Jazz Manifesto

I have a resentment against the Major Seventh Chord. For lucky non-musicians this is a sad, pretty chord is used in jazz but not in blues, rhythm and blues, or funk. Since the 1940’s it has been the most frequently used chord in jazz.

As the Major Seventh comprises two thirds of the primary chords in any given key, you hear it’s sweetness played…hegemonically. It is like an attractive woman in 3/4 length white satin gloves, an Hermes scarf and Prada evening loafers…at her teenager’s soccer game. Wildly overdressed, but, so pretty, that no one ever questions whether this is simply unbalanced taste…or borderline personalty disorder.

This was not true of jazz in The Swing Era , The "Reign of King Louis Armstrong", Dixieland, or with the Old Blues Masters that preceded jazz and plowed the earth for jazz to create the soil for baby jazz to grow in. It was used upon occasion, as the Seven #9 is currently used, but with respect for its force and restraint when it is employed.

During the Second World War Jazz entered its “Romantic period” as Classical music had done more than 100 years before. In both styles of music heavy chromaticism and absurd changes of key, pointlessly going nowhere and having absolutely no musical value, except in saying “Oh, look at me and my chromatic jewelry, aren’t we fine some fine babes, here?”. I don’t like Bop for the same reason I don’t like Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Liszt and that insufferably self-pitying Gustave Mahler…raw excess.

As John Cage would say “ There is too much there...there”.

The only use of that most potent and pretty chord, the major seventh, that I find agreeable is in Eric Satie’s Trois Gymnopedie No. 1. It is elegant, simple, straightforward and used for purposes worthy of its grace and charm. When you are that pretty, that much of a “genetic celebrity”, it is important that you know your effect on people…and to act in ways appropriate to your listeners.

This is not exclusively true of the major seventh chord…

Rampant, indiscriminate use of augmented, fully diminished, half-diminished, minor-major sevenths, augmented sevenths and a bevy of chromatically altered dominant ninths, elevenths and thirteen chords more resemble the commercial trashing of the Amazon rainforests than the intelligent expression of artistic experience, judgement and intuition. Thank God that Stravinsky would come along in 1910 and put and end to this madness in Classical music and in 1959 Miles Davis would stop the mayhem with the album “Kind of Blue” and bring purity and simplicity back to jazz.

More reasons I hate most "Jazz":

The first time I ever played jazz was Duke Ellington’s “Satin Doll”. I was 15 years old in a local dance band of 28 to 55-year-olds.

I kind of enjoyed the harmonic complexity. Then I learned “Girl from Ipanema”, which is, socially, a unique piece of music in that it can get people out from behind the sodden supper club tables and onto the dance floor more efficaciously than any piece of music I’ve ever heard. It is an insipid, vapid piece of uselessness, about a man objectifying some girl on the beach. "Grin and bear it” was the best I could do, because I really wanted to be part of this band of "old guys".

But, when we got to “ Ebb Tide” and "Moonlight in Vermont", the Vietnam war was at its peak, Hendrix was doing the Star-Spangled Banner and I had had enough. I started my own all original band called “The Looney Tunes”. My musical income dropped 90%. Three years later I would land the best steadily income producing gig of my life. I played bass in a jazz trio, at the Hyatt house, in Richmond Virginia for eight weeks, six nights a week. We had a free shared room, half price on food and drinks, wore tuxes every night and after hours we would go to local clubs to hear fellow musicians working. I grew up in the country, so Richmond Virginia seemed very “Bright Lights, Big City”, to me. There was a musical hegemony in that town and the very best improvisers were all young, up and coming jazz players. Killer Joe, Night in Tunisia, Salt Peanuts, Round Midnight, Naima…the quality of material was vastly improved. So, were the players. But, I was listening to Sam Rivers, Cecil Taylor, and Anthony Braxton, courageous avant-garde jazz and after about five weeks the sheen of the gig was wearing thin...but, I sure loved being a professional. After that gig, I swore I’d never play another note I didn’t believe in…and I never have. That was 48 years ago.

Finally… It’s always a woman. It was a woman, that discovered Hendrix, not Chas Chandler as history reports. It was a woman, that discovered Elvis, not Sam Phillips as history reports. It was teaching a woman the music that she loves (jazz), that changed my mind and opened my heart around jazz a third time.