![]() Think of Coltrane’s visceral reinvention of My Favourite Things. What came to be known as the “standard” repertoire in jazz emerged in the 1930s and 40s in the US and consisted of the popular music of the day, mostly Tin Pan Alley songs and Broadway show tunes, which were mercilessly plundered and endlessly reinvented by the great innovators of jazz, from Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker to John Coltrane. If you want to take people on a journey, first you have to get them on the bus.įrom the earliest years of the art form, jazz musicians have employed stock harmonic sequences and structures like the 12-bar blues or the AABA song form, not simply because it means that musicians can play together without prior rehearsal, but, more importantly, because the listener will know the tune and therefore can discern the daring act of recomposition that is happening before their ears. His answer – because everyone knows them” – goes to the heart of the creative tension that often exists in a jazz performance, between what is familiar and what is new, between the conventional and the unexpected. ![]() Saxophone legend Sonny Rollins, one of the most liberated and inventive improvisers in jazz, was once asked why he insisted on playing cheesy popular songs like Don’t Stop The Carnival and the Mexican Hat Dance. ![]()
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