Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Philly Joe plays an entrance: Oleo

Lots of action here this week, but here's a little something for you... the new Book of Intros is still on its way... finishing is always the hard part, and there's always more to do than you think...

Here's a very targeted transcription, to get one important piece of information: how someone comes in, and sets up a chorus of horn soloing. This is Philly Joe Jones's entrance with sticks on the second chorus of Coltrane's solo on Oleo, from the Miles Davis Quintet album Relaxin'. He plays a fill on the snare drum on the last measure of the first chorus, and plays some big accents with the cymbal and bass drum when the time starts:



The punches on 1 and 4 at the top of a chorus are kind of a universal thing in jazz, but they also seem very Philly Joe. He makes a big impression here, but he's not playing extremely loud; the accents in the last measures are lighter than the ones at the beginning. At this tempo, he plays the 8th notes completely straight on the lead-in on the snare drum, and swings them slightly when he's playing time. He does play the hihat, but sporadically, and it's not really important for our purposes here, so I left it out.

You own the record, but here's the audio anyway. The transcribed measures are after 1:50:

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