Jazz - Exam 1

Jazz prehistory

A scholarly term for the period between the birth of jazz and its first recording

West African music vs. 19th Century European music

West African

• Collaborative

• Taught by ear

• Memorized/Improvised

• Fluid pitch spectrum (you can bend between the 12 notes)

• Rhythmic sophistocation

19th Century European

• Art music

• Authoritarian

• Notated, composed

• Discrete pitch spectrum (set pitches)

• Harmonic sophistication

Minstrelsy

“A black imitation of a white caricature of black music”

Black face, making fun of black singing and dancing

Most famous Vaudeville entertainer

Bert Williams

What did the Fisk Jubilee Singers sing?

Spirituals

What did the Fisk Jubilee Singers do?

They began touring to support their University (Fisk)

March features

• Two-beat meter

• Several repeating sections (AABBCCDD)

• Polyphonic arrangements

  • Cornets playing melody

  • High woodwinds playing obligatos

  • Low brass playing low countermelodies

Semper Fidelis style

March

Semper Fidelis form

March (f)

Semper Fidelis composer

John Philips Sousa

“Alexander’s Ragtime Band” form

Song

“Alexander’s Ragtime Band” style

Popular song

“Alexander’s Ragtime Band” composer

Irving Berlin

Where and when did the Country Blues develop?

Mississippi Delta or Alluvial Plain in 1890s

Country Blues form

12 bars repeated (no assigned letter), AAB lyrical structure

Father of Country Blues

Charley Patton (fa)

Juke joints

Dance halls for dancing, drinking, and gambling. Where Country Blues were played

“Down the Dirt Road Blues” style

Country Blues

“Down the Dirt Road Blues” form

Blues form (3 phrases, 3 phrases, 3 phrases)

“Down the Dirt Road Blues” performer

Charley Patton

Ragtime features

• Straight 8th notes

• “Ragged time” from high amount of syncopation

• 2 beat meter

Ragtime form

March form (AABBCC)

Ragtime instrumentation

1 piano, sheet music, piano rolelrs

Maple Leaf Rag style

Ragtime

Maple Leaf Rag composer

Scott Joplin

Congo Square

• Official site for slave dances on Sundays and holy days

• Hundreds would gather for this circular dance

Uptown New Orleans

• Descendents of slaves

• SW of Canal Street

• Aural tradition of improvisation, memorization, and preset routines

Downtown New Orleans

• Creoles

• NE of Canal Street (the French quarter)

• In general, lighter skin, more education, more economic security

• Classical training, read music

Storyville

• 1897-1917 red-light district

• Place where alcohol and prostitution were allowed

• Two black/white

• Where jazz began playing

• Sidney Story helped establish it

First jazz musician

Buddy Bolden

Second line

In a jazz funeral there would be a front line with a slow funeral march, and a second line with people ready to party and celebrate life

Cutting contests

Wrap battle but jazz music

Elements of New Orleans jazz

• Polyphonic texture

• Brass band instrument roles

• Ensemble-oriented

• Two-beat feel (except on blueses)

• Soloing

New Orleans jazz forms

March, blues, song

Tailgate trombone

• Played very flamboyant and extraverted

• Name comes from advertising wagons, where the trombone would be on the back (over the tailage)

First band to record jazz music

Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1)

“Livery Stable Blues” form

Blues (ls)

“Livery Stable Blues” significance

First recorded jazz music

“Livery Stable Blues” performer

Original Dixieland Jazz Band

First great composer of jazz

Jelly Roll Morton (1)

Who played some of the first well rehearsed jazz music?

Jelly Roll Morton

“Black Bottom Stomp” style

New Orleans Jazz

“Black Bottom Stomp” composer

Jelly Roll Morton

“Black Bottom Stomp” performer

Red Hot Peppers

“Black Bottom Stomp” techniques

• Call and response

• “Stride” piano

• Stop-time

• Tailgate trombone

• Starts homophonic, mostly polyphonic

Who did King Oliver add to his band?

Louis Armstrong (ko)

King Oliver’s style

Muted techniques, “wah” “wah”

“Dippermouth Blues” form

Blues form

“Dippermouth Blues” performer

King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band

“Dippermouth Blues” techniques

• Polyphonic texture

• Stop-time accompaniment

What instrument did Sidney Bechet play?

Started on clarinet, but switched to soprano saxophone and makes it a popular jazz instrument

Sidney Bechet solo style

Very expressive, musical

Louis Armstrong’s wife

Lil Hardin, the pianist from King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band

Who did Louis Armstrong play with?

Fletcher Henderson

Significance of Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings

• The most important recordings of Louis Armstrong’s career

• Established him as one of the most important players in jazz history

Scat singing

Making your voice sound like an instrument by saying nonsense

“West End Blues” main musician

Louis Armstrong

“West End Blues” piano player

Earl Hines

“West End Blues” techniques

Many solos, mix of hot and sweet (uptown and downtown), is a blues!

Earl Hines piano style

“trumpet style”

• Phrase endings allowing for breath

• Tremolos on sustained notes mimicking vibrato

• Right hand melody lines in octaves

W.C. Handy

• Known as the father of the Blues even though he didn’t come up with it

• Listened to the Blues as he traveled, then published the Memphis Blues and became famous

Bessie Smith

• Known as the “Empress of the Blues”

• Recorded a lot of W.C. Handy’s Blues

Who got the title, “The King of Jazz” in the 1920s?

Paul Whiteman

Who was Paul Whiteman’s main arranger?

Ferde Grofe

What was Paul Whiteman’s type of music?

Symphonic Jazz

Elements of Chicago style jazz

• Restless energy from competitiveness

• Solos more subdued

• Change of instrument roles

• More arranged/written intros and interludes

• Uncommon harmonics from contemporary classical music

What forms were Chicago style jazz?

Popular song and 32-bar

Bix Beiderbecke’s intrument

Cornet

Bix Beiderbecke’s playing style

• Unique and warm sound

• Altered tones

• Relaxing phrasing

• “Correlated choruses”

• Cool soloist

Who was the first great “cool” soloist in jazz history

Bix Beiderbecke

Correlated choruses

Musical ideas develop into each other they flow logically

Frankie Trumbauer instrument

C- Melody Saxophone

Frankie Trumbauer style

• Solos focus on storytelling

• Precursor to cool jazz

“Singin’ the Blues” style

Chicago

“Singin’ the Blues” form

Song form (ABAC)

“Singin’ the Blues” main performers

Bix Beiderbecke, Frankie Trumbauer

Rent parties

To pay for the high cost of living in Harlem, residents would take all the furniture out of their apartments and have a concert, charging people. This brought competing pianists and the Harlem stride

Harlem stride compared to ragtime

• More spontaneous/improvisational

• More virtuosic right-hand part

• More chromaticism, blue notes, and dissonance

• Often a quicker temp

• Swing feel

Who was the “Father of stride piano”?

James P. Johnson

What was James P. Johnson’s famous “test piece”?

“Carolina Shout”

Who was “The Clown Prince of Jazz”

Thomas “Fats” Waller

“Fats” Waller’s work as a composer and performer

Performed at religious services, silent films, rent parties, cabarets, toured in Europe, starred in movies, and wrote music for the stage

“Handful of Keys” performer

Thomas “Fats” Waller

“Handful of Keys” style

Harlem Stride

Boogie Woogie was derived from what?

12 bar blues

Boogie Woogie stylistic traits

• Ostinato (repeating) left hand bass figure

• Riffs in the right hand

• Swing feel

Who was the greatest virtuoso of the Harlem Stride tradition?

Art Tatum

Art Tatum style

VIRTUOSITY (great skill)

Rhythm

The durational patterns of sound and silence in a piece of music

Beat (or pulse)

The division of musical time into regular, recurring units; also: any of those units

Tempo

Speed of the beat

Meter

The organization of beats into regular, recurring patterns

Measures (or bars)

The organization of beats into regular, recurring patterns

Measures (or bars)

A regular grouping of beats in a given meter

Swing

A rhythmic element in a lot of jazz music where the beat is subdivided into two unequal parts, one long and one short.

Syncopation

The accentuation of rhythms that ordinarily go unaccented

Melody

A linear succession of pitches that we hear as a coherent unit

Pitch

(1) The “highness” or “lowness” of a sound, (2) an individual note

Interval

Distance between pitches

Scale

An abstract collection of notes from which musicians draw to create melodies