How much jazz was there in these classic rock artists?

I generally agree with you, and may have even made the mistake myself with Deep Purple. I guess Ian Paice is the guy if anyone, that gave them a bit of swing, but as you say the influence doesn't always have been apparent in terms of style / genre.


Also - anyone influenced by someone like Chuck Berry would have no doubt been influenced by jazz, as Berry's piano player was initially from a jazz orchestra.

So yeah, while someone might be labelled in a certain way, it doesn't necessarily follow that certain other influences aren't in the mix.

 

The only thing I don't agree with there is that I wouldn't say that influence is transitive. That is, if A influenced B and B influenced C, I wouldn't say that A influenced C.

 

Yes, you are right. It doesn't necessarily follow that A influenced C, and in many cases it doesn't. Not everyone who plays Chuck Berry riffs would be influenced by the intonations of Jonnie Johnson.

That's pretty much true of everyone across the board.

 

Just a couple examples from myself: I love both Igor Stravinsky and Steve Reich and they've both had a lot of influence on my music, especially Stravinsky--he's one of my most important influences. Reich is more one among tons of different influences.

In the midst of a rock or jazz tune I've done, there might be an unusual chord or two that may more or less have been directly cribbed from a particular Stravinsky piece that I was studying at the time--though I may have changed it up a bit if it would be too recognizable as a crib, or there might have been some background ostinato--but just in the background and it might even be difficult to notice--that gradually changes, where I was thinking of Reich in that, but the resultant work won't sound anything like Stravinsky or Reich, and it certainly won't be classical --it would be rock or jazz. It's just that the only reason those particular features are in the music as they are is because I had Stravinsky and Reich in mind, and I wanted to add something to my own music that stemmed from why I love their music.

And that gets especially difficult to identify as we add the tens of very different influences, both intentional and subconscious, that can go into the same tune.

 

I even have a slogan posted where I do most of my songwriting/composing at home that goes something like this (I don't want to share the exact "formula," because it might be too identifiable, plus it's the "secret formula" anyway , but it's in the vein of this fictionalized example--well, although now one could guess that the real slogan features Stravinsky instead)

"As if Chopin were a swinging, punk/jazz-fusion singer-songwriter"

It's a way of me keeping focused on the primary, overarching blend of influences I want to keep in mind, but what comes out of it often doesn't sound very much like any of those elements, and there are obviously conflicting goals in those elements anyway. That makes it hard to identify the influences . . . which wasn't the goal--the goal is just that there is a handful of different things that I really love in music that I wanted to always concurrently focus on at least in the background--but it has the upshot of making it more difficult to identify influences.

 

The Doors
Pink Floyd
Steely Dan (musically, but not as much rhythmically as the previous bands I mentioned)
Maybe some of Rick's stuff with Supertramp

Bill Ward of Black Sabbath had a jazzy feel to some of his drumming. I think it fits in great with those amazing semi-tone riffs.

A handful of of prog-rock from the 70s.

 

Area (Italian prog)
BS&T
Chase
Chicago
Colosseum
Dreams
Gentle Giant
If
Lighthouse
Quintorigo (Italian group)

 

I find this to be a kind of scolding, moralistic, self-centered, and closed minded way of approaching the world of art -- I, joe listener, am going to declare for artists what it is appropriate and right for them to do and not to do. You can do this, if I deem you capable of it, but if you do some other thing that, its wrong. It's fine for one artist to do something because I deem that artist capable, but it's not fine for another artist because I deem that artist incapable.

The thing is, artists get to do whatever they want to do, for whatever reason they want to do it, and they're entitled to do it, it's their art. And audiences get to like it or not. Cream didn't "disrespect" its audience. The band had a big, happy audience who were enjoying what they were getting and getting what they wanted and knew what to expect and liked that. There's nothing "disrespectful" about that. And there's nothing about the form of music that the band played that was an indulgence anymore than choosing to play a three minute punk rock song is an indulgence.

 

This is 100% correct. People saying that they don't understand the jazz influence over all these different artist, apparently don't understand artistic influence at all of any kind.

Maybe they've never been engaged in the creative artist in any way, they're just listeners, so if they don't hear that X sounds like Y, they don't get it.

I wrote a song once, it has a lyric in the chorus that basically had a repeated singing line as the lyric and the hook. It was an idea directly influences by Tom Petty. I was listening to Tom Petty's work, and thinking how successful he was at writing these great choruses with these simple, single line or nearly single line choruses, "I'm free, free fallin'," "You don't have to live like a refugee" (less of a chorus, exactly, than a stanza closing refrain that gets repeated). "Don't Do Me Like That" (not a "great chorus" but pretty much one repeated line, though there's a release so it's AABA). But these very simple sort memorable, direct repeated single line choruses and refrains. So I wrote a song with a repeating one line chorus lyric. Nothing about the song sound like the musical style of Tom Petty, but not only was the chorus structure completely influenced by Tom Petty, but I never would have written the song if I hadn't been thinking about those Tom Petty choruses.

Another one, I wrote a lyric for a song that began with a bunch of negative assertions en route to a song about commitment and marriage -- "This could have been easy, you could have said no./You could have been a good excuse for a weekend bender in Mexico/ This could have been simple, a tattoo to explain, a letter in a shoebox, a brave face to maintain but....." And then it went on to a bunch of other things. I had been noodling around with a Keith Richards s0lo music style open G guitar part and thinking about the beginning of Jane Austen's Northanger Abby, where she opens by describing the things her heroine, Catherine Morland, as a child, was not in the context of the expectation of a novel -- no one would have expected her to be a heroine, her father didn't torture her, her mother didn't die tragically, she was plain with a thin awkward figure, she never learned to play the piano. A litany of negative expectations to start the piece. A person listening to the finished song probably would hear the Keith Richards influence in the music, but I'm not sure anyone would hear the inspiration of example that the beginning of Northanger Abbey provided. The lyric isn't written in 18th century prose. But that was the influence.

Personally, I'm a style agnostic listener -- I listen to jazz, rock, classical of all eras, R&B, country, raga, bollywood film qawwalis, gospel music, son montuno, whatever. But jazz has been the music I've probably spent the most time with over the last 25 years. I hear the impact of jazz in almost all of that rock at some level. Sometimes it's much closer to the surface -- Joni Mitchell's post folkie music, the swinging improvisation-based music of the Grateful Dead in concert -- sometimes not -- that neo baroque organ playing of Ray Manzerek both rhythmically and harmonically masks the jazz in it. And sometimes, a musician can adore jazz by play something else. I don't really hear too much influence of jazz in the music of the Rolling Stones, to pick a band high up in the OPs original list because of the drummer's love of jazz and because he's made some swing and bebop records. But I think there's a lot more jazz influence in the music that's been discussed in this thread than some listeners seem to be able to abide. I mean, some of these statements about how there's no jazz in any of this music at all, are ludicrous on their face.

 

Funny, as someone who has attended possibly as many jazz concerts -- my favorite venue in the world to see live music is the Village Vanguard, and, pre-pandemic at least, I made a point of getting there (and other venues) regularly beginning around 40 years ago -- as well as lots at lots of rock concerts (including having seen McGuinn and Springsteen and the Dead), I can hear the jazz influence right on the surface of some of the music. Sometimes listening to the Dead in a concert performance (mostly during the period before they had two drummers, when it was just Kruetzmann) I marvel at how much the band swings. There's more explicitly jazz-influenced music on display on say One from the Vault than there is in some fusion records by jazz musicians. Rock bands rarely swing, and rock drummers are rarely good at swinging (even those who are jazz buffs like Neil Peart), but the Krutzman/Lesh rhythm section could swing. And the mid-'70s Dead band sometimes sounded more like a jazz fusion band than anything else. With McGuinn and Springteen the jazz only pops up here at there but as everyone has noted "Eight Miles High" and "Kitty's Back" weart their jazz influence on their sleeves.

 

I don't know if Bruce Springsteen was interested in jazz but it sounds like he was listening to Van Morrison who had a big jazz influence.

 

I think I heard a jazz chord in a Ramones song once.

 

Cream is not a jazz band.

 

Jeez...c'mon man.......hello!!

 

Ginger would beg to differ

 

You would have to add John Barleycorn...

Can...some of their stuff rivals Bitches Brew style

Someone mentioned Randy Bachman when in The Guess Who, but after he left they did some very Jazz laced songs.

 

There is also "Giving To You" from their first album with the dialogue about jazz in the intro and outro.

 

Blood, Sweat and Tears

 

Here is our point of difference I think. If I hear a swing beat with a country flavored rock song, or eight bars of an organ solo which might not have been written out in a hard rock song, I do not think “that’s a jazz influence in that music!” My bar is higher for jazz influence. To me the entire band has to show jazz chops and sensibility. It has to be more than “oh that pop singer seems like he might have listened to Coltrane before he wrote that Top 40 hit.” But neither of our ways of thinking is “right,” they are just different ways of thinking.

 

Well Cream's audience thought Clapton was God, for starters. So that probably renders them incapable of logical analysis. When you deify a rock star or rock group, it doesn't make you the most careful or thoughtful listener. Jazz fans are generally more careful, and the music of jazz artists generally stand up better to careful analysis. Beyond any of this there are objective features of the musicians' virtuosity that you can discuss based on the the harmonic, rhythmic and melodic approaches they use.

So to your point that this is about me and my scolding, moralistic, self-centeredness and close mindedness? No, it is purely about the artist and what they are playing. I am a no one with a pair of ears connected to a brain. They are a rock star with an arena full of people who think they're gods (and who are probably high as a kite, which also doesn't lend itself to an analytical approach to music). The rock stars are generally the self-centered ones. We can readily admit is a general feature of rock stars/celebrities. Nice try to make it about me, but I am no one, just sharing my take on it to an audience of maybe a couple dozen. It's quite bizarre to call me self centered for expressing my opinion and out of the other corner of your to proclaim that rock stars can play whatever the hell they like because...ART. No, I don't think what Cream did was art. I think it was little better than practice. Sure, they can play whatever they want. And I can say what I think of it. That's the deal.

I assume the "moralistic" was thrown in regarding my observation that Clapton's music has been more about enslavement and jazz is more about freedom. That might seem harsh, but I was speaking both literally and figuratively about Clapton's dismissal of jazz and the zeal with which he perfected his approach to 12-bar blues that are sourced from cotton fields. To quote a Music Preserves article, "The blues was born out of the long and regrettable history of slavery in the American South. The sheer monotony of life on the plantation as a slave or sharecropper gave rise to the almost incessant repetition of a blues song. The temporality or the way they experienced time is right there in the songs."

https://www.musicpreserves.org/post/early-blues-the-african-american-experience-and-temporality

Clapton gets off on this type of repetition. He's lost without it. Contrast that with jazz musicians who had advanced so far beyond basic repetition, and it's not at all a "moralistic" or close minded observation but an inescapable facet of comparing the two approaches to music that is staring us all in the face.

 

He would and I would tell him that he plays blues rock. And I would be correct! Ginger's pleadings be considered a jazz drummer were rather pathetic in my opinion.

 

very odd list....my chemical romance? where do they fit with the rest of those artists?
joni mitchell, stones, beatles, and byrds (crosby), had a bit of jazz to them, joni more than the others.

the rest, not a bit....and good lord syd barrett, jazz?????

you left out:

traffic, steely dan, hendrix, prince.

 

My list:

Allman Brothers
Grateful Dead
Little Feet
Steely Dan

 

Calling it jazz don't make it so.

Just ask the Eagles of Death Metal