Professional Documents
Culture Documents
50A 2022 Week 5 Midterm Review 10.25.2022
50A 2022 Week 5 Midterm Review 10.25.2022
1
Midterm Review
Week 5, Lecture 1 (10)
October 24, 2022
Marc T. Bolin
University of California, Los Angeles
Slide 2
The Department of
Ethnomusicology at UCLA
acknowledges the
Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as
the traditional land caretakers
of Tovaangar (the Los Angeles
basin and So. Channel Islands).
As a land grant institution, we
pay our respects to the
Honuukvetam (Ancestors),
‘Ahiihirom (Elders) and
‘Eyoohiinkem (our
relatives/relations) past,
present and emerging.
Now, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the protectors of this land, the Gabrielino/Tongva
peoples.
The Department of Ethnomusicology at UCLA acknowledges the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as
the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar. As a land grant institution, we pay our respects to
the Honuukvetam, ‘Ahiihirom, ‘Eyoohiinkem, past, present and emerging.
Slide 5
Thanks, Joan Pak.
Slide 6
Burnim and Maultsby’s Evolution of African American Music
Slide 7
What is jazz?
What is jazz?
Jazz is an African American musical tradition.
Jazz is a musical form that is highly improvisational that was developed by African Americans. It is
influenced by both European and African musical structures and aesthetics, employing: call‐and‐
response structures; an intense emotional delivery style with a wide range of vocal devices; and
embedded in jazz culture is an expectation to participate, both as a musician actively adding
one’s own musical voice to the texture, and as an active observer/participant—both vocally (or
via an instrument) and/or corporally. The earliest jazz band style developed in New Orleans, a
city with a long, racially mixed, musical, and cultural tradition.
Jazz is pivotal to the African American experience, central to the American experience, essential
to the political, economic, cultural, and social life and history of nearly every nation in the
Western hemisphere, a major contributor to how the Western World, and a major shaper of
modern world history.
Slide 8
What is jazz?
Slide 9
Aesthetics:
Heterogeneous Sound Ideal: composer/scholar Olly Wilson refers to “a common approach to
music making in which a kaleidoscopic range of dramatically contrasting qualities of sound
(timbre) in both vocal and instrumental music is sought after. This explains the common
usage of a broad continuum of vocal sounds from speech to song.” Wilson refers to this
“tendency as the heterogeneous sound ideal”, and the anti‐blend ideal (Wilson, 1983)
This includes “buzzing” sounds: the bottle caps place on and inside of a mbira for example.
The sound a jug makes in jugband music, the “scratching” a DJ makes, and the “whoops” that
sousaphone players make are contemporary examples of this sound.
Heterophony: "The simultaneous statement, especially in improvised performance, of two or
more different versions of what is essentially the same melody." (Harvard Dictionary of
Music, ed. Don Michael Randel, 4th edition [Cambridge, MA: Bellknap Press, 2003])
Syncopation: “the shifting of accent from standard Western stressed beats to atypical stress
points in the measure.”
Polyrhythm: A polyrhythm is a combination of two or more rhythms played simultaneously
while moving at the same linear tempo.
Call‐and‐response: call – response, is a song structure or performance practice in which a
singer or instrumentalists makes a musical statement that is answered by another soloist,
instrumentalist, or group. The statement and answer sometimes overlap. Also called
antiphony and call‐and‐response.
Music As Part Of Community Life:
Collective participation. Functionality.
Slide 10
What four styles are embedded in jazz, and
immediately precede ragtime?
What four styles are embedded in jazz, and immediately precede ragtime?
Slide 11
What four styles are embedded in jazz, and
immediately precede ragtime?
• field hollers
• work songs
• spirituals
• the blues
What four styles are embedded in jazz, and immediately precede ragtime?
Field hollers, work songs, spirituals, the blues
Spirituals and hymns, and the blues share many similar musical elements, but are very different
ideologically, and perhaps theologically. Spirituals and hymns; coming out of the Great
Awakening, and were a response to chattel slavery, looking toward the afterlife from which to
derive hope. Blues came out of sharecropping and was…and is…a survival, a response to the Jim
Crow system, and defines a situation. The blues represents a way of life that is both secular AND
spiritual and depicts what life IS rather than what it could be.
Slide 12
Big Ideas
connections drawn from a person, place, musical element, or thing to some larger
concept or “big idea”
connections drawn from a person, place, musical element, or thing to some larger concept
or “big idea”
Give me some BIG ideas
Slide 13
Big Ideas
connections drawn from a person, place, musical element, or thing to some larger
concept or “big idea”
o retentions, aesthetics
o heterogeneous sound ideal
o Ring shout
o The period of enslavement
o post‐emancipation, “Jim Crow”
o The Great Migration
o Harlem Renaissance
connections drawn from a person, place, musical element, or thing to some larger concept
or “big idea”
o retentions, aesthetics
o heterogeneous sound ideal
o Ring shout
o The period of enslavement
o post‐emancipation, “Jim Crow”
o The Great Migration
o Harlem Renaissance
Slide 14
Culture
culture is not a fixed, changeless phenomenon.
A culture has fundamental characteristics that change very slowly, but it also has features
that change within a span of a few years or a person’s lifetime. A culture lives within
people, and people do change over time.
United States enslaved Africans had a wide array of African cultural backgrounds, but
they were few in numbers immersed in colonial populations that were majority non‐
black. They had to blend their ethnic African cultures into a new culture if for no other
reason than to communicate with one another, especially to learn how to work and live in
a new land, to build personal and family relationships, and to build unity. Enslaved African
Americans and their immediate descendants had to build a syncretic culture, not only
blending their ethnic African cultures but also blending their African cultures with
European and Native American cultures.
Slide 15
Culture
• syncretism
Professor Cheryl Keyes defines syncretism as a process of hybridization that occurs when
different cultures come into sustained contact.
Slide 16
Culture
• syncretism
• hybridity
Jazz developed as a cultural hybrid. It became a method of survival ‐‐‐ a way of coming
through the indignation of white supremacy for both sides of the color line that did not
adhere to its evil premise.
A separation of clear cultural group lines led to a mixing of music’s and other cultural
attributes from diverse regions of Africa. A new “survival matrix” was created where the
music developed exponentially within its broad set of African references.
Thousands of years of development in Africa helped lay the foundation for the two
underpinnings of Jazz ‐‐‐ Blues and Spirituals ‐‐‐ a going back even further, the blues and
spirituals are believed to come directly out of field hollers and work songs, that is, cultural
memory (through lyrics [whether explicit of in the form of coded language or double‐
entendre] or by learning stylistic means of performing, as well as vocal devices, and
aesthetics.
Slide 17
New Orleans (NOLA):
New Orleans (NOLA):
If jazz was next in the lineage of African American musical traditions, how is it that jazz
became associated with New Orleans? What was it about New Orleans that made it
unique? What created the circumstances for all the elements that make up jazz to
coalesce?
The answer is complicated, but can be summarized: a laissez faire attitude toward the
handling of slaves (at least for while, but still allowing for the heinous institution, a large
working class—made up of formerly‐enslaved Africans, African Americans, and Italians
and Irish immigrants, a large Caribbean—predominantly Haitian population as well as a
strong Cuban influence…the fact is that, until the train was a viable solution for travel, it
was easier to get to Cuba than it was New York City, Philadelphia, or Washington D.C.
Congo Square was the place in NOLA that enslaved Africans of many cultures (the Bantu
of Central Africa making up the largest percentage: the Mande, Akan, Walaf, Congolese,
Doheny, and many more) as well as indentured servants from the Caribbean, Ireland, and
Italy)
“African Cultural Memory in New Orleans” via Congo Square, voudou, Black Mardi Gras
Indians, the second line, and brass bands.
Gathering at Congo Square afforded a degree of cultural exchange via African
religious practices such as music, dance, and Carnival celebrations. Despite their
forcible removal to the New World, enslaved Africans in NOLA were active agents
in reformulating their cultural and social identities, maintaining their emotional
and symbolic ties with Africa, despite the oppressive setting to which they were
subjugated. Dances performed at Congo Square include the bamboula, calinda,
coujaille, and the pilé chactas. African culture survived longer in Louisiana than in
other states. The activities at Congo Square went uninterrupted until the Civil War
and had a profound impact on the social and cultural behaviors of future African‐
Americans.
drum and fife, drum and bugle corps, and wind band configurations
Slide 19
Jazz photography:
• Herman Leonard
• William P. Gottlieb
• Christopher M. Claxton
Jazz photography:
Herman Leonard’s photographs—along with William P. Gottlieb and Christopher
M. Claxton—are some of the most recognized images in jazz history. Their
depictions of predominantly African American jazz musicians—mostly men—in
New York City have created not only a visual record of jazz in the 1950s, but have
become the standard by which the musical style of jazz was, and continues to be,
visually represented.
Leonard’s photographs appeared regularly in Life and Playboy magazines, among
others.
These photographers sought to what the photographed musicians were trying to
do themselves: to create a new interpretation from existing standards.
Slide 20
Minstrelsy:
Minstrelsy evolved from several different American entertainment traditions; the
traveling circus, medicine shows, Irish dance and music with African syncopated rhythms,
musical halls and traveling theatre.
The "father of American minstrelsy" was Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice (1808‐60), who
in 1828, in a New York City theatre, performed a song‐and‐dance routine in blackface and
tattered clothes. Rice's character was based on a folk trickster persona named Jim Crow
that was long popular among black slaves. Rice also adapted and popularized a traditional
slave song called Jump Jim Crow.
Slide 21
Minstrelsy:
Mammy
the pickaninny
Jezebel
Sapphire
Uncle Tom
the buffoon
the brute
Mandingo
racist stereotypes like the minstrel, blackface, and the stereotypes that were born of this type of
theater, such as the mammy, Uncle Tom, pickaninny, jezebel, Sapphire, brute, mandingo, buffoon
we continue to see on our screens today.
Women are often stereotyped to be either submissive, hyper‐sexualized, or angry, or some
combination all three
Mammy, the pickaninny, Jezebel, Sapphire
Black men are stereotyped to be either a clownish or savage, animalistic, destructive, and
criminal…and hyper‐sexualized
Uncle Tom, buffoon, brute, Mandingo
Slide 23
The importance of the theater and theater circuits
to the development of jazz.
• Vaudeville
Vaudeville
is an American artform that arose immediately following the American Civil War,
and to some extent, defined American life after the Civil War to the present. The
development of vaudeville marked the beginning of popular entertainment as big
business. Improved transportation and communication technologies, allowed for
the control of vast networks of theatre circuits standardizing, professionalizing,
and institutionalizing American popular entertainment. All of the aspects of
circuses, minstrel shows, medicine shows, and Wild West Shows were
incorporated in the Vaudeville show.
The term "vaudeville” came into common usage after 1871 with the formation of
"Sargent's Great Vaudeville Company" of Louisville, Kentucky. The name was
merely selected for its vagueness, its faint, but harmless exoticism, and perhaps its
connotation of gentility.
M.B. (or M.S.) Leavitt (Leavitt’s Gigantic Vaudeville Stars) and H.J. Sargent's
(Sargent’s Great Vaudeville Company) shows differed little from the coarser
material presented in earlier itinerant entertainments, although their use of the
term to provide a veneer of respectability points to an early effort to cater variety
amusements to the growing middle class.
Benjamin Franklin Keith, "the father" of American Vaudeville. Keith’s vaudeville
theaters also played a key role in a new entertainment industry, motion pictures.
Keith partnered with a man named Edward Franklin Albee in the late 1880s to
promote "polite" vaudeville. bridged the gulf between notions of "high"
("legitimate") and "low" (folk) entertainments that grew increasingly wider in the
years following the Civil War. In addition, they owned many theaters across the
West…known as the Keith‐Albee‐Orpheum Circuit The programs at Keith's
theatres ensured "there is something for everybody."
M.B. (or M.S.) Leavitt (Leavitt’s Gigantic Vaudeville Stars) and H.J. Sargent's
(Sargent’s Great Vaudeville Company)
• Benjamin Franklin Keith, "the father" of American Vaudeville
• Keith‐Albee‐Orpheum Circuit
• promoted "polite" vaudeville
Slide 24
The importance of the theater and theater circuits
to the development of jazz.
• Vaudeville
• Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.)
T.O.B.A. (Theater Owners Booking Association) circuit
Black Vaudeville grew parallel but hidden beside mainstream vaudeville. There
were theatres which catered to African American audiences all across the US.
Most of these theatres were owned by white men for whom entertaining blacks
was simply a business. There were also a few theatres owned by African American
women.
Most of these theatres were vaudeville houses.
Black vaudeville got organized into a circuit by 1909 and the Theatre Owners
Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) determined which acts went where and for how
long and how much. Toby Time, as it came to be called, started with 31 theatres;
at its height in the mid‐1920s it numbered nearly 100. Early on its reputation was
so bad that African American acts called it –Tough On Black Artists—or Tough On
Black Asses.
But by the early 1920s the New Negro press was demanding reforms and things at
T.O.B.A. started to improve. By 1924 a black man who owned a number of
theatres was part of the leadership of T.O.B.A.
Slide 25
Ragtime
• came into existence long before the music was given a name
Ragtime:
“Ragtime – came into existence long before the music was given a name.” Genre and
recording (audio recordings, publications, etc.) always follow practice.
What does Harer mean by “duality”, duality between written music and oral tradition, jazz
and classical music, and between African American and European American music?
“…The essence of ragtime exists within these “blurred” cultural elements and
practices.”
Song, dance, and instrumental music
Ernest Hogan’s “All Coons Look Like Me” contains an optional arrangement of the song’s
chorus, subtitled as “Choice Chorus, with Negro ‘Rag’” is the first known use of the term
“rag” in publication. Also offers a piano version.
Ben Harney’s Ragtime Instructor ….demonstrates “the art” of ragging in notated form.
This publication “documents the translation of ragtime from oral tradition to written
score.” “notated version of an African American banjo playing style”
Thomas Turpin, St. Louis pianist. Published “Harlem Rag”
Helped out other musicians, among them was Louis Chauvin “King of Ragtime Players.
Slide 26
Ragtime
• came into existence long before the music was given a name
• Cakewalk and “coon songs”
Cakewalk and “coon songs”
What was the cakewalk?
What is meant by the term “coon song”?
typically performed by Whites, (often in Blackface) and Blacks in minstrel
shows. Exaggerated dialect
“Cakewalk – a dance that parodies White upper‐class behavior, originally
performed by African American slaves; the best performance was awarded a prize,
usually a cake, from which the dance takes its name.”
What is meant by the term “coon song”?
typically performed by Whites, (often in Blackface) and Blacks in minstrel
shows. Exaggerated dialect
“’Coon song’ – popular song style of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that
presented a stereotyped view of African Americans, often performed by White singers in
blackface.”
Slide 28
Ragtime
• came into existence long before the music was given a name
• Cakewalk and “coon songs”
• Rag
• Cutting contests
“to rag,” as a verb:
• performative emphasis of ragtime
• to syncopate a tune
• To embellish and decorate a melody
“rag,” the noun:
• linked to “handkerchief‐flaunting”
Ernest Hogan’s “All Coons Look Like Me” contains an optional arrangement of the song’s
chorus, subtitled as “Choice Chorus, with Negro ‘Rag’” is the first known use of the term
“rag” in publication. Also offers a piano version.
Ben Harney’s Ragtime Instructor ….demonstrates “the art” of ragging in notated form.
• A cutting contest was a musical battle between musicians; akin to “the dozens.”
Slide 29
Ragtime
• came into existence long before the music was given a name
• Cakewalk and “coon songs”
• Rag
• Cutting contests
• Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin:
Known as the "King of Ragtime"
Grew up in northern Texas
formed a vocal quartet
taught mandolin and guitar
1880s – Became an itinerant musician
During the late 1880s he left his job as a laborer with the railroad, and travelled
around the American South as an itinerant musician.
Joplin moved to Sedalia, Missouri, in 1894
made a living as a piano teacher
began publishing music in 1895
published "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1899
Slide 30
Ragtime
• came into existence long before the music was given a name
• Cakewalk and “coon songs”
• Rag
• Cutting contests
• Scott Joplin
• Orchestrated ragtime
Slide 32
Orchestrated Ragtime
• W.C. Handy
• Wilbur Sweatman
• Lt. James Reese Europe
W.C Handy
Codified the 12‐bar blues form in “St. Louis Blues”
For this reason, Handy became known as the "Father of the Blues“
Handy was an educated musician who used elements of rural African Americans into
his compositions.
Wilbur Sweatman
began playing professionally in a circus band, then moved on to minstrel shows and
vaudeville.
led a successful syncopated orchestra based in Chicago early in the century and made
the first recording of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1903.
one of the first African‐Americans to join ASCAP in 1917.
Mentored many early jazz and swing pioneers: Duke Ellington, Sonny Greer, Otto
Hardwick, Cozy Cole and Coleman Hawkins all played in his orchestra early in their
careers.
In the 1930s Sweatman was active in music publishing and was the executor of Scott
Joplin's estate.
Lieut. James Reese Europe
Europe Although his career was brief—about 15 years, he profoundly influenced the
course of popular music, not just in the United States but throughout the world.
In 1910 Europe organized the Clef Club, a society for African Americans in the music
industry.
In 1912 the club made history when it played a concert at Carnegie Hall for the
benefit of the Colored Music Settlement School.
The Clef Club Orchestra, while not a jazz band, was the first band to play proto‐jazz at
Carnegie Hall. It is difficult to overstate the importance of that event in the history of
jazz in the United States — it was 12 years before the Paul Whiteman and George
Gershwin concert at Aeolian Hall, and 26 years before Benny Goodman's famed
concert at Carnegie Hall. The Clef Club's performances played music written solely by
black composers, including Harry T. Burleigh and Samuel Coleridge‐Taylor.
Europe's orchestra also included Will Marion Cook, who had not been in Carnegie Hall
since his own performance as solo violinist in 1896. Cook was the first black composer
to launch full musical productions.
As the leader of the 369th Infantry Jazz Band, also known as
"Hellfighters," introduced the sounds of American ragtime to Europeans during the World War I.
Slide 34
Early Jazz
• Buddy Bolden
• Original Dixieland Jazz Band (O.D.J.B.)
• Freddie Keppard
• Joe “King” Oliver
• Edward “Kid” Ory
• Louis Armstrong
• Lil Hardin Armstrong
• Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton
Early Jazz:
Buddy Bolden is generally considered to be the first bandleader to play the improvised music
which later became know as Jazz. He was the first "King" of cornet in New Orleans, and is
remembered by the musicians of that time period as one of the finest horn players they had ever
heard. He is remembered for his loud, clear tone. His band starting playing around 1895, in New
Orleans parades, dances, and funerals…In 1907 his health deteriorated and he was committed to
a mental institution where he spent the remainder of his life.
Freddie Keppard (Feb1889) was an early jazz cornetist from New Orleans.
He played in marching bands, funerals, and red‐light district clubs.
Moved to Los Angeles for a while…and from 1914‐1918, led Original Creole Orchestra
toured the country in vaudeville shows
Victor Talking Machine Company eventually offered Keppard the chance to be one of the
first to record the new jazz sound. Keppard refused the recording offer saying he was
fearful people would “steal his stuff.”
he settled in Chicago in the early 1920s recording under his own name, leading the
“Freddie Keppard's Jazz Cardinals” from 1923‐1927, in Chicago.
Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB):
American youth invigorated by the rush of a world picking up speed, shaped by urban
industry and teetering on the edge of the First World War, “Jazz was the right thing,” says
Michael White, a well‐regarded jazz clarinetist and professor at Xavier University of
Louisiana. “It broke rules and dared to say you could be an individual.” The band was a
sensation—“the latest craze that’s sweeping the nation like a musical thunderstorm,”
raved the New York Times—and recorded six more 78s in 1918. New bands rushed to
cash in on the sound.
Livery Stable Blues” by the Original Dixieland “Jass” Band (1917). a nationwide hit, selling
more than a million copies to date
universally hailed as the first jazz recording
leader Nick LaRocca’s cornet, Eddie Edwards’ trombone and Larry Shields’s clarinet
blowing simultaneous, counterpointed lines—and imitating barnyard animals—over the
beat of Tony Sbarbaro’s drums and Henry Ragas’ piano.
New Orleans residents, meanwhile, were already well acquainted with the
sound…African‐American musicians such as the cornetists Buddy Bolden, Freddie
Keppard and Joe Oliver had combined the precise, written music of ragtime with the “ear
music” of rural blues, adding improvised solos to the “ragged” syncopated rhythm. They
mostly played for black audiences, but also performed in parades where anyone on the
sidewalk could hear. Soon white musicians picked up the style.
When Keppard, Oliver, Kid Ory, Louis Armstrong, and Lil Hardin Armstrong began to
record in the 1920s, these African American innovators were able to record, for It wasn’t
until the 1920s that record labels discovered a growing market, largely among African‐
Americans, for Black music.
King Oliver
Another “King”…It is said that King Oliver was the first cornetist to play with mutes ‐‐‐‐
‐‐ bottles and cups in the cornet's bell.
1916 Oliver and trombonist Edward "Kid" Ory co‐led
"The Kid Ory and King Oliver Band" then considered one of the best in New Orleans. It
was the first time that Oliver's name was used in a billing.
Moved to Chicago and played many Chicago night clubs. He then traveled to the West Coast for a
while.
1922,
"King" returned to Chicago and organized his own 'Creole Jazz Band' for a stay at the Lin
coln Gardens. This was the band that achieved immortality. Then, Oliver sent the fabled
telegram to Louis Armstrong asking him to come to Chicago to play with his Creole Jazz Band in
the Windy City.
1923, they made their recording debut for the Gennett label. This Creole Jazz Band was
highly regarded by all the 'White' Chicago musicians who, when their own gigs were over
, would nightly would make a pilgrimage to the Lincoln Gardens, to hear "King's" band
which then had a very young Louis Armstrong playing 2nd trumpet. …Louis’ first gig outsi
de of New Orleans.)… (Satchmo' later described Oliver as his TRUE mentor.)
In 1923, this band made over 30 recordings for the Gennett Label in Richmond, Indiana, as well
as some others for Okeh, Columbia, and Paramount labels in Chicago.
White musicians would often make nightly pilgrimages to hear the band at the Lincoln Gardens,
to hear the band…and Armstrong.
Louis Armstrong
“If we measure the success of experiments in terms of their broad impact the collected solos of
Louis Armstrong become the mother lade of the century’s rhythmic research.”
Daniel Schiff, The Ellington Century
Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings are among the best ensemble performan
ces in the history of Jazz despite the fact that this was not a working ensemble but
one assembled for these recordings.
The Jazz, art form of carefully listening while performing and dialoguing with other music
ians owes a great deal to the interplay within the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings.
Armstrong possessed phenomenal virtuoso technique, a Shakespearian range of emotions
from which he could instantaneously create pillars of great musical architecture, and an a
malgamation of all of the essential styles of African American music. Added to that root i
s military marching music and a lifelong insatiable love of Italian opera.
Developed a style that was mimicked by all those that followed:
Melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic vocabulary
An emphasis on improvised solos
Became an influential vocalist, developed scat singing
Because of the immensity of his contributions as a cornetist/trumpeter and vocal artist, b
y the mid 1930s Armstrong had achieved international stardom.
His phasing presages both the swing and bebop eras.
Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings:
Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives:
• Armstrong, Louis (Cornet)
• Dodds, Johnny (Clarinet)
• Thomas, Hersal (Piano)
• St. Cyr, Johnny (Banjo)
• Armstrong, Lil Hardin (Piano)
• Along with several vocal artists.
- the addition of the tuba and drums …less of an artistic decision than a technological one. In
1928, Okeh switched from an acoustic means of recording to the new improved sounding
electrical based systems.
o The acoustic recording process was often ruined by the vibration created by drums
or bass and are rarely be heard well on the old acoustic recordings.
Louis Armstrong’s Hot Sevens:
• Armstrong, Louis (Trumpet, Vocal)
• Robinson, Fred (Trombone)
• Strong, Jimmy (Clarinet, Tenor Saxophone)
• Redman, Don (Clarinet, Alto Saxophone)
• Hines, Earl (Piano)
• Carr, Mancy (Banjo)
• Singleton, Zutty (Drums)
Lil Hardin‐Armstrong was the most prominent woman in early jazz. ‐
played piano, composed, and arranged for most of the important Hot Bands from New O
rleans.
Played in Played in Freddie Keppard’s Original Creole Orchestra
led her own band in Chicago
1921
joined King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band where she met Louis Armstrong. separated in
1931 and were divorced in 1938, although they remained friends for life.
Lil died while taking part in a Louis Armstrong Memorial Concert in Chicago while pla
ying "St. Louis Blues," just two months after Louis died.
Jelly Roll Morton was widely accepted as the first great composer and piano player of jazz. He
was the first to write down his jazz arrangements in musical notation, and took advantage of the
three‐minute limitations of the 78 rpm records, and he was the originator of a large number of
the musical compositions that became staples in the jazz repertory."
He claimed to have invented jazz. "I invented jazz" is how Jelly Roll Morton often introduced
himself.
A character, with a diamond stud in his teeth, who worked in the whorehouses of Storyville as
a piano player, a professional gambler, a pool shark, a pimp, a vaudeville comedian, and as a
pianist.
He was an important transitional figure between ragtime and jazz piano styles AND helped
lay the foundation for the next important phase of the evolution of jazz and popular music,
swing.
He played on the West Coast from 1917 to 1922 and then moved to Chicago and where he
hit his stride. Morton's 1923 and 1924 recordings of piano solos for the Gennett label were
very popular and influential.
He formed the band the Red Hot Peppers and made a series of classic records for Victor.
The recordings he made in Chicago featured some of the best New Orleans sidemen like Kid
Ory, Barney Bigard, Johnny Dodds, Johnny St. Cyr and Baby Dodds. Morton relocated to New
York in 1928 and continued to record for Victor until 1930. His New York version of The Red
Hot Peppers featured sidemen like Bubber Miley, Pops Foster and Zutty Singleton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2h7XqeLvpo
New Orleans 1890‐‐‐1900 “
- Until 1890 the music in New Orleans had primarily consisted of
European‐‐‐style band music with a syncopated beat, in addition to
Ragtime piano, Spirituals, Blues and European dance music.
- None of the foregoing were adequate to meet the functional
requirements of the new social gatherings. Marching bands were to
unwieldy and their dependence on notated music did not lend itself
to the need for hasty regroupings or the demands of alternating
membership.
- The uptown non‐‐‐Creole players, having been exponents of the non‐
notated Blues, introduced improvisatory techniques, which on the one
hand enabled the playing of extended compositions from “head”
arrangements, an on the other hand facilitated ensemble playing by
musicians with varying sight‐‐‐reading abilities.
- “The polyphonic texture of New Orleans Jazz was, in turn, a result of an
instrumentation whose functional requirements precluded the use of the piano.” ‐
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
- His parents were both Creoles, free people of color whose Haitian ancestors had
come to Louisiana after the Haitian Revolution.
- Performing in Stroyville at the very moment when jazz is said to have begun, and
developed a style of piano playing that drew on everything he had heard, from folk
music to the concert hall.
Elements of Morton’s writing:
- Joplin’s use of extended European compositional forms
- Improvisation
- A deft use of dynamics
- Syncopation (especially in the left hand of the piano)
- Blues
- African American and European dance forms ranging from quadrilles, cakewalks,
stomps, and slow drags, to French operatic dances
- Call‐and‐Response
- Integrated tailgate trombone style into his compositions
- French and Italian romantic opera….the first to incorporate romantic and “epic”
themes and quotes. Employing an emotional scope that embraced an immense
emotional range.
- Morton is considered the first to utilize notated, long‐form composition within a jazz
group in tandem with improvisation
Jazz was not widely recorded and distributed by African American musicians because of
racism. As we see, what we know as early jazz, was alive and well in New Orleans, and
due to the increased migration of African Americans from the South to urban cities of the
North and North‐East (later known as the Great Migration), African American
communities throughout the US were accustomed to the music…more than familiar with
the sounds. It was Women blues singers that brought African American recordings to the
fore as a viable consumer good.
Slide 35
Why NOLA?
•geography
•Catholic
•a large and diverse working class
•strong Caribbean influence
•Contact with First Nations
•Congo Square
Slide 36
Why NOLA?
•geography
•Catholic
•a large and diverse working class
•strong Caribbean influence
•Contact with First Nations
•Congo Square
Distinct in its geographic advantages
Several factors contributed to the unusual development of the second line: it was founded as a
colonial outpost in 1718 by the French; due to its unique geography, it was relatively isolated,
bordered on three sides by Lake Pontchartrain to the north, by Lake Borgne to the east, and the
Gulf of Mexico to the south; its close proximity to the Caribbean and Latin America;
New Orleans’ geographic situation made the city an indispensable part of the fledgling colonies
economic development, and later for the US. At the mouth of the Mississippi River system, it
became the commercial and strategic gateway to the continental interior. The French, Spanish,
Confederate and Union forces would all vie for control of the city; for those that controlled the
city, dictated the economic development of the interior.
New Orleans was—and is—home to the largest port in the United States, where everyone is
crowded into a very small tract of land…which attracts a very diverse group of people from all
over the world,
Slide 37
Why NOLA?
•geography
•Catholic
•a large and diverse working class
•strong Caribbean influence
•Contact with First Nations
•Congo Square
a very…Catholic leaning toward the handling of slaves (at least for while, but still allowing for the
heinous institution,
Slide 38
Why NOLA?
•geography
•Catholic
•a large and diverse working class
•strong Caribbean influence
•Contact with First Nations
•Congo Square
a large working class—made up of formerly‐enslaved Africans, African Americans, and Italians
and Irish immigrants,
Slide 39
Why NOLA?
•geography
•Catholic
•a large and diverse working class
•strong Caribbean influence
•Contact with First Nations
•Congo Square
a large Caribbean presence—predominantly Haitian population, as well as a strong Cuban
influence…
Think of this, until the train was a viable solution for travel, it was easier to get to Cuba than it
was New York City, or Philadelphia, or Washington D.C.
Slide 40
Why NOLA?
•geography
•Catholic
•a large and diverse working class
•strong Caribbean influence
•Contact with First Nations
•Congo Square
You’ve seen lots of feathered regalia in slides and video clips.
What do you think the origins of this custom come?
[WAIT]
Feathers have always been part of human self‐adornment, betokening status, wealth, vitality,
enthusiasm, and defiance
Across the world, tribal peoples had used the most colorful and extravagant plumes of the birds
they hunted to decorate themselves.
Zulus once wore turaco feathers as headdresses.
They can represent:
- Achievement
- they can indicate an individual's position
- Can represent a person's affiliation or membership with a culture or social group
In New Orleans, this tradition is both viewed as an African retention, shows kinship to other
hybrid cultures around the Black Atlantic, and is associated with the rich Mardi Gras Indian
culture that thrives in and around New Orleans.
Mardi Gras Indian culture is influenced by both ancestral enslaved Africans and the friendship
forged with Native Americans. They are the vestiges of maroon communities from NOLA's lower‐
river settlements, whose layered, multi‐sensorial spiritual and musical expressions, material arts,
are manifest in street performances—a form of sacred theater.
Slide 41
Commercial Blues
Commercial Blues:
“The Roaring 20s” were an age of dramatic social and political change.
Spirituals articulated the hopes of Black slaves in religious terms…with economic and political
liberation must have seemed more attainable than ever,
“The blues, on the other hand…articulated a new valuation of individual emotional needs and
desire. The blues therefore marked the advent of a popular culture of performance, with the
borders of performer and audience becoming increasingly differentiated.” Angela Davis,
BLandBF
According to Angela Davis, “emancipation radically transformed the personal lives of African
Americans:
The was no longer a proscription on free individual travel
Education was now a realizable goal for individual men and women
Sexuality could be explored freely by individuals who now could enter into autonomously
chosen personal relationships,
blues created a discourse that represented freedom in more immediate and accessible
terms…though, African Americans lived under adverse and deplorable material
conditions…freedom seemingly no closer after slavery than it had been before.
It helped construct a new Black consciousness.
These blues women “embodied sexualities associated with working‐class Black life.” Angela
Davis, BLandBF
Challenging notions of women’s subordination.
“Emerging during the decades following the abolition of slavery the blues gave musical
expression to the new social and sexual realities encountered by African Americans as free
women and men.” Angela Davis, BLandBF
Slide 42
Commercial Blues
Themes:
Love
Sex
Travel
On a deeper level:
Counter-narratives to normative ideas of gender and sexuality
Agency
Challenging notions of women’s subordination.
Themes:
Love
Sex
Travel
On a deeper level:
Counter‐narratives to normative ideas of gender and sexuality
Agency
Challenging notions of women’s subordination.
Bradford, pianist and songwriter, "sold the concept to the record companies that black
female vaudevillians could translate to blues and that there was money to be made,“
Until 1920, no black singer had been recorded doing a blues song. Sophie Tucker was
scheduled for a recording session earlier in the year, but fell ill.
Slide 43
Commercial Blues
• Perry Bradford, who wrote "Crazy Blues," persuaded Okeh Records to use Mamie Smith
instead. Mamie Smith was the first black vocalist to record the blues.
• It became apparent to the record companies that there was an untapped market: the
black record buying public.
• Within a year three major record companies—Okeh, Paramount, and Columbia—had
black music sections advertised as “Race Records” … Victor Records, entered the market
in 1924.
Perry Bradford, who wrote "Crazy Blues," persuaded Okeh Records to use Mamie Smith
instead. Mamie Smith was the first black vocalist to record the blues.
It became apparent to the record companies that there was an untapped market: the
black record buying public.
Within a year three major record companies—Okeh, Paramount, and Columbia—had
black music sections advertised as “Race Records” … Victor Records, entered the market
in 1924.
Slide 44
Race Records
“Race Records” were recordings produced in the 1920s‐30s exclusively for African
American audiences.
Slide 45
Race Records
• were recordings produced in the 1920s‐30s exclusively for African American
audiences.
• The big three dominated the market, accounting for more than two thirds of the
total blues and gospel releases. However between 1921 and 1926 Race records were
issued on more than 15 different labels, such as Emerson, Pathe/Perfect, Arto,
Cameo, Black Swan (the only African American owned label at the time was acquired
by Paramount in 1924), Edison, Gennett, Ajax, Brunswick, and Aeolian’s Vocalion
label (sold to Brunswick in 1924).
“Race Records” were recordings produced in the 1920s‐30s exclusively for African
American audiences.
The big three dominated the market, accounting for more than two thirds of the total
blues and gospel releases. However between 1921 and 1926 Race records were issued on
more than 15 different labels, such as Emerson, Pathe/Perfect, Arto, Cameo, Black Swan
(the only African American owned label at the time was acquired by Paramount in 1924),
Edison, Gennett, Ajax, Brunswick, and Aeolian’s Vocalion label (sold to Brunswick in 1924).
Between 1923 and 1926, most blues records were by professional singers using a 12‐bar
blues style (such as Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues”) along with a few traditional and
popular numbers.
New Orleans black jazzmen recorded for the first time in Los Angeles in 1922 on the rare
Nordskog label featuring singer Ruth Lee. She was accompanied by Spike’s Seven Pods of
Pepper featuring Kid Ory’s trombone, Mutt Carey’s trumpet and Dink Johnson’s clarinet.
Only after New Orleans musicians settled in Chicago and became popular were new
recordings sought by musicians and singers still living in the Crescent City.
Slide 46
Commercial Blues
• Mamie Smith
• Gertrude “Ma” Rainey
• Bessie Smith
Mamie Smith
Born Mamie Robinson, Mamie Smith was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1891. She began touring
with the Four Dancing Mitchells, a vaudeville group, at around 10 years old. And by about 22
years of age, she left the road, moving to Harlem, in New Yor City. In 1920, she became the first
African American artist to make vocal blues recordings.
Now, you’ll often see scholars use vocal blues, commercial blues, and classic blues
interchangeably.
Her first recording—a version of Perry Bradford’s “Crazy Blues” (1920)
Bradford, pianist and songwriter, sold the concept to the record companies that Black female
vaudevillians could translate to blues and that there was money to be made,
Until 1920, no Black singer had been recorded doing a blues song. Sophie Tucker was scheduled
for a recording session earlier in the year, but fell ill. Perry Bradford, who wrote "Crazy Blues,"
persuaded Okeh Records to use Mamie Smith instead. Mamie Smith was the first Black vocalist
to record the blues.
was so successful that the General Phonograph Company’s OKeh label launched a series called
“Original Race Records.”
Gerturude “Ma” Rainey
“Mother of the Blues”
Businesswoman and entertainer Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, known as the Mother of Blues, was the
most popular blues singer/songwriter of the 1920s. As a single woman, she established her own
entertainment company in 1917 and after a successful career in vaudeville managed theaters in
her home state of Georgia.
Between 1904 and 1917 Gertrude and Will Rainey toured with many groups, including the
Rabbit Foot Minstrels and the Tolliver Circus, until their marriage dissolved. At times they billed
themselves as “Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues.”
In 1904, she married fellow vocalist and performer Will Rainey and they soon began to tour
together as a duo. As they performed various routines with different minstrel troupes, they
started to call themselves “Ma and Pa Rainey,” which is how she got her stage name.
After nearly twenty years of dramatic performances on the stage, Rainey signed a contract with
Paramount records in 1923, only three years after the first commercial blues recording was
produced. She recorded almost 100 sides between 1923 and 1928 with a wide variety of the
best contemporary musicians, including a young Louis Armstrong, and Thomas “Georgia Tom”
Dorsey, Ma Rainy’s long‐time pianist, who first gained recognition as a blues pianist in the 1920s
and later became known as the father of gospel music for his role in developing, publishing, and
promoting the gospel blues‐‐the African American religious music which married secular blues
to a sacred text. He wrote over 400 compositions, but it is for “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”
that he is best known.
Unique in pre‐Stonewall American history is an assertive song of self‐affirmation and defiance,
"Prove It on Me Blues." Written, performed, and recorded in 1928 by Ma Rainey, this
extraordinary song of resistance features a woman‐loving woman who proclaims her sexual
interest in other women and challenges the world to "prove it on me.“
In 1925, Rainy was arrested by Chicago police raided a wild party, catching Ma and the chorines
from her show in a state of undress. Blues singer and alleged lover of Rainy’s, Bessie Smith is
said to have bailed Rainey out of jail. Smith, who will talk about in a moment is purported to
have been bi‐sexual.
Bessie Smith
As a young girl Bessie Smith auditioned in local amateur vaudeville competitions, and by the
time she reached 18 she was touring as a dancer.
She toured – often headlining on the T.O.B.A. circuit. In 1929, she starred in a film, the 17‐
minute St. Louis Blues.
Smith made her first recordings in 1922—but, the masters were lost.
1923, recorded the single "Down Hearted Blues" (Columbia Records)
And by the mid‐20s, was the highest‐paid Black entertainer in the country.
Performed with top jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong, and a few that we’ll talk about in later
lectures…the great stride pianist, James P. Johnson, the hugely famous big band
leader/composer/arranger, Fletcher Henderson, and the incredibly influential, Coleman
Hawkins.
“Back‐Water Blues” was one of the best‐known works of Smith’s, recorded for Columbia
Records in 1927 with James P. Johnson on piano.
Bemoaning the fate of losing a home to flood waters after five days and nights of rain, Smith
laments: ‘”thousands of people ain’t got no place to go.”
This song is often associated with the disastrous 1927 flood of the Mississippi River, Smith but
Smith recorded the song before the great disaster. It was released just as the flood came, and as
a result, it became a huge hit.
Slide 48
Chicago‐style Jazz
• Southside of Chicago
• Chicago audiences
• Black and Tan clubs
What are some takeaways from Ted’s article??
‐ There were a lot of Black and Tan clubs in Chicago
o More than a handful of Black entrepreneurs
o all races allowed
o mixed race couples dancing
o a type of music – I guess they were either hearing music that indeed reminded them
of something they heard in the South OR it is a racist essentialization that any Black
musician playing an instrument MUST be playing southern countrified, music
‐ Did no one infer that Asian Americans and Asian immigrants were in Chicago in the teens
and 20s, frequented black and tan clubs where jazz music was performed . . . they also had
an entrepreneurial spirit!
‐ Who remembers how I might infer those things?? Anyone remember Ted bringing
up Asian American or Asian immigrants in the reading?
Between about 1916 and the end of the 1920's, the first wave of at least 75,000 Southern
immigrants arrived on the South Side of Chicago.
It had an already flourishing African American community,
Former sharecroppers and others who came north to work in Chicago's stockyards, steel mills,
and factories could afford to have a good time, and job opportunities for musicians were
correspondingly good.
By the time Freddie Keppard, Sidney Bechet, Lee Collins, King Oliver, and other New Orleans
musicians arrived in 1918
rubbed musical shoulders with the local talent
the New Orleans style began changing in deference to local tastes.
Chicago venue owners, patrons, and musicians expected hard‐driving, uptempo playing, and they
expected elegantly turned‐out musicians in sophisticated surroundings ‐‐ places like the Grand
and Vendome Theaters, the Dreamland Ballroom, and clubs with posh names like Royal Gardens,
Elite, Panama, and Sunset Cafe.
Most of these venues were Black owned Black and Tans located on The Stroll
Slide 49
Chicago‐style Jazz
• Bix
• Tram
• Jimmy Noone
The Wolverines Orchestra (sometimes referred to as "The Original Wolverines") was the premier
Midwestern territory jazz band of the mid‐'20s, and is remembered primarily as the group in
which jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke generally became known to audiences.
Territory bands were dance bands that crisscrossed specific regions of the United States from
the 1920s through the 1960s. Beginning in the 1920s, the bands typically had 8 to 12 musicians.
These bands typically played one‐nighters to seven‐night runs at venues like VFW halls, Elks
Lodges, hotel, barn‐ballrooms, and the like. Territory bands were the Top 40 cover bands of their
day.
When the lead cornet dropped out of the band, clarinetist Jimmy Hartwell sent to Chicago for his
friend Bix Beiderbecke to fill the vacant position.
they played Jelly Roll Morton's tune "Wolverine Blues" so often that pianist and band leader
Dudley Mecum once quipped "why don't you guys just call yourselves the Wolverine Band?
Bix Beiderbecke was a child of the Jazz Age who drank himself to an early grave with illegal
Prohibition liquor.
His tone, virtuosity, and creative genius on the cornet made him a legend among musicians
during his life.
Bix never learned to read music very well, but he had an amazing ear even as a child.
His parents disapproved of his playing music and sent him to a military school outside of Chicago
in 1921. He was soon expelled for skipping class and became a full‐time musician.
Early on, Bix was influenced a great deal by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.
Bix joined the Wolverine Orchestra late in 1923, and the seven‐man group first played a
speakeasy called the Stockton Club near Hamilton, Ohio.
In late 1924 Bix left the Wolverines to join Jean Goldkette's Orchestra, but his inability to read
music eventually resulted in him losing the job.
In 1926 he spent some time with Frankie Trumbauer's Orchestra where he recorded his solo
piano masterpiece "In a Mist". He also recorded some of his best work with Trumbauer and
guitarist, Eddie Lang, under the name of Tram, Bix, and Eddie.
Bix was able to bone up on his sight‐reading enough to re‐join Jean Goldkette's Orchestra briefly,
before signing up as a soloist with Paul Whiteman's Orchestra. Whiteman's Orchestra was the
most popular band of the 1920's and Bix enjoyed the prestige and money of playing with such a
successful outfit, but it didn't stop his drinking.
In 1929 Bix's drinking began to catch up with him. He suffered from delirium tremens and he had
a nervous breakdown while playing with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, and was eventually sent
back to his parents in Davenport, Iowa to recover. It should be noted that Paul Whiteman was
very good to Bix during his struggles. He kept Bix on full pay long after his breakdown, and
promised him that his chair was always open in the Whiteman Orchestra, but, Bix was never the
same again.
Clarinet Marmalade” (1927)
Bix Beidebecke and Frankie Trumbauer
I think that was the young Jimmy Dorsey on clarinet
Frankie Trumbauer
A groundbreaking saxophonist (primarily on the C melody saxophone but on the alto as well) of
the 1920s and '30s,
Tram influenced a lot of the early swing saxophonists that followed him ‐‐ notably Lester Young
and later bebop musician
Charlie Parker.
Sometime in the very early 1920s, Tram was playing with Chicago's Benson Orchestra when he
was spotted by Bix Beiderbecke and quickly recruited to join the legendary cornetist in Jean
Goldkette's orchestra. Soon Tram had climbed to the position of Goldkette's musical director,
earning recognition for the impeccable technique of his light‐toned solos; he cut some of the
definitive records of the era with Beiderbecke, "Singin' the Blues" among them, and, by 1927 was
performing with Bix in Paul Whiteman's orchestra. Tram remained with Whiteman until 1937
Austin High School Gang was the name given to a group of young, white musicians from the
West Side of Chicago, who all attended Austin High School during the early 1920s. They rose to
prominence as pioneers of the Chicago Style in the 1920s.
In 1922 five kids from Austin High School out at Chicago’s west end, got up a little band.
Jim Lannigan played piano in the little band. Jimmy McPartland played cornet and his older
brother Dick played banjo and guitar. Bud Freeman played C‐melody sax, at that time a popular
instrument for home study, and changed to tenor sax a few years later after the band had got
under way professionally. Frank Teschemacher was learning alto sax, but still played violin
The band played at high school fraternity dances, at the homes of fellow students, for supper or
for nothing at all. Practicing day and night.
Across the street from Austin was an ice cream parlor known as “The Spoon and the Straw.”
The Blue Friars were beginning to have a name. And in the fall of 1924 the Wolverines lost Bix, so
they wired to Chicago for Jimmy McPartland.
Eventually, every member of the Wolverines was replaced by a member of the Austin Gang.
Jimmie Noone was a New Orleanian clarinetist and bandleader. He studied first with Lorenzo Tio,
and then with the young Sidney Bechet.
In 1913, Noone played with Freddie Keppard’s band in Storyville, replacing Bechet.
When Keppard went on the road, in 1916, Noone and Buddie Petit formed the Young Olympia
Band
In 1917, Noone played with Kid Ory and Oscar Celestin until the Storyville district was
permanently closed.
He rejoined Keppard and the Original Creole Orchestra on the vaudeville circuit until the group
broke up the following year. In 1918, Noone moved to Chicago forming his Apex Club Orchestra,
a Chicago band.
Classical composer Maurice Ravel acknowledged basing his Boléro on an improvisation by
Noone.
Slide 50
Chicago‐style vs. New Orleans‐style
(came to be known as Dixieland)
• often fewer musicians (5‐8) • strong marching band history
• instrumentation includes piano, drum set and • instrumentation which is more mobile (banjo,
many times acoustic bass tuba and other brass instruments, woodwinds,
• accents are placed on beats 1 and 3 ("two marching percussion (bass drum player, snare
beat") player, etc.)
• emphasis on individual solos • strong emphasis on all four beats ("four
• more upbeat/driving beat")
• repertoire derived from all forms of popular • emphasis on ensemble
music including Tin Pan Alley • more laidback
• repertoire derived from well‐known hymns
and rags/marches
Chicago‐style
• often fewer musicians (5‐8)
• instrumentation includes piano, drum set and many times acoustic bass
• accents are placed on beats 1 and 3 ("two beat")
• emphasis on individual solos
• more upbeat/driving
• repertoire derived from all forms of popular music including Tin Pan Alley
New Orleans‐style
• strong marching band history
• instrumentation which is more mobile (banjo, tuba and other brass instruments, woodwinds,
marching percussion (bass drum player, snare player, etc.)
• strong emphasis on all four beats ("four beat")
• emphasis on ensemble
• more laidback
• repertoire derived from well‐known hymns and rags/marches
Slide 69
Important “Firsts” and Dates:
• 1884‐85 World Cotton Centennial
• 1893 World’s Fair held in Chicago
• 1895 Ben Harper, “You’ve Been a Good Old Wagon but You’ve Done Broke Down
• 1897 Ben Harney, Ben Harney’s Ragtime Instructor and Thomas Turpin, “Harlem Rag”
• 1899 Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag is published
• 1903 Wilbur Sweatman made the first recording of Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag"
• 1917 Original Dixieland Jazz Band
• 1920 Mamie Smith records Perry Bradford’s “Crazy Blues”
•
Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds records Perry Bradford’s “Crazy Blues”