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World War II to the Civil Rights Movement

Overview

While no one knows the exact origins of jazz music, many say it began as the result of the first known recorded jazz music was by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, a White band from New Orleans. However, by studying the musical characteristics of the song "Livery Stable Blues (1917)," it's clear they borrowed (or stole) musical techniques practiced by African Americans in New Orleans. Swing music was the first jazz style that proved commercially successful, taking jazz out of the brothels of New Orleans into ballrooms.

Be ready to:

Draw musical comparisons with regard to prominent musical characteristics and performance practices between this lessons' noted jazz styles.

Relate this lesson's noted jazz styles to contemporaneous cultural, social, and political circumstances.

Identify innovators as well as noted performers that further advanced each jazz style.

Explain how certain jazz musicians did not merely see their music as an accompaniment for dancing, but instead as reflective and intellectual music accorded as art music.

Explain why improvisation is central to jazz performance.

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References

Bebop (Bop) 7

The continued evolution of solo improvisation in bebop reflects the gradual development of the jazz soloist, whose roots trace back to early jazz in New Orleans where half of the instruments in a New Orleans style jazz band perform a solo. Such is the case with the previous piece "Shaw Nuff' as an example of bebop; three instruments (saxophone, trumpet, and piano) in the quintet perform a solo.

Despite such continuities, bebop also departed from many of the jazz orthodoxies of the early 1940s. One of the most striking differences was the frequent use of fast tempos, sometimes reaching more than 300 quarter notes per minute. In part, this reflected a shift in the social function of jazz from being mainly an accompaniment to dancing (in the Swing Era) to provide opportunities for individualized listening. Faster tempos also embodied new technical challenges that illustrated new kinds of virtuosities associated with bebop. A related phenomenon was "double time" phrasing (improvising at twice the given tempo of a song), which had its roots in flashy "trick" playing developed by specific musicians of the 1920s and 1930s, such as Kansas City saxophonist Buster Smith (who had a profound influence on Charlie Parker).

Double-time: notice the snare moves to the '&' beats while the hi-hat begins to subdivide sixteenth notes (semiquavers)

Elaborating on earlier approaches to jazz improvisation pioneered by Armstrong, Hawkins, and other bebop musicians emphasize the extensions of chords: the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth. Unless one is familiar with these harmonic structures, though necessary, it can take a while to hear their significance in a performance context. In general harmonic structures or chords are based on combining every other pitch, such as C-E-G-B (1-3-5-7) pitches, as shown below. Therefore, to play the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth chords, we would simply add the notes D-F-A or 9-11-13 from C. Using the piano keyboard below with the musical alphabet, these pitches are illustrated in the key/scale of "C." Bebop musicians frequently altered these extensions, creating more chromaticism, harmonic color, and tension in the music. You can find these techniques in improvised as well as composed melodies.

C Scale

Bebop musicians also developed a new, more angular approach to melodic phrasing, which includes wide intervallic leaps, such as that heard throughout Dizzy Gillespie's and Kenny Clarke's melody Salt Peanuts" heard in this 1946-47 video:

Dizzy Gillespie and his Orchestra - Salt Peanuts (1946 - 47) [ 00:00-00:00 ]

Heebie Jeebies

Say, I've got the Heebies
I mean the Jeebies
Talking about
The dance, the Heebie Jeebies
Do, because they're boys
Because it pleases me to be joy

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.

He was a famous trumpet man from out Chicago way
He had a boogie style that no one else could play
He was the top man at his craft
But then his number came up and he was gone with the draft
He's in the army now, a blowin' reveille
He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B