As Time Goes By: Love and Romance in Popular Music

Frank A. Salamone

Table of Contents

Foreword 1Chapter One Love and the Times 7Chapter Two It’s All Sacred Music: Duke Ellington from the Cotton Club to the

Cathedral 20 Chapter Three Jazz and Its Impact on the Classics 32Chapter Four Borrowing from the Classics: The Use of Classical Music

In Popular Music 44Chapter Five 1950s Music 50Chapter Six Biringin’ It All Back Home 67 Chapter Seven Milt Gabler Interview 77Chapter Eight The Culture of Jazz and Jazz as Critical Culture 101Chapter Nine Bebop and Hip-Hop: Their Strong Relationship 116

Chapter Ten Bpppin’ along with Johnny Mercer 124Chapter Eleven Bonanza and Popular Themes from TV and Movies 131Index 134

CHAPTER ONELOVE AND THE TIMES

–Without music, life would be a mistake–Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Growing up in the 1950s it seemed that everypopular song was a love song. The juke boxes andradios blared the latest hits and almost every oneof them was a song aimed straight at the heart. Ateenage boy had no chance but to expect that eachpop tune would guide him toward the love of hislife, at least the love of tonight. Although I wasmore a fan of jazz and the music of earlierdecades in which jazz was a large segment of thepopular music, nevertheless the silky tones of NatCole, minus his trio, had the power to stir upstrange emotions. So did those of other singers ofthe early 50s—Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, and manyothers. Even as Rhythm ‘n’ Blues, renamed Rock ’n’Roll, took over the pop charts, there were stillsome mellow singers bridging the gap—Bobby Darin,Johnny Mathis, and others. Even Elvis turned tothe traditional love song at time as “Love MeTender”, for example, demonstrates. The fiftieswere definitely a period in which, however, timeswere changing and so, too, the depiction of lovein America also changed.

That personal experience led me to ponder whatthe connection between the concept of romanticlove and popular music might be. Was it, as FrankSinatra sang in a ballad of the times, like love

and marriage? The song claims you can’t have onewithout the other. Can we only have acorrelational answer or can we delve more deeplyfor one that suggests some causation? A survey ofthe top tunes from 1955 to 2005 sheds some lighton the issue. It also suggests that “love” meanssomething different from one period to another,leading to all sorts of generational confusion andmisunderstandings.

This chapter examines whether socio-demographicchange affects mass-mediated expression ofemotion. Specifically, do objective societaltrends affect popular song content? When societyis getting better, do pop song lyrics get morepositive? For example, does reduced unemploymentor increasing income lead to more representationof positive ideas like love, achievement, orgrowth? When reality is going downhill, is theremore negativity in pop songs? This is interestingin itself as a social and cultural question: howis popular culture affected by objective reality?

This chapter covers the period from 1950 to1980 and concentrates on the pop music top 100songs for the decades 1950s, 60s, and 70s.Billboard added Top100 charts for other genres ofmusic over time: for example, Latin Music wasgiven its own chart in 1986. This article does notexamine these other important charts but tries toaccount for the influence of other musical formson popular music.

The Fifties and Romantic Love: The AmericanRomance with the Automobile

–In brief, automobiles are so designed as to be dangerous at any speed–

Ralph Nader, “The Safe Car You Can’t Buy”, The Nation, April 11, 1959

Virtually since its invention, Americans havehad a love affair with the automobile. Perhaps,the fifties mark the high point of that affair.During the fifties, the automobile industryexperienced a huge growth, and cars become fetishsymbols. They became more elaborate, much fasterthan they had been, and a sign of Americanprosperity and energy. The Beat generation addedto the myth of the automobile, depicting itsdriver as heroic and dangerous. The fiftieswitnessed a number of “road movies” that added tothe myth. Brando and Dean personified thesefigures on the big screen. TV also added its ownversion. Programs like “Route 66”, for example,glorified the wonders of the open road. In itself,that open road had long been an American symbol,exploited by Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and WaltWhitman among others.

Rock music and advertising also used the mythof the heroic driver, although advertisements forplush executive cars that presented them as heroesdo appear a bit ironic in retrospect. However, theexecutive liked to think of himself as a potentialrebel, with or without a cause, and dangerous inhis own way. Furthermore, although there were somewarnings about the danger of the big fifties gasguzzlers to the environment, relatively fewAmericans took them seriously.

Certainly, in the fifties, the automobilerepresented far more than mere transportation. Itsignified power, sex, freedom, and technology. Thearchitect Le Corbusier wrote in The City of the Future,

for example, “Cars, cars, fast, fast! One isseized, filled with enthusiasm, joy ... in the joyof power”. The Cadillac’s famous tail fins borewitness to that lust for power. They had, afterall, been copied from an American World War IIfighter plane.

In the fifties, the car was part of theAmerican courtship ritual, nicknamed a movingbedroom. The movie star, James Dean encapsulatedthe mythology of the car through his movies andhis death. He died skidding off the road whileracing his Porsche, “Little Bastard”. The death inthe “saddle” tied him to legendary figures of theAmerican West, adding to his aura.

For the fifties, the road was the whole world,or so it seemed to teens, at least male teens.Chuck Berry’s “No Particular Place to Go” capturedthe mood of the times. Cruising up and down theroad was an end in itself, or a means to an end,finding “chicks” who would ride with you. The carindeed had become a phallic symbol, as so many ofits critics exclaimed. Its supporters onlyshrugged in reply. A sampling of the top songs inthe 1950s emphasizes the point while clarifyingit.

It should be noted that most lists of top 1950ssongs ignore the early 1950s; that makes goodcultural sense because the early 1950s musicreally belongs to the late 1940s. In the same way,early 1960s music belongs to the late 1950s. Thetop 100 list, then, of the 1950s includes thesesongs: songs by Elvis are found throughout thelist.

These are eight songs by the King, including Don't Be Cruel / Hound Dog and Heartbreak Hotel /

I Was the One ("http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/elvis_presley/all_shook_up___thats_when_your_heartaches_begin/" \o "[Album108709]"; "http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/elvis_presley/jailhouse_rock___treat_me_nice/" \o "[Album108708]"; "http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/elvis_presley/_let_me_be_your__teddy_bear___loving_you/" \o"[Album240442]"; "http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/elvis_presley/love_me_tender___anyway_you_want_me/" \o "[Album108706]"; "http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/elvis_presley/dont___i_beg_of_you/" \o "[Album326093]").

Note that most of these were love songs, even if not necessarily traditional love songs. The flip side of “Hound Dog” was a love lament, and iftime permitted I could argue that understood in Blues talk “Hound Dog” was a love argument. The flip of Jailhouse Rock is the very sweet “Treat MeNice”.

Specifically, Elvis had the number 1, 8, 13,17, 18, 22, 47, and 67 top sellers of the decade.Not one of these top sellers came after 1957. Hisarmy career interrupted his top 40 surge, but hewas able to resume his place in music on hisreturn. Although he was always able to rock out,his hits tended to be rather mainstream songs witha tinge of rhythm and blues; he was indeed thewhite man who fulfilled Sam Philips’s dream of awhite man who could sing like a black man. Hismusic reflected the growing integration of thecountry, the mixing of black and white culturaltraits which then had its place in social life.

It is no wonder that his music sounded sorevolutionary at the time and so tame today. Itwas not bubble gum pop at all. It was blues-basedmusic by a southern boy who came from the HolinessChurch and listened to black music and absorbedit. Howling Wolf, for example, stated, “He [Elvis]made his pull from the blues” (Howlin’ Wolf in conversation with PeterGuralnick, 1966(http://www.elvisinfonet.com/spotlight_blues_album.html).

What made Elvis so important to the integrationof musical styles and audiences was that hisnatural talent for rhythm and blues was able togain him a strong black following. Michael Banerecounts a story in his book, White Boy Singin’ theBlues, of Elvis entertaining a black audience atClub Handy in Memphis when it was still againstthe law for a white to enter a black entertainmentvenue. The audience was skeptical at first, butElvis soon won them over with his versions of“Milkcow Blues Boogie” by Sleepy John Estes, and asong by Crudup, probably “That’s All Right Mama”.His black audience must have appreciated Elvis’soutspoken love of blues and respect for itspractitioners. Michael Ward quotes Elvis assaying, “A lot of people seem to think I startedthis business. But rock ‘n’ roll was here a longtime before I came along. Nobody can sing thatkind of music like colored people (Ward, 136).

Dizzying Changes in American Life and MusicalRiffs on It

–There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious,makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even

passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gearsand upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and

you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people whorun it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine

will be prevented from working at all!–U.C. Berkeley Free Speech Movement leader Mario

Savio, 1964

It is intriguing and enlightening to viewthe period of the sixties through the eighties asa dizzying period of incredible social change andits consequent turmoil. Looking back from 2013 itis somewhat clearer than living through it. Manyof the changes are consequences of the spread anddefense of the American Empire and the reaction toit of those who believed America should besomething other than the world’s policeman andprotector of the one per cent at the top of theeconomic pyramid. Musically, those who believe thelatter have been more exciting and creative. Thearts flourish in periods of chaos and the best andmost permanent work seems to come out of it. Thereis indeed room for the familiar and mediocre, andeven Beethoven incorporated much of his idols,Bach and Mozart, while influencing all music thathas come after him. After all, Charlie Parker in asimilar vein incorporated Louis Armstrong’s solosnote for note into much of his work—played fasterbut with respect. Thus, what seems like chaos tomany people at first is but a logical extension ofwhat has gone before, a means of finding stabilityin the midst of rapid social and cultural change.

There was indeed rapid social and culturalchange in this period. The early sixties were a

continuation of the late 1950s. John F. Kennedywas the first president born in the twentiethcentury and promised youth and change. He did infact move towards greater equality in promotingwomen’s right to equal pay, and promoting civilrights for African Americans as a moralobligation. There were signs that he was moving toend the Vietnam conflict at the time of hisassassination.

Certainly, the Vietnam War marks the onset ofthe Sixties culturally. It also marked a rapidchange in the music. The music expressed protestmore openly, especially popular music. There was agreater frankness, even crudity, in the lyrics,which carried over to love songs. It is not until1965 that the first open protest song makes theBillboard list. It is Barry McGuire’s “Eve ofDestruction” (Billboardhttp://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_billbord2.html). Indeed, there is not another top tentune on the list that even remotely resembles aprotest tune. Nevertheless, there were manyprotest songs in the period but, by and large,they were not pop tunes. The pop tunes were stillmainly love songs and nonsense tunes like:Dominique, There! I’ve Said It Again, I Want To Hold Your Hand,She Loves You, Can’t Buy Me Love, Hello, Dolly!, My Guy, LoveMe Do, Chapel Of Love, A World Without Love, I Feel Fine,Come See About Me, Downtown, You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’,This Diamond Ring, My Girl, Eight Days A Week, Stop! In TheName of Love, I’m Telling You Now, Game of Love, Mrs. BrownYou’ve Got A Lovely Daughter, Ticket to Ride, The Sound ofSilence, We Can Work It Out, The Sound of Silence, My Love,Lightnin’ Strikes, These Boots Are Made For Walkin’, The BalladOf The Green Berets, (You’re My) Soul And Inspiration, Good

Lovin’, Monday, Monday, Hello Goodbye, Judy In Disguise (WithGlasses), Green Tambourine, Love Is Blue, (Sittin’ On) the Dockof the Bay, Honey, Tighten Up, Heard It Through TheGrapevine. Crimson And Clover, Everyday People, Dizzy,Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, Get Back, Love Theme fromRomeo & Juliet, In the Year 2525.

All these Billboard top tunes were generallymuch lighter than the songs by Bob Dylan, BuffySainte-Marie, Country Joe and others. Here are thetop ten protest songs according to TopTenz.net:1

1. Give Peace a Chance—John Lennon; 2.Masters ofWar—Bob Dylan; 3.With God on Our Side—Bob Dylan;4. I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag; 5. The WarDrags On—Phil Ochs; 6. I Ain’t Marching Any More;7. A Change is Gonna Come—Sam Cooke; 8. UniversalSoldier—Buffy Sainte-Marie; 9. Blowin’ in the Wind—Bob Dylan; 10. Turn! Turn! Turn!—Pete Seeger.

Some of these songs did make the BillboardCharts but not one made the top 100 for the decade(Music Outfittershttp://www.musicoutfitters.com/topsongs/1960.htm).More interesting, perhaps, is the placement of“Love Theme from a Summer Place” by Percy Faith asthe number one song of the decade. It is a lush,haunting traditional instrumental. It issurprising only to those who underrate America’slove affair with the dreamy romantic. Elviscontinued to have hits, but his only two on thetop 100 for the decade were “It’s Now or Never”—anEnglish version of “O Sole Mio”, very far from arocking tune—and “Stuck on You”, a 50s style

1 http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-protest-songs-from-the-1960s.php

rocker. Of the top 100, 79 were love songs, somelike “Harbor Lights”, remakes of much earlier hitsfrom the 30s or 40s.

However, some of the frankness of the protestsongs was entering the Billboard pop charts.Although none of the more explicit love songs madethe decade’s top 100, there were some onindividual year’s top charts. In 1964, forexample, the Stones’ “Satisfaction” had some ofthe bite of a Blues love song. Dylan’s “Lay LadyLay” of 1969 is about as explicit as one could getand still be on the air in 1969.Perhaps, theimpact from the typically sweet or subtle lovelyrics to the more explicit came in the 1970s.Here is a selection of titles from the Billboard1970s Top 100 list of the decade. 

13 Make It with You Bread

23 Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) Melanie

48 Come and Get It Badfinger

71 Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind ThisTime)

The Delfonics

79 I Want to Take You Higher Ike & TinaTurner

88 Up the Ladder to the Roof The Supremes

Fedler, et al., conducted an interesting studyof the lyrics of popular music testing theirhypothesis that popular music lyrics from 1950 to1980 became concerned more with physical thanemotional love. In other words, lyrics becamesexier and more explicit. Putting aside thedubious assumption that physical and emotional

love are necessarily separate, it is aninteresting hypothesis. They found in theiranalysis that songs became progressively moreexplicit over time and less romantic. “During the1960s, lyrics became more ambiguous, and sexualdesire became a more dominant theme. By the 1970s,the traditional values were broadened: personsdescribed in modern love songs often met, spent asingle night together, and then parted without anyemotional bond or commitment. Today even songswith the most explicit lyrics become number onehits”. I would suggest that further analysis showsthat even some of the more explicit lyrics, suchas Dylan’s “Lay, Lady, Lay” has a strong romanticcurrent, and how does one code “The Love Themefrom Romeo and Juliet”?

There are areas that need a bit more coveragein depth as Frank C. Salamone reminds me in apersonal note (May 18, 2013). First, there is theimpact of disco and electronic music. DonnaSummer, the Queen of Disco, was reaching out tonew areas. She did not want to be known only fordisco, or for her physical beauty. Her “I FeelLove” was the first major recording with an all-electronic accompaniment in contrast to a humanvoice. (Donna Summer, Queen of Disco WhoTranscended the Era, Dies at 63(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/arts/music/donna-summer-queen-of-disco-dies-at-63.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&)).

Her combination of a church-rooted voice andup-to-the-minute dance beats was a template for1970s disco, and, with her producers GiorgioMoroder and Pete Bellotte, she pioneeredelectronic dance music with the synthesizer pulse

of “I Feel Love” in 1977, a sound that pervadestwenty-first century pop. Her own recordings havebeen sampled by, among others, Beyoncé, the PetShop Boys, Justice and Nas.

The song is on Rolling Stone’s all-time top 500 hitsand became popular in dance clubs, especiallyfinding favor in the gay community (Wikipedia “IFeel Love”(http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Feel_Love).“Indeed, there is”, writes Frank C. Salamone, “astraight line from ‘I Feel Love’ to theEurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’, which takes you fromthe hedonistic but not-completely-selfish discoera to the dawn of the ‘me decade’. ‘Sweet Dreams’is barely, if at all, a love song but does speakto the harsh realities of intimate, interpersonalinteraction at the dawn of an era defined by greedand disregard for others. The video starts with aniconic shot of Annie Lennox in a boardroompounding on the conference table. It alsoreferences militarism and Hindu spirituality, andhas an interesting shot in which Lennox’s binditurns into a gun sight” (You Tube “SweetDreams”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeMFqkcPYcg&feature=youtu.be).

This movement marked a strong African Americaninfluence in dance music, even though these lattersongs were of European origin. Giorgio Moroder, aTyrolean who worked in Germany, produced “I FeelLove”, adding a strong on the beat four-to-floorrhythm to make the funky music more accessible forwhites to dance to (see You Tubehttp://youtu.be/1R9hwGOObqs).

Finally, in 1954 Muddy Waters recorded WillieDixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You”. The

difference between his version and Etta James’s isinteresting. Basically, James answers Muddy Waterswho stated he did not want his girl to wash, orcook, or do anything else but make love with him.James responds:

All I want to do is wash your clothesI don’t want to keep you indoorsThere is nothing for you to doBut keep me making love to you

(http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ettajames/ijustwanttomakelovetoyou.html)

We can argue over which is sexier. The contrastis definitely one between a man’s and women’sperspective. Both songs were hits on the AfricanAmerican charts, and hip whites knew them well.The point is that the sixties did not discovereither sex or sexy songs. I do not deny that thephysical element of love became more explicit asthe youth music of the 1960s became diffusedthrough the 1970s music. However, I am not readyto accept that this inevitably led to a lack ofromanticism in music. Physicality was alwayspresent in African American music. Jazz and Blueslyrics did not shy away from an open recognitionof sexuality: Louis Armstrong’s “Back o’ TownBlues”; “Cheesecake”; Ferdinand Jelly RollMorton’s very nickname; the very phrase rock androll from a Blues lyric, “My Man Rocks Me With aSteady Roll”; Lucille Bogan’s “Shave ’em Dry”;Alberta Hunter’s “You Can’t Tell the Differenceafter Dark”; and so on. Lyricists like Cole Porterand Johnny Mercer, influenced by African Americanmusic had a few very explicit songs. Porter’s

“Love for Sale” discusses the life of a prostitutein explicit terms. His “It’s All Right with Me” isalso clear about what is all right, especially inFrank Sinatra’s version. Mercer’s “Tangerine” fromthe 1940s pulls no punches, and his “Teach MeTonight” leaves no doubt about what lesson is tobe learned. One more example to push the point is“Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” by Harry Noble. Itwas first a hit in 1952 by Karen Chandler, andsent goose bumps up many a young adolescent boy’sback. Connie Francis rerecorded it in 1959.

The difference is that the songs of the 1970swere, in comparison with the earlier ones citedhere, less polished, less harmonic, and moreadolescent in general. There is a kind of “look atme, I am being naughty”. As one writer puts it:

After the Golden Age came the music of protest,of Vietnam and hippiedom and the civil-rightsmovement and beyond. Once rock-and-roll hadknocked the Golden Age songs of Hollywood andBroadway off their perch, innumerable othermusical subgenres crawled out of the shadows orcame into being, among them bluegrass, disco,electronica, synthpop, ska, zydeco, rockabilly,techno, hip hop, house, trance, garage, funk, R&B,soul, gangsta rap, heavy metal, punk rock, andemo. These developments were hardly without a plusside: all kinds of good music was born. But themerit was all too often outweighed by the sheerdecibel level and, in many cases, by vulgarity,incoherence, and brutality. In any event, asAmerican musical tastes fragmented, so didAmerican society and culture. Songs had once boundAmericans together – and encouraged them to bindtogether. Now, all too frequently, they defined

Americans in opposition to one another. BruceBawer, The Golden Age of American Music was theGolden Age of America(http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/03/24/the-golden-age-of-american-song-was-the-golden-

age-of-america/).

Conclusion

There are some conclusions we can draw from aquick scan of love songs over the past sixty or soyears. First, no matter how much things havechanged in music, an idealized version of romanticlove has prevailed. Through the protests of thesixties, the integration and diversity thatincreased from the fifties to the present, theproliferation of musical styles decade by decade,the ease of retrieving the myriad forms of musicat the click of a mouse—through all these changes,including changes of styles—one constant has beenthe “silly love song”. As rockers get older, theyoften seek to establish their credential throughsinging the Great American Songbook, more or lesssuccessfully. Indeed, their attempts are no worsethan Frank Sinatra’s foray into rock classics.

Structurally, pop music has changed verylittle. The twelve, or sometimes the sixteen-barblues with three basic chords underlies much rockmusic. The thirty-two bar song in an A-A-B-A formis mainly the foundation of the rest of pop music.The blues, with some changes, goes back at leastto the nineteenth century, with roots in Africa.W.C. Handy helped standardize it in its twelve andsixteen bar formats.

The Encyclopedia Britannica(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/254261/WC-Handy) states the case quite clearly: “Handyworked during the period of transitionfrom ragtime to jazz. Drawing on thevocal blues melodies of African American folklore,he added harmonizations to his orchestralarrangements. His work helped develop theconception of the blues as a harmonic frameworkwithin which to improvise. With his “MemphisBlues” (published 1912) and especially his “St.Louis Blues” (1914), he introduced a melancholicelement, achieved chiefly by use of the “blue” orslightly flattened seventh tone of the scale,which was characteristic of African American folkmusic”.

The standard American song, the thirty-two barstructure with A (8 bars, A (repeat those 8 bars)B (a different 8 bars, called the bridge or riveror channel), and a final A repeating the first 8bars. This form can have many variations, and mayhave a coda tagged on to end the song. Its debt toArt Music, commonly lumped together as Classicalmusic, is apparent (see Music and the FibonacciSeries http://www.goldennumber.net/music/, andB r a d Mehldau: Writing(http://www.bradmehldau.com/writing/papers/november_2010.html). It is at root the classic theme andvariations. Jazz musicians play on the variationangle, altering the melody, harmony, and rhythm ofthe tune, reinventing it to fit the times, theirpersonality, and their degree of genius. At root,however, the Great American Songbook is mainlycomposed of love songs.

Michael Feinstein, a vocalist who has done muchto preserve The Great American Songbook, has beena leader in establishing sources for itspreservation. The Website, The Michael FeinsteinGreat American Songbook Initiative(http://www.thecenterfortheperformingarts.org/Great-American-Songbook-Inititative/About-the-Great-American-Songbook.aspx), states:

The “Great American Songbook”, sometimes referredto as “American Standards”, is the uniquelyAmerican collection of popular music from Broadwayand Hollywood musicals prevalent from the 1920s to1960s. Familiar composers include George Gershwin,Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, HaroldArlen, and Richard Rodgers. Singers include FrankSinatra, Al Jolson, Louis Armstrong, Billie

Holiday, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, EllaFitzgerald, Mel Tormé and so many others. 

This timeless music offered hope of better daysduring the Great Depression, built morale duringtwo world wars, helped build social bridges withinour culture, and whistled beside us duringeconomic growth. We defended our country, raisedfamilies, and built a nation to these songs.

Interestingly, both the blues and the 32 barpop song have deep roots in the past, but havealso had art music (“classical music) touchesadded to their foundations. W.C. Handy, a FiskeUniversity graduate and schooledcomposer/musician, added western harmonic touchesto the folk-rooted early blues, without decreasingtheir African identity. Similarly, the GreatAmerican Songbook composers in general knew theworks of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky andothers, as well as the European roots of thetwentieth century pop song. To it, many—ColePorter, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and othersadded jazz touches, to which lyricists, likeJohnny Mercer, easily wrote American sentiments inAmerican idioms.

Not surprisingly the two streams merged over along period of time—think Duke Ellington, FatsWaller, Jimmy Rushing, and, the masters LouisArmstrong and Charlie Parker. Sadly, Europeansseemed to note this merging long before Americansdid, at least on the art music level. As I wrote(Salamone 2008, The Culture of Jazz: Jazz asCritical Culture, p. 52):

For European composers whom jazz influenced, thereseemed to be a highly personalized epiphany, anepiphany and conversion that were suited to theindividual temperament of the composer. Forexample, for the sociable Milhaud and Ravel, theirepiphanies occurred in Harlem, while for the moreprivate Delius, it was an epiphany that transpiredin a Florida swamp far removed from society.However, for each, it was a quasi-religiousconversion and an eye-opening experience.Something new entered their souls and transformedtheir lives and understanding of reality. It wasspiritual, emotional, and cognitive realigning.Each felt that he became a new person, and thatnewness suffused his music. 

This newness, freshness, perpetual reinventingis a mark of American music as is its perpetualincorporation of elements from diverse cultures.American music is a showplace for World Music. Thebest of America is shown in its ravenous appetitefor borrowing from other cultures, whether it isreligion, painting, food, or music. It is anexpression of true democracy which breaks theshackles of our sometimes chauvinistic exterior.The music is perpetually refreshed through theaddition of new elements into the mix. And thesilly love song comes around, as we have seen, inevery form sooner or later. At heart, at root, theAmerican is a romantic. We dream different dreams,perhaps, but nonetheless, we dream.

Johnny Mercer’s “Dream” could be America’stheme song, as it was his. After all, it sums usup rather well, I think, or why do we keepreturning to that silly love song and why is the

way a jazz musician performs a love song the truetest of ability?

Dream when you’re feeling blueDream that’s the thing to doJust watch the smoke rings in-n the airYou’ll find your share o-o-f memories there

References

Billboard’s Top #1 Songs of the 1950s (http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_billbord1.html).

Billboard’s Top #1 Songs of the 1960s (http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_billbord2.html)

Bane, Michael. White Boy Singin’ the Blues.Da CapoPressBrad Mehldau: Writing

(http://www.bradmehldau.com/writing/papers/november_2010.html).

Bruce Bawer, The Golden Age of American Music was the Golden Age of America (http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/03/24/the-golden-age-of-american-song-was-the-golden-age-of-america/).

Fedler, Fred; et al., Communication Research; Comparative Analysis; Content Analysis; Emotional Response; Mass Media Effects; Music; Popular Culture; Sexuality; Sociocultural Patterns; Trend Analysis. ERIC. 1982.

I Just Want to Make Love to You (http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ettajames/ijustwanttomakelovetoyou.html).

Mercer, Johnny. 1944 Dream.Mehldau, Brad Music and the Fibonacci Series and

Phi (http://www.goldennumber.net/music/, and Brad Mehldau:

Writing http://www.bradmehldau.com/writing/papers/november_2010.html).

Music and the Fibonacci Series and Phi (http://www.goldennumber.net/music/).

Howlin’ Wolf in conversation with Peter Guralnick,1966 (http://www.elvisinfonet.com/spotlight_blues_album.html).

New York Times Donna Summer, Queen of Disco Who Transcended the Era, Dies at 63 (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/arts/music/donna-summer-queen-of-disco-dies-at-63.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&).

Ortner, Sherry. 1994. “Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties.” Pp. 372-411 in Culture / Power / History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, edited by Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry Ortner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Pettijohn, Terry F. II, and Brian J. Jungeberg. Playboy Playmate Curves: Changes in Facial and Body Feature Preferences Across Social and

Economic Conditions. PSPB, Vol. 30 No. 9, September 2004 1186-1197.

Salamone, Frank A. 2008 The Culture of Jazz: Jazz as Critical Culture. University Press of America, 270 pages.

Salamone, Frank C. 2013 Personal Correspondence. May 13.

Wikipedia “I Feel Love” (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Feel_Love).

You Tube “Sweet Dreams” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeMFqkcPYcg&feature=youtu.be).

Wikipedia “I Feel Love” (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Feel_Love).

You Tube http://youtu.be/1R9hwGOObqs.

CHAPTER TWOIT’S ALL SACRED MUSIC: DUKE ELLINGTON FROM THE COTTON CLUB TO THE CATHEDRAL

Edward Kennedy (Duke) Ellington (1899-1974) wasborn in Washington, D. C. He was a gifted artist,turning down a scholarship to the Pratt Institutein New York to pursue a musical career. Ellingtonwas a fine pianist, but made his major mark onjazz in particular, and twentieth century musicin general, through his compositions and hisorchestra, the height of sophisticated music,which partook of Duke’s jazz royalty. Thenickname was given him by his family as a childfor his regal bearing and overall demeanor.

It is no accident that Ellington’s Harlem,composed in 1951, is included with his SacredConcert material and religious works, for there isa direct line in Ellington’s music that connectsthe Sacred Concerts to the Cotton Club days.Ellington took the Cotton Club concepts ofelaborate ideas and precision pacing into church.These concerts were, truly, the ultimate in totalshow business production including, as they did,dancing, musical and vocal solos, lusciousensemble work, choirs and—of course, Ellington’sMC work. Taking the Cotton club into church,however, was not an attempt to secularize thesacred, for ultimately Ellington viewed all of his

music as spiritual at root, as his writingsdemonstrate (Ellington 1931, and 1976).2

Gary Giddens has a clear understanding of thisprocess, and includes this prescient passage inhis positive appraisal of the Sacred Concerts:

His familiar dictum, “Every man prays in hisown language and there is no language that Goddoes not understand”, reminds the listener thathe did not attempt to apply his genius to anestablished idiom, but rather to bring his ownmusic intact to the church. The differencebetween playing for people, whether at the CottonClub or Westminster Abbey, and creating for thegreater glory of God, was not lost on him. WhenFr. Norman O’Connor commissioned a jazz mass(apparently never completed), Ellington ponderedthe conflict: “One may be accustomed to speakingto people, but suddenly to attempt to speak,sing, and play directly to God—that puts one in anentirely different position”. He prayed on hisown musical terms, and celebrated the talents ofhis collaborators accordingly; “All the members of

2 In an article carried in PM (9 December 1945)magazine, Ellington is quoted as saying: “Religionhelps my spirit of independence….Helps me do thingspeople call daring. For instance, say musicians justdon’t put in a ninth in a particular place, and we doit. Religion helps me. I guess it gives me the properinflation when I need it.” Steed (1993 and 1994)discusses the role of Ellington’s spirituality in hismusic. She quotes Ellington’s sister Ruth regarding thedeeper meaning of his “jungle music” in expressing the“basic humanity” of people and the deep love Ellingtonhad for humanity itself.

the band played in character”, he said of thefirst sacred concert. He did not abandon theCotton Club; he brought the Cotton Club reviewto the pulpit (Giddens 1993: 376).3

Ellington took the Cotton Club into church withhimself because, truly, there was no reason forEllington to abandon the Cotton Club whenentering the church, for he had been conveying aspiritual message through his music from itsinception. The Cotton Club, with its midnightbroadcasts, enabled Ellington to hone thatmessage to its ultimate clarity and precision;namely, that life itself is sacred, that every actof affirmation is an act of love, that no one canlove God without loving his or her neighbor, andthat his music conveyed that significant message.

Sonny Greer in an interview stored at theInstitute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers’sUniversity, Newark (1974), for example, statesthat a night at the Cotton Club was “kind ofhectic. Harlem was heaven. In those times you hadto see that. It was like going to Church. Therewas a different atmosphere. You could walk up anddown the streets all night. There was nomolestation. It was a carnival atmosphere…

3 Stanley Dance’s (1974: 15) eulogy also makes thispoint: “Withal, Duke Ellington knew that what somecalled genius was really the exercise of gifts whichstemmed from God. These gifts were those his Makerfavored... Duke knew the good news was Love, of Godand his fellow men. He proclaimed the message in hissacred concerts… He reached out to people with hismusic and drew them to himself”.

Everybody loved everybody. Love is not a newword in our profession”.

Ellington was keenly aware of the power ofmusic as a symbol of love, and saw his music as anappropriate response to prejudice anddiscrimination. He told Florence Zunser (1930:45), “I am not playing jazz. I am trying to playthe natural feelings of a people. I believe thatmusic, popular music of the day, is the realreflector of the nation’s feelings”.

In the course of the interview, Ellington toldZunser he was working on an extended work, “TheHistory of the Negro”. In 1943 this became“Black, Brown, and Beige”, premiered atEllington’s first Carnegie Hall concert. Some markthis work as clearly part of his explicitly sacredworks. Mahalia Jackson, for instance, who wouldonly sing sacred music, had no problem performingselections from this Ellington suite.

Ellington rarely, if ever, lost sight of hisoverall goal of representing his people andpresenting positive accounts of theiraccomplishments. This excerpt from his 70thbirthday interview underscores this point.

My eighth grade teacher taught race pride.We’ve been involved right along. It’s a wonderwe’re still alive. I’ve been in the theater along time. I think from the point of drama. Agood playwright can say what he wants to saywithout saying it… I was getting $5000 per weekin 1932 but there was a corny cotton field thingin the show. I said the cotton field comes out orwe come out … Black, Brown and Beige is a toneparallel to a history of the Negro in America. We

have always tried to use good grammar, andelegant presentation.

Truly, there was no reason for Ellington toabandon the Cotton Club when entering thechurch, for he had been conveying a messagethrough his music from its inception. The CottonClub, with its midnight broadcasts, enabledEllington to hone that message to its ultimateclarity and precision; namely, that life itself issacred, that every act of affirmation is an actof love, that no one can love God without lovinghis or her neighbor, and that through his musiche could in some way convey that significantmessage.

The Sacred

For Ellington, then, the sacred and spiritualappears to refer to that which promotes love andin the process provokes a sense of awe. Certainly,the quality of being life-affirming and inclusiveis part of Ellington’s conception of the sacred.Additionally, however, Ellington is aware of thepower of ambiguity and humor in presenting hisspiritual message. He is careful to allow dramaticpacing and juxtaposition of seeming opposites totell his tale. As noted above, “A good playwrightcan say what he wants to say without saying it”.It was a lesson he had learned early.

The short movie Black and Tan Fantasy, forexample, released in 1929, has a nice littlestory. The movie opens with Ellington and ArtieWhetsol, one of his trumpet players, rehearsing.They need money and Fredi Washington, one of theCotton Club dancers, informs Ellington and

Whetsol that she is going back to work to helpsave Ellington’s piano. Of course, Washington isin danger of dying but performs anyway.

The movie features an authentic Cotton Clubsetting in which there is a brief but rathercomplete floorshow, featuring the famous CottonClub Dancers. Fredi Washington dances, and thenshe collapses. After a spiritual, Black & TanFantasy is played. In sum, the movie isprogrammatic imitating a Cotton Club performance.This was a pattern that Ellington followed formuch of his life.

What is often overlooked, however, is themanner in which Ellington dares to intersperse thesacred and the profane. There are not only echoesof spirituals or “church music” in hiscompositions. There are also outright spiritualsused just before dancing that would offend manytraditionally religious people. Moreover, thatdancing takes place to a suite that has oftenbeen considered more religious in nature thansecular. Ellington was blurring the distinctionbetween two spheres that many other performerspreferred to keep distinct, the sacred and theprofane. By so doing he was placing his music inwhat he came to call “beyond category”. He wasalso deeply involved in the realm thatanthropologists recognize as that of theambiguous and dangerous.4

4 Claude Levi-Strauss has referred frequently to theseambiguous categories, as has Mary Douglas. These arecategories that are neither fish nor fowl, and oftenbetwixt and between, as Victor Turner names them. Iwill address these issues in the conclusion.

Steed (1993: 3) notes this Ellington charac-teristic of avoiding categories. “Although hestill personifies jazz for millions of people,Ellington did not even like to use the wordunless it was defined simply as freedom ofexpression”. Steed cites Dance (1970) who wrote:

Duke Ellington never ceases to voice hisdisapproval of categories, which he views as acurb on an artist’s right to freedom ofexpression. He always wants to be free to dowhat he feels moved to do, and not what someonefeels he should do.

There is no doubt that Ellington felt that thismixing of categories had meaning beyond themusic itself, that it was somehow sacred. Heviewed his music as a vocation and as a means forbreaking himself and other African Americans outof rigid categories, as his interview with Zunser(1930) makes absolutely clear. Ellingtonfrequently explicitly noted his belief that musicwas a vocation, a sacred calling. At the SecondSacred Concert, for example, he labeled himself“God’s messenger boy”, a phrase repeated in thealbum notes (Steed 1993: 6).

Steed (1993) includes this important passagefrom Stanley Dance’s eulogy:5

...Duke knew the good news was Love, of God andhis fellow men. He proclaimed the message in hisSacred Concerts, grateful for an opportunity to

5 The full text of Dance’s eulogy can be found in Mercer Ellington (1978).

acknowledge something of which he stood in awe, apower he considered above his human limitations.

For Ellington, attempts to capture that loveand awe in his music, a love he viewed astranscending artificial differences andencompassing all life, were attempts at graspingthe sacred. It is as if Ellington were saying thatGod has no limits. Limitations are human.Therefore, attempts to affirm life and loveshould also know no artificial limits.

Steed (1993: 8) puts this issue in a slightlydifferent, more musicological manner. AtEllington’s funeral, a recording by Johnny Hodgesof “Heaven” from the Second Sacred Concert wasplayed. Steed notes the construction of themelody and some of its notable internalcontrasts. One observation is relevant inascertaining and understanding Ellington’sconception of the sacred. “Ellington’s favoredtri-tone is heard three times, perverselyascending as if he were determined to make whatwas once called the ‘devil’s interval’ angelic”.This desire to force people to reconsider theirstereotypical categorizations was a long-timeproject with Ellington that led logically to theSacred Concerts.

The Sacred Concerts

Ellington’s religious convictions and musicalpredilections converged in the Sacred Concerts.He had an opportunity to do openly what he hadbeen doing privately. As he puts it, “Irecognized this as an exceptional opportunity.

“‘Now I can say openly,’ I said, ‘what I havebeen saying to myself on my knees’” (Ellington1973)”.

His friends had noticed a growing spiritualityabout him. Time had, finally, started to take itstoll on his energy, and the growing seriousillness of his alter ego, Billy Strayhorn, in themiddle 1960s was a reminder of his own mortality.Mercer Ellington (1978, quoted in Hajdu 1996:247) stated:

He always believed in God his whole life. Thatwas always there. It came more to the forefrontwhen Strayhorn got sick. The old man didn’t likethe whole idea of death or any kind of ending ofanything.

In 1965, C. J. Bartlett, the dean of GraceCathedral in San Francisco, the Reverend John S.Yaryan, and James A. Pike, the Episcopal Bishopof California, jointly invited Duke Ellington tojoin their year-long celebration of the comple-tion of the new Cathedral, a stone structure ontop of Nob Hill. Ellington was to write aliturgical work. This work was, as Ellington madeclear, not a mass. In a mass the composeraddresses God. Ellington intended to address thepeople (Steed 1993: 12; Hasse 1993: 357-58).

As Giddens (1993: 376) noted, there is a clearconnection in Ellington’s musical developmentbetween the Cotton Club and the Cathedral. As ifto emphasize that relationship, Ellington’s FirstSacred Concert performed on September 16, 1965,included a number of older works, including“ideas from Black, Brown and Beige and My People,

and included the 1943 piano feature New World a-Comin’” (Hasse 1993: 358). These old chestnuts,however, were framed by a new composition, In theBeginning, God. In so doing, Ellington reaffirmedthe sacredness of his earlier work.

He also harked back to his Cotton Club originsin presenting a sort of floorshow at thecathedral. Ellington imported a tap dancer, BunnyBriggs, choirs, solo singers, and in laterconcerts, various solo musicians. As Hasse(1993:358) notes, this, and subsequent sacredconcerts, were not quiet intimate music like MoodIndigo or Azure. He correctly compares them tothe type of celebratory spectacles that Handelproduced.

Predictably, the critical reviews were mixed.Throughout his career, Ellington received mixedcritical reviews whenever he attempted any newendeavor. That the sacred concerts suffered thisfate is not surprising. Indeed it would have beensurprising if these concerts had not offended anumber of people. Hasse provides some insight intothe problem in this passage.

Traditionally in the African American communitythere has been a rather rigid distinction madebetween sacred religious music—spirituals andgospel—and secular music—blues and jazz—thoughmusically there has been great interchange. Forthe church, where some were scandalized by thevery idea of jazz in a church, it was also adeparture from the musical norm (Hasse 1993:359-360).

Nevertheless, Ellington was quite pleased withthe results of the First Sacred Concert, theGrammy he won for In the Beginning, God, the

Emmy for the PBS televised version, and therecords he sold of it. It was a summation andjustification for his work. Ruth Ellington, hissister, spoke to these points in an interview withJanna T. Steed on January 7, 1993:

The Sacred Concerts expressed his own raisond’être. We were raised as Christians … Thespirituality of his music is why it didn’t soundlike anybody else’s music … The jungle music wasnot simply that; it expressed the frustration ofblacks, male-female relationships, our basichumanity. When Edward was writing music he wasexpressing love and the emotionality of humanexperience … When God is guiding you, who canrestrict you? … He knew his destiny. He didn’tact as if he were restricted, and people relatedto him as if he were equal. He was revolutionary,but not militant, in race; never political.“‘Show enough love; people will let you in’”, hewould say (Steed 1993: 22).

It was inevitable that the success of the firstSacred Concert led to sequels. There were, infact, two more distinct sacred concerts. TheSecond Sacred Concert was first performed onJanuary 19, 1968, and the Third Sacred Concertat Westminster Abbey on October 24, 1973 (Steed1993: 41 and 54). In spite of musical, personal,and other problems, there is sufficient excellentmusic in each of these concerts to compensate fortheir weaknesses. Critiques of the concerts them-selves in musical terms, however, is not anobject of this chapter.6

6 For such a critique see Steed, especially pp. 30-77.Steed also offers a detailed discussion of Ellington’s

It is, however, important to note their rela-tionship with Ellington’s overall musicalphilosophy and persona. Ellington’s music was aninclusive one, one that Leonard (1987) termed amusic of “communitas”, borrowing the term fromVictor Turner. His band was more like a family,even a Church. Moreover, Ellington hated conflictand sought to avoid it on most occasions. Hesincerely believed that love, eventually, couldovercome all obstacles and those it could notwere not really worth overcoming.

His musical strengths, as well as weaknesses,flowed from that perspective. At times, his musicwas simplistic; his lyrics could be amateurish.However, at other times his eclecticism workedand amazing things ensued. Combinations thatothers feared to explore revealed unexpectedbeauty and grandeur. Simplicity and enthusiasmmore frequently than not worked. Ellington’sbelief in his musical vocation as a calling fromGod did produce a high percentage of qualitymusic, whether that music was specifically sacredor not. It is a pantheistic orientation, onecommon in the sixties and seventies, but one thatalso influenced more traditional establishedchurches. Ellington lent his peculiar genius tosomething in the zeitgeist and turned it into athing of beauty.

Conclusion

theological heterodoxy and his overall influence onChurch music within the context of the period.

Ellington’s love for things that are “beyondcategory” resonates with Levi-Strauss’scategorization of anomalous mediating categoriesas dangerous and sacred (Levi-Strauss 1967, forexample). These anomalous categories, accordingto Levi-Strauss, partake of the categories whichthey mediate and consequently are neither fishnor fowl. They are dangerous and somehowpollute. Mary Douglas (1966) has treated of thesecategories of pollution, an idea Neil Leonard(1987) has applied to jazz itself.

Leonard (1987-9-10) notes that Emile Durkheim,who influenced Douglas, indicated not only thatthere is a distinction between the sacred and theprofane but also between two kinds of sacredness.There is a sacredness “that produces social andmoral order, health, and happiness. There isalso, however, an opposite sacred force “thatbrings disorder, immorality, illness, and death.Though radically antagonistic, these two kinds ofsacredness can be highly ambiguous because bothstem from similar supernatural sources”.Interestingly, however, these types of sacrednessappear to be highly unstable and each can resolveinto the other.7 The musical “purist” seeks tokeep them separate. Even in the African Americantradition there was a desire to keep the twotraditions separate, as some opposition toEllington’s sacred concerts revealed.

There is, however, an older African traditionthat understood the unity of the sacred. Thevariations work together to provide a harmonious

7 See Salamone 1992 and 1988 for fuller discussion of the concept.

whole. Each part both stands alone and yet takeson full meaning only within the context of theentire performance. This perspective is wellillustrated in the work of a Nigerian musician,Fela Anakulapi-Kuti.

Fela was a musician who proclaimed himself “TheBlack President” and perceived his mission in lifeto be the restoration of the pride that the blackman has had taken from him. He does so throughconveying a spiritual message in his music whichunites every aspect of black music into eachperformance, including those aspects which whitemusicians have produced based on black forms.

In a sense, in his performance Fela added toGregory Bateson’s and Erving Goffman’s concept offrames, turning frames into shifting things, onesthat almost perpetually transformed themselvesinto one another. This house-of-mirror image ofshifting frames is in keeping with thepredominant perspective on African religious andphilosophical thought that sees it as positing anever-changing unstable reality under the illusorypermanent reality of every-day common sense.This skepticism of the presented reality and asubsequent search for underlying structures iswell suited to African-derived musicalperformance. Fela expressed this concept well inan interview with me:

The music is spiritual… I know the music is agift for me, for the purpose of the emancipationof the black man. It’s a spiritual gift. It’s aspiritual message. I want to give people mind,the essence towards progress in life. Africansmost especially because we need it most right now.The continent’s confused. The leaders are

terrible. So I have to face Africa reality—theproblems that relate to Africa at the moment. Butproblems that relate to Africa are also interwoveninto the relationship we have with Europeancountries and capitalism. So in a sense it becomesinternational.

Fela’s music, then, was in conformity with hisbeliefs. Specifically, it cannot contradict itself.Therefore, the incorporation of all varieties ofAfrican-derived music is not accidental or haphaz-ard. It served to convey his message of blackpride. His point was the unity of black peopleseverywhere. The manner in which he conveyed hismessage displays the technical brilliance that isappreciated when it is suited to the message.Thus, his shifting frames reflect African religionand philosophy. The manner in which one style ofAfrican-derived music melds into another definestheir relationship through praxis not merediscussion. The central role of jazz, a word Feladisdains as did Ellington, is demonstrated in itsbeing used as a mediating form.

Finally, the continuous transformation ofmaterial is also evocative of spiritual matters.Fittingly, the self-proclaimed Black President andChief Priest leads his people to a better landthrough invoking spiritual images and enactingthem on the stage. His entire performance isritual of a high order. It is a Creoleperformance that has the “that too” characteristicof all such performances (James Farris Thompson,personal communication). Thus, there is nocontradiction in Fela’s performance. Each elementis an integral part of the overriding message andenables the performance to move toward an end he

deems sacred, the true emancipation of the Blackman and the instilling of pride in his mind.

What is true of Fela illuminates Ellington’smixture of styles and categories. It would bebeneficial to explore Ellington’s African rootsmore deeply and to investigate his own reading ingreater detail in relationship to his music(Hudson 1991). It is clear that Ellington’sreligion struck orthodox Christians as pantheisticand idiosyncratic (Steed 1993: pp. 19ff. andGensel 1992). His statement that he was “born in1956 at the Newport Jazz Festival Hasse” (1993:322)” was often cited, but never fully explored.The religious connotations are often noted butthe literal sense in which Ellington meant theterm has been missed. He believed that somehowhe had been literally reborn and called to avocation.

Seen within the context of African Americanculture Ellington’s religious beliefs andpractices make perfect sense, even those“superstitious” aspects which so bothered hismore traditionally orthodox son Mercer (MercerEllington and Dance 1978: 111).8 The continuitybetween the Cotton Club and the Cathedral isemphasized by Ellington’s very African Americanphilosophy and theology. His mixture ofcategories of the sacred and profane and varioustypes of sacredness is an affirmation of bothlife and the continuous nature of that life,transcending categories of time and space.

8 For a similar view see Anderson 1995, The Sacred Element in Ellington’s Music.

Acknowledgements.

I wish to thank the staff of the SmithsonianInstitution Duke Ellington Archives and the staffof the Library of Congress for their aid infacilitating this research.

References

Anderson, Paul A. 1995.Ellington, rap music, andcultural difference. The Musical Quarterly 79:172-206.

Dance, Stanley. 1970.Album Notes to MCAAC “DukeEllington’s Orchestral Works” with Erich Kunzelconducting the Cincinnati Symphony, Decca,reissued by MCA Records, Inc., 1989.

Ellington, Edward Kennedy1931. The Duke Steps Out. Rhythm March: 20-22.1976. Music Is My Mistress. New York: Da Capo.

Orig. 1973.Ellington, Mercer with Stanley Dance.

1978. Duke Ellington in Person: An IntimateMemoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Giddens, Gary. 1993. Gary Giddens on the SacredConcerts In Mark Tucker, The Duke EllingtonReader. New York: Oxford University Press, pp.375-378.

Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis. New York:Harper and Row.

Greer, Sonny. 1975. In Those Days as told toStanley Dance. Ellington Era 1927-1940. Vol.II. Columbia Archive Series.

Hajdu, David. 1996. Lush Life: A Biography ofBilly Strayhorn. New York: Farrar StraussGiroux.

Hasse, John Edward. 1993. Beyond Category: TheLife and Genius of Duke Ellington. NY: Simon &Schuster.

Hudson, Theodore R. 1991. Duke Ellington’sliterary sources (with appendices) AmericanMusic 9: 20-42.

Leonard, Neil. 1987. Jazz: Myth and Religion. NewYork: Oxford University Press.

Salamone, Frank A. 1992.Africa as a Metaphor ofAuthenticity in Jazz.” In Frank A. Salamone,ed. Art and Culture in Nigeria and theDiaspora. Studies in Third World Societies.College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va.

Salamone, Frank A. 1988.The Ritual of JazzPerformance. Play & Culture 1: 85-104.

Steed, Janna Tull. 1993. Duke Ellington’s JazzTestament: The Sacred Concerts. Thesis. Masterof Sacred Theology. Institute of Sacred Music,Worship and the Arts. Yale University. April 5.

Tucker, Mark, ed. 1993.The Duke Ellington Reader.New York: Oxford University Press.

Zunser, Florence. 1930. Interview with DukeEllington. NY Evening Graphic Magazine 27 Dec.,p.45.

Interviews

Anakulapi-Kuti, Fela. Interview May 27, 1989.Lagos, Nigeria.

William “Sonny” Greer 4/22/74 - Rutgers Univer-sity.

Ruth Ellington 1993 Interview with Janna T. SteedJanuary 7, 1993, New York City.

The Rev. John Gensel 1992 Interview with Janna T.Steed. Nov. 22, 1992, New York City.

The original performance of the Sacred Concertwas given at Grace (Episcopal) Cathedral in SanFrancisco on September 16, 1965. This recordingwas made at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church inManhattan on December 26, 1965. A studio recordingwas also made but never released. This pieceeventually became known as the First SacredConcert after Ellington produced two more: theSecond Sacred Concert (first performance in 1968at the [Episcopal] Cathedral of St. John theDivine in New York) and the Third Sacred Concert(first performed at Westminster Abbey in London,1973). Jack Johnson opened the Club Deluxe at142nd Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem in 1920.Owney Madden, a prominent bootlegger and gangster,took over the club in 1923 while imprisoned inSing Sing and changed its name to the Cotton Club.While the club was closed briefly in 1925 forselling liquor, it reopened without trouble fromthe police. The dancers and strippers occasionallyperformed for Madden in Sing Sing after his returnthere in 1933.

The club reproduced the racist imagery of thetimes, often depicting blacks as savages in exoticjungles or as “darkies” in the plantation south.The club imposed a more subtle color bar on thechorus girls whom the club presented in skimpyoutfits: they were expected to be “tall, tan, andterrific”, which meant that they had to be atleast 5 feet 6 inches tall, light skinned, andunder twenty-one years of age. Ellington was

expected to write “jungle music” for an audienceof whites.

CHAPTER THREEJAZZ AND ITS IMPACT ON EUROPEAN

CLASSICAL MUSIC

–You Americans take jazz too lightly–Maurice Ravel

From the late nineteenth century through the1930s, there was a cult of the primitive inEurope, exalting traditional art whilereinterpreting that art in a European manner.Europe’s love affair with all things Africanextended to African American creative arts aswell. There was a long period between the originof the glorification of the primitive and Africa,and the true coming of jazz to Europe. Picassobegan to put into operation the lessons he learnedfrom the exhibit of African art at the Musée del’homme in Paris, as his Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)and other Cubist masterpieces demonstrate.Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (1913) and Les Noces(1923) applied those lessons in evoking primitiveRussia, and other composers followed.

The emergence of the Harlem Renaissancemovement simply intensified that interest andfound willing collaborators among many AfricanAmerican artists. Duke Ellington disliked the term“jungle music”; however, he not only lived withit, but he also fostered and profited from itsuse. He employed sounds that evoked images of theexotic and played at the Cotton Club, wheredancers dressed in pseudo-African costumes for the

pleasure of the white audience. Josephine Bakeralso played to the image of the primitive, wearingoutrageous costumes and walking wild animalsthrough ’the Parisian streets. Both mocked theimage while seemingly embracing it, making theirbows to show business and transcending thosedemands at the same time (The Journal of PopularCulture, Vol. 38, No. 4, 2005).

When American performers discovered that theirmusic and other art were taken seriously inEurope, it reinforced the lessons of the HarlemRenaissance, leading Ellington and others to greatheights in composition. Thus, the influence ofAmerican musicians on European classical composerswas at least equally great. As Jack Sullivanwrites, in 1995, Bill Clinton, America’s sax-playing president declared that jazz was“America’s classical music”. Whateverconsternation caused among America’s “real”classical composers as well as those invested inthe myth of jazz as eternally avant-garde, it wasan idea taken for granted by Europeans for nearlya century (191).

Sullivan goes on to say that Europeans may havebeen ignorant regarding America’s seriouscomposers, but they knew Ellington and Jelly RollMorton, and regarded them as America’s classicalcomposers. This chapter is concerned with why jazzhad such a great influence on European classicalcomposers, and also with some of the implicationsof that influence. Along the way, it examines thenotion of primitivism and its role in increasingjazz influence, as well as its costs.

Primitivism

Primitivism is an aesthetic theory, strongestin France, which holds that what is most authenticin jazz is that which is most African. Thus, themore Dionysian a performance, the more African andthus authentic it is. The more the music stresses“pure” emotion and direct expression of thatemotion, the more authentic the music.Authenticity is seen in the African side of jazz,while its European side is perceived by theprimitivists as inauthentic. Thus, use ofsophisticated diminished seventh chords or the useof chord substitutions is somehow considered asdiminishing one’s jazz credentials. Reading musicis a major failing in this view. Of course, theprimitivists would exclude many of their favoriteearly artists if they applied these criteria toorigidly. King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, SidneyBechet, Johnny Dodds and others would fail theirtest. Certainly, the so-called primitives of morerecent jazz, such as Ornette Coleman and AlbertAyler, would also disappoint (Brown).

Traces of primitivism have continued to pop upfrom time to time as defenders of some imaginedAfrican purity in the hybrid music that is jazzdefend earlier performers as somehow closer to theimagined roots of the music. Thus, even suchastute critics as Philip Larkin argued that modernjazz was not jazz at all because it brought in toomany European and Latin elements, and showed toomuch technical proficiency, an idea that HughesPanassie (54) echoed.

Andre Hodeir, however, took a stand thatopposed this primitivist view of jazz, and heldthat jazz was neither African nor European, but a

combination of elements. Although there werecertainly racist elements in much of theprimitivist position, it cannot be denied thatprimitivism did help promote jazz. Howeverreluctantly Armstrong and Ellington negotiatedaround primitivism’s presuppositions, they foundways to use it to promote the “jungle” image thatboth deplored (Ake 55; Gabbard; Goldmark). Theprimitivist position, in fact, was but a racistposition that found use for African-based music,though for the wrong reasons.

Sieglinde Lemke, for example, notes the mannerin which European composers accepted jazz, whileclassical composers in America, considering jazztoo flashy and not cerebral enough, reviled it.She notes the way in which Milhaud, Stravinsky,and Ravel, for instance, embraced jazz’s rhythmicvitality that could revitalize European art music.However, as a New York Times article indicates inquoting the director of the FrankfurtConservatory, often the positive opinion ofEuropeans sounds rather shocking to people today.The director states, “The teaching of jazz is notonly the right but the duty of every up-to-datemusical institution”. So far, so good. Hecontinues, “An infusion of negro blood can do noharm. It will help to develop a wholesome sense ofrhythm, which after all constitutes the lifeelement of music” (quoted in Sullivan 10). Thestatement, infused with primitivism, isnevertheless essentially a positive one.

In an era in which many composers were seekingto get to the roots of their own European culturesthrough getting in touch with the folk music oftheir lands, it was reasonable to look for folk

elements from which real American music wouldemerge. Antonin Dvorak had predicted that realAmerican art music would come from AfricanAmerican music, and attempted to indicate how thismight come about in his New World Symphony. Othercomposers happily continued to seek the essence ofAmerican culture through using African Americanelements. By the 1920s, these elements hadcoalesced in jazz and blues, and deeply infusedwhat is now termed the Great American Songbook,the standard songs of Tin Pan Alley (734).

Carol J. Oja (650) specifies that Europeancomposers who visited America in the 1920srevealed in interview after interview that it wasnot America’s serious composers who interestedthem; rather, it was jazz that they sought out.They rushed to hear Jelly Roll Morton and DukeEllington. Paul Hindemith wrote to his wife aboutthe ecstasy of hearing Ellington. For SergeiRachmaninoff, the pleasure was in hearing FatsWaller in Harlem. They found both pleasure andinspiration in the music, marveling at thevirtuosity of the performers. Interestingly,although it was primitivism that first attractedmost Europeans to jazz—its rhythmic vitality, itspromise of sexual and other freedoms, and itssubversive nature—jazz provided a newsophistication. Sullivan put it this way:Ultimately, as Kurt Weill, Michael Tippett, andmany other composers discovered, it delivered aself-abandon and transcendence, a temporary butpowerful release from chronic anxiety in a war-ravaged century” (192).

Sullivan goes on to discuss Ernst Krenck’s 1925libretto for Jonny spielt auf, which he terms the

first jazz opera. In this opera, Jonny is a blackjazz musician who comes to Europe. He steals aviolin and transforms it into a fiddle. With thisfiddle, he leads the people to come into thestreets and join him in a wild dance, signifyingfreedom and the triumph of the New World over theOld. The metaphor of jazz as freedom and theconquest of new music over old became a majortrope in European art.

For European composers whom jazz influenced,there seemed to be a highly personalized epiphany,an epiphany and conversion that were suited to theindividual temperament of the composer. Forexample, for the sociable Milhaud and Ravel, theirepiphanies occurred in Harlem, while for the moreprivate Delius, it was an epiphany that transpiredin a Florida swamp, far removed from society.However, for each, it was a quasi-religiousconversion and an eye-opening experience.Something new entered their souls and transformedtheir lives and understanding of reality. It wasspiritual, emotional, and cognitive realigning.Each felt that he became a new person, and thatnewness suffused his music.

It would be remiss to ignore those Europeanswho opposed jazz. Although European intellectualswho were anti-jazz were fewer than Americanintellectuals who opposed it, they wereinfluential. Among their number were Adorno,Poulenc, and Messiaen. Adorno’s attack can standfor them all. He says that those who praise the“revolutionary” potential of jazz are wrong. ForAdorno, jazz is not revolutionary, but rather abourgeois form that promotes false self-consciousness. It makes false claims about freedom

and the glorification of the individual. However,the individual only gives an impression of musicalfreedom. The soloist’s improvisation is bound by aset of notes related to chords so that departuresfrom the melody only lead the soloist back to it.Moreover, the rhythm is primitive and binds thesoloist to a rigid time format. Jazz, far frombeing a radical revolt against set melody, is buta late capitalist form of decadence in whichpeople are deluded into thinking that they arefree.

Despite the opinion of Adorno and of similarlyinclined European critics, the dominant trope forjazz was that of freedom. It was clearly expressedduring World War II as a potent means for opposingNazi oppression. In Josef Skvorecky’s The BassSaxophone, jazz is the personification of freedom,an existential weapon that the oppressed wieldsagainst the oppressor. In both, it is lifeaffirming, liberating, and even frightening—asource of knowledge of good and evil thattransforms the “true believer” and recalls CharlieParker’s answer when questioned about hisreligious affiliation: “I am a jazz musician.”

The Bass Saxophone is composed of two novellas,“Emoke” and “The Bass Saxophone”. I will treat themas a unit, as Skvorecky intends, because they areessentially about the same thing: the life-affirming nature of jazz and its opposition tooppression of any kind. In a brilliant preface,Skvorecky asserts that at root, all oppression isthe same. Similarly, freedom is indivisible.Therefore, dictators inevitably oppose the musicof freedom, a point that the recent imprisonment

of his fellow Czech musicians has driven home, asdid the Gorbachev thaw.

The Bass Saxophone is a powerful statement ofthe transcendent power of jazz in the eyes of itsfans to overcome the life-denying force ofoppression and its constrictive aesthetics. It isset in 1940. The Germans have occupiedCzechoslovakia, and every loyal Czech is expectedto avoid all but necessary or forced contact withGermans. The eighteen-year-old protagonist, ajazz-loving tenor saxophonist “filled withcomplexes”, outwardly complies with the norm, butfrom time to time questions it when he perceivesthat not all Czechs are good, and not all Germansevil.

His dilemma is heightened when he meets an oldman at the train station. The old German iscarrying a bass saxophone, an instrument oflegendary dimensions, and one that he has neverseen or heard. He had read about the instrument inLe Jazz Hot, a book a friend borrowed and kept,shelved next to the Book of Mormon. All that heknew about the instrument was that Adrian Rolliniplayed it—and he had never heard him either. Thelure of the exotic instrument tempts him, and soonhe is lured into playing with Lothar Kinze’scollection of misfits, a Mickey Mouse band bookedto play for an all-Nazi party under a circus tent.Although concerned that his fellow Czechs willview his playing as an act of betrayal, he playsanyway, for he is also ashamed to reject a genuineplea for help from fellow musicians. Their regularplayer is indisposed in a manner that theconclusion brings home in a surprising andpowerful manner.

The book, then, appears to make astraightforward plea for the transcendent natureof jazz. If that were all that it did, however, itwould be as sweet as Lothar Kinze’s band. Thepower of jazz is driven home in the powerfulclimax:

I saw him: he was a wild, hulking man, maybeforty. His hair was black, intertwined with whatseemed like a leaden crown of thorns of gray hair,his eyes were wild, all black: a black mustache, aface that was almost Sicilian; he was insane, ornormal at that insane moment: I recognized him;the pointed bluish chin with the crop of stubblejutted out over the white collar as it had stuckup out of the white hotel pillow earlier; it wasthe last stranger, the sleeping one whose place inLothar Kinze’s orchestra I had involuntarilytaken: the mysterious one (202).

There is no mistaking the religious imagerypresent in this and all subsequent passages. Thestranger is the last in a long series of religioussymbols in the book. He takes the stage andtransforms the performance. All of the mysterylocked up inside him is unleashed as he takes asaccharine waltz, “The Bear”, and rips through itin a performance that somehow anticipated the asyet unheard Charlie Parker. It was a prematurelegend: Charlie Bird did not struggle with asaxophone like that, with music like that, withlifelike that, until later; his was a band ofprimordial times, obscured by the fog of anotherhistory, the war, by that island of Europeseparated from the wide distant world by anarrowing ring of steel and dynamite; just as

great, just as painful, but forgotten, ananonymous bass saxophone player under the canvasof a circus tent, which like the canvass-riggedSanta Maria de los Angeles sailed those two,three, four years over the Pacific Ocean ofburned-down villages and traces of long-gone frontlines; Lothar Kinze and his Side Show; it neverfound land; it fell apart, disintegrated in thefinal confusion of nations; an unknown blackSchultz-Koehn, the Adrian Rollini of my dreams,some great, unknown, unexplainable pain, so sad…(206).

The bass saxophone player, like Christ, hasrisen from his death. He had attempted suicide andbeen saved, but given up for dead. His playingannoys a petty Nazi martinet, and presumably, inan existential protest against this last loss ofhis freedom, he slashes his wrists. But saved froma death that had allowed him to render his final“No!” to his oppressors, he rises, wrests the basssaxophone from his reluctant substitute and playsthe forbidden “black jazz” in a last assertion ofpersonal freedom, subverting the bourgeois musicof the Nazis in the process.

Jazz, however, is not a negative force.Skvorecky carefully points out its capacity totranscend ethnic and cultural boundaries. Herefers to the then German officer Schultz-Koehn,who not only shielded a black GI during theoccupation of Paris, but also put together HotDiscography with Charles Delaunay in the verymidst of the German High Command. On otheroccasions, Czechs and Germans forgot theirconflict for a time in their mutual enjoyment ofthe forbidden music. Even in the Officers School

there was a jazz band where members of the elite“master race” imitated black musicians. So it wasnot just in concentration camps, not just in theJewish town of Terezin, but in the Offizierschuletoo, it was simply everywhere, that sweetsickness, it would have eventually infectedeveryone, and perhaps if the war had turned outbadly it would have finally infected the victors,ultimately—even though it might have taken manyyears, maybe centuries—transforming them intopeople… (152–53).

The religious nature of jazz and its ability totransform people are clear in both novellas. In“Emoke”, however, it is present in a subdued form.There, it is a commentary on jazz’s seductivepower. The hero uses his ability to attempt toseduce a beautiful widow who has foresworn sex.His plans are thwarted through the lying schemesof an ignorant and repulsive village schoolmaster.However, that the unnamed hero does not pursue thepossibility of repairing the damage hints atSkvorecky’s more basic theme: that the power ofjazz should not be subverted to bass themes.Perhaps the pun implicit in the title is intended?“[T]hen Emoke was only a dream again, only alegend that perhaps never was, a distant echo ofan alien destiny, and soon I had almost ceased tobelieve in her existence” (113).

Exoticism

Whether following primitivistic theories ornot, it is true, as Gunther Schuler (281)indicates, that European composers viewed jazz asan exotic music. It was something other than the

normal. There was a dichotomy, in short, between“us” and “them”. Whether the Other was demonizedor romanticized as a noble savage, the major pointis that the Other was different from the normal insome significant way. Schuler is absolutelycorrect in this contention. Schuler (282–83)points out that it was Charles Ives, an Americancomposer, who first used ragtime in his “serious”works, but that it was not exotic material toIves, who used various American forms of all kindsin his works early on.

For Claude Debussy, however, American ragtimeand other African American music was indeedexotic. Debussy’s use of syncopated rhythms in his“Golliwog’s Cakewalk” (1907), “Le petit nègre”(1909), and “The Minstrels” (1910) reflects hisinterest in the cakewalk, ragtime, and other formsthat evolved into jazz, or were incorporated intoit. Moreover, his juxtaposition of the erotic andexotic reveals the popular European view of themusic. Schuler (286) examines the manner in whichIgor Stravinsky and Eric Satie employed jazzinfluences amid other elements. For both, therewas an attempt to swing the music, using 4/4rhythm as a ground beat while working syncopationover it, a practice rare in classical music butessential to most jazz. Schuler holds that manyEuropean composers viewed this practice as daringand even paradoxical, a point that others havenoted in their view of jazz as inherentlysubversive of accepted reality (Salamone 617-30).

However, one of the few European composers whotruly understood early jazz and employed it in hismusic in far more than a surface manner was DariusMilhaud (Schuler 287). Milhaud was able to

understand the significance of improvisation injazz, perhaps because he actually went to Harlemto hear jazz performed by its masters. He alsotook back to France a collection of jazzrecordings and studied them to perceive theiressence. Milhaud remained a jazz fan, and DaveBrubeck, a modern jazz piano genius, was proud ofthe time he studied with Milhaud.

Milhaud demonstrated his superior understandingof jazz in his ballet La Creation du Monde (1923).Portions of the work are based on such earlyDixieland works as “Livery Stable Blues” and KingOliver classics. Milhaud’s understanding of thestop-time break and improvisational flourishes ofJelly Roll Morton and King Oliver and of jazzfeel, put him far in advance of Maurice Ravel andothers who sought to use jazz effects in theirworks.

After Milhaud, other composers began asuccessful use of jazz, Kurt Weil showed a greatfeel for jazz, although Louis Armstrong’sreconceived “Mack the Knife” brought that thiefinto jazz’s mainstream and gave a lesson in loosejazz time. Dimitri Shostakovich, Alfredo Cassella,Boris Blacher, and others made serious forays intothe jazz world. In turn, many jazz musicians weretrained in the classics or trained themselves inthe masters and brought those lessons to jazz.Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Coleman Hawkins, ArtTatum (when he played people shouted, “God is inthe house!”), Oscar Peterson, and Frank Foster(who was kept out of the conservatory inCincinnati now named after him) all appreciatedthe classics.

But no one else in jazz was able to do whatDuke Ellington did. He fulfilled Dvorak’simperative for Americans to find their own music,incorporating the music of African Americans.Ellington’s compositions are indeed jazz, but jazzon a symphonic level, merging Europe, Africa, andmusic of other lands into somethingquintessentially American, as Dvorak had dreamed.It was disappointing to see Teachout (2013) failto grasp this point and to criticize Ellington fornot writing in classic symphonic format. In sodoing, he revealed his lack of understanding ofHaydn and Mozart’s manner of composing and in thedifference between movements. Some of theirmovements are in rondo form, and some can be intheme and variation. Even the sonata form wasflexible, and Beethoven broke all their rules,splendidly as did the mature Mozart.

Conclusion

In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois articulated a themethat inheres in the very essence of AfricanAmerican culture: “the dual heritage of the blackman in America”. That heritage, African andEuropean, is at root one of dual identity and acause of a recurring crisis of identity, as DuBois went on to note. In a very real sense, thehistory of jazz has provided a dynamic model ofthe ever-changing terms of that heritage, as wellas a running commentary on it. It has done sothrough the use of tropes of identity.

Tropes encapsulate a culture’s essence.Whatever a culture may be, however it viewsitself, it expresses that self-perception in

select images packed with powerful meanings. Jazzis no exception. It too has its own cultural modesof expression, its personal symbols and metaphorsand conveys identity. Moreover, the best of thesetropes are flexible and allow for the expressionof changing concepts of self-identity.

“Africa” has been precisely that type ofvehicle within jazz. It has served as a touchstonefor gauging the state of the art and the self-image of its performers. Throughout jazz history,the concept of served as an index of authenticity.The less “African” and more “European” aperformance, for example, the less likely jazzmusicians are to find it acceptable. Conversely,the more authentic—even flawed—a performance, themore it is perceived to be approaching an Africanessence, or “soul”. Jazz musicians have beencareful and correct in indicating that their musicis not a result of inability or corruption inperformance, but rather, of choice. Two musicalcultures consisting of related but differing codeshave been captured in the contrastive metaphors“African” and “European”. These terms have not, ofcourse, remained static over time.

The binary opposition between “Africa” and“Europe” is essential to the production of jazzitself and to the souls of those “black folks” whocreated this Creole music (Szwed). For example,improvisation alone does not distinguish jazz fromso-called “classical” music. Althoughimprovisation is essential to jazz, only arelative handful of its practitioner shave beenimprovisational geniuses; many others have beencompetent in its execution, some have beenuninspired imitators. What does distinguish jazz

from all other music, even to the point of oftenbeing overlooked, are its African elements.

John Collier discusses some of these traits.In jazz, timbre is highly personal and varies notonly from player to player but from moment tomoment in a given passage for expressive purposes,just as European players swell or diminish a noteto add feeling… In jazz, pitch is flexible to aconsiderable degree, and in fact in some types ofjazz certain notes are invariable and deliberatelyplayed “out of tune” by European standards.European music, at least in its standard form, isbuilt on the distinction between major and minormodes. The blues, a major building block in jazz,is neither major nor minor; it exists in adifferent mode altogether. In jazz, the groundbeat is deliberately avoided in the melody andmust be established by some sort of separaterhythm section (5).

Black musicians are careful to note thatdistinctions between emotion and intelligence injazz miss the mark. They quite rightly fear thatwhite critics equate the emotion of jazz withAfrican intuition, and intelligence with Europeanrationality. Absolutely correctly, they note thatthe African aesthetic does not separate theseterms, but rather demands the unity of the two.

In addition to the African elements of pitch,timber, and cross rhythms, there is the socialelement of jazz. Jazz is a music that thrives oncontact between performer and audience. No matterhow much an artist protests, few if any jazzperformers actually sound better in studiorecordings as compared with live performances.Indeed, most jazz musicians will entreat audience

members to come closer in order to have themparticipate in a mutual act of creativity.

These African elements have become so much apart of jazz that, aside from discussions of “bluenote” and rhythm, they tend to be overlooked.There has been no major innovation in jazz thathas not been inspired and accompanied by rhythmicchanges, inevitably in an African direction.

Europe in the early years of the twentiethcentury through World War II saw jazz as an exoticrepresentation of the Other. Sometimes that imagewas negative, sometimes positive; sometimes it wasambiguously both at once. It was exotic anderotic, dangerous but alluring. Classicalcomposers began to incorporate elements into theirmusic, using jazz to represent somethingdifferent, something outside the normal. At thesame time, authentic jazz musicians, usuallyblack, began to go to Europe. True jazz becamefamiliar to Europeans, and often more highlyregarded than in its own country. The virtuosityof the musicians fascinated composers andmusicians, many of whom asked to examine LouisArmstrong’s horn to note whether he used devicesto allow him to play so high and reach seeminglyimpossible notes. More so than in America at thetime, jazz was taken seriously, and its musiciansgenerally appreciated as artists. Over the years,jazz concepts began to influence twentieth-centuryEuropean composers. Whether many had a “true” jazzfeel is beside the point; it is as irrelevant asasking whether Coleman Hawkins—or Duke Ellington,for that matter—had a true classical feeling inhis playing. The fascination is in the use made of

another music, the adaptation of one musicalculture of another’s idiom.

Duke Ellington, who despised musicalcategories, put it in perspective when he statedthat there is only good music and bad, and thebest is “beyond category”. The appropriation ofjazz ideas by classical composers helped make muchof their music beyond category and intriguing toanalyze.

Works Cited

Ake, David. Jazz Cultures. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002.

Brown, Lee B. “Postmodernist Jazz Theory: Afrocentrism, Old and New.” Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism 57.2 (1999): 235 – 47.

Gabbard, Krin. Jammin’ at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cine. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.

Goldmark, Daniel. “Jungle Jive”: The Animated Representation of Jazz Music in Happy Harmonies. PhD diss. UCLA, 2001.

Hodeir, Andre. Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence. Trans. David Noakes. New York: Grove Press, 1956.

Lemke, Sieglinde. Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism. New York: Oxford UP, 1998.

Oja, Carol J. “Gershwin and American Modernists ofthe 1920s.” Musical Quarterly 78 (1994): 646– 68.

Panassie, Hughes. Louis Armstrong. New York: Scribner’s, 1971.

Salamone, Frank A. “Close Enough for Jazz: Humor and Jazz Reality.” Jazz.

Ed. Frank A. Salamone. Long Beach, CA: Whittier, 2002: 617–30.

Schuler, Gunther. “Jazz and Musical Exoticism.” The Exotic in Western Music. Ed. Jonathan Bellman. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1998.

Skvorecky, Josef. The Bass Saxophone. New York: Knopf, 1979.

Sullivan, Jack. New World Symphonies. New Haven: Yale UP, 1999.

Szwed, John. Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra. New York: Pantheon, 1997.

Teachout, Terry. Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington. New York: Chatam, 2014

CHAPTER FOURBORROWING FROM THE CLASSICS:

THE USE OF CLASSICAL THEMES INAMERICAN POP MUSIC

Borrowing in music is an old practice. It hasprobably gone on for as long as humans have hadmusic. Indeed, originality has not always beenprized as much as it has been in recent times.Even today there is a certain satisfaction inhearing old familiar tunes, even if wrapped insomewhat new packages. In fact, any music too newwill attract very few followers, at least atfirst. Too much novelty alienates. If the new isfinally accepted, it is because of what peoplefind common to the old. Even Mozart had hisdetractors for being too innovative and fortinkering with the unfamiliar (Jan Swaford, TheGuardian, 3 June 2004).

The famous complaint of Emperor Joseph II aboutThe Marriage of Figaro—”too many notes, Mozart”—isgenerally perceived to be a gaffe by a blockhead.In fact, Joseph was echoing what nearly everybody,including his admirers, said about Mozart: he wasso imaginative that he couldn’t turn it off, andthat made his music at times intense, evendemonic. Hence Mozart’s bad, or cautionary,reviews: “too strongly spiced”; “impenetrablelabyrinths”; “bizarre flights of the soul”;“overloaded and overstuffed”.

The same article mentions criticisms of J.S.Bach as well. Interestingly, the very pieces mostcriticized tend to be, like “The Marriage ofFigaro”, those that future generations considerthe composers masterpieces.

Even these original artists, however, did notabstain from borrowing from their predecessors.Indeed, the Baroque and Classical periods, likethose that came before and after them, relishedborrowings since these borrowed pieces weretransformed as variations, and these weresomething new and old at the same time, somethingtoday’s postmodernists should appreciate. Onecritic, indeed, goes so far as to questionMozart’s reputation because of his borrowings:

Unlike their predecessors, however, neither DonGiovanni nor Figaro were a success with Vienneseaudiences. What becomes increasingly clear is thatMozart exploited a myriad of sources in creatinghis body of works, but the most prominent ofthese, and also the most commonly cited anddiscussed was Franz-Josef Haydn…(Pei-Gwen South,Exploding the Myth about Mozart(http://www.xeeatwelve.com/articles/mozart.htm#top).

In my opinion, the article mistakes commonpractices and ignores the great respect Haydn hadfor Mozart as well as that of Bach’s son, CarlPhilip Emmanuel Bach. Nor does South note thepractice of Beethoven of lifting complete themesfrom Mozart. However, the point is made thatborrowing was common practice in music long beforethe current era and is not necessarily bad: “…borrowing from other composers in classical music

is as traditional as a Gregorian chant. Bach,Schubert and Beethoven all did it” (Daniel J.Wakin, Musical Borrowing Under Scrutiny. New YorkTimes March 7, 2012).

Finally, there is the outstanding work byOlufunmilayo Arewa, From J.C. Bach to Hip Hop: MusicalBorrowing, Copyright, and Cultural Context (Case ResearchPaper Series in Legal Studies Working Paper 04-21Revised to Final February 2006). The response ofworking musicians, classical, jazz, rock and othergenres, was unanimously positive. Their point wasthat composition is not a simple matter of totaloriginality. Emulation is important and it is whatis done with material that is creative.

It is important to make this point. Muchmusical composition is recomposition. There aredifferent types of creativity. Borrowing note–for-note without attribution or change is, in my mind,plagiarism today. It was not so considered in thepast. However, it seems clear that from Bach’stime on that the composer had to do somethingdifferent with the material. He or she had to playwith it. The many variations of “Twinkle, TwinkleLittle Star” were the type of recomposition thatjazz musicians do daily. It is in the “playing”that creativity springs forth. This is my point inconsidering the borrowing of classical music inpopular music.

Examples of Borrowed Classical Music in PopularMusic

The practice of borrowing ideas and completesections from classical music is an old one forcomposers of popular music. Without going back

beyond the gay nineties (or 1890s), we can findample proof of taking material from baroque,romantic, and post-romantic music and dressing itup in the popular style. For example, the 1890shave among others listed “O Promise Me” fromStanislo Gastaldon, The teen years have (1913)“Hungarian Rag” by Julius Lenzberg. It isobviously based on the Second Hungarian Rhapsodyby Franz Liszt. While “I’m Always ChasingRainbows” (1918), by Joseph McCarthy and HarryCarroll, is clearly taken from Chopin’s FantasieImpromptu in C Sharp Minor, Op. 66. Even thatquintessentially American anthem “The Marine Hymn”(1919), by L. Z. Philips is taken from JacquesOffenbach’s Genevieve de Brabant. And there is nodoubt that (1919) “Peter Gink” by George L. Cobbcomes from Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite.

We could continue proceeding decade by decade,but a few examples make the point just as well.Therefore, I will list twenty songs taken from“classics” in whole or part. I will take one ortwo from each decade. In 1922 Paul Robesonrecorded “Going Home”, which was based on Dvorak’s“Largo”. “Lover, Come Back to Me”, a 1928 hit,recorded many times after into the presentcentury, was based on “June”, from Tchaikovsky’s“The Seasons”.

There were many songs taken in whole or partfrom classics in the 1930s. The influence of morerecent composers was felt, such as Rimsky-Korsakov. His Scheherazade gave us the “Song ofIndia”, a hit for Tommy Dorsey. The great tune,“The Lamp Is Low”, came from Ravel’s “Pavane pourune infante défunte”. The trend continued in the1940s, perhaps the high point of the swinging the

classics trend. Frank Sinatra had a hit, courtesyof Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in Cminor, Op. 18, known to pop fans of the time as“Full Moon and Empty Arms”. I wonder whether heever got any royalties for it. Similarly,Stravinsky’s “The Firebird” gave us “Summer Moon”: atleast that masterpiece provided the opera greatLauritz Melchior with a hit.

The 1950s, even with the birth of rock and rollsaw no letup in the influence of the classics. Itis not surprising that Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty”should have music based on Tchaikovsky’s “SleepingBeauty” ballet”. However, “Hot Diggity Dog”appears to be a strange vehicle for the classics.It is taken from Chabrier’s España, rapsodie pourorchestre. Perry Como had a hit, thanks to Brahms’s“Academic Festival Overture”, turned into “Catch aFalling Star”. But none of these songs was a rocksong of any kind. However, the 1960s witnessedmany rock songs based on the classics.

Almost every style of music in that tumultuousdecade borrowed something from the classics. Notsurprisingly, given his sweet voice and potentialto become a crooner, Elvis Presley had a hit in1960 with “It’s Now or Never”. The familiar tuneis based on “O Sole Mio”, composed by Eduardo diCapua. Interestingly, “Rap City” by The Ventures,a 1964 hit, was based on Johannes Brahms’sHungarian Dance No. 5 in G minor. Having hit oncewith a song taken from a classical composition,Elvis struck again in 1961 with “I Can’t HelpFalling in Love with You”, taken from Plaisird’Amour, by Jean Paul Egide Martini. The noveltytune, “Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter FromCamp)”, by Allan Sherman, is based on Ponchielli’s

“Dance of the Hours” from La Giaconda, A WhiterShade Of Pale”, which many young fans thought sooriginal, drew upon the Air (the so-called Air on aG String) from J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 inD Major, BWV 1068, and his Cantata 140 SleepersAwake (“Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme”), BWV140. In any case, Procul Harum had a major hitwith it. This is but a taste of the vast number ofhits based on the classics, most not attributed tothem by the performers or their recordingcompanies.

The borrowing did not end in the 1970s. Indeed,an impressionistic glance seems to signal thecontrary. Rachmaninoff and Mozart have suppliedmany tunes over the years, along with Bartok,Chopin and others. I have chosen just a few 1970ssongs based on Mozart and Rachmaninoff. Mozart wasrepresented by Minuetto Allegretto (1974) by TheWombles—based on Mozart’s Symphony No. 41in CMajor, K.551—and Neil Diamond’s “Song SungBlue”(1972), based on the second movement ofMozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21in C Major, K. 467.Sergei Rachmaninoff is represented by thefollowing three songs, among others: Eric Carmen’s“All By Myself” (1976) taken from the PianoConcerto No. 2 (again!), and “Never Gonna Fall inLove Again” from Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 inE minor, Op. 27. A few years later, in 1979, TheKorgis recorded “If I Had You”, taken fromVariation 18 of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Themeof Paganini, Op. 43, itself based on Paganini’s 24Caprices for Solo Violin. So this last song givesus a double treat, Rachmaninoff borrowing fromPaganini, and The Korgis borrowing from him. Wecan continue into the present century, but the

point is clear. Just as modern “classical”composers borrow from jazz musicians andcomposers, so, too, do pop and jazz composersborrow from the classics.

The Beatles

Certainly, it is no secret that the Beatles,under George Martin’s guidance, began usingclassical themes in their music as well asviolins, which many confound with “classical”music. In the late 1960s, for example there were1968’s “All You Need is Love, the beginning ofwhich quotes J.S. Bach’s Two Part Invention No. 8in F Major, BWV 779. In 1969, “Because” is clearlybased on Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2, “TheMoonlight”.

McCartney’s experimentation with The Beatlessound lay in mixing traditional classical elementsinto the rock and roll context. It had been donebefore when rock and roll was “tamed” by anelitist/segregated constituent known as the MassMedia. Orchestral augmentation of what wasessentially rhythm & blues existed beforeMcCartney and George Martin, though it was new toThe Beatles framework. With the power of influenceThe Beatles had between 1964 and 1966, theclassical European influence grew stronger onAmerican shores in popular music than possiblybefore, but classical influence on popular musichas always existed. With the import of Africansonto American shores, this popular music changeddrastically, and is still changing today throughtheir influence, but the European rules of harmony

and melodic structure are fifty per cent of thatequation. It is not difficult to notice that manyof the most successful artists in pop music haveimitated and been influenced by the classicalcomposers, and the harmonic structures theyfollowed. Paul McCartney, Abba, Queen, Elton John,to name but a few, have all embraced rock androll, but their songs bear the hallmark of beingwritten two or three centuries before in the worksof Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827), SergeiRachmaninoff (1873–1943), Johann Sebastian Bach(1685–1750), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791),and Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), to name but afew.

And then there are artists who share affinitywith Claude Debussy, Edgard Varese, Luigi Russolo,Bela Bartok, Erik Satie, and Charles Ives, workingin unconventional or sometimes unaccepted forms ofcreative expression, only to be brought back againin relevance when the world has caught up to theirideas, or is finally able to envision them withnewer tools and greater technologicalcapabilities. Varese foresaw the world of theelectronic instrument, yet was born in a timewithout the technology to develop it. Had he beenborn 50 years later, he would have been at theforefront of electronic music, quite possibly oneof its greatest composers. Though McCartneyenjoyed the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, wasinfluenced by him, and included his picture on thecover of 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts ClubBand, Stockhausen later said, “In my eyes, JohnLennon was the most important mediator betweenpopular and serious music of this century” (DavidHolmes: http://beatlesnumber9.com/vanguard.html).

The Beatles were pioneers in what came to beknown as Baroque Rock or English Baroque. It is anattempt to bring classical music ideas into popmusic. Sgt. Pepper is one example of the genre. Itis also an attempt to elevate rock music to an artform. Certainly, classical touches had been foundin pop music before the Beatles, and havecontinued since their final performances andrecordings. However, the connection has persistedto the present day. There still remains somethingspecial about their music and their blend ofvarious popular and classical elements.

Works Cited

Arewa, Olufunmilayo From J.C. Bach to Hip Hop: Musical Borrowing, Copyright, and Cultural Context.

Holmes, David (http://beatlesnumber9.com/vanguard.html).

South, Pei-Gwen, Exploding the Myth about Mozart (http://www.xeeatwelve.com/articles/mozart.htm#top).

Wakin, Daniel J, Musical Borrowing Under Scrutiny.New York Times March 7, 2012).

CHAPTER FIVE1950S MUSIC

Although most people today associate the musicof the 1950s with rock and roll, 1950s music wasincredibly diverse. Rock and roll did not simplystorm in musical forms existed side-by-side withthe newer ones throughout the fifties andoverwhelmed jazz, classic crooners, show tunes orAmerican classic pop. These older forms continuedbut declined in popularity as the decadecontinued.

Big Bands and Vocalists

The decade began with a mixture of post-bigband music, dominated by vocalists and vocalgroups who had sung with the big bands. Pre-rockand roll teens continued to support this music,claiming that modern jazz “was too difficult todance to”. “The Singing Rage, Miss Patti Page”,for example, not only had the top song for theyear, “All My Love”, but also songs more closelyassociated with her, “The Tennessee Waltz”, “IWent to Your Wedding”, and “How Much Is ThatDoggie in the Window?” These songs were quitepopular at record hops, dances that featuredrecords rather than live bands—not only early inthe decade, but also later on when rock becameking. Although she had no other tunes placed inthe top ten for the years after 1953, she did haveher own variety television program, continued to

sell records and filled auditoriums for herconcerts. Patti Page was a symbol of the decade’s“innocence” and its continued ties to the big bandpast. She was barely out of her teens in 1950 whenshe had her first hit “Confess”.

Even more impressive for the decade was thesuccess of Perry Como. Como had recordings in thetop ten throughout the decade. In 1950, forinstance, he had the number six record of r theyear, “Hoop de-Doo”. In 1958, against such rockand roll competition as the Everly Brothers, Danny& the Juniors, Elvis Presley, and others, Como hadthe number four record in the U.S., “Catch aFalling Star”. The secret of Como’s enduringpopularity during the rock and roll era has longbeen something of a mystery. Perhaps, his easyacceptance of the new music and his featuring iton his popular television program helpedcontribute to it. Certainly, his very relaxedmanner and “cool” personality made him a naturalfor television and his weekly exposure enabled himto promote his music to his large weekly audience.

While Como’s popularity was unique, there werealways more “sedate” or jazz-like recordings onthe charts. In 1959, for example, Bobby Darin’s“Mack the Knife” was number eight for the year. In1960, Ray Charles’s hit “Georgia on My Mind” wasnumber six for the year. Percy Faith and HisOrchestra had an instrumental hit with “The Themefor a Summer Place”. Interestingly, a number oflater rockers were moving into “the mainstream”with songs like “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and“It’s Now or Never” (Presley), “El Paso” (MartyRobbins), “I’m Sorry and I Want To Be Wanted”(Brenda Lee). In addition, there were hits by

ballad singers who used a slight rock beat such asConnie Francis (“Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool”, “MyHeart Has a Mind of Its Own”). The Platters,always a sweet group more in the rhythm and bluestradition, had a number of hits in the period suchas “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, “The GreatPretender”, and “My Prayer”. Additionally, JohnnyMathis became very popular during this period withsongs like “Chances Are”, and “The Twelfth ofNever”.

In contrast, Frank Sinatra, “The Chairman ofthe Board”, had only one top ten hit in theperiod, 1955’s “Learning the Blues”. Sinatra had,however, not only diversified his talents, havingvarious TV shows, winning an Oscar for “From Hereto Eternity”, and a successful night club act, buthe also turned to the potentials of the LP (long-playing record). Sinatra overcame his throattroubles of the early 1950s and moved to CapitolRecords. His vocal problems, caused by polyps onhis vocal chords, left him with a deeper andhuskier voice. A world-wearier one that, alongwith his publicized personal problems, appealed toan older audience and more sophisticated collegestudents, and replaced the young romantic sound.

That audience tended to be more affluent andwilling to plonk down the cost of an LP, from$2.99 to $3.99, compared with the $.75 of asingle. Sinatra found that he could stretch out inthe LP format and develop a common theme, orconcept, in these albums. He had Capitol hireNelson Riddle and the best studio musiciansavailable, especially the distinctive trumpetsound of Harry “Sweets” Edison from the CountBasie Band. These Capitol albums “Close to You”,

“Songs for Swinging Lovers”, “Only the Lonely” andothers are classics of their types.

Bing Crosby, whose successful career stretchedback to the 1920s, continued to be popular invarious media. His movie career continued. Its1950 high point for many was his role in HighSociety, a musical remake of The PhiladelphiaStory, co-starring Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra.His duet with Sinatra on “Well, Did You Ever?” isnot only a highlight of the film but shows wheresome of Sinatra’s talent came from. Similarly, hisduet with Louis Armstrong demonstrated thatArmstrong was the ultimate father of jazz andpopular singing.

Crosby was, perhaps, Armstrong’s earliest mostfamous disciple. Crosby, himself, acknowledged hisdebt on many occasions. That heritage was passedon to a number of “crooners”, the term used formale vocalists who mastered the use of microphoneand “crooned” into it, rather than belting out asong. He continued that style through the fiftiesand sixties. Only Crosby’s death in 1977 stoppedhis various media activities.

Rhythm and Blues

There were early signs that a new music wasslowly gaining popularity among a young audience.In 1952, for example, “Her Nibs, Miss GeorgiaGibbs”, covered a rhythm and blues tune, “Kiss ofFire”, and it was the number eleven hit song ofthe year. Kay Starr covered “The Wheel ofFortune”, and it finished as 1952’s number 13song. In 1954, the Crew Cuts hit it big with “Sh-Boom”, and Georgia Gibbs had a hit with “Dance

with Me Henry”, a cleaned up version of “Dancewith Me, Annie” and “Annie Had a Baby (Can’t DanceNo Mo’)”. Interestingly, none of the top ten oreven twenty hits featured one black rocker. Thereis no Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Big JayMcNealy, Little Anthony, or any of the others whomthose who were teens remember from the fifties.Not even the white rocker Bill Haley and hisComets is on the list. The reason for that is thatrhythm and blues and its child rock and roll werefound on separate lists. Race music was generallysegregated from the mainstream, and early rock androll was definitely considered race music.1955 sawthe popularization of rock and roll with such hitsas Pat Boone’s number one song “Ain’t That aShame”, a watered down version of Little Richard’ssong.

The reason that rhythm and blues had a separatelisting of its hits is the same one that made itappeal primarily to a black audience; namely,segregation in American society. Black artistswere generally separated from white ones and the“race” music that was R&B was free to developblack themes for a predominantly black audience,using black idioms in its presentation. As thefifties saw the first serious cracks insegregation, that music began to reach a whiteaudience, often in diluted form. That ending ofsegregation, slow as it was, meant that blackartists who had been confined to an R&B ghettowere freer to cross over into the big money of thetop ten, helping to end one of their majorcomplaints. Chuck Berry was the first black artistto become truly popular with white audiences. Hebroke through the barrier with the aid of Alan

Freed in the mid-1950s with his own composition“Maybelline”. In the 1960s, rhythm and blues wouldbreak from rock and emerge as soul music.Rock and Roll

Rock ’n’ Roll, of course, is perhaps the mostenduring of the fifties fads. It burst on thescene in 1954-55 with hits by singers includingChuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, andElvis Presley. Rock also generated its share ofnovelty songs, including David Seville’s “WitchDoctor” and “The Chipmunk Song”. Those loveablechipmunks still plague us every Christmas withAlvin still interrupting his other chipmunkfriends, Simon and Theodore. Two other noveltytunes of note are “The Purple People Eater” bySheb Woolley, and “Willie and the Hand Jive”, withits own dance craze of 1958.

Rock & roll was certainly related to R & B andthe blues. It was also related to other forms ofAfrican American music, a fact that often appearsto surprise its supporters as well as itsdetractors. All forms of African American derivedmusic, including the popular doo wop street music,are related. Whatever else it was to become, themusic categorized as rock & roll was AfricanAmerican derived music, or in the terms of theday, “race music”.

There is some argument about the “origins” ofrock and roll. Nelson George (1988: 67) describesits beginnings in his book The Death of Rhythm &Blues. After discussing the role of the whiterhythm and blues deejay Alan Freed, he notes:

Rock & roll—the words alone evoke notions ofhedonism, romantic wandering (taken from the

blues), and pseudo rebellion akin to the blues butwithout the mature battle of the sexes essentialto that black expression. Nevertheless, as Freedknew, rock & roll wasn’t a music, but a marketingconcept, that evolved into a life-style. Yearslater, critics and fans would search for the firstrock & roll record, a quest Freed would probablyhave laughed at, since he never seemed to knowwhat rock & roll was. The many recordings madeunder his name in the 1950s reflected a taste forbig-band swing, with bluesy sax breaks and coversof standard tunes…

One of the primary influences on both rhythmand blues and rock & roll was Joseph Vernon Turner(Big Joe Turner). Big Joe’s music was widelyimitated by the early rockers and he, himself,often appeared on early rock & roll bills. Turnerwas famed for his recordings with his partner, thepianist Pete Johnson. The duo became famous inKansas City saloons.

As was the case with many other musicians, JohnHammond “discovered” them and took them to NewYork City. Turner was a star of the 1938 CarnegieHall “Spirituals to Swing” concert. Turnerremained in New York and became quite popular,helping to popularize boogie with Pete Johnson.Turner became a frequent singer with jazz bands,including the enormously popular Count Basie.

In 1951 Turner hit the R&B charts with “Chainsof Love”, and followed it with a series of top R&Bhits “Sweet 16”, “Honey, Hush”, “Shake, Rattle andRoll”, and “Flip, Flop and Fly”, all of which werecovered by young white musicians, notably BillHaley; the white musicians generally cleaned upthe lyrics for the white teenage crowd.

Alan Freed, in a similar vein, used the termrock & roll to “disguise the blackness of themusic”, according to Nelson George. The attemptdid not work, as we have come to be told throughnumberless movies and oral histories. Perhaps, itsfailure to mask its blackness was its best sellingfeature. However, if it failed to mask it whatcame to be identified as rock & roll did water itdown a bit. One its earliest divas, Laverne Baker,is reputed to have said, “The blues is forbourbon. Rock & roll is for Coca Cola.”

That evaluation was generally true in the earlydays, and became even more valid as black artists,like Little Richard and Fats Domino began to becrowded out by white adolescents like Fabian andFrankie Avalon. That development is notsurprising, because the purpose of rock & roll wasto exploit the white teenage market. Rock & roll,unlike rhythm and blues, did not specificallyaddress a black audience of all ages. Instead, itaddressed the coming of age concerns of whiteadolescents. Again, George (1988: 68) describesthe situation well.

The generational schism and teen-eye view thathas always been the crux of the rock & roll ethoswas mostly foreign to black consumers, young aswell as old. That is not to say that all blacksrejected rock & roll, both as a business term orsocial attitude, but R & B made a connection toblack listeners that was both musical and extra-musical. Music made by the white bands wasinevitably (and often deliberately) adolescent,addressed to adolescent ears about adolescentfears. Black teens might listen, but their headswere in different places, and R&B articulated that

difference not just in vocal or aural effect butalso in attitude.

Alan Freed (1926-1965), as George notes, isgenerally given credit for putting the marketingterm rock & roll on a collection of related blackmusic. Freed was an R&B deejay at WJW in Clevelandin 1952 when he applied the black euphemism forsexual intercourse to a conglomeration of music.His sponsor, Leo Mintz, encouraged Freed to playR&B originals, and Freed generally stayed awayfrom white covers of black music throughout hiscareer (Larkin 1998: 151). Freed moved to NewYork’s WINS in 1953 and began to host rock & rollconcerts, first in New York and then elsewhere. Heappeared in a series of rock & roll films, makingenemies in the music world for his championing ofrock & roll. Eventually, a riot at a Bostonconcert in 1958 and a conviction for payola in1962 ended his career.

Freed’s career was greatly aided through hiscollaboration with Chuck Berry, the duck-walkingmaster guitarist and composer. More than anyoneelse, Berry brought the electric guitar to itspreeminent position in rock & roll. Berry had agreat deal of sexual energy and an ability tofocus it on the problems of adolescents. He wasable to give voice to what Freed had only hintedat. Berry was a classic blues storyteller who hadsoaked up the lessons of the great Louis Jordan.

According to Larkin (1998:52), Berry was bornin 1926 in San Jose, California, not in St. Louisas he claims. Like Ray Charles, Berry cites NatCole as a great influence on his singing. Berry’sfirst hit was “Maybelline”, in 1955. He quicklyfollowed that up with “Thirty Days”, “No Money

Down”, “Roll Over Beethoven”, “Brown-Eyed HandsomeMan”, School Days”, “Sweet Little Sixteen”, andmany others that topped the R&B charts. Larkin(1998: 32) sums up his success in this way:

Between 1955 and 1960, Berry seemedunassailable. He enjoyed a run of 17 R&B Top 20entries, appeared in the films Go Johnny Go, Rock,Rock, Rockland Jazz on a Summer’s Day…

Larkin also indicates that it was Berry whoclarified rock & roll’s message through bringing aneeded discipline to its vocals and performance.He also set a template, which the next generationfollowed.

The mix of black music tailored to whiteadolescent audience becomes even more curious whenthe case of Leiber and Stoller is considered.Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were two Jewish boyswho managed to write from a black perspectivewithout condescension and with total authenticity.Leiber and Stoller managed to catch the blackidiom and attach it to stories of urban life thatblacks could sing with comfort.

Both Leiber and Stoller had grown up aroundAfrican Americans and had embraced black culture,especially its music. They felt that writing musicwas a sign of respect for the culture.Interestingly, they did not feel that whitesshould perform the music. Both Leiber and Stollerwere well grounded in that music, Leiber in bluesand Stoller in jazz.

Their first R&B hit was the Robins’ (laterrenamed the Coasters), “That’s What the Good BookSays”, which came out in 1951. The next five yearswere a period of intense R&B activity in whichLeiber and Stoller wrote songs for the black R&B

audience. These songs attracted such artists asRay Charles, the Isley Brothers, JimmyWitherspoon, Big Momma Thornton, and Joe Turner.They included “Hound Dog” and “Kansas City”, amongothers.

Leiber and Stoller turned to the new Rock &Roll along with the Coasters and others of theirclients. They, too, began to address the whiteteenage audience that favored the more commercialmusic that addressed their needs. They managed tokeep their sounds soulful even if they began toaddress mainly white teens rather than a broaderblack audience.

Larkin (1998: 224) states that songs such as“Smokey Joe’s Cafe”, “Searchin’”, “Yakety Yak”,and “Charley “Brown”, each a hit for the Coasters,marked a transition from straight R&B to Rock &Roll. Each hit the wit, urban black language, andstory-telling genius associated with Leiber andStoller at their best.

Inevitably, the duo expanded their repertoireand wrote hits for Elvis Presley (“JailhouseRock”), Ben E. King (“Stand by Me”), and suchstalwarts of non-rock music as Peggy Lee (“I’m aWoman”). They even wrote for Dion. According toLarkin (1998:225), they seemed unable to cope withthe later changes in the music and went into andout of retirement. Their work is still on Broadwayin Smokey Joe’s Cafe.

Doo-wop Music

The success of the Broadway musical SmokeyJoe’s Cafe also illustrates the continuingpopularity of what has come to be called doo wop

music. This type of music was exemplified by anumber of groups in the 1950s. Doo-wop musicfeatured a simple four-part harmony that youngmale teens could, and often did, sing on streetcomers. Groups such as the Ink Spots anticipateddoo-wop music. The Ink Spots popularized simplefour-part harmony with a falsetto tenor and deepbooming bass voice. They also put in human soundsto replace musical instruments, a major feature oflater doo-wop tunes. These characteristics becamedominant among fifties doo-wop groups.

The Drifters, for example, were a black doo-wopgroup. The height of their popularity was from themid to late 50s to the mid-60s. The group had verygifted members, including at one time or another:Clyde McPhatter, Gerhart Thrasher, AndrewThrasher, Bill Pinkney, Ben E. King, Rudy Lewis,and Johnny Moore (Collins, 3/17/99). The driftershad a string of hits that transcended many of thechanges in music that occurred during thisvolatile time. They included “There Goes My Baby”,“On Broadway”, “Save the Last Dance for Me”, and“Under the Boardwalk”, among others.

The Spaniels were another popular doo-wopgroup. Their biggest hit was “GoodnightSweetheart, Goodnight” which continues inpopularity to the present. The popular movie,Three Men and a Baby, for example, used itthroughout the film. The rock revival group, ShaNa-Na used the tune as its closing theme. “Pookie”Hudson, the Spaniel’s lead singer, wrote the song.As an example of the complex mix that was 50smusic, several musicians during the 1950s,including The McGwire Sisters and Pat Boone

covered the hit and had successful hits of theirown with the song.

Elvis, Orbison, Perkins

On the other side of the divide, as Morris putsit, was Elvis Presley. In many ways, The King cameto transcend the divide and become an icon byhimself. Nevertheless, in 1956 there was no realway to know that he would become his own category.Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, onJanuary 8, 1935. By all accounts he was a rathershy misfit and something of a mommy’s boy in hisadopted hometown of Nashville. However, after somefalse starts he became a star, a white boy whocould sing like a black man, as Sam Phillips putit. 1956 was his breakthrough year. “HeartbreakHotel” went to number one on the charts. Presleyhad 18 top hits and two others that made the topten list. His fame carried him through generallyforgettable movies, although he did begin hiscareer with an obvious talent that could have beendeveloped, as were Crosby’s and Sinatra’s.

Some of Presley’s hits were “I Want You, I NeedYou, I Love You”, Jailhouse Rock”, and, of course,his first major hit, “Heartbreak Hotel”, Althoughmost of his hits are in the general rock & rollvein of the times, others demonstrate Elvis’srather wide range - from soft ballads to gospel-tinged renditions. There are successful efforts tocrossover to the “establishment” with “The Wonderof You”, and “Can’t Help Falling in Love (WithYou)”, not to mention “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”

Presley influenced a number of imitators andfollowers. Prime among them was Roy Orbison.

Orbison tended to accent the rockabilly joinedwith rhythm and blues side of Presley. Over theyears he developed his own personality and madehis own contributions to the evolution of themusic, but his roots were deep in Presley’s music.Orbison was a multi-talented performer. He was afine guitarist and songwriter as well as avocalist with a three-octave range who knew how touse his soaring falsetto tones to add depth andmystery to his performance.

Orbison began as a country vocalist for thesame record company, Sun, which signed Elvis. Hisfirst hit was also in 1956, “Ooby Dooby” (1956).He left Sam Phillips to join Monument Records,achieving distinction as a melancholy romanticsinger. John Belushi, one of his biggest fans,parodied Orbison’s trademark dark glasses, darkclothing, and black pompadour hairdo, both as oneof the Blues Brothers, and as a Roy Orbisonimitator.

Carl Perkins, who had the original hit on “BlueSuede Shoes”, is another artist who was very muchin the Presley vein. Perkins also went on toestablish his own style and voice. Perkinspioneered Rockabilly, a fusion of blues, country,rhythm and blues, and gospel that is one of thesources of what became rock and roll. Perkins’shit “Blue Suede Shoes” became the definitive themeof the movement.

In common with many of the early stars of rock& roll, he began playing at a young age and formeda band in his teens. In Perkins’s case, he playedwith his two brothers. After hearing Elvis, thetrio noted the similarity of their styles anddecided that Nashville was the place to be.

Perkins joined the Sun record stable and openedfor Presley in the mid-50s. Sun Records gave himthe opportunity to compose and produce. Anaccident, unfortunately, stalled Perkins’s career.He continued to write hits like “Honey Don’t”(1956) and “Matchbox” (1957), but Presley’spopularity far outstripped his own. Presley’sversion of “Blue Suede Shoes” reached Number oneon the charts; ahead of Perkins’s number two.Perkins did, however, become a major influence onthe development of the music through hiscompositions and guitar playing. His hard-rockingguitar playing influenced the Beatles, amongothers. His songs received wide circulation amongrock & rollers and country performers, includingthe Beatles and Johnny Cash.

America’s Oldest Teenager: Dick Clark, and theTeenage Idols

Dick Clark was born in 1929.He was thus wellout of his teens when he became AmericanBandstand’s second host in 1956. Bandstand was alocal Philadelphia show when Clark became itshost, but so popular was big brother Clark thatABC distributed it nationally in beginning August5, 1957. For the next six years, it was live everyweekday afternoon.

Clark’s low-key style helped gain fans for rockand roll, since many figured if a nice boy likeClark liked the music it couldn’t be toodangerous. Clark broke with the tradition ofhaving black artists’ music covered by whiteperformers. On Bandstand, he played the originalrecordings for his teens to dance to. And his teen

regulars danced every popular dance—The Slop, TheHand Jive, and The Bop. Bandstand even introducednew dances of its own—the Stroll, the Circle, andthe Calypso among them.

Clark made it a practice to introduce theoriginal talent behind the records on his show.Bill Haley and the Comets, James Brown, BuddyHolly, Connie Francis, Bobby Darin, Fabian, andRitchie Valens, among others, got their nationalstart on Clark’s show. For over forty years,Clark, the man who never grows old, continued toplay popular music on the air.

He is often credited in helping to make rockthe success that it became. He introduced many newrecords for teens to judge. Their stock reply,“It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it,”has become part of the lore of the fifties. Butdancing was much of what the music was about atthe time. Clark emphasized the fun that the musicrepresented and became a clean-cut spokesman forthat music, an older brother reasoning to Mom andDad about this new music that many feared so much.

Clark’s regulars, like Justine Carrelli and BobClayton, started many clothing and dance trends.The fact was that there were no other nationalshows targeted to teens at the time. Clark usedthis advantage to press quietly for integration.On his show, blacks and whites were together,peacefully dancing and performing.

By proving that there was a viable teenaudience, Clark had a further impact on popularculture. Other shows came along to tap thataudience, Soultrain and Hootenanny, among them. Bythe 1960s, others had discovered the teen marketand the value of targeting that market.

Integration was progressing in the entertainmentindustry and Black performers carved out theirniche on center stage.

But Clark had been among the first to push thetrend, and his quiet demeanor and understanding ofhis audience served him well as he moved on toother endeavors in show business without everquite abandoning American Bandstand in theprocess.

Bachelor Pad Music

A musical form of the fifties that has becomepopular once again is bachelor pad music. It hasbecome known as Space Age Bachelor Pad Music.Bachelor Pad Music was directed toward an oldersophisticated crowd. Exotic Latin and Brazilianrhythms and sounds marked it; parrots and otherexotic birds were often on the sound track.

Les Baxter had a series of hits in the 1950s,for himself and others. For example, he arrangedPeruvian singer Yma Sumac’s 1950, “Voice of theXtabay”, which became a landmark of exotic music.Baxter went on to produce a number of albums forCapitol, including Tamboo (a top 10 hit in 1956),and between 1956 and 1959, The Sacred Idol, Rita of theSavage, and Skin. Skin demonstrated a new dimensionof the genre, one that exploited its pullingexoticism. Perhaps, Baxter’s most famouscomposition is “Quiet Village”. This song becamean instrumental hit for Martin Denny, reachingnumber four in 1959. Its exotic birdcalls arestill imitated and those who lived through theperiod often parody the sound at parties. Thealbum, in fact, reached number one during 1959.

During the 1960s, there were a number of exotic“Bachelor Pad” instrumentals. Part of theexplanation for the music is found in the factthat it exploited the relatively new phenomenon ofhi-fi stereo systems, toys for older boys of thetime.

The genre lies on one side of a great divide inAmerican popular culture. That rift was visible tomillions of viewers on “The Milton Berle Show” ofJune 5, 1956; there, the King of Rock ’n’ Roll waspitted against the Godfather of Space Age BachelorPad Music. Elvis Presley’s swiveling, eroticperformance of “Hound Dog” that night set off astorm of national protest, leading Steve Allen togarb Presley in a tuxedo and Ed Sullivan to shoothim from the waist up in later TV appearances. Atthe benign end of the sonic spectrum was Berle’sother musical guest, Les Baxter, who performed“The Poor People of Paris”, a chirpy hit that hadbeen displaced at No.1 on the charts by Presley’s“Heartbreak Hotel” that April.

Jazz

The LP revolution did a great deal to enhanceand preserve Jazz’s popularity. It allowed notonly for longer solos in contrast with thelimitation of the old 78s, but also for conceptalbums. In addition, jazz fans tended to be olderand a bit more affluent than rock fans, as Playboyhad noted. There were many changes in jazz duringthe 1950s, the Golden Age of Jazz. Thanks to thecreation of the jazz festival and its predecessor,the Jazz at the Philharmonic road show, it ispossible to note the similarity of the different

jazz styles as well as their connection. Moreover,it is possible to appreciate in retrospect thefact that most of the important jazz musicians whohad lived were alive and working in the 1950s.Jazz’s past, present, and future were all there inthe 1950s.

Jazz was still a young art form in the 1950s.The Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded thefirst jazz record in 1917. Louis Armstrong andSidney Bechet, the first two outstanding jazzsoloists, were still performing. The great swingmusicians were well represented. The be-boprevolution had become part of the mainstream andthe new revolutionaries who would blossom in the1960s, like John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman,were launching their careers or consolidating themin the 1950s. In sum, all forms of jazz could befound in vital live performances not by revivalbands or repertory aggregations but by theoriginals, many of whom were not out of theirfifties, like Louis Armstrong, even though youngermusicians might consider them old men.

The first of the great festivals was theNewport Jazz Festival. George Wein, a pianist andnightclub owner in the Boston area, decided topromote a jazz festival in Newport, Rhode Island.Jazz still had a slightly unsavory reputation andthe wealthy inhabitants of Newport did not havethe reputation of being great supporters of theart form, a fact that added to the spice of themovie High Society, the successful remake of ThePhiladelphia Story.

The festival began over the July 4th weekend in1954 and soon grew to a weeklong event withhundreds of performers. Its excitement can be

viewed in a documentary of the 1958 festivalentitled Jazz on a Summer’s Day. The film mad, by BertStem, gains from the work of Aram Avakian. It wasthe forerunner of other concert documentaries andis still unmatched for its general quality and thematching of music and setting. It combined a senseof 50s high quality fashion with its love of thecool and the hip.

Stern juxtaposes tryouts for the America’s cupwith the best of jazz. Big Maybelle, Chuck Berry,and Mahalia Jackson show jazz’s roots andrelatives in performances. Jazz musicians and therelationship of Blues, Rock ’n’ Roll, and Gospelbecome quite clear through the performances thataccompany each of these non-jazz performers. Therange of jazz in the 50s is also remarkable. Someof the performers whom Stern highlighted are nowmere footnotes to jazz history, known only toaficionados. Their 50s reputations appear inflatedin retrospect. Others have stood the test of timeand their reputations are still strong. Among theperformers were Chico Hamilton, Jimmy Giuffre,Anita O’Day, Theolonius Monk, and Louis Armstrong.There were interesting brief interviews with fans,giving the viewer a good glimpse into the way realpeople looked and talked in the50s, rather thanthe way Hollywood later came to portray the 50slook. Additionally, there are some excellentcandid shots of fifties fans reacting to the musicand dancing in the aisles, giving the lie to theold canard that you can’t dance to “modern jazz”.

The Newport Jazz Festival has spawned over 2000other national and international jazz festivals.Its success has made it common for jazz to beperformed in venues other than clubs and

auditoria. Nevertheless, the Newport Festival hadother predecessors, most notably Norman Granz’sJazz at the Philharmonic series that began in thelate 1940s and reached its height in the 1950s. A1953 Time magazine piece on JATP’s second Europeantour began in this fashion.

Two thousand Swedish fans turned out inStockholm last week to hear a rocking sample ofthe best brand of U.S. jazz, beaten out andbellowed by some of the best U.S. practitioners.First, half a dozen instrumentalists gave them around of modern combo numbers, including C-JamBlues and Perdido. Then Songstress Ella Fitzgeraldstepped forward and let loose with Why Don’t You DoRight? and St. Louis Blues. Finally, the stage wasdarkened, and Gene Krupa, his face spotlightedfrom below, flailed away on the drums.

Between numbers, the packed hall resounded toroars and whistles of approval and the stamping ofteenage feet. Afterward, it took the performers 45minutes to fight their way through the ecstaticcrowd outside. For U.S. Jazz Impresario NormanGranz, it was a comfortably reassuring beginningfor his second annual invasion of Europe with hispackage show, “Jazz at the Philharmonic”.

In the next ten weeks, he and his musicaltourists expected to put on much the same kind ofprogram—and get much the same kind of flatteringattention—in such cities as Oslo, Brussels, Paris,Geneva, Zurich, Milan and Turin.

The Jazz at the Philharmonic series grew out ofGranz’s promotion in his junior year at UCLA of aconcert featuring Nat Cole, Lester Young, andBillie Holliday on the same bill. It gave jazzfans a chance to hear a number of stars perform

with their own groups on the same bill. He feltthat it filled a niche seriously lacking in jazz.After being in the Special Forces for a time inWWII, Granz sponsored a concert at PhilharmonicAuditorium in Los Angeles. The posters weresupposed to read “Jazz Concert at the PhilharmonicAuditorium”, but there was too little space. Thecards read “Jazz at the Philharmonic”, and thename stuck.

Granz left Los Angeles after the directors ofPhilharmonic auditorium told him that they did notappreciate integrated performances. He neverbooked his JATP back into the auditorium that gavehis show its name. Beginning in 1946, he took hisshow on the road to about 60 cities a year. Granzsummed up the reasons for the success of JATP, andfor the festivals that followed in the 1950s. “Igive to people in Des Moines and El Paso the kindof jazz they could otherwise never see or hear.” Aglimpse into 1950s prices incidentally is given byhis advice on scaling a house. He also believesthat he has learned as much as any living manabout scaling a house, i.e. deciding how manyseats to price at $4.80, etc. “You can’t getpiggish,” he says. “On the other hand, you can’tbe easy. I’ve got a sixth sense about it.”

The festival scene came at an opportune timefor jazz, for dancers had gone to rock ‘n roll,either live or in the sock or record hops thatfeatured records played by disk jockeys. The bigballrooms had either closed or were deemed notappropriate for most of the modern jazz musicians.The jazz clubs were hurt by the luxury taxes leftover from World War II, extended through the earlyCold War period and the Korean conflict. The

college kids fueled the festival culture in greatmeasure, and the king of the college circuit wasDave Brubeck.

Brubeck was associated with the “cool” WestCoast sounds of jazz. He also seemed to be part ofthe more cerebral movement in jazz that tied intothe Jazz with Classics movement. The Dave BrubeckQuartet was immensely popular and its sound wasone of those that helped identify an era. In spiteof being considered “too white” by some critics,the Dave Brubeck quartet won the first jazz pollconducted by a black newspaper, The PittsburghCourier. Brubeck further angered some jazz criticswhen his picture appeared on the cover of TimeMagazine. Nevertheless, Brubeck’s album” TimeOut”, and its singles, “Take Five” and “Blue Rondoa la Turk”, became the first in modem jazz to “gogold”.

Brubeck took part in the Jazz Ambassador programby going on several world tours sponsored by theState Department in the Middle East and EasternEurope. These tours gave Brubeck many ideas formulti-rhythmic performances and further increasedhis popularity. They also led to an album of aplay he wrote, “The Real Ambassadors”, settingforth a program for civil rights that carried overinto the sixties. The album featured a number ofjazz musicians, including his quartet and LouisArmstrong.

Country Music

The fifties witnessed a major change in countrymusic and its spread to mainstream popularity. Itspread from an isolated base in the south to

nationwide acceptance. It did so throughincorporating electronic sounds, such as amplifiedguitars and a more popular approach to music, onein keeping with popular music in general. HankWilliams, one of the most popular country singers,began his career in the forties and never claimedto be anything else but a country singer,exploring the many diverse forms of that genre.Williams was at home in any kind of countrysetting but was most noted for his honky-tonktunes, such as “Hey Good Looking, What You GotCooking?” Along with Williams, Lefty Frizzel andErnest Tubbs helped popularize the honky-tonkstyle, noted for its amplified guitar riffs andhard-driving beat and tales of “outlaw” life. Inaddition to being a stellar performer, Williamscomposed a number of famous tunes; many recordedby artists in no way associated with country. TonyBennett, for example, had a hit with “Cold, ColdHeart”. Sadly, on New Year’s Day 1953, HankWilliams died in the back of his Cadillac, avictim of living the life he sang about. Pills andbooze did him in, making him a legend at 29.

A number of people carried on in William’stradition. Others developed a new style. GentlemanJim Reeves brought crooning to the country world,for example. The most popular of the new styles,however, was the mixture of black music withcountry. Elvis Presley began as a country singerwho mixed rock with country, a “white man who hadthe Negro feel”, in the words of Sam Phillips theowner of Sun Records. “That’s Alright Mama”, acover first recorded by rhythm and blues singerArthur “Big Boy” Crudup, startled the music world,especially country fans, as did the flip side, a

souped-up version of Bill Monroe’s bluegrassclassic, “Blue Moon of Kentucky”. This recordingwas the first of the “rockabilly” genre. JohnnyCash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis, amongothers, would develop and profit by the rockabillysound, changing country music, and the country’sperception of it. Country stars no longer hadqualms about incorporating popular sounds intotheir performance, a trend that continues to thepresent.

Conclusion

As the decade ended, the various musical formscontinued to evolve. In the 1950s there was stilla type of uneasy alliance brought about by theconfusion of the marketing label rock & roll andthe promise of great money to be made from fiftiesteens and their disposable incomes. However, asthe 1950s end and the world began to get morecomplex, and with the escalation of the VietnamWar in the 1960s and the maturing of the babyboomers, the music began to split into variousfactions.

White rock would go its own way into“progressive” rock and its many forms. It wouldbecome increasingly amplified and often turn itsback on the steady beat of old time rock & roll.In the 1960s, much of its momentum would come fromprotesting the war and the establishment. Fromtime to time it would remember its roots and paytribute to black blues musicians, as the Beatlesand Stones did, but it became increasinglyenamored with experiments and tricks thatadvancing technology made possible, such as tape

splicing and recording. Toward the end of theirpartnership, for example, the Beatles becamemainly a studio band.

Rhythm and blues evolved into Soul Music andlater allied itself in the strange partnershipbetween black musicians and gay men thatcharacterized disco. In the sixties, however, theMotown Sound carried on a more polished rhythm andblues tradition with incursions from B.B. King andMuddy Waters and their colleagues, providing anupdated blues sound for the black musical mix thatinspired so much of the sixties musical sound.

Country music continued its musical evolutioninto glitzier and more popular acceptance. DollyParton, Johnny Cash, and others continued toincorporate and tame wilder rock and rhythm andblues sounds. Glen Campbell and John Denvercrossed over into the pop scene as often as theymade country records. The genius of Ray Charlesunited soul music with a country sound thatpleased Nashville audiences as well as urbanboomers.

The big bands were often pronounced dead, butEllington and Basie continued the tradition andDizzy Gillespie managed to revive his big bandperiodically. The State Department helped BennyGoodman and others revive their big bands as partof the cultural exchange program. Moreover, WoodyHerman’s Herds just kept getting better as thesixties went on. Maynard Ferguson and his highnote trumpet, and Buddy Rich and his drums kept upthe big band tradition. The reports of the deathof the big band were greatly exaggerated.

Jazz entered a period of protest as the sixtiesevolved. Much of sixties jazz was for a very small

audience as it often became incoherent. Much ofthe old Dixieland and bop tradition continued,however. Miles Davis and others tried to becomepopular with the youth through changing theirstyles and becoming electrified. The old coreaudience, however, tended to abandon these newstyles, arguing that there wasn’t much jazz infusion or jazz-rock groups. Chicago, and BloodSweat and Tears, as well as Chase, did manage apopular blend that kept touch with their jazzroots.

Fifties music was regarded as old hat and even“Uncle Tom” by many of the sixties rebels. Only inthe 1980s did a fifties revival begin that haslasted to the present day. It was a vital periodfor music and, in retrospect, the roots of much oftoday’s music can be readily discerned.

Suggested Readings and Works Cited

Ake, David. Re-Masculating Jazz: Ornette Coleman, ‘Lonely Woman,’ and the New York Jazz Scene in the Late 1950s. American Music 16: 1 (Spring 1998), 25-44.

Cross, Alan. 20th Century Rock and Roll: Alternative (20th Century Rock & Roll Series) New York: Collector’s Guide, 2000.

Goldberg, Joe. Jazz Masters of the Fifties. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998.

Larkin, Colin, Editor. The Virgin Encyclopedia of Fifties Music (Virgin Encyclopedias of Popular Music) New York: Virgin, 1998.

Marvin, Elizabeth West, Editor. Concert M music, Rock, and Jazz Since 1945: Essays and Analytical Studies (Eastman Studies in Music). Boydell & Brewer, 1995.

Hill, Trent. The Enemy Within: Censorship in Rock Music in the 1950s.

South Atlantic Quarterly_90: 4 (Fall 1991), 675-707.

McKeen, William. Rock and Roll ls Here to Stay: AnAnthology. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000

Morrison, Greg. Go Cat Go! Rockabilly Music and Its Makers.

Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 2000.Pruter. Doowop: The Chicago Scene. Champagne:

University of Illinois Press, 2000.Romanowski, Patricia, Holly George-Warren, and Jon

Pareles, Editors. The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. New York: Fireside, 1995.

Wilmer, Valerie. As Serious As Your Life: John Coltrane and Beyond (Five Star). New York: Serpents Tail, 2000.

CHAPTER SIXBRINGIN’ IT ALL BACK HOME!

Note: Fela Anakulapi-Kuti died on August 2, 1997 of complications due toAIDs. I have left this chapter as I wrote it in the early 1990s. For me, Felastill lives as long as the need to fight the beast remains. Thanks to the playFela! more people know about his and his work than when he was alive.

The proverb, “What goes ’round, comes ’round”,is perfectly applicable to the development ofjazz. The sociocultural seeds of jazz came fromWest Africa, penetrating and developing in theEuro-American soil of the New World. The resultingorganism is American but one whose ancestralstrains are clearly evident. Without the creativetension inherent in its very nature, jazz wouldlong ago have stagnated and died. Instead, itconstantly responds to an innate need to redefineitself through action, continuously sorting outthe consequences of its mixed heritage in an on-going dialectic. Therefore, a study of jazz in oneWest African setting, Nigeria, provides guidancein understanding the process of self-definitionand creativity inherent in a Creole art form aswell as its meaning to practitioners and fansalike.

This fact became fully clear to me through anincident that occurred in Lagos, Nigeria, in May1989. I was sitting in the Shrine in Lagos, anightclub owned and operated by Fela Anakulapi-Kuti, a musician who is also the leader of thenation’s disaffected youth. In keeping with Yoruba

tradition he freely and openly criticizes theNigerian government, seeking to draw attention toglaring inequities of life. In accord with thattradition he has a type of sacred persona and isrelatively immune from open government harassment.That immunity has not, however, stopped thegovernment from seeking to silence him throughundercover means. “Unauthorized soldiers”, forexample, took offense at his song “Zombie” andburned his Kalakuta Republic. They went so far asto fling his mother from an upstairs wim1ow,eventually leading to her death. Fela won hislawsuit against the government in open court.Later, the government arrested him for “currencyviolation”; the outcry from Nigerians and othersforced it to free him.

After the first number which took up the firsthour, I turned to my Nigerian colleague andinformed him I was ready to leave. I had the basicpattern and could get to bed fairly early. It wasalready past one in the morning and Fela performsTDB (Till Day Breaks). My colleague laughed andtold me to sit down. It was obvious to him that Iwas not hearing the performance in the same manneras an African would. What I perceived asrepetition was simply the sufficient and necessarycause for variety. In common with many westerners,I had focused on those structural elements thatpromote stability. I had failed to note that it isonly as a result of stability that change andvariety are possible.

With that key in mind, I was able to begin tounderstand the concept of creolization. It is aconcept that offers an insight into the manner inwhich “the powerless” have exerted power in the

face of seemingly impossible odds. Furthermore, itforces one to rethink the meaning of “traditional”and culture change. At the least, it focuses onthe dual nature of change and its dialecticalnature. Simply put, change is inevitablyinteractive. The person seeking to change othersis changed by them. Those who are the “targets” ofchange” may, in fact, change but not necessarilyin the manner change agents may plan. In turn, thechange agents—missionaries, development agents,anthropologists—are often changed by theircontacts more than they change them. Creolizationtheorists concentrate on the power of the creativeimagination present in every culture. That powerenables people to present their cultures to othersin a fashion calculated to provide them withperceived advantages. In turn, it enables them tofashion elements from other cultures in a mannermost consonant with their own social and estheticvalues. In sum, creolization theory offers a viewof social actors as active, but not all-powerful,participants in their own destiny. It enables usto understand the process of social dialogue whileoffering an alternative to the shortcomings ofworld-systems theory, substituting alert, alive,and active people for the mechanistically passivevictims presented in well-intentioneddeterministic change theories.

Cultural texts offer a means for recording andanalyzing the interpenetration of two cultures.When those texts are presented in performance, theanalyst has an opportunity of experiencing aliving example of cultural dialogue and, in theappropriate circumstances, creolization. Fela’s

performance on May 26, 1989, presented me withsuch an opportunity.

The Shrine and the Performance African music is essentially a form of

communication. It is a statement about the meaningof life and the relationships of people to oneanother. In most African, and African-derivedmusic, it is the responsibility of the performerto seek to restore broken social conditionsthrough bringing them to the conscious attentionof the community. In that manner they can nolonger be denied or hidden from view. They must beaddressed. Among the Yoruba of Nigeria the singerhas a quasi-sacred, protected role. So long as heis operating as a singer, he is a voice of thepeople and can speak the truth bluntly. Thattradition has been carried over into the modernworld through such singers as Chief LandrewajuAdepoju, Sunny Ade, and, most prominently, Fela.

In spite of traditional protection, Fela’s lifehas not been free of government-induced problems.His song “Zombie”, in which he compared soldierswith the living dead who follow orders blindlycaused a number of “unauthorized “soldiers toattack and burn his Kalakuta Republic in Lagos. Inthat attack they captured and killed his mother,throwing her from an upstairs window. Fela’smother was a force in her own right, leadingmovements for human rights and women’s liberationlong before any government would easily acceptsuch actions from a woman.

Fela won his lawsuit against the illegalmilitary attack. No government could admit to

being a party to such actions in Nigeria any morethan Henry II could admit to condoning theassassination of Beckett. However, after bidingits time for a few years, the government exactedits revenge. After Fela boarded a plane forpassage to the United States, agents arrested himfor currency violations. The consequent outcryfrom Nigerians and westerners led to his eventualrelease. The release came, however, only afterFela spent time in the notorious Kiri bikiniprison, a maximum security facility noted for itsbrutality. Fela left the prison virtuallypenniless, legal and other fees having eaten uphis wealth. The experience has only served tostrengthen Fela’s message. No longer is he awealthy performer singing about injustice. He isopenly seen as one who must earn his living day-to-day as other Nigerians do. He no longer singsabout injustice while skating above its waters. Hehas fallen into the water and survived. Near-martyrdom adds to his mystique. His message isdeepened.

Although it was fun to see Fela in one of hisfour or five Mercedes, It is easier to identifywith one who has lost his wealth by putting hismoney where his mouth is. Fela is now a leader ofthe people who is one of the people. Even those nolonger youthful tend to identify with his causeeven if they can no longer identify with hismeans. It is easy to sympathize with the Fela whohas suffered and can smile in adversity than withthe younger Fela of the past.

For the Nigerian audience the message of amusical performance is a primary criterion forevaluation. All else is subordinate to that

message, or, better, is part of it. Music, quitesimply, must tell a story. Each bit of aperformance is part of the overall message. If itis not, it is merely technique and, consequently,extraneous. Therefore, a key to comprehendingFela’s success lies in understanding the manner inwhich he has assembled, controlled, and displayedthe mosaic of his performance. Fela encapsulates ahistory of modem African-derived music asreflected through Nigerian experience.

Although he had early success as a high lifeand jazz performer, studying with Dizzy Gillespiein the United States, he soon became fascinatedwith James Brown and other soul artists. InEngland, Fela absorbed the influences of thesixties rock scene, recording with Ginger Bakerand socializing with members of the Rolling Stonesand Beatles. At the same time, he has never lostcontact with more traditional Yoruba music and itsintricate cross-rhythms permeate every segment ofhis performance.

Certainly, each performance has a message. AsFela himself insists he speaks the truth andsimply says what he sees. Therefore, when he callspoliticians “beasts”, he is not abusing them, forthey act like beasts and, therefore, must bebeasts. To tell the truth about people is not toabuse them. It is the duty of the performer to doso. In addition to his “protest” songs and theirmessages, however, his performances convey othermeanings. There is first and foremost the messageof continuity and unity within African derivedtraditions. Modem laments concerning corruptionderive directly from a musical tradition rich inexposing abuses of trust. Additionally, Fela

demonstrates that all black music, including thatperformed by whites, is part of the same cloth. Itis all interconnected. Therefore, by this logic,his performances must be lengthy—typically an hourper “song”—in order to convey his meaningsappropriately. Additionally, each pan of the wholework, really a suite in its structure, must bepresented in an appropriate fashion and sequence.Each segment evolves into the next. Each is atransformation of the preceding and is transformedinto its successor through a series of brilliantmediations. It is only through careful attentionof the backstage area that one can obviouslyobserve what otherwise would be virtuallyunnoticeable; namely, the reconciliation andmediation of oppositions in Fela’s overallperformance. The typical audience member is notprivileged to see a smiling Fela, for example,turn and snarl at his chorus of female singers inorder to inspire them to a performance peak in amanner reminiscent of a master drummer “callingout” the name of a drummer who is not performingup to his abilities.

The cool, in-control, smiling trickster-likestage presence is in sharp contrast with hisbackstage demeanor. This discrepancy, however, isalso part of Yoruba as well as the jazz tradition.No status is ever permanent in Yoruba society.Consequently, it is permeated with uncertainty.Status must be displayed or else it is lost. One,therefore, must always prove oneself. Entertainerscapitalize on that idea. They prod members of theaudience to get them to respond with proof oftheir status. Fela, for example, transactscontracts with his audience. Quite openly, he asks

for more applause or teases them by asking if theyhave requests and is assured when they recite oneafter another of his songs.

In Lawuyi’s analysis (989) this behavior isrelated to the market mentality of Yoruba society.Social relations are a special form of languageand advertise the members of Yoruba society to oneanother. Just as Yoruba society is filled withconflict, so also is music. However, just ascultural devices must keep this conflict in checklest it rend society apart so must the musicitself be kept in check or “harmonized”. Fela isnot only an example of Yoruba culture and society,he also clearly understands it and seeks toprovide a model for its harmonization andamelioration. Thus, his musical performance isfilled with mediated contrasts and ever-changingbut related musical textures. The variations worktogether to provide a harmonious whole. Each partboth stands alone and yet takes on full meaningonly within the context of the entire performance.

In a sense Fela has added to Bateson’s andGoffman’s concept of frames, turning frames intoshifting things, ones that almost perpetuallytransform themselves into one another. This house-of-mirror Image of shifting frames is in keepingwith the predominant perspective on Africanreligious and philosophical thought that sees itas positing an ever-changing unstable realityunder the illusory permanent reality of every-daycommon sense. This skepticism of the presentedreality and subsequent search for underlyingstructures mark Fela’s work. Nothing, therefore,is what it appears to be. This kaleidoscopic

aspect of Fela’s performance is best reflectedthrough a description of one of his performances.

After conducting his offerings to the orishasat their altars in The Shrine, Fela, the self-proclaimed High Priest, mounts the stage dressedin a gold-lame skin tight suit. His shin is opento the waist. In the course of the evening he mayor may not shed it, depending on his mood and thecrowd’s response. He is barefoot. Around his neckis a gold chain with a medallion sacred to one ofhis orishas. To his left and right, off stage ingo-go cages, are two young girls clad in what usedto be called “microminis”. These girls dance inthe go-go cages. After each performance, they arereplaced by other girls, so that the sense ofconstant movement is found even in the continuityof personnel. Behind Fela on the stage is an arrayof musicians. African percussionists, trombonists,saxophonists, trumpet players, supplemented fromtime to time by a chorus of young girls singing ina high-pitched minor mode.

Each performance also makes room for soloistswho are not part of the band but who emerge fromthe audience and go front-stage to play straight-ahead or avant-garde jazz. These soloists are inaddition to those who are part of the band and whoget to emerge from the down-stage background toplay true jazz solos. Between Fela and hisbackground musicians are two who are at mid-stage,a guitarist and an electric bassist. They form azone of calm, self-containment between Fela’supstage frenzy and the abandon and showmanship ofthe downstage musicians. Soloists who pay in ajazz style leave their area and join these twomusicians. Fela himself moves back toward or even

into their zone for his tenor saxophone orsynthesizer solos. His vocals are all doneupstage. Significantly, his dancing moves freelyand comfortably through each zone.

Fela begin his performance with a commentary onlife in Nigeria. He may take ten or fifteenminutes to discuss current issues such as theterrible 994 per cent inflation that hit Nigerialast year, the evils of the Structural AdjustmentProgram, the elitism of the HHC and what it hasdone to his people. This conversation with theaudience is carried on in pidgin. Now and then abit of Yoruba gets tossed in but if so it tends tobe Yoruba that is part of most people’svocabulary. Fela does not use Standard English inperformance because he wishes to be understood byhis audience. He is, in fact, quite capable ofbeing articulate in the Queen’s English, as hisnumerous interviews demonstrate. However, hisintention is to draw his audience to himself, fora leader must also be one of the people who knowstheir needs and can express them. Thus, part ofhis task is to be a man-in-the middle, moving fromworld.

Once his bantering with the audience iscomplete, Fela begins his musical performance.Generally, he starts with a rhythmic figure. Oftenthat figure is a repeated Yoruba phrase, chantedin a call and response pattern between himself andthe band. This chanting is accompanied by dancing.The cross-rhythms set up by this procedure arehypnotic and recall the in-person work of JamesBrown and other soul performers of the sixties.Once he establishes the ground beat, Fela beginsto sing across the beat.

His topic is one form or another of socialinjustice. Usually, he testifies from his ownabundant experiences, his imprisonment, his lossof money through government means, the burning ofthe Kalakuta Republic, attempt to silence him,amid other examples of harassment. Particularlypoignant is his recounting of the murder of hismother. “She was my mother, my only mother,” hewails. For once the mask of the trickster isdropped and every heart in the audience goes outto him. Quickly, however, he leaves the phrase andbegins to assault the oppressors with humorousscorn. They are not humans. They are beasts,animals who try to give what no one can give—humanrights—because God has already given us thoserights at birth. If we allow them to claim theyare giving us human rights, then we tacitly givethem the right to take them away.

After fifteen or twenty minutes of preachingand teaching Fela begins to play. Usually, he goesfirst to the synthesizer, which is almost alwaysset on its organ setting. Although he improvisesfreely, his improvisations on the organ have theflavor of a sixties blues band. One hears OtisRedding, Marvin Gaye, and, especially James Brown.The band develops the theme and the rhythmschange. A swirling effect is maintained, until ahistory of African and African American musicpasses. At that point, the chorus of young womenemerges and begins to sing in a minor mode. Felamay reemerge and join them in a call and responsepattern or they may simply sing with the band insuch fashion. One hears echoes of gospel groups,the Supremes and hundreds of backup groups overthe years. The rhythmic intensity of the

performance, however, is unique. Fela is a masterof pacing, and just when it seems that the musicmust climax because it has nowhere else to go, hesignals a soloist to emerge from the group.

This soloist may be a visitor, a member of theband, or himself. Whoever it is, the kaleidoscopeturns again. Suddenly, the performance is a jazzperformance. Perhaps, the soloist is a youngGerman saxophonist, playing avant-garde, post-Coltrane music. Maybe, it is a trumpet player fromthe band, bringing to mind a young Miles Davis. Itcould be Fela himself forcing tortured sounds fromhis horn, breaking hearts as he communicates thepain of living in a country he loves and watchingit suffer unnecessarily. Whoever solos passesthrough the mediating zone of the bass and guitar.The cool demeanor of the guitarist contrasts withhis torrid playing and with the frantic antics ofthe band who tend to toss their horns in themanner of the old Jimmy Lunceford band.

From that point Fela may begin to sing oncemore and the chorus also reenters. The theme istaken up, the volume increases, the dancers exerttheir last ounce of energy, the audience may singalong and the performance is brought to a closeabout one hour after it started. Perhaps, somemembers of the audience went to the dance floor.Very few actually do. Perhaps, a famous star cameon the stage—Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, andothers have. Perhaps, it is a Saturday and Felahas “put on his paint” and danced with nothingmore than briefs on. These variations add to thechanging nature of his performance and should bedocumented. However, his typical performancevaries only within the general frame I have

described. That that frame is itself meant tocommunicate his message of the unity of Africanderived culture (Fela May27, .1989).

Conclusion: Down Home in West Africa

–The first thing you have to do in playing the saxophone is to learn itinside out. The second thing is to forget all you learned and just play–

Charlie Parker

African music is communication. Certainly, onemust know the language in order to communicate.Knowledge of the language, however, isinsufficient in itself. It is merely the meanswhich enables a person to bare private thoughts,offer insights into life, comment on political andcommunal behavior, remind of forgotten values, andpresent a coherent view of life. This relationshipbetween technique and communication is crucial tounderstanding African music, whether that music betraditional, modem, or fusion of any kind. Statedsimply, that relationship is one between havingsufficient technique to communicate one’s messageand having a message worth communicating. Havingmore technique than necessary is superfluous;having less, is disastrous. It is a devastatinginsult to be known as one who has great techniquebut no message.

Fela is too attuned to his culture not toappreciate this value. As he told me in aninterview in The Shrine, his club in Lagos (May27, 1989):

The music is spiritual...I know the music is agift for me, for the purpose of the emancipation

of the black man. It’s a spiritual gift. It’s aspiritual message. I want to give people mind, theessence towards progress in life.Africans most especially, because we need it mostright now. The continent’s confused. The leadersare terrible. So I have to face African reality—the problems that relate to Africa at the moment.But problems that relate to Africa are alsointerwoven into the relationship we have withEuropean countries and capitalism.

So in a sense it becomes international. Fela’smessage thus becomes clear. It is a message ofpride for black people in Nigeria. Since Nigeriais part of the international scene, however, itbecomes necessary to incorporate all that is blackin music into his message. This is what Fela meanswhen he states that his music must be long becauseit is African. Moreover, in order to preach themessage of Black Pride, he must convey theimportance of mind; that is, intelligence. Toooften people portray the African and his/her artsas “emotional”, “rhythmic”, and so forth withoutalso including the important fact that they arealso symbolic, filled with content and messages,and what Fela calls mind. Thus, in his performanceFela includes what he terms African music withdifferent “minds”, or traditions. His point is todemonstrate that they all came from Africa andreflect different experiences of African people invarious environments.

Additionally, Fela is committed to resistingany government or economic system that inhibitsthe freedom of African peoples. Thus, he isopposed to corrupt African rulers and thecapitalist system that is part of their

corruption. His opposition would mean nothing inhis own mind if he did not live up to his beliefs:

I’m not out to have anyone remember me foranything. I don’t want to contradict my own thingin this world. That’s the most important thingbecause what I’m living is most important for me.So I don’t want to think of when I’m gone...1don’twant to leave anything for posterity... I don’tcare about posterity... I do things for the reasonof what is happening now. You see, I won’t beplaying this music if the country is not bad… Iplay my music straight to communicate. My businessis to play my music and get out. Simple. Iconcentrate on what is happening in this world… Ilive to create. Creation is not only my music.Creation is by philosophy, by thinking, myleadership. All is creation... I talk Truths(Interview May 27, 1989).

Fela’s music, then, is in conformity with hisbeliefs. Specifically, it cannot contradictitself. Therefore, the incorporation of allvarieties of African-derived music is notaccidental or haphazard. It serves to convey hismessage of Black Pride. His point is the unity ofblack culture. The manner in which he conveys hismessage displays the technical brilliance that isappreciated when it is suited to the message.Thus, his shifting frames reflect African religionand philosophy.

The manner in which one style of African-derived music melds into another defines theirrelationship through praxis, not mere discussion.The central role of jazz, a word Fela disdains, isdemonstrated in its being used as a mediating formand through its obvious spatial location in the

middle of the stage. People pass through the zoneto perform one or another type of music. Theversatility of different band members also conveysthe message of the ultimate unity of African-derived music. The ubiquity of the ground beatpermeates each form of music and each soloist cutsacross that beat in a manner reminiscent of amaster drummer. Fela himself moves through each ofthese zones, unifying them as he longs for theunity of African people. He unites also mind andsoul, intelligence and emotion in his performance,and the sacred area allocated to what is commonlytermed jazz music is one in which emotion iscarefully communicated and controlled throughintelligence (see Salamone 1988 for a discussionof the religious nature of jazz).

Finally, the continuous transformation ofmaterial is also evocative of spiritual matters.Fittingly, the self-proclaimed Black President andChief Priest leads his people to a better landthrough invoking spiritual images and enactingthem on the stage. His entire performance isritual of a high order. It is a Creole performancethat has the “that too” characteristic of all suchperformances (Thompson, personal communication).Fela feels that music is spiritual. His niece, ajazz vocalist, states that Fela is the onlymusician in Nigeria who believes that the music issacred (interview with Frances Kuboye, May 26,1989). Thus, there is no contradiction in Fela’sperformance. Each element is an integral part ofthe overriding message and enables the performanceto move toward an end he deems sacred, the trueemancipation of the Black man and the instillingof pride in his mind.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Milton Gabler was the owner, with his brother, of the Commodore RecordStore at Grand Central Station, before becoming an Artist and Repertoryman (producer) at Decca Records, where he recorded such stars as BingCrosby, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, and helped start Rock and Rollby guiding Bill Haley and the Comets to the blues tune, Rock Around theClock. He was the only producer brave enough to release Billie Holiday’s“Strange Fruit”, an anti-lynching protest song, recording it for his ownlabel, Commodore Records. He and Louis Armstrong were good friendsand Milt sponsored many jam sessions in New York City for many years. Heis in both the jazz and rock and roll Halls of Fame.

MILTON GABLER, INTERVIEW 7/11/85, 9:45 AM

Reminiscences on the music

Dr. Salamone: Could you tell us a little bit aboutyourself, and how you got into the music, and whatyou did? Milton Gabler: I generally ask my interviewers howthey found me, or who told them to come here.Salamone: Well, Mike Carney is the culprit. Italked to Mike who brought in Kaeff Ruzidan to ourclass and Mike and I got to be friendly and hefound about what I was doing.Gabler: AlrightSalamone: He said to come on over and see you.Gabler: I really never got into talking too muchabout jazz with Mike but he is of today’sgeneration, not that I wouldn’t talk to him, henever asked me, really. He used to tell me howinterested he was and what he was doing, but as

far as my origin, or what, I guess he knew what Ipreferred, due to the records I had made in mylifetime and all the people I knew, butessentially, I am Milton Gabler and I have beenlistening to popular music and jazz since about1926, so it is a good stretch, and I had a recordshop which I started in my father’s store, arecord department, in 1926 when I was atStuyvesant High School. And we got calls forrecords, we used to play a loudspeaker out over atransmitter in my father’s store over on 42ndStreet. At that time it was called the CommodoreRadio Corporation, and we sold plots for buildingradios and batteries and stuff like that. I said,“Pop we better get in some records, we are gettingcalls from people who hear the music and come intothe store and ask if we sold records”. So myfather said, “I don’t know anything about popularsong and records, I am a hardcore electricalradioman.” I was a young fourteen year-old thatwould say, “I know all about songs”. The radio wason all day I know every song. So he said, “Get theyellow pages and look up the record companies, geta salesman down here, you run the recorddepartment.” That was the beginning of it in 1926,and it just grew and grew, like the old book says,like Topsy, until the records pushed everythingelse out of the store, and we even had to changethe name of the place to the Commodore Music Shopbecause people couldn’t find us in the phone book,they didn’t realize they had to look up CommodoreRadio, and the phone company called and said, “Youbetter buy an extra listing, we got an awful lotof calls for where is the Commode Music Shop andthen we figured out it was your place. “So, that

is enough of that. In any case, it was a tinystore about nine feet wide and sixty feet long andthe first records I sold were the Columbia’s andHarmony’s and the Okehs and the Vocalions, andBrunswick’s, Brown and Perfect, and we couldn’tget the Victor line because automobile agencies inthe old days of 78RPM records in the 20’s, theygave exclusive territories, if the Victor dealerwas around the corner, you couldn’t get thefranchise, that was due to the popularity toCaruso and people like that, and so, anyway, acouple of years later Victor wasn’t so high andmighty, we were able to get the line, besides thedealer around the corner went out of fold, so wegot the line anyway, about the time Rudy Valleemade the Stine song, around 1930, it was more thana couple of years. Anyway, we had a lot ofcompetition, there was Landes on W 42nd and theGramophone shop on Madison Avenue and 43rd I thinkit was, or 44th, so I decided to specialize in hotrecords—they didn’t call it jazz or swing in thoseyears—because that is what I liked, what Ipreferred. You must realize that at the end ofWorld War I, I guess when the original DixielandJazz Band created the flurry when they came to NewYork and made Tiger Rag, Barnyard Blues, and DixieLand One Step, and all those early classicDixieland Numbers, it was just like the Beatleshitting the United States. Everybody was dancecrazy, and it went from there to all over theworld—they even toured Europe and England. Theywere a very sensational act: they were called anact in those years. From there it just spread.King Oliver’s Band had come up to Chicago a fewyears after them, and other New Orleans musicians

came up to Chicago, the saying goes in the olddays, you say it turned right and went to NewYork, everybody had to come to New York. I was ayoung lad and I used to dance to those kinds ofbands. When you went to dances there were, like,jazz bands until the sweet stuff came in, theywere either that or concert orchestras, like PaulWhiteman. But for dances or where a kid used to goto dance on the weekend or at a wedding, therewere small five piece bands. If you went to aChinese restaurant there it was very fancy; if Iwent to Yung’s Chinese Restaurant on Broadway, youwould have the Paul Tremaine Orchestra, which wasnumber one in 1929.They used to play New Year’sEve on the radio, New Year’s Eve before GuyLombardo took over. Also the bands played thehotels, the sweet bands, it wasn’t until the ’30swhen the swing bands came in. But in any case, therecord stock kept growing and growing at therecord store, and we were the only place you couldget what we call hot records, like Duke Ellington,Fletcher Henderson, Red Nichols and his FivePennies was a New Orleans type music, butnorthernized; they were white musicians. Thevarious groups that Red Nichols had, guys likeBenny Goodman and Jack Teagarden and Miff Moleplaying in those bands, and Arthur Shut, and latereven the Condon guys worked on some of the RedNichol sessions. He wasn’t the greatest trumpetplayer in the world because he tried to copy, thatwasn’t the reason, he couldn’t play like Bix orLouis—all the jazz trumpet players wanted to playlike Bix or Louis Armstrong in those years. So, itjust kept growing, Of course, when the sweet bandscame in all the hot musicians fell by the wayside

or they went commercial and did their work everynight for whoever they worked for, whether it beBen Bernie or George Olson or some of the musicalcomedy bands on Broadway, and even the movietheaters in those years before sound hadorchestras in the pit of the movie theater.See, the movie theaters developed movies thatthrough your life you may have found that theyused to have piano accompaniment for the films.Now when you see it, it’s like a special, I don’tmean the movies but when someone does the old-timepiano playing for the newsreels and that kind ofstuff you realize that they tried to set anatmosphere up for the silent movies when they wereup on the screen in the theater. Then, when thestuff got more pretentious they used to writeorchestration for what today would be asoundtrack, and play it live in the pit of thebetter houses like on Broadway or up in the Bronx.What’s the name of that movie house in the Bronx?Paradise Theater on the Concourse, and all the bigcities had musicians playing in the pits as wellas when there were musicals there were musiciansin the pit. And then when sound came in at the endof the ’20s, it used to be Warner Brothers who hadbig sixteen inch records that were synchronized tothe film, and then someone figured out that youcould put a sound track right on the film, and youwould synchronize it when you recorded it, youdidn’t have to worry about getting the turntableto match the film. This was all commercial workfor musicians, and the musicians who worked theleast were the jazz musicians, and I always loveplaying that kind of music, and that was my taskin the world, to get them work. They all used to

come in my store, even though my store was nearLexington Avenue and 42nd Street. Most musicianshung out on Broadway, at Charlie’s Tavern andPlunkets, and places like that. When they wanted agood record they would come all the way over toLexington Avenue and buy it from me. We werebuilding up our reputation and then the recordcompany would cut out the records that were good,that I call well anyway. You couldn’t even getgood Louis’s and Dukes because they would run outof stock, or there wouldn’t be enough orders inthe metropolitan area for them to keep a goodstock. The first thing you would know the companywould discontinue them. Today you have that samething happen when you didn’t get an LP on time,and when you went back six months later the dealerwouldn’t have it. He went to order it but hecouldn’t get it anymore, the computers in thosedays would do the same thing. If they didn’t sellenough they would cut them out. Being such anenterprising man of about twenty years old, thatbothered me because I would get calls fromeverybody who would finally get their way to theCommodore and try to buy these cut out records. Iused to go to the Salvation Army and used recorddealers who didn’t have stores in those days; theyhad them in lofts. They would buy old records whendealers went out of business. We used to have arecord return privilege in those years; it maymean nothing to people today, but to get you tostock the merchandise, the record companies wouldallow you to send back five per cent of your totalsales in records that became obsolete. In otherwords, my father used to say he hated the recordbusiness that I got him into because they were

like vegetables, like tomatoes and lettuce. Whenthey got old you had to throw them away. While inhis hardware business, if he sold a hammer or ascrewdriver or a nail (it was always later anail), but records were like vegetables becausethey got rotten and died. Except to me, I knew thegood ones, the ones with the good musicians onthem were the ones who had songs by greatcomposers or good singers that were stylists. Youeventually would get someone coming in to ask forthat artist or song and it would move out. Myfather said that it was no good for some of thatstuff to stay there a year before you sell it, hewas a businessman, and he was right. But I wantedto keep every record in the world and we soonbecame famous for having the best stock of recordsin the world. We shipped records all over theworld and people came from every state to theCommodore. Fortunately, we were near Grand CentralStation—most people who came into New York nearGrand Central could find the Commodore music shopright across from the Commodore Hotel. So, myrecord stock grew, and became very concentratedabout 1932 or 1933.I met Eddy Condon, and I alwaysliked his records they made with the ChicagoRhythm Kings under his own name McKenzie CondonChicago. They seemed to have a beat and drive tothem, they was more a band to them that made themexciting to me. I was very happy to meet him, andwe hit it off right away, and he became a star. Hestarted telling me stories of how the musiciansgot together at the ale club. In those years thestarving musicians always found a place to go fora drink and have a sponsor. They also would becarrying their horns and maybe they got the drinks

because they got the horns out and started to jam.He would say, last night we had a great one at theale club, which was around Vanderbilt Avenue. Iwent over there with Walla Hopson, an amateurtrombonist, to the ale club. He wrote for theHenry Lewis Publications across the street in theChrysler Building. They called over a couple ofmusicians, and we had a hell of a session. He kepttelling me these things all the time and I wouldhear about Whitpee’s Restaurant, I think that itwas on west 40th Avenue, and some hotel whereAdrian Rollini played at night. All we had to dowas tell the writers when they came in the store.People would come in also to see who was playingwhere, at what club, and what was going on in NewYork. It didn’t take long to notify all the peoplewho liked jazz music that we were going to have ajam session. I went over to Decca Records, JackCap, and I said, “Can I borrow your studio onSunday, I’ll rent the chairs?”We wanted topublicize jazz music, we called it swing music toget the writers to write like it was somethingnew, but it was still the same old jazz. We said,but it swings; you know, guys would make recordsthat seemed like good hot records, but they justdidn’t have the drive. When it all falls in and itgets together, we used to say that it swings. Sowe called it swing music. The papers all wrote itup, and the magazines, and the first thing youknow the clubs on 52nd Street were putting in moremusicians. There were a few spots there east of6th Avenue, between 5th and 6th, Art Tatum wasplaying over there and Joe Sullivan and TheSpirits of Rhythm. When the guys got finishedplaying at the NBC Studios they wanted to relax

somewhere and have a drink. They would go intothese joints and some would bring their horns andthe first thing you know the trio or whoever wasworking there would be augmented by guys sittingand playing. People found out about it and writerslike Winchell would write it up that there was agreat session last night. The public started to goto all these places on 52nd Street and that wasthe start of jazz in a more commercial way. Thenjazz concerts to publicize the music. That allpopularized the music.Salamone: This was all in the 1930s?Gabler: This was the middle of the 30s, from 35right up through 1940.All the critics loved jazzrecords and would give them good write-ups. Itbuilt up the jazz collecting business. Somebodygot the idea, I think it was Ralph Burton, VickBurton the drummer’s brother, to do a jazzsegment. It was a great show that started with theCommodore.This brings us up to the ’30s.I made the firstCommodore in 1938, the day after Benny Goodman’sswing concert.Salamone: Did you know Benny personally?Gabler: Oh sure, well Benny used to come in thestore. I don’t have his book, but he wrote a bookcalled The Kingdom of Swing. They tell me that inthe book he states that he was intrigued by thefact that I had the names on the cards so peopleknew who were on the records. In his book he wrotethat the Commodore Music Shop made him realize theimportance of key men in the band.I was always interested in the studio, and learnedby watching and listening. In 1938 when I had tomake my own records, I knew how it was done. We

were a very popular record dealer. We didn’t sellthe most records, but we knew when a record wouldbreak, and so on.Everyone learns from the people who come beforethem, even singers, and definitely any performers.You base your style on what you like, not onlywhat’s inside you but also by what you heard inyour formative years growing up. After a while youcan put it all together, but you have to startsomewhere.Salamone: Absolutely. Let me ask you one questionbefore we end for today. I have a million, butthere are only about five minutes left on thetape.Gabler: Well, there was one question you asked mebefore. You asked about how the musicians feltabout the music.Salamone: Yeah.Gabler: Louis was asked once about how he feltplaying. He looked at the man who asked him thequestion and said, “I don’t know, I can’t tell youhow I feel, but if you want to know how I feelabout the music ask the guy behind me, Milt. Heknows more about my music than I know myself.” Ibelieve that when a man plays he is like a poet.There is so much beauty in it; it is beautiful tome. I don’t know how they do it and I don’t knowhow they even think about it. You can create itand do it, or you can use composing. Music canprogress beyond the point of beauty and get tomathematics and get very complicated with sounds.Salamone: He told the story about the other personwho wanted to interview him. He said that you werefairly close to all of them.

Milton: Well, I didn’t go to his home…I shouldhave, but it is one of the things I regret nothaving done because he lived near Corona when hewas in New York. I just never had the time to go,or I felt like I was imposing on him. I was sowrong, because after he died I went through histapes hoping that I would find some broadcastingor something you might be able to use. But when hebecame ill, he decided to copy all of his recordsand interviews he might have. He had mementos ofhis favorite records on his old machine, and itwas a quarter-track machine. He had two stereoswith tracks going in each direction, when you gotto the reel you would turn it over like acassette. Then you will fill the other track. Itcould have recorded up to 7 ½ inches per second,but he wanted to get more on it. The reason why hedubbed the records, after he had the heart attack,he wanted to have longer programs so he ran it ata slower speed. Instead of having some engineercome up and hook up his amplifiers directly to thetape machine, he played it through the speakers inthe room and picked them up on a microphone. Itruins the quality, and worse than that, peoplefrom the neighborhood kept dropping in to visithim because he was stuck up in the house. But hewas walking around as usual. But you say sorrythat I didn’t go, but then I realize it was likethe dressing room. Anybody in the world could cometo Louie’s house and spend a dollar or two. WhenLouie talks you would listen to him, with his jivetalks. Especially when he’s with an old buddy,they would be off the microphone, and the mike wasin front of the speakers about six feet away fromthe wall having a conversation, and the record was

playing. So when you hear the stuff he taped, heoften gets interrupted by a conversation, and youcan’t hear what they are talking about and youcan’t hear the demo records. He had all kinds ofrecords. He used these records for long playingtunes. He would put the tapes on, sit in his chairand fall asleep. Someone would come in and say,“Hi, pops.” He would tell funny stories and youwould be able to hear the punch lines. He is aterrific guy.Gabler: It is hard, because they are all like mychildren, and they do different things and playdifferent instruments, and you can like one aswell as you like the other depending on theoccasion or the mood you’re in or the type ofmusic you want to hear. My favorite musician ofall times would be Louie Armstrong. He might nothave been the greatest as far as knowledge ofmusic, but for his feelings of music, and for whathe created for everyone else to learn from, pickup on, and be inspired by he is probablyeveryone’s number one musician. But in a piece Iwrote, I was talking about clarinetists, my threefavorite clarinetists would Benny Goodman, EdmundHall, and Pewee Russell. Of the three, my numberone would be Pewee Russell because he was the mostpoetic when he played, he was the most excited,because you would never know which direction thesolo was going to go in, and when he would getstuck in a phrase he would get out of it. Hedidn’t care about pure tone; he wanted to make hisown statement. If he wanted to have flute tone, hewould do it. If he wanted to make it squeak, hewould do it. The important thing was the note hewas playing: there was a certain kind of sound he

wanted to produce. Pewee was way ahead of histime. Benny Goodman should have been my obviouschoice because we started in this businesstogether. He was such a marvelous musician, andhad such a great sound and also a lot of greatfeelings. Pewee was amazing. Pewee was somethingelse. A lot of people don’t like him because theydon’t like his sound. They are just not picking upon what the man was doing. Now, you asked aboutfavorite musicians, to me what happens when youget more knowledge is that my favorite musiciansbecame the arranger/composer ones. Because theydid the charts and set the backgrounds foreverybody else to look good. They had to have theknowledge of the entire orchestra, like Beethovenor Wagner. I love the way Bessie Smith sang, andBilly Holiday, I love the way Peggy Lee sang. Tothis day, I love what she does and her feeling forthe music, but she in her early days was like acopy of Billy Holiday, you hear a lot of Billy’sphrasing in her. Carmen McCrae is a great singer,Jerry Southern, and I like the show businesssingers like Roberta Sherwood, and she did so manyold songs. She was always amazed that I knew asmany as she knew. She’s a great old girl, and it’shard to go back, I did so many of them.Salamone: when you were doing a lot of the popularDecca were you still doing any of the Commodores?Gabler: Oh yes, I did Commodore up until the timeat the end of the forties, the latest one I didwas about 50 or 51.We were losing so much moneywith that factory the family built that it wasimpossible to keep doing records. I was ending uppaying for the record tapes, royalties on thesongs, just to keep the creditors from moving in.

So I laid down the law and said, stop recordingCommodores until the factory pays for itself. Bythe time it paid for itself, it stopped makingrecords, and was, like, making biscuits without amanufacturer. It was a losing proposition, mybrother Danny and my brother Barney and Jackstruggled. But I couldn’t keep bailing them out.Salamone: Did you go back to Commodore after that?Gabler: After I lost my job, I started a labelagain. It’s just re-issuing the old stuff in therebecause the bootleggers were stealing them. Theywere being bootlegged in California, Sweden, andCanada. They’re like vultures, the bootleggersare, and they think the body is dead, or thecompany is out of business, they move in and theydub your records and make masters and sell them,jazz re-issues sell so poorly. You have to get acertain amount of money back, because you need acertain amount of money to make covers withspecial artwork. You have to package and ship. Ifyou can’t sell a couple thousand records then itdoesn’t pay to re-issue a record. When abootlegger puts it out and pays no one, he doesn’tpay the publishers, he sells his couple ofthousand and then when you go to put it outlegitimately they’ve taken the cream off the topand you can’t sell anything.Salamone: How do you catch a bootlegger? Do theyjust kind of hit and run?Gabler: They don’t hit and run, some of them takeit right off of companies. I’ve had big companiesknow that world transcriptions made in 1944 wasthe greatest, a time capsule of all jazz, whichwas made for radio broadcast. Circle records,what’s his name, George Buckley, bought the

transcriptions, and he thought that he had seenthem before, but I had DECCA write them, becauseDECCA owned most masters. I made them when Iworked for them. We pay the musicians for playingthe records. Ten per cent came out on Decca.Decca, as I say, didn’t like jazz. Most of thosetunes, I used the word Commodore, because I didthe same tunes I did for Commodore that I did forWorld, plus a few extras. They would get airtimeon all transcriptions, but you could never getCommodore record to play it on the radio. SoGeorge Buck is now putting them out, and he didn’tpay the musicians and the FCA wouldn’t sue himbecause it was so little. When they sue him fordamages they say. Well, you hadn’t put it out forthirty years or forty, and how much did they findout, that maybe he sold three or four of the LPs.So how much could the damage be? The companiesdon’t imagine that RCA or Columbia will chasethem. They’re getting away with it, some aren’t aslegitimate as others, and the union does nothingabout it. I’m very upset with the AmericanFederation of Musicians. They should make sure totake care of the rights of musicians.They can stop them from doing that by blacklistingthem, and we don’t do it, it’s a very badsituation. Look at how many Goodman, Ellington, orWoody Herman records, the broadcasts, air checkshave been bootlegged.Salamone: So very little is being done? So itdoesn’t pay for the small company to go afterthem?Gabler: Yes. To top it all off George Buck sendsme a card, tells me he’s got a guilty conscience.

Salamone: What happened to the composers who weresupposed to be getting the royalties?Gabler: That I don’t know. If the bootleggers weresmart they would control the publishers. Thepublishers should be chasing them. The musiciansshould get organized enough to sue. The guy whoput out Hindsight Records used to have his ownstudio, hell of a nice guy. He decided to put outtranscriptions of all the old bands. He called meup, I said don’t put out any of mine. For years hewas with Decca, he signed cuts. I told him to putout the other years. So he does a great job fortranscriptions. He went to the widows and he madea contract with them for a flat deal. He wouldgive the widow $500.He says, I give them $500 or$1000, if the leader doesn’t sue then I’m notgoing to worry about the sideman or the union.Salamone: Well at least he’s making an effort.What is the arrangement, thousands of recordsrecorded over a year? How does that work?Gabler: Find out who the publishers are, and thenthey have some company called the Harry Platsagency. They have contracts with most of them. Hewill license the song for a mechanical licensethey call it. It costs over fifty-cents just forthe royalties to the song. In addition, if youwant to do it legitimately, you’re putting out anair check, go to the union, they will figure itall out. You have to pay the arrangers for copies.Today’s scale, not the forties scale, it may be$100 for every member. Monetarily it’s just notpossible. It’s priced so out of sight.Salamone: Let’s say you’re making a recordingtoday, is it the same?Gabler: It’s the same.

Salamone: What do the musicians do, do you payeach time you play, or is there a flat settlement,what do you do? Do you get paid for playing a songlive?Gabler: The club has an annual license fee. I canplay the whole catalog, and that goes into thepot. A club like Condon’s makes a couple thousanddollars per year.Salamone: And this goes to the publishers and thewriters?Gabler: It goes to the publishers and the writers.It could be a soloist or a band. Carnegie Hall’slicense fees for the year are maybe very high. Ata place like that it may be done by the program,you know? Most the stuff they play is veryclassical.Salamone: And in the radio stations?Gabler: That’s different. It depends on how manytickets are sold. Radio stations have annuallicenses. They’re all exactly the same. Thecomputer and the amount of people around weresending in the lists and everything. We speed upall the income. So that the system is approved bythe government. The system is good at monitoringit. Backed by a formula, that worked out and wasapproved by Washington. Those songs that appearedon those monitors get so many performancesaccredited. My station in Buffalo was monitoredand you would collect it just as if it was on fiveother stations. They figured it will average out.I’ll go to ASCAP meetings and tell them that Ihave been here for five years and never collectedanything. And I know my songs were playing in theconcert down at Atlanta, Georgia because I wasthere, but it was not monitored that night. But

what they would do in those cases, if you aremember for a certain period of time, you would goin a different class and you would benefit fromthat. Because it all goes into the fund. See, onesmart thing they did when they formed ASCAP, andit really started to get income, let say up aboutinto the 40s the class writers, AAA writers, likeBerlin, they got paid for their actualperformances that will clean ASCAP was a limit seton how much they could get a year, and the rest ofthe income was very little. They figured out thatI should get half a million dollars a year for mycatalog, and really if you computed it, it wouldbe worth seven million. It is hard to understandwhen you are just starting out. You had to bevoted in by other members. After they had the biglawsuit, about it being a monopoly, they have toaccept anybody, and of course you will have theratings. The government made it to be tabulated.Suppose you do have a big hit, by Elvis Presley,when it is on the chart you will collect from allthe performances. You may never have a bigger yearfor the rest of your life, and in the old daysthey would accept you in ASCAP. My song was numberone and it sold a million and a quarter records in’78 and they voted me into ASCAP. I think thatfirst year for ASCAP performances they gave me theminimum. But when you look through the years, bygetting in there, it comes back to you. Now thegovernment changed it about ten years ago. Thefirst year you get in, you really collect on yourperformance. It is a performance society; it isnot for the record sales.Salamone: I always wonder how does it work. Let meask you just one or two questions.

We are getting tired by now. You saw a lot ofchanges in the business over the years, the comingof the LP records and so on. How is the businessdifferent today from when you decided to get intoreissues because you wanted to hear the music youwanted to hear?Gabler: The business has more problems today thanit ever had. First of all, the techniques ofrecordings have improved so. With better tape,equipment, and amplifiers, you do not have to makemetal masters anymore. You can put it on tape andmake it multi-tracks, and twenty-four tracks, andso on. If something is wrong you can record overthat and correct the notes. We had to go back tothe top. Now they say you have direct to discrecording. That was the way we had to record inthe old days. We did it until it was right, andyou had to balance it perfectly. Now everybody isisolated and you remix the track by making itfaster. When we are talking about old records, ithas to come down to about two tracks. So even ifyou have twenty-four, you would have to mix themdown to two when you are making your master tape.But the sad thing about the business today is thatthere is almost no reissuing, unless you have arare record.People can borrow or get an LP from a friend andput it on a cassette. In the old days we did nothave the tools. So if you can borrow an LP from afriend you can copy a record which is reallyillegal. You would have to pay the writers. I amlosing a lot of money because people are notbuying their own tapes. It is becoming veryserious thing because people are trying to make a

living writing. You read the papers every day andsee who made tapes and so on.

MILTON GABLER, INTERVIEW 7/11/86

Dr. Salamone: Why didn’t Eddie Condon stick withthe electric guitar? Milton Gabler: He actually did stick with theelectric guitar.Salamone: But he was more famous as a trombonist. Gabler: Yes, he was. Salamone: Okay, I have another question for youthat is clearer than the other ones I have startedout with. When you were talking about BillieHoliday, said, that “in a sense you were tooethical.”Gabler: I was too ethical…Salamone: Yeah, you were saying that… when youwere talking about the Decca and that you workedfor Decca and of course the Commodores, you didmention that you were very careful…Gabler: Oh, I had a contract with Decca Recordsthat I could continue to be President of, andmake, Commodores recordings. It was up to me todecide if I saw an act that I thought would begood for Decca Records and Commodores, I wouldmake the decision, which label to put the artiston without affecting my job at Decker which Iwanted to keep. In a sense where I had mentionedabout Billie Holiday, I had been recording her onCommodores and I walked into a club and heard hersong “Lover Man”, which I knew was going to be anatural pop hit, and I made it to Commodore then

the boss would say why the hell you didn’t make itfor Decca. That would cause conflict in my work. Salamone: It is amazing that you were able to dothis for so long.Gabler: I did that all through my career. Evenwhen I stopped with Commodore, I still had to makedecisions like that. It is the same as … it wasonly a question of personal feelings when I hadthe jazz concert on 52nd Street. Dizzy used tocome to Ryan’s with his horn, and bop had notreally developed yet. They were playing with theidea of it, or trying to work it out. I knewDizzy, but I didn’t know Charlie Parker eventhough I had recorded with him. Ryan’s was a smallclub, it only seated about one hundred-fortypeople, and it was packed. Because of the successof the Sunday afternoon jams they started them inother clubs across the street, and Monty Kaystarted running concerts directly across thestreet from Ryan’s and he was one of my customers.But they knew that the Eddie Condon guys, Zootie,and those people, wouldn’t leave me. So theystarted to use the more modern musicians acrossthe street; they were attracting a differentaudience, that’s all it was. I could have turnedaround the following week and said “Hey, lookdon’t play for these kids, come and play forRyan’s… and put them into Ryan’s”, but there wasenough action for everybody. So they went theirway, the same thing with the Harry Lynn sections.Although Lynn used to mix it up more than Montieand Pete did. But Lynn ran his downtown in thevillage, and Joe Marcelli was running his on thenext block. It was plenty of work for everybody,we had really started something, and the scales

weren’t high. It kept everybody going, and itstarted George Winoff, and also started Condon. Ididn’t go into having the bop guys at my sessionsbecause I was more mainstream. There was a blackband and a white band that was from the beginningwith the Commodore labeling half-and-half. Peoplealways said I did great Dixieland, work that’swhat Commodore is, but they forget that I did allthis bop work with Bennie Carter and Hayward withHayward Records. I did Joanna Jones and Roy Allen;people forget that I did all these musicians alongwith Peewee Russell and Bobbie Hackett, that’s whyit was such a rounded-out label. When I went toDecca I had to take Condon and Billy Holiday withme, if Commodore was with them exclusively I wouldhave to leave or get fired, or something.Salamone: Did you record any of those jazzconcerts?Gabler: No, it’s not against regulations, but ifyou file a contract and you pay for three records,and additional for what I paid for the last works,I couldn’t afford it with such a small audience. Ididn’t want to delegate walking in and Blackcalled me and… That’s why I say that it was tooethical, guys like Grant recorded his concert, andI am sure that they didn’t file contract with theunion until later. Then I had to pay union scales,the three sessions, in order to do a concert Imight as well take them into the studio and made atriple scale and make it with good sound, becauseRyan’s was only about ten feet wide, with a lowceiling, and with the noise in the room andeverything I had the chairs right in front of thebandstands, the sound to me wouldn’t be goodenough, and I could get perfect sound, like what I

got on the Commodores and ballets with a goodpiano and everything, they had a little broken-down up right there in Ryan’s, I don’t even thinkthat they tuned it but I am sorry that I didn’texperiment or record some of it. But it wasagainst union regulations without filing a regularcontract. Salamone: How were recordings in those days, nowthat we have mentioned it? What did people getpaid and what were the conditions like, how longdid it take to do something?Gabler: Regulation recording sessions were a threehours call booking. You were allowed to do fourtunes. If you did four tunes, twelve-inch, youwould get pay for over- time. This union scale formost of that period was forty-one twenty-five. So,musicians pick-up the three hours work. I alwayspaid them over scale anyway. Then I would go up tothe union and pay their tax because they alwayswanted the money at the end of the session. I didthe same for the sessions in Ryan’s. The scale wasso low, if you pay a guy ten dollars he wasn’tgoing to get up early and go to union and paythirty cents. So we use to file the contracts forthe Ryan’s session every week; when I would fileit, I would pay them the two dollars that was duefrom the musicians. We weren’t taxed but themusicians were.Salamone: Did the musicians get any royalties inthose days? Gabler: No, everything was flat scale but they gota reputation that they got royalties. We paid themroyalties at Decca. You got to realize that a lotof those records that I made only sold, like,seven hundred copies, eleven hundred copies, and

all that kind of stuff. I didn’t lose any money,it was great advertising for the Commodores, butit would take a year or so to get your money outof a day. But when the war came along and jazzrecords were starting to sell better, it becameprofitable. I never had a Cadillac, in fact webuilt the factories to press the records in,because during the war the big companies threw allof the small labels out, they needed theproductions for their own labels. So, my brotherbuilt a factory in Yonkers that broke us, becauseeventually the factory went out of business. Soonas the war was ended the big companies startedpressing for everybody again, and we had to closeup. Salamone: I was going to ask when did you get yourown studio. Gabler: We didn’t have our own studio, we had ourown pressing plant. Salamone: Did you always use other people’sstudios?Gabler: Yeah, always. You could book studio timebut you couldn’t get pressings. In fact when I wasup at Decca and the war came along, they let a lotof artists go. We would press a record orsomething, and when we were finished we would goto the next record because you didn’t have enoughtime. So it was hard to get records, blue pressedrecords for Atlantic. Our Commodores kept BlueNote going until the war was ended. On top of thatwhen Alfred [Alfred Lions, of Blue Note Records]started to do more of the black blues kind ofmusic, and he did the “boogie woogie”. I didn’t dothose artists because he was a dear friend Ididn’t want him to have competition. So, as we

sold his records in the store; they only had somuch money to record with I was glad when therewas a Blue Note or a Key Note because we couldsell more jazz music in our store. We sold everylabel. When the money came back from sessions Iinvested in more Commodores sessions, and I didn’tduplicate the artist on other labels. Salamone: During the war, Decca began selling agreat deal because there was more money or thefact that the war was going on. Were a lot of theGIs buying records?Gabler: No, it was just that the generalpopulation… the GIs didn’t have records when theywere overseas. You had V Disks, but they are tooheavy to carry. Some of them did, but how manycould you carry. What were you going to play iton? You had to have a turntable, amplifier, andother things. So they heard their records at thePX, mostly. But the sales came from people workingin the factories and war plants. They used moneyto buy gin and records. At parties, becauseeveryone was going away.Salamone: Is there less flowering of jazz popularmusic?Gabler: Well they were away out because I use tosell Commodores for jukeboxes. They would takesome of the instrumental stuff. But they didn’tcare that a Commodore record was a dollar,although the jukebox guys got them at a dearerprice. But they could have gotten other recordsthat were fifteen cents less than a Commodorerecord. But they couldn’t get enough records forthe jukebox coin machines. So they put jazzrecords on, also. Besides, the major companieswere making jazz or Hampton records, the dance

band records and other bands as well. They wereplenty of records.Salamone: What led to an end of jazz popularmusic?Gabler: I don’t get that question.Salamone: Not the end of jazz, but the end of jazzbeing a popular music. It was on the radio a lotin those days.Gabler: No, there is more jazz music on now. Salamone: So it is like a myth that this was aperiod of the swing bands?Gabler: Swing bands were popular music. They weredance music, and started to feature greatvocalists. There have been band vocalists for along time. They went on their own, what destroyedthe bands was the fact that they all had to go inthe service. They all were available to bedrafted, and some of the bands went in. They gotthemselves a good deal and lot of the guys wentalong with them and a lot of other people wentalong with them too. They had an Air Force Bandand other things like that. They were a lot ofgreat bandleaders in the service. They had prettybig orchestras, they needed marching bands, theyplayed for parades, and they had fifteen guys toplay the band. It was safer playing in a band thancarrying a gun. So all the good musicians wouldtry and get into these army, air force, coastguard, and navy bands. I recorded Mel Powell whenhe was on leave before he shipped out. I use torecord guys who were in the navy band.Salamone: That pretty much broke up the bands. Gabler: Of course, there were new bands to replacethem, but they did not have the names andrecording power to do so. The singers were broken-

up and the audience that they had, when they didthe vocals with the band. So when they were out ofsoloists, we at the record company could recordthem and keep our business going. Then rock androll came in a little later. But I would say thatthey got used to the vocal records with the vocalbackgrounds, and it was after the war in the 50swhen I did Bill Haley. Then you would have all ofthe R&B artists and things like that. But the oneswho would buy the records were young people. Theykept buy the singers that they liked and when thewar ended rock and roll came in. The kids were notused to listening to things like that.Salamone: You said something interesting before,that there is more real jazz being played on theradio now than there was back in the days.Gabler: Yeah, on FM stations you don’t have thattight format out of the top 40. Jazz was always asmall part of the business, you said popularmusic. Popular means just what the definition ofthe word is. Most of the public prefers it, whichmakes it popular. It only can become popular if itis a hit. It is a hit piece of music or song.Generally, it is the song, the words and the musicthat makes it popular. Kids can remember it, andthey going around singing it all the time. It canbe nonsense, or a beautiful song. But I always saythat for everyone that is popular you can asksomebody, what is on the other side? There arealways two sides to a record. Mostly one side willbecome popular. So why doesn’t anyone asked forthe one on the back? It is probably the samearrangement and singers. But it is the tunes andlyrics on one side that is popular.

Salamone: It probably wasn’t jazz that some of thebig bands were doing.Gabler: Well, jazz you have to have a broaddefinition, because in the beginning, like in the30s, the people that bought certain serious musiceven called some pop records jazz. It was notclassical, it was jazz. Now we have differentvariations (popular and rock) of jazz. But youwill have to remember that in the early years whatbecame jazz was the dance music. Then peoplestarted to appreciate the soloists in the danceband. Taking solos, and from that you have themusicians who would prefer them to go their ownway and improvise a good solo and get with a smallgroup to do more of that. They would get kicks outof that. They didn’t care about having a steadyjob with some of those big guys. They would workin nightclubs and joints because they could playthe way they wanted.Salamone: You mentioned before that for a longtime jazz was called hot music. Was that the wayyou sold it in the record store?Gabler: Yeah. Salamone: When did they start calling it jazz,rather than hot records?Gabler: It was either a straight pop, or a sweetband recording or hot. A hot record is notnecessary a swing. Everything has to be right ifit is going to be a swing. Salamone: What do you mean by swing, becauseeveryone has their own interpretation of it?Gabler: If I had to define what swing is Iwouldn’t be able to do so. Salamone: Who are some of the people who you feelswings?

Gabler: Some musicians have their nights when theydo not swing. It all has to come together, gel,and everybody feeling it the same way with a beatthat moves ahead that isn’t laid back. I have adefinition that I wrote in a program note that Ihad written in a concert, February 1942. I didsome notes for Tom Hall Jazz Concert, and I wentwith a friend of mines and this is what I wrotefor the notes: Did I hear you say that jazz was onthe way out? (This is 1942, jazz has always beenon the way out). Brother if you did, you know notwhat you are talking about. Now how could it be onthe way out, over the hill, when you and I knowthat it never really climbed that hill? Don’t tellme about big bands ’cause they just don’t playjazz, and small bands never got the chance to. Thepublic won’t listen to them; people would not openup their ears. That’s the trouble. Let me tell youabout a friend of mine, he said ‘Gabe let’s takein this concert,’ so I asked him, and he tells methat it is the arrangement of light and dark parts(like in a picture) so this concert must be thearrangement of black and white musicians on thestage. There would not be any arrangement if youget what I mean. Getting back to this friend ofmine, he also said “You are the guy whose supposeto understand all this. Maybe you can enlightenme; maybe for once I will be able to enjoy what Ihear.” “Okay,” I said, “but don’t hope for toomany, after all half the time I don’t get what ishappening myself.” How can I get him to recognizea good version if the other half of the time Idon’t know what it is? I know the tune because Ihad to request it. There is nothing to it if yourears are long enough. Did you ever try to relax

when some fine horns are blowing? To listen to amusician is enough to make you melt inside.Imagine three composers all with the same feelingwriting and playing new sounds constantly. Now youknow why I get so excited when I hear it. But ithas to be right. There is nothing worse than badjazz, take it from me. Understand this, trying todefine jazz is like trying to define poetry. Whatis poetry? You tell me! I recognize it when I seeit, the same as I do good jazz when I hear it.Some people write poetry, and some people justwrite. You either could swing, or you can’t thereis no half way. A good jazzman actually composesas he plays. Did you ever try to play a melody andnot play it at the same time? If you have notsucceeded, you are my man. Take my word for it,the day is coming that jazz will be back and it issomething to look forward to. That would be theday when guys would make money and hold theirheads up high. Not saying that they don’t havetheir heads up high already. They have somethingto look forward to. Now, how about this concert?So here, you take this, and this is what I wroteabout the men.Salamone: 1942 jazz is on the way out again.Gabler: How can it be on the way out if it nevercame in? I don’t care about what they say becausein 1942 we have the first record band in less thanone year and a half. We got royalties frommusicians because we knew that by playing recordson the radio and putting juke boxes in rooms wherepeople dance you did not need live musicians orbackground music. Such music you hear inrestaurants, so you do not any more have pianoplayers playing in restaurants. We used wired

music. We wanted the royalties for the musicians.That fund every year is still being paid by allthe record companies, which were passed on toconsumers. But at least musicians are playingconcerts. I never met any that played concerts,but they do have these concerts, and what happensis that it is not the musicians that do therecordings that get the money that is the sad partabout it. What happens to those guys when they getold? All these funds that are divided amongst allthe union locals, where they give concert in thepark, is great. But the guys that are playing inthose bands, most of them work in gas stations anddepartment stores. They are only playing forweddings on Saturday nights, Sundays, or playingthese concerts in the summertime. For the rest ofthe week they are elevator operators, taxidrivers, or whatever people do to make a living.They cannot make a living playing the horn, whileJames Petrillo (the head of the Musicians Union)foresaw all of that and said that it is recordingsthat have put musicians out of work. So the unioncollects some records, but now with progress therecordings on tape and equipment that anybodycould buy is going to put the record companies outof business. Their incomes are down by millions ofdollars, and forget the bootleggers. It’s the hometapings that is destroying everything, and as asongwriter it could affect my income tremendously.Now they are trying to pass a law where when youbuy the blank tape and maybe a 10 per cent tax. Sowhen you buy a tape for three dollars, it would be$3.30, and the thirty cents goes to a fund likeASCAP fund. So how do you go divide it up? Whatabout the singers and musicians and people like

that? But we have to have some ways to pay thepeople that create the music in the first place.The musician’s Union does not protect them, soit’s a big problem.Salamone: And talking about the technologicalchanges, a lot of the old 1920’s and 1930’s recordare being reissued for a lot. Some of them arebeing reissued with laser technology, with thescrapes and scratches in the discs removed. Didyou look into any of that? For some of theCommodores?Gabler: Oh, I already removed all thecollection stuff on the Commodores when I put themon the regular player. It’s the bootlegs don’tbother some of them, and they certainly can’tafford to go into laser technology. It’s just onthe real recreations of great performances wherethey can go back to the metal masters and try todo the laser technology. It’s really expensive,and if it does not sell enough, it’s just notworth doing. And how many people that want thoseold records are going to play with laser beams? Imean, you’re maybe looking 15 years or 20 yearsahead until there is enough equipment out there.But it can be done, can be improved. I heard acouple, in fact, I just got a letter from Germany:some of my Commodores are on compact disc. In factI have just received a letter from MCA that BillHaley’s “Rock Around the Clock” is now on CD. Theysent me the package but not the record. So theyare already doing it.Salamone: I heard the Midnight Show on WBGO, somevery, very early recordings, maybe 1920, or 1921,very early, maybe Louie or somebody, just totally

different sound. Suddenly, we realize just howgreat some of the people were, because you hear…Gabler: Well, if you’re going to hear you kindexpand the spectrum with the laser beam or evenwith the electronics, because in those years,maybe enough of the sound was in there: eventhough it was cut on wax, those vibrations are inthe electronics. Yeah, let’s reproduce them andmaybe the laser beam can bring out more of them inpurer sound.Salamone: I just realize how great some peoplewere.Gabler: And the… I am sure, but does it pay togo all the way back? And it’s tedious, slowprocess, and then when you make the record it’s OKto take some classic performances and show how itis. But are there enough customers to buy it? If Ihave my Commodores’ Billy Holiday record, that’senough for me, it has been great for me. Fortyyears, do I have to have it, or in this case, do Iwant to hear it? Do I have to have it on laser? Ienjoyed it, will I enjoy it more? Because you see,in my case, because I was there in the beginning,when I play a Billy, Peggy Lee, or a Duke record,or Basie, I had heard the bands and knew thepeople. So when I play it, it opens up my memorybank. I am hearing, and seeing them as they werewhile I am listening. So, I hear more than youthink I am hearing.Salamone: Why is Blue Note suddenly reissuing itsrecordings and sending them to a good store likeTower Records? Much of the history of jazz is nowavailable. Why is there such a demand of some ofthe old records suddenly? A lot of the people Iknow are out there, jazz fans, maybe not the

general public. But among jazz fans there is asudden thirst to go back to the past. Gabler: That’s what I’ve been doing all of mylife!Salamone: Yeah, I know. Why are we catching upwith you?Gabler: No! That’s not the whole idea, to getmore and more people to do it. You get a friendinterested or a student or another musician. Justto talk to them while playing the stuff in yourhouse. All of a sudden the drug hits them…maybe Iought to go back and hear some of the early stuffand close my ear to it, because it doesn’t haveany terrible sound. We did not listen to what theguys were doing then. Maybe they will go back nowand realize that some of the old songs and tunesof the 20s are a great source for what I am doingnow. You take a guy like Bob Greene who built hiscareer on music. He is a great musician because hecan recreate anything. He and his wife kepttalking about them when I went to talk to them,they wanted to go and find the old sheet music…toput it in the rack because it becomes somethingnew for the audience. It is not just doing SatinDoll over again. You’re going back to an earliersource…and you can go back if you are doing SatinDoll because you are going so well you canimprovise can create your own Doll. Some of thoseearly tunes like the “Mooch” and those otherthings that Duke wrote, in the 20s and 30s, can bebrought up to date. Essentially, he was a goodcomposer in those years. Those tunes should bepreserved. That is the idea. Preserve the oldmusic. I did not have to preserve what Columbiawas reissuing or what this one was doing, but

being a dealer I knew everything that was out. So,I would go looking for tunes that the world wouldhave to forget or not even know in the firstplace. Salamone: Given all of the new technologies thatwe have today, like twenty-four tracks, you can goback and play a G instead of a C, or record a noteover. Does that really lead to better music?Gabler: More correct music…Salamone: But in the jazz sense, do you reallythink that you can take a note out of a jazz soloand, say, go back and do it? Gabler: No, you just don’t put out the one withthe goof in it. Some of my reissues that I gotback and I find that there were other parts of theperformance that were outstanding expect for thatgoof, I would have used that tape. So a take anote out of a later or earlier one. But you don’tdo a note when you are doing it from a tape. Youwould have to find a place to come in so the worlddoesn’t know what you did. A lot of the Commodoressecond choices or third choices are correctedtapes, and I would put it on and let you know andedited tapes. But it is not just a second choice,you could tell by my master number, the realcollectors know. It is not necessarily better, itis more correct. You do it to save time. In otherwords, it cost so much to record. When you listento it, it gets by you…first of all I use to recordmulti-tracks in Europe. Europe is not likeAmerica, if you did seven tapes then you will haveseven tapes to review or pick a correction out of.In Europe, for one reason or another, they don’tsave the earlier tapes. What they would do is goin and just hit up or punch up the button of that

one track, and the guitar move or trombone move.And the musicians come back in and play, what theydo is synthesize it, and they get the sound thesame as of the damn trombone. They have the built-in-the-studio synthesizer, and ordinarily when youplay the record, with all 40 guys blowing, youdon’t know bad or good. We cannot see it, but wecan hear it. The public would never know. But ifhe were a perfectionist, he would go back andrepair that note over, which takes time. But ifyou would record what the whole band did, to maketime to make another tape and go overtime, you gotto pay 40 musicians, and you got to pay studiotime. So it is easy to do the next best thing. Gota synthesizer or just bring a chunk of violins,and say, “Well, do something for me.” They put thephones on them, and they do it. So the whole otherpart of the record is the live performance. So youdon’t notice it, you just correct it. It’s abetter technique, but I don’t like it. You see,when I recorded in the old days, you set the bandup like the way they work. And you got the feelingand the relationship between those men like theywere on the job. When you play, the guys will getgoing. It’s really an excitement, and feelingtowards the relationship between the men. Todaythe flats and the separation from each other, it’sthe same as being in the booth. Even the musicianswith the headphones on, how the hell are you goingto know what your brother is playing, 15 feetaway? Instead of sitting in a chair, hearing thenatural sound of system, which you are used to onthe job. But who the hell plays on the job today?You all play in the studio, and they do remarkablework. But to me, the feeling and togetherness, and

the feeling you get when it is live, even when thesingers are there, and have the band applaud whenthey hear what the singer did, it was enthusiasmand it was more fun. When you hear what the otherguy does, then you do a better solo. You pick upsomething he didn’t. He puts an idea in your headand you go on that same line and take it fromwhere he left off. Then he takes it back orsomebody else. That makes a great or an excitingrecord. That is what we used to do.Salamone: I wonder if sometimes technique doesn’tproduce sterility?Gabler: It is not only that, but I would like toget into something else. You see, when the boyswent into the service and the music changedbecause the kids got used to hearing just therhythm section you know, basically rock and rhythmguitar, drummer, and the base player, then you gotfender bases which was different than theirregular ones. Everything became electronic,including the pianos, and it became a singingthing. But they got used to that sound and the“doo wop” vocal groups during the war, kidssinging in the street, making up their own trios,and it became like barber shop or church harmony.The kids, from singing in gospel churches, wereused to it because they were doing this at a youngage. So they got in the choir or in school or inglee clubs. That harmony was entirely differentthan the harmony the swing bands were playing.They got the thirteen [chords], and stuff likethat, that I don’t understand. I didn’t know thename of it, but I can tell when I would hear it.It was great to know those kinds of stuff and whatthe writers were really writing. The kids didn’t

hear those sounds because they were strange tothem. They didn’t even like brass until that groupcame out of Canada and had some trumpets on them.They like the saxophones and the rhythm guitars.The whole sound of music has change. The kids havetheir own music and you have more than onegenerations of it. You have the 40s then the folkgroups came and so on. So now that you start toget rock, which is like a swing, a fast beat kindof thing. Now you have the combinations of jazzand rock. Now you have rock groups with get offguitars, who can’t do solo like Charlie Christian.They solo with the country guitars, which arefantastic. When I went to the Nashville to record,we would go to the alleys at night to drink andhear music. They were playing organ and wereswinging like crazy. All those guys came out ofdance bands. They played country music, but whenthey left they would swing. But they didn’t usethat wild card. They use country, folk, and churchcards. They could swing, then you had guys addingtheir trumpet and stuff. Now they are planning outthe stuff that I did with Louie Jordan. The onlything that we didn’t have back then were backbeats, in those years. We used a tight rhythmsection. But the kids are not used to that stuff.Now you have the mixture of rock and jazz, whichis fusion. You have to go back to something else,or progress. But it is based on simpler harmonies,because you don’t have a full sax session or brassto really ride out. You can spread it out on aguitar or a piano. But it is not like how thebands played them. It is moving, and then you havethe guys who play the way-out music. When there isno beat going, they play all kinds of stuff. You

learn those rhythms with [composer and bandleader] George Russell. But it is music: some ofus won’t like it as much as others. It has to dowith dancing; they have that whole dance thing forthree to five years. It can’t really last,although it is still going on. But to me, when youused to dance to a Glen Miller tune, it was prettyexciting. If the dancers could come up with somenew dances maybe it would be fun again. To me themusic must go on. Latin dancing has morevarieties, like disco dancing.Salamone: Looking back on all of this, why did youget involved with jazz?Gabler: Because I love it. I grew up with it. Itold you in the beginning of the tape. In 1919 andthe early 20s what we danced to was really jazzand popular music. Later when they started toarrange, and when it was a sweet band’s turn toplay, people would love it too. We also had somejazz combinations. The early bands did shows, andthey were the kings of jazz. He had his pianofeatures and his rhythm boys. He had his bigconcert-like arrangement. But it was not reallydance music. Salamone: You were involved because it wassomething you loved?Gabler: But you started to notice when you playedthe old records, and what I liked were thetrumpets and clarinets solos. If it were a goodold tune then you would discover Louie, and so on.They used to be around 39th street. They were onWEDB or something, the early bands in the 20s. Youwould not miss a program. Then you also tuned inthe regular popular programs on the radio or sign

a record in the store. From that I had developedmy own taste.Salamone: It is great; you also know somethingabout distribution.Gabler: I didn’t know what distributions were, Ijust sold them over the counter. Salamone: Later on did you….Gabler: We didn’t have distributions until themiddle 40s. I made the records because youcouldn’t buy it on Broadway or on 14th street oryou can just come to my store. You have to beunique. Salamone: Were you trying to know the musicians alittle bit better?Gabler: No, I knew the musicians before I made therecords. Salamone: So, this was not an opportunity to getto know them?Gabler: Oh, No! I knew them on a one-to-one basisbecause they came to me. Because I had the recordsthey had recorded, or I had the records of otherartists they liked, and which they couldn’t getanywhere else. Before you know it, one would tellthe other to go to East 42nd Street because youcould get the records there. I tried to keep themin stock after the companies discontinued them. Iwould go to the Salvation Army because peoplewould throw away old records. So, you spent timegoing through them and taking the clean ones.Salamone: You’re telling me that Goodman wasimpressed and has given you credit in his book forputting the names of musicians and so on. Is heshy?Gabler: He used to come to my store, but he wasalways busy on the West Side. He is very friendly.

He is a quiet man. When I look at him, youwouldn’t think that he could make a goodbandleader. It took him along time to becomfortable with other musicians. He was asparkling leader because he didn’t have to be. Hestill loves to play. He was so good. He didn’thave any mediocre players. It was like going to auniversity, getting a job with his band. Tommy wastough with his band. Russ, a great man he was, wastough with his band. He didn’t want them goofingoff and getting drunk.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTTHE CULTURE OF JAZZ AND JAZZ AS CRITICAL CULTURE

–Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?– Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Neil Leonard states, “For all true believersjazz answered needs that traditional faith did notaddress. While the music had different meaningsfor different followers--black, white, malefemale, young, old, rich or poor, in variouspsychological states and social situations--forall devotees it provided some form of ecstasy orcatharsis transcending the limitations, drearinessand desperation of ordinary existence”.

Moreover, he continues,

As earthy blues, exalted anthem, or something inbetween, jazz could energize the most jaded will.Jazz is an active agent, a powerful force whoseecstasies, whether subtly insinuated or suppliedin lightening illuminations, altered personalityand society. Through cajolery, charm, warmth,surprise, shock or outrage it could brush asidethe most entrenched tradition, the most oppressivecustom, and inspire subversive social behavior.Consider how the jazzy music of the Twenties wenthand in hand with the upheavals in manners andmorals of that time, how bop was the cry ofstreet-wise young rebels in the Forties, and howthe “New thing” of the Sixties was closely alliedto the “Black Power” impulse of the day. Clearlyjazz is more than a passive flower, a glorious

cultural ornament affirming humanity, it is also apowerful social force which has cut broadly anddeeply, its prophets, rituals and myths touchingnot only individual souls but large groupsbringing intimations of magic and the sacred to anera whose enormous changes have depletedconventional faiths.

It is this power of jazz to propel socialchange and energize its acolytes, its touch of thesacred, which I wish to develop in this work.

Pratt (1990:7) notes that popular music ingeneral has expressive and instrumental politicalfunctions. He quotes John Coltrane, a major jazzinfluence, as stating that a person’s soundreveals his personality, the way he thinks andinterprets the world (Sidran 1981:14). Prattnotes, correctly, that in performance thatinterpretation may change. Indeed, jazzperformance is one in which fellow musicians andthe audience sway the musician, providing at timesnew insights and facets on reality. This opennessin jazz is one of its hallmarks and often jazzmusicians cite it as a sacred characteristic.

In conformity with the sacred nature of jazz,role reversal and rituals of rebellion are commonmodes of behavior and communication. Armstrong’sdemonstration of the power of music and humor tosubvert pompous platitudes regarding theestablished order of things provides an entrée tothe theoretical relationship between music andhumor and the uses to which an accomplished artistmay put that relationship. This sacred tricksterquality was an integral part of Louis Armstrong’spersona, one that he was well aware of and usedwith consummate skill to comment on and subvert

mainstream conception of reality. An example ofthis power of subversion explodes from hisrecording of Laughin’ Louie.

Laughin’ Louie

Salamone (1990), Keil (1979, 1992), and Crouch(2000), among others, have also noted similaritiesin the use of humor among Africans and AfricanAmericans, and more particularly they have notedthis similarity among African Americans andAfrican musicians.

Dizzy Gillespie—Crazy Like a Fox

Dizzy Gillespie, for example, continued thetrickster tradition in jazz. Dizzy, born JohnBirks Gillespie in 1917, was given his nicknameearly in his career. The bandleader Teddy Hillgave him the nickname because of his crazy anticson stage. For example, Dizzy used to come torehearsals dressed in a hat, gloves, and overcoat,which he kept on throughout the rehearsal nomatter the temperature. However, Hill alwaysadded, “Diz crazy? Diz was crazy like a fox.” Heclaimed, quite rightly, that Diz was a stableperson, “the most stable of us all”. Hill, likemost jazz musicians, thought quite highly of Diz.He gave him his first recorded solo and featuredhim at Minton’s Playhouse, one of the fabled“birthplaces” of be-bop.

It is important to note that Dizzy’s humor wasnot common among his fellow modernists. In fact,as he later acknowledged, it was related to thetype of humor that Louis Armstrong used because he

was such a great showman. Many modern musicians,who acted “cool”, turning their backs on theiraudiences and failing to acknowledge applause orannounce tunes, put down Armstrong as an “UncleTom” whose antics kept jazz in the show businesscategory. They want jazz to be considered high artin a league with classical music and separate fromentertainment. Diz, who was a close friend ofArmstrong’s, used humor to draw people to the newjazz. Even though both Diz and Satch recordedparodies of the other’s music, their uncannyability to reproduce it showed they had listenedclosely to it. Indeed, material in the LouisArmstrong archives shows that his taste in musicincluded not only opera, classics, pop tunes, butalso the most modern of jazz recordings. Hisrecorded comments while listening with musicianfriends, shows his ability to critique themusicianship of performers. He rated Gillespiequite highly on all accounts.

Just as Armstrong used humor to bring hissuperb music to audiences that had not heard hismusic before, so, too, did Gillespie. Audiencesfound humor, correctly, in the twists and turns ofbop tunes and extended lines. If humor is built onsurprise, then bop was an appropriate vehicle forhumor. Charlie Parker is often caught onrecordings, laughing out loud, especially when heand Diz played together and finished each other’sphrases, as friends finish one another’s jokes.Diz’s dress was another humorous sales techniquefor bop. His infamous bop glasses, string ties,and, above all, his beret gave bop a sartorialidentity, which all but squares found humorous.There was a trickster humor about bop, which many

missed, although many sensed its subversivenature, questioning the status quo and seeking toreplace old, unjust verities with new equitableones. Bop was the musical language of the post-warAfrican American but its roots went deeper thanthat. Try as some of its adherents did to deny thefact, it partook of the humor of the Africantrickster, just as Satchmo did and Gillespie cameto admit he did as well.

The Trickster and the Diz

The trickster myth is found in clearlyrecognizable form among both aboriginal tribes andmodern societies. We encounter it among theancient Greeks, the Chinese, and the Japanese andin the Semitic world as well .Many of thetrickster’s traits were perpetuated in the figureof the mediæval jester, and have survived right upto the present day in the Punch-and-Judy plays andin the clown. Although repeatedly combined withother myths and frequently drastically reorganizedand reinterpreted, its basic plot seems always tohave succeeded in reasserting itself (Radin 1955:ix).

We have a fundamental figure here, which isboth general and specific. There appears a generalneed for the trickster but a need clothed inspecific features of a culture. The trickster canbe creator and destroyer, one who gives and onewho takes, one who tricks and is tricked. Thetrickster inspires awe and affection at the sametime. Seemingly, the trickster is one who givesinto primal impulses without thinking. But I wouldargue that he is sly as a fox, who does, at least

at times, clearly see the results of his behaviorbut who can get away with much because of hishumor.

I have argued that powerful, sacred Africanfigures require humor so that the audience canapproach them (Salamone 1995: 3-7; Salamone 1976:208-210). The informality prevalent in Americanjazz allows the royalty to temper the awe inherentin their status in order to permit youngsters toapproach them. I suggest that much the samepractice can be found in Nigeria. For example, Iworked with a traditional priest who was one ofthe more powerful “doctors” in Nigeria. However,in order to encourage clients, rather thandiscourage them, he cloaked his power beneath apersona of humor. This humorous presentation drewpeople to him whom he might otherwise havefrightened away (Salamone 1976). Similarly, giantssuch as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, DizzyGillespie and Louis Armstrong shared an ability todraw people to themselves. Doing so enabled themto work their music for the good of the peoplewhile being open to further innovations. Althoughthe Bori was an African trickster, I have not goneon a diversion here.

I am explicitly suggesting that Gillespie andArmstrong, among others, are in that sametradition. They clearly used humor to draw peopleto them. They would do almost anything to make theaudience receptive to their message, for theirmusic did indeed have a message. For Gillespie andArmstrong before him that music was, in fact,“spiritual”. I once asked Dizzy about why he saidit was spiritual: “Makes the other fellow soundgood,” he replied with his usual arch wit.

Additionally, there is an African traditionwhich holds that the musician has a sacred duty tostand up to oppression and speak truth to power.In that task, Gillespie followed a long traditionof African musicians. It is no accident, I think,that the Yoruba musician Fela Anakulapi-Kutistudied and worked with Gillespie early in hiscareer. Even Fela’s claim to be the BlackPresident has traces of Gillespie’s half-humorouspresidential candidacy. Fela combined variousaspects of African based music into his style.Interestingly, its foundation was the jazz ofGillespie and Charlie Parker, which he heard as ayoung man and which he used to create somethingdifferent for Nigerian music, something he deemedwould be revolutionary. He put on a mask of thetrickster to perform, mocking those whom he deemedhad betrayed Africa, the colonialists and theirAfrican collaborators.

The Humor of Subversion

Dizzy would often open his performances bysaying he would like to introduce the band. Bandmembers would then turn to one another and shakehands, giving their names to each other, smilingand nodding. The routine, which I saw repeatedmany times, never got stale. Diz would sometimesstand aside and raise his eyebrows bemusedly atthe audience. Eventually, he would get tointroduce the musicians in the band, for Diz was afair man who gave each person his due.

I remember one night in the winter of 1957-58,when he arrived in the middle of a blizzard toperform in Rochester, NY. He was late, something

unusual for him. The audience, however, waited forhim, knowing that somehow he’d make it through thestorm. In those days, Diz traveled by car alongthe Birdland Circuit and he was coming in fromDetroit. As the band scrambled to take off theirheavy, snow-laden coats and assemble theirinstruments, Diz began to play solo trumpet.

The audience laughed as they recognized acurrent hit “Tequila”, by the Champs. They stoppedlaughing when they realized Diz had bested themagain because he was playing it straight. He tookthe novelty tune and re-imagined it as a lovelythen torrid Latin tune. One by one the bandmembers joined in as they assembled theirinstruments.

After ten minutes or so, Diz then began hisspiel. He apologized for being late. “I wasplaying a benefit for the Ku Klux Klan at theWhite Citizens’ Hall in Montgomery Alabama.” Asthe crowd broke up, he launched into “Manteca”(Grease) with his then new opening chant, “I’llnever go back to Georgia. No, I’ll never go backto Georgia.” Again, as the crowd—and it was acrowd despite the snow—roared with laughter, helaunched into a brilliant high-note solo, completewith all the pyrotechnics of which he was capablein his prime.

I reminded Diz of this performance thirty yearslater when he was performing at Elizabeth SetonCollege. He remembered it with a smile andrepeated the opening of his solo for me vocally.It was then that he talked about humor and thespirituality of music, among many other topics.Diz took his role as a teacher/musician seriously,

reminding me of Chaucer’s Clerk, “Gladly would helearn and gladly teach”.

There was another routine he had when doing“Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac”, his version of “SwingLow, Sweet Chariot”. The song is not only anAmerican spiritual but according to thesaxophonist Archie Shepp comes from an Africanreligious song. Diz began his version with aYoruba chant from Chano Pozo, a Cuban Santeria.The chant often drew befuddled laughs from theaudience, and Diz played it up big. For him, humorand spirituality were not polar opposites butcomplementary principles. Humor was a means ofleading people to the spiritual.

As he told me, “When Chano Pozo came, the musicall came together.” Again, once Diz finished hischanting, also setting the cross-rhythms of histempo, he started the song, in the midst of whichhe took a brilliant solo. When the tenor saxplayer James Moody was present, there would be twobrilliant solos. Then the piece would end withDizzy’s tag line, “Old Cadillacs never die. Thefinance company just tows them away!”

The examples could continue. Just what was thisonce wild bad boy of jazz getting at? What did hisgreat dancing in front of his band mean? Hismugging with his frog like checks? His tilted bellon his horn? His African robes later in life? Hispointedly supercilious vocabulary? His outrageoustwists and turns, with his deeply serious playingon frivolous tunes and his humor on serious ones.What was he telling the audience? And just whichaudience was he addressing?

The following vignette displays most of thecharacteristics I have discussed.

One night in Texas in the mid-1950s (Kliment1988:75-76), the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald wassitting backstage eating a sandwich and watchingthe band members playing dice, a group thatincluded renowned Dizzy Gillespie. Fitzgerald wasterrified by the sudden arrival of local lawofficials, who arrested the entire group forgambling. The officers, upset because the groupwas performing in an all-white theater, took themto the police station where they were booked andjailed—Fitzgerald still in her ball gown. Duringthe booking process, an officer asked Gillespiefor his name. He replied, “Louis Armstrong.”

And that is what the officer wrote down.Several hours later, after the band’s whitemanager paid the $50 bail, an arresting officerasked Ella Fitzgerald for her autograph. The nextday, local papers reported that she was the best-dressed prisoner the jail ever held (Iris CarterFord: 43).

The subversive quality which Satchmo and Dizexemplified, the indistinguishability of thesacred and profane, the refusal to take acceptedinterpretations of reality at face value, thesubstitution of new realities for old are oftenfound in literature based on jazz culture.

Jazz in Literature

In African American Satire: The SacredlyProfane Novel Darryl Dickson-Carr writes ofWallace Thurman’s Infants of the Spring:

Infants of the Spring, then, asks us to reconcilewhat is normally considered an oxymoron, at least

in the United States: an individualistic groupconsciousness… What… Thurman… demands, however, isactually a precursor to the conundra that RalphEllison would propose in his widely acclaimedInvisible Man Raymond argues that principlesupheld by masses of African Americans are theultimate linchpins to African Americans’ culturaland political progress, not unlike the narrator ofInvisible Man, who argues that African Americans“were to affirm the principle on which the countrywas built” despite the reality of staunch, violentopposition, lest the nation, and therefore AfricanAmericans, be lost forever. It is precisely thisfear of total loss, of an African Americancommunity swallowed up because it wastes itsenergies on frivolities instead of a fight forprinciples that drives Infants of the Spring’ssatire“(Dickson-Carr 2001: 56-57).

This satirical glance is common to jazz andliterature based on jazz. Jazz is music of freedomand, as such, opposed to that which hindersfreedom. Thus, it is the supporter of all thatpromotes freedom, although just what constitutesthat freedom is open to debate. Indeed, sometimesit appears that everything is open to debate inthe jazz world.

Although the origins of jazz as an essentiallyAfrican American music are not seriously in doubt,the exclusivity of it as something only AfricanAmericans can perform is in doubt. I have writtenabout it earlier (Salamone 1990). Indeed, I findthe fact that some “white” players can sound asblack as “black” players a significant culturalphenomenon and will return to it in theconclusion. Jurgen E. Grandt has similar thoughts.

In 1951, James Baldwin wrote that “... it isonly in his music ... that the Negro of Americahas been able to tell his story” (24). But thatsame year, British jazz critic Leonard Featherpublished in the pages of Down Beat magazine ablindfold test with jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge.Throughout his distinguished career, Eldridge hadrepeatedly expressed his firm belief that whiteand black jazz musicians had distinctly differentstyles and that he could easily distinguishbetween them. When Feather took him at his wordand administered the test, the results weresomewhat astonishing: The musician, nicknamed“Little Jazz” by his peers, was eithernoncommittal or wrong much more often than he wasright (Feather, Book 47). Listening to BillyTaylor’s recording of, ironically, “All Ears”, theseventh of ten selections, Eldridge’s irritationmounted: “I liked the pianist. Couldn’t tell whowas colored and who was white. They could beEskimos for all I know,” he admitted, and had toconcede defeat in the end (Feather, “Little Jazz“12). (1) Eldridge’s blindfold test again raisesthe old yet still provocative question: Can whitefolks play the blues? If indeed the end product ofa jazz performance transcends what W.E.B. Du Boiscalled “the problem of the color-line” (v)—canjazz itself still provide a useful criticalframework for the study of black American culturalexpressions? To be sure, music, instrumental musicat least, is a much more abstract art form thanliterature, but the contemporary critic stillfaces the same dilemma that confronted RoyEldridge: the apparent paradox that jazz music is

at once a distinctly black American art form aswell as a cultural hybrid.

Jazz, indeed, in literature has taken on thishybrid, multicultural aspect. It is both “adistinctly black American art form as well as acultural hybrid”.

The point is that jazz is a Creole art form,which combines elements of seeming opposites,making reality a matter of “this” and “that too”.Like American society and culture which it mirrorsand shapes, jazz derives its power from itscombination of opposites, which it combines intosome new thing. That new thing appears to changeconstantly before our eyes, making any absoluteunderstanding of reality but a tentative guess.Everything can be other than it is.

Such a perspective is a metaphor of Americanculture itself. It, too, is always in the processof becoming, rarely taking time to “be”. Even themost banal themes can be transformed into thingsof exquisite beauty and at the most unexpectedtimes. In the midst of despair, hope explodes intoconsciousness. America and jazz have grown uptogether and each expresses the fact that ourseeming differences must be reconciled in acreative tension of harmony that can producesomething far more beautiful and productive thantheir individual elements or else fall into brokenfragments far inferior to those from which theycame.

In literature, jazz has represented freedom.For those detractors of the music, it representedlicense and a return to the primitive with allthat such a designation implied: namely, sexuallicense, indeed license of all types. For its

literary supporters, Fitzgerald, Carl Van Vechten,and John Dos Passos, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen,Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, RichardWright, and Jean Toomer as well as James, Baldwin,Jack Kerouac and Toni Morrison, the music is aforce against fascism and other systems opposingfreedom. It is a movement for racial integrationand social justice. To emphasize their jazz rootsthese writers used jazz accents and rhythms intheir writings.

Multiple and Overlapping Realities and Audiences

The Eshu trickster from the Yoruba of Nigeriais a character who disturbs the peace byquestioning norms and calling his people to beattentive skeptics of order. He also employs acrafty and cunning wit in the face of the morepowerful, preserving his and others’ freedom whereit might potentially be curtailed. The Yoruba alsoparallel their trickster to the artist,celebrating his imaginative capacities andmalleable skills. In all of these respects, LouisArmstrong may be regarded as a quintessentialtrickster, part of a long legacy passed fromAfrica and through slave-holding and segregatedAmerica.

In a broader context, Armstrong’s tricksterrole can be tied to the jazz musical genre that heso transformed. Both were subject to—and respondedto—unavoidable social realities, expressing painand anger in reaction to a debilitating racism.Both also employed secret musical codes, employingprotective masks that gave space to individualfreedom and collective empowerment. Furthermore,

both recognized humor as the license thatpermitted their liberationist expressions ofthinly veiled social commentary. Jazz, likeArmstrong, offered a language, the subtleties ofwhich spoke to the in-crowd (the “hip”) and aboutthe outsiders (the “squares”). Invariably, itwould privately mock either or both.

Louis Armstrong used the Trickster image in hisrendition of “Laughin’ Louie”. First, the“squares” are outed in the title itself, whichparodies the common misinterpretation of his namein mainstream culture and mocks the one-dimensional stereotype with which he was regarded(and sometimes dismissed). From Armstrong’s point-of-view, the title’s humor might also allude tohis habitual pot-smoking habits, this furtherunderscored by the name of his accompanying band,the Vipers, a slang term for marijuana. The song’smusic fluctuates throughout, between the “hot”sound “hip” critics encouraged from Armstrong, andthe “sweet” sounds he always had such affectionfor, but for which he was criticized ascompromising to mainstream tastes. Here, thetrickster celebrates his own creative choices(laughing for himself), and satirically dismissesthe imposing judgment of his critics (laughing atthem). This is achieved through the humorousmethod of incongruity, the shock of the juxtaposedstyles surprising listeners into recognition andappreciation while appealing to many differentaudiences.

In considering audiences we must take note ofthe fact that Gillespie, as Armstrong before him,addressed multiple audiences. Indeed he was also amember of multiple audiences. As an African

American southern musician he was always aware ofhis membership in Afro-American culture, hisacculturation into the dominant white culture, hisbeing a leading founder of bop, his maleness andmany other memberships. His intelligence shonethrough as he played with these identities in hisperformances, juggling one against others as themood moved him. Things were rarely, if ever, thisOR that; as Robert Farris Thompson (1964) hasnoted about Creole culture; they were this ANDthat, too (See also Roger D. Abrahams, NickSpitzer, John F. Szwed and Robert Farris Thompson.Blues for New Orleans: Mardi Gras and America’sCreole Soul. Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 2006).

Diz was a master of mixing things together thatoften did not go together. He took risks thatothers hesitated in taking. But he made you lovehim as he did so by turning his critique into ahumorous comment or making it so seeminglyoutrageous that he couldn’t really be serious.Except that, of course, he was. There was also alove for that which was human. At the height ofthe civil rights movement, I saw Dizzy drinkingwith a southern soldier who thought he wascomplimenting Diz but was condescending to him. Isat at the bar expecting Diz to explode. Instead,he accepted the proffered drink, listened to theyoung soldier, and then made some off-handedremark that had the soldier laughing. The twowalked off arm in arm.

To me this incident is illustrative of Dizzy’sbeing able to occupy a number of cultures andidentities simultaneously. He often understoodexactly where others were coming from and found

ways to be diplomatic while getting his pointacross. As with Armstrong, he found a way to livehis life the way he wanted while also finding away to criticize people in ways they firstlistened too because they were humorous. Nosurprise, then, that they both were superb jazzambassadors, representing America, yes, but alsothe need for greater equality and democracy inAmerica. They understood that while they had adual heritage, that heritage was an overlappingone and could not be neatly segregated as othersbelieved. They were this AND that, too.

Ellington epitomized the blurring of categoriesin his music. It was hard to tell where one genreended and another began. In so doing, he continuedan African tradition and elevated his music to therealm of the sacred.

The Sacred

For Ellington, then, the sacred and spiritualappears to refer to that which promotes love andin the process provokes a sense of awe. Certainly,the quality of being life-affirming and inclusiveis part of Ellington’s conception of the sacred.Additionally, however, Ellington is aware of thepower of ambiguity and humor in presenting hisspiritual message. He is careful to allow dramaticpacing and juxtaposition of seeming opposites totell his tale. As he stated, “A good playwrightcan say what he wants to say without saying it.”It was a lesson he had learned early.

The short movie Black and Tan Fantasy, forexample, a very early talkie released in 1929, hasa nice little story. It opens with Ellington and

Artie Whetsol, one of his trumpet players,rehearsing. They need money and Fredi Washington,one of the Cotton Club dancers, informs Ellingtonand Whetsol that she is going back to work to helpsave Ellington’s piano. Of course, Washington isin danger of dying but performs anyway.

The movie features an authentic Cotton Clubsetting in which there is a brief but rathercomplete floor show, featuring the famous CottonClub Dancers. Fredi Washington dances, and thenshe collapses. After a spiritual, Black & TanFantasy is played. In sum, the movie isprogrammatic imitating a Cotton Club performance.This was a pattern that Ellington followed formuch of his life.

What is often overlooked, however, is themanner in which Ellington dares to intersperse thesacred and the profane. There are not only echoesof spirituals or “church music” in hiscompositions, there are also outright spiritualsused just before dancing that would offend manytraditionally religious people. Moreover, thatdancing takes place to a suite that has often beenconsidered more religious in nature than secular.Ellington was blurring the distinction between twospheres that many other performers preferred tokeep distinct, the sacred and the profane. By sodoing he was placing his music in a category thathe came to term “beyond category”. He was alsodeeply involved in the realm that anthropologistsrecognize as that of the ambiguous and dangerous.

Steed (1993: 3) notes this Ellingtoncharacteristic of avoiding categories: “Althoughhe still personifies jazz for millions of people,Ellington did not even like to use the word unless

it was defined simply as freedom of expression”.Steed cites Dance (1970) who wrote:

Duke Ellington never ceases to voice hisdisapproval of categories, which he views as acurb on an artist’s right to freedom ofexpression. He always wants to be free to do whathe feels moved to do, and not what someone feelshe should do.

There is no doubt that Ellington felt that thismixing of categories had meaning beyond the musicitself, that it was somehow sacred. He viewed hismusic as a vocation and as a means for breakinghimself and other African Americans out of rigidcategories, as his interview with Zunser (1930)makes absolutely clear. Ellington frequentlyexplicitly noted his belief that music was avocation, a sacred calling. At the Second SacredConcert, for example, he labeled himself “God’smessenger boy”, a phrase repeated in the albumnotes (Steed 1993: 6).

Steed (1993) includes this important passagefrom Stanley Dance’s eulogy:

...Duke knew the good news was Love, of God andhis fellow men. He proclaimed the message in hisSacred Concerts, grateful for an opportunity toacknowledge something of which he stood in awe, apower he considered above his human limitations.

For Ellington, attempts to capture that loveand awe in his music, a love he viewed astranscending artificial differences andencompassing all life, were attempts at graspingthe sacred. It is as if Ellington were saying thatGod has no limits. Limitations are human.Therefore, attempts to affirm life and love shouldalso know no artificial limits.

Steed (1993: 8) puts this issue in a slightlydifferent, more musicological manner. AtEllington’s funeral, a recording by Johnny Hodgesof “Heaven” from the Second Sacred Concert wasplayed. Steed notes the construction of the melodyand some of its notable internal contrasts. Oneobservation is relevant in ascertaining andunderstanding Ellington’s conception of thesacred: “Ellington’s favored tri-tone is heardthree times, perversely ascending as if he weredetermined to make what was once called the‘devil’s interval’ angelic”. This desire to forcepeople to reconsider their stereotypicalcategorizations was a long-time project withEllington that led logically to the SacredConcerts.

This characteristic of blurring distinctions ofasserting that what some think evil is a path tothe good often irritated those who heldtraditional values. As Leonard (1962:21) notes,one of the major opponents of jazz included theguardians of traditional morality. Jazz violatedthe clear-cut values of this group throughblurring indisputable distinctions and promotingambiguity. Armstrong and Gillespie did so throughtheir humor while Ellington subverted acceptedreality through his embrace of the sacred, whichdiffered from more traditional notions.

Discussion

Whatever the “prehistory” of jazz may havebeen, jazz itself begins with the consequences ofthe imposition of Jim Crow laws in New Orleans andthe subsequent cultural clash between black

Creoles and other blacks in New Orleans: withsegregation, educated black Creoles and lessfortunate and largely untrained other AfricanAmericans were forced to play together. Themixture of European and African music became moreintense, and is still seen in jazz today. Strikinga balance is a delicate thing.

In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois articulated a themethat inheres in the very essence of AfricanAmerican culture; namely, ‘the dual heritage ofthe black man in America’. That heritage, Africanand European, is at root one of dual identity anda cause of a recurring crisis of identity, as DuBois went on to note. In a very real sense, thehistory of jazz has provided a dynamic model ofthe ever-changing terms of that heritage as wellas a running commentary on it. It has done sothrough the use of tropes of identity.

Tropes encapsulate a culture’s essence.Whatever a culture may be, however it viewsitself, it expresses that self-perception inselect images packed with powerful meanings. Jazzis no exception. It, too, has its own culturalmodes of expression, its personal symbols andmetaphors that encapsulate and convey identity.Moreover, the best of these tropes are flexibleand allow for the expression of changing conceptsof self-identity.

“Africa” has been precisely that type ofvehicle within jazz. It has served as a touchstonefor gauging the state of the art as well as theself-image of its performers. Throughout jazzhistory, the concept of “Africa” has served as anindex of authenticity. The less “African” and more“European” a performance, for example, the less

likely jazz musicians are to find it acceptable.Conversely, the more authentic, even flawed, aperformance, the more it is perceived to beapproaching an African essence, or “soul”! Jazzmusicians have been careful and correct inindicating that their music is not a result ofinability or corruption in performance, but,rather, of choice. Two musical cultures consistingof related, but differing codes, have beencaptured in the contrastive metaphors “African”and “European”. These terms have not, of course,remained static over time.

Tracing the manner in which these contrastiveterms have changed in meaning in the course ofjazz’s history provides an intriguing insight intoboth the genesis and change of jazz style and itscultural relationship to the increasingconsciousness of its performers. Insight into thatdialectical relationship, moreover, promises tolead to increasing understanding of the manner inwhich artists reinterpret cultural vehicles inorder to convey their own personal visions ofreality to fellow community members.

Thus, black musicians worked at perfectingstyles that were uniquely their own. No other bandcould imitate the swing of the Basie band. Noother band could be mistaken for Ellington’s. Hissophisticated use of harmonies and colors,inspired by French impressionistic music andpainting, was unique in Jazz. Black soloistsrarely had equals among white musicians. Therewere, of course, white musicians who were indeedoriginals, like Bunny Berrigan or Bix Beiderbecke.Significantly, these artists found themselvesimitating their own African myth, one stressing

outrageous living, unreliability and self-centeredness as prerequisites for creativity. Itwas but one more version of the myth of the “noblesavage”, documented by Hammond and Jablow (1977).It is an open question of just how much Euro-American art has been created through amisunderstanding of African art.

Throughout the post-war era, Africa’s aura grewamong jazz musicians.

Certainly, the independence movement added toAfrica’s mystique and the linkage of blackliberation with it was but natural. Islam becamecommon among musicians long before it spread toother segments of the African American community.Armstrong’s trip to Ghana was merely the mostnoticeable of many trips by jazz musicians to thecontinent. Africa increasingly became a metaphorof authenticity, of true identity within the blackmusical community and a trope of opposition towhite exploitation of African Americans.

Certainly, images of Africa have long been partof jazz history. As I have argued, the contrastbetween “Africa” and “Europe” has provided adialectic of development for jazz itself. Africanelements have always formed part of the musicalcomposition of jazz, and “jungle” images, forbetter or worse, have been used, willingly or not,by Ellington, Armstrong, and others. Manymusicians have become Muslims in a belief thatIslam is a more authentic African religion thanChristianity and, thus, more appropriate for anAfrican American.

In the 1960s, however, Black Nationalism becamemore openly dominant in jazz than it had ever beenbefore in conformity with the self-conscious

assertion of the right of Blacks to control theirown destiny, including their own identity. AsAmerica in general entered the confrontationalpolitics of the late sixties, themes of identity—youth, gays, women, American Indians and blacks—became more pronounced. Initially, theseassertions of identity tended to be separatist andexclusionary. The movement illustrated a veryinteresting contrast between black and whiteimages of Africa in jazz. White musicians chooseto be part of black culture. They are, however,free to move in and out of it at will. They are,therefore, always on trial by black musicians andare aware of their probationary status. They tendto be both more romantic and fanatic about themystique of Africa than most black musicians whoare more likely to use the concept as a tool—evenas a weapon—in order to obtain their objectives.

There were a number of manifestations of themovement to Africanize jazz but all of them sharedthe adjective “free”. In some way, jazz was to bemade “free”. Indeed, even before the black powermovement itself had jelled, Ornette Coleman hadcome on the scene in 1959 and, after an initialburst of enthusiasm, met with outright hostility.Within a few short years, however, many of hisbasic ideas were being followed.

In one very real and important sense jazzitself is the message. Its own meaning, to itspractitioners and fans, changes over time as itssocial location alters and as the meaning of its“African/European” opposition varies. However, thesituation is further complicated because each jazzmusician and performance is meant to be creative,to generate meaning. Over and over, in one form or

other, the principle is laid down that eachmusician must tell a story. Moreover, that storymust be personal: one must live the story themusic tells. In a truly essential way the mediumis the message. Technique, for example, theability to run chord changes accurately, to playfast or slow and still swing, is admired, but onlya naïve listener admires it for its own sake. Itmust be used in the service of conveying a story.Charlie Parker, for example, is said to haveadvised aspiring saxophone players first to learneverything about their horns and then to forget itall when playing. Technique, in other words, isonly a tool in allowing one’s true inner self tobe expressed. It is not admirable in and ofitself. A knowledgeable insider sums up theposition well when speaking about the early daysof the bop revolution: I never heard anyone playas fast as Bird. But it wasn’t just speed. He hadideas no one else had (Bob Redcross, personalcommunication).

Endeavoring to understanding the meaning ofjazz, therefore, involves one in a series ofexercises requiring the examination of multiplereferents and cross-referents, of matchingindividual biographies to broader movements,specific variations to broader themes, and theever-retreating just out of reach essence of themetaphor that is jazz itself, for to understandjazz is to understand the tertium quid that it is;namely, a symbol and encapsulation of Americaitself.

Conclusion

Ellington’s love for things that are “beyondcategory” resonates with Levi-Strauss’scategorization of anomalous mediating categoriesas dangerous and sacred (Levi-Strauss 1967, forexample). These anomalous categories, according toLevi-Strauss, partake of the categories which theymediate and consequently are neither fish norfowl. They are dangerous and somehow pollute. MaryDouglas (1966) has treated of these categories ofpollution, an idea Neil Leonard (1987) has appliedto jazz itself.

Leonard (1987-9-10) notes that Emile Durkheim,who influenced Douglas, indicated not only thatthere is a distinction between the sacred and theprofane but between two kinds of sacred-ness.There is sacredness “that produces social andmoral order, health, and happiness. ...” There isalso, however, an opposite sacred force “thatbrings disorder, immorality, illness, and death.Though radically antagonistic, these two kinds ofsacredness can be highly ambiguous because bothstem from similar supernatural sources”.Interestingly, however, these types of sacrednessappear to be highly unstable and each can resolveinto the other. The musical “purist” seeks to keepthem separate. Even in the African Americantradition there was a desire to keep the twotraditions separate, as some opposition toEllington’s sacred concerts revealed.

There is, however, an older African traditionthat understood the unity of the sacred. Thevariations work together to provide a harmoniouswhole. Each part both stands alone and yet takeson full meaning only within the context of theentire performance. This perspective is well-

illustrated in the work of the Nigerian musician,Fela Anakulapi-Kuti.

In a sense in his performance the Nigerianartist Fela added to Gregory Bateson’s and ErvingGoffman’s concept of frames, turning frames intoshifting things, ones that almost perpetuallytransform themselves into one another. This house-of-mirror image of shifting frames is in keepingwith the predominant perspective on Africanreligious and philosophical thought that sees itas positing an ever-changing unstable realityunder the illusory permanent reality of every-daycommon sense. This skepticism of the presentedreality and a subsequent search for underlyingstructures is well-suited to African-derivedmusical performance.

Therefore, the incorporation of all varietiesof African-derived music is not accidental orhaphazard. It serves to convey his message ofblack pride. His point is the unity of blackpeoples everywhere. The manner in which he conveyshis message displays the technical brilliance thatis appreciated when it is suited to the message.Thus, his shifting frames reflect African religionand philosophy. The manner in which one style ofAfrican-derived music melds into another definestheir relationship through praxis not merediscussion. The central role of jazz, a word Feladisdained as did Ellington, is demonstrated in itsbeing used as a mediating form.

Finally, the continuous transformation ofmaterial is also evocative of spiritual matters.Fittingly, the self-proclaimed Black President andChief Priest led his people to a better landthrough invoking spiritual images and enacting

them on the stage. His entire performance isritual of a high order. It is a Creole performancethat has the “that too” characteristic of all suchperformances (James Farris Thompson, personalcommunication). Thus, there was no contradictionin Fela’s performance. Each element was anintegral part of the overriding message andenabled the performance to move toward an end hedeemed sacred, the true emancipation of the Blackman and the instilling of pride in his mind.

What is true of Fela illuminates Ellington’smixture of styles and categories. It would bebeneficial to explore Ellington’s African rootsmore deeply and to investigate his own reading ingreater detail in relationship to his music(Hudson 1991). It is clear that Ellington’sreligion struck orthodox Christians as pantheisticand idiosyncratic (Steed 1993: pp. 19ff. andGensel 1992). His statement that he was “born in1956 at the Newport Jazz Festival” (Hasse, 1993:322), was often cited but never fully explored.The religious connotations are often noted but theliteral sense in which Ellington meant the termhas been missed. He believed that somehow he hadbeen literally reborn and called to a vocation.

Seen within the context of African Americanculture Ellington’s religious beliefs andpractices make perfect sense, even those“superstitious” aspects which so bothered his moretraditionally orthodox son Mercer (MercerEllington and Dance 1978: 111). The continuitybetween the Cotton Club and the Cathedral isemphasized by Ellington’s very African Americanphilosophy and theology. His mixture of categoriesof the sacred and profane and various types of

sacredness is an affirmation of both life and thecontinuous nature of that life, transcendingstereotypical traditional categories.

Jazz culture then challenges mainstream culturein a number of ways. Through indirect and directsubversion—humor and confrontation—it asserts areality contrasting with accepted presupposedcultural reality. The presuppositions of theaccepted worldview are generally held up toquestioning, upsetting true believers. Thus,whether the sacred clown, the genial sophisticatedreligious performer, or the angryconfrontationalist challenges accepted realitythrough performance, jazz can disturbinglychallenge one’s notions of cultural reality andoften does. It subverts accepted reality throughoffering its own perspective, sometimes comic andsometimes angry, of what reality could be,prompting listeners to think of just might be abetter world.

 

CHAPTER NINEBEBOP AND HIP-HOP:

THEIR STRONG RELATIONSHIP

Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. in his Race Music: BlackCultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop recounts aconversation with Muhal Richie Abrams about blackmusic. Abrams stated that no matter how far youtravel you never get far from home. That statementis true about African American music. At somelevels, it is all intertwined. One genre, orsubgenre, feeds off another even as olderpractitioners and the white public may resist thenew form. Although some trace the origins of rapto Louis Armstrong’s “Heebie Jeebies” and, asMiles Davis said, there is nothing played on thetrumpet that Louis did not play first, Armstrongwas very resistant to bebop even as Charlie Parkerwould play Armstrong’s improvised solos note fornote on his alto sax before improvising on them,showing the long chain of continuity. Indeed,resistance to bebop parallels the resistanceevidenced toward hip-hop even as hip-hop sampledbebop artists, especially Gillespie. Only half-joking, Dizzy Gillespie and his protégé Jon Faddisreleased a rap recording in the 1980s, showing itsties to the old talking blues. Both bebop and raptapped into urban Black culture and was originallyan expression of changes in black youth culture.This chapter will explore these connections andthe eventual use of hip-hop in jazz by artists

such as Herbie Hancock, Branford Marsalis, andMiles Davis, among others.

Both bop and hip-hop were more than musicalforms; they were ways of life. Bop, accidentallynamed from the title of one of Gillespie’s songs,“Be-bop”, was a means of playing jazz in wayssquares, mainly whites, would not be able to play,at least at first. It was a return to an African-based cultural ideal. While it did keep out thesquares, at least at first, both Gillespie andCharlie Parker, not only played with whitemusicians, they hired them and tutored them.Parker was quite fond of Chet Baker and GerryMulligan and promoted them to his fellowmusicians.

Similarly, the hip-hop movement was anassertion of Black culture, expressed in manyforms, most familiarly in dance and in rap. Rap isin form an update of the old talking blues, using,at first, whatever means are found at hand—oldrecords, turntables, and such. Over time, likebop, it became more routinized. Also white rappersbegan to fill the ranks of its stars, most notablyEminem, just as white musicians had filled theranks of the boppers. Similarly, mainstream musicbegan to incorporate elements of rap just as ithad incorporated elements of bop before it.Interestingly, Rap music often sampled be-boptracks and when such practices were declaredillegal, jazz musicians found jobs laying downtracks for rappers to sample. The court case thatchanged the sampling frenzy was a 1991 U.S.District Court case—Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v.Warner Bros. Records, Inc. Basically, the courtruled that if you want to sample existing

recordings you must get permission of the originalartists or, more simply, if you want to play youmust afford to pay.

Both bop and hip-hop suffered from and, attimes, promoted the stereotype of the primitivegenius whose talent sprang from a wild nature andsuffering endured from prejudice and intimidation.Otherwise intelligent white critics promoted thisimage. John Hammond, for example, who discoveredand promoted many artists and later produced themon recordings, preferred artists who could notread music. He felt Duke Ellington was not anauthentic jazz musician because his music was tooelegant, and he preferred Count Basie, givingBasie a left-handed compliment. Of course, Basie,whose band had brilliant musicians, lovedEllington’s music and the Duke returned thecompliment. However, even Norman Mailer and JackKerouac perpetuated the stereotype, and setcomfort in what they wrongly saw as the music’smindless bliss.

Indeed, one of the things that irritated bothboppers and the hip-hop nation was theinfiltration of whites into the culture. Some ofthis infiltration was, nevertheless, the result ofthe generosity of African Americans who soughttalent, regardless of skin color. In any event,this infiltration was part of an old pattern goingback to early contact between Euro-Americans andAfricans and Afro-Americans, namely, theappropriation of African-based modes of expressiondaily life and the arts. Sadly, the imitation andthe imitators often profited more from theappropriation than the originators. Just as BennyGoodman and Artie Shaw out earned Louis Armstrong,

Count Basie, and Duke Ellington, white rappers andbusinesses people reaped the greater profits.

Interestingly, the attempt to segregate blackmusic has never worked. In one form or another itbecomes American popular music. Like America itbecomes hybridized, mixed, or in the terms ofGuthrie and others, intercultural. Since Americais intercultural that is not so surprising.American culture is a creole culture, in the wordsof Robert Farris Thompson (1983 also see CharlesHersch 2006)). Creolization has come to signifyboth creativity and continuity, as well as amixing or blending of cultures (Spitzer 2011).Both bop and hop are creole forms, no matter howoriginal their creators may have thought them.However unconsciously he may have done so, LouisArmstrong’s “Heebie Jeebies” is considered aforerunner of Rap. Similarly, early boppersacknowledged the pioneering roles of Armstrong andEllington. Miles Davis can stand in for them all.He noted that there is nothing played in jazz onthe trumpet that Pops (Armstrong) didn’t playfirst. He also said that every jazz musicianshould get on his knees before Ellington. That isnot to denigrate Gillespie or Parker. Gillespiehimself stated about Armstrong, “No him, no me.”Charlie Parker would quote Armstrong in his ownsolos, often playing entire choruses of “West EndBlues” or another piece from Armstrong’s vastrepertoire.

The Last Poets

Abiodun Oyewole, Umar Ben Hassan, Alifia Pudim,together with the percussionist Nilaja, are

generally considered the Last Poets. There wereearlier incarnations of the group. This versionhowever released two key statements on DouglasRecords in the late 1960’s, The Last Poets andThis is Madness. Their music put revolutionarypoetry, drawing on sense images over what theyconsidered primitive Afro rhythms, once againincorporating a stereotype to fight stereotypes.Around this group, rap began.

The language was something unheard of inpopular music at the time. Here is a taste:

Time is running out on bullshit changesRunning out like a bushfire in a dry forestLike a murderer from the scene of a crimeLike a little roach from DDT...

Not only did The Last Poets inspire rap and anew consciousness in “the ’hood”, it also inspiredjazz musicians to go back to their roots and to bemore socially conscious, with mixed results.Arguments still rage over whether the electrified,funkafied Miles Davis is better than the cool, orwhether the chest-thumping, screeching shoutingJohn Coltrane is better than the daringlyharmonic, “sheets of sound” Trane. Miles livedlong enough to come back to his cool style. Tranetold Theolonious Monk he had gone as far as hecould, and would come back to harmonic music.Sadly, he died before he could. Monk, the originalrebel, who clearly based his experiments onEllington’s music, no longer sounded so odd.

It is not my intent to give a history of rap.It is interesting to note that a number of jazzmusicians were involved in its early evolution,

including the saxophonist Julian Hemphill and theleader of the revolution Gil Scott Heron. The workof these people, rap and jazz, led to theemergence of Tupac Shakur, the Charlie Parker ofrap.

Tupac fulfilled all the promise of rap. Hismusic melded all its key elements: lyricism,poetry, stridence and rhythm. It was originalmusic, speaking across musical genres. He left thesame mark on rap that Bird left on jazz. Youcannot get away from his influence and still besinging rap.

From Be-Bop to Hip-Hop

The phrase comes from a production put on atthe Montreux Jazz Festival by Quincy Jones Hefeatured music from African roots to the Hip-Hopera. Q showed how it is all related. The concertfeatured Jon Hendricks, Al Jarreau, George Benson,Dianne Reeves, Grandmaster Melle Mel, and manyother Rap stars. Fittingly Jon Hendricks beganwith an improvised scat phrase that was tossedaround, back by various drummers from Africa andthe US. Everyone got a chance to improvise,demonstrating the connection, not oftenacknowledged between jazz and Rap.

There have been attempts at jazz rap. DizzyGillespie and Jon Faddis had a musicallysuccessful go at it. Herbie Hancock and MilesDavis released hip-hop albums. Jazz fusion groupsalso produced excellent music. There is no doubtthat there is a link between the two genres, justas there is between any two African American forms

of music. Whether it is a good link is beyond thisauthor’s ability to say.

 

References

1991 U.S. District Court case—Grand Upright Music,Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records, Inc.

Guthrie, P. Ramsey, Jr. Race Music: Black Culturesfrom Bebop to Hip-Hop Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2003.

Hall, Stuart. “What is This ‘Black’ in BlackPopular Culture?” Stuart Hall: CriticalDialogues in Cultural Studies. Eds. DavidMorley and Kuan-Hsing Chen. New York:Routledge, 2011.

Hersch, Charles. 1996. 465-475.Review of Abrahams,Roger D.; Spitzer, Nick; Szwed, John F.;Thompson, Robert Farris, Blues for New Orleans:Mardi Gras and America’s Creole Soul. H-Urban,H-Net Reviews. May 2006.

Spitzer, Nick Creolization as Cultural Continuityand Creativity in Postdiluvian New Orleans andBeyond New Orleans: Tulane University, 28November 2011.

Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit:African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy. NewYork: Vintage Books, 1984.

 

CHAPTER TENBOPPING ALONG WITH JOHNNY MERCER

John said of the song “Laura”, “If a fellowplays me a melody that sounds like something,well, I try and fit the words to the sound of themelody. It has a mood, and if I can capture thatmood, that’s the way we go about it. Laura wasthat kind of picture. It was predesigned, becauseLaura was a mystery. So I had to write ‘Laura’with kind of a mysterioso theme.”

(http://www.jerryjazzmusician.com/linernotes/johnny_mercer.html).

There aren’t many jazz musicians who have notperformed a Johnny Mercer song. Bop musicians wereno exception. Oscar Peterson and Dizzy Gillespiewere just two among the many who performed “AutumnLeaves”. Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis alsofound much to explore in the song as well. EllaFitzgerald did an entire songbook album of Mercermelodies, including the following outstandingsongs, “Too Marvelous for Words”, “Early Autumn”,“Day In, Day Out”, and “Laura” among others. In amovie portrait of Gillespie, Mercer’s “MidnightSun” is featured. The question is why boppersturned to Mercer’s tunes so often. What was therein his lyrics and melodies which attracted them?For young Turks who were supposedly rebellingagainst the restrictions of swing it seems an oddchoice of material. However, deeper examinationshows the logic of their choice and reveals a gooddeal about bop which is often overlooked.

Why do some songs become jazz standards andothers of seemingly equally interest do not? Partof the answer lies in the habit of many jazzmusicians of memorizing the lyrics of a song.Lester Young, the Pres, was famous for knowing thewords of hundreds of songs, and fellow musicianscalled him to check on the words of a song theywished to perform. Miles Davis, a master of theballad form, would state that he wished to playthe trumpet in the way Frank Sinatra sang. He was,needless to say, one of the musicians who calledon the Pres for help (Porter 2005:31).

Certainly, Johnny Mercer’s lyrics are among thebest ever written. Mercer was not only steeped inthe jazz tradition but generally wrote lyrics withcomposers from Hogie Carmichael to Henry Mancini,who were also in the know regarding jazz.Understandably, those times he wrote his own musicshowed a fine sense of jazz feeling. At parties,for example, people would ask Mercer to improvisesome jazz blues. There are recorded examples ofMercer doing so, showing great understanding ofthe form and ease with appropriate language to fitthe melody. It was also a feat he performed on hisradio program, “The Chesterfield Hour”, accordingto Gene Lees. Mercer would read the headlinesbefore his show and then have a segment of hisshow where he improvised words and music relatingto the news of the day. The music and words wouldalways fit together. As Daryl Sherman, a jazzvocalist and pianist noted, you can hear Johnny’slyrics in the melody.

It is the perfect wedding of the lyric andmelody, whether Johnny wrote the words and musicas with “Dream”, or “Something’s Gotta Give”, or

wrote lyrics to someone’s else’s music as in “IThought about You”, “Midnight Sun”, or “AutumnLeaves”. And the lyrics appealed to jazz musiciansas diverse as Lester Young, Louis Armstrong, andMiles Davis among many others. Indeed, it is moredifficult to find jazz musicians who have notplayed a Mercer tune than those who have.

Thus, when praising Wynton Marsalis Frank Tirrosays:

But as a model of the neoclassic in jazz AutumnLeaves stands out. A popular standard by JohnnyMercer, it has been sung, played, and orchestratedad infinitum, to the point, in fact, that alleducated jazz listeners know the harmonic andmelodic sequences (Tirro 450).

Many other examples could be given of how jazzmusicians react to Mercer’s lyrics while playing atune, from Miles Davis’s almost straight renditionof “I Thought about You”, to Sonny Rollins’smagnificent “I’m Old-fashioned”, in which thewords jump out at you through Sonny’s exuberantflourishes and runs. Along with Miles, Sonny isnoted for his mastery of a song’s lyrics.

Johnnie Mercer has clearly stated the reasonfor this respect for his lyrics. In his “AnEvening with Johnny Mercer”, he states that hewrote his lyrics to match the rhythmic contour ofthe melody. They had to be sung a particular way,the way in which a jazz musician phrases them.Thus, Mercer was fully aware of the melody,harmony, and rhythm inherent in his lyrics.Because of his awareness and his ability to fitthe lyric to the melody, harmony, and rhythm aswell as the intent of the musician in using these

elements in a jazz solo, Mercer’s lyrics singthrough the improvisations of Gillespie andArmstrong, Rollins, as well as those of LesterYoung or Coleman Hawkins, and Charlie Parker aswell as Johnny Hodges. They are not “jazzy”lyrics: they are lyrics that personify theelemental humor and sophistication of jazz itself.

Three examples of musicians who sing along withMercer’s lyrics drive home the point. Each of thepeople is a unique bop or post-bop stylist who,with roots firm in that tradition create counter-melodies in their solos, rather than simplyrunning notes, and who respect the lyrics and themood they enhance in their solos as well.

The Jazz Vocalists

But Young exerted an equally pervasiveinfluence on several generations of jazz andpopular singers, both directly and through suchkey acolytes as Holiday and Frank Sinatra, whotold Arlene Francis in 1981: “I knew Lester well,we were close friends and we had a mutualadmiration society. I took from what he did and hetook from what I did.” Sinatra also praised Youngfor “knowing the lyrics” to the songs that heplayed: “Knowing what the song is about has tocome from the lyric, not merely notes on a pieceof paper” (Will Friedwald, reprinted from The WallStreet Journal).

Although Lester Young is not strictly speakinga bop saxophonist, he influenced in some way orother almost every succeeding modern saxophonist.Mercer and Young were certainly aware of eachother, and, personal feelings aside, Sinatra was

definitely aware of Mercer’s work. Comparing theirversions of Mercer’s “Laura” or “Dream”, forexample, reveals the similarities of theirapproaches and their respect for Mercer’s lyrics.Both Mercer and Sinatra were drawn to greatmusicians and their vocals reveal that attractionquite clearly. Lester Young, in turn, wascertainly a lyrical musician who, like Sinatra,could swing with ferocity while remaining light onhis feet and not intrusive on the lyric or melody.

Lester was a bit like Ella Fitzgerald. Ella hadcome from the Swing Era and become proficient inbop. She could swing hard and sing sweetly. It wasno accident that long before she recorded theJohnny Mercer Songbook she waxed “My Baby Likes toBe-Bop”, perhaps Johnny’s first attempt at the newidiom. It is a fine novelty tune, but more thanjust a novelty tune. Johnny’s lyrics catch thefun, swing, and sophistication of the new music.Walter Bishop is listed as its composer. Mercerhimself recorded it with Nat Cole. The lyrics flowto the music and capture the fun of bop’s message.

Dizzy Gillespie returned the favor shortlyafter with his version of “That Old Black Magic”,played in waltz tempo. The booking agentcomplained that Dizzy’s music was too fast andconvoluted for normal people to follow. So hisband played it relatively straight, corny andslow. He made up for it later, playing “AutumnLeaves”, “Moonlight in Vermont”, “Days of Wine andRoses”, “Moon River”, “Laura”, with “Laura”, inhis own way, providing fresh looks at these gems.The lyrics take on deeper meaning and become morenuanced. It is clear that Gillespie is shaping hisarrangement and solo to the lyrics and he inflects

the lyrics to fit their meaning. Thus, on “Laura”he gives the word “dream” an other-worldlydimension, emphasizing what Mercer intended. In“Autumn Leaves”, Gillespie conveys the falling ofthe leaves with cadenza after cadenza, travelingfrom high note to low note.

There is no mystery why Ella Fitzgerald, LesterYoung, and Dizzy Gillespie respected Mercer’slyrics. Ella, for example, recorded The JohnnyMercer Songbook, the only one of her songbooksdedicated to the work of a lyricist. Mercer was ahip jazz-influenced vocalist. He not only spokethe language, he also sang and wrote it. Hislyrics are hip. After all, as Edie Adams says,Mercer during the production of Lil Abner, “hatedbeing around the set…You always saw him at a jazzclub somewhere” (Furia 198). Like Sinatra, whom hewas not fond of, he enjoyed being in the companyof jazz musicians and loved their music.

And they loved his. Vocalists as different asLouis Armstrong, Joe Williams, Susanna McCorkle,Frank Sinatra, June Christie, Connie Boswell, EllaFitzgerald, Billie Holliday, recorded his songsand sang them well. Johnny himself would sing hisown songs just about as well as anyone else, andoften better, showing how he thought they shouldbe interpreted. Bopper or Moldy Fig loved Mercer’slyrics. Even those who went beyond bop foundtreasure in Mercer’s work. Sonny Rollins, forexample, has some classic renditions of Mercer’sworks.

Sonny Rollins

Over many years Sonny Rollins has been anoutstanding musician. He has recorded numerousMercer songs. These include “Skylark”, “I RememberYou”, “I Thought about You”, “I’m an Old Cowhand”,“Traveling Light”, and others. Sonny grew uploving the movies and the songs, written byMercer, heard in those movies. As the tenorsaxophonist Joe Lovano states Sonny never plays asong he doesn’t love. Listening to hisinterpretation of any of his songs is an educationin deconstruction and reconstruction.

For example, Rollins’s version of “I’m OldFashioned” begins on anything but an old fashionednote. He begins with a rhythmic riff in thecalypso style. It is almost a minute into theperformance before he begins to state the melody.However, the core of his solo is a return to themelody over and over again, and one can hear thelyrics coming through, enhancing their meaning.One could spin an entire narrative about whatSonny is conveying. He is conveying the unity ofopposites, the importance of both the old and thenew. He moves back and forth between drivingrhythm and sheer melodic beauty, between Africanrhythm and European harmony, laying claim to both.It is the contrast beyond the hard-bop and post-bop accoutrements and the old fashioned core ofhis solo that, for me, brings out the strength ofthe lyrics. Sonny is as hip as can be but there isa core of honesty and love for enduring valuesexpressed in his solo that draws one back again.

Sonny Rollins has been wrongly accused of beingtoo rational and unsentimental in his playing.However, just a bit of serious listening dispelsthat contention. Similarly, one of his models,

Charlie Parker, was also accused of being toohard-edged. A brief listen to his version of“Laura” with its close adherence to the melody andlovely string background gives the lie to thecharge. Parker all but speaks Mercer’s lyricsthrough his alto sax. It is a deeply romanticpresentation. One that is both thoughtful andemotional. In sum, much like Mercer himself.

McCoy Tyner and Post-Bop Mercer

A final example comes from the work of McCoyTyner, best-known, perhaps, for his remarkablework with John Coltrane. Both perform “Out of ThisWorld”. Trane begins his rendition in the upperregisters but close to the melody, accentuatingthe title and presenting an ethereal feelingappropriate to being out of this world. McCoyTyner adds to that feeling with his all-butpatented fourths in his comping and solos. Thereis a modal, eerie feeling to the tune and bothJulian Protester’s version and Herbie Hancock’sdemonstrate.

Tyner was also one of many to record “AutumnLeaves”. He does a textured version, fullyswinging and surprisingly more traditional thanmany other post-bop musicians. It is clean,brilliant, and beautiful. He allows the chords tocarry the message of the tune, playing theoriginal only at the beginning and end. Yes, thelistener is never in doubt that “Autumn Leaves” isbeing played. McCoy’s brilliance carries thelyrics as well as the melody. It is the kind ofperformance that Mercer’s songs bring out inmusicians.

There are, in fact, hundreds of versions of“Dream”. The performers range from rock stars topop singers to jazz stars. Each found somethingworthwhile in the song. The fact that it is one ofthe few in which Mercer wrote both words and musichas much to do with its popularity. It isunfortunate that he did not do more songs forwhich he wrote the music. The few for which he didbecame quite popular, and are very good.

Reflections

Johnny had a facility with expressing hip andsublime ideas in the American vernacular. Whileinstrumentalists appreciated this knack, it may benoted most clearly among jazz vocalists. The 3-disk Johnny Mercer Songbook is a fine collectionof jazz versions of his songs, both instrumentaland vocal. The vocalists appear to let the wordsroll around lazily in their mouths, savoring themand with great ease interpret them, showing hownaturally Mercer captured the thoughts and fit thewords to the melody. A few examples demonstratethe point.

Ella Fitzgerald’s version of: Skylark, with hervirtuoso treatment of the melody and harmony,displays a keen understanding of the meaning ofthe lyrics. In the manner of Louis Armstrong shestays just a bit behind the beat, allowing therichness of the words to flow over the listener:“Faint as a will-o’-the wisp. Crazy as a loon. Sadas a gypsy serenading the moon”. Then sheplaintively sighs, “My heart is riding on yourwings”. Do we really need to parse the rhythm ofthe line? The natural way Mercer’s poetry reflects

idiomatic American speech is obvious. Turning itinto poetry, however, is subtle indeed.

Another Armstrong disciple, Billie Holiday,interprets “One for My Baby” in her patentednaturalistic mode. It is not very far removed fromSinatra’s, since both could read a sophisticatedlyric and had great familiarity with heartbreaksand late night drinking. Anyone who has been thererecognizes the innate truth of the lyric. Withouttaking anything away from either Lady Day or theChairman of the Board, it is fair to say the songalmost interprets itself. As Sinatra sang in adifferent song, you just wind it up and let it go.

Louis Armstrong sang many Mercer songs over hislong and praiseworthy career. He sang “JeepersCreepers” to a horse in the 1938 movie “GoingPlaces”. Harry Warren, an outstanding composer,was Mercer’s partner on this song. Many otherartists have also sung this tune. In the SongbookCDs, Satchmo sings “Blues in the Night”. The wordsappear to hang slightly behind the melody, givingthe world a lesson in what swing means. He evenspeaks some of the lyrics to emphasize theirappropriateness and poetic essence. His trumpetsolo reflects the lyrics, and mimic his ownvocals. This is quite a tribute to Mercer’sartistry.

Conclusion

Johnny Mercer’s lyrics are wedded to the melodyof the song. It is something that jazz musicianslove. It provides them with a narrative frame onwhich to build their improvisations. It signals tothem the feelings of the song. It is interesting

that not only Lester Young and Miles Davismemorized lyrics to songs but, at least when itcame to Johnny Mercer’s songs, others did so aswell. The range of jazz musicians who recordedMercer’s creations is a wide one and is stillbeing added to. There is a great differencebetween versions of his songs by jazz or jazzinfluenced performers and those from other genres.

Obviously, Mercer himself had strong jazzroots, which revealed themselves time after time.From the folksiness of “Lazy Bones” to thesophistication of “The Days of Wine and Roses”,Mercer’s lyrics were pure jazz poetry. Theirmeaning goes deeper than their surface, like asatisfying jazz solo. Both Armstrong and Coltranecould find jazz meaning in Mercer’s lyrics ascould many in-between. Mercer wrote some songswith jazz musicians, from the humorous “My BabyLikes to Be-Bop”, with Walter Bishop, Jr., and thehaunting “Midnight Sun” with Lionel Hampton, tohis final great hits with Henry Mancini,“Charade”, “Moon River”, and “Days of Wine andRoses”.

After all the analysis of Mercer’s work, thesimplest and truest statement regarding why jazzmusicians, including the boppers loved Johnny’swork is that he was one of them, a jazz lyricistwho loved their work. It was a match made inheaven as Daryl Sherman (2009} suggests. This finejazz pianist and performer notes that Mercer’slyrics are so well formed to the melody that onecan hear them in an instrumental performance,because they were unforgettable.

References

Coltrane, John Coltrane. Impulse 21, 1962.Furia, Philip. Skylark. New York: St. Martin’s

Press, 2003.Friedwald Will A Centennial Tribute. The Wall

Street Journal, 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574356562790622616.html.

Johnny Mercer Song Database Popular Music Collection, Special Collections Department, Georgia State University Library, 2004.

Lees, Gene (http://www.jerryjazzmusician.com/linernotes/johnny_mercer.html).

Lovano, Joe. Joe Lovano on Sonny Rollins. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iT0qPkDENs).

Mercer, Johnny “An Evening with Johnny Mercer”. ASIN: B000000PF0 September 23, 1992.

Porter, Lewis. Lester Young (Jazz Perspectives) [Paperback] University of Michigan Press, 2005.

Sherman, Daryl on Marion McPartland’s “Piano Jazz”June 26, 2009 (http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=105952486&m=105922174)

Tirro, Frank. Jazz: A History. New York: Norton, 1993.

 

CHAPTER ELEVENBONANZA AND POPULAR THEMES

FROM TV AND MOVIES

The age of popular TV themes is in the past.Perhaps, it may always be in the past because ofthe nature of the genre. After all, it reallyappears that we grow fond of the old TV shows aswe age. The theme songs not only identify theshows when they are new, they also call them tomind after the shows are off the air. A bar or twocalls them to mind in a flash. A few bars of thetheme from The Rockford Files, Love Boat, JackieGleason, Cheers, Sanford and Son, Mash or my ownfavorite, Peter Gunn, flashes the action into ourminds and time melts away. Similarly, movie themesremain famous long after the movies they gracedhave been forgotten. The theme from Rocky, TheWizard of Oz, Flashdance, Shaft, Singin’ in theRain, Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate, Live andLet Die, Goldfinger… one could continue almostendlessly. The theme song, then, sets the themeand reminds us of the TV or movie.

Perhaps the most memorable TV theme song wasthat from Bonanza. The show seems to have lastedon TV forever. In fact, it was on from 1959 until1973 in first run and is still on TV today inreruns. That gave viewers plenty of time to haveJay Livingston’s and Ray Evans’s simple melodyinstilled permanently in their brains. In fact,many baby boomers grew up with the show.

Each of Pa Cartwright’s sons mirrors an aspectof goodness useful in opposing the evil embodiedin Virginia City. That aspect, of course, comesfrom a reflection of his mother. Pernell Roberts,as Adam, decided that his mother was “a woman ofintelligence, a gentle soul and the qualities ofbeing strong willed, something she got from herBritish ancestors”. Dan Blocker. Hoss, believesthat his mother had “a rich sense of humor” likehim, and was also big and strong. Finally, MichaelLandon—Little Joe—found his mother morecomplicated than his brothers. She was “a woman ofmystery and intrigue. My mother had formed somequestionable alliances during her younger,carefree days in New Orleans. After dad marriedher, a former suitor tried to blackmail her anddad killed him. In an effort to help her erase thebackground. That maybe wasn’t the best. BenCartwright took off for Nevada and The Ponderosa,but another suitor followed. Right after I wasborn this suitor killed her in a fit of jealousy.My mother must have had a lot of courage.”Intelligence, humor, strength, mystery,repentance, courage: overall, Ben, the patriarch,presides over and coordinates these aspects,seeking to harness them in the cause ofrighteousness (Anonymous 1962).

Moral Lessons from Bonanza

Writers in the Golden Age of Television knewthat if it isn’t the Bible, it’s in Shakespeare.They drew freely on these sources for theirwriting. It is clear that David Dortort, who didthe Bonanza pilot, and the other writers,

including Alex Sharp, Suzanne Clauser, ThomasThomoson, Michael Landon, John Hawkins, WardHawkins, Robert Vincent Wright, Ken Pettus,Anthony Lawrence, Denne Petitclerc, Robert Barron,Frank Cleaver, Joe Pagano, Preston Wood, and FrankChase who worked on Bonanza, were well aware ofthe prime sources for Euro-American literature.

Each Bonanza program fits easily under theheading of a Bible lesson. For example, StevenSkelton provides a number of lessons built aroundBonanza episodes. Some of them are “Death atDawn”, for which Skelton says the appropriateBiblical topic is “fathers”. The verse is “I willbe a Father to you, and you will be my sons anddaughters, says the Lord Almighty (Corinthians6:18)”. The episode involves Hoss becoming afather figure to a young boy whose mother dies.The boy’s real father is a convict. When hisfather escapes from prison, he and Hoss areinvolved in a shootout in which Hoss kills theboy’s father and has to give the news to him.

In “The Abduction”, the issue of jealousy isexplored in Skelton’s series. He uses thefollowing from Proverbs 27:4: “Anger is cruel andfury overwhelms but who can stand before jealousy.When Ben aids a friend who has been cuckolded, andhas become bitter because of it, a hired handtells the man that Ben only helped him build amill because Ben is himself after the man’s wife—everyone is hurt by the results of jealousy.

ln The Henry Comstock Story, shown on November7, 1959, but actually the second episode filmed,the story of the founding of Virginia Cityunfolds. A flashback has Henry T.P. Comstockvisiting the Ponderosa. He is running from angry

Californians whom he has bilked of their money.The Cartwrights, always committed to fair play,believe that four armed men against one unarmedone is just wrong. They decide to even the odds ina show of spectacular marksmanship. Comstock, on amule, follows them back to the Ponderosa. LittleJoe remarks that “God helps fools and littlechildren.”

Alone the way, Comstock buys a share in agoldmine, and sells it for $1100 when he believeshis partner is playing along with his con game. Ofcourse, the mine is the famous silver ComstockLode. The conman outsmarts himself. Along the way,one of the miners falls on his liquor and baptizesthe mining town “Virginia”. Comstock adds City tothe miner’s name as a more fitting name for whatwill, he states, become a big city.

The program provides some background to Ben’sbackground in California as a partner of Sutter aswell as his hatred of gold miners, and the lustthat causes men to destroy the land. Ben alsoteaches the value of stewardship as he counselshis sons to replace any tree they cut down. Thefierce love of the Ponderosa is on display when aminer who had paid Comstock $25 for the Ponderosatries to drive them off the land. However, thepotentially dangerous situation becomes anostalgic one when Ben reminisces with his sonsabout their encounter with Comstock. The programalso takes a few moments to display the moralcharacters of the sons and Hoss’s protectivenesstoward others, especially Little Joe, who almoststarts a war with the Paiutes when he sneaks offwith the chief s daughter to a dance. Somehow itall fits around the theme of God protecting fools

and little children. Ironically, Joe becomes oneof those to whom he had condescended.

One more example gives the flavor of the seriesand the way Bonanza can and has been used. In “TheLast Trove”, the basic lesson is kindness. HereProverbs 11:17 is used. “A kind man benefitshimself but a cruel man brings trouble onhimself”. In this episode, the Cartwrights showkindness to a mysterious worker who seeks shelterafter robbing a bank. The robber, Sam, hires on asa hand. Little Joe doubts Sam’s story, but theCartwrights decide to give Sam some room untilproven otherwise. However, Joe is captured by thegang and Sam faces the dilemma of drawing on Joeor not.

Bonanza provided a weekly Bible lesson cloakedin action entertainment. There was enough actionto snare most people. A large segment of theaudience was made up of young people n their teensor even preteens. The program was family friendlyand continued the myths of the American West inwhich the cowboy fought fair and for justice,while working for the good of the community. Theshow did demonstrate some subtlety in exploringthe motives of the villain. Sam could not draw onJoe, for example. There were causes leading tovillainy, including failure in early nurturing.Prior events did have consequences, just as Benwas shaped by events in his own life.

The Lessons of Bonanza

Bonanza began its long run in the 1950s, a timewhen America still believed in its traditionalvalues, before the rise of the new conservativesand the cynicism embodied in programs like Dallas.Ben made his money the old-fashioned way by hardwork and integrity. He carried the weight of hisfortune and station in life with “a sense of civicresponsibility, charity, and warm family relations(Kellner, 60). Intuition substitutes forintellectuality. The Bible provides answers to allof Ben’s problems, although he adapts them to hiscircumstances. Moreover, he exhibits an admirabledegree of tolerance, looking at people’s characternot at skin color or other extraneous factors.Ability over birth is what matters, in keepingwith Ben’s democratic principles.

The premise worked well. Bonanza reached a wideaudience on NBC. Its high point was in 1964-1967,when it was the number one show. It was in the topten for most of its lengthy run, appealing topeople who enjoyed American traditional values setin that most American of places, the AmericanWest. Moreover, it is set at a time when thosevalues were clearly beginning to be challenged andchanging, the period when the Comstock Lode wasfound, the Civil War over, and the frontiernearing its end. Business and the robber baronswere on the rise, and the first millionaires wereeager to shape America in their image.

The fact is that the Cartwrights were anappealing mix, each reflecting an aspect ofgoodness in the battle against evil. Although Benwas tough, he was rational, a pioneer sensitive

and committed to justice. He had strong civiccommitment, as did his sons. The program promotedthese virtues within good plots, dramatic action,fine acting, and appealing characters. The fact isthat the Cartwrights were a family that exhibitedmutual love. They had a sense of loyalty to eachother, and showed it in a humorous manner, addingto its appeal. The Cartwrights saw theircommitment to their family as extending to aidingthe community (Hammerstein. p. 223).

As one author notes “The sight of theCartwright s charging down a hillside on horseback—old Ben with his great mane of hair whippingbehind him like a Biblical prophet, Adam, with thedeadly eyes of a swooping hawk, Hoss, so huge ofchest and shoulder that the giant bay under himlooked puny by comparison, and Little Joe, a wildrebel yell on his lips—was enough to cow thecoolest man. And this close-knit family of menstood between the silver barons and the mostextensive stretch of timberland in the ComstockLode area” (Himmelstein 223).

Note the Biblical imagery in the quotation. Benis compared with a Biblical prophet. The otherssons have aspects, which together add up to thepersonification of goodness. They ventured forthfrom the Ponderosa, their vast Garden of Eden toright the wrongs of the area. Not only did theyguard their property, which helped give them thestatus, authority and strength to help others. Butthey sought to protect their own home as well. Aspowerful as the Cartwright’s were, they had toface down the even-richer silver barons. Unlikethe cattle and silver barons, the Cartwrights hadheartfelt concern for others, and were truly

charitable. In sum they were good citizens,embodying the values of the Old West, as seen fromthe perspective of the late Eisenhower and Kennedyperiod

The Cartwrights were also a male dynasty inline with traditional gender thinking of theperiod. The joke about the program is that theCartwrights were the kiss of death. The minute oneof the brothers, for example, was involved in aromantic alliance, viewers were certain she wouldbe dead by the end of the episode. However, thatdid not deter the Cartwrights, because the strongheterosexual ethos of the period demanded theiradherence to all the requirements of masculinity,including a romantic interest in women, whom theytreated as gallant gentlemen.

Ultimately, the lessons of Bonanza stem fromthe masculine, one could rightly say muscular,Christianity of the period. Remember it was aperiod when many Americans regularly attendedchurch services. It was a time when, ideally atleast, there were clear-cut, black and white rulesfor life, gender relations, values, and associatedbehavior. Those rules were just being challengedwhen Bonanza began its run and the critiqueincreased as the sixties ran its course.Interestingly, the show continued its run duringthe height of the critique, somehow continuing toappeal to a large segment of the population in themidst of the torrid culture wars of the sixties.

The suave performance of the character Paladin,able to slay a man in one second and or offerwisdom in the next, marked not only Have Gun—WillTravel, but the adult Western in general, as astereotypical masculine genre. There were few

female heroics in these TV series. The brawls,shootout, and other forms of violence wereproducts of a male socia1ethos; remember it tookeven the countercultural some time to get aroundto female equality. David Dortort, the producer ofBonanza, consciously eschewed female interferencein the Western. Speaking of the leading characterin the series, the patriarchal Ben Cartwright,Dortort explained that “he is not led around bythe nose by anybody. We do not have any moms builtinto our show—or, for that matter, any women. Weare, as it were, anti-momism” (Mac Donald 1987,751).

It is important to remember that momism was nota good thing in the 1950s, and many in thoseFreudian days attacked it as a means foremasculating men. The Organization Man in the GrayFlannel Suit had become a conformist who violatedthe basic individualism of America’s frontiertradition and wound up in The Lonely Crowd.Bonanza embraced the myth of Old West whilepromoting the domestic family, albeit, without anactual mother present. Interestingly, in a periodof time noted for its homophobia, the domesticmale family of the Ponderosa became a strong forumfor traditional family values and gender roles.

Those values were wrapped in a package boundwith the strong ties of the Bible. Ben generallyarticulated those words but sometimes the Biblicalverses and allusions were given to one of thesons. Remember each of the sons embodied an aspectof Goodness. Generally, they stayed in character,reflecting clearly, and sometimes didactically,their personal virtues.

Conclusions

It may appear strange to those who did not livein the period of Bonanza’s popularity that mediaguru Marshall McLuhan could state that Americanswere living through Bonanza, which reflectedAmerican gender roles. Certainly gender roles havechanged drastically since the program first aired.Attitudes have changed about what constitutes the“typical” American family. Certainly, the familyitself has undergone drastic changes. The deathknell of the fifties family has been sounding formany decades now. We know the facts: about half ofnew marriages ending in divorce; single parentshead over a quarter of families with youngchildren. Nuclear families are breaking up. Lessthan 13 per cent of the elderly are living withfamilies. More women are now childless than in therecent past, and that by choice. And the roll callgoes on (Jennings Bryant, editor, 166).

Interestingly, although certainly embodyingdifferent realities from those of today, BenCartwright was a single parent. In common withmany single parents he was not averse to marriage.He often idealized it to his sons. Not only werethere programs devoted to each of his wives butreferences to these women emerge in a number ofthe shows. Interestingly, we still embody many ofthe images of individualism so common to Bonanza.If one looks closely at current programs on TV,there is still an idealization if not realizationof the nuclear family. The dysfunctional membersof The Simpsons and the somewhat more functionalmembers of Modern Family are in nuclear families.Other popular sitcoms have people who would like

to be in one, as Two and a Half Men and Two BrokeGirls would, even while they demonstrate aspectsof the “new morality. There is nostalgia for theold one peeping out in the cracks of these shows,demonstrating the sociological truth that behavioroften changes faster than values, real culturethan the ideal culture

Ben still goes on in TV Land reruns, doling outBiblical lessons to his sons living the just lifeas he sees it. The old American values ofindividualism, fair play, protection of the weakand hard work amid stewardship are expressed dailyto old and new fans.