Music 308 History of Jazz

Day 9, Feb. 26: Louis Armstrong and Jazz in the 20's

Quiz #2 This Thursday!

•  8 musical identifications
•  Covering all music heard in this unit so far
•  4 questions about music
•  Musical forms
•  Definitions of terms used in class
 Jazz in the early 20th century
•  Early Jazz (c. 1900-1920):
–  Developed in New Orleans
–  Marching Band Instruments
–  Playing styles from Blues and Church music
–  Collective Improvisation
•  Evolved from heterophony to polyphony
•  “Front line” - clarinet/trumpet (or cornet)/trombone
•  Three independent melodies in counterpoint
–  Forms:
•  Blues (12 bar form)
•  Multithematic Rags and Marches (several 16-bar strains)
•  Popular Songs (often in Verse/Chorus form) (32 bar chorus)
•  Often featured breaks – 1-4 bars solo, unaccompanied
•  Jazz in the 1920's
–  Part of Afro-American "Great Migration" from rural South to urban North
–  Less emphasis on collective improvisation
–  More emphasis on the “star” soloist
–  Shift from rags and blues to popular song forms
–  Growth of large dance bands
–  Increased importance of recordings in the spread of the style
 The "Jazz Age"
•  Historian Richard M. Sudhalter:
–  "Jazz quickly became synonymous in the American vocabulary
with forced gaiety, abandon…
–  "and any music lively or loud enough to promote it.
–  "Popular 'jazz' images from the cartoons of John Held, Jr.
•  flappers, sheiks, bootleg booze and nonstop whoopee"
"Hot" Music
•  Sudhalter:
–  Music now identified as
'genuine' jazz was a different
phenomenon
–  Usually called "hot music" or
just plain "hot"
–  "Blend of improvisation,
rhythmic intensity, emotional
involvement, and personalization
of style and execution
–  Serious professionals in the 20's
did not call themselves "jazz
musicians"
–  They said they "played hot"
 Louis Armstrong: "What
is Swing?"

•  Reading in Keeping Time (p. 73-76)

–  Published in 1936
•  Armstrong distinguishes "swing" from what was then called "jazz"
–  which he identifies as "commercial music," written by arrangers
and performed as written
–  Identifies his "hot" style with "swing"
•  "'hot' … does not necessarily mean loud or even fast"
–  "… when a player feels the music taking hold
–  "he can break through the set rhythms and the melody and toss
them around as he wants without losing his way"
–  "when you've got a bunch of real swing players in the orchestra
–  "they all play together, picking up and following each others
swinging all by ear and sheer musical instinct"
–  "you will catch new notes and broken-up rhythms you are not at
all familiar with"
Louis Armstrong’s Later Career:
Louis the Entertainer

•  In the 1930's Louis Armstrong

became a major star
–  Appearances on radio, films,
European tours
–  From 1935 on, his career
managed by Joe Glaser
–  Cover of "Time" magazine –
February 1949
From “Satchmo” (by Gary Giddins)
 Louis Armstrong the media star
–  From Satchmo
•  Tony Bennett: Louis tells Prince Philip how he got out of
the gangster world of New Orleans:
•  "Become a white man's nigger"
•  George Avakian on Joe Glazer
–  Louis appeared in movies, popular recordings, radio, etc.
•  Jazz purists feel that his influence as a jazz innovator
ended
•  Gioia: “Crowd-pleasing bravura style”(p. 68)
•  Some appearances in movies in the 1930's
Louis Armstrong: "Dinah" (Copenhagen, 1933)
Louis Armstrong: "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead"
1932 Max Fleischer Cartoon
Louis Armstrong: "Shine" (1932)
 Class Discussion:

•  "Innocent entertainment" can be read as an indicator

of deeper elements in our culture
•  What messages are conveyed by the producers of
these films?
•  What messages are conveyed by Louis' performance?
•  What story is Gary Giddins (producer of this
documentary) trying to tell?
–  "He transcended it all. As a truly free man who
could make offensive material serve his own ends,
he became a hero to the black community."
 Was Armstrong an "Uncle Tom"
or a "Trickster?"
•  “Uncle Tom”
–  Subservient, playing into white people’s image of the black
•  “Trickster”
–  double meanings in actions.
–  Louis’ career tells us both about the ideology of
“mainstream” (white) show business
–  .... And about strategies that Afro-Americans adopt to deal with it
–  What may seem clowning or deferential to white audiences
–  Can seem ironic or defiant to black audiences
•  Dizzy Gillespie (Keeping Time, p. 168):
–  "I criticized Louis for…his 'plantation image'
–  "Hell, I had my own way of "Tomming." Every generation of blacks
since slavery has had to develop its own way of…accomodating
itself to a basically unjust situation… “
–  "What I had considered Pops's grinning in the face of racism (was)
his absolute refusal to let anything, even anger about racism, steal
the joy from his life and erase his fantastic smile.
–  "Coming from a younger generation, I misjudged him."
 Other great soloists of the 20's
•  Louis Armstrong's brilliance as soloist overshadowed some
other great players of 20's
•  Gioia mentions a number of them – Red Allen, Jabbo Smith
(trumpets)
•  And the first generation of great white jazz musicians, including
Jack Teagarden, Peewee Russell, Eddie Condon, etc.
•  We don't have time to cover them all
 Jabbo Smith's Rhythm Aces:
"Sweet and Low Blues" (1929)

•  Not all tunes called "blues" are really
blues
•  This is an AABA popular song form
•  Jabbo Smith's sound and approach
was unlike Louis'
–  (though he was inspired by him)
•  A transcription of second chorus – (at
0:38)
–  Omer Simeon, clarinet, plays
melody; Jabbo Smith plays a
countermelody
–  Notes skittering around like drops
of water on a hot frying pan
•  Gioia: "foreshadows the later
evolution of jazz trumpet"
•  A lovely scat chorus as well
Sweet and Low Blues – Jabbo Smith and Omer Simeon
The first great white Jazz musicians
•  Midwesterners
–  first influenced by white New Orleans bands -
ODJB, New Orleans Rhythm Kings (NORK)
–  Then by recordings and live performances by
black musicians around Chicago: Oliver,
Armstrong •  Gioia History, chapter 3:
•  Read “Bix Beiderbecke and the
Jazz Age” p. 66-71
•  Skip “Chicago and New York”
p. 71-80
•  The “Chicago school” and
the “Austin High Gang”
•  Pretty good music, just no
time for them in this course!
•  Read “Bix and Tram” p. 81-87
 Frankie Trumbauer Orchestra: "Singin'
the Blues" (1927)

•  Form: Popular song (ABA'C)

•  Frankie Trumbauer’s solo (soprano sax)
–  very influential on later players: Lester Young, Budd Johnson
–  Lyrical, reflective, relaxed
–  Lester Young: “The only people telling stories that I liked to
hear
–  Eddie Lang, guitar, adds tasteful fills

"Singin' The Blues" – Frankie Trumbauer solo
Bix Beiderbecke, cornet

•  Not rhythmically driving like Louis

Armstrong
•  Beautiful, lyrical lines
•  Very clean, pure tone: "every note full,
big, rich and round, standing out like a
pearl" (Mezz Mezzrow)
•  Louis Armstrong: "I'm telling you,
those pretty notes went right through
me ”
 Jelly Roll Morton (1885-1941):
From "collective folk" to "self-conscious art"?

–  Gioia p. 39-45
–  Morton a New Orleans Creole; immersed in Euro-American
culture.
–  "The First Great Jazz Composer,” says Gunther Schuller
 Morton as Pianist:
New Orleans Blues (1923)
•  Habanera rhythm: "The Spanish Tinge"
•  Not a flashy piano style - unappreciated by Eastern
pianists
•  The sounds of a New Orleans band expressed by a
single instrument
–  2nd chorus (0:29) - trombone-like left hand break
–  3rd chorus (0:50) - right hand break
–  4th chorus (1:11) - extraordinary polyrhythm (see transcription
by James Dapogny)
 Morton as Arranger
•  The Red Hot Peppers
–  Chicago, 1926
–  New Orleans musicians
•  Omer Simeon, clarinet; George Mitchell, cornet; Kid Ory,
trombone; Johnny St. Cyr, banjo; John Lindsay, bass;
Andrew Hilare, drums
 Dead Man Blues (1926)
•  Begins with Minstrel-show style comic dialogue
•  "Church bells at 11 in the morning…Somebody must be
dead"
•  "Must be dead drunk."
•  "No, it must be a funeral."
•  "Looky here, it is a funeral. I hear that trambone call.."
•  Brief passage of funeral march
•  (similar to Chopin's funeral march)
•  Into a moderate-tempo blues
•  Chorus 1: Collective improvisation
•  Chorus 2: Clarinet solo (Omer Simeon), Morton
accompanying
•  Chorus 3 & 4: Trumpet solo (George Mitchell)
•  Chorus 5 & 6: Clarinet trio, arranged by Morton
–  (2 additional clarinetists only play here & at end)
–  Chorus 6 adds Kid Ory's trombone
•  Chorus 7: Collective improvisation
•  Tag: a snatch of the clarinet trio again
 Black Bottom Stomp (1926)
•  Based on New Orleans style, but intricately arranged
•  Gioia p. 42
–  “maximalist” structural complexity
–  a description “for a 3 minute recording
... requires 10x as much time”
to account for “shifts in...
•  instumentation,
•  harmonic structure,
•  rhythmic support”
•  Multi-strain rag form:
–  A: (8 bars - an introduction)
–  B: (16 bars)
•  1. Full band
•  2. Trumpet/Band Call and Response
•  3. High Clarinet
–  Transition (4 bars)
 (Black Bottom Stomp, continued)

–  C: 20 bars!
•  8 (ending with 2 bar break)
•  + 12 (ending with this polyrhythm:
« Q eEEeEE « eEEeQ Q «
•  Seven repetitions of the form:
–  1. Full band, collective improvisation (trp + trb. break)
–  2. Low Clarinet (Simeon)
–  3. Piano solo (Morton)
–  4. Trumpet (Mitchell)(band riffs on the above rhythm)
–  5. Banjo (St. Cyr) (with slap bass)
–  6. Full band, collective improvisation (cymbal break)
–  7. Full band, collective improvisation,
»  (backbeat in drums, trombone break)
»  Incredible sense of ensemble swing