As regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Bonkers) will know, among the various things I write about apart from The Universe and Stuff is my love of Jazz. I don’t often get the chance to combine music with physics in a post so I’m indebted to George Ellis for drawing my attention to this fascinating little video showing a visualisation of the effects of quantum entanglement:
The experiment shown involves pairs of entangled photons. Here is an excerpt from the blurb on Youtube:
The video shows images of single photon patterns, recorded with a triggered intensified CCD camera, where the influence of a measurement of one photon on its entangled partner photon is imaged in real time. In our experiment the immediate change of the monitored mode pattern is a result of the polarization measurement on the distant partner photon.
You can find out more by clicking through to the Youtube page.
While most of my colleagues were completely absorbed by the pictures, I was fascinated by the choice of musical accompaniment. It is in fact Blue Piano Stomp, a wonderful example of classic Jazz from the 1920s featuring the great Johnny Dodds on clarinet (who also wrote the tune) and the great Lil Armstrong (née Hardin) on piano, who just happened to be the first wife of a trumpet player by the name of Louis Armstrong.
So at last I’ve found an example of Jazz entangled with Physics!
P.S. We often bemoan the shortage of female physicists, but Jazz is another field in which women are under-represented and insufficiently celebrated. Lil Hardin was a great piano player and deserves to be much more widely appreciated for her contribution to Jazz history.
Over thirty years ago I wandered into Windows shop in Newcastle and found an LP called Blues Pour Flirter. It was recorded in Paris in 1962 and features Don Byas on tenor saxophone. I didn’t care much for the title, especially when I looked at the listing to find that there wasn’t a single blues among the tracks – they’re all ballads. I bought the album anyway and am glad I did because Don Byas plays beautifully throughout, and one of the tracks has been a particular favourite of mine ever since.
Some of the tracks involve a big studio orchestra including strings and woodwinds but my favourite has Don Byas on tenor saxophone accompanied by a rhythm section of Christian Garros on drums, Pierre Sim on bass and George Arvanitas on piano. They play a ravishing version of the Jerome Kern standard Smoke Gets InYour Eyes, which someone has had the good grace to put on YouTube. It seems this and some of the other tracks on the album I bought way back when have been reissued on another album.
I love the huge sound Don Byas produces as he plays this tune, like a lion playing with a cub. At one point it seems like he’s going to tear it apart but it all ends peacefully. How I wish I could play like this!
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the death of the great saxophonist Charlie Parker (“Bird”) on 12th March 1955. I’ve written quite a few posts relating to Charlie Parker over the years but today has provided a good excuse to spend my lunchtime writing another one, this time featuring one of my favourite tracks from one of my favourite albums. First released in 1952 but in fact recorded in two separate sessions in 1949 and 1950, the album Bird and Diz was actually the last studio album made under the joint leadership of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, the two main architects of the bebop revolution; the track I’ve picked has the added advantage of featuring another great musical genius on piano, Thelonious Monk.
The Charlie Parker composition Bloomdido is yet another of his variations on the blues, though this one is a bit less intricate than some of the others he wrote. Here are the chords for Bloomdido:
You can see that the progression is based around the standard three chords of a blues in B♭. The foundation is a “tonic” chord (T) based on the root note of whatever key it’s played in, in this case B♭. This sometimes a basic triad consisting of the first, third and five notes of a major scale starting on that note or, as in this example, including the dominant 7th so it’s B♭7. The next chord is the subdominant chord (S), shifting things up by a perfect fourth relative to the tonic, in this case an E♭7 and then finally we have the dominant (D) which brings us up by a fifth from the original root note, in this case F7.
The basic blues sequence in B♭ would be four bars of B♭7 (T), two of E♭7 (S), back to B♭7 (T) for two, then the characteristic bluesy cadence returning to two bars of B♭7 (T) via one bar each of F7 (D) and E♭7 (S). The sequence for Bloomdido has a few alterations, including a characteristic turnaround at the end instead of the tonic, but is otherwise fairly recognizable. I guess the first part of the title is a play on the blues origin too, though I wonder if the second part suggests that some of the alterations are inspired by the A-section of the Juan Tizol standard Perdido?
Some people tell me they find Charlie Parker’s music “too technical” and that somehow if music “needs to be explained” it’s not good music. I don’t understand that attitude at all. I find this music so fascinating and exciting to listen to that I want to try to dig a little bit into it and find out what’s going underneath the surface. It’s particularly striking what a difference a few substitutions and passing chords can make to the overall harmonic “feel” of a piece like this compared to a standard blues sequence, for example. But you don’t need to study the chords to appreciate the sheer beauty of the music that Charlie Parker built on these harmonic foundations; his solo on this track, as on so many others he recorded in his short life, is just sublime even if you don’t realise how hard it is to play! I guess it all depends whether your way of enjoying a thing is to sit back and let it wash over you, or for it to inspire you to find out more. Many of the physicists I know are deeply interested in music. Perhaps that’s because they’re the sort of people who don’t just think “wow that’s beautiful”, they tend to think “wow that’s beautiful – how does it work?”.
Charlie Parker and Albert Einstein died in the same year, just over a month apart, the former in March 1955 and the latter in April. They were two very different geniuses but it’s as difficult to imagine physics without Einstein as jazz without Bird.
I couldn’t resist reblogging this wonderful letter from one great saxophonist, Sonny Rollins, to another, Coleman Hawkins.
The letter was written in 1962. You can find here on Youtube a recording of the two of them playing the great Jerome Kern tune All The Things You Are at the Newport Jazz Festival just a few months later in summer 1963. The title seems to match the sentiments of the letter rather nicely!
Do read this, a touching letter from Sonny Rollins to Coleman Hawkins in 1962 (from the website www.jazzclef.com). The greatest players possess not only self-discipline and powers of concentration, but generally, great humility.
A very busy day back in Sussex meant that I had no time for a post until I finished lecturing at 6pm, so there’s just time for a bit of music before I head home. I thought I’d put up another track by Humphrey Lyttelton, from the same concert at the Royal Festival Hall in July 1951 sponsored by the National Federation of Jazz Organizations (NFJO) from which I posted The Dormouse some time ago. This is an excellent performance of a blues called It makes my love come down, which Humph probably transcribed from the classic original recording by the greatest female blues singer of all time, Bessie Smith. Again it shows the Lyttelton band’s front line in fine fettle, especially when they come together for the last couple of choruses.
Just spent an extremely enjoyable Saturday morning on the Sussex University campus for one of our Applicant Visit Days; there’ll be several more of these occasions over the next few months and I only hope we have such glorious weather for the others!
I thought I’d celebrate the fact that it all went well by posting a bit of old-fashioned good-time jazz. It’s getting on for seven years since the death of the great Humphrey Lyttelton, who was not only a fine trumpeter and bandleader but also blessed with wickedly dry sense of humour. During the late 1940s and early 1950s Humph’s band had a terrific front line consisting of Wally Fawkes on clarinet and the superb Keith Christie on trombone, led by himself on trumpet. Apparently when they did late-night gigs, Keith Christie had a habit of occasional dozing off while someone else was soloing. Not unreasonably, this behaviour reminded Humph of the Dormouse at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, so he decided to write a tune with that name in honour of Keith Christie. I have the studio recording of The Dormouse, which was released on Parlophone as a 78rpm single, and it’s such a blast that I love it to bits, but this is a live performance which I just came across a few days ago. It comes from a famous concert at the Royal Festival Hall in July 1951 sponsored by the National Federation of Jazz Organizations (NFJO) which featured a number of bands as well as Humph’s.
Anyway, it’s a delicious helping of New Orleans jazz served with a generous side order of English eccentricity, guaranteed to bring a smile to the most crabbed of faces. The trombone introduction and fills by Keith Christie, in whose honour the tune was written, are typically full of humour, but the improvised ensemble playing is absolutely terrific, especially from about 1.55 onwards. Humph’s band of this time didn’t have the greatest rhythm section – Humph himself joked that they often sounded like they were wearing diving boots – but the front line was world class.
ps. It definitely should be “The Dormouse” not “The Doormouse”…
pps. Unless my ears deceive me I think this number is announced by Kenneth Horne…
Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of famous Belgian Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone. To mark this occasion I thought I’d undertake a bit of audience participation and get you out there in internet land to vote on the greatest proponent of said instrument. I’ve populated the list with people I consider to be likely contenders, but feel free to add your own if your favourite is missing!
Yesterday evening I heard the sad news that “trad” jazz stalwart Acker Bilk had died, aged 85. With his trademark bowler hat and goatee beard, he was one of the leading figures of the post-war British jazz scene. He scored considerable commercial recording success with the Paramount Jazz Band, especially with Stranger on the Shore which was in the British Charts for 50 weeks in 1962, was the first record by a British artist to hit No. 1 in the American Billboard charts, and was greatly admired by no less a figure than Duke Ellington. There are tributes all over today’s newspapers (e.g. here) that do better justice to Acker Bilk than I could, so I’ll just post one track as a special tribute. This track, Train Song, the B-side of The Harem, was recorded in the year of my birth and I have loved it since I was a kid.
I was transferring some old CDs onto my iPod the other day, and in the process of doing that I realized that in all the six years I’ve been running this blog I haven’t posted a single item about the great guitarist Charlie Christian, who did more than any other individual to promote the use of the electrical guitar and thus had an enormous influence on the development of 20th century music. The only reason I can think of why his is not a household name is that he died so young, in 1942, of tuberculosis, at the age of just 25.
Born in 1916, Charlie Christian came to prominence with Benny Goodman‘s orchestra during the 1930s. That in itself merits a remark. Benny Goodman was one of the first white bandleaders in the Swing Era to have black musicians in his band at a time when both musicians and audiences were generally racially segregated in the United States of America. Goodman deserves great credit for picking the best musicians he could find, regardless of the colour of their skin; Lionel Hampton is another prominent example. Bringing the young Charlie Christian into his band also testifies not only to his refusal to pander to racism, but also his willingness to experiment with new musical ideas, not least taking the guitarist out of the rhythm section and placing him as front-line soloist.
Here’s an excellent example of Charlie Christian playing with Benny Goodman’s Orchestra in 1939. I remember that my Dad wasn’t all that keen on Benny Goodman’s clarinet playing, which he regarded as “too clinical”. In fact many jazz writers also tend to refer to Benny Goodman’s playing as “unemotional”. I can’t agree. I admit that the band is a bit “slick”, but the clarinet on this track is absolutely sensational to me, and I find it a joy to listen to over and over again. There’s also fine Cootie Williams on trumpet on this version of Fats Waller’s composition Honeysuckle Rose:
Commercial records from the 1930s were strictly limited by the available technology to 3 minutes’ duration, so Charlie Christian’s solo on that track is necessarily brief. You can hear much more of him on the historically important amateur recordings made during the early 1940s of late-night jam sessions at Minton’s Playhouse in New York City. This is an excerpt from a piece called Swing to Bop recorded in 1941, which shows how far Charlie Christian had advanced in just a couple of years. His improvised solo is way ahead of its time in the way it develops through an effortless string of musical ideas into an exploration of the harmonic possibilities of the chord sequence that I find absolutely sensational to listen to.
Not many people knew it at the time, because tracks like this weren’t made commercially available, but a musical revolution was brewing. Charlie Christian changed the course of jazz history, helping to usher in the bebop era, but his influence on rock-and-roll guitar is also incalculable.
Incidentally, I think Swing to Bop is actually the Count Basie tune Topsy in disguise, or at least the chords thereof. Listen to Topsyhere and see if you agree..
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