PART 6: Video Intro

"It's a bad word, you know.  I never say it in front of ladies."    What was the word?  Jazz.  It was a four-letter word in the brothels of New Orleans-- the town where the new musical art was born.  Who was the speaker?  None other than the legendary, Eubie Blake (1883-1983) one of the founding fathers of the genre.  Jazz was the unique creation of black musicians around 1910. Its roots came from an amalgam of three different popular styles of the time:  Ragtime  Blues  Marching Bands

Early jazz musicians began by improvising on and embellishing popular tunes.  After a while their improvs became even more important than the original tune itself. All members of the early bands contributed to the spontaneous "jazzing up" of tunes and this kind of collective improvisation was at the heart of the early style.  Following the lead of Ragtime, the rhythmic approach to the music also became more syncopated.

Whites quickly began imitating the style, and a white group called The Original Dixieland Jazz Band actually cut the first jazz recording ever in 1917: The Dixieland Jazz Band One-Step.  By 1930 that recording had sold 1 million copies.  When you listen to this excerpt you'll immediately hear the brass band influence on early jazz: the beginning drum "roll-off" sounds like the musicians are lining up for a parade-- until the real 'jazzy' part starts in.

EARLY PIONEERS OF JAZZ

It don't mean a thing if it aint got that swing..."     --Duke Ellington

Listen to the pioneers of jazz from the 1920s, and you'll begin to hear the music become looser and looser-- more graceful and syncopated, less martial and stiff. As the Ragtime and Brass Band influences began to recede into the distance, jazz developed its own rhythmic approach--this approach came to be known as "swing" and it absolutely defines jazz. Particularly recently, there have been heated debates over what exactly constitutes "jazz," and many practitioners have maintained that without the swing feeling a musical style cannot be considered jazz.

Jelly Roll Morton, who was mentioned in Lecture 24 under Ragtime, is important in the early history of jazz for playing with a lighter, more swinging feeling-- for anticipating later jazz swing style. His piano style was quite complex, often playing 2 or 3 melodic lines at once, kind of like a one-man band.  His band, the Red Hot Peppers, was made up of some of the best New Orleans musicians, using collective improvisation.

The pianist Earl Hines (1903-1983) was known for his 'brassy' piano style (he had wanted to be a trumpeter).  Hines piano style was historically important because it pioneered a technique and sound that has come to be associated with jazz pianists: a more direct, crisp, sometimes even punchy style, as opposed to the more flowery, singing tone of classical pianists. Hines strength at the piano was of the string-snapping variety-- literally-- and his phrasing was also that of a trumpeter.

Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) is often called "The Father of Jazz." He was one of the first musicians to play with that indescribably wonderful swing feeling. Only a master of rhythmic precision such as Armstrong could have produced melodic lines that tilted so precariously before or after the beat, sometimes staggering for a whole melody and 'catching up' only at the last moment. Armstrong engineered the transition from the stiffer sound of Ragtime to the rhythmic sophistication and lilt of swing.

A virtuoso trumpeter, he also helped change the dynamic of collective improvisation to one of solo improvisation-- and what solos they were!  Armstrong was a great musical architect, building up shapes and pacing his solos perfectly, crossing the spontaneous charm of improv with the planned sense of form in traditional notated music.

Finally, Armstrong popularized the technique of scat-singing, a kind of vocalise in which the pitches are sung but without the words.  (Since I often forget the words to songs, it's an ideal technique for me!)  Of course, scat-singing done by a master is an elaborate art, akin to the most complicated improvs of instrumentalists.  As with so many things that look easy, it is not at all easy to do well!

The 1930s: THE AGE OF SWING

In the 1930s, the popularity of jazz began to translate into artistic changes.  Larger bands were needed to play to larger audiences in larger halls.  The commercial possibilities of the style were attracting the attention -- and money -- of whites, who were now forming 10-20 piece Swing Bands.  This was the "big band era" of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Glenn Miller. The make-up of these bands was generally 2-5 trumpets, 1-5 trombones, saxophones (2 alto, 2 tenors, 1 baritone), and a rhythm section of string bass, guitar, and drums.

The band of Count Basie (1904-1984) had one of the smoothest sounds in jazz history, with a light, buoyant Basie at the piano, and such jazz greats as Walter Page on bass, who popularized the walking bass sound, and Lester Young,  the tenor saxophonist whose light tone and slow vibrato floated phrases in an effortless manner.  Percussionist Jo Jones pioneered the use of wire brushes on the high-hat, letting the cymbals ring between beats-- again, moving away from the more etched quality of earlier jazz.

The Swing Era, by Gunther Schuller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989

The pianist, composer, and band leader Duke Ellington (1899-1974) ran the most long-lived big band in the history of jazz, with some of his musicians remaining with him for 30 years. His band members pioneered new sound effects such as growling with trumpets and trombone and wailing with clarinet. The solos that they contributed even became part of the band's standard repertoire as if they had been composed. Ellington was also a composer of concert music, writing a 50 minute tone poem called Black, Brown and Beige on the history of the American black.

The bands of Ellington and Basie emphasized instrumental jazz improvisation-- as opposed to the so-called "sweet bands" of Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw, which focused more on vocals and dance melodies in pretty arrangements. All of these older bands, however, belong to what is now known as the classic jazz period, as opposed to the newer styles which emerged in the 1940s and which have taken on the title of modern jazz.  There is not a clean, clear break between the two styles, however, particularly since many of the "modern" practitioners started out in '30s era swing bands. Rather, modern jazz represents an extension of swing-era jazz.

The best jazz textbook around (which also comes with a cassette) is the one by Mark C. Gridley: Concise Guide to Jazz, New York: Prentice Hall.  Gridley is a master at concision alright-- he also is very clear and direct.

 

The 1940s: BEBOP

 

The style of Bebop differed from earlier swing style in a number of ways (adapted from Mark Gridley's book, Concise Guide to Jazz):  the preferred instrumentation of bebop was the small combo, not the big band  the average tempo was faster in bebop  the clarinet was rare in bebop  the display of instrumental virtuosity was even greater in bebop  Bebop improvs were more complex, more syncopated, more agitated.

Bebop musicians often departed from the melody when improvising, retaining the outline of the underlying chord structure only-- a difficult feat which Armstrong had pioneered.  Sometimes they also went ahead and rewrote a melody over the same chord progression of another tune.

Bebop: The Music and The Players, by Thomas Owens. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Among the greats of  "modern jazz" and perhaps of all jazz history is Charlie Parker (1920-1955).  "Bird," as he was called, was a genius of an improviser, running off the fastest riffs every played on a saxophone with flawless speed.  Parker favored short melodies and a clipped sound. Soon after his 1940s recordings appeared other musicians began to follow suit, attempting to imitate his speed, agility, and the sheer profuseness of his melodic invention. His work is a mainstay of jazz repertoire and students of jazz study and memorize his ideas. Here is Ko-Ko, with Charlie Parker on alto sax, Dizzy Gillespie on piano, and Max Roach on drums.

Just look at the trumpet in that picture!    It looks like someone sat on it-- and that, reputedly, is what happened one day during a break in a recording session. Apparently Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie really liked the way the instrument sounded after the accident-- he found he could hear himself better with the bell pointed upward-- and kept it that way.  It was his signature.

In addition to a dazzling trumpet style, Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993) has been credited with single-handedly bringing a Latin influence into jazz.  His works like Manteca, Cubano Be, and Cubano Bop are among the earliest appearances of Latin American and Caribbean music in modern jazz.  Gillespie and Parker were the twin geniuses of the Bebop era, each bringing the level of virtuosity on their respective instruments to new heights. Here's a sample from Things to Come, with Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet and Kenny Clarke, another prominent Bebop player, on drums.

Maybe you've heard the old joke about the violinist who was so bad he played out of tune on an open string? Well, there's a variant of that joke with Thelonius Monk (1917-1982), the brilliant Bebop era pianist whose dissonant piano style made the most in-tune piano sound almost out-of-tune. A hallmark of Monk's style is his use of silence, which feels as palpable as the moments that he is playing and which he used to create tension in his solos.  In his accompaniments Monk often stopped playing for long stretches at a time, cultivating a sparse sound with a few notes judiciously placed here and there, letting his soloist take flight.

The 1950s - 1970s: Cool Jazz, Hard Bop, Free Jazz, Avant Garde

 

Cool Jazz represented somewhat of a shift toward a more subdued, detached atmosphere rather than the more frenetic pace of Bebop. The 1949-1950 recording sessions organized by Miles Davis were dubbed "the birth of cool," and the performers on those sessions included jazz greats such as Lee Konitz (alto sax) and Gerry Mulligan (baritone sax), with Davis on trumpet. In addition, Davis had piano, bass and drums in the group and then, instead of guitar and tenor sax, he added a special sound: french horn and tuba.  This instrumentation was really essential to giving the music that distinctively mellow quality-- as the word says, a "cool" sound.

The particular tone quality of Davis' own trumpet playing is so distinctive that he can always be recognized, and when that gentle sound is coupled with his very spare aesthetic-- a few notes here or there to suggest a melody, then a long silence-- the effect is overwhelming. For a good demonstration of Davis' sound and lean style- complete with his trademark mute- listen to "Blue in Green" written by Bill Evans, and with Evans at the piano.

Other cool jazz greats include Dave Brubeck, whose quartet performed and recorded from 1951 to 1967, and Stan Kenton, Stan Getz, and Lennie Tristano.

Like Charlie Parker, the Hard Bop player John Coltrane was an inspiration to younger players who admired his total command of his instrument and his dense, rapid-fire improvs. Hard Bop was kind of an offshoot from Bebop that was darker and weightier in tone. Coltrane had a penchant for replacing chord changes in standard pop tunes, and for using modal style in which a player improvises on a mode or scale rather than a chord progression.

Here's an example of modal improv with John Coltrane in Your Lady. The percussionist, Elvin Jones, plays a kind of free-for-all of percussion effects, rather than strict time keeping; the pianist, McCoy Tyner uses a chord vocabulary that became popular in the 1970s.

Free Jazz refers to avant-garde styles of jazz which improvise freely, without following a chord progression.  The piano was often left out of the mix in free jazz because it had traditionally been so strongly associated with the job of outlining chord progressions-- and the whole idea of Free Jazz was to get away from chord progressions, a role that many pianists did not feel comfortable with anyway. The drummer also took on a different role, changing from being a time keeper to providing a more free and much less predictable type of sonic background.  Free jazz often used ultra-high register playing with shrieks, wails and gurgles. Like the avant-garde in classical music, Free Jazz players often saw texture as an end in itself, not just a means to an end.

Among the notable names from the 1970s is the pianist Bill Evans-- one of my personal favorites. Evans adapted the chords of Ravel and Debussy to his improvs which gives them a deliciously complex sound.  He also had a rhythmically fluid way of staggering a phrase across several beats --referred to as floating pulse or non-obvious pulse-- so that you almost lost the beat altogether.  Here is Bill Evans in Solar.

The 1980s

The 1980s saw the crossing of rock elements with jazz, called Fusion. Jazz pieces in this style borrowed the repetitive rhythms of rock, adopted some rock instrumentation (i.e., substituting synthesizer for piano and electric bass for string bass), and used more regular accompaniment textures. Miles Davis worked in this style, using electric piano and organ instead of acoustic piano, replacing string bass with electric bass, coupling electric guitars with soprano sax and using two different drummers.

Birdland by Weather Report is an example of Fusion.

The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz has an enormous range of examples from the styles you have read about in this lecture.

© Copyright 1998, 1999  by Omnidisc inc.  All rights reserved.  Reproduction of this page and all pages contained in this site is strictly prohibited by law.