What is swing anyway?

From a subjective point of view, it is a feeling of forward propulsion combined with a sense of easy relaxation. The beat has to be posed between those two feelings.

From the point of view of the music itself, it has two main elements, the relative equality of quarter note beats and the phrasing of 8th notes.

(1) The jazz beat is one two three four, not: ONE two THREE four. It's almost one TWO three FOUR. Think of a walking bass with four more or less equal beats. Now think of the high hat clicking on two and four.

(2) The basic 8th note subdivision is swung rather than played straight. (This would be written out as an 8th note triplet with a rest between the two notes.) This is known as a "shuffle." Early rock and roll is still played in a shuffle rhythm; it's still basically a form of "swing" music.

Complications: (1) was an achievement of big bands in the 1930s. You will find a much more prominent up-and-down "two" feel in earlier jazz styles, like stride piano. Do these styles swing? They probably do. Sometimes too straight a "four" can get flat and colorless, like "one one one one one one one...." So maybe the lilt of the two feel is still an element of swing?

According to Gunther Schuller, that equality of the four beats comes from African music. Yet it emerged in jazz at a particular point in time. This raises the question of where this principle was hibernating between its African origins and its emergence in the Count Basie orchestra in the 1930s.

What if (1) and (2) are present but that tension between forward movement and relaxed ease is not perceived by the listener? The music doesn't swing but there might be differences of opinion. Crouch thinks Wynton can swing and Scott LaFaro can't. I hold the opposite opinion. I don't find swing in John Lewis or Nina Simone.

Of course music might not necessarily swing in the jazz sense but still be rhythmically engaging in an analogous way.

What can I say about Wynton? My view is hardly original or unusual, but Wynton is a not a first-rate player at all, despite his considerable virtuosity, earnestness, and jazz erudition. The missing element is that "it." That tastiness and conviction. There's often a pedanticism about playing older styles, one that is stylistically correct but misses the essential element of those styles: that indefinable tastiness we get in Nat Cole or Coleman Hawkins. Even more minor figures than Wynton have this quality in greater abundance. I think Wynton strives for that but misses it by a country mile. His classical playing is virtuosic but rather pompous; I'll take Alison Balson over him.

Of course tastiness is a function of taste. Wynton's supporters will have a different opinion than mine. Of course, they will be wrong, but what I can do about that?

Speaking of Hoagy Carmichael, at one point "Stardust" was the most recorded and covered song of all time. (Now it's "Yesterday." There are also 4,000 versions of "Summertime.") It's hard to know what makes this song so special--the integration of the verse and the chorus, which have similar melodic patterns. The perfect "fit" between the lyric and the melody. The melody itself, which its up and down movement and unpredictability. It combines unpredictability and inevitability like few other tunes.

I used to think Ray Charles had written "Georgia on my Mind." I was used to the idea that the singer was the songwriter. Of course I was 14 at the time so there is some excuse. Also, it's the perfect fit between song and singer. It's too bad Louis Armstrong's version isn't more played.

One of the myths of jazz is that the raw material on which improvisation was based was dreck, and that jazz musicians took a largely hostile attitude toward this raw material (the popular songs of the day.)

Well, actually, no. These are great songs for the most part. And my hypothesis is that musicicans chose songs that they liked over those that they didn't like. Hence the huge preference among jazz musicians for the big four of Gershwin, Porter, Arlen, and Rodgers.

Take the example of John Coltrane playing "My Favorite Things." We know this melody is by Richard Rodgers, from the "Sound of Music." What is the more parsimonious interpretation? That Coltrane played this song in order to mount an attack on Richard Rodgers, or that he played it because he loved the song? Or take Monk's preferennce for Gershwin's "Nice Work." Monk only played a few standards, and he liked to play them over and over.

I think these Russian Jews who created Tin Pan Alley Americana were on to something great and that the black jazz musicians resonated with their creations. And what about Russian Jewish musicans like Stan Getz? Or Hungarian Jews like Benny Goodman? I don't think you can understand American popular culture without getting this fusion of Eastern European and African-American influences in the 1920s.