Instruments Archives: Trombone

Cool Jazz

[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]

Funk

[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

“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.)]

Big Band Blues

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 |

Early Blues

Around the turn of the 20th century, guitar-based music with hard livin’-based lyrics developed in several parts of America’s South. Though both African American and white musicians played this music, for the most part the only distinguishing characteristic was what record companies called it: if the performer was white, it was “hillbilly music,” if black, it was a “race record.” Distinctions in style, instrumentation and rhythms did soon develop, and by the 1920s, African-American artists like W.C. Handy found themselves as the torchbearers of a new genre, performed by African Americans and mainly marketed to African-Americans, though, through a revolutionary new medium radio, accessible to everyone, called “the blues.”

Listen to the earliest recordings of the earliest African-American blues artists:
— W.C. HANDY: “Ole Miss Rag:
— BESSIE SMITH: “St. Louis Blues”
— MA RAINEY: “Shave ’em dry blues”
— TAMPA RED: “You Missed a Good Man“

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.”]

Latin Jazz

In the 1950s and ’60s American dancehall bands, which had for decades mainly performed dances and compositions that originated in the U.S., began to actively communicate with Latin musicians and add Latin dances like the mambo, samba and cha-cha-cha to their repertoires. Bebop band leaders like Dizzy Gillespie also wove Latin elements into their music, and in turn American jazz began to appear all over Latin America, fusing with Latin rhythms to become “Latin Jazz.” Latin jazz was syncopated like American jazz but didn’t emphasize the same beats, giving the music a different feel. The form introduced Latin instruments into jazz bands such as congas and bongos (both Afro-Cuban), the claves, the timbales and even the cowbell.

Latin bandleaders like TITO PUENTE, ARTURO SANDOVAL and PAQUITO D’RIVERA became popular in the U.S. in this time, as did a new trend, one that blended Brazilian samba with jazz, called “bossa nova” (which, conveniently, literally translates as “new
trend.”) American saxophone player STAN GETZ performed with Brazilian bossa nova musicians such as ANTONIO CARLOS JOBIM and JOÃO GILBERTO and receives due credit for popularizing the style in the U.S.

[Watch Tito Puente (on timabales) perform live in Montreaux in 1980 | Watch saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera perform live in Bern 1992 | Watch Arturo Sandoval and his band play, “Mam Bop,” in 1998 | Watch saxophone player Stan Getz share bossa nova with California in 1983]

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]

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