Jazz Journey
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Jazz Journey A Guide for Listening FIRST EDITION By John Valerio University of South Carolina-Columbia Bassim Hamadeh, CEO and Publisher Michael Simpson, Vice President of Acquisitions Jamie Giganti, Managing Editor Jess Busch, Graphic Design Supervisor Zina Craft, Acquisitions Editor Monika Dziamka, Project Editor Natalie Lakosil, Licensing Manager Mandy Licata, Interior Designer Copyright © 2015 by Cognella, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information retrieval system without the written permission of Cognella, Inc. First published in the United States of America in 2015 by Cognella, Inc. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Cover image copyright © in the Public Domain. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-63189-056-7 (pbk)/ 978-1-63189-057-4 (br) Contents Introduction 1 Prelude 1: How Music Works 2 Prelude 2: How Jazz Works 22 Part 1: Roots and Early Jazz Chapter 1: Ragtime 40 Chapter 2: Blues 48 Chapter 3: Early Jazz—New Orleans Style, Dixieland 60 Chapter 4: Louis Armstrong 78 Chapter 5: Bix Beiderbecke—Chicago Style 86 Chapter 6: Stride Piano—Harlem Piano School, Eastern Ragtime 92 Part 2: Swing Chapter 7: Swing Era—Eastern Swing, Fletcher Henderson and Benny Goodman 100 Chapter 8: Count Basie—Southwest Swing, Kansas City Swing 118 Chapter 9: Duke Ellington 132 Chapter 10: Singers from the Swing Era 150 Chapter 11: Transitional Figures 174 Part 3: Modern Jazz Chapter 12: The Bebop Revolution—Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker 186 Chapter 13: Bebop Pianists—Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk 202 Chapter 14: Cool Jazz 212 Chapter 15: Hard Bop 234 Chapter 16: Great Piano Trios 254 Chapter 17: Miles Davis in the Fifties 260 Part 4: Freedom, Fusion, and Federation Chapter 18: Bill Evans Trio 280 Chapter 19: Free Jazz—In and Out of Control, Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus 290 Chapter 20: John Coltrane 300 Chapter 21: Miles Davis in the Sixties 312 Chapter 22: Fusion in the Seventies 334 Chapter 23: Keith Jarrett 344 Chapter 24: Jazz from the Eighties 356 Bibliography 364 Introduction his book is intended for a one-semester History of Jazz or Jazz Appreciation course. The major styles and players of jazz are described chronologically from T the forerunners of jazz through the 1970s. While many players are left out, most of the major players who have impacted the evolution of jazz are included. The student will learn that jazz is as diverse and varied as any other kind of music, and that there is a rich, evolving history of this uniquely American art form. While some biographical and sociological information is presented, the emphasis is on the music, itself. The history of jazz is told through its performers and their recorded performances. Since Jazz is a 20th-century phenomenon, we can study the music directly from recordings, films, and videos. The ebook version contains direct links within the text for easy access to audio and video examples. For the print version, the following webpage has links to all the same examples: http://johnvaleriomusic.com/JAZZ_JOURNEY/LINKS.html Ideally, the student should listen to the audio examples and watch the video examples as he or she reads the text. Suggestions for what to listen for and listening guides ac- company each audio recording. Descriptions for the video examples are provided as well. Although there are some written music examples, the student needs no background in music or ability to read music to comprehend this book. It is assumed that the student knows nothing about music, formally, and the instructor will introduce and explain the workings of music, and specifics, as need be, in class. Please report any nonworking links or problems accessing the web material to [email protected]. Prelude 1 How Music Works usic is a most ephemeral art form: notes come and go, sounds vibrate the air then disappear, songs are sung then cease to exist. If any of this is true, M how can music make any sense? Where do songs go after they are sung? The answer may be blowin’ in the wind, so to speak, but more than likely, they reside in our memory. Songs are not things; they are relationships of sounds that proceed in time. Music unfolds and as it does, it is always present, but the present gets there from the past and proceeds to the future; all of which depend on the memory of the listener. Just as language makes sense only within the context that words relate to each other, music relies on notes and rhythms that lie within a contextual framework. Unlike language, however, music is nonspecific in meaning and refers only to itself. Of course language and music often go together to form songs; so do they work in the same ways? Are there words—nouns and verbs—in music? Not exactly, but there are phrases and sentences and a grammar for most music we listen to. Do we need to become music specialists, musicians, or music theorists to comprehend this grammar and syntax? No; no more than we need to be linguists or grammarians to understand language. Culture takes care of all of this for us. While most of us need training to become musicians, most of us need no training to become listeners and perhaps just a little training to become attentive listeners. The great jazz pianist Bill Evans spoke of a universal mind of music that everyone possesses. For Evans, this universal mind was a better arbiter of musical worth than musi- cians themselves. Specialists often miss the forest for the trees and musicians often miss the music for the notes. This Prelude attempts to show how music works in the broadest sense in order to facilitate the auditory perception of music to thus engage the listener as an active participant in the music-making process. GOOD VIBRATIONS Sounds are mere vibrations yet good vibrations can delight and even titillate us, but how? Most sounds we hear are vibrations of the air. Usually there is a vibrating body that imparts its vibrations to the air, which transfers those vibrations to our eardrums, which translates those vibrations to our brains as sensory data we call sound. Th e vibrating bodies include metal strings in the case of string instruments (violins, basses, etc.), thin wooden reeds in the case of reed instruments (saxophones, clarinets, etc.), a player’s lips in the case of brass instruments (trumpets, trombones, etc.), stretched plastic or hide membranes in the case of drums, tempered metal in the case of cymbals, and vocal chords in the case of human voices, etc. Sound waves produce the contraction and rarefaction of the air as shown in the top image below. Th e sine curve below that is a mathematical representation of any wave. Figure P1.1 Copyright in the Public Domain. Two aspects of the physics of waves are important for music: the wavelength or frequency, and the amplitude or height. Th e faster a wave vibrates, the shorter the wavelength. Th us faster vibrations produce more waves per unit space and have a higher frequency. Th e amplitude of a wave measures its intensity. Amplitude and frequency work independently of each other and do not correlate in any particular way. Figure P1.2 Copyright in the Public Domain. 3 4 | Jazz Journey: A Guide for Listening There are two general categories of sound: noise and tone. Irregular vibrations that have no repeating pattern to them when represented on an oscilloscope are defined as noise. Sounds that generate repeating patterns are tones. Figure P1.3 Both noise and tones are important for music. While tones make melodies and harmonies, rhythms are often played by noisemakers, such as drums and cymbals. CHARACTERISTICS OF TONE 1. Pitch Pitch is a product of frequency (wavelength). Different frequencies produce different pitches or notes, such as Middle C. Middle C is a pitch that vibrates at the rate of roughly 262 cycles per second (cps) or 262 hertz. Anything that vibrates at 262 hertz will produce the note we call Middle C. If you could wave your hand back and forth 262 times per second, you would hear Middle C. Not all frequencies are used in music. For western music there is no note for frequencies of 263, 266, or 270 cps. The next highest note is C sharp, which vibrates at roughly 277 cps. Middle C is one of eight Cs on a piano. We call them all C, yet they have very different frequencies. The frequency of the lowest C is roughly 33 hertz and of the highest C is 4186 hertz. There is quite a difference between these frequencies, yet there is something similar between them and among all the Cs. The secret lies with the principle of the octave. The relationship between pitches is measured by intervals: 2nds, 3rds, 4ths, etc. The most curious and special of all the intervals is the octave. It is so special that we use the Latin term octave instead of 8th. It is these octaves that have the same letter name and a very definite mathematical relationship. Octaves have a 2:1 ratio between frequencies. The note A above Middle C vibrates at 440 hertz. The A, an octave higher, vibrates at 880 hertz and the A, an octave lower, vibrates at 220 hertz. Prelude 1 | 5 A = 220 cps or hertz A = 440 cps or hertz A = 880 cps or hertz Although these As are different frequencies, they are somehow equivalent.