Charlie Hunter Trio Mutant Axe
Charlie Hunter has this eccentric modified guitar and an amazing way of playing. He's put eight-strings on it and he plays both the bass and melody lines like he has three hands. Guitar players are wowed by the axe and the technique. Milo Miles, writing for Salon.com does a good job of covering Hunter in Riffs from a Mutant Axe.
Even for the non-playing listeners, the Trio's inventiveness comes through. However, this is hard-edged bebop musicality, the type of jazz that pop music fans often can't stand.
About 50 years ago, Chuck Berry in his timeless hit "Rock 'n Roll Music" stated pop music's critique, "I got nothing against modern jazz, 'til they play it too darned fast, and lose the beauty of the melody, til it sounds just like a symphony." That's why Chuck and most of the world "likes Rock 'n Roll Music... it has a back beat you just can't lose it".
Interesting that Chuck slags symphonic music along with "modern" jazz. "Losing it" is the issue. 70 years ago it was Ella Fitzgerald fronting the Chick Webb Orchestra, the real Kings of Swing, who stated, "Don't give me no symphony ... give me a swing song and let me dance!"
The issue with her and with Chuck and with most people is that they want music to clearly indicate the response it desires. If it's dance music, it should compel them to dance, fast or slow. But what do you do with sit-down music?
Symphonic music and bebop jazz share this problem -- you're supposed to follow it and marvel at it. Sometimes you just might not be up for it. I imagine most people, most of the time, are thinking about something else when appearing to be immersed in either of these two musical forms.
With live symphonic music, you're dressed up, sitting in a large respectful audience, watching the string player's bows go up and down, the conductor's arms wave. Hopefully, you're remembering meaningful life moments, perhaps ones triggered by the music's emotional cues, but I suspect, many people's thoughts are more strategic. Did I confirm the after-concert arrangements? Did I give the baby-sitter my cell phone number? Is my cell phone really turned off? Will I have to get gas after? Will so and so be there? I've got a mess to clean up when I get back to the office. When's this going to be over?
In the old bebop days, at a beat club, you'd smoke to the music, you'd bop your head up and down, move from table to table, shouting in friend's ears, go out in the back alley to get high, admire pretty girls or laugh at jerky guys, catch the eye of the waitress for a refill on your drink. You might be thinking of the right words to describe the performance of each player, maybe shout encouragingly during a solo chorus, perhaps even feel so charged up by the "too darned fast" rhythms that you plan to splash paint on canvas when you get home and become a popular painter.
Nowadays, in a Jazz club, you can't smoke, you can't afford to drink more than the required minimum, you're packed in so tight, you can't move, no one wants to get high, no one cares about descriptions of jazz performances and you know nobody's gonna give a damn about you splashing paint. You sit, sipping the melting ice out of your last drink. You can watch the musicians, but they're usually sweaty, grimacing, not much to look at. If you shout out, you might get bounced.
In the early '90s San Francisco, a young hipster crowd shuffled between Charlie Hunter Trio at Elbow Room and Braun Fellinis at The Kennel Club. For an old guy, it was a curious delight, an actual revival of bebop, with young players and audience, just as the original bebop days, dressed in black, smoking, chatting, bopping heads in front of powerful young players squeaking and squawking over drums of fury.
While both trios' saxophonists, David Boyce in the Braun Fellinis and Dave Ellis in Charlie Hunter Trio, reached back for Sonny Rollins, the music did what jazz always does, absorb and re-interrupt elements of current pop music transmuting them into a Jazz stream. For these trios, for the '90s, the pop elements were Hip Hop, Nirvana and Jam Band Rock.
Members of the Charlie Hunter Trio and the the Braun Fellinis spent time in groups organized by Michael Frante. Braun Fellini's leader and drummer, Kevin Carnes was in Frante's Beatnigs, Charlie Hunter and saxophonist, Dave Ellis were with Frante's Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy. Dave Ellis did a jam band rock tour with Bob Weir 's Ratdog.
Charlie Hunter Trio now comes to New York, not as young turks playing to newly minted jazz hipsters, they're now solid, mid-career jazz artists appearing twice a night before mature jazz afficiandos at New York's Jazz Standard, on East 27th, September 7 - 10th.
Here's two MP3s by the Charlie Hunter Trio:
- "Fred's Life", Charlie Hunter Trio at Elbo Room, San Francisco, Jan. 11, 1994
- "Run For It", Charlie Hunter Trio at Bowery Ballroom, New York, Sept. 2, 2000
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