Postbop Jazz in the 1960s: The Compositions of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea by Keith Waters

Abstract

Reviewed by: Postbop Jazz in the 1960s: The Compositions of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea by Keith Waters Matthew Snyder Postbop Jazz in the 1960s: The Compositions of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea. By Keith Waters. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. [xx, 169 p. ISBN 9780190604578 (hardcover), $28.95; also available as e-book, ISBN and price vary.] Music examples, discography, bibliography, index. Postbop jazz was an enormously influential approach to composition and improvisation that developed alongside the more widely known modal and [End Page 422] free jazz styles; all three originated at the end of the 1950s and developed throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to the three seminal figures mentioned in the title, other significant postbop pioneers included saxophonist Joe Henderson and trumpeters Booker Little and Woody Shaw (though Shaw did not produce his most mature work until the mid-1970s). Students have studied these compositions in university jazz programs and conservatories for decades, but it is only in the last twenty years or so that scholars such as Steven Strunk, Henry Martin, Patricia Julien, Bill Dobbins, and a host of others have been publishing theoretical analyses of this music. Keith Waters is an ideal figure to delve into these works. A performing pianist as well as a professor of music at the University of Colorado, he has published analyses of 1960s-era jazz in other venues and wrote the "Postbop" entry in Grove Music Online (doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.A2276289 [accessed 13 September 2022]). Waters's indispensable survey The Studio Recordings of the Miles Davis Quintet 1965–1968 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) in some ways set the stage for this book. In the introductory first chapter, Waters defines postbop's general features as "ambiguity of tonality, form, and/or melody" (p. 3) and states his aim to determine how Shorter, Hancock, and others expressed them during the 1960s. More specifically, Waters notes the hallmarks of postbop composition as the use of axis progressions ("sequential harmonic, melodic, or bass progressions by single interval such as [major or minor third]"; innovative use of quartal and suspended harmonies that do not function in traditional ways and in fact cloud tonic establishment; bass pedal points over which harmonies move (referred to by Waters as "upper-structure progressions"); and single-section, circular, or other irregular forms which depart from traditional AABA or ABAC structures (pp. 3–4). Waters notes examples of these features in previous eras of jazz and popular music to demonstrate how rooted postbop was in previous practice. John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" (on Giant Steps, Atlantic SD 1311 [1960], LP), defined by its axis major third progressions, is most key (Waters supplies an analysis of the tune because it lays the groundwork for so much of the discussion to follow), but even that composition was predated by Richard Rodgers's "Have You Met Miss Jones," which has an axis in its bridge. Likewise, Jerome Kern's "All the Things You Are" blurred its tonic center by cycling through many keys in a short time (p. 6). Waters also offers in chapter 1 an enlightening discussion of postbop's relationship and dialogue with contemporaneous modal music and with earlier jazz styles. Chapters 2 through 5 are devoted to the work of Shorter, Hancock, Corea, and (in one chapter) Little, Henderson, and Shaw. For each of the first three artists, Waters selects three or four representative compositions to analyze, observing and exploring the tools mentioned above in action, and noting how each composer used them in personal ways. Waters traces the use of multiple approaches by each artist, through which we can observe their development. He will often cite more than one recording of a composition if they demonstrate differences in realization, and Waters obtained from the Library of Congress the original lead sheets submitted to the US Copyright Office, shedding further light on a tune's development from initial inspiration to recording. (These originals are not reproduced in the text). Waters did produce his own detailed lead sheets for many of the compositions under discussion, though it was likely cost-prohibitive to provide them for all. [End Page 423] He...