a Tribute for Jazz

2006-07-17T01:37:00.000-07:00

History of Jazz Time Line

1926 - Kansas City, Missouri becomes the wildest city in America (a perfect match for Jazz) when Tom "Boss" Pendergast (the Democratic boss of Jackson county) begins his reign over the city.

1926 - In September, Jelly Roll Morton cuts his first band recordings with his Red Hot Peppers group. Jelly Roll had acquired Lester and Walter Montrose as publishers. Notable songs are "Deep Creek", "The Pearls", "Wolverine Blues", "Dead Man Blues" and King Oliver's "Doctor Jazz".

1926 - Duke Ellington and his band record "East St Louis Toodle-o" on November 29. This is Ellington's first signature song and his first important original composition.

1926 - On December 9, the Ben Pollack Band with Benny Goodman on clarinet records "Deed I Do"/"He's the Last Word" for Victor. It is Benny Goodman's recording debut.

1926 - On the evening of December 9, Benny Goodman's father dies at the corner of Madison and Kostner streets in Chicago after being struck by a speeding auto. He never got to hear Benny's first recording done that very same day.

1931 - Duke Ellington writes "Dreamy Blues" (aka "Mood Indigo") in 15 minutes while waiting for his mother to cook dinner. When Duke recorded "Mood Indigo", the melody was stated by muted trumpet, muted trombone and clarinet. Sam Nanton played the highest part on the trombone and Barney Bigard played the lowest part on the clarinet. This reversal of traditional roles sounded eerie and compeling. "Mood Indigo" was Ellington's first big hit.

1933 - On June 2, the morning of Duke Ellington's departure for Europe on the SS Olympic, John Hammond takes a portable phonograph to Ellington as a bon voyage present. Ellington declines. He does not like Hammond and does not need his presents or advice.

1933 - The Ellington Band goes to Europe. Their reception in England is very good. The fans love Ellington and know most of the band members by name. Ellington discovers that he is considered a significant composer in London.

1933 - Ellington records Solitude and Sophisticated Lady.

1933 - Coleman Hawkins battles Kansas City tenor players Herschel Evans, Ben Webster and Lester Young at the Cherry Blossom at Twelfth Street and Vine in Kansas City, Mo. According to pianist Mary Lou Williams, Hawkins lost this battle because of Young's unconventional style.

1933 - On the morning of November 27, John Hammond records two tunes with Broadway star Ethel Waters. After this, he brings his new discovery Billie Holiday into the same studio for Waters to hear. Waters is not impressed, but that will not deter Hammond or Holiday.

1933 - Most musicians, even Benny Goodman, are having a tough time because of the depression. Goodman heads a pickup band that has been organized by John Hammond. The band includes Jack Teagarden, Gene Krupa and Joe Sullivan. They record "Ain'tcha Glad"/"I've Got a Right to Sing the Blues" for British Columbia. It is Benny's first record as a bandleader. It sells 5000 copies.

1960 - Over six days in October, Coltrane records material for three albums. The first one released, My Favorite Things, features his recorded debut on the soprano saxophone. "My Favorite Things," a highly modal piece, will become a Jazz favorite. Coltrane's quartet on this date includes pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Steve Davis, and drummer Elvin Jones.

1960 - Two other albums recorded by Coltrane during these marathon October sessions were Coltrane's Sound and Coltrane Plays The Blues.

1960 - Coltrane's The Avant-Garde, which delves into Free Jazz, was also released during 1960.
1960 - Coltrane also becomes interested in and influenced by Ornette Coleman. He records Coleman's "The Invisible".

1961 - In May, Coltrane records his last Atlantic record: Ole. Eric Dolphy, who joined Coltrane's band in 1961, appears under the pseudonym "George Lane."

1961 - Coltrane records Impressions and Live at the Village Vanguard (Impulse!) during 1961 Vanguard performances. The personnel on Impressions, released in November, include Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, McCoy Tyner on piano, Reggie Workman and Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. The title tune is modal, but other pieces, such as "India," approach Free Jazz.

1961 - During May and June, Coltrane records Africa/Brass (Impulse!) with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Reggie Workman, and drummer Elvin Jones. This record explores dark sounds and textures, with explicit references to African music.

1961 - After Reggie Workman leaves the band, Coltrane forms his classic quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones.

1962 - John Coltrane records Coltrane (Impulse!) in April and June with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums.

1962 - Coltrane's classic quartet records Ballads, a strikingly softer, quieter, and simpler album than his recent high-energy work.

1962 - Coltrane records a number of live albums, including Live At Birdland (Charly) and Bye Bye Blackbird (OJC).

Jazz Music

2006-07-17T01:18:00.000-07:00

This Period we are Featuring the Evolution of Jazz

Jazz started out with a mixture of many types of music. It's roots date back to the 1880's with African origins. Jazz combines elements of African music with elements of Western European music. The birthplace of that combination, which is Jazz, is said to be New Orleans. One theory as to why New Orleans is the birthplace is contributed to the black Creole subculture.The Creoles were originally from the West Indies and lived under the Spanish and French rule in Louisiana. They became free Americans under the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The Creoles spoke Spanish and French and lived in the high society of the French district in New Orleans. The Creoles took pride in their formal knowledge of the Western European music and their social and cultural values that classified them as upper class.

Their music focused on sight-readings and correct performances for they played at the Opera House and chamber ensembles.On the West Side of New Orleans live the uneducated, culturally and economically poor American blacks. Their music was based on simple melodies and complex cross-rhythms mixed in with verbal slurs, vibrato, syncopated rhythms, and "blues notes". The songs they sang were mostly spiritual or sung to pass the time of hardship and hard labor. The songs were actually encouraged because the workers seem to work better with the soothing effects of the music. Their music was characterized more by memorization and improvisation, and not of formal training.In 1894, the segregation laws were in effect in New Orleans, which forced the upper class Creoles to live on the West Side with the poor, uneducated American blacks. The mixture of the two styles of music and two cultures clashed and created the start of Jazz.Jazz changed and new forms were developed often. Between the 1890 and the 1900, "Ragtime" and the Blues was the new craze. New Orleans seemed to be the Mecca of new artists and sounds that included everything including but not limited to brass band, Ragtime, marches, pop, dances, and Blues. The music spread to the north and west through migrating travelers and records. Jazz really came into effect by the 1920's when the whites adapted and imitated it.

Some of the leaders of the popular Jazz bands include Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton. These bands played in a style that would come to be known as Dixieland.Dancing became the latest craze during the late 30's. Many people wanted to shake off the depression by dancing. So Jazz music developed into new types of music to dance to. By the 1940's Jazz has developed into many styles of music. There were Bop, Traditional, Swing, Dixieland, and Latin influences of Jazz. Jazz has a variety of forms, even today. Acid Jazz is the most recent form of Jazz. It is becoming more and more popular these days. Jazz has such a great mixture of rhythm and beats that Jazz will never cease to exist. To view great photographs and listen to some great Jazz songs from the golden age of Jazz visit the American Memory Library of Congress.

Jazz Music

2006-07-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

Bossa Nova Thriving in Rio

Since migrating from Brazil to America’s jazz scene in the 60s, bossa nova has been one of my favorite styles. I bought my first bossa LP in 1962, “Jazz Samba,” featuring tenor Stan Getz and guitarist Charlie Byrd playing compositions by innovators such as Antonio Carlos Jobim (pictured above) and Joao Gilberto. “Desafinado” was the big hit and the album skyrocketed to popularity, becoming one of the best sellers in jazz history.
This was followed in 1964 with the collaboration between Getz and Brazilian singer Astrud Gilberto on ”Getz/Gilberto,” which featured Jobim’s legendary “Girl From Ipanema,” voted 64s best jazz performance.

From that time on bossa nova’s popularity was established, and today top musicians include bossa songs regularly in their repertoire. Vocalists Diana Krall and Tierney Sutton, along with guitarists John Pizzarelli, for example, feature bossa nova compositions in recent releases.
Still performing today, Sergio Mendes emerged in the 60s with his group Brazil 66, performing pop versions of bossa with a lineup of eight musicians and singers, further pushing the popularity of the music. In fact, a celebration of the group’s 40th anniversary is slated this year.
This style, pioneered by Jobim and Gilberto, evolved from the traditional Brazilian samba. In the late 50s, it is said, when the two heard “cool jazz” from the U.S., they adapted it to the gentler samba rhythm, syncopated on the guitar.

This new music–romantic, reflective, relaxed–projected Rio’s laid back beach life style. To illustrate: Listen to the singer longingly lament in “Girl from Ipanema,”...each day when she walks to the sea, she looks straight ahead but not at me.” Or in “Corcovado,” the vocalist passionately exults: “When finding you I knew what is happiness.” This is music from the heart, not the intellect.

Today Jobim is considered a near saint in Rio. His nickname is Tom (pronounced “Tone”), and, hear this, Rio’s airport is named the Tom Jobim International Airport. (How about having a Charlie Parker Airport in Kansas City?) Today the best place in Rio to hear bossa nova and to explore everything bossa nova is on a two-block stretch on Rua de Morais, a short walk up from Ipanema Beach. We were in Rio for two days before boarding a cruise ship, and we wanted to check out the bossa spots. We consulted travel guides and asked the concierge, so my wife and I knew where we were going.
First stop, Vinicius, a restaurant and club named for Jobim’s close friend and fellow musician, Vinicius de Morais. (The street also takes his name.) He's the one who wrote the lyrics for “Girl From Ipanema.”

We decided to have dinner before the music. Nothing fancy, the dining room is on ground level with the club venue upstairs. The traditional Brazilian food was good, but looking out across the street we saw a flood light on the wall of a bar, Garota de Ipanema. The beam lit up a mural-sized painting of sheet music for the lyrics and score of “Girl From Ipanema”–written large for all to see. Our waiter said that the young Jobim and Morais, sitting at an outside table, were inspired to compose the song as they observed a beautiful, bikini-clad girl walk by each day. Sipping their drinks, they probably sighed “a-a-ah!”
At 9:30, the first show started. Vinicius features local singers and musicians. Andre Goncalves, vocalist/guitarist, got his groove going immediately and had us swaying in our seats with his soft, dreamy bossa style. We loved the songs but many were new to me, but my ears did perk up on “One Note Samba.”

Midway during the set, he brought on singer Andrea Montezuma. Her voice was beautiful in the husky Astrud Gilberto-style. And, of course, she did sing that Ipanema song everyone was waiting for. The crowd was mostly “cariocas” (the nickname for Rio residents), along with a bevy of tourists.
After the set, I cornered the very affable Goncalves who spoke English well. He says he plays two times a week at Vinicius. On Fridays he appears with Montezuma; on Sundays he performs alone. Others fill out the week's schedule. On weekends, the club brings in big names for 11 p.m. shows.

Mostly Goncalves concentrates on the classics. “At Vinicius,” he says, “they ask us to play only bossa nova, but sometimes I play different composers such as Ivan Lins, Caetano Velosa and Djavan.” He says the music of those three “is a very good example of MPB (Music Popular Brasileira), a contemporary type still very much influenced by the samba. Gilberto Gil and Chico Buarque are popular in this genre. Goncalves defines MFB as a “combination between a strong harmony, a sweet melody and an unforgettable poem.”
With bossa nova, the old songs and artists are still the most popular. "It’s impossible [for the young] to break this wall put up by the old,” he says. “It sometimes seems that there will never be a chance for a new Tom Jobim.” Goncalves loves the genre. He sums up his feelings: “Bossa nova is not only a music style, because it represents our way of life, feelings and is a very special way to compose about love.”

Two blocks up the street is Toca do Vinicius where one can find practically every bossa recording in existence. As well, the store is a museum, containing bossa nova memorabilia from over the years–books, sheet music, artefacts that detail the history of the music. For aficionados, it is certainly a place to browse for half an hour and maybe pickup a hard-to-get recording.
Another night club was recommended to us, La Mistura Fina, which schedules bossa nova along with jazz and MPB. As with Vinicius, there is a ground floor restaurant with a showroom on the top. The night we were there a fine neo-bop pianist was playing in the bar opposite the dining room.

Upstairs we went to a show featuring popular singer-guitarist Jorge Simas and his Quinta. He led a large group consisting of a clarinetist, mandolin player and two percussionists. Simas played guitar and sang pleasantly in typical bossa nova manner, but the group on occasion revved things up and really jammed with the horn, guitars and percussion going all out–bossa R and B or samba rock, you might say. Simas brought in others to sing along with him. The audience loved it. All together a good show.
The next morning, it was time to board ship. It was bye, bye Brazil–where bossa nova still thrives.

Jazz Music

2006-07-16T23:59:00.000-07:00

Jazz History

Jazz is the art of expression set to music! Jazz is said to be the fundamental rhythms of human life and man’s contemporary reassessment of his traditional values. Volumes have been written on the origins of jazz based on black American life-styles. The early influences of tribal drums and the development of gospel, blues and field hollers seems to point out that jazz has to do with human survival and the expression of life.

The origin of the word "jazz" is most often traced back to a vulgar term used for sexual acts. Some of the early sounds of jazz where associated with whore houses and "ladies of ill repute." However, the meaning of jazz soon became a musical art form, whether under composition guidelines or improvisation, jazz reflected spontaneous melodic phrasing.
Those who play jazz have often expressed the feelings that jazz should remain undefined, jazz should be felt. "If you gotta ask, you’ll never know" ---Louis Armstrong.

The standard legend about jazz is that it was conceived in New Orleans and moved up the Mississippi River to Memphis, St. Louis and finally Chicago. Of course that seems to be the history of what we now refer to as jazz, however, the influences of what led to those early New Orleans sounds goes back to tribal African drum beats and European musical structures.
"Jazz, like any artistic phenomenon, represents the sum of an addition. The factors of this addition are, to my mind, African music, French and American music and folklore." ---Robert Goffin, 1934.

In reviewing the background of jazz one can not overlook the evaluation over the decades and the fact that jazz spanned many musical forms such as spirituals, cakewalks, ragtime and the blues. Around 1891 a New Orleans barber named Buddy Bolden reputedly pitcked up his cornet and blew the first stammering notes of jazz, thereby unconsciously breaking with several centuries of musical tradition. A half-century later, jazz, America’s great contribution to music, crossed the threshold of the universities and became seriously, even religiously considered.
Jazz functions as popular art and has enjoyed periods of fairly widespread public response, in the "jazz age" of the 1920s, in the swing era of the late 1930s and in the peak popularity of modern jazz in the late 1950s. Beginning in the 20s and continuing well into the 30s, it was common to apply the word "jazz" rather indiscriminately, melodically or tonally. Thus George Gershwin was called a jazz composer. For Gershwin’s concert work he was acclaimed to have made a respectable art form out of jazz. Somewhat similarly, Paul Whiteman, playing jazz-influenced dance music, was billed as the King of Jazz. Perhaps the broader definition of jazz, such as the one that would include the blues influence as well as those who shared our understanding of the art form, even if they did not perform it, would be the most useful historical approach.

"It has always intrigued me, that people like Ma Rainey, Al Jolson and Guy Lombardo are considered a part of jazz history, but they are!" ---Les Paul, 1994.
The influence and development of the blues can not be over looked when discussing the early years of jazz.
"The blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Blues music is not. With all its so called blue notes and overtones of sadness, blues music of its very nature and function is nothing if not a form of diversion." ---Albert Murray.

Those feelings as expression of blues music fits very comfortably with the strains and phrases of jazz. Today, Bessie Smith is considered primarily a blues singers, however in the 1920s, she was most often referred to as a jazz singer. An ability to play the blues has been a requisite of all jazz musicians, who on first meeting one another or when taking part in a jam session, will often use the blues framework for improving. Blues, stemming from rural areas of the deep South, has a history largely independent of jazz. Exponents of blues usually accompanied themselves on guitar, piano or harmonica or were supported by small groups who often played unconventional or homemade instruments.
A number of the early jazz performers relied on the blues for more than the chord exchanged. Many of these jazz musicians used the blues for the driving force of their musical emotions, such as the work of Don Redman, Stuff Smith, Ma Rainey and the early works of Louis Armstrong and Benny Carter.

Jazz Music