Track from Self-Immolation
1) Oxtail Soup
180 bpm
The recipe for Oxtail Soup is a savory Jazz Blues. A solid twelve-bar form with a swinging bridge on the side, its tried-and-true chord substitution flavorings are indescribably tasty; generously punctuated with breaks, it builds using contrasting textures of walking, two-feel and double-time 6/8 choruses.
Influences
[ Horace Silver, Charles Mingus ]
Perhaps the most popular period of Jazz–enjoyed by fans, critics and musicians alike, and actually listened to on the radio, providing ambience in Jazz clubs in between sets and piped in to restaurants–is the Blue Note hard bop era. Serious but not eggheaddy, sultry but not pandering, blues-rooted but with creative forms and harmonies, well-rehearsed, arranged and engineered, it captured distinctive tones and voices with a focus and success that has not been matched before or since. This era is perhaps best represented by the original Jazz Messengers with Horace Silver and Art Blakey, featuring Donald Byrd, and also the recordings of Dexter Gordon. “Oxtail Soup” is shaped in this mold of tasty, down-home, serious yet smooth.
Form
Oxtail Soup is a blues in Eb with an 8-bar bridge, following an AABA form. Blues and sonorous sixths harmonies abound, smoothing out and providing contrast to the slick chromaticism of the progressions. The bridge provides a release, slowing down the pace of the changes. The arrangement moves back and forth through several styles, with the melody going between two-feel and swing, ending on a solo break. Grant swings his chorus like nobody’s business. Then Henry enjoys a chorus in a relaxing two-feel, followed by a blistering chorus in 6/8 double time feel, reminiscent of Charles Mingus’ “Better Get Hit In Your Soul”. Elaine continues this pace for a chorus before bringing back the Head.
Harmonically, Oxtail Soup uses the more bluesy V-VI cadence rather than the jazzy ii-V, but makes up for it by piling on other available tritone substitutions, including the typical bii-bV in bar 4 leading to IV, an unusual but parallel construction in bar 6 (bvi-bII) leading back to I, and a deceptive cadence that becomes a turnaround, following in whole steps to bIII and bII, leading back to I. The normal elaboration in bar 8 is also present, but it is vi-II setting up V, rather than iii-VI setting up ii.
Credits
- composed by David Elaine Alt and published by Aural Imaging
- David Elaine Alt, Tenor Saxophone
- Henry Hung, Trumpet
- Andrew Ryan, Drums
- Grant Levin, Piano
- Kenny Annis, Bass
- Gabe Davis, Bass
- Steve Armstrong, Recording Engineer Hyde St. Studios
- Mixed by David Elaine Alt at Flaming Hakama
- Mastered by Myles Boisen at Headless Buddha