Jason Rosenblatt wrote:
<I don't know if I'm making Rick's point below or refuting it, but
<here's a crack at Body & Soul.
<http://www.shtreiml.com/bodySoul.mp3
My reaction to this is the same as my reaction to most of the
ambitious chromatic-on-diatonic stuff I've heard: half the time I'm
completely amazed, and the other half of the time I'm grimacing.
Sometimes I have both reactions to a single phrase.
The problem is that I've been having the same reactions to this
approach for about 20 years now, and I kind of think the parts that
make me grimace -- the out of tuneness, the differences in timbre, all
the other oft-cited ills -- should have gone away by now. When will
they go away?
All that said, the amazing parts are f---ing amazing. I don't know if
I'm ever going to really crave hearing an evening of ballads like
"Body and Soul" played on the diatonic, but that Rosenblatt dude is a
monster.
On a related point, the single best performance of "Body and Soul"
that I have ever heard was Charles Leighton's version on chromatic
harmonica, performed at a meeting of the New York "Top Brass"
harmonica club organized by Rob Paparozzi and hosted by Wade Schuman
(the leader of Hazmat Modine) in Wade's NYC apartment in 2001 or
thereabouts. Charlie made the skies open and the heavens sing.
In my opinion, it is very, very hard to play a jazz ballad on the
diatonic that compares with the same ballad played on chromatic.
Ballads are red meat for chromatic players.
regards, Richard Hunter
hunterharp.com