MUSIC APPRECIATION WEEK 14: JAZZ AND ROCK I
RAGTIME TO BALLS OF FIRE
These next two weeks we will look at Jazz and Rock and how they have influenced each other.
It is appropriate that in the last blog we looked at Charles Ives who's music was influenced by marching bands. Jazz had its beginnings in marching bands and the blues. In New Orleans, White band leaders and Black Blues and Gospel musicians mingled together, eventually leading to the Dixieland Jazz style that lead to Jazz. Here is Louis Armstrong playing and singing a popular New Orleans Dixieland number. "When the Saints Go Marching In."
As this style progressed and moved into the cities of Chicago and New York City, this began to evolve into Jazz. Here is Louis Armstrong playing "Basin Street Blues", a bluesy swing. Notice how the drums are playing a different rhythm than in the above example and the bass is playing a steady "walking bass "style that became a defining feature in Jazz.
As the Swing style became more and more popular throughout the 1930s and 40s, most vestiges of the Dixieland stele began ti disappear as Louis Armstrong's stele began to seem "old fashioned" to younger urban Black Jazz listeners. Here Billie Holiday sings, "My Man" in her own unique style. Billie was influenced more by saxophone players than other singers and used her voice as a horn. She was a total original that will never be duplicated, although many have tried. Lets listen to "Lady Day" do her stuff:
As Jazz continued to move into the city, bands grew in size and attracted White listeners. The Big Band era hit it apex in the 1940s, with such weld wide stars as Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Stan Kenton. The most influential of the all was Duke Ellington, Jazz's first great composer. The songs of Duke Ellington remain part of the Jazz canon today and have become the standard by which all Jazz composers are judged by. Here is the Duke Ellington Orchestra doing one of my favorite Jazz classics, "Sophisticated Lady", featuring Jazz saxophonist Harry Carney:
Pretty amazing, huh? Well, here's one more with some free good advice: "It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got that Swing."
After World War II, Bebop took Jazz to new virtuosic levels. It featured more complex rhythms, faster moving chord changes and new scales, influenced by the Impressionist classical composers like Debussy and Ravel. It's most famous players were Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk and Bud Powell. The size of the ensembles were smaller, encouraging the members of the group to "stretch out" with longer solos. The improvisations became the main thing in this music. Listeners mostly sat down and listened to this music instead of dancing to it like Swing. Here are Charlie Parker (sax) and Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet) playing "Hot House." Notice how the drums seem to comment on the solos instead of just keeping the beat.
Cool Jazz was a reaction the the speed and complexity of Bebop. The chords changed less often, and the tempos were usually a little slower than Bebop. Here is a brief documentary on Miles Davis' monumental album, Kind of Blue:
Another type of Jazz became popular in the mid-50s. Soul Jazz incorporated elements of Black Gospel and Rhythm and Blues and was played by such musicians as Cannonball Adderly (who played on Kind of Blue), Art Blakey and Jimmy Smith. This brings us to the music of Ray Charles, "the Godfather of Soul. " Ray was brought up in the church and his music was heavily influenced by that experience. Compare the Gospel classic "This Little Light of Mine" to Charles' "This Little Girl of Mine:"
And now Brother Ray:
Elvis Presley was also brought up in the church and in Gospel. He also went to the other side of Memphis and used to listen to Black Blues musicians like Big Mama Thornton:
They say the Blues had a baby and they named him Rock and Roll and Elvis is proof of that. The recordings he made in 1954 and 55 at Sun Studios mixed together many different elements including Blues, Country, Gospel and even the Big Band crooning style of Bing Crosby. Elvis and Scotty Moore (guitar) and Bill Black (bass) created a new style of music that came to be known as Rock and Roll. Most of these formative Rock and Roll tunes were the result of "horsing around" in the recording studio. When Sam Phillips, the producer, heard what they were doing he liked it better than what they came there to do. He rolled the tapes and Rock and Roll with its rebellious spirit was born:
We can't give all the credit to Elvis. Blues guitarist and songwriter Chuck Berry recorded "Maybelline" in 1955 and forever influenced every Rock guitarist to play the music in the future. Here is a clip of his signature tune "Johnny B. Goode":
Although space does not permit everyone I would like to include, we should mention R&B piano player and singer Fats Domino, who typifies the Rock and Roll "Doo Wop" sound. Lets take a trip to "Blueberry Hill."
But Jazz was about to change in a big way. In 1959 Ornette Coleman released the album, The Shape of Jazz to Come, which signal the arrival of Free Jazz. This was a new type of Jazz that rejected playing over changes (chords) and instead "freely" improvised on whatever the musicians felt like doing at the time. You can clearly hear the influence of Charlie Parker in the lines, but not in the organization. Later on, Coleman, like Schoenberg, would formalize some of his concepts. He calls these "Harmelodics." Here is Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman."
It was almost 1960 and Jazz and Rock and Roll were both about to change and influence each other even more throughout the 60s and 70s. That is the era we will look at in our next installment. Let me leave you with "The Killer", Jerry Lee Lewis:
You are now ready for this week's music quiz.
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