...that I've learned in reading about him since his passing this week.
He made his performing debut at age 7 singing onstage with Fats Waller.
He played drums professionally before college and played with Benny Carter's band.
Asked in 1958 if jazz had a future, he said: "If America has a future, jazz has a future. The two are inseparable." (Amen, brother.)
He actually composed Cubano Be/Cubano Bop for Dizzy Gillespie, probably the most influential early melding Afro-Cuban music and jazz.
Of course, I already knew that his creation of the Lydian concept led to modal playing led to Kind of Blue and A Love Supreme and lots and lots of other great things. Russell's own Ezz-Thetic with Eric Dolphy is a classic.
He said this about the Lydian: "It comes from Pythagoras. It's a reflection of nature. It wasn't in any way a jazz thing, but a way to appreciate the laws of tension and release, a way of understanding Bach, Ravel, and Stravinsky -- and seeing Coltrane, Monk, and Miles Davis as musicians who were part of the same continuum."
No comments:
Post a Comment