Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music, 1955-1965 by Rosenthal David H

Author:Rosenthal, David H. [Rosenthal, David H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780195058697
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 4530589
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 1992-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

T ENORS AND ORGANS

Benny Carter and Duke Ellington represent refinement and urbanity—but big-band Swing had a rawer, more "down-home" side as well. While this earthier variant is best known to jazz aficionados through the work of Count Basie's orchestra, it can be heard in many other southern and southwestern "territory bands" of the 1930s. Such bands, which included Walter Page and His Blue Devils and Milt Larkins's and Jay McShann's ensembles, performed in the main for black audiences. Mostly, they played the blues and showcased "blues shouters," like Jimmy Rushing in Basie's band, who could generate big enough sounds to be heard over seventeen wailing musicians.

Written arrangements were usually rudimentary or nonexistent. Riff-based tunes would be worked out in rehearsal and performance, "by head." Talking about his years with Basie, trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison remembered that "when I first joined the band we had maybe six arrangements in the entire book. Now since I was going to make music my career, I wanted to read music and learn more about it. But they kept playing and playing until I didn't know where I was. Finally I said, 'Hey, Basie, where's the music?' and he answered, 'What's the matter? You're playing, aren't you?' So I said, 'Yes, but I want to know what I'm playing.' And I said, 'When the band ends I don't know what note to hit.' Then Basie told me, 'If you hit a note tonight and it sounds right, just play that same note tomorrow.'"1

This Texas-Oklahoma-Kansas City-based, riff-oriented, hard-and-sinewy orchestral sound was to have a long life in both jazz and black pop music. The backgrounds for most of B. B. King's records from the 1950s, for instance, come straight out of it. When vibraphonist Lionel Hampton left Benny Goodman and formed his first big band in 1941, he plugged into the Southwest scene. This was partly due to his friendship with guitarist Charlie Christian, who was at once a pioneer of modern jazz and a quintessential Oklahoma bluesman. Hampton also raided the Southwest for two tenors: Illinois Jacquet and Arnett Cobb, both veterans of Milt Larkins's Houston-based outfit. Jacquet, born in Louisiana and raised in Texas, scored a smash hit for Hampton with his solo on "Flying Home" in 1942. Though deep-funk tenor playing should perhaps be traced back to Ben Webster's lusty, swaggering solos, the honkin'-and-screamin' movement is usually linked to Jacquet's outing on "Flying Home" and to his antics at Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts in the mid-forties.

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