The O'Zone — Soul Jazz Lifetime: 1955-1977 Hardbop Meets Funk the "In Crowd"
Sunburst Shag carpet underfoot,
Venus Flytrap lighting and cigarette incense air.
Ubiquitous woodlike wall paneling
Formica tabletop and red upholstery kitchen chairs.
The Bassline brass is bumpin’ and the tchotchkes rattle on the bookshelf syncopation next to copies of Kerouac
and 45s full of soul in the record rack.
The Beatles aren’t a thing yet,
some lads in Liverpool bedrooms practicing Chuck Berry licks
into songs to come.
While attempts of teen idols try selling records to the nearly square.
Old Mac Heath in a sharkskin suit dancing
a rat pack yet to be.
Sinatra isn’t working for Dorsey anymore.
Tri-level end tables with matching lamps
Flank the tweed sofa.
The black and white TV set has a record player built in.
Dancing the boogaloo and the mashed potatoes
The wartime world has given way to cold war tension
and McCarthy truth suspension.
I’m the baby crying upstairs
“The music is too loud Tom”
Scotch and soda serenade
Cool is still cool but that was Miles yesterday
Dig
Cannonball is swinging!
Mercy Mercy
Sidewinder on the radio.
Messengers and Ramsey Lewis exclaiming an In Crowd
I’m ten, sleeping over at Steve Vessell's house.
Playing some Milton Bradley Board game while
Beatlemaniac records our backdrop. Downstairs Cousin Kate is diggin’ this
Hard Bop Begets Soul Jazz
Black American music swings like a pendulum: for every vibe, there becomes an equal and opposite vibe…Cool turns hot, the intellectualism of Bop becomes the body moving Hard-Bop. It’s moved forward by a desire for change from the previous thing. Jazz musicians are restless and constantly seek change. Society affects these changes, and often these artistic changes affect society as well. This music evolves, and that’s why we have an ongoing canon over 100 years in the making.
Ragtime begat traditional jazz, which begets cool jazz and hard bop, which begets soul jazz (our subject for this missive)... roots and branches spreading the word and making new words.
It’s not always an opposite, sometimes it’s variations, sometimes it’s just a spontaneous feel that moves the music out of its former form.
Case in Point: Lou Donaldson
BeBop to Hard Bop to Soul Jazz
Many Bop players found themselves in sections in Swing bands. Sitting in a row of trumpets, sitting in a row of saxes, playing the ink… told what to think. Wanting something more and so BeBop eschews dance music.
Lou Donaldson moved through these movements, and his BeBop inclinations started evolving into Hard Bop. In 1953, he was playing with Clifford Brown as these changes begat something else. The song is “Cookin’.” And dig his more Bop oriented work with Monk on 1952’s “Hornin’ In.”
Five years later after his stints with Monk and Art Blakey, he rolled into a funkier, more soulful vibe with “Grits and Gravy” from his 1957 crossroads record, Swing and Soul. A year later, he followed up with Blues Walk.
Now, dig! A decade drops, and here is Lou Donaldson accompanied by
Lonnie Smith (organ), George Benson (guitar), Melvin Lastie (cornet) and Leo Morris aka Idris Muhammad (drums). The cut is “Aw Shucks” from 1967's Soul Jazz classic Alligator Bogaloo
Now check out the 1970 manifesto from his iconic album of the same name, stating “Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky (From Now On.”
Lou played Soul Jazz, Mainstream, BeBop, Hard Bop, Ballad, and Blues!
OFTEN ALL IN ONE SHOW!!!
Music of the People
In smokey bars, in sketchy roadhouses, and city park festivals
Social Soul, Spiritual Jazz, Funk and Fusion,
Inner peace and outer grooves
Danceability and meditative moments movement
Singing social issues and upheaval
Electric sax and Hammond B3 bounce
Big Bad Basslines and Chicken scratch guitar
Frontline choreography on platforms and one piece jumpsuits.
Dancin’ and romancin’
The sages dug the new thing
The people dug the groove
Down home foundation inspiration syncopation sensation
Saturday night meets Sunday morning
McGriff and Smith
Get down to who you with
Lady Soul and Muscle Shoal
Let me tell you about a place I know
To get in it don’t take much dough
The Boogaloo bandwidth
from Jazz Crusaders to Crusaders
And the band played on.
Some of the best known soul jazz labels were Blue Note, Atlantic, CTI, Soul Note, Fantasy, Black Jazz, Strata East, Black Swan, Sunshine Records, and the aptly-named Soul Jazz. The music kept a groove, but along the way it absorbed adjacent vibes, influenced by them while influencing them.
Talk about adjacent, in the 1970s, classic hard bop Blue Note was bumpin’ up against Fusion and New Orleans (which is almost a genre of its own) was mixing with Motown… and then CTI and KUDU were working together. Here we are fifty years later, and the music is in revival mode. Funky is as funky does!
Let’s throw down a mix of old and new. Look out for more about this music in future O’Zones. In the words of Paul Jackson, the Headhunter Bass maestro, “God made me funky!”
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