Jazz Does Rock
Let me start by recognizing that there is the genre of jazz/rock fusion. While it personally inspires me to put my head through a wall, it exists. And if you are a fan of jazz/rock fusion, let me just say that I have positively referenced Blood, Sweat, and Tears in this article, so don’t hurt me.
Jazz and pop, or rock, sound a bit contradictory today. But at one time, jazz was pop. Blues led to swing, which inspired dancing to big bands and jazz performers becoming household names throughout America. Out of swing grew “jump” music, which led to rhythm and blues, which finally led to rock. Traditional jazz artists today have their place in the “jazz” section at the music store, while pop/rock artists have their own. So while most often traditional jazz and rock operate creatively within their own genres, both sides have on occasion reached across the aisle and covered tunes from the other side. The results? Sometimes questionable and sometimes brilliant.
Let’s start with the questionable. Sarah Vaughan covered the Beatles in her 1981 album, the appropriately titled, Songs of the Beatles. While Sarah is undeniably at the top of the list of vocal jazz talent, this album lands somewhere on the scale of horrifying at worst to merely tolerable at best. Many of the songs sound only slightly different than the originals.
Other jazz artists’ attempts to cover the Beatles yielded much more pleasing results. Bassist Jaco Pastorius’ interpretation of Blackbird is now classic Pastorius listening. His bass flies like the lyric suggests, and with Toots Thielemans’ harmonica carrying the melody, the song becomes another entity.
Similarly, the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night never paid better tribute to its bluesy roots than when Ramsey Lewis played it. It is pure, rocking piano blues under Lewis’ touch.
And perhaps the cover to top them all, Shirley Horn’s interpretation of Yesterday is a masterpiece. Horn’s vocals are intimate, a conversation supported by sparsely tasteful piano, bass and brushes. If Paul McCartney gave us a thoughtful, but somewhat plucky Yesterday, Shirley Horn gave us depth, poignancy, and the wisdom of maturity.
If you happen to be a Beatles purist and are deeply offended at any deviance from the original four, there are other options for you. Current jazz vocalist Madeleine Peyroux’s cover of Elliott Smith’s Between the Bars is excellent. Reminiscent in Peyroux’s haunting voice is the timbre and emotion of Billie Holiday. She exudes Holiday’s aching sensitivity and applies it skillfully to Smith’s original lyric.
An impressive rendering of a complicated song is accomplished in the Brad Mehldau Trio’s cover of Radiohead’s Knives Out. Starting with solo bass, the trio soon launches rhythmically into the song with featured piano. Mehldau further explores the song’s harmonies with a dexterous piano solo.
Of course, jazz artists aren’t the only ones to reinterpret classic songs. Willie Nelson’s 1978 album Stardust covered many jazz standards, including All of Me, Moonlight in Vermont, and the title track, Stardust. Nelson’s renderings add a level of stripped down honesty to the songs that can sometimes be lost under the improvised touch of jazz vocalists.
And one of my favorite versions of a jazz standard is God Bless the Child, covered by Blood, Sweat, and Tears. Blues, Latin, swing, and three different time signatures take this song where it has never been before. But it works! Contrast this version with Anita O’Day’s interpretation with acoustic guitar accompaniment. And then compare that with the original Billie Holiday, who co-wrote the song. All three versions offer a unique perspective on the original music and lyric.
Maybe after checking out these covers, you will come away convinced that the line between jazz and rock is there for a reason. Many artists’ covers have proven that it is certainly a risk to sing what has already been sung before. But that risk is a foundational element of the genre of jazz. You take a song that everybody knows, and then stretch it, twist it, and mold it to say it in a new way. Sometimes the effort fails, but often the risk pays off. Sometimes jazz does rock and does it well, but reinterpretation is always jazzy.
