Music

Grade 11

New Orleans Style

Dixieland

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 NEW ORLEANS STYLE
 From about 1900 to 1917, jazz developed in a number of American cities, but the
major centre was New Orleans.
 The city was the home of such important jazz musicians, including Ferdinand ''Jelly
Roll" Morton, Joseph "King' Oliver, and Louis Armstrong.
 Around the turn of the century, New Orleans was a major port and a thriving
cultural and commercial centre with a cosmopolitan character.
 Its diverse population included people of African, French, Spanish, Portuguese,
English, Italian, and Cuban ancestry.
 A particular group in New Orleans made up of people of mixed African, French,
and Spanish descent maintained its own ethnic identity.
 This diversity of population was mirrored in the rich musical life of New Orleans.
 It included opera and chamber music as well as folk, popular, dance, and sacred
music of all kinds.
 The tradition of marching bands and dance bands was particularly strong. There
were frequent competitions between bands to see which could play more loudly or
more brilliantly. Some band musicians were trained in classical music and could
read musical notation; others played by ear and relied on improvisation. Many
were only part-time performers who worked full time at other trades, such as
bricklaying, carpentry, and cigar making. Band music—including early jazz—was
heard at picnics, parades, and political meetings and in dance halls. African
American bands often played jazz during funeral processions. In the words of one
New Orleans musician: “You'd march to the graveyard playing very solemn and
very slow, then on the way back all hell would break loose! . . . We didn't know
what a sheet of music was. Just six or seven pieces, half a dozen men pounding it
out all together, each in his own way and yet somehow fitting in all right with the
others."
 But the main home of early jazz was Storyville, a red-light district of brothels,
gambling joints, saloons, and dance halls. These establishments often employed a
piano player or small band. Storyville provided not only employment but an
atmosphere in which musicians felt free to improvise. When Storyville was closed
down in 1917 on orders of the Navy Department, many jazz musicians left New
Orleans. The center of jazz soon shifted from the Crescent City to Chicago, Kansas
City, and New York.
 Jazz in New Orleans style (or Dixieland) was typically played by a small group of
from five to eight performers.
 The melodic instruments, or front line, included the cornet (or trumpet), clarinet,
and trombone.
 The frontline players would improvise several contrasting melodic lines at once,
producing a kind of polyphonic texture. This collective improvisation was the most
distinctive feature of New Orleans jazz.
 Each instrument had a special role. The cornet was the leader, playing variations of
the main melody. Above the cornet, the clarinet wove a countermelody, usually in
a faster rhythm. The trombone played a bass line that was simpler than the upper
lines, but melodically interesting, nevertheless.
 The syncopations and rhythmic independence of the melodic instruments created a
marvellous sense of excitement.

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 The front-line instruments were supported by a rhythm section that clearly marked
the beat and provided a background of chords. This section usually included drums,
chordal instruments (banjo, guitar, piano), and a Single-line low instrument
(plucked bass or tuba).
 New Orleans jazz was usually based on a march or church melody, a ragtime piece,
a popular song, or the 12-bar blues.
 Some well-known tunes associated with this style are When the Saints Go Marching
In and Oh, Didn't He Ramble?
 One or more choruses of collective improvisation generally occurred at the
beginning and end of a piece. In between, individual players were featured in
improvised solos, accompanied by the rhythm section or by the whole band.
Sometimes there were brief unaccompanied solos, called breaks. The band's
performance might begin with an introduction and end with a brief coda, or tag.
 As the New Orleans style evolved during the 1920s — mainly in Chicago — solo
playing came to be emphasized more than collective improvisation. Soloists began
to base their improvisations less on the original melody than on its harmonies. In
addition, the trumpet gradually replaced the cornet, and the saxophone became a
member of the band.

DIPPERMOUTH BLUES (1923), BY KING OLIVER’S CREOLE JAZZ BAND

 Dippermouth Blues, as performed in 1923 by King Oliver's Creole Jazz
Band, is a fine example of the New Orleans style.
 It is based on the chord progression of the 12-bar blues. Nine choruses of
12-bar blues are preceded by an introduction and followed by a brief tag
(coda).
 Choruses 1, 2, 5, and 9 are for full ensemble and illustrate a style of
collective improvisation that is typical of New Orleans jazz.
 Choruses 3 and 4 feature a clarinet solo with an accompaniment in
repeated rhythm.
 The climax of Dippermouth Blues is Joe "King" Oliver's muted cornet solo
(in choruses 6 to 8), which is heard against a background of improvisation
by the other instruments. Oliver's solo, with its ' 'blue" notes and swinging
syncopations, was widely imitated by other jazz musicians.

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 LOUIS ARMSTRONG (1901 – 1971)
 As both a trumpeter and a singer, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong had a worldwide
impact on jazz.
 He was born on the 4th of August in a poor black section of New Orleans, and he
learned to play the cornet in a reformatory (where he was sent at the age of
thirteen for shooting a gun into the air during a New Year's celebration). Upon his
release after one year of confinement, Armstrong was soon playing in honky-tonks
at night (he drove a coal wagon during the day).
 His musical ambitions were encouraged by the cornetist King Oliver, who took a
fatherly interest in the young boy and gave him some lessons. When Oliver left for
Chicago in 1918 — after Storyville was closed down — Armstrong took his place in
the famous Kid Ory Band. Four years later, Armstrong himself went to Chicago to
be second cornetist in King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band.
 In 1925, he started to make a series of recordings with bands known as Louis
Armstrong's Hot Five and Louis Armstrong's Hot Seven. The Hot Five included three
New Orleans musicians — Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Kid Ory (trombone), and Johnny
St. Cyr (banjo) — along with Lil Hardin (piano), whom Armstrong had married a

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 year earlier. These recordings established Armstrong's reputation as the leading jazz
trumpeter.
 After 1930 he appeared with a wide variety of groups, made many tours, and was
featured in many films. In the 1950s and 1960s Armstrong served as a “goodwill
ambassador" for the United States. At the age of sixty-four, he had his greatest
popular success, the hit recording of Hello, Dolly!
 Armstrong was one of the greatest jazz improvisers; he was able to invent
extraordinary solos and to transform even ordinary tunes into swinging melodies
through changes of rhythm and pitch.
 He revealed new dimensions of the trumpet, showing that it could be played in a
higher register than was thought possible. His playing style featured "rips" up to high
pitches, along with a tone that was both beautiful and alive.
 One jazz expert has singled out the “subtly varied repertory of vibratos and shakes
with which Armstrong colors and embellishes individual notes.”
 Armstrong also introduced scat singing, vocalization of a melodic line with nonsense
syllables. His gravel-throated voice was not conventionally "beautiful," but it
conveyed the same jazz feeling as his trumpet playing.

HOTTER THAN THAT, BY LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND HIS HOT FIVE

 It shows how the New Orleans style developed in Chicago during the 1920s.
 The emphasis is on improvisatory solos. Collective improvisation — so important in
earlier New Orleans style — is restricted to the introduction and closing chorus (items
1 and 6b in the listening outline).
 Listen for the exciting vocal and instrumental breaks (items 2, 3, 4, and 6a), the
syncopations of Armstrong's vocal melody (item 4), and the dissonant guitar chord
that gives Hotter Than That an unusual, inconclusive ending.
 A succession of different tone colours contributes to the variety within Hotter Than
That, for jazz band. After an introduction, played by the full band, we hear solos by
the trumpet, clarinet, voice, guitar, and trombone. Louis Armstrong performs as both
trumpeter and vocalist. His singing is like his trumpet playing in sound and style.
Instead of lyrics he sings nonsense syllables like dat-a bat-a dip-da. In one section, the
guitarist, Lonnie Johnson, imitates the melodic phrases sung by Armstrong, whose
voice takes on a guitar-like twang.
 Unlike the preceding compositions by Wagner, Chopin, and Stravinsky, this music was
improvised by the performers. Their point of departure was the tune Hotter Than
That, by Lillian Hardin Armstrong, the band's pianist.
 Within item 2 of the listening outline, the trumpet is momentarily heard alone,
without its accompaniment of piano and guitar. This unaccompanied solo should not
be mistaken for the entrance of the clarinet (item 3), which sounds like a high-pitched
whine.