Juicy Little Details: Gene Ammons and the Art of Listening

I’ve loved this album since I first heard it in high school. “Canadian Sunset” in particular. Ammons’ sound, his phrases, the long tail reverb and how he lets his notes float off into it…

So many details. Juicy little details.

It’s easy to forget how powerful listening is. We musicians get caught up in licks, patterns, books, what to practice, how long to practice, how to play faster, how to make those changes…

But listening — active listening — to great examples of this music we’re trying to play, gets a disproportionate share of attention. If your high school jazz band was anything like mine (and I went to a performing arts school) you spent 0% of your class time listening to music and 100% of the time “taking it again from measure 52.”

Over dinner in San Francisco the other night, my old friend (and high school mentor) brought up Gene Ammons. We got talking about the rich details of Ammons’ playing and how the art of listening seems to be all but lost in “jazz education”.

Sad, too. Because nothing has more power to shape how you imagine music should sound. And guess what: the way you play music is a direct result of the way you hear music.

To give you an idea what I’m talking about, here are 3 details that stand out to me in Ammons’ performance on this recording:

1. His gorgeous use of space. Ammons seems to use the reverb/room sound as a soloistic element. He’s as conscious of the space his notes occupy after he’s let them go as he is the notes themselves.
2. Those guide tone lines. Listen to how he shapes his phrases against the harmony, first ascending (3:10-17) and then descending (3:18-23). He does something similar at 3:53-59.
3. The carefully chosen moments of double time. They are sparse and thus meaningful when they appear. That double time 1235 pattern over the quasi-Coltrane changes ~2:48 is a quick nod to the sound that was coming into fashion around the time this recording happened (1960). And that part from 3:25-34 is a moment he’s been building to for, well for over 3 minutes.

The name of the album says it all: Boss Tenor.

So how about you? Are you listening more than you’re playing? Are you soaking in the details as you listen?

Try this: grab some headphones, put a good track on repeat (why not start with this one?) and see what you notice on the 5th or 6th spin that you missed on the first.

Do this often and the noticing alone begins to sink into your playing.