Lecture Early Jazz

8/11/2019 Lecture Early Jazz

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The City on the Gulf

Jazz comes from a mixture of African,European, and Caribbean experiences,but it started out as a local musicalpractice in New Orleans. New Orleans

jazz transformed marching band anddance music into an improvised, playfully

voiced, cyclic, polyphonic music playedover a steady dance beat using collectiveimprovisation.


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Creoles of Color and Uptown Negroes The demographics of New Orleans also

contributed to the creation of jazz because itwas a site characterized by the mingling ofnewly urbanized blacks with EuropeanizedCreoles. New Orleans musicians eventuallymoved to other parts of the United States,such as Chicago, New York, and California,as part of the Great Migration.


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Creoles of Color and Uptown Negroes At the same time, the burgeoning record

industry made New Orleans jazz available indiverse geographical and socioculturalcontexts.


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Creoles of Color and Uptown Negroes New Orleans is a port city. It became a

nineteenth-century commercial centerfocusing on the slave trade on the one hand,with a distinct, more relaxed Caribbeanculture on the other. A brief history:

1718: founded by France 1763: sold to Spain 1803: reclaimed by the French 1803: almost immediately sold to the United States


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Creoles of Color and Uptown Negroes New Orleans had French, Spanish, and

English speakers and was the largest, mostsophisticated city in the South. This includedan active cultural life from the eighteenthcentury, encompassing opera, Mardi Gras,dances, parades, and fancy balls.


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Creoles of Color and Uptown Negroes Race relations were different from those in

other parts of the United States. UnlikeProtestant North America, New Orleans wasoriented to the Caribbean, and like racialpractices there, slaves were allowed to retainmuch of their culture, including music.


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Creoles of Color and Uptown Negroes North American culture recognized two

categories: white and black. Caribbeanculture, including New Orleans, recognized amulatto culture as well. This benefited freeblacks with lighter skins.


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Creoles of Color and Uptown Negroes New Orleans mulattos were known as

Creoles of Color. Because they were of mixedrace, they had privileges and opportunitiesthat blacks did not, including civic power,property ownership, French language skills,Catholic religious practice, decent education,and skilled trades. Creoles lost this statusaround 1894 with the enactment of Jim Crowlaws and U.S. Supreme Court decisions in

1896.


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Creoles of Color and Uptown Negroes Creoles tried to remain geographically

separate from blacks by keeping to an area ofthe city east of Canal Street including theFrench Quarter. Blacks lived uptown, on theother side of Canal. But Jim Crow laws forcedthe two traditions to collide.


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Creoles of Color and Uptown Negroes Uneducated Uptown Negroes played

raucous, beat-based, orally learned, bluesy,improvised music based on rags, folk music,and marches. Creoles saw this asunprofessional, but they started teachinguptown blacks as well as young Creoles.


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Creoles of Color and Uptown Negroes At first Creoles got the better-paying jobs

playing traditional European dances, butblacks eventually came to offer a new,alternative way of playing that appealed toaudiences for different reasons.


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New Orleans Style Instrumentation

First, brass bands provided the front line of cornet,

trombone, and clarinet. Second, the rhythm section of banjo (or piano), tuba (or

string bass), and some percussive instrument.


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New Orleans Style Improvisation

By the time New Orleans jazz was first recorded, ithad attained its own distinctive style of collectiveimprovisation, with each wind instrument having itsown musical space and rhythm: clarinet was thefastest and pitched higher than the cornet; the

cornet was in the middle; and trombone was theslowest and below the cornet.


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New Orleans Style Form

Mostly the form was the same as ragtime. At theend, the last strain would be repeated many times.

A new structure was the 12-bar blues. This couldbe repeated indefinitely.


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Storyville The District in New Orleans, where

prostitution was legal, lasted until 1917.Bordellos could be mansions or shacks.


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StoryvilleMany jazz musicians worked in Storyville

cabarets, but they also worked in parks,parades, excursions, advertising wagons, andriverboats and for dances throughout the city.


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Storyville But Storyville did play a role. It was a rough

area where white values of taste were absent.This made it easier for musicians to developexpressive techniques, slow tempos (for sexy,slow dances), and timbre variation.


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The Great Migration In the late nineteenth century, former slaves

started to move into cities like New Orleans.With the onset of World War I, they movednorth to places like Chicago and New York.


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The Great Migration They were socially motivated by their

powerlessness, the discriminatory practices ofsharecropping, widespread racial segregationtouching practically all areas of life in theSouth, and thousands of lynchings for whichnobody was arrested.

Economically, the draft during World War Iopened up the labor market in northern citiesfor blacks.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings Original Dixieland Jazz Band

The white ODJB came to New York to play atRiesenwebers Restaurant in 1917. They were asensation.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings Victor signed them to record two pieces, Livery

Stable Blues and Dixie Jazz Band One Step,

which turned out to be blockbusters. Althoughprevious ragtime records had hinted at some jazzelements, to most listeners, ODJBs music wasunprecedented. They were so popular that theybrought the word jazz into common parlance.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings Origins

Many New Orleans neighborhoods were integrated, andthus white players became familiar with ragtime and jazzin New Orleans and probably influenced black players interms of repertory, harmony, and instrumental technique.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings Influence

The ODJB has been labeled as mediocre. But theyplayed a spirited, unpretentious music that establishedmany Dixieland standards, broke with ragtime, and, byvisiting Europe in 1919, made jazz international. Thegroup dissolved in 1922.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings Jelly Roll Morton (1890 1941)

Jazz history can be seen as a mutually influencing

relationship between composers and improvisers,as is the relationship between Creoles and blacksin the creation of jazz. Morton fits right in as aCreole composer who learned from and worked

with black New Orleans musicians.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings Morton had many jobs and claimed to be the

inventor of jazz. He was proud of his French

Haitian heritage.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings He traveled widely, assimilating new musical

approaches. He settled in Chicago in 1922 and

started recording in 1923 with a white New Orleansband called the New Orleans Rhythm Kings(NORK) for Gennett Records in Richmond,Indiana; this was the first important integratedrecording. He introduced some of his originals,including future standards such as King PorterStomp.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings The Red Hot Peppers

Morton became a successful songwriter. To helpincrease interest in his work, Victor started recording hisstudio band of seven or eight players (The Red HotPeppers) in 1926, when recording was switching fromacoustic to electric recording. For many they represent aperfect balance of improvisation and composition in theNew Orleans style.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings Dead Man Blues

A number of blues choruses in collective New Orleansstyle, this is Mortons take on the New Orleans burialritual. This is highly organized with even the bass lineswritten out. There is also an overlay of ragtime structurewith various sets of choruses as ragtime strains.

By 1930, he was considered outdated. In 1938 he

made some important recorded interviews with Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings King Oliver (1885 1938)

By 1922 jazz musicians had matured, writing many

new pieces and demonstrating increasedinstrumental technique. But jazz had also becomeassociated with gimmickry and comedy. KingOliver resisted this last turn.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings In 1905 Oliver started playing cornet in brass

bands and saloon groups, before joining

trombonist Kid Orys band in 1917. Oliver wasknown for his use of various mutes, a practice thatwas very influential.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings King Olivers Creole Jazz Band

Oliver organized many different kinds of bandsdepending on the specific job. In 1918 he moved toChicago and spent several years on the road until 1922to play at a high-end, black-owned nightclub, the LincolnGardens. His band was made up of New Orleansmusicians except for the pianist, Lil Hardin. Oliver hadgum disease, which meant he required a secondcornetist to back up his playing, so he sent for his oldstudent, Louis Armstrong.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings They were a great success. Black and white musicians

came to hear the uptown style of this band. The bandsrecordings from this period exhibit a mature New Orleans

collective style. In 1923 they recorded for Gennett inRichmond, Indiana then a hotbed for the Ku KluxKlan using stop-time, breaks, and an improvised,polyphonic first line.

Dippermouth Blues also includes solos by clarinetist

Johnny Dodds and Louis Armstrong and a widelyimitated one by King Oliver using mutes.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings Not unlike Morton and other early jazz figures,

Oliver was soon surpassed by new styles and

younger players. By 1935 he could no longer playand died in poverty soon thereafter.

Gennett Records Gennett was owned by a piano-manufacturing

company. The studio was made of wood plankswith one megaphone that recorded acoustically, sothe musicians had to position themselves in theroom to create a musical balance.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings Snake Rag

As per the title, this has a ragtime structure but

also includes bluesy breaks, chromatic melodies(or snakes), a repeated trio section (which isused to build excitement), and the signature

Armstrong- Oliver improvised duo breaks.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings Sidney Bechet (1897 1959)

Clarinetist and soprano saxophonist Bechet may

have been the first great jazz improviser. He madethe saxophone central to jazz and also traveledabroad during the 1920s spreading this new music.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings Born a Creole, Bechet mostly taught himself the

clarinet. He ended up playing in many of the

important marching bands. In 1916 he startedtouring, taking him to Chicago in 1919. There heattracted the attention of composer, songwriter,classical violinist, and bandleader Will MarionCook, who recruited Bechet into his band, theSouthern Syncopated Orchestra, for theirEuropean tour. There were some important resultsfrom this tour:


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings In 1921 Bechet teamed up with New Orleans

pianist, composer, song-publisher, and record

producer Clarence Williams and recorded withClarence Williamss Blue Five. In the groups 1924recording of Cake Walking Babies (from Home),Bechet proved himself to be the only musician ofthat era who could rival the talented, up-and-coming Armstrong.


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Jazz Moves On: First Recordings He settled in France in 1951 and remained the

soprano saxophones chief exponent until his

death in 1959. The New Orleans style is still alive at

Preservation Hall bands in New Orleans andin bands all over the world devoted to

Dixieland jazz.

Lecture Early Jazz

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