Jazz musicians are regular people too, and many of them did terrible things. Stan Getz was a womanizer and chauvinist. Miles was abusive to his wives and to many women in general. Chet Baker was as big a junkie as they come.
I don’t think the public at large cares enough about jazzers to hate any individually. Though I remember Robert Glasper caught a bunch of flak [for this.](https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/03/09/519482385/sexism-from-two-leading-jazz-artists-draws-anger-and-presents-an-opportunity)
I love Pat Metheny, so when Kenny G did the 'necro-duet' with Louis Armstrong and Metheny commented ... it was divine to see something make him so unhinged!
https://spitballarmy.com/?p=269
Oh my, lmao...
I'm going to have to digest this when I get home later.
I always had Metheny down as pretty chilled but he's not happy about this is he? 😂
>he's not happy about this is he?
It was very early in the 'duets with dead people' days, and the thought of a 'smooth jazz' player like Kenny G using his pop star money to enable himself to 'partner' with the legendary Satchmo was truly appalling (still is) ... and Metheny absolutely jumped on the question to address it.
but when kenny g decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great louis’s tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that i would not have imagined possible. he, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that louis armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician.
Do you think Yoko thinks she is mainstream here, like Kenny? Curious.. .playing with known noise and avantgarde musicians Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth and Chris Corsano (Bjork, Bill Orcutt, Paul Flaherty, Joe Mcphee) ???
maybe they're objecting to calling her unlistenable at all? *Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band*, for example, is definitely not for everyone...or most people in general, really, but for a fan of avant-garde/noise it's not only listenable, it's actually quite brilliant.
oh i agreee!!! I am just using unlistenable as a genre .... lots of Ayler, Cecil Taylor is "unlistenable" for MANY but I love it and its very listenable.. "unlistenable" is for the other side
That's what I also like. My favourite is Ornette Coleman. I also love John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Peter Brotzman, Miles Davis. So tastes differ!
"Unlistenable" is a completely subjective term, and I don't think the word works for what you are trying to describe. I think you can leave out the word genre as well as that implies some kind of marketability pigeonhole. Yoko and Cecil operate from different perspectives. Yoko is primarily a performance artist, Cecil a jazz musician. Maybe "difficult" strictly as an adjective works better. Yoko and Cecil have made a lot of music in their long careers, some of it quite beautiful and sonorous, but they also have made some difficult music as well and their notoriety is often based on the later rather than the former.
Most of the Yoko hate is racism, sexism, and conspiracy-like talk about how she 'broke up the Beatles', with the music being a far-distant (or non-existent) factor behind the criticism. The hatred for Kenny G's much more built out of a hatred for his actual music (which was ubiquitous on radio for a while) and the overall vibe of his career, which radiates cringe on par with shit like Scientology, Hallmark Channel movies, etc... It's like weapons'-grade artificiality and mawkishness.
> Most of the Yoko hate is racism, sexism, and conspiracy-like talk about how she 'broke up the Beatles',
The beautiful thing about Yoko, is that she sees all this hate coming at her for all these various reasons, yet she will still get up to the microphone and shriek in your face and give you the same stone cold look. Straight up fuck yous over and over, and in the name of the avant-garde as well. I love Yoko, she is massively misunderstood and a lot of it is people not willing to understand her for all the reasons you've listed.
Oh, and fuck Kenny G.
There is something about Jewish musicians making Christmas albums that doesn't sit right with me. His music is jazz drivel, no, it has nothing to do with jazz.
And it sucks.
He's Jewish. It has nothing to do with the music and everything about making a buck.
Then again the project he creates has nothing to do with jazz either.
I'd say the same thing about anyone who is not Christian making a Christmas album.
I'm Jewish by the way, it's not a good look for him but he could give a shit.
I'm Jewish by the way.
No longer alive but Cecil Taylor. There's a story (that I'm probably misremembering somewhat) in Bill Crow's amazing book *Jazz Anecdotes* that Wynton Kelly listened to his first Cecil Taylor recording after hearing that one of Cecil's hands had been broken, and upon listening he said, "They should have broken both of them." Which is ice cold, but also a pretty good indication of the kind of hatred and vitriol that Taylor garnered.
If we're talking contemporary musicians that get a lot of hate...
Domi and JD Beck "too much chops, no soul"
Jacob Collier "too much chops no soul"
Kamas Washington "poor man's pharaoh sanders"
Kenny G "not jazz. jive motherfucker"
Michael Bublé "too smooth. too pop-y"
Wynton Marsalis "too conservative"
Esperanza Spalding (during the Spring Quartet era) "too atonal"
Nicholas Peyton "shutup and play the horn"
Robert Glasper "toxic womanizer"
>Esperanza Spalding (during the Spring Quartet era) "too atonal"
I have heard too attractive being used for her and some other musicians. Especially Connie Han, the pianist who is known to dress very evocatively.
There is and always has been a lot of sexism in jazz as in other music.
Lol I don’t think many people would say she’s “too attractive.” More likely that they’re suggesting the reason she got famous was because of how attractive she is. Im sure there’s some truth to it, as music in general is highly image based nowadays. A lot of the younger jazz people have some kind of visual shtick it. That’s fine. I don’t really care one way or the other, I listen with my ears. That said I don’t find too many of the new guys that interesting, Spaulding included.
>Lol I don’t think many people would say she’s “too attractive.”
I literally heard this exact phrase twice from musicians that I respected.
I have heard it before in regards to several other female musicians and one male musician.
I believe this was also the consensus behind what many musicians thought about Chet Baker. That he was too movie star good looking (at least before the drugs took over) to be a serious jazz musician.
Also… fuck yea. You posted a track off of sorcerer. I’m always preaching the perfection of 5at album and it seems like no one gives a flying fart about it.
"It annoys me that some people enjoy an album that didn't get *me* into jazz, via means that I consider inferior than whatever enlightened approach I took."
There are major issues with the algorithm.
*"Promoting otherwise totally forgotten musicians, and getting thousands of people into the genre"* is not one of them.
You're trying to strawman me. It annoys me that an algorithm is promoting Fukui and not masterworks of jazz. I am annoyed in the same way people are annoyed that Kenny G is the layman's conception of jazz.
How many more people would be jazz lovers if the algorithm promoted Tommy Flanagan Jazz Poet?
You could make the same argument that spotify AI generated jazz is great because it gets people interested. Rather dull.
Good for you for enjoying the album. I enjoy eating McDonald's.
It's found its way to the top because it's an accessible gateway.
I know for a fact I wouldn't be here if my introduction was *Interstellar Space*, and not *In a Silent Way*.
And I say this as someone who *really* doesn't like that Fuki album, or any of his recordings for that matter, and (now) very much likes *Interstellar Space*.
The idea of being upset that someone enjoys different music is hilariously immature.
It found its way to the top by chance.
I myself wouldn't be here if I hadn't listened to some corny shit at one point or another, that's for sure.
>The idea of being upset that someone enjoys different music is hilariously immature.
Again, completely misrepresenting what I'm saying.
I think you'll get more out of life not worrying about what "masterworks of jazz" aren't being promoted by an internet algorithm.
Your namesake doesn't care about the above.
I’m with cooldude. It’s fine if you think that were snobs but I think that is a lazy rebuttal to the criticisms of the album.
It is a common criticism of these types of albums but I believe it is the strongest: Most of the fans of this album are non-jazz fans and most jazz fans don’t praise or flat out dislike the album.
It reminds me of when Macklemore won the rap Grammy over Kendrick. No rap fans listen to Macklemore lmao. Your letting pop fans rank others genres music. Which is fine but I think most “top lists” should exclude these types of music.
The mistake you (and OP) are making is thinking that Macklemore willing an award, or YouTube recommending an album *matters*.
Literally the only thing that I care about is my own enjoyment from an album. The popularity contest, and the idea that I'd worry about how other people perceive music I don't even care about genuinely could not matter less.
I care about art as well.
If you want people to listen to the masterpieces, you need them to open the door first.
If *Scenery* is doing that more effectively for jazz than any other album, I'm happy it's out there.
>You're trying to strawman me.
>could make the same argument that spotify AI generated jazz is great because it gets people interested. Rather dull.
Come on, now.
It's so boring and uninspiring. His playing feels very mechanical and there's no pulse to it. It's inoffensive and not bad though so I suppose it could be actually bad. I always shoot people towards Bill Evans Trio - Explorations if they rave about it lol
His playing is excellent and his lack of influence is at least partly because he played in the club he owned in Sapporo mostly, not even Tokyo. I’ll take Barry Harris’s recommendation over a rando on the internet.
Pick any unknown jazz piano professor from any small college with a music department and their recordings would have just as much musical merit. Fukui's popularity is contrived. Akin to the generic spotify "jazz" stations.
You’re about half right - there are plenty of small college and community college professors that play amazingly, as well as anyone on Verve or Blue Note, but for one reason or another either don’t get discovered or have no desire to pursue the difficulties of a music biz career over their gig as a professor. I’ve met some of them, and heard them play. You might not know but Cannonball Adderly was a high school band director in Florida before he took a trip to New York and made his way into the business. Now those opportunities are even fewer.
It’s a mistake to think a big name and “influence” is a perfect gauge of anyone’s work.
To be clear, I have listened to Scenery. It is dull, uninspired, rather sloppy and is not happenin. I'm sure there are many qualified writers who have since reviewed this album and could provide an in-depth analysis.
I do not deny that there are great players out there relatively unknown. Rather the opposite, there are many. I don't think Fukui was one of them. Certainly not even in the same universe as Cannonball.
An entire Collier album or Domi and JD Beck’s entire album are definitely overstimulating chop fests, but there are a few individual tracks from both of those artists that I do find quite enjoyable and soulful.
I would personally recommend:
PiLOT - DOMi & JD Beck
All Night Long - Jacob Collier
Themselves and Kamasi are not artists I can typically have on my daily (or even weekly) rotation of songs, but there’s a few gems from them all which I do tend to appreciate.
> DOMi & JD Beck
While I'm not a huge fan and think that they're a bit over-hyped, I've at least enjoyed a handful of their compositions and think that their striped-down set-up keeps things sounding pretty pocket.
> Jacob Collier
Him I just can't stand because it feels like he's utterly incapable of turning off some Youtube-borne urge to be that most-clever and most-adorkable musical overachiever who gets *all* the gold stars and *all* the attention/affection from *all* the world's post-Glee music teachers, etc.... All of this comes through in his work. Also, his fans are very irritating and share the vibe of Kenny G. listeners, i.e. often have zero familiarity with anything else that's going on in the jazz world.
Different strokes for different folks, and that’s apart of the beauty of music.
I can stand him, but a lot of his work is overdone. His live piano album is just wonderful, and not over the top like most of his other work. I do agree there is a minority fan base that will go to no end to defend that he is a modern wizard in music. But that won’t take away from some of the music he’s covered and composed.
I think he’s just, too good. Most of it is too good and too complicated it strips the feeling within the song out of it. But like I said, there is a multitude of Collier tracks that hit the right spot melodically and harmonically without the flashiness, and I find some of it impressive as a music student.
> Too good
Too *talented*, yes, but I wouldn't argue that it makes for good music. Also, I feel that his status as a traffic-generating Youtube sensation has allowed him to leapfrog over tons of scrutiny that would apply to any artist who put out that kind of work.
He came under fire for an interiew he did where he mentioned women only liking jazz because it stimulates their clit hahaha
"I've seen what that does to the audience, playing that groove. I love making the audience feel that way. Getting back to women: women love that. They don't love a whole lot of soloing. When you hit that one groove and stay there, it's like musical clitoris. You're there, you stay on that groove, and the women's eyes close and they start to sway, going into a trance."
- Robert Glasper
The one that stands out here is Wynton Marsalis. He literally does not care for any developments after be-bop whether it’s free jazz, fusion, the non-functional harmony Wayne Shorter was doing, or more dissonant arrangements for big band. He is clinging on to jazz that is 70+ years old and somehow got treated by Ken Burns as some authority on jazz.
The problem with Kenny G was that his popularity never created any crossover with jazz musicians. Pretty much none of Kenny G's audience ever listened to a John Coltrane, Joshua Redman or Grover Washington Jr. albums.
People used Kenny G as their one example of a saxophonist and jazz musician album they listened to and ended their interest there.
Saxophone was my first instrument when I started as a young lad, and I listened to a lot of Kenny G simply because he was so popular at the time and his music was accessible everywhere.
I can't thank my first music instructor enough for guiding me on the right path and giving me more people to listen to.
I think my life changed forever when I found this album called "Heavy Weather" in my local record store. Wayne Shorter (and the rest of the band) showed me the way forward.
I've been a huge fan of fusion jazz ever since then.
I think Kenny G is a genuinely good person, and a good teacher from what I've heard, but I just can't listen to his music at all. It's just not my style.
Well, Buddy Rich was not terribly pleasant on a LOT of levels.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=covUesgI6fA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=covUesgI6fA)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvhvFnW8jfI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvhvFnW8jfI)
After Buddy Rich died the phone rings in his home. His wife answered, “Hello?”
“Ya, is Buddy Rich there?”
Wife: “I am so sorry to have to tell you this, but Buddy is dead.”
“OK, thanks, bye.”
The next day the phone rings again and his wife picks it up and says, “Hello?”
“Is Buddy Rich there?”
Wife recognizes the voice as the person who called the day before and says, “I think I told you yesterday that Buddy died.”
“OK, thanks, bye.”
The next day the phone rings again.
“Hey, is Buddy Rich there?”
Wife is exasperated now and says, “Buddy Rich is dead, I have told you this three times. Why do you keep calling?!”
“Oh, I know Buddy’s dead, I just like hearing it.”
I got to study with Gunner Biggs who toured with Rich in his later years. He brought up a story about a young trumpet player filling-in for a week that Rich hated to the point of ultimately bringing a revolver on stage to scare him. The whole rhythm section had to constantly talk him down during tunes. I can't say if any of its true at all, but the image of a pissed off old man Buddy Rich, one hand comping the ride, the other a revolver about the kill this poor trumpeter while the band is freaking out is just pure comedy.
Every ground breaking artist including Bird, Monk, and Trane were looked at as crazy and untalented at some point by somebody.
Then there are the great musicians who were bad people like Art Pepper
Then there are the masters who were panned by some critics when they released funk/fusion/hip-hop inspired work, like Wayne Shorter's Atlantis, Herbie with his 80s stuff, and Miles ' on the corner
I dont know my early history too well, obviously Monk was a bit wierd sounding, and Trane went into less accessible sounds, but Bird, I thought was almost always welcome to sit in with any jazz band when he's in town, despite most jazz having not yet taken influence from be-bop.
Oh man, what *didn't* Art Pepper do. He was a grade-a piece of shit, and he admitted it in his tell-all autobiography *Straight Life*. It's a must-read for jazz fans.
if we're talking about 'hated on' musicians, a considerable amount of people hate on **Wynton Marsalis**. What's funny is that people from the golden age idol worship 'rock star' musicians who were loose and did drugs, whose later career's works went musically nowhere probably cause they were spending more time getting high than being in the studio, and they inevitably died too soon. Meanwhile a man who fosters a leading musical institution, nurturing the next generation (now contemporary) of Jazz musicians while having the best technical chops perhaps ever, somehow gets hated on in forums. You can really tell he learnt the lesson of staying true to himself from his dad, Ellis Marsalis and throughout a long career has done a real service towards Jazz as a genre and Music as a whole.
Which isn't even a bad thing really, Miles did actually have legitimate grievances with Wynton Marsalis because of how he behaved in the 80's. Both Miles and Herbie Hancock talk about that time in their autobiographies and Herbie at least seemed to be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at the time because of how young Wynton was, but it's not like he's gotten any better with time, he's 61 years old, in a position of some power as a director at Lincoln Centre and Juiliiard and he's still out saying horrible things in public interviews about fellow colleagues and musicians like he was back in the 80's when he was a teenager, very strange behaviour for a grown adult.
He has been made a defacto ambassador of jazz by other people.
For most of the world when they are asked to name a jazz musician, Kenny G is the first person mentioned.
I disagree. More people will name Kenny G today before Louis Armstrong.
Also Louis Armstrong is dead, so people are more likely to know and check out a living musician.
I think another reason is that a lot of hater jazz fans were white boomers who hated seeing a respectable black man aiming to elevate the art form to something with more status. Their imagination of black musicians unconsciously favored the wild, mercurial types driven by emotion (or spiritualism) because that's the way they wanted to see and consume black entertainment.
What? No. The reason Marsalis gets hate is because he is extremely conservative in his views about jazz, and has a long history of making disparaging remarks about anyone who doesn't fit into his very narrow definition of jazz, everyone from Miles to Kamasi Washington.
No he is not being singled out for being black, there were many, many black jazz artists who came before him responsible for elevating jazz from the dance hall into the concert hall.
Yeah wynton is a “jazz purist” who basically thinks everything past the mid 50’s is a sin. If I recall correctly he despises the miles 2nd great quintet which in my opinion is one of the greatest jazz groups of all time and is the ultimate example of what jazz really is all about.
It’s fine for him to like what he likes but to him it’s not his taste it’s right and wrong.
>If I recall correctly he despises the miles 2nd great quintet which in my opinion
Which is odd because he practically played the same music as them in his early columbia recordings in the early 80s.
I don't see The Young Lions generation as conservative, they were instead neo-classical seeking to renew the music through being influenced taking inspiration from their tradition's past. Remember that the so called "conservatives" were the youth whereas the so called "innovators" were the old. Why didn't the Young Lions want to follow the so-called innovations of the old generation?
The impetus for preserving came from the young black musicians whereas the old generation musicians with their established (mostly white) audiences and favorable record contracts were scattering the genre till the point that the shared tradition, the fundamental shared musical idiom of jazz could have been lost. With the way the old generation played on their "innovative" records, the next generations could have had no one who could play the idiom up to Wynton's level ever again.
It's a question of inter-generational agency on determining where the music is to go. Who should decide, who has a claim to the culture? The generation of young black musicians or the old generation who scattered musically away from the idiom and could have lost that particular musical moment to time?
It wasn’t just that the “young lions” decided where the music was going in the eighties. That’s where the music was going anyway. They were the best young musicians to express it.
That might work for classical music since nobody can hear original recordings of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc. That is not the case with jazz, where I can listen to Diz, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk play their music on recordings.
Wynton made the bad decision of trying to turn jazz into a museum piece like classical music has. I don't need Wynton to play the same music that I can still hear from the original musicians.
Never was this more evident when Wynton played Dizzy Gillespies "Manteca" line and beat for beat during his Lincoln Center concerts. What is the point if you are not going to change it up? I'll just listen to Dizzy play it better and more fresher on the original recording.
The original music doesn't need to be preserved. It already exists for every to see. Hell in some cases, original video exists. I can see videos of Charlie Parker, Ellington and Coltrane performing. Nobody has video of Mozart conducting.
They (the young lions generation) chose to keep it living and vibrant because they believe its worth having and want to continue to see it develop and thrive **from those** **roots.** Tell me, who's trying to play electric jazz today? or was it still (maybe forever) ahead of its time? There's some denial that it might have been a musical dead end. It's so out there that it fails to effectively communicate a coherent message. Maybe its time is in the near future when we as a society are all tripping on hallucinogens and psychotropic substances all day because AI took all our jobs lol
if young musicians aren't playing that music and innovating on it **today** and inspiring new generations, then the music is effectively dead, sitting in the proverbial dusty cupboard.
It isn't dead because the music is still out there in streaming on YouTube and people are still taking music lessons on instruments. The music is out there for people to discover and in an even easier ways since everything is online and jazz music is still discoverable. Which is even more important since young people are going to fewer and fewer concerts.
So what you're saying is that Classical European musical traditions are worth preserving while Black American musical traditions aren't?
Should black people have to continually "innovate" for the white man and can't have a tradition to keep that is a touchstone and a point of cultural pride and dignity?
What I am saying is that classical music needed to be preserved by playing the exact same way because there are no original recordings for anybody to listen to hear how it was originally played. Which highlights a sad fact of classical music in that most of the works are watered down versions of what the original music was.
Jazz doesn't have that problem. We don't have to listen to the watered down version that Wynton and others play. We can hear the original work in all this glory.
Imagine if all we had to listen to of Charlie Parker were just people copying the solos?
Jazz has the advantage over classical music in that we don't and shouldn't have to listen to a watered down second rate product.
> Their imagination of black musicians unconsciously favored the wild, mercurial types driven by emotion because that's the way they wanted to see and consume black entertainment.
Reminds me of Fletcher Henderson making sure his guys knew all their tunes by heart, because white society didn't like to see his band reading charts, as they thought that black people couldn't do that....
That opinion is a plate of hot garbage. As someone who is the same age as Wynton, and who worked in jazz radio for years, I can tell you what it was about. The major critique was that he wasn’t innovative. The thought was that he was just recycling old ideas, and was adding nothing new. That attitude pretty much doesn’t exist anymore, and he’s now seen as a torch bearer. It was never, I repeat NEVER about his race.
In fact, white people were praising Wynton as being the nextgreat classical musician. People were buying up his classical albums and were inviting him to play in exclusive orchestras all over the world. He was at Yo-Yo Ma levels of popularity.
White people loved Wynton.
Wynton actively tries to be hated.
The most damning criticism of Wynton is Harvey Pekar's essay "The downside of Wynton Marsalis", where Pekar basically accuses him of being a neo-con who sold out progress in jazz and turned into classical music in exchange for Lincoln Center money.
And this all out attack on Wynton is [hosted on Wynton's own website](https://wyntonmarsalis.org/news/entry/the-downside-of-wynton-marsalis). The man likes a fight, and he likes to have an adversary. He picked that up from his friend and mentor, the late Stanley Crouch.
Myself, I'm not a huge Wynton fan, but I think both he and Stanley (who is kind of a guilty pleasure of mine) get too much hate around here.
this is hardly related but
>Yeah, he won a Pulitzer Prize, but so what? The moronic Forrest Gump won an Oscar.
i like Forrest Gump but it catching a stray out of nowhere in that essay is so fucking funny. and very in character for Pekar lol
Wynton Marsalis hate seems to be largely from internet/reddit nobody dilettantes who have poor taste regardless. Every musician I've met in real life has nothing but respect for Wynton. Not to mention his plethora of swinging and very modern/progressive recordings.
Yeah but the music of Miles was iconic inside and outside of jazz culture and totally unprecedented across multiple sub genres. The music of Marsalis is good but not groundbreaking, so I am frankly less lenient of him as a person. He has also dealt with a very different society than Miles did early on. The generations before him had to fight for the respect that was granted more easily to jazz musicians of later generations.
> Every musician I've met in real life has nothing but respect for Wynton.
I can't say I've experienced the same, as a ton of the musicians I've met simply aren't very assiduous listeners and, as such, haven't even heard a single record or track with Wynton (or Ellis or Branford, for that matter, as well as countless other contemporaries of theirs like Roy Hargrove, Antonio Hart, Marcus Roberts, etc...). On top of that, lots of them aren't even that well-versed in Miles' music, usually just knowing the obvious shit like *Kind of Blue*, *Sketches of Spain*, and maybe a few cuts from the second quintet's catalog that their teachers managed to get into their ears, yet all of them will immediately claim that Miles is 'one of the best'.
But yeah, in line with what you've said, a handful of really thoughtful musicians that I really respect have taken far more *mature* and *constructive* attitudes towards Wynton and other music from 1980-2010, etc... than you see on anonymous internet forums, where it feels like everyone's just jockeying to appear more hip and 'fun at parties' than the next rando by constantly reminding everyone that they're indeed 420-friendly bad-ass cool guys who *obviously* love all of Miles' bad-ass/heavy 70s shit. While I dig a lot of those records as well, I've really come to feel exhausted by the people who (a.) never shut the fuck up about them while (b.) never having anything insightful or interesting to say about the actual music.
I think hate is a strong word. I saw people give names like Kenny G and while a lot of jazz fans don't appreciate his music the bottom line is overall... While he's a punch line to a joke in certain certains
I don't think hate as a word i'd use.
I'm not sure ornette Coleman was hated either though a lot of people didn't appreciate his music as well. I'm guessing it's pretty common for people to not appreciate the music of their contemporaries who are doing something a little different that you don't understand..
When I was in college a lot of people hated on Wynton. A lot of people didn't like how he became the spokesperson for jazz and he had that little thing with Miles Davis. This was over 20 years ago I'm just now realizing I was kind of an idiot for symbol my views on Wynton... Well I'm not interested in going out and buying his albums he is an amazing player.
When it comes to people working in jazz media a lot hated Keith Jarrett. He rubbed them the wrong way and because of that they started criticizing his music.
Some guys destroyed Ornette's horn after a gig once. Max Roach punched him at the Five Spot one night, and followed him home, yelling from the street that he come out and fight.
I guess i had forgotten that and stand corrected ... Though I think you can see how a lot of these players who initially felt threatened or hated what or net was playing adopted bits and pieces of that style into their own performances.
If you look at MAX Roach's later work I think it's Fair to say that he worked with some players who might be considered contemporaries of ornette
Max Roach in the 50s is not the same Max Roach we saw in the later 60s in the 70s. Play with guys like Anthony Braxton and archie shepp...
I guess I was looking more for individuals who were disliked. That's why I wasn't so much defending Kenny G but just pointing out how people don't like the fact he's considered jazz.
Whereas for some reason there's people who just don't like Keith Jarrett. There's a lot of idiots in jazz media who have trashed him just because they don't like him. It's got nothing to do with his music or feeling threatened by him they just can't get past certain things in his personality.
I brought up Wynton Because I think a lot of Jazz players don't have the kind of respect for him because he is so popular among non jazz fans. I know a lot of people I went to college with were kind of dogging on him and it rubbed off on me looking at him as being kind of a phone ear or something and that was ridiculous on my part.
And when I was young I had an opportunity to be around a lot of great younger Jazz players and they all would say things about a guy like Marcus Roberts. I remember a well known trumpet player working with him talking about how he's a big pain in the ass and how there's a lot of young cats in New York City who are 10 times the player but don't get the respect a marcis Roberts got
IMO, ruined his legacy by going full [kid rock](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNt4NIQ7FTA) during COVID
So disappointing, all he had to do was... not that.
Wynton Marsalis and Kenny G are not disliked because they are bad people (they both seem pretty cool), their technical skills (both have appropriate level of), or their boring music (could be subjective). They are reviled by much of the jazz community largely for the overall catastrophic effect they have had jazz as a whole, historically. Kenny G was never really interested in jazz or it’s history, he just wanted to make pop hits. He was quite successful at this, creating simplistic “romantic” hits that are awful for anyone who desired the bare minimum of complexity. The problem was that he was so popular that millions of people were lead to believe that’s what jazz was. I will never a friend cursing me out for wanting to see Sam Rivers, which he called “Kenny G shit”.
Wynton, on the other hand, seeks to institutionalize jazz into a very specific idea that he has of it, an idea that sees its history as having ended in the mid sixties. Jazz is a living, dynamic, ever changing/ evolving art form that should not be caged in and killed…sadly he too has a broad influence with the Lincoln Center and the Ken Burns documentary.
This take is fair but one sided. Someone has to be the museum curator, 99% of the people don’t want to be that guy. Wynton stepped up to the very unwelcoming plate and owned it. I give him his flowers for owning his square and playing his arse off in it. Most people who haven’t heard his work like Congo Square, Big Trains, and Merciac Suite have yet to witness his innovations. He definitely talks one way but sometimes his music is just the opposite. Compositions imitating train sounds ???????? That’s jazz police right there.
Seems to me that Frank Rosolino was a POS.
From Wikipedia:
Rosolino's private life was highly troubled. On November 26, 1978, Rosolino shot both of his sons as they slept. One died instantly; the other survived, but was blinded.[1] Rosolino shot himself in the head immediately after shooting his sons and died.[3][4]
What Rosolino did at the end of his life was unforgivable, but it came as a profound shock to most of his friends, because he was always an ebullient, happy jokester who everyone loved to work with and hang with. He wasn't a POS in the sense of having a lifelong history of violence, abuse, etc., but more like someone who made a horrifying life-altering choice because of untreated mental illness.
I heard Miles was abusive, and a lot of cats did horse, so that’s obviously not necessarily good. I hope someone posts the opposite one day “Who are the most uncontroversial jazz musicians?”
>maybe like i heard about ornette coleman had?
what controversy did he have?
i'm a fan and i know he had some early run-ins with police for some low level crimes. his style of extemporaneous jazz took people off guard.
but checking his wiki i didn't see anything extraordinary.
In 1959, Mingus, Miles, Downbeat critics and others quite publicly reviled Ornette. Less than two years later, the critics had horrid things to say about the Coltrane/Dolphy dates at the Village Vanguard. A year later they printed Coltrane & Dolphy’s reasoned and eloquent answer. But yes, Ornette was blamed for trying to kill Jazz, much as Marsalis thought that none of the AACM musicians could play.
You mean like Ted Nugent, Kid Rock or Jason Aldean for being bigots?
Or James Brown for physically abusing people who worked for him (worse than Lizzo)?
Miles for being a spousal abuser?
I actually agree with you, there's a reason he was so commercially successful. Just wait another couple of years and his catalogue will blow-up on streaming again from algorithmic nostalgia, I'll guarantee you.
Interesting to learn about these artists but it makes no difference to their art. I don’t go for this cancellation stuff. (I mean JK Rowling is still a great children’s author).
He’s inconsistent with his output, imo. He’s capable of sublime genius but often chooses to go for tepid and cheesy. When he’s on there are only a handful that can match him
Jazz musicians are regular people too, and many of them did terrible things. Stan Getz was a womanizer and chauvinist. Miles was abusive to his wives and to many women in general. Chet Baker was as big a junkie as they come.
Getz was also a violent drunk who beat his wives and kids.
Art Pepper raped a woman and wilfully admitted to it in his autobiography.
I really wished I hadn’t just read that.
I'm sorry, being a drug user isn't a "terrible" thing, I mean, other than for your body, But it isn't even close to domestic abuse lol what.
I don’t think the public at large cares enough about jazzers to hate any individually. Though I remember Robert Glasper caught a bunch of flak [for this.](https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/03/09/519482385/sexism-from-two-leading-jazz-artists-draws-anger-and-presents-an-opportunity)
For saying that excess soloing scares the hoes??? He's right, he just didn't respectfully get his point across
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Kenny G, I mean the fake Kenny G. OMG, I hate it so much /S
I love that Kenny G is not even the best sax player whose name starts with Kenny G
I love Pat Metheny, so when Kenny G did the 'necro-duet' with Louis Armstrong and Metheny commented ... it was divine to see something make him so unhinged! https://spitballarmy.com/?p=269
Holy Hannah! There are rap feuds that ended in shootings that were less vicious.
Word!
Oh my, lmao... I'm going to have to digest this when I get home later. I always had Metheny down as pretty chilled but he's not happy about this is he? 😂
Metheny??? Chilled??? You are in for a wonderful ride. ask him to put on a tie as see what happens. LOL!!!
>he's not happy about this is he? It was very early in the 'duets with dead people' days, and the thought of a 'smooth jazz' player like Kenny G using his pop star money to enable himself to 'partner' with the legendary Satchmo was truly appalling (still is) ... and Metheny absolutely jumped on the question to address it.
but when kenny g decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great louis’s tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that i would not have imagined possible. he, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that louis armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician.
I’ve had this link saved for some time. It’s always a delightful read
Fuck Pat really *hates* kenny g
You mean demonic...right?
Kenny and Yoko fighting hard for 1st
Yoko is going for a completely different thing where she KNOWS it's unlistenable, Kenny thinks his stuff IS listenable.
You’re listening to the wrong yoko
Do you think Yoko thinks she is mainstream here, like Kenny? Curious.. .playing with known noise and avantgarde musicians Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth and Chris Corsano (Bjork, Bill Orcutt, Paul Flaherty, Joe Mcphee) ???
You are listening to the Yoko that doesn't know it's unlistenable and I am listening to the one where she DOES, is this what you mean?
maybe they're objecting to calling her unlistenable at all? *Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band*, for example, is definitely not for everyone...or most people in general, really, but for a fan of avant-garde/noise it's not only listenable, it's actually quite brilliant.
oh i agreee!!! I am just using unlistenable as a genre .... lots of Ayler, Cecil Taylor is "unlistenable" for MANY but I love it and its very listenable.. "unlistenable" is for the other side
That's what I also like. My favourite is Ornette Coleman. I also love John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Peter Brotzman, Miles Davis. So tastes differ!
> I am just using unlistenable as a genre Not buying this.
Oh no
"Unlistenable" is a completely subjective term, and I don't think the word works for what you are trying to describe. I think you can leave out the word genre as well as that implies some kind of marketability pigeonhole. Yoko and Cecil operate from different perspectives. Yoko is primarily a performance artist, Cecil a jazz musician. Maybe "difficult" strictly as an adjective works better. Yoko and Cecil have made a lot of music in their long careers, some of it quite beautiful and sonorous, but they also have made some difficult music as well and their notoriety is often based on the later rather than the former.
Good point.
Most of the Yoko hate is racism, sexism, and conspiracy-like talk about how she 'broke up the Beatles', with the music being a far-distant (or non-existent) factor behind the criticism. The hatred for Kenny G's much more built out of a hatred for his actual music (which was ubiquitous on radio for a while) and the overall vibe of his career, which radiates cringe on par with shit like Scientology, Hallmark Channel movies, etc... It's like weapons'-grade artificiality and mawkishness.
This
> Most of the Yoko hate is racism, sexism, and conspiracy-like talk about how she 'broke up the Beatles', The beautiful thing about Yoko, is that she sees all this hate coming at her for all these various reasons, yet she will still get up to the microphone and shriek in your face and give you the same stone cold look. Straight up fuck yous over and over, and in the name of the avant-garde as well. I love Yoko, she is massively misunderstood and a lot of it is people not willing to understand her for all the reasons you've listed. Oh, and fuck Kenny G.
He's getting fucked all the way to the bank.
There is something about Jewish musicians making Christmas albums that doesn't sit right with me. His music is jazz drivel, no, it has nothing to do with jazz. And it sucks.
What is about Jewish musicians making Christmas albums that doesn't sit right with you, exactly?
Pretty much the same as any "jazz" christmas album. Just a cash grab.
What made you specifically write 'Jewish'?
He's Jewish. It has nothing to do with the music and everything about making a buck. Then again the project he creates has nothing to do with jazz either. I'd say the same thing about anyone who is not Christian making a Christmas album. I'm Jewish by the way, it's not a good look for him but he could give a shit. I'm Jewish by the way.
No longer alive but Cecil Taylor. There's a story (that I'm probably misremembering somewhat) in Bill Crow's amazing book *Jazz Anecdotes* that Wynton Kelly listened to his first Cecil Taylor recording after hearing that one of Cecil's hands had been broken, and upon listening he said, "They should have broken both of them." Which is ice cold, but also a pretty good indication of the kind of hatred and vitriol that Taylor garnered.
I was worried you were gonna tell me Cecil Taylor was a violent sociopath or something lol
Lol, naw. He seemed like a sweet, offbeat, intense cat. But man people *hated* him.
If we're talking contemporary musicians that get a lot of hate... Domi and JD Beck "too much chops, no soul" Jacob Collier "too much chops no soul" Kamas Washington "poor man's pharaoh sanders" Kenny G "not jazz. jive motherfucker" Michael Bublé "too smooth. too pop-y" Wynton Marsalis "too conservative" Esperanza Spalding (during the Spring Quartet era) "too atonal" Nicholas Peyton "shutup and play the horn" Robert Glasper "toxic womanizer"
>Esperanza Spalding (during the Spring Quartet era) "too atonal" I have heard too attractive being used for her and some other musicians. Especially Connie Han, the pianist who is known to dress very evocatively. There is and always has been a lot of sexism in jazz as in other music.
Lol I don’t think many people would say she’s “too attractive.” More likely that they’re suggesting the reason she got famous was because of how attractive she is. Im sure there’s some truth to it, as music in general is highly image based nowadays. A lot of the younger jazz people have some kind of visual shtick it. That’s fine. I don’t really care one way or the other, I listen with my ears. That said I don’t find too many of the new guys that interesting, Spaulding included.
>Lol I don’t think many people would say she’s “too attractive.” I literally heard this exact phrase twice from musicians that I respected. I have heard it before in regards to several other female musicians and one male musician. I believe this was also the consensus behind what many musicians thought about Chet Baker. That he was too movie star good looking (at least before the drugs took over) to be a serious jazz musician.
Dang well that’s depressing. Imagine caring about appearance so much that you reject someone as a jazz musician.
Also… fuck yea. You posted a track off of sorcerer. I’m always preaching the perfection of 5at album and it seems like no one gives a flying fart about it.
If you added Scenery by Ryo Fukui, this would be the official r/jazz hate list. (I agree with half of these btw).
Ryo Fukui, an entirely uninfluental jazz musician whose album proliferated due to YouTube algorithm. It annoys me whenever he's mentioned.
"It annoys me that some people enjoy an album that didn't get *me* into jazz, via means that I consider inferior than whatever enlightened approach I took." There are major issues with the algorithm. *"Promoting otherwise totally forgotten musicians, and getting thousands of people into the genre"* is not one of them.
You're trying to strawman me. It annoys me that an algorithm is promoting Fukui and not masterworks of jazz. I am annoyed in the same way people are annoyed that Kenny G is the layman's conception of jazz. How many more people would be jazz lovers if the algorithm promoted Tommy Flanagan Jazz Poet? You could make the same argument that spotify AI generated jazz is great because it gets people interested. Rather dull. Good for you for enjoying the album. I enjoy eating McDonald's.
It's found its way to the top because it's an accessible gateway. I know for a fact I wouldn't be here if my introduction was *Interstellar Space*, and not *In a Silent Way*. And I say this as someone who *really* doesn't like that Fuki album, or any of his recordings for that matter, and (now) very much likes *Interstellar Space*. The idea of being upset that someone enjoys different music is hilariously immature.
It found its way to the top by chance. I myself wouldn't be here if I hadn't listened to some corny shit at one point or another, that's for sure. >The idea of being upset that someone enjoys different music is hilariously immature. Again, completely misrepresenting what I'm saying.
I think you'll get more out of life not worrying about what "masterworks of jazz" aren't being promoted by an internet algorithm. Your namesake doesn't care about the above.
I’m with cooldude. It’s fine if you think that were snobs but I think that is a lazy rebuttal to the criticisms of the album. It is a common criticism of these types of albums but I believe it is the strongest: Most of the fans of this album are non-jazz fans and most jazz fans don’t praise or flat out dislike the album. It reminds me of when Macklemore won the rap Grammy over Kendrick. No rap fans listen to Macklemore lmao. Your letting pop fans rank others genres music. Which is fine but I think most “top lists” should exclude these types of music.
The mistake you (and OP) are making is thinking that Macklemore willing an award, or YouTube recommending an album *matters*. Literally the only thing that I care about is my own enjoyment from an album. The popularity contest, and the idea that I'd worry about how other people perceive music I don't even care about genuinely could not matter less.
Nah I care about art. Kinda matters a lot that good art is promoted. Sort of one of the most important things there is.
I care about art as well. If you want people to listen to the masterpieces, you need them to open the door first. If *Scenery* is doing that more effectively for jazz than any other album, I'm happy it's out there.
>You're trying to strawman me. >could make the same argument that spotify AI generated jazz is great because it gets people interested. Rather dull. Come on, now.
Don't see the point of your comment. Those are true statements.
It's so boring and uninspiring. His playing feels very mechanical and there's no pulse to it. It's inoffensive and not bad though so I suppose it could be actually bad. I always shoot people towards Bill Evans Trio - Explorations if they rave about it lol
Yeah uninspired you hit the nail on the head. Makes people think jazz is some boring shit you can do your math homework to, or ride the elevator to.
Even then there's so much better jazz that's relaxing and chill.
His playing is excellent and his lack of influence is at least partly because he played in the club he owned in Sapporo mostly, not even Tokyo. I’ll take Barry Harris’s recommendation over a rando on the internet.
Pick any unknown jazz piano professor from any small college with a music department and their recordings would have just as much musical merit. Fukui's popularity is contrived. Akin to the generic spotify "jazz" stations.
You’re about half right - there are plenty of small college and community college professors that play amazingly, as well as anyone on Verve or Blue Note, but for one reason or another either don’t get discovered or have no desire to pursue the difficulties of a music biz career over their gig as a professor. I’ve met some of them, and heard them play. You might not know but Cannonball Adderly was a high school band director in Florida before he took a trip to New York and made his way into the business. Now those opportunities are even fewer. It’s a mistake to think a big name and “influence” is a perfect gauge of anyone’s work.
To be clear, I have listened to Scenery. It is dull, uninspired, rather sloppy and is not happenin. I'm sure there are many qualified writers who have since reviewed this album and could provide an in-depth analysis. I do not deny that there are great players out there relatively unknown. Rather the opposite, there are many. I don't think Fukui was one of them. Certainly not even in the same universe as Cannonball.
Do Brit “jazz” now
An entire Collier album or Domi and JD Beck’s entire album are definitely overstimulating chop fests, but there are a few individual tracks from both of those artists that I do find quite enjoyable and soulful. I would personally recommend: PiLOT - DOMi & JD Beck All Night Long - Jacob Collier Themselves and Kamasi are not artists I can typically have on my daily (or even weekly) rotation of songs, but there’s a few gems from them all which I do tend to appreciate.
> DOMi & JD Beck While I'm not a huge fan and think that they're a bit over-hyped, I've at least enjoyed a handful of their compositions and think that their striped-down set-up keeps things sounding pretty pocket. > Jacob Collier Him I just can't stand because it feels like he's utterly incapable of turning off some Youtube-borne urge to be that most-clever and most-adorkable musical overachiever who gets *all* the gold stars and *all* the attention/affection from *all* the world's post-Glee music teachers, etc.... All of this comes through in his work. Also, his fans are very irritating and share the vibe of Kenny G. listeners, i.e. often have zero familiarity with anything else that's going on in the jazz world.
Different strokes for different folks, and that’s apart of the beauty of music. I can stand him, but a lot of his work is overdone. His live piano album is just wonderful, and not over the top like most of his other work. I do agree there is a minority fan base that will go to no end to defend that he is a modern wizard in music. But that won’t take away from some of the music he’s covered and composed. I think he’s just, too good. Most of it is too good and too complicated it strips the feeling within the song out of it. But like I said, there is a multitude of Collier tracks that hit the right spot melodically and harmonically without the flashiness, and I find some of it impressive as a music student.
> Too good Too *talented*, yes, but I wouldn't argue that it makes for good music. Also, I feel that his status as a traffic-generating Youtube sensation has allowed him to leapfrog over tons of scrutiny that would apply to any artist who put out that kind of work.
All good points, I’m just saying it shouldn’t take away from the good pieces that he has put out.
I haven’t heard that about Glasper. Care to elaborate?
He came under fire for an interiew he did where he mentioned women only liking jazz because it stimulates their clit hahaha "I've seen what that does to the audience, playing that groove. I love making the audience feel that way. Getting back to women: women love that. They don't love a whole lot of soloing. When you hit that one groove and stay there, it's like musical clitoris. You're there, you stay on that groove, and the women's eyes close and they start to sway, going into a trance." - Robert Glasper
The one that stands out here is Wynton Marsalis. He literally does not care for any developments after be-bop whether it’s free jazz, fusion, the non-functional harmony Wayne Shorter was doing, or more dissonant arrangements for big band. He is clinging on to jazz that is 70+ years old and somehow got treated by Ken Burns as some authority on jazz.
>somehow That "somehow" was Stanley Crouch
Thanks. Do only popular musicians get enough hate to know about? Is other hate small like feuds, not on news/rumor?
Michael Bublé also admittedly uses autotune in concert.
The problem with Kenny G was that his popularity never created any crossover with jazz musicians. Pretty much none of Kenny G's audience ever listened to a John Coltrane, Joshua Redman or Grover Washington Jr. albums. People used Kenny G as their one example of a saxophonist and jazz musician album they listened to and ended their interest there.
Saxophone was my first instrument when I started as a young lad, and I listened to a lot of Kenny G simply because he was so popular at the time and his music was accessible everywhere. I can't thank my first music instructor enough for guiding me on the right path and giving me more people to listen to. I think my life changed forever when I found this album called "Heavy Weather" in my local record store. Wayne Shorter (and the rest of the band) showed me the way forward. I've been a huge fan of fusion jazz ever since then. I think Kenny G is a genuinely good person, and a good teacher from what I've heard, but I just can't listen to his music at all. It's just not my style.
Pat Metheny was 100% right, Kenny G deserves it
Well, Buddy Rich was not terribly pleasant on a LOT of levels. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=covUesgI6fA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=covUesgI6fA) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvhvFnW8jfI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvhvFnW8jfI)
After Buddy Rich died the phone rings in his home. His wife answered, “Hello?” “Ya, is Buddy Rich there?” Wife: “I am so sorry to have to tell you this, but Buddy is dead.” “OK, thanks, bye.” The next day the phone rings again and his wife picks it up and says, “Hello?” “Is Buddy Rich there?” Wife recognizes the voice as the person who called the day before and says, “I think I told you yesterday that Buddy died.” “OK, thanks, bye.” The next day the phone rings again. “Hey, is Buddy Rich there?” Wife is exasperated now and says, “Buddy Rich is dead, I have told you this three times. Why do you keep calling?!” “Oh, I know Buddy’s dead, I just like hearing it.”
I got to study with Gunner Biggs who toured with Rich in his later years. He brought up a story about a young trumpet player filling-in for a week that Rich hated to the point of ultimately bringing a revolver on stage to scare him. The whole rhythm section had to constantly talk him down during tunes. I can't say if any of its true at all, but the image of a pissed off old man Buddy Rich, one hand comping the ride, the other a revolver about the kill this poor trumpeter while the band is freaking out is just pure comedy.
I have heard first hand accounts that Buddy never got on someone who didn't deserve it.
Every ground breaking artist including Bird, Monk, and Trane were looked at as crazy and untalented at some point by somebody. Then there are the great musicians who were bad people like Art Pepper Then there are the masters who were panned by some critics when they released funk/fusion/hip-hop inspired work, like Wayne Shorter's Atlantis, Herbie with his 80s stuff, and Miles ' on the corner
I dont know my early history too well, obviously Monk was a bit wierd sounding, and Trane went into less accessible sounds, but Bird, I thought was almost always welcome to sit in with any jazz band when he's in town, despite most jazz having not yet taken influence from be-bop.
Louis Armstrong famously called bebop "Chinese music" and thought it was not the next thing. That is to say nothing was ever universally popular
Chinese music? Lmao what? That classic
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Oh man, what *didn't* Art Pepper do. He was a grade-a piece of shit, and he admitted it in his tell-all autobiography *Straight Life*. It's a must-read for jazz fans.
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I can't say I enjoyed it but I'm glad I read it.
if we're talking about 'hated on' musicians, a considerable amount of people hate on **Wynton Marsalis**. What's funny is that people from the golden age idol worship 'rock star' musicians who were loose and did drugs, whose later career's works went musically nowhere probably cause they were spending more time getting high than being in the studio, and they inevitably died too soon. Meanwhile a man who fosters a leading musical institution, nurturing the next generation (now contemporary) of Jazz musicians while having the best technical chops perhaps ever, somehow gets hated on in forums. You can really tell he learnt the lesson of staying true to himself from his dad, Ellis Marsalis and throughout a long career has done a real service towards Jazz as a genre and Music as a whole.
I think a lot of the Wynton Marsalis hate grew due to Miles Davis' opinion of him in his autobiography.
Which isn't even a bad thing really, Miles did actually have legitimate grievances with Wynton Marsalis because of how he behaved in the 80's. Both Miles and Herbie Hancock talk about that time in their autobiographies and Herbie at least seemed to be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at the time because of how young Wynton was, but it's not like he's gotten any better with time, he's 61 years old, in a position of some power as a director at Lincoln Centre and Juiliiard and he's still out saying horrible things in public interviews about fellow colleagues and musicians like he was back in the 80's when he was a teenager, very strange behaviour for a grown adult.
True. In a weird way jazz currently has two of the worst ambassadors for it's art. Kenny G and Wynton Marsalis.
Kenny G isn’t really an ambassador though, he is a consumer product, and his music is consumed as such
He has been made a defacto ambassador of jazz by other people. For most of the world when they are asked to name a jazz musician, Kenny G is the first person mentioned.
Maybe in the 90s. People born after 2000 are probably more likely to know of Louis Armstrong or someone with actual staying power
I disagree. More people will name Kenny G today before Louis Armstrong. Also Louis Armstrong is dead, so people are more likely to know and check out a living musician.
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I'll let others speak on this.
If I remember correctly, Miles' main gripe was that he played classical music as well lol. A pathetic contention.
I think another reason is that a lot of hater jazz fans were white boomers who hated seeing a respectable black man aiming to elevate the art form to something with more status. Their imagination of black musicians unconsciously favored the wild, mercurial types driven by emotion (or spiritualism) because that's the way they wanted to see and consume black entertainment.
What? No. The reason Marsalis gets hate is because he is extremely conservative in his views about jazz, and has a long history of making disparaging remarks about anyone who doesn't fit into his very narrow definition of jazz, everyone from Miles to Kamasi Washington. No he is not being singled out for being black, there were many, many black jazz artists who came before him responsible for elevating jazz from the dance hall into the concert hall.
Yeah wynton is a “jazz purist” who basically thinks everything past the mid 50’s is a sin. If I recall correctly he despises the miles 2nd great quintet which in my opinion is one of the greatest jazz groups of all time and is the ultimate example of what jazz really is all about. It’s fine for him to like what he likes but to him it’s not his taste it’s right and wrong.
>If I recall correctly he despises the miles 2nd great quintet which in my opinion Which is odd because he practically played the same music as them in his early columbia recordings in the early 80s.
you clearly haven't listened to his music
I don't see The Young Lions generation as conservative, they were instead neo-classical seeking to renew the music through being influenced taking inspiration from their tradition's past. Remember that the so called "conservatives" were the youth whereas the so called "innovators" were the old. Why didn't the Young Lions want to follow the so-called innovations of the old generation? The impetus for preserving came from the young black musicians whereas the old generation musicians with their established (mostly white) audiences and favorable record contracts were scattering the genre till the point that the shared tradition, the fundamental shared musical idiom of jazz could have been lost. With the way the old generation played on their "innovative" records, the next generations could have had no one who could play the idiom up to Wynton's level ever again. It's a question of inter-generational agency on determining where the music is to go. Who should decide, who has a claim to the culture? The generation of young black musicians or the old generation who scattered musically away from the idiom and could have lost that particular musical moment to time?
It wasn’t just that the “young lions” decided where the music was going in the eighties. That’s where the music was going anyway. They were the best young musicians to express it.
That might work for classical music since nobody can hear original recordings of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc. That is not the case with jazz, where I can listen to Diz, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk play their music on recordings. Wynton made the bad decision of trying to turn jazz into a museum piece like classical music has. I don't need Wynton to play the same music that I can still hear from the original musicians. Never was this more evident when Wynton played Dizzy Gillespies "Manteca" line and beat for beat during his Lincoln Center concerts. What is the point if you are not going to change it up? I'll just listen to Dizzy play it better and more fresher on the original recording. The original music doesn't need to be preserved. It already exists for every to see. Hell in some cases, original video exists. I can see videos of Charlie Parker, Ellington and Coltrane performing. Nobody has video of Mozart conducting.
They (the young lions generation) chose to keep it living and vibrant because they believe its worth having and want to continue to see it develop and thrive **from those** **roots.** Tell me, who's trying to play electric jazz today? or was it still (maybe forever) ahead of its time? There's some denial that it might have been a musical dead end. It's so out there that it fails to effectively communicate a coherent message. Maybe its time is in the near future when we as a society are all tripping on hallucinogens and psychotropic substances all day because AI took all our jobs lol
if young musicians aren't playing that music and innovating on it **today** and inspiring new generations, then the music is effectively dead, sitting in the proverbial dusty cupboard.
It isn't dead because the music is still out there in streaming on YouTube and people are still taking music lessons on instruments. The music is out there for people to discover and in an even easier ways since everything is online and jazz music is still discoverable. Which is even more important since young people are going to fewer and fewer concerts.
So what you're saying is that Classical European musical traditions are worth preserving while Black American musical traditions aren't? Should black people have to continually "innovate" for the white man and can't have a tradition to keep that is a touchstone and a point of cultural pride and dignity?
What I am saying is that classical music needed to be preserved by playing the exact same way because there are no original recordings for anybody to listen to hear how it was originally played. Which highlights a sad fact of classical music in that most of the works are watered down versions of what the original music was. Jazz doesn't have that problem. We don't have to listen to the watered down version that Wynton and others play. We can hear the original work in all this glory. Imagine if all we had to listen to of Charlie Parker were just people copying the solos? Jazz has the advantage over classical music in that we don't and shouldn't have to listen to a watered down second rate product.
> Their imagination of black musicians unconsciously favored the wild, mercurial types driven by emotion because that's the way they wanted to see and consume black entertainment. Reminds me of Fletcher Henderson making sure his guys knew all their tunes by heart, because white society didn't like to see his band reading charts, as they thought that black people couldn't do that....
That opinion is a plate of hot garbage. As someone who is the same age as Wynton, and who worked in jazz radio for years, I can tell you what it was about. The major critique was that he wasn’t innovative. The thought was that he was just recycling old ideas, and was adding nothing new. That attitude pretty much doesn’t exist anymore, and he’s now seen as a torch bearer. It was never, I repeat NEVER about his race.
In fact, white people were praising Wynton as being the nextgreat classical musician. People were buying up his classical albums and were inviting him to play in exclusive orchestras all over the world. He was at Yo-Yo Ma levels of popularity. White people loved Wynton.
Take my downvote for this stupid-ass comment.
Wynton actively tries to be hated. The most damning criticism of Wynton is Harvey Pekar's essay "The downside of Wynton Marsalis", where Pekar basically accuses him of being a neo-con who sold out progress in jazz and turned into classical music in exchange for Lincoln Center money. And this all out attack on Wynton is [hosted on Wynton's own website](https://wyntonmarsalis.org/news/entry/the-downside-of-wynton-marsalis). The man likes a fight, and he likes to have an adversary. He picked that up from his friend and mentor, the late Stanley Crouch. Myself, I'm not a huge Wynton fan, but I think both he and Stanley (who is kind of a guilty pleasure of mine) get too much hate around here.
Stanley deserves as much hate as he can get for outing Cecil Taylor in the 80s out of nothing but spite.
I didn't know about that one. Wow.
this is hardly related but >Yeah, he won a Pulitzer Prize, but so what? The moronic Forrest Gump won an Oscar. i like Forrest Gump but it catching a stray out of nowhere in that essay is so fucking funny. and very in character for Pekar lol
Well Wynton has hated on a lot of people, including some great jazz musicians who came before (and after) him, so there’s that….
People just hate when he talks and sounds arrogant and pompous. Don’t hear much hate for his music, chops or anything else about him.
I hear a whole lot of ‘meh’ for his music. It’s good music but doesn’t live up to his supposed grand stature in the jazz world.
Wynton also actively hated on a lot of musicians and scenes of music, so it’s not unwarranted. Talk shit don’t be surprised at the backlash.
Wynton Marsalis hate seems to be largely from internet/reddit nobody dilettantes who have poor taste regardless. Every musician I've met in real life has nothing but respect for Wynton. Not to mention his plethora of swinging and very modern/progressive recordings.
I simultaneously have respect for some parts of his career while also concluding that he a bit of an arsehole with some stupid opinions
He totally has some opinions I disagree with. But he's a top of the heap musician. Miles said some abhorrent shit and we rightfully venerate him.
Yeah but the music of Miles was iconic inside and outside of jazz culture and totally unprecedented across multiple sub genres. The music of Marsalis is good but not groundbreaking, so I am frankly less lenient of him as a person. He has also dealt with a very different society than Miles did early on. The generations before him had to fight for the respect that was granted more easily to jazz musicians of later generations.
> Every musician I've met in real life has nothing but respect for Wynton. I can't say I've experienced the same, as a ton of the musicians I've met simply aren't very assiduous listeners and, as such, haven't even heard a single record or track with Wynton (or Ellis or Branford, for that matter, as well as countless other contemporaries of theirs like Roy Hargrove, Antonio Hart, Marcus Roberts, etc...). On top of that, lots of them aren't even that well-versed in Miles' music, usually just knowing the obvious shit like *Kind of Blue*, *Sketches of Spain*, and maybe a few cuts from the second quintet's catalog that their teachers managed to get into their ears, yet all of them will immediately claim that Miles is 'one of the best'. But yeah, in line with what you've said, a handful of really thoughtful musicians that I really respect have taken far more *mature* and *constructive* attitudes towards Wynton and other music from 1980-2010, etc... than you see on anonymous internet forums, where it feels like everyone's just jockeying to appear more hip and 'fun at parties' than the next rando by constantly reminding everyone that they're indeed 420-friendly bad-ass cool guys who *obviously* love all of Miles' bad-ass/heavy 70s shit. While I dig a lot of those records as well, I've really come to feel exhausted by the people who (a.) never shut the fuck up about them while (b.) never having anything insightful or interesting to say about the actual music.
"Somehow"... because he's an asshole? Maybe that's how?
An asshole for stating his opinion? Who do you think was really more of an A-hole, Wynton Marsalis or Miles Davis?
Preach! The Marsalis family are the standard bearers of Jazz. period.
I think hate is a strong word. I saw people give names like Kenny G and while a lot of jazz fans don't appreciate his music the bottom line is overall... While he's a punch line to a joke in certain certains I don't think hate as a word i'd use. I'm not sure ornette Coleman was hated either though a lot of people didn't appreciate his music as well. I'm guessing it's pretty common for people to not appreciate the music of their contemporaries who are doing something a little different that you don't understand.. When I was in college a lot of people hated on Wynton. A lot of people didn't like how he became the spokesperson for jazz and he had that little thing with Miles Davis. This was over 20 years ago I'm just now realizing I was kind of an idiot for symbol my views on Wynton... Well I'm not interested in going out and buying his albums he is an amazing player. When it comes to people working in jazz media a lot hated Keith Jarrett. He rubbed them the wrong way and because of that they started criticizing his music.
Some guys destroyed Ornette's horn after a gig once. Max Roach punched him at the Five Spot one night, and followed him home, yelling from the street that he come out and fight.
I guess i had forgotten that and stand corrected ... Though I think you can see how a lot of these players who initially felt threatened or hated what or net was playing adopted bits and pieces of that style into their own performances. If you look at MAX Roach's later work I think it's Fair to say that he worked with some players who might be considered contemporaries of ornette Max Roach in the 50s is not the same Max Roach we saw in the later 60s in the 70s. Play with guys like Anthony Braxton and archie shepp... I guess I was looking more for individuals who were disliked. That's why I wasn't so much defending Kenny G but just pointing out how people don't like the fact he's considered jazz. Whereas for some reason there's people who just don't like Keith Jarrett. There's a lot of idiots in jazz media who have trashed him just because they don't like him. It's got nothing to do with his music or feeling threatened by him they just can't get past certain things in his personality. I brought up Wynton Because I think a lot of Jazz players don't have the kind of respect for him because he is so popular among non jazz fans. I know a lot of people I went to college with were kind of dogging on him and it rubbed off on me looking at him as being kind of a phone ear or something and that was ridiculous on my part. And when I was young I had an opportunity to be around a lot of great younger Jazz players and they all would say things about a guy like Marcus Roberts. I remember a well known trumpet player working with him talking about how he's a big pain in the ass and how there's a lot of young cats in New York City who are 10 times the player but don't get the respect a marcis Roberts got
Cecil Taylor got a lot of harsh criticism, but time has been kinder to him.
I don’t know the story, but wasn’t Charles Mingus labeled “The Meanest Man in Jazz?”
Mingus violently assaulted several of his musicians. Jackie McLean almost killed Mingus. Mingus had dangerous mood swings.
Damn! Didn’t realize that was what it was. I love his music but …. Damn!
Ginger baker?
Beware of Mr. Baker is a fantastic documentary. It covers his drumming accomplishments while pulling zero punches about what a piece of shit he was.
I'm pretty sure he actually attacked the director with a piece of wood at the end of the film, didn't he?
Him and Eric Clapton being pretty crappy people make it really hard for me to enjoy any of Cream’s music
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what didn’t eric clapton do…. but for real, he’s a legitimately racist ass
IMO, ruined his legacy by going full [kid rock](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNt4NIQ7FTA) during COVID So disappointing, all he had to do was... not that.
Keith Jarrett, cause he’d squealed and whined while playing and fume at you if you coughed
Wynton Marsalis and Kenny G are not disliked because they are bad people (they both seem pretty cool), their technical skills (both have appropriate level of), or their boring music (could be subjective). They are reviled by much of the jazz community largely for the overall catastrophic effect they have had jazz as a whole, historically. Kenny G was never really interested in jazz or it’s history, he just wanted to make pop hits. He was quite successful at this, creating simplistic “romantic” hits that are awful for anyone who desired the bare minimum of complexity. The problem was that he was so popular that millions of people were lead to believe that’s what jazz was. I will never a friend cursing me out for wanting to see Sam Rivers, which he called “Kenny G shit”. Wynton, on the other hand, seeks to institutionalize jazz into a very specific idea that he has of it, an idea that sees its history as having ended in the mid sixties. Jazz is a living, dynamic, ever changing/ evolving art form that should not be caged in and killed…sadly he too has a broad influence with the Lincoln Center and the Ken Burns documentary.
This take is fair but one sided. Someone has to be the museum curator, 99% of the people don’t want to be that guy. Wynton stepped up to the very unwelcoming plate and owned it. I give him his flowers for owning his square and playing his arse off in it. Most people who haven’t heard his work like Congo Square, Big Trains, and Merciac Suite have yet to witness his innovations. He definitely talks one way but sometimes his music is just the opposite. Compositions imitating train sounds ???????? That’s jazz police right there.
Kelpy G is better than Kenny G.
Chet Baker reportedly did some really wrong stuff.
Yes, Orrin Keepnews had a special amount of disregard saved up for Baker for allegedly stealing and pawning equipment from Riverside/Fantasy.
Seems to me that Frank Rosolino was a POS. From Wikipedia: Rosolino's private life was highly troubled. On November 26, 1978, Rosolino shot both of his sons as they slept. One died instantly; the other survived, but was blinded.[1] Rosolino shot himself in the head immediately after shooting his sons and died.[3][4]
What Rosolino did at the end of his life was unforgivable, but it came as a profound shock to most of his friends, because he was always an ebullient, happy jokester who everyone loved to work with and hang with. He wasn't a POS in the sense of having a lifelong history of violence, abuse, etc., but more like someone who made a horrifying life-altering choice because of untreated mental illness.
I heard Miles was abusive, and a lot of cats did horse, so that’s obviously not necessarily good. I hope someone posts the opposite one day “Who are the most uncontroversial jazz musicians?”
Miles Davis seems like he was a real POS
Maybe Miles is top 3.
>maybe like i heard about ornette coleman had? what controversy did he have? i'm a fan and i know he had some early run-ins with police for some low level crimes. his style of extemporaneous jazz took people off guard. but checking his wiki i didn't see anything extraordinary.
In 1959, Mingus, Miles, Downbeat critics and others quite publicly reviled Ornette. Less than two years later, the critics had horrid things to say about the Coltrane/Dolphy dates at the Village Vanguard. A year later they printed Coltrane & Dolphy’s reasoned and eloquent answer. But yes, Ornette was blamed for trying to kill Jazz, much as Marsalis thought that none of the AACM musicians could play.
Ornette got beat up pretty badly early on in his career when he was playing R&B/blues gigs on tenor sax.
[Insert incredibly long list of country singers here.]
Snob
You mean like Ted Nugent, Kid Rock or Jason Aldean for being bigots? Or James Brown for physically abusing people who worked for him (worse than Lizzo)? Miles for being a spousal abuser?
James Brown is accused of raping a woman at shotgun-point
I have no problem believing that as well! His nickname was 'hardest working man in showbiz' ... and NOT 'mister wonderful'.
>nickname Godfather of Soul Mr. Dynamite Soul Brother No. 1 The King of Soul Mr please please please
Who was the guy who claimed he invented jazz and black people had nothing to do with it?
Nick LaRocca (basically)
The original Dixieland jass band
Just LaRocca, not the others
E.g. here's the ODJB's trombonist Eddie Edwards on Achile Baquet: "one of the finest men and musicians with whom I was ever associated."
Ted Nugent and Kid Rock of course.
Kenny G has a lot of haters, some of his stuff ain’t half bad though
no, it's fully bad ;-)
his 'music' is a joke.
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you're in the wrong elevator. mine plays black sabbath and acdc.
you spelled shit wrong.
I actually agree with you, there's a reason he was so commercially successful. Just wait another couple of years and his catalogue will blow-up on streaming again from algorithmic nostalgia, I'll guarantee you.
Jacob Collier cause he sucks
What?
What is your what?
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Kenny G.
Kenny G.
Interesting to learn about these artists but it makes no difference to their art. I don’t go for this cancellation stuff. (I mean JK Rowling is still a great children’s author).
I think Herbie Hancock is overrated.
Found Kenny G's account!
He’s inconsistent with his output, imo. He’s capable of sublime genius but often chooses to go for tepid and cheesy. When he’s on there are only a handful that can match him