It Takes A Great Jazz Musician to Play Rock & Roll

Here’s an interesting fact: the rock & roll, R&B, Motown, soul, funk and groove hits of the 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s were liberally peppered with the solo and improvisational work of jazz musicians.

That’s jazz flautist/saxophonist Bud Shank, for instance (recording under a pseudonym) on the amazing 33-second flute solo on “California Dreamin’,” which was improvised in a studio in 1965. My dear friend Papa John Phillips and his producer, Lou Adler, often used jazz musicians as musical metaphors on their masterfully produced Mamas and the Papas’ albums.

Shank also performed the flute solo on the Association’s 1967 hit, “Windy,” and appeared on other popular tunes recorded by the likes of Joni Mitchell and Boz Scaggs.

So do you want to hire a jazz band to play wedding music at your wedding? And dance music for your wedding reception?

Of course you do.

Admittedly, nobody should trust the music for one of the most important days/nights of their life to a bunch of young jazzers reading from “fake books.” Unfortunately, that’s a lot of what’s out there advertising itself to play the music for your once-in-a-lifetime wedding.

This is where experience counts…and seasonong.

Jazz gets a bum rap when people forget that it is much more than some people playing “whatever” or scatting badly.

I just read something annoying, an article on an obscure news wannabe web blog site written by someone who ventured that she planned to have live music at her party because she “lives in LA, where musicians are desperate for an audience, much less a paycheck.”

Maybe she’s thinking “background music.”

I can almost guarantee you that the musicians she hires because they are “desperate for an audience” will not be the seasoned players who know how to play rock & roll and a variety of perfectly “paced” and entertaining music people can actually dance to.

It takes a different breed of cat to do that…