ask deej

well fwiw, in strict musical terms yeah Ra's influence will never approach the scope of Ellington - his shit is just too weird, too dissonant, too idiosyncratic.

funnily enough while I am sure Dan is correct about the formal impact of Ellington's innovations still being felt in contemporary music, I bet the percentage of currently performing artists who are actually familiar with Duke's music is probably roughly analogous to the number who are actually familiar with Ra's lol

xp

lol btw, thank you Google Ngram thread:

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=Duke%20Ellington,Sun%20Ra&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1900&year_end=2010

lol

Way back in 1910 a very small % of ahead of the curve music critics were really on top of Sun Ra.

what is that?

That is a graph showing the hit rate of "Duke Ellington" vs "Sun Ra" in published material indexed by Google Books, normalized for publishing volume across decades.

see here: Google Books Ngram Viewer

thats amazing

by comparison:

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=Gucci%20Mane,Lil%20B&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1900&year_end=2008

(sorry, I just had to post that because LOL)

lol

lol

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=whiney%2Cdeej&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

what happened in 1923 is what i'm wondering.

should be vs. shakey

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=shakey%2Cdeej&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

sorry, deej

this is rlly interesting actually

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Duke+Ellington%2CMiles+Davis%2CJohn+Coltrane&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

Really disappointed by the decline in deej criticism in the latter quarter of the twentieth century.

woah shakey is way more relevant with the young ppl of google :/

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Duke+Ellington%2CMiles+Davis%2CJohn+Coltrane%2CCharlie+Parker&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

who would be up w/ those four as far as revolutionizing jazz? louis obv

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Duke+Ellington%2CMiles+Davis%2CJohn+Coltrane%2CCharlie+Parker%2CLouis+Armstrong&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

basically that site is a full-on stats boner

xp: yeah Louis; possibly Scott Joplin if you are looking at ragtime? Also I tend to think of Dizzy in the same breath as Miles and Charlie; maybe Dave Brubeck as an outlier

i remember a fascinating piece in one of the jazz mags talking about how there were no white jazz artists who really created a sea change as far as style, could be considered up w/ the greats in terms of being sea change-type performers, with the possible exception of bix biederbecke. it was an interesting piece

eh I think that is a standard critical position. the guy who taught my history of jazz class in college said the same about Bix. he def. has his adherents.

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Scott+Joplin%2CDuke+Ellington%2CMiles+Davis%2CJohn+Coltrane%2CCharlie+Parker%2CLouis+Armstrong&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

joplin registers way at the bottom

i think brubeck is probably a bit overrated, biederbeck a bit underrated

woah

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=sun+ra%2C+max+b%2C+cop+shoot+cop&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

ha I was also going to bring up Biederbecke but figured "too in-the-scene"

two most important yet underrated trumpet players ime are beiderbeck & fats navarro

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Bix+Beiderbecke%2CFats+Navarro&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Dave+Brubeck%2CBix+Biederbecke&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

lol

haha
wasnt brubeck one of the first jazz dudes to like tour colleges & shit ... i mean he even had a 'live at oberlin' album

yeah, his Wooster performance is basically the reason why my dad likes jazz today

fats navarro & tadd dameron cd i have is one of my favorites ever. highly recommended

this actually brings up something interesting about 'influence' arguments ... how some artists are influential by dint of popularity vs. others who are influential by doing something so structurally significant to the art form ... that sort of stuff is fascinating to me. its like 'deep' influence vs. 'wide' influence or something

well it's only gonna be structurally significant if other artists pick up on it and run with it

trying to think of artists who are popular among musicians but were never popular commercially (probably applies to a TON of rap dudes. also to Sun Ra lol)

Neu!

wasn't brubeck kinda influential in that whole button-down "third stream music" thing that supposedly was taking classical type hongro compositional shit and marrying it to jazz?

(tho ellington already did that i guess)

modern jazz quartet too i imagine --

gunther schuller

hmm i thought that stuff came from the other direction: american composers like bernstein having blue note riffs and wilder syncopation

maybe it's both! (actually my knowledge of the whole deal is pretty limited to some liner notes essays on a couple used jazz records -- one of which might actually be MJQ come to think)

should have mentioned, roc marciano's another crit rap dude whose album i was feeling this year

deej,

what's a good intro to sun ra and/or duke ellington

sun ra's greatest hits (lol title) is actually a pretty diverse & well ranging comp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epapZ24iym8

ty!

ellington depends on what era u are looking for ... his most influential / significant stuff was cotton club era -- where they started calling his style 'jungle music' -- 1927-1932. i think ppl consider his most influential stuff to go into the early 40s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80cTeLCcHOo

bubber miley on tpt!!

a lot of folks will rep for his 'comeback' live cd at newport, which is cool, or 'far east suite' which is awesome. 70th birthday party cd has some insane stuff. money jungle trio records w/ mingus & roach are incomparable esp 'fleurette africain' which is probably the most beautiful song ever made. my mindgarden fav is 'side by side' w/ johnny hodges, partic. 'stompy jones' which has an incredible solo from sweets edison

but his real impact was in the late 20s / thru the 30s. this is probably a great comp, i just have a bunch of cds the un-comprehensively cover this era: http://www.allmusic.com/album/creole-rhapsody-duke-ellington-in-the-thirties-r942498

oh yeah when i was covering his later stuff i forgot to mention his album with john coltrane, their version of 'in a sentimental mood' kills

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsm49l5_47I