Functional Music
Published: Fri, 09/02/22
Functional because unless you're hearing a well-known musician in the same kind of venue that presents string quartets and the symphony, you're probably hearing the music halfway in the background. (To paraphrase guitarist Adam Levy, if your name even goes on a chalkboard outside the bar the night of your gig, they usually spell it "Live Jazz Tonight.") And this doesn't just happen with jazz. But it's not like there's anything wrong with functional music. Miles Davis even said he found it more comfortable playing nightclubs than concerts, or in a place where people were talking, drinking and otherwise not a hundred percent focused on the music. Which points up that of course this all exists along a continuum. Plenty of people who went to see Miles at the Plugged Nickel because Miles Davis was playing were probably bugged by the people who thought they'd come to see Miles Davis but discovered about six abstract minutes into "No Blues" that they'd really come to drink old fashioneds and sharpen their verbal skills with the nearest and most appealing member of the waitstaff to the accompaniment of Miles Davis – "Live Jazz Tonight," indeed.
But thinking about functional vs. new music has got me wondering if maybe this is part of what makes talking about and learning blues so tricky. Because there is this tension in the blues world between what I would roughly call "playing it like you're supposed to" and "playing it like you want to." In the "Playing it like you're supposed to" camp are people who treat the great records of the idiom – the prewar Delta blues recordings or the 1950s Chess recordings, to name two – like scores. You don't change the notes of a Haydn string quartet, and you don't change the notes of a Blind Blake record. You play it the way it was written, or in the case of Blind Blake, the way it was recorded. Likewise, if you play in a blues band, you defer to Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Little Walter as far as what songs to play and how to play them.
This is not limited to blues, of course; it goes on in all kind of American roots music, from bluegrass to western swing to the music of Merle Travis and Chet Atkins. And I'm not entirely opposed to this approach; for one thing, it's how you learn in the absence of any written scores, conservatory system or centuries-long trail of pedagogy. Plus, it's satisfying, and fun, to successfully recreate music you love. Not to mention enjoyable for an audience – having grown up decades after the swing era, I found it thrilling to go out in the 1980s and hear that music played by people as gifted as Scott Hamilton and Chris Flory, five feet away and live as you please.
I'll also be the first to admit, I love me some functional music. It's great hearing people play the snot out of some bebop, or deliver a set of honky-tonk with skilled enthusiasm. But it does ultimately beg the observation that what you're hearing is on some level a recreation of something that once was new. Of course, everyone brings themselves into whatever music they play, and aside from the sheer training and ability it takes to play these musics, anybody playing on a high level must be, by definition, doing something personal with it. And I will also admit that if I go to hear "a blues band," I'd probably rather hear them play shuffles, slow blues, maybe a rhumba or two and a Junior Wells groove, than a mashup of Albert King licks and a hiphop groove.
Or would I? I've heard my share of shuffles and slow blues, and while there is something absolutely, timelessly great about it when done well – not unlike a string quartet – maybe I would rather hear something that is at least looking for something new. I know I feel this way about the prewar blues canon. And while I've never put it to myself in these terms before, I think I realized a long time ago that while it's deeply enjoyable to play blues as functional music, it's not where I've chosen to hang my hat artistically. I'd rather use the raw materials of the blues idiom to write my own songs and work out the relevant grooves and improvisation ideas to make them go, than get up and play as much like Son House as I can manage. As the old response to the heckler's request goes, "No, why should I? Son House doesn't play any of my songs."
This is obviously a terrible attitude to take if you want to actually get gigs. Most opportunities to play live call for functional music: bar gigs or other situations involving satisfying customers, helping the venue sell drinks, and actually getting paid at the end of the night. All of which is sensible and righteous and part of the job. Unless it isn't. If the point is to earn your keep as a working performer, functional music is the gig. If the point is to make your own art, you figure out how to pay the bills some other way. Again – all this exists on a continuum. Some people get to where they can make art music that a lot of people want to come hear. A lot of people find an alternative hustle – in academia, in the studio, in a completely unrelated profession – in order to play the way they want. And some people play functional music when necessary and art music when they can, strolling back and forth along that continuum for some or all of their life as a musician.
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Saxophonist Lucky Thompson ultimately wound up opting out of music altogether, but early in his recording career he made a trio record guitar geeks might find particularly worth checking out: 1956's Tricotism, with Skeeter Best on guitar and Oscar Pettiford on bass. I'm going to guess that Best, who also appears on Ray Charles and Milt Jackson's Soul Brothers, was the namesake of Kenny Burrell's 1950s Blue Note recording "Blues For Skeeter," but that's neither here nor there. Tricotism is one of those opportunities to hear Freddie Green-inspired rhythm guitar in relative isolation, plus it affords the pleasure of hearing Thompson's gorgeous tenor playing in a particularly up-close-and-personal setting. The balance of the reissue includes a quartet/quintet session from the same year with an equally stellar crew on hand, including Hank Jones on piano for three tracks. You can find it all on the Playlist page of my web site:
Lucky Thompson, Tricotism
More soon,
David
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