Blues Changes
Extensive JazzTimes article by Ed Berger from 2005.
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Ray Bryant loved his mild heresy. The first chord of “Blues Changes” on 1957’s Ray Bryant Trio is a F major 9 rendered as delicate, delighted, unaccompanied rubato flourish. It’s as far as from the blues as you can get, more like what a cocktail pianist would play at the start of a sentimental standard like “The Touch of Your Lips.”
Charlie Parker used a major seventh at the start of a blues progression more than once (“Blues for Alice”), and so did Bud Powell (“Dance of the Infidels”). But it is impossible to imagine a cocktail piano flourish before those serious bebop pieces. On “Blues Changes” the pretty atmosphere continues until a proper, non-cocktail blues shout in the final cadenza. The last lick is the pure blues scale, slickly spun down from the top of the piano to the bottom, a stock effect that back-announces the preceding choruses as a new kind of cool. “Are you hip enough to get this?” Bryant seems to be asking.
Miles Davis got it: he had already recorded a version of “Changes” with Bryant on piano and an identical opening flourish. Toots Thielemans got it: his most famous song, “Bluesette,” is basically Bryant’s collection of alternative II/V's moved up a fourth and placed in the even more sentimental context of a waltz.
If Bryant had actually written a tune (beyond the opening flourish) on “Blues Changes” it would probably be as popular as “Bluesette." But what intrigues Bryant is not a tune but the blend of pretty harmony and the blues. He is fascinated by how well these disparate genres go together.
Since this fascination is not academic or intellectual in nature, it’s easy to underrate by those who are not folk musicians. If you are conversant with much more “advanced” harmony, Bryant may seem to be appreciating the obvious.
It’s not obvious. Folk musicians often know deeper truths than intellectual musicians. Every chord on Ray Bryant Trio is treated like a well-known member of an important family. They have a regal bearing earned from hard-won experience. You try to play the opening chorus of "Blues Changes" and see well it goes!
The ambience is earthy, subtle, and relaxed throughout Ray Bryant Trio. Before “Blues Changes” there are two C minor bluesy ballads, “Golden Earrings” and “Angel Eyes.” (On the latter Bryant occasionally plays the outrageous eleventh E-flat to A-flat with his left, a span unthinkable to pianists with normal-sized hands. ) Connections to the hippest kind of modern jazz community are confirmed with solid renditions of “Splittin’,” “Django,” and especially “Daahoud.” The latter features unusual hi-hat work from Specs Wright, another member of that fecund Philadelphia scene that also fostered the Bryant dynasty. Bassist Ike Issacs was Carmen McRae’s husband, and this trio was her backing band for a time.
It’s an unpretentious and classic record that I should have known a long time ago. While Mike Kanan’s rave was recommendation enough to buy it, also in the back of my mind was the thought I should try to find and interview Ray Bryant. Even though I had never paid him sufficient attention, I knew that Bryant was one of the last of a generation that understood folk wisdom and advanced harmonic information in equal shares. We will always have the advanced harmonic information, but I worry about the distance we have come from folk wisdom. Sadly, Bryant died the day after my purchase.
Bryant deals more exclusively with the folk side of things on another 1957 recording, “After Hours” on Dizzy Gillespie’s Sonny Side Up. The original recording of “After Hours” by the composer Avery Parrish with Erskine Hawkins was a huge hit and the progenitor of a kind of urban, glistening, and patient piano blues.
Despite its fame, there has never been accurate sheet music to “After Hours” available. No classical pianist has ever been able to play it. To learn it requires extensive listening to the record -- and, ideally, someone who can play it already to show you how parts of it go. You don’t have to come from the black community to acquire the right information, but it surely doesn’t hurt.
Maybe Gillespie had it mind to cover “After Hours” and looked for the right musician; maybe Bryant suggested it himself in the studio when the leader wanted to play some slow blues. However it went down, the only way Dizzy Gillespie could have programmed “After Hours” on his record date is by hiring a pianist that knew it already. The bass part is not easy, either, but Tommy Bryant had probably been playing “After Hours” with his brother for years.
Compared to the perfection of the original, the “After Hours” on Sonny Side Up is too long. Charlie Persip also seems unaccustomed to the slow 12/8 beat. (I may be wrong about that: Persip is a major drummer, and especially important to the Dizzy Gillespie tradition.)
Quibbles aside, it is fascinating to hear three major modern jazz horn soloists (Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, and Sonny Stitt) tackle this grits ‘n gravy vibe. Almost everyone in jazz recorded at least one slow funky blues in the mid-50s, and one can learn a lot about aesthetics by checking them out. My current favorite is Bud Powell’s darkly dissonant “Dry Soul,” which is like “After Hours” gone terribly awry.
The style would reach its apotheosis in a new crop of funky organists: Jimmy Smith also recorded “After Hours” in 1957. For most serious modern jazz pianists, the slick slow blues would become an exotic special effect the same way boogie woogie was for stride pianists. But a few like Bryant, Oscar Peterson, Junior Mance, and Gene Harris would continue to use blues licks, tremolos, walking bass lines, and other vernacular tricks of the trade in almost any type of song. I don’t always approve of this. The video of “Billie’s Bounce” with Hal Dodson and Leroy Williams is obviously great. At the same time, I have usually rejected this many blues licks in a bebop composition. Why not play a funky head if you are going to funk out?
But now Bryant’s gone and I miss him more than I expected. The authenticity of his approach was unquestionable. The way he plays those clichés on "Billie’s Bounce" is just so damn good. I don’t think you can learn to play this way today; I think it is gone.
07/15/2011
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