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Look at this:
Even though this is the theme song to Monty Python's The Flying Circus, there is a practice and rigidness to every element of this performance. Considering that the piece is called "The Liberty Bell" and was written by John Philip Sousa in 1893 as a commemorative march for the Liberty Bell itself, there's nothing intentionally silly about the ringing of the bell at the 2:28 mark.
The core function of this piece is to showcase disciplined, purposeful music.
Now look at this:
Buddy Bolden was really advancing the style of ragtime music through improvisation towards jazz, but there are similarities between "The Liberty Bell" and this. For one, this piece sticks to a 4/4 time signature, except for the trumpet lead-ins, and has an easy walking rhythm. The piece wears the outfits of many genres of music at the same time (ragtime, early blues, gospel) and serves as an example, though not a direct recording, of how Black Americans created American music cultures and continually updated them through restless internal development.
And the result of that development is that the music sounds more relaxed and simple than Sousa's piece even though improvisation and more diverse instruments mean that it's actually more complex.
*****
My high school Jazz Band teacher, Mr. Strauss, once said that the distinguishing characteristic of American musical traditions is to make a difficult song or technique sound easy to play. "European music was obsessed," he said, "with demonstrating mastery and expertise." As if being impressed with the performer or composer was the central purpose for listening to a concert in the first place.
I contend that, though the general observation about striving for simple sounds seems to hold true, evolutions within Black American musical communities drove that purpose.
Here's a song written by Fletcher Henderson, one of the earliest great influencers of jazz music. Many black musicians, such as Louis Armstrong, moved through Henderson's band or competed against it in the jazz cultural revolution that seized Chicago and New York throughout the 1920s.
It was 1926. Contrast that slow blues sound with this from 1923:
The blues sound in Henderson's piece is far more like the blues that we know today. The swung down syncopation--the way that it seems to take forever for the next note to be played, dragging out that genuine, low feeling of the blues--feels less busy and more evocative. There's a deliberate slouch in the music that brings more purpose to the song; Bessie Smith's voice glides from one note to another while the trumpets playing "Canal Street Blues" only sometimes strive for that effect.
The span of jazz sounds evolved quickly, but this is a small sample of two pieces that called themselves "blues" over a three year difference. Henderson's own style took on all available forms of the jazz movement, bringing the sound to communities of black musicians that furthered it. Unfortunately, Henderson had to start selling arrangements to Benny Goodman, who largely takes credit for bringing the musical moment to white audiences. And he takes almost all of the credit--his website refers to him as "the king of swing."
Check out this, one of Benny Goodman's most famous songs, which he recorded in 1937:
Oh and here's Chu Berry's "Christopher Columbus," one of the last songs recorded by the Fletcher Henderson band in 1936:
The integration of the melody without the accompanying credit for it is a feature of white jazz bands. In fairness to Goodman, his band integrated white and black musicians in a way that enabled the music to expand for all involved, and he recognized the contributions of Henderson and others in his own horrible 1930s way (under the table payments for college or personal debts of the black musicians who worked with him) whether or not history cared to give Henderson or Berry authorship credit. Still, it's not exactly surprising to see even with a supposedly "integrated" band, no black musicians were on film for the "Sing, Sing, Sing" scene of this "Hollywood Hotel" clip.
Beyond that, I observe that the production of the song has changed the focus back to mastery. With a lavish drum solo, the camera panning in on soloists, members of the band choreographed to stand up on cue--Goodman is trying to make the song look cleanly rehearsed rather than an organic production like the previous videos I displayed. I love "Sing, Sing, Sing" because it sounds complicated--a lot of swing era songs have this dynamic. Even the solos stop valuing improvisation over clarity of presentation, which is more obvious across the numerous recordings of the same songs that often feature the same solos.
It is as if it was more than a tune that was taken without honest credit. The purpose behind the music was also snatched. Where Goodman's song is great to dance to and energetic, "Christopher Columbus" by Berry feels also alive, like one performance of the song could be utterly different and unique from another.
Check out Duke Ellington in Reveille with Beverly in 1943 with a song from 1939:
Even though everything is clearly rehearsed for film, this piece exudes chill. The lyrics are literally saying "hurry, hurry, hurry" at one point and sounds like it's doing anything but hurry. The musicians are all dressed up for the presentation in suits but hang around in the booths of a restaurant set piece like there is no particular urgency whatsoever. But listen to Duke Ellington play the piano at 2:00. There's nothing less complex about what he's doing with the chords than what the soloists in Goodman's band did. And then there's a call and response with multiple other band members at 2:24 that is almost too clean to be authentically improvised, except this is what black musicians had been perfecting for forty years through competitively playing jazz in increasingly effortless-looking ways in New Orleans, Chicago, and Harlem.
Goodman's work, by contrast, feels like an imitation of the style.
*****
What fascinates me most about this concept is where it went during and after the 1940s. Jazz exploded, incorporating many different styles and new directions after World War II. Benny Goodman tried out bebop, one of the new styles coming out of black musicians, but experimentation with chord progressions and rhythms that could not be danced to drove him and many other white musicians back to swing.
Dizzy Gillespie is one of the pioneers of bebop and one of my heroes (because I puffed my cheeks out a lot the first year I played trumpet and got compared to him by my teacher, even though I don't play an eighth as well as him). Look at this and look at the bewildered crowd he's talking to. "Salt Peanuts" was released in 1942, which should indicate just how fast jazz continued to evolve.
Blinding tempo, extreme high notes, and a more erratic rhythm meant that songs like "Salt Peanuts" were almost impossible to dance to without first evolving dancing itself. And yet, Gillespie talks to his audience and reacts with them as if his own part of the song takes no work at all. This is the hardest song I have ever tried to play.
It would be grossly reductionist to suggest that Gillespie and others like Miles Davis and John Coltrane wrote the evolution of American music with the specific purpose of making songs that were hard for white people to dance to, but it's an amusing image. Rather, by doing outstandingly complex things with their instruments and compositions that they made look simple in practice, these musicians made music that felt achievable for young listeners and therefore more inclusive.
Most importantly, however, the songs evoke a deeper range of emotions than European music traditions, which have since borrowed greatly from jazz. One last song: listen to Thelonious Monk's "Round Midnight" from a performance in 1966. The song was written in 1944 and has lost none of the wistful, longing vibe that the call and response between saxophone and Monk's own piano imparts here.
Monk's solo at 4:05 is the embodiment of the idea of careful carelessness. Sometimes his notes veer from the chord in a way that make it seem like anyone can play jazz piano, and that's the whole point of this essay.
*****
Even though this is the theme song to Monty Python's The Flying Circus, there is a practice and rigidness to every element of this performance. Considering that the piece is called "The Liberty Bell" and was written by John Philip Sousa in 1893 as a commemorative march for the Liberty Bell itself, there's nothing intentionally silly about the ringing of the bell at the 2:28 mark.
The core function of this piece is to showcase disciplined, purposeful music.
Now look at this:
Buddy Bolden was really advancing the style of ragtime music through improvisation towards jazz, but there are similarities between "The Liberty Bell" and this. For one, this piece sticks to a 4/4 time signature, except for the trumpet lead-ins, and has an easy walking rhythm. The piece wears the outfits of many genres of music at the same time (ragtime, early blues, gospel) and serves as an example, though not a direct recording, of how Black Americans created American music cultures and continually updated them through restless internal development.
And the result of that development is that the music sounds more relaxed and simple than Sousa's piece even though improvisation and more diverse instruments mean that it's actually more complex.
*****
My high school Jazz Band teacher, Mr. Strauss, once said that the distinguishing characteristic of American musical traditions is to make a difficult song or technique sound easy to play. "European music was obsessed," he said, "with demonstrating mastery and expertise." As if being impressed with the performer or composer was the central purpose for listening to a concert in the first place.
I contend that, though the general observation about striving for simple sounds seems to hold true, evolutions within Black American musical communities drove that purpose.
Here's a song written by Fletcher Henderson, one of the earliest great influencers of jazz music. Many black musicians, such as Louis Armstrong, moved through Henderson's band or competed against it in the jazz cultural revolution that seized Chicago and New York throughout the 1920s.
It was 1926. Contrast that slow blues sound with this from 1923:
The blues sound in Henderson's piece is far more like the blues that we know today. The swung down syncopation--the way that it seems to take forever for the next note to be played, dragging out that genuine, low feeling of the blues--feels less busy and more evocative. There's a deliberate slouch in the music that brings more purpose to the song; Bessie Smith's voice glides from one note to another while the trumpets playing "Canal Street Blues" only sometimes strive for that effect.
The span of jazz sounds evolved quickly, but this is a small sample of two pieces that called themselves "blues" over a three year difference. Henderson's own style took on all available forms of the jazz movement, bringing the sound to communities of black musicians that furthered it. Unfortunately, Henderson had to start selling arrangements to Benny Goodman, who largely takes credit for bringing the musical moment to white audiences. And he takes almost all of the credit--his website refers to him as "the king of swing."
Check out this, one of Benny Goodman's most famous songs, which he recorded in 1937:
Oh and here's Chu Berry's "Christopher Columbus," one of the last songs recorded by the Fletcher Henderson band in 1936:
The integration of the melody without the accompanying credit for it is a feature of white jazz bands. In fairness to Goodman, his band integrated white and black musicians in a way that enabled the music to expand for all involved, and he recognized the contributions of Henderson and others in his own horrible 1930s way (under the table payments for college or personal debts of the black musicians who worked with him) whether or not history cared to give Henderson or Berry authorship credit. Still, it's not exactly surprising to see even with a supposedly "integrated" band, no black musicians were on film for the "Sing, Sing, Sing" scene of this "Hollywood Hotel" clip.
Beyond that, I observe that the production of the song has changed the focus back to mastery. With a lavish drum solo, the camera panning in on soloists, members of the band choreographed to stand up on cue--Goodman is trying to make the song look cleanly rehearsed rather than an organic production like the previous videos I displayed. I love "Sing, Sing, Sing" because it sounds complicated--a lot of swing era songs have this dynamic. Even the solos stop valuing improvisation over clarity of presentation, which is more obvious across the numerous recordings of the same songs that often feature the same solos.
It is as if it was more than a tune that was taken without honest credit. The purpose behind the music was also snatched. Where Goodman's song is great to dance to and energetic, "Christopher Columbus" by Berry feels also alive, like one performance of the song could be utterly different and unique from another.
Check out Duke Ellington in Reveille with Beverly in 1943 with a song from 1939:
Even though everything is clearly rehearsed for film, this piece exudes chill. The lyrics are literally saying "hurry, hurry, hurry" at one point and sounds like it's doing anything but hurry. The musicians are all dressed up for the presentation in suits but hang around in the booths of a restaurant set piece like there is no particular urgency whatsoever. But listen to Duke Ellington play the piano at 2:00. There's nothing less complex about what he's doing with the chords than what the soloists in Goodman's band did. And then there's a call and response with multiple other band members at 2:24 that is almost too clean to be authentically improvised, except this is what black musicians had been perfecting for forty years through competitively playing jazz in increasingly effortless-looking ways in New Orleans, Chicago, and Harlem.
Goodman's work, by contrast, feels like an imitation of the style.
*****
What fascinates me most about this concept is where it went during and after the 1940s. Jazz exploded, incorporating many different styles and new directions after World War II. Benny Goodman tried out bebop, one of the new styles coming out of black musicians, but experimentation with chord progressions and rhythms that could not be danced to drove him and many other white musicians back to swing.
Dizzy Gillespie is one of the pioneers of bebop and one of my heroes (because I puffed my cheeks out a lot the first year I played trumpet and got compared to him by my teacher, even though I don't play an eighth as well as him). Look at this and look at the bewildered crowd he's talking to. "Salt Peanuts" was released in 1942, which should indicate just how fast jazz continued to evolve.
Blinding tempo, extreme high notes, and a more erratic rhythm meant that songs like "Salt Peanuts" were almost impossible to dance to without first evolving dancing itself. And yet, Gillespie talks to his audience and reacts with them as if his own part of the song takes no work at all. This is the hardest song I have ever tried to play.
It would be grossly reductionist to suggest that Gillespie and others like Miles Davis and John Coltrane wrote the evolution of American music with the specific purpose of making songs that were hard for white people to dance to, but it's an amusing image. Rather, by doing outstandingly complex things with their instruments and compositions that they made look simple in practice, these musicians made music that felt achievable for young listeners and therefore more inclusive.
Most importantly, however, the songs evoke a deeper range of emotions than European music traditions, which have since borrowed greatly from jazz. One last song: listen to Thelonious Monk's "Round Midnight" from a performance in 1966. The song was written in 1944 and has lost none of the wistful, longing vibe that the call and response between saxophone and Monk's own piano imparts here.
Monk's solo at 4:05 is the embodiment of the idea of careful carelessness. Sometimes his notes veer from the chord in a way that make it seem like anyone can play jazz piano, and that's the whole point of this essay.
*****
