The Blues: A Homegrown Story IV
Under the aegis of the 92Y
“Part of what I want to do this semester,” begins host Louis Rosen, “is show the reach of the blues and how it influences more mainstream music. Let’s start with some examples of concert music where not only is the blues feel utilized, but also the 12 bar form…George Gershwin (1898-1937) was a unique case among songwriters who emerged during the era. He studied piano only for about four years at 13/14, but was lucky to find George Hambitzer who saw something exceptional. His teacher exposed him to concerts of Chopin, Debussy, Ravel.”
Gershwin took a job as a song plugger at $15 a week in his teens, then recorded and arranged piano rolls for The Aeolian Company. In his early twenties, he spent a great deal of time in Harlem listening to music and getting to know musicians. The great pianist/composer James P. Johnson (1894-1955), pioneer of stride and ragtime, commented about Gershwin, “There’s this ‘ofay’ who can play almost as well as we can.” The word, originating with “foe” in pig latin, was Black slang for a white person. Johnson was responsible for a 1922 anthem of the era, “The Charleston.”
When Gershwin’s friend Irving Caesar had an idea for a “one-step” like 1918’s popular “Hindustan,” it took the two young men just an hour to write “Swanee.” Al Jolson heard Gershwin perform it at a party and put it in his show. “1920-1924, Gershwin wrote over 60 songs for The George White Scandals. Out of all these, you probably know one of them, “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise.” He was successful, produced and published, but not writing hit after hit.”
Theater, though one flight up from Tin Pan Alley, was considered entertainment, not art. Gershwin proceeded on dual tracks with his work almost from the beginning. In 1922, with the mentorship of Black composer/arranger Will Vodery, he wrote a one-act, experimental jazz opera called Blue Monday (lyricist- Buddy DeSylva) for Paul Whiteman, king of jazz bands. Whiteman then rented Manhattan’s Aeolian Hall to present a concert of African American music. It would end with an original composition.
In three weeks, Gershwin composed Rhapsody in Blue with which the evening would close. “It had the melodic inflection of blue notes and syncopated character of the genre,” Rosen comments. “Critics were puzzled, but the audience loved it. It’s with this piece his musical voice coalesces and becomes mature.” We listen to a section of the piece as played by virtuoso pianist Yuja Wang. “Every minute is suffused with blue notes, but this particular part is like you walked into a saloon at 2 a.m.,” the host observes at one point.
Gershwin explored the blues more fully in Three Preludes. Each short piece takes a style of classical music and imbues it with jazz. We listen to excerpts by pianist William Bolcom during which Rosen calls out changes, themes, chords, counter melody… It’s like an aural x-ray. “Gershwin understands the structure, but makes it completely his own.”
His orchestral Concerto in F as conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas is saturated with blues. “It’s one thing for a songwriter to use a blue note here and there and be fashionable, but this is a style in which Gershwin is steeped.”
Next there’s an excerpt from 1951’s An American in Paris where the composer is purposefully reminding an American abroad of home. Rosen points out blue notes even within musical gaiety. “So the importance of George Gershwin can’t be overstated. This is the first music in the vernacular that doesn’t just sound dressed up.” (Porgy and Bess came 10 years later.)
We then look at the significance of blues to two towering jazz figures whose careers will go into the 1970s. In the 1920s, blues is the language in which they’ll build their style. The first is Duke Ellington (1899-1974). James Edward Ellington was raised in a middle class, African American neighborhood in Washington, D.C. His mother taught the children poise and elegance. Dapper even as a youngster, he was nicknamed “The Duke.” Ellington didn’t grow up with the blues.
Though he took piano from the age of seven, the boy was more interested in baseball until, sneaking into poolrooms at 14, he heard and was attracted by ragtime. A parallel talent in art got him into Pratt Institute, but by then he was hooked on music. Ellington founded The Washingtonians. He soon took over not only managing his band, but several others. “He could’ve lived a successful life on the charity circuit of Washington, D.C.,” Rosen reflects.
Instead, Ellington and a few bandmates traveled back and forth to New York until they got a gig – at The Kentucky Club. Six of them played six to eight hours a night, then went to after hours clubs and jammed. Cab Calloway (1907-1994), writer of “Minnie the Moocher,” led the resident band at the fabled Cotton Club. When he decided to leave, auditions were held. Ellington and his band were late, but so were the gangster owners who would make the ultimate decision. The band got hired. Not only did his band play for the club, but once a week, there was a national live broadcast enhancing its reputation.
“In October 1927, eight musicians go into the studio to record two compositions that for Ellington would go a long way to establish his distinct sound. He couldn’t yet afford the best musicians, but he had a great ear for hearing what made someone unique, so early compositions were collaborations.”
First we hear “The Black and Tan Fantasy,” a 12-bar blues with James “Bubber” Miley’s ‘freak’ trumpet and trombonist Joe “Tricky Sam” Manton creating the wah-wah sound that would characterize what critics called Ellington’s “Jungle Style.” (Black and Tan derived its name from the Black, white, and Asian patrons who attended a club.)
The second number features clarinetist Rudy Jackson and singer Adelaide Hall (1901-1993), who had picked up some of Miley’s sound. “Creole Love Call” is a 12-bar blues bookended by Hall’s wordless vocal. Ellington’s contribution is the form, making its components a compositional whole. “By then the blues had permeated all American music, orchestral, nightclubs, Broadway…”
“The last artist tonight is another genius who breaks out in the 1920s, Louis Armstrong. We’ve already heard him on Bessie Smith records, but he had his own idiosyncratic style.” Armstrong was in Chicago playing with King Oliver when bandleader Fletcher Henderson (1897-1952), needing a “hot” soloist, asked him to come to New York.
It seemed like a great opportunity, but the trumpet player didn’t get along with his boss. Henderson was a college boy, an example of what Rosen tells us was called “the talented tenth,” African American men who had the right chances to help the race, but were not themselves at the top of their fields. He was a guy who put on airs.
Armstrong went back to Chicago where he played every kind of music conceivable for stage shows and silent films half the day, then moved on to entertain at The Sunset Club on State Street til 3 am. His third job was to record “race records” as Louis Armstrong and The Hot Five with wife Lil Armstrong (1898-1971) starting on piano and Earl “Fatha” Hines (1903-1983) taking over. It was a dream band, personnel from the King Oliver Group who never worked together live, but had a great, loose time in the studio.
These recordings changed jazz, taking a soloist from someone who ornamented a piece to someone who strikes out on his own improvisation. “I want to play you the shot heard round the world, “West End Blues.” What seems like a trumpet cadenza from a brass band goes through three different keys and shifts time even before the song starts.” Listen. “This is just a part of the way blues permeated the culture.”
All unattributed quotes are Louis Rosen
“The Blues is the purest home-grown music that America ever produced, a complex, profound expression of life’s essential desires and struggles. It came from places as varied as the Mississippi Delta, the Texas panhandle, New Orleans, Chicago, the Eastern Seaboard and New York City. It is the essential musical language of artists as diverse as Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Jimmy Rodgers, Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King and Bob Dylan.
It also became an essential building block in the American concert music of Gershwin, Copeland, and African-American composers such as James P. Johnson and William Grant Still, as well as important composers today. This semester we’ll explore all of these exceptional artists, rural and urban, folk and classical, past and present, and much more. Awaken—or reawaken—to the power of The Blues, our uniquely American story. “ Louis Rosen
This is a subscription Series from the 92Y
Photo of Mr. Rosen courtesy of Louis Rosen
Opening picture from Shutterstock
