Music 325 mid2

History of Jazz

Duke Ellington

-1899 - 1974

-Born in Washington, D.C.

-Pianist composer

-Flourished at The Cotton Club 1927-31

-Associated with swing music.

-Composer, arranger, pianist, elder statesman of jazz

-Born middle class African American family in Washington, DC

-Took piano lessons as a child, more interested in visual art

-Didn’t go to music school

-Leads a group in New York called the Washingtonians, he plays piano and arranges for the group.

-Uses Timbre

-Uses mutes and plungers for “jungle sound”

The Cotton Club

-The prohibition-era Harlem club where Duke Ellington flourished as an artist and entertainer 1927-31.

-Was a prohibition-era, mob-owned, racially-segregated nightclub in Harlem, New York.

-Features racist presentations of African American dancers dressed up for plantation scenes.

-Major career stepping stone for Ellington, whose music was broadcast from the club nationally.

-Ellington is highly ambitious and writes long-form jazz music.

Timbre

The characteristic quality of a sound, independent of pitch and loudness.

Verse

An introductory section of music. Most jazz standards don’t have this section, and jazz musicians often omit verses in standards that do have a verse.

Chorus

The “main” formal section in most jazz music. This section is cycled with variation. (Head chorus, Solo chorus.)

Head Chorus

A chorus during which song’s melody (the head) is played (roughly) as written. You could think of this like an exposition or a thematic statement in Western art music.

Solo Chorus

A chorus during which a player (or players) improvise or otherwise play a solo.

Head Arrangements

Musical arrangements that are worked out in rehearsal between members and memorized rather than notated.

Swing

A word which can have at least three meanings in the context of jazz. It can refer to a rhythmic concept, a genre of music, or a skillful way of playing.

Rhythm Changes

A tune based on the harmony and form of George Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm.

Contrafact

A jazz tune/composition that uses the harmony/form of another tune/composition but replaces the melody.

Chord Changes

The harmony of a jazz tune/composition.

Modernism

A 20th century artistic and cultural movement that sought to break with tradition. It emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and novelty.

Minton’s Playhouse

The club where Thelonious Monk was house pianist.

Sarah Vaughan

-One of the most significant jazz vocalists.

-Known as “queen of bepop”

-Born in Newark, New Jersey

-Took piano lessons from a young age.

-At 18 she wins amateur night competition at the Apollo theatre in Harlem. Wins $10 and a weeklong spot at the Apollo.

-Discovered by Earl Hines, he invites her to join his orchestra.

-Vaughan joins the Earl Hines orchestra which also includes Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

-In 1944 she leaves Hine’s orchestra for Billy Eckstine’s Orchestra.

-1945 she launches a solo career.

-Vaughans career characterized by two streams of recordings: Modernistic jazz and popified commercial.

-horn-like sound

Jazz Standard

Songs or compositions that are commonly played by many jazz musicians. When playing these, musicians generally prize novelty, innovation, and improvisation over fidelity to an “original” version.

Cover

A performance or recording of a tune/composition/song that is closely associated with a difference performer/composer. It generally strives for fidelity to the sound of the original.

The Great American Songbook

The loosely defined canon of 20th century American jazz standards, popular songs, and musical theatre tunes. 

Where do jazz standards come from?

Come from anywhere, but they generally come from musical theatre, popular (non-jazz music), or were originally written by jazz musicians but picked up as standards.

Jazz is an…

Improvisatory art form. The “composition” can occur in the moment. Both in the context of a soloist improvising as well as band members reacting to each other in accompaniment.

Chops

A jazz musician’s technical skill at their instrument.

Charlie Parker

-1920 - 1955

-Born in Kansas City, Kansas, as a child moves to Kansas City Missouri.

-Saxophonist

-Associated with bepop music

-Involuntarily committed to a mental institution for six months.

-He suffered from severe addiction issues throughout his life.

-Anthropology, Summertime, The Jumpin’ Blues, Salt Peanuts Ko-ko, Lover Man, A Night in Tunisia, Donna Lee, Billie’s Bounce.

Features of Bepop

-Fast tempos

-Small ensembles

-Lots of chords

-Changes in key

-It develops from sidemen rather than swing band leaders. Gioia refers to this as an “underclass within the underclass.”

-The treatment of form is often head in - solo choruses - head out

-Major focus on improvisation rather than arrangement.

-Major focus on chops.

-Often based around jazz standards.

-Utilizes old showtunes, old popular tunes, as well as jazz originals as foundations for improvisation and novelty. 

It has a modernistic, subversive ethos. 

Duke Ellington Instrument + genre

-Piano

-Swing and stride

Count Basie Instrument + genre

-Piano

-Swing and stride 

Benny Goodman Instrument + genre

-Clarinet

-Swing

Charlie Parker (and Dizzy Gillespie) instrument + genre

-Parker-sax, Dizz-Trumpet

-Bebop

Thelonious Monk Instrument + genre

-Piano

-Bebop

Sarah Vaughan Instrument + genre

-Voice and piano

-Bebop

Count Basie

-Kansas City swing sound

-Born in New Jersey, refines his sound in Kansas, Missouri, makes it big in New York City.

-He gets his chops together early in his career in Harlem within the stride piano tradition.

-He goes on tour with a musical revue that collapses in Kansas, MO and he decides to stay there.

-There he absorbs some of the features of the Kansas, MO swing sound.

The Kansas City Swing Sound

-Heavily blues based, and riff-based.

-Tends to use head arrangements and improvisation rather than the more tightly notated arrangements of Ellington or Goodman.

Benny Goodman

-Born in Chicago, he takes up clarinet as a child.

-By age 20, working full time as a studio musician, playing clarinet on band recordings.

-In 1933 gets a gig as the bandleader for the NBC radio program “Let’s Dance”, which gives him his first major platform.

-Goodman hires Fletcher Henderson as his arranger.

-In 1935 Goodman has his breakout year. He plays an important gig at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, California, and records hi first hit, a Fletcher Henderson arrangement of Jelly Roll Morton’s King Porter Stomp.

-This initiates the “swing era” during which jazz was America’s popular music.

-Goodman goes on to become a major swing hitmaker until Glenn Miller supplants him almost a decade later.

-Style is smooth and tightly arranged.

Charlie Parker (and Dizz)

-Parker is born in Kansas City Kansas, as a child moves to Kansas, Missouri.

-Parker begins playing sax as a child.

-Incident occurred when he was 16 at a jam session and the drummer Jo Jones throws a cymbal at him for failing to follow the changes.

-Incident encourages him and he gets his chops together. He studies Lester Young’s style.

-Late teens Parker develops an addiction to heroin.

-He gets work in swing orchestras, and is heard on the radios.

-While Cab Calloway’s band is in Kansas, Calloway’s trumpet player (Dizzy Gillespie) meets Parker and is impressed.

-Parker and Dizzy form a long-term partnership.

-Both join Earle Hines Orchestra (along with Sarah Vaughan) in 1942, but this ensemble never records due to the 1942-1944 musicians’ strike.

-1946 crashout year. Addiction caught up to him.

-He is institutionalized at the Camarillo State Mental Hospital for six months.

-Maintains a career as a vanguard bebopper.

-He dies in 1955 at the age of 34.

-He is considered both an architect of bebop as a genre, as well as one of its most effective and skilled practitioners.

Thelonious Monk

-A pianist who got his start in the context of the Harlem stride scene: cutting contests an rent parties.

-Born in North Carolina but moves to Harlem as a child.

-He does small time gigs until at the age of 23 he secures a gig as the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse, which places him at the genesis of the bebop scene. Parker and Gillespie play Minton’s as well.

-During his time at Minton’s, Monk develops his unique piano style.

-Style is reflective of the bebop ethos.

-Highly modernistic.

-Piano style is often percussive, sparse, and highly dissonant.

-”It’s about the notes he’s not playing”