Module 4

As I listen to the transitions of vernacular music from the 19th Century to the 21st, I am fascinated by how elements slip away, how they return, and how they can be restructured.  Prior to Sinatra, we had the standard dance bands that had some strings and had no strings, some even not having any including a bass player.  Yet when we listen to the Sinatra listening for this week, Ol' Blues not only incorporate the strings, he pulls a full compliment of them together, almost in the manner of a symphony orchestra.  The incorporation of strings in jazz and popular music has always been a very fluid thing, mirroring very much the transitions of vernacular music over the past century.  Legendary trumpet Maynard Ferguson was lauded for staying true to the roots of jazz but remaining progressive enough to stay relevant with the vernacular styles of the times.  His years with Stan Kenton, which were contemporaneous with the Sinatra ballad from this week, were straight dance band years.  Yet, one of his final albums, Storm, sounds very much like late 1980s rock 'n' roll.  The listening for this week contains prime examples of this flux and incorporation of what came before...

Frank Sinatra’s ballad of Nancy is so different than the ballads we listened to in the last module.  Sinatra’s voice and phrasing are so unique to him and a style of his own.  The band backing him up isn’t a 40s dance band, as with Sinatra, there is a full compliment of strings that are big, warm, and part of the overall tonal weight. Sinatra weaves around with very little popular form to this ballad.  The only hook is “Nancy with the laughing face,” and that occurs sparingly.  There is not really a chorus section, the verses move from one to another. 

In listening to Louis Jordan’s Choo-Choo Boogie right after, the contrast from the two charts is so stark.  The style of Jordan’s chart is really a bridge between big bands (with large elements) and 50s rock’n’roll.  There are big brass and sax hits, instrumental solos, and no big strings.  I’d argue that this has much more in common with In the Mood than Nancy does, yet Nancy is jazz, and the Choo-Choo Boogie really borders on proto-Elvis rock’n’roll.  I head more in common with this and Crazy Little Thing Called Love from my Song Share than I do with the Sinatra chart.  Jordan’s chart is very structured and formal, with verses and chorus predictably interwoven. 

As much as my parents loved Chuck Berry, I’m pretty sure that Maybelline uses the rhythmic underpinning of a quick-step march with rock’n’roll imposed on the top.  This chart is just as different as the previous ones this week.  When you throw some swing on the ride to help the “boom chucks” on the set, Charlie Brown is quite similar, with the other exception being the brief pauses for the “why is everyone always pickin’ on me?” hooks and the slight tempo changes in the verses.  The chorus cooks along with a nice “boom chuck” pattern, similar to the Chuck Berry chart.  A third chart this week, Long Tall Sally is quite similar to these charts in form and structure, although Little Richard does much more with harmonies in the piano.  I am of the mind that his hook is “ooooo-oooo-uuuuh!”  Although I am of the mind that it’s his personal hook, rather than just one for the song.

Elvis gives us something completely different, yet totally rooted in everything we’ve listened to this week.  Gone is the big brass from Choo-Choo Boogie.  The big, big strings from Sinatra are gone too.  Elvis strips the big band sounds and the Sinatra additions down to an electric bass, a piano doubling the bass more than anything, yet with deemphasized comping, and then all the brass hits that we’re used to hearing in big band charts of similar structure covered by voices on bops, oos, and ahs.  A mediocre arranger could take Don’t Be Cruel and arrange it out for full big band (such as Miller or Basie) or even Sinatra orchestra and have a very viable chart in those styles.  Elvis uses a guitar as well, but mainly it stays out of the harmonic picture and just reinforces the rhythms.  Drum set is largely out of the way with a simple swing pattern on, I believe, the hi-hat, rather than the ride cymbal, which, although it’s still a swing pattern, is a rock-style departure from the driving ride of jazz.  There are other Elvis charts on the optional listening list for this week, and they all use this same minimalism of the big band instrumentation.  

Module 3

Of any styles of American Vernacular Music, the "Swing Era" has an almost pragmatic quality to it.  It has stood the test of the time because of the quality of its music.  Our school jazz bands are still playing Swing Era charts, and in competitive jazz festivals, Swing is a requirement.  The Wisconsin School Music Association has changed its jazz band Solo and Ensemble requirements over the years, but a SWING CHART has always been required.  The underlined required in-text analysis tunes for this week are frequently found on the WSMA jazz band list, with different arrangements in found in different difficulty classes, and they're there because these charts are such important pieces of Americana and are still alive today as ever.

Hal Leonard has published a basic jazz chart book with tunes like Ja-Da, Blue Skies, American Patrol, It Don't Mean a Thing (If it Ain't Got That Swing), and In the Mood.  Many of these charts have been published separately, and this particular version of It Don't Mean a Thing used to be on the WSMA Class B list in its separate publication.  These are great opportunities for us to expose jazz bands at any level to these Swing Era gems.

One of the things that may have contributed to the longevity of Swing Era in the US is Johnny Carson's reign on The Tonight Show.  As recently as 1992, people could tune in five nights a week and hear the Doc Severinsen-led swing band on television.  Carson's Tonight Show Band was playing their versions of these charts for thirty years, and are still touring together playing their versions of these charts.  I owned all three of the old Tonight Show Band albums on cassette and I recently purchased digital copies from iTunes so I could keep listening to them, as well as share the music with my daughter and with my students.  The Tonight Show Band's tempos aren't always the same as the original recordings, and especially Doc Severinsen’s version of In the Mood, which is significantly faster than Miller’s.  Sometimes the order of the phrases or complexity of the charts don't always match either, but Doc maintains the styles, as even in In the Mood, the stompy push on each beat (this is known to me as part of the dance band style).  I am not seeing a recording of One O’Clock Jump with our text, but YouTube recordings abound.  Doc’s version, which is full of just wild, showy playing, and dating to the mid-1980s, is still as authentic as everything we've been listening to this week. 


The version of In the Mood on this week's listening is the Glen Miller original, and it's certainly a swing chart that remains on that needs to be in every stage band’s books, whether it's a complex version of it, an majorly uptempo and harmonically more modern version like the Doc Severinsen version I spoke of above, or the more simple one readily accessible in the Hal Leonard swing book.
The Glen Miller In the Mood gives us further development of the dance style from what we heard in this week's listening of The St. Louis Blues.  In the version of St. Louis Blues for this week, we hear the great Bessie Smith singing the melody with Louie Armstrong on his cornet playing a counter-melody.  W.C. Handy’s composition dates to 1914 with the recording in our listening dating to 1925.  It's not an uptempo version that we've grown accustomed to hearing, but rather more of a ballad than the up-tempo foxtrots and quick dances of the time.  This particular YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmFUXYaZIMk purports to be a recording of Handy playing his chart on piano with period jazz orchestra, and I easily hear the foxtrot style with touches of ragtime infused.
With Miller's In the Mood, gone is the one-step, but a foxtrot dance might work.  In these swing charts, as I alluded to above, the power of the beat is a focus because these are dance charts.  It's really important for people to have a clear understanding of where the beat sits so that, as social dancers, you know how and where to move.  In the Swing Era, a further development of the cymbal swinging eighth-notes comes in to being, and you can hear it clearly on each of the recordings for this week.
With Smith and Armstrong we have a demonstration of an early ballad in the blues style, when we get to the Benny Goodman chart, we get a swing ballad that is something of a meld of the original Handy, the Henderson chart’s style and backgrounds, and the Smith and Armstrong recording.  I hear a progression in style of the ballad as we move from the blues to swing, and it becomes clear to my ears that all three charts are intricately related.  By the time that Paper Doll comes in during World War II, we’ve had almost twenty years of development from Smith and Armstrong’s balladification of The St. Louis Blues, and you can hear some very different harmonic and rhythmic lines in that development. You can hear this continued development in In the Mood and you can also hear it in the representative Severinsen recordings too.  Lastly, even Paper Doll appears in the Hal Leonard book, making it accessible to today's young jazz students.