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BOTM BotM January 2017 Body & Soul

billbluesnjazz

billbluesnjazz

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As a relative newcomer to Café Saxophone I am honoured to host the Ballad of the Month for the New Year. I have chosen one of the all time great ballads, Body and Soul. Body and Soul was composed in New York in 1929 by Johnny Green. Lyrics were by Frank Eyton, Edward Heyman and Robert Sour. First performance was in London, first jazz recording by Louis Armstrong on October 9, 1930, with Armstrong on trumpet and vocals.

The real impetus for Body and Soul came from Coleman Hawkins, whose 1939 recording was the first purely jazz record to be a hit with the general public, remaining so for years. Since then, Body and Soul is up there with the blues and rhythm changes for tenor saxophonists, and I have listed some of the many recordings on this and following pages.

This is not to say that sax is the only instrument for Body and Soul. Django Reinhart, Art Tatum, numerous vocalists from Billie Holiday, to Ella, to Amy Winehouse; Tony Bennet et al. There are over 2,200 recordings making this the most recorded standard in jazz.

There are so many great versions of this tune that I have selected only a few hopefully to illustrate how tenor playing and jazz has evolved since the first hit jazz recording of Coleman Hawkins in 1939.

For tenor players first, but everyone can learn from listening to the greats.

Coleman Hawkins 1939 - the seminal recording - oh and altissimo G into the bargain! Many bebop figures predating bebop!
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sul_9BcgOOI


Lester Young in 1942. Really slow, a true ballad treatment.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBfqqbm50uw


Stan Getz 1952 - moving the melody up an octave.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSUb_yjj-ys


I have posted more versions, including Bird and Pepper on following pages.

Chris has once again come up with the goods in providing Bb and Eb parts as well as a playalong mp3 which can be downloaded from the link below.

B&S(botm).zip


For a more or less straight version of the head, I recorded one chorus against Chris’s backing track of those of you who prefer to play by ear than read the dots. Feel free to download this page and then click on the link to play or download the chorus for practice.


B&S Soprano


Bill
 
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Great choice ! What a selection of sax heroes to inspire us all.

I bought this book last year: Body and Soul - Tenor Saxphone - Book: Amazon.co.uk: Books and it features transcriptions and analysis of solos by the following tenor giants:
  • Coleman Hawkins(1939)
  • Lester Young (1942)
  • Stan Getz (1952)
  • Sonny Rollins (1958)
  • John Coltrane (1960)
  • Dexter Gordon (1967 and 1970)
  • Michael Brecker(1992)
  • Chris Potter (1993)
I haven't started studying with the book yet, but this BOTM is just the kick I need.

Rhys
 
Love the Dexter Gordon video you posted, but the sax geek in me has to say it was before 1965 when his Conn 10M and Dukoff Stubby were stolen and he moved on to Selmer + Otto Link STM.

Reading through the many comments on that YouTube video it says that Dexter recorded it in Belgium, January 8, 1964 with George Gruntz (p), Guy Pedersen (b), Daniel Humair (d).

Rhys
 
@rhysonsax - thanks for the correction, I was trying to get a wide spectrum of players and dates, but somehow managed to miss that. I will correct the original post.

I also have the Body and Soul book you refer to - where do you think the original sequence of tenor players came from? 😉. Just practising the techniques Coleman Hawkins used in 1939 is enough to make most players sound good.

@Tiberius - there is a saying in classical piano pedagogy (I play classical piano, and have done for around 60 years for my sins!) "There is no such thing as a difficult piece, either you have practised it and can play it, in which case it is easy, or you have not yet worked on it and so it is impossible!". So pieces are either impossible or easy! This mindset transfers well to jazz. If you think something is too difficult for you then you tense up and with a wind instrument that is a real problem, but if you think "I am going to learn to play the first 8 bars out of tempo first" then you are on your way. Even if you only play one bar and get it spot on, then that is progress. I remember learning a Schoenberg piano piece and spending a month working on one bar till I nailed it. I had to play it in a piano summer school in front of piano professionals and concert pianists, so there was motivation there!

I would suggest that you concentrate first of all on the melody for the A section of B & S. Take it slowly and play it with a metronome at first. The accompaniment Chris has provided is great, but you really need to watch your entry, it is on the "a" of "one-an-a" of the first beat (approximating swing timing). I recorded a more or less straight version of the melody which you can access for practice from the first page on this thread. I am on soprano, so I will be an octave higher than you on tenor, so you can hear if you are in time or not. I would not advise playing this on soprano until you can nail it on tenor. Hope this helps.

Looking forward to hearing all the great versions!

Bill
 
I've recorded this tune three times before for several earlier TOTM/SOTM/BOTM threads on different forums.

First one is from Dec. 2012 on my main mouthpiece (a 1950's Otto Link Florida no USA 10*):

1 - 'Body And Soul' (Otto Link Florida no USA 10* - La Voz medium reed):
SoundClick

The next two recordings are made in May 2016.

Number 2 is on a modern Otto Link STM 7* (which plays actually too easy for me, so I had some issues with the lower and upper register):

2. - 'Body And Soul' (Otto Link STM 7* - La Voz medium reed):
SoundClick

Number 3 is again on my main mouthpiece, but now with a Rico Plasticover 2 reed and played in far more adventurous and free way then the two above recordings:

3. 'Body And Soul' (Otto Link Florida no USA 10* - Rico Plasticover 2 reed):
SoundClick

Not sure if I will try a new one this month, let's see!

PS. Happy New Year to all 🙂.
 
billbluesnjazz said:
...there is a saying in classical piano pedagogy <snip> "There is no such thing as a difficult piece...
Click to expand...

Probably said by some teacher when setting Les Ronde Des Lutins' for pupils to learn 🙂

Personally I prefer to be realistic, but recognise that there's nothing wrong with something that is more difficult, we should all aim to get better and play increasingly more difficult pieces as we progress. Can't just play Jingle Bells our entire life.

With the melody, then to some extent you're correct, it's just a series of notes to play. The difficulty comes about more when responding to the chord changes I think. Take Summertime from a few months ago, beginners could play over this just using the pentatonic scale. Even when responding to the chord changes, they chords were quite similar, really only requiring G# changing to G to highlight the changes in the key I was playing in.

I haven't take a look yet, but I briefly discussed Body & Soul a few months ago with my teacher and he informed me that the chord changes were tricky. Still as I said above, can't just play simple tunes all the while. I had a similar situation with Satin Doll recently, where again, I can play the melody, but the chord changes were just too fast for me to confidently improvise over.

Anyway, I'll download it now and start having a play.
 
If you break it down into it's constituent tonal centres first it should be achievable, then, as your confidence grows, start to incorporate some more of the changes, beginning with dominant - tonic movement and gradually stretching out from there.

That's how I'd approach it with a student at least.
 
@mrpeebee - thanks for those three versions. The first one really captured the classic sound of a tenor ballad, lovely. The second was a different sound altogether, at least to my ears, probably because of the mouthpiece, still great to listen to, and the third was an interesting take, with the head only appearing in the last A section, a la Coltrane on Countdown. I would like to have heard you play this with one of your other reeds, perhaps you could record a version or two for us for this month.

Thanks again, and Happy New Year to you too.
 
@GJ77 - Chris Potter really captures so much of jazz and saxophone history while at the same taking making it melodic and musical - it was a great find for me too, I hadn't heard that version till I started researching what to post for this thread.
 
Ok, nothing much else to do and rest of the family still in bed from last night's celebrations...so..

Just part a, i.e. 2 goes through the bit in C minor, backing from Jazzbacks but the chord chart looks very similar to Chris'

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/97346875/BandS20170101.mp3

One bum note in the 2nd time around and I misread the rhythm for bar...5 I think of the melody, its rest, beat, then a triplet, I just played it as 4 notes. So, that to correct and the other bits to learn next 🙂
 
@Tiberius A very good start. Play this over and over until you do not need the dots, then start playing around with the rhythms, just a bit, so that you can make the melody your own.

Just a small point, but the A section is in Eb major in tenor (Bb) key - same key signature as C minor. B & S is unusual in starting on the ii minor chord (here F minor 7). You can solo over the first few bars by thinking F dorian (same notes as Eb major) and you will not go far wrong.

In fact you can use this when you are improvising, and stay on the F minor 7 right up to the Eb major - harmonic simplification is a useful tool in jazz, and Coleman Hawkins does this in the opening section, so if it is good enough for him...

The B section looks harder than it is, with the A section under your belt you have 3/4 of the tune down.

Looking forward to hearing how you get on.
 
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I will give it a try, but I must say that I'm quite intimidated. I tried to follow the score while listening to various versions and I must say that I am at a loss. Unless I'm mistaken, they all take so much liberty with the dots that it's only vaguely related... That's probably where you see that I still have a long road ahead of me in terms of music education!

@Tiberius you did a good job with it. I can follow the dots with you! 😛
 
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