Chapter 1 Jazz in Its Beginnings Jazz is a rich musical language that claims its origins from many diverse circumstances. This diversity is certainly one of jazz's strengths, but it does make an exact account of its start complex. We are sure that jazz is a mixture of cultural traditions from Africa and the essentially European New World and that the slave trade brought these cultures into conflict. The movement of slaves from Africa along what is known as the Dark Passage was driven by profit and a need for cheap labor in the New World. Portugal bought slaves in Senegal and shipped them to Brazil, Britain enslaved the Ashanti tribes of the Gold Coast for sale in North America and Jamaica. the French bought slaves directly irom the rulers of Dahomey and sold them to Haiti and the French colony of Louisiana, and similarly as to the Spanish and the other slavers. The flow of slaves to the West Indies was further enhanced by the notion that the slaves seemed to “do better” when acclimated in the Caribbean first. The Slave Trade © 2014 spisit of America. Used under license from Shutterstock, Inc. Depiction of African Slaves The heinous brutality of the slave trade, regardless of how the slaves were acquired, had as much to do with the cultural destruction of these individuals as the inflicted physical suffering. Indeed, the Dark Passage is called such because the conditions were so bad on the slave ships that over 30% of the slaves died during the voyage and were unceremoniously dumped overboard. But consider the fact that the paradigm in most tribal groups in Africa at that time held that the society was anchored by two people: the Shaman and the Griot. The Shaman was most often the head of tribal affairs and was the spiritual connection as well. The Shaman also provided medical care and held the important knowledge of which herbs and plants provided which benefits The Griot had a similarly important function. The concept of a written history, for that matter, a written language, was not shared by many Africans. Though there was certainly contact through trade to Egypt and other North African groups with a long history of writing, very few of the Africans took on this method of archiving information. They used instead a very efficient method of memorizing large amounts of data by setting stories to music, and constantly revisiting the materials. The Griot functioned as the repository of all these stories and also as the master musician, leading the songs and performances. The information archived in these songs was monumental. They covered everything from very practical information about how to smoke out the bees before trying to gather their honey to long genealogical lineages ‘When one adds to the equation the fact that the Shaman and Griot passed on their vital knowledge via the apprenticeship model, the cultural disaster of the slave trade starts to come into better focus. Since the slavers enslaved only the young and strong, the centuries of cultural knowledge held by the Shaman and Griot were lost immediately. If the group taken as slaves were extremely lucky, one of the apprentices might be taken as well, but even then, they had only a one in two chance of surviving the journey. The concept of cultural disassembly is key in understanding the story of jazz. The idea that a group of people removed from their culture loses a certain amount of that cultural integrity over time and that any generation bom into the new circumstance suffers significantly more loss is well documented throughout history. The actual degree of loss often depends on the situation the group finds themselves in. For instance, many of the slaves taken to the West Indies were allowed great latitude in recreating some of their cultural heritage, whereas slaves taken directly to the North American colonies were forbidden any African edifice. The corollary to cultural disassembly is cultural reassembly. This is the process whereby a group that has an incomplete culture starts to replace the lost cultural items with new, ofien borrowed, items. In the case of language, depending on where the slaves might have ended up, they might start to replace missing parts of their language with words borrowed from Spanish or perhaps English. This reconstituted language would then be spoken and understood by only those who were part of the process. This concept ofa private language resonates deeply in the history of jazz. In many ways, jazz is a private musical language that one must know intimately to speak and that language is constantly changing and morphing as musicians experiment and other musicians either imitate. thus perpetuating the gesture. or discard. This is why jazz musicians in Chicago might approach playing a blues differently than musicians in North California. Even wide distribution of recordings and the Internet haven't changed the fundamental communication of musicians plaving together in real time and deciding what is keepable and what is not. African Music Making What we do know of the African music making that underwent the disassembly/reassembly process is limited. The slave trade was not such that a number of musical scholars rushed to archive the pre-European treasures before they disappeared. However, some things are clear. Music making in Africa involved everyone, unlike the European idea that society is divided into musicians and nonmusicians. Since the music contained memory triggers for all sorts of different information, the music making was almost constant. Though there were many regional differences, in general, the music relied heavily on drums and voices for the core of its sound and featured improvisation and call and response in its structure. Dance and body movements were also integrated into the performance The music also featured many polyrhythms. This meant that the music would have upward of 20 different rhythms all being performed the same time. This intense rhythmic activity gave a tremendous amount of energy to the music and certainly jazz has benefited from this concept. “Blue” notes were also a part of the African concept. Unlike the European concept, African musicians would bend and shape the pitch of each note as they saw fit in order to give it personal meaning and emotion. Much like their languages, the changing inflection of each note gave it new meaning. Similarly, each time they sang even a familiar tune, the changing inflection could, in a very subtle way, make it seem like a new composition. Jazz also does this—taking the familiar and often played tunes and making them seem new every night. Slavery in the States When the slaves from the West Indies started to be sold in large numbers in New Orleans, they were spread out in a large farming belt fanning east and west from Louisiana often referred to as the Mississippi delta. This territory reached from North Florida across to North Texas. The slave owners here had many more control issues than those in the islands. The possibility of runaway slaves was much greater where the supply of fresh water was plentifial and the slaves soon found out that if they could get north, they would be free. The owners tried to teach the slaves the languaze they spoke in order to better control the slaves. However. they were not professional educators and precious few bocks were available as texts, and the teaching was at best an uphill battle. These owners also felt compelled to try and teach Christianity to the slaves, unlike the slave masters in the islands, who in general, left the slaves to their own devices in spiritual matters. Since the Bible was often the only book on some of these farms, the two needs combined. Since many of the Africans did not hold a concept of the written word, both the language lessons and the religious conversions were most likely difficult. But an accessory to the religious teaching was the singing of hymns, and since the Africans had a strong concept of important stories set to music, information started to transfer through the hymns It is at this point that we get one of our first glimpses of music in slave culture. There are diary references to the slaves singing these hymns “very badly” or “roughly.” What was most likely happening was that the slaves were inserting such things as blue notes and extra rhythms into the hymns in order to make them more beautiful. This different interpretation of the European hymns was the start of a musical practice called Spiritual singing or Black Spirituals. Later on, at the start of the twentieth century, singers in the Black church in the south started to open their Bibles to the gospels and, often improvising, sing passages directly from the Bible. This was the start of what we now call Gospel singing. Similarly, the Africans started to try and complete their disassembled language, and by using words borrowed from English, Spanish, and French, started to put together a complete patois that became in time a private language called Black dialect or slave dialect. It was spoken and understood by only the slaves and the few who worked closely with them. The advantage to this was that this allowed the slaves to have private conversations about things the owners certainly would not have wanted them discussing. By 1820, other ideas started to be part of the slave's reassembly process. The use of western instruments by slaves starts to be documented via the runaway slave ads found in the pre-Civil War southern newspapers. A typical ad for a runaway slave would include such identifiers as certain scars and often what property they took when they left. Phrases such as “has my fiddle and plays tolerably well upon it when drunk” and “stole my french horn - want slave and horn back” are testament to the slaves not only learning to play westem instruments, but caring enough about them as to take them on the long journey to freedom. Work Songs and Field Cries also show the mixture of African and Western music. The slaves sang songs while they worked in the fields, which in itself is not unusual. Most repetitive work soon generates songs, regardless of who is doing the work. And the overseers did encourage the slaves to sing as an additional security measure (ie. if the singing stopped, something was happening). However, undoubtedly, most of the songs were sung in black dialect and therefore, the rhythms and inflections of their speech gave the singing a strong emotional content. Further, since the slaves still had a strong tradition of archiving information via music, some of the work songs started to recreate this tradition and become new archives. Similarly, at various times, certain slaves were sent out to the fields to lead the work songs and they started to become, in effect, replacement griots. If the slave owners had had any concept of what information the songs in the field were disseminating and archiving. they would certainly have stopped the singing. But since they were sung in virally private language, not much notice was given the music and it continued 10 grow as a rich source of folk tradition in the slave culture. Inboth the work songs and the spirituals, a melodic patterning can be seen. Research by jazz educators Dr. Alfred Pinkston and Professor Melton Mustafa at Florida Memorial College has shown the clear correlation between the African use of the pentatonic scale and the persistence of that scale throughout the A irican—American tradition. The pentatonic scale is a division of the octave into five tones (Fig. 1.1), as opposed to the westem world’s reliance on a division of seven tones, also known as the major scale (Fig 12) Though variations of the basic pentatonic scale were and are used, this basic melodic device, when coupled with all the possibilities brought by the use of blue notes to inflect each note choice, opens up a wealth of potemtial melodies. Figure 1.1: The major pentatonic scale Figure 1.2: The major scale ———— = ee 1 One of the most important of the Affican concepts began to reemerge in the slave culture is that of accumulation. The westem concept of intellectual ownership is not necessarily shared by other cultures. The concept of taking an item from someone or a group of people, using part of it to make a personalized item, and then discarding the rest can be applied to almost anything from an actual object fo an idea or even a piece of music. In the western mode, this is plagiarism and is not acceptable, but in the African sense, is not only logical, but could be construed as an honor. What more a compliment could be paid someone than to use and reuse part of their thinking? This concept resonates throughout jazz and other music, and dovetails nicely with the concept of the oral archival tradition previously discussed. The Rural Blues These concepts continued to ferment throughout the Civil War and by the Reconstructionist era, a new expression of them appeared. As freed slaves in the south made that transition, a small window opened up for musicians in that culture. Friday and Saturday nights started to hold the opportunity for some sort of get together and often simple house parties with amateur musicians became a sort of rural nightclub. Soon, a number of fairly nomadic professional musicians from the black community started to entertain at these casual parties. They played a mixture of new compositions, as well as borrowed spirituals, work songs, popular songs of the day. all adapted by their performers for purpose of entertainment. They played guitars of various types, and since they were mostly self-taught, developed idiosyncratic tunings for their instruments different from the standard guitar tunings. These “open tunings” facilitated their song writing and ofien were based on the pentatonic scale. This was the start of what we now know as the rural blues or country blues. This distinction is important as later on, the rural blues influenced the start of jazz, as well as evolving on its own. The important thing to remember here is that the rural blnes kept much of the overall flow and feel of the work songs and the spirituals and accumulated it into a new format Later on, jazz took some of its cues from that way of singing and playing with so much emotion and energy in every bar of music. Jefferson Blind Lemon Many of the rural blues musicians traveled constantly throughout the Mississippi delta region, often sharing their songs with other musicians during long train rides as hobos and also in various prisons such as Parchman Farm where they often ended up for short stays. This sharing accelerated the growth of the music. By the time, the rural blues were first started to be recorded in the late 1910s, the music had no doubt changed from its early days, but we do get a glimpse backward of what it must have sounded like. Musicians such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Huddie Leadbetter (better known as Leadbelly), Robert Johnson, and many others have left us some remarkable snapshots of this early form of the biues. Another form of music making in the time leading up to the start of jazz was the minstrel show. Originally put on by whites “blacked up” as blacks, this highly ritualized form of entertainment was widespread and featured the cakewalk and other borrowed parts of slave culture. Though racially demeaning, this form of popular culture was seen and heard everywhere and produced the first substantial body of songs that everyone recognized, regardless of their geographic location. Later on. the farce was increased by blacks “blacking up” as themselves, but keeping that somewhat obscene texture of the ridiculously black face makeup with the big white lips that was standard for the minstrel shows. These shows caused America to start to view blacks in a stereotypical manner, involving slurred southern speech and banjo playing. The many songs written for this entertainment form also echoed these stereotypical images. Curiously, the name for the Jim Crow laws restricting blacks in the Reconstructionist era came from a minstrel song. Though minstrelry continued well into the new century, it was fortunately eclipsed by other popular entertainments and faded by the start of the 1920s. A\ll of these early musical endeavors set the stage for jazz. The further accumulation of such things as American popular music and the sound of the small brass bands added to the mixture and by 1910, started to bubble over into a new unique music that survived and flourished in its new surroundings, For Further Research: Important Musicians Blind Lemon Jefferson Robert Johnson Huddie Leadbetter Alan Lomax Suggested Reading Black Music of Two Worlds by John Storm Roberts (Praeger, 1972) Suggested Listening Adventures in Afropea—Zap Mama (Luka Bop, 1992) African Journey: A Search for the Roots of the Blues— (Folkways Records FA2202) Music of the Rainforest Pygmies—Colin Tumbull (Lyrichord Records LRYCD7157)Chapter 2 Early Jazz and New Orleans Styles With as much research into the birth of jazz as has now been done, one would expect an exact account of such an important event could be given. However, jazz was at best an informal music when it started, and like most fads, most likely would have faded within a short time. Jazz survived this to become a pervasive language on the musical landscape, but because it was so casual, much of its origins are hazy. ‘We can say for certain that some form of early jazz was found by the 1910s in places such as New Orleans and Kansas City and that the practice of group improvisations involving materials and instruments borrowed from the rural blues, spirituals, and American popular music including Ragtime and brass bands were part of this new music. New Orleans was an important port city connecting the West Indies with the Mississippi river and the flow of goods transferring from sailing ships to river barges also brought many sailors and international visitors who, after long months on a ship, were eager to find good food and entertainment of many sorts, Although other places have been suggested as the birthplace of jazz, New Orleans not only had the tremendously robust economy and subsequent party life, but also had the tremendous cultural diversity other possibilities lacked. This diversity included a group called the Creoles. The Creoles were French speaking and very sophisticated in their outlook, though they were from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Their mixed heritage was owed partly to the continued operation of many “houses of pleasure” in and about New Orleans and the area by Lake Ponchetrain called Millenburg. There were establishments that catered to all levels of society and offered not only the services of a “lady of the evening,” but often gambling and food as well. The resultant children of such were raised with an eve to education, and some of the first music educators in New Orleans were from the Creole community The Creoles valued music highly such that, by 1880s, they had their own opera house and orchestra hall. In the Reconstructionist era, the Creoles, being people of color, lost their standing in the community and were forced to forego some of their landholdings inside the French Quarter and move into neighborhoods already populated by the freed slaves. Though this did cause some friction. it also brought the cultures closer together and the westem concepts of music education as well as the techniques of playing such western instruments as the clarinet started to be shared. The rhythms and melodies found in spirituals and the rural blues started to transfer to the Creole musicians as well, and some of the earliest musicians plaving some form of jazz in New Orleans were Creole such as the great ragtime pianist, Ferdinand “Jellyroll” Morton. This was also the start of the area known as Storyville after the city alderman Sidney Story, who crafted the legislation relocating the Creoles to the area bearing his name Ragtime One of the components of jazz is a music known as ragtime. Its roots are found in parodies the slaves made of the European dances they had seen performed by the slave owners at parties, and ofien featured the accompaniment of fiddles and banjos playing syncopations or staggered rhythms to match the dancers’ exaggerated motions. A Cakewalk was a common feature at these gatherings, and couples would dance in a circle or “walkaround” and the most interesting couples efforts would be rewarded, often with a cake. These cakewalks (imitations in themselves!) were imitated by the white population, and by the 1890s, the entire country was dancing some form of the Cakewalk. These syncopations were incorporated ina music performed usually at the solo piano and played in many sporting houses in New Orleans and other places. The term “ragtime” has been attributed to the use of these “ragged” chythms, and also to the white flag (or “rag”) that was flown in front of various, establishments advertising that music and dancing was to be had that night. Ragtime was a music that also was published. It was often notated in the traditional European manner and put out as a portfolio so that people might buy it and learn to play it at home. This music was also made popular by the invasion of the mechanical Player Pianos at the turn of the century, as it relied on ragtime’s bounce to demonstrate the wonders of this new automaton. The ragtime composers such as Scott Joplin and “Jellyroll” Morton used very European structural devices in their compositions. Forms such as (AA BB CC DD) were common to both western military band compositions and ragtime. Even when ragtime started to be performed by ensembles such as Morton's own Red Hot Peppers, it kept that tight formal structure as an important feature of the music. When the highly improvised behavior called jazz started, some of these concepts of syncopation and European form were definitely accumulated into the new music. The Start of Jazz In addition to the music heard in and around New Orleans, American Popular song played a part in the birth of jazz. When jazz started. it borrowed from many musical sources and songs such as Stephen Fosters “Suwannee River” and others were parodied by the early jazz players. © 2014 Lori Monshan Borden. Used under license from Shutterstock, Inc Marching Band, Mardi Gras, New Orleans Before jazz, the parade bands in New Orleans were relied on for much of the city’s entertainment. Playing both indoors and outdoors, they embodied the bustling motion and spirit of the city and could be found everywhere in the town by 1990. They were part of a then national craze for the brass band, usually made up of amateur musicians. In New Orleans, the high demand for their services, both at parties and funerals led to a number of professional bands being established. One of the first musicians in New Orleans documented as playing some form of jazz improvisation in a parade band setting was cometist Buddy Bolden, wio led his own ensemble. Later on, when jazz-like behavior started in eamest, the frontline borrowed from the parade band became an earmark of early jazz. lending the cornet, clarinet, and trombone to the effort Tt can be said then. that jazz came together in a very informal way. most likely in New Orleans from + Black Spirituals and Gospel Singing + Rural Blues + Ragtime + American Popular Song + New Orleans Brass Bands. The exact place and time jazz started is impossible to note, but most likely it happened in New Orleans, probably down in Storyville or nearby. Informal groups of musicians. many from the parade bands. gathered around a piano started improvising on commonly known songs and won the approval of other listeners and tried it again and again with this encouragement egging them on. They fell into a pattem of performance that suited them, a kind of group improvisation on the melody of a tune, followed by individual solos that followed the form of the song, followed by a reprise of the melody statements from the beginning. This formel structure of (ABA) or (melody - solos - melody) is still used in most jaz performance today. These early performance practices extended to the role of each instrument. With some variation, the comet would play the melody, the clarinet would play a number of runs and arpeggios complementing the melody, and the trombone would play a series of counter lines, featuring large glissandos or rips. The rhythm section, usually piano and/or banjo, tuba or string bass, and drums, would provide an accompaniment accenting the first and third beats in each bar © 2014 9928548109. Used under License from Shutterstock, Inc. ‘Street Band in New Orleans Early jazz was played both indoors and out and always with a passion for living. Its early stars were often comet players. Buddy Bolden, Manuel Perez, “Bones” Johnson and eventually Joe Oliver became the first known jazz artists in the community. New Orleans added to the new jazz tradition by informally electing a cornet player “King” of New Orleans. Jam sessions are where musicians get together to play for the fun of it and sometimes these sessions tum aggressive. “Cutting” sessions are where jam sessions degenerate into contests of skill and showmanship. Ar these sessions, the unofficial “king” of the New Orleans players was chosen. Joe “King” Oliver was the last of the comnetists chosen for this honor Joe Oliver and Louis Armstrong In the lineage of cornet kings, Joe Oliver was the most successful. His strong musical abilities were well documented by some of the very first recordings of a black jazz group made in 1923 and he indeed was the “king” of the New Orleans scene. As a cometist and a bandleader, he brought together some of the best musicians in the city. Oliver. along with Johnny Dodds (clarinet) and Honore Dutrey (trombone), codified the interlocking frontline improvisations that were the signature of the early New Orleans style. Oliver was also one of the first to travel north to explore the scene in Chicago and New York before the close of Storyville by the Navy in 1917 and became part of the pipeline for many New Orleans musicians moving north in the 1920s. Ultimately his best band, called the Creole Jazz Band, combined the talents of the above, as well as pianist Lil Hardin, drummer Warren “Baby” Dodds, and a young coretist Louis Armstrong. The two had met and performed together in New Orleans, but it was when Oliver asscmbled the band in Chicago at « steady gig at the Lincoln Gardens that things really started to happen musically. The two corncts would weave together in an intricate dance of improvisation and at various points, the rest of the band would drop out for two bars, leaving the two homs to exploit the temporary freedom. Armstrong and his by then wife. Lil. eventually left that group to strike out on their own. and the others soon followed suit, but for that time, the Creole Jazz Band was the model for all of Chicago jazz Also from New Orleans, Sidney Bechet, originally a clarinetist, helped bring a recently invented instrument into the jazz vocabulary of New Orleans—the saxophone. Saxophones didn’t really take hold in jazz until later in the 1920s, making Bechet a real forerunner of the saxophone’s eventually dominant role in jazz. By the time the Swing era had started, the saxophone in a variety of sizes had filled out the band as much due to their volume being more equal to that of the trumpets and trombones as anything else. ‘© Richard Cummins CORBIS Outside a Bourbon Street Pub Because of the motion of commerce, jazz-like behavior traveled quickly via the Mississippi river as well as the general restlessness of many musicians. It started mixing with scenes in wide-open places such as Kansas City and East St. Louis, where the local musicians had been putting their own brand of improvised music together. Kansas City had a strong tradition of the blues and jazz there took on the deep flavor of the blues. Similar things happened in other cities, and jazz started to evolve. There were documented visits by cometist Freddie Keppard to Los Angeles in 1914 and Coney Island in New York in 1915 as well as “Jellyroll” Morton’s trips to New York in the mid-1910s. Early on, Kid Ory also visited Los Angeles before Louis Armstrong in Chicago and wherever the party went, so went jazz. For Further Research: Important Musicians Lil Hardin Ammstrong Louis Armstrong Sidney Bechet Buddy Bolden Scott Joplin Ferdinand “Jellyroll” Morton Kid Ory Suggested Reading Early Jazz by Gunther Schuller (Oxford University Press, 1968) Scott Joplin: King of Ragtime by Edward A. Berlin (Oxford University Press, 1994)Chapter 3 Jazz in the 1920s In 1917, Storyville was briefly closed and the migration north for jazz musicians was now a certainty. In 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act prohibiting the sale and use of any alcohol and in the year before, Joe Oliver moved to Chicago. Many other New Orleans musicians saw the writing on the wall and started to look for work up north and the scene started to shift toward Chicago. Many of the gangsters involved with the acquisition and sale of the now illegal substance had business interests in Chicago and jazz followed the party. The Emergence of Boogie-Woogie and Stride Some of the pianists wandered toward New York, particularly to an area in Harlem called San Juan Hill. This section of New York became a cultural mecca for African-American artists of all sorts, due in part to the ready availability of cheap housing. Soon, San Juan Hill became host to what is now known as the Black Renaissance. Painters, playwrights, poets, dancers, actors, and especially musicians started to explore their cultural roots and possibilities, producing amazing results. In the middle of this, a jazz style based in the solo piano traditions from New Orleans started to emerge. Called by the French phrase, Boogie- Woogie, it featured all the hustle and energy of the New York streets as well as the sounds of jazz and ragtime. ‘The main features of this style are the bass line and the “shakes” or tremolos performed with the right hand. The bass line is performed nonstop with the pianist’s left hand. This is sometimes called an “ostinato” bass line. The pianist then uses the right hand to play rhythmic placed chords as well as solos. making this a very athletic music. Some of the great boogie woogie players were Meade Lux Lewis, James P. Johnson, and early in his carcer, Thomas “Fats” Waller. Many in the arts community of San Juan Hill on the 1920s were living on the financial edge, as is most always the case with artists everywhere. Sometimes, the following their muse caused them to come up just a little short at the end of the month, and in order to get the money to pay the rent, they would often throw rent parties. These gatherings would involve literally rolling back the rug in someone's apartment, wheeling in a piano from somewhere, and hiring one of the boogie-woogie players to entertain. A hat would be put by the door, and by word of mouth as well as the occasional opened window, people would spill in for the fun. They would drop a little change or whatever they could spare in the hat and by the end of the party. the rest of the rent would most often be there. ‘These parties often became a cutting session for the pianists as well. If one particularly good pianist was scheduled to play at one of these get- togethers, the word of mouth grapevine among the musicians would soon broadcast it, and other pianists trying to make their mark would make it a point to stop by the party and try fo one-up the resident pianist. To the delight of the partygoers, this provided not only nonstop music, but often spurred the attending pianist to new heights of outrageous playing in order to prove his status was not false. Toward the end of the 1920s, boogie-woogie started to evolve, and an even more virtuosic style emerged called Stride piano. This new development had the pianist using their left hands to jump back and forth playing a fast bass line and grab chords in the middle of the keyboard. All the while, the pianist would be soloing wildly with his right hand. The acknowledged master of this was Art Tatum. Tatum was classically trained and brilliant at playing classical music, but as an African-American, was denied the opportunity to perform such music, and tuned instead, to making a living playing boogie-woogie in the clubs in Harlem, He eventually took all his classical technique and transferred it over to the improvised music he played and the result was phenomenal. His performances amazed everyone. and very few pianists ever tried to imitate him. Art Tatum performed mostly solo, as his thoughts ran too quickly for most sidemen to follow. Drummer Louie Bellson remembers that on several occasions, Tatum would be scheduled to record with 2 small group. One of the best bassists in New York would be hired to play the session and Tatum would invariably end up sending him home as he found it easier to play the bass lines himself, rather than rely on the bassist to catch on to his fast moving style. Even the great twentieth century composer, Igor Stravinsky. on his first trip to New York, insisted on being taken to see Tatum play. even before going to his hotel. The Swide style continued into the present day in the hands of the great Canadian pianist, Oscar Peterson and Jamaican pianist. Monty Alexander. Many of the New Orleans musicians tried to get to Chicago to find employment and along the way, jazz visited other places including the a great scene in Kansas City. Great pianists such as Jay Me Shann, William Basie (later to lead the Count Basie Band), and Mary Lou Wiliams were the core of a group of jazz musicians in this 24 hour a day town. Many of these musicians later had a great influence on the Swing era as well as post World War Il jazz. Louis Armstrong in Chicago Federal Agents with Seized Still In Chicago, the gangsters controlling the then booming business of the sale of illegal alcohol acquired an interest in jazz. This was more so because the music was lively and fit in well with their clientele at the illegal clubs called speakeasies than it was out of a te love for jazz. These clubs not only were outlets for the gangster’s products, but many had available gambling (via races called in by telegraph) and other pursuits. Various musicians did become quite loyal to the gangsters who employed them and logically so—it would not have been a good idea to anger such by jumping ship to another rival speakeasy. By 1922, a young Louis Armstrong had joined “King” Oliver in a long running engagement at the Lincoln Gardens in Chicago. There, his countless hours of practice as well as his natural abilities started to really come together. His switch to trumpet gave him a huge upper register and he started to play high notes that amazed all the trumpet and comet players, jazz, or otherwise. He married the pianist of the group, Lil Hardin, who wrote some of his first hits, though only recently are historians uncovering all her compositions. At that point in time, many women composers used male pseudonyms in order to get things recorded or published. Her tune called Strumin’ with Some Barbecue is still a classic associated with Lovis Armstrong, In 1924, Armstrong did leave the Oliver band and became part of the New York Scene for a while, working there in the band of Fletcher Henderson, carly on an important arranger and bandleader. While with the Henderson band, Louis had the chance to work with some of the nation’s best including singers, Bessie Smith, the “Emperess” of the blues and Ma Rainey. Back in Chicago in 1925, he started to perform and even more importantly, record under his own name. The importance of the recording industry blossoming at the same time jazz was undergoing major growth cannot be emphasized enough. With the advent of the flat disk 78-rpm records and the trickle down of technology allowing most everyone to own or have access to 2 Victrola, music of all kinds was now free to travel way outside its locale. Before commercials recording. it was necessary to travel to where the music was to hear it and even then, there was no permanent record of the event for further relistening or study. Once records started to flow, you could live anywhere and hear jazz and other music and with repeated listening, one could start to absorb the style and musicians who were nowhere near jazz (such as in Paris) started to learn to play it via record. © 2014 spline x Used under license from Shutterstock. Ine. ‘Vintage Gramophone Many of the eatly recordings of jazz were awful 3-minute excursions into commercial folly, replete with racially stereotypical images and even plantation references. They were also quite inaccurate as to the performance of jazz in that actual jazz compositions of the time were played in such a way as to provide a lot of room for various soles, and the 3-minute physical time limit of the 78-rpm record left no room for extra soles and riffs Many of the recordings featuring some form of jazz were called race records and were an early attempt at demographic marketing by the record companies. Coincidentally, the companies soon found that many of the race records were being actively sought cut aad bought by a young white audience as well, and in the 1930s moved such artists as Louis Armstrong over to their mainstream labels. Louis’ first recordings for OKEH records in 1925 featured his working band recording under the name of Louis Armsirong’s Hot Fives and Hot Sevens. Not only are these important recordings from the standpoint of his playing being shared with so many, but also from the standpoint that because of these recordings, the basic paradigm of jazz started to shift. In its original conception, the heads were all played by the ensemble of horns, improvising their parts at first. and later being somewhat orchestrated, such as in the Fletcher Henderson band. On the Armstrong recordings. jazz took on more of a soloistic feel and this new way of approaching the music also was popularized through Louis’ great appeal. Louis also connected in Chicago with the great pianist Earl “Father” Hines and started to play some lines that were more pianistic than trumpet like because of his love for Hines’ playing. Louis Armstrong (“Pops”), was certainly jazz's first big star, and throughout his long career, continued to be one of jazz’s most elegant spokespersons. Amnstrong’s influence was felt in many comers of the music business and even the huge society orchestras of the day were forced into playing a small percentage of jazz due to its nascent popularity. During the 1920s, the very wealthy vied with each other as to who could throw the most lavish party, and this often included one-upping the neighbors with larger and larger bands playing at their functions. Bands such as the Paul Whiteman Orchestra grew to over 100 members and featured full string sections as well as horns. multiple percussionists. and two white grand pianos. These grand ensembles soon started to feature a small nurber of jazz players in their ranks and ringers such as Bix Biederbecke and Frankie Traumbauer started to take hot jazz solos in the mostly commercial music played by these bands. Bix Biederbecke and the Chicago Style As jazz became better known it would be inevitable that a number of white musicians with more classical training would “fall out” over jazz and start to play it. Some made the pilgrimage to Lincoln Gardens to try and hang out with Louis Armstrong and indeed, he made them as welcome as possible. In Chicago, a group called the “Austin High Gang” started to experiment with playing real jazz, and this is often the start of what is called Chicago Style jazz. Their version of jazz was a little stiffer and had more tension than the New Orleans style and also tended to sound (because it was, in fact) rehearsed. Also, the shift from banjo to guitar happened in these bands, and the string bass totally replaced the tuba. The tenor saxophone really came into focus at this point, being added to the standard frontline of homs and changing the texture of the music as well Pee Wee Russell, Dave Tough. Gene Krupa, and Eddie Condon joined forces with the likes of Bix, Muggsy Spanier, and Bunny Berrigan to popularize and record this new style. It's important to note that while the Original Dixieland Jaz Band (part of the Chicago style groups) incorrectly stated that they had no influence at all from African—American musicians, other groups such as the New Orleans Rhythm Kings went out of their way to give credit to the musicians they were copying such as Joe Oliver and Louis Armstrong. Of all the eccentric members of Chicago's new inner circle, several stand out. Two clarinetists went divergent ways, but shared the same background. Benny Goodman wert on to form one of the most important bands of the Swing era, and Mezz Morrow went on to be the first white dope dealer in Harlem. Both were great clarinetists and Mezz even became an author. writing what is now a jazz classic. Really the Blues which contains an absolute compendium of jazz in the 1920s and 1930s, hipster language, and a real insight into his longtime friend, Louis Armstrong. Another facet of the Chicago style was explored by cometist Bix Biederbecke. One of the few jazz players who did not make the switch to trumpet from the comet, Bix had a softer, sweeter style that owed as much as to contemporary classical composers such as Debussy to popular jazz players. Bix’s classic composition, In A Mist, very much foreshadows the Cool jazz styles of the 1950s. Bix passed away at the age of 28, becoming almost an underground figure among jazz aficionados. Bix is also a great example of how jazz doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Most jazz figures overlap the style periods they represent, both as a newcomer to the music, and often after they have made their mark. This elision is constantly going on and many times, in the jazz world, who you've worked with is more important than your personal credentials. When you consider the African concept of accumulating oral history, one could lock at this lineage issue as a continuation of that. In the case of Bix, while playing in the Paul Whiteman orchestra, violinist Joe Venuti was hired to be Bix’s caretaker. Bix’s personal life had fallen apart, but Whiteman wanted to keep him in the band, so Joe was responsible for sobering him up, getting him in a clean tux, and getting him to the gig on time. After a while, Joe and Bix became friends and Joe was introduced to the world of jazz, Bix played outside the Whiteman band. When Bix passed, Joe quit the Whiteman gig, and started playing jazz on his own, becoming one of the first real jazz violinists. Many times, contact with great musicians, especially working with them, has a deep influence on a musician's growth and musical choices. © Lonis Anmstrong (1900-71) (brw photo), American Photographer, (20th century) Private Collection Peter Newark American Pictures/The Bridgeman Art Library Louis Armstrong In the case of Louis Armstrong, many such cross influences existed; Fletcher Henderson and Earl Hines are two examples of this. But Louis Armstrong's career lasted until 1971, which meant the number of musicians and jazz influenced by him was tremendous. Even though he stayed with that early New Orleans style with very few exceptions, he made an elision with jazz all the way up to Miles Davis’ experiments with electronic instruments in 1967. In is very convenient to think of jazz artists as only belonging to a single time period, but it really does them a disservice. This elision factor is the way jazz really grew—this musician working for 2 while with that musician and then taking (accumulating) some of the things from that gig to the next group they play with and the process starting over and over again in that musician's life alone. Multiply that by all the great musicians playing out there over the more than 100 years of jazz and yon start to get an idea of how jazz grew so quickly and wonderfully. Ifjazz had had to stop and write it all down and analyze every move, hardly anything would have happened; instead, jazz is alive and well and moving still at an incredible speed. In the late 1920s, jazz was restless again. With the shift in entertainment moving toward the radio as well as the phonograph, and the incipient economic downturn, the musicians started to focus on New York as the place to be. Work, cheap housing, and a city that stayed up all night had much appeal and by 1930, New York became the stomping grounds of many of jazz’s finest musicians. For Further Research: Important Musicians Lil Hardin Armstrong Louis Armstrong Sidney Bechet Bix Biederbecke Buddy Bolden “Baby” Dodds Mezz Morrow Joe Oliver Frank Traumbauer Suggested Reading Early Jazz by Gunther Schuller (Oxford University Press, 1968) Reaily the Blues by Mezz Morrow Random House, 1946; Anchor, 1972; Citadel, 1990) Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans by Louis Armstrong Prentice Hall, 1964; Da Capo, 1986) Suggested Listening Piano Solos—Fats Waller (1929-1941) (Bluebird Records AXK2-6618) Piano Starts Here—Art Tatum (CBS CK9655E) Louis Amstrong Story, Volumes 1-4 (CBS CL851, -52, -53, and -54)Chapter 4 The Swing Era: (1930-1945) The Swing era is a period in jazz history that is demarcated by endless contradictions. The music itself grew tremendously during this period, and yet faced the serious challenge of the tremendous commercialization of jazz holding it back. Also during this period, the bandleaders and arrangers started to limit the amount of improvisation onstage. The great bandleader and arranger Fletcher Henderson reportedly said that he felt soloists for the most part were “better off out of the big band medium.” And yet, some of jazz's greatest improvisers emerged during this era, and became well known for their individualistic styles. During the Big Band era, segregation plaved out in many aspects of the musician's lives. Many of the clubs they plaved at were segregated by law and the musicians could not appear onstage with a racially mixed ensemble. Touring the south became so difficult for black performers that some of the bandleaders went to great effort to avoid the constant harassment. Duke Ellington and Cab Callow even experimented with renting sets of railroad cars for the musicians to live in to try and solve some of the problems associated with the segregation of hotels and restaurants. Yet in the freewheeling after-hours clubs where musicians got together for nightly jam sessions, musicians mixed freely and produced an amazing consensus of what swing music really was about and just how to go about playing it Adding to the chaos. at the height of the swing period, there were tens of thousands of big band musicians, touring the country like madmen. In the shatiered economy of the 1930s, most musicians were willing to work for next to nothing and would go out on the road at the drop of a hat. If the economy had not been such a disaster, many would have simply stayed home. These often exhausting tours brought live jazz to many people outside the Northeastern mainstream and further fueled the dance mania that propelled the Swing era ‘The Swing or Big Band era was a period when jazz became the biggest popular music for the entire nation. It even had various regional varieties In the Southwest, there was a version of swing called Wester Swing, wherein big bands such as Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys added ten gallon hats and bolo ties to their tuxes. and played their jazz with the addition of fiddles (violins) and steel guitarists Swing music was most often plaved for dancers. The reasons for any dance craze are many. but in the 1930s, dancers somehow chose jazz to be their muse, creating a staggering enterprise for jazz bands of all kind. The advent of nationally broadcast radio spurred the craze and kept it for an unprecedented amount of time. All through the 1930s and 1940s, Americans of all ages and backgrounds danced to the big bands, both on radio and in person, in living rooms and ballrooms across the countries, Into the Swing Musically speaking, the passage into the Swing era did have its precedent in the bands in the 1920s playing some form of early big band music that featured bands with a solid rhythm section and an expanded hom section featuring saxes, trumpets, and trombones, with important soloists improvising over the complex textures of the arrangements. Fletcher Henderson’s band in 1925 featured a young Louis Armstrong as one example of a preswing ensemble that utilized this expanded format. McKinney's Cotton Pickers is another example of an early jazz ensemble moving in that direction during the mid-to-late 1920s a ‘Unemployed Men Outside a Depression Soup Kitchon in Chicago, February 1931 However, it was the economic meltdown of the Great Depression that opened up the possibilities of there being many of these larger ensembles simply by providing a huge pool of musicians, both amateur and professional, out of work, and willing to do whatever they could do 10 generate income to feed their families. As the bands got larger. it was the arranger’s task to come up with the written arrangements that organized the performances of the musicians involved. The earlier concept of improvising all the horn’s casemble parts was just not practical with the large number of musicians, all playing at the same time. The arrangers simply tried to bring some order to the chaos, and in the process, started to personalize the sound of the arrangements. These personalization: led to the point where a band’s sound started to be recognizable via the aural signature of the arrangers. The Sweet Bands and the Hot Bands Coming into the 1930s, there were two tracks that led to the Big Band era. On one hand, the large Society Orchestra pared down their membership. mostly due to bad economic times. The very well off that employed them were not as well off financially, and the bands were forced to downsize. Initially, the string section was the first to be made redundant. Similarly, the large percussion sections was dispensed with, leaving one drummer playing a drum set, and many of the other auxiliary members were let go. This move toward a leaner ensemble neatly dovetailed with the bands starting to employ many of the young jazz players from the late twenties just coming into their own. New stars such as trumpeters Bunny Berigan and Red Nichols, as well as clarinetist Benny Goodman, often appeared with commercial ensembles and on occasion, in films. This newfound notoriety certainly helped jazz get vet another foothold in the public awareness. In return, this brought the sounds of jazz deeper into the growing popular music scene. Later, when the Big Band era took hold, these modified commercial bands became the basis for the Sweet Bands. The other track into the Big Band era came from semi-urban areas like Kansas City, where the Blues had mixed freely with the New Orleans music. In many of these areas, the standard seven- or eight-piece ensembles started to grow in size by the start of the 1930s. It's likely that as unemployment increased, many good amateur musicians who were formerly employed during the day started to just hang out at jam sessions and the like, and just got absorbed into the scene. We do know that many of the players added tended to be hom players, and that often they weren’t the primary soloists in the ensemble, but rather, supporting players. As the bands grew. the arrangers started to take part in the organization of the music. The early arrangements they wrote tended to be more simplistic and were ofien centered around the “riff.” The riff is a short musical phrase, usually two measures long or less, that is repeated and forms a kind of musical pad for the soloists to play off of. Some of the earliest, most effective arrangements took major advantage of the riff's usefulness. Listen to Basie’s arrangement of his hit, One O°Clock Jump, and you can hear the riffs layering neatly under all the soloists. By the end of the piece, he has three riffs going at once: one in the sax section, one in the trombone section, and one in the trumpet section. This gives the piece an incredible energy and challenges the clarinet soloist to give it his all. The concept of spontaneously creating a riff to go behind soloists is still very much a part of jazz tradition today. The Riff bands were the start of the Hot Bands of the period. The Scene in New York As jaz bands started to experiment with various forms of tighter or looser organization, they started to move toward New York. New York was one of the only places during the Depression that had any economic energy at all. and became the mecca for jazz players and in many ways, still is. New York was the jumping off point for the many bus and train tours the bands did, and it was also the center of much activity in radio. Radio, at that point in time, used live musicians for everything, and some of the large radio stations (CBS for example) actually had musicians on call 24 hours a day in the studio to provide whatever music was necessary. And jazz was a part of the on-call workforce. The big music publishing houses were in Manhattan as well as many recording companies, and the combination of relatively inexpensive housing and an advanced mass transit system to get to the jobs, made New York an ideal place to be for a jazz musician. The scene in New York for the Hot Bands was centered around Harlem, particularly in and around San Juan Hill, the epicenter of the short-lived Black Renaissance. Clubs like the Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom became the stomping grounds for New York's ever-trendy crowd, and provided much opportunity for jazz players. Though these clubs were segregated, blacks could still attend, but in separate sections of the club. Areas such as the blacks-only balcony at the Cotton Club were often packed for performances by vocalist Cab Calloway or the Chick Webb Orchestra Many of the hot bands played late gigs, starting at arouad 11PM and going on uatil quite late in the evening; conversely, many sweet bands had early gigs—usvally a supper club or a dinner/dance, and finished by around 11PM Many times, the sweet band musicians would put their tuxes in a tux bag, and take the train uptown to Harlem. There, they would get a table and observe the Basic band up close, or spend hours watching Ellington's trumpet section. Because of the segregation, the two groups of musicians could not publicly interact, but after the hot band’s gigs finished, those still able would do the really late night aiter hours clubs or bottle clubs. These were clubs that had a bring your-own aleohol policy. Since they didn’t require a liquor license, there was no mandated closing time involved and many stayed open until late in the next day. This is where the musicians, black and white, went to catch a taste and play jazz together in informal jam sessions that lasted seemingly for days. This is also where the chythmic concept of the hot bands started to transfer to the sweet bands. The sweet bands, for the most part, had a real image to keep. Radio show sponsors insisted on bands sounding a certain way to represent their products and record companies also put pressure on the bands to sound conservative. When members of the sweet bands had spent a little too much time absorbing the hot sound and went to play their gig, logically, they started to play a little differently. The bandleaders would chastise them, cajole them, and even threaten in order to keep their gigs. In any discussion of the hot and the sweet bands, it needs to be said that not every band was on one side of the fence or the other. The line between sweet and hot was a continuum, with bands like Count Basie on the extreme hot side, Tommy Dorsey on the extreme sweet side, and bands like Benny Goodman and Jimmy Lunceford in the middle taking the best from both sides. Though the swing information tended to tavel from the hot bands to the sweet bands, this is not to say that the sweet band musicians were weak in any way. Many of them were great jazz players and just were in a situation that did not always allow them to express themselves in the manner they might have personally chosen. © William ‘Couat’ Basie (1904-84) (b/w photo), American Photographer, (20th century) Private Collection’ Peter Newark American Pictures The Bridgeman Art Library William ‘Count’ Basie This is evident in some of the small group recordings made during this period. Many of the bands also carried a small ensemble made up of members of the big band. and often they would play the intermissions on the dance gigs and sometimes record in a looser. more casual fashion. Some of the sides recorded by the “Swing Wing” of the Paul Whiteman orchestra or the Grammercy Five of the Artie Shaw band showcased some really creative soloing, and similarly. the Benny Goodman trio. © Hulton-Deutsch Collection’ CORBIS Benny Goodman During the Big Band era, most of the bands remained segregated. Bandleader Benny Carter was the first to put together an interracial big band for a tour of Europe in the early 1930s. Benny Goodman did so in the states a year later. Goodman very much wanted vibist Lionel Hampton, who was black. to perform with his band, but because of the segregation in many parts of the United States. decided to bring him on as a special guest artist. thus implying that he was not a regular pant of the band. Hampton's playing won over audiences and critics, and soon, Goodman also brought guitarist Charlie Christian into the band in the same manner. The Big Band © 2014 Alexander Kalina. Used under license from Shutterstock, Inc Big Jazz Band By the mid 1933s, the Big Band era had come to a consensus on what a big band really was. The standardization they came up with is still used today. In the Big Band era, the saxophone started to eclipse the clarinet, and though still used for solos and some clever ensemble writing a'la Ellington, the clarinet, being softer than the sax, gave way to the volume of the big bands, Most arrangers started to write for five saxes (two altos, two tenors, and one baritone), four trombones, and four trumpets. In the trumpet section, one trumpeter was called the lead trumpet player, and would often get some extra money by playing the really high notes. (This is also known as the “screech” trumpet part.) The chythm section also standardized and always included piano, bass, and drums. The guitar at that time was still unamplified and when used, strummed the instrument as loud as possible to be heard at all, and never played onc-note lines or took solos. Some bandleaders, such as Basic, loved the sound that guitar added to the mix, and others deliberately avoided it. Charlie Christian. in the Goodman band was one of the first to play with an amplifier and solo over the band. Freddie Green, with the Basie band for over 40 years, kept playing acoustically the whole time. Even though he bought some early amplifiers and guitar pickups, the band kept sabotaging his efforts in order to prevent him from soloing, down to the final effort of gutting all the electronics fom his amp end just leaving the wooden shell on stage. Fredilie finally got the message and semeined unplugged. Though they were exceptions, this standardization allowed for a lot of important things to go forward, further propelling jazz toward its all- encompassing role in the World War II years. Some were simply logistical things. The stagehands at concerts always knew how many chairs to set up for the band and where the piano went. More importantly. the standardization allowed bands to trade arrangements. Previously. if the Shaw band had wanted to play a Basie chart, assuming they could get a hold of one, they would have had to rearrange it to accommodate the fact that the Basie band had a different number of hom players than the Shaw band. Often. these accommodations changed the basic sound of a chart. Once standardization occurred, bands could buy or trade charts with little or no adjustments, thus speeding the flow from hot to sweet, as the hot band charts were by far the most coveted. The Dance Craze By 1934, the Big Band era started to get a very unexpected boost. A dance craze called the jitterbug swept the nation. This acrobatic dance form was soon the hottest thing across the States, and because of coast-to-coast radio, everyone was caught up in it. By coincidence, jazz was in the middle of it. Almost overnight, jazz, which had been steadily growing in popularity, took off like a rocket! And with thousands of musicians caught up by the Depression and eager for any work, the dance craze was soon serviced by thousands of big bands, hot, sweet, and in between crisscrossing the nation by bus and train and radio, ready to serve up that swing thing for anybody who wanted to dance. By the mid-1930s, the name Fiterbug was generally used to refer to dancing that was inspired by the hot bands. Their emphasis on two and four created a lighter swinging feel to the music and the dancers simply responded. In 1934. singer Cab Calloway recorded a side for RCA records that included some hastily improvised lyrics about the dancers they played for as well as the habits of the band as to their alcchel consumption. When asked for the tune’s title, Calloway mugged and said it was the “Jitterbug.” giving a name to the craze. The commercial boon that followed was unexpected by everyone, including the musicians Swing Rhythms What was happening behind the scenes was that the musicians started to agree on what made the music swing. Two important concepts came out of the collaboration of many musicians—emphasis on two and four, and the concept of a swing triplet. If you look ata song written in 4/4 time, you would note that there are four quarter notes in each measure. It is common practice in classical music to treat the notes evenly. In the Swing era, jazz musicians started to emphasize beats two and four (Fig. 4.1). Emphasizing these backbeats propelled the music and aided in creating a very danceable sound. Listen to any rock and roll une and many hip-hop tunes and that same backbeat is indelibly there. Many of the Hot bands started this and it spread to the Sweet bands. Count Basie was the band people said “swung” the hardest and by that meant that the band deeply emphasized those backbeats when they played. The other major swing concept was the use of the uneven or “swung” triplet feel. The jazz community hed for some time thought of the 4/4 time signature as a series of four triplet groups (Fig. 4.2). This reading of the music in 4/4, but interpreting it in 12/8, lent a much different feel to the music. During the swing era, this evolved into an uneven interpretation of the triplet (Fig. 4.3). When teaching this interpretation, we often use the phrase “doo-dle-dat” or “noo-dle-soup” to communicate the idea. As you say the phrases, note that you naturally emphasize the last syllable and almost wallow or “ghost” the cecond. As trumpeter Clark Terry cays, “This puts the highe and the lows, the hille and the valleys hack in the mucie.“* Soon, the swing triplet also started to travel from the hot bands to the sweet bands. Certain soloists in the bands also became recognized for their ability to integrate this new concept into their playing Figure 4.1 ea oi S primary beats backbeats Figure 4.2: 4/4 to 12/8 Each quarter note now equals an eigth note triplet y ZS SS SS = v1 23 4 1 2 3 4 Figure 4.3 ae Doodle-dat The Solo: One of the major contradictions of the Swing era was that as the arrangers focused more and more on the ensemble writing and solos were made shorter and shorter, there emerged 2 group of star soloists within the various bands. These individuals had widespread public recognition and were the role models for countless jazz musicians for several generations. In Duke Ellington's band, soloists were cultivated and Duke would write features for the varied abilities of his sidemen. One of his favorites was the alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges. nicknamed the “Rabbit.” For the next 20 years all the alto players emulated his large agile sound. S © 2014 catwalker. Used under license ‘from Shutterstock. Inc Duke Ellington Fletcher Henderson's band became a focal point for such players as well. The tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins was with the band for many years in the Swing era, and its complex arrangements lured Hawkins to expand his soloistic vocabulary. He also had a very aggressive time feel, playing as though he was trying to push the notes past him with a big, brawny tone. His polar opposite was the great Lester Young, who played with the Count Basie band. Young had a lyrical sweet tone and played with a very laid back, swinging feel that fit in perfectly with the Basie swing machine. Both became the models of how to play the tenor sax, virtually creating the two modern schools of tenor playing Similarly. trumpeter Roy Eldridge who played with all the big bands including the Gene Krupa band, was a major trumpet influence. His nickname referred to his physical stature, not his musical—he was known as “Little Jazz.” Nicknames were as important then as they are now—Hawsins was known as the “Bean”; Lester Young got his nickname from the singer Billie Holliday—the “President of the board.” mostly shortened to the “Prez. One of the most unusual names came to drummer Panama Francis when he made his way from Florida to New York At the first rehearsal for his new gig with Roy Eldridge’s band, the band’s manager asked Roy who the new drummer was, and Roy, who didn’t remember, looked at the drummer's new Panama hat, and simply said “That's Panama.” Panama later admitted he was too scared to correct the leader and remind him that his real name was David Albert Francis, The End of an Era By 1938, almost every city had several ballrooms and Swing via radio, record, and live appearances had found its way into every part of society. Even the rural blues suffered a sea change and entered the more urban north as larger ensemble playing the “Jump” blues: most likely acquiring the name because you “jumped” or rather danced to it. The oncoming World War and the easing of the depression did nothing but fuel the fire and swing was indeed king. And yet. the end of all this activity was caught up in the same events that brought it to an emotional peak. The entry of the United States into World War II and the 2 years leading up to it created an anxiety that further pushed the swing era to a peak. When the draft started, all the goodbyes were said the strains of a big band. When the newsreels played news of the war at the movie thesters, big bands provided the soundtracks. All the radio broadcasts of the war news, all the fund-raisers and war bond rallies, even the dances when the troops were cut on furlough-featured jazz. And then things started to fall apart quickly. The draft started to drain young men out of their careers as musicians. Remember, though there was a black army, air force, and even a one-ship black navy, most of the soldiers were white and this meant that the Sweet bands were more devastated than the Hot bands. One solution to this was to sign up as a group. Trombonist Glenn Miller's ensemble was the first. signing on with the Air Force. Other followed suit. and this started a long tradition of jazz in the military. In the wake of the drat, the need for dance bands tumed to a then unlikely source—women. In the history of jazz. women had, with few exceptions, been relegated to being singers or pianists. There is no good reason for this—women have been and are absolutely capable of being great jazz musicians. But the thinking of the times prevailed and until most of the bands were drafted in part or in whole, this gender bias stood firm. Symphony Orchestras at that time were similarly segregated along the same lines. By the end of World War II, there were many all- women jazz bands playing and touring. Because of the record companies’ strikes during the war, hardly any got recorded and again due to the extreme misogyny of the time, most are totally undocumented and forgotten in general. After the war ended, jazz, as well as other music, went back to business as usual. This was starting to change in 2003, but that bias was still in some parts of jazz and it definitely need not be. Musicians such as the great drummer Terri Lynne Carrington and bandleader, composer and arranger Maria Schnieder are finally getting their due in the jazz business. In addition to the draft, rationing was a major obstacle to big band activity. During the war, many items were rationed by the government to provide more of the raw materials for the war effort. Everything from silk stockings needed for parachutes to tin cans were controlled. The gas and rubber tires were also part of this and unless you had a government job, the ration stamps were scarce, even on the black market. Most of the Swing era depended of bands touring. Without the gas and tires to make the tour busses run, touring slowed down to a trickle. Train tours still worked to some extent, but only went to major cities—the long run of one nighters across the country virtually stopped. Another war consideration was the blackouts. Before radar and satellite mapping. simple sight was a major way to plan attacks, and most major ballrooms on the east and west coasts were at the top of the hotels. These beacons of light at night were shut down, along with many other places so as not to provide a visible homing beacon for an invasion. This further crippled the Swing erz. Another major reason for the demise of the cra was Swing’s total connection with the war. The horrors of the war and the loss of life and family were so deep that after the war was over, Americans were ready for something new. Even fashion changed—small military like collars spread to big zoot suit collars; military style shoes during the war changed to the very unmilitary two-tone loafers. Music needed to change as well and the industry responded. During the war, two strikes held up the recording of the big bands. One was a composer's strike and it resulted in nothing being recorded that was, written after 1927 (the date of the first United States copyright convention), leaving unrecorded some of the best writing of the era. The second was a musician's strike during the last 2 years of the war, and in place of the instrumentalists, the record companies turned to the vocalists, which up to that point had been minor parts of the big band scene. During this strike, the vocal music recorded set up many vocalists to be stars when the paradigm shified after the war to a more vocal oriented popular music. Stars such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra got their start in the industry this way. Curiously, during the war, the U.S. government was the only one recording and documenting the best of the big band sound. In order to entertain the troops, the government reinvented the Victrola into a field phonograph and slowed the standard rpm of 78 down to 33 1/3 in order to put more music on each disc. The time jumped from 3 minutes to around 20 minutes. They recorded the best of the Sweet bands in a radio show format on records called “Victory” discs. As there was also a black army, a small number of discs were made for that group as well, called “Jubilee” discs, featuring the best of the Hot bands. ‘When the war ended, many musicians-tumed-soldiers did not go back to the music business but took the GI Bill’s promise of free college tuition and went back to achoo!. The remains of the weet bands tended to go into the studios to start backing up the new vocal pep stars and many of the displaced musicians from the hot bands started to fall into a new black popular music starting in the south called Rhythm and Blues. There were bands that survived the downturn, but many just washed out entirely. Of the survivors, even Count Basie had to go with a smaller ensemble for a while. Benay Goodman and the Dorsey Brothers did fairly well in the postwar era: Ellington survived as well. But the days of thousands of big bands touring the country for dances were definitely at an end. The big band sound did survive the eclipse. It stayed alive in the military and some of the best big band playing is there today. Backing up the singers also kept it going. Immediately post-World War I, two California big bands made a big splash, though they played more for concert audiences than for dancers. Woody Herman’s Thundering Herd and the Stan Kenton Orchestra both took the messaze of swing and brought it to a real peak. Ellington went on to write for many ensembles besides his band, including various film scores and his great opus, the Sacred Concerts, scored for Gospel Choir and soloists, expanded jazz band, and full orchestra. Today, the big band is in a renaissance as it has become the teaching model for most of the many jazz studies programs. Performers such as Hasry Connick Jr. are also involved in bringing back this style and the shear fun of playing in a big band with all the energy and camaraderie is causing pick up big bands to sprout across the country. Most only play one night a week, with everyone taking very reduced pay, but some of the “Monday night bands” are making some great music Right before the end of the war. there were some musicians, mostly érom the hot bands. who became dissatisfied with the restrictions of the big band business and started to drift toward a new movement in jazz. This wes eventually called Be-Bop and it ushered in the new era of Modem Jazz. Suggested Listening All of the recordings available today of the Swing cra are cither compilations of 1978s or radio broadcast that have been archived and put out as records. Some of the best big band records were made in the late 1940s and early 1950s. after the era had eclipsed. Still, listening to any album by Basic, Ellington, and/or Benny Goodman will give the listener a flavor of what the cra was all about. (Of particular interest in Ellington's carcer is his historic recording made at the 1956 Newport Jaz festival, called At Newport (Columbia CK40587). On that recording, while making announcements, he coins the wonderful phrase “... For those sophisticated enough to dig it,"!) Some of the current big bands that carry on in the tradition are worth listening to as well. The Bob Mintzer Big Band on any of their sides for DMP records is a good bet: likewise the efforts of GRP Alll Star Big Band on GRP records, For Further Research: Important Musicians Count Basie Cab Calloway Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey Duke Ellington Benny Goodman Fletcher Henderson Billie Holliday Gene Krupa Fimmie Luaceforé Glenn Miller Red Nichols Don Redman Suggested Reading Music Is My Mistress by Duke Ellington (autobiography) (Doubleday Books, 1973; De Capo Press, 1975) The Swing Era by Gunther Schuler (Oxford University Press, 1989) (