BillieBalloon said:

http://diffuser.fm/prince-sgt-pepper/ "Wendy & Lisa took him to a jazz place." Really Bobby? Prince was the son of two jazz musicians and was named after his fathers jazz band. "John Lewis Nelson (June 29, 1916 – August 25, 2001),[1] also known as his stage name Prince Rogers, was an American jazz musician and songwriter. He was the father of musicians Prince and Tyka Nelson and a credited co-writer on some of his son's songs." Mattie was also a jazz musician. I take issue with this disingenous comment by Bobby. You know Prince heard jazz whilst still nestled in his mothers womb. What is Bobby talking about? . . [Edited 6/29/17 10:51am]

More bull his dad was a jazz musician. He was named after a jazz trio. Eric Leeds said he was a hugh fan of the Bitched Brew era Miles.

Just more nonsense.

laurarichardson said:

Maybe he meant that Prince came to reject jazz as his parents' music in his early career. Nothing from the first few albums shows a jazz influence. I think the first song to have that is arguably "Condition of the Heart." Parade and Sign o' the Times had jazzy elements which coincides with the Revoluton era. Maybe Wendy and Lisa got him back into jazz as an adult musician. Of course knew about it, but he did say "it's time for jazz to die" on "All the Critics..." So he probably had different eras he was more open to it than others.

kind of ridiculous really, they introduced him to the beatles, jazz, duke ellington. It's the Elvis Syndrome, everyone wants to take credit for huge success. Yesterday, I was reminded listening to Let's go Crazy the dance version that the vocal part the "ahhs" where they all add in, was the beatles on Twist and shout, this was a little before wendy and lisa supposedly introduced him to the beatles. The revolution did their part, SNIP -OF4S

All I know is that Prince's music is full of more jazz chords than I ever realized.

RodeoSchro said:

All I know is that Prince's music is full of more jazz chords than I ever realized.

it always was, always, I wanna be your lover is nothing but jazz chords really. Little Red Corvettes chords are jazz except for the chorus, prince also had lots of unexpected, really beautiful gospel chords in places where you wouldn't expect or really even notice. I didn't until I played them on piano, the bridge in raspberry beret and although not obvious at the time, although it should have been, the opening of Let's go crazy. I've always said it was the Jazz influence that really helped him stand out from the competition at the time.

PeteSilas said:

RodeoSchro said:

All I know is that Prince's music is full of more jazz chords than I ever realized.

it always was, always, I wanna be your lover is nothing but jazz chords really. Little Red Corvettes chords are jazz except for the chorus, prince also had lots of unexpected, really beautiful gospel chords in places where you wouldn't expect or really even notice. I didn't until I played them on piano, the bridge in raspberry beret and although not obvious at the time, although it should have been, the opening of Let's go crazy. I've always said it was the Jazz influence that really helped him stand out from the competition at the time.

Yes he was obviously musically influenced by his father's style of playing and took that into his own music. But it still wasn't overtly jazzy like his later stuff. The horns he had on so many tracks after the Parade era showed he began to embrace a more organic sound over the Oberheim/Linn style he popularized.

3rdEyeUnlimited said:

PeteSilas said:

it always was, always, I wanna be your lover is nothing but jazz chords really. Little Red Corvettes chords are jazz except for the chorus, prince also had lots of unexpected, really beautiful gospel chords in places where you wouldn't expect or really even notice. I didn't until I played them on piano, the bridge in raspberry beret and although not obvious at the time, although it should have been, the opening of Let's go crazy. I've always said it was the Jazz influence that really helped him stand out from the competition at the time.

Yes he was obviously musically influenced by his father's style of playing and took that into his own music. But it still wasn't overtly jazzy like his later stuff. The horns he had on so many tracks after the Parade era showed he began to embrace a more organic sound over the Oberheim/Linn style he popularized.

big chick once said that Prince hated horns, i don't know if that was true at that time or not but he definitely got into them. It may not have been because of any other thing than the power he had gained. He used synths to play horn section parts but by the time he got to parade, he had the power to hire and boss around whoever he wanted. The guy who had to do 1999 mostly alone because he couldn't rely on people wasn't the same guy who was a superstar after purple rain. Also, Claire Fischer had a lot to do with the arrangements on Parade.

I wasn't a fan of the horn section at first (even though Eric Leeds is a beast on the sax). I wasn't into the jazz sound as a teen (I preferred the electronic tones). I remember taking my girlfriend to the Lovesexy tour. She was a diehard Prince fan like me, but she said the horns made it sound like circus music!! And I remember agreeing with her (I think it was mostly due to Atlanta's trumpet playing). But later in college I went through the normal jazz phase starting with classics like Coltrane and Davis and then moving into more obscure artists. Jazz is definitely an acquired taste for mature ears but once you're hooked it's for life.

3rdEyeUnlimited said:

I wasn't a fan of the horn section at first (even though Eric Leeds is a beast on the sax). I wasn't into the jazz sound as a teen (I preferred the electronic tones). I remember taking my girlfriend to the Lovesexy tour. She was a diehard Prince fan like me, but she said the horns made it sound like circus music!! And I remember agreeing with her (I think it was mostly due to Atlanta's trumpet playing). But later in college I went through the normal jazz phase starting with classics like Coltrane and Davis and then moving into more obscure artists. Jazz is definitely an acquired taste for mature ears but once you're hooked it's for life.

jazz is awesome, it really is, as a longtime musician, i keep putting off learning to play until or rather if i am ever making a living playing music. that's the only way i'll have the energy to devote to it. many musicians will tell you just how humbling playing with jazz musicians is. recently i was watching a docu on THE GITS the drummer mentioned how he really wanted to be a jazz musicians but he just wasn't good enough, i understood what he meant right away.

as far as prince using horns, i really think he discarded the vintage minneapolis sound as soon as it was discovered because people copied it and he wanted to keep doing something new to throw everyone off. He said in the RS interview that when everyone started using drum machines he threw his away, which couldn't have literally been true because he used the linn throughout his life. Not all the fans liked the horns, many saw it as a step into music's past rather than one forward. Like I said though, Prince could call the shots by the point he used horns and not being able to do that may have been the reason for the synths and the one man band to begin with, that he couldn't rely on anyone. Even when he had the power to be a boss, it still left nothing but messy relationships with disgruntled employees in the end. Musicians however, need a firm hand, the egos, the laziness and flakiness, without someone strong to pull it together it'll just fall apart. It's nothing new, they said after ellington died that he used to have to beat up members of his band to get them in line, which many jazz people still find hard to believe, i don't, musicians are a handful.

[Edited 6/29/17 14:15pm]

3rdEyeUnlimited said:

Maybe he meant that Prince came to reject jazz as his parents' music in his early career. Nothing from the first few albums shows a jazz influence. I think the first song to have that is arguably "Condition of the Heart." Parade and Sign o' the Times had jazzy elements which coincides with the Revoluton era. Maybe Wendy and Lisa got him back into jazz as an adult musician. Of course knew about it, but he did say "it's time for jazz to die" on "All the Critics..." So he probably had different eras he was more open to it than others.

I'm thinking the same thing. A lot of kids reject their parents music in their teen years etc

.

Especially with all that went on between him and his parents.

.

.

It's time 4 a new direction
It's time 4 jazz 2 die
4th day of November
We need a purple high

.

.

It wasn't until his dad came back into his life 1985 period that Prince started opening up to Jazz in his music it seems.

3rdEyeUnlimited said:

kind of ridiculous really, they introduced him to the beatles, jazz, duke ellington. It's the Elvis Syndrome, everyone wants to take credit for huge success. Yesterday, I was reminded listening to Let's go Crazy the dance version that the vocal part the "ahhs" where they all add in, was the beatles on Twist and shout, this was a little before wendy and lisa supposedly introduced him to the beatles. The revolution did their part, I don't know why they have to go the route of the civilized white people showing the black genius some real cultured music. Like Prince was some kinda wild, untamed, creative force, white people always go that route though.

laurarichardson said:

laurarichardson said:

PeteSilas said:

3rdEyeUnlimited said:

I wasn't a fan of the horn section at first (even though Eric Leeds is a beast on the sax). I wasn't into the jazz sound as a teen (I preferred the electronic tones). I remember taking my girlfriend to the Lovesexy tour. She was a diehard Prince fan like me, but she said the horns made it sound like circus music!! And I remember agreeing with her (I think it was mostly due to Atlanta's trumpet playing). But later in college I went through the normal jazz phase starting with classics like Coltrane and Davis and then moving into more obscure artists. Jazz is definitely an acquired taste for mature ears but once you're hooked it's for life.

jazz is awesome, it really is, as a longtime musician, i keep putting off learning to play until or rather if i am ever making a living playing music. that's the only way i'll have the energy to devote to it. many musicians will tell you just how humbling playing with jazz musicians is. recently i was watching a docu on THE GITS the drummer mentioned how he really wanted to be a jazz musicians but he just wasn't good enough, i understood what he meant right away.

as far as prince using horns, i really think he discarded the vintage minneapolis sound as soon as it was discovered because people copied it and he wanted to keep doing something new to throw everyone off. He said in the RS interview that when everyone started using drum machines he threw his away, which couldn't have literally been true because he used the linn throughout his life. Not all the fans liked the horns, many saw it as a step into music's past rather than one forward. Like I said though, Prince could call the shots by the point he used horns and not being able to do that may have been the reason for the synths and the one man band to begin with, that he couldn't rely on anyone. Even when he had the power to be a boss, it still left nothing but messy relationships with disgruntled employees in the end. Musicians however, need a firm hand, the egos, the laziness and flakiness, without someone strong to pull it together it'll just fall apart. It's nothing new, they said after ellington died that he used to have to beat up members of his band to get them in line, which many jazz people still find hard to believe, i don't, musicians are a handful.

[Edited 6/29/17 14:15pm]

Thank you. When it's discussed how he was a "tyrant", in my mind I was always thinking that he knew this was his shot, he had to make it and he was going to do everything in his power to make it. To me I always thought it was more about survival than ego. In addition, maybe he also needed to let folks know not to get it twisted, the height, the clothes, the "feminine side"; he was still in control.

PeteSilas said:

SNIP - OF4S

Eric explained it well.
Knowing about Jazz and how it feels is very different than the actual technic

.

Just because someone plays a tombale doesn't make it Latin music
Just because someone plays steele drums doesn't make it Calypso or Caribbean music

.

TLM: Earlier you said that you realised that Prince was special. What makes him special?

EL: It's just little things like the fact that he can be very spontaneous in the way that works in the studio and the way he approaches music, which I've always kind of related to someone of the jazz ethic. Prince is not a jazz musician in the traditional sense and certainly doesn't have the harmonic background that we would associate with straight-up jazz musicians, [but] he can apply a sense of spontaneity, whether he's in the studio or in rehearsal or in a life situation that is more true to the jazz ethic than a lot of jazz musicians that I've played with [laughs]! I always responded to that because that's what I came out of.

OldFriends4Sale said:

Eric explained it well.
Knowing about Jazz and how it feels is very different than the actual technic

.

Just because someone plays a tombale doesn't make it Latin music
Just because someone plays steele drums doesn't make it Calypso or Caribbean music

.

TLM: Earlier you said that you realised that Prince was special. What makes him special?

EL: It's just little things like the fact that he can be very spontaneous in the way that works in the studio and the way he approaches music, which I've always kind of related to someone of the jazz ethic. Prince is not a jazz musician in the traditional sense and certainly doesn't have the harmonic background that we would associate with straight-up jazz musicians, [but] he can apply a sense of spontaneity, whether he's in the studio or in rehearsal or in a life situation that is more true to the jazz ethic than a lot of jazz musicians that I've played with [laughs]! I always responded to that because that's what I came out of.

eric leeds is totally irrelevant as any kind of artistic force whatsoever. So what he can play a horn. He's no different than any other musical snob and there are no shortages of them in classical and jazz not to mention rock. I've mentioned recently how Mark Cardenas called Prince "ghetto" and said he didn't really know basic things about music but Mark, as good as he is, is totally irrelevant. It's like a minor league baseball player talking shit about an all time great ball player, it's almost meaningless.

PeteSilas said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

Eric explained it well.
Knowing about Jazz and how it feels is very different than the actual technic

.

Just because someone plays a tombale doesn't make it Latin music
Just because someone plays steele drums doesn't make it Calypso or Caribbean music

.

TLM: Earlier you said that you realised that Prince was special. What makes him special?

EL: It's just little things like the fact that he can be very spontaneous in the way that works in the studio and the way he approaches music, which I've always kind of related to someone of the jazz ethic. Prince is not a jazz musician in the traditional sense and certainly doesn't have the harmonic background that we would associate with straight-up jazz musicians, [but] he can apply a sense of spontaneity, whether he's in the studio or in rehearsal or in a life situation that is more true to the jazz ethic than a lot of jazz musicians that I've played with [laughs]! I always responded to that because that's what I came out of.

eric leeds is totally irrelevant as any kind of artistic force whatsoever. So what he can play a horn. He's no different than any other musical snob and there are no shortages of them in classical and jazz not to mention rock. I've mentioned recently how Mark Cardenas called Prince "ghetto" and said he didn't really know basic things about music but Mark, as good as he is, is totally irrelevant. It's like a minor league baseball player talking shit about an all time great ball player, it's almost meaningless.

LOL yeah ok

Eric is actually pay Prince a huge compliment here. Mark was attacking Prince. Bringing Mark into this is a strawmen arguement. Has nothing to do with Eric Leeds who has worked with Prince for a long time.

It's time 4 a new direction
It's time 4 jazz 2 die
4th day of November
We need a purple high

it's a condescending way of making a compliment, i've had teachers like that and I got rid of them. It's like that scene in Amadeus where Mozart tells salieri that he made some "variations" based on Salieri's music, Salieri is first complimented until Mozart says "funny little tune but it yielded some good things" i'm not making this shit up, that's how musicians are.

OldFriends4Sale said:

PeteSilas said:

eric leeds is totally irrelevant as any kind of artistic force whatsoever. So what he can play a horn. He's no different than any other musical snob and there are no shortages of them in classical and jazz not to mention rock. I've mentioned recently how Mark Cardenas called Prince "ghetto" and said he didn't really know basic things about music but Mark, as good as he is, is totally irrelevant. It's like a minor league baseball player talking shit about an all time great ball player, it's almost meaningless.

LOL yeah ok

Eric is actually pay Prince a huge compliment here. Mark was attacking Prince. Bringing Mark into this is a strawmen arguement. Has nothing to do with Eric Leeds who has worked with Prince for a long time.

It's time 4 a new direction
It's time 4 jazz 2 die
4th day of November
We need a purple high

purplefam99 said:

Prince is a musician too so i doubt he took it a wrong way

PeteSilas said:

it's a condescending way of making a compliment, i've had teachers like that and I got rid of them. It's like that scene in Amadeus where Mozart tells salieri that he made some "variations" based on Salieri's music, Salieri is first complimented until Mozart says "funny little tune but it yielded some good things" i'm not making this shit up, that's how musicians are.

OldFriends4Sale said:

LOL yeah ok

Eric is actually pay Prince a huge compliment here. Mark was attacking Prince. Bringing Mark into this is a strawmen arguement. Has nothing to do with Eric Leeds who has worked with Prince for a long time.

It's time 4 a new direction
It's time 4 jazz 2 die
4th day of November
We need a purple high

BillieBalloon said:

laurarichardson said:

More bull his dad was a jazz musician. He was named after a jazz trio. Eric Leeds said he was a hugh fan of the Bitched Brew era Miles.

Just more nonsense.

Its laughable that he said Wendy and Lisa would take Prince to a jazz place. P was born into this music, he heard jazz as a newborn baby. What could Bobby be implyig here?

Sorry but Prince's dad kept him away from the music and the scene. Almost like his character in the movie. the Kid also did not want Apollonia in his life via the music. He wanted to keep his romantic partners away from the scene.
.
Prince snuck out at times to see his dad. But his dad wasn't big into that. His relationship with his father was almost competitive. Didn't his father remove the piano so Prince couldn't play or something like that. I suspect the parents relationship didn't not go well because of the mix of their career lives.

laurarichardson said:

purplefam99 said:

YES!!!!!!!!!!! Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!!![ They might as well claim that they told him he was black too!!

--Well maybe not because I think they still do not realize he was black😯. Lisa thinks Prince was talking about Bette Davis the actress not funk/Rock singer😱 Bobby and Matt think that Prince came up with the organ ebbin and flowing while he is testifying on "Let's Go Crazy " not realizing he lifted it from Rev Ike or any Preacher at a Baptist church. According to Jill someone in the group called Wally, Brooks, and Jerome buffoons never mind he had known Jerome since he was a teen.

Prince was a fan of Bette Davis & Betty Davis. I suspect she knows who he was talking about.

.

They think he came up with it? Prince did come up with it for the song. And why Rev Ike?

.

Prince didn't know him since he was a teen.... but what does that have to do with certain behaviour?

whatever the case, prince picked up enough to have some jazz flavor, as stated, it helped seperate him from the other pop musicians. And....it would have been disasterous for him to go further with jazz at that time, at least commercially, Jazz/big band/blues etc.., were well in the past as commercial entities, as great as they were. Prince's dad might have been competitive but didn't he buy him a guitar? also came to all his shows, sounds pretty supportive in that one way. I always thought it was a little odd that Prince was able to forgive his dad so early in his life, he did say how money made it easier to forgive but many people never forgive their parents. I've also read different things about his relationship with his mom, I think in Hahn's first book, he mentioned that both of them were where he went to when the pressure got to him. Again, I think that's a bit odd but only because my parents were pretty dysfunctional too and I usually knew better than to go to them with my lives grievances because they weren't real nice about it. Never saw his mom speak on camera, seen some of her interviews in print, the dad seems like a real character, more than a little nutty which is why prince probably forgave him, how responsible is a nut for their own behavior?

Ironically, I recently downloaded 1999 sheetmusic, i learned a version before but it was only 3 note chords, the new version has jazz chords which I guess was how it was really written but I hadn't noticed. If you learn these songs like i do, you'll notice that most of his biggest hits utilize jazz chords, even when they are used like pop chords, meaning simple riffs (like 1999, simplist riff in the world).

[Edited 6/29/17 21:25pm]

Early in Princes career he steered away from jazz,especially with lyrics like "its time for jazz to die".

By around 85 he began to use jazz elements and by 86 he was playing jazz,Venus De Milo would be the best known example. The height of his use of jazz for a Prince album woud be The Rainbow Children. Just a quick summary. If I could be bothered I would go into his use of jazz in great depth.

............................................................

'I know I shouldnt put my faith in heroes,but I cant c u any other way' RIP P