From Jazz to Jazz Classics: 1926–1936
From Jazz to “Jazz Classics.”—For many persons, “classic” is a high-brow stick with which to spank so-called “low brow” music, because traditional music is more grown-up and authoritative. But let us listen to what may be said from the side of jazz in self-defense; and then realize, perhaps, that the important distinction is not between jazz and classical music but between the good, mediocre and bad of both varieties. Jazz has its classics; and the classical tradition has its second, third and fourth raters. By such standards a fine bit of writing or playing in the popular idiom and forms should outrate a mediocre attempt in the “classical” forms.
Louis Armstrong puts the case for good jazz plainly and sensibly. “Swing musicians worked hard for a quarter of a century, and against odds, to bring swing to the top; and swing musicians today have their work cut out for them to carry their art forward, to develop swing music into a broad and rich American music…. The way I look at swing music as it stands today is that it is America’s second big bid to bring forth a worthwhile music of its own. The first big attempt was in the early days of jazz. We can now look back and see the mistakes and see about where jazz got side-tracked. We won’t have many excuses to make if we let today’s swing music go the same way. Jazz lost its originality and freshness and stopped growing. It stopped early. Jazz went down the easiest road where the big money was…. The writers of jazz have not “developed jazz music much during all these years, although a few men must be given credit. But for the most part, the new songs that have been coming out of ‘Tin Pan Alley,’ which is Broadway’s music publishing district, are really not new at all. They are the same old melodies and rhythms just twisted around in a different way and with different words. Coarse beats or sticky-sweet phrases, and all that, year after year. It makes a good musician tired, for they are the very ones who are doing most to break up these worn-out patterns. The reason swing musicians insist upon calling their music ‘swing music’ is because they know how different it is from the stale brand of jazz they’ve got so sick of hearing. But in the early days, when jazz was born, jazz wasn’t that way at all.”
So what we have said and quoted in defense and praise of jazz is by no means meant for the cheap low-browed jazz that is manufactured for passing popular consumption. But imbedded in this mass of mediocrity and trash are many compositions and versions of compositions that may justly be styled “jazz classics.” One version of a song or dance tune may be cheap, trite and stereotyped and another version distinguished, original and highly musical. It depends on who “arranges” or recomposes it, and also upon who plays it. Some clownish rendition of “It Don’t Mean a Thing” or crooner’s wail of “Stormy Weather” will be musical trash, while an Ethel Waters or a Duke Ellington version must really be rated a “jazz classic,” both for technical musicianship and for typically racial or “pure” style. It may take the connoisseur or expert to point it out to us, but after that, the difference is easily recognized.
Jazz has now developed its serious devotees and critics. They collect records, classify periods of style, trace developments of new technique, have their critical quarrels over favorites, have their special journals and their occasional “Jazz Recitals.” Thus the nameless musical foundling of the slums and dance halls has, within less than a decade, acquired musical respectability, a pedigree, and such standing in serious musical circles as in previous musical history no popular music has ever received. Later we shall quote several of the most authoritative jazz critics,—Henri Prunieres and Robert Goffin of Paris, Constant Lambert, the English composer. In passing, it will be enough to refer to Hugues Panassie’s book,—“Le Jazz Hot,”—recently translated, which traces and analyzes jazz like a combined encyclopedia and hall-marking guild register.
The Title.—However, the most convincing praise of jazz will not come from the “jazz fans,” but must come from the ranks of the orthodox musicians. And it is from such sources that jazz of the better sort has received great consideration. Kreisler, Rachmaninoff, Koussevitzky and Stokowski are certainly names authoritative enough. “jazz,” says Serge Koussevitzky, famous conductor of the Boston Symphony, “is an important contribution to modern musical literature. It has an epochal significance—it is not superficial, it is fundamental. Jazz comes from the soil, where all music has its beginning.” And Leopold Stokowski, of the Philadelphia Orchestra, says more pointedly: “Jazz has come to stay because it is an expression of the times, of the breathless, energetic, super-active times in which we are living,—it is useless to fight against it…. Already its new vigor, its new vitality is beginning to manifest itself…. America’s contribution to the music of the past will have the same revivifying effect as the injection of new, and in the larger sense, vulgar blood into dying aristocracy. Music will then be vulgarized in the best sense of the word, and will enter more and more into the daily lives of people…. The Negro musicians of America are playing a great part in this change. They have an open mind and unbiased outlook. They are not hampered by conventions or traditions, and with their new ideas, their constant experiment, they are causing new blood to flow in the veins of music. The jazz players make their instruments do entirely new things, things finished musicians are taught to avoid. They are pathfinders into new realms.”
We have to reckon with two types of worthwhile jazz, as distinguished from the trashy variety. First that which, rising from the level of ordinary popular music, usually in the limited dance and song-ballad forms, achieves creative musical excellence. This we may call the “jazz classic;” and will consider it in this chapter. The other is that type of music which successfully transposes the elements of folk music, in this case jazz idioms, to the more sophisticated and traditional musical forms. This latter type has become known as “classical jazz,” and will be considered in due course. Both the jazz classic and classical jazz are examples of the serious possibilities of the Negro’s music, and both have been vital contributions to the new modernistic music of our time.
Jazz Contributions,—Jazz has thus seriously influenced modern music in general. It has educated the general musical ear to subtler rhythms, unfinished and closer harmonies, and unusual cadences and tone qualities. It has also introduced new systems of harmony, new instrumental techniques, novel instrumental combinations, and when fully developed, may lead to a radically new type of orchestra and orchestration. Thus jazz has been a sort of shock troop advance, which the regular line advance of modernistic music has intrenched and consolidated. In accounting for its originality and force, Mr. Stokowski has already referred to the Negro jazz musician’s freedom from the shackles of musical conventionality. But he could also have mentioned another factor. Much of the musical superiority and force of jazz comes from the fact that the men who play it create it. In the typical Negro jazz band, the musicians compose as a group under the leadership of a conductor who is also a composer or at least an arranger. The music comes alive from the activity of the group, like folk-music originally does, instead of being a mere piece of musical execution. There is the story that Rossini, the great Italian composer, often composed in bed, and that when a manuscript slipped down to the floor on the wall-side, he would think up another melody because it was easier than picking up the strayed manuscript. Improvising is an essential trait of the genuine jazz musician: with the assurance that “there is plenty more where it came from,” he pours his music out with a fervor and freshness that is unique and irresistible. This titanic originality of the jazz orchestras has only to be harnessed and seriously guided to carry jazz to new conquests.
The Jazz Orchestra.—With all the changes of style and all the feverish experimenting, the jazz orchestra has remained relatively stable in its makeup. Usually a combination of from eleven to fourteen musicians, it is composed usually of three trumpets, two or three trombones, three or four saxophones, one or two clarinets, interchangeable with bassoon, a bass-fiddle, guitar, violin or banjo, and the two basic instruments, a piano and the “traps” or drums and percussion. The conductor traditionally is the pianist, though not always, and usually plays or alternates between conducting “in front” or at the piano, although more and more, the vogue is calling for the dangerous theatricality of the virtuoso or stunt conductor. Usually the Negro combinations are smaller and less formally organized than the white jazz orchestras, and get similar or greater effects with fewer musicians.
Of course, their number is legion. Even to mention the outstanding organizations is difficult; but no jazz fan would omit Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Luis Russell, Claude Hopkins, “Fats” Waller, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Don Redman, Jimmy Lunceford or Duke Ellington from the list of great Negro jazz combinations. Similarly, experts single out among the great white jazz groups, the 1926 orchestra of Jean Goldkette, Paul Whiteman’s early aggregation, Ben Pollack’s, Red Nichols’, Ted Lewis, the Casa Loma orchestra, Jimmy Dorsey and finally Bennie Goodman. Many a popular and lucrative jazz combination is omitted, but they are the vendors of diluted and hybrid jazz, which the experts frown on as mere popular amusement music lacking real jazz character and distinction.
And when it finally comes to the blue ribbon of the fraternity, Ellington’s band has usually received the expert’s choice, although for a racier taste, Louis Armstrong has always had his special praise and rating. The Continental critics, with the advantage perhaps of distance, always argue Ellington versus Armstrong warmly, generally to conclude that Armstrong is the most phenomenal jazz player of today but that Duke Ellington is the greatest jazz composer.
Duke Ellington.—Constant Lambert, himself a modern composer of note and one who has used jazz idioms in his own compositions like the symphonic suite “The Rio Grande,” has this to say about jazz in general and Ellington and Armstrong in particular:
An artist like Louis Armstrong, who is one of the most remarkable virtuosi of the present day, enthralls us at first hearing, but after a few records one realizes that all his improvisations are based on the same restricted circle of ideas…. The best records of Duke Ellington, on the other hand, can be listened to again and again because they are not just decorations of a familiar shape but a new arrangement of shapes. Ellington, in fact, is a real composer, the first jazz composer of distinction, and the first Negro composer of distinction. His works, apart from a few minor details, are not left to the caprice or ear of the instrumentalist; they are scored and written out … and the best American records of his music may be taken definitively like a full score, and they are only jazz records worth studying for their form as well as their texture. Ellington, himself bring an executant of second rank, has probably not been tempted to interrupt the continuity of his texture with bravura passages for the piano, and although his instrumentalists are of the finest quality, their solos are rarely demonstrations of virtuosity for its own sake.
The real interest of Ellington’s records lies not so much in their color, brilliant though it may be, as in the amazingly skillful proportions in which the color is used. I do not only mean skillful as compared with other jazz composers, but as compared with so-called high-brow composers. I know of nothing in Ravel so dextrous in treatment as the varied solos in the middle of the ebullient “Hot and Bothered!” and nothing in Stravinsky more dynamic than the final section. The combination of themes at this moment is one of the most ingenious pieces of writing in modern music. It is not a question, either, of setting two rhythmic patterns working against each other in the mathematical Aaron Copland manner—it is genuine melodic and rhythmic counterpoint which, to use an old-fashioned phrase, “fits perfectly.”…
He has crystallized the popular music of our time and set up a standard by which we may judge not only other jazz composers, but also those high-brow composers, whether American or European, who indulge in what is roughly known as “symphonic jazz.”
Extravagant and eccentric as such praise might seem coming from only a single voice, however distinguished, it becomes something quite different when echoed here and there independently by the most competent European and American critics and composers. On such a basis, I think we must agree that in addition to being one of the great exponents of pure jazz, Duke Ellington is the pioneer of super-jazz and one of the persons most likely to create the classical jazz toward which so many are striving. He plans a symphonic suite and an African opera, both of which will prove a test of his ability to carry native jazz through to this higher level. Many of his more spectacular competitors have changed their style repeatedly, proof of musical versatility, but Ellington’s has developed more solid maturity, especially as shown by the lately published four-part “Reminiscing in Tempo.” Critics had said previously: “His one attempt at a larger form, the two-part ‘Creole Rhapsody’ is not wholly successful, although it does develop and interweave a larger number of themes than usual in his work. It is here that Ellington has most to learn.” The later record proves that he has learned or is learning. So one can agree with Robert Goffin that “the technique of jazz production has been rationalized by Ellington” and that “he has gradually placed intuitive music under control.”
Jazz has been as fickle a medium as acting, and but for recording would have vanished in thin air. Its most extraordinary achievement, as has been said, is “the dissociation of interpretation from a stenographic execution of a work,” to “improvise upon a given rhythmic theme with changes of tone, combinations of voices and unexpected counterpoints (spontaneous interpolations).” Someone had to devise a technique for harnessing this shooting geyser, taming this wild well. R. D. Darrell’s tribute to Ellington is probably an anticipation of what the future critics will judge. He says:
“The larger works of Gershwin, the experiments of Copland and other serious composers are attempts with new symphonic forms stemming from jazz but not of it. Not forgetting a few virtuoso or improvisatory solos (by Zez Confrey, V. Venuti and Lang, Jimmie Johnson and others), one can truthfully say that a purely instrumental school of jazz has never grown beyond the embryonic stage … Ellington’s compositions gravitate naturally toward two types, the strongly rhythmed pure dance pieces (‘Birmingham Breakdown,’ ‘Jubilee Stomp,’ ‘New Orleans Low Down,’ ‘Stevedore Stomp’) or the slower paced lyrical pieces with less forcefully rhythmed dance bass (‘Mood Indigo,’ ‘Take it Easy,’ ‘Awful Sad,’ ‘Mystery Son,’ etc.) Occasionally the two are combined with tremendous effectiveness, as in the ‘East St. Louis Toodle-O,’ ‘Old Man Blues,’ or ‘Rocking in Rhythm.’ The most striking characteristic of all his works, and the one that stamps them as ineradicably his own, is the individuality and unity of style that weld composition, orchestration and performance into one inseparable whole…. Within an Ellington composition there is a similar unity of style of the essential musical elements of melody, rhythm, harmony, color, and form. Unlike most jazz writers, Ellington never concentrates undue attention on rhythm alone…. Delightful and tricky rhythmic effects are never introduced for sensational purposes, rather they are developed and combined with others as logical part and parcel of the whole work…. Harmonically Ellington is apt and subtle, rather than obvious and striking, and in the exploitation of new tone and coloring, he has proceeded further than any other composer—popular or serious, of today.”
Such praise would be too much if it were entirely true of Ellington (as a wise caution spoken by the same critic will show in a moment), or if it were not partly true of many other of the great jazz composers and “arrangers” like Don Redman, Bennie Carter, Cy Olliver, in their best but often too fragmentary passages. It is quoted as much in praise of jazz and its correct appreciation as in praise of Ellington. Jazz is in constant danger from the commercialization of the money-changers who exploit it and the vulgarization of the immense public that consumes it.
Thus the word of caution, which Darrell offers to Ellington, ought to be stressed for all who come into the dangerous zone of commercially controlled popular music. Darrell says: “He may betray his uniqueness for popularity, be brought down to the level of orthodox dance music, lose his secure footing and intellectual grasp in the delusion of grandeur. Most of his commercial work evidences just such lapses. But he has given us, and I am confident will give us again (Darrell wrote this in 1932), more than a few moments of the purest, the most sensitive revelations of feeling in music today.” All this is the common enemy of the jazz musician, white and black. But the artistic loss would be irreparable for the Negro musician, whose spirit-child jazz is, and whose artistic vindication its sound development must be. If these musicians can accomplish what they have, with commercial chains on and hampered by the strait-jacket of popular dance tempo and pattern, they must seek to break through these limitations or else yield the future possibilities of jazz to the modernistic musicians who are trying “symphonic” jazz There is enough genius, however, in the ranks of the professional jazz musicians to do the job independently.
The present vogue of “swing music,” and the development of groups like the “Hot Clubs” for the serious study and support of undiluted jazz, true to the Negro idiom, comes at a strategic time. Already this support has rejuvenated the old guard veterans like Ellington, Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Noble Sissle, Wm. (“Fats”) Waller, Earl Hines, “Chick” Webb, and Don Redman, who are returning to their original traditions. They must try to minimize the empty tricks of eccentric jazz on the one hand and thus get over the minstrel dangers of the “scat period” of popular jazz, and on the other, avoid the musical shallows of diluted, sentimental “sweet jazz,” still popular but by the testimony of every expert neither racially or musically very significant. Behind the “old guard” organizations mentioned stand the promising younger Negro bands: Luis Russell’s merger with Louis Armstrong, the Claude Hopkins’ Orchestra, the Blue Rhythm group of “Lucky” Millinder, and most especially the band of Jimmie Lunceford, that is composed almost exclusively of musicians of high technical and cultural training. Shoulder to shoulder with these exponents of “real” jazz stand such white musical organizations as the orchestras of “Red” Nichols, “Red” Norvo, the Dorsey Brothers, and the now favorite “swing” group of Bennie Goodman, who, by the way, uses principally Fletcher Henderson’s arrangements, and has in his group the sensational young Negro jazz pianist, Teddy Wilson.
What is a “jazz classic?” Can jazz or any popular music produce classics? What exceptional recognition and influence did Negro jazz receive between 1926 and 1936? What contributions has jazz made to modernistic music? To modern orchestration and harmony? What is the difference between “sweet jazz” and “hot jazz?” Which is more racial? Which has the widest vogue today? What are the contributions of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson to serious jazz? Which school of jazz did Paul Whiteman follow? Is the influence of the Gershwin-Whiteman school of jazz growing or on the wane? What is the relation of “jazz” and so called “swing music?” Does the vogue of “swing” represent a come-back for the truly Negro idioms of jazz? What is the present standing of jazz among competent musicians and critics?
Black Beauty (on Ellington)—“Disques,” June, 1932. Ferguson, Otis: The Spirit of Jazz—New Republic, Vol. 89—Dec. 30, 1936.
Knowlton, Don: The Anatomy of Jazz—Harpers Magazine, 1926. Lambert, Constant: Music Hot—The Spirit of Jazz—pp. 192–214. For adverse criticism of Jazz: see Hare: Negro Musicians and Their Music: pp. 131–157. Also Literary Digest, 105:20—April 12, 1930.
Record Illustrations: “Jazz classics”
Duke Ellington and Orchestra: “Awful Sad”—Brunswick 6805; “Black and Tan Fantasy”—Victor 24861; “Black Beauty”—Victor 21580 and 21137; “Creole Love Call”—Victor 24861; “Creole Rhapsody”—Victor 36049; “East St. Louis Toodle-O”—Victor 21703; “Hot and Bothered”—Okeh 8623; “It Don’t Mean a Thing”—Brunswick 6265; “The Mooche”—Okeh 8623; “Mood Indigo”—Victor 24486; “Rockin’ in Rhythm”—Brunswick 6038; “Reminiscing in Tempo”—Brunswick 7546/47; “Solitude”—Victor 24755; “Sophisticated Lady”—Brunswick 6600; “Swanee Rhapsody”—Brunswick 6288; “Take It Easy”—Brunswick 6803.
Ellington’s Orchestra with Jazz Solos: “Clarinet Lament,” (Barney Bigard) and “Echoes of Harlem” (Cootie Williams)—Brunswick 7750; “Trumpet in Spades” (Rex Stewart) and “Yearning for Love” (Lawrence Brown)—Brunswick 7752.
Louis Armstrong and Orchestra: “Melancholy Blues”—Okeh 8519; “St. James Infirmary Blues”—Okeh 8657; “Can’t Give You Anything but Love”—Okeh 8669; “Ain’t Misbehavin,”—Okeh 8174; “Chinatown”—Okeh 41538; “Mahogany Hall Stomp” (Spencer Williams)—Victor 24232; “Body and Soul” and “Shine”—Okeh 41468; “I Got Rhythm”—Okeh 41534; “Star Dust”—Okeh 41584; “Sweet Sue”—Victor 24321; “I’m in the Mood for Love”—Decca 579; “Lazy River”—Okeh 41541.
Fletcher Henderson and Orchestra: “Shoe Shine Boy”—Victor 25375; “Someone Stole Gabriel’s Horn”—Decca 3563; “Fidgety Feet”—Brunswick 500321; “Riffin,”—Victor 25339; “Sugar Foot Stomp”—Brunswick 500153 and Victor 22721.
Don Redman and Orchestra: “Chant of the Weeds”—Brunswick 500160; “Shuffle your Feet”—Brunswick 6520; “I Got Rhythm”—Brunswick 500194.
Cab Calloway and Orchestra: “Scat Song” and “Cabin in the Cotton”—Brunswick 6272; “Minnie the Moocher”—Brunswick 6321; “Miracle Man”—Brunswick 7756; “St. James Infirmary”—Brunswick 6105.
Chick Webb and Savoy Orchestra: “Lonesome Nights”—Okeh 41567; “Heebie Jeebies” and “Soft and Sweet”—Brunswick 500324.
“Fats” Waller and Orchestra: “I Ain’t Got Nobody”—Victor 25026; “Love Me or Leave Me”—Victor 22092; “Sweet Sue”—25087; “Christopher Columbus”—Victor 25295; “Truckin’”—Victor 25116; “Write Myself a Letter”—Victor 25044.
Claude Hopkins and Orchestra: “Three Little Words”—Brunswick 6864; “Everbody Shuffle”—Brunswick 6916.
Luis Russell and Orchestra: “My Sweet”—Odeon 238287; “Song of the Swanee”—Okeh 8780.
Blue Rhythm Boys: “Blue Rhythm”—Brunswick 6143; “Moanin’”—Victor 22800.
Earl Hines and Orchestra: “Blue”—Brunswick 6872; “Rossetta”—Brunswick 6541; “Melancholy”—Brunswick 500165.
Jimmie Lunceford and Orchestra: “Rhythm is My Business”—Decca 369; “Melody Man” and “I’ll Take the South”—Decca 805; “Runnin’ Wild”—Decca 503.
Coleman Hawkins: “Rhythm Crazy”—Parlophone 1743.
Ethel Waters: “Heat Wave”—Columbia 2826 D; “Some of These Days”—Columbia 14264 D; “I Got Rhythm”—Columbia 23460; Stormy Weather—Victor 6564.
Adelaide Hall: “Blues I Love to Sing”—Victor 22985; “I Must Have That Man”—Brunswick 50257.
Mildred Bailey: “Someday Sweetheart”—Vocalion 3057.
Jimmy Johnson: “Riffs”—Okeh 8770; “You Got to be Modernistic”—Brunswick 50023.
Art Tatum: “Star Dust”—Decca 306; “St. Louis Blues” and “Tiger Rag”—Brunswick 500265; “When a Woman Loves a Man”—Decca 38389.
Cleo Brown: “Me and My Wonderful One”—Decca 486.
Teddy Wilson: “Every Now and Then”—Brunswick 7543; “Breakin in a New Pair of Shoes”—Brunswick 7589; “Blues in C# Minor”—Brunswick 7684.