When a performer says those party-pooping words: "This next number is one I wrote..." the audience sighs, if not audibly, at least inwardly. Not all great musicians are great composers and vice versa. Irving Berlin was a great songwriter yet, I'm told he could only play in one key.
One of the problems with jazz musicians writing originals is that you hear them once and maybe won't hear the tune again until their next gig. Whereas pop tunes get played and plugged and covered by other performers so that in no time they're as familiar to younger fans as White Christmas is to an older generation, jazz musicians tend not to share their music around.
Which makes this collection of 124 compositions by Paul Edis more than welcome. They offer musicians, particularly those who are non-writers, the opportunity to play numbers that haven't already been done to death by the great and the good and yet can, in most cases, hold their own at the highest level.
Set out in Real Book format, there are blues, ballads and straight ahead swingers. Songs in the traditional AABA construction as well as jazz waltzes and a few unusual time signatures. Some have words, some don't, but all have standard chord symbols.
Interestingly, all but a few are written in flat keys with only a handful of # keys which makes things easier for those playing transposing instruments although one piece, appropriately named Relentless, whilst written in Bb has four bars that contain more sharps than the all the rest put together - at least that's how it appeared at first glance!
I haven't had time nor space to analyse each piece - Paul gives chapter and verse to the background of each composition - but the ones I have are beautifully constructed and, if enough copies get into the right hands and someone produces "The Great British Songbook", a fair number of these will be found within its pages.
Also, if you've purchased an Edis CD a fair number of the heads are notated within the 202 pages.
Recommended.
Lance.
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