Sidney J. Furie’s film is a crossover text, created to win the sympathies of both white and African American audiences. In its effort to provide for all possible viewer positions, the film negotiates racial, gender, generational, and political issues.
This according to “Strange fruit?: Lady sings the blues as a crossover film” by Gary Storhoff (Journal of popular film and television XXX/2 [summer 2002] pp. 105–113).
Today is Diana Ross’s 70th birthday! Below, her portrayal of Lady Day.
Glenn Miller and Fats Waller were born in the same year, 1904, and died on the same date, 15 December 1944 and 1943 respectively. Few pop idols survive changing fashions unscathed, but Miller and Waller seem to have done just that.
One does better to consider the overlooked similarities between Miller and Waller than to belabor their obvious differences. Too much has been made of a racial divide that turned them into emblems of black cool and white corn, but everyone danced to Miller, and more whites than blacks bought Waller records.
The era inspired similar goals: Waller encouraged people to laugh through the privations of the thirties; Miller induced them to romanticize American values during wartime. Both used jazz as a conduit to reach a larger public than jazz per se could command. Both were defined by the times; now they define those times for us.
This according to “Stride and swing: The enduring appeal of Fats Waller and Glenn Miller” by Gary Giddins (The New Yorker LXXX/14 [31 May 2004] pp. 85–87).
The work draws on both long-standing symbols of African American cultural identity and more immediate historical context. It is a modernist work as well, as Roach (1924–2007) and his musicians strove to make use of African and African American legacies in new ways.
Decades after the recording, We insist! still sounds fresh, modern, and haunting, reminding us that jazz tradition has always been in dialogue with the social and cultural movements going on around it, and has often been at its most inspired when engaged in social commentary.
This according to “Revisited! The Freedom now suite” by Ingrid Monson (JazzTimes XXXI/7 [September 2001] pp. 54–59,135; available online here).
Today is Roach’s 90th birthday! Below, a recording of the work.
BONUS: Roach was the first jazz musician to receive a MacArthur Fellowship! You can read about it here.
“None of us knew we were making history” said Earl “Fatha” Hines (1903–83) in a 1981 interview. “To us, every one of those sessions was just one more recording.”
Hines was speaking of the recordings that he made with Louis Armstrong in 1928 and the following years—recordings now considered enduring jazz masterpieces, not least due to the pairing of Armstrong’s trumpet and Hines’s avowed “trumpet-style” piano playing.
“My father was a cornet player, and I wanted to play that instrument when I was growing up. But playing it hurt me behind my ears, so I learned the piano instead. And I started playing on the piano what I had wanted to play on the cornet.”
In so doing, Hines freed the piano from its limited role as a rhythm instrument, playing hornlike phrases that cut across the regular patterns that the bass and drum were playing. He enriched his style further by using his classical training to introduce rich chords and piquant dissonances.
In 1924 Hines met Armstrong over a game of pool. Soon they were working together, for, as the pianist recalled, “he was playing the same style that I wanted to play.”
This according to “Fatha Hines: Stomping and chomping on at 75” by Robert Palmer (The New York times 28 August 1981).
Today is Hines’s 110th birthday! Below, Joe “King” Oliver’s Weather bird in a masterful 1928 duet with Armstrong.
In a 2012 interview, Wayne Shorter described a life-changing incident.
One day when he was in high school, Shorter, who was not a musician at the time, was called to the vice-principal’s office, “and there’s my mother and father, and they had all the forged letters I wrote, signing a doctor’s name, my parent’s name, and everything like that.”
“I was put in the music [theory] class because I played hooky, and the teacher was a disciplinarian—when people were talking in the back of the room, he took the chalk and threw it at them.”
“This teacher said that music could take form in three avenues. He had a record of a lady from Peru named Yma Sumac; she had that range—high octaves and all that stuff. Then he brought out another record, Igor Stravinsky’s The rite of spring, which is happenin’. The third record he pulled out was Charlie Parker. And then, when he was talking, I was thinking of a movie unfolding. And I was like, ‘I want to be in that movie.’”
This from “Moment to moment: A conversation with the Wayne Shorter Quartet” by Renee Rosnes (JazzTimes XLIII/2 [March 2013] pp. 22–27).
Today is Shorter’s 80th birthday! Below, performing in 1986.
We cannot understand the nature of music and its role in human life by conceiving of it as a thing; we must see it as an event in a context, replacing the noun music with the verb musicking.
The nature of musicking may then be addressed by asking whose ideal relationships are being celebrated, what the nature of those relationships is, and how they are represented in the performance.
This according to “Musicking: A ritual in social space” by Christopher Small, an essay included in Aflame with music: 100 years of music at the University of Melbourne (Melbourne: Centre for Studies in Australian Music, 1996 pp. 521–533).
Below, an example of musicking that involves minimal precomposition.
Sometime in October 1939 Woody Herman and his band traveled to the Vitaphone Studio in Brooklyn to begin work on a ten-minute film short.
Probably within a week or two they returned with their instruments, but not to play them—this time they were there to mime playing as the recordings from their first session were played back! The film was issued with a phonograph record to be played during projection, creating an early example of what is now called lip-synching.
The producers also added some stock clips of an audience whose formal dress and staid demeanor indicate that they were a world away from any jazz performance.
This according to “Celluloid improvisations: Woody Herman and his orchestra” by Mark Cantor (The IAJRC journal XL/1 [February 2007] pp. 22–30).
Today is Herman’s 100th birthday! Above, a still from the second session; below, Herman leads the band in the finale of the Vitaphone film, King Oliver’s Doctor Jazz.
With the U.S. tax season coming down to the wire, let’s note how taxes altered the jazz scene in the 1940s.
The demise of big bands and swing in the years following World War II was attributable not to changing musical tastes but to the imposition in 1944 of a 30% “cabaret tax” (later a slightly less ruinous 20%) on all receipts at establishments offering live performances and in which dancing was permitted.
An exception was made for recorded and purely instrumental music, assuming that no dancing took place. The heyday of bebop was one of the results.
A multi-instrumentalist and multi-linguist who has lived and performed in Tehran, Paris, Geneva, Brussels, Stockholm, and Frankfurt, Dr. Lloyd Miller has been fusing jazz and world music since the early 1960s.
The California native finds that the modal music of Asia is completely compatible with the African American tradition. “It is all the same musical system,” he says. “The same spirit, the same feeling, the same notes, and some of the same melodic patterns and repetitive and mirroring phrases.”
Long documented only by rare recordings, Miller’s music can now be heard in the compilation A lifetime of Oriental jazz (Jazzman JMANCD 208).
This according to “Jazz in an unfamiliar key: The wanderings of Lloyd Miller” by Francis Gooding (The IAJRC Journal XLIV/2 [June 2011] pp. 9–13]). Below, a compilation of Miller’s broadcasts.
The Gnawama’llem (spirit master) Abdellah El-Gourd and the African American jazz pianist Randy Weston met in El-Gourd’s native Tangier in the early 1970s; over the next 30 years their interactions transformed their lives.
They recognized a common thread in slavery, as the Gnawa were originally sub-Saharan peoples who were mainly brought to Morocco as slaves. The two men collaborated musically, and Weston’s music was deeply influenced by the experience.
For El-Gourd, the great figures in jazz—both historical and contemporary—became symbolic ancestors; their portraits hang in his home next to those of Gnawa elders. Also due to his Western encounters, El-Gourd realized the importance of documenting his local laylaẗ tradition, a project that possesses him in a way that may be compared to the spirit possession of the laylaẗ ceremony itself, and which resonates with the way that Gnawa music has possessed and is possessed by the West.
This according to “Possessing Gnawa culture: Displaying sound, creating history in an unofficial museum” by Deborah Kapchan (Music & anthropology: Journal of musical anthropology of the Mediterranean 7 [2002]). Below, a brief interview with El-Gourd.
The main entrance to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s exhibition Lou Reed: Caught between the twisted stars opens up on Lincoln Plaza, directly adjacent to the The Metropolitan Opera house. On a sunny day, the Met’s … Continue reading →
Seven strings/Сім струн (dedicated to Uncle Michael)* For thee, O Ukraine, O our mother unfortunate, bound, The first string I touch is for thee. The string will vibrate with a quiet yet deep solemn sound, The song from my heart … Continue reading →
Introduction: Dr. Philip Ewell, Associate Professor of Music at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, posted a series of daily tweets during Black History Month (February 2021) providing information on some under-researched Black … Continue reading →
For it [the Walkman] permits the possibility…of imposing your soundscape on the surrounding aural environment and thereby domesticating the external world: for a moment, it can all be brought under the STOP/START, FAST FOWARD, PAUSE and REWIND buttons. –Iain Chambers, “The … Continue reading →
