Joel Harrison has earned his reputation as a guitarist’s guitarist — over some two dozen albums and myriad collaborations, and as founder of the Alternative Guitar Summit, an annual gathering in New York.
As of this week, he also has a relevant new book: Pity the Genius: A Journey Through American Guitar Music in 33 Tracks, available now from Cymbal Press.
As its title implies, the book is a collection of close readings, though with plenty of license for personal digression. Harrison takes a genre-agnostic spin through his self-curated playlist: songs like “Vox Humana,” by his old teacher Mick Goodrick; “Machine Gun,” by Jimi Hendrix; “Dark Star,” by Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead; and “Amelia,” by Joni Mitchell with Larry Carlton.
WRTI is proud to publish an excerpt about “Ezra,” which Philly’s own Kurt Rosenwinkel released on his 2017 album Caipi. If you want to delve further, Kurt Rosenwinkel: Ultimate Book of Compositions also just published, on Heartcore Records.
Kurt Rosenwinkel
Ezra
Caipi (Heartcore 2017)
by Joel Harrison
By 1980, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Bill Frisell, and Mike Stern began to dominate the jazz guitar landscape. Their era seemed to stretch on forever, the oxygen theirs. Call them the “Big Four.” By the late ‘90s the only additional person to attain their visibility and influence was Kurt Rosenwinkel.
His 2001 release, The Next Step, changed the jazz guitar world. Suddenly everyone sounded like Kurt, they bought hats like his, emulated his rig, his tone, and even his body language. Listen to Kurt’s improvising and it’s obvious why. Fully saturated in bebop language, he created a modern, signature sound grounded in stunning compositions.
But here’s something none of the “Big Four” did — write and sing a song to one of their offspring.
Kurt’s run at Smalls in the late 1990s, in which his band developed his most iconic pieces, is the stuff of legend. It culminated in the seminal record The Next Step. Since I lived on the west coast in the ‘90s I never saw them. I saw Kurt play in a trio when I visited New York City, heard him with Paul Motian, but never with his storied band. By the time I moved to New York he had moved to Germany.
I got to know Kurt when he became one of the core teachers in my guitar camp. Sitting next to him on stage and playing a tune was an education. It’s one thing to see a master play, and another to actually play with him or her. Kurt’s mastery of the jazz language was beyond anything I had ever experienced, or maybe even imagined. Although this might seem obvious listening to his records, it smacks you in the face when you’re playing a standard two feet from his tuning pegs. Growing up, Kurt didn’t have the typical detours into rock, punk, funk or whatever. He was obsessed with jazz. By age 18 he’d already played Monk’s “Reflections” more times than I might in two lifetimes.
But then there’s “Ezra,” which Kurt wrote and sings. When I heard this piece it gave me an even greater appreciation for the man’s music and for him as a human being. The song makes me a bit teary-eyed. The fact that somebody with this much intellectual savvy, this much technique, can leave it all behind to make music this simple and vulnerable is something deeply touching. Kurt doesn’t have a trained voice. It’s sort of like listening to Charlie Haden sing. It’s all heart. He could easily have brought in a great vocalist, but I’m glad he didn’t.
The composition itself is fairly straightforward, though a couple of surprising harmonic moves add color and impact. It’s the lyrics that I admire most. I have no children. This song makes me wish that I could write a song to a son I don’t have. My relationship with my father was extremely distant. In a million years he would never have said, much less sung, anything to me this unguarded. There are a lot of mistakes Kurt could have made in this song. It could easily have been maudlin. He could have overdone it, made it more complex than it needed to be. Instead, it feels timeless, and how many pieces of music can you say that about?
I hear some corollary between “Ezra” and Wayne Shorter’s work on Native Dancer with Milton Nascimento—folk-based material, jazz improvisers, and lyrics and melody both tuneful and memorable. This was a period where Kurt was exploring Brazilian music, collaborating with some of the best young Brazilian musicians, resulting in the album Caipi.
Jazz can be quite the macho affair. There’s a lot of emphasis placed on chops, and a history of cutting, a show can become a gladiatorial battle. Although this mindset is changing, for some it’s still about speed, being hip, being dominant. It’s a relief, then, to hear a song like “Ezra,” to which any sentient being might relate.
Of course, there’s a long history of vocals in jazz, but mostly based on standards. There are vocals all over my work, Frisell’s work with Petra Haden, Metheny’s wordless vocals in his group with Lyle Mays, Tuck Andress with Patti Cathcart. But “Ezra” is something different. It’s more kin to Dylan’s “Forever Young” than Hoagy Carmichael. Kurt steps up as his own singer, composes his own lyrics. It’s not a song about romantic love, someone’s foolish heart, Georgia, the moon, or Valentine’s Day. Neither is it abstract, boppish, or caked with dreaded scat singing. It’s a man expressing love to his son. That’s what I call deep.
Joel Harrison's Pity the Genius: A Journey Through American Guitar Music in 33 Tracks, is available now from Cymbal Press.