Welcome to Jazz History

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Welcome to Jazz History!

• MUSC 5219
• Monday Wednesday, 905-1020am, rm 1713
• Dr. Beddage beddage_victor_at_colstate.edu
• Office hours MW 1130am-1pm

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Today

• Duke Ellington
• Featured instrumentalists
• Count Basie
• Life
• Works
• Lester Young

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Exam, Next Thursday (2/19/09)

• Topics Origins of jazz to Swing Era
• All topics covered in text (incl. Keeping Time
  articles), lectures
• Drop-the-needle
• Short-answer, fill-in-the-blanks
• Essay

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Ellington Arranging Techniques

• Voicing for individual band members
• Motivic writing
• Eg. Ko Ko
• Harmonic complexity
• Eg. Harlem Airshaft intro
• Eg. Star Crossed Lovers

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Arranging Techniques

• Formal complexity
• Eg. Concerto for Cootie
• Writing across sections
• Eg. Mood Indigo

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Featured Instrumentalists

• Youve got to write with certain men in mind.
  You write just for their abilities and natural
  tendencies and give them places where they do
  their best My band is my instrument.
  (Ellington), 1966

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Featured Instrumentalists

• Saxophone / clarinet
• Barney Bigard
• Johnny Hodges
• Eg. Prelude to a Kiss
• Harry Carney
• Eg. Sophisticated Lady
• Agra
• Paul Gonzalves

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Featured Instrumentalists

• Trumpet
• Bubber Miley
• Cootie Williams
• Cat Anderson (video)
• Clark Terry
• Trombone
• Juan Tizol
• Tricky Sam Nanton
• Lawrence Brown

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Featured Instrumentalists

• Drums
• Sonny Greer
• Louis Bellson
• Sam Woodyard
• Bass
• Jimmy Blanton
• Eg. Jack the Bear

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Ellingtons piano style

• video

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William Count Basie (1904-84)
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Count Basie Early bands

• Red Bank, NJ, to NYC
• Vaudeville to Kansas City

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Count Basie Early bands
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Count Basie Early bands

• Walter Page
• Bennie Moten (1933)
• Basie organizes own band (1935)

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Count Basie Early bands

• Recordings with Lester Young (1936)
• Shoe Shine Boy

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Count Basie Early bands

• While Benny Goodman always had big
  arrangements, with Basie, we had something no
  expensive arrangements could touch. The cats
  would come in, somebody would hum a tune. Then
  someone else would play it over on the piano once
  or twice. Then someone would set up a riff, a
  ba-deep, a ba-dop. Then Daddy Basie would
  two-finger it a little. And then things would
  start to happen.

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Count Basie Early bands

• Half the cats couldnt have read music if theyd
  had it. They didnt want to be bothered anyway.
  Maybe sometimes one cat would bring in a written
  arrangement and the other would run over it. By
  the time Jack Wadlin, Skeet Henderson, Buck
  Clayton, Freddie Green, and Basie were through
  running over it, taking off, changing it, the
  arrangement wouldnt be recognizable anyway.

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Count Basie Early bands

• Everything that happened, happened by ear. For
  the two years I was with the band we had a book
  of a hundred songs, and every one of us carried
  every last damn note of them in our heads.
  (Billie Holiday, 1962)

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The Basie Style

• Head arrangements and riffs
• Eg. One OClock Jump (1937)
• Source material?
• Laid-back time feel
• Eg. Moten Swing
• Eg. Lil Darlin

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Count Basie Early bands

• Rhythm section
• Basie
• Freddie Green
• Walter Page
• Jo Jones

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Count Basie Early bands

• Important soloists
• Saxophone Lester Young, Herschel Evans, Frank
  Foster, Frank Wess
• Trumpet
• Buck Clayton
• Thad Jones (video)
• Snooky Young

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Count Basie 1940s onwards

• Written arrangements
• 1950-1952 small groups (video)

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Count Basie 1940s onwards

• 1950s big band
• Emphasis on arrangements
• Neal Hefti
• Sammy Nestico
• Eg. Basie, Straight Ahead
• Frank Foster
• Eg. Shiny Stockings
• Quincy Jones
• Later career

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Lester Young (1909-59)
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Lester Young

• Biography
• Career with Basie
• After Basie

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Lester Young

• Stylistic innovations
• Sound
• Melody
• Eg. Shoe Shine Boy (1936)
• Lester Leaps In
• Swing feel vs. earlier saxophonists

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Next class / assignments

• Swing era (Ch. 6)
• Assignments Study!!!
• Readings / listening Read Ch. 6, listen to
  Seven Come Eleven and After Youve Gone on
  JCC1, Body and Soul and Willow Weep for Me on
  SCCJ