Modern Jazz Quartet: Bags’ Groove

Sunday is jazz day here at the Radio Faux Show. Today’s post continues my weekly Intro to Jazz concept. If you love jazz, I hope you find something of interest each Sunday. If you are scared of jazz or think that you hate it, I hope that I can open your mind enough to give this wonderful music another try.

My original Intro To Jazz Part 3 post on February 11, 2023 provided a detailed explanation of the Rhythm Section in Jazz. You can read that original post in total with a click here. That post focused on the five primary rhythm instruments in jazz. Although there are others, the primary five are drums, bass, piano, vibraphone, and guitar. I’ll steal a little bit from the intro to that 2023 post:

We (and by “we” I mostly mean me) have a running gag at the Faux household. We (I) like to point out to anyone who will listen to us (me) that you can put one hundred trumpets and saxophones in a room and you will get a lot of noise, but you can put a rhythm section in a room and you will get jazz for an eternity. This quote isn’t as life affirming as “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day but teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime,” but I think it has its own sentimental charm. The point of that joke is that without the rhythm section there is no jazz. Not to be too simplistic, but this is because the function of the rhythm section is to provide the rhythm and there is no jazz without rhythm. I admit it isn’t universally true that there must be a rhythm section to create the rhythm in a jazz tune, but for our purpose it is certainly a basic tenet of jazz. To start, let’s look at the definition of rhythm. There are a lot of them, but I’ll go with “the pattern in which music flows.” It is composed of elements such as the tempo (or beat) and the time signature (see the first show in this series for a discussion of these basic elements), as well as the way those elements are presented in relation to each other. In all music, and especially jazz, the rhythm is everything. It allows the musicians to conduct their musical conversation, and allows the listener to understand what they are saying. In other words, the rhythm is the language of the tune being played. Using this as our definition, the rhythm section musicians are responsible for ensuring that the rhythm is constant and that all of the other musicians know how to play the tune. While playing the right notes is also important, if they aren’t played within the structure of the rhythm then they usually aren’t very pleasant to listen to.

Today’s song selection goes straight to the heart of the rhythm section with my favorite jazz group composed entirely of rhythm instruments. The Modern Jazz Quartet was one of the first jazz supergroups. It was founded in 1952 by three former members of the Dizzy Gillespie big band rhythm section (John Lewis on piano, Milt Jackson on vibes, and Kenny Clarke on drums). Percy Heath joined on bass, replacing the initial bassist Ray Brown (who instead joined the Oscar Peterson Trio). After a few years, Connie Kay replaced Clarke on drums and that foursome remained for decades. Their unique concept was to present the jazz rhythm section as a form of chamber music that focused on the blues elements of jazz, and to perform in concert halls instead of clubs. Their concept worked. I’ve chosen Milt Jackson’s original composition “Bags’ Groove” from the live The Complete Last Concert recordings of 1974. This song works well as an introduction to the beauty of the vibraphone (the Faux household’s favorite jazz instrument), and also showcases all of the rhythm section instruments. After the head, Jackson plays a vibe solo, followed by Lewis’ piano solo and a virtuosic Heath bass solo. Kay’s drums lay the rhythmic foundation throughout. There is no better way to listen to and understand the art of the jazz rhythm section than this tune.

To learn more about the Modern Jazz Quartet, check out their Wikipedia page.

To listen to all of the songs of the day, check out the Radio Faux Show Song of the Day playlist.

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