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Jazz history - all of it! The Thread

I'm interested in the use of counterpoint in early jazz. Is this something that evolved completely independently of classical music?
 
Left said:
I'm interested in the use of counterpoint in early jazz. Is this something that evolved completely independently of classical music?
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No, it's most likely a by-product of the disenfranchisement of the "Creoles of Color". New Orleans in the 19th century was a very musical city with a lot of work for classically trained musicians, and many Creoles were employed that way. However, when "Redeemer" Governor, Francis T Nicholls and those Democrats opposed to black suffrage (see White League) succeeded in reversing the post Civil War Reconstruction (see also the Colfax Massacre), eventually classically trained "Creoles of Color" found themselves reclassified as black, and thus unable to work in "legit" orchestras, because they were to be kept "Separate but Equal" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson).
 
danny la rouge said:
Choosing a starting point
The first band calling itself a jazz band to make a record was a white band. They were called the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Their first release was “Livery Stable Blues”. However, their sound is not typical of early jazz, and their music – especially this first record – was novelty music, which seems to find cheap humour in black music in a way somewhat akin to minstrelsy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrel_show ). It lacks a deep passion and understanding, and is played for laughs. (My dubiety towards the sincerity is only amplified by leader Nick LaRocca’s overt racism in his later self-promoting writing). Their records also contained little by the way of improvisation: each chorus is played much the same way as the last.

Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke were among those who rated them, and some of their tunes – such as Tiger Rag – became standards in the hands of others, but looking back I don’t hear what they heard. They have a certain charm taken on their own terms, and were hugely popular and had an enormous effect on the popularization of jazz music, but I don’t think they are representative of jazz of the time. I’m not choosing the ODJB as a starting point; they weren’t the beginning, they only got into the studio first.
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Danny set out great reasons for not including ODJB here, and I dont expect he's going to mention them much as a starting point or in any other context, so I thought Id throw in a post about them anyway as there is something interesting to talk about there - which is not to disagree with anything Danny has said above.

So here's the "first recorded jazz record " Original Dixieland Jass Band - Livery Stable Blues


I found it interesting to listen to this back to back with the Morton track Danny picked


I think that really brings into relief just how firing Morton and the band are and how the ODJBs were on the make, including throwing in joke trombone slides and such. From what I understand at this period that New Orlean sound wasn't jazzy until people like Morton started pushing the envelope and sneaking jazz elements into it - just like James Johnson added blue notes to piano rags. With ODJB it doesnt really have those elements - no blue notes and more mundane time keeping. In fact LaRocca denies any black traditions influencing their music :eek:

But there is a legacy there. First of all the timing of the record was 1917. People in the US were very much aware of WW1 and there was a mood of rebellion against the generation that allowed this to happen. Partly this expressed itself in a mood for postwar hedonism with people going dancing several times a week. According to Collier not only was there a huge demand for good time music to be played and bought on record, but ODJBs had an influence in bringing a lot of white musicians into jazz at that time. This is not to say that black musicians weren't respected or even adored - supposedly they were - but it did open the door for white musicians to get involved.

Collier says there was a colour divide in the music - white audiences wouldnt go to black neighborhoods and black audiences weren't welcome in white dancehalls, so a segregation existed. It wasnt unheard of to have 'mixed' lineups on stage though, and of course a lot of crosspolination took place. But if the first time you heard the music was on record, and those records were by white artists it wouldve been hard for many to know the roots of the music.

Of the white musicians who took influence from ODJBs Collier sites a bunch of New York musicians who often recorded as the Original Memphis Five

Again it feels a bit like a Musical number and doesnt have the swing and spontaneity of Morton's band, but they were contemporaries.

According to Collier the best of the white bands was New Orleans Rhythm Kings - a combination of New Orleans and Chicago musicians who helped shape Chicago Jazz and although not a big name in terms of sales were influential.

New_Orleans_Rhythm_Kings.gif

The New Orleans Rhythm Kings in 1922. Left to right: Leon Roppolo, Jack Pettis, Elmer Schoebel, Arnold Loyacano, Paul Mares, Frank Snyder, George Brunies.
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Again going back to Morton and the Hot Peppers - you can really hear what they had that all these guys didnt... and perhaps that missing ingredient is "jazz"
 
One last bit on this, Collier reminds that in the 20s a career as a popular musicians would be one that most white parents would have recoiled at, and that a career in jazz - with its connotations with liquor, sex and the race divide - wouldve tipped well-to-do parents over the edge. A lot of the white players got into it young (teens or a little older) and saw it as an act of rebellion. Even if the music they played was stiffer and lacked jazz inflections, Collier insists much of it had "a reckless spirit, a heedless, headlong drive [...] for it was built on a philosophy of rebellion".
 
King Oliver

This probably seems like we’ve lost chronological order, but that’s because jazz wasn’t put onto record in the right order. The recording industry was slow to catch up with jazz, so the first generation were recorded haphazardly.

Joe-King-Oliver.jpg


Innovations with mutes

Joe Oliver was the third King of New Orleans jazz, having taken the crown from Freddie Keppard. He was active on the New Orleans scene from 1908 – 1917, when he took his band north to Chicago, part of the Great Migration of Southern blacks hoping to escape poverty and racism. He was a commanding, muscular player, with a style that was bluesier than Keppard’s, and he experimented with the use of mutes to imitate the human voice. He invented the Harmon mute (later favoured by Miles Davis), although it was patented by the white owner of the club at which Oliver played in Chicago, music and sports promoter Paddy Harmon (depriving Joe and his dependents of what would have been a decent royalty stream). A bowler hat wearer, one of Oliver’s early attempts to manipulate his sound was to use his hat as a mute. When we now think of Traditional Jazz*, we think of bowler hat mutes; Joe Oliver was the originator.

Generous mentor

King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band were masters of the New Orleans ensemble polyphony, and highly influential on other musicians. Joe himself was remembered, in those early New Orleans days, as nurturing young talent. Louis Armstrong remembers that when Louis was an unknown kid blowing inexpertly on street corners, Oliver was always happy to stop and give pointers to him or anyone else he thought had a nascent talent.


2206203.jpg



Harmony improvising

In July 1922, Oliver wrote to Louis Armstrong in New Orleans, inviting him to Chicago to join the Creole Jazz Band on second cornet. What Oliver had in mind was the close harmony cornet improvising that was popular in New Orleans, but hadn’t yet been heard in Chicago. Here we can hear the sort of improvising that Jelly Roll Morton felt he had to write down for his pick-up musicians when he first left New Orleans (and, being a control-freak, kept doing even with high quality New Orleans improvisers). Although Armstrong could read and write music, this type of improvising was second nature to him and Oliver, and it caused a sensation in Chicago.

Dippermouth Blues:



Listen to the bent notes and glisses and slides, Oliver’s famous Cry Baby lick on muted trumpet, and the stop-time section for Johnny Dodds’ clarinet solo. You can hear the extended ensemble improvisation after Dodds’ spot, from about 1:08, during which we hear Armstrong's cornet without Oliver's, and Oliver’s mute use can be heard most clearly from about 1:25, especially during the chorus which cumulates in his trade-mark Laughing Lick at 1:58. This is bluesy, improvised New Orleans polyphony at its best.

Joe "King" Oliver on CD

Morton and Cook recommend King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, The Complete Set on the Retrieval imprint. They write "The Creole Jazz Band sides were the first genuinely important recordings by black musicians. [...] for a shining moment, his group expressed to us everything that jazz was about". (p14, the Penguin Jazz Guide).
 
* A note on terminology. Generally speaking, "New Orleans Jazz" means early jazz styles played by black or Creole musicians. "Dixieland Jazz" means early styles played by white musicians. "Trad Jazz" means revivalist music played by British musicians. The longer "Traditional" Jazz is a British term that covers all these. But some degree of term overlap is common.
 
If anyone disagrees with me about my choices, the reasons for my choices, the order of my choices, or if you think there are tunes that better represent the artists, feel free to chip in. As I said before, this is all up for discussion: I'm not any kind of authority on jazz, just a listener.
 
One reason you should have started with the ODJB is that the history of jazz would have been one with a future of getting better and more interesting. Jelly Roll is about as good as anything gets. That banjo is like a whirl wind. And what a rhythm section. Crumbs.
 
danny la rouge said:
Polyphony

The next thing to notice is that New Orleans polyphony. This is the vital feature of early New Orleans jazz; the ensemble improvising that went on between cornet, clarinet (here played by the great Johnny Dodds) and trombone (Eddie Vincent).

Those three instruments essentially take different parts of the chord: trombone plays the root note; cornet (or trumpet) takes the middle part of the chord, where the main melody will be voiced; and clarinet – most agile of the three – uses the highest notes to arpeggiate patterns like the cast iron filigree work of New Orleans balconies. By knowing their respective roles, they can then weave in and out of each other, improvising counterpoint and harmonies, each contributing their own individual character, and with the whole greater than the parts. That ensemble polyphony is perhaps little changed from what we think went on in Bolden’s day.
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Literally it's more than one sound at once; it's more than one melodic line. (As opposed to one melody supported by harmony, or merely unison).
 
ska invita said:
Danny set out great reasons for not including ODJB here, and I dont expect he's going to mention them much as a starting point or in any other context, so I thought Id throw in a post about them anyway as there is something interesting to talk about there - which is not to disagree with anything Danny has said above.

So here's the "first recorded jazz record " Original Dixieland Jass Band - Livery Stable Blues


I found it interesting to listen to this back to back with the Morton track Danny picked


I think that really brings into relief just how firing Morton and the band are and how the ODJBs were on the make, including throwing in joke trombone slides and such. From what I understand at this period that New Orlean sound wasn't jazzy until people like Morton started pushing the envelope and sneaking jazz elements into it - just like James Johnson added blue notes to piano rags. With ODJB it doesnt really have those elements - no blue notes and more mundane time keeping. In fact LaRocca denies any black traditions influencing their music :eek:
...

Again going back to Morton and the Hot Peppers - you can really hear what they had that all these guys didnt... and perhaps that missing ingredient is "jazz"
Click to expand...


I think this is a little unfair. Several ODJB compositions became standards - e.g. Tiger Rag, At the Jazz Band Ball to name perhaps the two strongest. it's not really fair to pit Livery Stable Blues against Black Bottom Stomp. LSB has comic elements for sure, but then so does Sidewalk Blues by Morton & RHP. It was also recorded in 1917 while BBS was recorded in 1926, an age later certainly for recording techniques if not the entire genre. No question that Morton was the legend, but the ODJB could certainly play.
 
Jazzz said:
I think this is a little unfair. Several ODJB compositions became standards - e.g. Tiger Rag, At the Jazz Band Ball to name perhaps the two strongest. it's not really fair to pit Livery Stable Blues against Black Bottom Stomp. LSB has comic elements for sure, but then so does Sidewalk Blues by Morton & RHP. It was also recorded in 1917 while BBS was recorded in 1926, an age later certainly for recording techniques if not the entire genre. No question that Morton was the legend, but the ODJB could certainly play.
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That's more like it. I was surprised there hadn't been a more spirited defence of the ODJB.

It's true that they were hugely influential, and that they played an important role in popularising jazz. But I didn't want to start my review of jazz history with them just because they managed to be recorded first. I thought that would be unfair to jazz and misguiding to readers.
 
Sidney Bechet

A child prodigy on clarinet who took up the then unusual soprano saxophone (which only really gained popularity after John Coltrane took it up in the1960s), Bechet was playing professionally in New Orleans bands before he was in his teens. He played in the Olympia Orchestra, under the leadership of Freddie Keppard, and in 1911, aged 14, joined Buddy Bolden’s former band, the Eagle Band, where he played alongside Bunk Johnson.

SidneyBechet_EarlyPRpicture.jpg


Influential clarinet innovator

Bechet really does deserve a mention alongside the early giants, first because he was a huge influence on clarinet sound in early jazz, even though he was barely a teenager when he began exerting this influence, and second because we can hear in him, along with Armstrong, the sound of the next stage in jazz.

The reason I might have swithered about including him here is that actually I think his best work comes later. However, it would just have seemed deliberately perverse not to give him a mention at this point.

“Difficult” personality

Although loved by his fans, Bechet was not universally loved as a person by other musicians. He was early to tour jazz to Europe, including to the UK in the Teens. In the late 20s he is imprisoned in France for injuring a passerby during a shootout with another musician over an argument about chord changes. Yes, really!

Bechet.gif


Wild Cat Blues

The track I have chosen is his first recording session, Wild Cat Blues, from 1923. He is the featured artist with Clarence Williams' Blue Five. Straight away you can hear that this is not ensemble playing as we have heard so far. This is a showcase for Bechet (and the band actually gives pretty average at best performance anyway). Bechet is playing soprano sax here, and he totally dominates the tune.

Next thing to notice, it isn’t actually blues (although Bechet can be very bluesy when he chooses). Wild Cat Blues doesn’t have a bluesy feel, and it doesn’t follow a blues chord structure. It’s far more raggy: it has a succession of four themes. In many of his improvisations he is simply arpeggiating the chords, but listen to his more novel break in the minor key section at around 2:18. He completely breaks away from the beat here, holding a high A note for a minim’s length, with an intense vibrato, then a little flick before accenting the fourth beat of the bar. It’s a rhythmically adventurous lick, and it cuts right through the accompaniment.




Bechet on CD:

You might want to consider The Complete American Masters 1931-1953 from Decca, a 14-CD set (which actually does include Wild Cat Blues from 1923, despite the set’s title!). However, be aware that the case is the size of a shoebox, so it won’t fit your CD shelves. It’ll cost you £28 - £30.




A cheaper option is the 1 CD Legendary Sidney Bechet, 1932-1941 from RCA Bluebird. This doesn’t have Wild Cat Blues, but does have a good selection of his notable recordings.

 
Jazzz said:
I think this is a little unfair. Several ODJB compositions became standards - e.g. Tiger Rag, At the Jazz Band Ball to name perhaps the two strongest. it's not really fair to pit Livery Stable Blues against Black Bottom Stomp. LSB has comic elements for sure, but then so does Sidewalk Blues by Morton & RHP. It was also recorded in 1917 while BBS was recorded in 1926, an age later certainly for recording techniques if not the entire genre. No question that Morton was the legend, but the ODJB could certainly play.
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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!
 
Knotted said:
I was genuinely about to say:
Sidney Bechet!! Bloomin' marvelous.

But now that sounds put on. :mad:

While I'm here, are we going to wander over to Kansas City at some point and meet Benny Moten?
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Yes, we are. Soon. We have other things to catch up with first, though!
 
Left said:
I'm interested in the use of counterpoint in early jazz. Is this something that evolved completely independently of classical music?
Click to expand...

danny la rouge said:
No, it's most likely a by-product of the disenfranchisement of the "Creoles of Color". New Orleans in the 19th century was a very musical city with a lot of work for classically trained musicians, and many Creoles were employed that way. However, when "Redeemer" Governor, Francis T Nicholls and those Democrats opposed to black suffrage (see White League) succeeded in reversing the post Civil War Reconstruction (see also the Colfax Massacre), eventually classically trained "Creoles of Color" found themselves reclassified as black, and thus unable to work in "legit" orchestras, because they were to be kept "Separate but Equal" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson).
Click to expand...

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.
 
killer b said:
i love you danny. this thread is wonderful. i listen to a lot of early jazz anyway, but it's so good to have some context. :cool:
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Agreed. I like a little bit of jazz, not a huge fan or have any knowledge of it... but this is one of those threads I like to keep an eye on and just read rather than contribute.
 
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