PAUL WHITEMAN

The King of Jazz

Yanisa Srirojanun 5202696

Paul Whiteman was considered a celebrated star as a bandleader of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, made recordings that sold more than millions of copies and had commissioned George Gershwin for the composition of Rhapsody in Blues. Being all of the above and more, he was named The King of Jazz. Despite all of his achievements, criticism was made that he was a racist in working with only white musicians and that his music werent the real Jazz.
Whiteman started out as an arranger, a violin/viola player and was a member of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. However he was wildly mesmerized when he rst heard Jazz music and had explained that what captured him was the raucousness, crudeness and unmusicality but rhythmically spirit-lifting. During World War I, he led a navy band that played march tunes and show music. Whiteman decided to formed his own seven-pieces band in 1919 which he then brought saxophone into the section, following the example from Art Hickman, a pianist, drummer and songwriter. Hickman included saxophones in his band in San Francisco, giving them preeminent role that separated the sound of the band out from the marching and the New Orleans jazz bands. He was successful in establishing saxophones as part of the jazz ensemble that before consisted of trumpet, trombones, violin and a banjo with stiff rhythm section. The Victor Talking Machine Company brought Hickmans band to New York however he disliked the city so he moved back to San Francisco. This was an unexpected opening for Whiteman that prove to be a turning point for him. In 1919, Whiteman took on a joint arranger Ferde Grof. Grof came from a similar background as Whiteman, being a former orchestral member of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. He establish the roles of all the sections, brass, reed and rhythm, into a systematic format and also featured this approached in the bands best-seller recordings. They also move away from the unison of theme and countermelody to using antiphonal responses between the sections. So Grof used this style of arrangements throughout the 1920s. With the new arrangements from Grofs work paring with Whitemans talent for showmanship and exacting musical standards, the band got its rst recording opportunity in New York after playing in Atlantic City in 1920. From the recordings and the fact that they hold a regular performance at the popular and fancy Palais Royal, the bands popularity grew enormously in a short period of time. It was a lucky coincidences for the bands rapid growth of popularity at this time also because to the upcoming dance steps that was changing from Waltz to Foxtrot. The upper social classes whites were drawn to the Palais Royal where there were popular dance team of Vernon and Irene Castle that was the new IT. It was a national phenomenon by 1920 from its, quote by Ronald M. Radano patrician sophistication with sexual suggestiveness and lack of restraint. Whiteman brought the craze escapade at the right moment and bringing right along with music that sells the idea of jazz to the whites.

The recording business is a large and greedy market that was dominated by the whites even though when Ralph Peer, a recording producer, produced an album Race that was targeted towards African-Americans group. There were many dances step recordings such as one-step, two-steps, foxtrots, waltzes and tangos. In 1920, 100 million recordings were sold throughout the country and from that around 1 million were the recordings of Whispering and Japanese Sandman from the Paul Whiteman Bands. Although there were some set backs in the record companies monopoly and the market subsided, Whitemans disc of Three Oclock in the Morning was sold around 1.7 million copies. It was a shocking amount for a performance by one artist. Which is no wonder why the Whiteman orchestra was so inuential. There are controversies of what should be consider as Jazz. Roger Pryor Dodge, dancer and critic, believed that if a savage rhythm can be found in the playing style, then we can recognize jazz. Whitemans work didnt meet the qualities of Armstrong, Bechet or Morton and his work didnt include the consistency of spirit in his big band work as Hendersons or Ellingtons. It was obvious that after Whitemans rst recording, Wang Wang Blues, that he separated himself from the use of savage rhythms and polyphonic melody sections of the band. However, in his rights, Whiteman had achieved the highest level of precision and unity in his ensemble than any other band of the period and laid the ground work for Henderson and Ellingtons upcoming achievements. He was important in the terms of having a sense of freshness and create a new and original characteristic of jazz. Whiteman combined classical style in his music such as Nobodys Sweetheart Now with Stravinskys Petrushka. He also used them to create jazzy syncopation in his big band arranging on his recordings which later others imitated them. An example is Louis Armstrong in Youre Next which comes from Japanese Sandman. It was a common technique that other arrangers later used but Whiteman was the rst to do a recording on it so it made him an inuential gure. In 1924, Whiteman organized a concert called An Experiment in Modern Music at the New York Aeolian Hall, which was his goal to bring his orchestra into a serious concert platform, with many starred guests such as Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kriesler, Sergei Rachmaninov and Igor Stravinsky. He opened the concert with Livery Stable Blues which was a true jazz and then closing with Gershwins Rhapsody in Blues. There was no real jazz at the concert but that was when Whiteman earned the title King of Jazz and was an originator of symphonic jazz. Symphonic jazz is a fusion of musical style, in this case, between the African-American folk songs and the European classical music. What Whiteman wanted to show to the audience was the combination of styles in which Gershwin had nailed in Rhasody in Blues, the programmatic sound of trains in urban America in the 1920s and the busy cities lled with eastern European immigrants. It was a style that Dodge view as encourages musicians to improvise in jazz therefore concluding that Whiteman was, in fact, real jazz.

Whiteman was the rst to recognize Louis Armstrongs arrival in the Fletcher Hendersons orchestra and in 1926 decided that he needed to recruit black musicians. However his manager felt that it was too early to get away with a racially integrated band so he hired black arrangers, William Grant Still, a prolic African American composer, and shared orchestrations ideas with Henderson. Whitemans rst important recruitment was Bing Crosby and Al Rinker, a singer and his pianist. It was the rst time that they had a full-time singer in the orchestra whereas before, the instrumentalists took turns in the vocal chores. Crosby heard Armstrong and became his inspirational gure. He adapted Armstrongs rhythmic and improvisational singing style to his own and Armstrong was inspired by Crosbys adding romantic ballads to his repertoire. Crosby was the most popular singer in the rst half of the 20th century and did recordings, radios and movies and was also a major link between jazz and the mainstreams. From adapting Armstrongs style, he helped giving the white public accessed to Armstrongs musical style. Other musicians that Whiteman signed up were young white jazz instrumentalists that were most sort-out including cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, saxophonist Frank Trumbauer, guitarist Eddie Lang, violinist Joe Venuti and the most especially recruitment of the arranger Bill Challis who had a mysterious way to combine Whitemans work of pop, jazz and classical together. And because of Challis, Whiteman was able to release new development jazz records in 1927-29. In conclusion, Whiteman and Grof were an important gure in the development of big-band style. However, Whitemans early career had only a tiny part that was truly connected to jazz. It was only working with imsy popular songs and dance with an attempted to combine classical and jazz worlds from Gershwin works. Not even when he hired quality improvising soloists to make it more jazz. Nevertheless, it was his popularity that gave the public what the perception of jazz was and had an important part in developing the musical form which later became some of the greatest works by his developers like Duke Ellington who had declared that Paul Whiteman was known as the King of Jazz, and no one as yet has come near carrying that title with more certainty and dignity.

Bibliography Giddins, Gary, and Scott DeVeaux. Jazz. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. # 2009 Shipton, Alyn. A new history of jazz. New York: Continuum International Publishing # Group Inc., 2007 Tirro, Frank. Jazz: a history. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993 All Music. Paul Whiteman - Music Biography, Credits and Discography : AllMusic. # Accessed September 24, 2012. http://www.allmusic.com/artist/paul# whiteman-mn0000753190. Red Hot Jazz. Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra. Accessed October 1, 2012. # http://www.redhotjazz.com/pwo.html.