Mid term 1 listening
"Mayeya," Septeto Habanero (Cuban son) 1930s
Cuban Counterpoint: History of the Son Montuno, Rounder CD 1078 In the early 1900s son emerged as an urban music that was a popular alternative to the elite orquesta tipica and charanga ensembles that played mainly danzon. The instrumentation of early son sextets was guitar, tres (a Cuban guitar-type instrument with three sets of double strings tuned in octaves), bass (or marimbula, an African lamellophone), bongos, maracas and claves. The basic form of the son is an instrumental intro, a pre-composed section, and an improvised call & response coro or montuno section. ("Son montuno" is actually the most accurate description for this type of performance; early sones did not have the call & response section).
"The New East St. Louis Toodle-O" (Music and arrangement, Edward Kennedy Ellington) Duke Ellington and his Famous Orchestra [1937]:
Edward Kennedy Ellington (1899-1974) was a major force in twentieth century American music. Born in Washington, D.C., he came from a urban middle-class background. His first band, the Washingtonians, played syncopated dance music in New York in the early 1920s. His band held engagements at a number of New York clubs, most notably the Cotton Club in Harlem (1927-1931). Ellington's highly individualistic approach to writing for big band included the creation of rich tone colors (often by writing for unusual combinations of instruments, or putting instruments in extreme registers) and dissonant chord voicings. This kind of intricate arrangement required written parts and musicians that could read music. Another hallmark of the Ellington style was his practice of writing to emphasize the strengths of particular members of his band, some of whom were with him for half a century. The plunger muted trumpet solo is by Cootie Williams. Notice Ellington's creative use of instrumental tones, including the plunger responses by the trumpet section during the first bridge (B section), and Barney Bigard's liquid clarinet responses to the trombone-led variations in the second chorus, followed by his domination of the bridge. "The New East St. Louis Toodle-O" has an AABA form, played twice through.
"Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean" (Wallace, Lance, Singleton) Ruth Brown [1953]:
Ruth Brown was Atlantic Record's first major R and B star, beginning in 1949. Her father was a preacher and she sang spirituals as a child. Her recordings were sung with inflections that came from the church and the blues, and were in part aimed at the expanding white audience for R and B. Note Brown's use of upward vocal glides, and the prominence of the tambourine, associated with revivalist church meetings. This song is a 16-bar blues (like a 12-bar blues, but AAAB).
"Bei Mir Bist du Schön," The Andrews Sisters (1937)
Song from the Yiddish theater in New York that was arranged for the Andrews sisters and became a national hit
"Dippermouth Blues (Links to an external site.)" King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (1923)
The music that came to be known as jazz developed in New Orleans around 1900. It drew upon a variety of sources, including white and black popular song traditions, ragtime, brass band music, black church hymns and funeral dirges, field hollers, and blues. Since the activities of recording companies were largely confined to large cities in the North and Midwest before the late 1920s, there is limited evidence as to what early New Orleans jazz sounded like. The first recording with the term "jazz" on its label was made by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white group, in 1917. The ODJB recording exemplfies the influence of African-American musical sensibilities on white musicians, and started a jazz craze among middle-class whites, but it is not a good example of New Orleans style. The first representative recordings of jazz were made by the cornettist King Joe Oliver (1885-1938) and his Creole Jazz Band in 1923. Like many other southern black musicians, Oliver moved north after World War One in order to make a better living. In 1923 he summoned the brilliant young musician Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) to Chicago to play second cornet in the band, which also included Honoré Dutrey on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano, Baby Dodds on drums, and, on this cut, Bill Johnson on banjo and vocals. The King Oliver band was a collection of individuals who knew each other's playing so well that they could perform a kind of polyphonic group improvisation. In New Orleans style, the trumpet or cornet states the melody (with embellishments), the clarinet improvises a counter-melody above and around the trumpet, and the trombone improvises a simpler melody, often hitting the roots (bass notes) of the chords below the trumpet. Solos were usually backed up by riffs (repeated patterns) played by the other instruments. In the earliest recordings, it is difficult to find a place where all of the instruments are not playing some role. Form: 12-bar blues.
"Dippermouth Blues" King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (1923)
The music that came to be known as jazz developed in New Orleans around 1900. It drew upon a variety of sources, including white and black popular song traditions, ragtime, brass band music, black church hymns and funeral dirges, field hollers, and blues. Since the activities of recording companies were largely confined to large cities in the North and Midwest before the late 1920s, there is limited evidence as to what early New Orleans jazz sounded like. The first recording with the term "jazz" on its label was made by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white group, in 1917. The ODJB recording exemplfies the influence of African-American musical sensibilities on white musicians, and started a jazz craze among middle-class whites, but it is not a good example of New Orleans style. The first representative recordings of jazz were made by the cornettist King Joe Oliver (1885-1938) and his Creole Jazz Band in 1923. Like many other southern black musicians, Oliver moved north after World War One in order to make a better living. In 1923 he summoned the brilliant young musician Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) to Chicago to play second cornet in the band, which also included Honoré Dutrey on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano, Baby Dodds on drums, and, on this cut, Bill Johnson on banjo and vocals. The King Oliver band was a collection of individuals who knew each other's playing so well that they could perform a kind of polyphonic group improvisation. In New Orleans style, the trumpet or cornet states the melody (with embellishments), the clarinet improvises a counter-melody above and around the trumpet, and the trombone improvises a simpler melody, often hitting the roots (bass notes) of the chords below the trumpet. Solos were usually backed up by riffs (repeated patterns) played by the other instruments. In the earliest recordings, it is difficult to find a place where all of the instruments are not playing some role. Form: 12-bar blues.
"Smoke on the Water" by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys
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"One O'Clock Jump" (Music by Count Basie) Count Basie and his Orchestra [1937]:
Kansas City, a frontier town which served as an entertainment center for cattlemen, farmers, and railroad men, was the crucible for a big band style based primarily upon riffs. Influenced by recordings of New Orleans jazz and New York bands such as Fletcher Henderson, black musicians in Kansas City began in the 1920s to develop a distinctive style of dance music based upon blues and the boogie-woogie piano tradition. The band of William "Count" Basie, firmly in the Kansas City tradition, developed the use of the "head riff" in call-and-response format between reeds and brass sections into a fine art. Arrangements were often worked out in an ad hoc fashion, with individual players suggesting riff patterns which were then picked up and harmonized by other players in a section. The compelling swing of this recording is generated by Walter Page's "walking" bass, the drumming of Jo Jones, and the 4-beat pulse of Freddie Green's guitar. The tenor saxophone solo is played by Lester Young, whose cool style was to influence a later generation of jazz musicians. On this recording, listen for Basie's carefully considered piano introduction, followed by a series of short horn riffs. The technique of riffing in effect turns the whole band into a rhythm section, and generates a great deal of momentum.
"It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" Kitty Wells [Nashville, 1952]
Kitty Wells (b. Nashville, Tennessee) was the female response to male domination of urban beer hall culture, in which the unattached "honky-tonk angel" was both a lure and a threat. Interestingly, the song was written by a commercially astute male composer as a response to "The Wild Side of Life" by Hank Thompson. Well's reserved, soulful style emphasizes the lyric content of the song. She set a paradigm for female country superstars, and was a major force in the emergence of Nashville as a recording center.
"New San Antonio Rose" Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys (1940)
Western Swing, another style of country music which reached its peak during the Depression, was a dance-hall music which combined cowboy ballads, hillbilly music, blues, and jazz, with touches of Mexican and Cajun music. Bob Wills (b. 1905 in west Texas) is regarded as the father of the style. His first bands were named after radio sponsors (the Light Crust Doughboys). During an 8-year stay in Tulsa, Wills established and refined his sound, drawing heavily upon the peripatetic "territory" swing bands of the southwest. The core of the band is fiddle, guitar, steel guitar, banjo, drums and string bass; from the big swing bands he incorporated piano, saxophones and clarinets, and trumpets. This song became an even bigger hit when crooner Bing Crosby recorded it in 1941. Note the electric pedal steel guitar, a modern version of the bottleneck guitar style pioneered by Afro-American and Hawaiian musicians.
"Gospel Ship" Carter Family (1935)
"Gospel Ship", a traditional song, demonstrates the importance of sacred music in southern culture. Religious songs were popular sellers among recordings of the time. This southern white "gospel music" tradition preceded the urban African American gospel music tradition that began in the late 1920s in Chicago. This song is another song that expresses sorrown and longing for a reward in heaven. It also contains a verse that seems to express an awareness of the prejudices that educated or urban people had about poor country people: "If you are ashamed of me, you ought not to be Yes you'd better have a care If too much fault you find you will sure be left behind While I'm sailing through the air"
"Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" Stephen Foster (1854)
"Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" is an example of Foster's sentimental "Irish" style, without any obvious references to minstrel images or stereotypes. It is a prototypical example of the AABA form that would become the dominant framework for popular song in the early 20th century.
"Long Tall Sally" Little Richard (1956)
"Long Tall Sally" Little Richard (1956) Born in Macon, Georgia, Richard Penniman was washing dishes in a bus station restaurant just months before he became one of the first recording stars of rock and roll. He recorded with Fats Domino's dance band in New Orleans, but his vocal style and stage presence was markedly different from Fats' cool and relaxed style. Little Richard was wild, exciting, and extroverted, and he introduced many of the characteristics we now associate with rock n' roll performance. Little Richard's band included piano and saxophones, in the tradition of jump blues. His driving piano playing and high energy vocals were signatures of his exciting style. He was known as a riveting and sometimes even shocking performer, dancing and singing lyrics with sexual double entendre. This song, for example, appears to have homosexual double entendre:
"Caravan" by Duke Ellington
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"Great Speckled Bird" by Roy Acuff
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"Hittin' the Bottle" by Jimmie Lunceford (w/ Eddie Durham)
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"Rock Around the Clock" (J. DeKnight and M. Freedman) Bill Haley and the Comets [NYC, 1954]
A former disc jockey and country-and-western bandleader from Chester, Pennsylvania, Haley was the first white musician to achieve major success by emulating R&B.; This song is considered the first big rock 'n' roll hit (#1 on the pop charts in 1955), partly due to its association with Blackboard Jungle, a film about high school juvenile delinquents. Haley's band featured Rudy Pompilli on sax, and Haley on electric guitar and vocals. "Rock Around the Clock" is a country-tinged version of the jump band sound of Louis Jordan, and is a 12-bar blues. After several hits in the 1950s, and a successful tour of Europe in 1957, Haley's career went into decline. He died in 1981.
"Nobody" Bert Williams (1913)
African American performers also worked in vaudeville, often playing roles derived from the 19th century minstrel show. Bert Williams (1876-1922) was one of the most popular comedians during the first decade of the 20th century. With his partner George Walker he began to work the vaudeville circuit in 1895, and later starred in all-black theatrical productions such as Abyssinia (1906). Williams wrote many compositions, the most popular of which was "Nobody" (1905), a wry, fatalistic song of complaint. Although "Nobody" is historically related to the racist "coon" songs initially popularized by minstrel performers, William's tragicomic performance lends human dignity to the character of the narrator. While on the surface the song played to stereotypes of black life held by many whites, African American listeners interpreted the lyric on another level: as a lament about the injustices of a racially segregated society.
"Mystery Train" (Junior Parker) Elvis Presley [Memphis, 1955]
As far as middle-class America was concerned, Elvis was the performer that established rock n' roll as the dominant popular music nationwide. Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and raised in Memphis, Elvis was working as a truck driver when he was discovered by record producer Sam Phillips. Phillips had previously specialized in recording black blues performers, and said that if he could find "a white man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel," he could make "a million dollars." Elvis Presley filled the bill. This recording was made for Phillip's Sun Records in 1955, and represented the emergence of a new blend of country music and R&B;, later dubbed "rockabilly." This style used blues songs such as this one (first recorded by Junior Parker), and added a simple accompaniment of electric guitar (played here by Scotty Moore), bass, and later drums. Presley strummed acoustic guitar and sang in an unaffected manner incorporating aspects of country and blues style. In 1954 and 1955 Presley created a sensation performing African-American-derived music for white audiences in concerts and via the expanding medium of television.
"Wrappin' it up" Fletcher Henderson (1934)
Bandleader Fletcher Henderson and his arranger Don Redman were innovators in the development of the dance band. Henderson came to New York in 1920 to begin a career in chemistry, but eventually took a job as a "song plugger" with a music publishing company (owned in part by W.C. Handy). In 1921 he joined the first black-owned record company, Black Swan. In the early '20s jazz was only beginning to come into public consciousness, and Henderson's early bands played arrangements of ragtime and popular dance tunes. The arrival of cornetist Louis Armstrong from New Orleans in 1924 moved the band toward a more jazz-oriented sound. By the end of the 1920s he played for packed dance floors at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, alternating on the bandstand with Chick Webb's band. Arranger Don Redman grasped the basic principle that was to animate big band music, that of dividing the orchestra into reed (saxophone and clarinet) and brass (trumpet and trombone) sections and playing them off against each other. At the beginning of this performance, for example, the trumpets play an energetic riff, and the saxophones answer. Then the saxophones take over the lead and their phrases are punctuated by brief punches from the brass (trumpets and trombones). The performance is intricately arranged, but still leaves some space for improvised soloists, the first of which is taken by the tenor saxophone.
"King Porter" Benny Goodman and his Orchestra [1935(Music, Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton; arranger, Fletcher Henderson) "
Benny Goodman was born in a Chicago ghetto in 1909, the son of a Russian immigrant. He made his first records under his own name in 1927, and worked as a free-lance musician during the Depression years. Goodman's career as a bandleader was boosted by wealthy promoter John Hammond, who also helped Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, and Bruce Springsteen. Hammond arranged the Goodman band's first recording dates and set up the purchase of a group of Fletcher Henderson's best arrangements. Although initial audience reaction was not enthusiastic, the band went on a national tour in 1935, culminating in spectacular successes in California. The Goodman band had appeared regularly on a national live radio show called "Let's Dance"; because they always played last, more West coasters were up to hear them, and the band had become very popular. This band started the swing craze, and Goodman became known as the "King of Swing." Goodman's band was the first to give current Tin Pan Alley hits a jazzy treatment. It was also the first white band to include black musicians, beginning with pianist Teddy Wilson. "King Porter" was first recorded by Fletcher Henderson's band in 1932 as the "New King Porter Stomp." Goodman's success was in part based upon emulation of the arranging techniques and swinging pulse of black dance bands. The riffs and call-and-response patterns between reeds and brass are well-rehearsed, and the rhythm section plays a steady 4-beat pulse with emphasis on the second and fourth beats. Goodman plays the clarinet solo, Bunny Berigan the trumpet solo. Gene Krupa is the drummer.
"Mama's Got the Blues" Bessie Smith (1920s)
Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues, was a star in her time and even appeared in one of the earliest sound pictures, St. Louis Blues. The assertive and independent attitude of this song (she has a man in every city, appropriating the sexual promiscuity more often associated with traveling male musicians) is typical of the "classic blues" songs recorded by black women professional singers in the 1920s. Stylistically this song includes several typical blues idioms: the 12-bar blues chord progression, an AAB text form (repeat the first line, then sing a contrasting line), the responsorial relation between voice and instrument, blues melodic mode and vocal timbre, and its theme of love disappointment. Here is a diagram that can help you to hear the 12-bar blues chord progression. Each phrase of the song lasts 4 bars (or measures), so the three phrases together add up to 12 bars—hence the "12-bar blues." The melodic phrases are played/sung over three chords: Tonic (I), Sub-dominant (IV), and Dominant (V). The most distinctive moment harmonically is the beginning of the third phrase, where the dominant chord creates a tension that your ear wants to hear resolve to the tonic.
"Shake, Rattle and Roll" (Jesse Stone and Charles Calhoun) Joe Turner [NYC, 1954]
Big Joe Turner's roots were also in the Kansas City shouting style, and he developed his technique singing with swing bands and boogie-woogie piano players. This is a 12-bar blues, with swing-band style riff patterns. In the mid-50s this song was covered by Bill Haley, who cleaned up the lyrics to produce a version acceptable to white-controlled AM radio stations (Turner's description of himself as "a one-eyed cat peepin' in a seafood store" admiring "dresses the sun comes shinin' through" were censored). Turner's success was generally restricted
Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys [Nashville, 1947]: "It's Mighty Dark to Travel" (B. Monroe)
Bill Monroe (b. 1911 in the "bluegrass" region of Kentucky) is known as the father of bluegrass music. He was influenced early by his uncle (a fiddler) and a black guitarist, fiddler, and railroad worker named Arnold Schulz, who gave Monroe's music a distinctive bluesy quality. This recording is from a period when bluegrass was coalescing into the sound we know today, characterized by rapid tempos and virtuoso interplay among guitar, banjo and mandolin. This particular group, which included stars Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, is generally regarded as the archetypical bluegrass band, setting a style and standard of performance for subsequent groups to follow.
"West End Blues" Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five (1928)
By 1925, Louis Armstrong had left King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in Chicago and Fletcher Henderson's band in New York and was ready to strike out on his own. His fiery solos and unbelievable use of the upper reaches of the cornet and trumpet were becoming known and he was achieving stardom through his playing. Okeh Records agreed to record him and any band he had in 1925, and Armstrong assembled four of his friends, Johnny St. Cyr on banjo, Lil Hardin on piano, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, and Kid Ory on trombone to record the first of his Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings. Absolutely seminal in the history of jazz, these recordings were a watershed in his career and a turning point for jazz in general. Moving beyond the aesthetic of "collective improvisation", these recordings focused on Armstrong as a soloist. Jazz was thus turned from a collective ensemble art to an art that focused on the ability of soloists to improvise off of known melodies. Armstrong also introduced scat singing to jazz and his gruff singing style and clever phrasing influenced many jazz singers that came after him. The solo that opens "West End Blues" is a feat of great technical mastery and has stumped and discouraged many great musicians since. This recording is from 1928, after the original members of his Hot Five had been replaced with new players. Armstrong really comes out as the star soloist in this, though other members of the band get solos as well. After the introductory solo, one would expect a blazing tune, but Armstrong chooses to cool down the tempo while never laying off the rhythmic pressure. The result is a slow-burning song of great rhythmic intensity despite the crawl that it moves at. His scat singing can also be heard in the middle of the piece.
"After the Ball" Charles Harris (1892)
Charles K. Harris was a self-taught banjo player from Wisconsin who could not write music and, like many songwriters of the late 19th century, dictated his melodies to a professional musician, who put them down on paper. "After the Ball," popularized during the 1890s by touring lyric theatre companies and by John Philip Sousa's band, was the first American popular song to surpass the five-million mark in sheet-music sales. Its success helped to stimulate the emergence of dozens of small music publishing firms around the turn of the century.
"Maybelline" (Chuck Berry, Russ Fratto, and Alan Freed) Chuck Berry [Chicago, 1955]:
Chuck Berry, who also recorded on the independent label owned by the Chess brothers, was one of rock and roll's foremost innovators, both as an electric guitarist and as a songwriter adept at dealing with the concerns of his teen-aged audience. An R&B; musician who played clubs in East St. Louis while earning a living as a cosmetician by day, Berry moved to Chicago in an attempt to break into the big time. He landed a contract with Chess through his friend Muddy Waters. Berry's simple, direct style and clearly enunciated lyrics about cars, high school romance, and the glories of rock n' roll reached a wide audience. He had a string of hits from 1955 to 1958, though his recordings did not dominate the pop charts to the same extent as those of Presley, Domino, Little Richard and others. In fact, his first #1 pop hit did not come until 1973, with the novelty song "My Ding-a-Ling." This song is a modified 12-bar blues with a country-and-western influenced beat (basically a fast polka). It was originally known as "Ida Red," and had been recorded by a number of country musicians, including western swing bandleader Bob Wills. Berry revised the song, putting Ida Red into a car, and (because "Ida Red" was a public domain song, which meant it couldn't be copyrighted, and couldn't generate royalties) renaming her "Maybelline," a term drawn from his beauty shop days. The song was purportedly co-written by white rock n' roll disc jockeys Freed and Fratto, although their major contribution was to promote the song on their radio shows.
"Blue Yodel" Jimmie Rodgers (1928)
Classic Country Music: A Smithsonian Collection, Vol.1 Smithsonian RD 042-1, 1990 Jimmy Rodgers was discovered by the recording industry at the same session where the Carter family first recorded, in Bristol, Tenessee in 1927. The two became country music's first big stars and symbolized different dimensions of the country tradition. In contrast to the Carter family's home and family image, Jimmy Rodgers sang songs of wandering and adventure. He was known as the "Singing Brakeman," a reference to trains, which represented migration and movement. Rodgers was an itinerant professional entertainer who integrated many styles into his recordings, including New Orleans jazz (which did not catch on in country music) and Hawaiian steel guitar (which did). This song has a basic blues chord progression as well as blues-inflected singing, techniques he learned from black musicians in his native Mississippi. It also features yodelling, which was a popular vocal technique by this time among Southern musicians, apparently learned from European yodelers who travelled with medicine shows and vaudeville shows in the 19th century.
"Can the Circle be Unbroken", the Carter Family
Classic Country Music: A Smithsonian Collection, Vol.1 Smithsonian RD 042-1, 1990 The Carter Family, from the Clinch Mountains in Virginia, consisted of A.P. Carter, his wife Sara, and sister-in-law Maybelle. A.P. "Doc" Carter (1891-1960) collected and arranged the music, and sang bass. His wife Sara (1899-1979) sang lead and took the majority of vocal solos, and sister-in-law Maybelle (1909-1978) sang harmony, played steel guitar and autoharp. The trio first recorded in Bristol, Tennessee in 1927, the same week as country music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers (example 13). Their songs of home and religion, rendered in an intimate style, are regarded as the classic roots of commercial country and western music. Maybelle is also one of the few women to have been recognized as an influential instrumentalist in country music. This song includes a passage of her "thumb brush" guitar technique, whereby she plays a melody on the low strings with her thumb and strums chords on the upper strings. This song is an example of the theme of sorrow and longing for the afterlife, so common in rural southern folk and religious music.
"Can the Circle be Unbroken", the Carter Family
Classic Country Music: A Smithsonian Collection, Vol.1 Smithsonian RD 042-1, 1990 The Carter Family, from the Clinch Mountains in Virginia, consisted of A.P. Carter, his wife Sara, and sister-in-law Maybelle. Their songs of home and religion, rendered in an intimate style, are regarded as the classic roots of commercial country and western music. Maybelle is also one of the few women to have been recognized as an influential instrumentalist in country music. This song includes a passage of her "thumbbrush" guitar technique, whereby she plays a melody on the low strings with her thumb and strumms chords on the upper strings. This song is another example of the theme of sorrow and longing for the afterlife, so common in rural southern folk and religious music.
"Soldier's Joy," Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers (recorded in 1929)
Classic Country Music: A Smithsonian Collection, Vol.1 Smithsonian RD 042-1, 1990 This is another traditional British Isles fiddle tune, rendered here by a string band, consisting of two fiddles (playing the melody), banjo (strumming chords), and guitar (playing a bass line/counter melody). String bands like this, in a variety of formats, were popular at dances throughout the South in the early 20th century. The self-parody in the name and in the banter at the start of this recording reflects the hillbilly stereotypes that country musicians often exploited to entertain regional or national audiences in radio broadcasts.
"A Tisket a Tasket," Ella Fitzgeral with the Chick Webb Orchestra (late 1930s)
Ella Fitzgerald is known as the Queen of Jazz and the First Lady of Song. She got her professional start with the Chick Webb orchestra in 1935, and went on to lead the band briefly after his death. The fact that she became a bandleader testifies to her extraordinary musicianship, something not usually expected from a singer. Fitzgerald was especially known for her "scatting," singing with non-verbal vocables and improvising the way a saxophone or trumpet might. This is a jazz arrangement of a nursery rhyme, with the melody arranged in an AABA form, in the traditional of Tin Pan Alley. Listen to how the band renders the form the second time around with call and response patterns to liven it up. Jazz musicians often took pop songs and made jazz-style arrangements of them, which is why people say jazz is a style, not repertoire of particular songs.
"In the Mood" (Music, Joe Garlan; lyrics, Andy Razaf. Arranged by Glenn Miller, et al, based on an Eddie Durham arrangement) Glenn Miller and his Orchestra [1939]:
From 1939 until its leader joined the Army in 1942, The Glenn Miller Orchestra was the most popular dance band in the world. The Miller band broke records for record sales and concert attendance, and has become the quintessential symbol of the Swing Era for many listeners. Born in Iowa in 1904, Miller had worked as a trombonist on numerous recordings before launching his own band in 1937. Like other bandleaders, his popularity was boosted by live radio broadcasts from hotels and dance halls. Glenn Miller developed a style that appealed not only to urban audiences but small-town, midwestern audiences as well. Though he died during World War Two, several versions of the Miller band are still touring the country, staffed by young players, and performing at big band revival concerts and dance halls. "In the Mood," perhaps the best-known arrangement from the Swing Era, is a 12-bar blues with a 16-bar bridge. The blues phrase is based on a simple riff that had been used by many previous arrangers. Miller left room for some improvised solos in the middle, and added the famous fade-away suprise ending.
"The Wild Side of Life" Hank Thompson and his Brazos Valley Boys [Hollywood, 1951]
Hank Thompson (b. in Waco, Texas, 1925) mixed the styles of Western swing and honky-tonk music. This song, based upon composer William Warren's personal experiences with a "honky tonk angel" who found the "glitter of the gay night life" too hard to resist, reflects a major theme of honky-tonk: the dislocations of urban working-class life, and the transience of male-female relationships. The melody of "The Wild Side" has a long history, having previously been used in "The Great Speckled Bird" and other songs.
"Your Cheating Heart" Hank Williams [Nashville, 1952]
Honky-tonk music - sometimes called "hard country" or "beer-drinking music" - conveys the sound and ethos of the social arena that spawned it, the roadside beer joint. Post-war honky-tonk music reflected changes in the experience of the southern audience that had patronized hillbilly music during the 1920s and 30s, including increased rural-urban migration, the emergence of a southern white working-class in cities such as Atlanta and Nashville, and the increased instability of male-female relationships. The typical band was small, including a fiddle, a steel guitar and "takeoff" or lead guitar (both amplified), string bass, and piano (but rarely a drummer). Hank Williams (b. 1923 in Alabama) was the quintessential honky-tonk singer. His recordings mark the emergence of modern country music, a style appealing to a wider mainstream audience. When musicians today talk about returning to "good old country music," they usually mean the honky-tonk style, not "hillbilly" or traditional mountain music. Williams' success peaked in the late 1940s and early 50s; he died at the age of 29, a tragic hero in the pattern of Jimmie Rodgers.
"Waiting for a Train" Jimmie Rodgers (1928)
If the Carter Family represented the stability of home, family, and traditional values, Jimmie Rodgers (1897-1933) conveyed the image of the wanderer, a man who had seen the world and tasted its temptations. These two images still continue to dominate country music lyrics. The ex-railroad brakeman from Meridian, Mississippi celebrated the allure of the open road and chronicled the lives of men who forsook the benefits of a settled existence: ramblers, rounders, hoboes, gamblers, convicts, and footloose lovers. Rodger's devil-may-care personality and his early death from tuberculosis contributed to his charismatic mystique, a sort of white parallel to black bluesman Robert Johnson. He was country music's first recording star. His style was strongly influenced by Afro-American blues and field hollers, as well as by Anglo-American folk songs, hillbilly music, and sentimental popular ballads. "Waiting for a Train" is an adaptation of an old folk song. It is a hobo song, and its dour mood, reinforced by Rodger's lonesome yodel, seemed to listeners to presage the Great Depression. This was Rodger's biggest hit. He introduced many new instruments and styles into country music: on this recording we hear a Hawaiian steel guitar, a jazz band, Jimmie's famous train whistle imitation, and his unique "blue yodel."
"Soldier's Joy" Tommy Jarrell (1978)
Immigrants from the British Isles and elsewhere brought fiddling traditions to the Americas. This is a traditional fiddle tune played by fiddler Tommy Jarrell, who learned it learned it in the 1910s in North Carolina. He plays in a style that was developed for dances, with a loud sound that is produced by playing a 'drone' tone on one string along with the melody on the other, and with steady rhythmic accents. The tune has a simple form that alternates between three different melodies called "strains"—one in a low range, another in a high range, and a third that begins with a repeated note (he ends with that one). This type of form is associated with dances like square dancing and contra dancing where the dancers form figures (rather than dancing in couples), and a new strain signals a new figure.
"And the Angels Sing," Benny Goodman (1944)
Includes "Klezmer"-style trumpet solo by Ziggy Elman
"How Deep is the Ocean" Bing Crosby (1932) c. Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin (born 1888 in Russia) was one of the most prolific of Tin Pan Alley composers. His best-known songs include "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "Blue Skies," "Cheek to Cheek," "White Christmas," and "God Bless America." Bing Crosby (b. in Tacoma in 1904) was the first singer to use the electronic microphone to develop a new way of singing, which became known as "crooning," an intimate and finely nuanced delivery of the lyrics that contrasts with the "bel canto" voice of opera singers and others who had to project their voices acoustically in large concert halls. He was the most popular singer of his generation; sales of his records have been estimated at more than 300 million. 32-bar ABAB form.
"Shake, Rattle, and Roll" (Jesse Stone) Bill Haley and the Comets [NYC, 1954]
It is important to compare Bill Haley's version of "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" to Joe Turner's version from CD #3. Composed by Jesse Stone, a black producer for Atlantic Records in 1954, Big Joe Turner's recording from the same year was in a jump blues R&B style. Bill Haley, former leader of a country and western band, recorded a cover version of this song in 1954 as well. His version differs from Turner's in that he emphasizes the guitar over Turner's saxophones, and his rhythm is derivative more of Western Swing than of jump blues R&B. Significantly, the highly erotic lyrics of Turner's are partially censored in Haley's version. Whereas Turner sings: "Well you wear those dresses, the sun come shinin' through, I cain' believe my eyes all that mess belong to you", Haley sings "Wearin' those dresses, your hair done up so nice. You look so warm, but your heart is cold as ice". Interestingly, the line "I'm like a one-eyed cat, peepin' in a seafood store" was retained in Haley's version, a double entendre that likely went right over the censor's head. Unlike later cases of white artists covering songs from black artists and generating huge profits, both recordings of "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" sold well. The difference was that Turner's version made both the pop and the R&B charts, while Haley's version never made it onto the R&B charts. Black audiences appreciated Turner's jump band approach over Haley's approach. This song was one of the first of many future hits for Haley, while it marked the beginning of the end of Joe Turner's career. Though obviously influential in early rock 'n' roll, Turner's time had passed and he was forced to take a backseat in the rock 'n' roll explosion
"Castle House Rag" James Reese Europe
James Reese Europe (1881-1919) organized the first band specializing in syncopated dance music in New York in 1910. He was hired as musical director by ballroom dance stars Irene and Vernon Castle in 1913, and signed a Victor recording contract in 1914, the year of this recording. Europe was the first black bandleader to make recordings, and the first to introduce syncopated dance music to France (with his 369th Infantry Band). Europe was popular enough to be greeted by a million people in New York upon his return from France. Europe composed and arranged this ensemble rag. The instrumentation includes cellos and violins as well as brass band instruments. This performance is regarded as the earliest recorded example of collective orchestral ragtime extemporization. "Castle House Rag" is both an East Coast parallel to New Orleans jazz style and a precursor of later developments in syncopated dance band music.
"Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" Louis Jordan and the Tympany Five [1946]
Jordan was the most successful black recording artist of the post-War period, with a string of hit rhythm & blues records. This is a classic jump band, consisting of a three horn front line (alto sax, tenor sax, and trumpet) and rhythm section piano, guitar, bass, and drums. Jordan, who sang and played alto sax, was a polished entertainer, and his up-beat lyrics and smooth vocal quality provided urban black audiences with a alternative to the Delta-based Chicago blues style of Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, etc. This recording was his first million-seller, a cross-over hit with both black and white audiences. Producer Milt Gabler was later involved in the production of Bill Haley and the Comets, a rock 'n'and roll band which drew upon the jump band sound.
"La Bamba," Son de Madera
Las Orquestas del Dia Led by requinto player Ramón Guiterrez, Son de Madera, performs the repertoire of son jarocho from Veracruz, Mexico. Their style is rooted in the practice of community fandangos--gatherings at which people sing sones, play jaranas and other instruments, and dance zapateado (rhythmic footwork) on the tarima (a portable stage or stomp box that basically functions as a drum played with feet). The recording begins with a requinto solo, followed by the entrance of the jarana, a type of strumming guitar. It also includes bass, and percussive zapateado dancing on the tarima. While this is a commercial recording, you can hear influences of the fandango protocol and aesthetic. Singers alternate, choosing the verses they want to sing, and in between verses there is instrumental improvisation and more active footwork on the tarima.
"One Hour Mama," Ida Cox (1939)
Like Bessie Smith, Ida Cox made her first commercial recordings in 1924, but this song was recorded in a jazz style in 1939. It doesn't have the characteristic features of the blues (12-bar blues chord progression, AAB text form, etc.); it's a sort of mixture between burlesque music and New Orleans style jazz, with polyphonic trumpet and clarinet lines, and a stop-time section. But the lyrics are a good example of the sexual assertiveness and independence of the 1920s classic blues singers.
"Sh-Boom" The Crew Cuts [Chicago, 1954]:
Major record label Mercury specialized during the mid-1950s in covering rhythm & blues hits, with white groups performing sanitized, less rhythmically complex versions directed at the mainstream pop audience. The Crew-Cuts were a Canadian group, modeled on The Four Lads. The Crew-Cuts and other performers specialized in covering rhythm & blues songs. Such groups generally had little or no understanding of the texture and rhythmic momentum of black popular music, and the results often seem awkward and amusing today. This is a classic example, complete with a tympani solo replacing the swinging tenor sax solo, and a cleancut vocal performance by the Canadian group Crew-Cuts (reminiscent of bandleader Paul Whiteman's attempt to "make a lady out of Jazz" some 30 years earlier). The Crew-Cuts' version of "Sh-Boom" far surpassed the original in sales, and reached #1 on the pop charts.
"Hoochie-Coochie Man" (Willie Dixon) Muddy Waters [1953, Chicago]
Muddy Waters (b. Rolling Fork, Mississippi) was "discovered" in the Mississippi Delta by folk song collectors John and Alan Lomax, who recorded him for the Library of Congress. Two years later, in 1943, he left for Chicago, part of a massive movement of blacks from the South. In 1948 Muddy recorded for the Chess label, playing electric guitar with bass accompaniment by Big Crawford. Though still clearly rooted in Delta blues style, Muddy's early Chess recordings marked the beginning of electric blues in Chicago. Sold at first through record stores, groceries and barbershops in South Chicago, his records became popular both in the city and in the South, and launched Muddy's career. The evolution of Muddy's band during the late 1940s and early 50s reflects changes in the Chicago electric blues band style. On this cut (one of Muddy's signature tunes) the band includes two electric guitars, piano, bass, drums, and amplified harmonica (pioneered by Muddy's sideman, Little Walter). Muddy, along with other southern migrants such as Howlin' Wolf, set the standard for Chicago urban blues during the post-War period. The electrification and expansion of blues ensembles helped musicians play dance music in noisy urban bars. In this song Muddy continues an old blues tradition: the bold assertion of personal power in the face of adverse circumstances: "I got a black cat bone; I got a mojo too; I got a Johnnie Conkaroo; I'm gonna mess wit' you; I'm gonna make you girls; lead me by my hand; Then the world'll know; I'm a hoochie-coochie man" Form: 16-bar blues (8 bars of "stop time," then 8 bars to finish).
"El Manicero" Don Azpiazu and his Havana Casino Orchestra (1930)
Music played by Latin bands like Xavier Cugat's Waldorf Astoria Orchestra and Don Azpiazu's Havana Casino Orchestra was intended mainly to accompany ballroom adaptations of Latin American dances. "El Manicero" was composed by Moises Simon, a Cuban pianist, as a rumba. Though rumbas are traditionally dances associated with complex African drumming systems involving intricate interactions between drummer and dancer, the name rumba has become attached to the kind of Cuban music that was popularized in America in the 1920s and 30s. Much of this music would be more accurately referred to as son. American rumbas were intended to present Cuban music as exotic, in tourist shows and in American clubs and movies. In "El Manicero", each percussion instrument plays a rhythmic pattern that is carefully arranged to interlock with the rhythmic patterns of the other percussion instruments. The percussion is led by the rhythm of the claves which can be heard in the opening of this track. Claves are two sticks of dense wood that make a loud "clack" when struck together. This style of rhythm in which various instruments interlock rhythmically and are led by one loud, high-pitched percussion instrument is very common in African drumming from the West Coast of Africa and in African music somewhat generally.
"Side by Side" Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra (1927)
Paul Whiteman brought jazz-tinged ballroom music into the musical mainstream during the so-called "Jazz Age." Whiteman, whose public relations title was "The King of Jazz," popularized a style of mildly syncopated dance band music. When World War I began, Whiteman secured a post as a musical director with the navy, organizing a forty-piece band that was the precursor of his later civilian groups. His first recording for Victor was "Whispering," which sold a phenomenal 1,800,000 copies in 1920. The rich arrangements played by the Whiteman band were widely imitated by both black and white bands. Between 1920 and 1934 he had 28 #1 hit records. "Side by Side" is typical of Whiteman's sound during the late 1920s. The vocal is by the Rhythm Boys, a trio which included Bing Crosby. The band plays in a two-beat feel, and the ensemble texture is smooth. The "cutesy" vocal arrangement is also typical of the period. The Paul Whiteman group included Bix Beiderbecke (an Indiana-born trumpeter generally regarded as the first important white jazz musician), trombonist Tommy and saxophonist Jimmy Dorsey, and pioneer dance band arranger Bill Chalis.
"I've Got A Woman" (Ray Charles) Ray Charles [Miami, 1954]
Ray Charles is a seminal force in American popular music. Starting out as an R&B singer and jazz crooner, moving into Rock 'n' Roll in the 1950s, and then into soul music in the 1960s, his presence has been felt by countless artists and fans throughout the years. Born in the Deep South during the Great Depression, Charles was blinded at age six and orphaned by the time he was sixteen. From an early age Charles was musically omnivorous, absorbing styles as diverse as jazz, blues, gospel, country, classical piano, and boogie-woogie piano. Charles got his start in Seattle in the late 1940s, recording jazzy crooning numbers. After he left Seattle in 1950 he formed a band of his own and began singing hard-driving R&B songs as well as deeply soulful songs adapted from the gospel tradition. Charles pioneered the combination of secular gospel and R&B that was to become soul music. The song "I Got A Woman", written by Charles, was his first #1 hit on the R&B charts. It is basically a remake (with secular words) of the gospel song "It Must be Jesus," by the Southern Tones. Charles was criticized for combining sacred and secular music like this, but he stood by his sound and by his belief that he should be able to play all different kinds of music. Powerful gospel inflections can be heard in Charles voice. The use of saxophone riffs, and the repeated vocal phrase in each verse (similar to aab text form), are stylistic features of the blues. The series of breaks—or stop time—toward the end of the song is an old jazz technique, also related to the use of call and response improvisation in church music.
"La Bamba," Ritchie Valens (1958)
Richie Valens was a Chicano (Mexican-American) musician brought up in the barrios of East Los Angeles who did a great deal to introduce Latin influences to mainstream rock and roll. "La Bamba," released on the indie label Del-Fi in 1958, is a rock n' roll version of a Mexican folk song. It is a son from the Veracruz region of Mexico, where the style is known as son jarocho. "La Bamba" was the B side of the #2 pop hit "Donna." Although it reached only #22 on the pop charts, "La Bamba" was very influential and became a quintessential party song. Richie Valens died before his 18th birthday, in the plane crash that also killed Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. The 1987 film based on Valens' life featured covers of his music by Los Lobos, who scored a #1 hit with "La Bamba."
"Cross Road Blues" Robert Johnson [San Antonio, 1936]
Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues" is one of his best-known songs. It was famously covered by Eric Clapton and Cream in 1969, and has been covered by other musicians as well. This song speaks to the legend that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to be able to play and sing as well as he did. Johnson's mentor, Son House, who knew Johnson when he was a kid, recalls that Johnson originally played harmonica, and that his guitar playing was quite poor. Johnson left town at some point in his youth and disappeared for six months to a year. When he returned, he had become an amazing guitarist, a feat that greatly surprised Son House. What Johnson did in this mystery period of his life is anyone's guess, though the legend that he went down to a crossroad to sell his soul has become the most popular answer. Johnson seems to play several parts at once, keeping a bass line at the same time he plays chords and melody, AND sings. His guitar technique includes the use of a sawed off bottleneck (sometimes a metal cylinder or a knife blade) laid across all the strings so that he can swoop up and down the fret board playing full chords. This technique is referred to as "slide guitar" or "bottleneck guitar" and it is similar to the Hawaiian-derived steel guitar technique; indeed it may be an African American adaptation of Hawaiian steel guitar. The song follows a 12-bar blues progression, and has an AAB text form, and in this sense it is similar to the "classic blues" recordings of the 1920s. Notice that Johnson's phrase lengths are irregular, though—not all the measures of the 12-bar blues have the same length. This metrical irregularity is common in country blues, especially when it is a solo performance and there is no need to coordinate between multiple musicians. Stories about crossroads as magical or supernatural places are common in many cultures, and these stories in African American culture may have some root in transplanted African religions such as Vodun. It has even been suggested that Johnson was inducted into the Vodun priesthood during this mystery period. It may also have been that Johnson simply left town and spent his time diligently practising everything he'd absorbed from listening to Son House, Johnson himself capitalized on his mystique, writing songs like "Me and the Devil Blues" and "Hellhounds on My Trail". Whether he believed it himself or not, the supernatural imagery of these songs, together with his intensely emotional performances, leave us with some of the most eery and powerful music ever recorded.
"Sheep Sheep, Don't Ya Know the Road " Bessie Jones, song leader (recorded 1960)
Southern Journey, Vol.6: Sheep, Sheep Don'tcha Know the Road, Alan Lomax Collection, Rounder CD 1706 (MLLC CD3168) This is a spiritual led by Bessie Jones, in the Georgia Sea Island community of St. Simons. Most folk spirituals like this one are not attributed to a particular composer. They may use biblical text or references (the image of Jesus as a shepard and the congregation as his flock is evoked here), but they have text and melodies that are distinctive to African American vernacular tradition. Spirituals can be sung solo or in a group. This one uses a call and response form, with variation and improvisation by the song leader to animate the performance and enhance its spirit. Call and response improvisation is common to much African and African American music, both sacred and secular.
"Ain't That a Shame" (Antoine Domino and Dave Bartholomew) Fats Domino [New Orleans, 1955]
Starting in the late 1940s, Fats led a New Orleans-based R&B; band. His distinctive piano style (based upon local boogie-woogie and Latin-influenced piano traditions), good-natured, relaxed singing, and excellent sidemen (e.g., co-leader Dave Bartholomew, a former member of Duke Ellington's big band) contributed to his success. This and other early recordings feature tenor sax solos by Lee Allen. Fats was the consummate crossover artist, and was able not only to generate a series of big hits with young white audiences, but also to fight off cover attempts by Pat Boone and other white artists who recorded simplified, "cleaned-up" versions of his originals.
"Old Folks at Home," Stephen Foster (1854)
Stephen Collins Foster, born in Pennsylvania in 1826 (died in 1864), may have been the first person in the United States to make his living as a fulltime professional songwriter. His repertoire included various popular song styles to which he was exposed as a young man -- Italian light opera, Irish and German songs, and "Ethiopian" Minstrel songs. Foster was a master at creating the simple but compelling melodies and texts that later popular composers would refer to as "hooks" (i.e., the basic idea or motif that "hooks" the listener's ear). Although Foster was not the most financially successful popular song composer of the mid-19th century, he was certainly the most influential. The songs of Stephen Foster have endured long beyond the minstrel show, which served as their original performance context. This song uses stylized black speech and references to the plantation and "darkies," and in that regard it is typical of minstrel songs and skits that portrayed the plantation nostalgically, populated by happy black people, and so served as a justification for slavery. But its European melody and its theme of missing home surely evoked personal nostalgia for many listeners in northern industrial cities who missed their rural homes, some of them on the other side of the ocean. This song uses a version of the AABA form that is one of the most common forms in American pop song to this day. The logic of the AABA form is basically to put a melody (A) into the listener's ear by repeating it, then change to something different (B) for contrast, and finally return to the familiar (A). In this case the final 'A' is a shortened version of the original 'A' melody. The AABA pattern here repeats three times. The B section always uses the same words, "All the world am sad and dreary ...", which gives it the function of refrain or chorus.
"Cool Water" (B. Nolan) Sons of the Pioneers [Chicago, 1941]
Taken only loosely from history and melded with images from dime novels, Tom Mix films, and Wild West shows, the "singing cowboy" genre became popular thoughout the U.S. (and the world) during the Depression. Stars such as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Tex Ritter were important figures in the establishment of the "western" aspect of country-and-western music. This group, the Sons of the Pioneers, was formed in 1933 when Len Slye -- later known as Roy Rogers -- coerced two fellow southern California musicians back into the music business they had left during the depths of the Depression. By the time of this recording they had appeared in numerous cowboy films, and Roy Rogers had left the group to develop a solo career. Their style, which was widely influential, featured trio singing and yodelling, sophisticated harmonies, and a smooth, polished style.
"Dark was the Night," Blind Willie Johnson (recorded 1927).
The Blues: A Smithsonian Collection of Classic Blues Singers, v.1. Washington, DC : Smithsonian Collection of Recordings, p1993. Historically, the blues are part of a continuum of vocal music among southern blacks that has included musically simple "hollers" and "cries" that slaves and workers could sing alone. The pained emotional qualities of the blues seem particularly similar to the mood of religious folk "spirituals." Blues are sometimes distinguished from spirituals only by the use of instrumental accompaniment and by their secular texts. "Dark was the Night," for example, is a wordless Baptist chant (sometimes referred to as a "moan") from East Texas, but the guitar accompaniment in this performance by Blind Willie Johnson brings it into the blues tradition.
"Smokestack Lightnin," Howlin' Wolf (recorded 1956).
The Blues: A Smithsonian Collection of Classic Blues Singers, v.4. Washington, DC : Smithsonian Collection of Recordings, p1993. Howlin' Wolf was one of the most famous of the Delta bluesmen who moved to Chicago and developed an urban blues tradition there (another was Muddy Waters). Note the typical Chicago blues instrumentation of bass, drums, piano and electric guitar. The harmonica (often called "harp" in blues parlance), common in rural blues, is also featured. Despite the changes in instrumentation and amplification the Chicago bluesmen tended to retain the "heavy," dense Delta sound. Howlin' Wolf's vocal style exploits a huge variety of timbres, moans and speech-type qualities. The form of this song is cyclical, built on a distinctive guitar ostinato (repeated melodic pattern) instead of an extended chord progression.
"Sh-Boom" (James Keyes, Carl and Claude Feaster, Floyd McCrae, and William R. Edwards) The Chords [NYC, 1954]
The Chords were a vocal R&B; group from The Bronx. This performance was recorded as the B side of a cover of a popular Patti Page song, "Cross Over the Bridge." "Sh-Boom" reached #3 on the R&B; charts, #9 on the pop charts, and is regarded as one of the first rock n' roll hits. Recorded by the indie label Atlantic, which specialized in rhythm and blues recordings during the early 1950s, the slick vocal sound of this group represents a conscious attempt to create a cross-over hit attracting a racially mixed audience. The structure of the song is AABA, with the A-section chords based on the classic I - VI minor - IV - V pattern common to much vocal group music of the period. The vocal lead and choral "pads" or backgrounds are also typical of the style. The record was produced by Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun.
"Pea Patch Jig"
The Early Minstrel Show, Music Listening CD 3999 The banjo was associated with African American culture in the 19th century. It derives historically from African lutes, like the halam, that have a stretched membrane upon which the bridge sits; and it was widely popularized in the U.S. through blackface minstrel shows. This performance is a modern reconstruction based on the notations of Dan Emmett, a famous mid-19th century black-face performer, using an 1850s minstrel banjo. The styles of professionals like Emmett were based to some extent on rural, especially black, banjo players; the wide dissemination of new banjo styles and repertoire in traveling shows also influenced rural traditions in a complicated feedback loop.
"The Boatman's dance" c. Dan Emmett (1843)
The Early Minstrel Show, Music Listening CD 3999 This modern recreation of a mid-19th century minstrel performance illustrates some of the typical features of minstrel show music. The instrumentation includes banjo, an iconically 'negro' instrument, as well as bones and tambourine. The lyrics are pronounced with a stylized accent (e.g. 'de' instead of 'the', 'sho' instead of 'shore'). The verse and chorus form also may have been associated for some listeners with the responsorial singing practices of African Americans.
"Tiger Rag," Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1917)
The Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB) was the first jazz group to record, the offer having been previously declined in 1915 by New Orleans cornetist Freddie Keppard's all-black jazz band because Keppard was afraid other players might steal his style through the recordings. The ODJB were a 5 person strong all-white jazz band hailing from New Orleans, but trying to make a name for themselves in the North. They were not immediately popular and audiences had no idea how to understand their music. They were led by cornetist Nic Larocca, a son of a Sicilian immigrant to New Orleans, a city known for its hatred of Italians and its vicious race riot against them in 1891. The ODJB players were young kids, the oldest being 28, eager to make a name for themselves and to get out of the grinding poverty of New Orleans. They did not improvise, as most New Orleans jazz bands did, but rather worked off of arrangements that sounded similar to African-American bands of the time. None of them were great players, but their energy and spirit were infectious, and their recordings, the first of which were made in 1917, were wildly popular. In this recording of the ever popular Tiger Rag, listen to the interplay between the instruments, and listen for their use of "stop-time". Stop-time occurs when the instruments stop their continual playing and move to playing choppy chords. As ODJB does it and as King Oliver would as well, this stop-time served to emphasize solos from one of the players. After touring England, the band broke up and Larocca had a nervous breakdown, returning to the construction business and foresaking music. He was to become famous in later years for his insistence that African-Americans had nothing to do with the creation of jazz, which he insisted was achieved entirely by white marching bands and by the ODJB.
"St. Louis Blues," Bessie Smith (1925)
The first appearance of the blues on gram ophone records was the so-called "classic blues" style, performed by black female artists such as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tenneessee, and began recording in 1923. She was stylistically a blues singer even when performing novelty and vaudeville numbers, and had a majestic voice and imposing presence. Smith sold millions of records, performed in New York stage shows, and attained a celebrity comparable to modern popular singers; she was the centerpiece of Columbia's "race record" catalog. On this recording she is accompanied by New Orleans jazz virtuoso Louis Armstrong on cornet. African-American composer and music publisher W.C. Handy (b. Florence, Alabama) was largely responsible for popularizing blues among middle-class white Americans during the 1910s and 20s. Handy's "blues" were actually ragtime-like compositions with several themes and blues tinges. "St. Louis Blues," his most successful piece, is an excellent example of the incorporation of selected elements of southern blues styles by professional popular composers. Although Handy complained about the monotony of rural blues, cleaned-up, commercialized blues were actually often more predictable, avoiding the irregularities of "downhome" performances. Form: Ragtime-like structure with three themes; A, a 12-bar blues ("I hate to see..."; "Feelin' tomorrow..."); B, 16-bar section in minor key ("St. Louis woman..."); and C, another 12-bar blues ("I got those St. Louis Blues...").
"Maple Leaf Rag" Scott Joplin (1897)
This composition sparked a craze for piano ragtime music in the late 19th century. Scott Joplin combined formal music training and familiarity with African American vernacular music, and aspired to be a composer of a new kind of opera. His music gave dignity to a genre that was often more associated with silliness and racial stereotyping. The syncopation ('off-beat' accents of the right hand part contrasting with the steady pulse of the left hand) that pervades this piece constituted a very different approach to composition compared to earlier minstrel songs that generally conformed to the style of Irish folk melodies. This performance, recorded on a paper piano roll, is by Scott Joplin (1869-1917), the best-known ragtime composer. "Maple Leaf Rag" was recorded by the U.S. Marine Band and sold over a million copies in sheet music. The form of "Maple Leaf Rag", which presents a succession of new melodic and harmonic materials, is related to march music, and to the high society tradition of set dances—dances that were done in coordinated figures, with each new section of music corresponding to a new figure (square dancing and contra dancing are folk versions of this tradition). Form: A-A-B-B-A-C-C-D-D (16 measures each)
"The Sun Didn't Shine" (Roosevelt Fennoy) Golden Gate Quartet [1941]
This gospel quartet was recorded by the Okeh and Columbia labels. Note the strong steady pulse; call-and-response; percussive approach; interlocking vocal parts; use of special vocal effects, such as rhythmic breathing; the importance of the bass vocal lines; background vocal "pads" (sustained "oooohs" and "aaahs"); and an emphasis upon direct communication of emotional experience.
"Mambo Gozon," Tito Puente 1950s
This is a New York style mambo. The "mambo" was first by conjuntos in Cuba (the conjunto was an expansion of the septeto, including piano, congas, and multiple trumpets). Mambo was popularized internationally by bandleader Perez Prado, a Cuban who relocated to Mexico City and made influential recordings. But at the Palladium Ballroom in New York in the 1950s, the mambo took a harder edge, including jazz harmonies and instrumentation. The polyrhythmic texture of the mambo is rooted in the rhythm section of the Cuban son, with piano, bass, congas, and other percussion instruments all playing fixed rhythmic patterns that are linked to the guiding rhythm of the clave (not heard here, but implicit in the rhythmic structure of the other parts). The call and response improvisations of the singer, exciting breaks, changing horn lines, and solos provide variety. One of Tito Puente's important innovations was to foreground the percussion, especially the timbales, on which he plays brief solo near the end.
"Gimme My Money Back" Treme Brass Band
This is an example of a contemporary New Orleans brass band, still rooted in the tradition of marching bands for funerals, mardi gras and other public events.
"Barbara Allen"
This is the most famous ballad in the Anglo-American folk tradition, and exemplifies the ballad genre generally. The song tells a story, with each verse adding a new part. The melody, though, simply repeats over and over. This is called 'ballad form' or 'strophic' form—variety and interest are created by the words and the unfolding story, while the melody repeats without change. "Barbara Allen" is one of many American folk ballads that originated in the British Isles and were perpetuated by singers in Appalachian mountain communities, with variations. The tragedy of this story, as well as its suggestion of a happier resolution beyond the grave (the intertwining of the brier and the rose), are typical of many southern folk songs, both secular and religious.
"What'd I say?" Ray Charles (1959)
This song shows some influences from Latin music, particularly the mambo, which became widely popular in the 1950s. The drumset is playing the rhythm of the conga "tumbao" rhythm, and the keyboard has a pattern that is sort of similar to a montuno. You can also hear the fast repeated rhythm on the cymbal as similar to the "cascara"—an elaborated version of the clave that is played with the stick on the side of the timbales drums in mambo.
"Don't Be Cruel" (Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley) Elvis Presley [Nashville, 1956]
This was Elvis' first recording for RCA, and it was a very big crossover hit, reaching an unprecedented #1 position on the pop, country, and R&B; charts. This recording demonstrates a more polished and highly produced studio sound, with a more artificial, self-conscious vocal style, a slick vocal back-up group (the Jordannaires), and professional Nashville studio musicians under the direction of country music star Chet Atkins. Rather than drawing upon blues and country songs, Elvis began to sing songs written for him by professional tunesmiths. Later, under the guidance of RCA recording moguls, he began to record ballads such as "Love Me Tender" and pop songs of all kinds, and starred in a series of commercially successful motion pictures. Elvis said that this is what he always wanted to be: a film star and not a rock n' roller. Today Elvis' image, that of the poor southern boy metamorphosized into wealthy (though troubled) superstar, is enshrined at Graceland. a museum-amusement park visited by hundreds of thousands of fans each year.
