Music 162 Chapters 1-5

samba

A Brazilian dance style strongly rooted in African music.

Ralph Peer (1892-1960)

A Missouri-born talent scout for Okeh Records; he worked as an assistant on Mamie Smith's first recording sessions and was the first to use the catchphrase "race music." He discovered the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers at a recording session in Bristol, Tennessee, in August 1927.

Vernon Dalhart (1883-1948)

A Texas-born former light-opera singer who recorded the first big country music hit. In 1924, Dalhart recorded two songs: "Wreck of the Old 97" and "The Prisoner's Song," a million-seller that contributed to the success of the fledgling country music industry.

bossa nova ("new trend")

A cool, sophisticated style of Brazilian music that became popular in United States during the early 1960s, eventually spawning hit songs such as "The Girl from Ipanema" (1964).

Bing Crosby (1904-77)

A crooner, by far the most popular representative of the style. Sales of his records have been estimated at more than 300 million.

pleasure garden

A forerunner of today's theme parks; one of the main venues for the dissemination of printed songs by professional composers in England between 1650 and 1850.

blues

A genre of music originating principally from the field hollers and work songs of rural blacks in the southern United States during the latter half of the nineteenth century. A musical genre that emerged in black communities of the Deep South-especially the region from the Mississippi Delta to East Texas-sometime around the end of the nineteenth century.

broadside

A large sheet of paper on which ballads were published; the predecessor of sheet music.

Virginia Minstrels

A minstrel troupe led by the white banjo virtuoso Dan Emmett; their show introduced more lengthy performances featuring a standardized group of performers. They first appeared in 1843.

collective improvisation

A musical element found in New Orleans jazz in which the players of the ensemble improvise and embellish melodies simultaneously.

arranger

A person who adapts (or arranges) the melody and chords to songs to exploit the capabilities and instrumental resources of a particular musical ensemble.

Sophie Tucker (1884-1966)

A popular Jewish American vaudeville star who specialized in "Negro songs." She was known as "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas."

turkey trot

A popular dance of the early twentieth century. Considered scandalous because of the close contact between the dancers.

salsa

A rumba-based style pioneered by Cuban and Puerto Rican migrants in New York City in the 1960s. The stars of salsa music include the great singer Celia Cruz and bandleader Tito Puente.

crooning

A style of singing made possible by the invention of the microphone. It involves an intimate approach to vocal timbre.

blackface

A style of stage makeup in which performers would apply burnt cork to darken their face. It is associated with the practice of minstrelsy.

analog recording

A technique for storing audio signals for playback. Unlike digital recording, which converts sound waves into numbers, the sound waves in an analog recording are stored as a physical texture on a phonograph record or a fluctuation in the strength of a magnetic recording.

bel canto

A technique used by opera singers that emphasizes breath control, a fluid and relaxed voice, and the use of subtle variations in pitch and rhythmic phrasing for dramatic effect.

verse-refrain form

A two-part musical structure used by Tin Pan Alley composers in which the verses usually assumed an introductory character and were followed by the refrain.

Sara Carter (1899-1979)

A. P.'s wife; she sang most of the lead vocal parts and played autoharp or guitar.

Scott Joplin (1867-1917)

African American composer and pianist; the best-known composer of ragtime music. Between 1895 and 1915, Joplin composed many of the classics of the ragtime repertoire and helped popularize the style through his piano arrangements, published as sheet music. Scott Joplin's first successful piece was "Maple Leaf Rag" (1898).

Noble Sissle (1899-1975) and Eubie Blake (1883-1983)

African American musicians who began their career with James Reese Europe's orchestra in 1916. In 1921, Sissle and Blake launched the first successful all-black Broadway musical, Shuffle Along.

Black Swan

African American-owned record company founded in 1921 in New York by Harry Pace, a former partner of the bandleader and songwriter W. C. Handy.

cakewalk

Africanized version of the European quadrille (a kind of square dance). The cakewalk was developed by slaves as a parody of the "refined" dance movements of the white slave owners.

standards

American popular songs from the Tin Pan Alley style of songwriting that remain an essential part of the repertoire of today's jazz musicians and pop singers.

habanera

An African-influenced variant of the European country-dance tradition that swept the United States and Europe in the 1880s. The characteristichabanera rhythm—an eight-beat pattern divided 3-3-2—influenced late nineteenth-century ragtime music.

rumba

An Afro-Cuban dance that became popular in the United States during the early 1930s.

Ethel Merman (Zimmerman) (1909-84)

At the age of twenty-one, introduced "I Got Rhythm" in the stage show Girl Crazy written by George Gershwin.

Al Jolson (1886-1950)

Billed himself as "The World's Greatest Entertainer." The most popular performer of his generation; his career overlapped the era of vaudeville stage performance and the rise of new media in the 1920s.

Mamie Smith (1883-1946)

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio; known as the "Queen of the Blues." She was a pioneer blues singer, pianist, and black vaudeville performer. In 1920, she recorded the bestsellers "Crazy Blues" and "It's Right Here For You, If You Don't Get It, 'Tain't No Fault of Mine." Mamie Smith's success as a recording artist opened up the record industry to recordings by and for African Americans.

Louis Armstrong, aka "Satchmo," "Satchelmouth" (1901-71)

Born in New Orleans; a cornetist and singer, he established certain core features of jazz, particularly its rhythmic drive and its emphasis on solo instrumental virtuosity. Armstrong also profoundly influenced the development of mainstream popular singing during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1964, he had a Number One hit with his version of "Hello, Dolly!"

The Carter Family

Born in the isolated foothills of the Clinch Mountains of Virginia, regarded as one of the most important groups in the history of country music.

Cole Porter (1891-1964)

Born into a wealthy family in Indiana; studied classical music at Yale, Harvard, and the Schola Cantorum in Paris.

WLS in Chicago

Broadcast the National Barn Dance, featuring country artists.

WSM in Nashville

Broadcast the famous Grand Ole Opry.

Bessie Smith (1894-1937)

Called the "Empress of the Blues," she was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and performed in traveling shows and vaudeville before embarking on a recording career with Columbia Records. Her recordings include W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" and Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band."

Jimmie Rodgers (1897-1933)

Called the "Singing Brakeman," he was the most versatile, progressive, and widely influential of all the early country recording artists and was early country music's biggest recording star. His influence can be seen in the public images of Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and almost every contemporary male country music star.

Tambo

Character in a minstrel show who performed the tambourine and was positioned at the end of a line of performers (as was Bones).

Stephen Collins Foster (1826-64)

Composed around two hundred songs during the 1840s, 1850s, and early 1860s; regarded as the first important composer of American popular song. He was probably the first person in the United States to make his living as a full-time professional songwriter; he wrote "Oh! Susanna," "Old Folks at Home," "My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night," "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair," and "Beautiful Dreamer."

contradance (or country dance)

Dance tradition in which teams of dancers form geometric figures such as lines, circles, or squares.

electric recording

Developed in 1925 using a new device, the microphone. Electric recording converts sounds into electrical signals.

phonograph (or gramophone)

Early device for playing recorded sounds etched on a disc.

song plugger

Employee of Tin Pan Alley music publishing firms who promoted their popular songs.

John Gay (1685-1732)

English poet and dramatist; wrote The Beggar's Opera(1728).

Ethel Waters (1896-1977)

Entertained the growing African American middle class in New York, Chicago, and other northern cities. She recorded with bandleaders Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and Benny Goodman, and appeared in several films.

ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers)

Founded in 1914 in an attempt to force all business establishments that featured live music to pay fees ("royalties") for the public use of music.

banjo

Four- or five-stringed instrument with a membrane stretched over a wooden or metal hoop that is strummed or plucked. It was developed by slave musicians from African prototypes during the early colonial period. The banjo was used in the music of the minstrel show, early jazz, old time country music, and bluegrass.

Irving Berlin (1888-1989)

Generally recognized as the most productive, varied, and creative of the Tin Pan Alley songwriters. His professional songwriting career started before World War I and continued into the 1960s. His most famous songs include "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "Blue Skies," "Cheek to Cheek," "There's No Business Like Show Business," "White Christmas," and "God Bless America."

Vernon and Irene Castle

Husband-and-wife dance team who popularized the tango and the fox-trot. The Castles attracted millions of middle-class Americans into ballroom classes, expanded the stylistic range of popular dance, and established an image of mastery, charisma, and romance. They were possibly the biggest media superstars of the World War I era.

KDKA in Pittsburgh

In 1920, became the first commercial radio station in the United States.

refrain

In a verse-refrain song, the refrain is the "main part" of the song, usually constructed in AABA or ABAC form.

riff

In much African American music, a melody or rhythmic pattern that is repeated to create momentum.

sound film

Introduced in 1927. Became an important means for the dissemination of popular music.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

Irish poet and ballad singer whose multivolume collection of poems set to Irish folk melodies was widely circulated in the United States.

Don Azpiazú

Latin American bandleader during the swing era; his band played music to accompany ballroom adaptations of South American and Caribbean dances.

Robert Johnson (1911-38)

Little is known of his early years. His guitar playing was so remarkable and idiosyncratic that stories circulated claiming he had sold his soul to the devil to play that way. Johnson died apparently as a victim of poisoning by a jealous husband. His work was especially revered by the British guitarist Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, and by Eric Clapton.

polyphonic

Musical texture with interlocking melodies and rhythms.

Fiddlin' John Carson (1868-1949)

Musician from Georgia who made the first commercially successful hillbilly record in 1923.

Tin Pan Alley

Nickname for a stretch of 28th Street in New York City where music publishers had their offices—a dense hive of small rooms with pianos where composers and "song pluggers" produced and promoted popular songs. The term, which evoked the clanging sound of many pianos simultaneously playing songs in a variety of keys and tempos, also refers to the style of popular song created by these publishers in the first half of the twentieth century.

Bones

Nickname for the character in a minstrel show who performed the bones and was positioned at the end of a line of performers (as was Tambo).

James A. Bland (1854-1911)

One of the best-known and most successful composers of plantation songs; the first successful black songwriter. An ex-minstrel show performer from a middle-class background, Bland wrote some seven hundred songs, including "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" (published in 1878, for a long time the official state song of Virginia) and "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers" (published in 1879).

Charley Patton (ca. 1881-1934)

One of the earliest known pioneers of the Mississippi Delta blues style. The son of sharecroppers; a charismatic figure whose performance techniques included rapping on the body of his guitar and throwing it into the air. His powerful rasping voice, strong danceable rhythms, and broad range of styles made him ideal for Saturday night dances and all-day picnics.

AABA form

One of the most common structures that Tin Pan Alley composers used to organize their melodic and harmonic material. This structure would be found in the refrain of a verse-refrain song.

Paul Dresser (1857-1906)

One of the most popular composers of the early Tin Pan Alley period; he wrote a series of sentimental and nostalgic songs including "The Letter That Never Came" (1885) and "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" (1899; later adopted as the official state song of Indiana).

Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (1912-67)

One of the musicians most closely associated with the plight of American workers during the Great Depression. He was born in Oklahoma and began his career as a hillbilly singer. He composed songs that were overtly political in nature, including "This Land Is Your Land," "Talking Dust Bowl Blues," and "Ludlow Massacre." After 1940, he was known primarily as a protest singer.

Interlocutor

One of the standard performers in the minstrel show; the lead performer who sang and provided patter between acts.

licensing and copyright agencies

Organizations set up to control the flow of profits from the sale and broadcast of popular music.

A&R (artists and repertoire)

Personnel of a record company who discover and cultivate new talent and find material for artists to perform.

strophe

Poetic stanza; often, a pair of stanzas in alternation that constitute the structure of a poem and could become the verse and the chorus of a strophic song.

parlor song

Popular form of American music in the nineteenth century. Parlor songs had simple piano accompaniment and were meant to be performed at home in the parlor.

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (1886-1939)

Popularly known as the "Mother of the Blues," was the first of the great women blues singers and had a direct influence on Bessie Smith.

acoustic recording

Process for recording sound in the pre-microphone era. Performers projected into a huge megaphone. Replaced by electric recording in 1925.

Richard Rodgers (1902-79)

Produced many of the finest songs of the twentieth century, in collaboration with lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. Wrote the ground-breaking musical Oklahoma! in partnership with Oscar Hammerstein II in 1943.

syncopation

Rhythmic patterns in which the stresses occur on what are ordinarily weak beats, thus displacing or suspending the sense of metric regularity.

Maybelle Carter (1909-78)

Sang harmony, played steel guitar and autoharp, and developed an influential guitar style, which involved playing the melody on the bass strings while brushing the upper strings on the offbeats for rhythm.

Charles K. Harris (1867-1930)

Songwriter and self-taught banjo player from Wisconsin who could not write down music; dictated his songs to a professional musician. He wrote the first mega-hit popular song, "After the Ball" (published in 1892).

tango

Style of dance that developed during the late nineteenth century in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The tango blended European ballroom dance music, the Cuban habanera, Italian light opera, and the ballads of the Argentine gauchos (cowboys).

vaudeville

Style of show that included a variety of acts; it became the dominant form of popular entertainment in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America.

Harry von Tilzer (1872-1946)

Successful turn-of-the-century songwriter sometimes referred to as the "Daddy of Popular Song"; his big hits included "A Bird in a Gilded Cage" (1900) and "I Want a Girl (Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad)" (1911).

James Reese Europe (1880-1919)

Talented African American pianist and conductor. Played ragtime piano in cabarets and acted as a musical director for several all-black vaudeville revues. In 1913, Vernon and Irene Castle hired him to be their musical director. From 1913 until 1918, Europe composed music for all of the Castles' "new" dance steps and provided musicians for their live engagements.

polyrhythmic textures

Textures in which many rhythms are going on at the same time.

William Christopher "W. C." Handy (1873-1958)

The "Father of the Blues," born in Alabama in 1873. Cornet player and composer, he went on to receive a college degree and became a schoolteacher. In 1908, cofounded the first African American-owned music publishing house. His first sheet music hit was "Memphis Blues" (1912), and his biggest hit was the song "St. Louis Blues" (1914).

bridge

The B section of AABA song form found in the refrain of a Tin Pan Alley song. The bridge presents new material: a new melody, chord changes, and lyrics.

minstrel show

The first form of musical and theatrical entertainment to be regarded by European audiences as distinctively American in character. Featured mainly white performers who artificially blackened their skin and carried out parodies of African American music, dance, dress, and dialect.

Blind Lemon Jefferson (1897-1929)

The first recording star of the country blues. Born blind, Jefferson was living the typical life of a traveling street musician by the age of fourteen. His first records were released in 1926. Jefferson's East Texas style features a nasal vocal timbre and sparse guitar accompaniments.

WSB in Atlanta

The first station to feature country artists regularly; began broadcasting in 1922.

George Washington Dixon

The first white performer to establish a wide reputation as a "blackface" entertainer. His act featured two of the earliest "Ethiopian" songs to enjoy widespread popularity, "Long Tail Blue" and "Coal Black Rose."

A. P. "Doc" Carter (1891-1960)

The leader of the Carter Family, he collected and arranged the folk songs that formed the inspiration for much of the group's repertoire; he also sang bass.

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)

The most popular bandleader from the 1890s through World War I; was known as America's "March King." The son of a trombonist in the U.S. Marine Band, Sousa eventually became its conductor and later formed a "commercial" concert band, which toured widely in America and Europe. He composed popular marches such as "El Capitan," "The Washington Post," and "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

timbre

The quality of a sound, sometimes called "tone color."

major and minor

The scale systems central to Western music; a series of pitches organized in a specific order of whole- and half-step intervals. The major scale can give music a feeling of openness and brightness, whereas a minor scale can give music the feeling of darkness or sadness.

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

The son of an immigrant leatherworker, did much to bridge the gulf between art music and popular music. Studied European classical music but also spent a great deal of time listening to jazz musicians in New York City. Wrote Porgy and Bess (1935), which he called an "American folk opera."

front line

The wind instruments (cornet, clarinet, and trombone) that play and embellish the melody in New Orleans jazz bands.

ragtime

The word derives from the African American term "to rag," meaning to enliven a piece of music by shifting melodic accents onto the offbeats (a technique known as syncopation). Ragtime music emerged in the 1880s, its popularity peaking in the decade after the turn of the century. Scott Joplin is the recognized master of this genre.

waltz

Type of dance with a triple-meter accompaniment, circular movements, and smooth, graceful lines.

plantation song

Type of song descended from the minstrel song tradition; combined elements of the parlor song and minstrel song.

verse

Usually sets up a dramatic context or emotional tone. Although verses were the most important part of nineteenth-century popular songs, they were regarded as mere introductions by the 1920s, and today the verses of Tin Pan Alley songs are infrequently performed.

Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice (1808-60)

White actor born into a poor family in New York's Seventh Ward. As a blackface performer, he introduced the "Jim Crow" character.

Original Dixieland Jazz Band

White group from New Orleans led by the cornetist Nick LaRocca. Their recording of "Livery Stable Blues" and "Dixieland Jass Band One-Step" was released in March 1917, and within a few weeks, it had sparked a national fad for jazz music.