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My goodness, being Frank, where the only way to be is Frank. Hello everyone, and welcome to being Frank. We're the only way to be is Frank. I'm your host, Frank WELBORNA. What I'd like to thank you for joining us on what we like to call the Intelligent Conversation podcast, where no conversations out of bounds and all points of view are welcome. You know, we record live to tape and I give you the date so you have some
context and relevant It's May Day. May first. Me, the appreciation of jazz has always been a lot like my feelings towards hockey. It's not for everyone, but those who do enjoy them are almost fanatical in their support, and because it's not for everyone, only seems to make their love even more passionate. It's kind of a paradox. However, what cannot be disputed is the importance of jazz and
mut style and influence on American society and culture. It's not hyperable to say that we would not be what we are today without it. So as we complete Jazz Appreciation Month, let's take some time to reflect on that history and significance. Today, of course, we have an expert on just that joining us for this edition of the
Intelligent Conversation Podcast. Please welcome back to being Frank freshof is highly successful library series The History of Jazz in America is the jazz historian, musician and teacher mister Eric DeVito. Welcome back, Eric.
How's it going. Frank happy to be on the show as always, Thanks for having me.
It's great, and I want to say how much I enjoyed your series of both the Nayak and Puremont Public Libraries were absolutely wonderful where you link the history of jazz to the music. You brought in wonderful top shelf musicians. And we're going to go through some of those examples in our program tonight. Here a few examples of just how jazz influenced American society. So we're looking forward to that.
So let's let's go right into it. Okay, Jazz, like America was created from a melting pot of cultures and people, so so talk about its origins, where did it come from, and how did it come to represent American and American style?
Yeah?
Absolutely, so, you know, to me, jazz is such a personification of what it means to be American.
You know, it's you know, you can't.
I always I always explain this to my students this way, and it's, you know, it's it's this is so fresh in my head because it's we're just coming off, as you said, you know, Jazz Appreciation Month in April, and it was just you know, International Jazz Day April thirtieth. So you know, I've literally been going through this lesson plan with all my classes.
So it's always kind of.
What I lead off with is how much jazz really does you know, parallel or symbolize being American? And the first thing I always do is I always ask my students. I always say how many people were born here in America? And depending on you know, over the over the career, the years of my career, I've taught in different areas,
sometimes in New York City, sometimes in Westchester. Now I'm in Yonkers, but you know, and the amount of hands always changed, but usually I get a you know, majority of hands that I you know, go up, who was
who was born here in America? And then I say, okay, uh, now put your hand down if your or keep your hand up if your parents were born here, and then a few hands go down and grandparents, and I go as far back as I can, and at some point all the hands go down, because you know, we I talk about, to be American means that your roots come from somewhere else, because we're a very young country with a very short history compared to say, you know, Europe
or other in other parts of the world. And then I asked them, you know, how many you know, we talk about where their family comes from and and how they identify with their culture. So being an American, you know, has to mean your culture comes from from somewhere else. And jazz is the same way. And I kind of paralleled by saying, you know, jazz, like many of you, was born here, but its roots come from somewhere else.
That's where it gets its identity from. So we kind of start there, and that's, you know, a very American thing. At a lot of times, when you go to other countries, you ask somebody where they're from, and and you know, of course I'm from Germany, where you're in Germany or I'm from and they identify with that. But I feel like America very much, we very much identify with all the various different places our ancestors come from, and I think that's really important key factor to jazz as well.
So I think go ahead, I'm sorry, no, no, go ahead. Well, you know, I think what's important to mention there that it's the roots are are strongly in Africa. The very germ, if you will, of jazz comes from African sounds, and I know you have an example of that, but talk to that and then how jazz from that dealt with certain social issues as racism, segregation, that that came as so interesting, how music can develop thoughts in other areas
as as we just mentioned. But but talk a little bit about the African the actual African roots of jazz.
Absolutely, so, you know, jazz, jazz gets its roots from really, you know, a lots of different places, but primarily the two places it gets its roots from are Africa and Europe, and in particular, it's it's African influences have a lot to do with its rhythm, the use of syncopated rhythm and how rhythm is perceived, not just in jazz, but in all the styles of music that have come after jazz or and really the blues that have been influenced
by the blues. You know, they have a very a very rhythmic characteristic that is contributed to the music of Africa. And also you know, of course European classical music has a huge influence on It's it's harmony, it's use of harmony, and it's a lot of its structures and its forms.
So what I usually start out my lesson with actually is a big map with a circle around the United States, like you are here for jazz, and then I have two arrows pointing to each continent, one to Africa and one to Europe, and this is where you come from. So regarding that African influence, you know, we start way back, you know, I always the first thing I asked my students is how did an African influence or culture get here in the United States. And of course it's all
ties into American history. We talk about the Transatlantic slave trade, you know, and so with the slave trade from about sixteen fifty to eighteen sixty. Of course, you know, this is one of the ugly parts of history that yielded maybe an unexpected I don't like to say, you know, a good result, but a positive outcome came out of.
A tragic historical thing.
So through the slave trade, millions of Africans, of course, were transported against their will, broke families, broken up, stripped away from their culture, terrible, terrible thing, and they were brought to all different parts of the world, across the Atlantic Ocean. Many to South America. Actually over five million went to South America, about four and a half million went to you know, what was the West Indies, the Caribbean area, and.
A lot of people like you don't know this.
About half a million were transported to North America, and of course that was primarily in the South, and a lot of that had to do with first the geography of of of transporting them it was closer, but also of course the you know, the the reliance on manual labor for agriculture that was a big part of the economy. So that's kind of where we start with, how did this African culture get here in the first place. And then of course we talk about with that culture or
with that with those people came their culture. You know, you could take somebody away from their family, away from their homeland, but you can't take their culture.
Away from them.
So of course when those when those Africans came here, most of them from you know, West Africa, from places like the Congo and Sierra Leone and Senegal.
They brought with them their culture.
Now how they you know, how much they were allowed to express their culture varied and the different ways they found, you know, they were able to do that. Sometimes it was done in secret, sometimes it was done you know, depending.
On what the situation was.
But they brought with them their music, and we first started to see that with things like slave songs and work songs, and these were songs that were sung on many different levels.
You know.
One level was it was it was just a way to pass the time. Another level was, of course they were used as ways to communicate among slaves, and they could have been what's called signal songs or map songs where the words actually had double or hidden meanings about you know, things they wanted to communicate, or how to escape using the underground railroad and things like that. So so that's kind of where the mix from their African music and culture kind of became a.
New thing that was mixed.
One of the musical examples I share with you before we go even into that, is just talking about the rhythm and the use of poly rhythms, and you know, African music is so much more rhythmically sophisticated than European you know, quote unquote when I say European mean like
Western European music. When we think of music from the you know, sixteen hundreds to the twentieth century that primarily had composers from Germany, Austria, you know, Italy, for it was so much more rhythmically complicated that we actually don't our own Western music system has trouble notating it. You know, we use things like triplets, which is a way to divide a beat into three equal parts. But that's irrational.
You can't divide a number into three equal parts. So that's why we have trouble performing a lot of that music because you know, and not to get too but it's it's not as quote unquote natural because we tended to divide our beat into two equal parts. But when a lot of you know, African music, and when we deal with the blues and jazz, it's based off the triplet, and so that comes with an unequal division of the beat, which means there's more room when we do it for interpretation.
And then when we talk about swinging rhythms.
And stuff that all comes off of it.
So just to kind of start as a point, I think it's really important to listen to African drumming, you know, the music of traditional music of West Africa, and also this music features lots of improvisation. You know, improvisation was something that it happened in class styles of classical.
Music, like baroque music. There it was expected.
If you were a baroque musician in the sixteen hundreds, you knew how and when to appropriately and stylistically improvise. But traditionally, you know, quote unquote classical musicians are a lot less comfortable improvising than people who are maybe jazz or popular musicians who have studied, you know, contemporary music, which gets its roots really from the blues and jazz.
And music of Africa.
So you hear right away the improvisation that's a part of the structure of the music, the call and response, the dialogue that's happening. That becomes such an important part of the blues and then of jazz and a more contemporary.
Styles of music.
So when you listen to this African drumming, it's almost like can put you in a trance because of all the rhythmic layering that's happening. That to our ears is really complicated. But you know, somebody who grew up maybe in Africa listening to this music, it was just natural.
It was just part of the organic feel of the music.
And I think that's a really good place to start to understand what we're dealing with rhythmically.
H So, what what so? What are we hearing there? Eric? What?
What?
What did we? What did? Obviously it's drumming, but within that drumming explo exactly what we were hearing kind of musically if you can.
Yeah, so you're you're hearing you know, lots and lots of rhythmic layering and you know, different polyrhythms and and creating almost like this, you know what we call syncopation, which is when you accent and parts of the beat that are kind of not generally on the beat, something that we're more familiar with in Western European music, but you know, the parts of the beat, or the offbeats, are in between the beats, and when you accent and
emphasize those different parts of the beat, it creates this kind of tug of war against the beat and the accents, and it kind of almost you know, I describe it to my students as it almost pulls you.
Into two different directions.
I call it like a tug of war of rhythm, and a lot of that is what makes it. When I listen to that music, I can't help but move. It's like my body is being pulled. And of course, when you when you you know, as much a part of the music of African music is the movement. Dancing and movement was an integral part of performing this music. If you ever watch anybody you know African music be performed, there's almost always a dance element or a movement element,
and that's because the rhythm. It's almost just the phenomenon of hearing those syncopations and those polyrhythms and that layered rhythm just makes your body want to move and dance. And I think that is kind of where, you know, as we go further down the line, and jazz is being a music that people dance to and that became a popular form of music, it really has to do with that syncopated rhythm and also that improvisational component to it.
And if I might add, and it brings me into my next question, about jazz culture. It can be and was often seen as sexual music if you will, there's a sexual component to listen to it and to see the dance movements can be interpreted by some people as sexy. So it kind of was kind of called immoral music, if you will for a while. You know, the music of blacks, if you will, was at a time, as we know, it was like different. So it's over there, okay,
all right. Social implications, yes, the social implications of it were strong. How did they overcome that to become serious musicians and for people to go beyond that kind of trite way of looking at it?
Well, so I think, you know, it's interesting when you when you say that, because there's a lot of assumptions that go into it. I think over here in our very you know, Anglo white, Caucasian based on European, we look at that and think of that because, you know, especially when our society, you know, when America first started with the Puritans and the Quakers and all that, we
were very rigid people. You know, we had a very religious kind of beginning, and so music that was more maybe we'll use the quote unquote like primitive to us or even exotic, because that's what it was. Right before the world was really connected. You couldn't turn on the radio and hear or to go on the internet and
hear music from other parts of the world. So these things were very exotic and exhilarating and exciting, and and a place like Africa would have definitely, I think been parts of it would have definitely been considered more primitive or less civilized to early you know, settlers and Europeans
back then. So when they saw them moving and of course the way they were dressed and and and you know, comparing it to our own culture in a very ethnocentric way, we would have said that that was less civilized and more primitive, and the use of their bodies and dancing and something that was more primitive. Of course, I could definitely see that being characterized as more sexual. And it's not too unlike you know, when we look at people tango dance or something that's very sensual and there's a
kind of a rawness to it. And I think that's what, you know, is part of what makes the music so visceral and organic and exciting. But you're right there, there is definitely a cognitive dissonance or like a dichotomy of of a of a very Anglo you know, religious culture that was, you know how a lot of America we started out in a way.
So I definitely see that, can see.
The parallel there, you know, you were so we're talking about it being a moral so when that first happened, you know, we we'll get to it in a bit, but jazz, when jazz kind of evolved as its own musical form, This happened in New Orleans, right in Louisiana, and there's a rich history there of why that happened. You know, that wasn't a coincidence or an accident. Louisiana was it was owned by France.
It was owned by Spain.
Actually then it was owned by France. There was some wars and treaties, then it went back and eventually we bought it. We purchased it Asia Louisiana purchase, and that completely changed the landscape of the US.
But we also.
Acquired a huge, you know, piece of land that was full of European culture already, and it was also full of African culture. And by the way, the Africans there weren't considered slaves or weren't considered you know, they enjoyed
a lot more freedom than Africans did. African people did, so it was kind of there was a lot of shock there to the way Africans were treated once they were part of the US, and there was a big culture there of you know what we think of as creole culture, or a mix of French or European and African culture from you know, different cultures that were there and that were over there already, and and the Africans that were there, and the mixing of those cultures, and
a lot of those creoles were the first jazz musicians.
But this music was often in.
The beginning, it was kind of like relegated to or delegated to what you might call the red light districts where you know, things were not it was a little bit more underground. It was kind of like not in the you know, you wanted to stay far away, just.
Like Times Square used to be. Right in the nineties, it was the red light district.
I remember the seventies. It was good in the nineties compared I remember the seventies right.
Right, So, yeah, I guess I'm dating myself a little bit. But so that's where the music was kind of allowed to because you know, the big cities and the red light districts, that's where the bars and the speakeasies and the clubs and all that were, and so that's where you heard that music really had a chance to kind of start and do its thing. And then you know, it did that for a while until it became a
little bit more mainstream. But going back before we even get to Louisiana, it's important to kind of know that that so that African music it that was brought here, that started to be you know, that was used as a main ingredient in a lot of the songs that slaves were now singing while they were here, and so you get this this concept of a slave song or a work song, and that in itself as such as
interesting history and culture because of all the functions. You know, first of all, the fact that people can be stripped from their culture, stripped from their families, and then find a way through music to give themselves hope to overcome, to me, is like one of the most powerful things
about music. The fact that these a lot of these you know, these people had in some ways nothing to live for, and yet they overcome all odds, and they create music, they make art, and so I think that's a real testament to just them and their music and
their culture. And so you see these songs emerge, whether they're songs to give people hope, which eventually becomes the spiritual, right, we talk about the spiritual, which is a huge ingredient in the blues, and eventually jazz and and all American folk music, and then eventually gospel music comes from spirituals.
But that all really comes.
From the slaves song and the work song, which were sung by slaves.
And wet we haven't exact, we have an exact.
So I have an example here, and a lot of these songs, of course were sung a cappella because they might might be songs people sung while they were working out in fields or maybe when they got to congregate the little bit of time they got to socialize. But this is called You're Gonna Rea just what you sew, and it's just kind of characterizes from an album songs of the American Negro Slaves. And I love the title because there's a real kind of hidden meaning.
You know.
Of course, a lot of you know, this could have been taking place on a plantation and so you have the agricultural reference.
You're gonna reap just what you sew.
But I think there's also some very interesting foreshadowing going on there about, you know, the slavery in general and what's to come and and and all that. So this is a great a cappella example of just the slaves, you know, what we'd call an American negro slaves.
Let's listen, turning your broda keep nu, find.
Fighting on the out and.
Fight horror in the valley. You will read so you believe just what you show. You be ree what you.
Saw, you know, Eric.
Unfortunately, people can't see us. They can only hear us. And it's great that they could hear the music, but I wish they could see my expression and yours. You kind of go away when you hear that music. It takes you somewhere. It is spiritual, it takes you inside. There's something about it that that reaches you. That's that it's emotional so and yet it's the same time it's so simple. Speak to you.
Yeah, I mean, and you could just hear I mean, if you can't hear the blues in that, even though this is pre the blues, if you can't hear like the you know, when I listen to that, I'm I'm hearing the blues, even though this is a song before the blues existed, probably, you know, so you can see
the connections or you can hear the connections there. And I think, you know, the comments that you're making are interesting because I think it's funny how we you know, we think of this as as a very you know, like before when you were talking about the music being you know, sexual or primitive. It it was funny because we very often I think that's one of the things that made a lot of people connect to this music. It was I don't want to say it was taboo,
but in some ways it was. And it was very counter to what we kind of looked at as you know,
quote unquote appropriate acceptable music. You know, a lot of Polish went into Europe, goes into European classical music and its compositions and it's tone, you know, just how we spend time on things like tone production and technique, and that's not what this was about, of course, And so I think there's a freshness to it in a in a real organic part of that music that really appeals to a lot of people and part of the reason why, you know, and that's true with a lot of folk
styles of music, of course, but I think definitely this kind of music.
Now, Eric, you mentioned the importance of geography, and particularly in the South. In New Orleans is still famous for for for jazz, but yet it's certainly not the only place. And it expanded is as it should, and took its culture with it out of Mississippi and then involved not only in terms of where it was but how it
was being played. It became bebop, for example, when it came to New York and some of the other great northern cities, you know, Chicago and Troit and New York, and each kind of had its own sound, if you will, from what my understanding, speak a little to that. Sure, well, you.
Know, talking about how jazz parallels you know, society, you know, back in you know, the earlier part of the late part of the nineteenth century, in the early twentieth century, you know, things flourished where cities were, where big, where people were, where trade could happen, right, and that was generally along you know, trade routes which were rivers for the most part, especially before we had trucks and planes and all that stuff. So, you know, New Orleans or
Louisiana in general, but New Orleans. You know, like I said earlier, it wasn't just coincidence. There was a lot of factors about being in the right place at the right time. And I always talk about jazz as being like this chicken soup. When I teach it, you know,
we go, how do you make chicken soup? And we talk about all the ingredients, and you know, there was a blues as an ingredient, and slave songs were an ingredient, and rag time when we get to that as an ingredient, and classical music and all these ingredients, and we talk about New Orleans being the pot where it all cooks together. And of course, you know, you need heat and you need time to make soup. And that's kind of what happened.
So you have New Orleans, which is on this port city right it's on the Mississippi River.
Of course, it's also.
On the near it's on the ocean is nearby, and it's this important city for trade, international city. So you have all sorts of people coming in and out, different cultures. Some are transient, some are decide to stay, some leave. You have the French and Spanish, you know, the European culture that was there through the Louisiana purchase, and so you have just this hub of activity. And so that's where cultures really start to mix.
And that's what jazz is.
It's a mixing of all these So all these people, they bring their culture, they bring their music, the pieces of its stay, Different things come in, and over time we start to have this development of this new kind of music that takes all of these this African influence and the slave songs and the work songs, and the European classical influence and the music that the Creoles were playing because Creoles were African people that were they weren't
you know, as I mentioned before, they weren't. They were free, many of them. They were allowed to have an education. They studied classical music, many of them, and so they brought their own, you know, flavor of a mix of African and European music already, so all that mixes together in Louisiana, and right about the turn of the century, the late eighteen hundreds, you know, some people will say, who's the first jazz musician.
That's a great thing.
People like to argue about Most people will say it was well, some people will say it was Jelly Roll Morton, who was a self proclaimed inventor of jazz. He's probably the most interesting character of my favorites because he was, you know, definitely a pathological liar, and yes, he was there part of its on set and its inception and an important bridge between ragtime and true jazz. A lot of people tell you it's Buddy Bolden, who is a trumpet player that I think died around the age of
twenty three or twenty four years old. There's only like one surviving picture of him. It's you know, and that's one of the things that I talked about it in one of my lectures. But the mystery of history around jazz is is we don't you know, if you ask ten different people, you might get ten different answers. But you start to see these early jazz musicians like Buddy Bolden, who are now playing what we might consider the first
form of jazz. And then of course you have Lewis Armstrong, who's from New Orleans, you know, a great symbol of our country, a symbol of jazz, symbol of New Orleans, and he's one of the first people to really, you know, maybe commercially become very successful that it becomes a you know, eventually a household name.
From this era, in this time period. And so you see what we call New Orleans jazz or early jazz.
And some of the best examples of that are the early works by Lewis Armstrong in the Hot five or is Hot seven and one of the things that you saw in New Orleans jazz. And it's funny because some people call this Dixieland jazz. But I always think this is interesting because right from its inception, the first recorded jazz album was actually not recorded by African Americans. It was recorded by a bunch of white dudes, and they were called the Dixie Land something jazz Man or something.
And then you hear that term and it was like, right as it started, the people who created this music were exploited through commercialism and a great symbol for America, right, what a great symbol of our country. So I love how jazz is from its inception. It just parallels American society.
Is so great.
But actually, yeah, the first recorded jazz album was a Dixie Land they called it, and it was all white musicians and when you see Dixieland jazz, you tend to see that we really think of true early jazz. It's kind of referred to as early jazz or New Orleans jazz, and there's a couple of key characteristics you can't ignore. And I didn't include it for time, but ragtime music.
A lot of people confuse ragtime music and jazz music because there's a lot of similarities and there is some crossover, but generally speaking, you know, if you think of Scott Joplin, who's maybe the most famous ragtime composer, ragtime music does mix the African rhythms with the European harmony and forms and structures. But one of the distinctive differences of true rag time music is that it's not improvised. It was
written out. You know, a lot of those early player pianos, you used to be able to buy the roles and the piano would play it and it was all written out. And those ragtime pieces were written out like a classical piece of music. But it featured that exciting syncopation, that danceable rhythm that made people want to move and dance
and became very commercially popular. However, one of the things that really sets apart earlier early jazz is its use of improvisation, which comes from the blues and also comes from African music of course, and then you know, you hear people like Jelly Royal Martin who was doing more of that, and then eventually Lewis Armstrong who kind of
standardized it. And before we get there, you know, I have a recording because we're talking about the South and New Orleans and the Mississippi area, and we don't want to neglect the Mississippi Delta area where which kind of we see the blues really form in the South, and before we get into jazz, really need to hear the blues.
And you know, the blues is important, of course, because without the blues, there really would be no contemporary musical styles period, whether it's the blues turning into jazz, which influences you know, rock and then all sorts of popular music.
Right, none of.
It exists without the blues.
And of course the blues doesn't exist without slave songs and work songs, and those don't exist without the music of Africa. So it's all kind of linearly connected. But there was different kinds and blueses and you know, a lot of people when we talk about the Blues, if slave songs and work songs were expressing the hardships of the of the life of a slave, then what the Blues was doing is it was really expressing the hardships
of life post slavery. And when I teach this to my students, you know, we talk about, okay, when did slavery end? Does that mean African Americans were just everything was great in the world. They were free and they had equal opportunities, and of course not of course, the residual effects are still happening today. All so many social problems with racism and and of course we dealt with
segregation and all that, you know, stems from that. So the Blues was really the anthem for the post slave about expressing the hardships of life and how we would adapt to this you know, quote unquote freedom, which in many ways it wasn't, and how they adapted to life post slavery. And the Mississippi Delta Blues, which is just
blues that comes from that area. It had its very own unique culture that it dealt with, you know, and I like listen to the Blues, you hear a lot of things called street cries, which were in a sense like commercials.
There's some of them. I teach them.
I tell my students they were like the first commercials, where people were shouting what they might be selling on the street in a very musically phrased way and in.
Something Italian, and all the Italian neighborhood music to it.
Yes, and that that kind of it ends up turning into some ways early blues because they're mimicking a lot of that that you know, inflection and intonation and that structure. But the Mississippi Delta blues has kind of got its own thing going on. And of course you characterize this is a lot characterized by the use of the slide guitar and the kind of rawness to it, and and the rawness of the voice and the way that the
musicians are often accompanying themselves on the guitar. So I have a great example of a piece by Sunhouse, one of the great early blues musicians, uh, and this is called Death Letter Blues, and it's just you can hear the kind of rawness and the crudeness of his guitar and the slide guitar, and you know, if you try to transcribe this, which I had done because I used I actually performed this at I think by the first session of my jazz workshop, and I decided I'm going
to do this with a singer because I'm not much of a singer, and realizing that, oh, this is almost impossible to notate because it doesn't follow what we think of, you know, in quote unquote Western European I'm thinking of how many bars is this? This should be a twelve bar blues and it's not. Sometimes it's twelve and a half bars if you're going to try to write it out, or thirteen bars, and hey, how come he doesn't change harmony where? And of course that's not what these musicians
were thinking. That's a very academic way to look at it. So when we hear, you know, the true rawness of the blues, it's a very hard thing to notate if we're trying to be academic about.
It, because that's not what it was about. So check this out. This is death letter blues.
Got down on a cooling board. Well, I wash your right toors look down in her feet. It's a cruel gun of the dead to change day. I walked up reclos I said, I looked down in a friend, I said, go on, girlin't gonta lay her and judgment day the bragging of ten thousand people standing around the bearing ground. I didn't know how Lord tell.
Her letter down?
Look like chim sounding almost standing on the bearing.
Ground, you know, idea of the love.
Don't tell her the general leader down?
Where is the fool?
Wow? Wow? Right? What do I really could see our expressions would all going to these far away places. But that's I mean, guess the idea. It's trip, yeah, journey and.
The guitartoonings and stuff, you know. I like one of the one of the things I loved about playing that song was it's in this open tuning, you know, which is you know, very common in the in the Delta blues tradition and stuff that I hadn't experimented too much with.
So it was very cool.
The sounds that they're getting out of the guitars and stuff, the way they tune them, and of course using the slides and you know, kind of changing the tone of the instrument.
Incredible. Now, you know, jazz is always as I mentioned in my intro, it's kind of it still is to a degree underground music. But was there a golden era where of commercialization where jazz even approached mainstream music. Was there such an era?
Absolutely?
So, Yeah, this what we would think of as the swing period of the big band era. The nineteen thirties was really the heyday of when jazz was as it's most commercially successful, most popular, and it hasn't been so since. That's really the last time jazz was that it's most popular.
And why why? I mean, what was it? The music? Was it the timing? Was it a combination of things, whether certain changesalities?
Yeah, so there was. There was a lot of factors.
You know, one is we're coming off with the Great Depression, so people were looking for something to be hopeful about, and jazz checked a lot of those boxes.
Also.
You know, it's funny, my I I always think of one of the people who got me into jazz.
Was my grandmother. And wow, you know she when I when I.
Was in college and studying jazz. You know, I'm learning all these tunes I'd be practicing for and she would know the words to every song that I sang. She would know the tune and I get Gramma, how do you know all these songs that was the music she grew up with. You know, she grew up and earned a Great Depression. And it's funny because when I play this music for my students, it's old music.
You know, Oh this is old music.
And with my grandma, this was the music her parents didn't want her to be listening to.
You know, it's funny how it changed.
But but you know that time period, you had the Great Depression and you had people looking young people especially, and young people, by the way, always drives every time I say young people, I feel like that makes me I'm older, but you are young, you know. I tell this to my student. The record companies, they look for what the young people are into, and that's what drives record sales. So young people were into jazz because remember there was no people weren't going to the movies.
They weren't playing video games.
Yet they were, and they weren't during the Great Depression.
They weren't going the opera.
So they were going There was a dance in a swing hall band in every town and that's that was the entertainment. And so the swing band was and the dance hall band was the form of entertainment. That's what
young people were going to do. And so when the record labels got involved, and this is also when you see jazz commercially exploit, you know, the musicians for the first time because they because it wasn't the African Americans at the time who were the business owners and the club owners and the record label producers, and those were all white people, and they were business people, and they said, this is a money maker. How do we tap into this?
And so they did, and jazz was able to become extremely commercially successful during that time period, and it hasn't enjoyed that.
Kind of success since.
You know, if you if you went right now and googled how many what percentage of all record sales in the world are jazz records? You know, last time I did it, it was far less than one percent, you know, wow, And I don't know what it was in the nineteen thirties, but it was certainly were much much much higher.
You know.
It was what happened to Eric. I mean, we you know, and we talk, you know, fans do come and go, oh, but this is a music that's been with us for over a centuries. Yeah, So two things.
Happening, well, lots of things happened but two primarily things happened. First of all, it became economically almost impossible to continue to operate as a big band. You know, you saw success with bands like Duke Ellington and Count Basie Band. There was loads of big bands. They're extremely expensive.
To operate, you know.
It's just the you know, the fuel cost of touring, these buses going around, touring, hotel So just this aspect of such a large band being financially stable.
It had to fizzle out because it's just too expensive to do.
You know.
I can tell you that when I go on tour with just a couple of musicians, I run out of money between gas and hotel rooms and feeding everybody. So there's an exorbitant expense to have twenty five musicians touring around or whatever. But the other thing is, like I said, music,
you know, the record sales follow the young people. And in the nineteen fifties rock and roll exploded and that was the young people's new favorite thing, and that's what took over, and the record labels and the business executives and all these people said, hey, this is where we need to invest, this is the this is what the young people are into now.
It was jazz.
Now it's rock and roll, and so we better give that our attention, make those record deals, you know, get those people in, make them the stars, because that's what's gonna sell records.
And so that's what did happen, you know, rock and roll, and I love rock and rolls great. And by the way, there be no rock and roll.
Without jazz because in the blues, right, but that really was took, you know, took a big chunk or slice of the of the pie away from jazz.
And you know, that was what became popular now the young people.
But before we go too much into swing, I would be remiss as a jazz musician and educator to not talk a little bit about when jazz. You know, so when rag time and the blues mixed together and we have what's known as early New Orleans jazz.
Letwis Armstrong.
We really look at him as the maybe most important jazz musician because he was kind of like in fact, his nickname is Pops for a reason. A lot of the trends that even happened today in jazz, the standardization of the art form, a lot of it started with him. You know, first of all, he's from New Orleans great trumpet player and a vocalist. He started, you know, his groups and his early groups really started and personified that sound.
Of early jazz.
And one of the characteristics I always teach my students, you know, because they're they're younger people and they're not used to growing up with this music. And they always say, like, mister Devido, how do you how do we tell the difference I we're listening to New Orleans jazz or if it's swing or if it's bebop.
And we say, well, first of all, most.
Of the time, if you're listening to a proper New Orleans jazz group, you know, you listen for the instrumentation. You're gonna the New Orleans tradition, the street parades and the brass bands. That tradition came from these bands, these marching bands and brass bands. So you hear a lot of brass, and very often you hear tuba before you even hear the bass. The tuba line. The basslines were played by a tuba. And also you hear a lot
of banjo because this was before the electric guitar. You know, we talk about the difference, and once the guitar, the electric electricity, you know, allowed for the electric guitar. Then you started to see banjos being replaced, and now bands could be bigger. You can't really hear a banjo over a huge band.
As easy.
Anyways, I tried to do it in one of my jazz sessions. It was a little tricky, and this is before amplifier and a lot of these bands were walking around the streets.
They were marching around anyways, So you're.
Hearing things like the tuba and the banjo, but also there are three main instruments. The melodic instruments are the trumpet, the clarinet, and the trombone. So and the combination of those instruments and the collective improvisation, and that idea of collective improvisation. We don't hear that in the swing period and the swing period the music was more arranged and you had these very polished arrangements that had very minimal improvisation.
But in New Orleans jazz and proper New Orleans early jazz, the musicians were constantly improvising over each other, almost like under and over each other. While one would kind of one instrument might take the forefront and play the melody, typically the trumpet. You know, Louis Armstrong played the trumpet, and he was usually the band leader. But you'll hear the clarinet just if you were playing clarinet or trombone. You knew that how to appropriately and stylistically improvise while
the trumpet player was playing the melody. And so I get my students to really tune in to listen for that combination of instruments.
And so I have a great example here of an example.
I have a great example of you know, any Lewis Armstrong of course is a great example. But I have a piece called Hotter than That, and it's by Lewis Armstrong. He had two very famous groups, the Hot five and the Hot seven. I forget which one of this is.
I'll have to listen when it comes on. And also, Louis Armstrong was one of the first people, or at least he's attributed, you know, we credit him with being the first person to take the idea of playing a melody and then embellishing it in a way that we think of as improvising over the chord changes, you know, And what that really was was him making the melody unique in his own and taking it, you know, a little further and further away, but always related to the melody.
And that kind of was how that that's still today how we approach Most jazz musicians approach a tune.
We state the.
Melody, then we improvise over the harmony, kind of based off the melody, and different periods veer further from it than others. But Louis Armstrong was really the master at this, and he was really the first kind of person we think of, the first musician as standardizing how do we do this? And there was of course Sidney Boschet during his time period also.
Who did that. And also he was a scat singer.
You know, he was one of the first people to try and use his voice to sound like an instrument, like improvised with his voice. He had that low browy voice and and and when we even hear him sing, we we hear him you can hear him thinking like how he would play on the trumpet. And so that scat singing is also something that's still done today. And that idea of making your voice sound like an instrument, right because most classical musicians, we want to make our
instruments sound like a voice. But Louis Armstrong he was trying to make his voice sound like his instruments.
All right, well that that can't be anybody else. You hear certain voices into like Frank Sinatra can't be anybody else, Louis can't be Yeah, you can't be anybody else. But we have to take a quick break, but just very quickly, if you will, Eric, what what was just what would? What did we hear there? What's most important to take from that? Most? Oh?
Yeah, well, first of all, so that was kind of mid clarinet solo, so unfortunately we didn't get to hear Louis Armstrong and some trumpet on that, but we heard certainly heard his scap singing, like you said, his unmistakable scat sing.
But also.
One of the things I noticed right away is that banjo playing. I don't know if you heard the banjo just chunking away under there and and really just.
And the clarinet is unmistakable.
Certainly visions of New Orleans there and lots of you know, back the The improvisation of course then was very you know, you heard lots of our peggios and the improvisation and you know this is before bebop and what we think
of as quote unquote modern jazz. So if you are, you know, if you're a lot of jazz musicians today kind of are trained in the bebop language, and this is pre bebop, so you're hearing a vocabulary that is very much centered around chord tones and arpeggios, which is you know, outlining the harmony and and a very To me, it's very refreshing, and it's I don't like to use the word simplistic, because there's nothing simplistic about it.
To me, it's more it's it's it's funny.
It's like the more the more I the older I get when I play jazz, the more I want to play traditionally because I feel like I don't need to try to. You know, a lot of younger cats, so they want to play a lot of notes and be impressive and show that they can play all this advanced harmony,
which is great and I love all that stuff. But there's something about listening to Lewis Armstrong just phrase something that is so melodic using just you know, chord tones that are maybe simpler in a way, but not they're just perfect and very melodic. Like all of his solo sound like they could be the melody of the song.
Sometimes er, we've got.
To take a quick break when we come back. When we have I think we could go off for house. We'll have about ten minutes left, and we still have to talk about bebop and modern jazz in the future and so but we're gonna make it. Don't let anybody go anywhere yet. We still have to talk about that, and I want to talk about the future with some of the changes. I know art Westchester has been hit with some of some of the changes from our current administration,
and I know that's affecting many artists, including you. Well, we'll talk about that brief anyway, and more music to hear. This is Being Frank. I'm your host, Frank Lebono. My very special guest is musician, historian and teacher mister Eric Devido. We'll be back with more of Being Frank writ after these brief commercial messages. Please don't go anywhere yet. Hudson River Radio dot com. Hudson River Radio dot com.
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Welcome back to Being Frank. The Intelligent conversation podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. I'm your host, Frank Lobono, and of course our engineer is Neil Rick. My very special guest tonight is historian, musician and teacher mister Eric DeVito. You know, we bring our audience a fresh topic every week and stream from Hudson River Radio, located in beautiful and historic Stony Point, New York. But you can catch Being Frank anywhere you get your favorite podcasts, and includes Apple, Spotify,
at Heart Radio, and the others. And because every Being Frank is archived, you can listen to any of our programs anytime you like. You can find a link to Being Frank on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page or at our website Hudson Riverradio dot com. Just click and you're there. Of course, we're talking about the history of jazz in America with mister Eric DeVito. Eric, we've been running through kind of historically. We've gone up to we're
getting up to the swing and bebop era. What's that about? Yep?
So you know we got to talk about Louis Armstrong and early jazz and New Orleans jazz and the collective
improvisation that was such a unique feature of it. And then you know, we kind of hit this earlier, but we talked about the nineteen thirties, and you know that we also think of the nineteen twenties, of course as the jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance, and this is where we see a lot of these big bands, and also New York start to really get on the scene as a place where all arts and culture was, especially
African American artists, authors, poets, musicians. But the swing period is when we saw you jazz being its most commercially successful, of course, and we have these big bands and one of the most you know, there's so many ones, of course that are important, but you know, the one that comes to mind, one that we can't not talk about is, of course Duke Gallington. The Duke Gallington Orchestra is, you know, one of the quintessential jazz orchestras just the fact that it was a jazz orchestra.
Not just a jazz band. It wasn't just a dance band, it was an orchestra.
Duke Gallington wrote for the orchestra like any other composer wrote, and you know, he was very he was a master of orchestration, and and the way he wrote is akin to how any great classical composer wrote. He also had a you know, he had a residency of course in Harlem at the Cotton Club, one Hunt and twenty fifth Street, and every week his band would play, and you know, people would line up and and you know to get to get in from all all over the town, all
over all over the state. You know, probably people came in from all over the place. But also there's a really important thing, important piece of technology which also is is you know happening at this time, which is the radio.
You know, so, yes, well, how did jazz become so popular? Then, well, the radio is part of it, just like the TV helped make rock and roll really popular when it became a household thing late, you know, a few decades later, people were turning on the radio in different parts of the world and hearing the Duke Ellington Orchestra every week.
You know, they had a live broadcast.
From the Cotton Club, and so that really helped launch not just jazz to the rest of the world, but also Duke Gallington. You know, he kind of became this unofficial spokesperson for you know, swing music. Because that's you know, what people were you know, listening to on the radio. So that was very important. And like I said earlier, this is also when we saw jazz become very commercial
a lot of you know, a lot of people. One of the criticisms is that a lot of the music lost its African influence and that you know, some of it was it was catering to white audiences and they had the white club owners and business owners and driving the commercial sales. But also you had radio requirements too, right,
like things were gonna be played on the radio. There was time constraints and if the object was now more about putting on a show and production, there was all that that those things to consider to make it polished. And of course we see this is when a lot of the segregation and racism becomes apparent in jazz. You know, you had great musicians who created this music that weren't allowed to stay in the hotels or eat in the restaurants where they were performing. You had black bands, you know,
or black clubs and white clubs. And if they if
people mix, they didn't mix very often. And it really wasn't until this period where you saw integration, you know, Benny Goodman, the King of swing, one of the greatest swing musicians, white musician, but he puts an African American guitarist in his band, Charlie Christian, only because he had the buying power and the and the and the audience, you know, fan loyalty that he said to clumboters, you know, if you if you don't let me put this guy in my band, I'm not playing and you're out all
these tickets sales. So you started to see people like, uh, you know, his stature being able to help break down barriers.
You know.
I always called Charlie Christian like the Jackie Robinson of jazz because he was like the first and you know, Benny Goodman, Uh, he demanded that. And and so here's another great example where jazz is kind of taking the reins in the forefront and dealing with issues like racism and segregation and uh, you know, and taking these risks before you saw it done in other places.
You know, this is long before the civil rights movement.
So Duke Ellington, of course same kind of power. You know, he was a household name and his band was, of course one of the most swinging bands is the Duke Ellington Band. So I have a great, classic example of from the Duke Ellington Orchestra. It's actually written by Billy Strayhorn, who was kind of like his silent writing partner. If you're a jazz musician, you know all about Billy Strayhorn.
If you're not, you might not.
But he co wrote a lot of tunes with Duke and a lot of times he didn't get the credit for them. But take the A Train is a classic class yeah, of course, referring to the A train that goes up.
To Harlem, which is where the Cotton Club was. So we'll just play a little bit of that.
But this is a classic example of the Duke Ellington Orchestra really swinging on a really you know, great tune.
H Well, I I certainly think we can consider that swing because I was definitely swinging. It's a perfectly descriptive name for the title. You want to swing, you want to roll, not quite full on.
The trumpet there, swinging And you know that word swing has two meanings of course in jazz, so you have swing music which refers to really the swing dance that kind of part of the culture of that that style, but also the way eighth notes are performed in jazz, we swing them, and that has to do with you know, again dividing them not equally, but based on the triplet, which is what gives it instead of that one and two and feel that's that's completely symmetrical. It has a
longer first eighth notes. So when we play eighth notes in jazz, not to get too technical or music.
Nerdy, but we have the bab ba ba.
And that's based on the triplet feel, which of course comes from the African influence of the music. So we kind of that you that word kind of sometimes gets thrown around interchangeably. But when we swing, when when we say somebody is swinging, they're really locked into that groove that kind of comes from that rhythmic feel, that triplet.
Okay, that brings up We don't have a lot of time, unfortunately, it's just great. But now we're up to bebop. Yeah, so set up and modern jazz and let's let's see what we can get there.
Well, I'll do I'll do a crash success that can on bebop. So bebop is what we think of as the beginning of modern jazz. And this is really you know, happens in the nineteen forties, and this is also when New York City really starts to become the center of jazz, as we're all the underground clubs and stuff and kind of first emerge and where bebop is born. And a lot of the first bebop musicians were swing musicians. Those
were their bread and butter gigs. But what happened is that this was a reaction to some of the things we spoke about the commercialization of jazz, the feeling that their culture was being exploited by you know, white business owners, and they kind of wanted to take their music back. You know, you notice when you were listening to Duke Ellington, you don't hear all that collective improvisation or the solos were very short. It was more about the band and
the arrangement. Bebop is a reaction to that. They want to kind of bring the music back to its African roots. So you see small groups again, longer solos that feature the individual, and the improvisation is more of a central part of the music now. And of course they wanted to be They wanted the music to be more abstract and more experimental, so they were challenging and pushing the
boundaries of the music. So you saw much more complex harmonies, melodies that weren't so singable and memorable, but they sounded like improvisations themselves. There was almost like a one upsmanship. There was a lot of competitive nature. How fast can we play, how high can we play? How abstract can
we be? How creative can we be? And so excuse me, this is when the we really see the music become a lot more creative, abstract, and we see these this new kind of language emerge, this modern jazz language which we call bebop vocabulary, which really hasn't changed a lot, although some people will tell you with free jazz and things, but a lot of jazz people will tell you that not a whole lot has changed, you know, vocabulary wise
in the music. We still kind of use this as the ba thesis of kind of our our vocabulary in jazz. And of course that's what musicians like Charlie Parker there to say, who are some of.
The ambassadors of bebop that we that we know.
Charlie Parker, of course, Disney Gillespie a big one, stealoneous monk, Bud Powell. I mean we could go on and on, but Max Roach, those are like some of the real early creators.
Of this music.
And then even a young Miles Davis who didn't create this music, but he kind of was taken under the wing of Charlie Parker and Disney Gillespie and he was a part of it as a you know, as a teenager really and and he used that language, that bebop language to help create the later styles of jazz like cool jazz, modal jazz fusion, which wouldn't have happened without his bebop you know, knowledge and involvement.
But yeah, a podcast for another day, of course, gone on what we're almost out of time and I want to get the song and what are we going to hear?
Now? That's exah.
So this is a great example of bebop tune. This is a called bloom Dido Charlie Parker tuon You're gonna It's a classic, you know recording with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. And you really hear the You hear the almost like frantic nature of be popular. Bebop's more angular, a lot more improvised, a lot longer solos, so you'll hear both of those guys on there, and of course piano bassed drums rhythm section.
Wow, that just screams feedbop.
You just you can really hear the interaction, you know, that's one of the interaction. All of a sudden, the drums and the bass are just as involved, where.
Maybe it's almost like yeah, where you didn't.
Hear that in the swing period as much. But now every musician is kind of just as an integral part of the creativity and the creation, the spontinuity and the improvisation.
Eric. So much more to talk about, but two key questions I have to get to before we close the program. Why is it important to continue to study and celebrate jazz today? Especially you know, it's still, as you even mentioned, it could be considered marginal music at least in terms of sales at least, So why is it important that we continue the tradition of jazz?
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question, and I think it's kind of the thing where the more you study it, the more you realize why.
You know, it can be a challenge.
It's one of the things that's a challenge for me with my students is you know how to get them you know, to feel connected to this music. But you know, throughout this whole discussion, we keep talking about how jazz parallels American society. And when you study jazz, you're studying American history, and I think that in itself is so important, you know, from its creation to where it gets its roots to You can't talk about jazz without talking about
the blues and talking about slavery. You can't talk about jazz without talking about segregation and racism. You can't talk about jazz without talking about you know, pushing boundaries without talking about the jazz age and different cultural you know, societal issues, time periods. So jazz is just so interwoven into the American fabric and it's just part of the DNA of who we are, whether you identify as an American or not. You know, jazz is just a part
of this culture in this place. And you know, like anything else, if you don't study the past, then you're not less informed. You might be doomed to repeat things about it. But there's so much in there to listen to, you know. There When I listen to Bebop, I'm hearing the blues, I'm hearing West African drum.
Music.
I'm hearing slave songs and work. So it's all in there, just like when you eat some chicken soup. You might not see every ingredient, but it's in there you taste. It's the complexity of it to me is what makes it so rich and so unique.
That leads me to my final question. And it's all relative to what you were saying, how important it is to continue these things. Yet I just read recently that art organizations like Art Westchester, Arts Westchester, you're going to have their funding cut, which will definitely affect to the brilliant programs that you had planned. I saw all four of them, two with the Nayak Library and two with
the Piramont Library. They're just fantastic. What is that going to mean for the future cuts in funding like that? What will happen?
Yeah, I mean, I can't say I don't have a crystal ball.
It's you know, I was very fortunate.
This was a great you know, I was fortunate this year to receive a generous grant through Arts Wenchester. I just got another one through these Casilina their Artists Support fund, So I've kind of been fortunate this year.
But I also see the cuts happening.
Even as a music teacher in schools, you know, it's something you're always aware of. Music in general always is the first thing on the chopping block and always has the smallest budget usually, So it's tough to say. You know, I think it all comes down to a lot of times, it comes down to what the public.
You know, what the public prioritizes.
Right, If if people are okay with having less music and less art, and then there's not always a reason to bring it back, right, but if people demand it, if people want it and make it a priority, then you know, you hope that the trickle down effect is that the leaders involved who make all the budgets, they see it as a priority.
You know, it's funny people tend to.
People tend to praise the art so much when there's money for them, you know, when they when they can they can give money. They love to say how important the arts are. But I always say, like, you know, what about when the money isn't.
There, then where you're seeing your leaders?
You know, that's to me, how they support the arts when the money isn't there, What things are they doing? You know, sometimes it's just doing simple things like going out to a local establishment that has live music, buying a local musician's records. There's little things you can do, you know, donating some money if somebody's doing a project on GoFundMe for a record album, throwing them twenty bucks.
All those little things are stuff that we can do that maybe a big government you know budget can't do. But we still have the power if we make it a priority, you know, And I think that's important. The more you listen to it and study it, the more you justify wanting to make it a priority for yourself. You don't know about this music, Why are you going to donate any money to keep it going? Why do
you think it's important? So learning about it is one of the forms that you really It deepens the appreciation for it, and it makes it so you can't be without it.
Eric, if you don't want to thank you for being Frank and you all of your intelligent conversation, please come back to These are always wonderful conversations. I always learned so much, and I'm sure people do as well.
I always love be in here, Frank, thanks for having.
Me, certainly my pleasure, and of course we offer special thanks to our listeners who take time to give us a voice in their lives. Remember you offer fresh topic just about every week. Catch us wherever and whenever you get your favorite podcasts and in pluts, apples, Spotify and all the rest. Check us out on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page. Like us and leave us a comment too. Like to leave you with our last two nuggets. As I said, a closing slogan and some great original music.
This one comes from one of my favorites and one of the greats of bebop, Disney Gillespie, who said, some days you get up and put the horn to your chops and it sounds pretty good and you win. Some days you try and nothing works and the horn wins. This goes on and on, and then you die and the horn wins. As a musician, you have to keep one foot back in the past and one foot forward
into the future. That's great advice from Disney Gillespie. We have some great closing music from my good friend Jim Donica. This is the Jim Donica Quartet with Storm the Barricades for our engineer, Neil Richter. I'm your host, Frank Luborono. We hope to have you join us for the next being. Frank. We're the only way to be is Frank.
Thanks everybody, bat.
Anything about, let all of this, let a little boer, serumer, difot nothing.
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