J A Z Z through the decades
J A Z Z
through the decades
Copyright Š 2017 Taschen GmbH All rights reserved under International and Pan American copyright conventions. Published in the United States by Taschen House, Inc, New York, and simultanously Canada by Taschen house of Canada Limited, Toronto. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording. Book design by Jahnavi Nirmal Printed November, 2017 in Germany First Edition
acknowledgements I would like to thank my mentors, Mr Mathew Kurien sir and Mr Bipin Daftardar sir, without whom this book would not have been created. Special thanks to my friends, Garima Bagaria and Mrunmayee Kothawade for being patient with me during the process of making this book. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents for their continuous encouragement and support.
introduction
Jazz emerged about one hundred years ago and the history of jazz shows us a genre that has never stopped evolving and growing. At its earliest stages, in the 1920s it was the pop music of that time and soon after, it became a laboratory for musicians to perfect their virtuosity. Born in America, jazz can be seen as a reflection of the cultural diversity and individualism of this country. At its core, are an openness to all influences, and personal expression through improvisation. Throughout its history, it has straddled the worlds of popular music and art music, and it has expanded to a point where its styles are so varied that one may sound completely unrelated to another. This book takes you on a journey of jazz music through the decades. Look out for the language of a Hepcat at the beginning of every decade!
contents
new orleans the cultural melting pot
the roaring 20s and the rapid economic growth
the swing era of the great depression
bebop when jazz becomes art music
cool jazz contributing to a subdued emotion
free jazz and avant garde
fusion a combination of multiple genres
smooth jazz the genre that grew out of jazz
jazz today and the excessive use of odd time signatures
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During the decade between 1910 and 1920, the seeds of jazz began to take root. New Orleans, the vibrant and chromatic port city in which ragtime was based, was home to a number of budding musicians and a new style.
1910
n ew orlean s the cultural melting pot
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#1. Cats: Folks who play jazz music. / “I used to partake in late night jam sessions with the ‘cats’ over at Sid’s.”
New Orleans had a great tradition of celebration. Opera, military marching bands, folk music, the blues, different types of church music, ragtime, echoes of traditional African drumming, and all of the dance styles that went with this music could be heard and seen throughout the city. When all of these kinds of music blended into one, jazz was born.
Jazz wasn’t born on a particular day, it was created over a period of time. It wasn’t just one person or one race that was responsible for creating it. It was a meeting, and mixing, of the essences and emotions of many people, of many cultures. New Orleans’ unusual history, its unique outlook on life, its rich ethnic and cultural makeup, and the resulting cultural interaction set the stage for development and evolution of many distinctive traditions. The city is famous for its festivals, foods, and, especially, its music. Each ethnic group in New Orleans contributed to the very active musical environment in the city, and in this way to the development of early jazz. A well-known example of early ethnic influences significant to the origins of jazz is the African dance and drumming tradition, which was documented in New Orleans. By the mid-18th century, slaves gathered socially on Sundays at a special market outside the city’s rampart. Later, the area became known as Congo Square, famous for its African dances and the preservation of African musical and cultural elements.
When circumstances are right and a variety of influences come together to create something special, when many flavors combine to make a new taste that is greater than the sum of its spices, they have a name for it. They call it gumbo. And just like Jazz, nobody makes gumbo like they make it in New Orleans.
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1920s music was called, “a combination of nervousness, lawlessness, primitive and savage animalism and lasciviousness.” With the invention of radios and record players, Jazz went from playing in New Orleans honky tonks to America’s airwaves, dance halls and living rooms.
1920
the r oaring 20s and the rapid economic growth
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#2. Balloon lungs: A brass man with plenty of wind. / “That cat must have ‘balloon lungs’, Stix siad he held that note for three and a half minutes!”
A time in which life felt like it was moving in fast forward
Armstrong, known as “Satchmo” or “Pops”, is the foundation of 1920s jazz. He experimented with nearly every musical style, including Hawaiian, gospel, bluegrass, and music of the twenties. In many ways, Armstrong is responsible for popularizing jazz throughout the world. He played everywhere and with everyone. He was a great 1920s musician and ambassador of music throughout the world.
At the end of World War I, society experienced a dramatic shift. Shaking off the misery and shell-shock, young people broke with traditional values and embraced all things modern.The Roaring 20s, or the Jazz Age, as it is also known, was a time in which life felt like it was moving in fast forward. The 1920s were a time of rapid economic growth and people had money to spend on entertainment and house hold goods. For the first time, radios and record players were widely avialabe. Jazz went from playing in New Orleans honky tonks to America’s airwaves, dance halls and living rooms. It all started with the prohibition of alcohol in 1920. Rather than prevent drinking, the law gave rise to speakeasies and private residences and inspired a wave of jazz-accompanied and boozefueled rent parties. To really know the roots of 1920s music, one must start with the King Oliver Creole Band, which played primarily on the South Side of Chicago. These were the haunts of gangsters like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. King Oliver brought together a blend of multiple styles like marches and “ragtime” and mixed in the blues and pop songs of the 1920s. Oliver’s big hit was called “Dippermouth Blues,” the band played the song nightly at the request of the crowd. An interesting fact about “Dippermouth Blues” is that it is the first jazz song to feature a fully-developed trumpet solo. At the time, King Oliver was the most famous jazz player in the world, but playing right behind him in “The Creole Jazz Band” was Louis Armstrong.
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1930 marked the worst financial crisis in the United States history. 25 percent of the workforce was jobless, and up to 60 percent of African American men had no work. A new style of Jazz, called “swing� emerged, to which people loved to dance. This made the great depression bearable.
1930
the s w ing era of the great depression
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#3. Jitterbug: A jumpy, jittery energetic dance or one who danced this dance during the swing period. / “Shaw is a hot clarinetist. He sure has all the ‘jitterbugs’ jumpin.”
Swing is a form of notation in which the beat (typically a crotchet) is divided into two parts, and the former part is longer and more accented than the latter.
IT DON’T MEAN A THING IF IT AIN’T GOT THAT SWING
More importantly, swing is a feeling defined by musical tradition.
Swinging means being in sync with other people and loving it
Swing is the basic rhythm of jazz. Swinging means being in sync with other people and loving it. The optimistic feeling of this music lifted the spirits of everyone in America. The era’s beginning is sometimes dated from “the King of Swing” Benny Goodman’s performance at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles on August 21, 1935, bringing the music to the rest of the country. By the mid-1930s, Orchestra leaders such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson and Paul Whiteman, led some of the greatest bands of the era. The swing era brought to swing music Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and by 1938 Ella Fitzgerald. Armstrong, who had heavily influenced jazz as its greatest soloist in the 1920’s when working with both small bands and larger ones, now appeared only with big swing bands.
above: Cab Calloway, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Duke Ellington, Rex Stewart unidentified guest, Ivie
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Ella Jane Fitzgerald, the first lady of song, and Queen of Jazz.
Jazz musicians were looking for new directions to explore. A new style of jazz called bebop was born. It had fast tempos, intricate melodies, and complex harmonies. It was considered jazz for intellectuals. No longer were there huge big bands, but smaller groups that did not play for dancing, but for listening audiences.
1940
b ebo p when jazz became art music
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#4. In the pocket: Refers to the rhythm section being together. / “Those guys are really ‘in the pocket’, tonight.”
above: Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter, Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, and Max Roach.
From this point on jazz entered the realm of art music. Bebop was first met with outrage: it was impossible to dance to, the tempos were extremely fast, and rhythmical, melodic and
Bebop was first met with outrage It was impossible to dance to
harmonic contents were unpredictable for the untrained ear. Bebop coincided with many cultural movements, and attracted an audience of avant-garde writers, painters, and poets. Pioneered by alto saxophonist Charlie Parker a.k.a. Bird, bebop became an outlet for musicians to show off their chops. Bebop pushes improvisation to the foreground, and features a trio, quartet or a quintet rather than a big band. Early in the 1940s, young musicians such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, steeped in the sounds of swing, began experimenting with melodic and harmonic dissonance as well as rhythmic alterations, such as beginning and ending improvised phrases in uncommon places in the measure. Minton’s Playhouse, a jazz club in Harlem, New York, became the laboratory for these experimental musicians.
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Due to a growing uncertainty of the future post World War II, cool jazz reflected a subdued emotion and quiet intellectual control that had become valued in American society. “Keeping cool� was an expression of emotional self-control in times of crisis .
1950
c o ol jazz contributing to a subdued emotion
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#5: Supermurgitroid: Really cool. / “That club was ‘supermurgitroid’.”
Cool jazz brought jazz music back to the mainstream right: Miles Davis, restoring humanity, one jazz note at a time.
The sound of “Cool Jazz� is what the name implies. To counterweight the bebop of the East Coast, the West Coast of United States resorted to a more chilled approach. Overwhelmed By head-spinning tempos and constant shredding, musicians started to look for new ways of expression. One of the most prominent figures of this movement was Miles Davis, who started his career playing bebop with Charlie Parker.
Due to the newly developed weapon of mass destruction, the atomic bomb, cool thinking was required at this crucial point in history. Whereas bebop was “hot,” i.e., loud, exciting, and loose, cool jazz was “cool,” i.e., soft, more reserved, and controlled “Classical” instruments such as flute, French horn, tuba, and vibraphone (vibes) were often found in cool jazz groups. It was a blending of jazz and classical music. Unlike bebop, much of cool jazz was arranged (written) ahead of time; in bebop the emphasis was on the improvised solos, in cool jazz both the arrangement and the improvised solos were important. Bebop, because of its intensity and complexity, did not have the mass appeal of the Swing Era. Dave Brubeck and other cool jazz artists brought jazz to college campuses in the 1950s, finding a new audience for jazz. Before this, jazz was mostly played in nightclubs and dance halls.
above: “Birth of the cool”, an album by Miles Davis. below: Chet Baker
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By the 1960s, performances were free improvisations altogether, the musicians playing without any preplanned music. Not only were chord structures not being used, but also melody, steady rhythms, and harmonies were abandoned.
1960
f ree jazz and Avant Garde
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#6. Noodlin’: To just play notes that have no particular meaning to a tune or a solo. / “Quit ‘noodlin’ cat, let’s start working the tune.”
above: John Coltrane He was one of the most significant saxophonists in music history. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and was later at the forefront of free jazz.
Improvising solely on the emotion of the moment Swing, Bebop, Cool, and Hard Bop improvisations were based on predetermined chord progressions, standard forms, and choruses while Free Jazz improvisations were generally not based on predetermined chord progressions, forms, and choruses. Free Jazz musicians “freed” themselves of these “constraints,” improvising solely on the emotion of the moment. It pushed the limits of what musicians could play and what audiences could accept. It widened the emotional and expressive parameters of jazz discarding European chord progressions, and became even more Afrocentric than Hard Bop; it reached back to the ethnic roots of the music, becoming modern, in a sense, by returning to the primitive. Free jazz musicians created a progressive musical language which drew on earlier styles of jazz such as Dixieland jazz and African music. Typically this kind of music is played by small groups of musicians. It is strongly associated with the 1950s innovations of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor and the later works of John Coltrane. Other important pioneers include Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Joe Maneri and Sun Ra.
right: Ornette Coleman
‘‘Preservation Hall. Now that’s where you’ll find all of the greats.’’ - Louis Armstrong Preservation Hall was established in 1961 to preserve, perpetuate, and protect traditional New Orleans Jazz. Operating as a music venue, a touring band, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, a record label, and a non-profit organization, Preservation Hall continues their mission today as a cornerstone of New Orleans music and culture. To this day, people from all around the world continue to visit New Orleans to share the intimacy and atmosphere of Preservation Hall. The story of Preservation Hall dates back to the 1950s at Associated Artists, a small art gallery at 726 St. Peter Street in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Upon opening the gallery, the proprietor Larry Borenstein found that it curtailed his ability to attend the few remaining local jazz concerts, and began inviting these musicians to perform “rehearsal sessions” in the gallery
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itself. During this period, traditional jazz had taken a backseat in popularity to rock ‘n’ roll and bebop, leaving many of these players to work odd jobs. Today 50 years later, Preservation Hall and The Preservation Hall Jazz Band continue their mission to broaden awareness of New Orleans Jazz in a modern age through new and archival recording releases, multimedia projects and presentations, maintenance of an ever-growing archive of New Orleans music and artifacts, collaborations with performers from other genres and disciplines, and education.
During the 1970s, many jazz musicians began experimenting with electric instruments, synthesisers, electronic effects and amplified sound for the first time. Rather than being a codified musical style, fusion can be viewed as a musical tradition or approach.
1970
f us ion 29
#7. Wax a disc: Cut a record. / “I just ‘waxed a disc’ up at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio with Jim.”
above: Miles Davis, one of the principal innovators of jazz fusion.
“Only in spontaneity can we truly know who we are.” - John McLaughlin
Jazz Fusion is a style of music derived from Jazz, incorporating elements of different musical traditions: the electric sound and the riffs of Rock music, the rhythms of Rhythm & Blues and Funk, the elaborate compositions of Classical Music, and various forms of worldwide Folk music traditions, are gathered in a jazzy environment of highly complex improvisation and experimentation, following the movement of Avant-Garde Jazz of the 50s and 60s. Instruments such as electric guitars and keyboards become commonly used. The experimentalist jazzmen/ jazzbands Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell or Soft Machine are considered to be pioneers of this genre. Davis’s 1960s albums “In a Silent Way” and “Bitches Brew” started a revolution by harnessing rock’s electric guitars and funk’s electric bass rhythms and drums to Davis probing, amplified trumpet. It was the first time a veteran jazz musician embraced electric music. The term “jazz-rock” is often used as a synonym for “jazz fusion” as well as for music performed by late 1960s and 1970s-era rock bands that added jazz elements to their music. After a decade of popularity during the 1970s, fusion expanded its improvisatory and experimental approaches through the 1980s, in parallel with the development of a radio-friendly style called smooth jazz.
left: Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin & Paco de Lucía
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Evolving from fusion, but leaving behind the energetic solos and dynamic crescendos, smooth jazz emphasizes its polished side. It is unobtrusive, slick, and highly polished, where the overall sound matters more than the individual parts.
1980
s mo oth jazz the genre that grew out of jazz
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#8. Muggles: One nickname for maijuana used by early jazzmen. / “Hey, Louis, I need to calm down. You got any ‘muggles’? ”
avove: Ramsey Lewis and John Pizzarelli
Where smooth is more important than jazz Influenced by rhythm and blues, funk, rock and roll, and pop music styles, smooth jazz was once successful as a radio format. It received frequent airplay with more straight-ahead jazz in “quiet storm” time slots at radio stations in urban markets across the U.S. Musicians such as Kenny G, Ramsey Lewis, David Koz and Spyro Gyra have had hits with instrumental recordings, while singers such as Anita Baker, Sade, Stting and Norah Jones have found success with vocal releases. George Benson remains a popular smooth jazz artist as both, a singer and guitar player. Improvisation in this genre is largely ignored, giving argument whether the term “jazz” can truly apply. “It rules out a certain kind of drama and tension that music needs; especially jazz music, since improvisation is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. When you smooth it out, you take the drama out of it”, says David Sanborn, six Grammy Awards winning saxophonist.
This genre is downtempo, layering a lead, melody playing instrument (saxophones, especially soprano and tenor are the most popular, with legato electric guitar playing a close second) over a backdrop that typically consists of programmed electronic drum rhythms, synth pads and samples.
avove: George Benson
Since the 1990s, jazz has become so diverse that it’s hard to find one solid style. Instead, musicians have freedom to do whatever they want, and there’s everything; bebop, avant garde, modal jazz, swing etc, all blended together. Some of the tendencies of contemporary jazz are to excessively use odd time signatures.
1990
j azz to d ay and the excessive use of odd time signatures
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#9. Wild: Astonishing or amazing. / “It’s really ‘wild’ the way Lee plays the trumpet.”
Jazz ofcourse, is not an invention, it’s alive. It grows. It dies It changes. It stays the same.
Today’s jazz artists are basically going in one of three directions: traditional, contemporary mainstream, or “anything goes.” Raditionalists are performing jazz mainly patterned on Blues, Swing, Bebop, and Hard Bop; in other words, they exclude Free Jazz and Fusion. Traditionalists believe that what they play is “real jazz,” not the various hybrids and “add-ons” (according to them) that occurred in the 1960s and since. They are also known as “jazz purists.” Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis is at the forefront of this movement. He is an internationally acclaimed musician and has played a major role in the resurgence of jazz. Contemporary mainstream jazz artists are influenced mostly by Hard Bop sensibilities. They use for the most part, Hard Bop instrumentation and musical forms. However, within the Hard Bop framework, contemporary mainstream jazz artists continue to push the music forward, e.g., ever increasing technical proficiency on their instruments, expanded musical harmonies (more difficult and complex chords and chord progressions), and deeper and varied emotions expressed.Trumpeter Terence Blanchard is one of today’s most important contemporary mainstream jazz artists. “Anything goes” jazz artists will put all kinds of music into the pot and stir it up; these can include but are not limited to: all styles of jazz classical music (mostly of the 20th and 21st century variety) world music (i.e., music from other parts of the world), especially from South America and Asia all styles of blues, rock, rhythm and blues, Latin, funk, hip-hop, ska, rap, and popular music. Two important jazz musicians in the “anything goes” camp include saxophonist Dave Liebman and trumpeter Dave Douglas.
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above: Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, at the forefront of jazz movement today.
JAZZ INFLUENCED LANGUAGE, PASSION, AND SOCIAL INTERACTION. IT IS A VITAL PART OF AMERICA’S CULTURAL HERITAGE.
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bibliography The information and images for this book have been taken from the following websites: https://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/timeline_search.php?keyword=jazz http://www.frenchquarter.com/jazzmasters/ https://spinditty.com/genres/How-did-jazz-begin-Part-one-of-a-history-of-jazz http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/g/gioia-jazz.html?mcubz=0 http://www.jazzinamerica.org/LessonPlan/1/1 https://www.musical-u.com/learn/jazz-improvisation-evolution-history-of-jazz-by-ear/ https://www.thoughtco.com/jazz-by-decade-1910-1920-2039544
but what is jazz?
An element of surprise. An element of the blues.
A LANGUAGE
OF THE SPIRIT
JAZZ IS SOMETHING WE RECOGNIZE WHEN WE ENCOUNTER IT. IT IS COMPLEX, CREATIVE, INSPIRING, BASICALLY LIFE. IT IS A BRIGHT, STARRY, INFINITE NIGHT.