The jazz standard cover is an interesting animal. To a band, the jazz standard is a direct reflection of a musical education, an homage to a master, a change of pace, a view into a particular time in history and a chance to shake loose and get weird. Unfortunately, to many a fan, it’s a bathroom break.

The roots of a great deal of our favorite jamband, progressive rock, funk, hip hop, vocal, and bluegrass artists are steeped in jazz, so it’s no wonder that so many of the bands we talk about ’round here enjoy breaking out a jazz standard from time to time, but as a collective fanbase, we could perhaps pay a little closer attention. So, today we celebrate some great jazz standard bust outs across the board.

“When the music changes, so does the dance.” – African Proverb

Derek Trucks Band – My Favorite Things

At its core, the version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s My Favorite Things that John Coltrane popularized, isn’t a complex jazz standard. Yet, the modal nature of the song – using notes within the mode as the basis of the song rather than specific chord progressions, thus essentially making any combinations of those notes all fit the harmony (or something) – allows the musicians to essentially go bananas, making it particularly interesting to compare various versions. Derek and his band take their version here to new heights, adding soaring leads and colorful note combinations to the famous melody.

READ ON for more jazz standards interpreted by jambands…

Phish – Take the “A” Train

Mike Gordon must have just missed the subway, because while the rest of the band took the A Train, Gordon (and his bass) walked all the way home. Woot woot. But seriously, Phish started playing this Duke Ellington cover early on in their career and peppered sets with the tune regularly until performing it near the 72nd Street station of the famed subway line at the Beacon Theatre on April 13, 1994. Having been shelved since that performance, A-Train would be quite the bustout for Phish 3.0.

String Cheese Incident – Well You Needn’t

Better known for their cheery bluegrass and effected acoustic trance improvisation, String Cheese Incident often mixed in a variety of jazz styles as well from bossa Nova to latin to, best of all, bebop as seen here as Kyle Hollingsworth does a mean impersonation of the Melodius Thunk.

The Breakfast – Take 5

The artists formerly known as Psychedelic Breakfast open up a Colorado show with a casual reading of Dave Brubeck’s hit, Take 5, a song best known for popularizing the bane of jazz students for years to come, the 5/4 beat.

The Disco Biscuits – A Night in Tunisia

Most jam fans are probably most familiar with Dizzy Gillespie’s repertoire via a short ditty called Manteca as played by a little band from Vermont, but the Disco Biscuits used to work Gillespie’s other big hit, A Night in Tunisia, into their sets with some regularity in the early days. What is most notable when listening to the Biscuits play jazz is not so much their interpretations of the actual material, but how different they sound as a band with these stripped down tones.

Garage a Trois – Angel Nemali

It may be a stretch to call Angel Nemali a standard, but it’s one of my favorite songs and the story of South African sax man, Dudu Pukwana, and the various members of the Blue Notes is pretty interesting. Consisting of mixed races, the Blue Notes were perpetually harassed and ultimately forced to flee to Europe to escape South African apartheid. Even across Europe throughout the ’50s and ’60s the group experienced racism, often feeling blackballed from various clubs and jazz scenes. Dudu passed away in 1990, around the time as did Chris McGregor (the lone white member) and Johnny Dyani, but through a number of derivations of the New Orleans Jazz scene, such as Charlie Hunter, Garage a Trois, and Stanton Moore, Dudu’s song Angel Nemali is finally getting its due.

Dirty Dozen Brass Band – When the Saints Go Marching In

Ask ten Dixieland jazz musicians about their least favorite song on earth and you might well hear “When the Saints Go Marching In” ten times. Fortunately, we’re not Dixieland jazz musicians, because this old classic done up with lots of horns and a heavy rolling barrel of vocals makes for a real hand-clapping saturnalia.

Side note: Check out this diss from Count Basie.

“I don’t dig that two-beat jive the New Orleans cats play. My boys and I have to have four heavy beats to the bar and no cheating.”

Umphrey’s McGee – It’s About That Time

Including Umphrey’s in these Bust Outs columns is an ongoing case of Déjà vu. They take the cover, embrace it as their own while staying true to the original, and then chew it up and spit out like a woodchipper. The band sums up this take on the Miles Davis beast after a madcap jam in the final three minutes saying, “You know, there’s nothing sexier than watching a bunch of ladies get down to some atonal rock!”

Ryan Dembinsky

Ryan Dembinsky is a contributing editor for Hidden Track, where he focuses primarily on longer-form content and interviews. Ryan has contributed to a wide variety of music and sports publications such as Sports Illustrated, AOL Fantasy Football, Jambase, and Relix to name a few.

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