Spectrum Culture: Chick Corea, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs

New on Spectrum Culture, I revisit one of my favorite jazz records of all time, Chick Corea's 1968 masterpiece Now He Sings, Now He Sobs. 

Drummer Max Roach, along with many other musicians, has referred to jazz as a uniquely democratic art form. In an April 1987 edition of Ebony Man, he said that jazz “comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.” Indeed, it is the interactive quality of jazz that, at its best, makes it so attractive for longtime fans and neophytes alike. There’s a sublime quality to a soloist and three or four supporting musicians uniting around an inventive melodic idea or rhythmic motif. The interaction between musicians in a jazz group is made all the more powerful by the fact that, unlike the complex counterpoint between instruments in an orchestra or the synergy of various elements of a pop studio production, the magic is largely a result of spontaneity and improvisation.

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