As Time Goes By: Love and Romance in Popular Music Frank A. Salamone Table of Contents Foreword 1 Chapter One Love and the Times 7 Chapter 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 32 Chapter Four Borrowing from the Classics: The Use of Classical Music In Popular Music 44 Chapter Five 1950s Music 50 Chapter Six Biringin’ It All Back Home 67 Chapter Seven Milt Gabler Interview 77 Chapter Eight The Culture of Jazz and Jazz as Critical Culture 101 Chapter Nine Bebop and Hip-Hop: Their Strong Relationship 116 Chapter Ten Bpppin’ along with Johnny Mercer 124 Chapter Eleven Bonanza and Popular Themes from TV and Movies 131 Index 134 Chapter One Love and the Times –Without music, life would be a mistake– Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols Growing up in the 1950s it seemed that every popular song was a love song. The juke boxes and radios blared the latest hits and almost every one of them was a song aimed straight at the heart. A teenage boy had no chance but to expect that each pop tune would guide him toward the love of his life, at least the love of tonight. Although I was more a fan of jazz and the music of earlier decades in which jazz was a large segment of the popular music, nevertheless the silky tones of Nat Cole, minus his trio, had the power to stir up strange emotions. So did those of other singers of the early 50s—Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, and many others. Even as Rhythm ‘n’ Blues, renamed Rock ’n’ Roll, took over the pop charts, there were still some mellow singers bridging the gap—Bobby Darin, Johnny Mathis, and others. Even Elvis turned to the traditional love song at time as “Love Me Tender”, for example, demonstrates. The fifties were definitely a period in which, however, times were changing and so, too, the depiction of love in America also changed. That personal experience led me to ponder what the connection between the concept of romantic love and popular music might be. Was it, as Frank Sinatra sang in a ballad of the times, like love and marriage? The song claims you can’t have one without the other. Can we only have a correlational answer or can we delve more deeply for one that suggests some causation? A survey of the top tunes from 1955 to 2005 sheds some light on the issue. It also suggests that “love” means something different from one period to another, leading to all sorts of generational confusion and misunderstandings. This chapter examines whether socio-demographic change affects mass-mediated expression of emotion. Specifically, do objective societal trends affect popular song content? When society is getting better, do pop song lyrics get more positive? For example, does reduced unemployment or increasing income lead to more representation of positive ideas like love, achievement, or growth? When reality is going downhill, is there more negativity in pop songs? This is interesting in itself as a social and cultural question: how is popular culture affected by objective reality? This chapter covers the period from 1950 to 1980 and concentrates on the pop music top 100 songs for the decades 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Billboard added Top100 charts for other genres of music over time: for example, Latin Music was given its own chart in 1986. This article does not examine these other important charts but tries to account for the influence of other musical forms on popular music. The Fifties and Romantic Love: The American Romance 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 have had a love affair with the automobile. Perhaps, the fifties mark the high point of that affair. During the fifties, the automobile industry experienced a huge growth, and cars become fetish symbols. They became more elaborate, much faster than they had been, and a sign of American prosperity and energy. The Beat generation added to the myth of the automobile, depicting its driver as heroic and dangerous. The fifties witnessed a number of “road movies” that added to the myth. Brando and Dean personified these figures on the big screen. TV also added its own version. 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 Walt Whitman among others. Rock music and advertising also used the myth of the heroic driver, although advertisements for plush executive cars that presented them as heroes do appear a bit ironic in retrospect. However, the executive liked to think of himself as a potential rebel, with or without a cause, and dangerous in his own way. Furthermore, although there were some warnings about the danger of the big fifties gas guzzlers to the environment, relatively few Americans took them seriously. Certainly, in the fifties, the automobile represented far more than mere transportation. It signified power, sex, freedom, and technology. The architect Le Corbusier wrote in The City of the Future, for example, “Cars, cars, fast, fast! One is seized, filled with enthusiasm, joy ... in the joy of power”. The Cadillac’s famous tail fins bore witness to that lust for power. They had, after all, been copied from an American World War II fighter plane. In the fifties, the car was part of the American courtship ritual, nicknamed a moving bedroom. The movie star, James Dean encapsulated the mythology of the car through his movies and his death. He died skidding off the road while racing his Porsche, “Little Bastard”. The death in the “saddle” tied him to legendary figures of the American 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” captured the mood of the times. Cruising up and down the road was an end in itself, or a means to an end, finding “chicks” who would ride with you. The car indeed had become a phallic symbol, as so many of its critics exclaimed. Its supporters only shrugged in reply. A sampling of the top songs in the 1950s emphasizes the point while clarifying it. It should be noted that most lists of top 1950s songs ignore the early 1950s; that makes good cultural sense because the early 1950s music really belongs to the late 1940s. In the same way, early 1960s music belongs to the late 1950s. The top 100 list, then, of the 1950s includes these songs: songs by Elvis are found throughout the list. 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 if time 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 Me Nice”. 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. His army career interrupted his top 40 surge, but he was able to resume his place in music on his return. Although he was always able to rock out, his hits tended to be rather mainstream songs with a tinge of rhythm and blues; he was indeed the white man who fulfilled Sam Philips’s dream of a white man who could sing like a black man. His music reflected the growing integration of the country, the mixing of black and white cultural traits which then had its place in social life. It is no wonder that his music sounded so revolutionary at the time and so tame today. It was not bubble gum pop at all. It was blues-based music by a southern boy who came from the Holiness Church and listened to black music and absorbed it. Howling Wolf, for example, stated, “He [Elvis] made his pull from the blues” (Howlin’ Wolf in conversation with Peter Guralnick, 1966 (http://www.elvisinfonet.com/spotlight_blues_album.html). What made Elvis so important to the integration of musical styles and audiences was that his natural talent for rhythm and blues was able to gain him a strong black following. Michael Bane recounts a story in his book, White Boy Singin’ the Blues, of Elvis entertaining a black audience at Club Handy in Memphis when it was still against the law for a white to enter a black entertainment venue. The audience was skeptical at first, but Elvis soon won them over with his versions of “Milkcow Blues Boogie” by Sleepy John Estes, and a song by Crudup, probably “That’s All Right Mama”. His black audience must have appreciated Elvis’s outspoken love of blues and respect for its practitioners. Michael Ward quotes Elvis as saying, “A lot of people seem to think I started this business. But rock ‘n’ roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that kind of music like colored people (Ward, 136). Dizzying Changes in American Life and Musical Riffs 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 gears and 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 who run 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 view the period of the sixties through the eighties as a dizzying period of incredible social change and its consequent turmoil. Looking back from 2013 it is somewhat clearer than living through it. Many of the changes are consequences of the spread and defense of the American Empire and the reaction to it of those who believed America should be something other than the world’s policeman and protector of the one per cent at the top of the economic pyramid. Musically, those who believe the latter have been more exciting and creative. The arts flourish in periods of chaos and the best and most permanent work seems to come out of it. There is indeed room for the familiar and mediocre, and even Beethoven incorporated much of his idols, Bach and Mozart, while influencing all music that has come after him. After all, Charlie Parker in a similar vein incorporated Louis Armstrong’s solos note for note into much of his work—played faster but with respect. Thus, what seems like chaos to many people at first is but a logical extension of what has gone before, a means of finding stability in the midst of rapid social and cultural change. There was indeed rapid social and cultural change in this period. The early sixties were a continuation of the late 1950s. John F. Kennedy was the first president born in the twentieth century and promised youth and change. He did in fact move towards greater equality in promoting women’s right to equal pay, and promoting civil rights for African Americans as a moral obligation. There were signs that he was moving to end the Vietnam conflict at the time of his assassination. Certainly, the Vietnam War marks the onset of the Sixties culturally. It also marked a rapid change in the music. The music expressed protest more openly, especially popular music. There was a greater frankness, even crudity, in the lyrics, which carried over to love songs. It is not until 1965 that the first open protest song makes the Billboard list. It is Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” (Billboard http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_billbord2.html). Indeed, there is not another top ten tune on the list that even remotely resembles a protest tune. Nevertheless, there were many protest songs in the period but, by and large, they were not pop tunes. The pop tunes were still mainly 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, Love Me 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 The Name of Love, I’m Telling You Now, Game of Love, Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter, Ticket to Ride, The Sound of Silence, We Can Work It Out, The Sound of Silence, My Love, Lightnin’ Strikes, These Boots Are Made For Walkin’, The Ballad Of The Green Berets, (You’re My) Soul And Inspiration, Good Lovin’, Monday, Monday, Hello Goodbye, Judy In Disguise (With Glasses), Green Tambourine, Love Is Blue, (Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay, Honey, Tighten Up, Heard It Through The Grapevine. Crimson And Clover, Everyday People, Dizzy, Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, Get Back, Love Theme from Romeo & Juliet, In the Year 2525. All these Billboard top tunes were generally much lighter than the songs by Bob Dylan, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Country Joe and others. Here are the top ten protest songs according to TopTenz.net: http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-protest-songs-from-the-1960s.php 1. Give Peace a Chance—John Lennon; 2.Masters of War—Bob Dylan; 3.With God on Our Side—Bob Dylan; 4. I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag; 5. The War Drags On—Phil Ochs; 6. I Ain’t Marching Any More; 7. A Change is Gonna Come—Sam Cooke; 8. Universal Soldier—Buffy Sainte-Marie; 9. Blowin’ in the Wind—Bob Dylan; 10. Turn! Turn! Turn!—Pete Seeger. Some of these songs did make the Billboard Charts but not one made the top 100 for the decade (Music Outfitters http://www.musicoutfitters.com/topsongs/1960.htm). More interesting, perhaps, is the placement of “Love Theme from a Summer Place” by Percy Faith as the number one song of the decade. It is a lush, haunting traditional instrumental. It is surprising only to those who underrate America’s love affair with the dreamy romantic. Elvis continued to have hits, but his only two on the top 100 for the decade were “It’s Now or Never”—an English version of “O Sole Mio”, very far from a rocking tune—and “Stuck on You”, a 50s style rocker. Of the top 100, 79 were love songs, some like “Harbor Lights”, remakes of much earlier hits from the 30s or 40s. However, some of the frankness of the protest songs was entering the Billboard pop charts. Although none of the more explicit love songs made the decade’s top 100, there were some on individual year’s top charts. In 1964, for example, the Stones’ “Satisfaction” had some of the bite of a Blues love song. Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” of 1969 is about as explicit as one could get and still be on the air in 1969.Perhaps, the impact from the typically sweet or subtle love lyrics to the more explicit came in the 1970s. Here is a selection of titles from the Billboard 1970s 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 This Time) The Delfonics 79 I Want to Take You Higher Ike & Tina Turner 88 Up the Ladder to the Roof The Supremes Fedler, et al., conducted an interesting study of the lyrics of popular music testing their hypothesis that popular music lyrics from 1950 to 1980 became concerned more with physical than emotional love. In other words, lyrics became sexier and more explicit. Putting aside the dubious assumption that physical and emotional love are necessarily separate, it is an interesting hypothesis. They found in their analysis that songs became progressively more explicit over time and less romantic. “During the 1960s, lyrics became more ambiguous, and sexual desire became a more dominant theme. By the 1970s, the traditional values were broadened: persons described in modern love songs often met, spent a single night together, and then parted without any emotional bond or commitment. Today even songs with the most explicit lyrics become number one hits”. I would suggest that further analysis shows that even some of the more explicit lyrics, such as Dylan’s “Lay, Lady, Lay” has a strong romantic current, and how does one code “The Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet”? There are areas that need a bit more coverage in depth as Frank C. Salamone reminds me in a personal note (May 18, 2013). First, there is the impact of disco and electronic music. Donna Summer, the Queen of Disco, was reaching out to new areas. She did not want to be known only for disco, or for her physical beauty. Her “I Feel Love” was the first major recording with an all-electronic accompaniment in contrast to a human voice. (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&)). Her combination of a church-rooted voice and up-to-the-minute dance beats was a template for 1970s disco, and, with her producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, she pioneered electronic dance music with the synthesizer pulse of “I Feel Love” in 1977, a sound that pervades twenty-first century pop. Her own recordings have been sampled by, among others, Beyoncé, the Pet Shop Boys, Justice and Nas. The song is on Rolling Stone’s all-time top 500 hits and became popular in dance clubs, especially finding favor in the gay community (Wikipedia “I Feel Love” (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Feel_Love). “Indeed, there is”, writes Frank C. Salamone, “a straight line from ‘I Feel Love’ to the Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’, which takes you from the hedonistic but not-completely-selfish disco era to the dawn of the ‘me decade’. ‘Sweet Dreams’ is barely, if at all, a love song but does speak to the harsh realities of intimate, interpersonal interaction at the dawn of an era defined by greed and disregard for others. The video starts with an iconic shot of Annie Lennox in a boardroom pounding on the conference table. It also references militarism and Hindu spirituality, and has an interesting shot in which Lennox’s bindi turns into a gun sight” (You Tube “Sweet Dreams”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeMFqkcPYcg&feature=youtu.be). This movement marked a strong African American influence in dance music, even though these latter songs were of European origin. Giorgio Moroder, a Tyrolean who worked in Germany, produced “I Feel Love”, adding a strong on the beat four-to-floor rhythm to make the funky music more accessible for whites to dance to (see You Tube http://youtu.be/1R9hwGOObqs). Finally, in 1954 Muddy Waters recorded Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You”. The difference between his version and Etta James’s is interesting. Basically, James answers Muddy Waters who stated he did not want his girl to wash, or cook, or do anything else but make love with him. James responds: All I want to do is wash your clothes I don’t want to keep you indoors There is nothing for you to do But keep me making love to you (http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ettajames/ijustwanttomakelovetoyou.html) We can argue over which is sexier. The contrast is definitely one between a man’s and women’s perspective. Both songs were hits on the African American charts, and hip whites knew them well. The point is that the sixties did not discover either sex or sexy songs. I do not deny that the physical element of love became more explicit as the youth music of the 1960s became diffused through the 1970s music. However, I am not ready to accept that this inevitably led to a lack of romanticism in music. Physicality was always present in African American music. Jazz and Blues lyrics did not shy away from an open recognition of sexuality: Louis Armstrong’s “Back o’ Town Blues”; “Cheesecake”; Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton’s very nickname; the very phrase rock and roll from a Blues lyric, “My Man Rocks Me With a Steady Roll”; Lucille Bogan’s “Shave ’em Dry”; Alberta Hunter’s “You Can’t Tell the Difference after Dark”; and so on. Lyricists like Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer, influenced by African American music had a few very explicit songs. Porter’s “Love for Sale” discusses the life of a prostitute in explicit terms. His “It’s All Right with Me” is also clear about what is all right, especially in Frank Sinatra’s version. Mercer’s “Tangerine” from the 1940s pulls no punches, and his “Teach Me Tonight” leaves no doubt about what lesson is to be learned. One more example to push the point is “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” by Harry Noble. It was first a hit in 1952 by Karen Chandler, and sent goose bumps up many a young adolescent boy’s back. Connie Francis rerecorded it in 1959. The difference is that the songs of the 1970s were, in comparison with the earlier ones cited here, less polished, less harmonic, and more adolescent in general. There is a kind of “look at me, 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-rights movement and beyond. Once rock-and-roll had knocked the Golden Age songs of Hollywood and Broadway off their perch, innumerable other musical subgenres crawled out of the shadows or came 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, and emo. These developments were hardly without a plus side: all kinds of good music was born. But the merit was all too often outweighed by the sheer decibel level and, in many cases, by vulgarity, incoherence, and brutality. In any event, as American musical tastes fragmented, so did American society and culture. Songs had once bound Americans together – and encouraged them to bind together. Now, all too frequently, they defined Americans in opposition to one another. 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/). Conclusion There are some conclusions we can draw from a quick scan of love songs over the past sixty or so years. First, no matter how much things have changed in music, an idealized version of romantic love has prevailed. Through the protests of the sixties, the integration and diversity that increased from the fifties to the present, the proliferation of musical styles decade by decade, the ease of retrieving the myriad forms of music at the click of a mouse—through all these changes, including changes of styles—one constant has been the “silly love song”. As rockers get older, they often seek to establish their credential through singing the Great American Songbook, more or less successfully. Indeed, their attempts are no worse than Frank Sinatra’s foray into rock classics. Structurally, pop music has changed very little. The twelve, or sometimes the sixteen-bar blues with three basic chords underlies much rock music. The thirty-two bar song in an A-A-B-A form is mainly the foundation of the rest of pop music. The blues, with some changes, goes back at least to the nineteenth century, with roots in Africa. W.C. Handy helped standardize it in its twelve and sixteen bar formats. The Encyclopedia Britannica (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/254261/WC-Handy) states the case quite clearly: “Handy worked during the period of transition from ragtime to jazz. Drawing on the vocal blues melodies of African American folklore, he added harmonizations to his orchestral arrangements. His work helped develop the conception of the blues as a harmonic framework within which to improvise. With his “Memphis Blues” (published 1912) and especially his “St. Louis Blues” (1914), he introduced a melancholic element, achieved chiefly by use of the “blue” or slightly flattened seventh tone of the scale, which was characteristic of African American folk music”. The standard American song, the thirty-two bar structure with A (8 bars, A (repeat those 8 bars) B (a different 8 bars, called the bridge or river or channel), and a final A repeating the first 8 bars. This form can have many variations, and may have a coda tagged on to end the song. Its debt to Art Music, commonly lumped together as Classical music, is apparent (see Music and the Fibonacci Series http://www.goldennumber.net/music/, and Brad Mehldau: Writing (http://www.bradmehldau.com/writing/papers/november_2010.html). It is at root the classic theme and variations. Jazz musicians play on the variation angle, altering the melody, harmony, and rhythm of the tune, reinventing it to fit the times, their personality, and their degree of genius. At root, however, the Great American Songbook is mainly composed of love songs. Michael Feinstein, a vocalist who has done much to preserve The Great American Songbook, has been a leader in establishing sources for its preservation. The Website, The Michael Feinstein Great American Songbook Initiative (http://www.thecenterfortheperformingarts.org/Great-American-Songbook-Inititative/About-the-Great-American-Songbook.aspx), states: The “Great American Songbook”, sometimes referred to as “American Standards”, is the uniquely American collection of popular music from Broadway and Hollywood musicals prevalent from the 1920s to 1960s. Familiar composers include George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, and Richard Rodgers. Singers include Frank Sinatra, Al Jolson, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Tormé and so many others.  This timeless music offered hope of better days during the Great Depression, built morale during two world wars, helped build social bridges within our culture, and whistled beside us during economic growth. We defended our country, raised families, and built a nation to these songs. Interestingly, both the blues and the 32 bar pop song have deep roots in the past, but have also had art music (“classical music) touches added to their foundations. W.C. Handy, a Fiske University graduate and schooled composer/musician, added western harmonic touches to the folk-rooted early blues, without decreasing their African identity. Similarly, the Great American Songbook composers in general knew the works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky and others, as well as the European roots of the twentieth century pop song. To it, many—Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and others added jazz touches, to which lyricists, like Johnny Mercer, easily wrote American sentiments in American idioms. Not surprisingly the two streams merged over a long period of time—think Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Jimmy Rushing, and, the masters Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. Sadly, Europeans seemed to note this merging long before Americans did, at least on the art music level. As I wrote (Salamone 2008, The Culture of Jazz: Jazz as Critical Culture, p. 52): For European composers whom jazz influenced, there seemed to be a highly personalized epiphany, an epiphany and conversion that were suited to the individual temperament of the composer. For example, for the sociable Milhaud and Ravel, their epiphanies occurred in Harlem, while for the more private Delius, it was an epiphany that transpired in a Florida swamp far removed from society. However, for each, it was a quasi-religious conversion and an eye-opening experience. Something new entered their souls and transformed their lives and understanding of reality. It was spiritual, emotional, and cognitive realigning. Each felt that he became a new person, and that newness suffused his music.  This newness, freshness, perpetual reinventing is a mark of American music as is its perpetual incorporation of elements from diverse cultures. American music is a showplace for World Music. The best of America is shown in its ravenous appetite for borrowing from other cultures, whether it is religion, painting, food, or music. It is an expression of true democracy which breaks the shackles of our sometimes chauvinistic exterior. The music is perpetually refreshed through the addition of new elements into the mix. And the silly love song comes around, as we have seen, in every form sooner or later. At heart, at root, the American is a romantic. We dream different dreams, perhaps, but nonetheless, we dream. Johnny Mercer’s “Dream” could be America’s theme song, as it was his. After all, it sums us up rather well, I think, or why do we keep returning to that silly love song and why is the way a jazz musician performs a love song the true test of ability? Dream when you’re feeling blue Dream that’s the thing to do Just watch the smoke rings in-n the air You’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 Capo Press Brad 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 Two It’s All Sacred Music: Duke Ellington from the Cotton Club to the Cathedral Edward Kennedy (Duke) Ellington (1899-1974) was born in Washington, D. C. He was a gifted artist, turning down a scholarship to the Pratt Institute in New York to pursue a musical career. Ellington was a fine pianist, but made his major mark on jazz in particular, and twentieth century music in general, through his compositions and his orchestra, the height of sophisticated music, which partook of Duke’s jazz royalty. The nickname was given him by his family as a child for his regal bearing and overall demeanor. It is no accident that Ellington’s Harlem, composed in 1951, is included with his Sacred Concert material and religious works, for there is a direct line in Ellington’s music that connects the Sacred Concerts to the Cotton Club days. Ellington took the Cotton Club concepts of elaborate ideas and precision pacing into church. These concerts were, truly, the ultimate in total show business production including, as they did, dancing, musical and vocal solos, luscious ensemble work, choirs and—of course, Ellington’s MC work. Taking the Cotton club into church, however, was not an attempt to secularize the sacred, for ultimately Ellington viewed all of his music as spiritual at root, as his writings demonstrate (Ellington 1931, and 1976). In an article carried in PM (9 December 1945) magazine, Ellington is quoted as saying: “Religion helps my spirit of independence….Helps me do things people call daring. For instance, say musicians just don’t put in a ninth in a particular place, and we do it. Religion helps me. I guess it gives me the proper inflation when I need it.” Steed (1993 and 1994) discusses the role of Ellington’s spirituality in his music. She quotes Ellington’s sister Ruth regarding the deeper meaning of his “jungle music” in expressing the “basic humanity” of people and the deep love Ellington had for humanity itself. Gary Giddens has a clear understanding of this process, and includes this prescient passage in his positive appraisal of the Sacred Concerts: His familiar dictum, “Every man prays in his own language and there is no language that God does not understand”, reminds the listener that he did not attempt to apply his genius to an established idiom, but rather to bring his own music intact to the church. The difference between playing for people, whether at the Cotton Club or Westminster Abbey, and creating for the greater glory of God, was not lost on him. When Fr. Norman O’Connor commissioned a jazz mass (apparently never completed), Ellington pondered the conflict: “One may be accustomed to speaking to people, but suddenly to attempt to speak, sing, and play directly to God—that puts one in an entirely different position”. He prayed on his own musical terms, and celebrated the talents of his collaborators accordingly; “All the members of the band played in character”, he said of the first sacred concert. He did not abandon the Cotton Club; he brought the Cotton Club review to the pulpit (Giddens 1993: 376). Stanley Dance’s (1974: 15) eulogy also makes this point: “Withal, Duke Ellington knew that what some called genius was really the exercise of gifts which stemmed from God. These gifts were those his Maker favored... Duke knew the good news was Love, of God and his fellow men. He proclaimed the message in his sacred concerts… He reached out to people with his music and drew them to himself”. Ellington took the Cotton Club into church with himself because, truly, there was no reason for Ellington to abandon the Cotton Club when entering the church, for he had been conveying a spiritual message through his music from its inception. The Cotton Club, with its midnight broadcasts, enabled Ellington to hone that message to its ultimate clarity and precision; namely, that life itself is sacred, that every act of affirmation is an act of love, that no one can love God without loving his or her neighbor, and that his music conveyed that significant message. Sonny Greer in an interview stored at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers’s University, Newark (1974), for example, states that a night at the Cotton Club was “kind of hectic. Harlem was heaven. In those times you had to see that. It was like going to Church. There was a different atmosphere. You could walk up and down the streets all night. There was no molestation. It was a carnival atmosphere… Everybody loved everybody. Love is not a new word in our profession”. Ellington was keenly aware of the power of music as a symbol of love, and saw his music as an appropriate response to prejudice and discrimination. He told Florence Zunser (1930: 45), “I am not playing jazz. I am trying to play the natural feelings of a people. I believe that music, popular music of the day, is the real reflector of the nation’s feelings”. In the course of the interview, Ellington told Zunser he was working on an extended work, “The History of the Negro”. In 1943 this became “Black, Brown, and Beige”, premiered at Ellington’s first Carnegie Hall concert. Some mark this work as clearly part of his explicitly sacred works. Mahalia Jackson, for instance, who would only sing sacred music, had no problem performing selections from this Ellington suite. Ellington rarely, if ever, lost sight of his overall goal of representing his people and presenting positive accounts of their accomplishments. This excerpt from his 70th birthday interview underscores this point. My eighth grade teacher taught race pride. We’ve been involved right along. It’s a wonder we’re still alive. I’ve been in the theater a long time. I think from the point of drama. A good playwright can say what he wants to say without saying it… I was getting $5000 per week in 1932 but there was a corny cotton field thing in the show. I said the cotton field comes out or we come out … Black, Brown and Beige is a tone parallel to a history of the Negro in America. We have always tried to use good grammar, and elegant presentation. Truly, there was no reason for Ellington to abandon the Cotton Club when entering the church, for he had been conveying a message through his music from its inception. The Cotton Club, with its midnight broadcasts, enabled Ellington to hone that message to its ultimate clarity and precision; namely, that life itself is sacred, that every act of affirmation is an act of love, that no one can love God without loving his or her neighbor, and that through his music he could in some way convey that significant message. The Sacred For Ellington, then, the sacred and spiritual appears to refer to that which promotes love and in the process provokes a sense of awe. Certainly, the quality of being life-affirming and inclusive is part of Ellington’s conception of the sacred. Additionally, however, Ellington is aware of the power of ambiguity and humor in presenting his spiritual message. He is careful to allow dramatic pacing and juxtaposition of seeming opposites to tell his tale. As noted above, “A good playwright can say what he wants to say without saying it”. It was a lesson he had learned early. The short movie Black and Tan Fantasy, for example, released in 1929, has a nice little story. The movie 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 Ellington and Whetsol that she is going back to work to help save Ellington’s piano. Of course, Washington is in danger of dying but performs anyway. The movie features an authentic Cotton Club setting in which there is a brief but rather complete floorshow, featuring the famous Cotton Club Dancers. Fredi Washington dances, and then she collapses. After a spiritual, Black & Tan Fantasy is played. In sum, the movie is programmatic imitating a Cotton Club performance. This was a pattern that Ellington followed for much of his life. What is often overlooked, however, is the manner in which Ellington dares to intersperse the sacred and the profane. There are not only echoes of spirituals or “church music” in his compositions. There are also outright spirituals used just before dancing that would offend many traditionally religious people. Moreover, that dancing takes place to a suite that has often been considered more religious in nature than secular. Ellington was blurring the distinction between two spheres that many other performers preferred to keep distinct, the sacred and the profane. By so doing he was placing his music in what he came to call “beyond category”. He was also deeply involved in the realm that anthropologists recognize as that of the ambiguous and dangerous. Claude Levi-Strauss has referred frequently to these ambiguous categories, as has Mary Douglas. These are categories that are neither fish nor fowl, and often betwixt and between, as Victor Turner names them. I will address these issues in the conclusion. Steed (1993: 3) notes this Ellington characteristic of avoiding categories. “Although he 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 his disapproval of categories, which he views as a curb on an artist’s right to freedom of expression. He always wants to be free to do what he feels moved to do, and not what someone feels he should do. There is no doubt that Ellington felt that this mixing of categories had meaning beyond the music itself, that it was somehow sacred. He viewed his music as a vocation and as a means for breaking himself and other African Americans out of rigid categories, as his interview with Zunser (1930) makes absolutely clear. Ellington frequently explicitly noted his belief that music was a vocation, a sacred calling. At the Second Sacred Concert, for example, he labeled himself “God’s messenger boy”, a phrase repeated in the album notes (Steed 1993: 6). Steed (1993) includes this important passage from Stanley Dance’s eulogy: The full text of Dance’s eulogy can be found in Mercer Ellington (1978). ...Duke knew the good news was Love, of God and his fellow men. He proclaimed the message in his Sacred Concerts, grateful for an opportunity to acknowledge something of which he stood in awe, a power he considered above his human limitations. For Ellington, attempts to capture that love and awe in his music, a love he viewed as transcending artificial differences and encompassing all life, were attempts at grasping the sacred. It is as if Ellington were saying that God has no limits. Limitations are human. Therefore, attempts to affirm life and love should also know no artificial limits. Steed (1993: 8) puts this issue in a slightly different, more musicological manner. At Ellington’s funeral, a recording by Johnny Hodges of “Heaven” from the Second Sacred Concert was played. Steed notes the construction of the melody and some of its notable internal contrasts. One observation is relevant in ascertaining and understanding Ellington’s conception of the sacred. “Ellington’s favored tri-tone is heard three times, perversely ascending as if he were determined to make what was once called the ‘devil’s interval’ angelic”. This desire to force people to reconsider their stereotypical categorizations was a long-time project with Ellington that led logically to the Sacred Concerts. The Sacred Concerts Ellington’s religious convictions and musical predilections converged in the Sacred Concerts. He had an opportunity to do openly what he had been doing privately. As he puts it, “I recognized this as an exceptional opportunity. “‘Now I can say openly,’ I said, ‘what I have been saying to myself on my knees’” (Ellington 1973)”. His friends had noticed a growing spirituality about him. Time had, finally, started to take its toll on his energy, and the growing serious illness of his alter ego, Billy Strayhorn, in the middle 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. That was always there. It came more to the forefront when Strayhorn got sick. The old man didn’t like the whole idea of death or any kind of ending of anything. In 1965, C. J. Bartlett, the dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, the Reverend John S. Yaryan, and James A. Pike, the Episcopal Bishop of California, jointly invited Duke Ellington to join their year-long celebration of the completion of the new Cathedral, a stone structure on top of Nob Hill. Ellington was to write a liturgical work. This work was, as Ellington made clear, not a mass. In a mass the composer addresses God. Ellington intended to address the people (Steed 1993: 12; Hasse 1993: 357-58). As Giddens (1993: 376) noted, there is a clear connection in Ellington’s musical development between the Cotton Club and the Cathedral. As if to emphasize that relationship, Ellington’s First Sacred 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 the Beginning, God. In so doing, Ellington reaffirmed the sacredness of his earlier work. He also harked back to his Cotton Club origins in presenting a sort of floorshow at the cathedral. Ellington imported a tap dancer, Bunny Briggs, choirs, solo singers, and in later concerts, various solo musicians. As Hasse (1993:358) notes, this, and subsequent sacred concerts, were not quiet intimate music like Mood Indigo or Azure. He correctly compares them to the type of celebratory spectacles that Handel produced. Predictably, the critical reviews were mixed. Throughout his career, Ellington received mixed critical reviews whenever he attempted any new endeavor. That the sacred concerts suffered this fate is not surprising. Indeed it would have been surprising if these concerts had not offended a number of people. Hasse provides some insight into the problem in this passage. Traditionally in the African American community there has been a rather rigid distinction made between sacred religious music—spirituals and gospel—and secular music—blues and jazz—though musically there has been great interchange. For the church, where some were scandalized by the very idea of jazz in a church, it was also a departure from the musical norm (Hasse 1993: 359-360). Nevertheless, Ellington was quite pleased with the results of the First Sacred Concert, the Grammy he won for In the Beginning, God, the Emmy for the PBS televised version, and the records he sold of it. It was a summation and justification for his work. Ruth Ellington, his sister, spoke to these points in an interview with Janna T. Steed on January 7, 1993: The Sacred Concerts expressed his own raison d’être. We were raised as Christians … The spirituality of his music is why it didn’t sound like anybody else’s music … The jungle music was not simply that; it expressed the frustration of blacks, male-female relationships, our basic humanity. When Edward was writing music he was expressing love and the emotionality of human experience … When God is guiding you, who can restrict you? … He knew his destiny. He didn’t act as if he were restricted, and people related to him as if he were equal. He was revolutionary, but not militant, in race; never political. “‘Show enough love; people will let you in’”, he would say (Steed 1993: 22). It was inevitable that the success of the first Sacred Concert led to sequels. There were, in fact, two more distinct sacred concerts. The Second Sacred Concert was first performed on January 19, 1968, and the Third Sacred Concert at Westminster Abbey on October 24, 1973 (Steed 1993: 41 and 54). In spite of musical, personal, and other problems, there is sufficient excellent music in each of these concerts to compensate for their weaknesses. Critiques of the concerts themselves in musical terms, however, is not an object of this chapter. For such a critique see Steed, especially pp. 30-77. Steed also offers a detailed discussion of Ellington’s theological heterodoxy and his overall influence on Church music within the context of the period. It is, however, important to note their relationship with Ellington’s overall musical philosophy and persona. Ellington’s music was an inclusive one, one that Leonard (1987) termed a music of “communitas”, borrowing the term from Victor Turner. His band was more like a family, even a Church. Moreover, Ellington hated conflict and sought to avoid it on most occasions. He sincerely believed that love, eventually, could overcome all obstacles and those it could not were not really worth overcoming. His musical strengths, as well as weaknesses, flowed from that perspective. At times, his music was simplistic; his lyrics could be amateurish. However, at other times his eclecticism worked and amazing things ensued. Combinations that others feared to explore revealed unexpected beauty and grandeur. Simplicity and enthusiasm more frequently than not worked. Ellington’s belief in his musical vocation as a calling from God did produce a high percentage of quality music, whether that music was specifically sacred or not. It is a pantheistic orientation, one common in the sixties and seventies, but one that also influenced more traditional established churches. Ellington lent his peculiar genius to something in the zeitgeist and turned it into a thing of beauty. Conclusion Ellington’s love for things that are “beyond category” resonates with Levi-Strauss’s categorization of anomalous mediating categories as dangerous and sacred (Levi-Strauss 1967, for example). These anomalous categories, according to Levi-Strauss, partake of the categories which they mediate and consequently are neither fish nor fowl. They are dangerous and somehow pollute. Mary Douglas (1966) has treated of these categories 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 that there is a distinction between the sacred and the profane but also between two kinds of sacredness. There is a sacredness “that produces social and moral order, health, and happiness. There is also, however, an opposite sacred force “that brings disorder, immorality, illness, and death. Though radically antagonistic, these two kinds of sacredness can be highly ambiguous because both stem from similar supernatural sources”. Interestingly, however, these types of sacredness appear to be highly unstable and each can resolve into the other. See Salamone 1992 and 1988 for fuller discussion of the concept. The musical “purist” seeks to keep them separate. Even in the African American tradition there was a desire to keep the two traditions separate, as some opposition to Ellington’s sacred concerts revealed. There is, however, an older African tradition that understood the unity of the sacred. The variations work together to provide a harmonious whole. Each part both stands alone and yet takes on full meaning only within the context of the entire performance. This perspective is well illustrated in the work of a Nigerian musician, Fela Anakulapi-Kuti. Fela was a musician who proclaimed himself “The Black President” and perceived his mission in life to be the restoration of the pride that the black man has had taken from him. He does so through conveying a spiritual message in his music which unites every aspect of black music into each performance, including those aspects which white musicians have produced based on black forms. In a sense, in his performance Fela added to Gregory Bateson’s and Erving Goffman’s concept of frames, turning frames into shifting things, ones that almost perpetually transformed themselves into one another. This house-of-mirror image of shifting frames is in keeping with the predominant perspective on African religious and philosophical thought that sees it as positing an ever-changing unstable reality under the illusory permanent reality of every-day common sense. This skepticism of the presented reality and a subsequent search for underlying structures is well suited to African-derived musical performance. Fela expressed this concept well in an interview with me: The music is spiritual… I know the music is a gift for me, for the purpose of the emancipation of the black man. It’s a spiritual gift. It’s a spiritual message. I want to give people mind, the essence towards progress in life. Africans most especially because we need it most right now. The continent’s confused. The leaders are terrible. So I have to face Africa reality—the problems that relate to Africa at the moment. But problems that relate to Africa are also interwoven into the relationship we have with European countries and capitalism. So in a sense it becomes international. Fela’s music, then, was in conformity with his beliefs. Specifically, it cannot contradict itself. Therefore, the incorporation of all varieties of African-derived music is not accidental or haphazard. It served to convey his message of black pride. His point was the unity of black peoples everywhere. The manner in which he conveyed his message displays the technical brilliance that is appreciated when it is suited to the message. Thus, his shifting frames reflect African religion and philosophy. The manner in which one style of African-derived music melds into another defines their relationship through praxis not mere discussion. The central role of jazz, a word Fela disdains as did Ellington, is demonstrated in its being used as a mediating form. Finally, the continuous transformation of material is also evocative of spiritual matters. Fittingly, the self-proclaimed Black President and Chief Priest leads his people to a better land through invoking spiritual images and enacting them on the stage. His entire performance is ritual of a high order. It is a Creole performance that has the “that too” characteristic of all such performances (James Farris Thompson, personal communication). Thus, there is no contradiction in Fela’s performance. Each element is an integral part of the overriding message and enables the performance to move toward an end he deems sacred, the true emancipation of the Black man and the instilling of pride in his mind. What is true of Fela illuminates Ellington’s mixture of styles and categories. It would be beneficial to explore Ellington’s African roots more deeply and to investigate his own reading in greater detail in relationship to his music (Hudson 1991). It is clear that Ellington’s religion struck orthodox Christians as pantheistic and idiosyncratic (Steed 1993: pp. 19ff. and Gensel 1992). His statement that he was “born in 1956 at the Newport Jazz Festival Hasse” (1993: 322)” was often cited, but never fully explored. The religious connotations are often noted but the literal sense in which Ellington meant the term has been missed. He believed that somehow he had been literally reborn and called to a vocation. Seen within the context of African American culture Ellington’s religious beliefs and practices make perfect sense, even those “superstitious” aspects which so bothered his more traditionally orthodox son Mercer (Mercer Ellington and Dance 1978: 111). For a similar view see Anderson 1995, The Sacred Element in Ellington’s Music. The continuity between the Cotton Club and the Cathedral is emphasized by Ellington’s very African American philosophy and theology. His mixture of categories of the sacred and profane and various types of sacredness is an affirmation of both life and the continuous nature of that life, transcending categories of time and space. Acknowledgements. I wish to thank the staff of the Smithsonian Institution Duke Ellington Archives and the staff of the Library of Congress for their aid in facilitating this research. References Anderson, Paul A. 1995.Ellington, rap music, and cultural difference. The Musical Quarterly 79: 172-206. Dance, Stanley. 1970.Album Notes to MCAAC “Duke Ellington’s Orchestral Works” with Erich Kunzel conducting the Cincinnati Symphony, Decca, reissued by MCA Records, Inc., 1989. Ellington, Edward Kennedy 1931. 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 Intimate Memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Giddens, Gary. 1993. Gary Giddens on the Sacred Concerts In Mark Tucker, The Duke Ellington Reader. 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 to Stanley Dance. Ellington Era 1927-1940. Vol. II. Columbia Archive Series. Hajdu, David. 1996. Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn. New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux. Hasse, John Edward. 1993. Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington. NY: Simon & Schuster. Hudson, Theodore R. 1991. Duke Ellington’s literary sources (with appendices) American Music 9: 20-42. Leonard, Neil. 1987. Jazz: Myth and Religion. New York: Oxford University Press. Salamone, Frank A. 1992.Africa as a Metaphor of Authenticity in Jazz.” In Frank A. Salamone, ed. Art and Culture in Nigeria and the Diaspora. Studies in Third World Societies. College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va. Salamone, Frank A. 1988.The Ritual of Jazz Performance. Play & Culture 1: 85-104. Steed, Janna Tull. 1993. Duke Ellington’s Jazz Testament: The Sacred Concerts. Thesis. Master of 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 Duke Ellington. 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 University. Ruth Ellington 1993 Interview with Janna T. Steed January 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 Concert was given at Grace (Episcopal) Cathedral in San Francisco on September 16, 1965. This recording was made at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan on December 26, 1965. A studio recording was also made but never released. This piece eventually became known as the First Sacred Concert after Ellington produced two more: the Second Sacred Concert (first performance in 1968 at the [Episcopal] Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York) and the Third Sacred Concert (first performed at Westminster Abbey in London, 1973). Jack Johnson opened the Club Deluxe at 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem in 1920. Owney Madden, a prominent bootlegger and gangster, took over the club in 1923 while imprisoned in Sing Sing and changed its name to the Cotton Club. While the club was closed briefly in 1925 for selling liquor, it reopened without trouble from the police. The dancers and strippers occasionally performed for Madden in Sing Sing after his return there in 1933. The club reproduced the racist imagery of the times, often depicting blacks as savages in exotic jungles or as “darkies” in the plantation south. The club imposed a more subtle color bar on the chorus girls whom the club presented in skimpy outfits: they were expected to be “tall, tan, and terrific”, which meant that they had to be at least 5 feet 6 inches tall, light skinned, and under twenty-one years of age. Ellington was expected to write “jungle music” for an audience of whites. Chapter Three Jazz and Its Impact on European Classical Music –You Americans take jazz too lightly– Maurice Ravel From the late nineteenth century through the 1930s, there was a cult of the primitive in Europe, exalting traditional art while reinterpreting that art in a European manner. Europe’s love affair with all things African extended to African American creative arts as well. There was a long period between the origin of the glorification of the primitive and Africa, and the true coming of jazz to Europe. Picasso began to put into operation the lessons he learned from the exhibit of African art at the Musée de l’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 primitive Russia, and other composers followed. The emergence of the Harlem Renaissance movement simply intensified that interest and found willing collaborators among many African American artists. Duke Ellington disliked the term “jungle music”; however, he not only lived with it, but he also fostered and profited from its use. He employed sounds that evoked images of the exotic and played at the Cotton Club, where dancers dressed in pseudo-African costumes for the pleasure of the white audience. Josephine Baker also played to the image of the primitive, wearing outrageous costumes and walking wild animals through ’the Parisian streets. Both mocked the image while seemingly embracing it, making their bows to show business and transcending those demands at the same time (The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 38, No. 4, 2005). When American performers discovered that their music and other art were taken seriously in Europe, it reinforced the lessons of the Harlem Renaissance, leading Ellington and others to great heights in composition. Thus, the influence of American musicians on European classical composers was at least equally great. As Jack Sullivan writes, in 1995, Bill Clinton, America’s sax-playing president declared that jazz was “America’s classical music”. Whatever consternation caused among America’s “real” classical composers as well as those invested in the myth of jazz as eternally avant-garde, it was an idea taken for granted by Europeans for nearly a century (191). Sullivan goes on to say that Europeans may have been ignorant regarding America’s serious composers, but they knew Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton, and regarded them as America’s classical composers. This chapter is concerned with why jazz had such a great influence on European classical composers, and also with some of the implications of that influence. Along the way, it examines the notion of primitivism and its role in increasing jazz influence, as well as its costs. Primitivism Primitivism is an aesthetic theory, strongest in France, which holds that what is most authentic in jazz is that which is most African. Thus, the more Dionysian a performance, the more African and thus authentic it is. The more the music stresses “pure” emotion and direct expression of that emotion, the more authentic the music. Authenticity is seen in the African side of jazz, while its European side is perceived by the primitivists as inauthentic. Thus, use of sophisticated diminished seventh chords or the use of chord substitutions is somehow considered as diminishing one’s jazz credentials. Reading music is a major failing in this view. Of course, the primitivists would exclude many of their favorite early artists if they applied these criteria too rigidly. King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Johnny Dodds and others would fail their test. Certainly, the so-called primitives of more recent jazz, such as Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler, would also disappoint (Brown). Traces of primitivism have continued to pop up from time to time as defenders of some imagined African purity in the hybrid music that is jazz defend earlier performers as somehow closer to the imagined roots of the music. Thus, even such astute critics as Philip Larkin argued that modern jazz was not jazz at all because it brought in too many European and Latin elements, and showed too much technical proficiency, an idea that Hughes Panassie (54) echoed. Andre Hodeir, however, took a stand that opposed this primitivist view of jazz, and held that jazz was neither African nor European, but a combination of elements. Although there were certainly racist elements in much of the primitivist position, it cannot be denied that primitivism did help promote jazz. However reluctantly Armstrong and Ellington negotiated around primitivism’s presuppositions, they found ways to use it to promote the “jungle” image that both deplored (Ake 55; Gabbard; Goldmark). The primitivist position, in fact, was but a racist position that found use for African-based music, though for the wrong reasons. Sieglinde Lemke, for example, notes the manner in which European composers accepted jazz, while classical composers in America, considering jazz too flashy and not cerebral enough, reviled it. She notes the way in which Milhaud, Stravinsky, and Ravel, for instance, embraced jazz’s rhythmic vitality that could revitalize European art music. However, as a New York Times article indicates in quoting the director of the Frankfurt Conservatory, often the positive opinion of Europeans sounds rather shocking to people today. The director states, “The teaching of jazz is not only the right but the duty of every up-to-date musical institution”. So far, so good. He continues, “An infusion of negro blood can do no harm. It will help to develop a wholesome sense of rhythm, which after all constitutes the life element of music” (quoted in Sullivan 10). The statement, infused with primitivism, is nevertheless essentially a positive one. In an era in which many composers were seeking to get to the roots of their own European cultures through getting in touch with the folk music of their lands, it was reasonable to look for folk elements from which real American music would emerge. Antonin Dvorak had predicted that real American art music would come from African American music, and attempted to indicate how this might come about in his New World Symphony. Other composers happily continued to seek the essence of American culture through using African American elements. By the 1920s, these elements had coalesced in jazz and blues, and deeply infused what is now termed the Great American Songbook, the standard songs of Tin Pan Alley (734). Carol J. Oja (650) specifies that European composers who visited America in the 1920s revealed in interview after interview that it was not America’s serious composers who interested them; rather, it was jazz that they sought out. They rushed to hear Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington. Paul Hindemith wrote to his wife about the ecstasy of hearing Ellington. For Sergei Rachmaninoff, the pleasure was in hearing Fats Waller in Harlem. They found both pleasure and inspiration in the music, marveling at the virtuosity of the performers. Interestingly, although it was primitivism that first attracted most Europeans to jazz—its rhythmic vitality, its promise of sexual and other freedoms, and its subversive nature—jazz provided a new sophistication. Sullivan put it this way: Ultimately, as Kurt Weill, Michael Tippett, and many other composers discovered, it delivered a self-abandon and transcendence, a temporary but powerful release from chronic anxiety in a war-ravaged century” (192). Sullivan goes on to discuss Ernst Krenck’s 1925 libretto for Jonny spielt auf, which he terms the first jazz opera. In this opera, Jonny is a black jazz musician who comes to Europe. He steals a violin and transforms it into a fiddle. With this fiddle, he leads the people to come into the streets and join him in a wild dance, signifying freedom and the triumph of the New World over the Old. The metaphor of jazz as freedom and the conquest of new music over old became a major trope 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 the individual temperament of the composer. For example, for the sociable Milhaud and Ravel, their epiphanies occurred in Harlem, while for the more private Delius, it was an epiphany that transpired in a Florida swamp, far removed from society. However, for each, it was a quasi-religious conversion and an eye-opening experience. Something new entered their souls and transformed their lives and understanding of reality. It was spiritual, emotional, and cognitive realigning. Each felt that he became a new person, and that newness suffused his music. It would be remiss to ignore those Europeans who opposed jazz. Although European intellectuals who were anti-jazz were fewer than American intellectuals who opposed it, they were influential. Among their number were Adorno, Poulenc, and Messiaen. Adorno’s attack can stand for them all. He says that those who praise the “revolutionary” potential of jazz are wrong. For Adorno, jazz is not revolutionary, but rather a bourgeois 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 musical freedom. The soloist’s improvisation is bound by a set of notes related to chords so that departures from the melody only lead the soloist back to it. Moreover, the rhythm is primitive and binds the soloist to a rigid time format. Jazz, far from being a radical revolt against set melody, is but a late capitalist form of decadence in which people are deluded into thinking that they are free. Despite the opinion of Adorno and of similarly inclined European critics, the dominant trope for jazz was that of freedom. It was clearly expressed during World War II as a potent means for opposing Nazi oppression. In Josef Skvorecky’s The Bass Saxophone, jazz is the personification of freedom, an existential weapon that the oppressed wields against the oppressor. In both, it is life affirming, liberating, and even frightening—a source of knowledge of good and evil that transforms the “true believer” and recalls Charlie Parker’s answer when questioned about his religious affiliation: “I am a jazz musician.” The Bass Saxophone is composed of two novellas, “Emoke” and “The Bass Saxophone”. I will treat them as a unit, as Skvorecky intends, because they are essentially about the same thing: the life-affirming nature of jazz and its opposition to oppression of any kind. In a brilliant preface, Skvorecky asserts that at root, all oppression is the same. Similarly, freedom is indivisible. Therefore, dictators inevitably oppose the music of freedom, a point that the recent imprisonment of his fellow Czech musicians has driven home, as did the Gorbachev thaw. The Bass Saxophone is a powerful statement of the transcendent power of jazz in the eyes of its fans to overcome the life-denying force of oppression and its constrictive aesthetics. It is set in 1940. The Germans have occupied Czechoslovakia, and every loyal Czech is expected to avoid all but necessary or forced contact with Germans. The eighteen-year-old protagonist, a jazz-loving tenor saxophonist “filled with complexes”, outwardly complies with the norm, but from time to time questions it when he perceives that not all Czechs are good, and not all Germans evil. His dilemma is heightened when he meets an old man at the train station. The old German is carrying a bass saxophone, an instrument of legendary dimensions, and one that he has never seen or heard. He had read about the instrument in Le Jazz Hot, a book a friend borrowed and kept, shelved next to the Book of Mormon. All that he knew about the instrument was that Adrian Rollini played it—and he had never heard him either. The lure of the exotic instrument tempts him, and soon he is lured into playing with Lothar Kinze’s collection of misfits, a Mickey Mouse band booked to play for an all-Nazi party under a circus tent. Although concerned that his fellow Czechs will view his playing as an act of betrayal, he plays anyway, for he is also ashamed to reject a genuine plea for help from fellow musicians. Their regular player is indisposed in a manner that the conclusion brings home in a surprising and powerful manner. The book, then, appears to make a straightforward plea for the transcendent nature of jazz. If that were all that it did, however, it would be as sweet as Lothar Kinze’s band. The power of jazz is driven home in the powerful climax: I saw him: he was a wild, hulking man, maybe forty. His hair was black, intertwined with what seemed like a leaden crown of thorns of gray hair, his eyes were wild, all black: a black mustache, a face that was almost Sicilian; he was insane, or normal at that insane moment: I recognized him; the pointed bluish chin with the crop of stubble jutted out over the white collar as it had stuck up out of the white hotel pillow earlier; it was the last stranger, the sleeping one whose place in Lothar Kinze’s orchestra I had involuntarily taken: the mysterious one (202). There is no mistaking the religious imagery present in this and all subsequent passages. The stranger is the last in a long series of religious symbols in the book. He takes the stage and transforms the performance. All of the mystery locked up inside him is unleashed as he takes a saccharine waltz, “The Bear”, and rips through it in a performance that somehow anticipated the as yet unheard Charlie Parker. It was a premature legend: Charlie Bird did not struggle with a saxophone like that, with music like that, with lifelike that, until later; his was a band of primordial times, obscured by the fog of another history, the war, by that island of Europe separated from the wide distant world by a narrowing ring of steel and dynamite; just as great, just as painful, but forgotten, an anonymous bass saxophone player under the canvas of a circus tent, which like the canvass-rigged Santa Maria de los Angeles sailed those two, three, four years over the Pacific Ocean of burned-down villages and traces of long-gone front lines; Lothar Kinze and his Side Show; it never found land; it fell apart, disintegrated in the final confusion of nations; an unknown black Schultz-Koehn, the Adrian Rollini of my dreams, some great, unknown, unexplainable pain, so sad… (206). The bass saxophone player, like Christ, has risen from his death. He had attempted suicide and been saved, but given up for dead. His playing annoys a petty Nazi martinet, and presumably, in an existential protest against this last loss of his freedom, he slashes his wrists. But saved from a death that had allowed him to render his final “No!” to his oppressors, he rises, wrests the bass saxophone from his reluctant substitute and plays the forbidden “black jazz” in a last assertion of personal freedom, subverting the bourgeois music of the Nazis in the process. Jazz, however, is not a negative force. Skvorecky carefully points out its capacity to transcend ethnic and cultural boundaries. He refers to the then German officer Schultz-Koehn, who not only shielded a black GI during the occupation of Paris, but also put together Hot Discography with Charles Delaunay in the very midst of the German High Command. On other occasions, Czechs and Germans forgot their conflict for a time in their mutual enjoyment of the forbidden music. Even in the Officers School there was a jazz band where members of the elite “master race” imitated black musicians. So it was not just in concentration camps, not just in the Jewish town of Terezin, but in the Offizierschule too, it was simply everywhere, that sweet sickness, it would have eventually infected everyone, and perhaps if the war had turned out badly it would have finally infected the victors, ultimately—even though it might have taken many years, maybe centuries—transforming them into people… (152–53). The religious nature of jazz and its ability to transform people are clear in both novellas. In “Emoke”, however, it is present in a subdued form. There, it is a commentary on jazz’s seductive power. The hero uses his ability to attempt to seduce a beautiful widow who has foresworn sex. His plans are thwarted through the lying schemes of an ignorant and repulsive village schoolmaster. However, that the unnamed hero does not pursue the possibility of repairing the damage hints at Skvorecky’s more basic theme: that the power of jazz 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 a legend that perhaps never was, a distant echo of an alien destiny, and soon I had almost ceased to believe in her existence” (113). Exoticism Whether following primitivistic theories or not, it is true, as Gunther Schuler (281) indicates, that European composers viewed jazz as an exotic music. It was something other than the normal. There was a dichotomy, in short, between “us” and “them”. Whether the Other was demonized or romanticized as a noble savage, the major point is that the Other was different from the normal in some significant way. Schuler is absolutely correct in this contention. Schuler (282–83) points out that it was Charles Ives, an American composer, who first used ragtime in his “serious” works, but that it was not exotic material to Ives, who used various American forms of all kinds in his works early on. For Claude Debussy, however, American ragtime and other African American music was indeed exotic. Debussy’s use of syncopated rhythms in his “Golliwog’s Cakewalk” (1907), “Le petit nègre” (1909), and “The Minstrels” (1910) reflects his interest in the cakewalk, ragtime, and other forms that evolved into jazz, or were incorporated into it. Moreover, his juxtaposition of the erotic and exotic reveals the popular European view of the music. Schuler (286) examines the manner in which Igor Stravinsky and Eric Satie employed jazz influences amid other elements. For both, there was an attempt to swing the music, using 4/4 rhythm as a ground beat while working syncopation over it, a practice rare in classical music but essential to most jazz. Schuler holds that many European composers viewed this practice as daring and even paradoxical, a point that others have noted in their view of jazz as inherently subversive of accepted reality (Salamone 617-30). However, one of the few European composers who truly understood early jazz and employed it in his music in far more than a surface manner was Darius Milhaud (Schuler 287). Milhaud was able to understand the significance of improvisation in jazz, perhaps because he actually went to Harlem to hear jazz performed by its masters. He also took back to France a collection of jazz recordings and studied them to perceive their essence. Milhaud remained a jazz fan, and Dave Brubeck, a modern jazz piano genius, was proud of the time he studied with Milhaud. Milhaud demonstrated his superior understanding of jazz in his ballet La Creation du Monde (1923). Portions of the work are based on such early Dixieland works as “Livery Stable Blues” and King Oliver classics. Milhaud’s understanding of the stop-time break and improvisational flourishes of Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver and of jazz feel, put him far in advance of Maurice Ravel and others who sought to use jazz effects in their works. After Milhaud, other composers began a successful use of jazz, Kurt Weil showed a great feel for jazz, although Louis Armstrong’s reconceived “Mack the Knife” brought that thief into jazz’s mainstream and gave a lesson in loose jazz time. Dimitri Shostakovich, Alfredo Cassella, Boris Blacher, and others made serious forays into the jazz world. In turn, many jazz musicians were trained in the classics or trained themselves in the masters and brought those lessons to jazz. Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum (when he played people shouted, “God is in the house!”), Oscar Peterson, and Frank Foster (who was kept out of the conservatory in Cincinnati now named after him) all appreciated the classics. But no one else in jazz was able to do what Duke Ellington did. He fulfilled Dvorak’s imperative for Americans to find their own music, incorporating the music of African Americans. Ellington’s compositions are indeed jazz, but jazz on a symphonic level, merging Europe, Africa, and music of other lands into something quintessentially American, as Dvorak had dreamed. It was disappointing to see Teachout (2013) fail to grasp this point and to criticize Ellington for not writing in classic symphonic format. In so doing, he revealed his lack of understanding of Haydn and Mozart’s manner of composing and in the difference between movements. Some of their movements are in rondo form, and some can be in theme and variation. Even the sonata form was flexible, and Beethoven broke all their rules, splendidly as did the mature Mozart. Conclusion In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois articulated a theme that inheres in the very essence of African American culture: “the dual heritage of the black man in America”. That heritage, African and European, is at root one of dual identity and a cause of a recurring crisis of identity, as Du Bois went on to note. In a very real sense, the history of jazz has provided a dynamic model of the ever-changing terms of that heritage, as well as a running commentary on it. It has done so through the use of tropes of identity. Tropes encapsulate a culture’s essence. Whatever a culture may be, however it views itself, it expresses that self-perception in select images packed with powerful meanings. Jazz is no exception. It too has its own cultural modes of expression, its personal symbols and metaphors and conveys identity. Moreover, the best of these tropes are flexible and allow for the expression of changing concepts of self-identity. “Africa” has been precisely that type of vehicle within jazz. It has served as a touchstone for 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” a performance, for example, the less likely jazz musicians are to find it acceptable. Conversely, the more authentic—even flawed—a performance, the more it is perceived to be approaching an African essence, or “soul”. Jazz musicians have been careful and correct in indicating that their music is not a result of inability or corruption in performance, but rather, of choice. Two musical cultures consisting of related but differing codes have been captured in the contrastive metaphors “African” and “European”. These terms have not, of course, remained static over time. The binary opposition between “Africa” and “Europe” is essential to the production of jazz itself and to the souls of those “black folks” who created this Creole music (Szwed). For example, improvisation alone does not distinguish jazz from so-called “classical” music. Although improvisation is essential to jazz, only a relative handful of its practitioner shave been improvisational geniuses; many others have been competent in its execution, some have been uninspired imitators. What does distinguish jazz from all other music, even to the point of often being overlooked, are its African elements. John Collier discusses some of these traits. In jazz, timbre is highly personal and varies not only from player to player but from moment to moment in a given passage for expressive purposes, just as European players swell or diminish a note to add feeling… In jazz, pitch is flexible to a considerable degree, and in fact in some types of jazz certain notes are invariable and deliberately played “out of tune” by European standards. European music, at least in its standard form, is built on the distinction between major and minor modes. The blues, a major building block in jazz, is neither major nor minor; it exists in a different mode altogether. In jazz, the ground beat is deliberately avoided in the melody and must be established by some sort of separate rhythm section (5). Black musicians are careful to note that distinctions between emotion and intelligence in jazz miss the mark. They quite rightly fear that white critics equate the emotion of jazz with African intuition, and intelligence with European rationality. Absolutely correctly, they note that the African aesthetic does not separate these terms, but rather demands the unity of the two. In addition to the African elements of pitch, timber, and cross rhythms, there is the social element of jazz. Jazz is a music that thrives on contact between performer and audience. No matter how much an artist protests, few if any jazz performers actually sound better in studio recordings as compared with live performances. Indeed, most jazz musicians will entreat audience members to come closer in order to have them participate in a mutual act of creativity. These African elements have become so much a part of jazz that, aside from discussions of “blue note” and rhythm, they tend to be overlooked. There has been no major innovation in jazz that has not been inspired and accompanied by rhythmic changes, inevitably in an African direction. Europe in the early years of the twentieth century through World War II saw jazz as an exotic representation of the Other. Sometimes that image was negative, sometimes positive; sometimes it was ambiguously both at once. It was exotic and erotic, dangerous but alluring. Classical composers began to incorporate elements into their music, using jazz to represent something different, something outside the normal. At the same time, authentic jazz musicians, usually black, began to go to Europe. True jazz became familiar to Europeans, and often more highly regarded than in its own country. The virtuosity of the musicians fascinated composers and musicians, many of whom asked to examine Louis Armstrong’s horn to note whether he used devices to allow him to play so high and reach seemingly impossible notes. More so than in America at the time, jazz was taken seriously, and its musicians generally appreciated as artists. Over the years, jazz concepts began to influence twentieth-century European composers. Whether many had a “true” jazz feel is beside the point; it is as irrelevant as asking whether Coleman Hawkins—or Duke Ellington, for that matter—had a true classical feeling in his playing. The fascination is in the use made of another music, the adaptation of one musical culture of another’s idiom. Duke Ellington, who despised musical categories, put it in perspective when he stated that there is only good music and bad, and the best is “beyond category”. The appropriation of jazz ideas by classical composers helped make much of their music beyond category and intriguing to analyze. 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 of the 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 Four Borrowing from the Classics: The Use of Classical Themes in American Pop Music Borrowing in music is an old practice. It has probably gone on for as long as humans have had music. Indeed, originality has not always been prized as much as it has been in recent times. Even today there is a certain satisfaction in hearing old familiar tunes, even if wrapped in somewhat new packages. In fact, any music too new will attract very few followers, at least at first. Too much novelty alienates. If the new is finally accepted, it is because of what people find common to the old. Even Mozart had his detractors for being too innovative and for tinkering with the unfamiliar (Jan Swaford, The Guardian, 3 June 2004). The famous complaint of Emperor Joseph II about The Marriage of Figaro—”too many notes, Mozart”—is generally perceived to be a gaffe by a blockhead. In fact, Joseph was echoing what nearly everybody, including his admirers, said about Mozart: he was so imaginative that he couldn’t turn it off, and that made his music at times intense, even demonic. Hence Mozart’s bad, or cautionary, reviews: “too strongly spiced”; “impenetrable labyrinths”; “bizarre flights of the soul”; “overloaded and overstuffed”. The same article mentions criticisms of J.S. Bach as well. Interestingly, the very pieces most criticized tend to be, like “The Marriage of Figaro”, those that future generations consider the composers masterpieces. Even these original artists, however, did not abstain from borrowing from their predecessors. Indeed, the Baroque and Classical periods, like those that came before and after them, relished borrowings since these borrowed pieces were transformed as variations, and these were something new and old at the same time, something today’s postmodernists should appreciate. One critic, indeed, goes so far as to question Mozart’s reputation because of his borrowings: Unlike their predecessors, however, neither Don Giovanni nor Figaro were a success with Viennese audiences. What becomes increasingly clear is that Mozart exploited a myriad of sources in creating his body of works, but the most prominent of these, and also the most commonly cited and discussed 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 common practices and ignores the great respect Haydn had for Mozart as well as that of Bach’s son, Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach. Nor does South note the practice of Beethoven of lifting complete themes from Mozart. However, the point is made that borrowing was common practice in music long before the 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 York Times March 7, 2012). Finally, there is the outstanding work by Olufunmilayo Arewa, From J.C. Bach to Hip Hop: Musical Borrowing, Copyright, and Cultural Context (Case Research Paper Series in Legal Studies Working Paper 04-21 Revised to Final February 2006). The response of working musicians, classical, jazz, rock and other genres, was unanimously positive. Their point was that composition is not a simple matter of total originality. Emulation is important and it is what is done with material that is creative. It is important to make this point. Much musical composition is recomposition. There are different types of creativity. Borrowing note–for-note without attribution or change is, in my mind, plagiarism today. It was not so considered in the past. However, it seems clear that from Bach’s time on that the composer had to do something different with the material. He or she had to play with it. The many variations of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” were the type of recomposition that jazz musicians do daily. It is in the “playing” that creativity springs forth. This is my point in considering the borrowing of classical music in popular music. Examples of Borrowed Classical Music in Popular Music The practice of borrowing ideas and complete sections from classical music is an old one for composers of popular music. Without going back beyond the gay nineties (or 1890s), we can find ample proof of taking material from baroque, romantic, and post-romantic music and dressing it up in the popular style. For example, the 1890s have among others listed “O Promise Me” from Stanislo Gastaldon, The teen years have (1913) “Hungarian Rag” by Julius Lenzberg. It is obviously based on the Second Hungarian Rhapsody by Franz Liszt. While “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” (1918), by Joseph McCarthy and Harry Carroll, is clearly taken from Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu in C Sharp Minor, Op. 66. Even that quintessentially American anthem “The Marine Hymn” (1919), by L. Z. Philips is taken from Jacques Offenbach’s Genevieve de Brabant. And there is no doubt that (1919) “Peter Gink” by George L. Cobb comes 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 or two from each decade. In 1922 Paul Robeson recorded “Going Home”, which was based on Dvorak’s “Largo”. “Lover, Come Back to Me”, a 1928 hit, recorded many times after into the present century, was based on “June”, from Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons”. There were many songs taken in whole or part from classics in the 1930s. The influence of more recent composers was felt, such as Rimsky-Korsakov. His Scheherazade gave us the “Song of India”, a hit for Tommy Dorsey. The great tune, “The Lamp Is Low”, came from Ravel’s “Pavane pour une infante défunte”. The trend continued in the 1940s, perhaps the high point of the swinging the classics trend. Frank Sinatra had a hit, courtesy of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, known to pop fans of the time as “Full Moon and Empty Arms”. I wonder whether he ever got any royalties for it. Similarly, Stravinsky’s “The Firebird” gave us “Summer Moon”: at least that masterpiece provided the opera great Lauritz Melchior with a hit. The 1950s, even with the birth of rock and roll saw no letup in the influence of the classics. It is not surprising that Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” should have music based on Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty” ballet”. However, “Hot Diggity Dog” appears to be a strange vehicle for the classics. It is taken from Chabrier’s España, rapsodie pour orchestre. Perry Como had a hit, thanks to Brahms’s “Academic Festival Overture”, turned into “Catch a Falling Star”. But none of these songs was a rock song of any kind. However, the 1960s witnessed many rock songs based on the classics. Almost every style of music in that tumultuous decade borrowed something from the classics. Not surprisingly, given his sweet voice and potential to become a crooner, Elvis Presley had a hit in 1960 with “It’s Now or Never”. The familiar tune is based on “O Sole Mio”, composed by Eduardo di Capua. Interestingly, “Rap City” by The Ventures, a 1964 hit, was based on Johannes Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G minor. Having hit once with a song taken from a classical composition, Elvis struck again in 1961 with “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You”, taken from Plaisir d’Amour, by Jean Paul Egide Martini. The novelty tune, “Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter From Camp)”, by Allan Sherman, is based on Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours” from La Giaconda, A Whiter Shade Of Pale”, which many young fans thought so original, drew upon the Air (the so-called Air on a G String) from J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068, and his Cantata 140 Sleepers Awake (“Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme”), BWV 140. In any case, Procul Harum had a major hit with it. This is but a taste of the vast number of hits based on the classics, most not attributed to them by the performers or their recording companies. The borrowing did not end in the 1970s. Indeed, an impressionistic glance seems to signal the contrary. Rachmaninoff and Mozart have supplied many tunes over the years, along with Bartok, Chopin and others. I have chosen just a few 1970s songs based on Mozart and Rachmaninoff. Mozart was represented by Minuetto Allegretto (1974) by The Wombles—based on Mozart’s Symphony No. 41in C Major, K.551—and Neil Diamond’s “Song Sung Blue”(1972), based on the second movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21in C Major, K. 467. Sergei Rachmaninoff is represented by the following three songs, among others: Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” (1976) taken from the Piano Concerto No. 2 (again!), and “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again” from Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27. A few years later, in 1979, The Korgis recorded “If I Had You”, taken from Variation 18 of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, itself based on Paganini’s 24 Caprices for Solo Violin. So this last song gives us a double treat, Rachmaninoff borrowing from Paganini, and The Korgis borrowing from him. We can continue into the present century, but the point is clear. Just as modern “classical” composers borrow from jazz musicians and composers, so, too, do pop and jazz composers borrow from the classics. The Beatles Certainly, it is no secret that the Beatles, under George Martin’s guidance, began using classical themes in their music as well as violins, which many confound with “classical” music. In the late 1960s, for example there were 1968’s “All You Need is Love, the beginning of which quotes J.S. Bach’s Two Part Invention No. 8 in F Major, BWV 779. In 1969, “Because” is clearly based on Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2, “The Moonlight”. McCartney’s experimentation with The Beatles sound lay in mixing traditional classical elements into the rock and roll context. It had been done before when rock and roll was “tamed” by an elitist/segregated constituent known as the Mass Media. Orchestral augmentation of what was essentially rhythm & blues existed before McCartney and George Martin, though it was new to The Beatles framework. With the power of influence The Beatles had between 1964 and 1966, the classical European influence grew stronger on American shores in popular music than possibly before, but classical influence on popular music has always existed. With the import of Africans onto American shores, this popular music changed drastically, and is still changing today through their influence, but the European rules of harmony and melodic structure are fifty per cent of that equation. It is not difficult to notice that many of the most successful artists in pop music have imitated and been influenced by the classical composers, and the harmonic structures they followed. Paul McCartney, Abba, Queen, Elton John, to name but a few, have all embraced rock and roll, but their songs bear the hallmark of being written two or three centuries before in the works of Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827), Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), and Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), to name but a few. And then there are artists who share affinity with Claude Debussy, Edgard Varese, Luigi Russolo, Bela Bartok, Erik Satie, and Charles Ives, working in unconventional or sometimes unaccepted forms of creative expression, only to be brought back again in relevance when the world has caught up to their ideas, or is finally able to envision them with newer tools and greater technological capabilities. Varese foresaw the world of the electronic instrument, yet was born in a time without the technology to develop it. Had he been born 50 years later, he would have been at the forefront of electronic music, quite possibly one of its greatest composers. Though McCartney enjoyed the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, was influenced by him, and included his picture on the cover of 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Stockhausen later said, “In my eyes, John Lennon was the most important mediator between popular and serious music of this century” (David Holmes: http://beatlesnumber9.com/vanguard.html). The Beatles were pioneers in what came to be known as Baroque Rock or English Baroque. It is an attempt to bring classical music ideas into pop music. Sgt. Pepper is one example of the genre. It is also an attempt to elevate rock music to an art form. Certainly, classical touches had been found in pop music before the Beatles, and have continued since their final performances and recordings. However, the connection has persisted to the present day. There still remains something special about their music and their blend of various 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 Five 1950s Music Although most people today associate the music of the 1950s with rock and roll, 1950s music was incredibly diverse. Rock and roll did not simply storm in musical forms existed side-by-side with the newer ones throughout the fifties and overwhelmed jazz, classic crooners, show tunes or American classic pop. These older forms continued but declined in popularity as the decade continued. Big Bands and Vocalists The decade began with a mixture of post-big band music, dominated by vocalists and vocal groups who had sung with the big bands. Pre-rock and roll teens continued to support this music, claiming that modern jazz “was too difficult to dance to”. “The Singing Rage, Miss Patti Page”, for example, not only had the top song for the year, “All My Love”, but also songs more closely associated with her, “The Tennessee Waltz”, “I Went to Your Wedding”, and “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” These songs were quite popular at record hops, dances that featured records rather than live bands—not only early in the decade, but also later on when rock became king. Although she had no other tunes placed in the top ten for the years after 1953, she did have her own variety television program, continued to sell records and filled auditoriums for her concerts. Patti Page was a symbol of the decade’s “innocence” and its continued ties to the big band past. She was barely out of her teens in 1950 when she had her first hit “Confess”. Even more impressive for the decade was the success of Perry Como. Como had recordings in the top ten throughout the decade. In 1950, for instance, he had the number six record of r the year, “Hoop de-Doo”. In 1958, against such rock and roll competition as the Everly Brothers, Danny & the Juniors, Elvis Presley, and others, Como had the number four record in the U.S., “Catch a Falling Star”. The secret of Como’s enduring popularity during the rock and roll era has long been something of a mystery. Perhaps, his easy acceptance of the new music and his featuring it on his popular television program helped contribute to it. Certainly, his very relaxed manner and “cool” personality made him a natural for television and his weekly exposure enabled him to promote his music to his large weekly audience. While Como’s popularity was unique, there were always more “sedate” or jazz-like recordings on the charts. In 1959, for example, Bobby Darin’s “Mack the Knife” was number eight for the year. In 1960, Ray Charles’s hit “Georgia on My Mind” was number six for the year. Percy Faith and His Orchestra had an instrumental hit with “The Theme for a Summer Place”. Interestingly, a number of later rockers were moving into “the mainstream” with songs like “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and “It’s Now or Never” (Presley), “El Paso” (Marty Robbins), “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 as Connie Francis (“Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool”, “My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own”). The Platters, always a sweet group more in the rhythm and blues tradition, had a number of hits in the period such as “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, “The Great Pretender”, and “My Prayer”. Additionally, Johnny Mathis became very popular during this period with songs like “Chances Are”, and “The Twelfth of Never”. In contrast, Frank Sinatra, “The Chairman of the Board”, had only one top ten hit in the period, 1955’s “Learning the Blues”. Sinatra had, however, not only diversified his talents, having various TV shows, winning an Oscar for “From Here to Eternity”, and a successful night club act, but he also turned to the potentials of the LP (long-playing record). Sinatra overcame his throat troubles of the early 1950s and moved to Capitol Records. His vocal problems, caused by polyps on his vocal chords, left him with a deeper and huskier voice. A world-wearier one that, along with his publicized personal problems, appealed to an older audience and more sophisticated college students, and replaced the young romantic sound. That audience tended to be more affluent and willing to plonk down the cost of an LP, from $2.99 to $3.99, compared with the $.75 of a single. Sinatra found that he could stretch out in the LP format and develop a common theme, or concept, in these albums. He had Capitol hire Nelson Riddle and the best studio musicians available, especially the distinctive trumpet sound of Harry “Sweets” Edison from the Count Basie Band. These Capitol albums “Close to You”, “Songs for Swinging Lovers”, “Only the Lonely” and others are classics of their types. Bing Crosby, whose successful career stretched back to the 1920s, continued to be popular in various media. His movie career continued. Its 1950 high point for many was his role in High Society, a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story, co-starring Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra. His duet with Sinatra on “Well, Did You Ever?” is not only a highlight of the film but shows where some of Sinatra’s talent came from. Similarly, his duet with Louis Armstrong demonstrated that Armstrong was the ultimate father of jazz and popular singing. Crosby was, perhaps, Armstrong’s earliest most famous disciple. Crosby, himself, acknowledged his debt on many occasions. That heritage was passed on to a number of “crooners”, the term used for male vocalists who mastered the use of microphone and “crooned” into it, rather than belting out a song. He continued that style through the fifties and sixties. Only Crosby’s death in 1977 stopped his various media activities. Rhythm and Blues There were early signs that a new music was slowly gaining popularity among a young audience. In 1952, for example, “Her Nibs, Miss Georgia Gibbs”, covered a rhythm and blues tune, “Kiss of Fire”, and it was the number eleven hit song of the year. Kay Starr covered “The Wheel of Fortune”, and it finished as 1952’s number 13 song. 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 “Dance with Me, Annie” and “Annie Had a Baby (Can’t Dance No Mo’)”. Interestingly, none of the top ten or even twenty hits featured one black rocker. There is no Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Big Jay McNealy, Little Anthony, or any of the others whom those who were teens remember from the fifties. Not even the white rocker Bill Haley and his Comets is on the list. The reason for that is that rhythm and blues and its child rock and roll were found on separate lists. Race music was generally segregated from the mainstream, and early rock and roll was definitely considered race music.1955 saw the popularization of rock and roll with such hits as Pat Boone’s number one song “Ain’t That a Shame”, a watered down version of Little Richard’s song. The reason that rhythm and blues had a separate listing of its hits is the same one that made it appeal primarily to a black audience; namely, segregation in American society. Black artists were generally separated from white ones and the “race” music that was R&B was free to develop black themes for a predominantly black audience, using black idioms in its presentation. As the fifties saw the first serious cracks in segregation, that music began to reach a white audience, often in diluted form. That ending of segregation, slow as it was, meant that black artists who had been confined to an R&B ghetto were freer to cross over into the big money of the top ten, helping to end one of their major complaints. Chuck Berry was the first black artist to become truly popular with white audiences. He broke through the barrier with the aid of Alan Freed in the mid-1950s with his own composition “Maybelline”. In the 1960s, rhythm and blues would break from rock and emerge as soul music. Rock and Roll Rock ’n’ Roll, of course, is perhaps the most enduring of the fifties fads. It burst on the scene in 1954-55 with hits by singers including Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley. Rock also generated its share of novelty songs, including David Seville’s “Witch Doctor” and “The Chipmunk Song”. Those loveable chipmunks still plague us every Christmas with Alvin still interrupting his other chipmunk friends, Simon and Theodore. Two other novelty tunes of note are “The Purple People Eater” by Sheb Woolley, and “Willie and the Hand Jive”, with its own dance craze of 1958. Rock & roll was certainly related to R & B and the blues. It was also related to other forms of African American music, a fact that often appears to surprise its supporters as well as its detractors. All forms of African American derived music, including the popular doo wop street music, are related. Whatever else it was to become, the music categorized as rock & roll was African American derived music, or in the terms of the day, “race music”. There is some argument about the “origins” of rock and roll. Nelson George (1988: 67) describes its beginnings in his book The Death of Rhythm & Blues. After discussing the role of the white rhythm and blues deejay Alan Freed, he notes: Rock & roll—the words alone evoke notions of hedonism, romantic wandering (taken from the blues), and pseudo rebellion akin to the blues but without the mature battle of the sexes essential to that black expression. Nevertheless, as Freed knew, rock & roll wasn’t a music, but a marketing concept, that evolved into a life-style. Years later, critics and fans would search for the first rock & roll record, a quest Freed would probably have laughed at, since he never seemed to know what rock & roll was. The many recordings made under his name in the 1950s reflected a taste for big-band swing, with bluesy sax breaks and covers of standard tunes… One of the primary influences on both rhythm and blues and rock & roll was Joseph Vernon Turner (Big Joe Turner). Big Joe’s music was widely imitated by the early rockers and he, himself, often appeared on early rock & roll bills. Turner was famed for his recordings with his partner, the pianist Pete Johnson. The duo became famous in Kansas City saloons. As was the case with many other musicians, John Hammond “discovered” them and took them to New York City. Turner was a star of the 1938 Carnegie Hall “Spirituals to Swing” concert. Turner remained 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 “Chains of Love”, and followed it with a series of top R&B hits “Sweet 16”, “Honey, Hush”, “Shake, Rattle and Roll”, and “Flip, Flop and Fly”, all of which were covered by young white musicians, notably Bill Haley; the white musicians generally cleaned up the lyrics for the white teenage crowd. Alan Freed, in a similar vein, used the term rock & roll to “disguise the blackness of the music”, according to Nelson George. The attempt did not work, as we have come to be told through numberless movies and oral histories. Perhaps, its failure to mask its blackness was its best selling feature. However, if it failed to mask it what came to be identified as rock & roll did water it down a bit. One its earliest divas, Laverne Baker, is reputed to have said, “The blues is for bourbon. Rock & roll is for Coca Cola.” That evaluation was generally true in the early days, and became even more valid as black artists, like Little Richard and Fats Domino began to be crowded out by white adolescents like Fabian and Frankie Avalon. That development is not surprising, because the purpose of rock & roll was to exploit the white teenage market. Rock & roll, unlike rhythm and blues, did not specifically address a black audience of all ages. Instead, it addressed the coming of age concerns of white adolescents. Again, George (1988: 68) describes the situation well. The generational schism and teen-eye view that has always been the crux of the rock & roll ethos was mostly foreign to black consumers, young as well as old. That is not to say that all blacks rejected rock & roll, both as a business term or social attitude, but R & B made a connection to black listeners that was both musical and extra-musical. Music made by the white bands was inevitably (and often deliberately) adolescent, addressed to adolescent ears about adolescent fears. Black teens might listen, but their heads were in different places, and R&B articulated that difference not just in vocal or aural effect but also in attitude. Alan Freed (1926-1965), as George notes, is generally given credit for putting the marketing term rock & roll on a collection of related black music. Freed was an R&B deejay at WJW in Cleveland in 1952 when he applied the black euphemism for sexual intercourse to a conglomeration of music. His sponsor, Leo Mintz, encouraged Freed to play R&B originals, and Freed generally stayed away from white covers of black music throughout his career (Larkin 1998: 151). Freed moved to New York’s WINS in 1953 and began to host rock & roll concerts, first in New York and then elsewhere. He appeared in a series of rock & roll films, making enemies in the music world for his championing of rock & roll. Eventually, a riot at a Boston concert in 1958 and a conviction for payola in 1962 ended his career. Freed’s career was greatly aided through his collaboration with Chuck Berry, the duck-walking master guitarist and composer. More than anyone else, Berry brought the electric guitar to its preeminent position in rock & roll. Berry had a great deal of sexual energy and an ability to focus it on the problems of adolescents. He was able to give voice to what Freed had only hinted at. Berry was a classic blues storyteller who had soaked up the lessons of the great Louis Jordan. According to Larkin (1998:52), Berry was born in 1926 in San Jose, California, not in St. Louis as he claims. Like Ray Charles, Berry cites Nat Cole as a great influence on his singing. Berry’s first hit was “Maybelline”, in 1955. He quickly followed that up with “Thirty Days”, “No Money Down”, “Roll Over Beethoven”, “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man”, School Days”, “Sweet Little Sixteen”, and many others that topped the R&B charts. Larkin (1998: 32) sums up his success in this way: Between 1955 and 1960, Berry seemed unassailable. He enjoyed a run of 17 R&B Top 20 entries, appeared in the films Go Johnny Go, Rock, Rock, Rockland Jazz on a Summer’s Day… Larkin also indicates that it was Berry who clarified rock & roll’s message through bringing a needed discipline to its vocals and performance. He also set a template, which the next generation followed. The mix of black music tailored to white adolescent audience becomes even more curious when the case of Leiber and Stoller is considered. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were two Jewish boys who managed to write from a black perspective without condescension and with total authenticity. Leiber and Stoller managed to catch the black idiom and attach it to stories of urban life that blacks could sing with comfort. Both Leiber and Stoller had grown up around African Americans and had embraced black culture, especially its music. They felt that writing music was a sign of respect for the culture. Interestingly, they did not feel that whites should perform the music. Both Leiber and Stoller were well grounded in that music, Leiber in blues and Stoller in jazz. Their first R&B hit was the Robins’ (later renamed the Coasters), “That’s What the Good Book Says”, which came out in 1951. The next five years were a period of intense R&B activity in which Leiber and Stoller wrote songs for the black R&B audience. These songs attracted such artists as Ray Charles, the Isley Brothers, Jimmy Witherspoon, Big Momma Thornton, and Joe Turner. They included “Hound Dog” and “Kansas City”, among others. Leiber and Stoller turned to the new Rock & Roll along with the Coasters and others of their clients. They, too, began to address the white teenage audience that favored the more commercial music that addressed their needs. They managed to keep their sounds soulful even if they began to address mainly white teens rather than a broader black 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, and story-telling genius associated with Leiber and Stoller at their best. Inevitably, the duo expanded their repertoire and wrote hits for Elvis Presley (“Jailhouse Rock”), Ben E. King (“Stand by Me”), and such stalwarts of non-rock music as Peggy Lee (“I’m a Woman”). They even wrote for Dion. According to Larkin (1998:225), they seemed unable to cope with the later changes in the music and went into and out of retirement. Their work is still on Broadway in Smokey Joe’s Cafe. Doo-wop Music The success of the Broadway musical Smokey Joe’s Cafe also illustrates the continuing popularity of what has come to be called doo wop music. This type of music was exemplified by a number of groups in the 1950s. Doo-wop music featured a simple four-part harmony that young male teens could, and often did, sing on street comers. Groups such as the Ink Spots anticipated doo-wop music. The Ink Spots popularized simple four-part harmony with a falsetto tenor and deep booming bass voice. They also put in human sounds to replace musical instruments, a major feature of later doo-wop tunes. These characteristics became dominant among fifties doo-wop groups. The Drifters, for example, were a black doo-wop group. The height of their popularity was from the mid to late 50s to the mid-60s. The group had very gifted members, including at one time or another: Clyde McPhatter, Gerhart Thrasher, Andrew Thrasher, Bill Pinkney, Ben E. King, Rudy Lewis, and Johnny Moore (Collins, 3/17/99). The drifters had a string of hits that transcended many of the changes in music that occurred during this volatile 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-wop group. Their biggest hit was “Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight” which continues in popularity to the present. The popular movie, Three Men and a Baby, for example, used it throughout the film. The rock revival group, Sha Na-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 50s music, several musicians during the 1950s, including The McGwire Sisters and Pat Boone covered the hit and had successful hits of their own with the song. Elvis, Orbison, Perkins On the other side of the divide, as Morris puts it, was Elvis Presley. In many ways, The King came to transcend the divide and become an icon by himself. Nevertheless, in 1956 there was no real way to know that he would become his own category. Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935. By all accounts he was a rather shy misfit and something of a mommy’s boy in his adopted hometown of Nashville. However, after some false starts he became a star, a white boy who could sing like a black man, as Sam Phillips put it. 1956 was his breakthrough year. “Heartbreak Hotel” went to number one on the charts. Presley had 18 top hits and two others that made the top ten list. His fame carried him through generally forgettable movies, although he did begin his career with an obvious talent that could have been developed, as were Crosby’s and Sinatra’s. Some of Presley’s hits were “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You”, Jailhouse Rock”, and, of course, his first major hit, “Heartbreak Hotel”, Although most of his hits are in the general rock & roll vein of the times, others demonstrate Elvis’s rather wide range - from soft ballads to gospel-tinged renditions. There are successful efforts to crossover to the “establishment” with “The Wonder of You”, and “Can’t Help Falling in Love (With You)”, not to mention “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” Presley influenced a number of imitators and followers. Prime among them was Roy Orbison. Orbison tended to accent the rockabilly joined with rhythm and blues side of Presley. Over the years he developed his own personality and made his own contributions to the evolution of the music, but his roots were deep in Presley’s music. Orbison was a multi-talented performer. He was a fine guitarist and songwriter as well as a vocalist with a three-octave range who knew how to use his soaring falsetto tones to add depth and mystery to his performance. Orbison began as a country vocalist for the same record company, Sun, which signed Elvis. His first hit was also in 1956, “Ooby Dooby” (1956). He left Sam Phillips to join Monument Records, achieving distinction as a melancholy romantic singer. John Belushi, one of his biggest fans, parodied Orbison’s trademark dark glasses, dark clothing, and black pompadour hairdo, both as one of the Blues Brothers, and as a Roy Orbison imitator. Carl Perkins, who had the original hit on “Blue Suede Shoes”, is another artist who was very much in the Presley vein. Perkins also went on to establish his own style and voice. Perkins pioneered Rockabilly, a fusion of blues, country, rhythm and blues, and gospel that is one of the sources of what became rock and roll. Perkins’s hit “Blue Suede Shoes” became the definitive theme of the movement. In common with many of the early stars of rock & roll, he began playing at a young age and formed a band in his teens. In Perkins’s case, he played with his two brothers. After hearing Elvis, the trio noted the similarity of their styles and decided that Nashville was the place to be. Perkins joined the Sun record stable and opened for Presley in the mid-50s. Sun Records gave him the opportunity to compose and produce. An accident, unfortunately, stalled Perkins’s career. He continued to write hits like “Honey Don’t” (1956) and “Matchbox” (1957), but Presley’s popularity far outstripped his own. Presley’s version of “Blue Suede Shoes” reached Number one on the charts; ahead of Perkins’s number two. Perkins did, however, become a major influence on the development of the music through his compositions and guitar playing. His hard-rocking guitar playing influenced the Beatles, among others. His songs received wide circulation among rock & rollers and country performers, including the Beatles and Johnny Cash. America’s Oldest Teenager: Dick Clark, and the Teenage Idols Dick Clark was born in 1929.He was thus well out of his teens when he became American Bandstand’s second host in 1956. Bandstand was a local Philadelphia show when Clark became its host, but so popular was big brother Clark that ABC distributed it nationally in beginning August 5, 1957. For the next six years, it was live every weekday afternoon. Clark’s low-key style helped gain fans for rock and roll, since many figured if a nice boy like Clark liked the music it couldn’t be too dangerous. Clark broke with the tradition of having black artists’ music covered by white performers. On Bandstand, he played the original recordings for his teens to dance to. And his teen regulars danced every popular dance—The Slop, The Hand Jive, and The Bop. Bandstand even introduced new dances of its own—the Stroll, the Circle, and the Calypso among them. Clark made it a practice to introduce the original talent behind the records on his show. Bill Haley and the Comets, James Brown, Buddy Holly, Connie Francis, Bobby Darin, Fabian, and Ritchie Valens, among others, got their national start on Clark’s show. For over forty years, Clark, the man who never grows old, continued to play popular music on the air. He is often credited in helping to make rock the success that it became. He introduced many new records 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. But dancing was much of what the music was about at the time. Clark emphasized the fun that the music represented and became a clean-cut spokesman for that music, an older brother reasoning to Mom and Dad about this new music that many feared so much. Clark’s regulars, like Justine Carrelli and Bob Clayton, started many clothing and dance trends. The fact was that there were no other national shows targeted to teens at the time. Clark used this 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 teen audience, Clark had a further impact on popular culture. Other shows came along to tap that audience, Soultrain and Hootenanny, among them. By the 1960s, others had discovered the teen market and the value of targeting that market. Integration was progressing in the entertainment industry and Black performers carved out their niche on center stage. But Clark had been among the first to push the trend, and his quiet demeanor and understanding of his audience served him well as he moved on to other endeavors in show business without ever quite abandoning American Bandstand in the process. Bachelor Pad Music A musical form of the fifties that has become popular once again is bachelor pad music. It has become known as Space Age Bachelor Pad Music. Bachelor Pad Music was directed toward an older sophisticated crowd. Exotic Latin and Brazilian rhythms and sounds marked it; parrots and other exotic birds were often on the sound track. Les Baxter had a series of hits in the 1950s, for himself and others. For example, he arranged Peruvian singer Yma Sumac’s 1950, “Voice of the Xtabay”, which became a landmark of exotic music. Baxter went on to produce a number of albums for Capitol, including Tamboo (a top 10 hit in 1956), and between 1956 and 1959, The Sacred Idol, Rita of the Savage, and Skin. Skin demonstrated a new dimension of the genre, one that exploited its pulling exoticism. Perhaps, Baxter’s most famous composition is “Quiet Village”. This song became an instrumental hit for Martin Denny, reaching number four in 1959. Its exotic birdcalls are still imitated and those who lived through the period often parody the sound at parties. The album, in fact, reached number one during 1959. During the 1960s, there were a number of exotic “Bachelor Pad” instrumentals. Part of the explanation for the music is found in the fact that it exploited the relatively new phenomenon of hi-fi stereo systems, toys for older boys of the time. The genre lies on one side of a great divide in American popular culture. That rift was visible to millions of viewers on “The Milton Berle Show” of June 5, 1956; there, the King of Rock ’n’ Roll was pitted against the Godfather of Space Age Bachelor Pad Music. Elvis Presley’s swiveling, erotic performance of “Hound Dog” that night set off a storm of national protest, leading Steve Allen to garb Presley in a tuxedo and Ed Sullivan to shoot him from the waist up in later TV appearances. At the benign end of the sonic spectrum was Berle’s other musical guest, Les Baxter, who performed “The Poor People of Paris”, a chirpy hit that had been displaced at No.1 on the charts by Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” that April. Jazz The LP revolution did a great deal to enhance and preserve Jazz’s popularity. It allowed not only for longer solos in contrast with the limitation of the old 78s, but also for concept albums. In addition, jazz fans tended to be older and a bit more affluent than rock fans, as Playboy had noted. There were many changes in jazz during the 1950s, the Golden Age of Jazz. Thanks to the creation of the jazz festival and its predecessor, the Jazz at the Philharmonic road show, it is possible to note the similarity of the different jazz styles as well as their connection. Moreover, it is possible to appreciate in retrospect the fact that most of the important jazz musicians who had lived were alive and working in the 1950s. Jazz’s past, present, and future were all there in the 1950s. Jazz was still a young art form in the 1950s. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded the first jazz record in 1917. Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, the first two outstanding jazz soloists, were still performing. The great swing musicians were well represented. The be-bop revolution had become part of the mainstream and the new revolutionaries who would blossom in the 1960s, like John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, were launching their careers or consolidating them in the 1950s. In sum, all forms of jazz could be found in vital live performances not by revival bands or repertory aggregations but by the originals, many of whom were not out of their fifties, like Louis Armstrong, even though younger musicians might consider them old men. The first of the great festivals was the Newport Jazz Festival. George Wein, a pianist and nightclub owner in the Boston area, decided to promote a jazz festival in Newport, Rhode Island. Jazz still had a slightly unsavory reputation and the wealthy inhabitants of Newport did not have the reputation of being great supporters of the art form, a fact that added to the spice of the movie High Society, the successful remake of The Philadelphia Story. The festival began over the July 4th weekend in 1954 and soon grew to a weeklong event with hundreds of performers. Its excitement can be viewed in a documentary of the 1958 festival entitled Jazz on a Summer’s Day. The film mad, by Bert Stem, gains from the work of Aram Avakian. It was the forerunner of other concert documentaries and is still unmatched for its general quality and the matching of music and setting. It combined a sense of 50s high quality fashion with its love of the cool and the hip. Stern juxtaposes tryouts for the America’s cup with the best of jazz. Big Maybelle, Chuck Berry, and Mahalia Jackson show jazz’s roots and relatives in performances. Jazz musicians and the relationship of Blues, Rock ’n’ Roll, and Gospel become quite clear through the performances that accompany each of these non-jazz performers. The range of jazz in the 50s is also remarkable. Some of the performers whom Stern highlighted are now mere footnotes to jazz history, known only to aficionados. Their 50s reputations appear inflated in retrospect. Others have stood the test of time and their reputations are still strong. Among the performers 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 real people looked and talked in the50s, rather than the way Hollywood later came to portray the 50s look. Additionally, there are some excellent candid shots of fifties fans reacting to the music and dancing in the aisles, giving the lie to the old canard that you can’t dance to “modern jazz”. The Newport Jazz Festival has spawned over 2000 other national and international jazz festivals. Its success has made it common for jazz to be performed in venues other than clubs and auditoria. Nevertheless, the Newport Festival had other predecessors, most notably Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic series that began in the late 1940s and reached its height in the 1950s. A 1953 Time magazine piece on JATP’s second European tour began in this fashion. Two thousand Swedish fans turned out in Stockholm last week to hear a rocking sample of the best brand of U.S. jazz, beaten out and bellowed by some of the best U.S. practitioners. First, half a dozen instrumentalists gave them a round of modern combo numbers, including C-Jam Blues and Perdido. Then Songstress Ella Fitzgerald stepped forward and let loose with Why Don’t You Do Right? and St. Louis Blues. Finally, the stage was darkened, and Gene Krupa, his face spotlighted from below, flailed away on the drums. Between numbers, the packed hall resounded to roars and whistles of approval and the stamping of teenage feet. Afterward, it took the performers 45 minutes to fight their way through the ecstatic crowd outside. For U.S. Jazz Impresario Norman Granz, it was a comfortably reassuring beginning for his second annual invasion of Europe with his package show, “Jazz at the Philharmonic”. In the next ten weeks, he and his musical tourists expected to put on much the same kind of program—and get much the same kind of flattering attention—in such cities as Oslo, Brussels, Paris, Geneva, Zurich, Milan and Turin. The Jazz at the Philharmonic series grew out of Granz’s promotion in his junior year at UCLA of a concert featuring Nat Cole, Lester Young, and Billie Holliday on the same bill. It gave jazz fans a chance to hear a number of stars perform with their own groups on the same bill. He felt that it filled a niche seriously lacking in jazz. After being in the Special Forces for a time in WWII, Granz sponsored a concert at Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles. The posters were supposed to read “Jazz Concert at the Philharmonic Auditorium”, but there was too little space. The cards read “Jazz at the Philharmonic”, and the name stuck. Granz left Los Angeles after the directors of Philharmonic auditorium told him that they did not appreciate integrated performances. He never booked his JATP back into the auditorium that gave his show its name. Beginning in 1946, he took his show on the road to about 60 cities a year. Granz summed up the reasons for the success of JATP, and for the festivals that followed in the 1950s. “I give to people in Des Moines and El Paso the kind of jazz they could otherwise never see or hear.” A glimpse into 1950s prices incidentally is given by his advice on scaling a house. He also believes that he has learned as much as any living man about scaling a house, i.e. deciding how many seats to price at $4.80, etc. “You can’t get piggish,” he says. “On the other hand, you can’t be easy. I’ve got a sixth sense about it.” The festival scene came at an opportune time for jazz, for dancers had gone to rock ‘n roll, either live or in the sock or record hops that featured records played by disk jockeys. The big ballrooms had either closed or were deemed not appropriate for most of the modern jazz musicians. The jazz clubs were hurt by the luxury taxes left over from World War II, extended through the early Cold War period and the Korean conflict. The college kids fueled the festival culture in great measure, and the king of the college circuit was Dave Brubeck. Brubeck was associated with the “cool” West Coast sounds of jazz. He also seemed to be part of the more cerebral movement in jazz that tied into the Jazz with Classics movement. The Dave Brubeck Quartet was immensely popular and its sound was one of those that helped identify an era. In spite of being considered “too white” by some critics, the Dave Brubeck quartet won the first jazz poll conducted by a black newspaper, The Pittsburgh Courier. Brubeck further angered some jazz critics when his picture appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. Nevertheless, Brubeck’s album” Time Out”, and its singles, “Take Five” and “Blue Rondo a la Turk”, became the first in modem jazz to “go gold”. Brubeck took part in the Jazz Ambassador program by going on several world tours sponsored by the State Department in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. These tours gave Brubeck many ideas for multi-rhythmic performances and further increased his popularity. They also led to an album of a play he wrote, “The Real Ambassadors”, setting forth a program for civil rights that carried over into the sixties. The album featured a number of jazz musicians, including his quartet and Louis Armstrong. Country Music The fifties witnessed a major change in country music and its spread to mainstream popularity. It spread from an isolated base in the south to nationwide acceptance. It did so through incorporating electronic sounds, such as amplified guitars and a more popular approach to music, one in keeping with popular music in general. Hank Williams, one of the most popular country singers, began his career in the forties and never claimed to be anything else but a country singer, exploring the many diverse forms of that genre. Williams was at home in any kind of country setting but was most noted for his honky-tonk tunes, such as “Hey Good Looking, What You Got Cooking?” Along with Williams, Lefty Frizzel and Ernest Tubbs helped popularize the honky-tonk style, noted for its amplified guitar riffs and hard-driving beat and tales of “outlaw” life. In addition to being a stellar performer, Williams composed a number of famous tunes; many recorded by artists in no way associated with country. Tony Bennett, for example, had a hit with “Cold, Cold Heart”. Sadly, on New Year’s Day 1953, Hank Williams died in the back of his Cadillac, a victim of living the life he sang about. Pills and booze did him in, making him a legend at 29. A number of people carried on in William’s tradition. Others developed a new style. Gentleman Jim Reeves brought crooning to the country world, for example. The most popular of the new styles, however, was the mixture of black music with country. Elvis Presley began as a country singer who mixed rock with country, a “white man who had the Negro feel”, in the words of Sam Phillips the owner of Sun Records. “That’s Alright Mama”, a cover first recorded by rhythm and blues singer Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, startled the music world, especially country fans, as did the flip side, a souped-up version of Bill Monroe’s bluegrass classic, “Blue Moon of Kentucky”. This recording was the first of the “rockabilly” genre. Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis, among others, would develop and profit by the rockabilly sound, changing country music, and the country’s perception of it. Country stars no longer had qualms about incorporating popular sounds into their performance, a trend that continues to the present. Conclusion As the decade ended, the various musical forms continued to evolve. In the 1950s there was still a type of uneasy alliance brought about by the confusion of the marketing label rock & roll and the promise of great money to be made from fifties teens and their disposable incomes. However, as the 1950s end and the world began to get more complex, and with the escalation of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and the maturing of the baby boomers, the music began to split into various factions. White rock would go its own way into “progressive” rock and its many forms. It would become increasingly amplified and often turn its back on the steady beat of old time rock & roll. In the 1960s, much of its momentum would come from protesting the war and the establishment. From time to time it would remember its roots and pay tribute to black blues musicians, as the Beatles and Stones did, but it became increasingly enamored with experiments and tricks that advancing technology made possible, such as tape splicing and recording. Toward the end of their partnership, for example, the Beatles became mainly a studio band. Rhythm and blues evolved into Soul Music and later allied itself in the strange partnership between black musicians and gay men that characterized disco. In the sixties, however, the Motown Sound carried on a more polished rhythm and blues tradition with incursions from B.B. King and Muddy Waters and their colleagues, providing an updated blues sound for the black musical mix that inspired so much of the sixties musical sound. Country music continued its musical evolution into glitzier and more popular acceptance. Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, and others continued to incorporate and tame wilder rock and rhythm and blues sounds. Glen Campbell and John Denver crossed over into the pop scene as often as they made country records. The genius of Ray Charles united soul music with a country sound that pleased Nashville audiences as well as urban boomers. The big bands were often pronounced dead, but Ellington and Basie continued the tradition and Dizzy Gillespie managed to revive his big band periodically. The State Department helped Benny Goodman and others revive their big bands as part of the cultural exchange program. Moreover, Woody Herman’s Herds just kept getting better as the sixties went on. Maynard Ferguson and his high note trumpet, and Buddy Rich and his drums kept up the big band tradition. The reports of the death of the big band were greatly exaggerated. Jazz entered a period of protest as the sixties evolved. Much of sixties jazz was for a very small audience as it often became incoherent. Much of the old Dixieland and bop tradition continued, however. Miles Davis and others tried to become popular with the youth through changing their styles and becoming electrified. The old core audience, however, tended to abandon these new styles, arguing that there wasn’t much jazz in fusion or jazz-rock groups. Chicago, and Blood Sweat and Tears, as well as Chase, did manage a popular blend that kept touch with their jazz roots. Fifties music was regarded as old hat and even “Uncle Tom” by many of the sixties rebels. Only in the 1980s did a fifties revival begin that has lasted to the present day. It was a vital period for music and, in retrospect, the roots of much of today’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: An Anthology. 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 Six Bringin’ It All Back Home! Note: Fela Anakulapi-Kuti died on August 2, 1997 of complications due to AIDs. I have left this chapter as I wrote it in the early 1990s. For me, Fela still lives as long as the need to fight the beast remains. Thanks to the play Fela! 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 of jazz. The sociocultural seeds of jazz came from West Africa, penetrating and developing in the Euro-American soil of the New World. The resulting organism is American but one whose ancestral strains are clearly evident. Without the creative tension inherent in its very nature, jazz would long ago have stagnated and died. Instead, it constantly responds to an innate need to redefine itself through action, continuously sorting out the consequences of its mixed heritage in an on-going dialectic. Therefore, a study of jazz in one West African setting, Nigeria, provides guidance in understanding the process of self-definition and creativity inherent in a Creole art form as well as its meaning to practitioners and fans alike. This fact became fully clear to me through an incident that occurred in Lagos, Nigeria, in May 1989. I was sitting in the Shrine in Lagos, a nightclub owned and operated by Fela Anakulapi-Kuti, a musician who is also the leader of the nation’s disaffected youth. In keeping with Yoruba tradition he freely and openly criticizes the Nigerian government, seeking to draw attention to glaring inequities of life. In accord with that tradition he has a type of sacred persona and is relatively immune from open government harassment. That immunity has not, however, stopped the government from seeking to silence him through undercover means. “Unauthorized soldiers”, for example, took offense at his song “Zombie” and burned his Kalakuta Republic. They went so far as to fling his mother from an upstairs wim1ow, eventually leading to her death. Fela won his lawsuit against the government in open court. Later, the government arrested him for “currency violation”; the outcry from Nigerians and others forced it to free him. After the first number which took up the first hour, I turned to my Nigerian colleague and informed him I was ready to leave. I had the basic pattern and could get to bed fairly early. It was already past one in the morning and Fela performs TDB (Till Day Breaks). My colleague laughed and told me to sit down. It was obvious to him that I was not hearing the performance in the same manner as an African would. What I perceived as repetition was simply the sufficient and necessary cause for variety. In common with many westerners, I had focused on those structural elements that promote stability. I had failed to note that it is only as a result of stability that change and variety are possible. With that key in mind, I was able to begin to understand the concept of creolization. It is a concept that offers an insight into the manner in which “the powerless” have exerted power in the face of seemingly impossible odds. Furthermore, it forces one to rethink the meaning of “traditional” and culture change. At the least, it focuses on the dual nature of change and its dialectical nature. Simply put, change is inevitably interactive. The person seeking to change others is changed by them. Those who are the “targets” of change” may, in fact, change but not necessarily in the manner change agents may plan. In turn, the change agents—missionaries, development agents, anthropologists—are often changed by their contacts more than they change them. Creolization theorists concentrate on the power of the creative imagination present in every culture. That power enables people to present their cultures to others in a fashion calculated to provide them with perceived advantages. In turn, it enables them to fashion elements from other cultures in a manner most consonant with their own social and esthetic values. In sum, creolization theory offers a view of social actors as active, but not all-powerful, participants in their own destiny. It enables us to understand the process of social dialogue while offering an alternative to the shortcomings of world-systems theory, substituting alert, alive, and active people for the mechanistically passive victims presented in well-intentioned deterministic change theories. Cultural texts offer a means for recording and analyzing the interpenetration of two cultures. When those texts are presented in performance, the analyst has an opportunity of experiencing a living example of cultural dialogue and, in the appropriate circumstances, creolization. Fela’s performance on May 26, 1989, presented me with such an opportunity. The Shrine and the Performance African music is essentially a form of communication. It is a statement about the meaning of life and the relationships of people to one another. In most African, and African-derived music, it is the responsibility of the performer to seek to restore broken social conditions through bringing them to the conscious attention of the community. In that manner they can no longer be denied or hidden from view. They must be addressed. Among the Yoruba of Nigeria the singer has a quasi-sacred, protected role. So long as he is operating as a singer, he is a voice of the people and can speak the truth bluntly. That tradition has been carried over into the modern world through such singers as Chief Landrewaju Adepoju, Sunny Ade, and, most prominently, Fela. In spite of traditional protection, Fela’s life has not been free of government-induced problems. His song “Zombie”, in which he compared soldiers with the living dead who follow orders blindly caused a number of “unauthorized “soldiers to attack and burn his Kalakuta Republic in Lagos. In that attack they captured and killed his mother, throwing her from an upstairs window. Fela’s mother was a force in her own right, leading movements for human rights and women’s liberation long before any government would easily accept such actions from a woman. Fela won his lawsuit against the illegal military attack. No government could admit to being a party to such actions in Nigeria any more than Henry II could admit to condoning the assassination of Beckett. However, after biding its time for a few years, the government exacted its revenge. After Fela boarded a plane for passage to the United States, agents arrested him for currency violations. The consequent outcry from Nigerians and westerners led to his eventual release. The release came, however, only after Fela spent time in the notorious Kiri bikini prison, a maximum security facility noted for its brutality. Fela left the prison virtually penniless, legal and other fees having eaten up his wealth. The experience has only served to strengthen Fela’s message. No longer is he a wealthy performer singing about injustice. He is openly seen as one who must earn his living day-to-day as other Nigerians do. He no longer sings about injustice while skating above its waters. He has fallen into the water and survived. Near-martyrdom adds to his mystique. His message is deepened. Although it was fun to see Fela in one of his four or five Mercedes, It is easier to identify with one who has lost his wealth by putting his money where his mouth is. Fela is now a leader of the people who is one of the people. Even those no longer youthful tend to identify with his cause even if they can no longer identify with his means. It is easy to sympathize with the Fela who has suffered and can smile in adversity than with the younger Fela of the past. For the Nigerian audience the message of a musical performance is a primary criterion for evaluation. All else is subordinate to that message, or, better, is part of it. Music, quite simply, must tell a story. Each bit of a performance is part of the overall message. If it is not, it is merely technique and, consequently, extraneous. Therefore, a key to comprehending Fela’s success lies in understanding the manner in which he has assembled, controlled, and displayed the mosaic of his performance. Fela encapsulates a history of modem African-derived music as reflected through Nigerian experience. Although he had early success as a high life and jazz performer, studying with Dizzy Gillespie in the United States, he soon became fascinated with James Brown and other soul artists. In England, Fela absorbed the influences of the sixties rock scene, recording with Ginger Baker and socializing with members of the Rolling Stones and Beatles. At the same time, he has never lost contact with more traditional Yoruba music and its intricate cross-rhythms permeate every segment of his performance. Certainly, each performance has a message. As Fela himself insists he speaks the truth and simply says what he sees. Therefore, when he calls politicians “beasts”, he is not abusing them, for they act like beasts and, therefore, must be beasts. To tell the truth about people is not to abuse them. It is the duty of the performer to do so. In addition to his “protest” songs and their messages, however, his performances convey other meanings. There is first and foremost the message of continuity and unity within African derived traditions. Modem laments concerning corruption derive directly from a musical tradition rich in exposing abuses of trust. Additionally, Fela demonstrates that all black music, including that performed by whites, is part of the same cloth. It is all interconnected. Therefore, by this logic, his performances must be lengthy—typically an hour per “song”—in order to convey his meanings appropriately. Additionally, each pan of the whole work, really a suite in its structure, must be presented in an appropriate fashion and sequence. Each segment evolves into the next. Each is a transformation of the preceding and is transformed into its successor through a series of brilliant mediations. It is only through careful attention of the backstage area that one can obviously observe what otherwise would be virtually unnoticeable; namely, the reconciliation and mediation of oppositions in Fela’s overall performance. The typical audience member is not privileged to see a smiling Fela, for example, turn and snarl at his chorus of female singers in order to inspire them to a performance peak in a manner reminiscent of a master drummer “calling out” the name of a drummer who is not performing up to his abilities. The cool, in-control, smiling trickster-like stage presence is in sharp contrast with his backstage demeanor. This discrepancy, however, is also 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. Entertainers capitalize on that idea. They prod members of the audience to get them to respond with proof of their status. Fela, for example, transacts contracts with his audience. Quite openly, he asks for more applause or teases them by asking if they have requests and is assured when they recite one after another of his songs. In Lawuyi’s analysis (989) this behavior is related to the market mentality of Yoruba society. Social relations are a special form of language and advertise the members of Yoruba society to one another. Just as Yoruba society is filled with conflict, so also is music. However, just as cultural devices must keep this conflict in check lest it rend society apart so must the music itself be kept in check or “harmonized”. Fela is not only an example of Yoruba culture and society, he also clearly understands it and seeks to provide a model for its harmonization and amelioration. Thus, his musical performance is filled with mediated contrasts and ever-changing but related musical textures. The variations work together to provide a harmonious whole. Each part both stands alone and yet takes on full meaning only within the context of the entire performance. In a sense Fela has added to Bateson’s and Goffman’s concept of frames, turning frames into shifting things, ones that almost perpetually transform themselves into one another. This house-of-mirror Image of shifting frames is in keeping with the predominant perspective on African religious and philosophical thought that sees it as positing an ever-changing unstable reality under the illusory permanent reality of every-day common sense. This skepticism of the presented reality and subsequent search for underlying structures mark Fela’s work. Nothing, therefore, is what it appears to be. This kaleidoscopic aspect of Fela’s performance is best reflected through a description of one of his performances. After conducting his offerings to the orishas at their altars in The Shrine, Fela, the self-proclaimed High Priest, mounts the stage dressed in a gold-lame skin tight suit. His shin is open to the waist. In the course of the evening he may or may not shed it, depending on his mood and the crowd’s response. He is barefoot. Around his neck is a gold chain with a medallion sacred to one of his orishas. To his left and right, off stage in go-go cages, are two young girls clad in what used to be called “microminis”. These girls dance in the go-go cages. After each performance, they are replaced by other girls, so that the sense of constant movement is found even in the continuity of personnel. Behind Fela on the stage is an array of musicians. African percussionists, trombonists, saxophonists, trumpet players, supplemented from time to time by a chorus of young girls singing in a high-pitched minor mode. Each performance also makes room for soloists who are not part of the band but who emerge from the audience and go front-stage to play straight-ahead or avant-garde jazz. These soloists are in addition to those who are part of the band and who get to emerge from the down-stage background to play true jazz solos. Between Fela and his background musicians are two who are at mid-stage, a guitarist and an electric bassist. They form a zone of calm, self-containment between Fela’s upstage frenzy and the abandon and showmanship of the downstage musicians. Soloists who pay in a jazz style leave their area and join these two musicians. Fela himself moves back toward or even into their zone for his tenor saxophone or synthesizer solos. His vocals are all done upstage. Significantly, his dancing moves freely and comfortably through each zone. Fela begin his performance with a commentary on life in Nigeria. He may take ten or fifteen minutes to discuss current issues such as the terrible 994 per cent inflation that hit Nigeria last year, the evils of the Structural Adjustment Program, the elitism of the HHC and what it has done to his people. This conversation with the audience is carried on in pidgin. Now and then a bit of Yoruba gets tossed in but if so it tends to be Yoruba that is part of most people’s vocabulary. Fela does not use Standard English in performance because he wishes to be understood by his audience. He is, in fact, quite capable of being articulate in the Queen’s English, as his numerous interviews demonstrate. However, his intention is to draw his audience to himself, for a leader must also be one of the people who knows their needs and can express them. Thus, part of his task is to be a man-in-the middle, moving from world. Once his bantering with the audience is complete, Fela begins his musical performance. Generally, he starts with a rhythmic figure. Often that figure is a repeated Yoruba phrase, chanted in a call and response pattern between himself and the band. This chanting is accompanied by dancing. The cross-rhythms set up by this procedure are hypnotic and recall the in-person work of James Brown and other soul performers of the sixties. Once he establishes the ground beat, Fela begins to sing across the beat. His topic is one form or another of social injustice. Usually, he testifies from his own abundant experiences, his imprisonment, his loss of money through government means, the burning of the Kalakuta Republic, attempt to silence him, amid other examples of harassment. Particularly poignant is his recounting of the murder of his mother. “She was my mother, my only mother,” he wails. For once the mask of the trickster is dropped and every heart in the audience goes out to him. Quickly, however, he leaves the phrase and begins to assault the oppressors with humorous scorn. They are not humans. They are beasts, animals who try to give what no one can give—human rights—because God has already given us those rights at birth. If we allow them to claim they are giving us human rights, then we tacitly give them the right to take them away. After fifteen or twenty minutes of preaching and teaching Fela begins to play. Usually, he goes first to the synthesizer, which is almost always set on its organ setting. Although he improvises freely, his improvisations on the organ have the flavor of a sixties blues band. One hears Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, and, especially James Brown. The band develops the theme and the rhythms change. A swirling effect is maintained, until a history of African and African American music passes. At that point, the chorus of young women emerges and begins to sing in a minor mode. Fela may reemerge and join them in a call and response pattern or they may simply sing with the band in such fashion. One hears echoes of gospel groups, the Supremes and hundreds of backup groups over the years. The rhythmic intensity of the performance, however, is unique. Fela is a master of pacing, and just when it seems that the music must climax because it has nowhere else to go, he signals a soloist to emerge from the group. This soloist may be a visitor, a member of the band, or himself. Whoever it is, the kaleidoscope turns again. Suddenly, the performance is a jazz performance. Perhaps, the soloist is a young German saxophonist, playing avant-garde, post-Coltrane music. Maybe, it is a trumpet player from the band, bringing to mind a young Miles Davis. It could be Fela himself forcing tortured sounds from his horn, breaking hearts as he communicates the pain of living in a country he loves and watching it suffer unnecessarily. Whoever solos passes through the mediating zone of the bass and guitar. The cool demeanor of the guitarist contrasts with his torrid playing and with the frantic antics of the band who tend to toss their horns in the manner of the old Jimmy Lunceford band. From that point Fela may begin to sing once more and the chorus also reenters. The theme is taken up, the volume increases, the dancers exert their last ounce of energy, the audience may sing along and the performance is brought to a close about one hour after it started. Perhaps, some members of the audience went to the dance floor. Very few actually do. Perhaps, a famous star came on the stage—Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, and others have. Perhaps, it is a Saturday and Fela has “put on his paint” and danced with nothing more than briefs on. These variations add to the changing nature of his performance and should be documented. However, his typical performance varies only within the general frame I have described. That that frame is itself meant to communicate his message of the unity of African derived culture (Fela May27, .1989). Conclusion: Down Home in West Africa –The first thing you have to do in playing the saxophone is to learn it inside out. The second thing is to forget all you learned and just play– Charlie Parker African music is communication. Certainly, one must know the language in order to communicate. Knowledge of the language, however, is insufficient in itself. It is merely the means which enables a person to bare private thoughts, offer insights into life, comment on political and communal behavior, remind of forgotten values, and present a coherent view of life. This relationship between technique and communication is crucial to understanding African music, whether that music be traditional, modem, or fusion of any kind. Stated simply, that relationship is one between having sufficient technique to communicate one’s message and having a message worth communicating. Having more technique than necessary is superfluous; having less, is disastrous. It is a devastating insult to be known as one who has great technique but no message. Fela is too attuned to his culture not to appreciate this value. As he told me in an interview in The Shrine, his club in Lagos (May 27, 1989): The music is spiritual...I know the music is a gift for me, for the purpose of the emancipation of the black man. It’s a spiritual gift. It’s a spiritual message. I want to give people mind, the essence towards progress in life. Africans most especially, because we need it most right now. The continent’s confused. The leaders are terrible. So I have to face African reality—the problems that relate to Africa at the moment. But problems that relate to Africa are also interwoven into the relationship we have with European countries and capitalism. So in a sense it becomes international. Fela’s message thus becomes clear. It is a message of pride for black people in Nigeria. Since Nigeria is part of the international scene, however, it becomes necessary to incorporate all that is black in music into his message. This is what Fela means when he states that his music must be long because it is African. Moreover, in order to preach the message of Black Pride, he must convey the importance of mind; that is, intelligence. Too often people portray the African and his/her arts as “emotional”, “rhythmic”, and so forth without also including the important fact that they are also symbolic, filled with content and messages, and what Fela calls mind. Thus, in his performance Fela includes what he terms African music with different “minds”, or traditions. His point is to demonstrate that they all came from Africa and reflect different experiences of African people in various environments. Additionally, Fela is committed to resisting any government or economic system that inhibits the freedom of African peoples. Thus, he is opposed to corrupt African rulers and the capitalist system that is part of their corruption. His opposition would mean nothing in his own mind if he did not live up to his beliefs: I’m not out to have anyone remember me for anything. I don’t want to contradict my own thing in this world. That’s the most important thing because what I’m living is most important for me. So I don’t want to think of when I’m gone...1don’t want to leave anything for posterity... I don’t care about posterity... I do things for the reason of what is happening now. You see, I won’t be playing this music if the country is not bad… I play my music straight to communicate. My business is to play my music and get out. Simple. I concentrate on what is happening in this world… I live to create. Creation is not only my music. Creation is by philosophy, by thinking, my leadership. All is creation... I talk Truths (Interview May 27, 1989). Fela’s music, then, is in conformity with his beliefs. Specifically, it cannot contradict itself. Therefore, the incorporation of all varieties of African-derived music is not accidental or haphazard. It serves to convey his message of Black Pride. His point is the unity of black culture. The manner in which he conveys his message displays the technical brilliance that is appreciated when it is suited to the message. Thus, his shifting frames reflect African religion and philosophy. The manner in which one style of African-derived music melds into another defines their relationship through praxis, not mere discussion. The central role of jazz, a word Fela disdains, is demonstrated in its being used as a mediating form and through its obvious spatial location in the middle of the stage. People pass through the zone to perform one or another type of music. The versatility of different band members also conveys the message of the ultimate unity of African-derived music. The ubiquity of the ground beat permeates each form of music and each soloist cuts across that beat in a manner reminiscent of a master drummer. Fela himself moves through each of these zones, unifying them as he longs for the unity of African people. He unites also mind and soul, intelligence and emotion in his performance, and the sacred area allocated to what is commonly termed jazz music is one in which emotion is carefully communicated and controlled through intelligence (see Salamone 1988 for a discussion of the religious nature of jazz). Finally, the continuous transformation of material is also evocative of spiritual matters. Fittingly, the self-proclaimed Black President and Chief Priest leads his people to a better land through invoking spiritual images and enacting them on the stage. His entire performance is ritual of a high order. It is a Creole performance that has the “that too” characteristic of all such performances (Thompson, personal communication). Fela feels that music is spiritual. His niece, a jazz vocalist, states that Fela is the only musician in Nigeria who believes that the music is sacred (interview with Frances Kuboye, May 26, 1989). Thus, there is no contradiction in Fela’s performance. Each element is an integral part of the overriding message and enables the performance to move toward an end he deems sacred, the true emancipation of the Black man and the instilling of pride in his mind. Chapter Seven Milton Gabler was the owner, with his brother, of the Commodore Record Store at Grand Central Station, before becoming an Artist and Repertory man (producer) at Decca Records, where he recorded such stars as Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, and helped start Rock and Roll by guiding Bill Haley and the Comets to the blues tune, Rock Around the Clock. He was the only producer brave enough to release Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”, an anti-lynching protest song, recording it for his own label, Commodore Records. He and Louis Armstrong were good friends and Milt sponsored many jam sessions in New York City for many years. He is 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 about yourself, and how you got into the music, and what you did? Milton Gabler: I generally ask my interviewers how they found me, or who told them to come here. Salamone: Well, Mike Carney is the culprit. I talked to Mike who brought in Kaeff Ruzidan to our class and Mike and I got to be friendly and he found about what I was doing. Gabler: Alright Salamone: He said to come on over and see you. Gabler: I really never got into talking too much about jazz with Mike but he is of today’s generation, not that I wouldn’t talk to him, he never asked me, really. He used to tell me how interested he was and what he was doing, but as far as my origin, or what, I guess he knew what I preferred, due to the records I had made in my lifetime and all the people I knew, but essentially, I am Milton Gabler and I have been listening to popular music and jazz since about 1926, so it is a good stretch, and I had a record shop which I started in my father’s store, a record department, in 1926 when I was at Stuyvesant High School. And we got calls for records, we used to play a loudspeaker out over a transmitter in my father’s store over on 42nd Street. At that time it was called the Commodore Radio Corporation, and we sold plots for building radios and batteries and stuff like that. I said, “Pop we better get in some records, we are getting calls from people who hear the music and come into the store and ask if we sold records”. So my father said, “I don’t know anything about popular song and records, I am a hardcore electrical radioman.” I was a young fourteen year-old that would say, “I know all about songs”. The radio was on all day I know every song. So he said, “Get the yellow pages and look up the record companies, get a salesman down here, you run the record department.” 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 everything else out of the store, and we even had to change the name of the place to the Commodore Music Shop because people couldn’t find us in the phone book, they didn’t realize they had to look up Commodore Radio, and the phone company called and said, “You better buy an extra listing, we got an awful lot of calls for where is the Commode Music Shop and then we figured out it was your place. “So, that is enough of that. In any case, it was a tiny store about nine feet wide and sixty feet long and the first records I sold were the Columbia’s and Harmony’s and the Okehs and the Vocalions, and Brunswick’s, Brown and Perfect, and we couldn’t get the Victor line because automobile agencies in the old days of 78RPM records in the 20’s, they gave exclusive territories, if the Victor dealer was around the corner, you couldn’t get the franchise, that was due to the popularity to Caruso and people like that, and so, anyway, a couple of years later Victor wasn’t so high and mighty, we were able to get the line, besides the dealer around the corner went out of fold, so we got the line anyway, about the time Rudy Vallee made the Stine song, around 1930, it was more than a couple of years. Anyway, we had a lot of competition, there was Landes on W 42nd and the Gramophone shop on Madison Avenue and 43rd I think it was, or 44th, so I decided to specialize in hot records—they didn’t call it jazz or swing in those years—because that is what I liked, what I preferred. You must realize that at the end of World War I, I guess when the original Dixieland Jazz Band created the flurry when they came to New York and made Tiger Rag, Barnyard Blues, and Dixie Land One Step, and all those early classic Dixieland Numbers, it was just like the Beatles hitting the United States. Everybody was dance crazy, and it went from there to all over the world—they even toured Europe and England. They were a very sensational act: they were called an act in those years. From there it just spread. King Oliver’s Band had come up to Chicago a few years after them, and other New Orleans musicians came up to Chicago, the saying goes in the old days, you say it turned right and went to New York, everybody had to come to New York. I was a young lad and I used to dance to those kinds of bands. When you went to dances there were, like, jazz bands until the sweet stuff came in, they were either that or concert orchestras, like Paul Whiteman. But for dances or where a kid used to go to dance on the weekend or at a wedding, there were small five piece bands. If you went to a Chinese restaurant there it was very fancy; if I went to Yung’s Chinese Restaurant on Broadway, you would have the Paul Tremaine Orchestra, which was number one in 1929.They used to play New Year’s Eve on the radio, New Year’s Eve before Guy Lombardo took over. Also the bands played the hotels, the sweet bands, it wasn’t until the ’30s when the swing bands came in. But in any case, the record stock kept growing and growing at the record store, and we were the only place you could get what we call hot records, like Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Red Nichols and his Five Pennies was a New Orleans type music, but northernized; they were white musicians. The various groups that Red Nichols had, guys like Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden and Miff Mole playing in those bands, and Arthur Shut, and later even the Condon guys worked on some of the Red Nichol sessions. He wasn’t the greatest trumpet player in the world because he tried to copy, that wasn’t the reason, he couldn’t play like Bix or Louis—all the jazz trumpet players wanted to play like Bix or Louis Armstrong in those years. So, it just kept growing, Of course, when the sweet bands came in all the hot musicians fell by the wayside or they went commercial and did their work every night for whoever they worked for, whether it be Ben Bernie or George Olson or some of the musical comedy bands on Broadway, and even the movie theaters in those years before sound had orchestras in the pit of the movie theater. See, the movie theaters developed movies that through your life you may have found that they used to have piano accompaniment for the films. Now when you see it, it’s like a special, I don’t mean the movies but when someone does the old-time piano playing for the newsreels and that kind of stuff you realize that they tried to set an atmosphere up for the silent movies when they were up on the screen in the theater. Then, when the stuff got more pretentious they used to write orchestration for what today would be a soundtrack, and play it live in the pit of the better 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 big cities had musicians playing in the pits as well as when there were musicals there were musicians in the pit. And then when sound came in at the end of the ’20s, it used to be Warner Brothers who had big sixteen inch records that were synchronized to the film, and then someone figured out that you could put a sound track right on the film, and you would synchronize it when you recorded it, you didn’t have to worry about getting the turntable to match the film. This was all commercial work for musicians, and the musicians who worked the least were the jazz musicians, and I always love playing that kind of music, and that was my task in the world, to get them work. They all used to come in my store, even though my store was near Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. Most musicians hung out on Broadway, at Charlie’s Tavern and Plunkets, and places like that. When they wanted a good record they would come all the way over to Lexington Avenue and buy it from me. We were building up our reputation and then the record company would cut out the records that were good, that I call well anyway. You couldn’t even get good Louis’s and Dukes because they would run out of stock, or there wouldn’t be enough orders in the metropolitan area for them to keep a good stock. The first thing you would know the company would discontinue them. Today you have that same thing happen when you didn’t get an LP on time, and when you went back six months later the dealer wouldn’t have it. He went to order it but he couldn’t get it anymore, the computers in those days would do the same thing. If they didn’t sell enough they would cut them out. Being such an enterprising man of about twenty years old, that bothered me because I would get calls from everybody who would finally get their way to the Commodore and try to buy these cut out records. I used to go to the Salvation Army and used record dealers who didn’t have stores in those days; they had them in lofts. They would buy old records when dealers went out of business. We used to have a record return privilege in those years; it may mean nothing to people today, but to get you to stock the merchandise, the record companies would allow you to send back five per cent of your total sales in records that became obsolete. In other words, my father used to say he hated the record business that I got him into because they were like vegetables, like tomatoes and lettuce. When they got old you had to throw them away. While in his hardware business, if he sold a hammer or a screwdriver or a nail (it was always later a nail), but records were like vegetables because they got rotten and died. Except to me, I knew the good ones, the ones with the good musicians on them were the ones who had songs by great composers or good singers that were stylists. You eventually would get someone coming in to ask for that artist or song and it would move out. My father said that it was no good for some of that stuff to stay there a year before you sell it, he was a businessman, and he was right. But I wanted to keep every record in the world and we soon became famous for having the best stock of records in the world. We shipped records all over the world and people came from every state to the Commodore. Fortunately, we were near Grand Central Station—most people who came into New York near Grand Central could find the Commodore music shop right across from the Commodore Hotel. So, my record stock grew, and became very concentrated about 1932 or 1933.I met Eddy Condon, and I always liked his records they made with the Chicago Rhythm Kings under his own name McKenzie Condon Chicago. They seemed to have a beat and drive to them, they was more a band to them that made them exciting to me. I was very happy to meet him, and we hit it off right away, and he became a star. He started telling me stories of how the musicians got together at the ale club. In those years the starving musicians always found a place to go for a drink and have a sponsor. They also would be carrying 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 the ale club, which was around Vanderbilt Avenue. I went over there with Walla Hopson, an amateur trombonist, to the ale club. He wrote for the Henry Lewis Publications across the street in the Chrysler Building. They called over a couple of musicians, and we had a hell of a session. He kept telling me these things all the time and I would hear about Whitpee’s Restaurant, I think that it was on west 40th Avenue, and some hotel where Adrian Rollini played at night. All we had to do was tell the writers when they came in the store. People would come in also to see who was playing where, at what club, and what was going on in New York. It didn’t take long to notify all the people who liked jazz music that we were going to have a jam session. I went over to Decca Records, Jack Cap, and I said, “Can I borrow your studio on Sunday, I’ll rent the chairs?”We wanted to publicize jazz music, we called it swing music to get the writers to write like it was something new, but it was still the same old jazz. We said, but it swings; you know, guys would make records that seemed like good hot records, but they just didn’t have the drive. When it all falls in and it gets together, we used to say that it swings. So we called it swing music. The papers all wrote it up, and the magazines, and the first thing you know the clubs on 52nd Street were putting in more musicians. There were a few spots there east of 6th Avenue, between 5th and 6th, Art Tatum was playing over there and Joe Sullivan and The Spirits of Rhythm. When the guys got finished playing at the NBC Studios they wanted to relax somewhere and have a drink. They would go into these joints and some would bring their horns and the first thing you know the trio or whoever was working there would be augmented by guys sitting and playing. People found out about it and writers like Winchell would write it up that there was a great session last night. The public started to go to all these places on 52nd Street and that was the start of jazz in a more commercial way. Then jazz concerts to publicize the music. That all popularized the music. Salamone: This was all in the 1930s? Gabler: This was the middle of the 30s, from 35 right up through 1940.All the critics loved jazz records and would give them good write-ups. It built up the jazz collecting business. Somebody got the idea, I think it was Ralph Burton, Vick Burton the drummer’s brother, to do a jazz segment. It was a great show that started with the Commodore. This brings us up to the ’30s.I made the first Commodore in 1938, the day after Benny Goodman’s swing concert. Salamone: Did you know Benny personally? Gabler: Oh sure, well Benny used to come in the store. I don’t have his book, but he wrote a book called The Kingdom of Swing. They tell me that in the book he states that he was intrigued by the fact that I had the names on the cards so people knew who were on the records. In his book he wrote that the Commodore Music Shop made him realize the importance of key men in the band. I was always interested in the studio, and learned by watching and listening. In 1938 when I had to make my own records, I knew how it was done. We were a very popular record dealer. We didn’t sell the most records, but we knew when a record would break, and so on. Everyone learns from the people who come before them, even singers, and definitely any performers. You base your style on what you like, not only what’s inside you but also by what you heard in your formative years growing up. After a while you can put it all together, but you have to start somewhere. Salamone: Absolutely. Let me ask you one question before we end for today. I have a million, but there are only about five minutes left on the tape. Gabler: Well, there was one question you asked me before. You asked about how the musicians felt about the music. Salamone: Yeah. Gabler: Louis was asked once about how he felt playing. He looked at the man who asked him the question and said, “I don’t know, I can’t tell you how I feel, but if you want to know how I feel about the music ask the guy behind me, Milt. He knows more about my music than I know myself.” I believe that when a man plays he is like a poet. There is so much beauty in it; it is beautiful to me. I don’t know how they do it and I don’t know how they even think about it. You can create it and do it, or you can use composing. Music can progress beyond the point of beauty and get to mathematics and get very complicated with sounds. Salamone: He told the story about the other person who wanted to interview him. He said that you were fairly close to all of them. Milton: Well, I didn’t go to his home…I should have, but it is one of the things I regret not having done because he lived near Corona when he was in New York. I just never had the time to go, or I felt like I was imposing on him. I was so wrong, because after he died I went through his tapes hoping that I would find some broadcasting or something you might be able to use. But when he became ill, he decided to copy all of his records and interviews he might have. He had mementos of his favorite records on his old machine, and it was a quarter-track machine. He had two stereos with tracks going in each direction, when you got to the reel you would turn it over like a cassette. Then you will fill the other track. It could have recorded up to 7 ½ inches per second, but he wanted to get more on it. The reason why he dubbed the records, after he had the heart attack, he wanted to have longer programs so he ran it at a slower speed. Instead of having some engineer come up and hook up his amplifiers directly to the tape machine, he played it through the speakers in the room and picked them up on a microphone. It ruins the quality, and worse than that, people from the neighborhood kept dropping in to visit him because he was stuck up in the house. But he was walking around as usual. But you say sorry that I didn’t go, but then I realize it was like the dressing room. Anybody in the world could come to Louie’s house and spend a dollar or two. When Louie talks you would listen to him, with his jive talks. Especially when he’s with an old buddy, they would be off the microphone, and the mike was in front of the speakers about six feet away from the wall having a conversation, and the record was playing. So when you hear the stuff he taped, he often gets interrupted by a conversation, and you can’t hear what they are talking about and you can’t hear the demo records. He had all kinds of records. He used these records for long playing tunes. He would put the tapes on, sit in his chair and fall asleep. Someone would come in and say, “Hi, pops.” He would tell funny stories and you would be able to hear the punch lines. He is a terrific guy. Gabler: It is hard, because they are all like my children, and they do different things and play different instruments, and you can like one as well as you like the other depending on the occasion or the mood you’re in or the type of music you want to hear. My favorite musician of all times would be Louie Armstrong. He might not have been the greatest as far as knowledge of music, but for his feelings of music, and for what he created for everyone else to learn from, pick up on, and be inspired by he is probably everyone’s number one musician. But in a piece I wrote, I was talking about clarinetists, my three favorite clarinetists would Benny Goodman, Edmund Hall, and Pewee Russell. Of the three, my number one would be Pewee Russell because he was the most poetic when he played, he was the most excited, because you would never know which direction the solo was going to go in, and when he would get stuck in a phrase he would get out of it. He didn’t care about pure tone; he wanted to make his own statement. If he wanted to have flute tone, he would do it. If he wanted to make it squeak, he would do it. The important thing was the note he was playing: there was a certain kind of sound he wanted to produce. Pewee was way ahead of his time. Benny Goodman should have been my obvious choice because we started in this business together. He was such a marvelous musician, and had such a great sound and also a lot of great feelings. Pewee was amazing. Pewee was something else. A lot of people don’t like him because they don’t like his sound. They are just not picking up on what the man was doing. Now, you asked about favorite musicians, to me what happens when you get more knowledge is that my favorite musicians became the arranger/composer ones. Because they did the charts and set the backgrounds for everybody else to look good. They had to have the knowledge of the entire orchestra, like Beethoven or Wagner. I love the way Bessie Smith sang, and Billy Holiday, I love the way Peggy Lee sang. To this day, I love what she does and her feeling for the music, but she in her early days was like a copy of Billy Holiday, you hear a lot of Billy’s phrasing in her. Carmen McCrae is a great singer, Jerry Southern, and I like the show business singers like Roberta Sherwood, and she did so many old songs. She was always amazed that I knew as many as she knew. She’s a great old girl, and it’s hard to go back, I did so many of them. Salamone: when you were doing a lot of the popular Decca were you still doing any of the Commodores? Gabler: Oh yes, I did Commodore up until the time at the end of the forties, the latest one I did was about 50 or 51.We were losing so much money with that factory the family built that it was impossible to keep doing records. I was ending up paying for the record tapes, royalties on the songs, just to keep the creditors from moving in. So I laid down the law and said, stop recording Commodores until the factory pays for itself. By the time it paid for itself, it stopped making records, and was, like, making biscuits without a manufacturer. It was a losing proposition, my brother Danny and my brother Barney and Jack struggled. 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 label again. It’s just re-issuing the old stuff in there because the bootleggers were stealing them. They were being bootlegged in California, Sweden, and Canada. They’re like vultures, the bootleggers are, and they think the body is dead, or the company is out of business, they move in and they dub your records and make masters and sell them, jazz re-issues sell so poorly. You have to get a certain amount of money back, because you need a certain amount of money to make covers with special artwork. You have to package and ship. If you can’t sell a couple thousand records then it doesn’t pay to re-issue a record. When a bootlegger puts it out and pays no one, he doesn’t pay the publishers, he sells his couple of thousand and then when you go to put it out legitimately they’ve taken the cream off the top and you can’t sell anything. Salamone: How do you catch a bootlegger? Do they just kind of hit and run? Gabler: They don’t hit and run, some of them take it right off of companies. I’ve had big companies know that world transcriptions made in 1944 was the greatest, a time capsule of all jazz, which was made for radio broadcast. Circle records, what’s his name, George Buckley, bought the transcriptions, and he thought that he had seen them before, but I had DECCA write them, because DECCA owned most masters. I made them when I worked for them. We pay the musicians for playing the records. Ten per cent came out on Decca. Decca, as I say, didn’t like jazz. Most of those tunes, I used the word Commodore, because I did the same tunes I did for Commodore that I did for World, plus a few extras. They would get airtime on all transcriptions, but you could never get Commodore record to play it on the radio. So George Buck is now putting them out, and he didn’t pay the musicians and the FCA wouldn’t sue him because it was so little. When they sue him for damages they say. Well, you hadn’t put it out for thirty years or forty, and how much did they find out, that maybe he sold three or four of the LPs. So how much could the damage be? The companies don’t imagine that RCA or Columbia will chase them. They’re getting away with it, some aren’t as legitimate as others, and the union does nothing about it. I’m very upset with the American Federation of Musicians. They should make sure to take care of the rights of musicians. They can stop them from doing that by blacklisting them, and we don’t do it, it’s a very bad situation. Look at how many Goodman, Ellington, or Woody Herman records, the broadcasts, air checks have been bootlegged. Salamone: So very little is being done? So it doesn’t pay for the small company to go after them? Gabler: Yes. To top it all off George Buck sends me a card, tells me he’s got a guilty conscience. Salamone: What happened to the composers who were supposed to be getting the royalties? Gabler: That I don’t know. If the bootleggers were smart they would control the publishers. The publishers should be chasing them. The musicians should get organized enough to sue. The guy who put out Hindsight Records used to have his own studio, hell of a nice guy. He decided to put out transcriptions of all the old bands. He called me up, I said don’t put out any of mine. For years he was with Decca, he signed cuts. I told him to put out the other years. So he does a great job for transcriptions. He went to the widows and he made a contract with them for a flat deal. He would give the widow $500.He says, I give them $500 or $1000, if the leader doesn’t sue then I’m not going to worry about the sideman or the union. Salamone: Well at least he’s making an effort. What is the arrangement, thousands of records recorded over a year? How does that work? Gabler: Find out who the publishers are, and then they have some company called the Harry Plats agency. They have contracts with most of them. He will license the song for a mechanical license they call it. It costs over fifty-cents just for the royalties to the song. In addition, if you want to do it legitimately, you’re putting out an air check, go to the union, they will figure it all 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 not possible. It’s priced so out of sight. Salamone: Let’s say you’re making a recording today, is it the same? Gabler: It’s the same. Salamone: What do the musicians do, do you pay each time you play, or is there a flat settlement, what do you do? Do you get paid for playing a song live? Gabler: The club has an annual license fee. I can play the whole catalog, and that goes into the pot. A club like Condon’s makes a couple thousand dollars per year. Salamone: And this goes to the publishers and the writers? Gabler: It goes to the publishers and the writers. It could be a soloist or a band. Carnegie Hall’s license fees for the year are maybe very high. At a place like that it may be done by the program, you know? Most the stuff they play is very classical. Salamone: And in the radio stations? Gabler: That’s different. It depends on how many tickets are sold. Radio stations have annual licenses. They’re all exactly the same. The computer and the amount of people around were sending in the lists and everything. We speed up all the income. So that the system is approved by the government. The system is good at monitoring it. Backed by a formula, that worked out and was approved by Washington. Those songs that appeared on those monitors get so many performances accredited. My station in Buffalo was monitored and you would collect it just as if it was on five other stations. They figured it will average out. I’ll go to ASCAP meetings and tell them that I have been here for five years and never collected anything. And I know my songs were playing in the concert down at Atlanta, Georgia because I was there, but it was not monitored that night. But what they would do in those cases, if you are member for a certain period of time, you would go in a different class and you would benefit from that. Because it all goes into the fund. See, one smart thing they did when they formed ASCAP, and it really started to get income, let say up about into the 40s the class writers, AAA writers, like Berlin, they got paid for their actual performances that will clean ASCAP was a limit set on how much they could get a year, and the rest of the income was very little. They figured out that I should get half a million dollars a year for my catalog, and really if you computed it, it would be worth seven million. It is hard to understand when you are just starting out. You had to be voted in by other members. After they had the big lawsuit, about it being a monopoly, they have to accept anybody, and of course you will have the ratings. 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 all the performances. You may never have a bigger year for the rest of your life, and in the old days they would accept you in ASCAP. My song was number one and it sold a million and a quarter records in ’78 and they voted me into ASCAP. I think that first year for ASCAP performances they gave me the minimum. But when you look through the years, by getting in there, it comes back to you. Now the government changed it about ten years ago. The first year you get in, you really collect on your performance. It is a performance society; it is not for the record sales. Salamone: I always wonder how does it work. Let me ask you just one or two questions. We are getting tired by now. You saw a lot of changes in the business over the years, the coming of the LP records and so on. How is the business different today from when you decided to get into reissues because you wanted to hear the music you wanted to hear? Gabler: The business has more problems today than it ever had. First of all, the techniques of recordings have improved so. With better tape, equipment, and amplifiers, you do not have to make metal masters anymore. You can put it on tape and make it multi-tracks, and twenty-four tracks, and so on. If something is wrong you can record over that and correct the notes. We had to go back to the top. Now they say you have direct to disc recording. That was the way we had to record in the old days. We did it until it was right, and you had to balance it perfectly. Now everybody is isolated and you remix the track by making it faster. When we are talking about old records, it has to come down to about two tracks. So even if you have twenty-four, you would have to mix them down to two when you are making your master tape. But the sad thing about the business today is that there is almost no reissuing, unless you have a rare record. People can borrow or get an LP from a friend and put it on a cassette. In the old days we did not have the tools. So if you can borrow an LP from a friend you can copy a record which is really illegal. You would have to pay the writers. I am losing a lot of money because people are not buying their own tapes. It is becoming very serious thing because people are trying to make a living writing. You read the papers every day and see who made tapes and so on. Milton Gabler, Interview 7/11/86 Dr. Salamone: Why didn’t Eddie Condon stick with the electric guitar? Milton Gabler: He actually did stick with the electric guitar. Salamone: But he was more famous as a trombonist. Gabler: Yes, he was. Salamone: Okay, I have another question for you that is clearer than the other ones I have started out with. When you were talking about Billie Holiday, said, that “in a sense you were too ethical.” Gabler: I was too ethical… Salamone: Yeah, you were saying that… when you were talking about the Decca and that you worked for Decca and of course the Commodores, you did mention that you were very careful… Gabler: Oh, I had a contract with Decca Records that I could continue to be President of, and make, Commodores recordings. It was up to me to decide if I saw an act that I thought would be good for Decca Records and Commodores, I would make the decision, which label to put the artist on without affecting my job at Decker which I wanted to keep. In a sense where I had mentioned about Billie Holiday, I had been recording her on Commodores and I walked into a club and heard her song “Lover Man”, which I knew was going to be a natural pop hit, and I made it to Commodore then the boss would say why the hell you didn’t make it for Decca. That would cause conflict in my work. Salamone: It is amazing that you were able to do this for so long. Gabler: I did that all through my career. Even when I stopped with Commodore, I still had to make decisions like that. It is the same as … it was only a question of personal feelings when I had the jazz concert on 52nd Street. Dizzy used to come to Ryan’s with his horn, and bop had not really developed yet. They were playing with the idea of it, or trying to work it out. I knew Dizzy, but I didn’t know Charlie Parker even though I had recorded with him. Ryan’s was a small club, it only seated about one hundred-forty people, and it was packed. Because of the success of the Sunday afternoon jams they started them in other clubs across the street, and Monty Kay started running concerts directly across the street 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 they started to use the more modern musicians across the street; they were attracting a different audience, that’s all it was. I could have turned around the following week and said “Hey, look don’t play for these kids, come and play for Ryan’s… and put them into Ryan’s”, but there was enough action for everybody. So they went their way, the same thing with the Harry Lynn sections. Although Lynn used to mix it up more than Montie and Pete did. But Lynn ran his downtown in the village, and Joe Marcelli was running his on the next block. It was plenty of work for everybody, we had really started something, and the scales weren’t high. It kept everybody going, and it started George Winoff, and also started Condon. I didn’t go into having the bop guys at my sessions because I was more mainstream. There was a black band and a white band that was from the beginning with the Commodore labeling half-and-half. People always said I did great Dixieland, work that’s what Commodore is, but they forget that I did all this bop work with Bennie Carter and Hayward with Hayward Records. I did Joanna Jones and Roy Allen; people forget that I did all these musicians along with Peewee Russell and Bobbie Hackett, that’s why it was such a rounded-out label. When I went to Decca I had to take Condon and Billy Holiday with me, if Commodore was with them exclusively I would have to leave or get fired, or something. Salamone: Did you record any of those jazz concerts? Gabler: No, it’s not against regulations, but if you 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. I didn’t want to delegate walking in and Black called me and… That’s why I say that it was too ethical, guys like Grant recorded his concert, and I am sure that they didn’t file contract with the union until later. Then I had to pay union scales, the three sessions, in order to do a concert I might as well take them into the studio and made a triple scale and make it with good sound, because Ryan’s was only about ten feet wide, with a low ceiling, and with the noise in the room and everything I had the chairs right in front of the bandstands, the sound to me wouldn’t be good enough, and I could get perfect sound, like what I got on the Commodores and ballets with a good piano and everything, they had a little broken-down up right there in Ryan’s, I don’t even think that they tuned it but I am sorry that I didn’t experiment or record some of it. But it was against union regulations without filing a regular contract. Salamone: How were recordings in those days, now that we have mentioned it? What did people get paid and what were the conditions like, how long did it take to do something? Gabler: Regulation recording sessions were a three hours call booking. You were allowed to do four tunes. If you did four tunes, twelve-inch, you would get pay for over- time. This union scale for most of that period was forty-one twenty-five. So, musicians pick-up the three hours work. I always paid them over scale anyway. Then I would go up to the union and pay their tax because they always wanted the money at the end of the session. I did the same for the sessions in Ryan’s. The scale was so low, if you pay a guy ten dollars he wasn’t going to get up early and go to union and pay thirty cents. So we use to file the contracts for the Ryan’s session every week; when I would file it, I would pay them the two dollars that was due from the musicians. We weren’t taxed but the musicians were. Salamone: Did the musicians get any royalties in those days? Gabler: No, everything was flat scale but they got a reputation that they got royalties. We paid them royalties at Decca. You got to realize that a lot of 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, but it would take a year or so to get your money out of a day. But when the war came along and jazz records were starting to sell better, it became profitable. I never had a Cadillac, in fact we built the factories to press the records in, because during the war the big companies threw all of the small labels out, they needed the productions for their own labels. So, my brother built a factory in Yonkers that broke us, because eventually the factory went out of business. Soon as the war was ended the big companies started pressing for everybody again, and we had to close up. Salamone: I was going to ask when did you get your own studio. Gabler: We didn’t have our own studio, we had our own pressing plant. Salamone: Did you always use other people’s studios? Gabler: Yeah, always. You could book studio time but you couldn’t get pressings. In fact when I was up at Decca and the war came along, they let a lot of artists go. We would press a record or something, and when we were finished we would go to the next record because you didn’t have enough time. So it was hard to get records, blue pressed records for Atlantic. Our Commodores kept Blue Note going until the war was ended. On top of that when Alfred [Alfred Lions, of Blue Note Records] started to do more of the black blues kind of music, and he did the “boogie woogie”. I didn’t do those artists because he was a dear friend I didn’t want him to have competition. So, as we sold his records in the store; they only had so much money to record with I was glad when there was a Blue Note or a Key Note because we could sell more jazz music in our store. We sold every label. When the money came back from sessions I invested in more Commodores sessions, and I didn’t duplicate the artist on other labels. Salamone: During the war, Decca began selling a great deal because there was more money or the fact that the war was going on. Were a lot of the GIs buying records? Gabler: No, it was just that the general population… the GIs didn’t have records when they were overseas. You had V Disks, but they are too heavy to carry. Some of them did, but how many could you carry. What were you going to play it on? You had to have a turntable, amplifier, and other things. So they heard their records at the PX, mostly. But the sales came from people working in the factories and war plants. They used money to buy gin and records. At parties, because everyone was going away. Salamone: Is there less flowering of jazz popular music? Gabler: Well they were away out because I use to sell Commodores for jukeboxes. They would take some of the instrumental stuff. But they didn’t care that a Commodore record was a dollar, although the jukebox guys got them at a dearer price. But they could have gotten other records that were fifteen cents less than a Commodore record. But they couldn’t get enough records for the jukebox coin machines. So they put jazz records on, also. Besides, the major companies were making jazz or Hampton records, the dance band records and other bands as well. They were plenty of records. Salamone: What led to an end of jazz popular music? Gabler: I don’t get that question. Salamone: Not the end of jazz, but the end of jazz being a popular music. It was on the radio a lot in those days. Gabler: No, there is more jazz music on now. Salamone: So it is like a myth that this was a period of the swing bands? Gabler: Swing bands were popular music. They were dance music, and started to feature great vocalists. There have been band vocalists for a long time. They went on their own, what destroyed the bands was the fact that they all had to go in the service. They all were available to be drafted, and some of the bands went in. They got themselves a good deal and lot of the guys went along with them and a lot of other people went along with them too. They had an Air Force Band and other things like that. They were a lot of great bandleaders in the service. They had pretty big orchestras, they needed marching bands, they played for parades, and they had fifteen guys to play the band. It was safer playing in a band than carrying a gun. So all the good musicians would try and get into these army, air force, coast guard, and navy bands. I recorded Mel Powell when he was on leave before he shipped out. I use to record guys who were in the navy band. Salamone: That pretty much broke up the bands. Gabler: Of course, there were new bands to replace them, but they did not have the names and recording power to do so. The singers were broken-up and the audience that they had, when they did the vocals with the band. So when they were out of soloists, we at the record company could record them and keep our business going. Then rock and roll came in a little later. But I would say that they got used to the vocal records with the vocal backgrounds, and it was after the war in the 50s when I did Bill Haley. Then you would have all of the R&B artists and things like that. But the ones who would buy the records were young people. They kept buy the singers that they liked and when the war ended rock and roll came in. The kids were not used to listening to things like that. Salamone: You said something interesting before, that there is more real jazz being played on the radio now than there was back in the days. Gabler: Yeah, on FM stations you don’t have that tight format out of the top 40. Jazz was always a small part of the business, you said popular music. Popular means just what the definition of the word is. Most of the public prefers it, which makes it popular. It only can become popular if it is a hit. It is a hit piece of music or song. Generally, it is the song, the words and the music that makes it popular. Kids can remember it, and they going around singing it all the time. It can be nonsense, or a beautiful song. But I always say that for everyone that is popular you can ask somebody, what is on the other side? There are always two sides to a record. Mostly one side will become popular. So why doesn’t anyone asked for the one on the back? It is probably the same arrangement and singers. But it is the tunes and lyrics on one side that is popular. Salamone: It probably wasn’t jazz that some of the big bands were doing. Gabler: Well, jazz you have to have a broad definition, because in the beginning, like in the 30s, the people that bought certain serious music even called some pop records jazz. It was not classical, it was jazz. Now we have different variations (popular and rock) of jazz. But you will have to remember that in the early years what became jazz was the dance music. Then people started to appreciate the soloists in the dance band. Taking solos, and from that you have the musicians who would prefer them to go their own way and improvise a good solo and get with a small group to do more of that. They would get kicks out of that. They didn’t care about having a steady job with some of those big guys. They would work in nightclubs and joints because they could play the way they wanted. Salamone: You mentioned before that for a long time jazz was called hot music. Was that the way you 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 sweet band recording or hot. A hot record is not necessary a swing. Everything has to be right if it is going to be a swing. Salamone: What do you mean by swing, because everyone has their own interpretation of it? Gabler: If I had to define what swing is I wouldn’t be able to do so. Salamone: Who are some of the people who you feel swings? Gabler: Some musicians have their nights when they do not swing. It all has to come together, gel, and everybody feeling it the same way with a beat that moves ahead that isn’t laid back. I have a definition that I wrote in a program note that I had written in a concert, February 1942. I did some notes for Tom Hall Jazz Concert, and I went with a friend of mines and this is what I wrote for the notes: Did I hear you say that jazz was on the way out? (This is 1942, jazz has always been on the way out). Brother if you did, you know not what you are talking about. Now how could it be on the way out, over the hill, when you and I know that it never really climbed that hill? Don’t tell me about big bands ’cause they just don’t play jazz, and small bands never got the chance to. The public won’t listen to them; people would not open up their ears. That’s the trouble. Let me tell you about a friend of mine, he said ‘Gabe let’s take in this concert,’ so I asked him, and he tells me that it is the arrangement of light and dark parts (like in a picture) so this concert must be the arrangement of black and white musicians on the stage. There would not be any arrangement if you get what I mean. Getting back to this friend of mine, he also said “You are the guy whose suppose to understand all this. Maybe you can enlighten me; maybe for once I will be able to enjoy what I hear.” “Okay,” I said, “but don’t hope for too many, after all half the time I don’t get what is happening myself.” How can I get him to recognize a good version if the other half of the time I don’t know what it is? I know the tune because I had to request it. There is nothing to it if your ears are long enough. Did you ever try to relax when some fine horns are blowing? To listen to a musician is enough to make you melt inside. Imagine three composers all with the same feeling writing and playing new sounds constantly. Now you know why I get so excited when I hear it. But it has to be right. There is nothing worse than bad jazz, take it from me. Understand this, trying to define jazz is like trying to define poetry. What is poetry? You tell me! I recognize it when I see it, the same as I do good jazz when I hear it. Some people write poetry, and some people just write. You either could swing, or you can’t there is no half way. A good jazzman actually composes as he plays. Did you ever try to play a melody and not play it at the same time? If you have not succeeded, you are my man. Take my word for it, the day is coming that jazz will be back and it is something to look forward to. That would be the day when guys would make money and hold their heads up high. Not saying that they don’t have their heads up high already. They have something to look forward to. Now, how about this concert? So here, you take this, and this is what I wrote about the men. Salamone: 1942 jazz is on the way out again. Gabler: How can it be on the way out if it never came in? I don’t care about what they say because in 1942 we have the first record band in less than one year and a half. We got royalties from musicians because we knew that by playing records on the radio and putting juke boxes in rooms where people dance you did not need live musicians or background music. Such music you hear in restaurants, so you do not any more have piano players playing in restaurants. We used wired music. We wanted the royalties for the musicians. That fund every year is still being paid by all the record companies, which were passed on to consumers. But at least musicians are playing concerts. I never met any that played concerts, but they do have these concerts, and what happens is that it is not the musicians that do the recordings that get the money that is the sad part about it. What happens to those guys when they get old? All these funds that are divided amongst all the union locals, where they give concert in the park, is great. But the guys that are playing in those bands, most of them work in gas stations and department stores. They are only playing for weddings on Saturday nights, Sundays, or playing these concerts in the summertime. For the rest of the week they are elevator operators, taxi drivers, or whatever people do to make a living. They cannot make a living playing the horn, while James Petrillo (the head of the Musicians Union) foresaw all of that and said that it is recordings that have put musicians out of work. So the union collects some records, but now with progress the recordings on tape and equipment that anybody could buy is going to put the record companies out of business. Their incomes are down by millions of dollars, and forget the bootleggers. It’s the home tapings that is destroying everything, and as a songwriter it could affect my income tremendously. Now they are trying to pass a law where when you buy the blank tape and maybe a 10 per cent tax. So when you buy a tape for three dollars, it would be $3.30, and the thirty cents goes to a fund like ASCAP fund. So how do you go divide it up? What about the singers and musicians and people like that? But we have to have some ways to pay the people that create the music in the first place. The musician’s Union does not protect them, so it’s a big problem. Salamone: And talking about the technological changes, a lot of the old 1920’s and 1930’s record are being reissued for a lot. Some of them are being reissued with laser technology, with the scrapes and scratches in the discs removed. Did you look into any of that? For some of the Commodores? Gabler: Oh, I already removed all the collection stuff on the Commodores when I put them on the regular player. It’s the bootlegs don’t bother some of them, and they certainly can’t afford to go into laser technology. It’s just on the real recreations of great performances where they can go back to the metal masters and try to do the laser technology. It’s really expensive, and if it does not sell enough, it’s just not worth doing. And how many people that want those old records are going to play with laser beams? I mean, you’re maybe looking 15 years or 20 years ahead until there is enough equipment out there. But it can be done, can be improved. I heard a couple, in fact, I just got a letter from Germany: some of my Commodores are on compact disc. In fact I have just received a letter from MCA that Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” is now on CD. They sent me the package but not the record. So they are already doing it. Salamone: I heard the Midnight Show on WBGO, some very, very early recordings, maybe 1920, or 1921, very early, maybe Louie or somebody, just totally different sound. Suddenly, we realize just how great some of the people were, because you hear… Gabler: Well, if you’re going to hear you kind expand the spectrum with the laser beam or even with the electronics, because in those years, maybe enough of the sound was in there: even though it was cut on wax, those vibrations are in the electronics. Yeah, let’s reproduce them and maybe the laser beam can bring out more of them in purer sound. Salamone: I just realize how great some people were. Gabler: And the… I am sure, but does it pay to go all the way back? And it’s tedious, slow process, and then when you make the record it’s OK to take some classic performances and show how it is. But are there enough customers to buy it? If I have my Commodores’ Billy Holiday record, that’s enough for me, it has been great for me. Forty years, do I have to have it, or in this case, do I want to hear it? Do I have to have it on laser? I enjoyed 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 the people. So when I play it, it opens up my memory bank. I am hearing, and seeing them as they were while I am listening. So, I hear more than you think I am hearing. Salamone: Why is Blue Note suddenly reissuing its recordings and sending them to a good store like Tower Records? Much of the history of jazz is now available. Why is there such a demand of some of the old records suddenly? A lot of the people I know are out there, jazz fans, maybe not the general public. But among jazz fans there is a sudden thirst to go back to the past. Gabler: That’s what I’ve been doing all of my life! Salamone: Yeah, I know. Why are we catching up with you? Gabler: No! That’s not the whole idea, to get more and more people to do it. You get a friend interested or a student or another musician. Just to talk to them while playing the stuff in your house. All of a sudden the drug hits them…maybe I ought to go back and hear some of the early stuff and close my ear to it, because it doesn’t have any terrible sound. We did not listen to what the guys were doing then. Maybe they will go back now and realize that some of the old songs and tunes of the 20s are a great source for what I am doing now. You take a guy like Bob Greene who built his career on music. He is a great musician because he can recreate anything. He and his wife kept talking about them when I went to talk to them, they wanted to go and find the old sheet music…to put it in the rack because it becomes something new for the audience. It is not just doing Satin Doll over again. You’re going back to an earlier source…and you can go back if you are doing Satin Doll because you are going so well you can improvise can create your own Doll. Some of those early tunes like the “Mooch” and those other things that Duke wrote, in the 20s and 30s, can be brought up to date. Essentially, he was a good composer in those years. Those tunes should be preserved. That is the idea. Preserve the old music. I did not have to preserve what Columbia was 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 would have to forget or not even know in the first place. Salamone: Given all of the new technologies that we have today, like twenty-four tracks, you can go back and play a G instead of a C, or record a note over. Does that really lead to better music? Gabler: More correct music… Salamone: But in the jazz sense, do you really think that you can take a note out of a jazz solo and, say, go back and do it? Gabler: No, you just don’t put out the one with the goof in it. Some of my reissues that I got back and I find that there were other parts of the performance that were outstanding expect for that goof, I would have used that tape. So a take a note out of a later or earlier one. But you don’t do a note when you are doing it from a tape. You would have to find a place to come in so the world doesn’t know what you did. A lot of the Commodores second choices or third choices are corrected tapes, and I would put it on and let you know and edited tapes. But it is not just a second choice, you could tell by my master number, the real collectors know. It is not necessarily better, it is more correct. You do it to save time. In other words, it cost so much to record. When you listen to it, it gets by you…first of all I use to record multi-tracks in Europe. Europe is not like America, if you did seven tapes then you will have seven tapes to review or pick a correction out of. In Europe, for one reason or another, they don’t save the earlier tapes. What they would do is go in 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 they do is synthesize it, and they get the sound the same as of the damn trombone. They have the built-in-the-studio synthesizer, and ordinarily when you play the record, with all 40 guys blowing, you don’t know bad or good. We cannot see it, but we can hear it. The public would never know. But if he were a perfectionist, he would go back and repair that note over, which takes time. But if you would record what the whole band did, to make time to make another tape and go overtime, you got to pay 40 musicians, and you got to pay studio time. So it is easy to do the next best thing. Got a synthesizer or just bring a chunk of violins, and say, “Well, do something for me.” They put the phones on them, and they do it. So the whole other part of the record is the live performance. So you don’t notice it, you just correct it. It’s a better technique, but I don’t like it. You see, when I recorded in the old days, you set the band up like the way they work. And you got the feeling and the relationship between those men like they were on the job. When you play, the guys will get going. It’s really an excitement, and feeling towards the relationship between the men. Today the flats and the separation from each other, it’s the same as being in the booth. Even the musicians with the headphones on, how the hell are you going to know what your brother is playing, 15 feet away? Instead of sitting in a chair, hearing the natural sound of system, which you are used to on the job. But who the hell plays on the job today? You all play in the studio, and they do remarkable work. But to me, the feeling and togetherness, and the feeling you get when it is live, even when the singers are there, and have the band applaud when they hear what the singer did, it was enthusiasm and it was more fun. When you hear what the other guy does, then you do a better solo. You pick up something he didn’t. He puts an idea in your head and you go on that same line and take it from where he left off. Then he takes it back or somebody else. That makes a great or an exciting record. That is what we used to do. Salamone: I wonder if sometimes technique doesn’t produce sterility? Gabler: It is not only that, but I would like to get into something else. You see, when the boys went into the service and the music changed because the kids got used to hearing just the rhythm section you know, basically rock and rhythm guitar, drummer, and the base player, then you got fender bases which was different than their regular ones. Everything became electronic, including the pianos, and it became a singing thing. But they got used to that sound and the “doo wop” vocal groups during the war, kids singing in the street, making up their own trios, and it became like barber shop or church harmony. The kids, from singing in gospel churches, were used to it because they were doing this at a young age. So they got in the choir or in school or in glee clubs. That harmony was entirely different than the harmony the swing bands were playing. They got the thirteen [chords], and stuff like that, that I don’t understand. I didn’t know the name of it, but I can tell when I would hear it. It was great to know those kinds of stuff and what the writers were really writing. The kids didn’t hear those sounds because they were strange to them. They didn’t even like brass until that group came 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 have their own music and you have more than one generations of it. You have the 40s then the folk groups came and so on. So now that you start to get rock, which is like a swing, a fast beat kind of thing. Now you have the combinations of jazz and rock. Now you have rock groups with get off guitars, who can’t do solo like Charlie Christian. They solo with the country guitars, which are fantastic. When I went to the Nashville to record, we would go to the alleys at night to drink and hear music. They were playing organ and were swinging like crazy. All those guys came out of dance bands. They played country music, but when they left they would swing. But they didn’t use that wild card. They use country, folk, and church cards. They could swing, then you had guys adding their trumpet and stuff. Now they are planning out the stuff that I did with Louie Jordan. The only thing that we didn’t have back then were back beats, in those years. We used a tight rhythm section. But the kids are not used to that stuff. Now you have the mixture of rock and jazz, which is 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 brass to really ride out. You can spread it out on a guitar or a piano. But it is not like how the bands played them. It is moving, and then you have the guys who play the way-out music. When there is no beat going, they play all kinds of stuff. You learn those rhythms with [composer and band leader] George Russell. But it is music: some of us won’t like it as much as others. It has to do with dancing; they have that whole dance thing for three to five years. It can’t really last, although it is still going on. But to me, when you used to dance to a Glen Miller tune, it was pretty exciting. If the dancers could come up with some new dances maybe it would be fun again. To me the music must go on. Latin dancing has more varieties, like disco dancing. Salamone: Looking back on all of this, why did you get involved with jazz? Gabler: Because I love it. I grew up with it. I told you in the beginning of the tape. In 1919 and the early 20s what we danced to was really jazz and popular music. Later when they started to arrange, and when it was a sweet band’s turn to play, people would love it too. We also had some jazz combinations. The early bands did shows, and they were the kings of jazz. He had his piano features and his rhythm boys. He had his big concert-like arrangement. But it was not really dance music. Salamone: You were involved because it was something you loved? Gabler: But you started to notice when you played the old records, and what I liked were the trumpets and clarinets solos. If it were a good old tune then you would discover Louie, and so on. They used to be around 39th street. They were on WEDB or something, the early bands in the 20s. You would not miss a program. Then you also tuned in the regular popular programs on the radio or sign a record in the store. From that I had developed my own taste. Salamone: It is great; you also know something about distribution. Gabler: I didn’t know what distributions were, I just sold them over the counter. Salamone: Later on did you…. Gabler: We didn’t have distributions until the middle 40s. I made the records because you couldn’t buy it on Broadway or on 14th street or you can just come to my store. You have to be unique. Salamone: Were you trying to know the musicians a little bit better? Gabler: No, I knew the musicians before I made the records. Salamone: So, this was not an opportunity to get to know them? Gabler: Oh, No! I knew them on a one-to-one basis because they came to me. Because I had the records they had recorded, or I had the records of other artists they liked, and which they couldn’t get anywhere else. Before you know it, one would tell the other to go to East 42nd Street because you could get the records there. I tried to keep them in stock after the companies discontinued them. I would go to the Salvation Army because people would throw away old records. So, you spent time going through them and taking the clean ones. Salamone: You’re telling me that Goodman was impressed and has given you credit in his book for putting the names of musicians and so on. Is he shy? Gabler: He used to come to my store, but he was always busy on the West Side. He is very friendly. He is a quiet man. When I look at him, you wouldn’t think that he could make a good bandleader. It took him along time to be comfortable with other musicians. He was a sparkling leader because he didn’t have to be. He still loves to play. He was so good. He didn’t have any mediocre players. It was like going to a university, getting a job with his band. Tommy was tough with his band. Russ, a great man he was, was tough with his band. He didn’t want them goofing off and getting drunk.   Chapter Eight The 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 believers jazz answered needs that traditional faith did not address. While the music had different meanings for different followers--black, white, male female, young, old, rich or poor, in various psychological states and social situations--for all devotees it provided some form of ecstasy or catharsis transcending the limitations, dreariness and desperation of ordinary existence”. Moreover, he continues, As earthy blues, exalted anthem, or something in between, jazz could energize the most jaded will. Jazz is an active agent, a powerful force whose ecstasies, whether subtly insinuated or supplied in lightening illuminations, altered personality and society. Through cajolery, charm, warmth, surprise, shock or outrage it could brush aside the most entrenched tradition, the most oppressive custom, and inspire subversive social behavior. Consider how the jazzy music of the Twenties went hand in hand with the upheavals in manners and morals of that time, how bop was the cry of street-wise young rebels in the Forties, and how the “New thing” of the Sixties was closely allied to the “Black Power” impulse of the day. Clearly jazz is more than a passive flower, a glorious cultural ornament affirming humanity, it is also a powerful social force which has cut broadly and deeply, its prophets, rituals and myths touching not only individual souls but large groups bringing intimations of magic and the sacred to an era whose enormous changes have depleted conventional faiths. It is this power of jazz to propel social change and energize its acolytes, its touch of the sacred, which I wish to develop in this work. Pratt (1990:7) notes that popular music in general has expressive and instrumental political functions. He quotes John Coltrane, a major jazz influence, as stating that a person’s sound reveals his personality, the way he thinks and interprets the world (Sidran 1981:14). Pratt notes, correctly, that in performance that interpretation may change. Indeed, jazz performance is one in which fellow musicians and the audience sway the musician, providing at times new insights and facets on reality. This openness in jazz is one of its hallmarks and often jazz musicians cite it as a sacred characteristic. In conformity with the sacred nature of jazz, role reversal and rituals of rebellion are common modes of behavior and communication. Armstrong’s demonstration of the power of music and humor to subvert pompous platitudes regarding the established order of things provides an entrée to the theoretical relationship between music and humor and the uses to which an accomplished artist may put that relationship. This sacred trickster quality was an integral part of Louis Armstrong’s persona, one that he was well aware of and used with consummate skill to comment on and subvert mainstream conception of reality. An example of this power of subversion explodes from his recording of Laughin’ Louie. Laughin’ Louie Salamone (1990), Keil (1979, 1992), and Crouch (2000), among others, have also noted similarities in the use of humor among Africans and African Americans, and more particularly they have noted this similarity among African Americans and African musicians. Dizzy Gillespie—Crazy Like a Fox Dizzy Gillespie, for example, continued the trickster tradition in jazz. Dizzy, born John Birks Gillespie in 1917, was given his nickname early in his career. The bandleader Teddy Hill gave him the nickname because of his crazy antics on stage. For example, Dizzy used to come to rehearsals dressed in a hat, gloves, and overcoat, which he kept on throughout the rehearsal no matter the temperature. However, Hill always added, “Diz crazy? Diz was crazy like a fox.” He claimed, quite rightly, that Diz was a stable person, “the most stable of us all”. Hill, like most jazz musicians, thought quite highly of Diz. He gave him his first recorded solo and featured him at Minton’s Playhouse, one of the fabled “birthplaces” of be-bop. It is important to note that Dizzy’s humor was not common among his fellow modernists. In fact, as he later acknowledged, it was related to the type of humor that Louis Armstrong used because he was such a great showman. Many modern musicians, who acted “cool”, turning their backs on their audiences and failing to acknowledge applause or announce tunes, put down Armstrong as an “Uncle Tom” whose antics kept jazz in the show business category. They want jazz to be considered high art in a league with classical music and separate from entertainment. Diz, who was a close friend of Armstrong’s, used humor to draw people to the new jazz. Even though both Diz and Satch recorded parodies of the other’s music, their uncanny ability to reproduce it showed they had listened closely to it. Indeed, material in the Louis Armstrong archives shows that his taste in music included not only opera, classics, pop tunes, but also the most modern of jazz recordings. His recorded comments while listening with musician friends, shows his ability to critique the musicianship of performers. He rated Gillespie quite highly on all accounts. Just as Armstrong used humor to bring his superb music to audiences that had not heard his music before, so, too, did Gillespie. Audiences found humor, correctly, in the twists and turns of bop tunes and extended lines. If humor is built on surprise, then bop was an appropriate vehicle for humor. Charlie Parker is often caught on recordings, laughing out loud, especially when he and Diz played together and finished each other’s phrases, as friends finish one another’s jokes. Diz’s dress was another humorous sales technique for bop. His infamous bop glasses, string ties, and, above all, his beret gave bop a sartorial identity, which all but squares found humorous. There was a trickster humor about bop, which many missed, although many sensed its subversive nature, questioning the status quo and seeking to replace old, unjust verities with new equitable ones. Bop was the musical language of the post-war African American but its roots went deeper than that. Try as some of its adherents did to deny the fact, it partook of the humor of the African trickster, just as Satchmo did and Gillespie came to admit he did as well. The Trickster and the Diz The trickster myth is found in clearly recognizable form among both aboriginal tribes and modern societies. We encounter it among the ancient Greeks, the Chinese, and the Japanese and in the Semitic world as well .Many of the trickster’s traits were perpetuated in the figure of the mediæval jester, and have survived right up to the present day in the Punch-and-Judy plays and in the clown. Although repeatedly combined with other myths and frequently drastically reorganized and reinterpreted, its basic plot seems always to have succeeded in reasserting itself (Radin 1955: ix). We have a fundamental figure here, which is both general and specific. There appears a general need for the trickster but a need clothed in specific features of a culture. The trickster can be creator and destroyer, one who gives and one who takes, one who tricks and is tricked. The trickster inspires awe and affection at the same time. Seemingly, the trickster is one who gives into primal impulses without thinking. But I would argue that he is sly as a fox, who does, at least at times, clearly see the results of his behavior but who can get away with much because of his humor. I have argued that powerful, sacred African figures require humor so that the audience can approach them (Salamone 1995: 3-7; Salamone 1976: 208-210). The informality prevalent in American jazz allows the royalty to temper the awe inherent in their status in order to permit youngsters to approach them. I suggest that much the same practice can be found in Nigeria. For example, I worked with a traditional priest who was one of the more powerful “doctors” in Nigeria. However, in order to encourage clients, rather than discourage them, he cloaked his power beneath a persona of humor. This humorous presentation drew people to him whom he might otherwise have frightened away (Salamone 1976). Similarly, giants such as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong shared an ability to draw people to themselves. Doing so enabled them to work their music for the good of the people while being open to further innovations. Although the Bori was an African trickster, I have not gone on a diversion here. I am explicitly suggesting that Gillespie and Armstrong, among others, are in that same tradition. They clearly used humor to draw people to them. They would do almost anything to make the audience receptive to their message, for their music did indeed have a message. For Gillespie and Armstrong before him that music was, in fact, “spiritual”. I once asked Dizzy about why he said it was spiritual: “Makes the other fellow sound good,” he replied with his usual arch wit. Additionally, there is an African tradition which holds that the musician has a sacred duty to stand up to oppression and speak truth to power. In that task, Gillespie followed a long tradition of African musicians. It is no accident, I think, that the Yoruba musician Fela Anakulapi-Kuti studied and worked with Gillespie early in his career. Even Fela’s claim to be the Black President has traces of Gillespie’s half-humorous presidential candidacy. Fela combined various aspects of African based music into his style. Interestingly, its foundation was the jazz of Gillespie and Charlie Parker, which he heard as a young man and which he used to create something different for Nigerian music, something he deemed would be revolutionary. He put on a mask of the trickster to perform, mocking those whom he deemed had betrayed Africa, the colonialists and their African collaborators. The Humor of Subversion Dizzy would often open his performances by saying he would like to introduce the band. Band members would then turn to one another and shake hands, giving their names to each other, smiling and nodding. The routine, which I saw repeated many times, never got stale. Diz would sometimes stand aside and raise his eyebrows bemusedly at the audience. Eventually, he would get to introduce the musicians in the band, for Diz was a fair 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 to perform in Rochester, NY. He was late, something unusual for him. The audience, however, waited for him, knowing that somehow he’d make it through the storm. In those days, Diz traveled by car along the Birdland Circuit and he was coming in from Detroit. As the band scrambled to take off their heavy, snow-laden coats and assemble their instruments, Diz began to play solo trumpet. The audience laughed as they recognized a current hit “Tequila”, by the Champs. They stopped laughing when they realized Diz had bested them again because he was playing it straight. He took the novelty tune and re-imagined it as a lovely then torrid Latin tune. One by one the band members joined in as they assembled their instruments. After ten minutes or so, Diz then began his spiel. He apologized for being late. “I was playing a benefit for the Ku Klux Klan at the White Citizens’ Hall in Montgomery Alabama.” As the crowd broke up, he launched into “Manteca” (Grease) with his then new opening chant, “I’ll never go back to Georgia. No, I’ll never go back to Georgia.” Again, as the crowd—and it was a crowd despite the snow—roared with laughter, he launched into a brilliant high-note solo, complete with all the pyrotechnics of which he was capable in his prime. I reminded Diz of this performance thirty years later when he was performing at Elizabeth Seton College. He remembered it with a smile and repeated the opening of his solo for me vocally. It was then that he talked about humor and the spirituality of music, among many other topics. Diz took his role as a teacher/musician seriously, reminding me of Chaucer’s Clerk, “Gladly would he learn and gladly teach”. There was another routine he had when doing “Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac”, his version of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. The song is not only an American spiritual but according to the saxophonist Archie Shepp comes from an African religious song. Diz began his version with a Yoruba chant from Chano Pozo, a Cuban Santeria. The chant often drew befuddled laughs from the audience, and Diz played it up big. For him, humor and spirituality were not polar opposites but complementary principles. Humor was a means of leading people to the spiritual. As he told me, “When Chano Pozo came, the music all came together.” Again, once Diz finished his chanting, also setting the cross-rhythms of his tempo, he started the song, in the midst of which he took a brilliant solo. When the tenor sax player James Moody was present, there would be two brilliant solos. Then the piece would end with Dizzy’s tag line, “Old Cadillacs never die. The finance company just tows them away!” The examples could continue. Just what was this once wild bad boy of jazz getting at? What did his great dancing in front of his band mean? His mugging with his frog like checks? His tilted bell on his horn? His African robes later in life? His pointedly supercilious vocabulary? His outrageous twists and turns, with his deeply serious playing on frivolous tunes and his humor on serious ones. What was he telling the audience? And just which audience was he addressing? The following vignette displays most of the characteristics I have discussed. One night in Texas in the mid-1950s (Kliment 1988:75-76), the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald was sitting backstage eating a sandwich and watching the band members playing dice, a group that included renowned Dizzy Gillespie. Fitzgerald was terrified by the sudden arrival of local law officials, who arrested the entire group for gambling. The officers, upset because the group was performing in an all-white theater, took them to the police station where they were booked and jailed—Fitzgerald still in her ball gown. During the booking process, an officer asked Gillespie for his name. He replied, “Louis Armstrong.” And that is what the officer wrote down. Several hours later, after the band’s white manager paid the $50 bail, an arresting officer asked Ella Fitzgerald for her autograph. The next day, local papers reported that she was the best-dressed prisoner the jail ever held (Iris Carter Ford: 43). The subversive quality which Satchmo and Diz exemplified, the indistinguishability of the sacred and profane, the refusal to take accepted interpretations of reality at face value, the substitution of new realities for old are often found in literature based on jazz culture. Jazz in Literature In African American Satire: The Sacredly Profane Novel Darryl Dickson-Carr writes of Wallace Thurman’s Infants of the Spring: Infants of the Spring, then, asks us to reconcile what is normally considered an oxymoron, at least in the United States: an individualistic group consciousness… What… Thurman… demands, however, is actually a precursor to the conundra that Ralph Ellison would propose in his widely acclaimed Invisible Man Raymond argues that principles upheld by masses of African Americans are the ultimate linchpins to African Americans’ cultural and political progress, not unlike the narrator of Invisible Man, who argues that African Americans “were to affirm the principle on which the country was built” despite the reality of staunch, violent opposition, lest the nation, and therefore African Americans, be lost forever. It is precisely this fear of total loss, of an African American community swallowed up because it wastes its energies on frivolities instead of a fight for principles that drives Infants of the Spring’s satire“(Dickson-Carr 2001: 56-57). This satirical glance is common to jazz and literature based on jazz. Jazz is music of freedom and, as such, opposed to that which hinders freedom. Thus, it is the supporter of all that promotes freedom, although just what constitutes that freedom is open to debate. Indeed, sometimes it appears that everything is open to debate in the jazz world. Although the origins of jazz as an essentially African American music are not seriously in doubt, the exclusivity of it as something only African Americans can perform is in doubt. I have written about it earlier (Salamone 1990). Indeed, I find the fact that some “white” players can sound as black as “black” players a significant cultural phenomenon and will return to it in the conclusion. Jurgen E. Grandt has similar thoughts. In 1951, James Baldwin wrote that “... it is only in his music ... that the Negro of America has been able to tell his story” (24). But that same year, British jazz critic Leonard Feather published in the pages of Down Beat magazine a blindfold test with jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge. Throughout his distinguished career, Eldridge had repeatedly expressed his firm belief that white and black jazz musicians had distinctly different styles and that he could easily distinguish between them. When Feather took him at his word and administered the test, the results were somewhat astonishing: The musician, nicknamed “Little Jazz” by his peers, was either noncommittal or wrong much more often than he was right (Feather, Book 47). Listening to Billy Taylor’s recording of, ironically, “All Ears”, the seventh of ten selections, Eldridge’s irritation mounted: “I liked the pianist. Couldn’t tell who was colored and who was white. They could be Eskimos for all I know,” he admitted, and had to concede defeat in the end (Feather, “Little Jazz “12). (1) Eldridge’s blindfold test again raises the old yet still provocative question: Can white folks play the blues? If indeed the end product of a jazz performance transcends what W.E.B. Du Bois called “the problem of the color-line” (v)—can jazz itself still provide a useful critical framework for the study of black American cultural expressions? To be sure, music, instrumental music at least, is a much more abstract art form than literature, but the contemporary critic still faces the same dilemma that confronted Roy Eldridge: the apparent paradox that jazz music is at once a distinctly black American art form as well as a cultural hybrid. Jazz, indeed, in literature has taken on this hybrid, multicultural aspect. It is both “a distinctly black American art form as well as a cultural 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 mirrors and shapes, jazz derives its power from its combination of opposites, which it combines into some new thing. That new thing appears to change constantly before our eyes, making any absolute understanding of reality but a tentative guess. Everything can be other than it is. Such a perspective is a metaphor of American culture itself. It, too, is always in the process of becoming, rarely taking time to “be”. Even the most banal themes can be transformed into things of exquisite beauty and at the most unexpected times. In the midst of despair, hope explodes into consciousness. America and jazz have grown up together and each expresses the fact that our seeming differences must be reconciled in a creative tension of harmony that can produce something far more beautiful and productive than their individual elements or else fall into broken fragments far inferior to those from which they came. In literature, jazz has represented freedom. For those detractors of the music, it represented license and a return to the primitive with all that such a designation implied: namely, sexual license, 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, Richard Wright, and Jean Toomer as well as James, Baldwin, Jack Kerouac and Toni Morrison, the music is a force against fascism and other systems opposing freedom. It is a movement for racial integration and social justice. To emphasize their jazz roots these writers used jazz accents and rhythms in their writings. Multiple and Overlapping Realities and Audiences The Eshu trickster from the Yoruba of Nigeria is a character who disturbs the peace by questioning norms and calling his people to be attentive skeptics of order. He also employs a crafty and cunning wit in the face of the more powerful, preserving his and others’ freedom where it might potentially be curtailed. The Yoruba also parallel their trickster to the artist, celebrating his imaginative capacities and malleable skills. In all of these respects, Louis Armstrong may be regarded as a quintessential trickster, part of a long legacy passed from Africa and through slave-holding and segregated America. In a broader context, Armstrong’s trickster role can be tied to the jazz musical genre that he so transformed. Both were subject to—and responded to—unavoidable social realities, expressing pain and anger in reaction to a debilitating racism. Both also employed secret musical codes, employing protective masks that gave space to individual freedom and collective empowerment. Furthermore, both recognized humor as the license that permitted their liberationist expressions of thinly veiled social commentary. Jazz, like Armstrong, offered a language, the subtleties of which spoke to the in-crowd (the “hip”) and about the outsiders (the “squares”). Invariably, it would privately mock either or both. Louis Armstrong used the Trickster image in his rendition of “Laughin’ Louie”. First, the “squares” are outed in the title itself, which parodies the common misinterpretation of his name in 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 to his habitual pot-smoking habits, this further underscored by the name of his accompanying band, the Vipers, a slang term for marijuana. The song’s music fluctuates throughout, between the “hot” sound “hip” critics encouraged from Armstrong, and the “sweet” sounds he always had such affection for, but for which he was criticized as compromising to mainstream tastes. Here, the trickster celebrates his own creative choices (laughing for himself), and satirically dismisses the imposing judgment of his critics (laughing at them). This is achieved through the humorous method of incongruity, the shock of the juxtaposed styles surprising listeners into recognition and appreciation while appealing to many different audiences. In considering audiences we must take note of the fact that Gillespie, as Armstrong before him, addressed multiple audiences. Indeed he was also a member of multiple audiences. As an African American southern musician he was always aware of his membership in Afro-American culture, his acculturation into the dominant white culture, his being a leading founder of bop, his maleness and many other memberships. His intelligence shone through as he played with these identities in his performances, juggling one against others as the mood moved him. Things were rarely, if ever, this OR that; as Robert Farris Thompson (1964) has noted about Creole culture; they were this AND that, too (See also Roger D. Abrahams, Nick Spitzer, John F. Szwed and Robert Farris Thompson. Blues for New Orleans: Mardi Gras and America’s Creole Soul. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). Diz was a master of mixing things together that often did not go together. He took risks that others hesitated in taking. But he made you love him as he did so by turning his critique into a humorous comment or making it so seemingly outrageous that he couldn’t really be serious. Except that, of course, he was. There was also a love for that which was human. At the height of the civil rights movement, I saw Dizzy drinking with a southern soldier who thought he was complimenting Diz but was condescending to him. I sat at the bar expecting Diz to explode. Instead, he accepted the proffered drink, listened to the young soldier, and then made some off-handed remark that had the soldier laughing. The two walked off arm in arm. To me this incident is illustrative of Dizzy’s being able to occupy a number of cultures and identities simultaneously. He often understood exactly where others were coming from and found ways to be diplomatic while getting his point across. As with Armstrong, he found a way to live his life the way he wanted while also finding a way to criticize people in ways they first listened too because they were humorous. No surprise, then, that they both were superb jazz ambassadors, representing America, yes, but also the need for greater equality and democracy in America. They understood that while they had a dual heritage, that heritage was an overlapping one and could not be neatly segregated as others believed. They were this AND that, too. Ellington epitomized the blurring of categories in his music. It was hard to tell where one genre ended and another began. In so doing, he continued an African tradition and elevated his music to the realm of the sacred. The Sacred For Ellington, then, the sacred and spiritual appears to refer to that which promotes love and in the process provokes a sense of awe. Certainly, the quality of being life-affirming and inclusive is part of Ellington’s conception of the sacred. Additionally, however, Ellington is aware of the power of ambiguity and humor in presenting his spiritual message. He is careful to allow dramatic pacing and juxtaposition of seeming opposites to tell his tale. As he stated, “A good playwright can say what he wants to say without saying it.” It was a lesson he had learned early. The short movie Black and Tan Fantasy, for example, a very early talkie released in 1929, has a 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 Ellington and Whetsol that she is going back to work to help save Ellington’s piano. Of course, Washington is in danger of dying but performs anyway. The movie features an authentic Cotton Club setting in which there is a brief but rather complete floor show, featuring the famous Cotton Club Dancers. Fredi Washington dances, and then she collapses. After a spiritual, Black & Tan Fantasy is played. In sum, the movie is programmatic imitating a Cotton Club performance. This was a pattern that Ellington followed for much of his life. What is often overlooked, however, is the manner in which Ellington dares to intersperse the sacred and the profane. There are not only echoes of spirituals or “church music” in his compositions, there are also outright spirituals used just before dancing that would offend many traditionally religious people. Moreover, that dancing takes place to a suite that has often been considered more religious in nature than secular. Ellington was blurring the distinction between two spheres that many other performers preferred to keep distinct, the sacred and the profane. By so doing he was placing his music in a category that he came to term “beyond category”. He was also deeply involved in the realm that anthropologists recognize as that of the ambiguous and dangerous. Steed (1993: 3) notes this Ellington characteristic of avoiding categories: “Although he 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 his disapproval of categories, which he views as a curb on an artist’s right to freedom of expression. He always wants to be free to do what he feels moved to do, and not what someone feels he should do. There is no doubt that Ellington felt that this mixing of categories had meaning beyond the music itself, that it was somehow sacred. He viewed his music as a vocation and as a means for breaking himself and other African Americans out of rigid categories, as his interview with Zunser (1930) makes absolutely clear. Ellington frequently explicitly noted his belief that music was a vocation, a sacred calling. At the Second Sacred Concert, for example, he labeled himself “God’s messenger boy”, a phrase repeated in the album notes (Steed 1993: 6). Steed (1993) includes this important passage from Stanley Dance’s eulogy: ...Duke knew the good news was Love, of God and his fellow men. He proclaimed the message in his Sacred Concerts, grateful for an opportunity to acknowledge something of which he stood in awe, a power he considered above his human limitations. For Ellington, attempts to capture that love and awe in his music, a love he viewed as transcending artificial differences and encompassing all life, were attempts at grasping the sacred. It is as if Ellington were saying that God has no limits. Limitations are human. Therefore, attempts to affirm life and love should also know no artificial limits. Steed (1993: 8) puts this issue in a slightly different, more musicological manner. At Ellington’s funeral, a recording by Johnny Hodges of “Heaven” from the Second Sacred Concert was played. Steed notes the construction of the melody and some of its notable internal contrasts. One observation is relevant in ascertaining and understanding Ellington’s conception of the sacred: “Ellington’s favored tri-tone is heard three times, perversely ascending as if he were determined to make what was once called the ‘devil’s interval’ angelic”. This desire to force people to reconsider their stereotypical categorizations was a long-time project with Ellington that led logically to the Sacred Concerts. This characteristic of blurring distinctions of asserting that what some think evil is a path to the good often irritated those who held traditional values. As Leonard (1962:21) notes, one of the major opponents of jazz included the guardians of traditional morality. Jazz violated the clear-cut values of this group through blurring indisputable distinctions and promoting ambiguity. Armstrong and Gillespie did so through their humor while Ellington subverted accepted reality through his embrace of the sacred, which differed from more traditional notions. Discussion Whatever the “prehistory” of jazz may have been, jazz itself begins with the consequences of the imposition of Jim Crow laws in New Orleans and the subsequent cultural clash between black Creoles and other blacks in New Orleans: with segregation, educated black Creoles and less fortunate and largely untrained other African Americans were forced to play together. The mixture of European and African music became more intense, and is still seen in jazz today. Striking a balance is a delicate thing. In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois articulated a theme that inheres in the very essence of African American culture; namely, ‘the dual heritage of the black man in America’. That heritage, African and European, is at root one of dual identity and a cause of a recurring crisis of identity, as Du Bois went on to note. In a very real sense, the history of jazz has provided a dynamic model of the ever-changing terms of that heritage as well as a running commentary on it. It has done so through the use of tropes of identity. Tropes encapsulate a culture’s essence. Whatever a culture may be, however it views itself, it expresses that self-perception in select images packed with powerful meanings. Jazz is no exception. It, too, has its own cultural modes of expression, its personal symbols and metaphors that encapsulate and convey identity. Moreover, the best of these tropes are flexible and allow for the expression of changing concepts of self-identity. “Africa” has been precisely that type of vehicle within jazz. It has served as a touchstone for gauging the state of the art as well as the self-image of its performers. Throughout jazz history, the concept of “Africa” has served as an index 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, a performance, the more it is perceived to be approaching an African essence, or “soul”! Jazz musicians have been careful and correct in indicating that their music is not a result of inability or corruption in performance, but, rather, of choice. Two musical cultures consisting of related, but differing codes, have been captured in the contrastive metaphors “African” and “European”. These terms have not, of course, remained static over time. Tracing the manner in which these contrastive terms have changed in meaning in the course of jazz’s history provides an intriguing insight into both the genesis and change of jazz style and its cultural relationship to the increasing consciousness of its performers. Insight into that dialectical relationship, moreover, promises to lead to increasing understanding of the manner in which artists reinterpret cultural vehicles in order to convey their own personal visions of reality to fellow community members. Thus, black musicians worked at perfecting styles that were uniquely their own. No other band could imitate the swing of the Basie band. No other band could be mistaken for Ellington’s. His sophisticated use of harmonies and colors, inspired by French impressionistic music and painting, was unique in Jazz. Black soloists rarely had equals among white musicians. There were, of course, white musicians who were indeed originals, like Bunny Berrigan or Bix Beiderbecke. Significantly, these artists found themselves imitating their own African myth, one stressing outrageous living, unreliability and self-centeredness as prerequisites for creativity. It was but one more version of the myth of the “noble savage”, documented by Hammond and Jablow (1977). It is an open question of just how much Euro-American art has been created through a misunderstanding of African art. Throughout the post-war era, Africa’s aura grew among jazz musicians. Certainly, the independence movement added to Africa’s mystique and the linkage of black liberation with it was but natural. Islam became common among musicians long before it spread to other segments of the African American community. Armstrong’s trip to Ghana was merely the most noticeable of many trips by jazz musicians to the continent. Africa increasingly became a metaphor of authenticity, of true identity within the black musical community and a trope of opposition to white exploitation of African Americans. Certainly, images of Africa have long been part of jazz history. As I have argued, the contrast between “Africa” and “Europe” has provided a dialectic of development for jazz itself. African elements have always formed part of the musical composition of jazz, and “jungle” images, for better or worse, have been used, willingly or not, by Ellington, Armstrong, and others. Many musicians have become Muslims in a belief that Islam is a more authentic African religion than Christianity and, thus, more appropriate for an African American. In the 1960s, however, Black Nationalism became more openly dominant in jazz than it had ever been before in conformity with the self-conscious assertion of the right of Blacks to control their own destiny, including their own identity. As America in general entered the confrontational politics of the late sixties, themes of identity—youth, gays, women, American Indians and blacks—became more pronounced. Initially, these assertions of identity tended to be separatist and exclusionary. The movement illustrated a very interesting contrast between black and white images of Africa in jazz. White musicians choose to 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 and are aware of their probationary status. They tend to be both more romantic and fanatic about the mystique of Africa than most black musicians who are more likely to use the concept as a tool—even as a weapon—in order to obtain their objectives. There were a number of manifestations of the movement to Africanize jazz but all of them shared the adjective “free”. In some way, jazz was to be made “free”. Indeed, even before the black power movement itself had jelled, Ornette Coleman had come on the scene in 1959 and, after an initial burst of enthusiasm, met with outright hostility. Within a few short years, however, many of his basic ideas were being followed. In one very real and important sense jazz itself is the message. Its own meaning, to its practitioners and fans, changes over time as its social location alters and as the meaning of its “African/European” opposition varies. However, the situation is further complicated because each jazz musician and performance is meant to be creative, to generate meaning. Over and over, in one form or other, the principle is laid down that each musician must tell a story. Moreover, that story must be personal: one must live the story the music tells. In a truly essential way the medium is the message. Technique, for example, the ability to run chord changes accurately, to play fast or slow and still swing, is admired, but only a naïve listener admires it for its own sake. It must be used in the service of conveying a story. Charlie Parker, for example, is said to have advised aspiring saxophone players first to learn everything about their horns and then to forget it all when playing. Technique, in other words, is only a tool in allowing one’s true inner self to be expressed. It is not admirable in and of itself. A knowledgeable insider sums up the position well when speaking about the early days of the bop revolution: I never heard anyone play as fast as Bird. But it wasn’t just speed. He had ideas no one else had (Bob Redcross, personal communication). Endeavoring to understanding the meaning of jazz, therefore, involves one in a series of exercises requiring the examination of multiple referents and cross-referents, of matching individual biographies to broader movements, specific variations to broader themes, and the ever-retreating just out of reach essence of the metaphor that is jazz itself, for to understand jazz is to understand the tertium quid that it is; namely, a symbol and encapsulation of America itself. Conclusion Ellington’s love for things that are “beyond category” resonates with Levi-Strauss’s categorization of anomalous mediating categories as dangerous and sacred (Levi-Strauss 1967, for example). These anomalous categories, according to Levi-Strauss, partake of the categories which they mediate and consequently are neither fish nor fowl. They are dangerous and somehow pollute. Mary Douglas (1966) has treated of these categories 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 that there is a distinction between the sacred and the profane but between two kinds of sacred-ness. There is sacredness “that produces social and moral order, health, and happiness. ...” There is also, however, an opposite sacred force “that brings disorder, immorality, illness, and death. Though radically antagonistic, these two kinds of sacredness can be highly ambiguous because both stem from similar supernatural sources”. Interestingly, however, these types of sacredness appear to be highly unstable and each can resolve into the other. The musical “purist” seeks to keep them separate. Even in the African American tradition there was a desire to keep the two traditions separate, as some opposition to Ellington’s sacred concerts revealed. There is, however, an older African tradition that understood the unity of the sacred. The variations work together to provide a harmonious whole. Each part both stands alone and yet takes on full meaning only within the context of the entire performance. This perspective is well-illustrated in the work of the Nigerian musician, Fela Anakulapi-Kuti. In a sense in his performance the Nigerian artist Fela added to Gregory Bateson’s and Erving Goffman’s concept of frames, turning frames into shifting things, ones that almost perpetually transform themselves into one another. This house-of-mirror image of shifting frames is in keeping with the predominant perspective on African religious and philosophical thought that sees it as positing an ever-changing unstable reality under the illusory permanent reality of every-day common sense. This skepticism of the presented reality and a subsequent search for underlying structures is well-suited to African-derived musical performance. Therefore, the incorporation of all varieties of African-derived music is not accidental or haphazard. It serves to convey his message of black pride. His point is the unity of black peoples everywhere. The manner in which he conveys his message displays the technical brilliance that is appreciated when it is suited to the message. Thus, his shifting frames reflect African religion and philosophy. The manner in which one style of African-derived music melds into another defines their relationship through praxis not mere discussion. The central role of jazz, a word Fela disdained as did Ellington, is demonstrated in its being used as a mediating form. Finally, the continuous transformation of material is also evocative of spiritual matters. Fittingly, the self-proclaimed Black President and Chief Priest led his people to a better land through invoking spiritual images and enacting them on the stage. His entire performance is ritual of a high order. It is a Creole performance that has the “that too” characteristic of all such performances (James Farris Thompson, personal communication). Thus, there was no contradiction in Fela’s performance. Each element was an integral part of the overriding message and enabled the performance to move toward an end he deemed sacred, the true emancipation of the Black man and the instilling of pride in his mind. What is true of Fela illuminates Ellington’s mixture of styles and categories. It would be beneficial to explore Ellington’s African roots more deeply and to investigate his own reading in greater detail in relationship to his music (Hudson 1991). It is clear that Ellington’s religion struck orthodox Christians as pantheistic and idiosyncratic (Steed 1993: pp. 19ff. and Gensel 1992). His statement that he was “born in 1956 at the Newport Jazz Festival” (Hasse, 1993: 322), was often cited but never fully explored. The religious connotations are often noted but the literal sense in which Ellington meant the term has been missed. He believed that somehow he had been literally reborn and called to a vocation. Seen within the context of African American culture Ellington’s religious beliefs and practices make perfect sense, even those “superstitious” aspects which so bothered his more traditionally orthodox son Mercer (Mercer Ellington and Dance 1978: 111). The continuity between the Cotton Club and the Cathedral is emphasized by Ellington’s very African American philosophy and theology. His mixture of categories of the sacred and profane and various types of sacredness is an affirmation of both life and the continuous nature of that life, transcending stereotypical traditional categories. Jazz culture then challenges mainstream culture in a number of ways. Through indirect and direct subversion—humor and confrontation—it asserts a reality contrasting with accepted presupposed cultural reality. The presuppositions of the accepted worldview are generally held up to questioning, upsetting true believers. Thus, whether the sacred clown, the genial sophisticated religious performer, or the angry confrontationalist challenges accepted reality through performance, jazz can disturbingly challenge one’s notions of cultural reality and often does. It subverts accepted reality through offering its own perspective, sometimes comic and sometimes angry, of what reality could be, prompting listeners to think of just might be a better world.   Chapter Nine Bebop and Hip-Hop: Their Strong Relationship Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. in his Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop recounts a conversation with Muhal Richie Abrams about black music. Abrams stated that no matter how far you travel you never get far from home. That statement is true about African American music. At some levels, it is all intertwined. One genre, or subgenre, feeds off another even as older practitioners and the white public may resist the new form. Although some trace the origins of rap to Louis Armstrong’s “Heebie Jeebies” and, as Miles Davis said, there is nothing played on the trumpet that Louis did not play first, Armstrong was very resistant to bebop even as Charlie Parker would play Armstrong’s improvised solos note for note on his alto sax before improvising on them, showing the long chain of continuity. Indeed, resistance to bebop parallels the resistance evidenced toward hip-hop even as hip-hop sampled bebop artists, especially Gillespie. Only half-joking, Dizzy Gillespie and his protégé Jon Faddis released a rap recording in the 1980s, showing its ties to the old talking blues. Both bebop and rap tapped into urban Black culture and was originally an expression of changes in black youth culture. This chapter will explore these connections and the eventual use of hip-hop in jazz by artists such as Herbie Hancock, Branford Marsalis, and Miles Davis, among others. Both bop and hip-hop were more than musical forms; they were ways of life. Bop, accidentally named from the title of one of Gillespie’s songs, “Be-bop”, was a means of playing jazz in ways squares, 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 the squares, at least at first, both Gillespie and Charlie Parker, not only played with white musicians, they hired them and tutored them. Parker was quite fond of Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan and promoted them to his fellow musicians. Similarly, the hip-hop movement was an assertion of Black culture, expressed in many forms, most familiarly in dance and in rap. Rap is in form an update of the old talking blues, using, at first, whatever means are found at hand—old records, turntables, and such. Over time, like bop, it became more routinized. Also white rappers began to fill the ranks of its stars, most notably Eminem, just as white musicians had filled the ranks of the boppers. Similarly, mainstream music began to incorporate elements of rap just as it had incorporated elements of bop before it. Interestingly, Rap music often sampled be-bop tracks and when such practices were declared illegal, jazz musicians found jobs laying down tracks for rappers to sample. The court case that changed the sampling frenzy was a 1991 U.S. District Court case—Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records, Inc. Basically, the court ruled that if you want to sample existing recordings you must get permission of the original artists or, more simply, if you want to play you must afford to pay. Both bop and hip-hop suffered from and, at times, promoted the stereotype of the primitive genius whose talent sprang from a wild nature and suffering endured from prejudice and intimidation. Otherwise intelligent white critics promoted this image. John Hammond, for example, who discovered and promoted many artists and later produced them on recordings, preferred artists who could not read music. He felt Duke Ellington was not an authentic jazz musician because his music was too elegant, and he preferred Count Basie, giving Basie a left-handed compliment. Of course, Basie, whose band had brilliant musicians, loved Ellington’s music and the Duke returned the compliment. However, even Norman Mailer and Jack Kerouac perpetuated the stereotype, and set comfort in what they wrongly saw as the music’s mindless bliss. Indeed, one of the things that irritated both boppers and the hip-hop nation was the infiltration of whites into the culture. Some of this infiltration was, nevertheless, the result of the generosity of African Americans who sought talent, regardless of skin color. In any event, this infiltration was part of an old pattern going back to early contact between Euro-Americans and Africans and Afro-Americans, namely, the appropriation of African-based modes of expression daily life and the arts. Sadly, the imitation and the imitators often profited more from the appropriation than the originators. Just as Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw out earned Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington, white rappers and businesses people reaped the greater profits. Interestingly, the attempt to segregate black music has never worked. In one form or another it becomes American popular music. Like America it becomes hybridized, mixed, or in the terms of Guthrie and others, intercultural. Since America is intercultural that is not so surprising. American culture is a creole culture, in the words of Robert Farris Thompson (1983 also see Charles Hersch 2006)). Creolization has come to signify both creativity and continuity, as well as a mixing or blending of cultures (Spitzer 2011). Both bop and hop are creole forms, no matter how original their creators may have thought them. However unconsciously he may have done so, Louis Armstrong’s “Heebie Jeebies” is considered a forerunner of Rap. Similarly, early boppers acknowledged the pioneering roles of Armstrong and Ellington. Miles Davis can stand in for them all. He noted that there is nothing played in jazz on the trumpet that Pops (Armstrong) didn’t play first. He also said that every jazz musician should get on his knees before Ellington. That is not to denigrate Gillespie or Parker. Gillespie himself stated about Armstrong, “No him, no me.” Charlie Parker would quote Armstrong in his own solos, often playing entire choruses of “West End Blues” or another piece from Armstrong’s vast repertoire. The Last Poets Abiodun Oyewole, Umar Ben Hassan, Alifia Pudim, together with the percussionist Nilaja, are generally considered the Last Poets. There were earlier incarnations of the group. This version however released two key statements on Douglas Records in the late 1960’s, The Last Poets and This is Madness. Their music put revolutionary poetry, drawing on sense images over what they considered primitive Afro rhythms, once again incorporating a stereotype to fight stereotypes. Around this group, rap began. The language was something unheard of in popular music at the time. Here is a taste: Time is running out on bullshit changes Running out like a bushfire in a dry forest Like a murderer from the scene of a crime Like a little roach from DDT... Not only did The Last Poets inspire rap and a new consciousness in “the ’hood”, it also inspired jazz musicians to go back to their roots and to be more socially conscious, with mixed results. Arguments still rage over whether the electrified, funkafied Miles Davis is better than the cool, or whether the chest-thumping, screeching shouting John Coltrane is better than the daringly harmonic, “sheets of sound” Trane. Miles lived long enough to come back to his cool style. Trane told Theolonious Monk he had gone as far as he could, and would come back to harmonic music. Sadly, he died before he could. Monk, the original rebel, who clearly based his experiments on Ellington’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 jazz musicians were involved in its early evolution, including the saxophonist Julian Hemphill and the leader of the revolution Gil Scott Heron. The work of these people, rap and jazz, led to the emergence of Tupac Shakur, the Charlie Parker of rap. Tupac fulfilled all the promise of rap. His music melded all its key elements: lyricism, poetry, stridence and rhythm. It was original music, speaking across musical genres. He left the same mark on rap that Bird left on jazz. You cannot get away from his influence and still be singing rap. From Be-Bop to Hip-Hop The phrase comes from a production put on at the Montreux Jazz Festival by Quincy Jones He featured music from African roots to the Hip-Hop era. Q showed how it is all related. The concert featured Jon Hendricks, Al Jarreau, George Benson, Dianne Reeves, Grandmaster Melle Mel, and many other Rap stars. Fittingly Jon Hendricks began with an improvised scat phrase that was tossed around, back by various drummers from Africa and the US. Everyone got a chance to improvise, demonstrating the connection, not often acknowledged between jazz and Rap. There have been attempts at jazz rap. Dizzy Gillespie and Jon Faddis had a musically successful go at it. Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis released hip-hop albums. Jazz fusion groups also produced excellent music. There is no doubt that there is a link between the two genres, just as there is between any two African American forms of music. Whether it is a good link is beyond this author’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 Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Hall, Stuart. “What is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. Eds. David Morley 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 Continuity and Creativity in Postdiluvian New Orleans and Beyond New Orleans: Tulane University, 28 November 2011. Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy. New York: Vintage Books, 1984.   Chapter Ten Bopping along with Johnny Mercer John said of the song “Laura”, “If a fellow plays me a melody that sounds like something, well, I try and fit the words to the sound of the melody. It has a mood, and if I can capture that mood, that’s the way we go about it. Laura was that kind of picture. It was predesigned, because Laura 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 not performed a Johnny Mercer song. Bop musicians were no exception. Oscar Peterson and Dizzy Gillespie were just two among the many who performed “Autumn Leaves”. Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis also found much to explore in the song as well. Ella Fitzgerald did an entire songbook album of Mercer melodies, including the following outstanding songs, “Too Marvelous for Words”, “Early Autumn”, “Day In, Day Out”, and “Laura” among others. In a movie portrait of Gillespie, Mercer’s “Midnight Sun” is featured. The question is why boppers turned to Mercer’s tunes so often. What was there in his lyrics and melodies which attracted them? For young Turks who were supposedly rebelling against the restrictions of swing it seems an odd choice of material. However, deeper examination shows the logic of their choice and reveals a good deal about bop which is often overlooked. Why do some songs become jazz standards and others of seemingly equally interest do not? Part of the answer lies in the habit of many jazz musicians of memorizing the lyrics of a song. Lester Young, the Pres, was famous for knowing the words of hundreds of songs, and fellow musicians called him to check on the words of a song they wished to perform. Miles Davis, a master of the ballad form, would state that he wished to play the trumpet in the way Frank Sinatra sang. He was, needless to say, one of the musicians who called on the Pres for help (Porter 2005:31). Certainly, Johnny Mercer’s lyrics are among the best ever written. Mercer was not only steeped in the jazz tradition but generally wrote lyrics with composers from Hogie Carmichael to Henry Mancini, who were also in the know regarding jazz. Understandably, those times he wrote his own music showed a fine sense of jazz feeling. At parties, for example, people would ask Mercer to improvise some jazz blues. There are recorded examples of Mercer doing so, showing great understanding of the form and ease with appropriate language to fit the melody. It was also a feat he performed on his radio program, “The Chesterfield Hour”, according to Gene Lees. Mercer would read the headlines before his show and then have a segment of his show where he improvised words and music relating to the news of the day. The music and words would always fit together. As Daryl Sherman, a jazz vocalist and pianist noted, you can hear Johnny’s lyrics in the melody. It is the perfect wedding of the lyric and melody, whether Johnny wrote the words and music as with “Dream”, or “Something’s Gotta Give”, or wrote lyrics to someone’s else’s music as in “I Thought about You”, “Midnight Sun”, or “Autumn Leaves”. And the lyrics appealed to jazz musicians as diverse as Lester Young, Louis Armstrong, and Miles Davis among many others. Indeed, it is more difficult to find jazz musicians who have not played a Mercer tune than those who have. Thus, when praising Wynton Marsalis Frank Tirro says: But as a model of the neoclassic in jazz Autumn Leaves stands out. A popular standard by Johnny Mercer, it has been sung, played, and orchestrated ad infinitum, to the point, in fact, that all educated jazz listeners know the harmonic and melodic sequences (Tirro 450). Many other examples could be given of how jazz musicians react to Mercer’s lyrics while playing a tune, from Miles Davis’s almost straight rendition of “I Thought about You”, to Sonny Rollins’s magnificent “I’m Old-fashioned”, in which the words jump out at you through Sonny’s exuberant flourishes and runs. Along with Miles, Sonny is noted for his mastery of a song’s lyrics. Johnnie Mercer has clearly stated the reason for this respect for his lyrics. In his “An Evening with Johnny Mercer”, he states that he wrote his lyrics to match the rhythmic contour of the 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 fit the lyric to the melody, harmony, and rhythm as well as the intent of the musician in using these elements in a jazz solo, Mercer’s lyrics sing through the improvisations of Gillespie and Armstrong, Rollins, as well as those of Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins, and Charlie Parker as well as Johnny Hodges. They are not “jazzy” lyrics: they are lyrics that personify the elemental humor and sophistication of jazz itself. Three examples of musicians who sing along with Mercer’s lyrics drive home the point. Each of the people is a unique bop or post-bop stylist who, with roots firm in that tradition create counter-melodies in their solos, rather than simply running notes, and who respect the lyrics and the mood they enhance in their solos as well. The Jazz Vocalists But Young exerted an equally pervasive influence on several generations of jazz and popular singers, both directly and through such key acolytes as Holiday and Frank Sinatra, who told Arlene Francis in 1981: “I knew Lester well, we were close friends and we had a mutual admiration society. I took from what he did and he took from what I did.” Sinatra also praised Young for “knowing the lyrics” to the songs that he played: “Knowing what the song is about has to come from the lyric, not merely notes on a piece of paper” (Will Friedwald, reprinted from The Wall Street Journal). Although Lester Young is not strictly speaking a bop saxophonist, he influenced in some way or other almost every succeeding modern saxophonist. Mercer and Young were certainly aware of each other, and, personal feelings aside, Sinatra was definitely aware of Mercer’s work. Comparing their versions of Mercer’s “Laura” or “Dream”, for example, reveals the similarities of their approaches and their respect for Mercer’s lyrics. Both Mercer and Sinatra were drawn to great musicians and their vocals reveal that attraction quite clearly. Lester Young, in turn, was certainly a lyrical musician who, like Sinatra, could swing with ferocity while remaining light on his feet and not intrusive on the lyric or melody. Lester was a bit like Ella Fitzgerald. Ella had come from the Swing Era and become proficient in bop. She could swing hard and sing sweetly. It was no accident that long before she recorded the Johnny Mercer Songbook she waxed “My Baby Likes to Be-Bop”, perhaps Johnny’s first attempt at the new idiom. It is a fine novelty tune, but more than just a novelty tune. Johnny’s lyrics catch the fun, swing, and sophistication of the new music. Walter Bishop is listed as its composer. Mercer himself recorded it with Nat Cole. The lyrics flow to the music and capture the fun of bop’s message. Dizzy Gillespie returned the favor shortly after with his version of “That Old Black Magic”, played in waltz tempo. The booking agent complained that Dizzy’s music was too fast and convoluted for normal people to follow. So his band played it relatively straight, corny and slow. He made up for it later, playing “Autumn Leaves”, “Moonlight in Vermont”, “Days of Wine and Roses”, “Moon River”, “Laura”, with “Laura”, in his own way, providing fresh looks at these gems. The lyrics take on deeper meaning and become more nuanced. It is clear that Gillespie is shaping his arrangement and solo to the lyrics and he inflects the lyrics to fit their meaning. Thus, on “Laura” he gives the word “dream” an other-worldly dimension, emphasizing what Mercer intended. In “Autumn Leaves”, Gillespie conveys the falling of the leaves with cadenza after cadenza, traveling from high note to low note. There is no mystery why Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young, and Dizzy Gillespie respected Mercer’s lyrics. Ella, for example, recorded The Johnny Mercer Songbook, the only one of her songbooks dedicated to the work of a lyricist. Mercer was a hip jazz-influenced vocalist. He not only spoke the language, he also sang and wrote it. His lyrics are hip. After all, as Edie Adams says, Mercer during the production of Lil Abner, “hated being around the set…You always saw him at a jazz club somewhere” (Furia 198). Like Sinatra, whom he was not fond of, he enjoyed being in the company of jazz musicians and loved their music. And they loved his. Vocalists as different as Louis Armstrong, Joe Williams, Susanna McCorkle, Frank Sinatra, June Christie, Connie Boswell, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, recorded his songs and sang them well. Johnny himself would sing his own songs just about as well as anyone else, and often better, showing how he thought they should be interpreted. Bopper or Moldy Fig loved Mercer’s lyrics. Even those who went beyond bop found treasure in Mercer’s work. Sonny Rollins, for example, has some classic renditions of Mercer’s works. Sonny Rollins Over many years Sonny Rollins has been an outstanding musician. He has recorded numerous Mercer songs. These include “Skylark”, “I Remember You”, “I Thought about You”, “I’m an Old Cowhand”, “Traveling Light”, and others. Sonny grew up loving the movies and the songs, written by Mercer, heard in those movies. As the tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano states Sonny never plays a song he doesn’t love. Listening to his interpretation of any of his songs is an education in deconstruction and reconstruction. For example, Rollins’s version of “I’m Old Fashioned” begins on anything but an old fashioned note. He begins with a rhythmic riff in the calypso style. It is almost a minute into the performance before he begins to state the melody. However, the core of his solo is a return to the melody over and over again, and one can hear the lyrics coming through, enhancing their meaning. One could spin an entire narrative about what Sonny is conveying. He is conveying the unity of opposites, the importance of both the old and the new. He moves back and forth between driving rhythm and sheer melodic beauty, between African rhythm and European harmony, laying claim to both. It is the contrast beyond the hard-bop and post-bop accoutrements and the old fashioned core of his solo that, for me, brings out the strength of the lyrics. Sonny is as hip as can be but there is a core of honesty and love for enduring values expressed in his solo that draws one back again. Sonny Rollins has been wrongly accused of being too rational and unsentimental in his playing. However, just a bit of serious listening dispels that contention. Similarly, one of his models, Charlie Parker, was also accused of being too hard-edged. A brief listen to his version of “Laura” with its close adherence to the melody and lovely string background gives the lie to the charge. Parker all but speaks Mercer’s lyrics through his alto sax. It is a deeply romantic presentation. One that is both thoughtful and emotional. In sum, much like Mercer himself. McCoy Tyner and Post-Bop Mercer A final example comes from the work of McCoy Tyner, best-known, perhaps, for his remarkable work with John Coltrane. Both perform “Out of This World”. Trane begins his rendition in the upper registers but close to the melody, accentuating the title and presenting an ethereal feeling appropriate to being out of this world. McCoy Tyner adds to that feeling with his all-but patented fourths in his comping and solos. There is a modal, eerie feeling to the tune and both Julian Protester’s version and Herbie Hancock’s demonstrate. Tyner was also one of many to record “Autumn Leaves”. He does a textured version, fully swinging and surprisingly more traditional than many other post-bop musicians. It is clean, brilliant, and beautiful. He allows the chords to carry the message of the tune, playing the original only at the beginning and end. Yes, the listener is never in doubt that “Autumn Leaves” is being played. McCoy’s brilliance carries the lyrics as well as the melody. It is the kind of performance that Mercer’s songs bring out in musicians. There are, in fact, hundreds of versions of “Dream”. The performers range from rock stars to pop singers to jazz stars. Each found something worthwhile in the song. The fact that it is one of the few in which Mercer wrote both words and music has much to do with its popularity. It is unfortunate that he did not do more songs for which he wrote the music. The few for which he did became quite popular, and are very good. Reflections Johnny had a facility with expressing hip and sublime ideas in the American vernacular. While instrumentalists appreciated this knack, it may be noted most clearly among jazz vocalists. The 3-disk Johnny Mercer Songbook is a fine collection of jazz versions of his songs, both instrumental and vocal. The vocalists appear to let the words roll around lazily in their mouths, savoring them and with great ease interpret them, showing how naturally Mercer captured the thoughts and fit the words to the melody. A few examples demonstrate the point. Ella Fitzgerald’s version of: Skylark, with her virtuoso treatment of the melody and harmony, displays a keen understanding of the meaning of the lyrics. In the manner of Louis Armstrong she stays just a bit behind the beat, allowing the richness of the words to flow over the listener: “Faint as a will-o’-the wisp. Crazy as a loon. Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon”. Then she plaintively sighs, “My heart is riding on your wings”. Do we really need to parse the rhythm of the line? The natural way Mercer’s poetry reflects idiomatic American speech is obvious. Turning it into poetry, however, is subtle indeed. Another Armstrong disciple, Billie Holiday, interprets “One for My Baby” in her patented naturalistic mode. It is not very far removed from Sinatra’s, since both could read a sophisticated lyric and had great familiarity with heartbreaks and late night drinking. Anyone who has been there recognizes the innate truth of the lyric. Without taking anything away from either Lady Day or the Chairman of the Board, it is fair to say the song almost interprets itself. As Sinatra sang in a different song, you just wind it up and let it go. Louis Armstrong sang many Mercer songs over his long and praiseworthy career. He sang “Jeepers Creepers” to a horse in the 1938 movie “Going Places”. Harry Warren, an outstanding composer, was Mercer’s partner on this song. Many other artists have also sung this tune. In the Songbook CDs, Satchmo sings “Blues in the Night”. The words appear to hang slightly behind the melody, giving the world a lesson in what swing means. He even speaks some of the lyrics to emphasize their appropriateness and poetic essence. His trumpet solo reflects the lyrics, and mimic his own vocals. This is quite a tribute to Mercer’s artistry. Conclusion Johnny Mercer’s lyrics are wedded to the melody of the song. It is something that jazz musicians love. It provides them with a narrative frame on which to build their improvisations. It signals to them the feelings of the song. It is interesting that not only Lester Young and Miles Davis memorized lyrics to songs but, at least when it came to Johnny Mercer’s songs, others did so as well. The range of jazz musicians who recorded Mercer’s creations is a wide one and is still being added to. There is a great difference between versions of his songs by jazz or jazz influenced performers and those from other genres. Obviously, Mercer himself had strong jazz roots, which revealed themselves time after time. From the folksiness of “Lazy Bones” to the sophistication of “The Days of Wine and Roses”, Mercer’s lyrics were pure jazz poetry. Their meaning goes deeper than their surface, like a satisfying jazz solo. Both Armstrong and Coltrane could find jazz meaning in Mercer’s lyrics as could many in-between. Mercer wrote some songs with jazz musicians, from the humorous “My Baby Likes to Be-Bop”, with Walter Bishop, Jr., and the haunting “Midnight Sun” with Lionel Hampton, to his final great hits with Henry Mancini, “Charade”, “Moon River”, and “Days of Wine and Roses”. After all the analysis of Mercer’s work, the simplest and truest statement regarding why jazz musicians, including the boppers loved Johnny’s work is that he was one of them, a jazz lyricist who loved their work. It was a match made in heaven as Daryl Sherman (2009} suggests. This fine jazz pianist and performer notes that Mercer’s lyrics are so well formed to the melody that one can 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 Eleven Bonanza 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 of the nature of the genre. After all, it really appears that we grow fond of the old TV shows as we age. The theme songs not only identify the shows when they are new, they also call them to mind after the shows are off the air. A bar or two calls them to mind in a flash. A few bars of the theme from The Rockford Files, Love Boat, Jackie Gleason, Cheers, Sanford and Son, Mash or my own favorite, Peter Gunn, flashes the action into our minds and time melts away. Similarly, movie themes remain famous long after the movies they graced have been forgotten. The theme from Rocky, The Wizard of Oz, Flashdance, Shaft, Singin’ in the Rain, Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate, Live and Let Die, Goldfinger… one could continue almost endlessly. The theme song, then, sets the theme and reminds us of the TV or movie. Perhaps the most memorable TV theme song was that from Bonanza. The show seems to have lasted on TV forever. In fact, it was on from 1959 until 1973 in first run and is still on TV today in reruns. That gave viewers plenty of time to have Jay Livingston’s and Ray Evans’s simple melody instilled permanently in their brains. In fact, many baby boomers grew up with the show. Each of Pa Cartwright’s sons mirrors an aspect of goodness useful in opposing the evil embodied in Virginia City. That aspect, of course, comes from a reflection of his mother. Pernell Roberts, as Adam, decided that his mother was “a woman of intelligence, a gentle soul and the qualities of being strong willed, something she got from her British ancestors”. Dan Blocker. Hoss, believes that his mother had “a rich sense of humor” like him, and was also big and strong. Finally, Michael Landon—Little Joe—found his mother more complicated than his brothers. She was “a woman of mystery and intrigue. My mother had formed some questionable alliances during her younger, carefree days in New Orleans. After dad married her, a former suitor tried to blackmail her and dad killed him. In an effort to help her erase the background. That maybe wasn’t the best. Ben Cartwright took off for Nevada and The Ponderosa, but another suitor followed. Right after I was born 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 of righteousness (Anonymous 1962). Moral Lessons from Bonanza Writers in the Golden Age of Television knew that if it isn’t the Bible, it’s in Shakespeare. They drew freely on these sources for their writing. It is clear that David Dortort, who did the Bonanza pilot, and the other writers, including Alex Sharp, Suzanne Clauser, Thomas Thomoson, Michael Landon, John Hawkins, Ward Hawkins, Robert Vincent Wright, Ken Pettus, Anthony Lawrence, Denne Petitclerc, Robert Barron, Frank Cleaver, Joe Pagano, Preston Wood, and Frank Chase who worked on Bonanza, were well aware of the prime sources for Euro-American literature. Each Bonanza program fits easily under the heading of a Bible lesson. For example, Steven Skelton provides a number of lessons built around Bonanza episodes. Some of them are “Death at Dawn”, for which Skelton says the appropriate Biblical topic is “fathers”. The verse is “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty (Corinthians 6:18)”. The episode involves Hoss becoming a father figure to a young boy whose mother dies. The boy’s real father is a convict. When his father escapes from prison, he and Hoss are involved in a shootout in which Hoss kills the boy’s father and has to give the news to him. In “The Abduction”, the issue of jealousy is explored in Skelton’s series. He uses the following from Proverbs 27:4: “Anger is cruel and fury overwhelms but who can stand before jealousy. When Ben aids a friend who has been cuckolded, and has become bitter because of it, a hired hand tells the man that Ben only helped him build a mill because Ben is himself after the man’s wife—everyone is hurt by the results of jealousy. ln The Henry Comstock Story, shown on November 7, 1959, but actually the second episode filmed, the story of the founding of Virginia City unfolds. A flashback has Henry T.P. Comstock visiting 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 unarmed one is just wrong. They decide to even the odds in a show of spectacular marksmanship. Comstock, on a mule, follows them back to the Ponderosa. Little Joe remarks that “God helps fools and little children.” Alone the way, Comstock buys a share in a goldmine, and sells it for $1100 when he believes his partner is playing along with his con game. Of course, the mine is the famous silver Comstock Lode. The conman outsmarts himself. Along the way, one of the miners falls on his liquor and baptizes the mining town “Virginia”. Comstock adds City to the miner’s name as a more fitting name for what will, he states, become a big city. The program provides some background to Ben’s background in California as a partner of Sutter as well as his hatred of gold miners, and the lust that causes men to destroy the land. Ben also teaches the value of stewardship as he counsels his sons to replace any tree they cut down. The fierce love of the Ponderosa is on display when a miner who had paid Comstock $25 for the Ponderosa tries to drive them off the land. However, the potentially dangerous situation becomes a nostalgic one when Ben reminisces with his sons about their encounter with Comstock. The program also takes a few moments to display the moral characters of the sons and Hoss’s protectiveness toward others, especially Little Joe, who almost starts a war with the Paiutes when he sneaks off with the chief s daughter to a dance. Somehow it all fits around the theme of God protecting fools and little children. Ironically, Joe becomes one of those to whom he had condescended. One more example gives the flavor of the series and the way Bonanza can and has been used. In “The Last Trove”, the basic lesson is kindness. Here Proverbs 11:17 is used. “A kind man benefits himself but a cruel man brings trouble on himself”. In this episode, the Cartwrights show kindness to a mysterious worker who seeks shelter after robbing a bank. The robber, Sam, hires on as a hand. Little Joe doubts Sam’s story, but the Cartwrights decide to give Sam some room until proven otherwise. However, Joe is captured by the gang and Sam faces the dilemma of drawing on Joe or not. Bonanza provided a weekly Bible lesson cloaked in action entertainment. There was enough action to snare most people. A large segment of the audience was made up of young people n their teens or even preteens. The program was family friendly and continued the myths of the American West in which the cowboy fought fair and for justice, while working for the good of the community. The show did demonstrate some subtlety in exploring the motives of the villain. Sam could not draw on Joe, for example. There were causes leading to villainy, including failure in early nurturing. Prior events did have consequences, just as Ben was shaped by events in his own life. The Lessons of Bonanza Bonanza began its long run in the 1950s, a time when America still believed in its traditional values, before the rise of the new conservatives and the cynicism embodied in programs like Dallas. Ben made his money the old-fashioned way by hard work and integrity. He carried the weight of his fortune and station in life with “a sense of civic responsibility, charity, and warm family relations (Kellner, 60). Intuition substitutes for intellectuality. The Bible provides answers to all of Ben’s problems, although he adapts them to his circumstances. Moreover, he exhibits an admirable degree of tolerance, looking at people’s character not at skin color or other extraneous factors. Ability over birth is what matters, in keeping with Ben’s democratic principles. The premise worked well. Bonanza reached a wide audience on NBC. Its high point was in 1964-1967, when it was the number one show. It was in the top ten for most of its lengthy run, appealing to people who enjoyed American traditional values set in that most American of places, the American West. Moreover, it is set at a time when those values were clearly beginning to be challenged and changing, the period when the Comstock Lode was found, the Civil War over, and the frontier nearing its end. Business and the robber barons were on the rise, and the first millionaires were eager to shape America in their image. The fact is that the Cartwrights were an appealing mix, each reflecting an aspect of goodness in the battle against evil. Although Ben was tough, he was rational, a pioneer sensitive and committed to justice. He had strong civic commitment, as did his sons. The program promoted these virtues within good plots, dramatic action, fine acting, and appealing characters. The fact is that the Cartwrights were a family that exhibited mutual love. They had a sense of loyalty to each other, and showed it in a humorous manner, adding to its appeal. The Cartwrights saw their commitment to their family as extending to aiding the community (Hammerstein. p. 223). As one author notes “The sight of the Cartwright s charging down a hillside on horseback—old Ben with his great mane of hair whipping behind him like a Biblical prophet, Adam, with the deadly eyes of a swooping hawk, Hoss, so huge of chest and shoulder that the giant bay under him looked puny by comparison, and Little Joe, a wild rebel yell on his lips—was enough to cow the coolest man. And this close-knit family of men stood between the silver barons and the most extensive stretch of timberland in the Comstock Lode area” (Himmelstein 223). Note the Biblical imagery in the quotation. Ben is compared with a Biblical prophet. The others sons have aspects, which together add up to the personification of goodness. They ventured forth from the Ponderosa, their vast Garden of Eden to right the wrongs of the area. Not only did they guard their property, which helped give them the status, authority and strength to help others. But they sought to protect their own home as well. As powerful as the Cartwright’s were, they had to face down the even-richer silver barons. Unlike the cattle and silver barons, the Cartwrights had heartfelt concern for others, and were truly charitable. In sum they were good citizens, embodying the values of the Old West, as seen from the perspective of the late Eisenhower and Kennedy period The Cartwrights were also a male dynasty in line with traditional gender thinking of the period. The joke about the program is that the Cartwrights were the kiss of death. The minute one of the brothers, for example, was involved in a romantic alliance, viewers were certain she would be dead by the end of the episode. However, that did not deter the Cartwrights, because the strong heterosexual ethos of the period demanded their adherence to all the requirements of masculinity, including a romantic interest in women, whom they treated as gallant gentlemen. Ultimately, the lessons of Bonanza stem from the masculine, one could rightly say muscular, Christianity of the period. Remember it was a period when many Americans regularly attended church services. It was a time when, ideally at least, there were clear-cut, black and white rules for life, gender relations, values, and associated behavior. Those rules were just being challenged when Bonanza began its run and the critique increased as the sixties ran its course. Interestingly, the show continued its run during the height of the critique, somehow continuing to appeal to a large segment of the population in the midst 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 offer wisdom in the next, marked not only Have Gun—Will Travel, but the adult Western in general, as a stereotypical masculine genre. There were few female heroics in these TV series. The brawls, shootout, and other forms of violence were products of a male socia1ethos; remember it took even the countercultural some time to get around to female equality. David Dortort, the producer of Bonanza, consciously eschewed female interference in the Western. Speaking of the leading character in the series, the patriarchal Ben Cartwright, Dortort explained that “he is not led around by the nose by anybody. We do not have any moms built into our show—or, for that matter, any women. We are, as it were, anti-momism” (Mac Donald 1987, 751). It is important to remember that momism was not a good thing in the 1950s, and many in those Freudian days attacked it as a means for emasculating men. The Organization Man in the Gray Flannel Suit had become a conformist who violated the basic individualism of America’s frontier tradition and wound up in The Lonely Crowd. Bonanza embraced the myth of Old West while promoting the domestic family, albeit, without an actual mother present. Interestingly, in a period of time noted for its homophobia, the domestic male family of the Ponderosa became a strong forum for traditional family values and gender roles. Those values were wrapped in a package bound with the strong ties of the Bible. Ben generally articulated those words but sometimes the Biblical verses and allusions were given to one of the sons. Remember each of the sons embodied an aspect of Goodness. Generally, they stayed in character, reflecting clearly, and sometimes didactically, their personal virtues. Conclusions It may appear strange to those who did not live in the period of Bonanza’s popularity that media guru Marshall McLuhan could state that Americans were living through Bonanza, which reflected American gender roles. Certainly gender roles have changed drastically since the program first aired. Attitudes have changed about what constitutes the “typical” American family. Certainly, the family itself has undergone drastic changes. The death knell of the fifties family has been sounding for many decades now. We know the facts: about half of new marriages ending in divorce; single parents head over a quarter of families with young children. Nuclear families are breaking up. Less than 13 per cent of the elderly are living with families. More women are now childless than in the recent past, and that by choice. And the roll call goes on (Jennings Bryant, editor, 166). Interestingly, although certainly embodying different realities from those of today, Ben Cartwright was a single parent. In common with many single parents he was not averse to marriage. He often idealized it to his sons. Not only were there programs devoted to each of his wives but references to these women emerge in a number of the shows. Interestingly, we still embody many of the images of individualism so common to Bonanza. If one looks closely at current programs on TV, there is still an idealization if not realization of the nuclear family. The dysfunctional members of The Simpsons and the somewhat more functional members 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 Broke Girls would, even while they demonstrate aspects of the “new morality. There is nostalgia for the old one peeping out in the cracks of these shows, demonstrating the sociological truth that behavior often changes faster than values, real culture than the ideal culture Ben still goes on in TV Land reruns, doling out Biblical lessons to his sons living the just life as he sees it. The old American values of individualism, fair play, protection of the weak and hard work amid stewardship are expressed daily to old and new fans.