Aaron Saunders said:
We're not talking delta blues, Damon. To be a "smokin' real jazz player," expectations are a little higher when it comes to technique and harmonic sense.
On Kenny in Lorber's band, Pat Metheny has this to say:
"He had major rhythmic problems and his harmonic and melodic vocabulary was extremely limited, mostly to pentatonic based and blues-lick derived patterns, and he basically exhibited only a rudimentary understanding of how to function as a professional soloist in an ensemble - Lorber was basically playing him off the bandstand in terms of actual music.
But he did show a knack for connecting to the basest impulses of the large crowd by deploying his two or three most effective licks (holding long notes and playing fast runs - never mind that there were lots of harmonic clams in them) at the key moments to elicit a powerful crowd reaction (over and over again). The other main thing I noticed was that he also, as he does to this day, played horribly out of tune - consistently sharp."
When I was a pup I used to care about technique and harmonic sense, particularly if I was fussing over whether to place a musician into the box marked "jazz" or some other box. Jazz is for the "good" musicians, right? Nowadays my horizons are broader, or my tastes are cheaper, or something like that. I'm a lot more impressed with a player who can do something with a few notes than I am in someone who's a technique geek. (With one note on the organ, Jimmy Smith can completely slay me -- that's where I'm coming from. Delta blues? Yeah, it's in there but so's my great-great-grandfather in me...) If someone's reply to that is "well, in jazz standards are higher" I say go ahead and have your jazz your way -- I went there a long time ago and have no interest in going back.
If Kenny G wasn't such a soft jazz ho' nobody would be too interested in saying "he can't play". Clearly he can play and does play -- he's made a lot more records (and money, too, sho' nuff) than any of us has. No, my problem with the G-zoid is that his taste is insipid; he panders to the Muzak-using aspect of our culture -- definitely not the music-loving aspect -- and insofar as he does it under the flag of jazz he insults people who live and love the jazz traditions more seriously.
Metheny wasn't pulling any punches when he tore G a new one in that quote, was he? He went after G's technique, too. I guess, though, that if he went after G's taste and artistry it mighta been a little too close to home. Pot and kettle territory -- maybe not right downtown, maybe not same area code, but close enough. Metheny's been a great friend of jazz tradition and I have a lot of respect for him -- I wore out my vinyl "Bright Size Life" well before the calendar hit 1980. But he's been repeating himself for a long long time, he sure as hell ain't no Gershwin or Golson in the tune-writing department, and if I hear that guitar synth sound anymore I'm gonna turn off the source real quick.
That's my quotient of negativity for the day. I don't like G at all, but I don't pump up myself and my own side by saying he can't play. I prefer to say I really don't like what he plays and, further, that he doesn't show much respect for jazz.
