THIRD STREAM, which more overtly blended jazz with Western classical music than other forms of jazz. Much of the early work of bassist Charles Mingus, such as the 1954 release, “Minor Intrusion,” is considered to be Third Stream. (Though you will also enjoy later, bluesier Mingus, such as “Devil Blues,” which we can see him and his band perform live at Monteaux in 1975.)
Here are twelve essential third stream performances.
[wpspoiler name=”Miles Davis and John Coltrane perform So What? in 1959″ open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
Others of the many subgenres of jazz that developed in the ’50s and ’60s included MODAL JAZZ, in which musicians based their compositions not on a progression of chords, but on the relationship notes have to each other in “modes,” which are types of scales–“So What,” with Miles Davis on trumpet and John Coltrane on saxophone is a prime example.
[wpspoiler name=”Watch Miles Davis perform in 1959 with the Gil Evans Orchestra” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
COOL JAZZ:
Another subgenre of jazz that developed throughout the 1940s was “Cool Jazz.” It was quieter, more subtle and more harmonic take on jazz than bebop; it took more cues from 20th century classical “art music” composers like Stravinsky and Debussy.The two main “cool jazz” pioneers were trumpeter MILES DAVIS and pianist/bandleader GIL EVANS, both of whom were undeniably cool.
Listen to “Jeru” from “Birth of the Cool,” a 1957 release of Davis recordings from 1949 and ’50 that epitomized “cool jazz.” | Watch Miles Davis (on trumpet) perform with the Gil Evans Orchestra in 1959 | As a bonus, watch Gil Evans perform in a funkier era, in Umbria, 1974. The song may not be “cool jazz,” but it’s definitely cool jazz]
[wpspoiler name=”Get on the Night Train with James Brown in 1963″ open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
Then came JAMES BROWN.
James Brown was an R&B crooner, a gospel preacher, the most soulful of soul artists, and, at the same moment, something completely new. Brown and his awesome, awesome band, THE JBs took the emphasis off of melody and harmony and put the focus on a driving, gutturally groovy, rhythm. In particular, unlike much soulful music of the time, Brown’s music emphasized “the downbeat,” or the first beat of a musical segment known as a measure. (Count 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4 and you’re counting out two measures of four beats each. Emphasize the first beat of each measure–1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4–and you’ll be in the ballpark of funk.) Brown’s band brought together many rhythmic instruments that had become standard in rock ‘n’ roll, like the electric guitar, electric bass, Hammond organ and a drum kit, and married them with a searing horn section. The band would then play songs that might consist, for the most part, of the same chord over and over. (This distinguished the form from R&B and soul songs which focds on more closely structured compositions.) “Godfather of Soul” Brown would use this repeated chord as a foundation upon which he’d sculpt the development of the performance, manipulating the pace of the band and the enthusiasm of the audience in order to whip everyone who was there into a frenzy.
In the ’70s in America funk formed the foundation for a less politically stirring form of music called disco, which we’ll explore in another week. It also inspired the even more intensely political Nigerian musician, FELA KUTI, to blend it with African rhythms to originate a genre called Afrobeat. [Watch Fela perform “Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense” live in the UK in 1984. Note the funky James Brown-style guitar underneath.]
Today you’ll hear funk music many places–usually places where people dance. DJs at dance clubs regularly use funk records to get people grooving, hip hop artists regularly sample funk chords and progressions, and funk bands…well, they just do their darndest to stay funky.
[Watch James Brown tear it up with “Night Train” in 1963, Live at the Apollo, “Super Bad”
(which we’re going to hear in class) performed on Soul Train in 1970 and “Get on the Good Foot,” another Soul Train appearance, this time in 1973 | Watch SLY & THE FAMILY STONE funk it up on Soul Train | Free your mind with PARLIAMENT/FUNKADELIC as they perform live in 1979]
“Soul music” blends the powerful spirituality of gospel with the deeply emotional grooves of “Rhythm & Blues,” which was the term record companies had begun to use in the ’40s to categorize forms of African American music, replacing the increasingly unconfortable “race records.” Using the term “soul” in reference to a song or singer implies more than just adherence to a particular musical genre, but the assertion that the musician–almost exclusively an African-American musician–brings a particular depth to his or her art, perhaps borne of historical struggles, maybe due to connection with a higher power.
“Soul music” as a term first became associated with RAY CHARLES, who brought a spiritual, Gospel-inspired emotion to his piano-based blues, and vocalist, preacher SOLOMON BURKE–“the Muhammad Ali of soul.” Passionate vocalists like Stax Records artist OTIS REDDING and gospel-soul artist MAVIS STAPLES, “soul blues” singer SAM COOKE, gospel/jazz/R&B singer/songwriter ARETHA FRANKLIN and even rhythm &
blues/rock ‘n’ roll legend ETTA JAMES, whose version of “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” we try to channel in class–watch this incredible performance of the 1962 hit–all virtually exploded with “soul.”
[Watch Ray Charles perform “I Believe to My Soul” in 1960 and “Hit the Road Jack” in 1961 | Watch Otis Redding sing “Try a Little Tenderness” | Watch Sam Cooke perform “Ain’t
That Good News” on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand | Enjoy Mavis Staples and the Staple Singers perform in Ghana in 1971 | Watch the Staple Singers, led this time by “Pops” on vocals, perform “Respect Yourself” in 1972 | Watch Aretha Franklin perform “I Never Loved a Man” in 1967 | Watch Solomon Burke singing “Cry to Me” live at the Long Beach Blues Festival.]
In the 1960s producer Berry Gordy’s Detroit-based Motown Records married soul with stellar songwriting to score over a hundred top ten hits. Often backed by a set of superb studio musicians known as the Funk Brothers, Motown artists like SMOKEY ROBINSON &
THE TEMPTATIONS, THE SUPREMES and GLADYS KNIGHT & THE PIPS were soulful and groovy. STEVIE WONDER–first known as “Little Stevie Wonder”–also was a Motown artist whose career has expanded well beyond soul to envelop many other genres like funk and R&B.
[Watch Diana Ross and The Supremes sing a flawless “Stop in the Name of Love” at the Hollywood Palace in the mid-60s | Watch Smokey Robinson & the Temptations perform “Tracks of My Tears” in 1965 | Watch Gladys Night and Pips sing their classic, “Midnight Train to Georgia,” in 1973, accompanied by their classic dance moves | Watch Stevie Wonder reach “Higher Ground” in 1973]
By the early 1970s soul music had expanded to refer to the electrifying new sounds that developed in the politically, socially and racially charged times. Soul in the 1970s had a deep, groovy center, with activist/artists like CURTIS MAYFIELD intertwining their music with the struggles taking place in the street. At the same time, a television program, Soul Train, with its infinitely soulful host DON CORNELIUS, introduced American youth to soul, R&B and eventually funk artists like EARTH WIND & FIRE and THE COMMODORES.
[Watch Curtis Mayfield live in performance in 1972 | Watch EARTH, WIND & FIRE perform “Mighty Might,” on Soul Train in 1974 | Dig the Commodores performing “Too Hot Ta Trot” in 1977 (Note the wonderful costumes. Note the amazing glasses. Note Lionel Ritchie.)]
“Deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell.
Go go. Go Johnny go….
Johnny B Goode.”
Ah, rock. Ah, roll. Ah…’n.’
Rock ‘n’ roll is yet another one of the many genres of music we come to explore in All Around This World that stands on the shoulders of the musical giants that came before it–could not stand at all if not for millennia of music-making in Africa, in Europe and then in America–yet when it emerged as a distinct form it sounded so shocking that it shook American society–“white” American society–to its core. A central issue at work here–often, but not always, unspoken–was race. When rock ‘n’ roll coalesced as a genre in the 1950s, America was entering a period of unprecedented interracial conflict. The South was still segregated, overtly and obstinately. The North was segregated too–though more covertly, insidiously. When America’s “white” teenagers started listening to and, heavens forbid!, dancing in suggestive ways to “black” music, spinning these contemporary “race records” on the player in their very own suburban bedrooms, not even in some swing era dancehall or a jazz club in a separate, seedy part of town…. Many who were in power in America saw this not as a moment of frivolous, cross-racial musical curiosity, but as a pronounced step toward breaking down the barriers between races that had structured American society since days of slavery. Dangerous, and potentially destabilizing. And, in
great part, they were right.
Our mission this week isn’t to detail the development of every twist and turn of every subgenre of American rock ‘n’ roll from its origins in the ’50s to the present–I did that with English rock and pop in our Western Europe and The Nordic Counties season, and, while it sure was a fun thing to go through, and I’ll one day do that for American rock music, oy! it took a lot of work. Instead, let’s go back to the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, before rock was what we know as ROCK. Back then, in the latest 1940s and early ’50s, record companies still mainly sold “white” music–Appalachian folk, for example, or most kinds of country–to “white” people and “black” music, like jazz and blues, to “black,” much as they had in the ’20s when they openly marketed “hillbilly” music to whites and “race records” to African Americans. As we’ve learned in in other weeks, none of the “white” forms of music was actually just by, or for, whites, and the same with music like jazz and blues, but when the record company marketing machines fired up, they most often chose sides.
Fortunately for us music-lovers, musicians themselves, and the fans who really appreciate their art, rarely listen to machines. As we’ve seen pretty consistently in our global explorations, musicians not only keep their ears open for interesting new ways to create, but the best musicians take genre-bending risks as a matter of course. Music fans don’t lag far behind.
So no one should be surprised that even in stratified, highly segregated 1950’s America, young, white musicians, especially in America’s south–like Tupelo, Mississippi’s ELVIS PRESLEY–were eager to cross racial boundaries and learn how to play “black” music. ELVIS and other white artists, like CARL PERKINS, JERRY LEE LEWIS and JOHNNY CASH combined blues rhythms with an accentuated “backbeat” and gave their songs a country flair to create a new form of music called “Rockabilly.”
Because rock ‘n’ roll evolved slowly into own genre there is much dispute among music historians about which musician can claim “the first rock record.” The prime candidate for rock record #1 seems to be “Rock Around the Clock,” which was a big hit for BILL HALEY & HIS COMETS; it may not have been the first rock record per se, but it certainly was the new genre’s first breakthrough hit. Coming in a close second may be “Rocket 88,” a 1951 recording by a band known as Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats. (This was actually an alias for IKE TURNER and The Kings of Rhythm.)
Whoever can claim the first rock record, by the mid ’50s record companies realized white teenagers were buying this music, and so a genre was born. Elvis, many of whose early hits were reworked versions of old blues songs, was certainly the most popular early rock artist, but black “electric blues” artists like CHUCK BERRY, who effectively transposed jump blues piano sounds onto guitar to create the first rock riffs, BO DIDDLEY, who adopted the Latin “3-2 clave” to create a blues-rock rhythm called the “Bo Diddley Beat”–watch him perform “Hey Bo Diddley” and count it out: bop bop bop, bop bop–not to mention a dynamic gospel/jump blues/booige woogie piano player known as LITTLE RICHARD, also became part of the early rock scene.
On February 3, 1959, three popular early rock musicians–BUDDY HOLLY, J.P. “THE BIG BOPPER” Richardson and RITCHIE VALENS–were flying together from one city on their concert tour to another when their plane crashed and they all lost their lives. (“The day the music died.”) Rock fans mourned not only the loss of three promising performers–fans and some critics believed Holly to have the talent and vision to advance rock songwriting some other, uncharted level, and Ritchie Valens was already breaking new ground, bringing Mexican son jarocho into the American mainstream with his rendition of “La Bamba”–but the end of what had seemed to be an idyllic era (no matter what the controversies rock had wrought).
Of course rock ‘n’ roll didn’t die with Buddy Holly, but the ’50s did certainly turn into the more turbulent, much more challenging ’60s. Within just a few years, straightforward three chord, 12-bar blues-based rock would become the sound of the past.
[Elvis appears on The Milton Berle Show in 1956 where he scandalously gyrates his way through the Lieber and Stoller song (first performed by BIG MAMA THORNTON), “Hound Dog.” Public outcry followed, as did harsh critical assessments, such as this: “Popular music has been sinking in this country for some years. Now it has reached its lowest depths in the “grunt and groin” antics of one Elvis Presley.” | Little Richard wows us with “Lucille” (in 1957) and his own version of “Hound Dog” | Watch “rock and roll specialists” Buddy Holly & the Crickets perform “Peggy Sue” on The Arthur Murray Dance Party in 1957 | Watch a theatrical Big Bopper sing–well, lip synch–“Chantilly Lace” in 1958 | Listen to Ritchie Valens perform, “Come On Let’s Go“]
“Chicago blues” developed in the early part of the 20th century during the “Great Migration,” when African-Americans from the south–including some from Mississippi who played Delta blues–moved to northern cities like Chicago in search of work. While early Chicago blues musicians played their acoustic guitars and harmonicas on street corners, South Side clubs (that mainly catered to African-Americans) invited them to perform inside and added microphones and amplification so large crowds could hear them; soon, North Side musicians and audiences “discovered” blues and a thriving, highly commercial scene developed. By the ’40s Chicago blues artists started using a broader array of scales in their improvising than their Delta blues ancestors, advancing the genre beyond its original manifestation as an electrified form of down-home Southern blues.
[Watch bass player WILLIE DIXON perform “Sittin’ and Cryin’ the Blues” in 1963 | Watch HOWLIN’ WOLF play “Shake It For Me” | Watch SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON play harmonica on “Nine Below Zero“]
BIG BAND BLUES/”JUMP BLUES”:
“Jump” blues took the basic spirit and rhythms of boogie woogie and transformed them into a popular style of energetic, highly danceable music. While some big bands of the ’40s and ’50s played songs in the the jump blues style, most jump blues ensembles were a bit smaller–six or seven performers, featuring just three horns, especially a tenor saxophone and a rhythm section, rather than sixteen or more performers in a big band–and therefore less expensive to hire at swing dances and at nightclubs.
[Watch big band blues vocalist JIMMY RUSHING perform “Going to Chicago” with Benny Goodman’s big band supporting him. | Watch vibe player LIONEL HAMPTON and his band performing, “Flying Home” in 1957 |
[
A great name for a subgenre of anything, eh? “Boogie woogie” originated in Texas at the turn of the 20th century as a style of early blues piano playing called “fast Western”–different from the “slow” piano playing in New Orleans–but it really became popular in the 1930s and ’40s when it became the realm of mutli-instrumental performing ensembles and even big bands. Boogie woogie piano playing has a similar feel to ragtime, but relies more improvisation. In boogie woogie the piano player’s left hand repeats a particular pattern of chords or bass notes while the right hand is available for melody and improvising. The hands operate so separately a listener may think there are two different pianos playing. [Learn about the differences between ragtime and boogie woogie.] While most blues songs of the time conveyed deep emotion of either the songwriter, the performer or both, the goal of most boogie-woogie was to inspire the audience to dance.
[Listen to Clarence “Pine Top” Smith’s 1929 song “Pinetop’s Blues,” which introduced the term “boogie woogie” to the public | Listen to Jimmy Yancey’s 1939 boogie, “Rolling the
Stone“]
“Talking blues” guitar player JOHN LEE HOOKER didn’t exactly play boogie woogie, but he did develop a style similar enough to be referred to as “guitar boogie.” [Watch a young Hooker play “Boom Boom” on BBC-TV in the early ’60s | Watch a slightly more seasoned Hooker perform “Boogie Chillen” in 1992]
[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.”]
