Going Solo

I've been going through my still limited but growing collection of jazz violin recordings, and trying to determine just what it is that marks the violin out from other instruments in the field of improvised music. The history of strings in jazz is a checkered and intricate one: to get some sense of just how complex the relationship of the violin to the development of "mainstream" jazz, you need to consult expert analyses such as those of Anthony Barnett, whose four-part history of Bebop Violin was recently published as "In Time - A Not So Brief History of the Swing to Recorded Bebop and Progressive Violin") in Fiddler Magazine, over four issues (Winter 2002/3 - Fall 2003)*. The viola and cello have also played a role in jazz, but some research is needed in order to discover the role they have played, and play, in the music's past and present.

Somehow, in spite of the massive interventions of Stephane Grappelli and Stuff Smith, the violin has seemed to occupy a rather marginal role in the development of jazz - now as an "entertainment" or "novelty" instrument, now as backing in the string ensemble for vocalists or horn players, now as a part of multi-string section work in various big band experiments (Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw). Yet the violin was part of the roots of jazz. As Julie Lyonn Liebermann and Darol Anger have shown in their books on the subject, blues fiddle was one of the earliest forms of improvised American folk music. The violin's later relative demise as a jazz instrument must be ascribed to sociological factors that have little to do with music.

The violin truly emerged as a solo instrument, played not as the representative of an exceptional genre but as an instrument on a par with others in the combo, in the bebop era that lasted from the 1950s until the early 1960s in the USA. It's from this period that the great recordings of Harry Lookofsky, Jean-Luc Ponty and Dick Wetmore date. The collaboration of Stuff Smith and Dizzy Gillespie also took place around this time. The names of violinists Joe Kennedy, Ray Nance, Ray Perry, Ginger Smock and Eddie South are also associated with this period. Their work paved the way for later artists such as John Blake, Jr., Jim Nolet and Regina Carter.

The experiments of Third Stream, the Max Roach Double Quartet, Uptown String Quartet, Turtle Island String Quartet and Mahavishnu Orchestra all played a part in retaining strings within the general framework of jazz improvisation and arrangement. Increasingly, it looks as though the violin may finally be heading for an incorporation into the mainstream of jazz, where after decades of ambivalence and eclecticism, it may at last be accepted. At the IAJE Conference in New York this year, saxophonist Jim Snidero gave a fine performance with a string ensemble that included string soloists (violin and cello). But for me, the most interesting event was hearing violinist Rob Thomas perform in a big band setting with Chuck Owen's Jazz Surge, alongside players who included Ingrid Jensen (trumpet) and Gary Versace (organ). The sound of the band was subtly coloured by the sound of the violin, which at times added a keen, unobtrusive, and almost clarinet-like edge to the upper registers - and the solo interchanges of violin and saxophone seemed to work together well.

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*Anthony tells me that the articles in Fiddler are substantially revised and expanded for the 84 page photo essay that will accompany his double CD history of early bebop violin. See the AB website for details.