Black Music Sunday: It’s Jazz Appreciation Month!

Jazz Appreciation Month was created in 2001 on the Smithsonian’s Nationwide Museum of American Historical past. April was chosen as a result of a whole lot of jazz greats had been born this month, together with Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Vacation, Carmen McRae, Charles Mingus, and Herbie Hancock.

This 12 months, JAM is a celebration of Ellington, as a result of 2024 marks his one hundred and twenty fifth birthday. Additionally in April, the United Nations Instructional, Scientific, and Cultural Group—usually referred as UNESCO—celebrates Worldwide Jazz Day on the thirtieth.

We’re celebrating Ellington right here at Black Music Sunday too, each this week and all through the month. However first I’ve a query for our readers, prompted by a dialog I had just lately with a youthful particular person who advised me that they “didn’t like jazz.” 

After I requested them about which musicians they did recognize, two of the highest names on their listing had been jazz musicians—simply not in one of many early genres most related to the title. So let’s discover the broad range of subgenres, or types, that make up jazz is—and hopefully you’ll discover your jazz favorites alongside the way in which.

”Black Music Sunday” is a weekly sequence highlighting all issues Black music, with over 200 tales overlaying performers, genres, historical past, and extra, every that includes its personal vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll discover some acquainted tunes and maybe an introduction to one thing new.

First, let’s reply the query: “What’s jazz?” Jazz really has a number of definitions.

From the Smithsonian:

Jazz is a form of music wherein improvisation is usually an necessary half. In most jazz performances, gamers play solos which they make up on the spot, which requires appreciable ability. There may be great selection in jazz, however most jazz may be very rhythmic, has a ahead momentum referred to as “swing,” and makes use of “bent” or “blue” notes. You’ll be able to usually hear “call–and–response” patterns in jazz, wherein one instrument, voice, or a part of the band solutions one other   

From Jazz at Lincoln Heart:

Jazz grew out of the African-American group within the flip of the twentieth century New Orleans. It’s a mingling of the musical expressions of all of the individuals who got here to america by selection or by power—individuals from Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean—in addition to these already residing in America. Jazz musicians introduced their traditions collectively (with particular emphasis on the blues, church spirituals and ragtime) in a brand new, common language. By the blues, jazz musicians confirmed that the sorrows frequent to us all could possibly be overcome with optimism and humor.

[…]

“If jazz means something,” DUKE ELLINGTON as soon as stated, “it’s freedom of expression.”

From Jazz in America:

Jazz is musical dialog: a partly deliberate and partly spontaneous musical dialogue among the many musicians who’re performing it.

[…]

Whereas performing (or practising), jazz musicians make the most of the inspiration of the second, their data of music concept, life expertise, social, political, and financial environment, technical savvy on their devices, and, particularly, all of the music (notably jazz and blues) they’ve ever heard that has influenced them (even probably the most avant-garde jazz artists replicate, not directly, the music of their musical forefathers). Jazz is a music of the current second, anchored lovingly and respectfully up to now.

And as jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock factors out, when answering the query at his Institute of Jazz, it’s “Means versus What: In jazz, it’s extra about the way in which a tune is performed, reasonably than what tune is performed.”

Although jazz is a comparatively new music style, on condition that it was birthed right here within the early 1900s, it has grown previous its roots and multiplied. In the event you seek for jazz genres, subgenres, or types, some music websites have 30 to 40 classes, whereas others have round 10. Both is far too many to cowl in the present day in a single publish, however I’ll listing some right here, and embody Ellington’s contributions to many. 

Blues

That is the first style on most lists. Although blues is a musical style in its personal proper, and predates jazz, the 2 grew to become intertwined .

Jazz and Blues notes that within the 1910s, Black music gained the curiosity of each white listeners and the music business itself, which was nonetheless white. 

In 1912 W. C. Useful grew to become the “Father of the Blues” along with his composition, Memphis Blues. His inspiration for the type got here from an African American musical observe of singing away one’s sorrows to maneuver on and up away from them.  W. C. Useful and “Ma” Rainey each recalled having heard the blues being sung by novice singers on this custom, however their capacity to translate this nation type right into a efficiency type is what introduced it to the eye of white audiences and the music business.

The Folklife At the moment weblog on the Library of Congress has an in-depth historical past written by Stephanie Corridor, entitled “The Painful Beginning of Blues and Jazz”:

Early blues recordings of [Handy’s] compositions, carried out by white musicians, are sometimes marked “foxtrot,” indicating the dance that could possibly be finished to it, and so performed sooner than was regular for the blues as performed amongst African People. That is an instance that was wildly widespread when it was printed in 1914, however not a foxtrot: “Memphis Blues,” performed by a white minstrel present group,  the Honey Boy Minstrels. The lyrics, additionally by Useful, replicate minstrel present themes, because the minstrel reveals had been nonetheless an necessary venue for African American composers to market their works in 1914. The minstrel reveals had been an issue, after all, as a result of they represented African People as caricatures, and each Black and white performers needed to carry out in blackface. However, many African American songwriters and performers selected to work for the reveals. A well-liked type of leisure from the mid nineteenth to the early twentieth century, these reveals had been an necessary a part of American leisure historical past, and in addition a supply of pervasive destructive stereotypes of African People.

RELATED STORY: Black Music Sunday: A style of the wealthy creole gumbo that’s New Orleans jazz

Ellington’s collaboration with alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, a longtime member of his band, is a pleasure to hearken to.

Hearken to the total album right here.

Ragtime 

Despite the fact that it’s a precursor, ragtime needs to be on this listing as a result of it contributed to jazz. As Dr. Douglas Henry Daniels writes for Carnegie Corridor’s “Timeline of African American Music”:

Itinerant African American musicians developed ragtime as a taking part in type of music spontaneously created whereas performing in brothels, saloons, bars, and different venues the place they performed after the Civil Struggle. Starting in 1897, ragtime grew to become accessible in a written custom when African American ragtime gamers and their white counterparts started transcribing and writing unique rags to be printed and offered as sheet music. Printed variations of ragtime simplified the improvisatory high quality of the unique type, which modified the natural character of the custom.

[…]

Tom Turpin’s “Harlem Rag” (1897) is the primary ragtime tune printed by an African American. Scott Joplin, dubbed “The King of Ragtime Writers” by his contemporaries, is the best-known composer of ragtime.

[…]

Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” was broadly carried out by pianists and instrumental ensembles and led to ragtime as a regular within the repertoire of many society bands, corresponding to Clef Membership Orchestra. James Reese Europe additionally launched the ragging type and a brand new sound to US navy bands. As chief of the all-Black 369th Infantry “Hellfighters” Band, he started ragging the melodies and making use of instrumental strategies that assorted the timbre (as in “Memphis Blues,” 1919).

Right here’s Jelly Roll Morton, taking part in Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.”

The Storyville Information web site factors out that the primary piece of music written by Duke Ellington was “Soda Fountain Rag.” He was 15 years outdated.

[Ellington] received his first job promoting peanuts at Washington Senators baseball video games. In the summertime of 1914, whereas working as a soda jerk on the Poodle Canine Cafe, he wrote his first composition, “Soda Fountain Rag” (also called the “Poodle Canine Rag”). Ellington created “Soda Fountain Rag” by ear, as a result of he had not but realized to learn and write music. “I’d play the ‘Soda Fountain Rag’ as a one-step, two-step, waltz, tango, and fox trot,” Ellington recalled. “Listeners by no means knew it was the identical piece. I used to be established as having my very own repertoire.”

Get pleasure from this 1937 efficiency of “Soda Fountain Rag!”

And right here’s a really brief clip of a a lot older Duke taking part in a couple of bars, as featured in Ken Burns’ 2001 PBS documentary, “Jazz.” Be sure you watch until the tip!

Dixieland

A lot to my shock, Ellington and his alter ego Billy Strayhorn composed some Dixieland for the soundtrack of the 1959 movie “Anatomy of a Homicide,” which went on to win three Grammy Awards. 

As Adam Scovell wrote for Little White Lies:

Although famous for an array of groundbreaking features, specifically its refreshingly reasonable portrayal of the authorized course of and its fearless inclusion of a extra detailed sexual actuality, it’s Ellington and Strayhorn’s soundtrack the place the movie is at its most bold. Arriving a 12 months after Miles Davis’ celebrated rating for Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Scaffold, Anatomy of a Homicide was the primary main Hollywood movie to function a rating by an African-American composer, in addition to being one of many earliest to make use of jazz in such a approach.

Right here’s “Completely satisfied Anatomy”:

Swing and Large Band

Earlier than we go any additional, the New Instructions in Music web site makes it clear that these phrases are usually not interchangeable:

Are swing and massive band music the identical factor?

Let’s get one factor straight instantly. Swing music is a mode, similar to conventional jazz and bebop are types of music performed by sure teams of musicians at a sure time in historical past. Types could be revived, however there may be at all times a time at which a sure type of music advanced, grew to become widespread, and ultimately developed into or was changed by one thing else.

Large band, however, is a format, and as such is has existed in jazz music from the swing period proper into the current. There are huge bands who performed swing (Rely Basie, Artie Shaw), bop huge bands (Dizzy Gillespie’s huge bands), progressive huge bands (Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington), and even fashionable/experimental huge bands (corresponding to Carla Bley’s work with giant teams).

Ellington’s “It Do not Imply a Factor (If It Ain’t Acquired That Swing)” is now a basic. Victor Cooper, who hosts KVUO’s “Tales of Requirements” sequence wrote:

Duke Ellington wrote the melody “It Don’t Imply a Factor” at Chicago’s Lincoln Tavern in August 1931 throughout intermissions. Irving Mills then wrote the lyrics and the primary recording, that includes Ivie Anderson, was launched February 2, 1932. This recording was added to the Grammy Corridor of Fame in 2008. Ellington attributed the phrase “It don’t imply a factor if it ain’t received that swing” to trumpeter Bubber Miley; Cootie Williams (Miley’s alternative) stated it was his catch phrase; Mills stated he originated the phrase when explaining to Ellington why prospects weren’t dancing. Others might have been utilizing the time period on the time as effectively.

Right here’s a 1943 efficiency!

Bebop

MasterClass affords this about bebop:

A Temporary Historical past of Bebop

Within the timeline of jazz historical past, bebop falls between huge band swing and funky jazz music.

[…]

Bebop pioneers: Within the early Forties, an progressive group of jazz musicians got down to create a brand new, tougher type of jazz. The essence of bebop was born throughout late-night jam classes with the Earl Hines Orchestra at Milton’s Playhouse in Harlem, New York. These pioneers included alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, pianists Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, drummers Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, and guitarist Charlie Christian.

RELATED STORY: Celebrating 100 years of Charlie ‘Yardbird’ Parker

Right here’s Ellington taking part in Charlie Parker’s “Ko-Ko”:

Submit Bop

This thorough definition could be discovered at Jazz Music Archives:

Submit Bop is a contemporary jazz type that continues the distinguishing traits that separate jazz from the world of pop and rock; swing rhythm and prolonged harmonies (ninth chords 11ths, altered chords, and so on). Submit Bop grew out of the Onerous Bop style in the course of the early to mid 60s as musicians corresponding to Invoice Evans, Wayne Shorter, and Herbie Hancock started to introduce extra prolonged harmonies, summary constructions and looser rhythms of their taking part in and compositions. When Hancock and Shorter joined Miles Davis’ quintet within the mid-60s, that group grew to become the right automobile for extending the boundaries of what might occur in a Submit Bop format. The Miles Davis Quintet albums, “Nefertiti” and “Sorcerer”, proceed to be pinnacles of Submit Bop composition and efficiency. Some types of free modal jazz, corresponding to Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”, are additionally a part of the Submit Bop sound. Typically known as ‘non secular jazz’, this type has made a comeback with younger musicians, particularly in London and Los Angeles.

When most individuals consider Ellington, they don’t seemingly affiliate him with John Coltrane—whether or not it’s onerous bop or publish bop. As Andy O from KUVO writes:

JAM—Celebrating the Collaboration of Duke Ellington & John Coltrane

It’s Jazz perfection in below an hour. A uncommon gem of an album if ever there was one. Many take into account it one of many best albums ever made by the principals or by anybody taking part in Jazz. The eponymous album was recorded in a single session on September 26, 1962. Ellington was 63 and Coltrane had celebrated his thirty sixth birthday three days earlier. It was launched in February 1963.

Andy O additionally consists of nice quotes from the lads themselves!

“The one time I had the privilege of working with John Coltrane was on a file date. It was a really fascinating session. We recorded a few of his tunes along with his rhythm part, and a few of mine with my rhythm part. No trouble, no sweat—- John Coltrane was a phenomenal cat. The date flowed so easily we did the entire album in a single session, and that’s uncommon. I cherished each minute of it.” (From his e book “Music is My Mistress.” by Duke Ellington)

“I used to be actually honored to have the chance of working with Duke. It was an exquisite expertise. He has set requirements I haven’t caught up with but. I’d have favored to have labored over all these numbers once more, however then I suppose the performances wouldn’t have had the identical spontaneity. They usually mightn’t have been any higher.” (John Coltrane from the liner notes of the album.)

Right here’s “Take the Coltrane”:

I nonetheless have a protracted listing of extra genres and jazz types to discover, however I’m out of house—so this will probably be continued in a while throughout this month dedicated to jazz, which first impressed this sequence in 2020. 

Be a part of me within the feedback for extra music, and extra importantly, to share your favorites.

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