"Traditional jazz belongs to the world." - George A. Borgman This is the official blog of the George A. Borgman Archives. The Archives contains all of Borgman's years of research and writings on traditional jazz, hot jazz, ragtime and swing. It includes all his writings and interviews, books, magazines, photographs and original recorded interviews with numerous jazz artists.
For today's jazz performance I present the Devil Mountain Jazz Band out of Oakley, California playing Under the Double Eagle.
From jazz nut.com.
The Devil Mountain Jazz Band was founded in 1982 and have appeared in several hundred jazz festivals since then. They specialize in playing music from the 1800s to the 1940s. They play many different types of music, the blues, dixieland, ragtime, even gospel and novelty tunes.
Interestingly the tune they play in this performance is an 1893 march written by Josef Franz Wagner (1856-1908) the Austrian composer. John Philip Sousa would popularize the tune in America recording it several times starting in 1896.
Featured in this performance recorded on February 15, 2015 at the 31st Annual Sounds of Mardi Gras in Fresno, California, we have leader Ken Keller on banjo; Tom Barnebey on piano; Pete Main on clarinet; Noel Weidkamp and Tom Belmessieri both on cornet; Glenn Calkins on the trombone; Keith Baltz on tuba; and Allan Grissette on drums.
Here are some more videos from the same event...
Ray and His Little Chevrolet composed by Bernie Grossman,
Jack Stanley and Billy Baskette from about 1924.
King of the Zulus
East St. Louis Toodle-Oo composed by Duke Ellington
The first Saturday of the month has been reserved for piano players! So this month lets take a look at Jerry Rothschild and his half hour session playing the music of Jelly Roll Morton.
Master jazz piano player, composer and band leader Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941) was a colorful character. He composed many famous tunes still played to this day.
Rothschild's performance was recorded at the South Bay New Orleans Jazz Club on April, 12, 2015 at Redondo Beach, California.
On today's Saturday Jazz Performance we will hear Italy's Ambrosia Brass Band playing the traditional gospel tune, Just A Closer Walk With Thee.
The Ambrosia Brass Band is based out of Milan, Italy. The current members of the band are Francesco Licitra on saxophone; Giancarlo Mariani on trumpet; Rudy Migliardi on trombone; Beppe Caruso on tuba; Marco Castiglioni on the snare drum; Walter Ganda on the bass drum; and Fabio KoRyu Calabrò as the grand marshall.
Just A Closer Walk With Thee has a murky past and it is almost impossible to know for sure where this tune was first developed and played. There is little doubt that it was a religious oriented song that was sung as early as the 1800s however, and it was quickly adapted by jazz bands and has been heard played by such bands since the dawn of Dixieland.
This video performance was recorded in 2007 as part of JazzAscona 2007 an annual jazz festival held in Switzerland.
For this Saturday's Jazz Performance we'll see a performance of the Nova Scotia Jazz Band with guest trombone player Roy Williams playing Rosetta.
Rosetta was written by Earl "Fatha" Hines who composed the music and Henri Woode who added the lyrics. Hines first recorded the tune on February 13, 1933. He would again record it on September 24, 1934. It even was recorded by Western swing bandleader Bob Wills in 1938. Rosetta would become a jazz favorite.
The Nova Scotia Jazz Band was founded in 2009 and won "Best Early Jazz Band" in 2011 as part of the Scottish Jazz Awards. The next year, 2012, found themselves featured in the film The Happy Lands.
In this performance John Burgess is on clarinet, Andy Sharkey is on bass and Roy Williams is on trombone. This video was recorded in the Fall of 2011 at The Lot in Edinburgh.
I was raking yesterday, listening to music on my I-pod, when I recalled what my father George A. Borgman had mentioned to me several times over the years. He told me that his favorite form of music was Gregorian chant!
Why did these memories come to mind while raking, well, I happened to be listening to the album, Benedictine Monks of Fontgombault Abbey which was of Gregorian chants.
It was rather surprising that my father was a closet fan of the religious Gregorian chant especially since he was a consummate jazz fan and writer about jazz, ragtime and big band music. I knew that my father studied music and had a degree in musicology and that he would frequently listen to Classical music but I hadn't ever heard him listening to Gregorian chant.
I assume that he discovered Gregorian chant while he was studying music at university. Gregorian chant was developed during the early Middle Ages to recite the Latin liturgy. It was sung in unison in a single vocal line.
This form of religious music received its name from Pope Gregory I who was head of the Church from 590 to 604. It was during Gregory's reign when this musical form was collected and codified.
Welcome back to the Saturday Jazz Performance! This Saturday we examine the Dixieland Crackerjacks from the Netherlands! The group was formed in 1994 and were already recording the next year. The next couple of years saw the band developing into a real professional organization with their first television appearance happening in 1997.
Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue (Has Anybody Seen My Girl?) was published and recorded in 1925. The music was written by Ray Henderson and the lyrics by Sam Lewis and Joe Young. The California Ramblers released a recording of this tune in 1925 as well as others apparently. In 1952 a Rock Hudson movie called "Has Anybody Seen My Gal" was released.
The Dixieland Crackerjacks has been a favorite at festivals and they can be seen in many videos playing at outdoor appearances on websites like YouTube. The members of the band in this performance, recorded on June 14, 2008 at the Cantanhede Dixieland Festival in Mealhada, Portugal, consists of "Slidin" Selena Brandsma-Kuiper on trombone; Michel Muller on trumpet; Koos Greven on banjo; Lielian Tan on drums; and Bert Brandsma on the bass saxophone.
This Saturday lets take a look and a listen to Bourbon Street Parade by the Heartbeat Dixieland Jazz Band out of Connecticut.
Bourbon Street Parade was written by the New Orleans drummer Paul Barbarin (1899-1969) in 1952 and was popularized by The Dukes of Dixieland and just about every jazz musician has played it from Louis Armstrong and Al Hirt to Wynton Marsalis.
The Heartbeat Dixieland Jazz Band was founded by drummer Bill Logozzo, and the group specializes in playing Dixieland. Bill along with Wendy Manemeit founded a charitable organization calledMusical Dreams for Human Harmony which helps people in need.
This video performance of Bourbon Street Parade was recorded on April 6, 2013 in Middletown, Connecticut for an event called Jazzin' With The Stars 2013. The musicians who are performing here are Tom Brown on trumpet;
Sherman Kahn on saxophone;
John Clark on clarinet;
Skip Hughes on trombone and Ben Griffin on the trombone doubles as singer;
Shari Lucas on piano; and Steve Keeler on banjo.
Here is a continuation of Memories of A Jazz Journalist by George A. Borgman, which has been augmented and broken up into a serialized format.
George first heard the name Sabby Lewis from his wife who was a local of Boston. He was from St. Louis and hadn't heard of Lewis prior to that time since Lewis' band could be described as a Boston based band. After George began writing about jazz in The Mississippi Rag and other publications in 1994 he interviewed Lewis and wrote a story for the Rag.
"A real gentleman was legendary pianist and bandleader Sabby Lewis (Braintree), who led a swing band in Boston from 1936 through the Fifties. Lewis' big bands were popular attractions in famous nightclubs in Boston and New York City, and his bands were known nationally through coast-to-coast network radio broadcasts. Some of Sabby's sidemen went on to play in such bands as Duke Ellington's and other eminent bands. In the Fifties, Lewis became the first fulltime disc jockey on Boston radio.
I interviewed Lewis for a story in the Rag, and found Sabby to be a truly fine gentleman, one of the nicest I ever met in the business. On June 26, 1994, he played with his trio at the Mall at Chestnut Hill, Newton, Massachusetts, and except for a swollen hand, he looked well. However, after a short illness he passed away on July 9th. He was well respected as a man and musician and Boston area musicians mourned his passing."
Sabby, born William Sebastian Lewis on November 1, 1914, in Middleburgh, North Carolina grew up in Philadelphia. He began piano lessons at the age of five and moved to Boston, Massachusetts sometime in 1932.
Listen to the Sabby Lewis Orchestra play Bottoms Up
from this 1947 recording.
This week we jump back to what appears to be the 80s and a performance by the Neo-Passé Swing Quintet, a group which was comprised of Kim Cusack on clarinet; Hank Tausand on drums; Jeff Czech on bass; Jerry Mulvihill on piano and Ted Butterman on guitar. The group played in clubs around Chicago about 25 years ago and presumably the musicians played with other groups as well.
The words and music for When You're Smiling (The Whole Word Smiles With You) were written by Mark Fisher, Joe Goodwin and Larry Shay. This tune seems to be th biggest hit that these composers had. Fisher started out as a bandleader who played at hotels and dance halls. He often composed with Joe Burke. Goodwin was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1889 and began his career in Vaudeville as a monologist he composed many tunes in colaboration with others. Shay's first published song was Do You, Don't You, Will You, Won't You which was published in 1923.
The tune was a favorite of Louis Armstrong who first recorded it in 1929.
Here now is the Neo-Passé Swing Quintet's version of When You're Smiling.
New Orleans Delight, also-known-as New Orleans Delight Creole Jazz Band is a Traditional jazz band from Denmark. The group was founded in 1996 and has played throughout Europe including Holland, Germany, Finland, Sweden and England. They proudly boast that they have also performed on, "on Bourbon Street in the birthplace of jazz, New Orleans."
An interesting aspect of this band is their commitment to remain true to the music associated to New Orleans which besides jazz includes, Ragtime, parade and Caribbean music, the Blues, Boogie Woogie, Spirituals and dance hall music.
Kid Thomas Boogie sometimes called Kid Thomas' Boogie Woogie was named for and apparently written by, Kid Thomas Valentine a jazz trumpeter born in 1896 five years before Louis Armstrong. He moved to New Orleans at an early age and steadily became known as a hot trumpeter during the dawn of jazz. His popularity became such that he formed and led his own band in 1926.
Kid Thomas made his home at Preservation Hall where he became quite popular in the 1950s when the Dixieland Jazz revival was in full force. He played in his same style of jazz until his death in 1987.
David R. Young wrote in 1978 about a Kid Thomas performance. "The next number Kid Thomas Boogie brings down the house. It always does. Emanuel Sayles puts down an extraordinary boogie woogie on the banjo, but it's Thomas himself who really gets the joint jumping. He blasts a cluster of notes here and a cluster of notes there, each time surprising the audience with the brashness of his trumpet, the rhythmic drive of his playing."
This video was recorded by Ronald Lind at the SeaSide Jazzklub, Frederiksund on October 31. 2011. The band in the video is made up of guest cornet player Fred Vigorito; Kjeld Brandt on clarinet; Bengt Hansson playing trombone; Erling Rasmussen on piano; banjoist Erling Lindhardt; Stefan Kärfve on bass and Claus Lindhardt on drums.
Not long after this performance bassist Stefan Kärfve passed away in February 2012.
The first Saturday's of the month are focused on pianists! Today we look at Luca Sestak. Sestak was born January 10, 1995 in Celle, Germany. He started learning the piano at age eight. He became interested in the Blues and by age 11 he was posting videos of his piano playing abilities online. After a television appearance in 2010 his first album, "Lost in Boogie" came out in November of that year. Then in 2011 he performed at the Boogie Woogie Festival in Laroquebrou, France.
In this video we see Sestak play Boogie Woogie Stomp at SummerJazz in 2013 at Pinneberg, Germany. Boogie Woogie Stomp was composed by Albert Ammons (1907-1949) a Blues and Boogie-Woogie pianist who influenced many other players, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Dr. John and Erroll Garner.
There are those who have made the trombone laugh, while some have made others nearly cry, and I dare say that most of you have often heard the expression, "He makes that trombone talk." Well, that's just what Frank F. Lhotak, who is with us this month in the Trombone Hall of Fame, can do. Not only can he make the instrument talk (from a musical standpoint), but so remarkable is his control over it that every evening at the Shubert Theatre in New York City (where he is one of the features with the well-known Ted Lewis in the "Greenwich Follies of 1921," an annual musical production which plays the entire winter season at this theatre) this trombonist pretty nearly enunciates the words "I DO." It happens towards the end of Mr. Lewis' act, when the cornetist and the trombonist are in the centre of the stage representing a bride and groom. Mr. Lewis is heard asking Mr. Lhotak the question: "Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?" His answer (played upon the trombone) "I DO," is one of the most laughable and original bits in the show.
Frank Lhotak is a clever performer, and his conscientious study has made him an exceptional trombonist. Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1894, Lhotak has had the benefit of a correct early training from his father who, besides being a successful musician abroad, also became a successful teacher of brass instruments in the "Windy City." Three brothers also became proficient as players on brass instruments — the oldest, Ferdinand (after leaving Chicago), became one of the leading band masters in the section of the country where he is now located— Beloit, Wisconsin — where he is in charge of the Fairbanks Morse Co.'s. most excellent band.
At the age of ten years Frank was urged by his brother Ferdinand to take up the baritone. This he did, and the career of Frank Lhotak had found its beginning. Living in Chicago at that time, the brothers sought the good advice of the late A. F. Weldon, whose watchful eye and careful tuition soon made the future of the boys a surety. Some few years later Frank decided to take up the slide trombone, and with the help of his father, brothers and Mr. Weldon it was not long before the public of Chicago was hearing the solos played by young Lhotak in their beautiful parks and other places where concerts are to be heard. During the summer seasons of 1913-14-15 he played concerts in the public parks of Chicago with Adam Sindler, Sidney Camp's 1st Regiment Infantry Band, and at all of the concerts given by his brother (Ferdinand) who was now one of Chicago's leading band masters. With the latter organization Lhotak also played baritone solos, and assisted his brother as director.
In the summer season of 1916 his brother booked a band tour over the Redpath Chautauqua circuit for three months. Young Lhotak went along with the ensemble, playing light trombone solos and as before assisting with the directing. He also conducted the band for the baritone solos played by his brother Ferdinand. At the conclusion of this tour Frank returned to Chicago, where he conscientiously continued his studies and accepted various engagements with the leading musical contractors in that city. In 1917 (just about the time when the popular craze for jazz began), and in consideration of a considerable amount of loose change, Lhotak was tendered a very fine engagement in one of Chicago's most popular restaurants with a combination from New Orleans. The success of this combination kept him in chicago until late 1918, when he came to New York to accept an engagement with the well-known black-face comedian, Al Jolson, in a musical production called "Follow the Girl." In this show, the people with whom Lhotak played were known as "The Five Southern Jazzers."
Some few months later a tour was arranged in connection with Hale and Patterson, one of vaudeville's biggest headline attractions, and soon after returning to New York after the close of this tour, Lhotak was engaged for a short while at Reisenwebers celebrated cafe and restaurant with another popular jazz combination. Then he organized his own band and named it "The Original New Orleans Jazz Band," which was soon engaged by Oliver Morosco for his musical attraction of "One of Us." It was while playing with this company in New York City that arrangements were made with the different phonograph companies to record Lhotak's work.
In 1919 along came the ever popular Miss Sophie Tucker, who made Lhotak a very fine offer which he accepted, his musical activities now being under the name of "Sophie Tucker and her Six Kings of Syncopation." Following this engagement Harry Weber placed Mr. Lhotak with a combination act in which Miss Bee Palmer was the star, and with this act he toured the big vaudeville circuits. A very fine financial stipend every week was one of the attractive features of this tour, which was terminated because of the serious illness of Miss Palmer. It was about this time that his fine work, from both the musical and "jazz" standpoint, came to the attention of Ted Lewis, and from that time to the date of the present writing Lhotak has been and is still under contract with Mr. Lewis at an exceptional salary — his reward for an ever conscientious endeavor to play well and to always put forth his best efforts.
That his fine personality and splendid congeniality also have contributed to his success is evidenced by Lhotak's long association with David Klein, who is the cornetist with Mr. Lewis. Mr. Klein and Frank Lhotak have now been playing alongside of each other (side-partners, to speak musically) for the past three years, and their relations are most amicable. Numerous phonograph dates and club work come along as side issues in connection with Mr. Lhotak's present engagement in the "Greenwich Follies" in New York City, and Frank is now enjoying the fullness of a well-earned success. I saw him this summer at Atlantic City, and his appearance bore the index to that contentment and happiness which are the accompaniment to a profitably spent life. Mrs. Lhotak also reflected her husband's prosperity.
NOTE: Throughout the original article Frank F. Lhotak's last name was written as "Shotak." I am not sure whether that was his real name and he changed it to "Lhotak" or whether it was just a mistake. However, Frank seems to have gone by Lhotak as the majority of articles from the period refer to him as such. To avoid confusion I have changed all references of "Shotak" to "Lhotak."
Musical battles between bands and drummers and other musicians go back to the earliest days of jazz music and continued into the Big Band era and can still be seen and heard today. Band battles between Chick Webb's orchestra against some bands have become the stuff of legend.
Gene Krupa versus Buddy Rich was always a thrill to watch or listen to. And like I said even today these musical battles between instruments are still occurring.
Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich Drum Battle from
the Sammy Davis, Jr. Show, 1966.
Here is a another fantastic drum off! This time between Steve Taddeo and Paul Midiri which was captured by Marce Enright on August 12, 2015 during a performance of the Swing Senders with the Midiri Brothers at CJAL. She writes all about the performance... HERE!
Marce posted this great excerpt on her YouTube Channel, please subscribe to it in order to see more great video content.
I've mentioned it before, and will mention it again Marce has a terrific website focusing on New England jazz called New England Traditional Jazz Plus. Make sure you check it out.
Jazz is upon us, everywhere. To deny the fact is to assume the classic ostrich pose, head buried in the sand, tail-feathers to the sun. To shout alarm hysterically from the housetops, is to exhibit over-confidence in clamorous indignation as a purifier of morals, if it be not wholly to ignore historic precedent.
The situation we are facing is not new. It offers many problems which are grave, yet seemingly not more perplexing than those which have arisen, under similar conjunctures, in the past. True it is that the dance to which jazz music has been coupled is not precisely setting an example of modesty and grace. True, also, that certain modern dance-perversions have called up music that is as noxious as the breath of Belial. Only by a bold stretch of fancy can this delirious caterwauling be brought under the head of music proper — or improper; as noise, its significance at times becomes eloquent to the point of leaving little or nothing to the imagination.
However, let us remember that the worst of our present dances are not beginning to approach in barefaced wickedness the almost unbelievable performances of our forefathers, for which we need not seek much further back than the time of the French Revolution, when the 1800 dance-halls of Paris were not enough to hold the whirling pairs, but dancing went on gayly in churches and in cemeteries. And let us admit that thJazz is upon us, everywhere. To deny the fact is to assume the classic ostrich pose, head buried in the sand, tail-feathers to the sun. To shout alarm hysterically from the housetops, is to exhibit over-confidence in clamorous indignation as a purifier of morals, if it be not wholly to ignore historic precedent.
The situation we are facing is not new. It offers many problems which are grave, yet seemingly not more perplexing than those which have arisen, under similar conjunctures, in the past. True it is that the dance to which jazz music has been coupled is not precisely setting an example of modesty and grace. True, also, that certain modern dance-perversions have called up music that is as noxious as the breath of Belial. Only by a bold stretch of fancy can this delirious caterwauling be brought under the head of music proper — or improper; as noise, its significance at times becomes eloquent to the point e best of jazz tunes is something infinitely more original — perhaps even musically better — than the so-called 'popular' music that America produced in the 'good old days,' that golden age which lives only in the mythology of disappointed sinners.
My ideas on the dance and the possible causes of its recurring degeneration I have set forth in an article, 'Why do we dance?' which appeared in the Musical Quarterly for October, 1920. I shall merely remind you that almost every race and every age have known social conditions which result in an unloosing of instincts that nature wisely has taught us to hold well in check, but which, every now and then, from cryptic reasons, are allowed to break the bounds of civilized restraint.
Such excesses have not infrequently attained to tragic madness. The silly, lewd gyrations for which jazz is held responsible by some are the release of tension in a witless, neurotic stratum of society. But such dances were common long before the word 'jazz' was coined. Our latest dance craze has known the Tango, the 'shimmy,' the various zoological trots, to much the same purpose that now cries out for jazz.
Whoever wishes to reform the dance must break the grip that clutches partner against partner, in shuffling, wriggling ambulation. Abolish the comparative intimacy of that twofold company; make room for the benign third party that turns company into crowd; devise a dance in which there is general participation, as there was in the quadrille, the figure dances, the milder forms of country reels, and you will not only improve the tone of public amusements, but possibly you may open a way for dance-music to resume a swifter, ampler, and more sweeping gait, instead of the repeated, jogging, stubborn motives which lead to stupid, short, reiterated movements. For the present, I am not concerned with dance reform, nor am I interested in jazz as an accompaniment to Terpsichorean atrocities; it is rather the musical side of jazz — how it originated, what it represents, and what it may lead to — upon which I shall try to throw a little light.
II
To a great many minds, the word 'jazz' implies frivolous or obscene deportment. Let me ask what the word 'sarabande' suggests to you? I have no doubt that to most of you it will mean everything that is diametrically opposed to 'jazzing.' When you hear mention of a 'sarabande,' you think of Bach's, of Handel's slow and stately airs; you think of noble and dignified strains in partita*, sonatas, and operas of the eighteenth century. Yet the sarabande, when it was first danced in Spain, about 1588, was probably far more shocking to behold than is the most shocking jazz to-day. The sarabande seems to have been of Moorish origin. Then, as now, the oriental, the exotic touch, gave dancing an added fillip. When Lady Mary Montagu, writing from Adrianople in 1717, described the dance that she saw in the seraglio of a rich Mussulman, she made allusions which leave no uncertainty as to the exact nature of these proceedings. Something of that character must have belonged to the earliest sarabandes. They were the proud Hidalgo's hoolah-hoolah.
A French author, Pierre de Lancre, wrote in 1618: 'The courtesans who mingle with the players have given this dance such a vogue on the stage, that there is hardly a young girl in the country who cannot copy them to perfection.' How truly the same might be said of our generation; it is the stage that starts a novel mode of dancing, the public which is alert to ape it and outstep it. Father Mariana, in his book De Spectaculis, published in 1609, devoted a whole chapter to an attack on the sarabande, accusing it of having done more harm than the bubonic plague which devastated Europe in the Middle Ages.
Again, we hear it alleged that the moral corruption worked by jazz is vastly more calamitous than was the material havoc wrought by the World War. And yet, as we know, this once objectionable sarabande finally became a matrix wherein the greatest musical composers have cast some of their loftiest and purest inspirations. Dances, popular and no doubt shocking in their day, have furnished the soil for the cyclic growth from which has sprung, by way of the concerto and sonata, the grandest form of absolute music, the orchestral symphony.
What the waltz was when first it set Vienna spinning, when it turned Paris into one big whirlpool, has been variously chronicled by pious and blushing witnesses, none of whom was more perturbed than the impious poet, Lord Byron.
Not soft Herodias, when, with winning tread,
Her nimble feet danced off another's head;
Not Cleopatra on her Galley's deck
Displayed so much of leg or more of neck.
Than thou, ambrosial Waltz.
Yet Weber was to vest such bareness in
the spacious mantle of his art, and
Chopin crown it with the coronet of quality.
I have taken the license of rapidly rehearsing these few historical facts, to answer those who might question my saneness in bestowing upon the musical side of jazz so much as a particle of studious thought. Without speculating what the future development of jazz may be, what ultimate contribution to musical styles it may make, there is an excuse for believing that long after the dance known as jazz will happily have vanished, investigators in the field of musical history will have occasion to search for the inception of these peculiar tunes, to seek for traces of contemporary opinion on their merit or their faults. I frankly think that it would set us down a rather jaundiced lot, if those investigators were to discover no sign of unbiased appraisement, nothing but wholesale ranting against a laxity of morals which was inveterate before the frenzied beaters of pots and kitchen kettles became entitled to full membership in the Musical Union.
Let me emphatically state that I in no way sympathize with these perpetrators of infernal din, who are giving a poor imitation of the admirable savage, with his highly perfected and astonishingly diversified art of sounding pulsatile instruments.
The savage stands far above the clownish tricks of rubbing sandpaper, blowing shrieky sirens, or hitting at random a battery of gongs. The savage is immeasurably more cultured than the person who belabors a piano with his whole body and, thrumming two or three ill-assorted chords, frantically fumbled together in endless and stale repetition, tries to tell you that he is playing jazz. As a matter of fact, he is doing nothing of the kind.
Like any other type of music, jazz can be bad or good. I am not defending bad jazz any more than I would defend a bad ballad or the bad playing of Beethoven. I have no intention of standing up for the insolent plagiarists who misappropriate and disfigure Rimsky-Korsakof, Puccini, and that superlative master, Johann Strauss. One of the most audacious in this little game is said to be a good musician, conductor of a practised band, the son of a respected Supervisor of Music in the Public Schools of Denver. (So says the New York Times.) I am certain that the apostle of vulgarization who should try to rewrite Shelley's poems in slang would be broken on the wheel and quartered. And I should be delighted to help set up the punitive machinery, if musical barbarians were to be similarly executed.
So much, then, to clear the stage, and range into a solid background these protests and restrictions, upon which I shall ask you to fix, from time to time, a reassuring glance, while I step to the proscenium and speak my little piece. The burden of it is this: there exists such a thing as good jazz music, and good jazz is a great deal better, and far more harmless, than is a bad ballad or the bad playing of Beethoven. And, if you are open-eyed in surveying our musical tendencies, you cannot pass blindly over the unspeakable riff-raff of our male and female balladists: the 'Smile' songs; 'Bubble' songs; 'Mother,' 'Mither,' and 'Mammy' songs; the sloppy 'Sweetheart' drivel; above all, the unpardonable maltreatment of the classics by the multitude of amateurs — offenses infinitely worse than good jazz. And to the latter I now come.
III
Jazz, as a state of mind, is symptom, not malady. Jazz, in the guise of music, is both anodyne and stimulant to the afflicted. To the immune, it is an irritant. The term jazz, as applied to music, is rather elastic. It embraces not only the noisy-noisome sort, the jumble-jungle kind, but a type thatrefines upon and meliorates the racy stuff of wilder species with matter of a distinctly and engagingly musical nature. Good jazz is a composite, the happy union of seemingly incompatible elements. Good jazz is the latest phase of American popular music. It is the upshot of a transformation which started some twenty years ago, and culminated in something unique, unmatched in any other part of the world. Fifteen years ago we had progressed to the insipid 'Waltz me around again, Willie,' to the Coon-song and Rag-time factories in the back parlors of the West Twentieth streets of New York.
"Waltz Me Around Again, Willie" by Ren Shields & Will D. Cobb.
Performed by Billy Murray & the Haydn Quartet, May 10, 1906.
With the period of 'Everybody's doing it, doing it, doing it,' about 1912, we reached the short insistent motive which was to usurp the prerogatives of songfulness.
"Everybody's Doin' It" composed by Irving Berlin
Performed by Collins & Harlan, recorded February 1912
Then, one fine day, in 1915, — or fine night, I should rather say; for, if I remember correctly, it was in the second act of a mildly entertaining operetta, — we were treated to' The Magic Melody.' A young man, gifted with musical talent and unusual courage, had dared to introduce into his tune a modulation which was nothing extraordinary in itself, but which marked a change, a new regime in American popular music. It was just the thing that the popular composer in the making had been warned against by the wise ones as a thing too' high-brow' for the public to accept. They were foolish prophets. The public not only liked it: they went mad over it. And well they might; for it was a relief, a liberation.
Gradually, the courageous young man found imitators more daring than himself. Harmonic richness and variety entered victoriously where stereotyped cadences, barren and threadbare progressions, had reigned ad nauseam. Mind you, I am not setting milestones with the tunes I have named; I merely wish to suggest to you different stages of a continuous evolution, by songs which were typical of each.
I have not given the subject sufficient study to say definitely at what point the course of popular American music took a new turn, but, unless I am very much mistaken, 'The Magic Melody,' by Mr. Jerome Kern, was the opening chorus of an epoch. It is not a composition of genius, but it is very ingenious. While it is almost more tuneless than was 'Everybody's doing it,' — if that be possible, — and largely adheres to the short, insistent phrase, it stands on a much higher musical plane. Its principal claim to immortality is that it introduces a modulation which, at the time it was first heard by the masses, seized their ears with the power of magic. And the masses, for once, showed excellent judgment.
"The Magic Melody" by Jerome Kern
Performed by the Mayfair Dance Orchestra, c. 1915
Mr. Kern subsequently proved to be one of the most fertile, tasteful, and characteristic composers of light music. When he tries to be purely melodic, he is apt to fall back upon cheap sentimentalism, tinged with spurious folksong color. But his little harmonic device had a hue all its own; and popular parlance decided that it was 'blue.'
A.veil of mystery covers the first dark deed that went by the name of 'Blue.' Forever hidden, perhaps, is the identity of the melancholic culprit who perpetrated it, although stout hearts are ready to cite the man, the place, and the tune. They are not apt, however, to tell you of an ancestral and bona-fide 'blue chord,' which Richard Wagner deliberately chose in order to make more graphic the word blau when Tristan, in the beginning of Tristan and Isolde, refers to the green, but distant, shore as shimmering still in a blue haze. That is the sublime instance.
The ridiculous one is the maudlin glissando on ukulele and steel guitar, the tear-duct of popular music. Whatstainless ears considered a rather weird turn of the melody, a morbid shifting of harmonies, entered the dictionary of professional jargon as 'blue note,' or 'blue chord.'
I am under the impression that these terms were contemporary with, if they did not precede and foreshadow, the period of our innumerable musical 'Blues.' What the uninitiated tried to define by that homely appellation was, perhaps, an indistinct association of the minor mode and dyspeptic intonation with poor digestion; in reality, it is the advent in popular music of something which the textbooks call ambiguous chords, altered notes, extraneous modulation, and deceptive cadence.
The trick had irresistible charm; everybody tried it. It was in the preludes and interludes of the popular songs that the radicals began to break down the old order — that is, in those measures where the voice did not interfere with their freedom. The hackneyed 'Till ready' wasmercifully dispatched to limbo, and superseded by some dexterous harmonic tricks that not only stood, but demanded and deserved, rehearing. Instead of the traditional sequence of dominant diminished-seventh, and dominant-seventh harmonies—which formed the timeworn transition into the refrain and accompanied the chanted announcement: 'When he to her did say,' — there sprang up a diversity of the freshest, most unexpected modulations, which fell upon the ear like drops of evening rain upon a parched and sunbaked soil. The various shades of blue, in which untutored harmonists indulged, ranged all the way from faint cerulean to deep indigo. The last could often be more fittingly compared to mud.
Between the earlier 'rag' and the 'blues,' there was this distinction: the rag had been mainly a thing of rhythm, of syncopation; the blues were syncopation relished with spicier harmonies.
In addition to these two elements of music, rhythm and harmony, the people — who in the beginning had known but one thing: melody, fastened upon a primitive and weak harmonic structure of 'barbershop' chords — the people, I say, who had stepwise advanced from melody and rhythm to harmony, lastly discovered counterpoint. And the result of this last discovery is jazz. In other words, jazz is rag-time, plus 'Blues,' plus orchestral polyphony; it is the combination, in the popular music current, of melody, rhythm, harmony, and counterpoint.
IV
Each of these four ingredients bears racial features which are unequivocally American. Yet this Americanism is not exclusively a tribal one; it is not content to borrow from the negro, to filch from the Indian. What marks of oriental inflections it shows hail from the Jordan rather than from the Congo River. While the primitive syncopation was taken over from the colored man; while the Semitic purveyors of Broadway 'hits' made us an invaluable gift of their more luxurious harmonic sense, the contrapuntal complexity of jazz is something native, born out of the complex, strident present-day American life. Where did you hear, before jazz was invented, such multifarious stirring, heaving, wrestling of independent voices as there are in a jazz orchestra? The saxophone bleats a turgid song; the clarinets turn capers of their own; the violins come forward with an obbligato; a saucy flute darts up and down the scale, never missing the right note on the right chord; the trombone lumberingly slides off on a tangent; the drum and xylophone put rhythmic high lights into these kaleidoscopic shiftings; the cornet is suddenly heard above the turmoil, with good-natured brazenness. Chaos in order, — orchestral technic of master craftsmen, — music that is recklessly fantastic, joyously grotesque, — such is good jazz. A superb, incomparable creation, inescapable yet elusive; something it is almost impossible to put in score upon a page of paper.
For jazz finds its last and supreme glory in the skill for improvisation exhibited by the performers. The deliberately scored jazz tunes are generally clumsy, pedestrian. It is not for the plodding, routine orchestrator to foresee the unexpected, to plan the improbable.
Jazz is abandon, is whimsicality in music. A good jazz band should never play, and actually never does play, the same piece twice in the same manner. Each player must be a clever musician, an originator as well as an interpreter, a wheel that turns hither and thither on its own axis without disturbing the clockwork.
Strange to relate, this orchestral improvisation, which may seem to you virtually impossible or artistically undesirable, is not an invention of our age. To improvise counterpoint was a talent that the musicians in the orchestras of Peri and Monteverdi, three hundred years ago, were expected to possess, and did possess, to such a high degree that the skeleton scores of those operas which have come down to us give but an imperfect idea of how this music sounded when performed.
A semblance of this lost, and rediscovered, art is contained in the music of the Russian and Hungarian gypsies. Just as that music is a riotous improvisation, throbbing with a communicative beat, ever restless in mood, so is jazz. Just as the gypsy players are held together by an identical, inexplicable rhythmic spell, following the leader's fiddle in its harmonic meanderings, each instrument walking in a bypath of its own, so is the ideal jazz band constituted — that is, the jazz band made up of serious jazz artists.
Franz Liszt could give a suggestion of gypsy music on the keyboard. He had a way of playing the piano orchestrally. There are few people who can play jazz on the piano. Jazz, as much as the gypsy dances, depends on the many and contrasting voices of a band, united in a single and spontaneous rhythmic, harmonic, and contrapuntal will.
The playing and writing down of jazz are two different things. When a jazz tune is written on paper, for a piano solo, it loses nine tenths of its flavor. Only the bitter grounds are left. In that form, also, it is not unlike the clavecin music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of which only the melody was noted over a figured bass, or 'ground.'
Jazz, fortunately, can be preserved on phonographic records for our descendants. They will form their own estimate of our enormities. If we had such records of what Scarlatti, Couperin, and Rameau did with their figured bases, we should need fewer realizations, restitutions, and renditions by arranger and deranger. Of the people whom I have heard play jazz on the piano, I can name but two who have impressed me with their uncanny skill, with their infallible musicianship. One of them is a young man in Boston who will play you the ten piano sonatas of Scriabin by heart (!), one after the other, and, if you have survived that, will give you some transcendental jazz which, I wager, you will declare eminently more worth-while than all the metaphysical ramblings of Scriabin's 'third period.'
My other young friend hails from New York; he is an accomplished player of Chopin and Debussy, yet nowhere quite so much at home as when he seems to grow another pair of hands, is over all the keys at once, and with the touch of wizardry, conjures up tonal jazz spooks that leave you baffled but grinning with delight.
Here is something in music that is a more typical, a more comprehensive expression of the modern American spirit, than all our coon songs, our pseudo-Indian wails, the regional songs of a hundred years ago, the tenth-rate imitations of vile English ballads, the imperfect echoes of French impressionism. Good jazz is enjoyed by capital musicians, by men who are neither inordinately immoral nor extravagantly uncultured. It has fascinated European composers like Stravinsky, Casella, Satie, as Debussy was fascinated before them by rag-time. 'Golliwog's Cakewalk' and 'Minstrels' are works of the purest art, notwithstanding the fact that the essence of their peculiar charm was filtered from the emanations of the music-hall.
Maurice Ravel, last summer, told Mr. Edward Burlingame Hill, who was visiting him, that he considered jazz the only original contribution America had so far made to music. Nor do American composers of repute disdain to try their hand at it. Leo Sowerby, the young Chicagoan, who is the first musical stipendiary to be sent to the American Academy in Rome, has been guilty of sounding the jazz note in his chamber music and in a piano concerto. No less respectable a person than Professor Hill himself, associate professor of music in Harvard University, a man who may be credited with harboring no desire for cheap notoriety, has signed his name to a 'Study in Jazz' which Messrs. Pattison and Maier have played in their remarkable recitals for two pianos, and which, arranged for full orchestra, I believe, has been programmed by M. Monteux for the regular concerts of the Boston Symphony. There is frank and appropriate tribute paid to jazz in Mr. John Alden Carpenter's 'Krazy Kat' ballet.
What more conclusive evidence could you demand to prove that jazz — good jazz — is not void of musical possibilities, not wanting in musical merit? If the fastidious musician succumbs to it, can you blame the people of America and Europe for liking good jazz?
Perhaps some of my hearers have begun to be agitated with wonder whether I am a paid emissary of the 'affiliated dance-hall proprietors,' or a hireling of unscrupulous publishers and phonograph companies.
As a matter of fact, in standing up for good jazz I am not making a plea for the deplorable dances of our day; I am not defending the prurient panders of the musical fraternity; I am not absolving the indiscriminate manufacturers of records. Against all three I want to register a loud, emphatic protest. But I cannot rouse myself to such a pitch of virtuous wrath that blindness is the result. Nor will I admit that music, at its worst, can be guilty of all the misdeeds that have been laid to jazz.
Let the reformer sacrifice his days and nights in the noble endeavor to save mankind from the diabolic pitfalls which constantly surround it. For one thing, the champion of righteousness may rely upon the satiety of the public which, sooner or later, is sure to make an end of every' rage,' including jazz dances. It is more than likely that he does rely on it, and therefore is all the more enthusiastic in his reform. He has, however, so far overlooked the powerful assistance that he might derive from bringing into wider prominence the musical and artistic potentialities of jazz. Nothing will help more speedily to lower it in the esteem of the public at large, than gently to hint, artfully to suggest, subtly to insinuate, that it may have some vague, remote relation to Art.
If jazz music has any of the gypsy music's fitness for survival, it will leave a trace, unsoiled by memories of indecorum and police raids. Meanwhile, the curious and heretical inquirer may be pardoned for dwelling reflectively upon so odd a case as that presented by the gradual accession of melody, rhythm, harmony, and counterpoint to the leading role in the popular music of America, a process covering barely more.than five decades. It has no parallel in musical history, unless we take musical progress as a whole during the last five centuries. Good jazz, once brought into the focus of unclouded criticism, reveals, aside from the grosser features visible to a naked eye in the dark, some finer lineaments, which make it appear justly entitled to the benefit of honest doubt, based — if on nothing else — on the examples of the sarabande, and the waltz.
Of course, someone may interpose that we cannot drive jazz, waltz, and sarabande in one and the same harness; that the musical vehicles of 1922 are as different from those of 1822, or 1722, as is a snorting eight cylinder automobile from a featherweight Tilbury, or a pompous state coach drawn by six.
Quite true. Yet some argumentative and jazz-loving person might come along and retort that, while the means and speed of locomotion have changed, human nature has remained stationary, or, at least, much as it always was and will be. Said person might add to our embarrassment by averring that perhaps the real trouble is a momentary shortage in Han dels, Webers, Chopins. And how shall we prove him wrong?
Today let's travel to South of the equator and visit sunny Argentina where the Hot Jazz Band Argentina is performing at Buenos Aires, Argentina at the Municipal Theatre of Lomas de Zamora.
The number featured today is Lil Hardin Armstrong's Knee Drops which she composed in about 1928. The performance took place this year in June. Louis Armstrong and his group recorded the tune many times over the years starting in 1928.
George A. Borgman was conducting an interview with a huge Jack Teagarden fan and collector, when this picture was taken in Canada! In the middle of the interview the collector mentioned that he thought George looked like Jack and convinced him to strike a pose!
Here's the REAL Jack Teagarden... What do you think?
Check out the life and music of the great Jack Teagarden at Dave Radlauer's awesome website Jazz Rhythm!
Since I saw the New Black Eagle Jazz Band play on Thursday, I thought it would be appropriate to focus this Saturday Jazz Performance on them.
The band was formed in 1971 and has played all over the world making appearances everywhere from international jazz festivals to small dives and everything in-between. In 2011 they celebrated their 40th year of existence and opened the Newport Jazz Festival.
In the video below, which was taped on February 7, 2013 at The Sounds of Mardi Gras in Fresno, California, the band consists of leader Tony Pringle on cornet; Stan Vincent on trombone; Butch Thompson on clarinet; Bob Pilsbury on piano; Peter Bulllis on banjo; Pam Parmeijer on drums, and Mark Caperone playing bass. Pianist Bob Pilsbury has since retired due to ill health.
"Yearning" heard hear is, Yearning Just For You which was written by Benny Davis and Joe Burke. It was first recorded by Harry Reser's Syncopators in 1925 and is a minor standard with Trad Jazz bands.
The first Saturday of the month is reserved for jazz pianists and today we have a great one - Bram Wijnands playing the 1927 piece Hallelujah!
Wijnands was born in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands. He started playing piano when young and even before he turned eight he was studying Stride and Boogie Woogie recordings of piano greats like Thomas "Fats" Waller, James P. Johnson, Meade Lux Lewis, Jack Dupree and Memphis Slim.
In 1991, he graduated from Hilversum Conservatory in the Netherlands. He was performing with various jazz artists like Slide Hampton, Gene Connors, Jos Moons, Richard Ross and Deborah Brown, even before he graduated. Soon he was touring with his trio around Europe, Russia, and the United States.
Over the years he has led many bands from trios to seven piece groups. Although playing at various festivals and venues around the world Wijnands always makes sure that he returns to his native Holland for the 'Jazz In Duketown' festival in Den Bosch, Holland.
The tune Hallelujah was song with the music written by Vincent Youmans, and the lyrics by Leo Robin and Clifford Grey for the Broadway musical Hit the Deck. The plotline of Hit the Deck was loosely adapted for the 1936 Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger's film Follow the Fleet. Then in 1955 MGM released a film version entitled Hit the Deck which featured the enduring tune Hallelujah.
Here in a video which was posted on February 10, 2015, Wijnands plays a stride version of it on a 1927 Steinway grand piano!
The performance for this Saturday is by the Thomson Big Band of Singapore. It was posted to YouTube on September 16, 2008. The Thomson Big Band has been existence for over 20 years. In 1993 Eddie Chan Fook Pong formed the Thomson Jazz Club in Singapore and the Thomson Big Band was the first band that played there. Since then the club has grown substantially.
The band has performed on television including "Tonight with Gurmit" on TCS 5 and "Jam!" on Arts Central. They have also travelled to various jazz festivals such as Japan's Kutchan International Jazz Festival, Australia's Jacaranda Jazz Festival, Thailand's Bangkok Jazz Festival as well as opening the SIA International Jazz Festival with sax master Ernie Watts and bassist/singer Eldee Young.
In this video the band performs the 1957 tune Come Fly With Me with music by Jimmy Van Heusen,and lyrics by Sammy Cahn. The tune was composed especially for Frank Sinatra and was the title track of his 1958 album, Come Fly With Me which featured Sinatra backed up by Billy May and His Orchestra.
This Saturday we examine the Dixie Singers reportedly Cape Town, South Africa's only traditional Dixieland jazz band.
According to their promotional videos the band was started many years ago with some of Cape Town's best musicians. They are still around as of 2015.
In the following jazz performance the Dixie Swingers play the Ballard MacDonald and James F. Hanley tune Back Home Again in Indiana which was originally published as Indiana in 1917. The tune contains musical elements of an older tune On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away.
Here the Dixie Swingers play Indiana in a performance recorded at the Nuthouse Studio in Newlands, Cape Town, South Africa. I think they have a pretty good sound and wish I could hear more performances by them!
On May 31, 1917 the Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded the tune for Columbia which released it on record on August 10, 1917. The record number was Columbia A2297. This recording has sometimes been given the mistaken date of January 1917. However the version of the tune recorded in January was apparently never released and most likely destroyed.
The Original Dixieland Jazz Band comprised of Nick LaRocca, cornet; Eddie Edwards, trombone; Larry Shields, clarinet; Henry Ragas, piano; Tony Sbarbaro, drums.
Here is a promotional video on the Dixie Swingers from 2006.
Here is a 2012 promotional video on the Dixie Swingers.
The first Saturday of the month is usually reserved for a jazz piano performance instead of just the regular jazz performance with a group that I have been trying to display on Saturdays.
This months piano performance is by Stephanie Trick which took place when she was 22 years old in 2009. Trick began piano lessons at the age of five. Her teacher introduced her to some jazz piano pieces before high school and she was apparently hooked. She is now one of the foremost stride pianist in America. Trick has released eight CDS and one DVD.
Handful of Keys was first recorded, it appears, by its composer Thomas Waller in 1929. Waller is the legendary Harlem stride pianist Fats Waller who it is claimed copyrighted over 400 tunes many written in collaboration with Andy Razaf. His popularity hasn't flagged despite his early death at the end of 1943.
Stephanie Trick plays Handful of Keys at Sue Keller's
5th Annual Ragtime Piano Concert at the
Harald Viking Lodge Concert in Tinley Park, Illinois in 2009.
Thomas "Fats" Waller playing Handful of Keys, 1929.
LAUGH and the world laughs with you." Gentlemen, here he is —Harry Raderman, the originator of the trombone laugh which has caused the entire trombone world, as well as all music lovers, to laugh with him.
In the evolution of the history of trombone playing, it seems to me no more than fair that the readers of this paper should know something about the men who are responsible for popular ideas and novelties which have brought the slide trombone prominently into public notice during the past few years. Radical changes have taken place in nearly every department of endeavor in the world of today, and this is particularly true with music. The rising generation seems to delight in popular strains and bizarre effects. Dancing, for instance, has changed considerably. A few years ago there were no fox-trots, or so-called one-steps, and this change in the style of dances has automatically brought about a change in the accompanying music — so much so, that the instrumentation for the up-to-date dance orchestra would look like Greek to the boys of a few years past. The professional leader who reaps a large financial harvest today has been keen to this fact. He also has evolved in pace with the popular tastes, and has tried out different combinations and adopted those which seemed most novel and pleasing to the majority.
Thus it holds that, if a man has made himself popular throughout the land by creating some new idea for which he alone is sponsor and has succeeded in launching it successfully before a discriminating public, he is entitled to all the praise we can possibly arouse in our modest little column here at least, so let us hope that these few words of appreciation will be an incentive to others to get out and become pioneers. Originality is the slogan. Strive for it, trombone players. You have a great field now when your instrument is so popular.
Harry Raderman was born in Russia, and is a member of one of the largest musical families in that country, as all of his relatives were gifted with musical talent and spirit. Raderman is a self-made man, however, and I doubt if his success is due to any inherited musical ability. The wonderful popularity and financial returns he now enjoys came undoubtedly from his initiative faculties, coupled of course with hard work and the surmounting of technical problems incidental to the mastery of his instrument, for be it understood that no one can properly execute "stunts" on an instrument unless he has first mastered the technic of said instrument.
Mr. Raderman began his studies in Odessa, Russia, and was just ten years of age when he arrived in the United States. Upon his arrival in this country his ambition was kindled. He studied hard and played around New York with most of the leading bands and orchestras, and also in the different theatres. It was while playing in one of New York's popular vaudeville theatres, namely, the Bushwick Theatre in Brooklyn, that I first became acquainted with Mr. Raderman. At that time Andrew Byrnes was conducting the music at this theatre, and his orchestra had won first place in the hearts of the patrons — mainly through the rendition of special overtures, solos and novel features between the acts and during the intermission. Harry Raderman's brain was thereby stirred into activity; he noted the numbers which delighted the people, and his thoughts were continually focused upon a plan to invent some new device to tickle the ears of the novelty-loving public.
At about this period along came the change in dance music. Dancing had become a popular institution to such an extent that space was set aside in cafes and restaurants for this special purpose. The style of dancing became entirely different, and the present ever popular foxtrot and one-step rushed into vogue. Orchestrations to follow this new fad were arranged by the numerous publishers, and each tried to outdo the other in the employment of novel effects. Mutes for trombones and cornets were introduced.
One of the most popular and largest restaurants in New York City, known as Rector's at Broadway and 48th Street, engaged the wellknown Ted Lewis for a drawing card at an extraordinary salary, and featured him as a wizard at providing music suited to the popular taste for dancing. Mr. Lewis instituted a search for a clever trombone player, and here Raderman saw his opportunity. The engagement was tendered him and he accepted it. Harry was noted for his goodly supply of optimism and it was right with him at this time, for in a number called "Smiles" Harry not only smiled, but this melody proved the incentive to the creation of the trombone laugh which proved to be the making of Harry Raderman. Crowds were attracted to Rector's through hearing the enthusiastic compliments of the many patrons regarding the excellent dance music, and Ted Lewis soon became the talk of the town — Raderman being included, and with especial credit given him among musicians who could appreciate his originality.
After an association of a year or more with Mr. Lewis, Raderman was engaged to make exclusive records with Joseph C. Smith and his orchestra. His popularity became so great that about two years ago he prevailed upon to organize his own novelty orchestra, known as Harry Raderman's Orchestra and which is now one of the popular features on most of the phonograph records. Thus optimism with Raderman not only blossomed into a laugh, but it has also brought him a well earned financial success.
Here are a couple of Harry Raderman's recordings from the 1920s.
George A. Borgman's second son Eric B. Borgman is in charge of the Yankee Jazz Beat Blog and the George A. Borgman Archives. Eric is a filmmaker and actor.
