studies in

The Institute of Jazz Studies Rutgers—The State University of General Editors: Dan Morgenstern and Edward Berger

1. : A Life in American Music, by Morroe Berger, Ed- ward Berger, and James Patrick, 2 vols., 1982 2. : A Guide to His Recorded Music, by Arnold Laubich and Ray Spencer, 1982 3. : The Most Happy Piano, by James M. Doran, 1985 4. JAMES P. JOHNSON: A Case of Mistaken Identity, by Scott E. Brown; Discography 1917–1950, by Robert Hilbert, 1986 5. : This Horn for Hire, as told to Warren W. Vaché Sr., 1987 6. : Listen to His Legacy, by D. Russell Connor, 1988 7. ELLINGTONIA: The Recorded Music of and His Sidemen, by W. E. Timner, 1988; 4th ed., 1996 8. THE GLENN MILLER ARMY AIR FORCE BAND: Sustineo Alas / I Sustain the Wings, by Edward F. Polic; Foreword by George T. Simon, 1989 9. SWING LEGACY, by Chip Deffaa, 1989 10. REMINISCING IN TEMPO: The Life and Times of a Jazz Hustler, by , with Edward Berger, 1990 11. IN THE MAINSTREAM: 18 Portraits in Jazz, by Chip Deffaa, 1992 12. BUDDY DeFRANCO: A Biographical Portrait and Discography, by John Kuehn and Arne Astrup, 1993 13. PEE WEE SPEAKS: A Discography of , by Robert Hilbert, with David Niven, 1992 14. SYLVESTER AHOLA: The Gloucester Gabriel, by Dick Hill, 1993 15. THE POLICE CARD DISCORD, by Maxwell T. Cohen, 1993 16. TRADITIONALISTS AND REVIVALISTS IN JAZZ, by Chip Deffaa, 1993 17. BASSICALLY SPEAKING: An Oral History of , by Edward Berger; Musical Analysis by David Chevan, 1993 18. TRAM: The Frank Trumbauer Story, by Philip R. Evans and Larry F. Kiner, with William Trumbauer, 1994 19. : On the Side, by Robert L. Stockdale, 1995 20. : A Discography and Musical Biography, by Ya- suhiro Fujioka, with Lewis Porter and Yoh-ichi Hamada, 1995 21. RED HEAD: A Chronological Survey of “Red” Nichols and His Five Pennies, by Stephen M. Stroff, 1996 22. THE RED NICHOLS STORY: After Intermission 1942–1965, by Philip R. Evans, Stanley Hester, Stephen Hester, and Linda Evans, 1997 23. BENNY GOODMAN: Wrappin’ It Up, by D. Russell Connor, 1996 24. AND THEMATIC IMPROVISATION, by Henry Martin, 1996 25. BACK BEATS AND RIM SHOTS: The Johnny Blowers Story, by Warren W. Vaché Sr., 1997 26. DUKE ELLINGTON: A Listener’s Guide, by Eddie Lambert, 1998 27. SERGE CHALOFF: A Musical Biography and Discography, by Vladimir Simosko, 1998 28. HOT JAZZ: From to Storyville, by David Griffiths, 1998 29. : A Musical Biography and Discography, by Vladimir Simosko, 2000 30. : A Study in Contrasts, by Robert L. Stockdale, 1998 31. STRIDE!: Fats, Jimmy, Lion, Lamb and All the Other Ticklers, by John L. Fell and Terkild Vinding, 1999 32. GIANT STRIDES: The Legacy of Dick Wellstood, by Edward N. Meyer, 1999 33. JAZZ GENTRY: Aristocrats of the Music World, by Warren W. Vaché Sr., 1999 34. THE UNSUNG SONGWRITERS: America’s Masters of Melody, by Warren W. Vaché Sr., 2000 35. THE MUSICAL WORLD OF J. J. JOHNSON, by Joshua Berrett and Louis G. Bourgois III, 1999 36. THE LADIES WHO SING WITH THE BAND, by Betty Bennett, 2000 37. AN UNSUNG CAT: The Life and Music of , by Safford Chamberlain, 2000 38. JAZZ IN : The Postwar Years Through 1970, by Charles Suhor, 2001 39. THE YOUNG ON RECORDS: A Critical Sur- vey of the Early Recordings, 1923–1928, by Edward Brooks, 2002 40. BENNY CARTER: A Life in American Music, Second Edition, by Morroe Berger, Edward Berger, and James Patrick, 2 vols., 2002 41. CHORD CHANGES ON THE CHALKBOARD: How Public School Teachers Shaped Jazz and the Music of New Orleans, by Al Kennedy, Foreword by Ellis Marsalis Jr., 2002 42. CONTEMPORARY CAT: Terence Blanchard with Special Guests, by Anthony Magro, 2002 43. PAUL WHITEMAN: Pioneer in American Music, Volume I: 1890–1930, by Don Rayno, 2003 44. GOOD VIBES: A Life in Jazz, by Terry Gibbs with Cary Ginell, 2003 45. TOM TALBERT—HIS LIFE AND TIMES: Voices from a Vanished World of Jazz, by Bruce Talbot, 2004 46. SITTIN’ IN WITH : A Reminiscence of Radio and Recording’s Golden Years, by Warren W. Vaché, 2005 47. FIFTIES JAZZ TALK: An Oral Retrospective, by Gordon Jack, 2004 48. FLORENCE MILLS: Harlem Jazz Queen, by Bill Egan, 2004 49. SWING ERA SCRAPBOOK: The Teenage Diaries and Radio Logs of Bob Inman, 1936–1938, by Ken Vail, 2005 50. ON THE AIR: The Radio Broadcasts and Discogra- phy, by Stephen Taylor, 2006 51. ALL OF ME: The Complete Discography of Louis Armstrong, by Jos Willems, 2006 52. MUSIC AND THE CREATIVE SPIRIT: Innovators in Jazz, Improvi- sation, and the Avant Garde, by Lloyd Peterson, 2006 53. THE STORY OF FAKE BOOKS: Bootlegging Songs to Musicians, by Barry Kernfeld, 2006 54. ELLINGTONIA: The Recorded Music of Duke Ellington and His Sidemen, 5th edition, by W. E. Timner, 2007 55. JAZZ FICTION: A History and Comprehensive Reader’s Guide, by David Rife, 2007 56. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: My Life In Music, by Lalo Schifrin, edited by Richard H. Palmer, 2008 57. THE CONTRADICTIONS OF JAZZ, by Paul Rinzler, 2008 58. EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRASS IDIOMS: Art, Jazz, and Other Popular Traditions, edited by Howard T. Weiner, 2008 59. THE MUSIC AND LIFE OF THEODORE “FATS” NAVARRO: Infat- uation, by Leif Bo Petersen and Theo Rehak, 2009 60. WHERE THE DARK AND THE LIGHT FOLKS MEET: Race and the Mythology, Politics, and Business of Jazz, by Randall Sandke, 2009 Annual Review of Jazz Studies is published by Scarecrow Press and the In- stitute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey. Submissions and editorial correspondence should be sent to:

The Editors, Annual Review of Jazz Studies The Institute of Jazz Studies Dana Library, Rutgers—The State University 185 University Avenue Newark, NJ 07102 or by email to ([email protected]) and Dan Mor- genstern ([email protected]). Publishers should send review copies of books to the above mailing ad- dress, marked to the attention of the book review editor. Authors preparing manuscripts for consideration should follow The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition. In particular: (1) except for foreign- language quotations, manuscripts must be in English; (2) all material must be neat and double-spaced, with adequate margins; (3) notes must be grouped together at the end of the manuscript, not as footnotes at page bot- toms, following either of the two documentation styles in chapters 16 and 17 of The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition; (4) authors should append a two- or three-sentence biographical note; (5) text must be in Microsoft Word; (6) music examples, complex tables, photographs, and other graph- ics should be submitted as separate computer image files, not embedded in the Microsoft Word file; (7) image files must be presentable for publica- tion; authors should take into account that each image and its caption have to fit within a page frame of 4-by-6 inches (10.5-by-16 cm); captions (in- cluding the example number, when applicable) should be included within the text, not in the image file; (8) if a submission accepted for publication includes music examples transcribed from recordings, the author may be required to send in a CD of the recordings to facilitate editing the paper and checking the accuracy of transcriptions. Authors alone are responsible for the contents of their articles and for ob- taining permission for use of material under copyright protection. ANNUAL REVIEW OF JAZZ STUDIES 14

Edited by Edward Berger Henry Martin Dan Morgenstern

Managing Editor Evan Spring

Associate Editor George Bassett

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Preface ix ARTICLES Ellingtonian Extended Composition and the Symphonic Jazz Model 1 John Howland Churchy Blues, Bluesy Church: Vernacular Tropes, Expression, and Structure in ’s “Ecclusiastics” 65 Horace J. Maxile Jr. Charlie Parker and Popular Music 83 Brian Priestley Chappie Willet: A Jazz Arranger in Swing Era New York 101 John Wriggle BOOK REVIEWS One O’clock Jump: The Unforgettable History of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils, by Douglas Henry Daniels, and Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to —A History, by Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix 189 Todd Bryant Weeks Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain, by George McKay, and The Evolution of Jazz in Britain, 1880–1935, by Catherine Parsonage 201 Howard Rye Books Received at the Institute of Jazz Studies 213 Vincent Pelote About the Editors 217 About the Contributors 219 About the Institute of Jazz Studies 221

vii

PREFACE

Each of the four intriguing articles in this issue of ARJS to some degree contravenes accepted precepts of jazz orthodoxy. John Howland, our astute colleague at Rutgers, traces the connection between Duke Ellington’s ex- tended works and the “symphonic jazz” model of the 1920s as exemplified by Paul Whiteman and his chief arranger, Ferde Grofé. Although in no way detracting from Ellington’s vast legacy, Howland’s carefully reasoned the- sis will no doubt spark controversy. Horace J. Maxile Jr., in his study of Charles Mingus’s “Ecclusiastics,” takes an unfashionably broad perspec- tive, applying recent developments in cultural theory as well as the formal tools of traditional music theory. Perhaps such a multifaceted methodology is the only way to grasp the essence of an artist as complex as Charles Min- gus. Brian Priestley’s exploration of the ties between Charlie Parker and popular music challenges the canonical depiction of Parker as a lone revo- lutionary genius, whose innovations seemingly sprang from nowhere. By examining Parker’s tone, melodic sense, and repertoire, as well as his ef- forts to appeal to a wider audience, Priestley underscores the saxophonist’s ties to the popular music of his time. Finally, John Wriggle, a graduate of the Master’s Program in Jazz History and Research at Rutgers-Newark, presents an extensive examination of the life and work of arranger Chappie Willet, an unsung hero of the Swing Era. Wriggle notes that arrangers like Willet “found themselves in the role, however hidden from the public, of defining the sound of a generation.” The book reviews cover a cross-section of the burgeoning jazz literature, and Vincent Pelote has again compiled a list of books received at the Insti- tute of Jazz Studies. We encourage publishers and authors to send copies of their works for inclusion in future listings and for possible review. Please note that our ongoing “Jazz Research Bibliography”—a listing of scholarly jazz articles printed in journals not specifically devoted to jazz—will re- sume with the next issue.

ix

ELLINGTONIAN EXTENDED COMPOSITION AND THE SYMPHONIC JAZZ MODEL

John Howland

While it is now often remembered merely as a minor footnote in most his- tories of American music, 1920s “symphonic jazz” exerted a significant in- fluence on the music-arranging conventions of a wide variety of interwar entertainment forms. In popular music of the 1920s and 1930s, the foremost exponents of this idiom in both its dance band arranging and popular con- cert work traditions were the bandleader Paul Whiteman and his chief arranger, Ferde Grofé. Whitemanesque symphonic jazz was a stylistically heterogeneous idiom that referenced jazz, syncopated popular music, African American music, musical theater, and the light classics. The “jazz” of symphonic jazz paralleled 1920s journalistic uses of the term as both an adjective and a verb to imply a mildly irreverent interbreeding of white and black, high and low, and culturally profane and sacred music. The “sym- phonic” characterization of this idiom referenced the music’s heightened theatricality, its comparatively complex episodic, multithematic formal structures, and especially its “sophisticated” introductions, interludes, and codas, its unexpected modulations and dramatic cadenzas, and its emphasis on orchestrational and stylistic variety. This broadly disseminated idiom can be heard in arranging and concert work traditions in popular music, musical theater, the variety prologue shows of the deluxe movie palaces, and certain genres of film music of the late 1920s and 1930s. The propo- nents of Whiteman-style symphonic jazz sought not so much to position this idiom as high art, but rather to mold the musics of Tin Pan Alley, jazz, and the jazz-derived entertainments of Broadway, Harlem, and Hollywood into forms that could endow these idioms with an aura of glamour and ele- vated cultural refinement. Across the late 1920s to early 1940s, despite Whiteman’s continued pop- ularity, there was a new critical desire to redefine the concert work tradition of symphonic jazz through the aesthetics of African American–style hot jazz. The origins of this shift are found in the development of the unique public image of Duke Ellington, the “serious jazz composer.” This image of Ellington was linked to both the agenda of Ellington’s own publicity ma- chine and his more sophisticated compositions of the late 1920s and 1930s.

1 2 Annual Review of Jazz Studies

This development culminated in the publicity and criticism for Ellington’s landmark 1943 “Tone Parallel to the History of the Negro in America,” Black, Brown and Beige (hereafter BB&B). In his 1993 essay “The Genesis of Black, Brown and Beige,” Mark Tucker explored the models and antecedents that Ellington drew upon to conceptual- ize and compose his “Tone Parallel.”1 Tucker concluded his study by propos- ing several avenues of further research. First and foremost, he suggested the need to examine Ellington’s composition against the backdrop of earlier “large-scale jazz works designed for the concert hall,” especially the concert- style works promoted by Paul Whiteman. I contend that the design of BB&B does in fact represent the apotheosis of Ellington’s unique adaptations of—and expansions on—the model of Whitemanesque symphonic jazz. The relationship between Whitemanesque and Ellingtonian symphonic jazz is indelibly tied to questions of both cultural reception and structural design. This relationship is evidenced in Ellington’s concert-style works of the 1930s and early 1940s, up to and including BB&B. Ellington developed his compo- sitional models for BB&B in the 1930s, a period when such efforts were re- ceived as part of a greater sphere of Whiteman-style symphonic jazz activities. The form of BB&B transcends the “elaborate recipes for giving a jazz tune ex- tended form” that 1930s jazz critics like Winthrop Sargeant had contemptu- ously identified with Whitemanesque symphonic jazz.2 BB&B also reveals Ellington’s emerging interest in extended, suite-based forms. His expansions on the symphonic jazz idiom are found at multiple structural levels in BB&B—in the large-scale arranging routines of its various episodic segments, in the construction and function of its various “developmental” interludes, in the unusual structures of its themes, in its rich network of motivic cross refer- ences, and so forth. It is important to identify the ways in which this work ex- pands upon—and transcends—the characteristic “recipes” of symphonic jazz form. These relations are revealed through comparisons between the compo- sitional design of BB&B and the concert jazz models that came before it, both by Ellington and his peers. This article examines the relationship between Ellingtonian “extended” composition and the symphonic jazz model through a study of the compositional devices and forms employed in Ellington’s con- cert-style works up to and including BB&B.

JAZZ POLITICS AND THE WHITEMAN-ELLINGTON CONNECTION

Paul Whiteman is now largely forgotten in mass culture, but his legacy has undergone a small degree of cultural reassessment over the last several Ellington and Symphonic Jazz 3 years. Most notably, Whiteman has been the subject of two recent books and a concert by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.3 Despite the generally positive light of this partial return to public view, the jazz world still har- bors deep concerns about the public’s understanding of Whiteman’s music. Any attempt to compare the legacy of Whiteman with that of a revered African American peer like Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong can still re- ceive severe reprobation from certain jazz enthusiasts. Nowadays, this re- action is less likely to result from a negative aesthetic assessment of White- man’s music than from a protective reaction rooted in deeply invested concerns about policing the boundaries of the jazz canon. This divisive concern about whether Whiteman’s music can rightfully be called “jazz” has a long history that is bound up in the ideological politics of jazz criti- cism, musical style, and race, dating as far back as the 1925 essay “Jazz Contra Whiteman” by the American critic Roger Pryor Dodge.4 The criti- cal response to one of the new Whiteman books, Joshua Berrett’s 2004 Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman: Two Kings of Jazz, illustrates a num- ber of points about the modern “jazz contra Whiteman” debate. For exam- ple, one critic argued that

what is desperately needed [now for Whiteman] is a comprehensive reissue series of the kind routinely afforded to . . . Goodman, Basie, and Duke Elling- ton. Which is not to say that Whiteman is a jazz giant on the same level with them. A recent book published by scholar Joshua Berrett, “Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman: Two Kings of Jazz” . . . , goes rather too far in that di- rection. He has [a] . . . well-researched narrative, but his central thesis—that Arm- strong and Whiteman were equivalent “Kings of Jazz”—is absurd. If Mr. Berrett had written a biography of Whiteman rather than make such a ridicu- lous claim, he might have written the best work yet on this pivotal figure in American pop.5

This critic’s review is less concerned with Berrett’s assessment of White- man’s legacy than with demarcating a firm division between canonic jazz figures and popular music. While this critic notably advocates a reassess- ment of Whiteman’s “pivotal” role in “American pop,” he also suggests that there are major differences in the inherent cultural and artistic merits of Whiteman’s “pop” and the music of a venerated “jazz giant” such as Armstrong. His references to their valuative “levels” in cultural or artistic merit invoke a longstanding, bifurcated view of American culture as con- sisting of either “art” (i.e., the bona fide jazz tradition) or “entertainment.” 4 Annual Review of Jazz Studies

This often rigid viewpoint does not take into consideration the hybrid nu- ances that can exist between high and low cultures. Despite this critic’s qualified support for reevaluating Whiteman’s legacy in popular culture, it is surprising to see defensive sentiments of this sort in the early twenty-first century, particularly in a jazz critic’s discussion of Armstrong, a musician who routinely bridged the worlds of art and entertainment. These concerns over policing the canonic boundaries of jazz are shaped by essentialist views of the jazz tradition and its relation to race and artis- tic creativity. Such perspectives do not often acknowledge the many plu- ralistic gray areas in American culture, identity politics, and racial inter- change. Whiteman’s career is an exemplary model of the hybrid middlebrow culture that overlapped with the first half-century of the jazz tradition. The social and aesthetic complexities of this pluralistic commer- cial middle ground are far more interesting than the dated question of whether Whiteman is or is not part of the jazz tradition. In any consideration of the broad range of popular music discussed in 1920s “jazz” criticism, one must bear in mind that the primary attributes that post-1930 jazz critics considered essential to “true” or “hot” jazz (im- provisation, the blues, swing, race, etc.) were not nearly as commonplace or prominently featured in syncopated popular music until the later 1920s. Even at that point, despite the “sweet-versus-hot” distinction having come into circulation, “authentic” jazz was lumped together critically and popu- larly with the music of sweet dance bands, hotel bands, and symphonic jazz. The divisions between these stylistic idioms were clean-cut only in theory and in individual recordings. In practice, popular music of this era encouraged stylistic confluences derived from variety entertainment. This entertainment aesthetic dominated the repertories and performance models of many white and black dance bands of the 1920s. Moreover, many bona fide jazz musicians—white and black—pursued diverse careers as profes- sional musicians for hire, regardless of the stylistic demands and perform- ance context of a given job, even if the sounds of these orchestras differed in important ways. This broad, variety entertainment–based musical culture of the 1920s was a major concern for post-1930 jazz critics who felt that the earlier “jazz” journalism of the 1920s was far too inclusive and con- fused about what constituted jazz and which elements in this novel music contributed to its infectious vitality. What is often glossed over in post-1930 critical discussions of 1920s “jazz” is that these various musical styles were in fact an overlapping fam- ily of syncopated musics in dialogue with one another. Post-1930 jazz crit- ics sought to divorce “authentic” jazz from this context in their quest to de- Ellington and Symphonic Jazz 5 fine a stylistically pure tradition. Charles Hamm has rightly noted that the terminological confusion with the idea of “jazz” in the 1920s originated in part from the “questionable theoretical assumption . . . that ‘jazz’ was a product of white American culture in the 1920s and that it grew out of the New York–based Tin Pan Alley style of songwriting.”6 The white critics of the 1930s seeking a more exclusive definition of jazz were promoting sty- listic and ethnic traits that they personally valued in improvisation-based, hot-style black jazz. This post-1930 need to construct a historical narrative of jazz authenticity required a firm delineation of stylistic boundaries. To achieve aesthetic priority, these critics—including Roger Pryor Dodge, Hughes Panassié, Frederic Ramsey Jr., and Charles Edward Smith, among others—also sought to redefine authentic jazz as an “Art,” with the music of Duke Ellington being central to this agenda. The critical project to repo- sition the public’s perception of jazz from lowly commercial popular cul- ture to an intellectual high art underscores the power of the myth of class mobility in American culture. The driving impetus behind this project was the belief that authentic jazz—and jazz musicians—should be afforded the same rarefied aura of high-culture prestige, status, and artistic entitlement that was tied to the classical music tradition. This class-based elevation of the style and performance aesthetics of black jazz (whether improvised or pre-composed) was intimately entwined with a simultaneous critical deval- uation of the symphonic-style, arranged “jazz” of Whitemanesque enter- tainment. This development is the root of the critical fall of Whiteman from the jazz canon, as well as the dialectical opposition of Ellington and White- man as the respective signifiers for jazz and non-jazz stylistic poles. In constructing the boundaries and narrative framework of an “authen- tic” jazz tradition, these critics were successful in outmoding the privileged cultural authority of other syncopated popular music styles of the 1920s, es- pecially symphonic jazz. A central ideological tool employed by this new critical school was the powerful dialectic that devalued “commercial” in- terests in favor of disinterested, creative “art” or “folk art” expressions (a romanticized notion of folk culture lay at the heart of much of this new crit- icism). This critical tool constructed a virtuous aura of artistic purity around black improvised instrumental jazz and simultaneously damned Whiteman and symphonic jazz. While this shift in the definition of jazz forged the modern discourses of jazz historiography and ultimately elevated the im- provised black jazz tradition to the privileged position of an art, it greatly shortchanged our present-day understanding of the larger cultural context of the bona fide jazz tradition in the first half of the twentieth century.7 What the now-accepted narrative of authentic jazz marginalized was the