In Jazz music of every era and style, there exists a tradition that delights some musicians and fans while vexing others. I’m referring to “the quote.” In a musical context, a quote is the insertion into one’s jazz solo of a snippet of an often (but not always) thematically unrelated melody to the title currently being performed. A prime example of this is Fats Waller’s cheeky inclusion of Edvard Grieg’s “In The Hall Of The Mountain King” during the slow section of his own “Viper’s Drag.”
To aficionados of the practice, musicians who include a surprise quote of another melody into an improvised solo illustrate their breadth of knowledge and depth of creativity. To cavilers, those who resort to foisting another melody onto the current tune being performed point, at best, to their inability to come up with their own musical thoughts and, at worst, their desire to doltishly interrupt the flow of the performance with an aural aberration or sonic non sequitur.
Loosely, the “quote” has been around for centuries. One could postulate that any composer working within the “theme and variations” motif is quoting themselves, from Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor to Poulenc’s Thema Varie. In fact, a favorite children’s nursery rhyme arose from Mozart’s variations on his theme Ah, vous dirais-je Maman, which most people know as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” For blatant “quoting” you need only search out Franz Liszt’s Variations on a Theme From [J. S. Bach’s church cantata] Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (this last missing only Blöd, Mürrisch, and Dok to complete the entire Sieben Zwerginnen [seven dwarfs] set), Brahms’ variations on themes by both Handel and Haydn, Beethoven’s 12 Variations on “See, the Conjuring Hero Comes!” from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus, and virtually everyone on almost every theme by Mozart, Paganini, or Rossini.
To return our discussion to jazz, Thelonious Monk has had themes lifted from his canon, including Gunther Schuller’s Variants on a Theme of Thelonious Monk for 13 instruments (1960) and the “Round Midnight Variations,” a collaboration with eighteen musicians (the best known being Milton Babbitt, William Bolcom, and George Crumb) contributing their interpretations of Monk’s immortal ballad. Even The Doors were honored in 1971 with Variations on “Light My Fire” by Austrian classical and jazz pianist and composer Friedrich Gulda.
Moreover, the use of premeditated musical quotes has been part of pop music composition since the term was coined and even before. Two early examples are George M. Cohan’s interpolation of the words and melody to 1799’s “Auld Lang Syne” in his “You’re a Grand Old Flag” from 1906 and “Yankee Doodle” (a melody from 1855) in his 1904 hit “Yankee Doodle Boy.” Or how about when Paul Dresser’s 1897 song “On the Banks of the Wabash” appears in the last eight bars of “Back Home Again in Indiana” from twenty years later? Even Irving Berlin was happy to quote Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home” (1851) in his mega-hit “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (1911).
Often the lyrics of a tune quote past hits as well. Take a tune my wife introduced to me: “A Sunbonnet Blue” with lyrics by Sammy Fain and recorded in 1935 by Billie Holiday and the Teddy Wilson Orchestra. As the subject is an older couple still in love, Fain decided to include the titles of four tunes popular from 40-50 years prior in his lyrics, making this one of the sweetest tunes ever written (Irving Kahal’s touching melody and harmonies didn’t hurt, either).
But let’s come back to the spontaneous quote when heard in an instrumental tune performed by a jazz group, whatever the size. No matter how fecund an imagination or ample a memory bank a musician has, there is bound to be a collection of fragments of other tunes waiting in the wings to be introduced at some point during the set, and these can sometimes repeatedly appear due to the length of the show or the mental energy of the quoter. If a band has been together long enough, chances are everyone in the group knows everyone’s else’s favorite “quotes.”
Some bands impose a penalty on a member caught quoting in the form of the offender putting a set amount of money into a jar or buying the band a round during the next break. Legendary bandleader and saxophonist Terry Myers, mimicking the practice of raising cards as penalties in European football, famously carries two with him—the carta gialla and carta rossa—the yellow card held high indicating a first offense with the red card as the final verdict of damnation if the perpetrator continues to quote. My wife Anne sometimes adopts this practice to the audience’s delight if I descend into crass quoting.
When I was traveling extensively with my friend, the fantastic trombonist Jim Fryer, he had a favorite quote. It was from “Stranger in Paradise.” It was very useful in that it fits in virtually every four-bar sequence using ii7-V7-I (for non-musicians, a ubiquitous chord progression used in every pre-bop—and almost all bop—tunes), so Jim would play it virtually every night, on occasion numerous times. Once, I threw it in my solo preceding his and he good-naturedly shouted across the stage, “Hey, that’s mine!!” In his case, it was a game to see where to insert the phrase—the first part of the melody, going with the words “Take my hand, I’m a Stranger in Paradise”—for the greatest effect, whether poignant or humorous.
Oh yes, I should mention that quotes aren’t always included to showcase a musician’s cleverness but sometimes to enhance a certain feeling during a solo over the changes of a certain tune. For example, I’ve found quoting Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” during a solo on another of his great songs, “The Sweetheart Tree,” (or vice versa) intensifies the plaintive quality of both pieces.
If a quote sticks in the ear, people may expect to hear it again the next time the tune in which it was inserted is performed. One time during my piano solo in between Anne’s vocals on “Careless Love,” I quoted Hoagy Carmichael’s “Old Rocking Chair.” She raised her right eyebrow and a few members of the audience chuckled and that was that. However, some weeks later in a different venue, our concert was attended by a number of the same people who had been present at the show where the (then) unplanned quote cropped up, and a few of them approached me after the performance complaining that they didn’t hear me include “Rocking Chair” during my solo spot! One lady even exclaimed, “It heightens the sorrow and loneliness ‘Careless Love’ is all about!” The customer is always right, so on occasion I slip it in where appropriate when we perform that tune.
In contrast, one can sometimes think themselves too clever, to the annoyance of fellow bandmates. In one case in the UK, a baritone sax player in a big band ALWAYS began his solo on “Out of Nowhere” with the first phrase of the “Theme From Star Trek” (alternate title “Where No Man Has Gone Before”), prompting fellow reedman—and rapier wit—Alan Barnes to one time loudly exclaim, “Listen, he’s boldly going where he went last night,” prompting guffaws from the other musicians! That bon mot did nothing, however, to deter the transgressor from continuing in his “quotidian” rut show after show after show…
Perhaps the current most prolific quoter in American Jazz is the bassist Richard Simon from Southern California. An inexhaustible punster, whether verbal or musical, Richard unremittingly (and remorselessly) quotes throughout his solos. If his solos came with a pre prescribed number of quotes, folks could try and catch each one, much as fans of caricaturist Al Hirschfeld try to locate all of the times his daughter Nina’s name appears in his artwork based on the number to the right of his signature on each drawing. In fact, Simon is so charming about his quote-addiction that I avow if he put an end to including them the reaction would be similar to that of Hirschfeld’s fans who wrote letters to The New York Times ranging from “curious” to “furious” that Hirschfeld had briefly ceased including “NINA” somewhere in his artwork. Richard Simon possesses a seemingly inexhaustible arsenal of musical quotes that rarely fail to surprise and delight both his audience and fellow musicians.
So back to my rhetorical title “To Quote or NOT to Quote?” The answer hinges on the relationship between quoter, fellow musician, and audience. If beauty requires the eye of the beholder, quoth I, “a quote is subject to the ear of the behearer (beholdear?).” Sometimes the surprise will ring clearly. Other times it will clumsily clunk, falling on deaf ears and hopefully soon cleaned up and forgotten. When expertly rendered, and in the right atmosphere, a musical quote can engage and exhilarate, cartas (gialla or rossa) aside.
Jeff Barnhart is an internationally renowned pianist, vocalist, arranger, bandleader, recording artist, ASCAP composer, educator and entertainer. Visit him online atwww.jeffbarnhart.com. Email: Mysticrag@aol.com
