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Originally Posted by PH  One person who I think has been very influential as a player and might fit your criteria is Thad Jones. I hear a lot of Thad in many contemporary players (Hagans, Harrell, Wendholt...) yet he is grossly overlooked when people talk about the "lineage".
One reason is that he became better known as a composer/bandleader. However, I think part of it is that he never fit neat categories.
To me he sounds like basically an early bebopper (Diz-influenced) but his harmonic language is quite a bit more out. He uses lots of polytonality and upper extensions of chords regrouped into very different superimpositions...basically the same harmonic approach used in his writing. I think that his small group records with Pepper Adams on bari are probably the most consistent musical statements he made as a player. He and Pepper really think and hear similar stuff.
His trumpet playing sounds a lot like Dizzy to me, but with a different approach to articulation, accent, and rhythm. His later playing is mostly cornet or flugelhorn.
Anyway, to me that is one guy who is worth a discussion in this context. |
No doubt, your choices reflect the "quirky" and original voice of Thad Jones. I might add Johnny Coles and Dizzy Reece to that list--always adventerous players harmonically and rhythmically. As "adventerous" as Tom's playing can be--and with him that can be almost on the level of Woody, although as a stylist much was pre 79. To my ears, Tom elved his style, after 1979, and especially starting with the Phil Woods group, to a more spare and "managaeble" way of playing the trumpet as he was not able to sustain the prodigious technique he sported pre-79. And his improv. started to be influenced by the corpus of compostions, and tailerd to the harmonic deamnds/requirements of his original compostions. Further--I hear him as more in the lineage of Fats/Clifford/FreddieWoody. But some of Tom's first work came in the J/L band so he heard Thad constantly, perhaps picking up influence (a tricky, slippery idea!!) Hagans to be sure fits fine. Wendholt and players of note in his generation are such an amalgum that its hard (for me) to pin them down, which, in contrast, the 20 something's I have heard, and who seem to play in a highly technicall but extreemly limited harmonic fashion are always talking about how they have a "fresh" voice, albiet in a very subtle way sometimes. Interestingly, when players like Woody and Freddie and Booker were in their youth, they certianly made arrogent statements (not sure about Booker) but never questioned thieir role as part of a lineage--something that today's under 30 players seem to forget--not only in their words but in their playing.