Keith Jarrett’s American combo, 1967-1976: Dewey wow them and how!
(after E.I., 2021)
Nine albums:
All music guides lists 1,318 credits.
All music guides lists discography of 104 albums (Although it lists “At Blue Note” as one cd, and says that ECM put out a cd of the “six-disc omnibus” – so I guess that means it was on LP, then a sampler on cd, but now we have access to all six on our various Apple iTune streaming services — last night we were listening to “Desert Sun” for 25 minutes, then when I took a break to watch the dog I quickly cued it up on my own handheld why Duffy did his doo diligence, so to speak — and it made me think of Dayna Stephens “The Nomad”)
But the nine albums with the classic lineup of Keith Jarrett, piano and soprano – sax —; Dewey Redman, reeds; Charlie Haden, bass and Paul Motian, drums. And my naive sense of being a jazz interloper is that I would know them as Joshua Shedroff Rodman’s father; that dog’s dad; a guy who played with Jenny Scheinman, Jenny from down the block, if you lived, like Tony Scher, or Donny McCaslin in Carroll Gardens/Red Hook turn of the century or millennium even, before the towers fell.
Life Between the Exit Signs (1967)
Says EI:
Vince Guaraldi might have broke open this piggy bank in 1962 with “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” Ramsey Lewis released “The In Crowd” in 1965. These were big hits, heard everywhere there was a juke box. The best jazz has always taken from popular music: it is one of the secret sauces in the recipe. Jarrett took from “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” and “The In Crowd.” There is no doubt about it.
He says somewhere else that Cast Your Fate was definitely a model for the now more familiar “Linus and Lucy”.
On the title track, which I’ve conveniently transfered to my handheld as I type:
— Life Between the Exit Signs. The fast waltz is real ’60s music, something like a television commercial or Burt Bacharach. Jarrett liked Dave Brubeck, especially the solo disc Brubeck plays Brubeck, and this tune with marching thirds is a little bit in that lineage — not that Brubeck ever played this loose. They are probably blowing on the form, but it’s all an intentional jumble.
So for me, to break it down:
- Is it a waltz?
- How fast is fast, for waltzes?
- How is this like Bacharach?
- Tv commercials just as zeitgeist or literally the music you’d find in a tv commercial? Now it sounds like I am editing EI or arguing, but I’m not. I’m just trying to step to his step.
- Brubeck Plays Brubeck — see also some recent mathing about, what was it, Brubeck Duke compared to Rollins the Bridge, per Dayna Stephens. And or Taylor Eigsti — who has an e, i, in his name, swiss — Julian Lage and my nephew by marriage Ben Davis.
- marching thirds — something that repeats three times, or is in three parts?
- looser than Brubeck. How loose is loose?
- “blowing” on the form — in the sense of moving it slightly like when you are playing origami football and you are very very close to the edge and so you cheat? Intentional jumble, his words, if not a genre, oxymoron; see also, George Carlin’s “jumbo shrimp… or shrimpy jumbos”. Again, I amniotically am not fluidly dissing Iverson. I’m just in utero. I mean, I try to jumble my mumbo.
On the title track:
Restoration Ruin (1968)
Somewhere Before (1969)
The Mourning of a Star (1971)
Ruta and Daitya (1972)
Expectations (1972)
Fort Yawuh (1973)
Treasure Island (1974)
Death and The Flower (1975)
Bob-Be (1977)
A bit procrustean or scattered; forcused on the American combo not the European ones; not the Japanese imports — things that a kid in WI could buy at the local store. Working towards, to come, verifying some of the statements in Ethan’s article. But for me this is a start.
Speaking of Wisconsin, or when I say “Wisconsin” I am looking ahead and organizing my day around a gridiron clash; the guys from the frozen tundra feature a former Cal quarterback and a wide receiver from here in Palo Alto, he actually apparently went to Barron Park School right behind the old toxic sites of Stanford Industrial Park, which is now mostly software social media and video games, but worth $19B with a B as in Bird and not an M as in Milford Graves.
I like all these cover arts — this one because its January
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 