GLST 490 – Day 7
The Further Evolution
of Jazz
Housekeeping Items
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Any more reactions to the part of the video we
watched on Thursday?
I’d like to start scheduling genre presentations.
Major project outlines are due on Thursday. With
final assignments and genre presentations, reference
your graphics.
Today we're going to cover big band/ swing, bebop,
the changes that jazz underwent in the 1950s, and
some of the racial and cultural political issues that
accompanied the rise of jazz to the peak of its
popularity. We're also going to discuss the reading
for this week by Burton Peretti.
Schedule for Genre Presentations
date
name
genre
Feb. 4
Wayne
Contemporary Korean
Max
Post-rock?
Mar. 4
Rochelle
Folk (early Dylan era?)
Mar. 6
Linda
Celtic
Mar. 11
Doug; Steve
Metal; TBA
Mar, 13
Kate; Tomson
TBA; house
Mar. 18
Sam
country
Mar. 20
Kim
TBA
Feb. 6
Feb. 11
Feb. 13
Feb. 18
Feb. 20
Gillian and Vanessa will be doing the journal option; who are we missing?
The Historical Context of Jazz
The reading is fairly rambling and unfocused, so
I'm going to try to draw together a few key
threads...
 When white musicians began playing ragtime and
jazz music, they tended to get the better jobs
because there was still tremendous
discrimination against blacks (initially, blacks were
not admitted to musicians' unions). As black
musicians often lived and worked in rougher
neighbourhoods and earned lower wages, they
were more likely to get involved in crime, such as
pimping and drug pushing. Pot use was also
widespread, and many succumbed, or were
temporarily sidelined, by heroine addiction.
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Hearths and Sub-Hearths for Jazz
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The Historical Context of Jazz
As early as 1906, ragtime and jazz “piano
professors” (e.g. Jelly Roll Morton) and
“territory bands” criss-crossed the United
States bringing the new music to all parts of the
country (usually in seedy venues) and inspiring
their fellow musicians, while exchanging new
ideas and tricks of the trade. Earlier, the minstrel
shows had done the same thing – prior to radio,
they created a national culture around popular
songs and music.
 The era in which ragtime and jazz was born and
evolved was a time of tremendous social,
economic, and technological change. This took a
number of forms:
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The Historical Context of Jazz
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massive waves of immigration, primarily from Europe;
the migration of blacks to the cities of the North, as
they sought the growing economic opportunities
associated with industry, and escape from the rampant
racism of the South (the collision with resistant whites
often led to race riots);
the introduction of Fordism and Taylorism (assembly-line
approaches) into the workplace;
labour and political struggles;
the growing urbanization of the nation;
the technological innovations association with
automobiles, planes, telephones, telegraphs, electric
lights, and radio;
The Historical Context of Jazz
the loss of innocence occasioned by World War I, the
first truly 'modern' war that saw horrible casualties;
 the growing social (and later economic) independence
of women who got the vote in 1920, along with a
general rebellion by young people against the puritanical
morals of earlier generations. For them, ragtime and jazz
were the perfect expression of this loosening of
constraints. Clubs, sometimes owned by gangsters,
catered to this.
 Jazz expressed the excitement of these bold times, the
general speeding up of life's pace, the embrace of the
new. The '20s became known as the “Jazz Age” or the
“Roaring Twenties.”
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Big Band/ Swing
All of these trends also produced a cultural and
political backlash, one manifestation of which was
Prohibition (passed in 1920), and another was the
abuse heaped on jazz as encouraging promiscuity and
and loose morals. One music educators' journal
described jazz as being associated with “vile
surroundings, filthy words, unmentionable dances and
obscene plays.”
 As mentioned last time, Fletcher Henderson, a black
bandleader largely originated the big band sound in
the '20s, which was then copied by the new white
bands coming up, often using the services of black
arrangers.
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Big Band/ Swing
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Just as Elvis became the
“king” of rock n' roll after
imitating the music of black
artists, Benny Goodman, a
clarinetist and son of a poor
Russian Jewish immigrant,
became the “King of Swing”
after imitating the music of
artists like Henderson.
Nonetheless, Benny's band
really swung, and he was one
of the first to make use of
black musicians.
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Big Band/ Swing
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These included singer Billie Holliday and guitarist Charlie
Christian. This was risky both for the bandleader and for
the individual artist, since these bands toured
everywhere, including in the Deep South, where race
mixing was frowned upon. Black musicians would have to
lodge separately from their white counterparts, and
sometimes encountered abuse on the bandstand.
Other prominent white big bandleaders included Artie
Shaw, and Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. Black bandleaders
included Duke Ellington and Count Basie, though there
were many more. Prominent singers and soloists included
Earl Hines, Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young,
Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, and Sarah Vaughan, etc.
Big Band/ Swing
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A significant thing about swing/ big band was that, in
the 30s and 40s, it was the dominant form of popular
music. This was the first and last time jazz achieved
this status.
As with the advent of rock n' roll (and even ragtime,
as we heard in the video), swing was seen by some as
lewd, lascivious, and encouraging sexual promiscuity
and race mixing.
Big band musicians, such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy
Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, Bud Powell, and Max
Roach would often practice and jam after their gigs
in clubs and apartments, and they began to evolve a
new music.
The Emergence of Bebop
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This new music – bebop – is seen by some as
having been a reaction to the over-commercialization of jazz by musicians who wanted to do
music that was more challenging. It is also thought
to have been a reaction to the cultural appropriation
of swing by whites. Black musicians supposedly
wanted to create a music that would be 'hard to
steal.'
Bebop was fast, it sometimes used popular songs as
a base, but it usually created scales and chords that
were quite novel in the history of jazz.
Some black jazz musicians hated it; Louis Armstrong
called it “Chinese music.”
The Emergence of Bebop
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Bebop was
more focused on small combos
its tempo was faster and the mood
more
agitated
it rarely used clarinet and rhythm guitar
there was a stronger emphasis on
instrumental virtuousity
arrangements were more spontaneous (as
opposed to charted)
melodies, harmonies and rhythms were more
complex
piano playing was less regularized and
drumming was not restricted to 'timekeeping.'
Bebop
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Though first developed in 1939-40, it was not
recorded until 1944-45 because a musicians' strike
between 1942 and 1944 meant that no records
involving jazz musicians were made for over two
years. Once that was lifted, bebop recordings began
to be made.
“hipster” style
popularized by
Dizzy Gillespie
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The ‘Dance’ of Black and White Culture
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Blacks and whites in America had a very uneasy relationship
with one another.
On the one hand, whites tended to (want to) keep blacks in
their “place,” but on the other hand, they were fascinated by
aspects of their music, culture, dance, and approach to life
and sexuality.
Black culture represented the “shadow” side of white
culture, all those things that were rather repressed.
For blacks, music represented one of the few routes out of
poverty and an acceptable pursuit in the eyes of white
society. They also infused African traditions with European
music theory to produce something truly new.
This ‘something new’ has been called the “classical music” of
America, though the musical mandarins didn’t notice it right
under their noses.