Classic Female Blues Singers (Essay) (by Richie Unterberger)

The image of the blues as a man hunched over his acoustic guitar in the Mississippi Delta--or, alternately, hunched over his electric axe or harmonica as he moans into a microphone at a sweaty club--is so ingrained in the collective consciousness that it comes as a shock to many to learn that the first blues stars were women. Indeed, women dominated the recorded blues field in the 1920s, the first decade in which a market for blues records existed. Except for the very most famous of these singers, these pioneers are largely forgotten today, having been retroactively surpassed in popularity by some Southern bluesmen who only recorded a precious handful of sides in the '20s and '30s. But these women were the performers who first took blues to a national audience.

The popularity of the early blueswomen was intimately tied to the birth of the recording industry itself. There were many kinds of nascent blues on the rise in the early 20th century-Delta guitarists, yes, but also songsters, jug bands, and dance bands that employed elements of jazz, blues, and pop. And there was the vaudeville stage circuit, which frequently featured women singers. Presenting productions that toured widely, the musicians involved couldn't helped but be exposed to blues forms, if they hadn't been already.

It so happened that female-sung blues, with a prominent vaudeville-jazz-pop flavor, was the first kind of blues to be recorded for the popular audience. There are many possible reasons for this. Perhaps the record companies felt that other styles of blues were too raw to market. Or they may have been largely unaware of more rural and Southern blues styles. The female vaudevillian blues singers had a jazzier and more urban sound that commercial companies may have been more likely to encounter and stamp with approval.

What's far more certain is that "Crazy Blues," recorded by Mamie Smith in 1920, was the first commercial recording of what came to be recognized as the blues. By the standards of the day, the record was a phenomenal success, selling 75,000 copies within the first month--in an era, it must be remembered, when much of the U.S. population, and an even higher percentage of the U.S. African-American population, didn't own a record player. It set off an immediate storm of records in the same vein, by Smith and numerous other women.

But to today's listener, "Crazy Blues" hardly sounds like a blues at all. It sounds more like vaudeville, with a bit of the blues creeping into the edges of the vocal delivery and the song structure. The more judgemental might find that it resembles the music found in contemporary Broadway productions that offer a nostalgic facsimile of pre-Depression Black theater. The song has to be taken in the context of its era, however. It was the first time anything with some allegiance to the blues form had been recorded--and the industry quickly found that such productions were being bought not just by Blacks, but by all Americans.

Mamie Smith's success opened the floodgates for numerous blueswomen to record in the 1920s, often on the OKeh and Paramount labels. Ida Cox, Sippie Wallace, Victoria Spivey, Lucille Bogan, Ethel Waters, and Alberta Hunter are some of the most famous; there were many others. The best of them were Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, both of whom had rawer, more emotional qualities that gives their recordings a feel more akin to what later listeners expect of the blues.

Today, the early recordings by the "classic" female blues singers, as they have sometimes been labeled, sound as much or more like jazz as blues. The vocalists were usually accompanied by small jazz combos, often featuring piano, cornet, and other horn instruments. The guitar, the instrument associated with the blues more than any other, was frequently absent, and usually secondary when it was used. Lots of early jazz stars, in fact, can be heard on the early blueswomen's records, including Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Duke Ellington, and Coleman Hawkins.

Yet the music is identifiable as blues, primarily via the vocal phrasing and the widespread use of the 12-bar song structures that are among the blues' most immediate trademarks. And it was not a form that thrived in isolation from the other styles of blues that were emerging throughout America. As top blues scholar Samuel Charters writes in his liner notes to Blues Masters Volume 11: Classic Blues Women, "Even the men living in the South and playing the blues for themselves and their neighbors learned many of their songs from the records that made their way down to local music stores or came through the post office from the mail-order blues companies in Chicago. If they didn't learn the songs themselves, they learned the form and the style of what the record companies thought of as the blues.

"So when the companies sent scouts to find new artists in the South, what they found were the same three or four ways of putting blues verses together. After the sweeping success of the first recordings by women blues artists, the 12-bar harmonic form on the records had become so ubiquitous that even the Delta players who only fingered a single chord on their guitars managed to suggest all the usual chord changes with their singing."

The blues could also be heard in the singers' frank discussions of topics like sex, infidelity, and money and drink problems, often with a palpable hurt. These were offered with a female perspective that has never been as widespread in the blues since, as the music came to be dominated by male performers after the Depression. Listeners from all eras can cut through the often scratchy recordings to find the seeds of the blues, and much modern pop music, in their depiction of hard times, and the struggle and endurance necessary to survive them. It's not all bleakness--the celebratory tunes could have a frank bawdiness, particularly when dealing with sexual double entendres, that would probably generate warning stickers if they were being purchased by today's teenagers.

The onset of the Depression meant hard times for the record business, as it did for every other industry. The craze for female blues singers, which may have already peaked in the mid'20s, was over, and not just because of artistic trends. Record labels in general were recording less sides. And they weren't eager to devote a lot of resources to the "race" market, populated as it was by the poorest Americans. These African American listeners would have even less purchasing power in the 1930s, as the Depression lowered their already low standard of living.

But it wasn't just economic factors that heralded the demise of the classic women blues singers. Urban African-American music was becoming more uptempo and elaborate. The swing and big band sound came to fruition in the 1930s, making the staider accompaniment common to many '20s female blues recordings sound tame in comparison. And the vaudeville/theatrical circuit that supported the singers was crumbling, threatening their livelihood just years after they enjoyed positively unimaginable wealth (by the standards of African-Americans of the '20s). Many were unable to make records or, after a few years, even perform; the tale of Mamie Smith, who died penniless in 1946, is unfortunately not unique. Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey would themselves be dead by 1940.

It may be that many of the women who would have been blues singers had they started in the 1920s ended up as jazz ones. Jazz as a whole proved much more fruitful for women singers fronting a band than blues would in the ensuing decades. Billie Holiday, acclaimed by many as one of the finest singers of any kind in the 20th century, certainly owed a great deal to the female blues vocalists of the '20s. Several of her earlier sides in particular could just as well be classified as blues as jazz. The blues feel remained prominent in many if not most of the major female jazz singers, from Dinah Washington to Cassandra Wilson.

The original female blues stars of the '20s didn't always disappear entirely. Alberta Hunter, for instance, if anything became more popular after the 1920s, and made an unexpectedly successful comeback as a senior citizen in the 1970s and 1980s, after about 25 years of retirement. Ethel Waters expanded into jazz, and then into movies, getting an Academy Award nominiation for Best Supporting Actress for a 1949 film. Victoria Spivey, returning to active recording in the 1960s, started her own label; Bob Dylan made his first appearance on an official recording for the company, playing harmonica on a Big Joe Williams session.

The blues revival of the 1960s, however, largely passed the classic female blues singers by, though Sippie Wallace did record an album with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. The vocalists were a considerable influence on pioneering '60s rock singers Janis Joplin and Tracy Nelson (who recorded an entire album of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith songs in her folkie days), thereby influencing rock performers who had never heard the originals. In any case, the styles that the early women blues singers brought to record had by then infiltrated all of blues, rock, soul, and pop, to be heard in almost everyone from Aretha Franklin on down.

10 Recommended Albums:

Various Artists, Blues Masters, Vol. 11: Classic Blues Women (Rhino)

Bessie Smith, The Collection (CBS)

Ma Rainey, Ma Rainey (Milestone)

Sippie Wallace, 1923-29 (Alligator)

Victoria Spivey, 1926-31 (Document)

Mamie Smith, In Chronological Order, Vol. 1 (Document)

Lucille Bogan, 1923-35 (Story of Blues)

Alberta Hunter, Young Alberta Hunter (Vintage Jazz)

Ethel Waters, Jazzin' Babies' Blues, 1921-1927 (Biograph)

Various Artists, Women's Railroad Blues: Sorry But I Can't Take You (Rosetta)

by Richie Unterberger

Birth of Rock & Roll (Essay) (by Richie Unterberger)

For those of us born too late to experience the birth of rock & roll firsthand, an unlikely parallel might be drawn to the Internet. It has been written that no one planned the Internet; it just happened. And the same could be said of rock & roll. No one planned rock & roll, and it overtook the musical culture of America and then the world, with a sudden impact that revolutionized popular music as surely as the Internet is revolutionizing telecommunications.

It has often been said that rock & roll was the result of cross-breeding between rhythm & blues and country & western music. That's a large part of the equation, of course, but hardly the entire picture. Gospel music, swing jazz, jump blues combos, country swing bands, Tin Pan Alley publishers -- they were just some of the other key building blocks of the music.

Few would dispute that rock & roll owes most of its origins to the musical traditions of America's black population. From Africa, blacks brought a strong oral musical tradition of music for storytelling, recreation, and work. Continued and modified in the United States under incredibly harsh conditions, these elements would provide the backbone of blues music. As segregated as American society has been, there has been constant personal interchange and cultural exchange between races throughout the nation's history. The white southern population of the United States had its own musical conventions: Anglo-Saxon folk songs, Appalachian music, and religious music for the church. African-Americans absorbed influences from whites in their use of stringed instruments and harmonies. The development of jazz around the turn of the 20th century introduced larger bands and stronger rhythmic elements.

Just as technological developments affected the pace and complexity of life in the early 20th century, so did it accelerate the growth of popular music. The phonograph record enabled artists to reach and influence an exponentially larger audience of listeners and fellow musicians. Huge numbers of blacks from the south migrated to urban communities, where music and dancing took place in considerably more crowded and hectic environments. And to be heard in these venues, musicians eventually had no choice but to use electronic amplification and, eventually, electric instruments.

As early as the 1930s, strong intimations of rock & roll can be found in rhythmic, increasingly riff-driven swing jazz music, as well as blues-influenced country recordings by the Delmore Brothers, Bob Wills, Jimmie Rodgers, the Maddox Brothers, and others. Charlie Christian pioneered the use of the electric guitar in the early 1940s, at the same time as jazz musicians like Lionel Hampton were putting out riff-heavy hits like "Flyin' Home." As the '40s progressed, jazz musicians like Illinois Jacquet, Big Joe Turner, Louis Jordan, Jay McShann, and others upped the R&B quotient with honking saxes, "shouter" vocals, and pounding boogie-woogie piano.

Big bands became increasingly less economically viable after the second World War, and smaller combos became more in vogue. They still had to play just as loudly as ever, though, and riffs, electric guitars, "shouting" R&B vocals, and prominent beats were usually the ticket. So it was that jump blues came into style, paced by Louis Jordan and singers like Wynonie Harris, Tiny Bradshaw, and Roy Brown

Jump blues itself wasn't far removed from rock & roll, and there were several other major changes afoot as the '50s began. The Delmore Brothers recorded frenetic country-boogie that anticipated the spirit of rockabilly. Vocal groups like the Orioles took the smooth popular stylings of black harmony ensembles like the Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots and added a more pronounced R&B and gospel feel. After Delta musicians like Muddy Waters amplified their guitars and added rhythm sections, a fullbodied electric blues band sound was born in Chicago, Memphis, and other urban centers. Fats Domino, Lloyd Price, and others pioneered the keyboard-and-horn driven grooves of New Orleans R&B. Les Paul took electric guitar wattage to new heights with his innovative multi-track recordings.

There were also major rumblings in the music industry and American society itself. Independent companies like Atlantic, King, Sun, Specialty, Chess, and numerous others recorded R&B and hillbilly music, catering to audiences that the major labels deemed too specialized and uncouth to service. Young white listeners began tuning in radio stations that played music for these supposed minority tastes. And the increasingly affluent economy meant that these young listeners had more time and money than ever to spend on records.

These disparate strands began to collide and merge as the '50s progressed. There are a great number of opinions as to what could be called the first "rock & roll" record; indeed, an entire book (the fine What Was the First Rock'n'Roll Record?) has been written on the subject. Certainly, early sides by Jackie Brenston ("Rocket 88"), Bill Haley, Lloyd Price, Hank Ballard, Fats Domino, and others have strong claims. Whatever it was, and whenever it became a style, by 1954 there were several records in the Top 30 that couldn't, from a latter-day vantage point, be called anything but rock & roll: Bill Haley's primitive rockabilly ("Shake, Rattle, and Roll"), the joyous doo wop of the Crows and the Chords ("Gee" and "Sh-Boom"), the saucy R&B of Hank Ballard ("Work With Me Annie"). The music needed a name, and several theories have been advanced as to how the term "rock & roll" came about. Influential Cleveland and New York DJ Alan Freed's claim to have originated the phrase is probably the most widely circulated, though rocking and rolling had long been a euphemism, especially in the black community, for dancing, partying, and more private pleasures.

In 1955, Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" became the first number one rock & roll hit; Little Richard and Chuck Berry had their first national smashes that year with "Tutti Frutti" and "Maybellene," songs which put electric guitar leads, honking saxes, whooping vocals, and lyrics about cars and girls to the forefront in a glorious package. In early 1956, Elvis Presley's number one hit "Heartbreak Hotel" ended any doubt (or hope by the more conservative factions of the music business) that rock & roll would fade.

An emerging regional sensation, Elvis pioneered rockabilly on his legendary recordings for Sun records in 1954 and 1955 by marrying the feels of the blues and country boogie with his hard-driving rhythms and frenetic vocals. His jump to a major label -- and assimilation of slightly more pop-oriented values into his recordings that didn't diminish his genius in the slightest (at least at first) -- made rock & roll an international phenomenon. His massive success, and the success of the countless rock & rollers who followed, was the end of the line in the evolution of the forces that gave birth to rock music -- and the beginning, of course, of much more.

15 Most Essential Recordings Leading to the Birth of Rock & Roll:

The Delmore Brothers, The Best of the Delmore Brothers (Starday). Country boogie with a reckless feel, close harmonies, and pounding backbeat, separated from rockabilly only by the level of electric instruments and a rhythm section. This collection of their late 1940s sides continues much of their most raucous work.

Bill Haley & His Comets, Rock the Joint! (Schoolkids). A collection of his early 1950s singles, prior to his breakthrough to mass success with "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" and "Rock Around the Clock." The earliest white rock & roll ever recorded, combining country swing, electric guitars, saxophones, and R&B rhythms to come up with something different altogether.

Louis Jordan, The Best of Louis Jordan (MCA). A crucial bridge from swing jazz to jump blues, and a major influence upon Chuck Berry

The Maddox Brothers & Rose, Vol. 1 (Arhoolie). Another hillbilly band that anticipated elements of rockabilly with their rumbling boogie and slap-back bass. This has 27 of their songs from 1946-51.

Various Artists, Hillbilly Music Vol.1...Thank God! (Capitol). A double album of rowdy hillbilly music from the late '40s to the mid-'50s, featuring such country giants as Tennessee Ernie Ford, Merle Travis, Buck Owens, and the Louvin Brothers. No other compilation illustrates the white country roots of rock & roll as well.

Various Artists, Atlantic R&B: 1947-1952 (Atlantic). The Atlantic label was arguably the greatest and most influential record company specializing in rhythm & blues in rock & roll's formative years. This is the first volume of a seven-part series, also available as part of a box set.

Various Artists, Atlantic R&B: 1952-1955 (Atlantic). More classic performances from the early Atlantic roster, edging closer to rock & roll from its more blues- and R&B-based beginnings.

Various Artists, Blues Masters Volume 5: Jump Blues Classics (Rhino). The best jump blues compilation, with classics by Big Jay McNeely, Wynonie Harris, Tiny Bradshaw, Big Joe Turner, and others. A second volume in the Blues Masters series (More Jump Blues Classics) is of equally high quality.

Various Artists, Blues Masters Volume 6: Blues Originals (Rhino). Many of these songs helped form the backbone of the rock repertoire. Often popularized to a larger audience by white performers from Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones down, here is where you'll find the original versions of classics like "That's All Right," "Back Door Man," "Love in Vain," and a lot of others.

Various Artists, A History of New Orleans Rhythm and Blues Vol.1 (Rhino). The first part of this three-volume series features key performances from the early and mid-1950s by artists who laid the foundations for the New Orleans sound, such as Lloyd Price and Guitar Slim.

Billy Ward, Sixty Minute Men: The Best of Billy Ward & His Dominoes (Rhino). One of the first great black harmony groups of rhythm & blues, featuring lead vocals by two singers who would go on to become early rock & roll stars in their own right, Clyde McPhatter and Jackie Wilson

Muddy Waters, The Best of Muddy Waters (Chess). The cream of the prolific output of the man who did more than any other performer to shape the course of modern electric blues, one of the primary currents feeding into the rock of both the past and present.

Various Artists, A Sun Blues Collection (Rhino). Excellent single-disc survey of the electrified country blues that the Sun label specialized in before moving to rockabilly, with great early and mid-'50s sides by Rufus Thomas, B.B.King, James Cotton, and others.

Various Artists, A Sun Country Collection (Rhino). The other side of the Sun equation has the country roots of the Southern rockabilly sound, with country hillbilly-verging-on-rockabilly by Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Warren Smith, Charlie Feathers ,and more obscure performers.

Elvis Presley, The Complete Sun Sessions (RCA). The full-fledged birth of rockabilly on Elvis' legendary 1954-55 recordings, which in the eyes of some critics have never been surpassed in the entire history of rock & roll.

Books:

What Was the First Rock'n'Roll Record?, by Jim Dawson & Steve Propes (1992, Faber & Faber)

Unsung Heroes of Rock'n'Roll, by Nick Tosches (1984, Charles Scribner's Sons)

The Sound of the City, by Charlie Gillett (1983, Pantheon)

by Richie Unterberger

Blues Rock (Essay) (by Richie Unterberger)

The blues and rock & roll are often divided by the thinnest of the margins. Blues, more than any other musical style, influenced the birth of rock & roll, and the amplified electric blues of Chicago, Memphis, and other cities during the 1950s was separated from the new music only by its more traditional chord patterns, cruder production values, and narrower market. The term "blues-rock" came into being only around the mid-'60s, when white musicians infused electric blues with somewhat louder guitars and flashy images that helped the music make inroads into the white rock audience.

Many of the early blues rockers were British musicians who had been schooled by Alexis Korner. Helping to organize the first overseas tours by many major American bluesmen, Korner -- as well as his former boss Chris Barber, and his early collaborator Cyril Davies -- was more responsible than any other musician for introducing the blues to Britain. More important, he acted as a mentor to many younger musicians who would form the R&B-oriented wing of the British Invasion, including Jack Bruce, members of Manfred Mann, Eric Clapton and, most significantly, the Rolling Stones, whose lead vocalist, Mick Jagger sang with Korner before the Stones were firmly established.

The Rolling Stones featured a wealth of stone cold blues in their early repertoire. They and other British groups like the Yardbirds and Animals brought a faster and brasher flavor to traditional numbers. They would quickly branch out from 12-bar blues to R&B, soul, and finally, original material of a much more innovative and rock-oriented nature, without ever losing sight of their blues roots.

Several British acts, however, were more steadfast in their devotion to traditional blues, sacrificing commercial success for purism. These included the early Graham Bond Organisation (who featured future Cream members Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker) and, more significantly, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. In early 1965, Mayall's group provided a refuge for Eric Clapton who left the Yardbirds on the eve of international success in protest to their forays into pop/rock. His sole album with Mayall Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton (1966), was an unexpected Top Ten hit in the U.K. Clapton's lightning-fast and fluid leads were vastly influential, both on fellow musicians and in introducing tough electric blues to a wide audience.

While Clapton would rapidly depart the Bluesbreakers to form Cream (who took blues-rock to more amplified and psychedelic levels), Mayall continued to be Britain's foremost exponent of blues-rock, as a bandleader of innumerable Bluesbreakers lineups. Many musicians of note were schooled by Mayall, the most prominent being Clapton's successors, Peter Green and future Rolling Stone Mick Taylor. Like Clapton, Green left Mayall after just one album, forming the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac with a couple members of Mayall's rhythm section, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood. Under Green's helm, Fleetwood Mac were the finest British blues-rock act of the late '60s. They invested electric Chicago blues with zest and humor, but their own material -- featuring Green's icy guitar tone, rich vocals, and personal, often somber lyrics -- was more impressive, and extremely successful in Britain, where they racked up several hit albums and singles.

As a bandleader of rotating lineups featuring budding guitar geniuses, Chicago harmonica player Paul Butterfield was Mayall's American counterpart; the two even recorded a rare EP together in the late '60s. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band's first pair of albums featured the sterling guitar duo of Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop, as well as bona fide African-American Chicago bluesmen in the rhythm section. Willing to tackle soul, jazz, and even psychedelic jams in addition to Chicago blues, they were the first American blues-rock band, and perhaps the best.

While blues-rock was less of a commercial or artistic force in the U.S. than the U.K., several other American blues-rockers of note emerged in the '60s. Canned Heat were probably the most successful, reaching the Top 20 with "On the Road Again" and an electric update of an obscure rural blues number, "Going up the Country." Steve Miller played mostly blues, with Barry Goldberg and as the leader of his own band, in his early days before tuning into the psychedelic ethos of his adopted base of San Francisco. Captain Beefheart was briefly a White counterpart to Howlin' Wolf before heading off on a furious avant-garde tangent.

In New York, Bob Dylan used Mike Bloomfield on much of his Highway 61 Revisited album, and teamed with the Butterfield Band for his enormously controversial electric appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. John Hammond recorded blues-rock in the mid-'60s with future members of the Band and Dion cut some overlooked blues-rock sides after being exposed to classic blues by Hammond's father, the legendary Columbia A&R man John Hammond, Sr. The Blues Project led by Al Kooper often reworked blues songs with rock arrangements, although their vision was too eclectic to be pigeonholed as blues-rock, also encompassing folk-rock, pop/rock, and psychedelia.

The influence of the first generation of blues-rockers is evident in the early recordings of Jimi Hendrix, and indeed Jimi would always feature a strong element of the blues in his material.

Albert King and B.B. King couldn't exactly be called blues-rockers, but their late-'60s material betrays contemporary influences from the worlds of rock and soul that found them leaning more in that direction. Early hard rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Free and the Jeff Beck Group played a great deal of blues, though not enough for purists to consider them actual blues acts.

The blues-rock form became more pedestrian and boogie-oriented as the '60s came to a close. From Britain, Ten Years After, Savoy Brown, the Climax Blues Band, Rory Gallagher, Chicken Shack, Juicy Lucy and Foghat all achieved some success. In the U.S., blues-rock was the cornerstone of the Allman Brothers' innovative early-'70s recordings (which in turned spawned the blues-influenced school of Southern rock), and Johnny Winter had success with a much more traditional approach.

While blues-rock hasn't been a major commercial force since the late '60s, the style has spawned some hugely successful acts, like ZZ Top and Foghat as well as influencing all hard rock since the late '60s to some degree. The success of Stevie Ray Vaughan in the 1980s, and groups like Blues Traveler and Spin Doctors in the 1990s, shows that its audience is far from dead. And it is a cliche, but it is often true, that many white listeners would be unaware of black blues performers if they hadn't been led to them through the work of white blues-rock bands.

12 Essential Blues Rock Recordings:

John Mayall, Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton (PolyGram)

John Mayall, London Blues (1964-1969) (PolyGram)

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, East-West (Elektra)

Fleetwood Mac, Black Magic Woman (Epic)

Fleetwood Mac, Then Play On (Reprise)

Jimi Hendrix, Blues (MCA)

The Graham Bond Organisation, The Sound of '65 (Edsel)

Canned Heat, Best of Canned Heat (EMI)

Cream, Fresh Cream (Polydor)

John Hammond, Jr. , So Many Roads (Vanguard)

The Allman Brothers, At Fillmore East (Polydor)

Duffy Power, Little Boy Blue (Demon/Edsel)

Books:

Blues -- The British Connection, by Bob Brunning (1986, Blandford Press)

by Richie Unterberger

Classic Jazz (Essay) (Scott Yanow)

When one thinks of the 1920's as it is portrayed by the mass media, the images of dixieland, college kids wearing raccoon coats, the Charleston, gangsters and speakeasies come quickly to mind. It was termed "The Jazz Age" by F. Scott Fitzgerald and was thought of nostalgically as a somewhat hedonistic era by later generations who had to live through the Depression and World War II.

Although there is some truth in the stereotypes, there was much more to the decade than is seen in movies depicting the era, and there was more to its jazz scene than dixieland. The term "classic jazz" refers to music from the era and its later revivals and recreations, overlapping with New Orleans jazz and dixieland but covering a wider area.

The 1920's were arguably the most important decade in the evolution of jazz. In 1920, jazz was largely unknown to the general public and those that knew of it often disapproved, considering it barbaric and even sinful compared to more sedate dance music, marches, ragtime and classical music. By 1930, even though it was still not taken all that seriously as an art form, jazz had become a permanent influence on popular music and it was danced to by a countless number of people who had never heard of Jelly Roll Morton or King Oliver.

The number of significant developments that occured during the decade in jazz are remarkable. It was during the 1920's that important soloists first emerged in jazz, causing the music to develop beyond its brass band roots (where all of the musicians generally played at the same time) to a vehicle for creative virtuosoes. Musicians began to phrase differently, changing from a staccato approach to legato and not hitting every note right on the beat. Arrangers began to infuse dance band arrangements with the rhythm and phrasing of jazz, leaving room for soloists; even most of the more commercial orchestras featured a brief trumpet solo after the vocalist. The recording industry grew drastically, propelled by the change in the mid-1920's (mostly during 1925-27) from an acoustic to an electric process that greatly improved the technical quality of recordings. And perhaps most importantly, it was in the 20's that top black jazz musicians began to record.

In 1920, jazz was primarily known to the general public as the colorful and primitive music of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. The ODJB's sound dominated records of the 1917-21 period to the point where most groups (virtually all white) who attempted to record jazz sounded similar to the band. While the ODJB was very important in helping to introduce listeners to jazz (including in England where they visited in 1919), it is not surprising that its music scared off some listeners. The group's initial recording "Livery Stable Blues" (a big hit) found the horn players imitating the whinnying, roars and cackles of barnyard animals and, beyond its novelty value, it was not comparable on any level to the typical playing of a classical violinist.

It was up to bandleader Paul Whiteman to make jazz accessible to the general public. Called "The King Of Jazz" by a press agent (which has led to his importance being underrated and ridiculed through the years), Whiteman could more properly be called "The King Of The Jazz Age." Starting with a million-selling 1920 recording of "Whispering," Whiteman's bands featured high musicianship and versatility. Its jazz content throughout the first half of the 1920's was not that strong but Whiteman always featured superior dance music and kept his ears open. In 1924 he persuaded George Gershwin to compose "Rhapsody In Blue" and his string section often played semi-classical works, an early predecessor of Third Stream music. In Henry Busse, Whiteman had a limited but appealing trumpeter whose hot choruses were generally just doubletime repetitions but had the feel of jazz; hit versions of "Hot Lips" and "When Day Is Done" were due to the excitement that Busse could generate. By the mid-20's, Whiteman started signing up serious jazz players such as cornetist Red Nichols and trombonist Tommy Dorsey and in 1927, with the collapse of the Jean Goldkette Orchestra, he added such important musicians as cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, C-melody saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer, violinist Joe Venuti, guitarist Eddie Lang and the inventive arranger Bill Challis. When Bing Crosby joined as part of the Rhythm Boys, Whiteman during 1927-29 finally had a frequently great jazz orchestra. Other contemporary dance bands followed in his path.

While one thinks of the big band era as having begun in 1935 when Benny Goodman caught on, the 1920's were filled with preswing jazz orchestras. Shortly after Paul Whiteman began to become famous, pianist Fletcher Henderson formed his own big band and started to record on a frequent basis in 1923. Arranger Don Redman (credited with being the first to divide an orchestra musically into trumpet, trombone, saxophone and rhythm sections) wrote complex, experimental and futuristic charts for Henderson that put the orchestra at the top of its class by 1924. However it was the emergence of Louis Armstrong that made the Henderson big band into the first swinging jazz orchestra. At the time, the New York musicians were better technically than the New Orleans players who were based in Chicago, but it took Armstrong to introduce blues phrasing and swing to the East Coast. Louis was an expert at constructing dramatic statements that expertly used space and he made each note count. By the time his year with Henderson was up, Armstrong's influence had permanently changed the band and the New York jazz scene.

New York had heard the blues before. In fact in 1920 Mamie Smith recorded "Crazy Blues" and her record started a blues craze that lasted a few years. Suddenly the word "blues" was tacked on to the titles of many songs and scores of vaudevillian-oriented female singers began to record. Although some (including Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters) were quite talented, it was not until Bessie Smith recorded Hunter's "Downhearted Blues" in 1923 that listeners began to know the difference between a singer performing a blues and a real blues singer. Throughout the 1920's, many "classic blues singers" would pop up on records but the one who made the biggest impact was Bessie Smith (rightfully called "The Empress Of The Blues"); even when faced with very primitive recording facilities and weak sidemen, Bessie (who recorded until 1933) overpowered the surroundings and created performances that still communicate to today's listeners.

It was when the blues craze was at its height that jazz began to emerge more fully on record. During 1921-22 trumpeter Phil Napoleon started recording frequently in New York with small bands that were more creative and swinging than the ODJB; the Original Memphis Five was the best known (and most prolific) of these recording groups. In Los Angeles trombonist Kid Ory in 1921 with the Seven Pods Of Pepper Orchestra (his usual band with cornetist Mutt Carey) recorded two instrumentals that were the first documentation of a black New Orleans group. During 1922-23 the New Orleans Rhythm Kings (with clarinetist Leon Rappollo) showed that not all the early jazz pioneers were black and then in 1923 King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (an octet with both Oliver and Louis Armstrong on cornets, clarinetist Johnny Dodds and drummer Baby Dodds) proved to be the finest of the early New Orleans jazz bands to make it on record. A few years later pianist-composer Jelly Roll Morton with his Red Hot Peppers perfectly blended together arrangements and creative frameworks with concise solos.

However classic New Orleans jazz was soon overshadowed by the rise of the great soloists. James P. Johnson, called "the father of the stride piano," was a brilliant pianist whose complex left-hand patterns ("striding" up and down between bass notes and chords) inspired youngsters such as Fats Wallerand often scared away his potential competitors. His first recorded piano solos were in 1921 and even now few listeners probably realize that this multi-faceted talent composed "Charleston." Sidney Bechet, a masterful soprano-saxophonist and clarinetist, recorded some virtuosic sides during 1923-24 although his extensive stays in Europe cut back on his impact in the U.S. Cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, who had a beautiful cool tone and a harmonically advanced style, recorded solos with the Wolverines (a fine Midwest jazz band) in 1924 that were full of subtlety and unexpected moments. Symbolic of the "jazz age," Beiderbecke became the top white jazz player of the decade yet was unknown to the general public. He was the star sideman with the short-lived Jean Goldkette Orchestra, recorded many brilliant solos in 1927 with recording groups headed by Frankie Trumbauer and was featured in occasional spots with Paul Whiteman's Orchestra during 1927-29 before alcoholism caused his rapid decline and death in 1931. His death at age 28 made him a jazz martyr and a legend.

But it was Louis Armstrong who, although a New Orleans player, really helped end the New Orleans era and pave the way towards swing. He was just too skilled a soloist to be confined to ensembles. After leaving Fletcher Henderson and returning to Chicago in 1925, he worked nightly with big bands and recorded a series of classics with his Hot Five and Hot Sevens. His 1925-27 records generally also included clarinetist Johnny Dodds (arguably the top clarinetist of the era) and trombonist Kid Ory who at first were nearly equals until Armstrong's rapid growth made him the dominant force. Armstrong's 1928 records with pianist Earl Hines (one of his few matches in rhythmic daring) are among the most advanced of Louis' career and his playing on the flawless "West End Blues" (with its memorable opening cadenza) was his personal favorite recording.

Even without Louis Armstrong, it seemed only a matter of time before soloists would become more important. The muffled sound of acoustic recordings were giving way to their much more lifelike electric counterparts by 1925-26 and jazz stars were destined to emerge. Dixieland was evolving from New Orleans jazz and the number of distinctive players that were inspired by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, King Oliver, Bix and Armstrong were multiplying yearly. While Armstrong and Beiderbecke were the pacesetters among cornetists and trumpeters, there were also such up-and-coming brassmen as Jabbo Smith (who in 1929 at the age of 19 showed tremendous potential that he never lived up to), Red Allen (the last major New Orleans trumpeter of the era), Jimmy McPartland and Red Nichols (a Bix-inspired player who was very important during the era as the leader of many jazz-oriented record sessions in New York, often under the name of his Five Pennies). The trombone evolved from the percussive and guttural playing of Kid Ory and the wide interval jumps of the unique Miff Mole (who often teamed up with Nichols to create unpredictable music) to the more influential Jimmy Harrison and Jack Teagarden. The New Orleans clarinetists (chiefly Johnny Dodds and Jimmie Noone) ruled during the decade but the young Benny Goodman was showing great promise with drummer Ben Pollack's fine big band. The saxophone, considered a novelty instrument and a poor replacement for a trombone at the beginning of the decade, worked perfectly in dance orchestras and some important voices emerged including on tenor Coleman Hawkins and Bud Freeman, both Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter on alto, Frankie Trumbauer on the C-melody sax (which soon became nearly extinct), bass saxophonist Adrian Rollini and baritonist Harry Carney.

As far the rhythm section went, James P. Johnson's followers and contemporaries at nightly jam sessions included Fats Waller, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Earl Hines (in Chicago) and the young Duke Ellington. Banjos and tubas by the late 1920's gave way to more flexible rhythm guitars and string basses. While Eddie Lang occasionally had brief guitar solos (often teaming up with the immortal violinist Joe Venuti) and bassist Steve Brown drove ensembles in the mid-1920's, their instruments were largely confined to a supportive role. The same was true of drummers who, until Gene Krupa in 1927, were not even allowed to record with a bass drum or a full set due to fears that it would overpower the recording balance. Baby Dodds, thought of as one of the era's top drummers, generally recorded with just a cymbal, woodblocks and a snare drum! It was not until the late 1920's that one can hear how a drummer really sounded.

While instrumentalists evolved quickly during the 1920's, vocalists lagged behind. Other than the female classic blues singers and the male blues performers (who were in a different musical world than players of jazz and dance music), very few vocalists on record were worth hearing before 1925. Singers were hired for their volume and ability to enunciate words, and many sounded like rejects from opera who were lowering themselves to sing pop music. An exception was Cliff Edwards (known as Ukulele Ike) but it was once again Louis Armstrong who introduced swing to singing. In addition to popularizing scat singing (substituting nonsense syllables for lyrics), Armstrong phrased his vocals like a trumpeter and virtually changed the world of pop singing. Bing Crosby, who was in Paul Whiteman's band at the time, learned from Louis' example and his rise saved the world from the pompous baritones and boy tenors who appeared on far too many jazz-oriented records through the late 1920's.

By the end of the 20's, jazz was a major part of popular music and Duke Ellington's innovations with his Cotton Club Orchestra were leading the way towards the future. Jazz, although hardly considered respectable by the middle class, was being utilized at least to a small degree by nearly every commercial dance orchestra and it was the vocabulary of talented musicians at after-hours jam sessions who indulged in freewheeling dixieland-oriented solos and of territory bands from outside the major metropolitan areas. In addition, the spontaneity of jazz by 1927 had become the soundtrack of the freewheeling 1920's.

With the onset of the Depression and the development of swing, the classic jazz era came to a close. Dixieland went underground and then re-emerged full force in the 1940's as did New Orleans jazz. Enthusiasts from later decades often tried their best to bring back the spirit and sound of classic jazz circa 1925-33 but it is a difficult task both because the recording quality has improved so much since then, and because most later musicians phrase in a more modern fashion. There have been exceptions along the way, particularly since the Stomp Off label began to extensively document the traditional jazz scene in the 1980's, but it is a tricky balancing act to recreate the excitement and joy of the early recordings and particularly to play with creativity (rather than merely copying the original records) while sticking within the older boundaries. Fortunately many (but not all) of the classic recordings are readily available on CD and, with the proliferation of so many dixieland and trad jazz festivals, the music lives on in different forms.

11 Essential Classic Jazz Recordings

The Original Memphis Five, Collection, Vol. 1 (Collector's Classics)

Fletcher Henderson, 1927 (Classics)

Louis Armstrong, (Classics)

Fletcher Henderson, 1927 (Classics)

Louis Armstrong, Vol. 4: Louis Armstrong And Earl Hines (Columbia)

Bix Beiderbecke, Volume 1: Singin' The Blues (Columbia)

Bix Beiderbecke and Paul Whiteman, Bix Lives (Bluebird)

James P. Johnson, Snowy Morning Blues (GRP/Decca)

Fats Waller, Fats And his Buddies (Bluebird)

Jabbo Smith, 1929-1938 (Retrieval)

Red Allen, 1929-1933 (Classics)

Benny Goodman and Red Nichols, BG & Big Tea In NYC (GRP/Decca)

Duke Ellington, Okeh Ellington (Columbia)

Books

Early Jazz by Gunther Schuller (Oxford Univ. Press, 1968)

Bix - Man And Legend by Richard Sudhalter, Philip Evans and William Dean Myatt (Schirmer Books, 1974)

Jazz Masters Of The Twenties by Richard Hadlock (Da Capo Press, 1965)

Voices Of The Jazz Age by Chip Deffaa (Univ. Of Illinois press, 1990)

Ellington - The Early Years by Mark Tucker (Univ. Of Illinois Press, 1991)

By Scott Yanow

Hard Bop (Essay) (Scott Yanow)

Hard bop, like cool jazz and soul jazz, started out as a subsidiary of another style of music, in this case bop. With the rise of bop in the mid-to-late '40s, the chord structures, rhythms and improvising in jazz had become much more complex. Although its pacesetters were masterful virtuosoes, many of the followers sacrificed feeling for precision, emotion for speed. Charlie Parker  and Dizzy Gillespie were nearly impossible musical role models and they certainly could not be topped at the music they had originated.

When cool jazz emerged in the late '40s, some of the qualities of swing that had been de-emphasized (arrangements, a use of space and more of an emphasis on tone) were restored to jazz. However other young musicians wanted to utilize a wider range of emotions than was to be found in cool jazz, and they sought to infuse jazz with elements of spiritual and gospel music (ie: soul). Hard bop gradually developed and by the mid-'50s it had become the new modern mainstream.

Although based in bop, hard bop had a few differences. Tempoes could be just as blazing but the melodies were generally simpler, the musicians (particularly the saxophonists and pianists) tended to be familiar with (and open to the influence of) rhythm & blues and the bass players (rather than always being stuck in the role of a metronome) were beginning to gain a little more freedom and solo space. Due to the soulful nature of some of the solos and the occasionally catchy rhythms, hard bop was nicknamed "funk" for a time. By the early '60s soul jazz (which relied more on a groove) had developed out of hard bop although the two styles frequently overlapped. As the '60s evolved, hard bop players started to incorporate aspects of both modal music (staying on one chord for longer periods of time) and avant-garde into their music.

The beginning of hard bop on record is difficult to determine since its development from bop was a gradual process. A good starting point is Miles Davis' Blue Note sessions of 1952-54; Davis seemed to be at the start of a half-dozen styles! His Blue Note sides featured such important young hard bop stylists as altoist Jackie McLean (whose sound was much different than the cooler-toned Paul Desmond and Lee Konitz), tenor-saxophonist Sonny Rollins (a hard bop extension of Coleman Hawkins), trombonist J.J. Johnson, the highly influential pianist Horace Silver and drummer Art Blakey.

Another important series of recordings were made by the Max Roach/Clifford Brown Quintet of 1954-56, a unit that featured either Harold Land or Sonny Rollins on tenor. While Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis were important influences on other trumpeters, Clifford Brown took his main inspiration from Fats Navarro (who partly derived his style from Howard McGhee), a short-lived and fiery bop player whose warm tone and logical ideas were easier for brassmen to follow than Gillespie's angular flights. Brownie, before his tragic death in a car accident at age 25 in 1956, became jazz's brightest new trumpeter and his huge influence on other trumpeters (and the entire hard bop movement in general) continues to this day. Since his time, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw to a large extent based their early styles on Clifford's.

With the gradual decline of West Coast Jazz during the mid-to-late '50s, hard bop essentially took over. A whole generation of top young modernists developed in the wake of the innovations of Parker and Gillespie, eager to develop their own voices. The development of the Lp in the late '40s had made recordings not only lengthier (individual songs could now reach 20 minutes rather than the previous three) but much more numerous. While many labels opted for inexpensive jam sessions, Blue Note (under the direction of Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff) paid musicians for rehearsals and encouraged the inclusion of new material. Their numerous releases were not only consistently high-quality (particularly during 1952-67) but classy.

There were many top musicians involved in hard bop, but few were more important than drummer-leader Art Blakey. The co-founder of the Jazz Messengers in 1955 with Horace Silver, Blakey retained the group's name after Silver went out on his own. Throughout a 35-year period, Blakey was a masterful talent scout (perhaps even surpassing Fletcher Henderson in earlier years and Miles Davis). The passionate drummer pushed his musicians to play themselves rather than copy their role models and to come up with original compositions. Here is a partial list of the young talent that benefitted from their periods as members of the Jazz Messengers: tenors Benny Golson, Hank Mobley, Johnny Griffin, Wayne Shorter, Billy Harper, Bill Pierce and Javon Jackson, altoists Jackie McLean, Bobby Watson, Branford Marsalis and Donald Harrison, pianists Bobby Timmons, Walter Davis Jr., Cedar Walton, John Hicks, Keith Jarrett, James Williams, Donald Brown, Mulgrew Miller, Benny Green and Geoff Keezer, bassists Doug Watkins, Reggie Workman and Charles Fambrough, trombonists Curtis Fuller and Robin Eubanks and trumpeters Kenny Dorham, Donald Byrd, Bill Hardman, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Chuck Mangione, Woody Shaw, Valeri Ponomarev, Wynton Marsalis, Wallace Roney, Terence Blanchard, Phillip Harper and Brian Lynch!

In addition to the Jazz Messengers, other significant hard bop groups included the Horace Silver Quintet (particularly when it featured trumpeter Blue Mitchell and the tenor of Junior Cook), the Jazztet (with trumpeter Art Farmer and Benny Golson on tenor) and the Cannonball Adderley Quintet (which crossed over into soul jazz).

Even though the avant-garde began to garner most of the headlines by the early '60s, hard bop was quantity-wise the most dominant jazz style of 1955-68. In general the pacesetters were trumpeters Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan (who had a major hit in the mid-'60s with "The Sidewinder") and Freddie Hubbard, trombonists J.J. Johnson and Curtis Fuller, tenors Sonny Rollins and Hank Mobley (although John Coltrane's influence was felt by the late '50s), altoists Phil Woods, Jackie McLean and Cannonball Adderley, guitarists Kenny Burrell, Grant Green and Wes Montgomery, organist Jimmy Smith and pianists Horace Silver and Bobby Timmons. As the 1960s progressed, such new players as tenors Joe Henderson and Stanley Turrentine and trumpeter Woody Shaw emerged to give the music some fresh blood.

But by the mid-to-late-'60s hard bop was running out of gas. With the sale of Blue Note to Liberty and eventually United Artists, the style (and jazz in general) gradually lost its most significant label. Soul jazz, which was becoming more commercial, took part of hard bop's audience and many of the musicians were looking elsewhere towards the emerging fusion movement, the avant-garde or more commercial sounds. The rise of commercial rock and the consolidation of most of the independent record labels caused hard bop to have a much lower profile in the 1970s as it was overshadowed by other trends.

However hard bop never died and in the 1980s it served as the inspiration for the Young Lions movement. Wynton Marsalis and many of the other later graduates of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers used hard bop (along with the post bop music of Miles Davis' mid-60s quintet) as a starting point for their own careers. With so many young players being signed to major labels (at least for brief periods), hard bop suddenly returned full force to the extent where detractors complained that the new musicians were merely recycling the past. Although that was true to an extent, the top members of the Young Lions eventually developed their own musical vision without forgetting their straightahead roots.

In the 1990s, hard bop is the modern mainstream music of the era. Sometimes called "traditional" or merely "mainstream," this style of music still seems to offer improvisers endless possibilities and is the foundation of modern acoustic jazz.

17 Essential Hard Bop Recordings:

Miles Davis, Vol. 1 (Blue Note)

Clifford Brown/Max Roach, At Basin Street (EmArcy)

Sonny Rollins, A Night at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note)

Horace Silver, And the Jazz Messengers (Blue Note)

Art Blakey, Moanin' (Blue Note)

Art Farmer/Benny Golson, Meet the Jazztet (Chess)

Jackie McLean, Bluesnik (Blue Note)

Hank Mobley, Workout (Blue Note)

Freddie Hubbard, Ready for Freddie (Blue Note)

Donald Byrd, Chant (Blue Note)

Wes Montgomery, Full House (Original Jazz Classics)

Lee Morgan, The Sidewinder (Blue Note)

Joe Henderson, Page One (Blue Note)

Grant Green, Idle Moments (Blue Note)

Cannonball Adderley, Dizzy's Business (Milestone)

Horace Silver, Song for My Father (Blue Note)

Art Blakey, Straight Ahead (Concord Jazz)

by Scott Yanow