Porgy and Bess: Controversy and Slow Progress

Posted on March 25, 2015 by biedenbe

Controversy

First, a short history of Porgy and Bess.

The original “Highlights from Porgy and Bess” album, featuring cover art entirely at odds with the featured vocalists, white Met Opera stars Lawrence Tibbett and Helen Jepson.

In fall 1935, the galleries of Carnegie Hall rang for over four hours (including two intermissions) with the music of George Gershwin and the lyrics of DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin. The private concert performance was of a new project, a grand experiment combining jazz, blues, spirituals, arias, and recitatives in a work that Gershwin described as a “folk opera,” Porgy and Bess, based on the novel Porgy by Heyward. The show became problematic for many reasons: though technically an opera featuring trained opera singers, it played according to Broadway’s schedule; the composer Gershwin had never written anything of such magnitude; while the production featured an all-black cast telling an African-American story, the author/librettist Heyward was white; the entire production crew from the director down to the stagehands to the violinists in the pit was white. In fact, the “official cast album” was recorded just days after the opera’s Broadway opening. It featured not the show’s original African-American leads, Todd Duncan and Anne Brown, as the titular Porgy and Bess, but white Metropolitan Opera stars Lawrence Tibbett and Helen Jepson, who sat in on the last few rehearsals before opening night to learn the music. Producers felt the album would be more palatable to wide audiences and therefore sell better. (Sidebar: black performers were not allowed at the Met. Duncan and Brown did finally collaborate on a Porgy and Bess album in 1940/42.)

The original Catfish Row as seen at Broadway’s Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon Theatre) in 1935. Photo from the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Controversy continued to surround the show: the performers protested the racial segregation at their Washington, D.C., venue, the National Theatre. Thanks especially to the efforts of Todd Duncan (Porgy), Porgy and Bess played to the National Theatre’s first integrated audience. Many more stories could be told.

Let’s fast-forward a decade to 1943, when Warner Brothers was hard at work on their fictionalized biopic of George Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue. Like most biopics, the storyline stretched the truth, creating two fictional romances for George, and served more as an homage to Gershwin than an accurate portrayal of his life, allowing the opportunity for full performances of Rhapsody in Blue, Concerto in F, “I Got Rhythm,” “Swanee,” and many more Gershwin hits.

Slow Progress

One of those other hits was “Summertime.” Judging by producers’ earlier resistance to recording an African-American Bess, one might expect the producers to opt again for a white star. But they did not ask Helen Jepson to sing. They called in Anne Brown, the original Bess, to reprise her role.

But progress seems to be a slow journey. As Alyce Key relates in an article for the Los Angeles Tribune in 1943 (this third incarnation of the paper was an African-American paper started by Almena Lomax praised for its fearless reporting), Miss Brown’s appearance in Hollywood was “shrouded in . . . more secrecy” than the WWII meetings of FDR and Churchill in Tehran, Potsdam, and Yalta:

Alyce Key’s article from the Los Angeles Tribune, September 6, 1943.

Fun fact: according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, $10,000 in 1943 is equal to $135,677.46 for one song. For comparison, Jennifer Lawrence got $500,000 for starring in The Hunger Games. The whole movie. $10,000 in 1943 was–and is–a lot of money for 3:40 of screen time.

As Alyce Key points out, people care. Gershwin cared enough to spend almost a decade working on Porgy and Bess. Todd Duncan cared enough to protest segregation at the National Theatre. The producers of Rhapsody in Blue cared enough to give Anne Brown a generous salary, but not enough to announce her involvement.

Progress, but slow progress. Maybe we just don’t care enough.

Hop on over to YouTube to check out Anne Brown’s reenacted performance of “Summertime”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxGMWfC7tm8.

“Key Notes by Alyce Key.” Los Angeles Tribune, Sep 6, 1943. America’s Historical Newspapers, SQN: 12A55C9DAF0E8A10.

Schwartz, Charles. Gershwin: His Life and Music. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1973.

Beach’s Variations and the Success of the American Female Composer

Posted on March 24, 2015 by nyberg

Amy Beach (September 5, 1867–December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was primarily self-taught in composition and was the first successful female composer of large works as well as the first president of the Society of American WomenComposers. She worked to further the works of young composers and was also known as “Mrs. H. H. A. Beach” at many of her concert piano performances.

This is the cover of a manuscript being held in the Amy Cheney Beach Collection, which is housed in the Dr. Kenneth J. LaBudde Department of Special Collections of the University of Missouri – Kansas City.

Amy Beach’s Variations on Balkan Themes, op. 60 was one of many great works she composed for piano. Based on songs “of unknown origin” collected by Reverend and Mrs. William W. Sleeper during their time living as missionaries in the Balkan region, the variations play upon “O Maiko Moya,” “Stara Planina,” and “Nasadil e Dado,” among other Balkan folk tunes. (Beach did not collect any of the folksongs her works were based on.) The variations employ switches between different themes to make up their complex texture.

The following is a loose translation of the text of “O Maiko Moya,” which is the first theme introduced in the work. Although there is no text to be sung or read with this work (this is a piano work, after all) this is important to the structure of the work and is suggestive of the overall tone of the variations and the cultural background that they were based on.

“O my poor country, to thy sons so dear,

Why art thou weeping, why this sadness drear?

Alas! thou raven, messenger of woe,

Over those fresh grave moanest thou so?”

The different folk songs do not all have to deal with Balkan nationalistic pride, rather, some texts relate to the mountains, or a story of a grandfather planting a small garden. As is the case in any piece written as a theme with variations, the variations gradually move away from the original motivic elements and provide new context for different themes.

In her analysis of Beach’s Variations on Balkan Themes, Dr. Adrienne Fried Block suggested that Beach borrowed from Beethoven’s tonal scheme for his Six Variations, op. 34. Beethoven’s Variations was one of the pieces that Beach regularly performed in her solo piano performances and one of the few variations that she regularly played throughout her career. It makes sense then, that this piece had such an effect on her own music. The Balkan Themes were in minor, which affected the tonal adjustments she made to the piece and prevented her from using Beethoven’s Variations structure exactly as it is (it should be noted that the speculation that Beach borrowed from Beethoven is a part of Dr. Block’s correspondence to a E. Douglas Bomberger).

Overall, Beach’s Variations are lively, yet melancholy in mood. Beach was known to incorporate romanticism and delayed resolution into her work, later on moving away from tonality. It is no surprise that Beach has been declared the first successful American female composer of large-scale music, although I think it would be interesting to explore the published music of other female composers and try to understand where they “fell short” of the success of their male counterparts, causing America to have to wait until the late 1800s for a female composer of Beach’s accomplishment.

Beach, Amy. Variations on Balkan Themes, op. 60. Boston: Arthur P. Schmidt, 1906. http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/0/0f/IMSLP08550-Beach_-_Op.60__Variations_on_Balkan_Themes.pdf.

Beach, Amy. Variations on Balkan Themes, op. 60. Performed by Virginia Eskin. Composed 1904.

Bomberger, E. Douglas, and Adrienne Fried Block. “On Beach’s Variations on Balkan Themes, op. 60.” American Music 11, no. 3 (1993): 368-71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3052509.

Amy Beach: musician in spite of her family

Posted on March 24, 2015 by smithg

Today many listeners of classical music are familiar with the music or at least the name of Amy Beach. A prodigy from a very young age who came to fame through her virtuosic piano performances made her lasting mark in her compositions. Her life was defined by her gender because women, especially those of Beach’s social standing, were not to support themselves. Even though her parents were distinctly aware of Amy’s talents, they stuck with the status quo plan for young women of the time: some formal schooling, lessons in the arts, and marriage.[1]

In her article published in many women’s magazines in the early 1900s she does not fault her family for so obviously holding her back when she had so much to do in music. Rather she saw her mother’s education style as a way to ease the young prodigy into music without becoming overwhelmed. Beach’s article almost exclusively focuses on the relationship between Amy and her mother, as well as her career as a performer and composer.[2]

Beach’s success as a musician almost depends on this sort of frame that women were expected to live in. There is no doubt that Beach could have done amazing things if afforded the right to a fancy musical education that men had available to them. However, her affluent family history and unique life story allowed (or forced) her to stand out among other women. I mention forced because Amy hardly had any choice in her study of music or the path it would take.[3]

Beach had the opportunity to become a self-taught musician after her little formal training because she did not have the duties of a domestic wife like many other women. After her husband’s death in 1910 she was able to take many tours of Europe and make her name even larger.

All of these facts make for a confusing picture of Amy Beach. On one hand we have a woman who is a prisoner in her time where women aren’t allowed to study music at high levels and must submit their wills to their parents and husbands. On the other hand we have Beach as a child prodigy who has led the way for other women composers after her and succeeded because of her circumstances, but could have thrived even more in a more accepting culture.

[1] Adrienne Fried Block, Amy Beach: Passionate Victorian, (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1998), 298.

[2] Judith Tick ed., Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 323-327.

[3] Walter S. Jenkins, The Remarkable Mrs. Beach, American Composer, (Warren: Harmonie Park Press, 1994), 66-68.

Charles E. Ives: Memos

Posted on March 24, 2015 by andersdh

When I was searching for Charles Ives correspondence in our music library, I came across a book called Charles E. Ives: Memos. It is a collection, constructed by John Kirkpatrick from Yale University, of previously unpublished loose leaf writings of Charles Ives. Some were initially handwritten by Ives himself, while others were written in shorthand by his secretary, Miss Florence Martin, and edited by him later. After his death in 1954, these loose leafs were collated and organized by when they were written, and ultimately published in this book. As with any correspondence collection, it does not include every single “memo” Ives ever wrote; it is believed this collection includes approximately three-fifths of his loose leaf writing.

The book is in three main parts: “Pretext,” “Scrapbook,” and “Memories.” While it looks as if each section is written in prose, that may not necessarily be the case. Kirkpatrick took the time to mark each piece, sometimes a paragraph or a few sentences, with identifying information revealing where those words came from. “Pretext” focuses on Ives’ aims, his views on music, critics, and criticism. “Scrapbook” reveals the composer’s notes on his own music. “Memories” provides the reader with biographical and autobiographical information.

Below, I have included the pages from “Scrapbook” of Ives’ Second Piano Sonata, since we are studying this piece in class (number 30). Ives provides insight as to how each of the four movements came to fruition. He reveals that he never really came up with an ending for the first movement, “Emerson,” or developed one way to play it. For the second movement, “Hawthorne,” Ives describes the cluster chords on page 25 of the score, how to play them and what effect they are supposed to have on the listener. In his words about the third, “The Alcotts,” and fourth movements, “Thoreau,” Ives reveals that he had intentions of expanding his orchestration to include organ, strings, woodwinds, etc. Some of the material from the fourth movement came directly out of a string quartet Ives had been working on but never finished.

Kirkpatrick, J., ed. Charles E. Ives: Memos. New York: W. W. Norton &, 1972. 78-79.

Kirkpatrick, J., ed. Charles E. Ives: Memos. New York: W. W. Norton &, 1972. 80-81.

Kirkpatrick, J., ed. Charles E. Ives: Memos. New York: W. W. Norton &, 1972. 82-83.

These notes by the composer about his or her own pieces are eye opening, especially to the performer. They are very insightful and allow the performer to get into the mindset of the composer, and learn more about exactly what the composer meant when he or she wrote the piece.

Kirkpatrick, J., ed. Charles E. Ives: Memos. New York: W. W. Norton &, 1972.

The ‘Practical Idealism’ of “Porgy and Bess”

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Cole

The day after the premiere of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at the Colonial Theatre in New York City, a review of the performance appeared in the New York Times that would both articulate the positive aspects of the opera while also aptly summarizing its importance to American music. A portion of the opening paragraph reads:

“An audience which assembled, uncertain whether they should find a heavy operatic work or something more resembling musical comedy, discovered a form of entertainment which stands midway between the two. The immediate response was one of enthusiasm that grew rather than diminished as the evening progressed.” [1]

In other words, Porgy and Bess was an immediate hit because it successfully bridged the gap between the styles of European grand opera and American musical theater in the style of tin-pan alley. By extension, Gershwin was cementing his reputation as the quintessential American composer: a perfect combination of elite artist and regular American. While this synthesis may appear to be a contradiction, there are a number of descriptions in this and other contemporaneous reviews that support this statement.

: A scene from the original Broadway projection of “Porgy and Bess”.

From the New York Amsterdam News:

“The first act represents George Gershwin’s most serious writing. It is Gershwin struggling for a greater expression, endeavoring to transcend into the world of great music. Contrapuntally speaking, he does. This is evident in the crap game fugue.” [2]

The author (Allen Gilbert) goes on to compare Gershwin to “Brahms, Bach, or Beethoven” for his clarity of theme in symphonic writing, effectively lifting him into a pantheon of greatness. Yet, Gilbert goes on to call the second act a “let down”, describing it as a musical side-show that more resembles a smorgasbord of primitive American music (hot jazz, broadway ballads, negro spirituals) than it does the work of a grand master. He attributes to Gershwin a false quote suggesting that opera is for the “masses” but that they cannot understand it if it’s not dumbed down for them.

But it is the third act that truly shows Gershwin’s greatness, a “gathering together of the parts” that utilizes both ends of the spectrum without compromising on beauty and emotional power. It is with this in mind that the author crowns Gershwin as the “practical idealist”.

While this is a deserving title for the young composer, we can see quite clearly how mind-numbingly kitschy this is, yet another example of American determinism seeking out the next great musical representative for the U.S. of A. This is especially frustrating when we consider the most problematic yet simultaneously inspiring aspect of the work and its initial performances: its nearly all-Black cast. While the New York Times review emphasizes this historic achievement (even including it in the subtitle), the New York Amsterdam review doesn’t even mention it. The first lauds each cast member and the “characterizing detail” given to a normally inhuman and primitive setting; the latter lauds only Gershwin and his ability to humanize to black music without mention of the African Americans involved.

I don’t mean to suggest that Gershwin is responsible for this discrepancy, but it is worth remembering that in the evolving world of American art music in the early 1900s, Porgy and Bess may have been more akin to minstrelsy than to grand opera for many white audiences. Though an article in the Chicago Defender less than a month later claims that “race music is dignified” by Porgy and Bess, this primarily African-American viewpoint doesn’t necessarily reflect a popular perspective of the work. [3] While Gershwin’s “idealistic” genius and his roster of memorable songs is undoubtedly responsible for the works success, it is fascinating to see how the “practical” matters of the performances may have been ignored.

[1] Special to The New York Times. “Gershwin’s Opera Makes Boston Hit.” New York Times (1923-Current File), Oct 01, 1935. http://search.proquest.com/docview/101340968?accountid=351.

[2] Allen, Gilbert. “George Gershwin, Practical Idealist.” The New York Amsterdam News (1922-1938), Nov 16, 1935. http://search.proquest.com/docview/226210087?accountid=351.

[3] McMillan, Alan. “‘Porgy and Bess’ Scores on Broadway.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Oct 19, 1935. http://search.proquest.com/docview/492522466?accountid=351.

Dvořák and The Song of Hiawatha

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Stephen Sweeney

When Czech composer Antonín Dvořák came to the United States near the end of 1892, he was met with welcoming arms in the musical community. With a salary at the National Conservatory of about 3 times that of a U.S. Senator, it’s fairly easy to see he was wanted in America.¹ There is some evidence of his popularity in some personal correspondence to Dvořák which I found in Dvořák and His World while perusing the Halvorson Music Library at St. Olaf College.²

Among the letters sent to him are those written by amateur musicians, requesting feedback on scores, thanking him for his compositions, and asking for rights to perform his published works. However, digging through the letters, I found some rather interesting ones. One group of letters that caught my attention was by that of an Auguste Roebbelen of the New York Philharmonic Society. He requested that the orchestra perform his newest work, the “New World Symphony” that year (1893) in December.² A letter on January first of 1894 confirmed that they did receive permission, and he says that the concert

“was epochal in its character, for it was the first production of a new work, by one of the greatest composers, written in America, embodying the sentiment and romance derived from a residence in America and a study of its native tone-expressions.”

These “native tone-expressions” link back to an earlier letter in this volume sent to Dvořák by a music critic and writer Henry Krehbiel. Thanking him for the permission to do the notes on his symphony, and providing him with “3 more Negro songs from Kentucky” in case Dvořák wished to use them while working on his new quartet and quintet. This interested me, and I followed the rabbit hole further, tracking down the original notes that Krehbiel wrote on the premier of the New World Symphony.

On December 15, 1893 Krehbiel wrote an extensive analysis and explanation of The New World Symphony in the daily publication of the New-York Tribune. In the article, he seems to capture words that Dvořák had said to him during their interview, noting that the melody of the second movement Largo is inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem, The Song of Hiawatha. His article even mentions the work of Alice Fletcher, who worked on transcribing and notating Native American music in the later 1800’s. All in all, it’s amazing to see what sort of influences other people could have on Dvořák or the music he composed. Letters from an orchestral society allowed them to play piece of his that hadn’t been published yet. The request for writing notes by Krehbiel gave him an interview which eventually led to my knowledge of what inspired Dvořák for a small portion of his symphony. These letters set the stage for what we now know of Dvořák: a man who took melodies from truly American tradition, whether positive or negative, and insisted that they be used for the core of American music. Continue reading →

Is Rhapsody in Blue an “Inauthentic” Representation of Jazz?

Posted on March 24, 2015 by xies

According to some jazz scholars, a racialized barrier between the black, “authentic” extended jazz compositions of Duke Ellington and the white, “inauthentic” symphonic jazz of Gershwin has emerged in critical and scholarly accounts of these traditions. However, when Ellington rearranged Rhapsody in blue, these barriers were considered to become more complex and permeable.

“Whites Cannot Play Real Jazz”- this is not only the title of a newspaper article (Pittsburgh Courier) in 1923, but inclined the idea that “in Whites’ performance, there is little real substance to black art in itself, that it is mainly a figment of white people’s racially twisted imagination.(Gerard, 101)”

Bañagale, Ryan Raul. “Rewriting the Narrative One Arrangement at a Time: Duke Ellington and Rhapsody in Blue.” Jazz Perspectives 6.1-2 (2012): 5-27.

Duke Ellington’s arrangements performed in 1925 and 1932 tried to remove long-held assumptions that the Rhapsody in blue was the provenience of white bands and provide insight into Ellington’s own development of concertized jazz. With a belief that “a soloist should be given absolute freedom,” Ellington might be one of the “angry African-American avant-garde jazz artists” that tried to point out white composers who have made money out of spontaneity and primitiveness of African- American art fail to see the skill and calculation of the Black composers/performers(Gerard, 98). In his 1932 arrangement of Rhapsody, he increased the large saxophone section into four, instead of using clarinets, hoping to achieve more complex harmonies and timbral. He also wanted to recall a social dance tradition instead of letting audiences sit on concert hall chairs. Except of an improvised piano solo, his arrangement can be played with a steady, danceable tempo (Raul, 105).

Here is a reconding of Ellington’s latest arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue:

http://ezproxy.stolaf.edu/login?url=https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/be|recorded_track|li_isrc_884385543143USESK0602247

However, would it be possible that Duke Ellington misunderstood intentions of some White composers? Chick Corea once said:

Gerard, Charley. Jazz in Black and White: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Jazz Community. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1998. Print.

Thus some of White composers’ interests in jazz were primarily aesthetic, since their music does not play a part in establishing a group’s social cohesion, as African-American music does for Black culture. Whites have a strong interest in expanding the technical aspects of jazz by introducing elements from modern classical music. At the same time, it would be rigorous that a successful performance of music that has jazz elements requires that all of its traditional ingredients be present in order for it to be considered authentic. Thus I personally won’t agree that in transforming jazz into “fine art”, composers/performers sought to transform/affirm their racial status in order to “distant” blackness.

Works Cited:

Bañagale, Ryan R. Arranging Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue and the Creation of an American Icon. , 2014. Print.

Bañagale, Ryan Raul. “Rewriting the Narrative One Arrangement at a Time: Duke Ellington and Rhapsody in Blue.” Jazz Perspectives 6.1-2 (2012): 5-27.

Gerard, Charley. Jazz in Black and White: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Jazz Community. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1998. Print.

Copland – Paris, France in 1921 – His Early Victories

Posted on March 23, 2015 by christes

In June of 1921, Aaron Copland sailed to Paris, France to study music composition at the Palais de Fontainebleau. He gained much knowledge and experience with the help of his instructors Paul Vidal and Nadia Boulanger, as well as meeting new comrades like Harold Clurman. These individuals were formative in the early stages of Copland’s composing career and thus left an immense impact on his life and music. During his time in Paris, Copland had a great correspondence with his parents back in the United States.

Copland in early 1920s

One particularly amazing written account of Copland’s early success in Paris is in a letter he wrote to his parents. Merely three months into his stay in Paris, Copland had an opportunity that excited him more than ‘any debut in Carnegie Hall ever could.’ The following shows a portion of his letter to his parents:

(Selected correspondence of Aaron copland, p. 39)

Copland’s gained great success in Paris very early on in his stay. In the next letter to his parents, he writes of another great victory–he sells his first composition to one of the biggest publishing companies in all of Paris. Copland writes to his parents with a delightful voice, comfortable expressing his unadulterated joy with his loved ones. Readers are lucky to be able to get such a glimpse into an intimate exchange of letters from a composer to his parents. Copland has left such a mark on music history in America, and to be able to read more closely at the details of the beginning of his career is unique and very telling of what he was experiencing in the moment.

At the end of his letter about selling his composition, with a charming tone Copland signs off saying, “So, we have a composer in the Copland family, it seems. Who says there are no more miracles. Lovingly, Aaron.” (Copland, p. 41)

Bibliography:

Copland, Aaron. Selected Correspondence of Aaron Copland. New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press, 2006. Accessed March 23, 2015. ProQuest ebrary.

Image found at: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/media/loc.natlib.copland.phot0020/ver01/0001.tif/225

Charles Ives Startles Bandmaster John Philip Sousa

Posted on March 23, 2015 by stephens

Probably the most famous story of the Ives family is that of George Ives directing two town bands to walk towards each other in an aural experiment of clashing proportions. Whether or not this story is true, it does tell how George inspired a desire to experiment in his son, as well as the tradition of band music that comes from the late nineteenth century.

As an adult, Charles Ives became involved in insurance, but remains one of the most prolific American composers of the 20th century. Much of this acclaim comes from the innovation of his compositions as they experimented with key, quotations, melody, and rhythm.

In 1918 Ives became ill with some sort of heart disease. As Ives grew sicker, he tried harder to reach the American musical communities by sending out his works to composers and musicians. Many recipients thanked him generously for the free scores he sent, but likely did not read through the pieces–or if they did, might have been put-off by the strange and new work. This is why John Philip Sousa’s reply is one of the best.

“1 June 1923, John Philip Sousa to Charles Ives

My Dear Mr. Ives:

Permit me to thank you for your kindness in sending me your volume of 114 Songs of which you are the composer. Some of the songs are most startling to a man educated by the harmonic methods of our forefathers.

Yours Sincerely,

John Philip Sousa”

Sousa’s comment is neither positive nor negative, but reflects the sentiment of a man confronted with something entirely new. As a composer steeped in the tradition of bandmasters such as Sousa, Ives must have been honored that Sousa took the time to read his work. Band music played such a prominent role in the Ives household as George led the town bands himself and probably chose many Sousa marches to direct. The satisfaction of knowing Sousa was impressed by Ives’ work reflects his life desire to write his father’s work. To Charles, Sousa probably represented a bit of George with his marches. Gaining the attention of the famous march composer must have been like receiving the approval of George Ives himself.

Burkholder, J. Peter. “Charles Ives and His World.” Princeton University Press, Princeton 1996.

Music is My Mistress

Posted on March 23, 2015 by butler

“It’s not unlawful to sing or play any kind of music in the United States of America, no matter how good or bad it sounds. Jazz is based on the sound of our native heritage. It is an American idiom with African roots-a trunk of soul with limbs reaching in every direction, to the frigid North, the exotic East, the miserable, swampy South, and the swinging Wild West.”[1]

Left- Duke Ellington’s autobiography; Right- Mercer Ellington’s memoir of his father

This passage from Duke Ellington’s autobiography, Music is my Mistress, hints at his plain writing style and his lifetime success in jazz. Ellington wrote his biography for the celebration of his 70^th birthday in 1973, but its intent is not entirely clear. While he has a few revelations on music, God, and his Sacred conventions, to share, most of the book is spent listing the unique experiences he had and the many people that he worked with or that influenced him, all of whom are described as “good guys.” As Eileen Southern said in her book review in The Black Perspective in Music, “a great deal of essential data is missing…nowhere in the book is a hint of the pain Ellington must have experienced.”[2]

In contrast, his son Mercer Ellington wrote a memoir of his father that painted a much different picture of his life. Perhaps tainted by his experience of not seeing much of his father, Mercer summarizes some of the moments when Ellington was sidelined because of his race, such as when Ellington wrote Black, Beige, and Tan as a parallel and critique to African American history and received a patronizing response from critics or the many moments that Ellington had to prove his bands’ worth in comparison and competition with white jazz bands.

Perhaps the fact that Ellington left out the more bleak and tough moments of his life shows his view on protesting racial issues. Mercer quotes his father, “’I think a statement of social protest in the theater should be made without saying it.’”[3] His piece, Black Beige and Tan, and his 1963 cover of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue have undertones of critique on white appropriation of jazz by the virtuosity, styles, and stories that he implements, but they have to be inferred. Arguably, these conflicting accounts also show Ellington contributing to the white narrative of jazz. Ellington’s success was not only because of his talent as a musician and bandleader, but he did not outwardly fight the racist structures controlling his profession. Since his autobiography was published at a time when Ellington was celebrated by white audiences as a successful American jazz musicians, it makes sense that he chose to leave his African American experience out.

[1] Edward Kennedy Ellington, Music is my Mistress, (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1973), 436.

[2] Eileen Southern, “Reviewed Work: Music is My Mistress,” The Black Perspective in Music, 2, no. 2 (1974): 211-212.

[3] Mercer Ellington, Duke Ellington in Person: An Intimate Memoir, (Boston: Hougton Mifflin Company, 1978), 94.

Henry Cowell’s Heavenly Music?

Posted on March 23, 2015 by simonson

Anyone who has taken Music History alongside the Norton Anthology knows Henry Cowell as the composer of the epically stated The Banshee. However, The Banshee is not the only Irish mythological topic that inspired his music as noted by Dr. Charles Pease, writer of the “As I See It” column in the Evening News, published in San Jose, California in 1922.[1] This column does not specify which piece he heard, so I did some extra research to find out which piece is most likely.

The volume of The Evening News was published three years before Cowell’s The Banshee was premiered. I found another piece written in 1912, entitled The Tides of Manaunaum: No. 1 of “Three Irish Legends.” This piece accurately fulfills all the descriptions found in Dr. Charles Pease’s article; it is based on Irish myths, voices “the crashing movements of the incredible forces and masses conveyed in strange ‘chord-clusters’, and includes “the old Dorian modes developed perhaps five or six centuries before Christ.” However, just because this piece includes chord clusters and the Dorian mode, does this piece really show a “World Closer to God?”[2]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgn4SQFgU9Y

The edition published in American Piano Classics selected by Joseph Smith includes the story according to John Varian:

Manaunaum was the god of motion, and long before the creation he sent forth tremendous tides, which swept to and fro through the universe, and rhythmically moved the particles and materials of which the gods were later to make the suns and the worlds.[3]

Yes, the low clusters the show the crashing tides against the shore created by the “god of motion” and the Dorian mode points back ancient Greece. But does this music really transcend over all other music the godly cosmos of another world? The ideas of chord clusters had been around as Igor Stravinsky used dissonant clusters in his music, and composers had been looking back to the Greeks for some time. Henry Cowell is just another development in the scope of music.

[1] Dr. Charles Pease, “As I See It: Cowell’s Cosmic Music World Close to God,” Evening News vol. 78 no. 73 (09-25-1922) : 6.

[2] Ibidem.

[3] Henry Cowell, “The Tides of Manaunaum,” in Americn Piano Classics: 39 Works by Gottschalk, Griffes, Gershwin, Copland, and Others, ed. Joseph Smith (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001), 44.

El Salon Mexico: Copland’s Correspondence with Carlos Chavez

Posted on March 23, 2015 by alexandc

El Salon Mexico was a highly labored over composition Copland was particularly enthusiastic about writing. Spending over two years on its composition, Copland was in correspondence with Mexican composer Carlos Chavez years before its actual premiere in the Fall of 1937. The correspondence between Copland and Chavez reveals Copland’s strong interest in the pieces reception critically both in terms of popularity but also particularly centered on the acceptance of it as Mexican music.

Copland’s enthusiasm for the piece can be seen in his letter two years before its premiere in a letter from August 28th, 1935:

“Just now I am finishing up the orchestration of El Salon Mexico which I wrote you about last summer. What it would sound like in Mexico I can’t imagine, but everyone here for whom I have played it seems to think it is very gay and amusing!”

This quote reveals both the excitement Copland felt and also his concern over the piece’s reception in Mexico. This concern is more strongly articulated in other letters he wrote to Chavez during the piece’s composition. In October 1934 he wrote that:

“I am terribly afraid of what you will say of he Salon Mexico – perhaps it is not Mexican at all and I would look so foolish. But in America del Norte it may sound Mexican!”

Anxious to hear about the reception of the piece, Copland asked explicitly for Chavez to pass on that information to him in 1937 after he sent the piece to be performed. He writes:

“I hope the Festival will be a big success. Also, that you’ll enjoy working on the Salon Mexico. Be sure to have Armando send me all the reviews – even those of Senor Pollares!”

The correspondence between Copland and Chavez provides a fascinating insight into the concerns and enthusiasm that Copland had over the piece and shows that Copland himself was very consciously thinking about the issues of race and musical representation during the composition of his piece. Some interesting questions to ask would be whether or not Copland ought to be writing pieces which he worries are “authentic” only to an audience they do not belong to. Is it reinforcing racial stereotypes if the culture wildly raving the piece as “Mexican” is America? Is Copland advocating the writing of stereotyped pieces? Or is he trying to authentically capture and represent what might constitute as “Mexican music?” Would doing so be a respectful celebration or appropriation of Mexican music? Is Copland’s correspondence with Chavez reveal a genuine desire to please Mexican audiences or to market to American audiences? These are all questions without answers, because that’s what this class is about.

Works Cited:

Kostelanetz, Richard. Aaron Copland: A Reader. Great Britain: Routledge, 2004. Print.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.copland.phot0005/default.html

They all got Rhythm

Quote

Posted on March 23, 2015 by Chloe Elzey

When Gershwin wrote “I Got Rhythm” for the 1930’s musical Girl Crazy, he couldn’t have known what effect he had on the direction of jazz for years to come. The chord progressions and simple rhythm changes presented in “I Got Rhythm” have become second nature in the most common harmonic structure of jazz.

It was 1930, and the Gershwin brothers were working on the score of Girl Crazy, their next Broadway show. The chorus of the song, based on a syncopated four-note figure, was cast in standard 32-bar AABA form with a two-bar tag. Of the seventeen lines in the lyrics of its chorus, thirteen are set to the same four-note figure, a rhythmic cell that hits only one of the four strong beats in the two bars it covers.

For Ira (George’s brother and lyricist), “rhythm” in this song was tied up with aggressive, accented, syncopated groupings of beats. Together the music and lyrics would create a catchy tune that would become something so great in very little time.

Within ten days of the opening of Girl Crazy on the 14th, three significant recordings of “I Got Rhythm” were made.

“On the 20th, Freddie Rich, conductor of the CBS Radio Orchestra, recorded it with a group under his own name. On the 23d, Red Nichols and His Five Pennies—all thirteen of them, and including Goodman, Krupa, Miller, and other members of the Girl Crazy pit band, plus vocalist Dick Robertson—made their own version. And on the 24th, one of New York’s best black bands, Luis Russell and His Orchestra, recorded another version. Each can be taken to represent the beginning of a different approach to Gershwin’s number: (1) “I Got Rhythm” as a song played and sung by popular performers; (2) “I Got Rhythm” as a jazz standard , a piece known and frequently played by musicians, black and white, in the jazz tradition; and (3) “I Got Rhythm” as a musical structure , a harmonic framework upon which jazz instrumentalists, especially blacks, have built new compositions.”

The endurance and progression of popularity in the jazz tradition expanded largely due to its extensive use by early bebop musicians. The chords were first used in 1930s and developed into a popular jazz standard. “I Got Rhythm” became extremely common in the ’40s and ’50s when composers listened to the song and wrote a new melody over its chord changes, thereby creating a contrafact- a new melody overlaid on a familiar harmonic structure. Gershwin’s influence in jazz music is now ubiquitous. In Robert Wyatt’s book The George Gershwin Reader,

Popular musicians like Sidney Bechet, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker started to imitate Gershwin’s style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZfVPvUOWro&spfreload=10

1 Crawford, Richard. “George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” (1930).” The American Musical Landscape. University of California Press. 1993. Web. 23 Mar. 2015. <http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft0z09n7gx&chunk.id=d0e6504&toc.id=d0e14086&brand=ucpress>.

2 Wyatt, Robert. “George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” (1930).” The George Gershwin Reader. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. 156-172. Print.

Popularizing Jazz at the Symphony: Copland’s Dance Symphony

Posted on March 23, 2015 by bergka

Copland's Dance Symphony was written in 1925 during the height of symphonic jazz.

Copland’s Dance Symphony was written in 1925 during the height of the development of symphonic jazz.

The 1920’s in the United States welcomed a new type of distinctly American music that combined music created by African Americans and stylized it for white audiences. Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Paul Whiteman and others can be credited with popularizing this new orchestral genre.

Distinct from New Orleans and Chicago styles of jazz, orchestral jazz included new style features like polyphony instead of homophony, the general expansion of instrumentation from big bands to orchestral instruments, and a shift to pre-arranged compositions rather than collective improvisation. Paul Whiteman commissoned several composers, including Gerswhin’s Rhapsody in Blue, to write music with the instrumentation and style features of jazz, but with the scale and structure of a symphony orchestra.

“In the twenties, most of those who listened at all regarded jazz as merely an energetic background for dancers; the few who sought more profound values in the music tended to accept Paul Whiteman’s concert productions… as the only jazz worth taking seriously.” – Paul Whiteman on symphonic jazz¹

Aaron Copland was a young composer during these “golden years” for American popular music and jazz. Determined to make it as a full time composer, Copland lived in a studio apartment near Carnegie Hall in New York. He created a group with several of his younger contemporaries, including Virgil Thomson, called the “commando unit” to help promote each other and their works, but also influence each other in what the American style would be in the 20th century.

Young Aaron Copland in New York²

The Dance Symphony is divided into three distinct sections, but there must not be any pause between movements. The first movement begins with a short slow introduction, followed by a light allegro. The tune is passed around in the woodwinds, starting in the bassoon, moving to the oboe and finally resting in the clarinet. Meanwhile, each time the tune is accompanied by soft plucked violins and harp. With each version of the tune, combos of instruments are used, like the jazz combos popular in the day.³

The second movement is more interesting in that it layers multiple melodies on top of each other. This is a technique popularized by Charles Ives around the same time.

The third movement is more interesting still because of its characterization of violence and syncopation. It begins with a jazzy motive using chords and blue notes popular in jazz. There is an extended development of all the material similar to the standard jazz form of numerous solos over a bass line ending with “all motives blazoned forth at once.”⁴

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8FJtOqkmgo

1Hadlock, Richard. The World of Count Basie. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1980

2 (picture of Aaron Copland in New York) http://www.pbs.org/keepingscore/copland-american-sound.html

3 Copland, Aaron, and Richard Kostelanetz. “His Own Works.” In Aaron Copland: A Reader; Selected Writings 1923-1972, 232-3. New York: Routledge, 2004.

4 Ibid., 232-3.

Nadia Boulanger – The French Woman Behind the American Man

Posted on March 23, 2015 by Brandon Cash

So how exactly did Aaron Copland meet the famed Nadia Boulanger? To be honest, it appears he never wanted to. Well, at least he didn’t think he would. In the summer of 1921, Copland sailed to France to study composition at the American Conservatory, in Fontainebleau where he was “handed over to the head composition teacher of the Paris Conservatoire, Paul Vidal… [a] solidly trained, conservative man, known to the musical world in Paris as one of the top composers of the day— certainly one of the top teachers of the day,” but as Copland put it, “had nothing to tell me that was of interest.”¹

: Nadia Boulanger

So his first teacher wasn’t a roaring success. What about Nadia Boulanger? Boulanger, at the time of Copland’s arrival, taught harmony, and as a subject, he “wasn’t interested in harmony at all. It was old stuff to [him].”² It took a little persuading from a classmate of his, but Copland finally decided to observe what Boulanger had to offer. When asked about his first encounter, Copland stated “I don’t remember what Boulanger was doing, harmonically speaking, that was so striking. It was more the sense of warmth of the personality that was very striking— and the sense of involvement in the subject— that made it seem much more lively than I ever thought harmony could be— a sudden excitement about it all, and how it was the basis of everything when you really thought about it.”³ Copland, was hooked.

: Copland and Boulanger enjoying dinner together

Nadia Boulanger was described as being “very honest— sometimes brutally honest” yet very open-minded to what her students were doing. She was, in fact, a French woman who held herself with a “certain reserve,” but at the same time was quite “warm and friendly.”⁴ After deciding to study with her, despite the fact she was a female (which was “revolutionary” to Copland)⁵ the life of the young composer would never be the same. Through his relationship with Boulanger, Copland had the opportunity to meet famous composers such as Stravinsky and Poulenc and was even published by Debussy’s own publisher.⁶ Nadia Boulanger opened countless doors for Copland. As Copland put it, “it was more than a student-teacher relationship.” They were also great friends.

: Copland and Boulanger

References:

1 Perlis, Vivian, and Van Cleve, Libby. Composers’ Voices from Ives to Ellington : An Oral History of American Music. New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press, 2005. 300.

2 Ibid., 300.

3 Ibid., 301.

4 Ibid., 302.

5 Ibid., 301.

6 Ibid., 303.

Depression Era Changes in American Music: Aaron Copland, Critics, and Music for the People

Posted on March 22, 2015 by herndon

During the Great Depression, the United States government took action to provide work for the unemployed musicians (70% of American musicians) that had been displaced by falling audience attendance in venues around the country. In 1935, the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Project Number One implemented relief for musicians with the Federal Music Project. The Federal Music Project employed musicians to perform in both concert and folk/dance settings, teach lessons, and conduct musicological research. The Works Progress Administration was the first instance of government funded music in the United States, and this shift in the way the country approached music affected both the music being made and the relationship between composers, audience members, and, as the letter below reveals, critics.¹

In the following open letter from Aaron Copland, Copland clarifies the reasons for the intended conference between critics and composers at the Yaddo Music Festival and chastises critics for failing to attend:

Though this letter dates three years prior to the implementation of Federal Project Number One, Copland was already beginning to articulate the changes that were happening in American music. By the mid-1930s, Copland himself was transitioning into his fourth stylistic period which incorporated recognizable melodies into a major-minor tonal system in an effort to garner widespread appeal.²Copland made the shift from abstract music to accessible music during this period because the Depression made audience appeal a significant factor in composing music. If music was to survive the Depression, it needed an audience to do so. Thus, composers like Copland sought to create music that the general public would deem valuable enough to listen to.

In Copland’s letter, he calls upon critics to play their role in the transmission of music from composer to audience. The following excerpt best captures his frustration with critics for their failure to adapt to–or even recognize the need to adapt to–the changing musical climate of the United States:

Our purpose was the thoroughly serious one of considering the relation between the American composer and the music critic of the daily press and to discover what might be done to make that relation more vital and more important than it now is . . . . [the critic] is an absolute necessity [to the composer], if only because he serves as a middle man between the public and the creative artist. . . . music critics of the daily press will soon come to realize that the position of the American composer has changed, and that he is no longer satisfied with the merely tolerant and often apathetic attitude of the press toward American music in general . . .³

With these words, Copland is saying that the music industry can no longer afford to be neutral towards the role the audience plays. He does not ask critics to manipulate their reviews in order to purvey American music to the public (in the sense of propaganda), but he does encourage them to have more of an opinion about American music, presumably to incite discussion, curiosity, and even knowledge of American music among potential audience members. Critics were integral to garnering interest for the changing American music scene of the Depression era, and Copland calls on them–as he called upon himself–to ensure that American music would have a lasting future.

Footnotes

1 Richard Crawford,”‘The Birthright of All of Us’: Classical Music, the Mass Media, and the Depression,” in America’s Musical Life: A History (New York: Norton, 2001) 590.

2 Ibid., 587.

3 Aaron Copland, Selected Correspondence of Aaron Copland (New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press, 2006), 91.

Virgil Thomson: Master Chef

Posted on March 22, 2015 by sison

Today, I will remain in the vein of composers and their culinary expeditions, as established by fellow author Phil Biedenbender (Here’s his post on Mahalia Jackson and her fried chicken excursion).

A pioneer of the “American” sound in classical music and winner of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize in music, Virgil Thomson had some serious musical chops. But did you know he also cooked gourmet lamb chops?

Virgil Thomson sharpening his knives in preparation

[1]

We know Virgil Thomson mainly through his acerbic wit revealed in his writings and musical critiques. Thomson wrote many letters to his friends and acquaintances, some criticizing music, some about special occasions, and even some advice about various topics. His prose is known for being blunt and often funny even if he was being offensive. Thomson’s curiosity was insatiable, composing for almost every genre of music and absorbing all that was new around him.

Thomson also had a passion for fine wine and dining that could only be matched by his passion for music. He once stated, “If I was going to starve, I might as well starve where the food is good.” Thomson’s dinner parties were legendary. Few people were invited since space was limited in his residence at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City, home to other greats such as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. But those that were fortunate enough to attend were treated to an amazing meal and enlightening conversation. He may have been one of the most well-connected men in New York during his time, as people worldwide wanted to stay in contact with him.

Correspondence from Virgil to fellow composer, Charles Shere

[2]

As enigmatic and detached he may seem in writing and his compositions, Thomson’s love of food makes him at once more personable as well as knowledgable. People would have not gone to his parties if he was a discourteous host or did not have engaging discussions. He showed a human side of himself that people may have never thought existed through the various meals that he hosted. Even as he was getting into his 80s and 90s, Thomson never lost his vigor and remained as sarcastic as ever until his death.

[3]

I wish I could have had the pleasure of being served his pot roasted guinea pig.

1. Hodgson, Moira. 1980. “Virgil Thomson Orchestrates a Meal And Reminisces.” New York Times (1923-Current file), Oct 29. http://search.proquest.com/docview/121418217?accountid=351 (Accessed March 22).
2. Shere, Charles, and Margery Tade. Everbest Ever: Correspondence with Bay Area Friends (Berkeley, CA: Fallen Leaf Press, 1996), 30.
3. Ibid., 45-46.

Newport Folk Festival Hosts Composer of the “The American Folk-Song Mass”

Posted on March 12, 2015 by simonson

As the folk tradition started to die out, American folk started to take flight when John and Alan Lomax recorded and collected music of the rural regions of the United State, particularly in penitentiaries. In the 1940s, artists around the country decided to takes these recorded folk songs and make their own recordings. A single vocal accompanied by a guitar became the standard folk song, and people decided to write their own songs in the “folk” style.¹

Along with this surge of new folk composers came Father Ian Mitchell, “the guitar-toting Episcopal priest…, and his wife, folk-singing star Caroline.”² Father Ian Mitchell composed The American Folk-Song Mass, consisting of several liturgical and some original text set to the twang of the guitar. The Chicago Defender stated that “Father Mitchel composed [The American Folk-Song Mass] because he got tired of ‘cloying, cornball, 19^th Century hymns.’”³ Later, Father Mitchell released Catholic version of his folk-song mass, incorporating the texts of the Roman Catholic Liturgy. According to the liner of the Catholic version of the mass, Father Mitchell was later commissioned to compose the Funeral Folk Mass.

According to the Chicago Defender, Father Ian Mitchell and his wife Caroline signed on to the Newport Folk Festival, best known for hosting renowned folk singers such as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell, to perform songs from their newly released album Songs of Protest and Love. However, I hardly consider Father Mitchell’s music to actually be “folk.” Father Ian Mitchell was “a city-dweller who spent three years in the wastelands of Utah,” seemingly making him more apt to folk styles.⁴ All he did was take liturgical text and sing them with a different melody with a guitar accompaniment. According to Oxford Music Online, “the [folk] revival spawned a large number of singer-songwriters who accompanied themselves on the acoustic guitar but had little in common with those concerned primarily to bear witness to the tradition.”⁵ I believe that Father Ian Mitchell falls into this category and his “folk-song” mass should be considered “Mass: Plus Guitar, Minus Organ.”

1 Laing, Dave. “Folk Music Revival.” Grove Music Online. www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed Mar. 12, 2015)

2 “Newport Folk Festival to Feature “Singing Priest”.” Chicago Daily Defender (Big Weekend Edition) (1966-1973), July 12, 1969. http://search.proquest.com/docview/493434506?accountid=351.

3 Ibid.,

4 Mitchell, Ian. Rev. “The American Folk-Song Mass” F.E.L Records. Back Cover.

5 Laing, Dave. “Folk Music Revival.”

William Billings: “America’s First Composer”

Posted on March 11, 2015 by alexandc

The Chicago Defender possesses a number of music reviews and articles describing contemporary performances of the time. These are a valuable resource as they give insight into the way both audiences and critics of the time received or reacted to new music, composers, and performers. Articles written within days of the performance can help distinguish between ideas or sentiments about a particular piece or composer that developed at the time, or were formed later. Reading in a newspaper article from 1959 that William Billings was “the first American composer” carries with it a different tone than a music historian much later in history ascribing this title to Billings as an after thought or reflection.

Reading that Ella Fitzgerald performed and sang William Billings February of 1959 also gives insight into the nature of performers and who was performing Billings, and to what audience they were performing to.

Similarly this article from March also describes the prevalence of Billing’s legacy and popularity. Also describing his music as “American” the attribution of Billings music possessing some type of uniquely American quality to it, is a longstanding concept that these articles demonstrate has been around for a while. Using newspaper articles of more recent history are a valuable insight into discovering the roots or at least history and prevalence of an idea.

Works Cited:

http://search.proquest.com/hnpchicagodefender/docview/493899376/22CE16733AF34886PQ/5?accountid=351

http://search.proquest.com/hnpchicagodefender/docview/493694616/22CE16733AF34886PQ/4?accountid=351

http://search.proquest.com/hnpchicagodefender/docview/493701102/22CE16733AF34886PQ/7?accountid=351

Development of Folk: Pre-Civil War to Civil Rights’ Movement

Posted on March 10, 2015 by christes

Folk music is one that draws many questions from American music historians. Questions like, “who owns folk music?”, “where did these tunes originate?”, and “what is a folk song?”. One perspective that is particularly interesting and comes to a strong conclusion is that the origin of American folk music is based upon African Tradition. An article in The Chicago Defender claims that from African Americans and slave music, the genre of folk emerged. The argument is that the melodies of African American music prior to the Civil war were considered true American folk songs. Some original, but also based on African traditional music. The English, French, and Spanish all brought their own style of song to the United States, so their music isn’t naturally American. Oscar Saffold wrote in his article, “There is, however, a real indisputable folk song in America, an American production, born in the hearts of slaves — expressing a part of the life of our country.” This can be argued against, saying that the music of the slaves is originally from Africa, but Saffold’s argument is moreover strong, in that the African American traditional music had a large influence on proceeding music styles such as the blues and then jazz.

During the time of the Civil Rights’ Movement, there were many protests in southern United States, to express the desires and rights of equality among people; To blur the racial lines. These protests were filled with demonstrations that used art to promote equality, and the folk song emerged as an effective protest song. This incorporated the melodies of the old slave songs, but with new words. For example:

This type of folk song is called a freedom song. It was used as a way to unite a community of people during the Civil Rights’ Movement, and was thought to communicate and express sentiments when words weren’t enough. This is tied into the work songs of slaves during the Antebellum South.

A poignant quote from the article says, “while there is no American folk song in the sense of expressing American life as a whole, still there is a folk song in America, and that is the music of the Negro” (Saffold). The roots of American folk music go deep into the history of the African American slaves of Southern American, and since, folk music has taken on many other attributes with the Folk Revival of the late 20th Century.

Bibliography

Saffold, Oscar E. “How american folk songs started.” The Chicago Defender (National edition) (1921-1967), 25 Feb. 1933. http://search.proquest.com/docview/492356076?accountid=351

“Songs seen Vital in Albany Demonstrations.” Chicago Daily Defender (Daily Edition) (1960-1973), 22 Aug. 1962. http://search.proquest.com/docview/493909703?accountid=351.

Is jazz dying? “I don’t know”

Posted on March 10, 2015 by andersdh

John Coltrane is known as one of the world’s most skilled saxophonists. As a jazz composer as well, his pieces fell into the bebop and hard bop jazz genres before incorporating modes and spearheading the free jazz movement. He was never one to do the same thing twice. He is also known for taking a theme or melody, stretching it out over a long period of time (sometimes as long as 45 minutes), repeating it over and over, playing it differently with each repetition.

In August of 1964, columnist for the Chicago Defender Louise Davis Stone managed to exchange a few words with Coltrane during the intermission of one of his shows. She asked him a question that was on the minds of many: whether or not the jazz genre was fading and losing the interest of many of its listeners.

Coltrane did not give a concrete answer, saying, “I don’t know whether jazz is dying or not. My records are selling well and I’m happy about that. I have no fear about my music being too way out. You are not going to find something new by doing the same thing over and over again. You add something to the old. You have to give up something to get something.”¹ Not having a firm answer can seem a bit disconcerting to some, especially to those to thoroughly enjoy the jazz genre. However, Coltrane’s comments about adding something to the old has merit. How else will an artist forge their own paths if they only cover exactly what has already been written and performed?

When Coltrane arranged “My Favorite Things,” for example (https://play.spotify.com/track/6oVY50pmdXqLNVeK8bzomn), he was not interested in performing it the same fashion as Mary Martin and Patricia Neway from the original Broadway performance (Sound of Music). He turned the vocal line into a solo for saxophone. The general “groove” of the song was changed as well from the original. Coltrane added new things to the old, made it his own, and gave the track a new life and spirit.

To the modern ear of the time, these alterations sounded more new age than what they were used to. That is exactly what Coltrane is not afraid of: new ideas and concepts that make the listeners’ ears perk up.

¹LOUISE, DAVIS STONE. “The Jazz Bit.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Aug 01, 1964. http://search.proquest.com/docview/493094849?accountid=351.

Mahalia Jackson’s Glori-Fried Chicken

Posted on March 10, 2015 by biedenbe

Bach and Handel had the same eye doctor (who botched both their surgeries). Brahms went to a tavern called The Red Hedgehog every day. Debussy loved cats.

Sometimes we need to be reminded that the musicians we worship did not just compose, play, or sing. They were just like us. They had lives, they had other interests, and, in Mahalia Jackson’s case, they had fried chicken.

Chicago Defender, October 31, 1970.

In 1968, Jackson, still at the height of her singing fame, started a fried chicken chain in Chicago, meant to be the black counterpart to country comedian Minnie Pearl’s own chain as well as a competitor to Colonel Sanders’s rapidly expanding Kentucky Fried Chicken. Though we now claim Jackson as part of our shared American musical heritage, the intended audience for this chain implies a more limited role for Gospel music in the 1960s. As an article in the African-American newspaper The Chicago Defender noted, the chain was “black-owned, managed and staffed and is hiring in the communities in which it operates.”

In this way, the chain was most definitely a product of the 1960s. In the midst of the Civil Rights Era, less than 15 years after the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education declaring segregation in public schools to be illegal, integration was still in progress. Black and white restaurants and neighborhoods, though not legally segregated, existed (and, in fact, still exist today).

In the end, even with her name, fame, and star power, the restaurant chain was a bust. Both Minnie Pearl’s and Mahalia Jackson’s stores went out of business within a few years. A final restaurant bearing her name (Mayo’s Fried Pies and Mahalia Jackson’s Chicken in Nashville) closed in 2008.

I don’t blame Richard Crawford for not including this story in our textbook, “American Musical Life.” There’s only so much you can include, and, however much I might like to say otherwise, knowledge of Mahalia Jackson’s Glori-Fried Chicken is not essential to understand Gospel music. But stories like this one put history in context and show the humanity and depth of musicians. They are people, just like us.

Go grab some fried chicken and enjoy a performance by the Queen of Gospel.

“2d Mahalia Jackson Chicken Shack Opens.” Chicago Daily Defender (Big Weekend Edition) (1966-1973), Oct 31, 1970. http://search.proquest.com/docview/493558307?accountid=351.

Miller, Adrian. Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press. 2013.

What the folk is going on with the youths of America?

Posted on March 10, 2015 by nyberg

An article written about the Mariposa music festival featured in Rock Magazine. 1972, Vol. 3, Issue 10

The folk music revival was carried by and largely served the young men and women who were raised to volunteer, organize civil rights protests and activist groups and work with political powers (at least at the start) to effect the change they envisioned for the world. These college-age individuals rejected commercial mass culture while they favored borrowing and adapting older music from previous generations to serve their own purposes.

During the 1970s, there was a boom in music festivals. Occurring over the span of 3-12 days, festivals became the best place to discover new artists, interact with new like-minded people and share new ideas about politics and the world. (They were also associated with drug use, but that’s not the focus of this article.) Festivals were generally grassroots efforts, organized by local communities, regionally or nationally and could have an educational focus. “The Mariposa Folk Festival in Toronto, Canada is one of the biggest in North America. [In the summer of 1972] it broke even and its organizers were happy.”¹

Many different artists came to the festival to perform the music that was shaping the mentality and ethos of the college-attending generation in 1972. Old folk tunes were repurposed, given new life with new words about the ideas and emotions of the heartbroken and those downtrodden by society.²

“In 1965, a young folk singer named Joni Anderson hitchhiked to Mariposa from Calgary and in 1970 she drew 12,000 to a night concert because she was the famous Joni Mitchell … [James] Taylor was asked to Mariposa because ‘he has a lot of roots in folk’ not because he would draw people. Taylor came because he wanted to, not for the money, which amounted to $75. That is the most any performer is paid, along with his traveling and accommodation expenses. Why? Because Mariposa is an annual gathering of balladeers, not a rock festival.”

Today, we still see (or hear of) people borrowing from other musical ideas and traditions. What they borrow leads to commercial success––in the case of Amy Winehouse and Iggy Azalea. Artists borrow ideas for several reasons: they identify with some aspect of the idea or culture, to make money, necessity demands that they adapt their music to today’s pop standards by updating the sounds or affect they use, or, to make a statement. We are in a never ending cycle of cultural repetition. Everything we produce and consume will reoccur in another form some time (shortly or long after) the “original” was produced. However, the questions have not changed from the 1970s when the folk music revival was in full swing, nor from when bluegrass was in its developmental stage as a musical genre. What is the intent behind artist’s borrowing ideas from others and how many alterations must the new work undergo before it is something original? Is there a way to respectfully reproduce or change something when you yourself have not been around to experience the genesis of that idea or have little to no connection with that cultural movement, people, or idea? And what is the significance of festivals? What role do they play with the appropriation, adaptation and spread of ideas and are they important cultural hub or a temporary collection of society’s social outcasts and wannabe reshapers?

The Mariposa music festival still is around today. This year, the festival’s dates are July 3-5, 2015.

1. Musgrave, Corinne. “Mariposa: The Festival That Never Fails.” Rock, 1972 3, no. 10 (1972): 20-21.

2. Crawford, Richard. America’s Musical Life. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.

Roberta Martin and her Singers

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Chloe Elzey

Roberta Martin proved that singing was not the only role open to women in gospel music. Her work has inspired many of the gospel genre and always instilled joy and encouragement to her listeners. Let this song play as you read!

In 1933, Roberta Martin and Theodore Frye organised a male quartet with Martin as the accompanist and occasional soloist. By 1936, the group was renamed The Roberta Martin Singers. The group was one of the first featuring male and female singers and soon developed a certain style that was called ‘The Roberta Martin Sound.’ The gospel songs are composed songs but within a clearly discernable gospel performance tradition. Generally, that tradition is more reflective of folk music stylistic traits than distinct compositional techniques, but Roberta Martin’s style of arranging and performing was unique and recognizable. “‘The Roberta Martin sound’ that boasted musical accompaniment of rich harmonies and fluid runs and arpeggios along with falling melodic lines and innovative use of dissonance.” 1

Thoughts from Theodore C. Stone’s “Personality Spotlight” on Roberta Martin’s work. (Citation 2)

(Citation 2)

During the 1940’s and 1950’s music, The Roberta Martin Singers were among the best in the country and the group toured the United States and Europe. By 1947, the Roberta Martin Singers had begun their recording career and received multiple Gold Record Awards. 3

One thing that followed through the entire process was Roberta’s drive to give meaning and joy to the music. Consequently, the music the Roberta Martin created influenced many and became a staple for the Afro-American Gospel genre.

What is undoubtedly true is that Roberta and her Singers made a huge contribution to gospel music history. The Gospel sound that Roberta Martin began is everywhere. In the Anthony Heilbut book, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times, he gives Roberta the credit to the feel of the rock genre. 4

After her death on January 18, 1989, the huge turnout for her funeral was just a small sign of gospel’s hold on its followers. 6 On 15th July 1998 the United States Postal Service issued four 32 cent commemorative stamps honoring four of the queens of gospel music – Mahalia Jackson, Clara Ward, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Roberta Martin. 7 The Smithsonian was recognizing a woman who was majorly influential as a singer, pianist, composer, choral organizer, arranger, music publisher, and overall advocate for the Gospel tradition.

(Citation 8)

1 McNeil, William K., ed. Encyclopedia of American gospel music. Routledge, 2013. p. 242.

2 Stone, T. C. (1960, Jan 23). Personality spotlight. The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967) Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/492935100?accountid=351.

3 McNeil, William K., ed. Encyclopedia of American gospel music. Routledge, 2013. p. 242.

4 Heilbut, Anthony. The gospel sound: Good news and bad times. Hal Leonard Corporation, 1975. p, x.

5 Ibid, p, x.

6 Ibid, p, x.

7 McNeil, William K., ed. Encyclopedia of American gospel music. Routledge, 2013. p. 242.

8 Stone, T. C. (1960, Jan 23). Personality spotlight. The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967) Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/492935100?accountid=35.

Can Bluegrass be Categorized as “Folk” music ?

Posted on March 9, 2015 by xies

There is a discussion about whether bluegrass music, a kind of music promoted and developed by Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys band from 1950s, is “authentic” folk music. According to the research I did, by the time bluegrass music had been labeled as “folk”, the hallmarks of the style (e.g. acoustic instruments, fast tempo and high tenor vocals) included many of the features that had originally made up by Monroe himself, as an “original invention”, not a subgenre of “folk” music or folk revival. However, bluegrass was adopted by the revivalists later as a type of “folk” music since revivalists subjected bluegrass to ideals of authenticity that have.

When Steve Rathe interviewed Bill Monroe in Dec. 10, 1973, Bill Monroe first told audience about “what bluegrass music is and what elements have gone into its composition”.

Ewing, Tom, ed. The Bill Monroe Reader. University of Illinois Press, 2000.

From this interview, I can see that Bill Monroe saw his music as a new production, a synthesis of genres he admired, and a way of making profits. However, at this time bluegrass music had not been ”absorbed” by folk revivalist and the best way of gaining this kind of acceptance was to characterize bluegrass as ”folk”. I assumed that it won’t be hard to see bluegrass as folk music, since it featuring much of the traditional repertoire that interested the revivalists.

For example, from the interview Bill Monroe also mentioned his reproduction of Mule Skinner Blues, which completely fit in his definition of bluegrass. I was disappointed of not being able to find an online score of this song, but I can still recognize some characteristics he mentioned in the recording.

The song uses the instrumentation of bass, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, banjo. The rhythm, especially the syncopation featured a combination of blues songs and early 20th-century pop song, with fast-paced instrumental breakdowns. After a short entrance, Bill starts with his high-pitched, “lonesome” vocal line with four-parts harmony; and he shows his use of the folk tune “the little mule” in the second stanza. Also, he separates song verses and choruses with virtuosic instrumental soloing.

However, since bluegrass had its origins as a commercial country music in which artists performed on the Grand Ole Opry and recorded for major labels, the music couldn’t hold up as an unchanging tradition that was anti-commercial and “from the mass”. As far as I understand, putting bluegrass in folk genre was an imagined construction and lack of grounding support. Asserting membership in a genre can thus be a form of cultural affirmation, a process that Allan Moore has identified as “second person” arises when a performer succeeds in conveying the impression to the listener that the listener’s experience of life is validated.

I would love to end with what Charles Keil said about folk music:

Keil, Charles. “Who Needs” The Folk”?.” Journal of the Folklore Institute(1978): 263-265. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3813980

Resource:Ewing, Tom, ed. The Bill Monroe Reader. University of Illinois Press, 2000.

Keil, Charles. “Who Needs” The Folk”?.” Journal of the Folklore Institute(1978): 263-265. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3813980

Odetta Who?

Posted on March 9, 2015 by sison

When many people think of American folk music, some of the first musicians that comes to mind are Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie. Few people know of Odetta Holmes, known simply by her stage name Odetta. Her name isn’t even mentioned in the Wikipedia “American Folk Music” page! Most people know her as “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement,” due to her influential role she played as an activist and blues/gospel musician.

Odetta in the Chicago Defender, 1964

[1]

However, Odetta started off not as a folk singer, but instead earned a music degree at Los Angeles City College. She went on to tour with a musical theater group performing “Finian’s Rainbow,” which was, fittingly, about prejudice. As she toured, she discovered that enjoyed singing in the coffeeshops late at night, infusing her music with the frustration she experienced growing up. In a 2005 National Public Radio interview, she said: ”School taught me how to count and taught me how to put a sentence together. But as far as the human spirit goes, I learned through folk music” [2].

Cover of Ballads and Blues

[3]

Odetta released her first solo album, “Odetta Sings Ballad and Blues,” in 1956. This album would turn out to be influential for a certain Bob Dylan. He stated in a 1978 Playboy interview that “the first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta,” after listening to this album in a record store. He learned all the songs and found something “vital and personal” in her singing [4]. Not only did her music draw Bob Dylan to folk music, but she also met Joan Baez, another popular folk musician, and Baez cites Odetta as one of her primary influences as well [5]. Two of the biggest names in American folk music were influenced by a woman and social activist that would later go on to perform at the 1963 march on Washington, march with Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, sing for presidents Kennedy and Clinton, as well as perform at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

I think that’s pretty neat

Ad for Odetta next to an ad for Bob Dylan in the Berkeley Tribe, 1969

[6]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd-ccVrIbQI

Odetta singing Muleskinner Blues, 1956

Bob Dylan Singing Muleskinner Blues, 1962

1.”Photo Standalone 23 — no Title.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Jan 25, 1964. 10, http://search.proquest.com/docview/493137885?accountid=351.
2. Weiner, Tim. “Odetta, Voice of Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 77.” NYTimes.com. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/arts/music/03odetta.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (Accessed March 9, 2015)
3. “Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues, Expanded CD Cover.” 1956. wikipedia.org.
4.”Playboy Interview: Bob Dylan.” http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/play78.htm (Accessed March 9, 2015)
5. Baez, Joan. And a Voice to Sing With: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009, p. 43.
6.”No Title.” Berkeley Tribe (1969-1972), 1969. 22-23, http://www.rockandroll.amdigital.co.uk/Search/DocumentDetailsSearch.aspx?documentid=1065486&prevPos=1065486&vpath=searchresults&pi=1

Newport Folk Festival: Inspiring Anarchist Revolutionaries?

Posted on March 9, 2015 by stephens

Folk music is ingrained in a sense of community and expression of the common man that many young people of the 60s and early 70s found as representative of the times and themselves. Folk artists played simply–typically a voice and guitar, with perhaps a harmonica. Listeners could collectively identify with the simplicity, and would feel connected to their peers. Folk music conveyed a peaceful time of long hair, free love, and a bohemian lifestyle.

But underneath the easy-strumming guitar and speak-singing voices were lyrics against the establishments that folk artists were so against. In 1967 festival singer Tim Buckley’s song, “The Earth is Broken,” government figures are called thieves.

But soon love is broken, they’ll take you away

Oh the wars they been growing as no relief

And the old men who ruled them oh they’re just like thieves

They rob from the sunshine, oh the air ain’t so clean

Our rivers are dirty where once we could see

A smile from your lady friend looking down

Look at that river hey did you ever shiver

Well the earth is broken there is no one to save

The “Home on the Range” era of sunny skies and seldom-heard discouraging words is definitely over.

In this article from East Village underground magazine The Other, Jerry Rubin presents his account of the 1967 Newport Folk Festival. Rubin is so against the idea of paying for music that he decided to attend the festival by creating a fake press pass. Screen Shot 2015-03-09 at 9.37.51 PM “Music concerts should be free,” he says. “Profit is pornography.” Rubin then gets himself kicked out of the festival by passing out “a copy of the free Yippie newspaper…(spiritual thoughts from our anarchist-revolutionary point of view)” to a pair of nuns. The magazines are deemed to have pornographic images themselves, and the festival cops escort Rubin out, Rubin blaming it on his hippie appearance.

What this account illustrates is the atmosphere of festivals like the Newport Folk Festival. They were attended by a variety of groups, but all came to experience the community spirit so often found in folk. In unity, concert attendees were able to band together and share ideas. In addition, the values of folk music are passed to the people. While folk music quietly discusses political issues, listeners took these complaints to heart and acted out against the closest representation of the establishment–in Rubin’s case, the festival security. The sense of community gave a feeling of strength to festival-goers which was heavily expressed in their actions.

While folk music is overall peaceful, its political undertones were strong enough to convince listeners to act out upon the messages they heard. Political events of the time period combined with the inclusive underground communities created an acceptable atmosphere of dissent and resistance.

Sources:

Rubin, Jerry. “Yippie go home!” East Village Other, Vol.3, no.3. December 15, 1967. Accessed from Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950–1975.

http://www.rockandroll.amdigital.co.uk/Contents/ImageViewer.aspx?imageid=1099190&searchmode=true&hit=first&pi=1&themeF=Civil+Rights+And+Race+Relations%7cMusic&vpath=searchresults&prevPos=1065501

“Precious Lord Take my Hand”: from Selma to the Grammy Awards

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Cole

In Ava DuVernay’s 2014 film “Selma”, poetic license is taken in depicting the role gospel singer Mahalia Jackson played in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches. During a moment of doubt, Martin Luther King Jr. (played by David Oyelowo) phones Jackson (portrayed by R&B singer Ledisi) and asks her to share “the Lord’s voice” with him. She answers by singing the immortal gospel classic, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”. This song was a standard at prayer meetings and Civil Rights marches, and was even performed by Jackson at King’s funeral. It was her showstopper, and the song that was requested the most from her by both King and her audiences worldwide.

At the 57th Annual Grammy Awards on February 8th, 2015, the song was performed as a prelude to a “Selma tribute”, which featured R&B artist John Legend and rapper Common performing their Academy Award Winning Song from the film titled “Glory”. However, the song was performed not by Ledisi but by the undisputed modern queen of R&B: the one and only Beyoncé.

http://youtu.be/kcNWxlHaAMo

This inspiring and powerful performance elicited wide acclaim, though some were quick to point out that a true tribute would have featured Ledisi (who was in attendance), rather than Queen Bey. Criticism escalated when it became apparent that Beyoncé herself had approached Legend and Common about performing the song, as it wasn’t originally planned to be part of the show. However, amid the accusations of self-promotion and concerns over unfair exclusion, the opportunity for an discussion regarding style was unfortunately missed.

On one hand it is easy to criticize Beyoncé’s performance if we are comparing to the historical standard set by Jackson. It is fair to say that Ledisi followed this standard in preparing for “Selma”, mimicking some of Jackson’s techniques and melodic alterations. (The album the below performance is taken from is available in the St.Olaf Music Library, call number M2198.J3 M3 [v.1])

http://youtu.be/N1ceCpU25vA

For live video performances by Jackson, check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0a8RNdnhNo; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as1rsZenwNc

Whereas Jackson displays virtuosity in the emotional range of her voice, Beyoncé relies more on virtuosic vocal runs more akin to flashy pop music than to a traditional gospel style. The spiritual component of Jackson’s version is amplified by the seemingly extemporaneous approach to the melody by Jackson and the fluid approach to the harmonic changes by her pianist and organist. Contrastingly, aspects of Beyoncé’s version seem meticulously rehearsed, from the timing her background singers movements to her rather parodic head movements at about 2:10.

But I think the biggest discrepancy between Jackson and Beyoncé’s performance is a matter of visual and emotional, rather than musical, aesthetics. In the live performances posted above, Jackson stands alone in the middle of the barren stage, barely moving but to look up to the sky. As the text suggests, she is powerless and none but God can help her in her time of trial. Beyoncé could not be more different, not only in complete control of her own body but seemingly in control of the 12 men behind her. She even cuts off the organ at the end! While this powerful depiction of an African-American woman is inspiring, it undeniably draws away from the meaning of the song, especially in conjunction with the accusation that this was more promotional stunt than impassioned performance. When Jackson performed, she would humbly tell the audience “I’m so happy for the way you are receiving me. I love applause. But you know I’m a gospel singer and I like to hear a few ‘amens’. ” [1]

That isn’t to say that any of this is bad, or that Ledisi would have performed any better or differently than Beyoncé. No one can or should deny how impressive and moving this performance is. Ledisi herself defended Beyoncé better than anyone.

“The song, ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord,’ has been going on forever. It started with the queen, Mahalia. The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin (who sang the song at Jackson’s funeral, in 1972). Then I was able to portray and sing my version of the song. And now we have Beyonce. I’m a part of history. Look at it like that, instead of looking at it as a negative. To me it’s a great, great honor to be a part of a legacy of a great song, by Thomas Dorsey.” [2]

To this point, performances by Franklin and Whitney Houston are much more radical and pop-infused than those of Jackson and Ledisi, which arguably stay truer to recorded performances by Dorsey. But perhaps this development is a good thing. The ability of musicians (and more importantly, African-American women) to freely influence this song is a great thing, and stands for what Jackson herself fought and sang for. Dr.Benjamin Mays elegy for Jackson said it best:

“One can only hope that this great and good woman will never die but that her life will inspire so many young people that she will live on throughout eternity. In this way she will become immortal.” [3]

He may as well have been speaking of the song too.

[1] Duckett, Alfred. “Mahalia Jackson Like Applause (Beg Pardon) Amens at Concerts.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Jun 01, 1957. http://search.proquest.com/docview/492918933?accountid=351.

[2] Fensterstock, Allison. “Grammys 2015: Beyonce takes on Mahalia Jackson, and Ledisi has a perfect response.” The Times-Picayune, Feb 08, 2015. http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/2015/02/grammys_2015_beyonce_takes_on.html

[3] Mays, Benjamin E. “Reminiscing about Mahalia Jackson.” Chicago Daily Defender (Big Weekend Edition) (1966-1973), Feb 26, 1972. http://search.proquest.com/docview/493504320?accountid=351.

Selma – A Musical March

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Brandon Cash

: Various front page article headings from the Chicago Defender in March of 1965.

50 years ago this month, Dr. King called hundreds of people to join him in a march from Selma, Alabama to the state’s capital in Montgomery to protest voter registration. The protestors were to gather in the small community of Selma and take the 50 mile trek to address the current governor, George Wallace, and demand change. According to The Chicago Defender and as one would expect, the march was greeted with opposition. On the day of the march in 1965, there was a “tenseness” that covered the town of Selma. City officials contacted citizens urging them to “stay away from the demonstrations” and Gov. Wallace issued an order that said the march was prohibited and that state troopers were to use “all force necessary” to stop the procession.¹ You could say things were not going well… The march was attacked with force and people were beaten and tear-gassed in the streets for fighting for their own rights.

This protest rocked the country and today serves as a key point in the civil rights movement. The effects of this march even hit close to home. James Reeb, a white man of the church and St. Olaf graduate, died in this fight for freedom on March 11, 1965, 50 years ago from this Wednesday who is being memorialized this week on campus. Why do we memorialize people and events? Well one reason would be to remember what occurred and how it has shaped the way we live today. Maybe a better question is HOW do we memorialize the events of the Selma march. Photographs and statues, plaques and books, all are great options, but what about memorializing through song?

The Smithsonian has a Screen Shot 2015-03-09 at 5.22.01 PM unique collection of recordings in their Smithsonian Folkways collection called “Freedom Songs: Selma, Alabama” which capture the emotional content of the march. Referred to as a “Documentary Recording,” Carl Benkert set out to preserve this moment in our nation’s history through sound. The liner notes confirm that “through all the events of those days, music was an essential element” and that the music expressed “hope and sorrow” while being able to “excite and pacify.”²One a Screen Shot 2015-03-09 at 5.23.50 PM article even specifically states that the police arrested “hymn-singing Negroes.”sup>3 Songs such as “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” and “We Shall Over Come” were lead by march leaders to establish a sense of unity among the protestors and calm the participants as the marched along their path. For the full list of recordings and to listen to excerpts of these march songs, check out the Smithsonian Folkways webpage.

Or listen here:

Resources

1 Leon, Daniel. “Prepare for Today’s Big March in Selma.” Chicago Daily Defender (Daily Edition) (1960-1973), Mar 09, 1965. http://search.proquest.com/docview/494135915?accountid=351.

3 Lynch, John. “Arrest 218 in Selma; Protest to Continue.” Chicago Daily Defender (Daily Edition) (1960-1973), Jan 21, 1965. http://search.proquest.com/docview/494121982?accountid=351.

A Muddy link from Blues to Rock

Posted on March 9, 2015 by smithg

As blues gained popularity through publication and performances it became blended with other types of popular music. Blues and rock music were obvious candidates for combination, both drawing on folk instrumentation and sharing similar subjects. In Chicago, which was a hotbed of blues music when many black musicians migrated to Chicago to leave the South. Possibly the most influential musician of the blending is McKinley Morganfield AKA Muddy Waters. Waters got his start at home in Mississippi when Alan Lomax traveled there on behalf of the Library of Congress in 1941 and again in 1942. Waters was later released on the album “Down on Stovall’s Plantation” from these recordings.

This recording shows us that Muddy Waters is a legit player of the blues from the south and would be taken seriously by white audiences in the North.

In 1943, shortly after Lomax’s visit, Waters moved to Chicago in hopes of making it big as a blues musician. As Muddy Waters made his way as a blues performer he made with friends with Big Bill Broonzy who helped Waters become popular. This article from Cultural Equity highlights some of the connection between Muddy Waters and Big Bill Broonzy. Muddy Waters was put on singles in the late 40s and through the 50s in Chicago. Waters gained popularity from recording Robert John tunes who had been on the blues mind since 1938 from the “Spirituals to Swing” concert in New York (Here’s a short RadioLab episode about this concert and Robert Johnson, it’s great!).

Muddy Waters became very popular in Chicago and was seen as a performer who was keeping the folk in the blues and rock that he was performing. Because he had such a close connection to the south and his history there. The Defender wrote an article to this effect in 1972. Muddy Waters keeps alive an Afro-American culture

Langston Hughes on African American folk

Posted on March 9, 2015 by butler

It isn’t very often in history that we read African American views on African American music. Langston Hughes, who wrote a column for an African American newspaper called The Chicago Defender, published several articles reclaiming African American folk music after jazz, the blues, and really much of American folk music was influenced by that tradition and style. In his poetic storytelling, and sometimes angry tone, Hughes gets at an issue of American music-that it has consistently turned African American folk music tradition into popular music, entertainment, etc. and reaped the monetary benefits while casting authenticity aside.

His article titled “Slavery and Leadbelly are Gone, But the Old Songs Go Singing on,” complains that African Americans have forgotten their slave heritage. “In 1963 we will be one hundred years free. Have you forgotten that you were once a slave? Is it a memory you do not want to remember?” On one hand, singers like Leadbelly could be popular because there was a certain time distance from slavery so that musicians weren’t judged “Uncle Toms.”[1] On the other hand, there is some tension as to how the folk music out of the slave tradition should be remembered, because clearly Leadbelly’s songs that embody oppression and images of slavery remember it much differently than revivals of the blues and spirituals during the 50s and 60s.

Chicago Defender, 1954 click image for linked article [3]

In another issue, “The Influence of Negro Music On American Entertainment,” Hughes celebrates the pervasiveness of African American folk music in American music. “The Negro has influenced all of American popular song and dance, and that influence has been on the whole, joyous and sound…America’s music is soaked in our rhythms.” It is no coincidence that Langston Hughes was writing during the civil rights movement, when African Americans often re-claimed and re-defined their identity in an effort to create unity and political momentum.[2] Many of the folk musicians singing about civil rights, however, were white musicians making money off a style that used the folk idiom to appeal to the popular masses. Langston Hughes is quick to criticize this, calling into question the definition of folk music, how it is used, how it is remembered, and who has the right and responsibility to perform it.

Chicago Defender, 1953 click image for linked article [4]

[1] Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life: A History, New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 2001, 746.

[2] Reebee Garofalo, “Popular Music and the Civil Rights Movement,” Rockin the Boat: mass music and mass movements, ed. Reebee Garofalo, Boston: South End Press, 1992.

[3] Langston Hughes, “Slavery and Leadbelly are Gone, but the Old Songs Go Singing On,” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Sep 04, 1954, http://search.proquest.com/docview/492889401?accountid=351.

[4] Langston Hughes, “The Influence of Negro Music on American Entertainment,” Chicago Defender (National Edition),(1921-1967), Apr 25, 1953, http://search.proquest.com/docview/492962325?accountid=351.

Bob Dylan the Movie Star

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Stephen Sweeney

Who knew that Bob Dylan was in a movie? I sure didn’t, until reading this clipping from Chicago Defender‘s issue released May 23, 1973. Announcing the premier of Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid, the author gives a short summary of the film and introduces the cast, which includes Bob Dylan. About the actors, he writes, “The cast is…truly noteworthy and Peckinpah acknowledges that the process of finding the right actor for the right role was painstaking work.” ¹ Peckinpah was the director of the film and had experienced success in the past, and he comments on the cast of stars with newcomer Bob Dylan to the scene. He says “It pays off…with a great cast like this it’s almost gratuitous to say you’ve got a lot going for you.” ¹

It appears that Peckinpah was perhaps counting on the fame of Dylan to bring the same success to this movie as others, as his acting is far from winning any academy wards in this film… and you can see for yourself.

The movie turned out to be a bust, and failed pretty miserably at the box office. According to the IMDb website, it netted only $4.5 million in contrast with Peckinpah’s 1969 film The Wild Bunch which 4 years earlier netted $10.5 million. I find it interesting that the author of the Chicago Defender article, as well as Peckinbah, make no mention of Dylan’s musical contributions to the production. After all, he provided much of the film score and music backing for the scenes, and perhaps the movie would have seen more success had it been advertised as having the music of Bob Dylan.

There was one success in the film, however, and that was the writing of Dylan’s original “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Coming towards the end of the film, this song covers the scene in which a wife watches her husband die of a gunshot wound, and the lyrics and emotion are poignant.

http://youtu.be/HzAN5qkVOZY?t=2m20s

This song saw a lot of success outside of the film, being performed on stage by Dylan himself, and covered by many other bands. Some people forget that Dylan originally wrote the song, most often hearing covers by bands from Guns N’ Roses to even Avril Lavigne.

The final question remains: Why would Dylan even agree to be in a movie in the first place? I could see him doing the score for a film when hired, but acting was something he had never done before. I think people could use this as an example of Bob Dylan’s willingness to sell out for money. It’s been said that he started writing and performing folk music in the first place because he saw there was an audience for it in New York. After “going electric,” he revealed that he didn’t really like folk music all that much and preferred his plugged-in style. If he was willing to sell out his musical style, why not be a terrible actor for money as well?

1 “‘Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid’ premieres.” Chicago Defender. May 23, 1973. Real Times, Inc. Accessed March 8, 2015. http://search.proquest.com/hnpchicagodefender/docview/493996634/fulltextPDF/71673A8288A44921PQ/1?accountid=351

The folk music monarchy: Bob Dylan & Joan Baez

Quote

Posted on March 8, 2015 by bergka

Perhaps the biggest stars of the 1960’s Folk craze, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez captured audiences performing duets in addition to their successful solo careers. Their relationship is filled with ups and downs, each giving and taking from the other over the years. This tumultuous relationship may have its roots in their motivations for performing this music.

Concert Poster for Joan Baez and Bob Dylan¹

At first sight, Dylan describes the first time he saw Baez singing on TV while he was still in Minnesota, “I couldn’t stop looking at her, didn’t want to blink. . . . The sight of her made me sigh. All that and then there was the voice. A voice that drove out bad spirits . . . she sang in a voice straight to God. . . . Nothing she did didn’t work.” ² Unfortunately Joan didn’t reciprocate Dylan’s admiration for him. She recalls being unfazed by what she heard when she first saw Dylan perform in 1961 at Gerde’s Folk City (a popular venue for the Greenwich village folk music scene artists in the 1960’s).

Joan Baez is originally from Staten Island, NY. Her father Albert, co-invented the electronic microscope as well as published a Physics textbook still commonly used today. Because of her father’s work in health care and with UNESCO, the family moved many times, living in towns across the U.S, as well as in England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, and Iraq. Joan became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, especially civil rights and an advocate of non violence. “Social Justice”, Baez says, “is the true core of her life looming larger than music.”³

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqaD9DAO0yQ

Joan Baez performing “Mary Hamilton” at the Newport Festival in 1960, one of her earliest performances.

In contrast, Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Hibbing, MN. Dylan began attending the University of Minnesota in 1959, only to drop out a year later and move to New York City to pay tribute to his idol, Woody Guthrie who had taken ill from Polio at the time. Dylan’s motivations for writing and performing folk music seem less rooted in social justice and more in its connection to the human spirit. At the 1965 Newport Festival Dylan walked on stage with an electric guitar in hand and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band backing him up. He was booed offstage after only three songs, at which point he returned with an acoustic guitar and a message for all the folk purists: “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”⁴ Dylan was later quoted as saying he switched from Rock n Roll to Folk because “it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.”

Bob Dylan covering “This Land is Your Land” in Minneapolis in 1961 before moving to New York City to meet his idol, Woody Guthrie.

It seems that Baez felt a stronger connection with the movement surrounding the folk revival of the 1960’s, while Bob Dylan saw it as more of a form of political expression as much as a way to make his living and see his name in lights. Perhaps this difference was so decisive, that it ultimately caused their romantic as well as professional relationship to end?

1 Ehrenreich, B. (2001, May). Positively 4th street: The lives and times of joan baez, bob dylan, mimi baez farina and richard farina. Mother Jones, 26, 105. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/213812109?accountid=351

2 “Joan Baez: How Sweet The Sound.” American Masters. October 14, 2009. PBS. Retrieved March 7, 2015.

3 “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum.” Bob Dylan Biography. January 1, 2015. Accessed March 9, 2015. https://rockhall.com/inductees/bob-dylan/bio/. Retrieved from Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975. http://www.rockandroll.amdigital.co.uk

2 “Joan Baez: How Sweet The Sound.” American Masters. October 14, 2009. PBS. Retrieved March 7, 2015.

Folk Music Revival During the McCarthy Era

Link

In the 1950s, several Americans who worked in the public sphere were under attack from United States Senator Joseph McCarthy during a time known as the Second Red Scare. Attempting to rid American media and entertainment of any trace of Communist sentiment, Senator McCarthy blacklisted writers, actors, and musicians who were suspected of Communist allegiance or sympathy. Anxiety over Communism lasted well into the 1960s, and one such victim of late McCarthyism was folk singer Pete Seeger in 1963. In the video below, former Governor Gordon Browning speaks at a press conference about Seeger’s suspected alliance with the “Communist Conspiracy” to warn folk music consumers of this potential “threat” to American entertainment.

Seeger’s alignment with populist / socialist sentiment and his incorporation of it into music was no secret. He had been a member of the Communist Party from 1942-1949, and he was a founding member of The Weavers, a folk group that performed songs like “Talking Union”¹ at workers strikes and other such political events until McCarthy blacklisted the group in 1953. Just two months before the 1963 press conference, Seeger released his album “We Shall Overcome” which featured songs that aimed to rally supporters of the Civil Rights Movement. That Seeger’s music was political is undeniable.²

However, Browning brings up an interesting point when he says:

Folk singing, for hundreds of years, has been a highly respectable art, and a very wonderful form of entertainment, and now we are concerned that the Communists are moving into this field and that they are going to pervert this wonderful form of entertainment so it will satisfy their own needs.³

Were folk revivalists, as Browning believes, using folk songs for political causes they were never meant to support, or has folk music always belonged to populist / socialist causes? In some ways, both are correct. It is certainly true that folk revival songs like “Talking Union” had more overtly political messages than traditional folk ballads like “Barbara Allen:”

Was in the merry month of May
When flowers were a-bloomin’
Sweet William on his deathbed lay
For the love of Barbara Allen

Slowly, slowly she got up
And slowly she went nigh him
And all she said when she got there
“Young man, I think you’re dying”

“O yes I’m sick and very low
And death is on me dwellin’
No better shall I ever be
If I don’t get Barbara Allen”⁴

Yet, folk ballads such as “Barbara Allen” often addressed universal themes like love and played important roles in rural, often poor and oppressed communities like those in Appalachia. While traditional folk song did not always directly encourage political activism like songs of the folk revival movement did, they represented the common person. So, Browning was not mistaken in noticing the overt political messages in folk revival music that were absent in earlier folk music, but he was wrong to assume that traditional folk music did not support the same sentiments that the Leftist songs of the folk revival movement did.

Footnotes

1“Talking Union,” Youtube video, posted by farmboy10001, December 8 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osnjAb-hoPo

2“Seeger Pete.” In Encyclopedia of Popular Music, edited by Larkin, Colin. : Oxford University Press, 2006. http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195313734.001.0001/acref-9780195313734-e-25192.

3Gordon Browning, “Folk singers linked to alleged ‘Communist Conspiracy,’ Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975, 2:25, August 19, 1963, http://www.rockandroll.amdigital.co.uk/video/videodetails.aspx?documentId=664253&videoSearch=Pete+Seeger

4“Ballad of America.” Barbara Allen (American Folk Song). Accessed March 8, 2015. http://www.balladofamerica.com/music/indexes/songs/barbaraallen/index.htm.

The good book says you’ve got to reap just what you sow

Posted on March 4, 2015 by nyberg

The blues tradition started with emotion. Albert Murray, a black novelist, commented that the blues were a way for one to “[Confront, acknowledge, and contend] with the infernal absurdities and ever-impending frustrations inherent in the nature of all experience.”¹Drawing from the oral music traditions of “field hollers” and call and response, the blues had a strong presence and role of importance in black American communities starting during the Reconstruction period before segregation laws.

One of the early recordings of Alberta Hunter and Lovie Austin’s Down-hearted blues was done in 1923²(the YouTube recording below is from 1939). It follows the typical AABA structure the blues would follow and makes use of call and response primarily between the singer and a clarinet. One thing that can be noted is the inflections Hunter uses as she sings. Many of the accents and emotive inflections she uses in her phrasing would not be written down in the music––such as shortening a note at the end of a phrase, sliding into or between notes and adding accented vibrato to a sustained note.

The subject matter deals with the singer being unhappy in the romantic situation she’s in. Hunter specifically sings about “the man that wrecked her life,” but beyond the relationship, the man could be extended to representing her job or position in society (especially important given the time this piece was written in). In the first verse, Hunter sings that “the good book says you’ve got to reap just what you sow,” which is acceptance for the situation that she’s in––something she could have arguably had very much or very little control over to begin with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOn6s3g00do

1. Hogue, W. Lawrence. Discourse and the Other: The Production of the Afro-American Text. Durham, North Carolina, NC: Duke University Press, 1986.

2. Hunter, Alberta and Austin Love. Tennessee Ten: Down-hearted blues. Victor, 1923, audio recording, http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/9323.

Woody Guthrie: Such a famous…. Writer?

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Stephen Sweeney

Woody Guthrie is an iconic folk singer and performer in American history. Most famously known for his performances of “This Land is Your Land,” Guthrie traveled the United States through the 40’s and 50’s singing anything from traditional folk music to anti-fascist songs about Hitler. However, I would guess that very few people would mention him as a prolific writer, or perhaps know that he wrote an autobiography (bonus points for those of you who did know).

This newspaper clipping (the rest of the issue found here) comes from the Salt Lake Tribune in its May 30th, 1943 publication. The author of the article, initialed E.B.M., writes a sort of review or advertisement for Guthrie’s Bound for Glory, his autobiography published earlier that year. Acknowledging his musical prowess, she tries to draw the reader’s attention to “a book that will fascinate you, keep you awake at night.” She even goes on to call it “another of the great stories of America.” The autobiography itself details his life of travels through 44 of the United States. It tells a sad story of Guthrie starting out on his own at the age of 12 when his mother was placed in an asylum. Never resorting to begging, he painted signs or played music and sang for the money he earned. His story claims that he was even a fortune-teller in Texas at one point. E.B.M strongly points out Guthrie’s aversion to riches, quoting parts of his story when he ran away from his aunt (who led him out of the Texas dustbowl) after seeing her mansion, and how he left his $75 per week singing job in New York.

So why is this all important? The answer to that question lies in the ideals of folk music. As folk expert and Folkway Records founder Moses Asch explains, “folk means people, and this in turn means all of us, folk represents all of us.”¹ This is what connects Woody Guthrie’s music, but also importantly his story, to the rest of us people. Asch goes on to say that “folk expressions are…so identified with the people who use them that they express conscious and subconscious feelings and experiences.”² Guthrie’s story is that of a common man’s identity in folk — the story of a young, poor, boy who finds his life in music. Turning away (at least he claims) from fame and riches for the authenticity of folk ideals, his story can indeed represent all of us. Even without fame or riches, we can tell our own story, a book “bound” with glory.

Continue reading →

St.Louis Blues- A Song Represents “Sexuality”?

Posted on March 3, 2015 by xies

Hollywood cinemas in mid-20^th century would use blues songs as a means to articulate racial instability in the characterization of women who represented problems in terms of their sexuality, their morality, and their (lower) class status.

The song St.Louis Blues would be an example.

Composed by W. C. Handy in 1914, St. Louis Blues was first featured in black vaudeville circa 1916 by Charles Anderson. On the basis of the song’s popularity, Handy has been called “The Father of the Blues”.

The song begins with a woman’s lament for the end of the day: “I hate to see de evenin’ sun go down.” Her man has left her for another woman who had “store-bought hair” and became a temptation too great for him to ignore. Composed in G major, St. Louis Blues is a 12-bar blues that combine ragtime syncopation with “a real melody in the spiritual tradition”. Handy also addressed that features from tango music was also figured in the introduction as well as the middle strain. In the famous Marion Harris version, the tango motif was played by violins, with bassoon’s humorous staccato, creating the image of a lovesick woman, full of lovelorn sadness but still has the longing for life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4Qccz2qsHY

Handy writes in his autobiography:

However, did the Hollywood film production interpret the music as W.C. Handy’s interpretation? My answer would be NO- the hardness in life and love relationship was mostly lost. According to Peter Stanfield, Stella Dallas (1937) provided a good example of the complex ideological work that was often performed by blues music. Stella “decay” from a “mother” to a “sexualized” when she laying on the sofa with a sexy pose and playing St. Louis Blues on her phonograph (after seeing all these, Stella’s daughter decided to leave Stella forever). I think it is clear that the symbolic power of St. Louis Blues was shown here, by the “transgressive” female sexuality, the “blackening” of white identity, and “urban primitivism.”

http://youtu.be/7sJun3eM8UY?list=PLaTUqD7vwzLXjcM8djw38nSPvnfkTcAS3

I personally think it is not an occasion that the White society perceived Blues as “primitive” but “sexy” in early 20^th century. Sociologist Gramsci’s idea of “culture hegemony” had to play in somewhere. White society would just love to take anything they want to take from black music- they redefined it and distorted it in order to adjust the entertainment of white people, without any further understanding of what the music actually talked about; Yet at the same time, African American musicians seemed already “accepted” the twisted impression in White society since they had to sale their music to white music dealers and singers, in order to make a living.

Sources:

Stanfield, Peter. 2002. “An Excursion into the Lower Depths: Hollywood, Urban Primitivism, and St. Louis Blues, 1929-1937”. Cinema Journal. 41, no. 2. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1225853

David Evans. “Handy, W.C..” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed March 4, 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/12322.

Handy, W. C. St. Louis blues. New York: Handy Bros. Music Co., Inc., 1914.http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/lilly/devincent/LL-SDV-09808

The Foxtrot: W.C. Handy, the Castles, and an Animal Obsession

Posted on March 3, 2015 by biedenbe

W.C. Handy, the Father of the Blues, in 1941.

From the 1890s to the 1910s, the world changed. A new era was sweeping the nation, the age of ragtime and the blues. As the popularity of this music skyrocketed, people all over America demanded to hear and dance to the music that before had only been available in regional enclaves like St. Louis, New Orleans, and Memphis. Sensing a money-making opportunity, musicians began to compose and play (and sell) what the public wanted to hear. The first musician to leap into commercialization of the blues was W.C. Handy, and his “Memphis Blues” is credited with inspiring the dance known as the foxtrot.

Mr. and Mrs. Castle dancing.

Meet Vernon and Irene Castle, a husband-and-wife dance team at the turn of the century. Through their hard work and numerous performances, they popularized social dancing and brought it from ballrooms into public venues. Needless to say, they were a big deal. As Handy recounts in his 1941 autobiography, Father of the Blues, their music director James Reese Europe played the slow “Memphis Blues” between faster dances (like the One-Step) to give the famous Castles a break. Falling in love with the rhythm, the couple decided to create a dance to go with the music. Following the contemporary craze of naming dances after animals (check out the Grizzly Bear, Turkey Trot, and Camel Walk), they originally called their dance the Bunny Hug but later changed the name to the foxtrot.

Maybe like me you assumed that the foxtrot has been around for a very long time. After all, the dance is included with the waltz, tango, and Viennese waltz in the American Smooth category of competitive dancing. But, like with the origins of the blues (while it is a descendent of centuries of African-American music, it is not itself an old genre), you cannot make assumptions about the history of a dance or a musical genre, lest we miss interesting connections like this one.

Armed with this knowledge, take a listen to Handy’s “Memphis Blues” and, if you know it, throw in a little foxtrot.

Click the image to listen to Morton Harvey’s 1914 recording of “Memphis Blues” at the Library of Congress’s National Jukebox.

Handy, W.C. Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1957.

Handy, W.C. “The Memphis Blues.” Morton Harvey, tenor. Victor 17657, 1914. Library of Congress National Jukebox, http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/117/ (accessed March 3, 2014).

Johnston, Frances Benjamin. [Irene and Vernon Castle, full-length, in dancing position]. Between 1910 and 1918. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/98506505/ (accessed March 3, 2014).

Van Vechten, Carl. [Portrait of William Christopher Handy]. July 17, 1941. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004662979/ (accessed March 3, 2014).

Original Dixieland Jass Band

Posted on March 3, 2015 by andersdh

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/4669

Originally from New Orleans, LA, the Original Dixieland Jass Band (ODJB) was recruited to Chicago in 1916 to perform at Schiller’s Cafe. There was interest in bringing a New Orleans-style band to Chicago. After a number of personnel changes, ODJB was booked to perform in New York City. Starting in January 1917, ODJB took up residency providing upbeat dancing music at Reisenweber’s Restaurant in New York City.

At the time, the center of the music recording industry was New York City and New Jersey. ODJB had earned their own following in New York and received invitations to record. In the end of February, the band recorded with Victor Talking Machine Company and recorded two sides of a 78 record under the Victor name. The song here, Dixie Jass Band One-Step, and Livery Stable Blues were the first songs released on this record.

Original Dixieland ‘Jass’ Band – Dixie Jass Band One-Step Victor 18255-A, February 26, 1917 Library of Congress National Jukebox

With the release of this record, ODJB gained immense popularity in America. The members dubbed themselves “Creators of Jazz” having given the American people their first taste of jazz with their record release. After a successful first release, the ODJB recorded more songs for a total of 25, 2-song records before the group’s disbandment in 1925.

Dixieland jazz is different than what we think of as “jazz” today. It follows the 12-bar blues model, but instead of having a dominant soloist in the foreground, each of the five players play throughout. It sounds as if each player is playing his own solo throughout the whole song. It gives a different flavor of ensemble than we are used to in today’s instrumental music.

One of the primary uses for this music was dance. The complexity of the music itself and each of the five instruments intertwining with each other parallels that of public dancing. Everyone dances to the same beat, but each person on the dance floor is dancing his or her own way. No one looks or sounds the same. The same applies to Dixieland Jazz.

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/4669

John Chilton. “Original Dixieland Jazz Band.” The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd ed.. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed March 2, 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/J339300.

The Devil and Robert Johnson

Posted on March 3, 2015 by olsonhe

There are many disparities between the life and legacy of blues musician Robert Johnson. While he was known for playing street corners and juke joints instead of large venues, Yet he is widely (and somewhat mistakenly, according to author Elijah Wald) credited as one of the founding fathers of the genre, even earning the title, “King of the Delta Blues.” If Johnson had so little exposure during his lifetime, why is he the king of this genre?

Part of Johnson’s legacy can be accredited to the myth surrounding his success. Nearly every biography tells of a Faustian deal by which he acquired his talent. Johnson’s mentor, Son House, describes Johnson’s music pre-disappearance as a “racket” that drove the audiences “mad.” He disappeared to Arkansas for six to eight months; this is allegedly when he made his pact with the devil at the crossroads of Highway 49 and 61 in Mississippi. House of Johnson’s first concert upon returning: “When he finished, all our mouths were standing open” and, “He sold his soul to the devil to play like that.”

The belief is so intuitive to history’s representation of Robert Johnson that it’s included in his biographies as an almost indisputable fact, as evidenced in a quote from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

“Robert Johnson stands at the crossroads of American music, much as a popular folk legend has it, he once stood at a Mississippi crossroads and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for guitar playing powers.”

Some of the myth can be attributed to Johnson’s early death at 27 of unknown causes. However, the legend came to prominence after Johnson was rediscovered by white fans two decades after his death. Blues historian Pete Welding, who heard the Faust story from Son House, reported in a 1966 issue of Down Beat that it was taken quite seriously by many fans. Welding states that Johnson’s improvement as a guitarist actually spanned two years, but because of faulty reporting, there’s insufficient evidence to back it up.

Johnson certainly had the guitar “powers” to back up the claims. He’s ranked fifth in Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list. Eric Clapton, who recorded a cover album commemorating Johnson’s work, called him “The greatest guitarist who ever lived.”During his time, Johnson was revered for playing in a pan-American style, with songs that resembled Chicago and St. Louis blues more than Delta music. Still, it’s important to remember that while Johnson has widely influenced American (and British) rock n’ roll after the 1950’s, he had virtually no effect on the development of the blues. Elijah Wald writes, “As far as the evolution of black music goes, Robert Johnson was an extremely minor figure…” Johnson’s Faust tale is an example about the mythically proportioned inaccuracies that are often created around the musicians and their histories. In both cases, getting to the root of the story is necessary to learning the truth behind the music.

Sources

Fricke, David. “100 Greatest Guitarists.” Rolling Stone, December 10, 2010.

“The 50 Albums That Changed Music.” The Observer, July 16, 2008.

The Search for Robert Johnson. Performed by Johnny Shines, David Honeyboy Edwards, John P. Hammond. United States: Iambic Productions, 1991. DVD.

Wald, Elijah. Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of Blues. New York City, New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

The Timeless Light of the “Midnight Special”

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Cole

When John and Alan Lomax visited the Louisiana State Penitentiary of Angola, Louisiana in July of 1933 they were in search of folksongs. Little did they know that they would instead come across a musical star, whose treatment of a popular prison song would transcend the boundary between folk and pop styles. The musician was Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, and the song was “Midnight Special”.

Angola, Louisiana prison compound. Leadbelly in the foreground.

Angola, Louisiana prison compound, July 1933. Leadbelly in the foreground.

Born in the late 1880’s to the oppressive cotton fields of Louisiana, Ledbetter feared only one thing: failure. It was from this determination that he received the nickname “Lead Belly”, as he could outwork, outfight, and out-sing anyone who dared challenge him. “I wants to be the best – the king” he would say. He even went so far as to call himself “The King of the Twelve-String Guitar”, a talent that he used to exploit the Texas prison system he entered in 1917 on a thirty year sentence for assault. He famously used his musical talent to garner the attention of Texas Governor Pat Neff, who pardoned and released Ledbetter from prison in 1925.

It was in this same spirit that he was brought to the Lomax’s attention in 1933. Incarcerated once again for assault, Ledbetter sufficiently wooed the Lomax’s that they convinced Louisiana Governor O.K. Allen to pardon Ledbetter. Thereafter, he worked as John Lomax’s chauffeur and relocated to the Northeastern United States, often traveling to Washington D.C. to record for Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress.

Volume I of the LOC Lead Belly collection.

Midnight Special as it appears in “The Leadbelly Songbook”

Midnight Special by Lead Belly, Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200196310/

Volume I of the LOC collection is titled “Midnight Special”, and though it contains memorable treatments of many classic folk-tunes, the titular song is Ledbetter’s most famous and influential adaptation. Thought to originate among prisoners in the South, the refrain of the song references a passenger train of the same name, the light of which shone into cells as it passed by:

Let the Midnight Special shine her light on me, Let the Midnight Special shine her ever-loving light on me.

If the “ever-loving light” of the train landed on a prisoner, the inmates believed that man would soon be set free.

When Alan Lomax first recorded Ledbetter’s version of the song he attributed the authorship to Ledbetter. However, this is fundamentally untrue. In addition to the fact that it was a popular prison song, it had been recorded commercially by Sam Collins as the “Midnight Special Blues” in 1927. His version seems much more like an extemporaneous performance of a folk song, while Ledbetter’s is a precise arrangement of the melody, harmonic progression, and guitar accompaniment.

In this vein, it may be fair to say that Lead Belly didn’t write the song, but did ‘compose’ a version of it that achieved mass popularity and lasting influence in the public conception, as heard in versions by Creedence Clearwater Revival….

…. and ABBA.

While both versions seem to emerge from Ledbetter’s arrangement, the ABBA version is particularly notable due to its seemingly contradictory nature: why is a Swedish pop group performing an African American prison song? According to the official ABBA website, this song was performed as part of a medley of American folk songs on a charity record the group contributed to in 1975. The artists carefully selected songs that “were in the public domain as far as copyright was concerned” in order to avoid composer royalties. Despite this, the site recognizes Ledbetter’s “distinctive arrangement of the song that made it truly famous” as the inspiration for this version.

To conclude, “Midnight Special” exemplifies a major problem regarding folk music and its chronicling: differentiating between the folk song and popular versions. When do we lend credit to individuals and their renderings? How do we identify legitimate folk versions? While these questions may be difficult to answer, they ought to be considered as we examine popular reactions to folk music.

“Rock Island Line” and Questions of Authenticity

Posted on March 3, 2015 by herndon

In search of music authentic to the African-American tradition–that is, music passed down from slavery and unsullied by white influence–folk music collectors of the early 20th century made recordings at prisons and penitentiaries where music like the work song was more likely to be alive. In 1934, John Lomax recorded a group of African-American prisoners at Cummins State Farm in Gould, Arkansas singing a tune called “Rock Island Line.” You can listen to Lomax’s original 1934 recording below.

Figure 1

This recording contains evidence of the work song tradition in its call and response structure and the sound of shovels hitting the ground rhythmically. However, the polished harmonies sound closer to the music produced by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, which was based on slave music but was highly modified to fit the tastes of white audiences. Another threat to authenticity was the presence of Lomax, his recording equipment, and the cognizance of a future audience during the making of functional music. Consider this photograph of an inmate pausing briefly from work to be photographed in comparison with the following photograph of the Cummins State Farm inmates congregated to perform “Rock Island Line” for Lomax’s recording.

Figure 2

Figure 3

In the first photograph, the prison officer is amongst the inmates, and the inmates do not seem to be coordinating their work. In the second photograph, the prison officer stands apart from the group of prisoners–much like an overseer–while the prisoners swing their shovels in synchronization over a small patch of land. Are both of these representations of Arkansas prison life accurate or is the second photograph staged to look more “authentic” to the work song tradition?

In the same way, the musical categorization of “Rock Island Line” is complicated. Is it a work song as the second picture above seems to show? Is it a blues song like Lead Belly’s 1949 rendition would have us believe? Or is it an American Folk song as white artists of the 1950s, 60s, and beyond would portray? The only thing we can say conclusively is that Lomax’s recording and Lead Belly’s subsequent reworking and marketing of the song changed it into a song well known but of questionable authenticity in America’s musical history.

Footnotes

“Original 1934 John Lomax recording of ‘Rock Island Line’ by Kelly Pace and Prisoners,” Youtube video, posted by Jan Tak, September 10, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NTa7ps6sNU

“[African American convicts working at an outdoor location].” Photograph. Washington, D.C.: c1934-1950. From Library of Congress: Lomax Collection. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2007660147/resource/ (accessed March 1, 2015)

“[African American convicts working with shovels, possibly the singers of “Rock Island Line” at Cummins State Farm, Gould, Arkansas, 1934].” Photograph. Washington, D.C.: c1934. From Library of Congress: Lomax Collection. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsc.00422/ (accessed March 1, 2015)

“leadbelly rock island line,” Youtube video, posted by Northern soul, September 23, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iJEVOUqepo

“Lonnie Donegan – Rock Island Line (Live) 15/6/1961,” Youtube video, posted by Paul Griggs, December 29, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI4nRD-DRpk

She Sang the Blues

Image

I don’t know about you, but I find it so fascinating how there have been many women involved in the evolution of the blues/jazz. I mean usually we study the history of different genres of music and it is mostly men who have participated in the crafting of music. I would say that that is not the case for the blues or jazz. I mean think about it, when you drop the names Mamie Smith, Bessie Smith, Billy Holiday, Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald… I immediately think of them as equivalent to all of the well-known male blues/jazz musicians. I am sure others do as well.

Taking a step back in time Bessie Smith (1894-1937) was one of the early blues vocalist who had a successful career. She traveled around the states performing blues creating a name for herself. She was called the ‘Empress of the Blues’ (Evans). When reading the article “Bessie Smith’s ‘Back-Water Blues’: the story behind the song” it was powerful to read how the song “Back-Water Blues” composed by her, made such an impact on the society around her. In this article, it spends a lot of time talking about how the text of this song relates to the Mississippi River flood. This flood impacted many black americans when it happened, but there is much irony in the fact that the song was composed and recorded before the flood actually happened (Evans).It is heart-warming to know that her artistry of composing and preforming allowed for other women to have similar experiences, especially women of color.

I found this poem called “Bessie Smith” by Sybil Kein.

“Bessie Smith” a poem.

I think this is such an interesting poem because it encompasses all that Bessie Smith conveyed through her performances of the Blues.

Here! Listen to “Back-Water Blues.”

http://youtu.be/wgBWGR0E83Y

Works Cited:

Evans, David. 2007. “Bessie Smith’s ‘Back-Water Blues’: the story behind the song.” Popular Music 26, no. 1: 97-116. Music Index, EBSCOhost (accessed March 3, 2015).

Hammering Out “Our Singing Country”

Posted on March 3, 2015 by sison

Alan Lomax playing guitar on stage at the Mountain Music Festival, Asheville, N.C.

[1]

John Lomax and his son, Alan, set out for one of the most ambitious tasks attempted in American folk song history: To travel thousands of miles and collect recordings of as many songs as possible in order to preserve them in the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Song. Early in their travels, they came upon a black guitarist and singer named Huddie Ledbetter. He would later be more commonly known by his nickname, “Leadbelly.” The Lomaxes were very impressed with his repertoire of folk songs as well as his virtuosic skill as a twelve-string guitarist. As a result of his four year imprisonment in the Louisiana’s Angola Prison for murder, he was cut off from hearing the popular music of the day. For the Lomaxes, he was a prime living example of the folk tradition they were seeking out and sought to bring his voice to the American public. After employing him as a driver and servant, they brought him to New York in order to record and promote his “pure folk” sound.

Leadbelly, three-quarter-length, profile, facing right, lifting car out of snow, at the home of Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, Wilton, Conn.

[2]

However, in order to make Leadbelly’s music palatable to the public, it seems some edits had to be made. Take the work song “Take This Hammer,” which can be found in the Lomaxes’ collection Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads from 1941 shown here:

“Take This Hammer” as it appears in Our Singing Country

[3]

Library of Congress Recording of prisoners at Florida State Prison singing “Take dis Hammer”

Now compare it to the transcription found in The Leadbelly Songbook, as transcribed by Jerry Silverman in 1962 and recorded by Leadbelly in the 1940’s:

“Take This Hammer” as it appears in The Leadbelly Songbook

[4]

As you can see, the general notes and rhythms are still the same, with some added notes in Leadbelly’s performance. However, in the Leadbelly version, the controversial verses about the “captain” calling him a “nappy-headed devil” and grabbing his gun are omitted. Also, in Our Singing Country, “Take This Hammer” is considered to be a highly rhythmic song that was sung when a slave worked in a gang in order to synchronize the dropping of axes and to “…make the work go more easily by adapting its rhythm to the rhythm of a song.” (citation) In the field recording, which lacks the dropping of picks but is conveyed through the “wahs” of the men singing, the tempo is considerably slower than when Leadbelly sings it.

If the Lomaxes wanted to accurately portray the pure folk tradition in this song, they would have sent the Florida State prisoners to New York to record it how it would have been performed. But no one would have bought the record or even bothered to listen to it. Instead, they realized that in order for the dying folk tradition to be kept alive they had to bring the style into American popular music. Unlike the folk song preservers of the past, they respected the black musical tradition and wanted it to be accessible to white audiences without losing too much of its authenticity. In doing so, the Lomaxes brought folk music to the American popular music sphere and created a new musical tradition.

1. “Alan Lomax playing guitar on stage at the Mountain Music Festival, Asheville, N.C,” Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Lomax Collection, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/lomax/item/2007660160/ (accessed 3/2/15).
2. “Leadbelly, three-quarter-length, profile, facing right, lifting car out of snow, at the home of Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, Wilton, Conn,” Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Lomax Collection, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/lomax/item/2007660303/ (accessed 3/2/15).
3. John A. and Alan Lomax. Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads. (New York, Dover Publishing Inc., 2000), 380-381.
4. Moses Asch and Jerry Silverman, The Leadbelly Songbook. (London, Oak Publications, 1962), 45.

Romanticizing the Struggle of the Common Man in Folk Music

Posted on March 2, 2015 by stephens

For black Americans in the 1930s and 40s, Jim Crow laws made it impossible to forget the color of their skin, even for celebrated musicians performing in upscale venues. Lead Belly, discovered in a penitentiary, was no stranger to these racial prejudices. In a trip to Washington DC in 1937 requested by Alan Lomax, Lead Belly wrote the song “Bourgeois Blues” in response to the unfair treatment he received.

Me and my wife went all over town
And everywhere we went people turned us down
Lord, in a bourgeois town
It’s a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around …

I tell all the colored folks to listen to me
Don’t try to find you no home in Washington, DC
‘Cause it’s a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

Prison compound in Louisiana, Lead Belly in front.

Although his life contained many of the hardships described in blues and folk songs, Lead Belly was never quite portrayed as a poor folksperson. Instead, to gain the respect due his talent, he adopted a more professional persona, working extremely hard and finding passion in every aspect of life. In an interview with PBS, Alan Lomax said that “he simply felt that he triumphed over everything” (PBS). In this, he left his early life in the penitentiary far behind.

Huddie Ledbetter and Martha Promise Ledbetter. Wilton, Conn., Feb. 1935.

Woody Guthrie, on the other hand, tried to embody the folky image, but never achieved it fully. He became a spokesperson for the hardships of ordinary Americans but due to his popularity was never a common man himself. And, as a white American, his persona never needed the sort of professionalism that Huddie Ledbetter needed to adopt.

Woody with his guitar.

Alan Lomax, a champion of folk music and a believer in its romanticism, spent years recording both Ledbetter and Guthrie and championing their cause as remnants of true American voices. Many Americans who listened to folk music idealized the singers as tortured souls moaning out their troubles. But while Lead Belly and Guthrie experienced the sorrows of racial prejudice, the Great Depression, and dustbowl-era America, neither one completely represented the hardworking common man so heavily lauded in the work of the Lomaxes. Their fame and status as alternative folk heroes lifted them way beyond the label of common man. Instead the common man remains in his dusty home, toiling his hours away and singing folk songs to bring up his spirits.

Sources:

Lomax, Alan. [Prison compound no. 1, Angola, Louisiana. Leadbelly (Huddie Ledbetter) in the foreground]. Photograph. Louisiana, 1934. From Library of Congress: The Lomax Collection. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/lomax/item/2007660073/

Lomax, Alan. Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly) and Martha Promise Ledbetter, Wilton, Conn. Photograph. Connecticut, 1935. From Library of Congress: The Lomax Collection. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/lomax/item/2007660385/

Aumuller, Al. [Woody Guthrie, half-length portrait, facing slightly left, holding guitar]. 1943. From Library of Congress: Prints and Photographs Division. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/95503348

So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Chloe Elzey

Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) was an American singer-songwriter whose folk music gave voice to people’s struggles and considered his songs as his weapon in the fight against injustice and hardship among many other things.

Woody Guthrie experienced enough tragedy and hard times to inspire thousands of songs. Alongside his passion to voice his own trials, Woody became a voice for more than just himself.

Wilson, Charles Banks. [Photograph]. Retrieved from http://www.oksenate.gov/senate_artwork/images/artwork/woody_guthrie.jpg

He crisscrossed across America and made ends meet playing guitar and singing in saloons and work camps during the Great Depression. As he would follow his insatiable wanderlust, Guthrie would absorb certain ballads and styles of the folk style he heard on the road and would write song after song that reflected the struggles and good times of the ordinary people he would meet. Listeners responded immediately to Guthrie’s heartfelt, down-to-earth style.

In the mid-1930s, The Great Depression had already swept across the nation, and a drought had hit the plains of the United States. The prairie grasses had been over-plowed and the dust that collected would sometimes blot out the sun. From his experiences in the “Dust Bowl”, Woody had realized the power that music had to capture the core of individuals and the events and places he understood.

eli.com [Photograph] Retrieved from http://eil.com/images/main/Woody-Guthrie-Dust-Bowl-Ballads-495806.jpg

“In thinking back about this time, he wrote, ‘there on the Texas plains right in the dead center of the dust bowl, with the oil boom over and the wheat blowed out and the hard-working people just stumbling about, bothered with mortgages, debts, bills, sickness, worries of every blowing kind, I seen there was plenty to make up songs about.’” 1

Behind the simple song, a rich and complex personality that Guthrie instilled, still exudes. One of his first songs to reflect what he saw happening around him became one of his most famous songs. “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You”

1 Jackson, Mark. “Rambling Round: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie — Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940-1950 | Collections | Library of Congress.” Rambling Round: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie — Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940-1950. Library of Congress. Web. 2 Mar. 2015. <http://www.loc.gov/collections/woody-guthrie-correspondence-from-1940-to-1950/articles-and-essays/rambling-round-the-life-and-times-of-woody-guthrie/>.

Bringing the Blues to the national stage: W.C. Handy

Image

William Christopher Handy, age 67

Widely acclaimed as “the father of the Blues,” William Christopher Handy experienced humble beginnings. Handy grew up in a log cabin in Florence, Alabama to former slaves. His father, a preacher, believed that musical instruments were tools of the devil and did not support his son’s musical endeavors.

As a teenager, Handy went against his parents’ wishes and secretly saved up to purchase a cornet by picking berries and nuts and making lye soap; he then joined a local band and spent every free minute practicing it. His troubles worsened after his band Lauzetta Quartet disbanded and he spent two years in St. Louis living under a bridge, homeless.

He would later reflect on his early days saying, “You’ve got to appreciate the things that come from the art of the Negro and from the heart of the man farthest down.”

In 1909, Handy self-published his song “Memphis Blues” while working in several clubs on Beale Street. Since then, the term “memphis blues” is used in lyrics of other tunes to describe a depressed mood.

“The Memphis Blues” is said to be based on a campaign song written by Handy for Edward Crump, a mayoral candidate in Memphis, TN and so is subtitled “Mr. Crump.”

For the 1914 recording of “Memphis Blues” by Morton Harvey, tenor, click the link below: http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/117

The song introduced his style of 12-bar blues and is credited with inspiring the foxtrot dance step by Vernon and Irene Castle, a NY dance team. When Handy moved to New York City, his hit songs “Memphis Blues” along with “Yellow Dog Blues” and “St. Louis Blues” brought Handy’s musical style to the forefront of mainstream American culture.

By moving from Tennessee to New York, Handy was able to spread the Blues to the epicenter of music during the early 20th century. His struggles during his early days allowed him to draw on his tribulations in order to create a genre of music America could call its own.

For more information on W.C. Handy’s life and music, check out this documentary!

Chenrow, Fred & Chenrow, Carol (1973). “W.C. Handy” Reading Exercises in Black History, Volume 1. Elizabethtown, PA: The Continental Press, Inc. p. 32.

Handy, W.C. “Memphis Blues. 1913.” Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University. Reproduction Number Music #725; 1-3. Web. 2 March 2015.

Van Vechten, Carl, photographer. Portrait of William Christopher Handy, 1941. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Reproduction Number LC-USZ62-42531 DLC.

Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life: A History, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001, pp. 536-537

William Christopher Handy’s “Memphis Blues” Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov (accessed March 2, 2015).

Woody Guthrie’s Letters

Posted on March 2, 2015 by alexandc

Letters from Woodie Guthrie to Alan Lomax on September 25, 1940 reveal many insights into the personal beliefs and character of Woodie Guthrie and help shed light into his music and philosophy behind it. As direct writing from the composer itself, it provides the least biased source available and gives Woodie Guthrie’s exact words, and a helpful context for them. Woodie Guthrie’s conviction of using music as politics can be seen in his writings here. He states that “if you see something thats wrong and needs to be fixed, and you get up and tell it just how you feel, that makes you a showman.”

He writes later that, “you cant entertain nobody unless you can do two things be yourself and forget yourself and imagine you’re helping everybody, cuss the ones that don’t like.” you, by what you do.”

His somewhat cynical view of politics comes out in another letter to the same recipient written a couple of months later. He writes that, “I am writing this [letter] on Christmas paper and I think all election speeches ought to be wrapped in gift boxes with a red and green string tied around them, and that a way we would be sure at least of a Christmas package whether there was anything in it or not.” He desires to fix things and make the world a better place and states that his purpose in voting is to fix things, “and if I dont fix it by a voting one way, I’ll vote another way, and finally, I’ll find out the right way.”

These letters of Woodie Guthrie help shed light on his passion, philosophy, and music. And as primary source material, as well as Guthrie’s own words, they can be relied on quite strongly to gain insight into Guthrie’s understanding of his life and musical career.

sources:

http://www.loc.gov/resource/afc1940004.afc1940004_036/?sp=1&st=text

http://www.loc.gov/item/afcwwgbib000038/

The Memphis Blues: A Controversy of Publications

Posted on March 2, 2015 by simonson

Luke P. Simonson

C. Handy, considered to be the founder of blues, published The Memphis Blues in 1912. The Memphis Blues was originally written without lyrics; however, the version included in A Treasury of the Blues: Complete Words and Music of 67 Great Songs from Memphis Blues to the Present Day includes lyrics, but does not disclose who wrote the lyrics. We can only assume that these lyrics were in fact written by W. C. Handy himself. Here is a recording of the Victor Military Band playing E. V. Cupero’s arrangement of The Memphis Blues in 1914. Cupero’s arrangement accurately takes every note and rhythm from A Treasury of Blues version publication.

: The Memphis Blues by W. C. Handy

The Memphis Blues page 2

The Memphis Blues, page 3

The Memphis Blues, page 4

From listening and looking at the score, one can tell that this piece unfolds in three binary sections. The first section (which I will refer to as Section A) includes the AAB structure of the 12-bar blues. Section B (page 2) features an AABA form and from A Treasury of the Blues lyrics it also contains the same two bars of singing and two bars of instrumental break feel (shown below). Section C (pages 3-4) does not have the same structure as the previous sections, yet still contains the instrumental fills.

Interested in learning more about The Memphis Blues, I continued to search for more recordings. I came across Morton Harvey’s performance of the work recorded 3 months after the Victor Military Band’s. At first listen it sounded exactly the same, just with lyrics. Slowly I started to notice that the lyrics were not the same as The Treasury of Blue’s printed lyrics. Curiously, the lyrics and performers matched a copy of The Memphis Blues that I found of imslp.org. The cover of the score (found below) claims that this piece was “George A. Norton’s” only founded on the W. C. Handy’s “World Wide ‘Blue’ Note Melody.”

Memphis Blues Norton 1

However, George A. Norton’s version takes out the most crucial opening A Section (see above), only including a tiny bit of the A section and tacking it on the end of the B section. As mentioned before, the A Section is 12-bar blues form. Without this section, I hardly believe that this piece can be entitled The Memphis Blues. Even the B section of A Treasury of the Blues version is marred by Norton’s lyrical arrangement, adding lyrics to the two bar instrumental interludes (see Norton page 2 and Handy page 3). I think it is a crude infringement on Handy’s blues form, changing the piece from The Memphis Blues to The Memphis Ragtime.

From Blues to Jazz: Handy to Vaughan

Posted on March 2, 2015 by christes

Jazz is a musical style native to the United States, that emerged in the early Twentieth century. Jazz was influenced from Blues music, which was established most notably by W.C. Handy in 1917. Jazz has new sound that incorporates both the African American musical stylings and the European American form of music. This hybridization of the two heritages created a unique style of music which we now call under a big genre “umbrella,” Jazz. In the Library of Congress photo archives, a photo of the reputable Sarah Vaughan was present among many photos of white jazz singers. She became popular in the late 40s and early 50s when Jazz was really hitting it’s stride as popular music, with the likes of Frank Sinatra.

Vaughan was highly influenced by the early blues style, of W.C. Handy. Handy’s invention or development of the Memphis Blues, drew on the folk style of the old southern plantation music. The emotional context of this music is heard in the vocal stylings of the renowned Sarah Vaughan. The memphis blues eventually took shape to the 12-bar blues, which also led to the development of Jazz.

While Vaughan represents a big part of the Jazz era, more commonly was the presence of white artists, such as Doris Day, Peggy Lee, and Sinatra. They emulated the sounds of a soulful Vaughan, singing on topics that go back to the days of slavery.

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/7948/autoplay/true/

“St. Louis Blues” is a great example of an old dixieland jazz band song that evolved over the years. In the recording provided in the above link, the instrumentation, while has elements of a traditional jazz band also still has southern sounds to it… likely from New Orleans. In the video below, the song is presented in a different style of blues and jazz, one that emerged later with artists like Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Sarah Vaughan.

Bibliography

Gottlieb, William, photographer. “Portrait of Sarah Vaughan in Café Society (Downtown).” Photograph. New York, N.Y.: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs. Aug. 1946. Online.

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/7948/autoplay/true/

Double Appropriation

Posted on March 2, 2015 by butler

“Chinaman, Chinaman
wash ‘em laundry all day
Chinaman, Chinaman
smoke ‘em pipe they say OR Wants his freedom that way
He’s got a little China gal
She love him all right,
He love little China gal, too,
So he sings to her ev’ry night
Sung Fong Lou, Sung Fong Lou
Listen to those chinese blues;
Honey gal, I’m crying to you
Won’t you open that door and let me in?
China man cries, baby, won’t you let me in
Chinaman feels his habit (OR lovin’) coming on again.
She cries to him “what’s the matter with you
I got those Ipshing, Hong Kong Ockaway Chinese Blues”

Recording of Irving Kaufman singing the Chinese Blues

Recording of Sousa’s Band playing the Chinese Blues

Written by Oscar Gardner, this song was not only published in a Treasury of the Blues by the “father of the blues,” W.C. Handy and recorded by George Gershwin, but also was, according to the critical notes by Abbe Niles, “the first and best by a white man, and had wide popularity in 1915.” [1] Niles’ notes also clarify that “Chinese Blues” falls under the category “blues-songs,” which do not follow the classical 12-bar blues form, but include songs that have any relation to the blues. “Chinese Blues” only fits the blues category in that it tells the story and emotion of the unrequited lover and there are a couple blue, or flatted notes, to the melody. We know that the early 20th century saw a trend of appropriating the blues to label any song that had ragtime rhythms, blue notes, and the longing emotion, even though the blues specifically came out of African American oppression.[2] In other words, Oscar Gardner, a white composer, tapped into the commercial blues genre in anyway he could to make money, and W.C. Handy benefitted by publishing it in his anthology of the blues.

As if this level of mis-labeling isn’t enough, the song also reflects racist stereotypes about the Chinese and their music. While the published music looks like an average ragtime or jazz arrangement, both period performances of it from the Library of Congress (Sousa’s band and Irving Kaufman) recordings emphasize an “oriental sound,” namely flutes slurring up to their notes and percussion including a gong and woodblocks. The lyrics “Sung, Fong, Lou,” though they don’t actually have a real translation in Chinese, also try to evoke the Orient. Additionally, in the lyrics depending on which version you look at, the Chinese are either washing laundry all day in order to get their freedom or suffering from an opium/other drug addiction. So, in sum “Chinese Blues” presents an example of a white composer using a genre traditional to African American oppression to subjugate the Chinese.

[1] Oscar Gardner, “Chinese Blues,” A Treasury of the Blues, ed. W.C. Handy, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1926), 184.

[2] Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), Ch. 1, “What is Blues?” 1-13.

Flocking to Folk Festivals

Posted on March 2, 2015 by smithg

In the 20th century folk song was afforded new status as a legit musical form. Previously folk song was sidelined by other more “artful” musical forms from famous composers such as Brahms or Beethoven (even though their music did often draw on popular contemporary songs or folk songs for themes or ideas). Academics, musicians, and composers all studied folk music with new vigor when they realized folk music was something worth paying attention to. Composer Hubert Parry spoke highly of the emotional value of folk music saying it is one of “the purest products of the human mind” (Crawford, 598).

Of particular interest in the folk music festivals that were founded in the early 20th century to around the 50s or 60s. Many of these festivals still exist today in some facet and it wouldn’t be hard to hear “modern” folk music somewhere like the Newport Folk Festival.

Academics became concerned with folk music that was being performed in their time because they were concerned with their musical past disappearing and being replaced with the popular music of the age. Ironically, today we would probably consider their popular music our folk music now.

Bog Trotters Band from Virginia http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.00412

The best way to share music is of course performance and creating a festival where many performers and listeners come together is a great way to share and learn new things about folk music. These festivals were highly attended in the height of their popularity. For example in 1968 70,000 people paid entry for the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island (Link to article: <http://search.proquest.com/docview/118382353?accountid=351>).

Folk Festivals were a huge part of why folk music was successful and pointed to the large demand for folk music in American consciousness. Without these festivals for sharing music across regions and states folk music might have stayed in its small box without having room to grow. If there had not been a strong community around folk music it indeed would have died in the libraries no matter how meticulously it was cataloged.

A “Southern Mosaic” – The Lomax Collection

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Brandon Cash

“Students with Miss Jovita Gonzales, St. Mary’s Academy, San Antonio, Texas;” Lomax Collection

“Five musicians and a singer performing at the Mountain Music Festival, Asheville, North Carolina;” Lomax Collection

At a first glance, the Lomax Collection has little to no obvious thread connecting the images. When looking at the portfolio we see a variety of individuals from different ethnic backgrounds including African Americans, Mexicans, Cajuns, and Whites. Some photos include elements portraying music in some fashion (a microphone, a musical instrument, or a description stating the individuals are musicians) but other are simply candid snapshots of life down south. It then occurred to me that it is quite possible that the lack of commonalities in the photos may have significance after all.

“Cajun girl near Crowley, La.” Lomax Collection

The Lomax Collection, which has been digitized by the Library of Congress, is a collection of 400 photographs collected by John, Alan, and Ruby Lomax as the sought out sound recordings from the American south between 1934 and ca. 1950.¹The Lomax team was collecting these recordings for the Archive of American Folk-Song, established by the Library of Congress in 1928. The Lomax family went in search of a variety of musical examples from ballads to the blues and field hollers to work songs in settings ranging from small towns to church congregations to prison cells.²and along the way took snapshots of the places and people that they encountered. That is what is so unique about this collection of photographs. They almost came together by accident.

“Stavin’ Chain playing guitar and singing the ballad “Batson,” (fiddler also in shot), Lafayette, La.” Lomax Collection

The beauty of these recording journeys that John, Alan, and Ruby Lomax took is that in addition to a wealth of primary musical sources, we now have this “Southern Mosaic” of photographs that display the American South in the 1930s and 1940s. From the collection as a whole we are able to see the diversity of the South both culturally and musically. Images of Hispanic school girls sings are placed next to White bands performing at music festivals. A picture of a Cajun girl happens to share a gallery page with “Stavin’ Chain” as he jams on his guitar. These situations that appear so individualized, when put side by side, actually paint a picture for those willing to look for it. So often the history of this time period that permeates textbooks and classrooms are the negative truths about our nation’s past, but these 400 photographs that have become the Lomax collection show a unique view of how rich the South truly was.

1 “Lomax Collection.” Library of Congress. Accessed March 1, 2015. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/lomax/.

2 “Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip.” Library of Congress. Accessed March 1, 2015. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/lohtml/lohome.html.