Word: sidemen
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Heart, Not Art. The magic ingredient that keeps C & W perking along is an elusive something called the "Nashville Sound." More than the drawling, sowbelly accents and nasal intonations of the singers, it is the background music provided by the sidemen on twangy electric guitars. They are a small, seasoned corps whose musical prowess is more heart than art. Few, lest it cramp their style, have had formal training. In fact, they tend to pride themselves on their inability to read music, "and the few who can," says RCA Victor Executive Steve Sholes, "don't let it interfere with...
...STEP BEYOND: JACKIE McLEAN (Blue Note). Alto Saxophonist McLean is several steps beyond most listeners' taste, but his musicianship is faultless, and his stratospheric imagination takes him into what may well become the future sound of jazz. Trombonist Grachan Moncur and Drummer Anthony Williams are superb sidemen...
...band tirelessly. His thesis, he says, is that a good band doesn't have to be dull. To prove it, he likes to leap up on a drum and stomp with both feet. His band is by far the least disciplined in jazz, and as a result his sidemen feel free to swing privately. Sometimes the players seem to be digging their own private scene, but on a good night they stir up a roomful of creative excitement. Hamp's arrangements are the raunchiest in the business, but when the band plays Flyin' Home, its audience seems...
...Maynard Ferguson, 35, plays the most complex and modern arrangements of any big band since Kenton's, though Ferguson sometimes swamps his sidemen with his outer-space approach to the trumpet. Every so often, like Kirk Douglas in Young Man with a Horn, he gets up and tries for the groovy sound of an ambulance siren. But most of the time the boys roll along smoothly in spite...
...Monk's sidemen traditionally hang back, smiling and relaxed, and apart from an occasional Rouse solo, they seem content to let Monk lead. "That's right, Monk," they seem to be saying, "you tell 'em, baby." But Monk demands that musicians be themselves. "A man's a genius just for looking like himself," he will say. "Play yourself!" With such injunctions in the air, the quartet's performances are uneven. Some nights all four play as though their very lives are at stake; some nights, wanting inspiration, all four sink without a bubble. But it is part of Monk...