James P. Johnson (1894-1955): Over the Bars (1944)

[sunweb7]

very good!



[NatKingCole46]

Sorry uncle Fats but this is just perfect!!

[nocturnalpianist]

omg.

I'm learning to play this now.

I didn't know it was this fast.

[MontagTheMagician]

Man, great tune but the drums don't work for me. I prefer the piano roll version.

[AAErikCO]

@MontagTheMagician

Yeah its funny how in the 40's, 50's you get the modern jazz drums in everything, kinda like the beatnik jazz. I wonder if it was Johnson or the record producer's decision to incorporate the drums? My guess is the latter.

[d60944]

I wasn't sure about the drums the first time I ever heard this track, but my ears kinda block them out now. The piano playing on this recording is a a whole universe better than any piano roll or previous recording Johnson made.

[MontagTheMagician]

I respect that opinion but can't agree. This is a great version but there are slight mistakes here and missing notes. I'm used to listening to the piano roll version and my ears keep groping for the things that are missing. I'm usually not that much of a stickler for such things, but this piece has a very precise and structured feel to it. When things are left out it becomes very obvious.

[d60944]

I think what you see as a looser feel, I see as a freedom from the straightjacket of ragtime! This performance is the truest "stride" version, whereas the piano roll (in particular) is far, far more like conventional ragtime in feel. I see a whole new sort of music full of roughness, improvisation, life and spontenaiety: leading to Tatum. Maybe you see sloppiness and lack of control, leading away from Eubie Blake.....?

[KawhackitaRag]

@d60944 I am on the fence about James P. Johnson's 1944 recordings. I think they are great listening and full of life, but I can't decide whether his swing feeling has changed from his early 1920s recordings or not. I know that the texture has definitely changed by th 1940s, with the playing pared down to fewer notes played at once and smaller chords in each hand. (part of this is also probably due to the fast nature of this tune). No doubt that Johnson was just keeping up with jazz fashion.

[KawhackitaRag]

@d60944 As much as I love the videos you post, I must disagree with you about ragtime. Ragtime was not and is not a "straightjacket". "Ragtime" is just a musical label the way "Jazz" is and "Classical" is. I have heard "Ragtime", "Classical", and "Jazz" pianists improvise. Obviously "Jazz" pianists tend to improvise the most, but this seemed to only really start when jazz criticism noted improvisation as an integral feature of jazz, a feature previously overlooked because it was once COMMONPLACE

[KawhackitaRag]

@d60944 You seem to think that musical styles are straightjackets, out of which musicians have to fight their way out. This may be true 80 and 90 years after the fact (present-day) when so much misinformation and junk has been written about music over the past few decades by ill-informed and self-serving "critics" and "experts" who are the real culprits.

[KawhackitaRag]

@d60944 If you listen to lots of recordings of vintage musicians from the first three decades or so (1900s-1930s), they don't confine their playing to labels. I am talking especially about piano players (whom I've been studying) but also about other musicians as well.

[KawhackitaRag]

@d60944 I think if you listened to enough OLD recordings of REAL ragtime pianists, you might change your tune about "straighjackets" and all that nonsense. I mean recordings, not piano rolls.

Piano rolls are very nice, but THEY definitely put the pianist in the "straightjacket" mercy of the roll EDITOR, who then imposed that editor's personal swing feeling (often the "house" swing of that roll company) on EVERYBODY'S rolls for that particular time period!

[KawhackitaRag]

@d60944 Regarding swing again, I should add that each individual pianist, regardless of "ragtime" or "jazz" has their own personal "swing" feeling or at least way of phrasing the notes that is as unique as a fingerprint. To say that so-and-so "swings" more or less than some other person is just making an abstract statement expressing your own personal opinion, rather than an absolution that is scientifically verifiable! It is also meaningless...

[KawhackitaRag]

@d60944 In James P. Johnson I hear a marvelously skilled pianist of impeccable musical taste and restraint, a good command of his instrument and with a terrific forward motion to his playing. Some pianists of his generation who could create a similar excitement with forward motion include (in my opinion) Luckey Roberts, Sugar Underwood, Porter Grainger, and many others. However, each expressed this motion in a different way. Forward motion is desirable in some musical situations but not others.

[MontagTheMagician]

@d60944 Well, we must be listening to two different recordings then. Either that or you've never actually heard the piano roll version of this song. The last minute of this is so sloppy it sounds like an alternate take that would be included on one of those CDs that has several alternate takes and you can hear why it wasn't originally released. There's a big difference between playing a variation on something, like what Art Tatum does with Chopin, and just flat not playing the song right.