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Music Moments

A Jazz Thing

Music writer Jeff Weiss dives into the connections between jazz and hip-hop, exploring the legacy of Blue Note Records and its role in shaping 90s rap.

At ten-years old, hip-hop production remained a total enigma to me. I couldn’t figure out what hidden reserve supplied this mystic brew of tectonic-rupturing bass lines, filthy drum fills, and empyrean brass horns. Did live musicians stuff themselves into the recording booths with the rappers? Did the beatmakers play every note themselves like funky red-eyed sorcerers? And wouldn’t these creative tributaries eventually run dry?

 

Commercial rap was barely a decade old. If you didn’t live in New York City, information was still esoteric and hard to access. My father told me that it was just a fad – the new version of disco. But on the album that rarely left my CD player, Q-Tip’s father offered a dharmic rejoinder: things move in cycles.

 

To Q-Tip’s dad, hip-hop reminded him of bebop. Or so he was quoted on “Excursions,” the first song and spiritual heartbeat of the ‘90s masterpiece, Low End Theory. I knew nothing about bebop. Jazz was something that my grandfather listened to in his glassed-off den filled with World War II books, Pacino VHS tapes, and thousands of CDs. Oscar Petersen, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Dexter Gordon. I’d eventually inherit them all. At the time, it just seemed like the dull music of out-of-touch AARP members.

 

It’s hard to remember when I realized that almost everything I loved borrowed directly from the past. I eventually learned that hip-hop producers were sampling old records, but never had the budget to seek out the originals. Besides, hip-hop felt so exciting and vibrant that it never occurred to dig much deeper than what was on the radio and cable. The G-Funk era led into the glory days of the East Coast underground and no one bothered to explain to teenagers that actually Biggie’s sample from “Hypnotize” came from the trumpet player Herb Alpert – who actually went to Fairfax High with my grandmother.

Jeff Weiss stands before a wall of Blue Note Records during a listening hour at the Wrensilva Listening Studio in LA.

My best guess for when I began to see the modal light was 2003’s Shades of Blue: Madlib Invades Blue Note. The premise was simple: Blue Note gave the self-proclaimed loop digger access to their catalogue and let him run wild. It’s perhaps the most direct bridge spanning the generations. One of the great alchemists of the 21st century remixing classic tracks from Donald Byrd, Bobbi Humphrey, Ronnie Foster, and Wayne Shorter.

“Understanding the connections between old music and now slightly less old music is a way of seeing our strange human existence as part of a broader continuum.”

Jeff Weiss

Even before I knew what albums Blue Note had released, I knew their visual aesthetic. The iconic album covers were later sampled by everyone from Yo La Tengo to Guru, Scott Weiland to Atmosphere. As I began to dig into the crates, the breadth of the Blue Note catalogue staggered me in its depth of quality, vision, and willingness to take chances. This was a label that had recorded nearly every jazz immortal: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, the list is endless.

 

On the Madlib album, there was a song called “Alfred Lion Interlude,” taken from a documentary about Blue Note. The film’s narrator explains the genius of Lion, the label founder, described as a “walking, living, human catalyst.”

 

Lion discovered jazz accidentally by showing up at an ice skating rink on the wrong day. Instead of winter sports, they had a show from Sam Wooding and his 8-piece jazz band. Lion was immediately transfixed.

 

Lion founded Blue Note accidentally, too. He became a record producer after hearing boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis at the 1938 “Spirituals to Swing Concert” at Carnegie Hall.

The music moved him so profoundly that he decided to record them himself for his own enjoyment. Renting a studio, he ordered a few dozen pressings of 12-inch, 78-r.p.m. records for his friends to hear. The response was so positive that he made a few more recordings of other artists, mostly Dixieland players like Sidney Bechet. Blue Note was born.

 

Lion soon teamed up with another German-Jewish immigrant, a Marxist vocal coach named Max Marguiles, who penned the label’s manifesto.

 

The rest is history. Blue Note established the gold standard for not just the sound of jazz, but art direction, imagination, and integrity. In turn, they inspired a classic generation of hip-hop production. All of the great sample-based producers flipped Blue Note wax: RZA, DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Madlib, Q-Tip, Buckwild, Dilla.

Brother Jack McDuff’s “Obligetto” became Tribe Called Quest’s “Check the Rhime.” Donald Byrd’s “Flight Time” became Nas’ “New York State of Mind.” This is the pinnacle of post-modern art, taking coruscating artifacts from the past, isolating a drum beat or a bass groove and turning them into a canvas for a rapper to spit fire over. That’s why ‘90s rap is so great: it’s the fossil fuel refined from the sounds of some of the best music ever conceived.

 

As for me, I eventually got really into jazz about a dozen years ago. After my grandfather died, I inherited his collection, which contained hundreds of Blue Note recordings. I simultaneously learned about the art form and became connected to his memory – a way of keeping his spirit close to me. I just wish he hadn’t gotten a little ahead of himself and traded in his vinyl collection for CDs in the ‘90s.

 

Understanding the connections between old music and now slightly less old music, is a way of seeing our strange human existence as part of a broader continuum. A way of processing how the past directly influences every moment of modern life and a reminder that Q-Tip’s dad was right about things moving in cycles.

 

I never played Low End Theory for my grandfather, so I have no idea if it would’ve been common ground for us. But if there’s an offhand chance that there’s an afterlife, he’d probably ask me to turn it up loud and bring him something to roll up. And then afterwards, he’d ask me why I didn’t bring any of his Charlie Parker records to play, too.

Read more by Jeff at @passionweiss or at passionweiss.com

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