By ETHAN SMITH and JULIE JARGON

Sharp-eared pop-music fans may have noticed a brief reference to an old chewing-gum jingle buried in "Forever," Chris Brown's top-10 hit. "Double your pleasure/double your fun," the R&B singer croons in the chorus.

What listeners don't know -- and what Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. planned to reveal Tuesday -- is that the song is a commercial.

"Forever" is an extended version of a new Doublemint jingle written by Mr. Brown and scheduled to begin airing next month in 30-second spots for Wrigley's green-packaged chewing gum.

Mr. Brown is one of a trio of pop stars enlisted by ad agency Translation Advertising, a unit of Interpublic Group of Cos., to update the images of three of Wrigley's best-known brands.

The campaign includes spots featuring R&B singer Ne-Yo doing his own take on Big Red's "kiss a little longer" jingle. And "Dancing With the Stars" regular-turned-country-singer Julianne Hough recorded a twangy version of Juicy Fruit's "The taste is gonna move ya."

But Mr. Brown's "Forever" is the most ambitious part of the campaign. Mr. Brown was commissioned to write and sing both the pop song and a new version of the Doublemint jingle, introduced in 1960.

First, Mr. Brown updated the jingle and recorded it with hip-hop producer Polow Da Don. Then, during the same Los Angeles recording sessions in February, paid for by Wrigley, Mr. Brown added new lyrics and made a 4½-minute rendition of the tune, titled "Forever."

In April, Mr. Brown's record label, Jive, released the song to radio stations and digital download services as a single. After the song became a hit, Jive added it to his 2007 album, "Exclusive," and re-released the album in June. "Forever" reached No. 4 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart last week.

All three new Wrigley jingles are scheduled to be unveiled at a news conference Tuesday in New York, with each of them to be performed by the artist involved. Mr. Brown is slated to sing "Forever" and segue into his jingle. New television commercials and radio spots featuring the jingles and print ads showing new packaging for the gum are set to appear in August.

The campaign illustrates a deepening of the ties between pop music and advertising. Rappers frequently mention luxury products like liquor or cars in songs, and occasionally serve as paid spokesmen for the brands. And for McDonald's Corp.'s 2003 "I'm Lovin' It" campaign, the burger chain, with the aid of Translation Chief Executive Steve Stoute, enlisted Justin Timberlake to write and record a song using the slogan as its chorus. But the song was never released on one of his albums.

Tom Carrabba, executive vice president and general manager of Sony BMG's Zomba Label Group, which includes Jive, says label executives initially had qualms about releasing and promoting a song recorded at an advertiser's behest "But the song was so potent and strong. That overruled us being maybe a little hesitant," he adds.

Sony BMG is a joint venture between Bertelsmann AG of Germany and Japan's Sony Corp.

Other than the "double your pleasure" line, the lyrics to the song and the TV jingle are different. But the melody and the music behind it are nearly indistinguishable. A 60-second radio ad scheduled to air starting Friday further blurs the line between the song and the commercial. It starts with a section of "Forever," and moves seamlessly into lyrics promoting the gum. "I'ma take you there, so don't be scared," Mr. Brown sings. "Double your pleasure; double your fun. It's the right one, Doublemint gum."

The campaign was conceived and executed by Mr. Stoute, a former senior executive at Interscope Records who counts rapper Jay-Z as a partner in his business. The idea was to connect the hit song and the jingle in listener's minds. That way, Mr. Stoute says, "by the time the new jingle came out, it was already seeded properly within popular culture."

Mr. Brown said in an email that he wrote "Forever" and the related jingle in about 30 minutes each. "I actually thought it would take longer to write a jingle they would like," he wrote. "But they said it was a perfect fit after the first try."

Paul Chibe, Wrigley's vice president for North American gum marketing, declines to disclose how much Mr. Brown was paid for his role in the campaign.

Wrigley's push to update its older gum brands started earlier this year, when the company began selling them in new slim, envelope-style packages. Some of the gum was reformulated to improve its flavor and make it last longer. Juicy Fruit -- Wrigley's oldest brand, launched in 1893 -- Doublemint, Big Red, Spearmint, Winterfresh and the newer Extra line, represent around 30% of the company's U.S. gum business.

Wrigley chose Mr. Brown to develop the new Doublemint song, in part because the company's consumer research showed that African-American consumers prefer Doublemint to other gum brands. Mr. Chibe calls the move "the future of the brand."

Mr. Chibe added that the mildly suggestive lyrics have never given the company pause. "Everything he's done with 'Forever' represents the brand and it fits our brand personality for Doublemint," Mr. Chibe added.

While Wrigley has had strong sales in emerging markets, it has lost market share in the U.S., where it faces strong competition from Cadbury PLC, maker of Trident, Stride and Dentyne. Last year, the company's North American sales were flat, at $1.75 billion.

During the company's annual meeting in March, Chairman William Wrigley said he was "far from satisfied" with the company's domestic performance in 2007, though results improved in the first quarter of 2008. In April, Wrigley agreed to be acquired by Mars Inc., the closely held maker of M&Ms and Snickers, for about $23 billion.

Labels: advertisement, marketing, Music

by Dan Love

Although I’m not a big one for New Year’s resolutions, I did make a promise to myself to up my commitment to Oh Word and increase my frequency of posting in ‘08. Of course, given Rafi’s recent unveiling of future plans for the site it seems like my days of venting hip hop geekery upon you at this particular corner of the wild and treacherous internet are now numbered: that’ll teach me for breaking with tradition and actually setting myself some goals at the turn of the year.

Anyways, what better way to celebrate the end of an era at Oh Word than by celebrating the greatest hip hop album of all time? What follows is a breakdown of all the key samples that went into the making of Illmatic, beat by beat. It’s not entirely exhaustive, but all the key grooves and some drum breaks are included in the following deconstructions. And yes, you’re right, this took a while…

Genesis Grand Wizard Theodore – Subway Theme
Main Source – Live At The BBQ

Given that this post is intended to purely deconstruct the samples used in the making of Illmatic, this brief note on ‘The Genesis’ is really just for the sake of pedantic completism. If you didn’t already know, which I assume you do, ‘The Genesis’ is comprised of Nas’s first appearance on wax with the Main Source crew on the classic posse cut ‘Live At The BBQ’ and excerpts from the equally classic and genre-defining film Wild Style. With Grand Wizard Theodore’s ‘Subway Theme’ reverberating throughout what seems like the whole of the borough of Queens, Nas takes the opportunity to remind us that, “niggaz don’t listen man, representin’, it’s Illmatic.” It’s on…

NY State Of Mind
Donald Byrd – Flight Time
Joe Chambers – Mind Rain

The first of the three Premo produced cuts, ‘NY State Of Mind’ is the darkest and most chilling of his contributions to the album, aptly setting the grimy yet melodic tone that permeates the LP. The harrowing high-pitched guitar notes that open up the track are lifted from Donald Byrd’s ‘Flight Time’ from his 1972 release on Blue Note, Black Byrd. This is of course just one small instance of Byrd’s work finding a home in a hip hop context, and his legacy as an artist still burns brightly in part due to the amount of sample fodder he provided for a wide range of legendary producers over the last two decades or so. It’s only a small touch in ‘NY State Of Mind’, but it’s a detail that complements the vibe of the track perfectly.

The more prominent groove of piano notes is taken from the 1.08 mark of Joe Chambers’s song ‘Mind Rain’ from his Double Exposure LP. I know very little about Chambers as an artist, but from brief research on the net it seems that he played a prominent role in the mid-’60s Blue Note releases as well as playing backup to many of the more prominent figures in jazz of the day and beyond. It’s a fantastic discovery on Premo’s part, an almost perfect one bar sample that is rounded off by the flurry of two higher notes at the end of the bar.

Throw in some heavy drums and it’s done: one of the greatest openers, if not the greatest opener, of any album in the history of the genre.

Life’s A Bitch
The Gap Band – Yearning For Your Love

‘Life’s A Bitch’ has always stood as an anomaly for me on Illmatic. Not only is it the sole track that features a guest MC spot, it is also by far the smoothest beat to be found anywhere on the album. This is of course in no small part a result of the sample source, lifted by L.E.S. from The Gap Band’s rather self-explanatory titled Gap Band III (although I believe that there may have been two albums that preceded this numbered series during the band’s formative years). The LP spawned several hits as the group began making steady progress into the charts, including ‘Yearning For Your Love’ which peaked at #60 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June of ’81 and forms the backbone of Nas and AZ’s classic collaboration.

The sample doesn’t take much spotting as it’s essentially a two bar loop with a little EQ tweaking, found after the intro to the track at the 0.22 mark. L.E.S. doesn’t leave it completely alone though, placing a few extra kick drums into the groove and layering over a more prominent rimshot/snare hit for that extra dose of flava. Beyond that there really isn’t much to it, although ‘Life’s A Bitch’ is special for one final reason, as it’s the only example of live instrumentation to be found on the album. The trumpet solo that brings the cut to a close is in fact played by Nas’s father Olu Dara (born Charles Jones III), and it provides a beautifully wistful end to a track that feels drenched in the dying rays of a crimson sunset over the city.

The World Is Yours
Ahmad Jamal – I Love Music

I can’t remember exactly where I sourced this titbit of information, but apparently when Premier listened to Pete Rock’s lone contribution to Illmatic, he went back to the lab, scrapped what he already had and started over. Whether this is true or not is open to debate, but it is a pleasingly romantic vision of the creative process that went into the construction of the album and a tale that confirms what you already know: ‘The World Is Yours’ is one of the Chocolate Boy Wonder’s finest moments on wax.

Rock sources his pianos from Ahmad Jamal’s ‘I Love Music’, the second song from his heavily-mined LP The Awakening. It’s a deft act of chopping from Mt. Vernon’s Finest, jacking a sequence from the 5.00 mark and subtly rearranging it to create the loop that forms the backbone of one of my favourite cuts from the album. ‘I Love Music’ is of note for those interested in Premier’s digging habits as well, as it also provides the sample for Jeru’s exceptional ‘Me Or The Papes’ from his sophomore outing Wrath Of The Math.

Although I’m not sure where Pete Rock sourced the drums for ‘The World Is Yours’, there’s one detail to the programming that I feel compelled to point out. The cowbell hits that are laid over each snare and immediately follow on the eighth of a bar are an incredibly subtle touch, but their inclusion is masterful: attention to detail is undoubtedly where it’s at.

Halftime
Average White Band – Schoolboy Crush
Gary Byrd – Soul Travellin’ Pt. I
Hair OST (Japanese Release) – ‘Dead End’

Average White Band’s impact on hip hop culture is significant, with a handful of extremely significant breaks that have at times transcended the genre and made it into the popular consciousness via artists such as Janet Jackson, TLC and Color Me Badd. In the case of ‘Halftime’, it’s ‘Schoolboy Crush’ that receives the sample treatment at the hands of Large Pro, and it’s those inimitable sleigh bells that help give the cut its undeniable swagger. Check the vocal at 4.25 as well to complete the picture: you’ll know it when you hear it.

For the horns Extra P gets his fingers dusty on a copy of Gary Byrd’s ‘Soul Travellin’ Pt. I’, an artist whose presence on the internet is extremely limited (and as such, so is my knowledge). You only have to listen to the first few seconds of the track to feel in familiar territory, although there’s some nice reverb on display here from Large Pro, effectively playing on the first couple of notes from the slammin’ horn track to be found in the original song. From what I can garner, Byrd eventually went on to form the group named Gary Byrd & The G.B. Experience who released a few records on Motown in the ‘80s, but that’s about all I can tell you. Brother of Donald? Who knows: speak ya clout and drop some knowledge on my ignorant ass.

The final element to note in Large Pro’s composition is the filtered bass line lifted from the Japanese version of the Hair OST. ‘Dead End’ was originally cut from the run and only added at a later date, hence its inclusion on the Japanese edition and its omission from versions released elsewhere. Extra P’s innovation is astonishing here, completely transforming the break that occurs at the 0.14 mark, and I particularly like the fact that small traces of the vocal manage to endure, giving the groove a sense of space that is truly remarkable given its otherwise simplistic aesthetic.

Memory Lane
Reuben Wilson – We’re In Love
Lee Dorsey – Get Out My Life Woman

Although ‘N.Y. State Of Mind’ is probably the more highly revered cut, and ‘Represent’ demonstrates the more innovative use of a sample, ‘Memory Lane’ ranks as my favourite Premier production on the album. Backed by the ubiquitous Lee Dorsey drum break, there is a brilliance to this song that allows it to peep its head over the shoulders of the other giants on the LP. Those _drums_…

For the main groove Premo grabs a chunk of Reuben Wilson’s ‘We’re In Love’ from his 1971 album Set Us Free, the final chapter in his Blue Note odyssey that saw him release five albums in the space of three years. The two bars in question drop at the 0.20 mark, a fantastic break comprised of Wilson’s Hammond organ, guitar, vocals and percussion, and although Preem slows the groove down a little, this is essentially a straight loop with absolutely no fiddling. The adage ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ has rarely seemed as pertinent, and it is the sheer bangin’ simplicity of ‘Memory Lane’ that makes it so incredibly captivating. Man, they just don’t make ‘em like they used to…

One Love
Heath Brothers – Smiling Billy Pt. II
Parliament – Come In Out The Rain


What I really dig about the Abstract’s production style on ‘One Love’ is that he resists the temptation to chop up samples too heavily, thereby keeping the sound fluid and warm. This cut is a case in point, with Tip jacking the first 23 seconds of the Heath Brothers’ ‘Smilin’ Billy Suite Part II’ from their 1975 release Marchin’ On and doing very little with it beyond the addition of drums and volume changes as the sample is introduced. This introductory section really is masterful, with Mtume Heath’s percussion part from the original source gradually building into the mix before its complete introduction after the initial eight bar sequence which brings with it the unveiling of double bass and piano tracks. From here on in there really are very few changes, the different musical elements of the track creating a mystical and hypnotic platform for Nas’s musings that simply doesn’t require too much fiddling around with. No extra loop at the chorus, no bridge section, only a handful of breakdowns: it’s a veritable lesson in measured, instinctive and thoroughly considered hip hop production techniques.

For the drum track Tip turns to Parliament’s song ‘Come In Out The Rain’ from their first official LP entitled Osmium, released on Invictus in 1970. The break crops up right at the beginning of the track, and although The Abstract’s skilfully executed chops disguise the original sample source, there’s no mistaking the kicks and snares that form the bangin’ percussion that drives ‘One Love’. Of course, Parliament themselves need little introduction in hip hop circles given that George Clinton’s legendary group are rightfully regarded amongst the godfathers of funk and have acted as a sample source for a list of acts that reads like a who’s who of golden era hip hop, particularly for artists based on the West Coast. Crazy hair and breaks: it’s a legacy made in heaven.

One Time 4 Your Mind
Jimmy Gordon – Walter L

Although the liner notes of Illmatic state Gary Burton’s ‘Walter L’ as the principle sample source contained within ‘One Time For Your Mind,’ things ain’t quite that straightforward. It transpires that it is Jimmy Gordon’s version of the ‘Walter L’ song that finds its way into Large Pro’s composition, a straight one bar loop jacked from the section beginning at the 0.20 mark made up of guitar and ascending bass notes. In real terms it is the simplest beat that Extra P contributes to the album, with both ‘Halftime’ and ‘It Ain’t Hard To Tell’ both featuring a wider range of sample sources and more complex production techniques.

However, trying to find out the origins of the Jimmy Gordon song is challenging to say the least (particularly when you are limited to internet-based research). With no listing on Discogs or any mention on Wikipedia, the song seems to have been swallowed somewhat by the sands of time. The chief contender appears to be Jim Gordon, a prolific session drummer who recorded for a myriad of artists during the ‘60s and ‘70s before being incarcerated for bludgeoning and stabbing his mother to death (I think it’s fair to say the man may have experienced some ‘issues’). As the rights to the song clearly belong to Gary Burton, I would think that it’s safe to assume that the version that gets jacked for ‘One Time 4 Your Mind’ was recorded after 1966, and the vibe of the Gordon track is certainly in keeping with this timeframe. This is further consolidated by the fact that he did also appear in the Scorsese directed documentary The Last Waltz playing the sax as part of The Band, and was also the drummer for The Incredible Bongo Band on their Bongo Rock LP, the home of the legendary ‘Apache’. These various pieces of evidence suggest that it is a cover performed by Gordon, although there is no information available that confirms a release date or in fact the existence of his version of ‘Walter L’, so a definitive answer eludes me.

Whatever the case may be, I opened a can of worms with this one. Just goes to show that there are still holes in the substantial knowledge base that is the world wide web…

Represent
Lee Erwin – Thief Of Baghdad

(Shouts to Scholar @ Souled On for the hook up)

‘Represent’ is the result of undoubtedly the most innovative piece of crate diggin’ on display on Illmatic. Whilst the majority of hip hop jams are comprised of small chunks of funk, soul and jazz from the ‘60s and ‘70s, Premier eschews this trend for something completely different on the album’s penultimate track. Thief Of Baghdad is a silent film that starred Douglas Fairbanks and featured a soundtrack composed by organist Lee Erwin that was released in 1924. That’s right: 1924. If ever you needed the beat diggin’ capabilities of DJ Premier confirmed, this would surely be the break to do it with.

The original song is a haunting piece of music that sounds almost oriental in places, and its filmic nature is clear from the high drama of the opening section. However, when this is stripped away at the 0.55 mark, a remarkably familiar beast emerges. What amazes me about this sample is how well it works in its new context, and its not only a demonstration of Preem’s sophisticated musical ear, but also of the organic and time-bending nature of hip hop itself. I think there’s something incredibly beautiful about the way in which this song gels together seemingly disparate elements: an organ from 1924; drums that draw their influence from the funk and soul of the ‘60s and ‘70s; the words of a young kid from Queensbridge from the ‘90s. I’m guessing that you feel the same way.

It Ain’t Hard To Tell
Michael Jackson – Human Nature
Kool & The Gang – NT
Stanley Clarke – Slow Dance

And so it is that we arrive at the album closer and one of my personal favourites from Illmatic. ‘It Ain’t Hard To Tell’ seems to be a song that splits opinion somewhat, and although it was arguably a strange choice for a 12’’ release, I don’t really see how anybody can overlook the sumptuous nature of the production to be found on the final chapter of the LP. There are actually more samples involved in the composition than I present to you here, but these are the most easily identifiable and obvious a part of ‘It Ain’t Hard To Tell’.

‘Human Nature’ needs little introduction. One of Michael Jackson’s finest ever slow grooves, the guitars and synths of the opening couple of bars make up the loop for the main verse sections, but Large Pro takes the time to fuck with Jackson’s vocals as well for the intro and chorus sections of ‘It Ain’t Hard To Tell’, taking four descending notes from the final section of ‘Human Nature’ that arrive around the 3.29 mark. From here there are several more layers to account for, the most prominent of which comes from Kool & The Gang’s heavily used ‘N.T.’ song, found on their relatively sought after album Live At P.J.’s. The sax loop is lifted from a section of the track that feels almost like a veritable journey through a sample odyssey, such was the popularity of the break amongst proprietors of that good ol’ boom bap, although the section in question here can be found at the 3.11 mark.

Other than that it’s just the drums, and these can be found on Stanley Clarke’s ‘Slow Dance’ from his 1978 album Modern Man. In some ways it surprises me that this break hasn’t seen a little more use, as its clear kick and snare pattern seems tailor made for hip hop production, but to my knowledge it never seemed to gain particular favour with the producing elite during the early to mid ‘90s. Go figure…

Hope you enjoyed this level of nostalgic indulgence: I know I did. After all, who wouldn’t grab the chance to revel in the joys of Illmatic? If you wouldn’t, the only question that remains is simple: what the hell are you doing here?

Labels: Music

by Kenneth Rexroth

Pursuant, as they say, to our conversation, the Village hasn’t changed much. I grew up in it and sat in high chairs at the Brevoort and Lafayette. There’s more of it, and it’s sharper. I don’t think there’s much doubt, for instance, that The Voice is a more civilized organ than Bruno’s Weekly. The place is full of uptowners; it always was. It is expensive; it was in 1920. As a way of life, it goes on unchanged, amongst the call girls, customers’ men, aboriginal Italians and Irish. But where one girl wore colored stockings in 1905, thousands wear them today. Where Floyd Dell read Nietzsche, untold numbers read Beckett in the dim light of cold-water walk-ups.

As for the Beat Generation. Let’s all stop. Right now. This has turned into a Madison Avenue gimmick. When the fall book lists come out, it will be as dead as Davy Crockett caps. It is a pity that as fine an artist as Jack Kerouac got hooked by this label. Of course it happened because of Jack’s naïveté — the innocence of heart which is his special virtue. I am sure he is as sick of it as I am. I for one never belonged to it. I am neither beatified nor pummeled. I’m getting on, but I’ve managed to dodge the gimmick generations as they went past; I was never Lost nor Proletarian nor Reactionary. This stuff is strictly for the customers.

As for Jack himself. Yes, I threw him out. He was frightening the children. He doesn’t frighten me, though when he gets excessively beatified he bores me slightly. I think he is one of the finest prose writers now writing prose. He is a naïve writer, like Restif de la Bretonne or Henry Miller, who accurately reflects a world without understanding it very well in the rational sense. For that, Clellon Holmes is far better on the same scene, shrewd and objective; but, as I am pretty sure he himself would be the first to admit, not the artist Jack is, and lacking, because of his very objectivity, Jack’s poignancy and terror. One thing about Jack and Allen Ginsberg, who, I might remind you, are Villagers, and only were temporarily on loan to San Francisco: I had to come back to New York to realize how good they are. They have sure as hell made just the right enemies.

Now about jazz poetry. Let anybody who wants to have started it go right ahead and have started it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t. But Lawrence Ferlinghetti and I did first start it off as public entertainment before concert and club audiences. For better or worse, I guess we started the craze. It is a lot more than a craze as far as I am concerned. I am not interested in a freak gig. I think the art of poetry in America is in a bad way. It is largely the business of seminars, conducted by aging poets for five or six budding poets.

Jazz poetry gets poetry out of the classrooms and into contact with large audiences who have not read any verse since grammar school. They listen, they like it, they come back for more. It demands of poetry, however deep and complex, something of a public surface, like the plays of Shakespeare that had stuff for everybody, the commonalty, the middle class, the nobility, the intellectuals.

Jazz gives poetry, too, the rhythms of itself, so expressive of the world we live in, and it gives it the inspiration of the jazz world, with its hard simple morality and its direct honesty — especially its erotic honesty. Fish or cut bait. Poetry gives modern jazz a verbal content infinitely superior to the silly falsities of the typical Tin Pan Alley lyric. It provides people who do not understand music technically something to hook onto — something to lead them into the complex world of modern jazz — as serious and as artistically important as any music being produced today. And then, the reciting, rather than singing voice, if properly managed, swings more than an awful lot of vocalists. As you may know, most jazz men like two singers — Frankie and Ella. With a poet who understands what is going on, they are not at the mercy of a vocalist who wants just to vocalize and who looks on the band as a necessary evil at best. Too, the emotional complexity of good poetry provides the musician with continuous creative stimulus, but at the same time gives him the widest possible creative freedom.

All this requires skill. Like if you just want to blow a lot of crazy words, man, if you think jazz is jungle music while the missionary soup comes to a boil, if you believe in the jazz myth of the hipster, you are going to fall on your face. Charlie Parker, or many younger men, are just as sophisticated artists as T.S. Eliot, and in some cases better, and have a lot more kinship with Couperin than with the King of the Cannibal Isles. And the combination of jazz and poetry requires good poetry, competent recitation, everybody in the group really digging what everybody else is doing, and, of course, real tasty music. Then it’s great, and everybody loves it, specially you, baby.

Labels: Music

Jazz Poetry

by Kenneth Rexroth

Over a hundred years ago the French poet, Charles Cros, the man who invented the phonograph, recited his poetry to the hot music of a bal musette band. Some of his pieces, especially the very funny “The Dry Herring,” are still in the repertory of café entertainers over there. In the twenties Langston Hughes, Maxwell Bodenheim and myself recited poetry to the jazz of the time. A few years back, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Patchen, Lawrence Lipton and I revived it in California. For a while it was a fad. The Beatniks took it up. Some pretty awful stuff was committed in joints around the country. Now the fad has died away and the permanent, solid achievements remain. The form is not going to revolutionize either jazz or poetry, but it is going to stay with us, and both jazz and poetry are going to have one new way of expressing themselves, and so are going to be just a little richer. This is as it should be, because jazz poetry is fun to listen to, and it is even greater fun to do.

During the past four years I have worked around the country with all kinds of top-notch bands. Every one of these dates has been a sheer joy. But always at last I have come home to San Francisco and “my” band. Somehow we seem to go together like ham and eggs. We know each other thoroughly. We are always with it. It’s not just that nobody gets lost too far out. We know perfectly how to bring out each other’s best points. We know what we are doing.

What are we doing? Nothing freakish. Nothing outrageous. Nothing really new. Not just the people I mentioned before, but the “talking blues,” recitations of poetry as part of the service in storefront churches, highbrow music like Stravinsky’s Persephone and Walton’s Facade, there is nothing strange about the form, it has a long history in both jazz, spirituals and classical music. It is not singing or chanting. It is not matched to the notes in the strict way a song is. The point is that is gives a freer relationship, one which gives the musicians more chance for invention, for individual expression and development. Again, modern jazz is much better stuff than many of the popular lyrics that go with the tunes on which it is based. Some of these are pretty silly. We think that good poetry gives jazz words that match its own importance. Then, too, the combination of poetry and jazz, with the poet reciting, gives the poet a new kind of audience. Not necessarily a bigger one, but a more normal one — ordinary people out for the evening, looking for civilized entertainment. It takes the poet out of the bookish, academic world and forces him to compete with “acrobats, trained dogs, and Singer’s Midgets” as they used to say in the days of vaudeville. Is this bad? I think not. Precisely what is wrong with the modern poet is the lack of a living, flesh and blood connection with his audiences. Only in modern times has poetry become a bookish art. In its best days Homer and the Troubadours recited their poetry to music in just this way.

How do we do it? We certainly don’t just spontaneously blow off the top of our heads. Most of these pieces are standard tunes, carefully rehearsed many times with the poet until we’ve got a good clear rich head arrangement. We don’t write it down, because we want to keep as much spontaneity and invention as possible, but at the same time we want plenty of substance to the music, and, of course, we want poet and band to “go together.” I have chosen poems which are about the same things as most popular songs and blues and which are simple enough so that they can be put across to the average audience in a jazz room. Maybe now that the medium has caught on, as it certainly has, we can go on and try “deeper,” more complicated poetry. I use poetry from all times and places, again to show that nothing is foreign to jazz treatment. Poets of all times and places have always sung, “I loved him but he went away.” “Come to my arms, we ain’t a gonna live forever.” “I wish I’d never met you.”

Why do we do it? No theories. We do it because we like to. It’s fun

Labels: Music

Jazz Poetry
by Kenneth Rexroth

Things are beginning to get out of hand. The other day Ralph Gleason, the jazz critic, said to me that he expected any day to see ads in the trade papers: “JAZZ POET: blues, ballad, upbeat, free verse or rhyme. Have tux. Will travel.” And T.S. Eliot touring the kerosene circuit with Little Richard and the Harlem Globetrotters. Crazes are usually pretty empty, sterile things. It would be a pity if incompetents looking for a fast buck turned this into a temporary social disease like pee-wee golf or swallowing goldfish.

I, for one, take it very seriously indeed. I started doing it long ago in the Green Mask in Chicago to Frankie Melrose’s piano and anybody else who wandered in to blow. The music was pretty gut-bucket usually, sort of paleo-funky, if you dig, and much of the poetry was Service, Sandburg, even Swinburne, but some of it wasn’t. The Waste Land was read to jazz, all of it, shortly after it appeared. Bert Williams and Bert Savoy were both in the audience and thought it was a gasser . . . the cat’s whiskers it was then.

I read poetry to jazz because I like to. I like poetry. I like to read to people. I like jazz. The people like the combination. But there’s more to it than that. Poetry and jazz gain new and different dimensions in association. Poetry has always gained by association with music . . . ancient China, Japan, India, Greece, the troubadours and minnesingers and scalds. Not just as lyrics for songs, but also as recitation. The Homeric poems were recited in this way. There was a special profession for doing it called rhetors. In a sense poetry and jazz as such began about mid-nineteenth century with a friend of Baudelaire and Verlaine, Charles Cros, who recited his poems to the jivy music of the three-piece bands of the bals musettes and cafés chantants. He was a very great and very wise poet as well. This should set to rest the cooked-up dispute as to who invented it. I am sure I didn’t and, as I say, I started in the early twenties.

Why to jazz specifically? Well, I, for one, don’t make any distinction between jazz and “serious music.” Jazz is serious music; some people think it is the only American music worth taking seriously. Not in lush or brutal clip joints, but in the best jazz rooms and concerts, poetry gains from jazz an audience of widely diversified character, people who are seriously concerned with music, but who do not ordinarily read verse and who care nothing for the conflicts and rituals of the literary scene. The audience poetry has today, its official audience, is what is killing it. And, of course, the poet himself gains by the test of popular presentation. Naturally all poetry is not, nor should it be, able to meet this test. But we could do with more. Jazz gains by a new vocal content which can match its own seriousness, depth and complexity. Some jazz is “abstract” like Bach, but most of it is a kind of “program music” like Stravinsky, and obviously the better the program — all other things considered — the better the results. I might mention that Stravinsky’s Persephone does not differ formally from what we are trying to do. Poetry and jazz is not a gimmick, a freak gig, something for the sockless cats and the unwashed chicks of the marijuana circuit. It is not new, but as old as music and poetry, and to be treated with the dignity and respect, by performers and audience respectively, which those ancient expressions of mankind should always merit.

I think that, by and large, poetry is a dying art in modern civilization, dying for lack of a significant audience. Kids who can’t make the team or build a hot rod or toss chicks around in the air jitterbugging tend to gravitate to “The Lit.” and thence to the reputedly adult literary quarterly. Poetry won’t get the chicks that even the poorest hot rod will, but in extremity it will serve. And like poet, like audience. It is not just the Babbitts who think there’s something odd about people who read poetry. I think so, and I know. Odd, and very, very few. And so poetry itself has become insufferably odd and cranky. I think this is due to the lack of living contact with the audience, as well, of course, as to general social and economic factors. There isn’t much to be done about the big factors by any one individual anyway, but it is possible to keep plugging away at putting the poet back into actual physical touch with a live audience. In San Francisco we have led the world in that effort. Today, more than anywhere in the world except possibly Japan, poetry is a real factor in the life of the community and poets enjoy widespread influence — not on literature, but on life.

Jazz poetry reading puts poetry back in the entertainment business, where it was with Homer and the troubadours. Even Victorian epics like Idylls of the King and Evangeline were written to be read to the whole family around the fire in the evening by papa — not, certainly, to be studied for their ambiguities by a seminar of five Ph.D. candidates, conducted by another poet.

The musicians get a chance to work with words that mean something, something approximating the really profound levels attained by much modern jazz which certainly does not belong in the banal world of the Tin Pan Alley lyric. Also, the rhythms of modern poetry are extremely complex and the problems they set the musicians are comparable to those he sets himself when he “takes off’ from the hackneyed rhythm structure of the popular tune. Actually, much modern poetry is too complex for jazz, which, aficionados to the contrary, is not as complicated as much quite ordinary classical music.

There is a widespread belief that real jazz is just blown, spontaneously, out of nowhere, and that if it isn’t improvised it isn’t jazz. Nothing could be less true. The most spontaneous improvisation works with an immense repertory of stereotyped patterns, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, which every musician knows, and into which he pours the new life of the immediate performance as he goes along. At any given moment everybody in the band has a pretty clear idea of what is going to happen next. By very definition the great swing bands were elaborately arranged and exhaustively rehearsed. So the idea that you can just get up in front of a band and everybody blow poetry and sounds out of dreams is just plain silly.

We have found that the effects we want are obtained by making sure that each musician knows exactly what the poet is doing — what he means, and what technical effects he employs, for instance the rhythms of his speech, to put his meaning across. Each musician has a sheet with the text in front of him, which he also uses as a cue sheet and for all sorts of other marginal musical notation. Then comes plenty of careful rehearsal, each one taped and played back and carefully analyzed. Rehearsals are pretty elaborate, far more finicky than the average band rehearsal, but the constant effort is to increase spontaneity, not to limit it. We find, like all artists, that you have to work hard to earn freedom of expression. One thing, there is very little room for the intensely competitive self-expression of the bop era. We don’t try to blow each other down. We find that jazz poetry is an exacting, cooperative, precision effort, like mountaineering. Everybody has to be perfectly coordinated; there is no place for the bitter musical dogfights immortalized on some bop records; everybody has to be as socialized as six men on a rope working across the face of a cliff.

I, for one, have tried to treat the voice as another instrument in the band. Whenever the voice takes on the character of a solo singer or the band sinks to background music, we feel we have failed, and we scrap that effort and start over. You can readily see that, contrary to popular belief, this poetry and jazz combination is harder work than either of the arts taken separately. So, as a warning to other poets and musicians, if you don’t work, but hard, you are going to fall on your face. It’s time and trouble, but the final product is worth it; what they call the creative satisfactions are terrific, a real joy, and Lord, Lord, Lord, look how it packs them in!

Labels: Music

by Kenneth Rexroth

A little short of two years ago, jazz poetry was a possibility, a hope and the memory of a few experiments. Today it runs the danger of becoming a fad. The life of fads is most often intense, empty and short. I feel, on the contrary, jazz poetry has permanent value or I would not have undertaken it.

When it is successful there is nothing freakish or faddish about it nor, as a matter of fact, is there anything specially new. At the roots of jazz and Negro folksong, especially in the Southwest, is the “talking blues.” It is not much heard today, but if you flatten out the melodic line, already very simple, in Big Bill Broonzy or Leadbelly, you have an approximation of it, and some of their records are really more talked than sung. This is poetry recited to a simple blues guitar accompaniment. Long before this, in the mid-nineteenth century, the French poet Charles Cros was reciting, not singing, his poems to the music of a bal musette band. Some of his things are still in the repertory of living café chantant performers, especially the extremely funny Le Hareng Saur. Even today some rock ’n roll “novelties” are recited, not sung, and they are some of the most engaging, with music that often verges into the more complex world of true jazz. It has become a common custom in storefront churches and Negro revival meetings for a member of the congregation to recite a poem to an instrumental or wordless vocal accompaniment. I believe Langston Hughes recited poems to jazz many years ago. I tried it myself in the twenties in Chicago. In the late forties Kenneth Patchen recited poems to records. Jack Spicer, a San Francisco poet, tried it with a trio led by Ron Crotty on bass. The result, more like the Russian tone color music of the first years of the century, was impressive, if not precisely jazz. Lawrence Lipton has been working with some of the best musicians in Los Angeles for almost two years. William Walton’s Facade, Stravinsky’s Persephone, compositions of Auric, Honneger, Milhaud, are well-known examples of speaking, rather than singing, to orchestra in contemporary classical music. Charles Mingus and Fred Katz, two of the most serious musicians in jazz — to narrow that invidious distinction between jazz and serious music — have been experimenting with the medium for some time. The music has been impressive, but in my opinion, speaking as a professional poet, the texts could be improved.

What is jazz poetry? It isn’t anything very complicated to understand. It is the reciting of suitable poetry with the music of a jazz band, usually small and comparatively quiet. Most emphatically, it is not recitation with “background” music. The voice is integrally wedded to the music and, although it does not sing notes, is treated as another instrument, with its own solos and ensemble passages, and with solo and ensemble work by the band alone. It comes and goes, following the logic of the presentation, just like a saxophone or piano. Poetry with background music is very far from jazz. It is not uncommon, and it is, in my opinion, usually pretty corny.

Why is jazz poetry? Jazz vocalists, especially white vocalists and especially in the idiom of the most advanced jazz, are not very common. Most Negro singers stay pretty close to the blues, and there is more to modern jazz than blues. Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, there are not many singers whom all schools of jazz find congenial. Curiously enough, the poet reciting, if he knows what he is doing, seems to “swing” to the satisfaction of many musicians in a way that too few singers do. I think it is wrong to put down all popular ballad lyrics as trivial; some of them are considerable poetry in their own right, but certainly most are intellectually far beneath the musical world of modern jazz, and far less honest. The best jazz is above all characterized by its absolute emotional honesty. This leaves us with the words of the best blues and Negro folksong, often very great poetry indeed, but still a limited aspect of experience, and by no means everything, translated into words, that modern jazz has to say. In other words, poetry gives jazz a richer verbal content, reinforces and expands its musical meaning and, at the same time, provides material of the greatest flexibility.

How is it done, in actual practice? Kenneth Patchen has been working with Allyn Ferguson and the Chamber Jazz Sextet. The music is composed; it is actually written out, with, of course, room for solo improvisation, but with the voice carefully scored in. There is nothing wrong with this. Far more of the greatest jazz is written music than the lay public realizes. Some of even the famous King Oliver and Louis Armstrong records of long ago were scored by Lil Hardin, a very sophisticated musician. Duke Ellington and his arranger, Billy Strayhorn, are among America’s greatest composers. For the past year I have been working with my own band, led by Dick Mills, trumpet, and including Brew Moore, tenor, Frank Esposito, trombone, Ron Crotty, bass, Clair Willey, piano, and Gus Gustafson, drums. Recently in Los Angeles, I played a two-week engagement with a fine band led by Shorty Rogers. In each case we worked from carefully rehearsed “head arrangements.” The musicians had each in front of them the text of the poetry, and the sheets were used as cue sheets, scribbled with “inners and outers,” chord progressions, melodic lines and various cues.

I feel that this method ensures the maximum amount of flexibility and spontaneity and yet provides a steadily deepening and thickening (in the musical sense) basis, differing emotionally more than actually from a written score. The whole thing is elaborately rehearsed — more than usual for even the most complicated “band number.” I would like to mention that jazz, contrary to lay opinion, is not just spontaneously “blown” out of the musicians’ heads. Behind even the freest improvisation lies a fund of accepted patterns, chord changes, riffs, melodic figures, variations of tempo and dynamics, all understood by the musicians. In fact, they are there, given, as a fund of material almost instinctively come by. Even in a jam session, when a soloist gets as far out as possible, everybody has a pretty clear idea of how he is going to get back and of how everybody is going to go off together again. Then the major forms of common jazz are almost as strict as the sonata — the thirty-two bar ballad, the twelve bar blues — bridges, choruses, fillers, all usually in multiples of the basic four-bar unit, in four-four time. Needless to say, the poetry is not “improvised” either. This has been tried, but with disastrously ridiculous results, and not by me. On the other hand, several poets have read over their things once with sensitive musicians and then put on a thoroughly satisfactory show. I have done this with Marty Paitch on piano or Ralph Pena on bass — both musicians with an extraordinary feeling for the rhythms and meanings of poetry. It all depends on the musician.

I hope the faddist elements of this new medium will die away. The ignorant and the pretentious, the sockless hipsters out for a fast buck or a few drinks from a Village bistro, will soon exhaust their welcome with the public, and the field will be left clear for serious musicians and poets who mean business. I think that it is a development of considerable potential significance for both jazz and poetry. It reaches an audience many times as large as that commonly reached by poetry, and an audience free of some of the serious vices of the typical poetry lover. It returns poetry to music and to public entertainment as it was in the days of Homer or the troubadours. It forces poetry to deal with aspects of life which it has tended to avoid in the recent past. It demands of poetry something of a public surface — meanings which can be grasped by ordinary people — just as the plays of Shakespeare had something for both the pit and the intellectuals in Elizabethan times, and still have today. And, as I have said, it gives jazz a flexible verbal content, an adjunct which matches the seriousness and artistic integrity of the music.

Certainly audiences seem to agree. Wherever it has been performed properly, the college auditoriums, the night clubs, the concert halls have been packed, and everybody — musicians, poets and audiences — has been enthusiastic.

In the past two years it has spread from The Cellar, a small bar in San Francisco, to college campuses, to nightclubs in Los Angeles, St. Louis, New York, Dallas and, I believe, Chicago; to the Jazz Concert Hall in Los Angeles, where Lawrence Lipton put on a program with Shorty Rogers, Fred Katz, two bands, myself, Stuart Perkoff and Lipton himself, heard by about six thousand people in two weeks. Kenneth Patchen and Allyn Ferguson followed us, and played there for the better part of two months. Dick Mills and his band have performed with me at several colleges and at the San Francisco Art Festival, and we are now planning to take the whole show on the road.

If we can keep the standards up, and keep it away from those who don’t know what they are doing, who have no conception of the rather severe demands the form makes on the integrity and competence of both musicians and poets, I feel that we shall have given, for a long time to come, new meanings to both jazz and poetry.

Labels: Music

By Steve Jones

Not long ago, rap dominated album sales charts. Now, the music that has been a driving creative and commercial force in American culture is struggling to get its swagger back.

The music industry is suffering across-the-board drops in CD sales, but rap is in a steeper slide: This year, rap sales are down 33% from 2006, twice the decline for the industry overall, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Five years ago, Eminem's album The Eminem Show was atop the Billboard chart, on its way to becoming the runaway best-selling album that year, with 7.6 million copies. Since then, no rap album has sold as well.

Established rap stars no longer are sure things in sales. During the past nine months, Jay-Z, Ludacris, Snoop Dogg, Diddy and Nas released albums, but only those by Jay-Z and Ludacris have sold at least 1 million copies in the USA, and only Diddy is still on the charts.

Rap's decline can be traced to a range of factors, including marketing strategies that have de-emphasized album sales in favor of selling less-lucrative single songs and short versions of those singles as ring tones for cellphones. But more important to the industry, there are signs that many music-buying Americans — particularly the young, largely white audience that can make a difference between modest and blockbuster sales — are tiring of rappers' emphasis on "gangsta" attitudes, explicit lyrics and tales of street life and conspicuous consumption.

Within the rap industry, there's a growing debate about whether years of rampant commercialism — Snoop Dogg now endorses Pony sneakers; 50 Cent peddles grape-flavored vitamin water — have drained credibility and creativity out of a once-vibrant genre of music. And there's concern that rap, also known as hip-hop, has reached an evolutionary plateau: After more than a quarter-century on the charts, it's no longer the radical newcomer.

Rap pioneer KRS-One, who just released Hip Hop Lives with fellow legend Marley Marl, offers a blunt explanation.

"The music is garbage," he says. "What has happened over the past few years is that we have traded art for money, simple and plain, and the public is not stupid."

Chuck Creekmur, co-founder of hip-hop news website Allhiphop.com, says rap once was known for creative storytelling and clever rhymes, but now is being undermined by a lack of both.

"A lot of these albums now are looking to duplicate the success" of whatever is hot at the moment, he says. "There is a lack of variety."

An industry force no more

Whatever's causing consumers to tune out, it's clear that rap no longer dominates the music industry. In 2006, rap sold 59.1 million albums, down 21% from 2005 and 27% from 2004. Sales are trailing those for country albums (75 million) and heavy metal (61.6 million) — genres that rap formerly overshadowed.

In 2006, for the first time in five years, no rap albums were among the year's 10 biggest sellers, a list led by the soundtrack to Disney's High School Musical, which sold 3.7 million copies. Compare that with 2003, when 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' ranked No. 1 with 6.5 million copies.

This year's top-selling albums thus far are by American Idol rocker Chris Daughtry's band and jazz chanteuse Norah Jones.

The rap industry is pinning hopes on 50 Cent's Curtis, due Sept. 4, and Kanye West's Graduation Day, expected in late August, as well as releases by Eminem and Dr. Dre that could arrive before the end of the year.

But those albums may not be enough to salvage the sales numbers for this year, and it's unclear whether 50 Cent or Eminem can match their past sales.

A genre is born

Hip-hop was born out of DJ-hosted block parties in the Bronx, N.Y., in the early 1970s and evolved with emcees "rapping" over the beats the DJs played.

The genre hit the Top 40 with the Sugar Hill Gang's Rapper's Delight in 1979.

Rap soon became, as Public Enemy's Chuck D described it, "the CNN of black culture," encompassing everything from party tales to political commentaries, especially from the view of poor and disaffected urban youths.

Rap found an audience not only in cities but in mostly white suburbs, as well.

By the 1990s, a harder-edged version of rap that glorified gang life began to dominate music and influence youth culture. Its songs and videos typically depict violence and drug dealers awash in diamonds and platinum jewelry, champagne and scantily clad women.

Rap became a multibillion-dollar-a-year global industry, influencing fashion, lifestyles and language while selling everything from SUVs to personal computers.

Rap's declining sales haven't escaped the attention of its kingpins. Declaring that hip-hop needed saving, Jay-Z ended a three-year retirement in November with his CD Kingdom Come, in which he essentially cast himself as Superman trying to save hip-hop.

A month later, Nas decried rap's lack of originality on his disc Hip HopIs Dead:

"Everybody sound the same, commercialize the game / Reminiscin' when it wasn't all business / They forgot where it started / So we all gather here for the dearly departed."

Rap may not be dead, but it's significantly weakened, in part by its own doing, music analysts say.

The industry's longtime strategy of pushing singles to sell albums has backfired in the digital age, says Felicia Palmer, president of 4Control Media and founder of the hip-hop news website SOHH.com.

Digital sales have outstripped CD sales, but not yet to a degree that compensates for the price difference between a 99-cent download and a $19.99 CD.

A just-released survey by the website found 82% of nearly 700 respondents are purchasing fewer albums than in previous years, and 67% acknowledge that they have illicitly downloaded albums rather than pay for them. One reason: 69% say they're "not inspired by many albums."

"People have gotten smart and know that (record companies) usually put out the two best singles, and the rest of the album is usually garbage," Palmer says.

Labels need to do more to help artists build their fan bases with promotional tours, which help consumers buy into the performer and not just a song, says Michael "Blue" Williams, who manages Outkast and other urban acts.

"People like hot music, but we are still not making artists who matter across the board," Williams says. "So while the labels are screaming that the sky is falling, they are trapped in their own vicious cycle of having to chase each single."

Promoting singles means getting favorable airplay, and that's more difficult now that hip-hop isn't the "only contemporary music that matters," as it was just a few years ago, says Sean Ross of Edison Media Research.

"Three years ago, you wouldn't have wanted to be a Top 40 station playing Bright Lights by (pop/rockers) Matchbox Twenty while your competitor was playing Get Low by (rapper) Lil Jon," Ross says.

"Now, Top 40 has Daughtry and Gwen Stefani, as well as a lot of quasi hip-hop from artists like Fergie and the Pussycat Dolls that, for some listeners, fill the same need as the real thing."

The real thing may no longer be real enough.

Glenn Peoples, founder and editor of music industry blog Coolfer.com, says: "A lot of people who used to listen to rap are now listening to rock. Rock is really strong right now."

'The public has made a choice'

Part of hip-hop's attraction has been the assumed authenticity of its lyrics and artists, but now, many younger listeners "believe that so much of what the mainstream (rap) industry does is orchestrated," says Bakari Kitwana, author of the books The Hip Hop Generation and Why White Kids Love Hip Hop. "I don't think they have a lot of confidence in the music the industry is producing."

For years, increasing sales of rap albums effectively muted protests about some songs' promotion of misogyny, racism and violence. Now, dwindling receipts and fading interest in rap have provided what some in the industry see as an opportunity to rethink content.

"The public has made a choice," KRS-One says. "They're saying, 'We do not want the nonsense that we see and hear on radio, and we are not putting our money there.' Rap music is being boycotted by the American public because of the images that we are putting forward."

The rising angst about rap lyrics was spotlighted this spring during the fallout over radio talk-show host Don Imus' smearing of the Rutgers University women's basketball team. Imus called team members "hos," then later noted in his defense that the word is commonly used in rap songs to describe women.

Soon after, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons called a meeting of music industry executives. His Hip-Hop Summit Action Network later recommended that the rap industry voluntarily delete or bleep out offensive terms for broadcast.

Such efforts have drawn mixed reactions from rappers.

Master P, who built his multimillion-dollar No Limit Records empire on gangsta rap in the '90s, announced plans to start a new label, Take A Stand Records, with his son Romeo. He says he has been part of the problem and now wants to be part of the solution with clean, positive music.

That idea was derided by 50 Cent, who said he has no intention of cleaning up his lyrics.

"Music is a mirror, and hip-hop is a reflection of the environment we grew up in," he said at a news conference.

"If I ask you to paint a picture of the American flag and not use the color red, you're going to have a difficult time."

A new business model

Content questions aside, rap faces the same challenge that has alarmed much of the music industry: how to adapt to the digital revolution.

"What we have to do is figure out what the new music business is," says Kevin Liles, executive vice president of Warner Music Group, home to artists such as DJ Quik, Lil Scrappy and E-40.

"There was a time when an artist like a Jay-Z or DMX or 50 Cent would sell 4 million or 5 million CDs. But there's a new climate. Artists like Young Jeezy might sell 2 million albums, but 6 million ring tones."

Recent sales by rap star Mims reflect the problems facing the industry. His single This Is Why I'm Hot has done well this year, selling 634,000 downloads and 1.9 million ring tones, the 2007 leader in ring tones so far. But the album that contains This Is Why I'm Hot hasn't been so hot, selling only 231,000 copies. Music Is My Savior is No. 100 on Billboard's albums chart 11 weeks after its release.

Rap's early stars, from Grandmaster Flash to Public Enemy and LL Cool J, "touched on humor, politics, ghetto life and realities they faced," says music consultant Tom Vickers. "Rap has gradually degenerated from an art form into a ring tone. It's a hip catchphrase or a musical riff with a short shelf life. It has a novelty element that captures the listener's imagination, but it's not a song. It won't build a career. That's why we're seeing this backlash."

To rebound, he says, "rap has to look at the bigger issues confronting society. There's only so much bling the public can take."

The upside for rap, Kitwana says, is that so much of it "remains off the mainstream radar. You never know when hip-hop is going to reinvent itself, or when something operating out on the fringe is going to emerge and become the next new thing."

Labels: Music

By Monica Racic

For a long time music and the visual arts were married. But the last ten years have been rocky, especially when music split for a rather extended rendezvous with the Internet (having flings with mp3s and other digital files). And while music moved on to new types of media, it left design with the kids: vinyl, cassette, and CD.

Album art just doesn’t have the same place in our culture as it used to have. Even as recent as the early 90s, album art had a decent amount of living space on the square CD cover. Although, the 5-inches offered up by the CD cover shrinks in comparison to the 12-inches of the vinyl LP sleeve that gave designers a much larger canvas on which to experiment and showcase their talents.


Leading the forefront of that indelible connection between sight and sound packaging was Reid Miles, a graphic designer for Blue Note Records. Miles was born in Chicago in 1927, making him only twelve years old when Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff founded Blue Note Records. A music label that would focus on the American institution of Jazz, Blue Note Records took its name from the blue notes commonly used in jazz music to emphasize emotion (achieved by shifting a note to a lower pitch—making it sound ‘blue’). Predominately featuring Jazz artists of the Bebop, Hard Bop, and Avant Garde type, Blue Note Records represented some of the biggest names in Jazz including Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Fats Navarro, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington.

Twenty-nine years after its founding, Reid Miles joined the Blue Note team. In the time Miles spent working for Blue Note records, starting in 1956 and leaving in the late sixties, he created almost 500 pieces of album art. His work demonstrated graphic design’s ability to articulate a visual companion to the abstract. As a result of the visual potency of Miles’ work, Blue Note Records became known for especially unique cover art.

Much like the personal styles that blare out from the records of each jazz musician that Miles’ art represents, Miles’ own visual style resonates on the page. Working within the modernist format, Miles employed geometric designs while still keeping the arrangements fresh and distinctive for each jazz artist. Francis Wolff, one of the founders of Blue Note Records and coincidentally a professional photographer, would provide many of the photographs that Miles used in his designs. Formally, Miles’ work is often made up of tinted black and white photos, as in his cover design for Hank Mobley’s album “Soul Station.” Many of his designs follow this limited color palette (black, white, and a third color—usually blue or red). Also, evident in this piece is the balance Miles creates between type and image. His arrangement of type, which was almost always sans serif, is reminiscent of the Swiss principles of design that were prominent at the time in artists such as Josef Muller-Brockmann. On some covers, the type even becomes the image, as with the album “Trompeta Toccata.” Miles frequently found a creative way to display type, as in the album cover for Lee Morgan’s “The Rumproller” (1965), which is a smeared rendering of the title.

Miles often used blocks of color, as on the album cover for Tina Brooks’ “True Blue” and on Sonny Clark’s album “Trio” (in which the rectangles of color seem to illustrate overlapping piano keys). Similarly, black rectangles seem to illustrate a piano on the cover of Freddie Hubbard’s album “Hub-tones” (1962). Although formally simple, Miles’ pieces such as “Trio” and “Hub-Tones” are an effective representation of the layered rhythms found in jazz and the concoction of musical styles that naturally occurs when artists collaborate in a ‘freestyle’ nature.

Knowing how to make the photography work for his designs, Miles would often crop each photographs in an interesting way to visually encapsulate the flair of the jazz sound. Particularly engaging is the album cover for Sonny Clark’s “Cool Struttin’.” The scene is activated when Miles crops the legs of a woman in mid-step, giving the impression that this woman has some ‘panache’ in her walk and that the music you’re about to listen to has an equally energized soul in its rhythm.

Miles understood the dynamic between the music realm and the visual world—knowing when to let the image speak for itself and when and how to use text to enhance it. Each cover gives a sense of the soulful and cool essence of jazz. For conveying such accurate visuals to accompany the abstractedness of the music, it is ironic that Miles, it has been said, did not particularly like jazz. Regardless of his musical tastes, Miles foresaw the impact and evolutionary importance the album cover would have on not only the music industry, but also on the overall experience of listening to music.

Although album art today is no longer tangible, music design is still prominent. Like any good divorcée design has re-invented itself to go back out on the market, this time having a delicious affair with the Adobe creative suite. And perhaps there will be some sort of reconciliation.

As seen in the work Reid Miles did for Blue Note records, for a long time music and album art had an impenetrable relationship. It makes one wonder whether that sensory bond is withering away in the digital age. I hope not.

Written by d/visible contributor Monica Racic

Labels: Jazz, Media, Music