Shirley Scott
Shirley Scott (born March 14, 1934 in Philadelphia , † March 10, 2002 ) was an American jazz organist .
Life
In her native Philadelphia, Shirley Scott began playing the piano and trumpet for a short time . In the mid-1950s she played the piano in the city's club scene and in a trio with the young John Coltrane .
Count Basie's tenor Eddie Lockjaw Davis heard her there, his organist had just started his own business, and asked her to join his band. Eighteen-year-old Scott told him she could play the organ, although she had only done so for six months. She finally decided on the instrument after hearing a recording by Jackie Davis . Together with Eddie Lockjaw Davis, she made numerous records and published in the late 1950s, among other things, the popular Cookbook series for the record label Prestige Records . Scott praises Davis as a teacher and master of semitones, referring to a II-VI "fallacy" cadence in semitone steps.
In 1958 Shirley Scott began her solo career, during which she recorded 23 albums for Prestige (1958-64), 10 for Impulse (1963-68), three for Atlantic (1968-70), three for Cadet (1971-73), recorded one in 1974 for Strata-East , two for Muse (1989-91) and three for Candid (1991-92).
In 1961 she married the tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine . Together they made a variety of recordings - for Blue Note, Prestige, Impulse and Atlantic. The recordings of this time are now considered classics of soul jazz . The marriage ended in divorce in 1972.
Shirley Scott spent her retirement in Philadelphia. She made occasional on-site appearances, mostly on the piano, and was the musical director of Bill Cosby's short-lived 1992 show You Bet Your Life . At that time she taught jazz history and piano, as a substitute, at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the first African-American music university. She had a research assignment from NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) to examine Dexter Gordon's music, she reports to Marian McPartland in an interview on an NPR jazz piano show.
For the last five years until her death in 2002 she lived in seclusion and did not perform any more. She suffered severe pulmonary hypertension as a result of taking the diet drug Fen-phen . She won eight million dollars in the compensation process in 2000 because she turned down the American Home Products ( Wyeth ) settlement offer and continued suing. She had been prescribed the drug by her doctor, who pays half the compensation, for far too long and too late, when side effects were evident and it was almost taken off the market.
Melody
Shirley Scott has clear ritual and gospel phrasing, although many of her pieces are blues , an example of which is Horace Silvers Señor Blues . She often leads the melody as a subtle individual voice. One can observe that her improvisational style sticks closely to the melody of a piece and plays around it in a decorative way, but does not create any new melodies of its own. As a contrast, her riff-like, brass section-like “ locked hand ” style is more free to invent new twists, which are hardly developed into entire melodies, but rather connected in pieces, and are enriched with dissonances in the middle voices that are unrelated to tonality. Your entire game does not have the compositional structure of the swing style. There is a gap between their unison melody improvisation and their more expressive chord improvisation.
Expressiveness
For her improvisational phrases she uses parallel slides and crushed notes at intervals . She also uses dissonant chord leads with two (also small) seconds in the upper voices (e.g. F minor seventh chord: F - a flat - c - es - f - g, the last three are dissonant). This is reminiscent of shouts (calls) and cries (screams) from the spiritual and gospel tradition . She uses falling glissandi as a conclusion. On the Hammond organ she uses alternating registrations within a piece.
Rhythm and accompaniment
Shirley Scott orientates herself on the structure of a piece while she improvises on it. She dabs one, two or three chords as a sparse accompaniment, has a two-handed “locked-hand” style that shows no obvious octave parallels, better enriches them, and is reminiscent of a medium-tight big band trumpet movement, but the softer approach of the saxophones Has. She hardly plays legato and does not use the organ pedal on the recordings. She prefers working with the rhythm section over playing solo. As part of her live appearances in a trio (with drums and melody instrument) she took over the part of bass.
The halftone technique mentioned above in the NPR feature introduces it something like this:
Instead of reaching the tonic directly in steps, a chord is inserted
(Here for the chords Gm9 - Fmaj79 or Gm9 - C7b9b13 - Fmaj79.)
This also goes from a whole tone below the target tone and then appears plagal. (Ebmaj9 - Bb7b9b13 - Fmaj9)
The chord is a modified variant of a diminished four-note chord (functionally an intermediate dominant, not an excessive one), and contains a small ninth that sounds quite good (in general, this interval should be avoided (avoid tone)). Variants of this are possible, so that by reinterpreting a different level instead of the level I chord, for example VI. (Presumably she includes mediants and changes in tone in her statement "no real cadence".) This can be heard very nicely in her interpretation of Silver's Moonrays.
The sound material of the three chords is suitable for improvising.
Voicings
Excessive third tongues are noticeable in her voice leading.
- The preacher
The upbeat has C7 as a chord, but it only appears on the third beat. (This quasi-modal game is interesting in view of the fact that she had played with young Coltrane .)
- Moon rays
interpretation
One of her great strengths is the character she knows how to give repertoire pieces. She interprets the piece Slaughter on Tenth Avenue in an eerie, dramatic, cinematic mood. Autumn Leaves interprets it with a carefree playfulness.
On their record “Sweet Soul” you can hear the influence of a formative zeitgeist. Jazz music as American culture - in connection with entertainment, entertainment, industry and commerce ( Tin Pan Alley ) - causes Shirley Scott to constantly cross these divergent elements.
Discographic notes
- Shirley Scott plays Horace Silver ( Prestige Records )
- Workin ' (Prestige, 1958–61) with Eddie Lockjaw Davis , Ronnell Bright , George Duvivier , Roy Haynes
- Like Cozy (Prestige, 1958–60) with George Duvivier, George Tucker , Arthur Edgehill
- Soul Shoutin ' (Prestige 1963) with Stanley Turrentine , Major Holley , Earl May
- Blue Flames (Prestige 1964) with Stanley Turrentine, Bob Cranshaw, Otis Finch
- Queen of the Organ ( Impulse! Records , 1965) with Stanley Turrentine
- Blues Everywhere (Candid, 1992), with Arthur Harper and Mickey Roker
- A Walkin 'Thing (Candid, 1992) with Terrell Stafford , Tim Warfield
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ John Coltrane Biography
- ↑ a b c d NPR Jazz Piano with Marian McPartland
- ↑ shirley-scott-on-piano-jazz
- ↑ [1]
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Scott, Shirley |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American jazz organist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 14, 1934 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Philadelphia |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 10, 2002 |
| Place of death | Philadelphia |