Evocations of the Dance IV: Crossovers: When Highbrow Went Lowbrow, When Lowbrow Went Highbrow (1)

http://www.jazzstudiesonline.org/files/Jazz%20as%20Decal.pdf

Fair warning: this is an exercise in false dichotomies – jazz and classical music in the twentieth century were often feeding off similar roots. But my key contention is that even now, long after Gunther Schuller’s ‘Third Stream’, the phenomenon that is the appeal of ‘World Music’, and the fusion of everything that isn’t bolted down (to mix a metaphor), we still have a sense of what is jazz and what is classical music.

It could be borrowings of melodic, harmonic or rhythmic qualities, or it could be the tendency of jazz musicians to favour more complex harmonies or to otherwise show their allegiance to the avant garde, which seems to me more of a highbrow borrowing from the classical music world than an indigenous jazz trait.

So, the following list of tracks represent a slightly selective history of the confluence of jazz tracks with classical elements and classical tracks with a jazz influence.

I want this list to be an organic thing. If you can suggest any tracks I’ve neglected, please leave a comment.

Late 19th & Early 20th Century

 

Year	The Jazz Side Of Things	The Classical Side Of Things
1869		Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G minor (Brahms, 1869) - Yehudi Menuhin, p. Adolph Baller - 1947
1902	On Emancipation Day (from In Dahomey, Will Marion Cook & Paul Lawrence Dunbar) - Len Spencer, banjo Vess L. Ossman - 1902
1903	I'm A Jonah Man (from In Dahomey, Will Marion Cook & Paul Lawrence Dunbar) - Arthur Collins - 1903
1904	Smoky Mokes (Cakewalk) - Peerless Orchestra - 1904	Allegro Marcato (Three Pieces) (Frank Bridge, 1904) - Phantasie Quartet - 1994
1905		Bethena (Concert Waltz) (Scott Joplin, 1905) - Joshua Rifkin - 1970
1906		Central Park in the Dark (Ives, 1906) - Vladimir Cherniavsky & the Polymusic Chamber Orchestra - 1951
1908		Golliwogg’s Cakewalk (Debussy, 1908) - Sergei Rachmaninov - 1921
1909		In Dahomey (Cakewalk Smasher) (Percy Grainger, 1909) - Marc-Andre Hamelin - 1996
1910	Dere was a man (from Treemonisha, Scott Joplin, 1910) - Gunther Schuller - 1976
1911		Polka de W.R. for piano in A flat major (Behr arr. Rachmaninov, 1911) - Sergei Rachmaninov - 1929
1914	Swing Along (Will Marion Cook) - The Afro-American Folk Singers - 1914
	Castle House Rag (James Reese Europe) - Europe’s Society Orchestra - 1914
1915		Chinese Blues (1915) - Sousa's Band - 1916
1916	That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland (Edison, first recording) - Collins and Harlan - 1916
1917	That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland (Victor, second recording) - Collins and Harlan - 1917	Rag-time du paquebot (edited) (from Parade, Erik Satie, 1917) - p. Georges Auric & Frances Poulenc - 1937
	Livery Stable Blues - The Original Dixieland Jass Band - 1917
1918		Rag-Time (Stravinsky, 1918) - Marcelle Meyer - 1925
1919	Rose Room - Art Hickman’s Orchestra - 1919	Piano Rag Music (Stravinsky, 1919) - Stravinsky - 1938

Download Part 1: 1800-1909 here.

Download Part 2: 1910-1919 here.

Timbre! Unusual Instrumentation Playlist - Vol. I

Timbre, as Frank Zappa says in the Real Frank Zappa Book, is everything. But it’s also confusing. To a Westerner, the sitar eternally signifies the mysterious allure of the East, while – as Talvin Singh once pointed out – ‘in Bombay, an electric guitar is exotic’. Why is this?

ABOVE: A rare and dangerous example of the urethra flute.

This playlist argues that context, rather than the instrument itself, is the key. I hope to demonstrate this by putting fifteen instruments in an unexpected context.

It’s a playlist that plunges into the world of exotic tones with a banjo in one hand and an ocarina in the other, and comes out the other side with a sore head, yodelling.

It would be doing the merely obvious
to include such gimmicky instruments
as the trapezoidal harp (ABOVE).

I have deliberately steered clear of the more familiar examples of instruments being used in an unusual context. Much as I love the sitar on the Beatles’ Norwegian Wood, or Jethro Tull’s use of rock flute, and the whole of the Tubular Bells album, I’m looking here for juxtapositions of timbre that still have the power to surprise.

I hope you find yourself marvelling at the sound of a violin screeching across a dub track, or a sousaphone powering an rock tune, as much as I did.

Jungle Flute – Don Tracy & the Voodoo Family

Flute

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(Dance to the Music of) The Ocarina – Irving Berlin

Ocarina

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The Twisted Nerve – Bernard Hermann

Harp

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Jan Pahechan ho – Mohammed Rafi

Electric guitar

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Got a Match – Frank Gallop

Harpsichord

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I Touch Myself – Rolf Harris

Wobble board

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A Day In The Life – The Koto Ensemble

Koto

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K.G.’s Half Way Tree – Augustus Pablo & The Simplicity People

Violin

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Yaman (The Colonel’s Lady) – The Indo-British Ensemble

Sitar

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Donna Lee – Tom Slavicek

Banjo

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Prodigy Medley – The Banana Sessions

Sousaphone

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Take Five – Cayman Islands Steel Pan Jazz Trio

Steel pans

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Bag’s Groove – Leon Thomas

The yodel

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Oboe Mambo – Machito And His Afro-Cuban Orchestra

Oboe

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It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ’N’ Roll) – AC/DC

Bagpipes

Timbre! Unusual Instrumentation Podcast – Vol. I

 
If you can suggest any more for the next playlist, please leave a comment or contact me.

Oh, and have a happy new year!

The Billy Eckstine Transition – Can Crooners Change?

A singer who made the transition from jazz crooner to funk-edged soul singer (on Stax records, no less) completely plausible.

Four tracks will illustrate his mastery of both musical forms:

Nat Cole - Wild is Love (1960)

Cole experiments here in an LP of love songs by Ray Rasch and Dotty Wayne tied together by a narrative concerning the vicissitudes of love. I think it would have made a fantastic one-man show. There are some spoken word interludes helping to tie the tracks together, and these may well be my favourite parts.

Beggar for the Blues

Clearly the stand-out track. A stripped-down 6/8 pulses throughout while Cole squeezes everything out of those portamento notes (When love pulls me iiiiiiiiin...).

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Pick-Up

I like this as an example of a jazz carpe diem. Cole’s pitch-perfect sleaziness is quite a contrast with the next track.

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Hold Her Tight

This is an example of the spoken word interludes that punctuate the album. Cole has got such a trustworthy voice that what could be interminably cheesy sounds genuine.

A Brass Band Swinging - Lansdowne Jazz Series (rec. engineer Joe Meek) (1959)

“They’re a brass band that play jazz,” are words that make any sane jazz addict blanch in trepidation. But not me.

Idly reading the sleevenotes, I spotted Joe Meek was the recording engineer (at the time the real names on this record would have been Kenny Baker and John Lusher), and I wondered if Meek’s engineering talents had been praised by any contemporary magazines. (I strongly suspected not: the sound was a little brash for my liking.) To my surprise, I found a reference in Gramophone magazine’s archives. The reviewer – a certain C.F. – had this to say:

Peggy Lee Sings The Man I Love (Arr. Riddle, Cond. Sinatra)

Featuring an orchestra conducted by Sinatra. And he does a good job. This post is no longer displayed here. You can find it here now.

The Left Bank Bearcats in Hi-Fi

I hope you’re ready for some Snazzy New Orleans arrangements with some nice solos. This is a really upbeat, fun record. But I think you’ll agree that the cover is what really swings it.

Evocations of The Dance - Part II - A Eudora Welty Playlist

If you’re wondering what the first Evocations of the Dance post was, click here to find out.

The opening of Eudora Welty’s Powerhouse (1941) is one of those masterful pieces of writing you come up with in your dreams but which on real paper seems to elude you:

“He’s here on tour from the city – “Powerhouse and His Keyboard” – “Powerhouse and His Tasmanians” – think of the things he calls himself! There’s no one in the world like him. You can’t tell what he is. [...] He’s not coal black – beverage colored – looks like a preacher when his mouth is going every minute: like a monkey’s when it looks for something. Improvising, coming on a light and childish melody – smooch – he loves it with his mouth.”

Whitney Balliett, eat your heart out!

Shortly after reading this we learn that hardly anybody is dancing. Why not?

“It’s a white dance, and nobody dances, except a few straggling jitterbugs and two elderly couples. Everybody just stands around the band and watches Powerhouse. Sometimes they steal glances at one another, as if to say, Of course, you know how it is with them–Negroes–band leaders–they would play the same way, giving all they've got, for an audience of one... When somebody, no matter who, gives everything, it makes people feel ashamed for him.”

Welty is said to have written the story after she had been to a dance in 1940 at which Fats Waller and his band had been playing. Call me avant garde if you like, but I really think there’s something to be gained from listening to the tracks I’m going to post alongside reading the story.

The story is like a jazz solo, riffing and quoting from the songs played that evening. The story explores the complicated relationship between the black performer Powerhouse (based on Waller) and his mixed-race audience. That said, the blend of sweet, trite love songs and ‘hot’ jazz tunes suggests Welty’s expecting the reader to have a familiarity with the subtle musical textures.

Really, I suggest you download these records below and make a playlist to put on while you read the story. You’ll come away astonished at how much the music is part of the texture of the story.

Name Band - 1959 - Bob Florence & His Orchestra

A piano’s one-finger mysterioso introduction; a guitar that thrums an almost inaudible heartbeat; beautiful structures that have as much room for carefree ensemble lollops as for solos of heart-rending intensity: sounds like I’m describing the music of Count Basie.

And it seems to me that Florence’s arrangements have some of the laid-back glitziness of the later Basie band orchestrations, particularly the ones by Neal Hefti for E=MC²/The Atomic Basie (1957).

The sleevenotes boast of the LP being completely manually compressed by skilful engineers. It just sounds classy to me, but if that over-compressed sound was interfering with your listening pleasure, who am I to argue?

From that album, one slow burner and one arrangement that sizzles with joy.

Baby Come Here

Little Girl

Personnel: Bob Florence (p), Johnny Audino (tp), Tony Terran (tp), Irv Bush (tp), Juiles Chaikin (tp), Bob Edmundson (tb), Bobby Pring (tb), Don Nelligan (tb), Herbie Harper (tb), Herb Geller (as), Bernie Fleischer (as), Bob Hardaway (ts).

Four Last Songs (1959-1980) - II - Four More Last Songs

Another quartet of beautiful songs that were the last things their composers wrote.

Two Soulful Jazz Albums I've Bought Recently

Two LPs I bought recently have been featured on the blog Singer–Saints (now defunct).
These are the albums in question:

Dinah Washington’s Drinking Again. Do get it because it’s absolutely wonderful, particularly the tracks “Just Friends”, “Drinking Again” and “For All We Know”.
The Lee Wiley compilation As Time Goes By. The tracks “Melancholy Baby” and “Make Believe” are about the best versions of those tunes you’re likely to hear.

A Sideswipe at the Beat Generation - I

I knew there must be one somewhere. An anti-Beat song. How very square.

Billy Daniels - The Beat Generation

Shakespeare And All That Jazz - Cleo Laine (arr. John Dankworth) (1964)

Rather late for a Dankworth tribute. Let's call it a Cleo Laine tribute instead. Or a Shakespeare tribute.

Some of this is sort of kooky, some of it as inscrutably off-the-wall as the cover. Of the tracks posted here, I'd only heard It Was A Lover and His Lass before, sung by Al Bowlly.

The Obscenity of Jelly Roll Morton

Jelly Roll Morton's 'Make Me A Pallet on Your Floor' is a 13-minute phantasmagoric blues prefiguring the sexual fantasies of Gangsta rap. Morton's famous bravado is here at its most untrammelled. Morton esteems his own prowess, issues commands, threats, and swears. A lot.

This latter fact alone will put a lot of people off, but if you can get past this, it's a fascinating document.

I don't believe I would have otherwise come across the beautiful comparative adjective 'fuckingest', as in 'You the fuckingest bitch, baby, I ever met'.

But the lyric that clinches it, for me, is the following:

Now listen to this baby:


Make Me A Pallet on Your Floor

Now imagine it's 1938. Lomax watches impassively as Morton pushes the song into evermore uncommercial territory. Listen for that lovely moment when Morton coughs and exclaims on the quality of the whiskey Lomax has given him.

(Note: this is my own edit of the recordings, which you'll find are split into tracks on the box set. As far as I can tell, there's no reason for them not to be edited together except the slightly uneven quality of the recordings.)

A 78s Playlist (The Nine Best 78s on Music Makes Me)

*A CD comprised entirely of rare and unusual 78s is now available here!*

I've got a present for you. It's a 45-minute playlist to introduce you to the 78s available on the site.

Music Makes Me - A 78s Playlist

There's some comedy, melodrama, protest, classical, swing, popular song, folk and, some, well, bagpipes.

Think of it as a lovingly made mixtape, one that might encourage you to find more about the site and the artists presented (click here to see the tracklist).

01 Blue Danube - International Concert Orchestra, HMV
02 The Lost Chord - Webster Booth
03 The Perpetual Laugh - Charles Jolley
04 Beneath the White Texas Moon - G. H. Elliot
05 Ave Maria - J. H. Squire Celeste Octet
06 Strange Fruit - Aubrey Pankey
07 The Hills of Glenswilly, v. John McGettigan & His Irish Minstrels (Regal Zonophone)
08 Sandy's Honeymoon (Pts. I & II)- Sandy Powell
09 Mean to Me - Alfredo & his Orchestra
10 Au clair de lune - Benno Moiseiwitsch
11 This is Heaven - Talbot O'Farrell
12 Flowers of the Forest - Pipe-Major Forsythe
13 Bop Goes the Weasel - Tommy Reilly

And if you like that sort of thing - shellac, 78s, pre-vinyl scratchy records - if broadband noise is no obstacle to your aural enjoyment, then I present you with the best 78s posts Music Makes Me has to offer...

Evocations of The Dance - Part I

Evocations of the Dance – Part II is here.

The dream sequences of that Bowlly-fest The Singing Detective (starring Michael Gambon, below) alone are enough to remind me that I - and by extension, my generation - will never truly know the pleasures of the dance.

This being a thought that often runs through my mind as I listen to my old 78s, I found a passage in V. S. Pritchett's (below) beautiful story When My Girl Comes Home particularly pertinent, so I reproduce it here.

Here he is reminding us that the dancehall was a mysterious, sensual underworld:

The kind of writing you might expect from Whitney Balliett; but from an English writer...

Which leads me to two waltzes and a foxtrot:


Till the Clock Strikes Three - Eddie Walter's Dance Band


My Lady Divine - Alfredo & his Orchestra 
 
That ecstatic atmosphere is also captured in Larkin's unfinished poem The Dance, which begins cheerily enough (although we should remember that in Larkin's poetry this is usually misleading):

'Drink, sex and jazz - all sweet things, brother: far
Too sweet to be diluted to "a dance" '

And the word 'jazz' brings to mind the most perfect, the most enduring of all the jazz standards, Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler's 'Stormy Weather', here sung with a naive charm that typifies the English dance band:


Stormy Weather - The Plaza Orchestra

Related:
Some Philip Larkin mp3s

Evocations of the Dance – Part II.

McJazz - Sandy Brown's Jazz Band (1957)

 Kilted clarinettist Sandy Brown plays modern jazz.

The title of the album and the cover are irresistible, and thankfully the contents aren't half bad, either.

Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but for me there's a bit of a Pee Wee Russell influence going on underneath the bebop exterior.

Doctor Blues, I Presume

Monochrome

Ognoliya

Scales (Brown)

The Card

Those Blues

The Four Seasons in Jazz (1965)

Raymond Fol and his quintet reimagine the most famous classical piece of music on Earth.

I think I know what you're thinking: a splendid idea, but is it seasonal? Well, you have to accept that your jazz quartet don't do wintry; they can do cool pretty well though.

01 - Spring

02 - Summer

03 - Autumn

04 - Winter

Ted Heath's Au clair de lune

A sedate jazzing of the Debussy.


Au clair de lune - Ted Heath

Cf. the post on Classical 78s

It’s from this album:

A Tuba Jazz - Ray Draper (with John Coltrane)

*One of Music Makes Me's Most Popular Posts*



It's hard to tell if John Coltrane is playing a leading or supporting role here, because when he stops playing, a tuba starts playing. Although Coltrane may be very diverting, tubas are, almost by definition, doubly so.

I read that after hearing Rufus Harley's bagpipe-playing, Coltrane bought himself a set of bagpipes.

But perhaps he needn't have cast his net so far. In the introduction to his collection of jazz writing All What Jazz, the poet Philip Larkin likened Coltrane's playing to "a pair of demoniacally-possessed bagpipes".

01 Essii's dance
02 Doxy
03 I Talk to the Trees
04 Yesterdays
05 Oleo
06 Angel Eyes

*One of Music Makes Me's Most Popular Posts*