Music Appreciation Midterm

Ragtime

Style of piano playing that caught on around 1900

Popularized by Scott Joplin

Marked by “ragged” or syncopated sound

Began as piano music and picked up by dance bands

Intro of African American rhythm to American popular music

Scott Joplin

Popularized ragtime style

maple leaf rag

Syncopation

Emphasis is shifted from expected strong beats to weak beats

Accenting off beats

Blues

rural blues:

Characterized by call and response between singer and his guitar. Use of raw emotional singing. Vernacular language, 12 bar blues chord pattern, alternation between singing and talking

City/urban blues:

Rhythm section to boost volume, added drums and bass to texture,

Classic blues:

Often performed by women like Bessy Smith the “empress of the blues”, classic 12 bar blues form, style, and feeling, used a band and began to be recorded in 1920s, led to Race Records

Robert Johnson important blues player who was heavily recorded

Jazz

Period from 1926-1940

Rhythmically free style of music that makes liberal use of syncopation and back beat

Always contains some element of Improvisation- spontaneous composition

Two families of beat:

Four-beat rhythm- all four beats equally accented

Sixteen beat rhythm- funk beat where one can hear 16 individual divisions of the four beats in a measurew

Improvisation

Spontaneous composition

Four beat

Four-beat rhythm- all four beats equally accented

Sixteen beat

Sixteen beat rhythm- funk beat where one can hear 16 individual divisions of the four beats in a measurew

Louis Armstrong

Dominant figure in Jazz before WWII

Style characterized by a rough voice, use of improvisation on the cornet, and use of blues sentiment in the jazz idiom

Characterized New Orleans or Dixieland Jazz then changed his style from solo improvisation to collective improvisation

Credited with the invention of scat singing

Scat singing

Style that does not use words, instead it is improvised pitches sung with improvised vocables

swing band Jazz

In 1935, the small Jazz band was taken over by the swing Band which were much larger and were used specifically for dance purposes

Comprised of rhythm section and sections of brass

swing band music moved jazz several steps closer to rock as can be heard

Use of four beat rhythm is a step in the direction of the rock eight beat rhythm

Call and response exchanges between the horn

Country music

First phase influence of Anglo Folk

Began in 1920s when white southerners began to perform their traditional music on the radio and records

Conversion of Anglo Folk into Country:

First “country” music in 1922

Became commercially available

Sold well in record stores

Success

Jimmy Rodgers

One of the first most important country music stars

Contrasting to the Carter Family’s traditionalism, Rodgers embraced all of the new musical elements that he could find

He added blues, jazz, and yodeling to his brand of country

Best selling record was called “Waiting for a train”

The Carter Family

Got their start in Bristol, Tennessee in April 1927

Old time and traditional

Took folk songs from the late 1800s and made them popular again by giving them a country update

Honky Tonk

name of the bars that working class whites go to drink and dance

When prohibition was repeated in 1933, honky-tonks sprang up everywhere in the South and Southwest and some Northwrn cities

Added drums and replaced acoustic guitars with electric guitars to add volume

Songs with themes of man/woman relationship troubles, homesickness, drinking, and traveling

Hank Williams sr

Your cheatin heart

Country/ honky Tonk

Describes singing style as moaning the blues

Bring country to the verge of rock and roll, it is the immediate predecessor of the rockabilly of Elvis and bill Haley and the comets

Folk Music

1930s, revival of folk music

1. The preservation of the Anglo-American Folk music both in print and on record

2. Use of a simple folk style to talk about the life of everyday people

Alan and John Lomax

Recorded large quantities of white folk musicians in the south in an effort to preserve the tradition; they transcribed these songs and published them in songbooks

Woody Guthrie

Responsible for bringing folk music into the 20th century

Wrote or adapted over 1000 songs that were influenced by his travels, the people he met, and the situations he encountered.

His music found a home in New Yorks Greenwich village

Pete Seeger

Late 1930s, pete Seeger worked closely with the Lomax’s and Guthrie to preserve traditional folk past WWII

After the war Seeger worked with other traditional folk singers and songwriters to maintain the style

Own Success came in the 1950s, cut short due to political content of their lyrics

Joseph McCarthy

McCarthyism: period of intense anti-communist suspicion in the US, characterized by public accusations of disloyalty with little to no evidence

In 1955, senator Joseph McCarthy brought them (Pete Seeger) before the House Un-American Activities Committee for questioning

They were blacklisted, and Seeger never again enjoyed mainstream success

Gospel music

Began in southeastern churches

In the 1930s, It emerged and enjoyed about 20 years of commercial success

African American religious music that blends white Protestant hymnody, African American spirituals, and the blues

Thomas A. Dorsey, father of gospel music

Male Quartet

Four singers harmonizing a song without assistance of instrumental backup

Sung in close harmony with one man taking each of the SATB parts

Several gospel male quartets were quite famous

The golden gate jubilee quartet was heavily recorded

Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers

Female Vocal Soloist

Exemplified by Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward

Involved a band, background singers, and a featured female lead vocalist

Singing style was blues tinged-used some blue notes

Used two keyboards, Hammond Organ (1930) and Piano

Gospel harmony tight four part vocal harmony that comes directly from the 19th century

European hymn singing

Great Depression/ Dustbowl Days

In the 1930s the US and other countries were in the grips of the Great Depression

Millions of people were out of work and this prevented them from consuming any thing that the record industry had to offer

These economic hardships were removed when the US entered WWII

World War II/ its aftermath

1945-1964: place the rock related music of these years in the cultural context, connect events of these years to the music business

In 1945, WWII ended and all the American soldiers returned home

Post war population boom

During late 1940s and 1950s, American public can more disposable income and much went to entertainment

Television gained wide distribution

Teens had leisure time

Generation gap and teenage delinquent common terms

Late 1950s rock and roll takes off and success fueled by teenage audience

Aspects of Rock and Roll rebellion

Singing about sex

Different clothes

Different speech

Different hair

Different walk and Elvis hip gyrations

Souped up muscle cars

Dick Clark’s American Bandstand

A Philadelphia-based dance show that was broadcast live after school

Was one of the earliest outlets for Rock and Roll on air

Car culture

Post war years massive demand for cars

Carhop, drive in, car culture

Recording Formats

78s: through mid 1940s, only commercial recording format was the 78 rpm disc

Popular music records began being issued on a 10 inch discs with a playing time of about 3 mins

LPs: in 1948, Columbia records began using the LP record that was a 12 inch disc that revolved at 33 1/3 rotations per minute and could hold a half hour of music per side

The smaller version of these was the 45

By the mid 1950s the 78 was obsolete

Sun records/ Sam Phillips

Early 1950s, record industry was conservative

Middle aged white males not interested in rock and roll ran major labels

For this reason, small labels Sun Records recorded Elvis and Chess records recorded chuck berry

Payola, Alan Freed

Payment that disc jockeys received from record labels to play certain songs more than others

Became so rampant that in 1958 a special session of congress had to convene to study the abuses

Les paul/ Leo Fender

Introduced early solid body guitars

Electric bass introduced in US by Leo Fender in 1951

Overdubbing

Recording new audio parts on an existing record

Crossover

Song is purchased by an audience that it was NOT written for

Jump bands

Led by men such as Louis Jordan

Late 1940s

Rhythm section plus a few horns

Back beat and instrumentation

Louis Jordan added the boogie woogie bass line in the left hand of the piano

Electric blues

Led by men such as muddy waters, howling wolf

Vocals/electric guitar, piano, bass, drums, rhythm guitar

Became the instrumentation of the rock and roll band

Doo wop

Gospel plus pop

Jump style and ballad style

Male gospel crossover

Smooth vocal sound led by Sam Cooke

Intense vocal sound with blues tinge and jump band instrumentation led by Ray Charles and James Brown

Gospel music

Impacted early Rock and Roll

Male quartet and female solo vocalist

Fats Domino

Popularized the New Orlean style of using fast triplets in rhythm and blues

Muddy waters

Born McKinley Morganfield in 1915 lived until 1983