Clan Of Xymox - Mysterium

My journey from Berklee's hallowed halls to the vibrant world of jazz has been an odyssey of discovery, with the blues serving as my guiding light. The intertwining of these genres is not just a historical footnote but a living testament to the evolution of American music. The blues, with its emotive simplicity and authentic storytelling, remains the beating heart that fuels the intricate dance of jazz... musical education is not just about mastering technicalities, it's about embracing the emotional depth that resonates through every note. The blues taught me to listen with my heart, respond with intuition, and let the music unfold organically. It became the bridge connecting past and present, tradition and innovation.

So, with immense gratitude for the educators, mentors, and the rich musical legacy they shared, I carry the spirit of the blues into every improvisation. As a jazz enthusiast, I understand that the blues isn't just a genre, it's a foundational language, a common thread weaving through the vast tapestry of jazz. This harmonious affair between blues and jazz is an eternal melody, and as I continue to navigate the ever evolving landscape of music, I do so with the soulful resonance of the blues guiding my every note.

Source: Did Jazz Come From Blues? by Cloe Haynes

Clan Of Xymox - Mysterium

• Released on: Sep 21, 2001
• Genre: Electronic, Rock
• Producer by: Ronny Moorings and Mojca Zugna

"Clan of Xymox were formed in Nijmegen, Netherlands in 1983 by Ronny Moorings, vocals, guitar, and Anka Wolbert, bass, vocals, who met two years earlier."

Kraftwerk - Computer World

A few more years and Rock and Roll will no doubt be washed back half forgotten into the sea of jazz. Jazz is a great big sea. It washes up all kinds of fish and shells and spume and waves with a steady old beat, or off beat. And Louis must be getting old if he thinks J. J. and Kai, and even Elvis, didn’t come out of the same sea he came out of, too. Some water has chlorine in it and some doesn’t. There’re all kinds of water. There’s salt water and Saratoga water and Vichy water, Quinine water and Pluto water, and Newport rain. And it’s all water. Throw it all in the sea, and the sea’ll keep on rolling along toward shore and crashing and booming back into itself again. The sun pulls the moon. The moon pulls the sea. They also pull jazz and me. Beyond Kai to Count to Lonnie to Texas Red, beyond June to Sarah to Billy to Bessie to Ma Rainey. And the Most is the It, the all of it.

Now, to wind it all up, with you in the middle, jazz is only what you yourself get out of it. Louis’s famous quote, or misquote probably­, Lady, if you have to ask what it is, you’ll never know. Well, I wouldn’t be so positive. The lady just might know, without being able to let loose the cry, to follow through, to light up before the fuse blows out. To me jazz is a montage of a dream deferred. A great big dream, yet to come, and always yet, to become ultimately and finally true. Maybe in the next seminar, for Saturday, Nat Hentoff and Billy Strayhorn and Tony Scott and the others on that panel will tell us about it, when they take up The Future of Jazz. The Bird was looking for that future like mad... That future is what you call pregnant. Potential papas and mamas of tomor­row’s jazz are all known. But THE papa and THE mama, maybe both, are anonymous. But the child will communicate. Jazz is a heartbeat, ­its heartbeat is yours. You will tell me about its perspectives when you get ready.

Source: Jazz as Communication by Langston Hughes

Kraftwerk - Computer World

• Composed by: Ralf Hütter
• Release in: 1981
• Genre: Electronic

"Kraftwerk is an electronic band founded in 1970 in Düsseldorf, Germany. They pioneered electronic music in the 70s and are considered the most important and influential band of their genre."

Cedar Walton - Summertime

In the mid 1800s, a German harmonica manufacturer named Hohner started exporting his product to North America. Being relatively inexpensive, relatively easy to play and extremely portable, the harmonica, commonly called a harp, was the perfect instrument for a nation on the move. Everybody from Abraham Lincoln to Billy the Kid had one.

Over time, its popularity has waxed and waned, and it's now heard most often in the context of blues music. But ever since Marion Little Walter Jacobs began playing saxophone lines on his harmonica in the late 1940s, the instrument has occasionally crossed over into the jazz world.

Source: Beyond The Blues: The Blues Harmonica In Jazz by Nick Morrison and Robin Lloyd

Cedar Walton - Summertime

• Written by: George Gershwin
• First recorded on: October 31, 1986
• Released on: Up Front album

"Cedar Walton was an American hard bop jazz pianist. He came to prominence as a member of drummer Art Blakey's band, The Jazz Messengers, before establishing a long career as a bandleader and composer."

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The Human League - Shameless

In 1920s appeared first blues bands and blues began to be not as it was before. It turned into something like show and popular trend. Many people felt that they could earn money both on blues music and musicians who played it. So they became popular and many recording studios want to see these blues musicians writing some songs.

However unlike jazz blues was music of black people and the situation was so for many years. There existed pubs for black people where blues was played. Many black people though that white population can’t play blues and it is really so. Afro American people have all right to say that blues is their music, as it describes their hard life and conditions in which they were. Their situation was harder that Austerity. You may get to know what austerity is and compare this policy with policy towards Afro American people.

At this stage, blues didn’t stop its development of course and gradually, new genre rhythm and blues and other ones appeared. Among popular and relatively modern bands and musicians, who played in this style Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan can be named. They are the brightest representatives of modern blues.

Source: Blues And Jazz Brief History

The Human League - Shameless

• Released on: August 6, 2001
• Genre: Pop, electronic
• Producer by: Dave Clayton and Kerry Hopwood

"Since 1978, the Human League have released 9 studio albums, a remix album, a live album, 6 EPs, 29 singles and 13 compilation albums. They have had 6 top 20 albums and 13 top 20 singles in the UK and sold more than 20 million records worldwide."

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Sam Jones - Buckle Up

It is no wonder, then, that literary critics intent on analyzing musical elements in Wilson’s plays, but who are not, after all, professional musicologists, tend to pursue the seemingly reasonable shortcut of consulting secondary scholarly sources about the blues, rather than daring to dive into what is, for most people, a vast, obscure, and forbidding ocean of pre World War II music... Yet there are inevitable and profound limits to any mobilization of secondary scholarship or theoretical frameworks that is not also rooted in solid knowledge of, or basic research into, the pertinent primary material.

When literary critics address the pervasive blues and jazz elements in Wilson’s plays, armed with a handful of secondary sources and generalizing abstractions but without substantial awareness of the relevant music, they frequently stumble into error... The protagonist of this drama may indeed be a composite of several historical sources, including Jefferson, but one might reasonably wonder if a fictional character named Blind Willie Johnson owes some debt to the renowned real life 1920s gospel blues singer Blind Willie Johnson. Conventionally, Dixieland refers to imitations of traditional polyphonic small group New Orleans jazz. Sometimes the term even has negative associations as a shorthand for ersatz white efforts to emulate Black music, from the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917 to the nostalgic revivalism of the 1940s and beyond. Swing, as a generic/historical descriptor, meanwhile, usually refers to the large orchestras that mixed hot rhythms and short solo passages within riff based arrangements during the 1930s and early 1940s. While it is true that good Dixieland jazz does swing, Dixieland swing is not a term used by jazz scholars. The kind of music that Levee dreams of recording would likely resemble the modernized and solo oriented evolution of Black, small group New Orleans jazz that Louis Armstrong developed in Chicago in the second half of the 1920s.

Source: Music That Breathes and Touches: The Implications of 1920s Blues and Jazz in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by Tim A Ryan

Sam Jones - Buckle Up

• Released on: Jun 23, 2014
• Genre: Electronic
• Track Duration: 9:02

"Sam Jones has released on Kearnage Recordings, Damaged Records, Mental Asylum, Black Hole, and Armada, and has performed in Sweden, Australia, Argentina, Ireland and UK major clubs."

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The Pat Moran Quartet - Come Rain Or Come Shine

The very institutional acceptance that many musicians sought in the mid to late 20th century has hitched jazz to a broken and still segregated education system. Partly as a result, the music has become inaccessible to, and disconnected from, many of the very people who created it, young Black Americans, poorer people and others at the societal margins.

Of the more than 500 students who graduate from American universities with jazz degrees each year, less than 10 percent are Black, according to Department of Education statistics compiled by DataUSA. In 2017, the last year with data available, precisely 1 percent of jazz degree grads were Black women.

The education is the anchor... We should be questioning our education system. Is it working? Is there a pipeline into the university for indigenous Black Americans to play their music, and learn their music? I don’t think that exists.

Source: Jazz Has Always Been Protest Music. Can It Meet This Moment? by Giovanni Russonello

The Pat Moran Quartet - Come Rain Or Come Shine

• Vocals by: Pat Moran, John Whited, and Beverly Kelly
• Released by: 1957
• Written by: Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer

"The Pat Moran Quartet consists of Moran on piano, John Doling on bass, John Whited on drums and Beverly Kelly, all singing four part harmony while they played."

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The Velvet Underground - Send No Letter

The word Jazz means pep or energy. This style was born in the taverns of New Orleans at much the same time and with the same influences as blues and ragtime. But jazz had an added element of Cuban/Spanish culture. Habanera rhythms, blues forms and ragtime drive blended together to form something new. Eventually the rigid rhythms of the beat relaxed to allow a feeling we call swing. Swing is hard to define and difficult to notate... The prohibition of the 1920’s saw the rise of The Jazz Age in the U.S. cementing this style and sound into American culture.

Ragtime... style takes traditional march form, much like the music of John Philip Sousa, and adds the syncopated, or ragged, rhythms of African music. The style fell out of favor in the early 20th century with the rise of jazz but many compare the American rag to European minuets, mazurkas and waltzes... American orchestras and conservatories were slow to recognize these styles, but their European counterparts embraced them openly.

Source: Timeline: Blues, Ragtime and Jazzy by James Stewart

The Velvet Underground - Send No Letter

• Released in: February 1973
• Recorded in: 1971
• Genre: Rock

"The Velvet Underground lineup consisted of Doug Yule, vocals, guitar, Willie Alexander, keyboards, vocals, Walter Powers, bass guitar, and Maureen Tucker and Ian Paice, drums."

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Roberta Flack - Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye

Jazz is a broad musical style, notoriously difficult to define, but with a general foundation of improvisation, syncopated rhythms, and group interaction. Considered a wholly American musical form, jazz originated during the late 19th century within black communities of the Southern United States. A jazz ensemble usually plays a predetermined tune, with each musician adding their own interpretations. This improvisation is the defining element of jazz, and is based on the mood of the musicians, the interaction of the group, and even the audience’s response to the music. Jazz performers try to create a unique and expressive tone for their instrument, also known as a voice. Skilled jazz musicians play and interact with a swing rhythm, a propulsive groove or beat that creates a visceral response of foot tapping or head nodding. These rhythms have roots in traditional African music, using the off beats of syncopated rhythms to create the groove.

Blues is a genre of music based on traditional blues chord patterns, scales, and emotive lyrics, often performed by a solo guitarist/vocalist... Blues scales contain blue notes, notes played at a slightly lowered pitch, which give the music a distinctive sound. The focus of blues music is usually the singer/guitarist, even when the performer is backed by a band. While improvisation is often a part of blues, there is rarely much deviation from the basic chord structure of the song.

Both types of music emerged in the American Deep South around the end of the 19th century and spread north and formed various sub genres. Jazz and blues are both characterized by the use of blue notes, swung notes, and syncopated rhythms. When blues musicians begin heavily improvising, the line between blues and jazz begins to diminish. In fact, mastery of blues style playing is considered part of learning to play jazz.

Source: Blues vs. Jazz by Diffin LLC

Roberta Flack - Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye

• Written by: Leonard Cohen
• First recorded on: February 26, 1969
• Released on: June 20, 1969

"Roberta Flack was the first, and remains the only, solo artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year on two consecutive years, 1973 and 1974."

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https://anomaleusedblog.blogspot.com/2024/01/groove-armada-highway-101.html

Groove Armada - Highway 101

During the 1920s, many Americans had extra money to spend, and spend it they did, on movies, fashion and consumer goods such as ready to wear clothing and home appliances like electric refrigerators. In particular, they bought radios.

Cars also gave young people the freedom to go where they pleased and do what they wanted. Some pundits called them bedrooms on wheels. What many young people wanted to do was dance, the Charleston, the cake walk, the black bottom and the flea hop were popular dances of the era.

Jazz bands played at venues like the Savoy and the Cotton Club in New York City and the Aragon in Chicago, radio stations and phonograph records, 100 million of which were sold in 1927 alone, carried their tunes to listeners across the nation. Some older people objected to jazz music’s vulgarity and depravity, and the moral disasters it supposedly inspired, but many in the younger generation loved the freedom they felt on the dance floor.

Source: The Roaring Twenties by Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan, Matt Mullen and Christian Zapata

Groove Armada - Highway 101

• Produced by: Groove Armada
• Released on: Jul 10, 2015
• Genre: Electronic

Groove Armada formed after Andy Cato and Tom Findlay had been introduced by a mutual friend and soon started their own club night in London. The duo have released nine studio albums, four of which have charted in the UK Albums Chart top 50.

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Christine McVie - Northern Star

The Graystone Ballroom, meanwhile, was the city’s cradle of jazz. Opened in 1922, it was once Detroit’s largest and grandest ballroom. In a 1974 interview with The Detroit News, clarinetist Benny Goodman said he drove all night to catch Bix Beiderbecke play at the Graystone, calling it a great mecca in those days. During the height of big band jazz, the Graystone often hosted a battle of the bands, with one in particular... that drew a record breaking crowd of around 7,000.

Detroit’s jazz scene, by this point, reached across the city. The now vacant Blue Bird Inn on the city’s west side eventually pulled the bebop crowd from the El Sino as blacks migrated west in the 1950s. The Blue Bird was where jazz musician and trumpeter Miles Davis cultivated his career. In his autobiography, Davis writes about moving to Detroit after quitting heroin, where he befriended the club’s owner Clarence Eddins. Eddins gave him a job with The Blue Bird house band, and as Davis’ solo career blossomed, he frequently returned to play at the venue alongside several groups.

Across the street from the Band Box was the Russell House Hotel, where a side basement entrance led to a blind pig after hours called the Night Club. Jess Faithful’s exclusive Rhythm Club, on the other hand, was a second floor booking agency that required a membership card past curfew, and it was common for late night parties to continue until noon the following day... We’d sit around and play cards and bootleg liquor was served. The police didn’t stop us. They’d walk the beat, you give them $2 and they’d walk out.

Source: Before Motown: A History of Jazz and Blues in Detroit by Ashley Zlatopolsky

Christine McVie - Northern Star

• Produced by: Christine McVie, Dan Perfect and Ken Caillat
• Recorded at: Sphere Studios
• Released on: July 27, 2004

"Christine shot to prominence as a blues singer in the 70s and was voted best British female vocalist in the Melody Maker polls. She joined Fleetwood Mac where her keyboard work and emotive singing did much to propel the band."

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David Allan Coe - Why You Been Gone So Long

Jazz music is an incredibly important part of American culture. There is a rich jazz history that has had a ripple effect on nearly every aspect of American life from style and social movements to the music that came after. Learning more about the importance of jazz music in America may just give you even more appreciation for the genre.

For many fans of jazz, New York is the best place to go... a tradition that continues today in many of the area’s best jazz clubs. You don’t have to look far to see the influence acts as these had on the best music from the 20th century... The genre has permeated musical culture to the point where it is nearly impossible to find someone who wasn’t influenced by jazz at some point... If you are looking for a jazz club, New York does not disappoint... the oldest New York jazz clubs around, to truly experience the legacy that jazz music has left behind.

Source: Why Jazz Music is Important to American Culture by Birdland Jazz Club

David Allan Coe - Why You Been Gone So Long

• Written by: Mickey Newbury
• Released on: Texas Moon album
• First release by: Johnny Darrell

"David Allan Coe's lyrics frequently include references to alcohol and drug use, and are often boisterous and cocky. His most popular songs performed by others are the number one hits and achieved charting success."

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Kenny Dorham - Like Someone In Love Take 2

In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable as white audiences began listening to blues. Blues came into its own as an important part of the country’s relatively new popular culture in the 1920s with the recording, first, of great female classic blues singers and, then, of the country folk blues singers of the Mississippi Delta, the Piedmont of the Carolinas, and Texas. The first copyrighted song was in 1912, the Dallas Blues. As huge numbers of African Americans left the South at this time due to failed Reconstruction, dismal economic conditions, oppression in the South and the hope of better treatment in the North between 1915 and 1940s, the blues went with them, and settled in the urban centers of the North, especially Chicago. A more urban, electric blues developed as a result, which eclipsed the rural blues of the South and eventually became both rock and roll and what would become known as rhythm and blues.

Blues fell somewhat out of popular favor until the later 1950’s... Blues had a huge influence on American popular music. Popular musicians Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, with their enthusiastic playing styles, departed from the melancholy aspects of blues. After this time, the blues became increasingly merged with rock music to form the rock blues bands of the 1960s and 70s.

When the country blues moved to the cities and other locales, it took on various regional characteristics. These were called the St. Louis Blues, the Memphis Blues, the Louisiana Blues, etc. Today there are many different shades of blues. Forms include:

Traditional country Blues, A general term that describes the rural blues of the Mississippi Delta, the Piedmont and other rural locales. Jump Blues, A danceable amalgam of swing and blues and a precursor to rhythm and blues. Boogie woogie, A piano based blues derived from barrel house and ragtime. Chicago Blues, Delta blues electrified. Cool Blues, A sophisticated piano based form that owes much to jazz. West Coast Blues, Popularized mainly by Texas musicians who moved to California, heavily influenced by the swing beat.

Source: A history of Blues Music by Cheryl Fallstead

Kenny Dorham - Like Someone In Love Take 2

• Recorded at: Peter Ind Studio
• Released in: 1990
• Genre: Jazz

"Kenny Dorham's later quartet consisted of some well known jazz musicians, Tommy Flanagan, piano, Paul Chambers, double bass, and Art Taylor, drums. Dorham recorded frequently throughout the 1960s for Blue Note and Prestige Records as leader and as a sideman."

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Roy Haynes - I'm So High

When it comes to music, jazz and blues are two distinct genres with their own unique characteristics. However, many people make the mistake of using these terms interchangeably. 

One of the most common mistakes people make is assuming that jazz and blues are interchangeable terms for the same type of music. While both genres have roots in African American musical traditions and share some similarities, they are distinct genres with their own unique characteristics.

Jazz is characterized by its improvisational nature, complex chord progressions, and use of swing rhythms. Blues, on the other hand, is characterized by its use of simple chord progressions, call and response patterns, and use of the blues scale. To avoid this mistake, it’s important to take the time to listen to both genres and familiarize yourself with their unique characteristics. This will help you to better understand and appreciate the nuances of each genre.

The mood and atmosphere of an event or place can greatly influence the choice between jazz and blues. Jazz music is often associated with a sophisticated and relaxed ambiance, making it a popular choice for upscale restaurants and cocktail parties. In contrast, blues music has a more soulful and emotional quality, making it suitable for intimate settings like small bars or cafes.

Source: Jazz vs Blues: Which Should You Use In Writing? by The Content Authority

Roy Haynes - I'm So High

• Written by: Roy Haynes
• Released in: 1971
• Genre: Jazz

"Roy Haynes, finally gaining recognition for his talents and versatility, has been a major player since the 1940s. In mid 2006, Haynes earned a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo."

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Tia Carrera - Unnamed Wholeness

Evidently, music was a central aspect of the African American culture... As most music scholars would put it, jazz music was among the first American genres that influenced global music. In essence, many share the ideas that this form of music developed after the civil war especially in America. On the other hand, jazz musicians also used this music genre as a platform for advocating for civil rights and equality for the African American minority group. It was a subtle way of dealing with social injustices for which others considered as stereotyping since it mainly targeted those of white color.

In essence, music serves as an avenue for communicating across one’s ignorance’s and hatreds hence connecting people for the betterment of the society. With this attribute in mind, many jazz musicians played their music for a purpose that was greater than entertainment but as a way of bringing unity for the oppressed. Ellison’s use of Jazz and Blues in the book Invisible Man serves as a way of self expression. The fact that jazz music began as a medium of expression among the black Americans, a racial group that defines the narrator’s ethnicity places emphasis on the feelings of the narrator in the underground hole, introduced to the reader in the epilogue and the prologue of the book.

Evidently, jazz music is the only form of expression for the narrator because race has made him an invisible man. Many jazz musicians were from the southern states and emerged to appreciate it as the only available means of defining their autonomy and individuality. This explains why the narrator chooses to listen to such music in his underground hole as he strived to peer deeper into the invisible man that he received little attention from the whites.

Although many jazz artists were from New Orleans, this does not limit the themes to this location only. On the contrary, many African Americans formed the audience of those jazz artists because the themes expressed reflected the feelings and experience of all of them.

The development of jazz music during such politically critical times explains why the new genre had immense political impact on the civil struggle in America. The preceding years before the emergence of jazz music presented black Americans with the stringent segregation rules under the Jim Crow policies. The Jim Crow policies are the reason why the Ellison titled his book, Invisible man. During the time when Jim Crow segregation pattern was stringent, African Americans faced extremes of mistreatment because and had no access to jobs, education, and medical health care used by whites. Young African Americans found the strength to refute the unfair treatment against racial divides that had prevailed for several decades. Previous genres of music had proven to the African Americans that music had the potential of being an avenue to convey political messages.

Source: The Role of Blues and Jazz in Expressing the Experience by irvingkovacek

Tia Carrera - Unnamed Wholeness

• Release on: October 27, 2009
• Duration: 50:26
• Genre: Pop/Rock

"Tia Carrera consist of drummer Erik Conn, guitarist Jason Morales, and bassist Andrew Duplantis. For over a decade now, Tia Carrera have been melting minds with their own twist on the 70’s rock n roll jam."

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Karen Dalton - Lonesome Valley

Oliver himself had come up in traditional brass bands but then leaned toward the new hot music, beginning with his matriculation into the gutbucket Eagle Band, probably around 1908. Later, after playing the district with his Magnolia Band, he joined the top line Onward Brass Band under the Creole Manuel Perez. One observer wrote that when the Onward played a march, dirge, or hymn it was played to perfection, no blunders. Yet even in that rarefied company, Oliver began playing monkeyshines, improvised figures around the score. He straddled the Uptown/Downtown fence.

There were likely a couple reasons. First, like any Crescent City musician, he needed to cover all styles and repertoires, especially to follow new trends and suit an international audience. Second, more than anything, he wanted to be a band man. He needed camaraderie.

The musicians he knew from New Orleans were plagued by feelings of inferiority so crippling that they could not succeed professionally. For Oliver, the police raid amounted to one more loss in a world loaded with them. One more reason to go down in the mouth, to give up hope. Or to move north, like so many others.

Source: When Jazz Moved to Chicago by Peter Gerler

Karen Dalton - Lonesome Valley

• Released on: April 23, 2022
• Arranged by: Karen Dalton
• Recorded at: The Attic, Boulder

"In the early ‘60s, Karen Dalton became a fixture in the Greenwich Village folk scene, interpreting traditional material, blues standards, and the songs of her contemporaries."

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The English Beat - The Tears of a Clowne

The blues is generally understood as a secular music of loss: lost women, lost jobs, regrets, and defeat. But it has a more profound, spiritual side, defying despair. In the 1950s, Ralph Ellison, while writing about flamenco, another Islamic influenced music, remarked that the blues voice mocks the despair stated explicitly in the lyric, and it expresses the great human joke directed against the universe, that joke which is the secret of all folklore and myth, that though we be dismembered daily we shall always rise up again... the blues is a secular spiritual. In this spirituality, perhaps one may find an echo of one of the blues’s roots in Islamic practices and music.

The blues is not African music; there is no traditional African blues. Nor is it Islamic music. The blues is an African American creation, born of American circumstances and various influences. What makes it unique is the prevalence of a number of Sahelian/Islamic stylistic elements that became dominant due in part to historical events particular to American slavery... Among these were the soulful tunes of the hollers and the blues. Though largely unrecognized, they are some of the most enduring contributions of West African Muslims to American culture.

Source: What Islam Gave the Blues by Sylviane A. Diouf

The English Beat - The Tears of a Clowne

• Released in: 1979
• Genre: Rock, Reggae
• Duration: 2:41

"The Beat, also known as Paul Collins' Beat, was a power pop band that formed in Los Angeles, California, United States in 1977. The band has been led through several incarnations by singer songwriter and guitarist Paul Collins."

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Charles Mingus - How Low The Earth

Although harmony by itself generally does not receive copyright protection, '07 Tempo Music Inc. v. Famous Music Corp. indicated that harmony might suffice. Duke Ellington's estate, namely his son Mercer and the Famous Music Corporation, sued the executor of Billy Strayhorn's estate claiming that Strayhorn did not have a protected interest in his harmonic contributions to subsequent arrangements of Satin Doll, a song by Ellington... Examining the issue of harmony, Judge Sand acknowledged harmony as inherently derivative because it usually accompanies an already created melody. Rejecting the Ellington Estate's argument that harmony cannot itself give rise to a copyright, the court held that, although certain chords occur inevitably from a given melody, composers especially in jazz and contemporary music sometimes make especially creative use of harmony, which necessarily influences the mood, feel and sound of a piece.

Instead of relying on the proposal of novel results as the standard for originality, the court deemed the creative process as most important, leading to its conclusion that harmony can, as a matter of law, be the subject of copyright. The court's refusal to grant summary judgment indicated the court's more expansive view of copyright protection.

In some cases, a portion of a musical work will prove important enough so that copying, or nearly copying, it will warrant a finding of copyright infringement. Plaintiffs can face a difficult burden when claiming copyright infringement in this manner. Generally, if a portion of one work proves to be quantitatively and qualitatively similar to another work, it will infringe the original work.

Source: Discontented Blues: Jazz Arrangements and the Case for Improvements in Copyright Law by John R. Zoesch III

Charles Mingus - How Low The Earth

• Arranger by: Louis Lubella, Charles Mingus
• Recorded on: December 12, 1953
• Released in: 1954

"Accomplished on the double bass, cello and piano, Charles Mingus was well known as a band leader, recording artist, producer, and a highly innovative composer. Mingus earning the reputation of the Angry Man of American jazz."

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Toto - Falling In Between

Couldn't find anything interesting to share today, will find something for tomorrow. Peace to theworld. ✌️☮️

Toto - Falling In Between

• Vocals by: Bobby Kimball
• Genre: Rock, Prog Rock
• Released in: 2006

"Toto is an American rock band formed in 1977 in Los Angeles, California. Having released 14 studio albums and sold over 40 million records worldwide, the group has received several Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2009."

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Thin Lizzy - My Sarah

Jazz uses a more theoretical approach. You’ll find Bebop Scales, Chord Tone soloing, Pentatonics, but on a different level, Triadic/Intervallic playing, and more. Melodic Minor is a scale used often in jazz that you probably won’t hear in bluegrass music much at all. Overall, the choices and approach are more exotic and deeper. 

The length of jazz solos tends to be longer. Hence, why they need more tools in their toolbox. They might take one solo with chord tones, the next with the bebop scale, or one with it all mixed up. Overall, I’d say the variations on a theme approach is less prevalent in jazz.

The topic and theme of bluegrass songs is much different than jazz. They focus on songs about the old home, cabins, rural living, etc. There are songs about mom & dad, trains, and gospel songs. Of course, there are the usual songs about losing a woman, or fights between a woman and a man. 

With jazz, a lot of the songs are about city living. A lot of jazz’s repertoire are Tin Pan Alley songs. However, it too has songs about relationships, love, etc. While there are certainly famous jazz vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, and Mel Torme, I’d say that jazz is usually focused on instrumental music. Whereas, with bluegrass, I think a greater percentage of the music is vocal based.

Source: Bluegrass vs Jazz Music by Jody Hughes

Thin Lizzy - My Sarah

• Written by: Phil Lynott
• Released on: April 13, 1979
• Released on: Jailbreak album

"Thin Lizzy spans from their beginnings in 1969, in Dublin when childhood friends Phil Lynott and Brian Downey were approached by two former members of Van Morrison's band, Eric Wrixon and Eric Bell. Their first album Thin Lizzy was released in 1971."

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The Libertines - Anthem For Doomed Youth

The blues points to a critical question for every person, What do we do with our sadness, pain, and disappointment? Do we use them to see more meaning in things and people? Do we use them to be kinder? Or do we use them to feel the whole world is bad, and to retreat from or lash out at other people? This, Aesthetic Realism explains, is the central fight in the mind of every person between the desire to like and respect the world, and the desire for contempt, which Eli Siegel defined as the disposition in every person to think we will be for ourselves by making less of the outside world. Contempt is as ordinary as a son not giving full attention to his mother, thinking, I know what she’s going to say. But it is the cause of all unkindness, including racism and economic injustice, which so many African American blues artists suffered from, and people suffer from right now. But no one can like themselves for having contempt.

Years ago, while I could act cheerful and make people laugh, I often felt very low. I hoped to make it as a jazz pianist, but I felt I never got the breaks. I hoped for love, but I felt, Why doesn’t someone appreciate me? And while I’d call myself names, essentially I blamed the world for my unhappiness. What I didn’t know and was to learn from Aesthetic Realism is that I had a hope to be displeased, and to feel distinguished in my misery, deeper and more sensitive than other people, and too good for the world. This was contempt, and it was the reason I didn’t like myself and often felt depressed.

The blues as musical form is against depression, even as the lyrics may describe that depressed feeling... I have looked at some of the ways the blues, because it makes a one of opposites, is beautiful, moves us, thrills us and meets our deep hope to put opposites together. I conclude with this, which comments importantly on the meaning and value of the blues.

Source: Why Do the Blues Make Us Feel So Good? by Alan Shapiro

The Libertines - Anthem For Doomed Youth

• Released on: Sep 11, 2015
• Genre: Rock, Indie Rock
• Released on: Anthems for Doomed Youth album

"The Libertines led by vocalists/guitarists Carl Barât and Pete Doherty, updates the traditions of British rock, which helped reinvigorate British indie. The pair formed the band with their neighbor Steve Bedlow, initially known as the Strand."

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The Collective Soul Band - Nowhere to Run

The hope beneath the despair of the blues is what Martin Luther King, Jr. heard, and his success as a reformer is due, in part, to his appreciation of the blues. His strategy of direct action through non violent resistance was an elegant example of the signifying, the practice in African American culture, involving a verbal strategy of indirection that exploited the gap between the denotative and figurative meanings of words, that goes on in the blues.

The blues is seldom associated with Martin Luther King, Jr. but its idiom was foundational to his life and career. In an opening address to the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival, King offered remarks that give us insights that, in true blues fashion, circle back to where we began by considering the relationship between the blues and religious faith. Indeed, King began by identifying the blues as originating from a divine source.

What makes the blues effective as an agent for social change is its ability to show us how to live with integrity while accepting the contingencies of radical disappointment and profound disenchantment. The blues gives one the context and method for organizing and mobilizing around common concerns while at the same time providing the opportunity for the individual, so often lost in the mass of human need, to have a moment of single recognition and identity as the author of her own song, her own struggles, her own blues. To stick to one’s calling as a blues person, however, requires support... a courageous few who are leavening a loaf by bearing witness to the truth of our circumstances. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one such bluesman who offered a model for how to live a sanctified life.

Source: Worrying the Line: Blues as Story, Song, and Prayer by Kimberly R. Connor

The Collective Soul Band - Nowhere to Run

• First performed by: Martha & the Vandellas
• First Released on: February 10, 1965
• Written by: Lamont Dozier, brothers Brian Holland, and Eddie Holland

"The Collective Soul group consists of the brothers Ed, lead vocalist, and Dean Roland, rhythm guitarist, Will Turpin, bassist, Johnny Rabb, drummer, and Jesse Triplett, lead guitarist."

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Queens of the Stone Age - Make It Wit Chu

Within and without music we each know the balancing act between autonomy and the

placation of authorities. The popular music industry is wrought with struggles between its

structures and participants agents. Blues, though it can be structured and formalized too, allows

for transition between other genres. After all, blues lies at the roots of all American popular

music, arguably all North American popular music... adopting a phenomenological stance favoring the socially informed experience of live performances, and suggests that one should focus on performers’ and listeners’ interpretations of the signs of a historical musical culture out of which musical works arise.

As I consider Dawn and the ways in which a blues singer must wrestle with the

frustrations of structure, I wonder about the way I’m writing this ethnography, too. The

negotiations of structure and agency, as a blues singer in Quebec or as a ethnomusicology

student in New York, are as opaque as genre or improvisation. What of this writing is fabrication

for the sake of satisfying the institution and the reader and what are the words that I really can’t

keep off the page. How could anyone, even me, parse it out? Part of the irony of performance is

that no one person can ever truly know which permutation of a performer exists at any given

time on a stage or a page. The juggling of Industry and autonomy is hazy. Agents, singers,

musicians, writers, and structures, the Industry, the Press, all improvise. Blues, however,

provides a means through which to ellide structures and exhibit agency.

Source: The Ethos of the Blues: An Ethnography of Blues Singers and Writers by Zoë Emilie Peters Ford

Queens of the Stone Age - Make It Wit Chu

• Release in: 2007
• Duration: 11:03
• Genre: Pop/Rock

"Queens of the Stone Age have been nominated for Grammy Awards seven times, four times for Best Hard Rock Performance, twice for Best Rock Album, and once for Best Rock Performance."

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Modest Mouse - Whenever You See Fit

A significant number of them took part in WWI, offering their lives and their strength for their country, willingly choosing to do so, an experience that greatly changed these men’s sense of belongings and expectation.

African American regiments proved to be particularly fierce and brave during the war, as was the case of the famous Harlem Hellfighters. True, these were segregated regiments, yet this very situation made it harder to deny African Americans’ achievements. It was a duality that became commonplace in the interwar years, especially in the 1920s. 

Prohibition unexpectedly gave African Americans the opportunity to show their culture, especially in the show business. Previous to Prohibition, only African Americans played and listened to jazz. But the pass of the 18th Amendment opened up the underground bars where jazzmen played to the general public, and suddenly, everyone was exposed to jazz and found they liked it.

It was a form of expression that spoke of the African American experience of liberation but resonated with the entire American society, and even beyond it, in a time when people wanted freedom and rejuvenation after the terrible experience of war.

The popularity of jazz opened the way to more avenues of expression for African American artists, who became generally acclaimed. African Americans had been part of the American experience for centuries, but now they were being discovered and deemed new. 

This didn’t mean that everything was nice and good. African Americans still had to face widespread racism and racial stereotyping. As they became more visible in American society, they were still described and represented with old racial stereotypes, which, to a certain point, they managed to use at their advantage.

Source: 1920s Blueswomen, the Voice of Freedom by Sarah Zama

Modest Mouse - Whenever You See Fit

• Released: Jul 7, 1998
• Genre: Electronic, Rock
• Duration: 14:28

"Modest Mouse shaped the sound of late '90s indie rock and enjoyed mainstream success in the years that followed. Modest Mouse was founded in 1992 in Issaquah, Washington by guitarist and vocalist Isaac Brock, bassist Eric Judy, and drummer Jeremiah Green."

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