[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >17. Keith Jarrett - All I Want: Surprisingly, nothing very creative here >from piano virtuouso Jarrett. One of his earlier recordings, it's pretty >enough and gets the job done and that's about it.
There's much more here than meets the ear. Creativity, in covers, can be a highly overrated commodity; too many covers are too damn "creative," by which I mean that the "creativity" supersedes the song. Yeah, a radical reworking can sometimes work, but often all a song needs is the firm stamp of the cover artist's own voice. With Jarrett it's the latter; the thing is, that stamp is somewhat masked by the fact that the song itself lays squarely on the broad intersection of Joni's and Jarrett's melodic/harmonic language. I think that's a big part of why he played it: to demonstrate the hipness of Joni's music, just as it is, with no further "hipping it up." He recognized a kinship in her music and celebrates by just "singing" her song in his voice, which shares so many characteristics with hers. Also, few jazz musicians at that time were investigating the current popular songs as alternative jazz vehicles to decades of Gershwin, Porter, etc. -Fred
