The fantastic and amazing Don Ellis

[larsvsnapster]

We've been talking about Frank Zappa, but here's a man who put him in the shade in many ways.  You may not have heard of Don because he was an academic all the way (he was my first piano teacher), but Frank pinched George Duke from his band, and he would have pinched John Klemmer except that Klemmer did not like Frank's porn chic material and overall demeanor.  He was also one of the old school jazz guys, closest I can think of to his approach is Stan Kenton, but no dice there. 

Don expanded the metrical palette and just made Dave Brubeck superfluous.  You introduce "Take Five" or "Blue Rondo a la Turk" to a blow with friends and they're all likely to complain how you picked the hard ones.  5/4 or 3/4+3/8 and minds are tweezed.  Don had 3 and 2/3 / 4 (actually 11/8) and helped to pioneer that time signatures were fractions and could make sense with something other than a multiple of 2 as the denominator, which I might explain in the discussion.  There's also a really faster klezmer like number in 27/16 and then of course there's "33 222 1 222" which Don often joked that that was just the area code. 

Because he was old school jazz he was always adding to the The Book, and some of his choices may blow your mind.  Yes's "Roundabout" got a jazz treatment very shortly after it was released and while it was still a hit.  My favourite mindblast from him is his amazing version of "Hey Jude" which, if it doesn't make you laugh and it doesn't put the cartoon question mark over your head, there's something wrong. 

I tried to embed Youtubes but none of them embedded because Youtube is now stepping up their anti-embedding game.  Betcha in 2 years Youtube will have gone the way of MySpace.  But there's a lot out there from him.

Some favourite numbers:

Hey Jude
33 222 1 222
27/16
Strawberry Soup
Final Analysis
Pussy Wiggle Stomp
Indian Lady

"Indian Lady" was the monster hit, and it's my earliest musical memory.  My dad had a reel deck and recorded a left of the dial college radio station, and it was the first song on the tape.  Second song was "For Example" by the Nice, so you could say my musical taste was cemented from the get-go!! 

[Guybrush]

I though I hadn't heard Don Ellis before, but I've actually heard part of 33 222 1 222 before as it was mentioned and played briefly on some episode of the No Dogs In Space music podcast, though I can't quite remember which episode.

The Hey Jude cover is indeed hilarious 😄 that's my kind of humour.

I just put on something random and gave H Natural a listen from the New Ideas album. Very nice! I like it a lot. I'll definitely dig a little deeper 🙂