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.
Following are the main points in this book:
- “Like Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson was at the peak of his career during a period which coincided with the beginning s of jazz as a distinct musical form and with the beginnings of recordings…But unlike Morton, James P. was able to leave his mark on a succession of pianists that constitute the elite of the jazz piano tradition: Fats Waller, Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, and on all the way to Thelonious Monk.”
“Johnson’s musical antecedents, of course, were ragtime…One of the clues to Johnson’s remarkably clear technique can be found in his early musical training, which was directed by his mother and an Italian music teacher, both of whom gave him a solid grounding in ‘classical’ piano techniques. Later, as a young and ambitions teenager, James P. augmented this training by listening to and emulating the leading ‘classical’ pianists of his day, de Pachmann, Rachmaninoff, and Hofmann. At the same time he was absorbing the stomp and rag styles of three slightly older players, Luckey Roberts, Eubie Blake, and a pianist know as Abba Labba…Blake was famous for being able to transpose pieces into all keys, an unheard-of feat in those days.”
Here is yet another example of Classical music’s influence on early Jazz. At our music school in Dallas, Texas we teach our students core competencies from Classical disciplines that can be used in any style.
“As in the case of Morton, the assimilation of the blues in Johnson’s style was an important integrative element in the transition from ragtime to jazz. At the same time Johnson was adding to his style ‘classical’ pianistic precision – correct fingerings, well-balanced chords, digital virtuosity.”
“By 1917 he was the new leader of the Harlem pianists, but he was also pursuing his interest in semi-classical and classical composition and in all manner of show music, working out orchestrations with various units associated with the Clef Club, a Harlem musician’s organization founded by James Europe.”
The merger that happened between Classical music and Jazz is unmistakable, and the apparent value in early Jazz musicians who studied Classical music is undeniable. At our music school in Dallas, Texas we teach our students Classical disciplines so they can successfully accomplish their musical goals in any style they choose.
“James P. Johnson’s greatest contribution was to recast the rhythms of ragtime into a more swinging, steadier jazz beat. To implement this he had a steady, rocking left hand providing a reliable rhythmic substructure. But even at its ‘stridingest,’ his left had added a flow and forward movement that none of the earlier players had, except Morton…By superimposing the vocal, linear feeling of the blues on the piano, James P. made an important break with the past and changed the piano into an expressive instrument. It is likely that he also heard this same flowing expressivity in a great deal of the ‘classical’ piano playing of the day…in other words, the whole ‘horizontalization’ of the music – represented at the time a new direction in jazz piano…This direction became even clearer on Johnson’s Keep Off the Grass and Carolina Shout.”
“Johnson focused his attention of the rhythmicization of melodic ideas…Many of his ‘melodies’ are essentially rhythmic figures that happen to have pitches attached to them.”
“Johnson’s improvisational talent can be savored in one of his most perfect realizations, Worried and Lonesome Blues, made in 1923.”
“His 1930 recordings of pieces like What Is This Thing Called Love? And You’ve Got To Be Modernistic are…compromises he was prepared to make in the direction of commercial music…and…insufficient to satisfy the demands of that market. As a result, without Johnson ever quite understanding it, both areas, the commercial and jazz, began to pass him by. In silent despair he concentrated fairly exclusively on his interest in ‘classical’ music, working on his symphonies and tone poems.”
- “In the hierarchy of jazz royalty, Bessie Smith was called ‘the Empress of the Blues.’ Probably the greatest ‘classic blues’ singer, she certainly deserves the title…In order to appreciate Bessie Smith’s artistry one must realize two things. The blues before her time (and the time of her teacher Ma Rainy) was a vast field encompassing a wide range of folk material – work songs, field hollers, spirituals, and shouts – mostly sung by everyday people, workers, sharecroppers, and itinerant beggars. Secondly, the blues was originally an area quite separate from ragtime and from early jazz…The development of the blues into a distinct musical form and idiom took many decades.”
“What Bessie undoubtedly acquired from her teacher during many years of apprenticeship…was an ear for the broad, tragic quality of voice that differentiated the true blues singers from the more ‘popular’ ballad stylists of the day.”
“What…made Bessie Smith such a superior singer? Again it is a combination of elements: a remarkable ear for and control of intonation, in all its subtlest functions; a perfectly centered, naturally produced voice (in her prime); an extreme sensitivity to word meaning and the sensory, almost physical, feeling of a word; and, related to this, superb diction and what singers call projection. She was certainly the first singer on jazz records to value diction, not for itself, but as a vehicle for conveying emotional states…Perhaps even more remarkable was her pitch control…fine microtonal shadings, the various ‘flatnesses’ with which she could color a pitch in relation to a particular word or vowel.”
At our music school in Dallas, Texas we encourage a high degree of ‘ear-training’ for all of our students, especially those who are studying voice.
“As early as Jailhouse Blues (September 1923) we can hear the embellishment traits that form the essence of Bessie’s style.” Ornamentation “appears with greater consistency starting around 1925, and can be heard on any number of recordings: Reckless Blues, Sobbin’ Hearted Blues, Cold in Hand Blues, and many others.)”
Louis Armstrong recorded with Bessie. “Armstrong had immense importance for Bessie’s artistic development.”
“In Nashville Woman’s Blues Bessie’s expansive phrasing and rich tone seem to be beyond metric or rhythmic confinement. Her vocal lines float in a manner that sounds improvised, but probably was not…Like a great actress, she created the illusion of total improvisation, even though every move may have been in some manner prepared and studied.”
The violinist Robert Robbins played on a number of Bessie’s recordings. “Paul Oliver points out rightly that in fourteen months of recording Robbins’s style came ‘closer to the folk tradition’ from which Bessie had come ‘than the work of any musician whom Bessie had employed to date.’ Robbins is at his best on Ticket Agent, Ease Your Window Down…On Sorrowful Blues, Robbins is joined by the guitarist Harry Reser. With a piano-less background – just guitar and violin – this blues sounds like a dusty county blues.”
“In later years…her voice was worn out by excessive drinking…Since her voice was no longer entirely reliable, and her record sales were consequently dropping severely by 1929, the beginning of the Depression, the sad finale of her life was in one way or another inevitable.”
At our music school in Dallas, Texas we encourage students to be comfortable in a number of styles. A jazz violinist is easily nurtured if they have developed good technique from studying Classical music and the disciplines of scales and music theory.