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American swing era 2013
- 1. American Swing From last Session • Importance of black genres -‐ jazz forms especially • Movie industry and its impact • Broadway stage • Country Music • Big bands • Solo Performers
- 2. Depression
- 3. Records • By 1909 12 million dollars of records and cylinders sold in USA, by 1921 thus had increase 4 fold. • Jazz arrives as a recorded product in the early 1920 and is our main source of knowledge of the genre from then on. • Record industry collapses aNer 1929. Does not recover from the challenge of radio unOl aNer the war.
- 4. Radio • Early records -‐ 78 had to be 3 and half minutes. • No electric microphones before 1925 so sound quality was poor and the recording process crude. • Radio preferred to a have a live band -‐ oNen a house ensemble to produce music on tap. • Quality of sound on radio was beXer than on record in general -‐ early shellac records deteriorated quickly and were easily broken. • 1930/40s the great decades fro radio and Swing Jazz.
- 5. Swing • The style of 30s music with polished arrangements and hard driving rhythms set off a new dance craze. • Also implies a parOcular rhythmic delivery in which the rhythm is never played straight -‐ though it is noted that way. Notes are divided unequally with a slight triplet feel.
- 6. Vocalist • Bands increasingly employed a vocalists as part of the band. • Many popular songs in repertoire -‐ band accompanied singer then extended the song with instrumental breaks and complex orchestraOons. • Singers gradually became stars on their own and had huge solo careers -‐ Sinatra, ?
- 7. Dance • Bigger dance halls, and importance and popularity of dancing led to increase in the size and power of bands. The bands would draw the public to the dance halls which they paid to enter. • Dance craze of 1920s led to greater diversity of dance styles, jazz, European, LaOn, and new styles of 1930s. • Traversed all society -‐ but liXle social mixing. Bands reflected this.
- 8. Composers/Arrangers • The pieces were wriXen down by an arranger -‐ someOmes the band leader, but more oNen a skilled arranger. E.g. Don Redman • ImprovisaOon restricted to solos. • Complicated arrangements allowed complex harmonies, dialogue between secOons, delicate sonoriOes. • Borrowed from classical music. Especially in four note harmonies -‐ sevenths and added sixths. • Fletcher Henderson Dixie Stompers
- 9. Move to New York
- 10. Big Band DisposiOon • Three secOons -‐ brass, reeds, and rhythm. • Brass -‐ 3 trumpets, 2 trombones. • Reed -‐ clarinets, saxophones. • Rhythm -‐ piano, drums, guitar and double bass. • Units alternated with soloists.
- 11. Move towards Big Bands and Soloists/ Leaders • Armstrong was clearly a more virtuosic player than Oliver -‐ who saw Jazz as collecOve and inter-‐ dependent. Armstrong was constrained within the band. • Individualism of Armstrong calls aXenOon to itself. • Death knell of New Orleans style -‐ and arrival of big band format. In place by 1925 and in full flow by 1930. • By 1935 Jazz orientated band sound the mainstream of populat music unOl the late 40s and early 50s.
- 12. 1930s The Popular Singer • The microphone meant that a singer could dominate a big band. • Popular singers became stars in the their own right – Frankie Vallee, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole. • Females -‐ Bessie Smith, Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, PaXy Paige, Ward • Huge record sales for some singers from the 1930s onwards. • Big link up with movie world. M
- 13. Big Band Swing • Throughout the 1940s and much of the 50s the big band sound of swing dominated popular. • Centred on New York but through out America. Recordings, live sessions and radio. • Band Leaders became huge – stars of the day-‐ whites -‐ Tommy Dorsey, (Dorsey brothers), Benny Goodman, ArOe Shaw, Charlie Barnet, Glen Miller. • All relied hugely on their arrangers.
- 15. Benny Goodman
- 16. Duke Ellington • Middle-‐class had him taught classical piano. • New York – Washingtonians. • Wanted Jazz to be taken as art music and use elements of classical style – fully arranged style.
- 17. Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra • 15 piece band. CoXon Club residency 1927-‐31 for a white audience. Weekly broadcasts live on the radio. Toured Europe 1931. Then on tour around the States. • CollecOve improvisaOons impracOcal with a big band. • Notated parts allowed variety of texture– chords for secOons – one player per note; unison for a secOon; anOphonal between secOons. Solos with accompaniment from a
- 18. Koko – Recorded march 1940 • Form – Into * bars – 7 choruses of 12 bars – 12 bar coda, • Chorus 1 Valve trombone (Juan Tizol) • Chorus 2 Trombone solo (Joe Tricky Sam Nanton) • Chorus 3 more Trombone • Chorus 4 Piano (Ellington) • Chorus 5 3 trumpets in unison • Chorus 6 Bass (Jimmy Blanton= ensemble) • Chorus 7 – full ensemble
- 19. Koko
- 21. Sounds and Textures • Jungle sound – African – minor – pedal E flat, Tom-‐ tom; ‘x’ moOf. Parallel descending chords on 3 trombones set mood. • Chorus 1 – trombone answered by 4 saxs in harmony. Bass walking. • Chorus 2 and 3 -‐ ya-‐ya growl sound with plunger mute; pixie mute. ImitaOon of words. • Chorus 4 – one-‐bar phrases aeolian mode. • Chorus 5 riff moves to trumpets • Chorus 6 – band takes up ‘x’moOve. • Chrorus 7 – shout chorus – melody in unison saxes
- 22. Glen Miller Pennsylvanian 65000
- 24. Glen Miller • Trombonist. • First hit 1936 ,solo hip’. New band 1938 • Theme tune Midnight Serenade, film songs (somewhere over the Rainbow). • A ‘sweet band’ that was also a swing band. • In the mood, Chatanooga Choo Choo, Kalamazoo, Don’t sit under the apple tree. • With vocals, about travel and parOng, • To cheer a naOon on the move.
- 25. The Story • Became a major in the army • Moved to Britain with American Basses. • Used to entertain troops. • 1954 film. • Lost on the way to France in the channel 1943. • His band conOnued with his legacy.
- 26. Jazz in the War Years
- 27. Minton’s Club Harlem 1940 • ANer hours club that aXracted improvisers.
- 28. Dizzy Gillespie • Theorist and teacher to new of 1940s generaOon
- 29. Parker -‐ Bird • Tragic life story and early death.
- 30. Charlie Parker • Individualist who was able to create a new approach based not on melody but on the underlying chords.
- 31. Readings • Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, pp. 844-‐864 • Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz, pp. 3-‐54 • Ed. Mervyn Cooke and David Horn, The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, CUP, 2002, pp. 9-‐32 • Gunter Schuller, Early Jazz, 1968, pp. 63-‐133