The following contains excerpts from the book, Early Jazz (Its Roots and Musical Development) (Gunther Schuller).
At our music school in Dallas, Texas we believe that music is more than sound, it is relationships. One of the most important relationships a musician can nurture is one with the fabric of history in which he creates.
“Despite the fact that many ‘serious’ composers and performers had indicated their high regard for jazz as early as the 1920s, the academic credentials of jazz were hardly sufficient to produce a serious interest in the analysis of its techniques and actual musical content…In a sense this book is an answer in terms of specific musical detail to a series of interrelated questions: What makes jazz work? What makes jazz different form other music? Why do so many people find jazz exciting? How did it get that way?…In this respect the book is directed particularly to the ‘classically’ trained musician or composer.”
This is quite possibly one of the top five most important books every musician should know. It has been regarded in the musical community as of paramount importance in the documentation of the jazz style. It is very dense and goes into a good deal of music theory, so I chose to break it into several sections to ensure that I thoroughly understood what the author was saying.”
We teach students at our music school in Dallas, Texas the fundamental ‘core’ competencies they will utilize in any style of music, including Jazz – things like scales, foundational theory, tone quality, and music notation.
This third section of the book deals with the earliest known history of the first great soloist of Jazz – Louis Armstrong.
Following are the main points in the book:
- What made Louis Armstrong outstanding among the rest of his contemporary jazz musicians were the following traits: “1) his superior choice of notes and the resultant shape of his lines; 2) his incomparable basic quality of tone; 3) his equally incomparable sense of swing, that is, the sureness with which notes are placed in the time continuum and the remarkably varied attack and release properties of his phrasing; 4) and, perhaps his most individual contribution, the subtly varied repertory of vibratos and shakes with which Armstrong colors and embellishes individual notes.”
At our music school in Dallas, Texas we help our students learn how to produce a successful tone quality, as well as all the various ways they can color that tone with added elements that give it augmented beauty.
- Around 1924, “There is considerable evidence to the effect that Armstrong, especially in those years, intuitively separated song material into two distinct categories: Tin Pan Alley songs, where blue notes were not mandatory and were probably out of place; and blues and New Orleans standards, where blue notes would be very much at home.”
- The most remarkable recording projects Louis Armstrong participated in were: the Hot Five and the Hot Seven.
- In 1926, Armstrong was involved in a recording project with Erskine Tate’s Vendome Theatre Orchestra, which had a great influence on his development. “A violinist, like many theater orchestra leaders, Tate received a fairly comprehensive musical training at various Chicago conservatories…With the emergence of jazz, Tate’s repertory expanded to include jazz, however without dropping the classics. Forming an early ‘Third Stream’ orchestra, in potential if not in fact, Tate’s musicians all had to read very well. Some indeed were legitimate musicians.” Armstrong stayed with Tate several years, and always spoke glowingly of the association.
This is another example of Classical music’s integral influence on the early beginnings of Jazz. We believe students in our music school in Dallas, Texas should study the ‘classics’ in order to give them foundational understanding for all other styles.
- Other musicians that complemented Armstrong’s style in his bands and recording, having a long-term relationship with him, and great in their own right were trombonist Kid Ory, and pianist Earl Hines. “Hines brought a whole new texture to the ensemble, and a greater sense of swing. His playing is remarkably consistent and leaves no doubt that, for the first time, Armstrong had met a colleague who understood him and was almost his equal. The contrast with most other pianists of the period is striking, and there is no question that Himes’s childhood training in classical piano had an enduring influence on his technical capacity and on the originality of his conception…Hines’s style attained a complexity and independence of the two hands that had probably never been heard in jazz before.”
This example shows, again, the importance of Classical music’s influence in Jazz. We teach students in our music school in Dallas, Texas how to successfully play Classical music, although we understand that they may pursue any other musical direction, taking that foundation with them.
- Among the most important recordings of Louis Armstrong was West End Blues, which made Armstrong a household name. Other outstanding performances were Weather Bird, Muggles, Potato Head Blues, and Beau Koo Jack.
- “The resilience of Armstrong’s genius is such that even past sixty his playing and singing were technically unimpaired. And despite years of showmanship, lip-splitting grandstanding, mugging and clowning, his art was indestructible. In his most recent comeback (early 1964) he revealed a new depth and poignancy in even the most uninspired musical material.”
We encourage students at our music school in Dallas, Texas to study the life and music of the great Louis Armstrong, gleaning from his genuine creativity and full career and legacy.
Studying Armstrong’s melodic conceptions, notated in the book, will provide students with insights into how he wove chromaticism into his melodies using ‘blue’ notes. And studying the transcribed notations in the book showcases Armstrong’s rhythmic creativity in his use of syncopations, polyrhythms, and poly-metric layering over the standard beat. The integration of Classical disciplines in the formation of Jazz keeps coming up and is an important point in understanding the ‘bridge’ between the two styles.