When I was seventeen and a senior in high school I decided I wanted to play piano again. I had taken lessons until I was twelve, then got bored with my teacher and practice – not untypical for a sixth grader. By senior year, I had rediscovered music, but wanted to play it on my own terms. My parents agreed, in that it was clear if I was going to take lessons, I was paying. They already had one son studying music in college, and I think, at least subconsciously, they were reluctant to have another.
A kid I knew at school suggested I take with his teacher. I was thinking rock and roll – I loved Nicky Hopkins on the Stones records and his performance on the Quicksilver Messenger Service’s “Just For Love”.
I didn’t get rock and roll. The teacher was a jazz teacher, and a formidable one at that. His name was John Mehegan, and he had literally written the book on jazz piano improvisation. I didn’t know any of this about him – I was an idiot seventeen year old. I showed up at 10:30 on a Saturday morning and he put me through the paces. He had me return to classical piano to learn fingering. He taught me voicings and a modal approach that I still carry around with me today, even though most of my songs are three chords and a little bit of the truth.
He wasn’t interested in me if I hadn’t practiced. One week I hadn’t done anything, and he walked out in the middle of the lesson. I stayed there until my time was finished and left. The next week, an assistant appeared, and I had the assistant for a month. One week I worked extra hard on “All The Things You Are”, and the next week, Mehegan reappeared, as if I had passed some test.
He also had me listen. He gave me a list of records to go out and buy. I went down to Klein’s on Main Street in Westport, CT and Sally, the queen of the record shop, guided me to the jazz section, where I bought music that was very foreign to me. I lay down on my bed at home, put on the cheesy earphones I bought at Radio Shack and listened. Over and over. Blowin’ the Blues Away by Horace Silver. The Blues and the Abstract Truth by Oliver Nelson (monster album). Maiden Voyage by Herbie Hancock (another monster album). I had already fallen in love with Les McAnn and Eddie Harris’s “Swiss Movement”, and of course the song “Compared to What”, which defines blues/funk jazz, with his amazing vocals on it, recorded right at the height of the Vietnam War.
A lot more – all kinds of stuff I never knew existed. I listened to all of it over and over again, trying to understand what was happening.
And then there was Kind of Blue by Miles Davis – with Coltrane, and Cannonball Adderly and Wynton Kelly (for one song), and the impressionistic playing of Bill Evans, defining modal harmonies. Paul Chamber’s bass notes – that soft, ascending riff that opens up the whole album – were like a secret, a hint of what was to come. Mehegan gave me the chord progressions and voicings of “So What” and I almost wet my pants when I played those amazing chords and the sound came out of my own fingers.
I’ve been thinking about Kind of Blue lately, and the other music I listened to that year, late in high school, because it strikes me that it’s rarely that I listen to music so intensely anymore. I could sing every solo that Miles played (still can, when it comes on). I knew the first note of every tune before it played, and could also predict exactly how much space was between each track on the recording. Because I listened to that stuff so intensely, it influenced the way I thought about music and played it. It made me a better musician to know every note, every hesitation and slur and chord change involved.
And of course, it wasn’t just jazz, though jazz was terra incognita, and therefore more impressive to me. I wore out the grooves on Crosby Stills and Nash’s first album. And Who’s Next, too. My girlfriend gave me Blue by Joni Mitchell (one of the truly great albums of all time, to my mind), and I learned every phrase. Love helps, of course.
Are there albums out there today that will define a genre of music, or a trend, or a period, like Kind of Blue did, or Blue, or Rubber Soul, or even Graceland? What new recordings bear a hundred listenings? Do we listen that closely any more?
Very rarely. There seems to be too much music, even though much of it is unbelievably wonderful. Now, music serves as soundtrack, not as a proposition demanding center stage. I have tried, lately, to just lie down and listen to one recording. I should just choose one album and listen over and over, and give it the care that the musician gives to it, until I know every note – then I would learn from it – something different from what I get from a cursory listening to see if I “like” it. I suppose part of it is that my hard drive is full, and my mindset is more rigid than it was when I was seventeen. But part of it, most of it, is time – which is, after all, what music is made of. Music requires time. Just like life. Just like love.
What recording does it for you?
Gosh there are so many. Blue, of course. Tapestry. Madonna’s Ray of Light, believe it or not. Right at this moment I’m intensely immersed in Bill Staines’ The Second Million Miles. Graceland, definitely, and a couple other of Paul Simon’s albums. The Duhks, Migrations.
I love your point that when you get to know the music as well as the artist (if that’s possible), then you can learn from it.
I totally wore out my first copy of Kind of Blue when I was in college. Working on the CD now with my second lp on the rack downstairs. The other album that does the same thing for me is Clapton’s Unplugged. I can sit an listen with that “intensity” over and over. Some cuts make me have more fun, but some just need to be listened to deeply and with complete concentration. Thanks for the memory. Think I’d better go dig out my vinyl copy of Kind of Blue. It’s probably lonely.
JB
Bill,
One quick comment about the Big Dogs. You put so much love into your craft it shines from you during your performance. And your audience wants nothing more than to give it back to you. If “..the only measure of your work and your deeds..is the love you leave behind when your gone..” then you are worth 9X your weight in gold. We all know the truch about the big dogs anyway, they’ve all been neutered.
Music, Ooo Baby, Baby. Motown, R&B like Bonnie Rait. CSN, JT, Joni of course. Song for a Seagull and Song for the Roses. More recently Dawes “When my time comes” and Levon Helms “When I go away”. Pat Wictor has a good cd “Waiting for the Water”. If you don’t know these check them out.
And when are we going to hear that lovely baritone range of yours doing the blues?? Harley with some bass guitar??? What do you think??
I think it helps to be learning an instrument. That brings a focus to the listening that’s otherwise absent—for me, anyway.
Having a car commute of 20 mins or more is also pretty good for music appreciation, I find (so long as it’s not too eventful).
I’ve been trying to learn finger style guitar. Many of John Fahey’s recordings stand out in the way you describe, but if I had to pick one, I’d recommend his album America.
You ask, “Are there albums out there today that will define a genre of music, or a trend, or a period, like Kind of Blue did, or Blue, or Rubber Soul, or even Graceland? What new recordings bear a hundred listenings? Do we listen that closely any more? ” At age 47, I can’t say I’m well versed in the latest music, but I got into Radiohead a few years back and I think for many younger listeners they are putting out the kind of music you are referring to. I have been listening to their latest album, The King of Limbs, intensely as you describe, getting to know the subtle shifts of phrase and coming and going of sounds. And I’m not otherwise a fan of electronic music. Search “King of Limbs” on youtube and check out Lotus Flower.
I have been able to listen to it over and over by loading it on the iPod and listening while I exercise – not the same as a good stereo but better than nothing.
Yes – Radiohead is really good. But what I still wonder about is not the quality of the music, but my ability to listen to it. I’ve found a bunch of recordings that have incredible resonance for me (Mark Knopler and Emmylou Harris’s album “All the Roadrunning”, albums by the English band Bellowhead, e.g.) but what about ones that define us. That said, it probably is generational – my songs, two very good musicians, like Radiohead a lot. Thanks.
A trend right now? Maybe Western musicians collaborating with many others from multiple traditions, like Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and Bobby McFerrin’s recent projects. Artists have been doing it for a while (Herb Alpert with Hugh Masakela, Eric Clapton with Bob Marley, Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo on Graceland); what’s different is maybe a more equal collaboration producing an even more layered, complex sound.
“What new recordings bear a hundred listenings? Do we listen that closely any more? ”
Bobby McFerrin’s VOCAbuLarieS (2010) is doing it for me right now. Seven McFerrin songs in new arrangements, with over 50 singers. I can’t imagine ever getting tired of it, and I’m listening in hope of singing at least some of it.
A car singer like Mario (above), I work on one vocal challenge at a time: the Roches, the Alley Cats, the Beach Boys, the occasional Weird Al original, and lately the Roy Zimmerman songs with backup vocals.
Learning to sing each part means listening closely, and even after I’ve learned them all, it’s a challenge to stay IN one part. And then it’s fun to add a part.
Not that I’m anywhere close to that with VOCAbuLarieS. But I can dream, and sing, and isn’t that pretty much the same thing?