Musc*2140 Exam Review – Unit Four

Key Terms:

Discography: The science of record classification.

Flatted Scale Degree: Note played a half step lower.

Big Bands: Large jazz orchestras featuring sections of saxophones, trumpets, and

trombones, prominent during the Swing Era (1930s).

Head Arrangement: A flexible unwritten arrangement created by a band.

Standard: A popular song that has become part of the permanent repertory for jazz

musicians.

Swing: (1) Jazz from the period 1935-1945 usually known as the Swing Era (2) A

jazz specific feeling created by a rhythmic contrast within a particular rhythmic

framework (usually involving a walking bass and a steady rhythm on the drummer’s

ride cymbal).

Riff: A short, catchy and repeated melodic phrase. This term is the most relevant to

big band Swing. A riff is a short, repeated, and persistent phrase. They can be altered

a little upon repetition in order to take into account changes in the underlying

harmony, but they don't change very much. Arrangers often use riffs in big band

arrangements both as the main melodic content and as background material. They

often function to build up momentum in the music.

Motive: A short melodic or rhythmic idea. Jazz musicians rarely use the word

"motive" although music theorists and historians use the term. Motives are short

phrases all right, but they are often used as a basis for melodic development in some

logical way. That is, the features of the motive, melodic or rhythmic, are used as a

basis for the development of other phrases. Composers use motives in this way all

the time.

Licks: Short melodic ideas that form a shared basic vocabulary for jazz improvisers.

Licks are small phrases that "are the building blocks of improvisation". A memorized

phrase is only the beginning. Jazz musicians creatively modify licks constantly,

depending on the musical context and the spirit of the moment, to create unique

solos. These modifications need not be "logical" in that they are systematically

transformed based on the musical features of the original musical idea, the way

motives are. If a jazz musician uses licks in a mechanical way, that is, using them in

strings of memorized phrases without any creative input.

Groove: A general term for the overall rhythmic framework of a performance.

Grooves include swing, funk, ballad, and Latin. In most African American music

there are a number of layers of music. There are the melodic, the harmonic and

rhythmic layers. The rhythmic layer is further divided into sub-layers carried by a

number of instruments, usually bass, drums and piano (or guitar). Both the bass and

guitar serve pitch-related as well as rhythmic-related functions. A swing groove

consists of a rhythmic gestalt (an organized whole that is perceived as a unitary

phenomenon although it is made up of a number of individual parts) played by the

right hand on the ride cymbal of the drum set, with the high-hat on beats two and

four, the bass drum lightly played on every beat, and the left-hand playing (often

improvising) other rhythms mostly on the snare drum. A groove happens when

these are put together in one stream of rhythm.

Soli: A passage for a section of a jazz band (saxophones, trumpets, trombones, in

block-chord texture.

Introduction to Unit Four

In the 1930s jazz was known as swing. It’s called the Swing Era to distinguish

it form the jazz of the 1920s. It was mostly Big-Band music performed by large

dance orchestras divided into sections of trumpets, saxophones, and trombones as

well as rhythm. Swing retained the basic elements of jazz like polyrhythm blues

phrasing, timbre variation. Swing used written music more then previous forms of

jazz it continued to balance composition against spontaneous improvisation. The

size of the bands transformed dance music into an orchestral music but the style

was not complex. Swing was a commercial phenomenon. Swing was central to a

nationwide system of mass entertainment. With the advent of Swing, jazz became

THE POPULAR music of America.

The Depression

Swing was defined by two crucial events in American history and culture.

The first is the Great Depression, which began with the stock market crash of

October 1929 and deepened slowly until in reached its peak in the 1930s. The crisis

ruined the banking systems, and left thousands without jobs and shifted America’s

political landscape. Swing came of age during the Depression but it hardly caught

the era’s deep anxiety. Swing was a counterstatement to reality – it was upbeat and

could distract people from their daily lives, swing inspired action. It was a teenager’s

music, the first in America’s history. Swing was loud and brash and demanded

exuberant dance steps. Its improvisatory flair and buoyant energy encouraged

American to recover from the country’s economic disaster.

World War II

The second crucial event defining the Swing Era was Word War II (1939-

1945) a global conflict that transformed America into a powerhouse of strength. The

bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 launched American into World War II and all of its

industries, resources, manpower, even entertainment – were drawn into the

worldwide fight against fascism. For many people, swing exemplified what

Americans were fighting for: compared with authoritarian Nazi Germany, the casual

participatory quality of swing, bringing together people from different backgrounds,

was a rousing statement of democracy. At the end of the war thousands of soldiers

returned home to their families and jobs shutting down the hyperactive dancing

culture that had formed the basis for hundreds of large swing orchestras. It was the

end of an era – and with the explosion of the atomic bomb, the beginning of a new

one.

Swing and Race

Swing was situated on the fault line of race. It emerged out of African

American culture, its dance steps worked out on the floor of black ballrooms and its

arrangements mimicking the black church in call-and-response patterns. Its success

boosted the careers of hundreds of musicians and pushed a handful of black

bandleaders (Ellington, Armstrong) into stardom. Much of white American was

dancing to an African American beat. Swing did not dissolve racial barriers. The

white audience was enthusiastic about the music, but indifferent as to its origins.

Most of them probably did not know that the hit tune “Stompin’ at the Savoy”

referred to Harlem, or that their “jive” talk was black slang. Behind the scenes, racial

bigotry was as alive as ever. Black and white musicians played together backstage in

jam sessions, but racially mixed bands were not tolerated. As most of the money

from swing went into white pockets, many black musicians felt that the music had

been “stolen” from them – a feeling that would later help fuel the musical revolution

known as bebop.

Swing and Economics

The Depression nearly destroyed the recording companies. At a time when

people could barely afford food and rent, the price of a record was too much to bear.

Sales of records plunged – from over 100 million in 1929 to only 4 million in 1933.

Familiar jazz labels like Gennett, OKeh, and Columbia went bankrupt or were bought

up by speculators. Commercial excitement made jazz possible. Musicians poured

into the field from all over: from Georgia (Fletcher Henderson), Washington D.C.

(Duke Ellington), Iowa (Glenn Miller), and New Jersey (Count Basie). As a

competition for the best jobs increased, musical standards rose precipitously.

Musicians were now expected to play their instrument flawlessly, to sight-read

efficiently, and to improvise. Dance bands offered steady work at a respectable

salary; making music one of the few skilled crafts open to African Americans.

Swing and Dance

At the core of swing style was its groove: a steady, unaccented four-beats-to-

the-bar foundation, perfect for dancing. This was neither revolutionary nor new:

One could hear the same groove in recordings by Louis Armstrong, or emerging

from passages by Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers. But in the early 1930s – the

same time that Duke Ellington immortalized it in the title “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If

It Ain’t Got That Swing”) – the four-beat groove became firmly established as the

standard for hot dance music.

The Savoy

The swing dance style emerged from New York’s Savoy Ballroom, which

opened for business in 1926. The Savoy was an enormous space, filling an entire

block in Harlem. Like many new dance halls, it offered a luxurious environment for a

modest fee. Two bands were hired on a given night, alternating sets on opposite

sides of the hall. Harlem was proud of the Savoy, and opened its door to white

visitors from downtown and around the world; but unlike the Cotton Club, its

primary constituency was the black neighborhood surrounding it. In the Savoy,

social dancing was an intense, communal activity; the Savoy dance style came to be

known as the Lindy Hop – named after Charles Lindbergh, whose dramatic flight

across the Atlantic in 1927 startled the nation. The steady four-four beat opened up

new possibilities.

The Rhythm Section

To help bands adjust to the new groove, major changes were made in the

rhythm section. While the bass drum continued to play a rock-solid four-beat pulse,

the tuba, commonly used in large dance bands of the 1920s, was replaced by the

string bass. During the early years of recording, the tuba was able to project a clear,

huffing sound. But the string bass had always been a specialty of New Orleans, and

many players, including Wellman Braud with Duke Ellington’s band, showed that

the instrument had a special percussive flavor when the strings were given a

pizzicato “slap” (plucked rather than bowed). Change came gradually in the late

1920s, once word had gotten around about how well the string bass worked; many

tuba players realized that they’d better switch instruments or lose their jobs.

Arranging

To fit the new groove, dance-band arranging became more inventive. To

some extent, this was a belated influence of Louis Armstrong, whose rhythms

continued to be absorbed by soloists and arrangers through the 1930s. Arrangers

learned to write elaborate lines for an entire section, harmonized in block chords

called soli. They were conversant with chromatic (complex) harmony and knew how

to make the most of their flexible orchestra. Arrangements could arise

spontaneously out of oral practice. This approach was popular in Kansas City. But in

New York where bands prided themselves on their musical literacy, musicians could

take improvised riffs and harmonize them on the spot. The result, known as a head

arrangement created by the entire band.

Fletcher Henderson

Both kinds of arrangements, written and unwritten, could be heard in the

hundreds of recordings made in the 1930s by Fletcher Henderson. For flashy pieces,

Henderson relied on experienced arrangers, from his brother Horace to Don

Redman and Benny Carter. But his biggest hits emerged from the bandstand. His

genius for rhythmic swing and melodic simplicity was so effective that his music

became the standard for numerous swing arrangers. Henderson was fond of short,

memorable riffs – simple, bluesy phrases – in call and response: saxophones

responding to trumpets for example. In some passages, he distorted the melody into

ingenious new rhythmic shapes, often in staccato (detached) bursts that opened up

space for the rhythm section. Henderson was shrewd and efficient. He wrote only a

few choice choruses, leaving the remainder of the arrangement open for solos

accompanied by discreet, long- held chords or short riffs. As each piece headed

toward its climax, the band erupted in an ecstatic wail.

“Blue Lou”

The early Henderson band was dramatically effective in person but notoriously

imperfect in the studio. Some of the best-known records from the early 1930s

sounded like cats and dogs fighting. By 1936, the band had perfected its public

presentation, and is in particularly splendid form on “Blue Lou.” The piece was

composed by Edgar Sampson, a saxophonist and arranger with the Chick Webb

band who also wrote for Henderson and later for Benny Goodman (among his tunes

are “Stompin’ at the Savoy” and “Don’t Be That Way”). It was arranged in the

Henderson style by Fletcher’s brother Horace, who oriented it toward the band’s

chief soloists: the brilliant trumpeter Roy Eldridge band one of Coleman Hawkin’s

gifted followers on tenor saxophone, Chu Berry. Like many swing tunes, “Blue Lou”

is built around a simple idea. The tune is in major, but the opening riff- a descending

two-note figure-introduces a flatted scale degree from the minor mode. Although

“Blue Lou” begins with a relaxed two-beat feeling, the four-four-dance groove

gradually takes over. The first chorus introduces the original tune (note how the

tune is expanded in the second A section into an elaborate soli), while the fourth

(and last) chorus deforms it through ecstatic starts and stops. But the piece doesn’t

end there: with half a minute to go, there is a sudden modulation to the unusual key

of a major (notoriously difficult for brass instruments). The new sixteen-bar section

doesn’t last long, but its presence suggests that this arrangement may have been

flexible. Perhaps the drum stroke that precedes the modulation was a cue to follow

if the band wanted to keep dancers on the floor. Eldridge’s solo at the end sounds as

though it could have gone on forever. “Blue Lou” was performed by Fletcher

Henderson and his Orchestra which consisted of: Dick Vance, Joe Thomas, Roy

Eldridge, trumpets; Fernando Arbello, Ed Cuffee, trombones; Buster Bailey, Scoops

Carey, alto saxophones; Horace Henderson, piano; Bob Lessey, guitar; John Kirby,

bass; Sidney Catlett; drums. The Label was Vocalion/OKeh 3211; Fletcher

Henderson: 1924-1936 (Giants of Jazz 634479088476). Date 1936. Style Big-Band

Swing. Form 32-bar popular song (AABA). This is a typical Swing performance:

extensive use of riffs in the lead and backgrounds, call and response between the

brass and reeds, the move to four-four rhythm, homophonic textures, instrumental

solos, and sectional soli. You already know that the recording technology at this

time only allowed recordings to last up to around three minutes and a little bit. In

live performance, bands often played longer especially if the dancers were into the

music. This meant that bands had to have mechanisms for extending a performance

if called for. Roy Eldridge's solo at the end of this recording sounds like it could

have fulfilled this purpose in a live performance.

Breakthrough

In the early 1930s, the music industry resembled the nation by being firmly

divided by race. In economic terms, segregation clearly worked to the advantage of

white musicians. For a time, black musicians, who had never challenged the

stereotype that insisted their music was naturally “hot”, kept jazz as their racial

specialty. White musicians were keenly interested in jazz. In the 1920s, future swing

bandleaders Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, and Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey increasingly

gravitated toward jazz, mastering it and even adding their own innovations. Some

were hired by Paul Whiteman to play hot solos, while still others made small-group

jazz with bands like Red Nichols and His Five Pennies. Most found jobs playing

demanding if uninspiring arrangements in white dance bands and radio orchestras

while dreaming of the chance to play some “real” jazz late at night in a jam session.

All that changed with the surprising breakthrough of the orchestra led by Benny

Goodman.

Benny Goodman (1909-1986)

Goodman grew up in the slums of Chicago, where his father, a recent

immigrant from Warsaw, worked in the stockyards. The boy showed a prodigious

talent on the clarinet, which gave him a way out of menial labour. He was accepted

into the band at the Hull House and acquired a solid training from Franz Schoepp,

the clarinetist from the Chicago Symphony. At the same time, he heard the jazz that

was buzzing around him and modeled his improvisation on its clarinetists, both

white (Leon Rappolo) and black (Jimmie Noone). By the 1920s, he was a bluesy and

elegant soloist, distinguishing him in white bands that have an inclination toward

jazz, like Ben Pollack’s. Goodman’s tastes led him to create a band that would bridge

the gap between the jazz he loved and the realities of commercialism. He hired some

of the best underemployed black arrangers he could find: Benny Carter, Edgar

Sampson, and Fletcher Henderson. In 1935, Goodman’s band was featured as the

“hot” orchestra on a national radio program, “Let’s Dance!” and went on a national

tour. Goodman’s success electrified the country. White fans celebrated him as a

hero, the more extreme enthusiasts, known as “jitterbugs”, adopted black dancing

and “jive” slang. Goodman’s band blended swing rhythms with up-to-date

arrangements of current pop songs. Goodman managed to both satisfy the

jitterbugs and make swing acceptable to the cultured middle classes. One of his

memorable acts was to bring jazz to New York’s Carnegie Hall, a citadel of musical

respectability, in January 1938. The musicians may have felt out of place (like a

“whore in church”) but the band’s rousing success there cemented jazz’s place on

contemporary American culture.

The Goodman Trio and Quartet

Goodman was also a pioneer through launching various small groups that

helped cast jazz as a king of chamber music – relaxed and spontaneous, yet highly

polished and refined. These groups revived an interest in small-combo

improvisation that has faded since the rise of the big bands. They were even more

remarkable in being among the few interracial groups in jazz. Goodman first heard

pianist Teddy Wilson on passing through Chicago from California in 1935. Wilson

grew up studying the piano and violin. Wilson’s style was smooth and carefully

polished, cool and controlled even at high speed. When Goodman jammed with

Wilson at an after-hours private party, he was thrilled by the pianist’s panache, but

also dismayed at the unspeakable risk of forming a mixed-race trio with his white

drummer Gene Krupa. Recordings by the trio sold well inspiring Goodman to

present the trio not as full members of the band, but as “special guests.” Within a

few years, Goodman’s “band-within-the-band” had been widely imitated in the

industry Cab Calloway (the Cab Jivers), Artie Shaw (the Gramercy Five), Tommy

Dorsey (the Clambake Seven), and Woody Herman (the Woodchoppers). The trio

expanded to a quartet when Goodman added Lionel Hampton in 1936. Hampton

was originally a drummer who had played with Louis Armstrong’s big band in the

early 1930s. While with Armstrong, he stumbled over the vibraphone in a recording

studio, a then-new instrument that used rotating discs and amplification to enhance

the sound of a metal xylophone. Within a few years he shifted to the vibes as his

main instrument. Hampton was a tireless entertainer who used his whole body to

communicate with audiences. Hampton’s extroverted energy, combined with the

sweaty glamor of drummer Gene Krupa, was a crucial part of quartet’s popular

appeal. After leaving Goodman in the early 1940s to form his own band Hampton

carried his reckless energy into rhythm and blue, ultimately linking jazz with rock

and roll.

“Dinah”

“Dinah”, a thirty-two-bar A A B A pop song composed in 1925, first became

popular in Goodman’s teenage years. Such tunes normally had a short shelf life,

lasting no more than six moths. But jazz musicians were attracted to its harmonic

structure, which was similar to the of “I Got Rhythm”: an opening section firmly in

the tonic, followed by a bridge with more elaborate harmonic movement. “Dinah”

became an “evergreen” – aka a standard: a permanent addition to jazz repertory. In

the Goodman Quartet’s 1936 recording the mood is exuberant and playful even

bewildering during Lionel Hampton’s introduction it’s virtually impossible to hear

where the downbeat is. The four musicians play in an informal jam-session spirit

exercising their freedom to listen and interact spontaneously. In the first A section,

Goodman plays the melody with delicacy and circumspection; but in the bridge, he

obliterates it in a lengthy string of fast notes. When Hampton plays in the second

chorus he shifts between simple riff figures and complicated harmonic substitutions

of his own devising. This is still Swing but in a small group setting. One interesting

aspect of this recording is its references to New Orleans jazz with its polyphonic out

chorus and breaks. More important is the racially integrated nature of the band. In

1936, this was practically unheard of.

John Hammond and Other Jazz Enthusiasts

The interracial Goodman Quartet was encouraged by John Hammond (1910-

1987), the most influential entrepreneur and activist of his period. A list of artists

whose careers he would include Bessie Smith, Fletcher Henderson, Goodman, Billie

Holiday, and Count Basie – and in a later generation, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and

Bruce Springsteen. Hammond was no musician (although he was an amateur

violinist for a while), but his intense commitment and political convictions made

him a crucial figure in jazz history. Born into a wealthy New York family (his mother

was connected to the Vanderbilt’s), Hammond grew up in an atmosphere of

privilege on the Upper East Side. Hammond developed two passions. The first was a

love of black jazz and folk music, which to him seemed infinitely superior to any

other kind. Although raised on prejudice typical of his time he became outraged by

inequality. He never joined the Communist party but he did join NAACP. Hammond

used a long running association with Columbia Records to champion the music he

loved. He was responsible for hundreds of recording dates, having shepherded his

latest discoveries into the studio. Some black musicians did not relish his

overbearing insistence. Duke Ellington, for example broke publicly with him after

Hammond complained in 1935 that Ellington’s longer pieces were “vapid and

without the slightest semblance of guts.” But few nonmusicians came close to

Hammond in shaping the course of jazz.

Early Jazz Fans

The Swing Era saw the emergence of jazz record collectors – young men of

privileged backgrounds who combed through the discarded vinyl at the flea markets

and junk shops looking for forgotten old recordings. To distinguish one recording

from another, they duly noted all the pertinent information: personnel, dates, matrix

numbers (the codes inscribed on the disc that identify a particular master disc, or

matrix), and release numbers. These data formed the beginnings of the science of

record classification, or discography. “Hot Clubs” were formed in towns throughout

the country, bringing together fans and sponsoring public jam sessions. To suit their

reading tastes, new mass-market magazines like Downbeat and Metronome and

smaller fan based journals like Jazz Information emerged. From their pages came

the first American jazz critics (Leonard Feather, George Simon). While jazz

enthusiasts were excited that their favorite music had achieved popular success,

their attitude toward which was mixed. Many were uneasy about “commercialism” –

the tainting of the music through the marketplace. They also felt that the “real” jazz

was beyond most people’s understanding. Joining their ranks was like joining a cult.

Major Swing Bands

As the dance business boomed the number of new bands exploded. By 1940,

there were hundreds of bands – some leaning toward conventional dance music

(the “sweet-swing” bands), others specializing in hard-driving swing. Benny

Goodman’s own band was a seedbed for bandleaders: they emerged from his

trumpet section (Harry James and Bunny Berigan), saxophone section (Vido Musso

and Toots Mondello), and quartet (Wilson, Krupa, and Hampton). Early jazz heroes

like Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines switched to big bands.

Artie Shaw (1910-2004)

Born Arthur Arshawsky on the Lower East side of Manhattan he was the son

of recent Jewish immigrants who used his skill on saxophone and clarinet to rise in

the world of dance orchestras. By 1931, he was studying with Harlem pianist Willie

“the Lion” Smith and listening to Armstrong, pianist Earl Hines, and clarinetist

Jimmie Noone in the nightclubs of Chicago. During the early 1930s, Shaw lived a

double life. He had completely fallen in love with jazz and spent his time jamming

regularly in Harlem with “the Lion” and others. At the same time he made ends meet

with a job in a radio orchestra playing what he disdained as “soap and cereal

programs” in an all-white band. He became successful after the band he had formed

in 1938 sold millions of copies of its hit record “Begin the Beguine.” Shaw dissolved

his band to brood in silence, only to return to even greater acclaim. Finally in 1954

he retired from playing altogether.

Author Insights

Add that the style of Swing was in place earlier, by 1932, with black bands

such as Fletcher Henderson's. It didn't really become mainstream popular culture

until 1935. Women have been pretty much ignored in the history of jazz until

recently. The expectations of women at the time as home makers and mothers

precluded many women from playing jazz. If they did play jazz, they were often

considered morally loose (on the road, playing late at night—where were their

men?) or gay ( All these women traveling together without men—what else could it

be?) .