American Song # 4: Tiger Rag

Ladies and Gentlemen...the TIGER RAG!



When dealing with jazz, there are lot of songs which are constantly pulled up by bands as a way of showing off their massive skillz and proving their committment to jazz history. On one end of the scale, there are the likes of "Summertime", "My Funny Valentine" and any number of Duke Ellington composition to be played "soulfully" and bore everyone to tears but make themselves seem terribly, terribly clever...

On the other end of the scale is "Tiger Rag", which what a band plays when they simply want to tear the place apart with speed, crazy solos and making animal noises. Of course, "Tiger Rag" has far more significance to it than that...let's start at the beginning...

The origins of "Tiger Rag" are highly disputed to this day - regardless, the song comes from New Orleans and was one of the first true jazz standards, perhaps THE first if you take into account that most other songs played by jazz bands were either traditional folk numbers, ragtime compositions or pop songs. "Tiger Rag" is a rag no doubt, but it is too simplisitic and repetitive for the classic ragtime style of Scott Joplin. On the other hand, it's too weird and crazy to fit into the folk/country rag grouping. It's a song which lives to be improvised upon - I doubt there is anyone who has heard the song played without improvisation and it might not even sound any good without it. The main hook of the song is "growl" of the tiger in the chorus - usually provided by trombone - which is often contrasted with the band members chanting "HOLD THAT TIGAH!" over and over until the audience is driven into an absolute fury!

Now, the largest majority consensus on the composition of the tune levels it with the group that first recorded it - the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

It was the first song recorded by the ODJB, but not the first released - regardless, when people first heard this song being blasted out of their gramophones in 1917, they must have been scraping their brains off the back of the wall:



You get the jist. Since this record was released, the song has always been credited to the band members, Nick La Rocca, Eddie Edwards, Henry Ragas, Tony Sbarbaro, and Larry Shields with Harry DaCosta writing lyrics. But numerous people have claimed the song's origins go back much further. Jelly Roll Morton claimed to have written it at one point, advancing on an old french quadrille - while it is probably a lie to say he wrote it, it probably does have its origin as a french quadrille. It may go back as far as the 19th century and others have mentioned recalling the song as being played for a long time around New Orleans. It's very likely that the ODJB heard various parts played around the city and integrated it into a whole which was the later imitated version.

And if you will let me wax lyrically for a moment, let emphasise to you how this record would have been taken in 1917 - there was simply nothing like this, NOTHING. People have slagged the ODJB for not being black but my god, you cannot believe how this psychotic music sounded when they first let it loose upon an unsuspecting nation. Music had never been improvised like this before, nor had it ever been played at such insane tempos or volumes. It makes the rock 'n roll and punk revolutions look tame by comparison.

Their version was heavily imitated - there 136 cover versions by 1942 alone. All of them were essentially used by the respective artists as an attempt to show off their prowess in dazzling, fiery style and give the audience something to really rocked to. This should not mean that "Tiger Rag" is placed down when compared to the likes of "Summertime", it just serves a different purpose.

It would be impossible to go through all the great versions, so let me just stick to a few:

In 1932, his royal Satchness, Louis Armstrong got ahold of the tune and performed it during a tour in Germany - compare this with the ODJB version to understand how far Louis advanced jazz since 1917. It's so fast it almsot becomes a blur and Louis' solo takes the song so far from its original melody as to make it almost unrecognisable:



It was - and is - also a big string-based number. Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli's guitar and violin-based version is probably how the song is best known today...



As well as another more fingerstyle version by the great Chet Atkins:



Then there was Duke Ellington's 6 minute long version from the early 30's. This version has less improvisation than most New Orleans versions bascially because it's a version from the North and as such is more of a swing arrangement. Doesn't matter, because when it's this loud, fast and furious, all's right with the world:



Finally, since it's impossible to list all the great versions of "Tiger Rag" - and since my personal favourite 8 minute version by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band seems not available on YouTube - let's end with the Washboard Rhythm Kings, whose manic version is a rare version that features the original lyrics:



The "Tiger Rag" kicked off the jazz age, an era of sex-fuelled hedonism with jazz was its aphrodisiac of choice. As the song plays, you can almost hear women tearing their dresses of to the hips, men slicking back their hair, homosexuals jumping out of the closet, bootleggers filling up their kegs and everyone going batshit in the nightclubs and speakeasies in an ecstatic, almost religious orgy of jazz fuelled mania. You can hear the KKK reeling in horror, the Catholic church crying into their alter wine and the older generations screaming for the amorality of it all! This was JAAAAAAZZZZ, man! And "Tiger Rag" was and IS it's anthem! Modern jazz musicians may have forgotten about it in favour of "respectability", but it was this that was grand artistic statement of the 20th century! It was a shotgun in the face of the Western world, a hand grenade in the camps of fascism and conservatism, the final death knell for the Victorian era and a herald for a new age! Highbrow and lowbrow, they all cry now: "PLEASE PLAY THAT TIGER RAG FOR ME!"

Robert Johnson SUCKS!!!

Y'know who sucks? Robert Johnson.

"Oh no he didn't!" I hear you say. And as I hear the rampaging feet of a hundreds "blues purists" brandishing pitchforks and lynch ropes coming towards me, let me deconstruct and hopefully destroy the cult of personality that is Robert Johnson.

Now, of course, the obsession with Robert Johnson is part of a greater issue I'd like to call the "Delta Blues Mystique". The Delta Blues Mystique is that element that is called upon by every indie band and post-punk band who wants to try and seem rootsy and authentic as well the element called upon by every half-assed singer/songwriter who want to sound "dark", "gritty" and "soulful". The Delta Blues Mystique is the modern conception of "the blues" which arose some time in the 60's and it is a horribly patronising and perhaps downright racist and offensive idea which was formulated by a lot of rich, educated student-types. Basically, it is the idea that old, black (ooooh, they've gotta be black) guitar-playing musicians, who are either poorly-educated or uneducated and who prelude every song they play by mumbling something incomprehensible while journalists nod on and pat them on the head for being such good boys...

I think this is the quintessential example:



Now, it is absolutely certain that the interviewer inquiring of Son House the nature and origin of "the blues" has written out his own idea of where "the blues" came from and has studying text books and musical theory and history to culminate this idea. And you know what? It's probably right! But it's probably not "authentic" whereas when Son House mumbles some cenile shite about "it's...it's...it's a feeeeeeling!" that's so freaking "authentic" that it must be worth writing down and sticking on some poxy BBC4 documentary. (Not that I'm dissing BBC4 documentaries in general - the Folk America series was really very good)

Ah, that word "authentic" which has done more harm to blues music than any other in history. It embodies The Delta Blues Mystique and signifies a hipster attitude and an artistic worth based on a supposed insight into the way poor, stupid people live - so rich bohemians can feel they're somehow in touch with a subculture that they are in no way a part of. It's not the music, it's the association/ I mean, have you ever heard anyone insult a country bluesman? Well, you're about to! Son House is crap - I mean, his playing is the equivilent of having a seisure while slapping an out-of-tune dobro. Ah, but it's REAL! And that's what counts!

Now, I must say that the Delta blue is not my thing - I prefer piedmont and atlanta styles which use complex fingerpicking and ragtime influences, as well as witty, hip lyrics and in-key singing. Buddy Moss, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Blake, Blind Willie McTell and the rest of those fellas. But as far as I can tell, the reason that Delta Blues, which refers to the likes of Robert Johnson, Son House, Charlie Patton and Tommy Johnson, is the most famous and lauded genres of blues is because it's simplistic. It requires very little brains or skill to play or sing, is often completely tuneless or out-of-tune and the lyrics are repetative and moronically simple. Which is, apparently, more "authentic".

This is where the root of the "authentic" issue comes from. Take a guy like Louis Armstrong and put him up against Son House. Why is Son House "authentic" while Louis Armstrong is not? They both came from the same poor backgrounds, both born around the same time (Louis Armstrong was actually one year older), both black and from the South. The difference? Louis went and learned to play an instrument, joined bands, innovated new musical ideas, learnt to read sheet music, played with a studied complexity and combined his own knowledge of folk music with modernistic ideas. While Son House sat and banged out the same out crap for 86 years without changing an iota.

All of which brings me back to Robert Johnson. Well, everything I said about Son House applies to Johnson too, but there is a lot more to it. For me, there is nothing more irritating than seeing endless 100 Best Guitarists lists online and in magazines filled to brim with the usual wankers like Slash, Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen and Eric Clapton and then stuck somewhere around the middle, Robert Johnson. It's ridiculous. Not just because Robert Johnson wasn't a very good guitarist, but because his style has nothing in common with anyone else in that list and you know he's only been placed as a point of hipster recognition. "Oh yes, we loooove Robert Johnson, he's sooooo dark and real! You know he sold his soul to the devil?!" Yeah, yeah, we all know he sold his soul to the devil and magically became an ingenious guitarist...in fact, more people know this than have ever even heard his recordings. More than anything it's this that embodies the Delta Blues Mystique. There is nothing special about Robert Johnson - in fact, he's not particularly good a guitarist at all. The likes of "If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day" could be played by someone who'd had about a week of guitar lessons. What counts is the hype.

Now, I must say, it's not entirely due to ignorance that Robert Johnson is so well known. When the album "King of the Delta Blues Singers" was released in 1961 it was for a lot of people, particularly in Britain, the only easily available country blues album and with the blues/folk revival kicking off it's hardly suprising that people ranted and raved about Robert Johnson in the absence of anything else. Still, that's not a complete excuse and it's certainly no excuse nowadays in this age of internet where people can find out about far superior (and far more enjoyable) blues musicians like Blind Blake, Peg Leg Howell, Bessie Smith and so on...it's all at your fingertips.

I'm not exactly one for shirking ideas of "authenticity", I would quickly mentioned. Or to put it another way, I do think that age does add value to music; surviving the ravages of time and changing culture is difficult and older music adds insight into a vanished period and provides a point-of-view and inspiration which simply can no longer exist. But that must be merely a part of it, rather than the main drive. And it often ends in hypocrisy - what's more "authentic", "Oh Susanna" or "Crossroads Blues"?

Stupid question.

The Secret Society - BLUEGRASS!

Bluegrass, oh yes, Bluegrass me boys!

When people talk of music they like to refer to certain music as being "cult" movements. That is a style of music which has never (or rarely) broke into the mainstream, but which has maintained a long devoted group of followers whose very lives may revolve around the style and who can tell each other from miles away, like a secret handshake. And various genre fit neatly into this definition - krautrock, hardcore punk, cajun music, prog rock, The Grateful Dead in themselves and so on so forth. But reigning king (and certainly the longest lived) among these is Bluegrass. Perhaps nothing sums it up better than this:



There is a misconception in this post-"Oh Brother Where Art Thou" world that bluegrass and hillbilly music or old-timey music are almost synonymous, which is simply not true. Bluegrass originated in the late 1940's, post-World War II and could perhaps be seen as an evolution of hillbilly music. It took bluegrass to a new level of technical proficiency - a level of musicianship which is perhaps as technical as rural music gets.

Bluegrass is unsually in that, much like DJ Kool Herc with Hip-Hop, its creator can be narrowed down one individual - Bill Monroe.



Now, it would daft to say that Bill Monroe was WHOLLY responsible for bluegrass or that it came fully formed from him - but it almost did.

Bill Monroe started his career long before he became known as the "Father of Bluegrass" - at first in a duet with his brother Charlie. Here's a recording from the mid-1930's of them playing the classic "Banks of the Ohio":



There style at this point was basically like a more religious version of the Delmore Brothers - although Bill's mandolin playing was already reaching a high level of technical skill. In 1939, he put together the first incarnation of the Bluegrass boys, the band's name later giving the genre its name.

Perhaps it's best I now list what Bluegrass actually is and why it's different from old-timey music. As the sound of Bill Monroe's band evolved over the years from 1939 to 1945, eventually a set instrumental template came to rise. The classic bluegrass line-up is guitar, banjo, fiddle, double bass and, often, mandolin. This differs from the hillbilly line-up mainly due to the double bass, but essentially it's quite similar. It's the means of playing that makes the main difference - rather than the synchronised group playing of the old string bands, the various instrumentalists take it in turns to play the melody and variations of the melody up front as the lead instrument - as a musical form, it's very show-offy and perhaps slightly indulgent, but usually its so jaw-dropping you don't care. And the key thing is that essentially anyone can sit in a bluegrass jam and take a round with their instrument - take a look at this video of 59 people playing the bluegrass anthem, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown":



The actual position of Bluegrass music at its origin is somewhat confusing - on the one hand it was a reaction against the heavily eletric country music styles of the time, such as honky-tonk and western swing, with the bluegras boys being entirely acoustic based. On the other hand, there is often noted to be a jazz influence on Bluegrass, with the soloing concept being the most obvious example of this. Although later Bluegrass musicians would occassionally include jazz standards in their repetoires, Bill Monroe never did as far as I know. Still, the music was obviously more modernised than he would probably have liked to admit.

Bill Monroe's most famous song and biggest hit - and one of the few times Bluegrass cut the mainstream - is undoubtably "Blue Moon of Kentucky". The song is probably most famous for having been the first song ever recorded by Elvis Presley (that fella!), but the original's no slouch, from 1946:



In 1945, Bill Monroe made what is perhaps his second-most important contribution to Bluegrass after inventing it - he hired Earl Scruggs as his banjo player.



It's not really possible to put in words how important Earl Scruggs is: almost inarguably the most popular and famous Bluegrass musician of all time, he almost single-handedly revolutionised the banjo.

Before Earl Scruggs hit the scene, the banjo had rarely been used since the end of the 1920's. It was seen as a twee, old-fashioned instrument played by old men on porch swings. Although Snuffy Jenkins was a precursor - and Don Reno developed a similar style around the same time - Earl Scruggs took the banjo away from the old frailing, clawhammer and 2-finger picking techniques that had been popular with hillbilly musicians and string bands in the 1920's and created the 3-Finger Scruggs style, which favour melodic innovation in the form of rapidly played "rolls" involving long series of stacatto notes played really, really, REALLY freaking fast. This pretty much sums the man up:



Since then, pretty much every Bluegrass band has included this style and Earl Scruggs (who's still alive, in a first for this blog) remains as popular as ever to this day.

Presumably realising the potential of Scruggs as a star vehicle, Earl Scruggs and fellow Bluegrass boy Lester Flatt split off and formed The Foggy Mountain Boys.



They were perhaps the most successful Bluegrass group of all time, although it must be said that they were not as much a full-on Bluegrass bands as their predecessors or followers - presumably realising where their key selling point was, Scruggs's banjo playing (and occasional guitar playing) pretty much takes the main lead position with only the fiddle playing as another lead. I must say, I've never been terribly impressed with Lester Flatt's guitar playing - he pretty much does nothing other than play rhythm and his singing is often a bit too maudlin for my tastes. Still, it doesn't really matter when you take into account that their band was perhaps the loudest, wildest, fastest music ever produced. Oh yes. In 1949, Earl Scruggs wrote "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" the most well-known Bluegrass banjo composition of all time. I've already posted it twice on this post, but I have to post the original for consistency:



After this, Bluegrass began to take off like a shot, with groups like the Stanley Brothers (the first band to imitate the Monroe bluegrass style and determine that the style actually existed), Reno & Smiley, Jim & Jesse and more kicked off.

The Stanley Brothers have probably remained the most consistently popular over the years and particularly recently due to their inclusion in the "O Brother" soundtrack. Here's a playing of the traditional "It Takes A Worried Man" from Pete Seeger's TV show:



With the rise of Rock & Roll, Bluegrass, like all country music, faded from popularity. Except that it didn't really - it merely changed hands.

In the late 1950's and early 1960's, the Folk Revival happened and suddenly guys like Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs were being heralded heroes by a different institution altogether. The actual designation of Bluegrass as "Folk Music" is rather ambiguous. Certainly in the early days of Bluegrass, traditional songs were not that common, even if they did pop up occasionally. But as Bluegrass started being heralded as "folk music" rather than "country music", old-time songs started to feature much more prominently and new bluegrass bands started to focus almost exclusively on them.

Another innovation in the late 50's and early 60's was the rise to prominence of the guitar - since guitars were all the rage in the other forms of pop music, I suppose it made sense for the new generation to bring it up from merely being a rhythm instrument into a lead instrument. The Bluegrass picking style was quite different from earlier forms, though - although influenced by both jazz guitar and the bluesier stylings of honky-tonk, the main focus of Bluegras guitar was recreating fiddle tunes in a flat-picking note-based format. Perhaps the first person to do this was Joe Maphis in the late 1950's. Take a listen to this 1958 or so recording of the fiddle tune "Fire on the Mountain", here called "Fire on the Strings" (be warned, this is perhaps the most insane and fast guitar playing ever recorded...Joe Satriani and his ilk would burst into tears trying to play this):



For a better example of his insane ability to play pretty much every stringed instrument under the sun - and play them better than pretty much anyone else - take a look at this:



So yeah - that's Bluegrass! It's still a massively popular underground music form and one of the great American musical institutions. Of course, due to the influence of the likes of "Deliverence" and the "Beverly Hillbillies", it's become a bit associated with hickishness and down-home simplicity. But don't be fooled - it's one of the great virtuoso genres and worth dipping your feet into...

American Artist No. 4: Uncle Dave Macon

This post has been a long time coming - Uncle Dave Macon has come up a lot in my blog posts and I do keep saying that he needs his own post - well here it is!

Uncle Dave Macon was perhaps the most influential, popular and important folksinger of the first half of the 20th century. He was known as the King of the Hillbillies (also the Dixie Dewdrop) and was consistently popular from his first single in 1924 up until his death in 1952. He was one of the very first performers on the Grand Ole Opry radio show in 1925 and people have been imitating his style, vocals, banjo-playing up to this day.

So what's the deal with Uncle Dave? Well there's a few point:

1. Age - Dave Macon was born in 1870. Think about that. It means he was born only 5 years after the end of the civil war and was a full grown adult in Victorian times. He didn't record until he was in his fifties and, as such, he gives a better insight into the folk music of the 19th century than pretty much any other perfomer - most folksingers only give their interpretations of 19th century music, Uncle Dave was actually there! He was older than any of the blues singers, older than Leadbelly, older than recorded music itself. Many of the songs which have become so well known as to merge into the public consciousness were probably written while he was adult and that's something to think about.

2. Wildness - Uncle Dave opitimised the "crazy old guy" persona. On most of his records he screams, hollers, whoops and howls out the lyrics with a reckless abandon and often the sound of him stomping his feet on the floor of the recording studio can be heard. His attitude towards folk music was at the complete opposite end from the bombastic pretentious nonsense that so many people now like to churn out. His music was wilder, faster and noisier than your average hardcore punk band and rocked mercilessly.

3. Repetoire - He had one of the widest ranging repetoires of any folk singer. Just take a look at the nine CD boxset, "Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy" and marvel at the sheer number of songs he knew and recorded. What's even more remarkable is the diversity. He played hillbilly, appalachian, proto-blues, minstrel songs, coon songs, vaudeville, cakewalks, spirituals, comic numbers and more. He played songs by both black and white musicians - some of which can be a bit, er, racially charged by today's standards. He had no qualms about using words like "nigger", "darkie" and "coon" and sometimes it can be a bit discomforting to listen to songs like "New Coon in Town" and "Run, Nigger, Run" - a song which was, ironically, originally sung by black slaves. He was, however, a man of his time; there no genuinely malicious intent behind these words, like if someone used them in today's society - the man was born in 1870 for christ's sake, concepts like racial sensitivity didn't even exist then. Not to mention he often gives kudos to the black folks at the beginning of some his songs - I dunno, it's these seeming contradictions that make the music that much more interesting.

Still, you really can't get the point about Uncle Dave until you hear his recordings - the song "Way Down the Old Plank Road", released in 1925, is probably his most famous song as it was included on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. And what a song it is - this is the recording that turned me forever onto the path of the old music and just listen to it and you'll know why:



Rockin' stuff. Uncle Dave's first single was "Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy" backed with "Hill Billie Blues", one of the first uses of the word "hillbilly". Most of Uncle Dave's early singles were just him by himself on banjo and, recorded before the 1926 advent of electrical recording, can sound a bit hollow, although his charisma still shines through the tinniness. In 1925 he teamed up with legendary country guitarist Sam McGee - who will also need a page of his own later - and expanded his sound to guitar and banjo in unison, with the guitar providing bass behind the banjo. These recording are where he really began to take off - other than "Way Down the Old Plank Road" he also recorded the negro spiritual "Poor Sinners, Fare You Well", the railroad classic "John Henry", crazy stomper "Whoop 'Em Up Cindy" and even dropped the banjo for "I've Got The Mourning Blues" in which Sam McGee plays some fingerstyle guitar in Open-D tuning. Here's "John Henry" in case you're one of the strange people who doesn't know this song - beginning, like many Uncle Dave records, with one of his peculiar monologues:



He expanded the line-up even further the following year adding Sam's brother Kirk on banjo and fiddle and Mazy Todd on fiddle to form the Fruit Jar Drinkers, who became the premiere string band of the 1920's. Their recordings are among the best recordings ever - I have already played "Sail Away Ladies" on an earlier blog, but screw it, I'm gonna play it again:



Perfection in music form. Another good recording from this era is "Jordan Am A Hard Road To Travel" a cover of Dan Emmett's 1853 mock-spiritual with heavily altered lyrics:



One of Uncle Dave's main points were political messages he often stuck in his songs - the above song, with lines like

I don't know, but I believe I'm right, the auto'll ruin the country,
Let's go back to the horse and buggy and try to save some money.

Before starting into music, Dave ran a horse and buggy business which collapsed due to the introduction of the horseless carriage - yeah, he's THAT old - and many of his songs have a personal beef with cars and, in particular, Henry Ford, who gets digged in the above song too.

Another, more explicitly political song of his is "Buddy, Won't You Roll Down the Line", which deals with a mining company leasing convicts to work in the mines and how free labour rebelled against this:

Way down yonder in Tennesee, they leased the convicts out
To work in the coal mines, against free labor South;
Free labor rebelled against it. To win it took some time.
But while the lease was in effect, they made 'em rise and shine.



BTW, the number of Uncle Dave Macon songs on YouTube is bloody disgraceful - it barely scratches the surface.

Anyhoo, another good example of his political style is "Wreck of the Tennessee Gravy Train". Recorded solo in 1930, the song deals with a scandal involving Henry Horton, the governer of Tennessee and the collapse of the Caldwell Company Bank in Tennessee, leaving the state $6 million in debt.



Uncle Dave kept going and touring with the Grand Ole Opry until basically the end of his life - he was beloved by everyone from his fellow old-timers, to the new breed of Bluegrass musicians, to the folkies of the 50's folk revival. In 1940, he appeared in the film "The Grand Ole Opry Movie". Here's a clip of him raving it up with his son, Dorris:



As well as a more crazed scene of him and bunch of other Opry stars playing something which sounds a bit like "Soldier's Joy":



The legacy of Uncle Dave Macon in today's day and age is that he essentially embodies the entire period of folk from after the end of the Civil War, post-Stephen Foster and post-Dan Emmett, up until the beginning of modern country music like the Carter Family their ilk. He presents folk music as it once was and, still often is, and always should be - loud, raucous, wild, accessible, moving, eccentric and unpretentious. So there!

Some of his stuff can be found on the Internet Archive, but if you're further interested, I highly recommend the boxset "Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy" which contains all his recordings. You can buy it or otherwise type it into google and see what happens...

Peng...

The History of Jazz?! Yes, the History of Jazz!

I think it's right about time, boys and girls, that I write up a history of jazz! Not being a complete psychopath, I'm going to give you a rundown up until about 1922.

So, where does jazz start? Of course, this question is compelte bollocks - you can't say where it began officially, because no-one really knows. It began in such squallid, anti-social origins that no-one was ever really going to document it at the time. It began in the brothels and whorehouses of New Orleans around the turn of the century where the black and white working class would go to get drunk, consort with women of the night and then dance themselves in a coma to what was the filthiest, dirtiest most provocative and anti-social music ever created.

The biggest myth about jazz in the 1910's was that it was invented by white people. The biggest myth nowadays is that it was invented by black people. The fact is - and this is a fact that will never deny - it was a complete mixture of both. Jazz evolved out of an unholy union of ragtime (black music), marching bands (white music), blues (black music), hillbilly music (white music), spirituals (black music) and parlour music (white music). OK, even that's a bit of a simplification, but I still maintain that trying to racially segregate jazz is pointless and no-one understood this better than the jazz musicians themselves - in the 1920' and 30's, a time when white and black people often couldn't ride a bus together, jazz was the only institution where black and white musicians worked together on completely equal standing. In some ways, jazz is more responsible than any other popular culture for eradicating racial boundaries in society. When it came to jazz, musicians valued skill and coolness above all else and that superceded race. Black, white, jewish, italian, native american, didn't matter as long you could play that thang.

Still, for the sake of interest, I will try and form a history of the evolution of jazz through its practitioners. And of course, the name that comes on everyone's lips when discussing this is Buddy Bolden.



I've already written a lot about Buddy Bolden on the "Funky Butt" page I made earlier, so I won't go into great detail again. Let's just say that Buddy is credited with playing jazz since the late 19th century. The problem arises when you consider that he never made any recordings and no-one is alive who ever heard him play. The only evidence comes from other jazz musicians who heard him play and this is always risky - some guys, like Freddie Keppard and Bunk Johnson who allegedly played with him, claim he invented jazz, other guys like Jelly Roll Morton consider him just a loud ragtime player. When dealing with early jazz, it's soetimes hard to make the difference between jazz and ragtime, so I think it's best that the issue of King Bolden be left moot.

More importantly, we the have the aformentioned Freddie Keppard. Now the history of King Keppard is much more complicated - he inherited the jazz royalty crown from Buddy Bolden after he went mental and around 1906 he started playing in marching band and in various orchestra's. In 1914, he put together the Original Creole Orchestra, perhaps the first jazz band as would recognisable today - he threw out the violins and solidified the cornet, trumpet, clarinet, string bass, banjo, trombone set-up that would be copied by every other jazz band in New Orleans. The band toured around the country presenting, for a lot of people, the first taste of true New Orleans jazz. However, Freddie went and fucked everything up - in 1916 he was offered a chance to record his music. A lot of people think that the lack of early black jazz recordings was due to racism, but that really wasn't the case so much - Freddie refused to record because he was afraid people would steal his style. Therefore, he missed an opportunity to become the first jazz musician - black or white - to record. He did record later in the midd 1920's, but by then his style was no longer edgy. It still represents a good example of the early jazz style though - here's a recording of him playing "Hote Tamale Man" from around 1926:



Now, the evolution of ragtime orchestra's into jazz, as I mentioned in my ragtime post, was a fairly fast and unsurprising events. I mean, if you actually listen to some of them, even as early as the 1910's, the kind of syncopation in them - as well the actual songs played - already predicts jazz in many ways. Take a listen to this recording of "Alabama Bound" from 1910 by Prince's Orchestra - the guy who made the video is very keen to point out that the song was later recorded by Jelly Roll Morton. It was also recorded by Papa Charlie Jackson, Leadbelly, Lonnie Donegan and numerous others. The sound quality's pretty awesome for 1910:



Prince's Orchestra was also the first band to ever record the blues. I'll probably do a post on the group in future, because, along with the Victor Military Band, they were the most cutting edge band of the time.

However, the most important bands of the time were, arguably, those led by James Reese Europe.



More than anyone else, James Reese Europe is resposible for the evolution of ragtime into jazz. Again disputing the claim that black musicians were bound by racism, he made his first recordings in 1914 with his Society Orchestra. It's fascinating to hear - it's not jazz yet, but it's too loud and chaotic for standard ragtime either. Here's his 1914 recording of "Castle House Rag":


Moving to New York in 1903, James Reese Europe honed his skills and put together a succession of various bands including the Clef Club, the Tempo Club and the Society Orchestra. It was around this time that a certain George Gershwin hear him play and was influenced by him. His groups were exceedingly popular - playing at Carnegie Hall and earning a lot of money. He also played in Paris and London. His orchestras at one time numbered 150 musicians and included numerous later important musicians such as Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Willie "The Lion" Smith. His most famous band came about as a result of World War 1 - after enlisting in the army, Europe was asked to form a military band. James Reese Europe's Harlem Hellfighters were the first African-American combat unit to set foot on French soil and were hugely popular everywhere they went - they were the first taste that Europe (the place, that is) got of Jazz, spreading the music around France, Germany, Italy and Britain, astonishing all that heard them. Their sound by this point had evolved into something which sounded more like jazz in the modern sense, albeit not quite as we know it today. Here's a recording from 1919 of "How You Gonna Keep Em Down On The Farm?":



The Harlem Hellfighters and James Reese Europe were memorably portrayed in the beginning of the film "Stormy Weather" from 1943, itself a biopic of band member, Bill Robinson, playing himself in the film. It's a bit overgenerous in the actual jazziness of the band, but otherwise pretty accurate and cool. James Reese Europe was sadly murdered by one of his drummers in 1919 and has passed from most people's memories. Which is sad, because he probably had more influence on the popularity and evolution of jazz - outside of New Orleans - than anyone else and he held in the highest esteem by those who knew and worked with him.

Now, turning our attention back to New Orleans, Jelly Roll Morton published the "Original Jelly Roll Blues" in 1915, the first published authentic jazz composition. Again, I'm not going into great detail on this since I already wrote a post on it, so let's move on to the big one.

The first authentic jazz recording was "Livery Stable Blues" by the Original Dixieland Jass Band in 1917:



This is commonly held up as the first jazz recording and I won't dispute this really - although some of James Reese Europe's music at the time was "jazzy" the ODJB were the real thing. Real jazz - with countermelodies, improvisation, blues influence etc. - by real New Orleans musicians. White guys, of course, which is where the controversy lies - the bandleader Nick LaRocca cost the band a lot of credibility by claiming that he invented jazz and devaluing the black influence on the music. Bytheway, they spelt jazz "jass" originally and it wasn't until a few years later that "jazz" became the common spelling. The band grew out of an earlier, unrecorded band led by Papa Jack Lalaine, which was a mixed, interracial band and thus renders LaRocca's claims even more ridiculous. The band was already deemed passed the sell-by date by the 1920's and they are given little cred beyond the fact that they were the first group. This is a bit unfair - although they were somewhat amateurish sounding compared the great early 20's jazz bands like the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and King Oliver's Creole Band, they were still genuine jazz musicians and were among the first people to record popular jazz standards like "Tiger Rag" and the quintessential jazz anthem, "Darktown Strutters Ball":



So, I guess the next important milestone would be the first African-American jazz musicians to record. Well, if we again ignore the jazz-like music being put out by James Reese Europe, we have to actually wait until the 1920's. Freddie Keppard, like I said, ruin his chance in 1916. The only other examples I can think of would be piano rolls by the likes of James P. Johnson which date back as early as 1917. However, these were mostly rags and, although more advanced from earlier ragtime, not really significantly jazzy enough to point out.

In 1920, Mamie Smith released the first African-American vocal blues record, "Crazy Blues" on which she was backed up by her Jazz Hounds. If you want you can list this as the first black jazz record. It really comes down to a matter of opinion. For me, personally, I have to back to James P. Johnson again.



James P. Johnson was the father of Harlem Stride Piano, a style of jazz piano which evolved out of ragtime in Harlem, New York in the 1910's. It will require a post of its own in the near future. Suffice to say, in 1921 James P. Johnson recorded his famous composition "Carolina Shout" in both a solo piano recording (not a piano roll) and in a full jazz band form. Both of these I credit as the first jazz recordings by an African-American artist. I can't seem to find a good link to the band version, but here's the piano version:



I will put up the band version once I can get a good link to it. The final "first" I need to mention is Kid Ory's Creole Orchestra and their recording of "Ory Creole Trombone" from 1922, the first recordings a black New Orleans jazz band. This is actually usually held up as the first African-American jazz recording rather than "Carolina Shout" and I put this down to lack of knowledge rather than anything else. It was the wildest jazz recording ever made up to that point and Kid Ory was later famous for playing with Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton - he should also be famous for being one of the very few jazz originators not to go mad, alcoholic and die penniless; he became very popular during the Dixieland revival of the 1940s and retired in the 1960's on a Hawaiian island. I can't seem to find the original "Ory's Creole Trombone" recording - youtube is crap for early jazz - but here's the 1940's recording he made of the same song. It rocks mercilessly:



So, that's JAZZ! Of course, it evolved much more beyond this point and there is far, FAR more to talk about in the 1920's, but seeing as how I'm not getting paid for writing this, I would have to be mad to write anymore now. Madder, that is.

Just about everyone I have mentioned on this post can be found public domain here:

http://www.archive.org/details/78rpm

You don't even have to feel oh so guilty about robbing some poor, innocent executive!

Jang Deuce, cruds!

On to more Spiritual matters...

No-one would deny that Christianity has contributed a huge amount to musical culture of the world. Afterall, written music has its origins there and hymns have made up most of the backbone of modern music. Still, I personally believe that the negro spiritual has been the best expression of christianity through music. Maybe its the simple unpretentiousness of them or their association with slavery - thus lending a certain authenticity to the messages and morals - or maybe, I dunno, I just don't like white people's religious music. Regardless, they make up one of the greatest repetoires of folk songs in history and are perhaps more important than any other genre of the 18th and 19th century.

Actually, I'm going to start this post with a song that was not originally a negro spiritual, or even an American song, but which was later inaliably identified with the genre. That song is, of course, "Amazing Grace".

Now if you're one of those genuinely strange people who doesn't know this song, here's a recording by Judy Collins from the early 70's. Generally, I don't like Judy Collins, because she represents a horribly, horribly polished and fake branch of so-called "folk music", but her recording of this, backed by a choir, is pretty perfect:



"Amazing Grace" is one of the oldest songs I'll be dealing with on this blog,it was published in 1779 by ex-slave trader John Newton. This is significant - there were absolutely shiteloads of hymns written in the 17th and 18th century and if we were simply dealing with Christian hymns that influenced negro spirituals I could come up with any number by the likes of Isaac Watts. What makes "Amazing Grace" significant is that it was written by an ex-slave trade trader in (allegedly) a fit of religious and moral guilt over his profession and the song became something of an anthem for the whole abolitionist movement and later for enslaved African-Americans.


The symbol used by the Quakers and other abolitionists in Britain in the 18th century - "Am I not a man and a brother?"

Ironically, this most theistically uplifting of musical genres grew out of cultural opression and repression - when African slaves were brought to America, all elements of their African culture and heritage was obliterated; they were all brought under the arm of Christianity and had any attempts at breaking into African songs or rituals forcefully beaten out of them. When sitting in church, benches would be pushed close together to prevent the slaves from getting up and dancing.

To quote negrospirituals.com:

Rural slaves used to stay after the regular worship services, in churches or in plantation “praise houses”, for singing and dancing. But, slaveholders did not allow dancing and playing drums, as usual in Africa. They also had meetings at secret places (“camp meetings”, “bush meetings”), because they needed to meet one another and share their joys, pains and hopes. In rural meetings, thousands slaves were gathered and listened to itinerant preachers, and sang spirituals, for hours. In the late 1700s, they sang the precursors of spirituals, which were called “corn ditties”.

However, the very basis of Christianity condemns slavery as a sin and it is this fact that eventually made Christianity the enemy of slavery and a tool for its abolition. Trying to provide a timeline for negro spirituals is practically impossible, since, even compared to white folk songs, documentation of the songs is practically non-existant. However, there were a few books published in the mid 19th century that were collections of negro slave songs, often including spirituals, the first and most significant being "Slave Songs Of The United States" in 1867.



If you want to actually read the book, here's a full scan of it:

http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/allen/allen.html

Not a lot of the songs documented are that well known today, but there are a few that are pretty famous. The most famous is probably "Michael, Row The Boat Ashore". It was big during the American 1960's folk revival and, as such, here's a version by Pete Seeger from 1963:



Pete can get on my tits sometimes with his often patronising attitude, but this is pretty cool. Another well known song from the book is "Nobody Knows the Trouble I Seen", sung here by legendary "voice of God" Paul Robeson:



One of the most popular and lasting negro spirituals is "Go Down, Moses", also known as "Let My People Go". Unlike a lot of spirituals, the song is not jubilant and uplifting, but sombre and ominous - the song's relevance has no doubt been emphasised due to the obvious parallels made between the plight of the Israelites and African-American slaves. I mean, it is one of the few slave songs that actually contains the phrase "Let my people go" and so has been put forward as one of the great songs of defiance and determination. The song was first published in 1872 by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the premiere black vocal group of the era, but some sources have dated the song as having been sung as early as 1853. One of the best versions of the song is from Preston Sturges' 1941 existentialist screwball comedy, "Sullivan's Travels":



Probably the most famous negro spiritual is "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". Interestingly, the song had an official author, Wallis Willis, a freedman (newly emancipated slave) who composed the song sometime before 1862. Whether he based it on an earlier song he had heard or actually thought it up himself doesn't really matter, though - the song became basically the anthem for African-Americans and arguably remains so until this day, although I'd like to suggest it has more universal status. It has been suggested that the lyrics to the song referenced the "underground railroad", the secret means for slaves to escape to the freed states. It was popularised by the Fisk Jubilee Singers starting in the 1870's and took from there. If, somehow, you haven't actually heard this song, you're probably sectioned. But still, here's a version by vocalist(and clearly a massive Paul Robeson fan) Kevin Maynor. Trying to find decent versions of this song is hard, bytheway, because almost all the versions I see are either "clever reinterpretations" (shite) or sung by overdramatic "soulful" singers (really shite):



After the abolition of slavery, the most famous singers of negro spirituals were the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a group of African-American students from Fisk University who formed in 1871 as something of reaction against the blackface minstrel shows who claimed to bring the "authentic" sound of the freed black slaves to the stage.



The Fisk Singers were an acapella vocal group whose dignified and, admittedly, middle-class renditions of negro songs (and a few Stephen Foster songs) provoked both praise and criticism across America and Europe. Probably for the same reason in both cases - they didn't confirmed to the stereotyped image of blacks that had been instilled in people's minds. They still exist today as a group, albeit (shockingly) with none of the original members; it is something of a tradition in Fisk University. The original Fisk singers made recordings as early as the turn of the century, but they often sound very old and creaky today. A lot of them can be found public domain on the internet, but here's a very good recording made in 1926 of "Keep A' Inchin' Along":



With the birth of various new recording markets, spirituals became widely spread throughout popular culture. Even genres like the supposedly Satanic medium of the blues and the supposedly white-washed country music recorded a lot of negro spirituals.

Artists like Blind Willie Johnson and the Reverend Gary Davis who were usually (and inaccurately) labelled as country blues artists had repetoire composed almost entirely of religious material, albeit played with a bluesy, raggy guitar accompaniment. Here's Reverend Gary Davis playing "Children of Zion" and looking badass on Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest in the mid 1960's:



And take this beautiful version of "All God's Chillun Got Wings" by cowboy vocal group, the Sons Of The Pioneers - a great defence against the percieved image of country music as white washed or racist:



In the 1940's, Thomas A. Dorsey combined the negro spiritual with jazz, R&B and pop influences and created gospel music. Gospel music is often thought of as interchangable with the negro spiritual, but it really is a very different kind of music - take a listen to this recording of the Golden Gate Quartet, one of the most popular gospel groups of the 30',s 40's and 50's singing the negro spiritual, "Joshua Fit The Battle" in the gospel style:



Of course, in the 20th century, negro spirituals had their biggest revival during the civil rights movements, but that's really an issue for another time....

Twang goose, muds!

American Artist No. 3: Stephen Foster

Although I have to admit this site is getting known for insanely OTT statements like this, I'm going to say it anyway:

Stephen Foster was, and is, the most influential and important American songwriter in American history.

And this actually more an official consensus, rather than any personal hyperbole - everyone on the planet knows his songs. If you don't, then you're probably living in a crater in the middle of the Atlantic with your ears fused shut. Stephen Foster's melodies are familiar across the world, even if he himself is not known as the author.

Take this version of "Camptown Races", by the 2nd South Carolina String Band (a band who make some terrific covers of his songs) and tell me that you don't know this:



Stephen Foster was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1826, of Irish descent, had only a brief education, was influenced by minstrels songs, parlor songs, German classical, negro songs and in the 19th century he set out to do something utterly batshit crazy - write songs for a living.

It's hard to imagine in these days of commercial music, but in the early half of the 19th century it was not considered a viable profession to be an official songwriter. If you wrote songs, it was because you were a performer and you charge money for your performances, not the songs. And of course, the songs were not worth anything - they were merely ditties, not at all worthy of esteem or social value like classical compositions. And, unfortunately for Steve, that's pretty much how it was for him, as a man out of his time - his songs were plagiarised, since there was no concept of copyright for songs in those days and since he wasn't a performer, he died penniless and impoverished at the age of 37.

What he left behind was, to that point, the most sophisticated, unique, memorable and oft-imitated body of songs in America. His work ranged from blackface minstrel songs, to parlour songs, to love ballads, to anti-slavery laments and whatever else he felt like. The most significant innovation was probably his ability to take the previously low form of music, the minstrel or "ethiopian" song and elevate it to a new status - he attempted to, in his own words, "build up taste...among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order."

One of his first big hits, published on February 25th, 1848 was "Oh! Susanna". One of the most perfect songs in the history of the world, like, ever, it was ostensibly a minstrel song, sung from the point of view of a black man, using the, *sigh*, dialect that was so popular at the time. The lyrics are partly nonsense:

I came from Alabama wid my banjo on my knee,
I'm g'wan to Louisiana, my true love for to see
It raind all night the day I left, the weather it was dry
The sun so hot I froze to death; Susanna, don't you cry.

But they have a genuine anthemic, emotional backbone to them. The song did contain a verse that is more than a tad inflammatory in today's eyes:

I jump'd aboard the telegraph and trabbled down de ribber,
De lectrick fluid magnified, and kill'd five hundred Nigga.
De bulgine bust and de hoss ran off, I really thought I'd die;
I shut my eyes to hold my bref -- Susanna don't you cry

Accusing Stephen Foster of racism is pretty much pointless - in 1848, even "Uncle Tom's Cabin" hadn't been published yet; considering black people even human was a radical notion to some people, so to empathise and try to emulate them like Stephen Foster did probably made him quite liberal for the day. So to try and condemn him for using dated terms like "nigger" or "darkie" over 150 years ago is ridiculous. On the other hand, I do think it does undermine the emotional impact of the song for it to performed nowadays using those lyrics.

This version by the 2nd South Carolina String band is clever - it basically changes a single letter to make the word "chigger" instead, which is basically a bed-bug. It doesn't matter since its essentially nonsense, but it fits seamlessly. This version is beyond perfect in every measure:



He wrote many other minstrel songs like "Ring De Banjo", "Nelly Bly" and "Uncle Ned", but never topped "Oh! Susanna" in this area. He did also write parlor songs for the more middle-class market, like "I Dream of Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair" and "Hard Times Come Again No More" which weren't radically different from his minstrel songs beyond the fact that they weren't written in a "dialect". Here's a recording of the latter song (written in 1854) by a certain Bob Dylan fellow from 1993. Although Bob's voice was at an all time low at this point, he does actually sing the song properly, presumably because it wasn't one of his own songs:



Steve's songs were incdrebily popular with minstrel performers like Dan Emmett and E.P. Christy, but they weren't so keen on giving him the credit for the. Likewise, publishers would often publish his songs without credit. Since there was no legal defence for songwriters in those times, he basically got royally screwed over throughout his whole career.

Another interesting thing to note about Stephen Foster is that, although he wrote a lot of songs about the Southern states and was most associated with them, he only visited the South once, on a steamboat trip on his honeymoon.

Perhaps Foster's magnum opus was written in 1863, "Old Black Joe". The song combined all his previous work in the fields of minstrel songs, parlor songs and spiritual ballads. The song is a tale that was popular in the late half of the 19th century, that of the aged slave (or ex-slave) living his last days, lamenting for his long gone friends and family and his desire to join them in the after life. It's a theme that would explored again in songs like "Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane", but Steve's song is the most poignant, with the haunting chorus refrain of:

I'm coming, I'm coming, for my head is bending low
I hear their gentle voices calling Old Black Joe.

Although sung from the point of view of a black man, it's not written in a dialect, which was pretty rare for the time and paint a sympathetic but also dignified portrayal, with little of the patronisation that existed in other minstrel songs. Here's a recording from the 1930's by Cowboy group, The Sons of the Pioneers:



Still, like I said, Steve wasn't making a lot of money and on January 13th 1864 he died in a Hotel in New York, with only 35 cents in his pocket. However, his songs lasted and became renowned throughout the world. They were routinely taught in American schools, although this abated somewhat in the 1960's after the Civil Rights movement claimed that many of Stephen Fosters songs were racially insensitive. Kind of ironic, since Stephen Foster came to fame in the first place through his attempts to be sensitive to African-American culture.

Today, another re-evalutation has been going on which argues against the claim of racially insensitivity, but it's unlikely to be a debate which'll close any time soon. Partly it's probably due to the sheer influence of his songs - no-one would give a rat's ass about Will Hayes, or Henry Clay Work's racially themed material from the same era, but Steve's song are so well known that they have come to represent America's musical culture more than any other and thus attract far more debate and controversy than any other songwriter of the time.

The main point about Stephen Foster is the songs themselves and they are truly beautiful - he was the first songwriter who actually saw the value in an original melody, rather than one merely stolen from a traditional song and he saw that the simple medium of the "song" could be just as relevant as any classical composition. He was a humble, shy figure from all accounts (just look at that photo at the top) and would probably never have believed his songs would cause the kerfuffle they have done over the century.

So, until I hear those gentle voices calling...


Monument to Stephen Foster, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania