I remember Jimmy being asked if you should copy other people's solos. His response was something, to this day I still tell my students. "It's okay to learn other people's solos, that's how you learn the language, but just steal the good stuff! Don't waste your time on the lousy parts of the solo." I totally agree!
I got to know Jimmy back in about 69 when he taught for a while at my brother's music store while he was in Louisville. I had some lessons with him but I was so green and inexperienced and just learning basics and couldn't really take advantage of the experience like I would have later in my life. One thing that sticks in my mind is his saying on more than one occasion that you play what you practice and warning me about just practicing scales instead of practicing just being melodic. I still remind myself of that and take that advice to heart. I visited with him at his mom's house in Lyndon and noticed all the magazines about physics and science..You can see the influence in the subjects he brings up in this interview. I have also come to enjoy reading about physics and science myself and now that I am the age Jimmy was when I knew him I wish I could sit and talk with him as an adult instead of some lost kid who had yet to discover and love the style of music that Jimmy excelled at. He was impressive however and commanded immediate respect. A was very kind ,gentle and so very smart about many things. How I wish I could sit and chat with him now and could tell him how he inspired me and how years later certain things he tried to show me finally made sense. A brilliant player and man.
Jon Raney I only knew about Doug but never met him and sorry to admit I didn't know he had another son. Its an honor to have this chat with you and can only imagine how you miss him and Doug. I remember playing a rock blues tune by Led Zepplin,of all things, for him and saying I wanted to be able to play like that. Of course he knew exactly what was going as it was just basic blues played with distortion and so basic compared to what he could do. I was just at a point in my playing where any guitar teacher from any music store could have introduced me to the basics and it was like having Einstein teach me how to add single digit numbers. What he finally said was that what I was attracted to was that the soloist was saying something and not just playing scales or "safe" notes.That really stuck in my mind and I have taken it to heart ever since. I have often wished I could take a lesson from him after I finally did study jazz and work hard to become a "real" guitar player and that he now could really help me. It just dawned on me that thru the magic of recording and youtube I can learn from him. Now I can hear and even see him play on so many youtube videos and can say honestly that he is still my teacher 46 years after my first lesson with him. I just remember another moment with him. I was parking cars at Churchill Downs on derby day here in Louisville for VIPs and opened a car door open and out come Jimmy with his guitar. I asked him what he was doing here and he said "I have a job playing for the VIPs at the track. He then said " some people dig ditches for a living and some people play music" It was such genuine humble way of saying he didn't feel like he was special or all that different from any other working stiff. Yet I should have said that if he was a ditch digger he would have been one of the very best in the world. I believe he won the Downbeat guitar player of the year twice around1957 or so. I felt like he was as important a player in his way as we thought Jimi Hendrix was.I think he may have even been a little uncomfortable with how I did compliment him so much and made such a big deal out of knowing him. He may not have truly believed it but he was special and deserving of our awe and appreciation. Words can't express how lucky I think I was just to have spent some time with him. I still think about his advice about "saying" something with my playing. He made it look easy..It isn't. Thanks for your reply. I posted a youtube of his on facebook and got some nice comments from other players in town who also revered him. We should name a street after him in Louisville..Maybe I'll make that a project to work on..Maybe change Harris place to Raney Ave..Harris I believe was where his mom lived and where he stayed when he came to Louisville. sorry to write so much but I think even small moments I remember might be appreciated by you.
I'm 70yrs old a grew up learning the old tradition of singing the solos/ lines of Lenny Tristano, Charlie Parker etc. Chuck Wayne once asked me during my lesson "Why don't you play something I never heard before". I replied How do I do That? You probably heard everthing already" He said "Why don"t you play something YOU NEVER HEARD BEFORE". Then he said Yes learn tunes, solos and lines. Throw away the muscle memory licks and just play. Let the improvising take you"
I miss him to this day. It’s great to see and hear him immortalized in this interview. He was a brilliant, timeless, human being who understood so much with music as his vehicle.
Jimmy is one of only a small handful of guitar players(Tal, Burrell, Benson and Wes) that was able to successfully play bebop convincingly on guitar in my opinion. Not that there weren't several other wonderful guitarist to listen to, but as far as the language and pulse of bebop, few could pull it off the way that Jimmy did. He often played with wider intervals than other guitar players and did things that were non guitaristic that made him stand out from the other guitarist that were trying to adopt the language of the horn players of the 40s and 50s. We already knew he was deep thinker from listening to him play, but this gem of an interview really illustrates just how introspective a man he really was. Thank you so much for sharing it.
And even among the elite circle of guitar beboppers he sounds totally unique and different. To me he seems to not have a heavy blues basis (like Joe Pass does), but it’s something different, more angular and more spicy. He’s like within the chords more I think. Very hard to explain his style. Definitely one of my favorites!
Much appreciated, Jon. Wish I'd have interviewed him. he didn't play in Philadelphia in the 1980s, and we were able to find Tal Farlow painting boat names and signs in Seabright, NJ and get him to come down to gig with Phil Wood's bassist (Steve Gilmore) and drummer (Bill Goodwin) a number of times. I even have a recording of Joe Pass and Jim Hall playing with Joey Baron and Steve LaSpina from 1985 that I should post sometime soon ...
My Dad and Tal were very close. I remember meeting him at Gregory's on 61st with Sal Salvador. They came to Attila and Dad's gig. Little did I know we'd lose all of them between 1995-1999
@@raneyjr I saw Atilla at Zinno's (with Larry Willis on piano), the Italian restaurant that Paul Desmond bequeathed his Steinway to when he passed away, in the early 80s, and other luminaries at ZInno's, but never your Dad. I'm sure Jimmy and Tal lit it up on all the tunes they jammed. I'm easily reachable via email (Music Education Professor at UBC). Last time I went to Zinno's was in 2000 (after not going for 10 years due to living out here on the Left Coast) and it was a very different layout, not intimate, loud, and poor acoustics.
this is great...thanks for posting..Jimmy was the guitarist that helped me see that it was possible to play a flowing, "flying" doubletime Bird-style line on the guitar
I'm sure many of us jazz musicians can intimately relate to what Jimmy's saying here-- We've all had those moments when, in the midst of mainly "conscious" playing, everything just "clicks", you end up playing several bars of something incredible and you WISH there had been tape rolling to capture it, but it's all lost to posterity and you will never play that phrase that way again, because it's not something that was created fully consciously. And you can't TRY, because that incredible few bars was NOT the product of trying, but of pure inspiration. It's hard to describe to someone to whom it hasn't happened-- It DOES feel like a drug- Just pure elation, and like JR says, it's one of the reasons why we play jazz in the first place. You can't achieve it by just regurgitating dots on paper written by someone else.
The great drummer Leroy Williams once talked to me about this exact topic. He had a very similar take on it. Really great video. Thank you for sharing your Dads genius with us .
I've begun to listen to your father's recordings lately. After a third listen to Momentum, I thought, here is a player who's approach is so different from mine and really worth studying. This video is really eye opening. He was not your average player! Well-read, obviously, literate and discerning, self-effacing and capable of real clarity in expression. I can now hear all of that in his lines. Thank you for posting it, Jon.
Really enjoyed this. He mentioned how he didn’t make much money. It’s amazing to think how this could be for a man at the top of his field. I guess without much spare money he must’ve lived a very simple, modest lifestyle.
BTW, I have two duo recordings (LP) of Atilla and Jimmy and just love them; bought them at least 35 years ago at 3rd Street Jazz & Rock record store in Philly :-)
Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisors. In the "cutting sessions" of their times, they wiped the floor with everybody. Mozart would write out the orchestra parts for the first performances of his piano concertos, for example, and improvise his piano part on the spot. He would then go back home and write out his improvisation as part of the finished piece. Beethoven could improvise on a basic melody and harmonic structure, creating variation upon variation, for hours at a time. So, these guys used the same strategies as the great jazz players. That's why some of their written music sounds improvised...because it was, initially.
it was not the structure of carbon, but benzene. In 1865 the German chemist Friedrich August Kekulé "found" the structure sleeping. Beautiful example of the creative power of the subconcious..
Side note: Regarding the shape of the carbon atom, Raney is probably thinking of British chemist and physicist John Dalton. (Though it could be Antoine Lavoisier.) Great clip! Thanks for posting.
Einstein said his ideas came when he wasn't trying to get ideas to come. The ideas came by themselves in a kind of a dream state - half awake, half asleep. Great improvising comes by itself, it's like all the ideas are being whispered in your ear and you just play what it tells you. Sounds weird, and almost disingenuous to say, but there's really no other explanation for how and why it happens. But when it happens, you know.
I remember Jimmy being asked if you should copy other people's solos. His response was something, to this day I still tell my students. "It's okay to learn other people's solos, that's how you learn the language, but just steal the good stuff! Don't waste your time on the lousy parts of the solo." I totally agree!
I got to know Jimmy back in about 69 when he taught for a while at my brother's music store while he was in Louisville. I had some lessons with him but I was so green and inexperienced and just learning basics and couldn't really take advantage of the experience like I would have later in my life. One thing that sticks in my mind is his saying on more than one occasion that you play what you practice and warning me about just practicing scales instead of practicing just being melodic. I still remind myself of that and take that advice to heart. I visited with him at his mom's house in Lyndon and noticed all the magazines about physics and science..You can see the influence in the subjects he brings up in this interview. I have also come to enjoy reading about physics and science myself and now that I am the age Jimmy was when I knew him I wish I could sit and talk with him as an adult instead of some lost kid who had yet to discover and love the style of music that Jimmy excelled at. He was impressive however and commanded immediate respect. A was very kind ,gentle and so very smart about many things. How I wish I could sit and chat with him now and could tell him how he inspired me and how years later certain things he tried to show me finally made sense. A brilliant player and man.
jim wilson very nice comments and story thank you, Jon
Jon Raney
I only knew about Doug but never met him and sorry to admit I didn't know he had another son. Its an honor to have this chat with you and can only imagine how you miss him and Doug. I remember playing a rock blues tune by Led Zepplin,of all things, for him and saying I wanted to be able to play like that. Of course he knew exactly what was going as it was just basic blues played with distortion and so basic compared to what he could do. I was just at a point in my playing where any guitar teacher from any music store could have introduced me to the basics and it was like having Einstein teach me how to add single digit numbers. What he finally said was that what I was attracted to was that the soloist was saying something and not just playing scales or "safe" notes.That really stuck in my mind and I have taken it to heart ever since. I have often wished I could take a lesson from him after I finally did study jazz and work hard to become a "real" guitar player and that he now could really help me. It just dawned on me that thru the magic of recording and youtube I can learn from him. Now I can hear and even see him play on so many youtube videos and can say honestly that he is still my teacher 46 years after my first lesson with him. I just remember another moment with him. I was parking cars at Churchill Downs on derby day here in Louisville for VIPs and opened a car door open and out come Jimmy with his guitar. I asked him what he was doing here and he said "I have a job playing for the VIPs at the track. He then said " some people dig ditches for a living and some people play music" It was such genuine humble way of saying he didn't feel like he was special or all that different from any other working stiff. Yet I should have said that if he was a ditch digger he would have been one of the very best in the world. I believe he won the Downbeat guitar player of the year twice around1957 or so. I felt like he was as important a player in his way as we thought Jimi Hendrix was.I think he may have even been a little uncomfortable with how I did compliment him so much and made such a big deal out of knowing him. He may not have truly believed it but he was special and deserving of our awe and appreciation. Words can't express how lucky I think I was just to have spent some time with him. I still think about his advice about "saying" something with my playing. He made it look easy..It isn't. Thanks for your reply. I posted a youtube of his on facebook and got some nice comments from other players in town who also revered him. We should name a street after him in Louisville..Maybe I'll make that a project to work on..Maybe change Harris place to Raney Ave..Harris I believe was where his mom lived and where he stayed when he came to Louisville. sorry to write so much but I think even small moments I remember might be appreciated by you.
jim wilson is
Viktor Groth I suspect you sent your reply before you were finished and I am curious what you had to say..
@@jimwilson5093s
I`m an admirer and Fan of Jimmy Raney, especially in the years he was joining Stan Getz in musical ventures..... God Bless both of them!!!
I'm 70yrs old a grew up learning the old tradition of singing the solos/ lines of Lenny Tristano, Charlie Parker etc. Chuck Wayne once asked me during my lesson "Why don't you play something I never heard before". I replied How do I do That? You probably heard everthing already" He said "Why don"t you play something YOU NEVER HEARD BEFORE". Then he said
Yes learn tunes, solos and lines. Throw away the muscle memory licks and just play. Let the improvising take you"
I'm glad I discovered your channel. Thanks for sharing such great materials about your father. He was the man! :)
Jimmy immediately projects wisdom and kidness.This would benefit any young musician,of any genre or style.
I miss him to this day. It’s great to see and hear him immortalized in this interview. He was a brilliant, timeless, human being who understood so much with music as his vehicle.
Jimmy is one of only a small handful of guitar players(Tal, Burrell, Benson and Wes) that was able to successfully play bebop convincingly on guitar in my opinion. Not that there weren't several other wonderful guitarist to listen to, but as far as the language and pulse of bebop, few could pull it off the way that Jimmy did. He often played with wider intervals than other guitar players and did things that were non guitaristic that made him stand out from the other guitarist that were trying to adopt the language of the horn players of the 40s and 50s. We already knew he was deep thinker from listening to him play, but this gem of an interview really illustrates just how introspective a man he really was. Thank you so much for sharing it.
Pat Martino played bop very well -- and that's a George Benson assessment.
And even among the elite circle of guitar beboppers he sounds totally unique and different. To me he seems to not have a heavy blues basis (like Joe Pass does), but it’s something different, more angular and more spicy. He’s like within the chords more I think. Very hard to explain his style. Definitely one of my favorites!
Much appreciated, Jon. Wish I'd have interviewed him. he didn't play in Philadelphia in the 1980s, and we were able to find Tal Farlow painting boat names and signs in Seabright, NJ and get him to come down to gig with Phil Wood's bassist (Steve Gilmore) and drummer (Bill Goodwin) a number of times. I even have a recording of Joe Pass and Jim Hall playing with Joey Baron and Steve LaSpina from 1985 that I should post sometime soon ...
My Dad and Tal were very close. I remember meeting him at Gregory's on 61st with Sal Salvador. They came to Attila and Dad's gig. Little did I know we'd lose all of them between 1995-1999
@@raneyjr I saw Atilla at Zinno's (with Larry Willis on piano), the Italian restaurant that Paul Desmond bequeathed his Steinway to when he passed away, in the early 80s, and other luminaries at ZInno's, but never your Dad. I'm sure Jimmy and Tal lit it up on all the tunes they jammed. I'm easily reachable via email (Music Education Professor at UBC). Last time I went to Zinno's was in 2000 (after not going for 10 years due to living out here on the Left Coast) and it was a very different layout, not intimate, loud, and poor acoustics.
These types of discussions that just don't happen enough....
And this is especially special considering it is Jimmy Raney offering his insights.
❤️
The Abersold Raney book and disc was a part of my guitar education. Awesome lines.
this is great...thanks for posting..Jimmy was the guitarist that helped me see that it was possible to play a flowing, "flying" doubletime Bird-style line on the guitar
I'm sure many of us jazz musicians can intimately relate to what Jimmy's saying here-- We've all had those moments when, in the midst of mainly "conscious" playing, everything just "clicks", you end up playing several bars of something incredible and you WISH there had been tape rolling to capture it, but it's all lost to posterity and you will never play that phrase that way again, because it's not something that was created fully consciously. And you can't TRY, because that incredible few bars was NOT the product of trying, but of pure inspiration. It's hard to describe to someone to whom it hasn't happened-- It DOES feel like a drug- Just pure elation, and like JR says, it's one of the reasons why we play jazz in the first place. You can't achieve it by just regurgitating dots on paper written by someone else.
The great drummer Leroy Williams once talked to me about this exact topic. He had a very similar take on it. Really great video. Thank you for sharing your Dads genius with us .
this is beautiful - thank you for sharing this. wow - your father was a gift to the world.
Beautiful ! Jimmy and Doug's playing is really inspiring me on so many levels as a guitarist
I've begun to listen to your father's recordings lately. After a third listen to Momentum, I thought, here is a player who's approach is so different from mine and really worth studying. This video is really eye opening. He was not your average player! Well-read, obviously, literate and discerning, self-effacing and capable of real clarity in expression. I can now hear all of that in his lines. Thank you for posting it, Jon.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. Best, Jon
Really enjoyed this. He mentioned how he didn’t make much money. It’s amazing to think how this could be for a man at the top of his field. I guess without much spare money he must’ve lived a very simple, modest lifestyle.
I love this. What a wonderful guy, would love to have met him. Thank you!
Thanks for posting Jon. I love my vinyl copy of Jimmy's 'Momentum' album, but sure wish it would get a CD reissue..All my best,
-Gary
true, all my lifes experience tells me this is true. thank you Jon for posting this.
This video is precious! ❤
This is wonderful! Thanks so much!
BTW, I have two duo recordings (LP) of Atilla and Jimmy and just love them; bought them at least 35 years ago at 3rd Street Jazz & Rock record store in Philly :-)
Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisors. In the "cutting sessions" of their times, they wiped the floor with everybody. Mozart would write out the orchestra parts for the first performances of his piano concertos, for example, and improvise his piano part on the spot. He would then go back home and write out his improvisation as part of the finished piece. Beethoven could improvise on a basic melody and harmonic structure, creating variation upon variation, for hours at a time. So, these guys used the same strategies as the great jazz players. That's why some of their written music sounds improvised...because it was, initially.
Thanks for posting. A major influence on my playing, brilliant music mind!
Wonderful, Jimmy really nailed it
nice interesting conversation
Hi Rick, the info is in the beginning, 1986
Wonderful
Thanks for your comments
Performance nirvana arrives and departs like fog.
Beautiful!
it was not the structure of carbon, but benzene. In 1865 the German chemist Friedrich August Kekulé "found" the structure sleeping. Beautiful example of the creative power of the subconcious..
As your dad shows, musicians -all artists?- are philosophers too. Many not so articulate as he was, but philosophers nonetheless.
He was gaving us real gems advices here.
Side note: Regarding the shape of the carbon atom, Raney is probably thinking of British chemist and physicist John Dalton. (Though it could be Antoine Lavoisier.)
Great clip! Thanks for posting.
nope, it's Kekulé and it isn't the shape of the carbon atom but the benzene ring, c.f. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Kekul%C3%A9#The_ouroboros_dream
best advice
Wow, this is great, I went to the abersold camp last year and had a blast. Of course, jimmy Raney is awesome.
Great advice, and wow does Jamey Aebersold look young! What year was this?
amen...
It was Kekule and it was the ring structure of the benzene atom, not carbon.
Einstein said his ideas came when he wasn't trying to get ideas to come. The ideas came by themselves in a kind of a dream state - half awake, half asleep.
Great improvising comes by itself, it's like all the ideas are being whispered in your ear and you just play what it tells you.
Sounds weird, and almost disingenuous to say, but there's really no other explanation for how and why it happens. But when it happens, you know.
who is the man in the red tie?
That's Jamey Aebersold..
Seems as if the unconscious mind is not able to rationalize anything as it is dead - knocked out "unaware, not marked by conscious thought,"
No, strangely enough it is a D'Angelico.
Regards