The Jazz Whistler

Jazz is often a difficult subject. People who are in the know can tell you much more than I can about theoretics. The people who want to dance to it know that it ain't mean a thing when it don't got that swing. Many artists have a quote about jazz. Duke Ellington said that you might call it jazz, or not, I just play music, and I hope the audience likes it. The more theoretical Anthony Braxton explained that there is a RST in jazz, Revolutionary Jazz, Stylized Jazz, and Traditionalism, and all three are worthwhile. Then there are outsiders, Frank Zappa with Is Jazz Dead, No, It Only Smells Funny. To which Lester Bowie replied Jazz Dead?, Depends On What You Know (hè hè hè). In my imagination, jazz started when Louis Armstrong played an improvisation for a bunch of record executives, and they were unimpressed, telling him that anyone could play random music. Louis took a sheet of paper and wrote down what he had just improvised.  That was (as I imagine it) the start of taking jazz (improvisation) seriously. 

Now I have come to the encore of my whistling CD's, and this is very much jazz and serious three-piece-suit music. From the street corner jazz to the Het Concertgebouw venue performances. And where do you start? I know a fine entrance, and that always stuck in my mind. I saw Misha Mengelberg a few times (live and on TV), and where his long-standing companion Han Bennink would start concerts with percussion from the moment he stepped out of the dressing room door, up to the stage, Misha started whistling as he walked to the piano.  That is A way jazz improvisation can work. Someone, somewhere, just starts.

On this CD, I included a wide variety of styles. 

After the total free one and a half minute with Ab, Misha, and Ig, there will be swing and amusement entertainment from Eddie Condon, Ray McKinley, and Harvey Ellington before we meet a Giant that is Toots Thielemans, who might well be one of the best things ever to come out of Belgium. Not only is he famous for his harmonica and guitar, but also as a wonderful master whistler. 

Then we skip to the seventies when jazz began to blossom in a wide variety. Pop jazz like Pierre Umiliani or Prophetic Band, Soft soul, funky jazz from Donald Byrd, sophisticated jazz by Milès Davís and Kenny Burrell, and the blues/vaudeville jazz by Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and ending the era with Leon Redbone (with Hal Willner as associate producer).

On the cusp of the eighties and further up in time, freedom gets the upper hand more and more. Do not adjust your set when Peter Cusack is on; he is making some noises one might regard as CD glitches, but they are as they are. And that is the best way to describe jazz. It is what it is. Derrick May used that for one of his early Techno tunes. Between Mr Cusack and Lol Coxhill/Fred Frith, there is a ghostly tune by Britta Lindell,  Jan Johansson will make you wonder what tune he is borrowing, Paul Schmidt and Ursula Oppens bring the classical music in with fragments from John Cage and Frederic Rzewsky. The last 15 minutes include Fil jazz by Wim Mertens, Pop by Takesi Inomata, and honest music by Robert Wyatt, plus K Sivaprasad, an Indian classical musician trained in the art of whistling.

This is what I wanted to share regarding whistling. At first, I thought 1 CD was enough, maybe it was. As it happens, this one is the 9th. Please enjoy this broad offering of classical and mostly jazzy whistlers.