Zappa and Jazz: Did it really smell funny, Frank? by Geoff Wills

Author:Geoff Wills
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2018-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

With this piece Zappa was, in effect, following the principles of chance or aleatory music laid down by John Cage and followers like Earle Brown, who created a style of musical construction known as ‘Open Form’ (see, for instance, Smith Brindle, 1986). As previously noted, Brown organized the 1957 sessions with Edgar Varèse and a group of eminent New York jazz musicians. The jagged, dissonant sound of the theme statement of ‘Approximate’ places it somewhere between avant garde jazz and new music. After the theme, a series of solos follows over a slow rock-funk tempo. A bass clarinet solo by Mike Altschul is reminiscent of Eric Dolphy, while Ian Underwood’s synthesiser solo conjures up the sound of Louis and Bebe Barron’s electronic score for the 1956 science-fiction movie Forbidden Planet. Other solos are by Earl Dumler on sarrusophone (an instrument related to the bassoon), drums, percussion and Ruth Underwood on marimba.

‘The Adventures of Greggery Peccary’, which Zappa had written in the early part of 1972, was premiered by the touring Grand Wazoo, and appears on the Wazoo album. It is divided into four movements, and lacks the narration that Zappa provided for it on the version on the album Studio Tan (1978). From a jazz point of view this recording of ‘Greggery Peccary’ is interesting because, as Zappa announces in his preamble, ‘We’re gonna put some solos in between the movements.’ In Movement II, a Bolero feel commences at 3:01, and the solo trumpet of Sal Marquez enters at 3:25. A mood not unlike that of ‘Solea’, from Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain (1960), is evoked. As the trumpet solo continues, the bolero rhythm accelerates and at 5:25 becomes a rock tempo. At 6:14 this changes into a tango rhythm behind Tom Malone’s tuba solo and then at 7:02 Bruce Fowler’s trombone takes over in typically humorous style. In Movement III, between 1:40 and 3:19, Jay Migliori plays a strong, muscular hard-bop tenor saxophone solo, and then, around 5:35, orchestral music that suggests the final, slow build-up in Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird’ (1910) begins to play behind Earl Dumler’s humorously lugubrious sarrusophone solo. Zappa’s guitar, when it appears at 9:07, creates an ambience that is oblique, reflective and Moorish. This live version of ‘Greggery Peccary’, then, contains sections of jazz and Third Stream music.

The other two pieces on Wazoo are ‘Penis Dimension’, from 200 Motels (1971), and ‘Variant I Processional March’, which later appeared on Sleep Dirt (1979) with the title ‘Regyptian Strut’. Though each, in its own way, reflects interesting aspects of the orchestral Zappa, neither has any jazz content of special note.

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