January 7, 2011

The "Real Jimmy Raney" circa 1952

Hold on to your hats folks.

This is the Song Is You 2 Chorus Jimmy Raney Solo referred to in previous post.

Time to rethink what you knew about Jimmy Raney Getz period playing. There was (or since??)no other player on earth besides Jimmy that could create a bebop solo with this amount of chops, articulation and clarity at this tempo in 1952.

Jimmy Raney- The Song Is You

BTW the key is Ab not the usual C.

Also note the tempo stays absolutely locked to the metronome for 1 chorus and 8 bars. Pretty astonishing. It moves slightly during a particular bar but the tempo is still pretty locked to the speed 314 bpm. Interestingly enough the tune starts around 296 and gradually speeds up thru Stan's chorus (not featured here). It locks during Dad's solo.

As a point of reference, Parker's speed anthem, Koko starts about 312 or so, and slows down immediately on the 1st chorus then hovers between 298 and 304. Max completely jacks the tempo up at least 20 points during a short drum solo and then comes back to about the start tempo on the outchorus.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Beautiful. Thanks for posting.

-Tony DeCaprio

Jon Raney said...

My (and everyone else's) pleasure, Tony.

j-

Anonymous said...

Absolutely great. I'm an aspiring jazz guitar player who was put on to your father by my teacher, Ron Eschete (he played with him). Now I've got a bunch of Jimmy's tunes from the Getz/Raney studio sessions and the complete recordings from 1954-1956 in my car in constant rotation. Ron also put me on to the recordings of "Motion", "Lee", and "Signal". I would damn near kill to get the lead sheets for those tunes. Can they be had? I'm more than happy to cough up cash for them. And I do hope you will finish your book.

Jim Campbell

Jon Raney said...

James not sure lead sheets are available. I don't know of them. I may start making them in pdf once the book is launched.

in the meantime visit the beta site
jimmyraney.net to get some transcriptions - including this solo to Song is You