I'll never forget watching t.v. with my parents one night in the sixties, wanting to see Louis Armstrong.
He was a guest with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, with a female vocalist,
and they were doing their usual shtick, Louis being gracious and elegant.
When they were getting onto him to start playing,
he just let loose a riff that started off badly and kept getting out of tune the lower he got,
making everyone around him stop and stare at him, astounded,
and then he smiled and got into the tune with his offstage band, sounding hot.
Only Stevie Wonder, putting Whitney Houston in her place, has provided a similar moment of television wonder.
If Louis Armstrong was down on bop, I can dig it, seeing that he's so melodic and his orchestra romantic,
while bop delineated instrument sections into less tonal ranges, good for arrangers, but less scalar in octaves,
what could be described as sounding Chinese, five notes per octave, I think. Or is that Japan? India has 32, sometimes.
I think of Elvin Jones as a polyrhythmic drummer. His first solo album, Agape Love, is one of my favorites.
A friend of mine who saw him still talks about Elvin Jones stepping on his coat as he made his way to the stage.
Like Jimi Hendrix sang, sometimes a depressed, crippled and unspeaking person can jump up and say,
"Look.. a golden winged ship is coming my way, and it didn't have to stop... it just kept on going,
and so castles made of sand slip into the sea, eventually...."
Now I'm thinking the middle of Beethovens' Fifth, what for me is a rainstorm, is a bop precursor.
