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Over the weeks I've noticed some submissions erroneously made under the category of "jazz".  Although you will get many differing opinions from jazz players as to what exactly constitutes jazz in their minds, one thing agreed on is that singing or playing jazz involves the (to put this simply) variation of the melody within (and sometimes out) of the chord structure.  Some will say it involves that and the ability to extemporize, "make it up as you go along" these variations but that is not always true...many jazz players will find a riff they like and will stick to it almost exclusively each performance.  

As a good example listen to any number of Manhattan Transfer recordings.  On many of them, they will sing the song pretty much straightforward just as it was written (not jazz); for the second chorus they will often dress up the melody and play with it (that is jazz).  

While bending a note and clever phrasing here and there do dip into the "jazz" pot, and any inventive touches like that help sell the song, singing a song pretty much the way it is written with emphasis paid more closely to embellishing the lyrics and not the music as much is not jazz.  

Jazzy Bags would be a good one to talk about this...

Michael,  This is a good question.  Althought Jazz is somewhat ambiguous in definition with roots to Afro-Americanized music, and Stephen Foster's stuff going back aways.  The 50's seemed to bring more free-form or avante-guard improv style, or "anything goes" type jazz.    I don't know if there's anything in the definition of ALL jazz, that says "free-form", (as opposed to just a standard song without an improv break)  or if even "taking instrumental improv breaks playing within the chordal structure, or even outside of it", has ever been compulsory to fit a style if music within the jazz realm, however that is what it seemed to evolve to around the 1950's to present,  "Jazz improv" style, as opposed to "Big Band" style, or more blues-based and structured etc..  Dixieland was even considered Jazz, and to me that was a beebop style,  "Swing" although free-form was integrated into it. Straight Blues often fell into "Jazz" depending on how it was played, and the time it was played in.... (era)...  This is a good question.  I think if it fell out've traditional styles, and was somewhat wild but blues-based given different times, it MIGHT have fallen into a category of Jazz.... Whether it's basis is l-lV-V with added ll-VI progression and a plagal cadence, 12 bar in format, improv, extemporaneous.  Jazz is a pretty loose term, for what many considered a looser form of music.. Today however, usually jazz means abstract improv often integrating many modes, variations, inversions, and scales... Little is off-limits.  Usually the listener wants to hear resolution at some point however.  There should be some theme that "brings it all home" at one point.

I don't recall anything within a set definition that implicitly states Jazz="Free-form" style across the board

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

Gimme horny blues any day

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"Be who you are and say what you feel... Because those that matter... Don't mind...And those that mind... Don't matter."

A great deal of jazz began with Dixieland (jazz).  You know, to confuse matters even more, there were popular misconceptions of what "jazz" was in its earliest days--misnomers if you will.  For example, there was the first talking movie, "The Jazz Singer" with Jolson, who was not a jazz singer and there was Paul Whiteman, a popular bandleader who was known as "The King of Jazz" although his orchestra  was not especially noted for it (he did have many great jazzmen such as Bix Biederbeck at various times, but did was not, for all intents and purposes as "jazz" band).  

Probably more than any other performers, it was Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong that really popularized the form and were among the first to be accepted by a wider audience.

I like the old stuff, I like the "smooth jazz" try playing me the dischordant chite and I will puke

dammit I need a witch on a broom emoticon anyone able to help?

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"Be who you are and say what you feel... Because those that matter... Don't mind...And those that mind... Don't matter."

That should be quite easy actually

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

I have to say my taste in jazz runs from the early days up to bop and then  I kind of dislike what came later...to my ears anyway, much of it was just a lot of noise, which is kind of odd because I dislike hearing it as much as a lot of heavy metal--I can only listen to amplified guitars just so long--it just has no  tonal quality to it to keep my interest.

I'd have a tough time describing what style of jazz I like.  I actually like quite a bit of it.  This would be very tough for me to answer.  I disliked alot of the less structured jazz in the 60's of course.  Like many things, I grew into it.

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

I'd say my heart will always be with swing music....it's my favorite and what I grew up listening to and still do.

Lionel Hampton once had an interesting definition of what made swing "swing": "It's the notes that are left out".  The man had a way with words. I remember them him why he liked Sinatra:  "Frank makes me tap my toes"....hey! Maybe part of a new ranking system on SS should include that phrase, "Made me tap my toes"--I like this!

..  Yep


Made toes Tap= 7,8,9,10
Made toes Curl=1,2,3,4

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

It's hard to say exactly what constitutes jazz. Though improvisation is a big part of jazz, it doesn't HAVE to be present in order for something to be considered jazz.  I think it has more to do with style and form of the songs, and some things will be borderline.. some smooth jazz is right on the edge of pop/rnb.  In genres, there will always be music that crosses border and can be considered a blend of styles or be claimed by more than one genre..

My favorite styles of jazz are

big band, both old school like Duke Ellington and newer stuff like Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band

vocal groups like the New York Voices, Singers Unlimited, and Manhattan Tranfer

instrumental groups like pat metheny's group, the Vince Guaraldi Trio, Paul Desmond/Dave Brubeck trio, Oscar Peterson trio

Incredible vocalists in the old style and today's style like Ella (my hero!), Sarah, Frank, Harry Connick, Diana Krall

Instrumentalists in the older and today's styles like Stan Getz (love latin jazz like Jobim!), Ernie Watts,  Maynard Fergusen,

I guess pretty much everything EXCEPT the really out there free form/atonal jazz like ornette colman, miles davis, and thelonious monk got into.  I need some sort of melodic structure and form to help me enjoy a piece of music, and that disorganized chaos just ends up sounding like noise to me a lot of the time.  I can take some of the borderline stuff, but the REALLY out there stuff never appealed to me.. I pretty much love everything else.

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Thanks for your viewpoint Jazzy--incidentally, it is refreshing to find younger people today who appreciate the sounds of the past masters and YES, Ella was the greatest! Did that lady ever really know just how great she was? I remember her dueting with Sinatra on his 75th birthday television special--you could see how singing with her delighted him--it was the last time ever sounded at his best.

Try giving a listen to Ornette Coleman sometime if you want Discordant.

My favorite stuff is Dizzy Gillespie be-bop and some of the new smooth jazz-Dave Koz Tom Scott.

Jazz did come from dixieland, but it was more of a reaction and protest to the confining and stranglating riffs of the big band swing structure.

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"You know that I sing the Blues and I do not suffer fools. When I'm on that silver mic, it's gonna cut ya, just like a knife"-The SWINGCAT

I think this is a shady area. Seems jazz did come out've New Orleans around the turn of the century,  but it also seems heavily rooted in the minstrels even 50 years prior.  Whether it does have much to do with people like Stephen Foster (compositions such as beautiful dreamer) Irving Berlin, the Minstrels, vaudeville, not sure... My guess is back around the turn of the century in New Orleans by the time Dixieland seemed to be it's introduction...  It'd been going on for quite sometime.. Assuming the derivation is Afro-American spiritual, and "loose blues"

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

This is actually a fascinating area.   Something I need to study since I am a Jazz musician (in part),  I should at least have a "clue".  


Funny thing is in the VERY early 70's I breifly was chatting with Larry Coryell about that funny looking Hagstrom Les Paul thingy he was playing  (his signature Hagstrom Swede) guitar.. WHich was nice at the time for a 500 dollar guitar. anyway, I never liked Coryell and the 11th house, or was it the 7th house..I forgot in those days (fusion type jazz)... Too freeform..Alot of us that were classically trained in the 50's and 60's had a tougher time with the atonality and dissonance of "free from" jazz that was evolving at that time from Swing..  Teddy Wilson was VERY advanced in his improv technique..  During his time with Benny Goodman,  people looked at his mode and scale technique and said

"What the #)$$ are you doing to music?"

Jazz being unconventional and breaking certain rules of classical theory had a tough time taking off and getting any acknowledgement as a respectable form of music.. (of course few that loved Jazz cared what the traditional musicians thought)Parallelism, less theory-based.. Music was more conservative even in the early 70's.
It least if you "studied" it.

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

Correct Steven..New Orleans is recognized as probably the "birthplace" of jazz with other contributions from the Chicago and New York players (mainly white musicians taking off with what they heard from the New Orleans-based players) and a bit of Memphis!  Some of the greats from that era included Kid Ory, James P. Johnson, Satchmo, Jack Teagarden, Bix Beiderbeck (the movie "Young Man with a Horn" was based on his life), Earl "Fatha" Hines, Frankie Trambauer, and the Dorsey brothers.

Incidentally, I acquired a collection of music Jelly Roll Morton recorded for the library of congress some time in the early 30s---you would not BELIEVE the language he uses on some of these cuts--this was a real eye opener--and was many years before rap and all it's scatological content came into being....

I never heard those Michael.  I'll have to do a search.

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

I think some sarcastic dude decided to take Scott Joplin's Ragtime Stuff, and keep it to a more blues-based smoother format.  Take Dixie-land,  put it on Dilantin, or throw it entirely into a Grand Mal Seizure, and you have the last century of jazz   .

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

I'm very fond of playing Joplin on the piano--he was a genius of sorts....his greatest admonishment about playing his compositions was they not be played at a very fast tempo, which of course, many artists did. Of course Marvin Hamlisch used his music to great effect in "The Sting" and  to my ear, did it properly.

Speaking of movies with great period soundtracks, one should check out the soundtrack to "The Cotton Club".  The movie itself was unsuccessful and much of the great, faithful recreations of the period music on the soundtrack CD was cut out, so it is a real treat to hear in it's entirety.  I'm not even sure who did the music off hand but the early Duke Ellington tracks on this are simply astonishing and accurately voiced and arranged.  

So many times in movies of a certain period in American history, they are content to play "In the Mood" by Glenn Miller (regardless of the year)..one of my pet peeves.
"The Rocketeer" is another movie that featured excellently done music (all from the Artie Shaw cannon--in fact "Artie Shaw" is seen leading the band in a few sequences).  I give this movie credit for not simply playing "In the Mood" in the background....

I have a few Miller, as well as various other Big Band tapes (and albums) that sound as tho they were digitally remastered off've an RCA Victrola with a very rusty needle, and muffled horn.  As pleasureable listening as riding in a car with no rubber on the rims

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".