How much jazz was there in these classic rock artists?

Stepfather. Ed played with Art Pepper and Cannonball for examples.

Good idea for a thread!

 

You, and anyone else who says there's no jazz evident in Dead music, should listen to the improvisation beginning at 12:05 here:



Then tell me what "song on a previous recording' this is "recreating."

 

Or the segment starting at 11:40 here:

 

On the other hand, there was a point in my life where neither Metallica, nor My Chemical Romance, would have even been considered "classic rock", so...

"Classic Rock" isn't a "style" of music, so much as it's more of a boat anchor, dragging down the profile of any newer rock performers, who came after these artists who are now sequestered into their own category. Most of these artists come from a wide range of musical expertise before finally settling down into a style of music that would become popular, get airplay, and then through excessive airplay become labeled as "Classic Rock/Artists Who Have Excelled In Getting Excessive Airplay".

Thijs van Leer, the guy who yodled his way through "Hocus Pocus", cut his teeth on Bach. Randy Bachman, who gave us "American Woman", learned at the altar of Lenny Breau. It's all relative.

 

Not in 1968 through 1974 he didn’t. Please get you facts straight. The only time the band members left the stage was during “drums” starting in April 1978 during the second set. Plus Jerry was never an intravenous drug user. Plus he didn’t start using opioids until 1975 or 1976.

 

Rock music born in the second half of the 60s owed a lot to jazz. A LOT.

 

I dunno.. l like The Dead voyaging out on a mid to late 70s inner space excursion as much anyone but this kind of inerlude (and the earlier one which sounds like Little Feat or The Meters trying to get through a tune without being able to hear each other) is going to get the musicians thrown off stage at more at less any bona fide jazz festival or venue you care to name. Playing this kind of music for real (given we are talking about 1974 lets call it proto Harmolodics) takes a lifetime's commitment and study. Which is why most of its major proponents either end up dead, dead poor or, with a following wind, tenure at a university. The aren't out playing theatres and making a living just doing this.

The original question was "how much jazz" and I would still say based on this evidence not so much. About as much jazz as there is reggae in the Stones. Good musicians can turn their hands to most idioms for a while but that to me is a different thing.

 

I have always felt that Charles Mingus' "Folk Forms I" could have been a direct influence:

 

From what I understand, Jerry started developing a drug problem as a teenager; I didn't specify a timeframe for his heroin addiction. My original point stands that the artists were using their breaks during long soloing workouts to go backstage -- not just for drug use but all kinds of things totally unrelated to music. The point was that these "improvisation" exercises were most assuredly not all about the music. If you'd rather ignore the point and nitpick me over details and misstatements about the artist's drug use you can certainly do that, particularly when I'm conflating artists like Clapton and Garcia. My memory is not as good as it once was, and I just don't care a great deal about the details of their drug use. You're going to find inaccuracies in what I have to say about it for sure, but my broader point is solid so why get bogged down in the weeds?

Also, I was thinking more deeply about our perspective and you said you got into jazz 30 years ago, whereas you got into The Dead 7 years ago. My journey was a lot different. I got into The Dead probably 40 years ago and went to several of their shows including their revered Chula Vista show in the early '80s. During this time, I had not discovered jazz at all. There were maybe 4-5 jazz albums in my dad's records and I can't remember hearing him play them, ever. My friends didn't listen to jazz, except the odd Miles, Trane or fusion album. So jazz to me was an exodus out of rock and that sort of liberation probably informs a lot of my opinions. I can understand how getting deeply into The Dead after hearing jazz for over 20 years might be a sort of liberation of a different kind.

 

My point wasn't to list the most obvious like Steely Dan, but those where the influence was less so. In my opinion a jazz influence is a very healthy one and it doesn't need to manifest in sounding generically - jazz *(already emphasised this about 4 times)

My Chemical Romance was really just an example of many artists that have no swing as far as I can hear - and no jazz influence. Just included as a token example.

Many of the ones I listed had drummers who knew how to swing (including Deep Purple, which I should have rated higher). It is what kept them from being standard from a rhythmic point of view.

Yes I get it - Cream don't sound like jazz at all - mainly because of Clapton, but that doesn't mean that 2/3rds of them weren't massively influenced. Those long improvisations that would influence many others, were down to this.

Btw Eight Miles High - Roger McGuinn's guitar part was a conscious attempt to approximate Coltrane's horns, so their jazz leanings weren't just down to Crosby.

Syd Barrett interviewed in 1967 All I've got at home is Bo Diddley, some Stones and Beatles stuff and old jazz.

I hope you're not a music teacher.

*luckily there have been a few posters who get this.

 

Still no.

There is zero jazz in any of that clip, including at 12:05.

The chord progressions are still firmly planted in the blues, there is no harmonic sophistication found in jazz, no one 'blowing over the changes', hell, there are no changes.

And the clip you posted after this, the same thing. Just because the Dead played extended jams, with soloing, does not mean there is any jazz there.

Sorry, but listening to these clips you posted (I haven't listened to the Dead in a long time), just demonstrated how little facility and vocabulary they had for creative soloing at all, let alone the musical sophistication that jazz requires.

Like the Dead as much as you like, but please, trying to make those of us that have years of jazz listening and understanding, believe they could play jazz, is just not going to work.

 

My post was about influence rather than whether someone can play straight ahead 'jazz'. You appear to be one of those people who wants jazz to stay in some kind of high falutin' guetto, where only people of immense technical prowess can create, and no doubt those with the ears can comment.

Unfortunately this goes against progression and evolution, and with this kind of viewpoint, jazz will be resigned to an ivory tower guetto and barely survive.

The Dead (I''m not the biggest fan) were listening to jazz and inspired by it - enough for it to influence what they were doing.

Whether the outcome was something that to you sounds like jazz is irrelevant. It's like saying there is no soul in Elvis Costello, because he wanted to sound like Motown and ended up sounding like him.

 

They never left the stage from 1968 through 1974. Why do you keep repeating that band members left the stage during this time. Well Pig Pen did but he wasn’t involved in the abstract improvisations. Jerry, Phil, Bobby or Billy NEVER left the stage during these years which for many of us are the absolute peak years for the band. It was ALL about the music for the Grateful Dead. Especially during this time.

 

LOL

I guess all jazz is playing “changes”

 

I'd agree, not that I think Jazz is gods gift to music. Joni's chord shapes, hot band and "appropriation" don't make her that much of an authentic Jazzer either.

 

Really? I had just replied to you in the spirit of the points I was making and you ignore all that and launch into this nitpick? I never even put a time frame around my statements about Garcia/Lesh and you continue to focus on that like it was the central thing I said. You made an assumption because I conflated my comments about The Dead with comments about Cream.

I will address the "it was all about music" comment. The Dead were among the highest grossing rock acts on tour for many years. Contrast this with jazz artists who barely could eek out a living playing their music, and I think your all about the music theory starts to fall apart.

 

Branford Marsalis makes the same point (and also one about the general issue of this thread answering the first question in this interview:

He goes on to talk about playing with the GD and especially Garcia and their prowess at improvisation.

He uses the words 'marvelously gifted' when talking about Garcia's ability to create melodies.

 

Yes: just because Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius make an appearance, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s jazz.

 

When did I say, "all jazz is playing “changes”? I also mentioned harmonic sophistication. But I could have mentioned quite a bit more things that those Dead clips are missing, that eliminate them from being jazz.

 

As an Italian, I am following this discussion and have to say that I am a bit surprised.
In Italy, unfortunately, jazz is not much considered mostly since two or three decades and often the prevailing tendency is thinking to music genres such as isolated compartments.
The typical prog fan ignores nearly all jazz except some things of Miles Davis jazz fusion era (in Italy jazz-funk is much less used than jazz-rock for instance) as well as the most mature jazz fans who know very well the bop era ignore Hendrix playing with Larry Young or early Chicago or Santana post Third until Borboletta or Bloomfield and Kooper improvising on modal scales.
American music is much more blended with intriguing crossovers.
Obviously, one may debate about the worth of the musicians doing the most varied comparisons thinking that Larry Coryell and Sam Brown are better and more sophisticated improvisers than Jerry Garcia or Terry Kath, but the approach to music isn't so different.

 

You really never have listened to any of their long form collective improv pre-hiatus (before they took a break after the October 1974 shows)?

Have you heard any of the Dark Stars or The Other Ones from the Europe 72 tour? They’re readily available streaming in 16 track sound. In fact the 22 full shows are all there. Most of them 2:45 to almost 4 hours. Good place to start as this is felt by many to be their greatest tour.

You stated the improvisations were “fillers” because they didn’t have enough songs in the early days and the band members left the stage to get high as others soloed!!!

 

Nobody said the Dead played jazz

 

Happy to do so!

 

It's not "soloing," it's collective improvisation. It takes a sophisticated ear to appreciate, so I can understand if some of you can't catch up to it.

 

So any band that improvises is jazz or jazz influenced? Hogwash imo.