Hear 4+ Hours of Jazz Noir: A Soundtrack for Strolling Under Street Lights on Foggy Nights

Image from The Big Com­bo, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Nowa­days few crowds seem less like­ly to har­bor crim­i­nal intent than the ones gath­ered to lis­ten to jazz, but sev­en­ty, eighty years ago, Amer­i­can cul­ture cer­tain­ly did­n’t see it that way. Back then, jazz accom­pa­nied the life of urban out­siders: those who dab­bled in for­bid­den sub­stances and for­bid­den activ­i­ties, those influ­enced by the alien moral­i­ty of Europe or even far­ther-away lands, those belong­ing to feared and mis­treat­ed social groups. That image stuck as much or even more firm­ly to jazz musi­cians as it did to jazz lis­ten­ers, and when a new cin­e­mat­ic genre arose specif­i­cal­ly to tell sto­ries of urban out­siders — the lowlifes, the anti heroes, the femmes fatales — jazz pro­vid­ed the ide­al sound­track.

“Jazz dom­i­nates assump­tions about the music used in film noir,” write Andre Spicer and Helen Han­son in A Com­pan­ion to Film Noir, “and it is par­tic­u­lar­ly preva­lent in con­tem­po­rary ref­er­ences to and recre­ations of film noir.”

And “although the num­ber of films noir to employ jazz in their scores was rel­a­tive­ly small, it was still notable in terms of the over­all use of jazz in Hol­ly­wood films of the era — if jazz was an inte­gral part of a film’s score then those pro­duc­tions tend­ed to be films noir or social prob­lem films.” The music first crept in dieget­i­cal­ly, in the 1940s, by way of “club scenes, illic­it jazz ses­sions, or on record play­ers and juke­box­es,” and lat­er, in the 50s, con­tin­ued its “estab­lished asso­ci­a­tion of sex and vio­lence” even as chang­ing atti­tudes “con­tributed to jazz being more accept­able in Hol­ly­wood films.”

A few years ago we fea­tured clas­sic works of “crime jazz” by Miles Davis, Count Basie, Duke Elling­ton and oth­ers, all meant to set the scene for the law­less worlds of films and tele­vi­sion shows like Anato­my of a Mur­der, Ele­va­tor to the Gal­lows, Peter Gunn, and The M Squad. The two playlists we have for you today take a wider view, col­lect­ing more than four hours of “jazz noir” on Spo­ti­fy (if you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, you can down­load it here). It fea­tures tracks by Miles Davis, Chet Bak­er, Ben­ny Gol­son, Tom Waits and more. While lis­ten­ing — maybe with the lights dimmed, maybe with your pre­ferred high­ball in hand — you might con­sid­er brows­ing the r/jazznoir, an entire sub­red­dit ded­i­cat­ed to this “mys­te­ri­ous, melan­choly and men­ac­ing music by swingin’ sax men and sul­try sirens for hard­boiled hep­cats and leg­gy look­ers,” this “late-night lis­ten­ing for luck­less losers, and the sound­track to strolls under street lights on fog­gy nights.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Crime Jazz: How Miles Davis, Count Basie & Duke Elling­ton Cre­at­ed Sound­tracks for Noir Films & TV

60 Free Film Noir Movies

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

Roger Ebert Lists the 10 Essen­tial Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Noir Films

The Essen­tial Ele­ments of Film Noir Explained in One Grand Info­graph­ic

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

“A Brief History of Goths”: From the Goths, to Gothic Literature, to Goth Music

The his­to­ry of the word ‘Goth­ic,’” argues Dan Adams in the short, ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video above,” is embed­ded in thou­sands of years’ worth of coun­ter­cul­tur­al move­ments.” It’s a provoca­tive, if not entire­ly accu­rate, idea. We would hard­ly call an invad­ing army of Ger­man­ic tribes a “coun­ter­cul­ture.” In fact, when the Goths sacked Rome and deposed the West­ern Emper­or, they did, at first, retain the dom­i­nant cul­ture. But the Goth­ic has always referred to an oppo­si­tion­al force, a Dionysian coun­ter­weight to a ratio­nal, clas­si­cal order.

We know the var­i­ous ver­sions: the Ger­man­ic insti­ga­tors of the “Dark Ages,” ear­ly Chris­t­ian archi­tec­tur­al mar­vels, Roman­tic tales of ter­ror and the super­nat­ur­al, hor­ror films, and gloomy, black-clad post punks and their moody teenage fans. Aside from obvi­ous ref­er­ences like Bauhaus’ tongue-in-cheek ode, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” the con­nec­tive tis­sue between all the uses of Goth­ic isn’t espe­cial­ly evi­dent. “What do fans of atmos­pher­ic post-punk music,” asks Adams, “have in com­mon with ancient bar­bar­ians?” The answer: not much. But the sto­ry that joins them involves some strange con­ver­gences, all of them hav­ing to do with the idea of “dark­ness.”

Two sig­nif­i­cant fig­ures in the evo­lu­tion of the Goth­ic as a con­scious­ly-defined aes­thet­ic were both art his­to­ri­ans. The first, Gior­gio Vasari—con­sid­ered the first art historian—wrote biogra­phies of great Renais­sance artists, and first used the term Goth­ic to refer to medieval cathe­drals, which he saw as bar­barous next to the neo­clas­si­cal revival of the 14th-16th cen­turies. (Vasari was also the first to use the term “Renais­sance” to describe his own peri­od.) Two hun­dred years after Vasari’s Lives, art his­to­ri­an, anti­quar­i­an, and Whig politi­cian Horace Wal­pole appro­pri­at­ed the term Goth­ic to describe The Cas­tle of Otran­to, his 1765 nov­el that start­ed a lit­er­ary trend.

Wal­pole also used the term to refer to art of the dis­tant past, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ruins of cas­tles and cathe­drals, with an eye toward the sup­pos­ed­ly exot­ic, men­ac­ing aspects (for Protes­tant Eng­lish read­ers at least) of the Catholic church and Con­ti­nen­tal Euro­pean nobil­i­ty. But for him, the asso­ci­a­tions were pos­i­tive, and con­sti­tut­ed a kitschy escape from Enlight­en­ment ratio­nal­ism. We have Wal­pole to thank, in some sense, for ersatz cel­e­bra­tions like Renais­sance Fairs and Medieval Times restau­rants, and for lat­er Goth­ic nov­els like Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la, Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein, and the weird tales of Edgar Allan Poe.

We can see that it’s a rather short leap from clas­sic hor­ror sto­ries and films to the dark make­up, teased hair, fog machines, and swirling atmos­pher­ics of The Cure and Siouxsie Sioux. In the his­to­ry of the Goth­ic, espe­cial­ly between Vasari and Wal­pole, the word moves from a term of abuse—describing art thought to be “crude and inferior”—to one that describes art forms con­sid­ered mys­te­ri­ous, and dark­ly Roman­tic. For anoth­er take on the sub­ject, see Pitch­fork’s  music-focused, ani­mat­ed, and  “sur­pris­ing­ly light-heart­ed” short, “A Brief His­to­ry of Goth,” above, a pre­sen­ta­tion on the sub­cul­ture’s rise, fall, and undead rise again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three-Hour Mix­tape Offers a Son­ic Intro­duc­tion to Under­ground Goth Music

A His­to­ry of Alter­na­tive Music Bril­liant­ly Mapped Out on a Tran­sis­tor Radio Cir­cuit Dia­gram: 300 Punk, Alt & Indie Artists

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Lou Reed Creates a List of the 10 Best Records of All Time

If you want to write, most every writer will tell you, you’ve got to read, read, read, and read. “Read more than you write,” advis­es Teju Cole. Even great film­mak­ers like Wern­er Her­zog and Aki­ra Kura­sawa cite copi­ous read­ing as a pre­req­ui­site for their pri­mar­i­ly visu­al medi­um. But what about music? What advice might we hope to receive about the art of writ­ing mem­o­rable, cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant songs? Lis­ten, lis­ten, lis­ten, and lis­ten, per­haps.

One of the great­est of rock and roll greats, Lou Reed, had overt lit­er­ary ambi­tions, formed dur­ing his years as an Eng­lish major at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, where he stud­ied under poet Del­more Schwartz. “Hubert Sel­by, William Bur­roughs, Allen Gins­berg and Del­more Schwartz,” he once told Spin, “To be able to achieve what they did, in such lit­tle space, using such sim­ple words. I thought if you could do what those writ­ers did and put it to drums and gui­tar, you’d have the great­est thing on earth.”

The­mat­i­cal­ly, Reed accom­plished this, bring­ing the same vio­lence, ten­der­ness, and street­wise deca­dence to his work as his lit­er­ary heroes did to theirs. But for­mal­ly, he drew on anoth­er bat­tery of influ­ences: clas­sic soul, doo wop, rhythm and blues, folk, jazz, and ear­ly rock and roll. Crib­bing from all these gen­res dur­ing his long career, Reed dis­played a seem­ing­ly effort­less mas­tery of arche­typ­al Amer­i­can pop music.

Unlike Leonard Cohen—another lit­er­ary song­writer drawn to life’s dark­er themes—Reed did not leave col­lege and start pub­lish­ing poet­ry. In 1964, he moved to New York to begin work as an in-house song­writer for Pick­wick Records, soak­ing up the music around him through his pores, trans­mut­ing it into his own warped take on ear­ly hits like his dance craze, “The Ostrich,” which includ­ed the line “put your head on the floor and have some­body step on it.”

As weird as Reed was even then, he wrote immense­ly catchy tunes and even­tu­al­ly inspired sev­er­al thou­sand punk, post-punk, alter­na­tive, and indie song­writ­ers with the nov­el idea that one could make dan­ger­ous, shock­ing music with sim­ple, catchy—even bubblegum—melodies. Per­haps no one had as great an effect on post-60s rock, but Reed’s own influ­ences drew solid­ly from the fifties and before, as par­tial­ly evi­denced in his own hand, in a scrawled list of “best albums of all time,” which he sub­mit­ted for a 1999 mag­a­zine inter­view.

1. Change of the Cen­tu­ry—Ornette Cole­man
2. Tilt—Scott Walk­er / Belle—Al Green / Any­thing by Jim­my Scott
3. Blood on the Tracks—Bob Dylan
4. Lit­tle Richard’s Spe­cial­ty Series
5. Hank Williams’ Sin­gles
6. Har­ry Smith Anthol­o­gy
7. Does Your House Have Lions—Roland Kirk
8. “Stay with Me Baby”—Lor­raine Elli­son
9. “Moth­er”—John Lennon
10.“Oh Super­man”—Lau­rie Ander­son & Unit­ed States

The list, tran­scribed above, includes the three-vol­ume Spe­cial­ty Ses­sions at num­ber 4, a com­pre­hen­sive omnibus of Lit­tle Richard hits. Below it is Hank Williams’ 3‑disc sin­gles col­lec­tion, and fur­ther down, at twice the size, Har­ry Smith’s enor­mous Anthol­o­gy of Amer­i­can Folk Music. By far, the bulk of Reed’s sug­ges­tions saw release before he ever put pen to paper and came up with “The Ostrich.” We’re just peek­ing into the six­ties with Ornette Cole­mans’ Change of the Cen­tu­ry, at num­ber one.

But you’ll also note that, tied at num­ber two with Al Green’s Belle and “Any­thing by Jim­my Scott” (mak­ing his list of ten come out to 13), we have Scott Walker’s bizarre, exper­i­men­tal 1995 mas­ter­piece Tilt (hear “Farmer in the City” fur­ther up), a return from obliv­ion for the reclu­sive six­ties croon­er and an album, writes All­mu­sic, “on a plateau some­where between Nico’s Mar­ble Index and Lou Reed’s Met­al Machine Music.” Ever mod­est (he once claimed, “my bull­shit is worth more than oth­er people’s dia­monds”), Reed was acute­ly aware of his own piv­otal place in 20th cen­tu­ry music, though he does refrain from list­ing one of his own records. He ends instead with the puls­ing, trance-like sin­gle “Oh Super­man,” by his roman­tic and musi­cal part­ner, Lau­rie Ander­son.

Who knows how seri­ous­ly Reed took this assign­ment, giv­en how much he could be “cir­cum­spect about the mate­ri­als and meth­ods of his art” in his often con­fronta­tion­al pub­lic state­ments. That same year, VH1 polled sev­er­al jour­nal­ists and “esteemed musi­cians,” writes the music chan­nel, on their choice of the 100 great­est songs of rock and roll. “Nat­u­ral­ly we approached Reed, who sent his choic­es back via fax. In true icon­o­clast form, instead of list­ing out his 100 favorite songs, he picked just eight.” Only two of the artists from his top ten appear here: Lor­raine Elli­son and Al Green. See his hand-writ­ten bal­lot above, and the eight songs list­ed below.

1. “Stay With Me” by Lor­raine Elli­son
2.“Out­cast” by Eddie and Ernie
3. “Lovin’ You Too Long” by Otis Red­ding
4. “Riv­er Deep Moun­tain High” by Ike & Tina Turn­er
5. + 6. “Geor­gia Boy” and “Belle” by Al Green
7. “That’s Alright Mama” by Elvis Pres­ley
8. “I Can’t Stand the Rain” by Ann Pee­bles

via @LouReed

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Ornette Cole­man Col­lab­o­rate with Lou Reed, Which Lou Called “One of My Great­est Moments”

Lou Reed and Lau­rie Anderson’s Three Rules for Liv­ing Well: A Short and Suc­cinct Life Phi­los­o­phy

Lou Reed Reads Del­more Schwartz’s Famous Sto­ry “In Dreams Begin Respon­si­bil­i­ties”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Sgt. Pepper’s Album Cover Gets Reworked to Remember Icons Lost in 2016

We’re just days away from the 50th anniver­sary of the release of The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. And, as we men­tioned last week, the BBC has kicked off the cel­e­bra­tions with a series of videos that intro­duce you to the 60+ fig­ures who appeared in the card­board col­lage that graced the album’s icon­ic cov­er. Bob Dylan, Edgar Allan Poe, William S. Bur­roughs, Albert Ein­stein, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, HG Wells, Shirley Temple–they all get a video intro­duc­tion, among oth­ers.

His­toric as it is, the Pep­per cov­er recent­ly became a good vehi­cle for remem­ber­ing the bewil­der­ing num­ber of musi­cians, artists and celebri­ties who left this mor­tal coil in 2016. Above you can see an illus­tra­tion cre­at­ed by Twit­ter user @christhebarker in the wan­ing days of last year. If you look close­ly, you can see some thought went into the design. Muham­mad Ali, for exam­ple, now stands where box­er Son­ny Lis­ton did in the orig­i­nal. Find them all in a larg­er for­mat here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet the Icon­ic Fig­ures on the Cov­er of The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band

How The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cov­er Design For­ev­er

Jimi Hen­drix Plays “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band” for The Bea­t­les, Just Three Days After the Album’s Release (1967)

Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell Sings Haunting Acoustic Covers of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” & Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”

I entered high school to the huge sounds of Soundgarden’s sec­ond album, Loud­er than Love, play­ing at home, in friends’ cars, on MTV’s 120 Min­utes late at night.… The band’s debut, and two pre­vi­ous EPs released on Seattle’s Sub Pop records, had not attract­ed much notice out­side of a fair­ly small scene. But Loud­er than Love—espe­cial­ly “Hands All Over”—was as hooky and alarm­ing as break­through sin­gles by oth­er emerg­ing bands on the oth­er side of the coun­try, while los­ing none of the propul­sive grit, groove, and raw, metal/hardcore pow­er of their ear­li­er work. Thou­sands of new lis­ten­ers start­ed pay­ing atten­tion.

But there’s anoth­er rea­son the songs on Loud­er than Love res­onat­ed so strong­ly (and scored them a major label deal). The album announced singer Chris Cor­nell as a vocal­ist to be reck­oned with—a singer with incred­i­ble pow­er, melod­ic instinct, and a four-octave range.

On songs like “Hands All Over” and “Loud Love,” he broke away from a fair­ly nar­row Ozzy Osbourne/Robert Plant style he’d cul­ti­vat­ed and intro­duced a sound that took both influ­ences in a direc­tion nei­ther had gone before, one full of anguish, urgency, and even men­ace.

Mil­lions more got to know Cornell’s voice after Supe­run­k­nown’s “Black Hole Sun,” but even then no one would have pre­dict­ed the direc­tion he would go in after leav­ing Soundgar­den. He inject­ed soul and sen­si­tiv­i­ty into songs like Audioslave’s “Orig­i­nal Fire” and “Be Your­self”—love ‘em or don’t—qualities we can hear in abun­dance in his cov­ers of sen­si­tive and soul­ful songs like Prince’s “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U” and Michael Jackson’s “Bil­lie Jean.” In his unplugged ver­sion of Jack­son’s pop mas­ter­piece the song acquires the heav­i­ness and griev­ous beau­ty of a mur­der bal­lad. And I mean that entire­ly as a com­pli­ment. He brings “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U” into “soul­ful new life,” as Slate writes, which is say­ing quite a lot, giv­en that Sinead O’Connor’s ver­sion is more or less per­fect.

Cor­nell took his own life at age 52 on Wednes­day night after play­ing with a reunit­ed Soundgar­den in Detroit, and after strug­gling with depres­sion for many years. It’s true he was nev­er laud­ed as a song­writer of a Prince/Michael Jack­son cal­iber. His lyrics were often tossed-off free asso­ci­a­tions rather than care­ful­ly craft­ed nar­ra­tives. One’s appre­ci­a­tion for them is a mat­ter of taste. But like the artists he cov­ers here, both of whom also died trag­i­cal­ly in their 50s, his music reflect­ed a deep con­cern for the state of the world. This comes through clear­ly in songs like “Hands All Over,” “Hunger Strike,” and in some point­ed com­ments he made dur­ing his final per­for­mance.

Rolling Stone has a few more acoustic Cor­nell cov­ers of Metal­li­ca, the Bea­t­les, Elvis Costel­lo, and more, and they’re all great. He did a pro­found­ly affect­ing, gospel-like take on Whit­ney Hous­ton’s bel­ter, “I Will Always Love You.” But for a true, and tru­ly heart­break­ing, exam­ple of how he could imbue a song with his “unfor­get­table vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty,” watch him play Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” at New York’s Bea­con The­ater in 2015 above, in an absolute­ly riv­et­ing duet with his daugh­ter, Toni. Cor­nell will be dear­ly missed by every­one who knew him, and by the mil­lions of peo­ple who were deeply moved by his voice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prince Plays Unplugged and Wraps the Crowd Around His Lit­tle Fin­ger (2004)

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Two Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (Sep­tem­ber 26, 1991)

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Everything Thing You Ever Wanted to Know About the Synthesizer: A Vintage Three-Hour Crash Course

Recent­ly I’ve been div­ing back into mak­ing music on my lap­top. Just like the iPhone has done to bulky equip­ment like cam­eras and key­boards, the dig­i­tal work­sta­tion has shrunk tons of gear, from music to mas­ter­ing, down into soft­ware. There’s cer­tain­ly no way I’m going to lug a mini-Moog to a cof­fee shop. But I’m will­ing to dab­ble with synth soft­ware, turn those dials and knobs, and see what hap­pens.

So this upload of “Intro to Syn­the­sis,” an instruc­tion­al VHS from 1985, is per­fect for me, and maybe you too. The hair, the clothes, and the jokes might be dat­ed, but the info is not. In the above video, Dean Friedman–who if you close your eyes sounds like late night host Seth Meyers–lays out the build­ing blocks of sound (pitch, tim­bre, vol­ume), the five types of wave­forms, and the sev­en com­po­nents of a syn­the­siz­er, from oscil­la­tors to the LFO.

All of these fea­tures are still found on the synth inter­faces used today in some form or anoth­er, and Fried­man goes through every ele­ment at a method­i­cal but appre­ci­at­ed pace. The three videos are an hour each.

And it pays to study the con­trols of synths and learn what makes them tick. The Yama­ha DX‑7 con­tained many pre-sets which, unfid­dled with, sound dat­ed and appear on many an ‘80s pop hit. Mean­while, Bri­an Eno, one of the few to actu­al­ly read the man­u­al, made “The Shutov Assem­bly” and oth­er mid-era ambi­ent tracks with the very same machine and noth­ing sounds quite like it.
Hap­py twid­dling!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 10-Hour Playlist of Music Inspired by Robert Moog’s Icon­ic Syn­the­siz­er: Hear Elec­tron­ic Works by Kraftwerk, Devo, Ste­vie Won­der, Rick Wake­man & More

Dis­cov­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Music: 1983 Doc­u­men­tary Offers a Fun & Edu­ca­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Elec­tron­ic Music

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music Visu­al­ized on a Cir­cuit Dia­gram of a 1950s Theremin: 200 Inven­tors, Com­posers & Musi­cians

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Hear 2,000 Recordings of the Most Essential Jazz Songs: A Huge Playlist for Your Jazz Education

If you were to ask me “What is jazz?” I wouldn’t pre­sume to know the answer, and I’m not sure any sin­gle com­po­si­tion exists to which one could point to as an ide­al type. Maybe the only thing I’m cer­tain of when it comes to jazz is—to quote Wal­lace Stevens—“it must change.”

Of course, there’s an incred­i­bly rich his­to­ry of jazz, broad­ly known, espe­cial­ly to those who have seen Ken Burns’ expan­sive doc­u­men­tary. I’d also rec­om­mend the excel­lent jazz writ­ing of Amiri Bara­ka, Stan­ley Crouch, or Philip Larkin. For the young, we might con­sult Langston Hugh­es’ illus­trat­ed jazz his­to­ry. And maybe every­one should read Charles Min­gus’ Gram­my-nom­i­nat­ed essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?” in which the con­trar­i­an genius writes, “each jazz musi­cian is sup­posed to be a com­pos­er. Whether he is or not, I don’t know.”

Min­gus the icon­o­clast argued for tear­ing up the text even as he sought a clas­si­cal pedi­gree for jazz. His wish was part­ly grant­ed by the influ­ence of jazz on com­posers like Leonard Bern­stein, who sought to answer the ques­tion “What is Jazz?” in a 1956 spo­ken-word LP. The ten­sion between jazz as a com­po­si­tion­al or whol­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al art seems to resound through­out the form, in all of its many guis­es and vari­a­tions. But one thing I think every jazz musi­cian knows is this: Stan­dards, a com­mon com­pendi­um of songs in the tra­di­tion.

You’ve got to know the rule­book (or the fake­book, at the least), before you can throw it out the win­dow. Even some of the most inno­v­a­tive jazz artists who more or less invent­ed their own scales, modes, and harmonies—like Cecil Tay­lor and Ornette Cole­man—either stud­ied at con­ser­va­to­ry or paid their dues as side­men play­ing oth­er people’s songs. Jazz—Coleman once told Jacques Der­ri­da—is “a con­ver­sa­tion with sounds.” Its under­ly­ing gram­mar comes from the Stan­dards.

Until fair­ly recent­ly, the only way one could get a prop­er edu­ca­tion in the stan­dards was on the job. Crit­ic, jazz his­to­ri­an, and pianist Ted Gioia writes as much in his com­pre­hen­sive 2012 ref­er­ence, The Jazz Stan­dards: A Guide to the Reper­toire. Gioia’s “edu­ca­tion in this music was hap­pen­stance and hard earned.” He writes, “aspir­ing musi­cians today can hard­ly imag­ine how opaque the art form was just a few decades ago—no school I attend­ed had a jazz pro­gram or even offered a sin­gle course on jazz.”

How times have changed. These days, if you can get in, you can take grad­u­ate-lev­el class­es taught by the greats, such as Her­bie Han­cock and Wayne Short­er at UCLA. Hun­dreds more less-famous jazz musi­cian pro­fes­sors stand at the ready in music depart­ments world­wide or at the renowned Berklee Col­lege of Music.

But for those auto­di­dacts out there, Gioia—who has served on the fac­ul­ty at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and been called “one of the out­stand­ing music his­to­ri­ans in America”—offers an excep­tion­al guide to the Stan­dards, one we can not only read, but also, thanks to Jim Hig­gins of the Jour­nal Sen­tinel, lis­ten to, in the Spo­ti­fy playlist above. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.) In a com­pan­ion essay, Hig­gins describes the process of com­pil­ing “as many of the per­for­mances [Gioia] rec­om­mend­ed” in his com­men­tary on 250 jazz stan­dards.

Gioia names over 2,000 dif­fer­ent per­for­mances of those 250 stan­dards, and the playlist con­tains near­ly all of them. You’ll find, for exam­ple, “sev­er­al dif­fer­ent record­ings of ‘In a Sen­ti­men­tal Mood’ by the com­pos­er (includ­ing one with John Coltrane), as well as ver­sions by Son­ny Rollins, Art Tatum, McCoy Tyn­er, Abdul­lah Ibrahim and Bud­dy Tate, and Chris Pot­ter.” While the playlist is “not a com­plete reflec­tion of Gioia’s rec­om­men­da­tions,” giv­en that cer­tain artists’ work can­not be streamed, “there’s a lot of music here”—a whole lot—“spanning a cen­tu­ry.”

The expe­ri­ence of lis­ten­ing to this incred­i­ble library will not be com­plete with­out some con­text. Gioia’s book con­tains a “short his­tor­i­cal and musi­cal essay” on each of the 250 songs and he isn’t shy about offer­ing inci­sive crit­i­cal com­men­tary. Oth­er than going to music school or join­ing a tour­ing band, I can’t think of a bet­ter way to learn the Stan­dards.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear What is Jazz?: Leonard Bernstein’s Intro­duc­tion to the Great Amer­i­can Art Form (1956)

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Langston Hugh­es Presents the His­to­ry of Jazz in an Illus­trat­ed Children’s Book (1955)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

The MC5 Performs at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention, Right Before All Hell Breaks Loose

With some rare excep­tions (Sid and Nan­cyI’m Not There, maybe Walk the Line and Cadil­lac Records), biopics usu­al­ly stum­ble bad­ly when they try to recre­ate the per­son­al­i­ties and atmos­pheres of famous musi­cians. For this rea­son I am grate­ful that no stu­dio has yet attempt­ed a nar­ra­tive of one of my favorite bands, the not-quite-famous MC5. On the oth­er hand, it’s hard to believe there’s no script in devel­op­ment some­where. If there’s one band whose story—and music—deserves a wider audi­ence, it’s this one. Sad­ly, gui­tarist Wayne Kramer has sup­pressed a very well-reviewed doc­u­men­tary that might do them as much jus­tice as any film can.

Formed in Lin­coln Park Michi­gan in 1964, the “Motor City 5” became syn­ony­mous with Detroit’s left­ist polit­i­cal scene. They were also some of the most uncom­pro­mis­ing garage rock­ers to emerge from the era, along with pro­to-punks The Stooges, with whom they often per­formed.

By the time of the infa­mous 1968 Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­ven­tion in Chica­go—well-known for the bru­tal attacks of police against thou­sands of aggriev­ed protesters—the MC5 had become heav­i­ly influ­enced by Fred Hamp­ton and Huey New­ton. Under their man­ag­er John Sin­clair, they became promi­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the “White Pan­thers,” an anti-racist ana­logue of the Black Pan­thers formed on a sug­ges­tion of Newton’s.

In Sep­tem­ber of 1968, Sin­clair would be indict­ed for tak­ing part in the bomb­ing a CIA office in Ann Arbor. But exact­ly one month pri­or, he presided over the MC5’s appear­ance at the riotous Chica­go Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion. The band was booked as part of Abbie Hoffman’s attempt to stage a “Fes­ti­val of Life,” bring­ing 100,000 young peo­ple to the city “for five days of peace, love, and music,” writes the site Chica­go ’68, to “redi­rect youth cul­ture and music toward polit­i­cal ends.” Fit­ting­ly, per­haps, the MC5 was the only band that showed up after Hoff­man and his Yip­pies failed to secure the per­mits. They played for less than an hour to a crowd of a few thou­sand. Kramer remem­bered the day in a 2008 inter­view:

There was no stage, there was no flatbed truck, there was no sound sys­tem, there were no por­ta-toi­lets, there was no elec­tric­i­ty. We had to run an elec­tri­cal cord from the hot dog stand to pow­er our gear. We played on the ground in the mid­dle of Lin­coln Park in Chica­go with the crowd all around us sit­ting on the ground, in the back stand­ing. I’m going to guess there were maybe 3,000 young peo­ple there. And it was very tense. The Chica­go police had been very aggres­sive and very intim­i­dat­ing all day, and even though it was a rock con­cert and we were the only band to play, it didn’t feel like a rock con­cert. There was a dark cloud over the day because we knew the like­li­hood of peo­ple being hurt was great.

The only film we seem to have of the event is silent sur­veil­lance footage at the top of the post. Fur­ther down, see clips of the riot­ing that ensued, with the band’s hit “Kick Out the Jams” played over it. And just below, see a video of them play­ing the song over a back­drop of riot footage. They released their debut album, Kick Out the Jams , the fol­low­ing year. It was an uneven col­lec­tion of per­for­mances, but “when they got it right,” says Michael Hann, “they sim­ply got it com­plete­ly right.” It was cer­tain­ly their phi­los­o­phy to go all in. As Kramer described it, “You have to come ear­ly, and you have to stay late. The song doesn’t say, ‘Slide out the jams.” It doesn’t say, ‘Stroll out the jams.” It says, ‘Kick out the jams!’”

What I find fas­ci­nat­ing about the emer­gence of the MC5 at this time in his­to­ry is how great of a con­trast they pre­sent­ed to the weary blues of the Rolling Stones, who became grim­ly linked in ’69 at Alta­mont with the cyn­i­cal end of flower pow­er. Despite their asso­ci­a­tion with the vio­lent spec­ta­cle of the DNC riots—another sign of the hip­pie apocalypse—the MC5 became the sound­track for peo­ple pow­er, and in a way bridged the R&B, garage rock, psy­che­delia, punk, and met­al of the grit­ty 1970s to come. But addic­tion, polit­i­cal repres­sion, and cen­sor­ship killed the band a few years lat­er. Lead singer Rob Tyn­er died in 1991, and gui­tarist Fred “Son­ic” Smith, who mar­ried Pat­ti Smith, passed away in 1994.

Kramer has car­ried on, and still tours (and gives lec­tures). When he revis­it­ed the DNC in 2008 for an unof­fi­cial per­for­mance and anti-war protest, he reflect­ed on the pol­i­tics of the day. “It will be help­ful not to have to bat­tle as hard as we have with the Bush admin­is­tra­tion,” he told The Huff­in­g­ton Post, “but Barack Oba­ma can­not save us. It’s real­ly a mat­ter of peo­ple them­selves tak­ing action in their own neigh­bor­hoods, at their own jobs, in their own homes, with their own friends, their own co-work­ers, to move us into the future, a more just world.” The peo­ple pow­er the MC5 rep­re­sent­ed lives on even into this grim era, and the band itself will always live in leg­end, if not—for good or ill—in cin­e­ma.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Web Com­ic Revis­its the Artists & Writ­ers at the Bloody ’68 Con­ven­tion: Jean Genet, William S. Bur­roughs & More

Hear the First Live Per­for­mance of the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sug­ar:” Record­ed at the Fate­ful Alta­mont Free Con­cert in 1969

A Gallery of Visu­al­ly Arrest­ing Posters from the May 1968 Paris Upris­ing

New Jim Jar­musch Doc­u­men­tary on Iggy Pop & The Stooges Now Stream­ing Free on Ama­zon Prime

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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