like serious
classsical music sort of composition, will always tell his student that the
composition should sound improvised. It should have this kind of spontaneous
quality. So actually the art of music is the art of speaking with this
spontaneous quality, and that is the thrilling part of Jazz in that it has more
or less ressurected the art ofspontaneous aspect of music.[....]"
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