ain't nobody's business...

jazz is the great american music. along with the blues it is truly american. often misunderstood by many people it is an expressive music that deals with feelings and moods.

the legendary baseballer Yogi Berra is credited with an interview about jazz -

Interviewer: Can you explain jazz?
Yogi: I can't, but I will. 90% of all jazz is half improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play the wrong part, its right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it's wrong.
Interviewer: I don't understand.
Yogi: Anyone who understands jazz knows that you can't understand it. It's too complicated. That's what's so simple about it.
Interviewer: Do you understand it?
Yogi: No. That's why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldn't know anything about it.
Interviewer: Are there any great jazz players alive today?
Yogi: No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for the ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the ones that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that are dead. Some would kill for it.
Interviewer: What is syncopation?
Yogi: That's when the note that you should hear now happens either before or after you hear it. In jazz, you don't hear notes when they happen because that would be some other type of music. Other types of music can be jazz, but only if they're the same as something different from those other kinds.
Interviewer: Now I really don't understand.
Yogi: I haven't taught you enough for you to not understand jazz that well.

and what better example to not understand it than Wynton Marsalis and Willie Nelson singing "Ain't Nobody's Business" from their album Two Men with the Blues that was performed live on Jazz at Lincoln Center

huh?


Ain't Nobody's Business
written by Porter Grainger
performed by Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis

There ain't nothing I can do, or nothing I can say,
Some folks will criticize me.
So I'm gonna do just what I want to anyway,
And don't care if you all despise me.

If I should take a notion
To jump into the ocean,
It ain't nobody's business if I do.

If I go to church on Sunday
And I shimmy down on Monday,
It ain't nobody's business if I do.

And if my friend ain't got no money
And I say, "All right, take all of mine honey,"
It ain't nobody's business if I do.

If I lend her my last nickel
And it leaves me in a pickle,
It ain't nobody's business if I do.

I would rather my gal would hit me
Than to haul right up and quit me.
It ain't nobody's business if I do.

I know that she won't call no copper
If she gets beat up by her poppa.
It ain't nobody's business if I do, Lord no.
Well, it ain't nobody's business if I do


so, are you appropriately confused?