The Swing Book Read Free

“ragged” or syncopated, giving emphasis
     to beats that were not traditionally stressed. Even the way that such early jazz musicians as Buddy Bolden, Kid Ory, King
     Oliver, Nick LaRocca, and Jelly Roll Morton played their instruments was original. They put an emotionalism and edge into
     the very sound of the notes themselves. Classical European musicians had generally attempted to produce the purest tones possible
     with their instruments. Instead, as musician Richard Hadlock remembered, New Orleans clarinetist and sax giant Sidney Bechet
     exhorted him to play one note in as many ways as he could. Bechet, according to Hadlock, told him to “growl it, smear it,
     flat it, sharp it, do anything you want to it. That’s how you express your feelings in this music. It’s like talking.”
    In turn, jazz inspired people to sing differently. Like instruments, voices also began to sound more like they were talking.
     Instead of vocalizing right on the beat, singers got hep to the new rhythmic devices of jazz and started to play around with
     how they phrased lyrics.
    And then there was the blues. Developing around the same time as jazz and reaching an early popular peak in the twenties with
     such singers as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, this powerful music exerted an immeasurable influence on jazz. Named for the music’s
     blue notes, which don’t fit into the more precise European conceptions of do-re-mi, the blues contributed its wonderfully
     nuanced tone and distinctive attitude of strength in the face of adversity to jazz. Meanwhile, jazz provided a new avenue
     for the blues, working it into more complex and up-tempo arrangements. These myriad influences and developments first came
     to national attention after 1917, when the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a group of white musicians, made the first jazz recording.
     They were soon followed by influential records from the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band, which introduced the man who would effect
     a cataclysmic change in jazz, Louis Armstrong. (For more detailed biographical information on Armstrong and other major jazz artists whose names are in bold print, see
     chapter 4.)
THE SOLO STEPS FORWARD
    Before Armstrong, the New Orleans bands were small groups that sought to hone a collective sound. As Ted Gioia writes, “The
     New Orleans pioneers created a music in which the group was primary, in which each instrument was expected to play a certain
     role, not assert its independence.” But as anyone who’s ever heard Armstrong knows, keeping a lid on this individual would
     have been impossible. With his hugely resonant warm voice, clarion trumpet calls, and larger-than-life personality, Armstrong
     was poised to dominate the American musical landscape as perhaps the most important singer and musician of the twentieth century.
    While he was never a major bandleader, Armstrong deserves to be called the true father of swing music. After leaving New Orleans
     for Chicago in 1922—his journey was part of a great migration of musicians and blacks in general who left the South for better
     job opportunities in the North—Armstrong began to assert a new role for jazz musicians. On a series of legendary recordings
     begun in 1925 with groups known as the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, he overthrew the ensemble ethos of New Orleans by blowing
     and improvising the hottest solos ever. These records, considered the most historically significant in jazz, show Armstrong
     at his most wildly inventive. On such songs as “Potato Head Blues” and “Wild Man Blues” he broke free of jazz conventions,
     letting loose a panoply of new melodies and rhythmic ideas. But his genius wasn’t only at creating breathtakingly elaborate
     riffs. There was logic and strength and structure behind his every flight. On one song, “Heebie Jeebies,” recorded in 1926,
     Armstrong scats for the first time on record, giving to voice the same improvisational space enjoyed by a musical instrument.
    None of