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Memphis Blues

COUNTRY: United States

Before the post-World War II influx of African-Americans who moved from the Mississippi Delta to Memphis seeking economic opportunity, the Memphis Blues scene was known not only for its guitarists, but for its “jug bands.” These were small ensembles that played highly danceable, syncopated jazz rhythms and whose musicians played on acoustic, sometimes homemade instruments–guitars, banjos, violin, harmonicas, mandolins, and sometimes washboards, guimbardes and even kazoos. Rather than have a bass guitar, musicians in bands would make the bass sound by blowing rhythmically into a large, deep jug.

[Listen to the MEMPHIS JUG BAND perform, “Round and Round [wpspoiler name=”Jug band spoiler test” ][/wpspoiler]

(note the kazoo) for an example of the early Memphis sound | Listen to Memphis-based jug band GUS CANNON’S JUG STOMPERS play “Big Railroad Blues,” recorded in 1928–listen closely and you can hear Cannon on the jug | Watch Kentucky-based Whistler’s Jug Band perform “Foldin’ Bed” in a rare film from the late 1920s to see an early jug band in action | Listen to accomplished Memphis-based guitarist “Memphis Minnie” perform “Me & My Chauffeur” in 1941]

After World War II, African-Americans from the Mississippi Delta moving to Memphis looking for work entered the city’s blues scene. Modern Delta guitarists began to performed along Beale Street and in West Memphis, nudging the city’s musical sound in the direction of electric blues (very much as in Chicago).

While Sam Phillips’ Sun Records Company recorded Memphis blues musicians like B.B. KING, Phillips is also widely credited with “discovering” ELVIS PRESLEY in 1954. After adding Elvis and JERRY LEE LEWIS to its roster, Sun Records changed its focus to producing rock ‘n’ roll records for an expanding white audience. [Watch B.B. King and his famed guitar, “Lucille,” in an extraordinary performance of “Why I Sing the Blues” in Zaire, Africa, in 1974.]

 

Nashville Sound

At the end of World War II several country music studios opened in Nashville, Tennessee, taking advantage of the disproportionate number of talented country musicians who moved there to perform as part of a massively popular WSM-AM radio concert series known as THE GRAND OLE OPRY. The Opry had started in 1925 as the radio broadcast of a one hour weekly “barn dance” but by the ’30s had moved to Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and expanded into a four hour Saturday night tradition that WSM’s 50,000 watt transmitter delivered directly to listeners in 30 states and broadcast nationally on the NBC radio network.

Even early in its development the Opry both celebrated country traditions and sought out contemporary country hit-makers, developing a recurring cast of country legends such as ROYACUFF, the Carter Family, Bill Monroe, Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams (though Williams’ frequent drunkenness caused him to be banned in 1952). Throughout the ’40s and ’50s Nashville-based guitarist and producer CHET ATKINS drew upon this talent to craft the so-called “Nashville Sound,” producing tracks that relied on guitar more than fiddle, added orchestral arrangements and background singers, featured polished vocalists rather than “high lonesome” crooners like Bill Monroe and, essentially, that brought a pop sensibility to country music.

[Learn a little more about the history of the Grand Ole Opry | Watch Roy Acuff play “Wabash Cannonball” live at the Opry | Watch Chet Akins perform “Wildwood Flower“–enjoy the lovely sound of his guitar | Watch Atkins perform “Villa” and “Say Si Si” at the 1958 Ozark Jubilee]

 

Honkytonk

A “honky tonk” was slang for a bar in the Southeast, Deep South and Southwest that provided musical entertainment along with the alcohol it served its working-class patrons. Though early “honky tonk” music was a rhythmic cousin of ragtime, in the early ’40s musicians such as ERNEST TUBB transformed it into a hard-driving form of country music that became the soundtrack of these mainly urban establishments. In the late ’40s and early ’50s Alabama-born HANK WILLIAMS had a string of honky tonk hits like his “Honky Tonk Blues,” taking the genre to a mass audience. Unfortunately Williams lived the rough life of which he sang; Williams died in 1953 at the age of 29 as the result of heart failure due to alcohol and drug abuse.

[Watch Ernest Tubb perform “Walking the Floor Over You” in 1961. Do note the awesome outfit. | Learn a bit about Williams in the documentary “Honky Tonk Blues.” | Watch Hank Williams perform “Cold Cold Heart“]

Bluegrass


In the 1940s Kentucky-based mandolin player BILL MONROE pioneered a form of music that came to be known as “Bluegrass.” He and his band, “The Blue Grass Boys”–a band that eventually came to include extraordinary musicians like guitar player LESTER FLATT and banjo player EARL SCRUGGS–used “mountain music” as their foundation but played it faster and with virtuosic vigor. Bluegrass included melodies and rhythms from gospel, country music, blues and laborers’ work songs. A bluegrass band’s banjo, fiddle or mandolin would play melody, while guitar and upright bass would keep the rhythm bounding forward. Monroe’s nasal, plaintive vocal style, known as “high lonesome” and is still a staple of the genre.

[Watch Monroe perform “Uncle Pen” and “I’m on my way back to the old home” | Watch Bill Monroe play with Earl Scruggs in 1972 | Watch Flatt & Scruggs perform the jaw-dropping “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,”  | This is truly the “Best Bluegrass Clog Dancing Video Ever Made“]

Jazz Fusion

 

[wpspoiler name=”Watch Miles Davis perform Santuary and Spanish Key” open=”true” style=”aatw-video” ][/wpspoiler] In the 1970s and ’80s jazz met rock in a modern form called “fusion’ or “jazz rock.” MILES DAVIS, pioneering yet another jazz genre, was essential in laying the groundwork for fusion by adding rock beats and electric instruments to several of his albums in the late ’60s and throughout the ’70s, causing much consternation among jazz purists. Pianists CHICK COREA and HERBIE HANCOCK, guitarist PAT METHENY and the jazz-rock ensemble WEATHER REPORT didn’t express consternation at all, embracing and advancing fusion by adding synthesizers, keyboards and highly processed woodwinds.

[Watch Miles Davis perform early fusion compositions “Sanctuary” and “Spanish Key” in 1970 | Watch Chick Corea and his band Return to Forever perform “Vulcan Worlds” in 1974| | Enjoy Weather Report’s “Birdland,” performed live in Germany in 1978 | Watch Pat Metheny perform “As It Is” | Watch Herbie Hancock perform “Cantaloupe Island” with Pat Metheny on guitar.]

TODAY’S JAZZ:

Today’s jazz is a “restless” genre that both infuses other genres such as rock, funk and hip hop and envelops them to expand its own horizions. Jazz may just as likely blend with hip hop to make both genres, unbelievably, even more cool–DIGABLE PLANETS‘ 1993 “Rebirth of Slick” is a great example of an uber-cool genre that became known as “ACID JAZZ“–or infiltrate elevators and grocery store sound systems everywhere, like the universally palatable–and therefore uncool?–SMOOTH JAZZ. (You’d disagree with the “uncool” label if you love KENNY G., seen here performing live with his son–clearly, his son–Max G.) Some contemporary jazz performers, such as avant-garde composer and saxophonist JOHN ZORN, blur boundaries between jazz and other genres, simultaneously mashing them all together and ripping them apart (watch Zorn perform “Karaim” in 2010)–while others, like jazz greats Barnford and Wynton Marsalis, return to jazz’s foundations as a base for their own work. (Watch Branford Marsalis perform “Cherokee” in 1991 | Watch Wynton Marsalis perform “Embraceable You.”) Since the late ’90s the term NUJAZZ has become a blanket term for jazz that eagerly blends with other styles, such as soul, electronica, house or hip hop. (Curious about NuJazz? Learn about the artists featured in the 2011 Toronto NuJazz Festival.)

We’re going to end our class by listening to “Radio Song” by bassist and vocalist ESPERANZA SPALDING. In 2011 Spalding was the first jazz musician to win the “Best New Artist” Grammy, surprising not only fans of Justin Beiber but also contemporary jazz fans who rarely see their favorite artists hit the mainstream. Spalding’s jazz is of many jazz genres at once and therefore doesn’t fit neatly into any of there. Where do you think Spalding will land? Decide for yourself after watching her perform “Radio Song” live on David Letterman in 2012.

Free Jazz

 

[wpspoiler name=”Watch Ornette Coleman (on sax) and his Sextet perform in Germany in 1978.” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]

In the 1960s an experimental, seemingly chaotic form called “Free jazz” became popular among jazz musicians, though not as much among the general population. Free jazz was challenging and unhinged, a style of jazz in which all musicians in an ensemble may be improvising wildly at the same time with little regard for a chord progression. The horns in particular made jarring squeaks and squawks, and the drums very rarely kept everyone’s beat. (AVANT-GARDE JAZZ is a similar subgenre, though it features a more predetermined chord structure over which improvising takes place than free jazz.)

“Free jazz” musicians seemed to understand what other free jazz musicians were doing, affording leaders of the movement such as Texas-born, New Orleans and then Los Angeles-based saxophone player ORNETTE COLEMAN great respect for their mastery of the form. Others questioned whether there was a form at all to be found in Coleman’s expansive and, critics claimed, indulgent musical exploration. Coleman himself only claimed to be following the music he found in the world around him.

[Learn about Ornette Coleman’s energizing–and controversial–arrival at “The Five Spot” in New York City’s East Village in 1959 | W 1978 | Listen to Coleman explain his approach to music in this recent infterview: “Sound is to people what the sun is to light.”]

 

Bebop

 

[wpspoiler name=”Thelonious Monk performs Straight No Chaser in 1965″ open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler] In the 1940s a new jazz style called “Bebop” emerged somewhat as a counter-movement to Big Band. Bebop ensembles were small–five or six musicians at most, most often featuring drums, bass, piano, trumpet and sax–and performed complicated arrangements that often featured irregular rhythms. These compositions were fascinating to hear but were not made for the dance hall.

Bepop’s virtuosic musicians communicated with each other and with audiences through fast and frenzied improvisation. Trumpeter DIZZY GILLESPIE–he of the amazingly stretchable cheeks and alto saxophone player CHARLIE “BIRD” PARKER, who first came to epitomize the intellectual/”hipster”/artist of the Beat Generation, then, sadly, the intellectual/”hipster”/artist who succumbed to substance abuse (PBS introduces you to
the life and times of Charlie Parker), pioneered bebop, taking advantage of the improvisational freedom the style afforded them as instrumentalists to bring the deep emotion of the blues back into jazz. Other jazz pioneers like idiosyncratic pianist and “High Priest of Bebop” THELONIOUS MONK advanced the genre with their unpredictable compositions. [Learn about Monk by watching the documentary “Straight, No Chaser.”|

Bebop as a jazz form came to maturity in the 1960s and then morphed and developed into other subgenres. For example, musicians like ART BLAKEY and the THE JAZZ MESSENGERS added a groovy, slightly more danceable edge to Bebop, weaving blues and gospel into their tunes. This genre became known as “Hard Bop.” Jazz heavyweights MILES DAVIS and JOHN COLTRANE, as well as trailblazing jazz guitarist WES MONTGOMERY, adopted this style and continued to harden the bop.

[Charlie Parker’s 1945 “Ko-ko” is widely considered to be the first bebop recording. (Dizzy
Gillespie joins him on trumpet.) | Watch Charlie Parker on alto sax and Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet perform “Hot House” in 1952 | Watch the Theonious Monk Quintet perform Monk’s composition, “Straight, No Chaser” in 1965 | Watch Art Blakey (on drums) and the Jazz Messengers performing Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia” live in 1958 | Listen to John Coltrane’s hard bop classic, “Moment’s Notice” | Watch Miles Davis perform bebop classic, “Walkin” in 1967 | Watch Wes Montgomery’s wonderful performance of “I Love Blues“]

Bebop was primarily instrumental but every so often musicians sang their melodies, or variations on their melodies, in an improvised form of singing that mimicked their instruments. This type of singing, known as “SCAT,” uses vocables to play with and even enhance the melody. Among the conflicting accounts of the origin of the term “bebop,” is a theory posits that “be” and “bop” were common scat syllables that often appeared together. Popular band leaders like CAB CALLOWAY used scat as a way to involve the audience in the vocal part of his compositions often through call and response. Jazz vocalists like ELLA FITZGERALD developed their own version of scat singing, using the voice to imitate jazz instruments.

In class we’re going to try a little scat singing, improvising sounds, imitating instruments and calling and responding ’til the cows come home.

[Listen to Cab Calloway sing “The Scat Song” and also “Zaz Zuh Zaz,” which sounds a whole lot like the more lyrically bawdy, and more famous, “Minnie the Moocher” | Watch Ella Fitzgerald perform her scat-arific “One Note Samba” in 1969, a version of which we’ll hear in class.]

 

Big Band Jazz and Swing

The emergence of Dixieland jazz in the 1920s inspired larger bands to form and develop more extensive and standardized arrangements of Dixieland songs. These big bands–which became known, conveniently, as “Big Bands”–were composed of ten or more musicians who sat or stood in rows while they were performing, much more like
musicians in Western Classical orchestras than those of the free-flowing Dixieland ensembles.

Because of their numbers the bands often grouped their instrumentalists together, breaking the band into three sections:

— BRASS (trumpets, trombones)
— REEDS (clarinets, saxophones)
— RHYTHM (drums, bass, piano and eventually guitar)

From the mid-’30s on big bands played a kind of music called “swing,” which was bounding, rhythmic and was meant to inspire people to dance…and dance they did!!
Even during the darkest days of World War II–maybe because the days were so dark–American youth flocked to nightclubs and danced with wild abandon. In the process
they developed steps like the Lindy Hop, which developed in the late 1920s and early 1930s as a big band-era interpretation of the Charleston, which itself was a signature dance of the ’20s. The Lindy Hop is an exuberant partner dance characterized by a
“swing out,” during which partners flail outward away from each other and then flail just as enthusiastically back, all the while each holding the other’s hand. The dance is playful and acrobatic, and thrives on improvisation. Check out this contemporary Lindy Hop competition. Holy cow! (Also check out examples of swing dances like the Balboa as performed in the 1943 short film, “Maharaja: With Hal & Betty Takier,” the Collegiate shag
and the St. Louis shag.)

A side note: though “jitterbug” has come to be accepted as a term that refers to a wide variety of swing dances, echnically “jitterbug” is not a form of swing dance, but is actually a term that refers to someone who dances a swing dance–i.e., “that Jay Sand is a real jitterbug!” Band leader Cab Calloway is believed to have coined the term when he described swing dancers by saying, “They look like a bunch of jitterbugs out there on the floor.” That said, if you want to “learn how to jitterbug” you absolutely must watch “Groovie Movie” from 1944.

“The Swing Era” lasted for almost two decades, throughout the ’30s and ’40s, during which thousands of big bands performed all over the United States, featuring America’s
best jazz musicians, both white and African-American–though rarely in the same bands. Band leaders like PAUL WHITEMAN, who some revere as “The King of Jazz,” but who others criticize as a Western classical orchestra leader who co-opted African-American
music, BENNY GOODMAN and DUKE ELLINGTON developed enthusiastic followings in the U.S. and remained popular internationally through the ’60s.

[Watch Paul Whiteman’s orchestra in an early performance (1928), featuring coronet player Bix Beiderbecke (A link mainly for grownups: Learn the sad story Bix Beiderbecke in “Wake Up Bix“) | Watch Benny Goodman perform “Sing Sing Sing” at Carnegie Hall in 1955]

After World War II big band music became even more popular, giving a war-weary nation the opportunity to enjoy itself through dance. Those who weren’t able to make it to “big city” dance clubs would listen to big band radio broadcasts from ballrooms in New York City like the Savoy and Roseland. Band leaders like TOMMY DORSEY, GLENN MILLER and COUNT BASIE, and vocalists like BILLIE HOLLIDAY, ELLA FITZGERALD and FRANK SINATRA were as popular at the rock stars of today.

[Watch Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra play “Bugle Call Rag” and “Ole Miss” in 1940 | Watch Glenn Miller and his orchestra perform one of their greatest hits, “In the Mood,” in
1941| Watch Count Basie’s band featuring Joe Williams on “The Kraft Music Hall” performing “Blee Blop Blues” and “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home.” The music starts at 1:39 after the vintage Kraft ad | Watch Billie Holliday and Louis Armstrong perform “The Blues Are Brewin’” | Watch Ella Fitzgerald sing “For Once in My Life” live in Berlin in 1968 | Watch Frank “The Chairman of the Board” Sinatra at the top of his game, performing, “That’s Life.”]

In the ’50s big band fell increasingly out of favor as genres that focused on individual musicians like bebop, cool jazz and even rock became more popular. (Though Benny Goodman was certainly still all the rage in the Netherlands in 1959.) Some bands adapted, weaving these new forms into their compositions, but for the most part the big bands that continued primarily kept playing the greatest hits of the ’30s and ’40s. Big band drummer BUDDY RICH, who started with Tommy Dorsey’s band in the ’40s, was one of the more popular band leaders of the time, backing “comeback”
recordings of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, though he did play the majority of his late career big band shows at colleges and high school gyms rather than in dance clubs.

[Watch Buddy Rich perform with a not-so-big band on The Lenny Bruce Show in 1959 | Watch Buddy Rich drum like crazy with the Muppets in 1980]

Dixieland Jazz

By the early 1920s blues and ragtime had fused with the exciting local brass band tradition that had developed in New Orleans become a new form known as “Dixieland” (or sometimes “Hot Jazz.”) Most Dixieland music is instrumental and features basic arrangements of songs that musicians in a group repeat over and over while each instrumentalist takes a turn improvising a solo in turn. Dixieland requires its musicians to be accomplished performers, but it’s far from stodgy and demure. Dixieland is enlivening, playful and FUN.

A Dixieland group might include a banjo, piano, stand-up bass, drums or tuba to keep the bouncy, upbeat tempo going and a clarinet and/or brass instruments like the trumpet, trombone and saxophone to play intertwining melodies. The musicians maintain the structure of the composition but cherish the opportunity to explore.

Dixieland jazz was most popular in the ’20s when musicians like pianist JELLY ROLL MORTON, trombonist “KID” ORY and New Orleans-born trumpet player and band leader LOUIS ARMSTRONG were all actively composing and/or performing, but the music, now often referred to as “traditional jazz” or “trad jazz,” has remained a fixture of the New Orleans jazz scene–and, apparently, of Croatia’s Špancirfest Varaždin–ever since.

[Listen to Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers perform “Hyena Stomp” in 1927 | Watch “Kid” Ory’s band perform “Tiger Rag” in 1959 | Watch Louis Armstrong and his Dixieland band play “Canal Street Blues” in 1962]

Guaracha (Cuba, Puerto Rico)

Guaracha is a form of music with bawdy lyrics originally meant to accompany dances that blended Spanish and African moves. The guaracha appeared first in Spain and became a staple of Cuban theater groups that toured Puerto Rico in the 1800s, which would play clever guaracha songs between acts of their performances to keep the audience entertained.

COUNTRY: Cuba, Puerto Rico (U.S.)
KEY INSTRUMENTS: Bass, Bongo, Congas, Cuatro, Guiro, Maracas, Piano, Tres, Trumpet

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