The Good Musician

This article is part of the Basic Repertoire Project.

In Jazz music, there is a (fairly large) pool of songs we consider to be “jazz standards”. Kenny Burrell was one of the all-time greats in Jazz music, and he contributed at least this one jazz standard that, in my opinion, everyone should know.

The piece I speak about is “Chitlins Con Carne”, a standard I love jamming to myself. Kenny Burrell plays the guitar and achieves one hell of a legendary solo in the original (which, unfortunately, I couldn’t find, but you can buy it off iTunes!)

Here’s the Oxford Jazz Quintet performing a very straightforward rendition of this piece:

Key points:

-Notice the simplicity with which solos are played. This absolutely reflects Kenny Burrell’s attitude towards Jazz music: Simple, entertaining, but simple and good (not technically, but note-theory-wise). The pianist does take it to slightly more complex realms, but the saxophone does a great job (IMO).

- For those accustomed to chord progressions, this song is as simple as a C-F-G progression. In normal speak, it consists of just three bass notes or chords, but the fun of this song just shows us how much you can extract from such simple things – which adds to it’s greatness.

- It’s a simple blues structure.

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