The Jazz Age

When was the jazz age? When was the first jazz record released?

End of WWI (1914-1918) to Great Depression (1929) (During the roaring 20’s). The first jazz record was released in 1917 and this ushered in the Jazz age

What did the roaring 20’s symbolize?

1. Post war prosperity

2. New found confidence in America as it established the US as the most powerful country

What does the Jazz Age coincide with? What year?

Prohibition (1919-1933). Alcohol was banned during these years

What began to rise during prohibition? What did this center around?

Speakeasies, which were an underground scene that entered around booze and music (ironically more people drunk during this time than before). 

What developed out of the cakewalk dance?

Charleston dance craze

What was the significance New Orleans, Louisiana?

It was a major center for the development of jazz. It was also a major port city, highly diverse and integrated the city with French, Spanish, Caribbean, Creole, Cajun, Black, and White populations co-existing.

What was New Orleans, Louisiana considered to be? What did it have lots of?

Considered to be a famously wild town (as was the case with most port cities). It had lots of bars and brothels that required a lot of music.

What was Storyville?

It was an area within NO that had the most lax laws and contained all vices within one area

What is The Big Easy?

It was a tolerant attitude that many people in NO acquired (they weren’t uptight about all the vices happening).

What was there an importance of in NO?

Bands as they played in parades, funerals, bars. Pianists were also very important for smaller venues such as brothels and sporting houses. 

What was the Congo Square?

It was an area in NO where every Sunday during slavery, slaves were able to gather and play music unhindered. Drums were banned along African Americans as slaves used them to plan their escape.

Who was Jelly Roll Morton? What year was he born? What year did he die? 

He was the first to come up with a stage name and was born in 1890-1941. He also was a brothel pianist by the age of 12 but went on to become a travelling musician by age 14 (absorbed ragtime, spirituals, minstrel songs, Tin Pan Alley songs, and blues) 

What was Jelly Roll a name for?

Erotic gyration of the pelvis, also slang for a woman’s genitalia

What was Jelly Roll Morton considered to be?

A transitional figure from ragtime to jazz

Did Jelly Roll Morton have a flamboyant personality? If yes, how so? What was he reluctant to take up?

Yes he did because he had diamonds in his teeth, nice suits, boastful and competitive. He was reluctant to take up the piano as he thought it was a girls instrument until he heard ragtime piano players (thought it was virtuosic and athletic)

Who composed Maple Leaf Rag? Who was it recorded by? What year?

Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton recorded it in 1938 

What type of rhythms are in Maple Leaf Rag by Jelly Roll Morton? Was there lots of improvisation?

Swing rhythms (groups of notes are broken up (short then long) and it has a bouncier feel). Yes there is

What did Morton position himself as?

Inventor of jazz who introduced riffs and breaks. He was the most influential.

What is New Orleans Jazz considered to be? What does it refer to?

Dixieland jazz. It refers to improvised, polyphonic style, collective improvisation (rather than individual soloists (you have to be keenly aware of what others are doing)).

What type of form does NO jazz have? What are the harmonies used? Scale, notes? Is there pitch bending?

Has 12-bar blues form (it is inclusive and provides common format for improvisation). 3 harmonies in an arrangement (I, IV, V). Blue scale with blue notes (flatted 3rds, 5ths, and 7ths). Yes there is (can bend the note up or down to a blue note) 

What’s in the frontline? Whats in the rhythm section for NO jazz?

Frontline: Cornet (older version of a trumpet)(main tune), clarinet (weaving around tune), and trombone (bass notes). 

Rhythm section: Banjo and/or piano, drums 

Who recorded Livery Stable Blues? What year? Was it the first recording identified as jazz?

Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917 and yes

What form did Livery Stable Blues have? What did it treat jazz as? Why?

Blues form and treats jazz as a novelty rather than something to be taken seriously because they had comic breaks with animal noises.

What did Joe “King” Oliver play? Where was he from? Born? Died? 

The cornet and he was from NO. 1885-1938 

What did Joe King Oliver do?

He was a mentor and teacher to many including Louis Armstrong and popularized using mutes, derbys, bottles, and cups to alter the sound of his cornet.

What year did Joe King Oliver move to Chicago? What did he establish here?

In 1918 and he established King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band

What did King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band feature?

The best NO players such as Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Baby Dodds (drums), Lil Hardin (piano), Honore Duty (trombone), Bill Johnson (banjo/bass), Armstrong and Oliver (cornet)

What was the great migration? When did it occur? Why?

It was a massive move of African Americans from the South to northern urban centres. It occurred in 1920’s-1950’s. It happened because of the Jim Crow laws that persisted in the South and due to greater economic opportunities in industrial urban centres of the North.

What was one of the main centres of the new recording industry? Who invented the tinfoil cylinder phonograph? What was the purpose and what year?

Chicago and Edison invented it for business/military purposes not music in 1877 

What was founded in 1901? What did they introduce?

Victor Talking Machine Company was founded and they introduced the Victrola which was an affordable phonograph for home use.

What year was Dippermouth Blues recorded in? Where? What form did it have?

In 1923 and in chicago

Describe each chorus in Dippermouth Blues

1st and 2nd chorus: Ensemble (cornet lead, clarinet countermelody, trombone bass support, rhythm section (drums, piano, banjo) laying out harmonies.

3rd and 4th chorus: Breaks with Dodds clarinet solo

5th chorus: Ensemble (collective improvisation)

6th, 7th, and 8th: Oliver solos with way-wah (gives it a vocal timbre)

9th: Ensemble

Have many players learned the solos on the Dippermouth Blues record note for note? What has this achieved? What did Oliver end up as?

Yes they have and now it has achieved canonical status. Oliver ended up as a janitor in a pool hall in Georgia 

Who was the most influential jazz musician of all time? Where was he from? Born? Died?

Louis Armstrong and he was from the toughest, poorest part of NO (the battlefield)(his mother was forced into prostitution). 1901-1971

Who did Louis Armstrong grow up admiring?

King Oliver who brought him into his band in Chicago and his wife/bandmate Lil Hardin convinced Armstrong to strike out on his own

Who wrote West End Blues? What year? Who was featured on it?

Louis Armstrong and his hot five in 1928. It featured Earl Hines on piano who proved to be an important inspiration for Armstrong 

What form does West End Blues have? What type of intro does it have?

12-bar blues form. Virtuosic trumpet intro that has fluidity, ease, power, confidence, originality, unrestrained (wide register).

Describe each chorus in West End Blues

1st chorus: Armstrong (great phrasing at end of chorus to climax)

2nd: Trombone solo (Fred Robinson)

3rd: Clarinet (Jimmy Strong) and scat vocal in call and response

4th: Paino (Earl Hines)

5th: Armstrong trumpet

Who was Charles Black? What belief did he have?

He was a wealthy, white southerner who believed in white superiority but at age 16 he saw a performance by Louis Armstrong and he realized that for the first time in his life that he was in the presence of genius and it completely reformed his view on race. He went on to be a major Civil Rights attorney and argued the Brown v Board of Education in 1954. 

What does pop culture often provide?

A venue in which notions about race can be challenged.

What was Harlem a major population center for?

For Black people in NYC

When did the Harlem Renaissance occur? Why?

1920’s after WWI as blacks came home to continued lynchings, segregation, and racism. Assimilation. was not working and this implies inferiority of black culture if there is an emphasis on adopting white manners and behaviour. There was the rise of the New Negro.

What was Harlem home of?

NAACP, urban league, Langston Hughes, Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois

Where were a lot of stride pianists located?

In Harlem

What did Stride piano grow out of? What type of style did it have?

Ragtime but swingier and more virtuosic (huge LH leaps). Had an aggressive but virtuosic style

What was the stride piano used for?

Bars and rent parties (community based events and used the income to pay the persons rent), and cutting contests (like rap battles that enable marginalized, disenfranchised people to assert their value and empower themselves in non-violent ways) 

Who was the father of stride piano? When was he born? Died?

James P. Johnson (1891-1955). 

What did the Charleston initiate? What year did it come out? Did it involve jumping all over the piano register?

The dance craze which was the biggest hit of Jazz age. 1923. Yes

What were flappers?

Women who flapped arms while dancing the Charleston

Who covered the Charleston?

Paul Whiteman

Who was recognized as the king of jazz by 1920’s? What was the concert he held on Feb 12, 1924 called?

Paul Whiteman. An experiment in Modern Music. 

What did the concert start with?

Livery stable blues by ODJB and then progressed through musical improvements (leading up to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue).

What was the biggest factor in improvement? What did Whiteman’s group do? What did Jazz provide a stepping stone for in Whitemans eyes?

Art of scoring. He scored all parts and play by the score (reduced improvisation). Jazz provides a stepping stone for masses to understand opera and symphonies 

What was the cotton club?

It was the biggest prestigious music venue in Harlem and was a Jim Crow club

Who performed and who was the audience in the Cotton Club?

Black performers but no black audience. It catered to slumming wealthy whites who wanted to experience the primitive excitement of black life.

Where was Duke Ellington from? Who signed Ellington to a contract? What percentage of his earnings did he take?

A middle class family in Washington. An influential manager Irving Mills and he took 55% of his earnings. 

What did Irving Mills get Ellington? What did he market himself as?

Got him a job as a house band at the Cotton Club and he was marketed as Jungle Music with a racy, primitivist floor shows.

What form was East St Louis Toodle-Oo in? Who wrote it? What key?

AABA form and Duke Ellington. Minor key in A section and major key in B section.

Who was Bubber Miley? Did he play in East St Louis Toodle-Oo?

He was a trumpet player who admired King Oliver and his plunger mute, wah-wah style and growling timbre.