Chapter 16 - Jazz

1
Chapter 16 - Jazz

• Five chronological sections
• 1. The New Orleans Style The Traditional Jazz
  of the Early Recordings (1920s)
• The most representative early jazz recordings
  date from about 1923.
• They define what jazz was at that time.
• essence of jazz as a way of singing and
  playingwith many intangible features.
• What are some of the tangible features of jazz?
• accent
• phrasing
• tone color
• the bending of pitch and rhythm
• improvisation

2
Dippermouth Blues

• Form and Harmony
• Perhaps the most common formal harmonic plan is
  the blues.
• performed by King Olivers Creole Jazz Band and
  recorded in Chicago, 1923.
• Listen for
• twelve-bar blues form
• the improvised variations within each chorus.
• Instrumentation
• What is the instrumentation of Dippermouth
  Blues?
• Texture
• front-line, or melody (like the right hand in
  ragtime piano)
• rhythm section (like the left hand in ragtime
  piano)

3
Improvisation

• Perhaps the most vital ingredient in jazz is
  improvisation.
• Who has been deemed the first great improvising
  soloist in jazz?
• Louis Armstrong (1898-1971)
• defined the hot style of playing in the 1920s
• early master of swing
• model solos of great influence on others to
  follow
• scat singing
• wordless improvising of complete choruses

4
Hotter than That

• representative example of Louis Armstrongs
  improvisation skills
• Listen for
• melodic inventiveness of cornet solos
• clarinet solo
• scat singing

5
2. Dissemination and Change Before the Swing Era

• Chicago
• Two jazz styles in Chicago in the 1920s?
• white and black
• white
• Original Dixieland Jazz Band
• New Orleans Rhythm Kings
• Bix Beiderbecke (1903-31)
• black
• playing on Chicagos South Side
• King Olivers Creole Jazz Band
• with Louis Armstrong
• fluid, relaxed style

6
What was the home of jazz in the 1920s?

• nightclub scene
• During Prohibition many clubs were run by the
  mob.
• Many of the jazz musicians from New Orleans went
  from Chicago to New York.

7
What elements made the big band different from
the traditional ensembles of early jazz?

• number of players about twice the size of a New
  Orleans-style band
• new trend toward arranged jazz
• improvised solos remain

8
3. The Swing Era and the Big Bands

• What are the dates associated with the beginning
  and ending of the swing era?
• What elements contributed to the emergence and
  popularity of big band jazz during the swing era?
• new performance venues dance halls and ballrooms
• recordings sold well
• Radio performances sold recordings and advertised
  the bands music.
• Movies featured jazz bands.
• Three Significant Bands
• Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Benny Goodman

9
Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington (1899-1974)

• pianist, composer, band leader
• The Ellington sound unique use of instrumental
  color
• broad range as a composer
• pioneered writing more complex works for jazz
  ensemble

10
Ko-ko

• - an example of the Ellington sound.
• 12-bar blues
• call-and-response pattern
• varied tone colors

11
The Midwest and Count Basie

• What is the Kansas City ingredient that went into
  big-band jazz?
• jump
• hard-driving beat
• Count Basie (1904-84) called it four heavy beats
  to a bar, and no cheating.
• closely akin to the drive of boogie-woogie

12
Benny Goodman

• (1909-86)
• white clarinetist and band leader (big bands and
  small)
• formal music education played both classical and
  jazz styles
• acknowledged his black jazz heritage
• many of his arrangements Fletcher Henderson
• one of the first to incorporate black musicians
  in his ensembles
• brought jazz to a new level of popularity and
  acceptance as dance music

13
The Great Jazz Singers

• The era of the big bands was also the era of the
  great jazz singers.
• Bing Crosby
• Billie Holiday
• Ella Fitzgerald
• The Small Combo
• three to seven players
• played in small bars cocktail combo

14
Wartime and the Seeds of Change

• What are some of the changes that occurred in
  jazz after the end of World War II?
• place of jazz in American culture changed
• Before and during most of WWII, for the most
  part, there was one kind of jazz.
• Fewer young people followed jazz.
• Jazz began to be considered serious art music.

15
The Emergence of Modern Jazz Bop as a Turning
Point

• What is bop?
• bebop or rebop
• emerged after WWII
• first exponents
• John Dizzy Gillespie (1917-93), trumpet
• Charlie Parker (1920-55), alto saxophone
• Thelonious Monk (1917-82), piano
• Kenny Clarke (1914-85), bass
• small ensembles
• musical characteristics
• harmonic basis remained jazz standards
• Nevertheless, substitute chords, harmonic
  extensions were common.
• very fast tempi
• bass keeps the beat
• lighter rhythm section often obscuring the beat
• drums more for accentuation and cross-rhythms
  than for keeping the beat
• Unison passages open and close the pieces.
• Bop has been called black backlash to the
  white synthesis.

16
KoKo

• representative example of bebop
• very fast tempo
• small ensemble
• only four performers
• unison passages that open and close the number

17
What are the various styles of jazz that emerged
out of bop?

• cool jazz
• hard bop and funk
• modal jazz
• free jazz

18
Cool Jazz

• music of understatement, restraint, and leanness
• what was new in jazz in the 1950s not what was
  popular
• slower tempi
• vibraphone (vibes) common
• Modern Jazz Quartet
• one of the most influential combos in this style
• Birth of the Cool
• Miles Davis, trumpet

19
Hard Bop and Funk

• 1950s and 1960s
• reaction against the restraint of cool jazz
• pull back toward jazz roots especially black
  gospel music
• leaders
• Art Blakely, drummer
• Horace Silver, pianist and composer
• changes from bop
• relaxed tempi
• backbeat rhythm
• preference for darker tones
• tenor saxophone (instead of alto)

20
Modal Jazz

• new developments harmony and structure
• virtually static harmony
• improvisation based on a succession of scales
• longer improvisations
• Miles Davis (1926-91), trumpet
• Kind of Blue (1959), So What
• Out of This World - John Coltrane
• Listen for
• static harmony on piano
• saxophones elaboration of tune
• virtuosic drumming

21
The Third Stream and Other Developments
Parallel to Bop

• incorporation of musical elements, procedures,
  and actual instruments that had been considered
  foreign to jazz
• instruments violins, cellos, flutes, and French
  horns
• merging elements from the jazz and classical,
  or European traditions
• Gunther Schuller called this merging of elements
  from the jazz and classical, or European
  traditions the third stream
• What are some specific examples of third stream
  developments?
• rhythmic innovations
• triple meter
• asymmetrical meters (Unsquare Dance)

22
Rock Fusions and Electric Jazz in the 1970s and
1980s

• Bitches Brew by Miles Davis recorded in 1969.
• electric instruments piano, guitars (bass and
  lead)
• jazz-rock fusion
• change in the rhythmic basis
• beat mostly the square rock beat
• ground bass
• ostinato

23
Reconnection with Tradition

• a resurgence and reinterpretation of bebop
• conservation of jazz classics as live music
• trumpet player Wynton Marsalis (b. 1961) is a
  representative example of one of a new generation
  of virtuosos.
• fluent in both jazz and classical music
• His jazz oratorio Blood on the Fields won the
  Pulitzer Prize for musical composition.

24
What is the primary function of repertory bands?

• to re-create specific pieces
• often transcribe music from early recordings
• began to develop in the 1970s
• examples
• American Jazz Orchestra and Lincoln Center Jazz
  Orchestra
• based in New York beginning in the 1970s
• Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra
• 1990