Jazz history - all of it! The Thread

[ska invita]

Did you take your username from this tune ex-Dr.Jazzz?
Doctor Jazz - Jelly Roll Morton

cool solos on this (1926)

 

[Hocus Eye.]

Love this thread. I know a bit about the subject but my knowledge is patchy. Mostly I am a fan of Billie Holiday and her contemporaries.

 

[danny la rouge]

Just had a thought regarding this, which is that perhaps the biggest influence on this period of early New Orleans style jazz are military marching bands (parades of which were common in N.O.) - a marching band is very much a band with each instrument given a particular role, and so counterpoint is used a lot in such arrangements. New Orleans bands also followed this demarcation of roles and solos were only elements within the whole...supposedly its only when Louis Armstrong comes along (any moment now on this thread) and blows (literally) the competition away that jazz develops into a music of soloing...

So these early jazz bands wouldve got it from marching bands and thats coming via the classical cannon. That said there is polyphony in african music - blatantly in the drum circle, and where theres polyphony theres probably going to be some counterpoint going on... but from what I can see its more a marching band thing than anything else.

Some things are just going to be impossible to pin down. You're right, we know that there is polyphony in African music. Here's an example http://www.pygmies.org/aka/music-dance.asp . (Although we should be wary of homogenising African cultures - there are many, and were many more). However, polyphony and counterpoint - while related - aren't synonyms. And while I'm no ethnomusicologist, what little I've read all agrees that the defining counterpoint in African cultures is polyrhythmic counterpoint, rather than melodic counterpoint. In other words, there are systems of crossrhythm set up whereby two (or more) contrasting rhythm patterns create an interplay that provides a meter neither would provide on their own. This element of music was far more advanced in African cultures than in European or "Classical" music.

What isn't found is the type of formal counterpoint we find in Renaissance and Baroque music, with its systems of cadences. I don't want to get all technical here, but what the scholars seem to agree is that the stuff going on in New Orleans jazz as regards melodic counterpoint far more resembles "Classical" music than it does African.

However, let's not get carried away on counterpoint itself. It would be daft to insist the tradition of African polyphony had no influence on jazz.

 

[ska invita]

I think i understand that - in simple terms two or more drummers drumming off each other is a very different thing from a band made up of a bunch of instruments playing scales where melodies are arranged and separated out to across an ensemble. Also New Orleans musicians would've had direct experience of marching bands (and other 'classically' influence music), but little if no experience of drum circles.

---

Maybe not enough music in comparison to chat so far, so just going to post this - a lot of the tunes that call themselves Blues out of the New Orleans jazz school don't sound all that bluesy to me, but this ones got it
King Oliver - Working Man Blues

 

[danny la rouge]

I think i understand that - in simple terms two or more drummers drumming off each other is a very different thing from a band made up of a bunch of instruments playing scales where melodies are arranged and separated out to across an ensemble. Also New Orleans musicians would've had direct experience of marching bands (and other 'classically' influence music), but little if no experience of drum circles.

Yes, in the early part of Gioia's book he quotes somebody saying that Western musical notation cannot write the rhythmic complexity of some African music. That's polyrhythmic counterpoint. What Left was asking about was melodic counterpoint. And the types of melodic counterpoint used by the New Orleans jazz musicians had the hallmarks of Classical convention. When to use certain cadences, to create tension, to end a piece, and so on.

Remember that jazz also uses distinctly African tonality - the blue notes, for example. So the musical archaeologists do seem to be able to identify what bit comes from where. If you see what I mean.

 

[danny la rouge]

More great bluesy New Orleans jazz:

Spoiler: King Oliver, Riverside Blues

 

[Jazzz]

fair play Jazzz - when i was writing the post i remember putting Tiger Rag in and then replacing it back to Liverly Stable because Tiger sounded too good - i guess i was trying to make a point about what was jazzy about Morton. Ive never listened to New Orleans jazz before this thread (except in passing) and I imagine others haven't either, and to an untrained ear a lot of it might just sound much the same - by contrasting what, as Knotted said, might well be a pinnacle of the style (that Morton cut), with a particularly weak early ODJB cut (Livery) I thought it made that clearer. Though yeah it was a bit of a hatchet job on ODJB - apologies to them!

hey no worries! Enjoy the treasure trove!​

​

Did you take your username from this tune ex-Dr.Jazzz?

yep. I was in a jazz band at college where several members went on to become doctors in a more conventional sense. I didn't, so being a fan of Jelly Roll Morton took the title "dr jazz" instead. I then accumulated an extra 'z'. ​

 

[danny la rouge]

The New Orleans Sidemen and Other Lights

Before we move on to the innovations of the 20s, I thought it would be appropriate to give a mention to some of the names we seem to speed past. These are the stars of the New Orleans style, whose roles were vital, but who are sometimes eclipsed by the bigger names. The tendency to tell the history of jazz as a succession of giants often misses people who help to formulate jazz, especially in the heady era of ensemble improvisation. Here are some names we don't want to miss:

Kid Ory

One of the great New Orleans trombone players, Ory personifies the ”tailgating” trombone style. (When the bands played on trucks and wagons round the streets, the trombone player would sit at the tailgate of the truck, so they could fully extend their slides).

Ory’s Creole Trombone, recorded in 1921.

Spoiler: Creole Trombone

Jimmie Noone

Another child clarinet prodigy, Noone played in Storyville with Freddie Keppard and in the Eagle band, as well as with King Oliver. Here’s his own band, with Earl Hines on piano (of whom, more later) on a tune entitled Four or Five Times:

Spoiler: Four or Five Times

Johnny Dodds

Dodds (pronounce it "Dots" and show how in-the-know you are) was a New Orleans stalwart on clarinet and alto sax, playing with King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, and later Louis Armstrong. We’ve already heard him a couple of times – with Morton and Oliver.

Here’s his Perdido Street Blues:

Spoiler

Sam Morgan

A fine New Orleans trumpet player, Morgan stayed in New Orleans instead of migrating north, and remained popular there, where he continued playing the style until his death in 1936. His records are wonderful. Members of his band went on to work with George Lewis and Bunk Johnson in the 40s revival.

Over in the Glory Land

Spoiler: Over in the Glory Land

 

[ska invita]

Im trying to understand a bit more how jazz is fitting into popular culture via theatre, dancehalls, radio and film in the 20s - here's some bits i've gleaned - feel free to correct and add.

Women's Lib

There was definitely a wave of women's lib going on throughout the 20s and jazz was the soundtrack to it. In the US different states passed laws that allowed women to vote at different times, but it was in 1920 when a national law was passed.

An expression of this gave rise to the 'flappers', where women wore their hair and skirts shorter, and ditched corsets along with their preconceived social roles - and then amongst other things went dancing! Was there a class dimension to flappers?

Jazz Dance

A big element of the first decades of jazz is the fact that its a dance music, and jazz dance itself has its own rich history. So postwar, people were dancing a pretty lively foxtrot but perhaps the big 'jazz' dance craze was the Charleston, penned by James P. Johnson (Harlem stride player who came up earlier), and which dropped in 1923, and came from the Broadway musical Runnin' Wild. Here's Johnson's version - on piano here its got a great swinging & staggered rhythm which makes it easy to hear why it got everyone on their feet


Johnson was in New York and represents the early age of the Harlem Renaissance, which would really come into its own in the later 20s and 30s. Whereas the brass band sound was associated with the south (and southerners who took the music up to Chicago), supposedly in New York at the time the piano was king (jazzwise) .

Theres some great footage of eary jazz dancing out there - this clip is pretty special

Al Minns & Leon James from the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem- Filmed during the 50s - Danced by original jazz dancers from the 30s

While heres a clip of some flappers and others going for it at the time

Spoiler

Just as in dance music today, when you write music you have to do what works for the dancefloor, so dancing plays a symbiotic relationship with the music.

After the Charleston was on the wane the next big dance was the Black Bottom. We already had a version of it played on Dannys Jelly Roll Morton post. Supposedly the tune has an older pedigree than that.

The dance originated in New Orleans in the 1900s (decade). The theatrical show Dinah brought the Black Bottom dance to New York in 1924, and the George White's Scandals featured it at the Apollo Theater in Harlem 1926 through 1927 where it was introduced by dancer Ann Pennington. Jelly Roll Morton, jazz player and composer, wrote the tune "Black Bottom Stomp" with its name referring to Detroit's Black Bottom area. The dance became a sensation and ended up overtaking the popularity of the Charleston, eventually becoming the number one social dance.

"The Original Black Bottom Dance" was printed in 1919. It came from an earlier dance called "Jacksonville Rounders' Dance" printed in 1907. The word "Rounder" was a synonym for "pimp." Both "dance-songs" were written by black pianist, composer and dancer Perry Bradford and were based on a dance done in Jacksonville, Florida "way back." One professional dancer stated, "That dance is as old as the hills." The dance was well known among semi-rural blacks across the South. A similar dance with many variations had been commonly used in tent show performances, and "Bradford and Jeanette" had used it as a finale. The dance was featured in the Harlem show Dinah in 1924, and then "The Scandals of 1926," whereupon it became a national craze.

 

[ska invita]

Radio
The 20s was also the era that radios started to make it into peoples homes - going from one station in 1920 to over 600 in 1922. Between 1923 and 1930, 60 percent of American families purchased radios.


Talkies
The first film with precorded sound comes out in 1927, and it was Al Johnson as the Jazz Singer - the film has a bunch of "jazzy" (rags and such) musical numbers but the finale is Al Johnson blacking up to sing Mamy

Spoiler

It looks bizarre at best today but supposedly it was broadly taken as a positive thing for 'race' relations, and as a way of creating a broader acceptance of black culture in the white mainstream.

Amongst the resposes theres this on wiki which i found interesting:

Jazz historians have described Jolson’s blackface and singing style as metaphors for Jewish and black suffering throughout history. Jolson’s first film, The Jazz Singer, for instance, is described by historian Michael Alexander as an expression of the liturgical music of Jews with the "imagined music of African Americans," noting that "prayer and jazz become metaphors for Jews and blacks."[17]:176 Playwright Samson Raphaelson, after seeing Jolson perform his stage show Robinson Crusoe, stated that "he had an epiphany: 'My God, this isn’t a jazz singer,' he said. 'This is a cantor!'" The image of the blackfaced cantor remained in Raphaelson’s mind when he conceived of the story which led to The Jazz Singer.

There's a lot more stuff out there on this...from what I can see on the whole it was perceived that it was coming from the right place.

Either way I think film (not just this one) must have played a role in spreading jazz, and i guess it was more piano rags that got played in the silent era? Not sure there - pretty sure it was usually just to a piano accompaniment.

 

[danny la rouge]

It looks bizarre at best today but supposedly it was broadly taken as a positive thing for 'race' relations, and as a way of creating a broader acceptance of black culture in the white mainstream.

Bizarre in the extreme!

Despite the title of his film, Jolson really wasn’t a jazz singer. He was a Vaudeville/Broadway singer, with none of the traits of jazz delivery. He did sing songs by composers whose songs went on to be jazz standards, but composers such as Jerome Kern hated the jazz arrangements of the songs. And Jolson didn’t sing those jazz arrangements anyway. Swannee and My Mammy are not jazz songs. Whatever else they might be.

It’s an interesting point that so many Jewish writers are writing for Broadway at the time, bringing in aspects of Klezmer and other aspects of Jewish musical culture, to create what becomes known as the Great American Songbook. And many of these songs become jazz vehicles. So all this eventually feeds into jazz, just as New Orleans jazz had sucked up all the available influences.

But to go back to Jolson, we are asked to believe that he was not himself racist. It seems incredible to suggest that him performing in blackface is anything but. It’s a gross caricature, not an attempt at an accurate portrayal of an African American. Those really were different times. Attitudes existed that we would find perplexing and alien, even in relatively progressive people.

Indeed, it makes me wince to think that Duke Ellington allowed his music to be marketed as “Jungle Music” by Irving Mills, along with props, sets and scenery to ram home the imagery.

 

[ska invita]

thanks for that danny - with hindsight i dont think my post was any way adequate in breaching the topic. ive never stopped to think about the the US 20s before...im finding it a mindboggling era, and that clip kind of sums up a lot of the weirdness.

 

[danny la rouge]

thanks for that danny - with hindsight i dont think my post was any way adequate in breaching the topic. ive never stopped to think about the the US 20s before...im finding it a mindboggling era, and that clip kind of sums up a lot of the weirdness.

It'd be a tall order for any post to adequately broach the subject.

Have you read Billie Holliday's Lady Sings the Blues? It's a good place to start for a general background on the racism of the era. (Although she took liberties with her own history. The famous opening lines were: "Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three". Actually, they were younger, never married, and never lived together as a family).

 

[Hocus Eye.]

It'd be a tall order for any post to adequately broach the subject.

Have you read Billie Holliday's Lady Sings the Blues? It's a good place to start for a general background on the racism of the era. (Although she took liberties with her own history. The famous opening lines were: "Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three". Actually, they were younger, never married, and never lived together as a family).

I have read that book and as you know it was ghost written for Billie Holiday by a journalist. That memorable opening line is typical of a journalist and it does grab you because she is supposedly just saying "I was a bastard". Certainly racism played a big part in her life as it must have with most Jazz performers. Racism, drugs and violence came with the territory. As did being on the wrong side of the law.

 

[danny la rouge]

I have read that book and as you know it was ghost written for Billie Holiday by a journalist. That memorable opening line is typical of a journalist and it does grab you because she is supposedly just saying "I was a bastard". Certainly racism played a big part in her life as it must have with most Jazz performers. Racism, drugs and violence came with the territory. As did being on the wrong side of the law.

Yup. "I was a bastard and my Mom was underage". It *was* published in the mid 50s.

 

[discokermit]

sticking my neck out a bit here, but i think sometimes we can judge the minstrel shows a bit harshley. it's a much more complex issue than it looks at first.

 

[ska invita]

sticking my neck out a bit here, but i think sometimes we can judge the minstrel shows a bit harshley. it's a much more complex issue than it looks at first.

its definitely more complex that it first appears - id be interested to know more about it. Always meant to watch that Spike Lee film from a few year back where a minstrel show gets brought back for a modern audience. but never got around to it. 'Race' representation in popular entertainment culture remains a huge issue today i'd say. Probably needs its own thread though....

 

[Maltin]

Radio
The 20s was also the era that radios started to make it into peoples homes - going from one station in 1920 to over 600 in 1922. Between 1923 and 1930, 60 percent of American families purchased radios.

Not that it changes the point that you are raising but a book I have seems to suggest a slightly slower growth than that. It indicates that in 1925 "Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover said there were 563 radio stations in the US" and "By 1930, the census estimated that 40.3 percent of the nation's households owned radios". This increased to 83% by 1940.

Whatever the real figures, I can't help thinking that the invention of the radio was a pretty incredible invention, perhaps akin to something like the Internet.

 

[ska invita]

i guess figures on radio ownership would only ever be estimates, and how many people had access to a shared set is unknown. Radio station figures should be correct as they would need a license. Your source (a book) sounds better than mine (an old html webpage rounded of to nearest hundred). But yeah, the huge technological leap in terms of access to music is unimaginable - music recording coming pretty much in parallel. I'd love to see some figures for record sales for the decade, including what was selling and in what quantities. The birth of the "modern" era...

Also read a paragraph drawing parallels with jazz and the art (painting) world of the 20s, particularly in the breaking down of traditional "high culture" european concepts of form and a new (not unproblematic) respect (of sorts) for African arts... I guess a lot of this context is too much to go into in depth on the thread, but especially so far back in time as the 20s its harder to imagine the social backdrop. 60s jazz onwards I understand the context without thinking too hard, but everything before then, especially these early days, its taking me a fair bit of imagination.

 

[Maltin]

As Danny hasn't necessarily got that far yet, I won't post anything related to the general entertainment industry in the late 20s yet but the book I referred to earlier, which is an illustrated history of the world through the pages of Variety has the following quotes from 1917 that refer to jazz.

The first is in relation to the Jazz Band at New York City's Reisenweber's cabaret

Late in the morning the Jazzers go to work and the dancers hit the floor, to remain there until they topple over...If the dancers see someone they know at the tables, it's common to hear 'Oh, boy!' as they roll their eyes while floating past, and the 'Oh, boy!' expression probably describes the Jazz Band music better than anything else could.

Another says:

New Orleans is being depleted of its jazz bands, about 20 of them having left there recently. Several negro jazz bands remain. Negro bands were the original jazz bands, and their expressions of 'jazzing it' and 'put a little jazz on it' are still very popular at their picturesque balls.

 

[Maltin]

The first is in relation to the Jazz Band at New York City's Reisenweber's cabaret

A website that mentions a bit more about Reisenweber's and it's link to jazz of the era.

http://theboweryboys.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/reisenwebers-cafe-glamour-late-nights.html

 

[nogojones]

This fife and drum stuff is really doing it for me - anyone know of a compilation? Might be best in short doses though i imagine

Reminds me a lot of Gil Scott Heron's - No Knock

 

[Jazzz]

Ive got one here for the earliest jazz manifestations roll call

"Carolina Shout" by James P. Johnson

...
according to wiki James Johnson "along with Jelly Roll Morton, were arguably the two most important pianists who bridged the ragtime and jazz eras, and the two most important catalysts in the evolution of ragtime piano into jazz. As such, he was a model for Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum and his more famous pupil, Fats Waller."

I don't think there were ever too many pianists who could really pull off Carolina Shout. Willie 'the Lion' Smith certainly could. I've just found this on youtube, enjoy

 

[Knotted]

Never heard of Sam Morgan before. That's a really great sound on that record. Not quite like anything else I've heard. I didn't expect anything quite so dreamy in this era.

 

[danny la rouge]

I don't think there were ever too many pianists who could really pull off Carolina Shout. Willie 'the Lion' Smith certainly could. I've just found this on youtube, enjoy

That's great. We'll be coming to the Harlem stride players very soon, I promise!

 

[danny la rouge]

Louis Armstrong – the Hot Fives and Sevens

Louis Armstrong. Where do you start? I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love Louis Armstrong.

Pops
We have to start somewhere, so let’s start with the name. He pronounced his name “LEW-is”. (You can hear him doing it on Hello Dolly, for example). He once wrote “All White Folks call me Louie”. (He had his own rules about using capitals). But he seems to have accepted “Louie” as a nickname, rather than a pronunciation of Louis. His preferred nickname was Satchmo or Satch, but his friends called him Pops.

Perdido Street
He was born on August 4th 1901 (although he believed his birthday was July 4th and the year to have been 1900), the illegitimate son of a prostitute, in Jane Alley on the edge of “black Storyville”, the region blacks were allowed to buy sex: Perdido Street. According to his biographer, Terry Treachout, the area his mother worked was “rough even by New Orleans standards”. And after a short time living with his paternal grandmother as a newborn, to allow his mother to get back to work, that is where Louis was raised.




Embrouchure
He had a tough childhood, during which he worked various jobs to supplement the family income, and busked the streets, and on New Year’s Eve 1912, aged only 11, was arrested for firing a pistol belonging to one of his “stepfathers”. He was sent to the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys. Here he was allowed to join the school band, and learned to read music. However, he was never corrected in bad habits he had picked up teaching himself cornet as a young child, and his incorrect embrouchure was to cause him medical problems later in life.

Fletcher Henderson
When we last encountered Armstrong in the thread, it was as second cornet in King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. His respect and admiration for Joe Oliver led him to stay in that position far longer than his talent and growing reputation should have allowed. It was only on the prompting of his future wife, Lil Hardin, Joe Oliver’s pianist, that Louis left the band in 1924 to join Fletcher Henderson’s band in New York. Henderson had long courted Armstrong, and wanted him to teach the other musicians to “swing New Orleans style”. During this time Armstrong is in high demand as a session man for the great female vocalists of the time.


Bessie Smith
We haven’t had any vocalists yet, so we should listen to his recording with Bessie Smith, which is very poor audio quality to modern ears, and has a very strange instrumentation: Smith on vocals, Armstrong, aged 24, on trumpet and Fred Longshaw on harmonium or reed organ.

There’s no rhythm backing, only the shapeless and fluid swell of the chords from the organ, so all the rhythmic pulse comes from Armstrong’s fills. Armstrong perfectly matches Smith’s emotion and sensibility with his deep understanding of blues and melody.

Spoiler: St Louis Blues

Again on Hardin’s prompting, Louis left Henderson in 1925 to return to Chicago. Henderson had hoped his horns would learn to play like Armstrong, but Henderson band member Rex Stewart famously said that by the time Louis left every instrument was trying to sound like Louis, even the drummer.

Back in Chicago, Louis found that Lil had billed him “The World’s Greatest Trumpet Player”, much to his embarrassment.

Legendary Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions
It was then that he was commissioned by the Okeh label to begin recording his legendary Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions. These were not Armstrong’s regular gigging bands (he was actually the featured artist in Lil’s band at the time), but high calibre New Orleans musicians Armstrong knew from back home. The musicians didn’t know the arrangements prior to the recording dates, but were (often hastily) put through their paces on arrival at the studio. But the results were stunning. Even with the mistakes. This was the sound that was to set the standard for jazz for years to come.

What is so different? If you can’t hear it for yourself, Gioia says “His melody lines ripple with newfound freedom, with a rhythmic bite that cuts through the ensemble”. Morton and Cook say “Armstrong’s music is one of the cornerstones of jazz and these, his most famous recordings, remain a marvel”.

Let’s listen to Potato Head Blues. The band is terrific, and Louis is on form throughout. But listen to his solo from around 1:50, over the stop time passage. It’s beautiful.

Spoiler: Potato Head Blues

Let’s not forget his vocals. He is credited with inventing scat at around this time (singing nonsense syllables), and his delivery has the same rhythmic phrasing as his playing. His horn playing influences every other instrumentalist, and after his singing is first heard, he influences every subsequent singer. Both Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday say they studied Armstrong’s records closely, listening to every nuance of his phrasing.

Here’s West End Blues, with its stunning opening cadenza, followed by the delicious slow drag. And then, at around 1:25, Louis transforms the song with his vocal obligados, in quite a high tenor voice that might surprise people only familiar with the more mature growl of his later years. He swaps licks and phrases with Johnny Dodds’ clarinet in a captivating call and response passage. Then we get an inspired piano solo from Earl Hines (not Lil), and then from around 2:30, Louis shows his mastery of the trumpet with an 8 bar solo that squeezes out long notes, plays with the meter, and finally melts away to be brought to a close by whatever it is that Zutty Singleton hits to get that dull, metallic “thcck”.

Spoiler: West End Blues

I have also made a Spotify playlist for you. SATCHMO! It has my pick of the Hot Five & Sevens, and I’ve sneaked a couple of Louis’ Big Band numbers in at the end, which is where he went next. But really it’s a drop in the ocean ofthe music he recorded, and we’ll be returning to him later in the thread, no doubt, not least for the Louis Armstrong All Stars period.

Hot Fives and Sevens on CD:

The King Louis 4 CD Proper Box set has the Hot Fives and Sevens, plus earlier recordings with King Oliver, Fletcher Henderson, Bessie Smith, and others. It has good sound reproduction, given the sound quality of the originals, and an excellent booklet. This has the pre Hot Fives & Sevens material the JSP box doesn’t have.




The Penguin Jazz Guide recommends the JSP 4 CD box, Louis Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens.



This set has even better sound quality, and great CD insets. And it includes post Fives and Sevens material the Proper box doesn’t have. (I have both).

Happy listening!

 

[Maltin]

Someone earlier posted a link to the Smithsonian Folkways which had an Armstrong album available to buy but you could download the liner notes for free that gives a bit of history about him plus, if you want, a lot of New Orleans recipes that Louis apparently loved.

http://media.smithsonianfolkways.org/liner_notes/smithsonian_folkways_special/SFS60005.pdf

 

[Maltin]

Armstrong's home in New York is a museum now and quite an interesting place to go if you like Louis Armstrong.

http://www.louisarmstronghouse.org/index.php

 

[killer b]

the jsp box is also really cheap - 15 quid for four disks of the greatest music ever recorded. get on it.

 

[danny la rouge]

Armstrong's home in New York is a museum now and quite an interesting place to go if you like Louis Armstrong.

http://www.louisarmstronghouse.org/index.php

That’s long been top of my itinerary for when I finally get round to visiting New York.