"It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing"

The Great Depression that swept through North America in 1929 had a huge devastating effect on the music of the late 20s and early 30s. With jobs as scarce as hens' teeth and whole families starving, the idea of purchasing records or going to a night club to hear some dance music bordered on the insane. The economy was depressed and the spirit of the people was even lower. Something was needed to stir the hearts, souls, and feet of the nation. Like a lightning bolt from Zeus in the heavens, Swing music arrives and "let the good times roll." Here is a clip from Ken Burns' "Jazz" series:

Is there possibly any thing so infectious and joyful as Swing music from the 30s and 40s? Just as the Great Depression was starting to lift and prosperity was returning, if not quickly than certainly steadily, Benny Goodman and his Orchestra was there to tell people "Blues skies, nothing but blue skies from now on." From the "Jazz" series:

 Benny Goodman's band and the other big bands that sprung up to play this new hot dance music dotted the landscape with their performances. The Palomar in Los Angeles, the Savoy Ballroom and the Cotton Club in New York City, even the Palais Royale in Toronto, were meccas for young people who wanted to dance and jive the night away, to put the troubles and strives outside the door and enter into a world of "pure pleasure." Doing the Lindy Hop and the Big Apple and the Jitterbug were ways to escape the present and pay no heed to the looming dark future. Europe was falling under the sway of Facism and the drumbeat of war was souding again but they couldn't match the drums of Gene Krupa!! This is from the movie "Hollywood Hotel" and features the song that sums up the whole period and sound - "Sing, Sing, Sing":

Is it any wonder that this music is still so popular today? The Big Band Sound endures because it brings in and employs many aspects of American music that went before and it mixes them all up in a bag and out pops something new and old and hot and cool and tame and wild - a true American Invention.

Of course, it is futile to try and present even the tip of this huge musical iceberg. Swing is far too big and influenced too much of the music we listen to today. Through the "four on the floor" rhythmns to the youth marketing to the driving irressitable beats to the wild abadonment, Swing had it all. But mostly, and at the core of it, is the joy and almost giddy nature of it. I defy any one to be in a bad mood and not spring out of it by watching or listening to the Andrews Sisters. Here is a clip from the Abbot and Costello film "Buck Privates":  

Black and White Blues

This week we look at the beginnings of much of the music we listen to today: blues and early country, both  musical genres that grew out of the hardships of the rural poor. In a sense, they are both about the blues. Although they appear somewhat distant from each other, their emotions have much in common. In spite of much of country music being gospel based, it can also be said that the blues has many of its roots in the music of the church. It comes from field hollers and work songs, from African melodies, from the pain and humiliation of slavery, infused with the yearning for redemption and salvation. Music becomes deliverance.

Here is a clip from Ken Burns' amazing series "Jazz" that looks at Bessie Smith and the beginnings of "race records":

 

This clip comes from the two-part series "American Roots Music" and covers the same ground as the clip above. It is interesting to note that the term "race records" was meant to classify more than stigmatize and the word "race," at that time was a word of pride among African Americans. To be a "man of race" was to denote a man proud of his African heritage. Even though it looks racist to us through our somewhat "enlightened" eyes, at the time, it was a matter of black pride and power. I find it fascinating how we often distort things when we view them through the prism of our concerns and not in their original historical context. Maybe Bakhtin is right when he says context gives meaning.

 

At the same time as the blues - delta blues, country blues, and classic blues -  is developing in the rural areas of America, another seminal music is blossoming. with its roots deep in the English and Celtic folk ballad tradition. Country music gives voice to the trials and tribulations of the rural poor. Though many of the songs had been passed down from generation to generation, it was until A. P. "Doc" Carter decided to collect and perform them with his wife and sister-in-law that the music was taken seriously. Shortly afterward, Ralph Peer - a Missouri born talent scout for Okeh Records -  set up the now famous recording session in Bristol, Tennessee in 1923 and recorded the Cater Family and Jimmie Rodgers. This clip is also from "American Roots Music."

 

Soon the radio starts to broadcast shows that featured this music and the working class and rural farm workers became a solid and steadfast audience, both as purchasers of the records and listeners of the radio broadcasts. The biggest and most important show was the Grand Ol' Opry, broadcast every Saturday night on WSM out of Nashville, Tennessee. It still exists and the broadcast is still very much at the heart of contemporary country music. You can't call yourself a country music star until you played the Opry. Here is yet another clip from "American Roots Music" dealing with the importance of radio in the promotion of country music.

Finally, here is a "lost" clip edited out of the first Star Wars trilogy. Why? I have no idea - it certainly would have added a deeper and more resounding insight into the nature of Darth Vader and his relationship with Luke Skywalker.

This week we look at the beginnings of Jazz music, the dance craze and mania that it spawned across the country, and Tin Pan alley, the birthplace and wellspring of what we now call "standards," the songs that have become a part of the tribal memory of most of us. I would venture a guess that you have heard at least one of the thousands of songs produced by the songwriters who wrote, plugged, and published their songs. Last week's post introduced the area in New York City that became known as Tin Pan Alley and a few of the songwriters who slaved there. This week's post will show the work of three of the most successful, if not artistically than certainly commercially, composers of their day : Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and the ground-breaking Broadway musical "Show Boat" by Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers.

This first clip comes from the documentary "The Great American Songbook" and deals with possibly the most diverse, prolific, and popular writers of the 20th century - Irving Berlin. His songs covered so many styles and eras that there was a rumour floating around for years that he kept a black man chained to his piano in the basement because people couldn't believe he could write so well in so many idioms. His work ranges from "Alexander's Ragtime Band, one of the most successful songs of  the Ragtime era, to "White Christmas," a Yuletide standard still recorded today. He is a fascinating character and you can find many versions of his songs all over the Internet. Do some searching and I am sure you will be surprised at how many of them you already know.

Also from "The Great American Songbook" comes this clip looking at George Gershwin, who moved the tawdry and sentimental songs of Tin Pan Alley into the realm of Art. Not only were his commercial songs beautiful, smart, and touching, but his later orchestral work is considered some of the finest music ever composed in America. Watch this clip and then go to the YouTube sites I have linked and see a gorgeous short film (in two parts) that brings his "Rhapsody in Blue" to life.

Here is the first part - check it out by cutting and pasting this URL into your browser"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cocB-DHzTU

Part Two:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlSVMNd0veI

Finally, here is a short clip that looks at "Show Boat," a Broadway musical that broke many of the boundaries over what was acceptable subject matter for Broadway shows.

As always, comments are encouraged . . .

Baby Steps

Last week we looked at the cauldron that American Pop Music springs from: the sounds and songs, the folk tales and melodies, the emotions and the longings brought to the North American shores by wave after wave of immigrants. Many of these people came searching for a new life, broader horizons and vistas, more promising futures. Others, of course, had no choice in the matter. Over two millions Africans were brought across the ocean to work the fields and farms as slaves, bought and paid for. This friction and resentment will run as a steady chasm through American life culturally, politically, socially, spiritually from its earliest days to the present. Race is the elephant in the living room in America and has been both a source of shame and a source of pride. What is heartening for us, however, is the music that grows out of this experience.

This week, we look at the "baby steps" of the music we hear today. We get introduced to Stephan Foster, America's first real songwriter. His songs are still performed today and some, for example "Hard Times Come Around No More", have as much power as they did when they were first performed. His work is a part of our collective memory and I will venture a guess that each and everyone of us has heard a Stephan Foster song somewhere in our past. Unfortunately, most of his songs were written for minstrel shows, a misunderstood, though rightfully shameful, form of entertainment that sprung up mostly after the Civil War. Minstrel shows were a great deal more complicated than they would appear on the surface and you owe it to yourself to do a little research on them. The Internet is full of resources you can garner information from.

The following is a short clip from a series entitled "The Great American Song Book," which tells the history of American pop music through the use of movies clips from the 30s and 40s. It is enlightening, to a degree, but it is hard to look at the footage showing minstrel shows without thinking "What the hell were they thinking???"

  

Shortly after this period, in the American South, Ragtime gets invented and Ragtime will dominate popular music for decades. It was developed as a dance rhythm and spread across the country like a virus. Ironically, one of the most popular dances that emerged from this rhythm was "the Cakewalk," a dance that white Americans saw black people doing and quickly expropriated it. The irony is that blacks developed the dance as a way of making fun  of how white people danced and the millions of whites dancing "The Cakewalk" had little idea of its origins. Sweet revenge in a way, eh? Here is another clip from "The Great American Song Book."

Finally (because this must be as exhausting to read as it is to write . . .lol), here is another clip from "The Great American Song Book" that deals with Tin Pan Alley - a form of music that without which, Michael Buble would be just another hapless Canadian singer performing as the opening act at Casino Rama.

 

As always, post your comments - I want to hear them . . .  

Let the Discovery Begin . . .

Here is a clip from Ken Burn's amazingly insightful and comprehensive documentary series "Jazz:." In it, we can see the beginnings of Popular Music in America and how the diversity of influences are still heard today. Clearly, as this clip illustrates, the African-American stream in American music is strong, vibrant, and wide-reaching, turning New Orleans into the epicentre of much of the music to follow. When you watch the clip, can you hear the roots of any of the music we listen to today? Can you hear the echoes of the past in the sounds of today?

The flip side of this, of course, is the huge influence the European immigrant experience has given to the cultural and musical landscape of America. This is a clip from a wonderful four-part documentary entitled "American Roots Music." In it, we see the early roots of country music and how each group that arrived on the shores of America brought their music with them and they blend together to form something different and unique. Again, does this music sound alien and strange to you? Is it too far in the past to move or interest you today? Post your responses and let's see where the dialogue takes us.

Although, at the beginning of our journey, these two streams seems so widely apart, by the end of the semester, we will watch how they merge together and feed off of each other. As the blues artist Muddy Waters once proclaimed "The blues and country music got married and the baby's name was rock 'n roll."

Welcome

(sound of trumpet fanfare) BRAD REED ENTERS THE BLOGOSHPERE KICKING AND SCREAMING - FILM AT 11 . . .

So after years of much resistance, I have decided to finally start blogging - however - with a difference. Unlike many of the other blogs I have seen, I don't want this to be a ego-driven, navel-grazing, vehicle of narcissistic ramblings. Instead, the main purpose for this blog is to provide a space for my online students in GHUM 1040 -"Good Vibrations: The Evolution of Pop Music" -  to discuss the issues, concerns,discoveries, and insights that you and I will develop over the course of the semester. Our course moves from the early days of American Popular Music to whatever we are listening to today and my experience has shown me that students - especially online students - need a forum to discuss the material and their discovery of it. It is my hope that Brad's MysteryTrain provides that forum.

Music - especially popular music - needs to be alive to be vital. In a somewhat sterile environment like online learning, that vitality can sometimes gets lost. What I hope to achieve here is to apply "jumper cables" to our material - to use video and sound clips, interviews, articles, YouTube pages, and whatever else we find interesting and relevant to give our course depth and substance that we might lack if we limit our exploration to just the textbook and PowerPoints.

This will not be done by me alone. Effective online teaching occurs on both sides of the computer screen. You have insights and perceptions about the music and other course material that is just as valuable as mine. Let's share what we know and feel with each and let's use this space as the place to do it.

I am looking foward to this new experience and hope that you be will as excited as I am. Let's see what we can each discover in this journey through the Evolution of Pop Music. As the old Louis Jordan song goes: "Let the Good Times Roll!!!"