Jazz history quiz questions

The ______ was an ensemble from an African American college that performed spirituals before the general public as early as 1871.

Fisk Jubilee Singers

Before 1800, New Orleans was owned by

France and Spain.

A simple way of diagramming march form is

A A B B C C D D.

Which musician, whose career ended with his nervous breakdown in 1906, is generally acknowledged as the first important musician in jazz?

Buddy Bolden

Today, New Orleans Style jazz is also known by the name of

Dixieland jazz.

Scott Joplin's most famous composition is

"The Maple Leaf Rag."

King Oliver's Jazz Band

was known for its use of polyphonic collective improvisation.

Sidney Bechet

was the first great jazz soloist on saxophone.

Collective improvisation is

when several instruments improvise their parts simultaneously and a defining characteristic New Orleans jazz only.

What musical characteristic of the spiritual directly influenced jazz?

call and response

A turnaround is

chords played in the last few bars of a chorus, leading on to the next chorus.

Creoles contributed to jazz by

adding their traditional musical training and ability to read music.

Jazz was transformed by the following technological advancements, new in the 1920s:

radio, electrical recording, and movies with synchronized sound.

Jazz is

american classical music, a folk music, a popular music.

Programmatic music

attempts to describe specific people, places, or events.

John Philip Sousa

invented the sousaphone and composed many marches, including "The Stars and Stripes Forever" only.

Compared to ragtime, stride style was

livelier, faster, and more propulsive.

Bessie Smith

made nearly two hundred recordings and starred in the short film St. Louis Blues only.

Freddie Keppard was

one of the first jazz musicians to travel widely.

Duke Ellington's compositions number

over a thousand.

Vaudeville blues - also known as classic or urban blues - songs were

performed on black theater circuits.

Joe "King" Oliver

played the cornet. was Louis Armstrong's mentor. moved his band from New Orleans to Chicago.

The blues has ____-line stanzas.

three

The minstrel show's characteristics, including blackface, lingered in American show business until the early 1950s.

true

Which of the following instruments constitute the frontline of a New Orleans jazz band?

trumpet (or cornet), trombone, and clarinet

country blues were

usually accompanied by guitar.

Jelly Roll Morton

was a Creole musician and led the Red Hot Peppers only.

Who is the best-known composer of ragtime music?

Scott Joplin

Among the African American dances that shocked and invigorated the country in the early twentieth century was

The Charleston

Which jazz band was the first to be recorded in 1917?

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band

During collective improvisation, the instruments are arranged in the following order (from top to bottom):

clarinet, trumpet (or cornet), and trombone.

At the time jazz started to be recorded in 1917, New Orleans style already featured

collective improvisation and glissandos, stop-time, and breaks only.

Rhapsody in Blue's premiere in 1924 featured

the Paul Whiteman orchestra.

In twelve-bar blues form,

the overall chord progression is always the same and each twelve-bar cycle is called a chorus only.

The minstrel show

was established as early as the 1840s and reinforced many degrading stereotypes of African Americans only.

Among Ellington's stylistic accomplishments is/are:

He proved that jazz writing could be applied to pop songs. He expanded the influence of stride piano on jazz. He demonstrated the potential of the big band beyond the developments of Whiteman and Henderson.

The Great Migration was a response to the manpower shortage created by

World War I.

Like Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson came from a disadvantaged background in New Orleans, steeped in the blues.

false

The Harlem Renaissance celebrated jazz musicians and bandleaders alongside its poets, painters, and playwrights.

false

The idea that "Jazz is African American music" is rooted in race, not ethnicity.

false

Although its nightclub entertainment showcased the finest in Harlem jazz, the Cotton Club

refused to admit black patrons.

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band was a ______ band.

white

______ occurs when all the musicians in the band suddenly stop to let a single musician take a brief two-bar solo.

A break

Which is true about American brass bands?

They were common in African American as well as white communities.

Tailgate trombone" features

exaggerated glissandos.

What kind(s) of musical form did New Orleans bands use?

12-bar blues and march/ragtime form only

When Louisiana and other southern states adopted the so-called Jim Crow laws, the special privileges of the Creoles ended in the year

1894.

Duke Ellington's career lasted from his New York debut in 1923 until his death in

1974.

This San Francisco bandleader was not famous, but established the saxophone section as part of a jazz ensemble:

Art Hickman.

Paul Whiteman hired ______ to be the full-time featured vocalist with his orchestra.

Bing Crosby

Among the jazz soloists added to the Paul Whiteman Band in the mid-1920s was/were

Bix Beiderbecke.

The following soloist, whose unusual timbres arose from his mastery of mutes, enriched Duke Ellington's early recordings:

Bubber Miley.

Which of the following is/are true of Wilbur Sweatman?

He was known for playing three clarinets simultaneously. His career spanned the transition to the sale of recordings over sheet music. His spontaneous musical embellishments hinted at a new era of bluesy improvisation.

What pattern of chord changes below is used in the twelve-bar blues form?

I I I I IV IV I I V V I I

Which chords or harmonies are used in the twelve-bar blues?

I, IV, and V

Which is true about ragtime?

Its "ragged" polyrhythmic syncopation contributed to jazz and it was a form of composition first published in 1897 only.

Among the great stride virtuosos of the 1920s was the following pianist, whose composition "Carolina Shout" became a test-piece for elite New York pianists:

James P. Johnson.

Louis Armstrong got his first big break playing in the band of

Joe "King" Oliver.

This musician was known for his inventive use of mutes:

Joe "King" Oliver.

Among the musicians hired by Fletcher Henderson in the 1920s was

Louis Armstrong.

Bing Crosby's vocal style was inspired by

Louis Armstrong.

Bill Challis was the noted 1920s arranger for the band of

Paul Whiteman.

This bandleader, widely known as the "King of Jazz," was an early pop superstar who championed "symphonic jazz":

Paul Whiteman.

By 1900, the syncopations of ragtime music had shifted from the banjo to the following instrument:

Piano

George Gershwin composed and performed

Rhapsody in Blue.

Which of the following contributed to New Orleans being the ideal place for jazz to be cultivated?

The two cultures of "creoles of color" and "uptown negroes" led to a blending of musical style that influenced jazz. It was a port town, so many different kinds of people from different cultures mingled together. Africans were allowed to retain more of their own languages, beliefs, and customs than elsewhere in the South.

The center of the songwriting industry in New York was known colloquially as

Tin Pan Alley.

During the trio section of a piece, New Orleans bands often switched from collective improvisation to block-chord texture.

True

The "Father of the Blues" was this cornet-playing bandleader who first heard the blues in a Mississippi train station:

W.C. Handy

James Reese Europe was

a black musician who performed ragtime for white dance instructors and leader of the 369th Infantry Band, or "Hellfighters," during World War I only.

In addition to its use in marches, "march form" was widely used in the following genre:

ragtime

Storyville was

a district of legalized prostitution.

Stride style is defined by

a left-hand technique, alternating bass notes and chords.

At the turn of the century, the term "ragtime" referred to

a piano style, a type of song, a syncopated dance

"Secondary ragtime" is

a polyrhythm, featuring a meter of three superimposed on a meter of two.

Creoles were

a racially mixed people of color.

Jim Crow was

a standard character in the minstrel show and the legal system of post-Reconstruction segregation only.

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey was

a vaudeville/classic blues artist.

Which of the following genres is/are part of early African American folk culture?

ballads

Country blues musicians changed the timbre and pitch of their guitars by using

bottlenecks

The popularity of the trumpet (cornet), clarinet, and trombone in jazz was due mostly to the influence of

brass bands.

In the 1920s, Paul Whiteman's band included

brass. strings. saxophones.

Field hollers and work songs

expressed the loneliness and hardship of African Americans and contributed to the music that became known as the blues only.

"Race records" were records kept by the census designed to prevent African Americans from voting in the South.

false

Fletcher Henderson

led the best jazz band around in the second half of the 1920s and used a big band that closely resembles the big band of today, including reeds, trumpets, trombones, and rhythm section only.

African American music is characterized by

polyrhythm, call and response, and blue notes.

Jazz nightlife was affected by the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which

prohibited the sale and manufacture of alcohol.

Which of the following styles would most likely be heard at a Harlem rent party?

stride piano

The bandleader and composer Duke Ellington was also a

stride piano player.

The player piano was especially useful for disseminating the following jazz style:

stride piano.

Duke Ellington's career had a big break when he got a recurring headlining gig at

the Cotton Club.