What is the music style of Radiohead - Life in a glasshouse?

Question

I'm looking for more (what I think is) jazz music like Radiohead - Life in a glasshouse. I'm not sure even if it is jazz, and if so, what "flavour" of jazz it is. Can anyone send me in the right direction

Answer 1

The radiohead fandom site entry for this song : states

After listening to a demo of the song, trumpeter and bandleader Humphrey Lyttelton suggested arranging it in the style of a New Orleans jazz funeral. He described the song as:

"[starting] with me doing a sort of ad-libbed, bluesy, minor key meandering, then it gradually gets so that we're sort of playing real wild, primitive, New Orleans blues stuff".

So if you want to explore other Jazz in that style, I suggest "New Orleans" - but clearly, as done by Radiohead + friends, it is filtered through the more modern influences and styles of the musicians playing, so the originals of that style will not sound 100% the same.

Answer 2

@Angst has correctly traced this back to New Orleans (thanks for doing the underlying research).However, it is nearly impossible to search music just by "New Orleans" alone, since New Orleans has such a rich, diverse and full musical history, and is arguably the birthplace of what we know as "jazz."

I'd suggest "jazz dirge," "blues dirge," or "New Orleans dirge" as the genre instead. Traditionally, "dirge" (a slow, mournful song played on the way to the graveyard) and "Second Line" (an uptempo, joyful piece played post interment, with crowd participation) are the parts of a New Orleans jazz funeral.

New Orleans jazz legend Wynton Marsalis' "Majesty of the Blues" is a great example of a jazz/blues album deliberately patterned in this way. Tom Waits' "Anywhere I Lay My Head" has both parts in a single song.