music unit 3

Joplin's

"Maple Leaf Rag" was the first commercially successful piano rag.

piano rag

A marchlike, syncopated composition for the piano.

foxtrot

A popular social dance of the 1920s and 30s that introduced a clearly black beat into mainstream culture.

In the two decades between 1905 and 1925, Americans went dance crazy. Early on, much of the music that they danced to was ragtime, but over time the music for these new dances diversified to include popular songs set to a danceable beat. The most popular and enduring of the new dances was the foxtrot.

Almost as soon as it appeared, ragtime became music for social dancing. Piano rags were scored for the dance orchestras of the period. Joplin's famous Red Book (so called because it had a red cover), a collection of dance-orchestra arrangements of his popular rags, is the best-known example. Original dance music in a syncopated style also appeared throughout the late 1890s and into the 1910s.

collective improvisation

An improvisational context in which more than one performer is improvising a melody-like line. Collective improvisation is standard practice in New Orleans jazz, free jazz, and much rock-era jazz fusion.All three (or four, when there's an extra cornet or saxophone) melody instruments typically play at the same time,

oth the four-beat rhythm and the rhythmic play over it were paradigm-shifting innovations. They were the clearest indications that jazz—and the popular music that it influenced—had embraced an entirely new rhythmic conception. The black musicians who created jazz kept the metrical structure of European music but interpreted it through an African sensibility. Instead of accenting the first beat of each measure, jazz musicians typically stressed all beats equally—or played rhythms that used that feel as a point of departure. In the Armstrong recording we hear next, the pianist and guitarist typically play chords on each beat; each receives the same amount of emphasis.

But in isolation the undifferentiated beats of the rhythm instruments do not produce swing. Swing results from the interplay between the beat and the syncopated accents and irregular patterns that conflict with the steady timekeeping of the rhythm instruments. It is this interplay that makes the rhythm so irresistible.

The Jim Crow laws enacted in the wake of Plessy v. Ferguson changed this. Race in New Orleans became simply "white" and "colored."

Grouped together with no legal difference between them, black and Creole musicians began to work with one another. Jazz gained the spontaneity of improvisation and the feeling of the blues from the blacks, and the discipline and the traditional virtuosity of classical training from the Creoles.

Improvisation is not unique to jazz. Through the early nineteenth century, classical composers were typically also adept improvisers: Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven were renowned for their improvisational ability.

However, the practice largely died out in European classical music during the nineteenth century. Only with jazz did a sophisticated form of improvisation once again become an integral component of a new genre

swing

Rhythmic play over a four-beat rhythm.

classic blues

The popular blues style of the 1920s, which typically featured a woman singing the blues (e.g., Bessie Smith) accompanied by one or more jazz musicians

The standard rhythm section of the time

consisted of banjo, piano, brass bass (or tuba, the lowest-pitched of the brass instruments), and drums. The rhythm section marked the beat and supplied the harmony.

James Reese Europe

had come to New York in 1905 from Washington, D.C., and quickly immersed himself in the popular music world. By 1910 he had organized the Clef Club, an organization for black musicians that was part union and part booking agency. In 1912, he directed the 150-piece Clef Club Orchestra in a concert at Carnegie Hall, then as now America's musical mecca. Designed to showcase the achievements of African-American musicians, the concert impressed members of New York's high society, and soon Europe and his Society Orchestra were in demand for parties given by the Rockefellers and other wealthy families.

Joe "King" Oliver

was one of the major figures of early jazz. His reputation rests on his achievements as a bandleader and a cornet player. Like many New Orleans musicians, he emigrated to Chicago in search of a better-paying job following the closing of Storyville. By 1920, he had assembled several of his New Orleans expatriates into King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, the finest traditional New Orleans-style jazz band preserved on record.

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, New Orleans had been a relatively hospitable environment for blacks. During slavery, Congo Square (now Louis Armstrong Park) was the only part of the South where people of African descent could legally gather and play drums and other percussion instruments. Before the Emancipation Proclamation, there were more free blacks in New Orleans than anywhere else in the United States, and New Orleans developed a complex social structure. It assigned social status by race and ethnic heritage—not just whites and blacks but also those of mixed race.

. "Creoles of color," those with ancestors from both France and Africa, enjoyed a higher social standing than ex-slaves. They lived in better neighborhoods, were better educated, and had more freedom. An aspiring Creole musician received traditional classical training, whereas black musicians typically learned to play by ear. Creoles of color tended to look down on the ex-slaves. Many emulated white culture rather than black.

jazz

A group of popular related styles primarily for listening. Jazz is usually distinguished from the other popular music of an era by greater rhythmic freedom (more syncopation and/or less-insistent beat keeping), extensive improvisation, and more adventurous harmony. There are two families of jazz styles: those based on a four-beat rhythm and those based on a rock or 16-beat rhythm.

animal dances

A popular dance which emerged in the early 1900s which was adapted or borrowed from a black folk dance.

Commercial blues

Blues which is performed by professional musicians, is published, and recorded.

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in 1923

From left to right: Honore Dutrey, trombone; Baby Dodds, drums; King Oliver, lead cornet; Louis Armstrong, slide trumpet; Lil Hardin (Armstrong's future wife), piano; Bill Johnson, banjo; and Johnny Dodds, clarinet.

They are "classic" blues because they embody the three defining aspects of the blues: its form, style, and feeling. Most of her recordings are conventional twelve-bar blues with call and response between singer and an instrumentalist. Typically, the songs are personal, and she sings them with a rough, full voice, with support from jazz musicians. The accompaniment varies from recording to recording, from just a pianist to a full jazz band. We hear a famous example next, recorded in 1928 at the peak of her career.

In "Empty Bed Blues," Smith begins by singing about her man troubles. For most of the song, she describes their lovemaking, sometimes in metaphor ("coffee grinder," "deep sea diver") and sometimes directly. All of this makes his infidelity even more painful

New Orleans jazz

Style of jazz performance based on the early bands that performed in and around New Orleans; revived in the late 1940s, it is based on collective improvisation and quick tempos. The front-line instruments usually include cornet or trumpet, clarinet, and trombone, with a rhythm section usually including banjo, tuba, and sometimes piano. Also called Dixieland jazz.

Improvisation

The act of creating music spontaneously rather than performing a previously learned song the same way every time. Improvisation is one of the key elements in jazz. It gives musicians the opportunity to express inspirations and react to situations; requires virtuosity, melodic inventiveness, personality, and the ability to swing.

he front-line instruments play melody, usually within a well-defined range and within well-defined limits, particularly when playing together.

The cornet (trumpet) is the mid-range instrument that usually carries the melody. The clarinet takes the highest part, playing a fast-moving countermelody to the main part. The trombone carries the lowest melodic part, usually in the form of "commentary" on the melody and the clarinet part.

front line

The horns (or other melody-line instruments, such as the vibraphone) in a jazz combo. The term comes from the position of the horn players on the bandstand: they stand in a line in front of the rhythm instruments.

Joplin saw ragtime as a vehicle for serious artistic expression as well as entertainment. Accordingly, he thought of himself as a composer of art music in the tradition of the nineteenth-century nationalist composers. He believed that he had elevated a folk-dance music to concert status, in much the same way that Polish composer Frédéric Chopin had elevated the mazurka (Polish folk dance) and Viennese composer Franz Schubert the ländler (Austrian folk dance) in classical music.

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W. C. Handy's

"Memphis Blues" was part of a wave of blues songs that appeared during the 1910s. Handy composed several more, most notably "St. Louis Blues" (1914), the most frequently recorded song in the first half of the twentieth century. These published songs are a pale imitation of the blues that Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith were singing in tent shows and on the black vaudeville circuit. Still, they mark the entry of the blues into the mainstream and it was this distinction that enabled Handy to claim with some justification that he was the "father of the blues." Although he certainly didn't invent the blues, he published sheet music editions of his compositions, thereby disseminating many of its conventions, such as the twelve-bar form, and bringing them into the world of popular music.

The most essential element in jazz is swing, as Duke Ellington asserted in his

1932 song "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)."

In addition to Europe's multi-instrumental setting, other differences between it and a classic Joplin rag include these:

A faster tempo. The tempo of ragtime music gradually accelerated during this period (despite Joplin's admonition to the contrary), so the beat of this song moves considerably more quickly than "Maple Leaf Rag." It's about the same speed as up-tempo music from the early 1920s (we hear two examples in the next chapter, "Charleston" and "Fascinating Rhythm.") Less syncopation and less "ragged" melodies. Overall, there is less rhythmic conflict in this piece than in a classic rag, and the figuration is less complex—probably because it would have been challenging to perform on melody instruments at such a fast tempo. There are exceptions, most notably the transition into the trio-like third section and the drum solo at the end. A chance to improvise. The last two sections allow the musicians, particularly drummer Buddy Gilmore, the chance to depart from the carefully scripted arrangement used throughout most of the performance.

ragtime

A popular style at the turn of the twentieth century that mixed European forms, harmony, and textures with African-inspired syncopation. Ragtime began as a piano music, but soon the term was applied to any music—song and dance as well as piano music—that had some syncopation.

Race records

A term that came into use in the early 1920s to describe recordings by African American artists intended for sale primarily in the African American community.

The featured styles were blues and jazz. Both major labels and the 1920s equivalent of indie labels recorded black jazz and blues musicians. C

Columbia Records, the company that recorded Bessie Smith, was one of the top labels of the era; Paramount, which recorded the folk bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson, was a sideline for a Wisconsin furniture manufacturer. It is on race records that we hear the sounds of classic blues.

The early history of jazz that we can document in sound begins in the early twenties, when black jazz bands began to record with some frequency. The standard New Orleans jazz band blended the instrumentation of three key popular music genres.

From the marching band came the clarinet, cornet or trumpet, trombone, tuba, and drum line, now consolidated into the drum set. From the minstrel show came the banjo, and from the saloons and bordellos (and other places where one could hear professional ragtime pianists) came the piano.

Louis Armstrong was the first great soloist in jazz. Every aspect of his playing—his beautiful sound; the bent notes, slides, shakes, and other expressive gestures; his melodic inventiveness; and above all, his incomparable sense of swing—inspired jazz and popular musicians of the era. Bing Crosby was a regular at the clubs where he worked; so were numerous jazz musicians

His playing became the standard by which other jazz musicians measured themselves. Recordings like "Hotter Than That" (written by Lil Hardin) captured an exuberance that is unique to early jazz, and especially the playing of Louis Armstrong.

Ma Rainey

Mother of the Blues ho would record extensively in the 1920s, recalls that she was inspired to sing the blues after hearing a girl sing the blues at a theater in St. Louis in 1902, and several of New Orleans's first generation of jazzmen recall playing the blues before the turn of the century. Early in the century, the audience for blues—folk, semiprofessional, and professional—were blacks, mainly in the South, and those whites who had extensive contact with blacks and/or who frequented the bars and bordellos where black musicians performed. However, as blacks migrated to urban areas in both the North and the South, they took the blues with them. After the move to the cities, what had been private or small-group entertainment in the rural South became music for public performance. Blues singers, most of them women, toured on the black vaudeville circuits and performed wherever they got paid. Ma Rainey was among the first; Bessie Smith joined her in the teens. They and other blues singers remained unknown to most Americans (both white and black) until the 1920s. The blues that reached these larger audiences were filtered through other styles. In the meantime, however, white America got its first taste of the blues.

We do know that New Orleans was regarded as the birthplace of jazz and that contemporary accounts date its beginnings sometime around the turn of the twentieth century. It flourished in the rich cultural mix that was New Orleans: whites of English and French descent, blacks, immigrants from the Caribbean and Europe, plus many citizens of mixed race.

Music was part of this mix: brass bands for parades, and pianists and small groups for the bars, honky-tonks, and houses of prostitution, which was then legal in New Orleans. New Orleans and its visitors simply let the good times roll.

The later rags are more melodious and less syncopated, and in both his tempo indications for rags and his written commentary on the correct performance of ragtime, Joplin constantly admonishes pianists against playing ragtime too fast; ragtime played at a slower tempo gains dignity.

The classic piano rags of Scott Joplin and other distinguished composers represent a repertoire of real artistic worth and individuality; there is no other music like it. From musical evidence in Joplin's works, we can also infer his dedication to bringing ragtime under the European classical music umbrella.

Commercial blues entered the larger world of popular music in four stages

The first began around the turn of the century, when the first professional blues performers launched their careers. The second occurred in the early teens with the publication of blues songs. In the third stage, which began in the late teens, blues style helped shape the sound of jazz. Finally, a group of "classic" blues singers, many of whom had started their careers years before, began to record.

The grizzly bear, the chicken glide, and the turkey trot all became popular in certain circles around 1910. "Respectable" citizens reacted violently to these dances, which were associated with sleazy establishments and disreputable people. As recounted in Sylvia Dannett and Frank Rachel's book, Down Memory Lane: The Arthur Murray Picture Book of Social Dancing:

The turkey trot was one of the most popular dances. By all accounts it was simple and awkward, but it permitted "lingering close contact," a novelty at the time. Body contact between couples (presumably) delighted the dancers but scandalized the more conservative segments of American society and provoked a hostile backlash.

Although in "Dippermouth Blues" Oliver and clarinetist Johnny Dodds play solos, most of the performance proceeds with all instruments playing simultaneously, with no one instrument completely dominant. This is the quintessential New Orleans jazz sound.

The two qualities that most readily distinguish jazz from other popular genres are swing, its distinctive rhythmic conception, and improvisation, its spontaneous dimension. The ability to play with time and create in the moment have been measures of artistry in jazz performance certainly since the late 1920s; both are abundantly evident in the playing of the most admired and influential jazz musicians, from Armstrong to the present.

With the influx of New Orleans jazz musicians into northern cities and the recording of both white and black musicians, jazz became a truly national music in the early 1920s. Chicago and New York were the hot spots. Chicago was wide open—Al Capone and other gang leaders all but ran it—and musicians found ample employment opportunities in speakeasies and ballrooms. A generation of white musicians, among them Bix Beiderbecke and Benny Goodman, absorbed the sound of the New Orleans musicians firsthand, much as white rockers absorbed Chicago blues style in the 1960s. New York had top dance orchestras, including those led by Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington. Armstrong and other top jazzmen relocated there in the latter part of the 1920s.

What blues did for the heart and soul, jazz did for the spirit. The jazz of the early 1920s was exuberant, optimistic, spontaneous, and fast paced. It suggested illicit pleasures, if only because it so often accompanied them. In these respects it captured—and often inspired—the mood of the country, which accelerated through the decade until everything came crashing down in 1929. More than any other music, jazz would become the soundtrack of the decade. Small wonder that novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and others called the 1920s the Jazz Age.

During this same period, black pianists in bars and bordellos up and down the East Coast played what would soon be called "ragtime," according to several contemporary accounts.

With the publication of Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1899, ragtime became a household word.

The blues recorded during the 1910s were strictly instrumental.

hat changed almost overnight with the release of Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues" in 1920. "Crazy Blues" is not a blues song in the full sense of the term. Rather, it is a blues-influenced popular song sung in a bluesy, distinctively black singing style.