Jazz Archives - Page 2 of 2

traditional, swing, big band, be-bop, modern

Types of jazz

Jazz was born in New Orleans. It was a fusion of folk music, hymns, marching bands and ragtime music. The earliest musicians played military instruments left over from the Civil war – ones that were easily portable for the funeral parades in which they played a prominent role. It started at the beginning of the twentieth century and was known as ‘Dixieland’ – from the name given to the southern states of the USA. Since that time, the types of jazz have diversified.

The lead instruments were normally the trumpet or cornet, the clarinet, and the trombone. The rhythm and harmonic structure was provided by guitar or banjo, a tuba or Sousaphone, and drums. When the music passed from the streets to the dance halls and drinking clubs where it flourished, this supporting function might be provided by piano and double string bass.

The essence of traditional jazz is that a lead instrument will play the melody of a tune, and then improvise on it, whilst other instruments in the ‘front line’ will play variations or paraphrases of it at the same time. This creates a polyphonic effect. which is sustained whilst other instruments take their turn to improvise their solos.

The melodies played by such groups all tended to be well known by the players, so there was no requirement for written scores.

George Lewis New Orleans Jazz Band

Mahogany Hall Stomp

Swing

This began in the 1930s and featured a strong emphasis on the rhythm section, which comprised piano, double string bass, and drums – with the occasional addition of a guitar. The front line instruments might be any combination of trumpet, saxophone, clarinet, trombone, or even violin.

Many swing bands were led by an outstanding instrumentalist, such as Benny Goodman (clarinet), Tommy Dorsey (trombone), and Artie Shaw (clarinet). They played for a mixture of dancing and concert performances, and became very popular with the spread of radio throughout the United States.

Because there were more musicians in the group, more formality in the structure of the performance was required. Music was arranged and written down, and players often supported an improvisation from the star player. However, the musicians might be playing the same tunes night after night at separate concerts, and could eventually dispense with the written scores.

Some groups also used ‘head’ arrangements: that is, patterns of playing which were improvised and then committed to memory by the entire band.

Duke Ellington Orchestra

‘Old Man Blues’ from the 1930 movie ‘Check & Double Check’

Big band jazz

As the name suggests, big bands feature multiple numbers of trumpets, trombones, and saxophones, plus piano, double bass and drums to provide rhythm and harmonic support. These large orchestra-sized combinations were popular from the 1930s up to the late 1950s when they played either for dancing or in concert performances.

What made them different from other forms of jazz is that the tunes they played were heavily arranged and elaborated – either by the bandleader or a professional arranger. The musicians played from written music, with deliberately orchestrated gaps during which a featured performer would improvise a solo.

These bands commonly supported singers, and often featured music played at loud volume, with screeching trumpets and noisy drum solos.

Woody Herman Band (1948)

‘Caledonia’ + ‘Northwest Passage’ – featuring Jimmy Raney (g), Stan Getz (ts), Al Cohn (ts), Shorty Rogers (t), Zoot Sims (ts), Serge Chaloff (bs) Don Lamond (ds)

Be-Bop

This form of modern jazz arose in the early 1940s. It was generated by musicians who had acquired a high degree of proficiency working in dance bands, but who wished to extend jazz music technically and harmonically.

It is characterized by tunes played at fast tempo, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisations based on the harmonic structure of popular songs, some of which were given entirely new melodies. The classic instrumental format was piano, bass, and drums, with two lead soloists – on trumpet and saxophone.

The rare archive material below exemplifies all these characteristics. The tune is ‘Hot House’, written by Tadd Dameron but based on the harmonies and structure of Cole Porter’s ‘All the Things You Are’. After the solos it also illustrates the feature of musicians taking alternate four bars of the song as it progresses – called ‘trading fours’.

Hot House (Tadd Dameron)

Dizzy Gillespie (t) and Charlie Parker (as) George Shearing (p) Stan Levy (ds)

Modern jazz

This term is so wide it has almost lost any meaning. It can describe just about any jazz music of the post-1945 period, which could be played in any number of styles. But it is perhaps best used to denote the products of the late 1950s and early 1960s when it entered its most fertile period of invention.

Instrumentation retained what had become the classic quintet format of piano, bass, drums, and two lead horns. And the approach to musical content remained focussed on playing a melody, then improvising on its harmonies.

However, around this time some musicians started to use modal concepts of harmony, which meant using scales rather than a sequence of chords. Two of the main exponents of this approach were Miles Davis and John Coltrane. The video that follows features one of the earliest compositions of this klind – So What. In the years that followed, both musicians went on to develop this approach much further.

So What (M. Davis)

Miles Davis (t) John Coltrane (ts) Jimmy Cobb (ds) Paul Chambers (bs)

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the state of jazz at the dawn of its second century

This book covers the writing of prominent jazz critic Gary Giddins from 1990 to 2003. There are reviews of concerts and broadcasts, record reviews, and transcripts of interviews, but mainly reprints of the column entitled Weather Bird which he wrote for the Village Voice between 1974 and 2003. His range is wide. It goes from Traditional figures such as Louis Armstrong to contemporary and avant-gard figures such as Cecil Taylor and young modernists such as Javron Jackson. In between there’s a rich appreciation of figures such as Benny Carter, Gerry Mulligan, Cassandra Wilson, Sonny Rollins, and Jimmy Heath. He even writes with generous recognition of fellow jazz critics Martin Williams and Leonard Feather.

Between the profiles and concert reviews there are features such as The Best Jazz Records of the Year. After the lapse of up to a decade, it’s interesting to see how many names you can recognise, and sad to note how few of these records are still available. His reviews of jazz concerts give a vivid impression of what it’s like to be immersed in the world of jazz, but because there are often so many people to mention, these reviews sometimes become bewildering lists of names and tune titles.

As a reviewer myself I admired the dextrous way he manages to avoid “… and the next tune … then they play … next comes …”. He certainly writes in a crisp style which is never dull:

The MJQ is almost too good. Fixed snapping rythms embellished with bells and chimes support contrapuntal melodies and compelling improvisation. Clipped, jabbing piano and vivid blues complement saturated sonorities augmented by bowed bass and accelerated vibrophone vibrato. A seductive book, assiduously reworked and enhanced for decades, transfigures popular songs into originals and vice versa.

He is amazingly well informed, and shows it in such fascinating and surprising features as a political and social history of jazz in Denmark. It’s a very instructive compilation for non-US readers. There are lots of musicians discussed who I had never heard of before, and his appreciation of the much under-rated bop vocalist Bob Dorough had me scanning the listings at Amazon in an instant.

He even finds positive things to say about people who have often struck dubious relations with the traditions of jazz such as Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and Ornette Coleman.

Longer pieces such as a book chapter essay summarising the avant gard in jazz, and his sleeve notes for the complete Columbia recordings of Bille Holiday, and his ‘roadmap’ to jazz 1945—2001 which analyses one significant recording from each year of the post-war period.

He puts the relative newcomers such as Cyrus Chestnut and Jason Moran into a rich historical context, and he’s not afraid to reveal the weaknesses in revered (some would say over-rated) figures such as Winton Marsalis.

One thing’s for sure. If you have listened to jazz of any style or flavour from the last seventy years or so, you’ll find something to interest you here. This is a tremendously comprehensive guide and a rich source of reference, as well as a stimulating critique of America’s one indigenous art form.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Gary Giddins, Weather Bird, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp.632, ISBN: 0195156072