"Catching as the Small-Pox"

This week we look at the beginnings of Jazz music, the dance craze and the mania it spawned across the country, and Tin Pan Alley, the birthplace and wellspring of what we now call "standards," the songs that have become a part of the tribal memory of most of us. I would venture a guess that you have heard at least one of the thousands of songs produced by the songwriters who wrote, plugged, and published their songs. Last week's post introduced the area in New York City that became known as Tin Pan Alley and a few of the songwriters who slaved there. This week's post will show the work of three of the most successful, if not artistically than certainly commercially, composers of their day : Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and the ground-breaking Broadway musical "Show Boat" by Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers.

This first clip comes from the documentary "The Great American Songbook" and deals with possibly the most diverse, prolific, and popular writers of the 20th century - Irving Berlin. His songs covered so many styles and eras that there was a rumour floating around for years that he kept a black man chained to his piano in the basement because people couldn't believe he could write so well in so many idioms. His work ranges from "Alexander's Ragtime Band, one of the most successful songs of  the Ragtime era, to "White Christmas," a Yuletide standard still recorded today. He is a fascinating character and you can find many versions of his songs all over the Internet. Do some searching and I am sure you will be surprised at how many of them you already know.

 Also from "The Great American Songbook" comes this clip looking at George Gershwin, who moved the tawdry and sentimental songs of Tin Pan Alley into the realm of Art. Not only were his commercial songs beautiful, smart, and touching, but his later orchestral work - especially "Rhapsody in Blue" and "American in Paris" - are considered some of the finest music ever composed in America.

 One of the most important musical events during this period is the emergence of Jazz music, a form many people consider as the only purely American musical form. Though it draws on a number of influences and sources, it remains music rooted in America. Starting in the whorehouses and bars of New Orleans, it becomes, during this period, a national craze, as the textbook says, "catching as the small pox." Here is a clip from Ken Burn's wonderfully amazing documentary series, "Jazz", on its early beginnings.

 Also from the "Jazz" series, is this clip about the early creators of Jazz music . . .

 

 Of course, as we will see throughout the course, when a "new" musical form emerges, it is always met with  opposition. Jazz music and the dance crazes it spawned raised a flood of condemnation. From church leaders to political officials, this "Negro devil's music" had people up in arms, citing it as the destruction of the young and clearly a pathway to hell. Here is another clip from the "Jazz" series:

 One of forgotten artists of this period is James Reese Europe. The social dance craze that swept the country - the Turkey Trot, the Tango, The Foxtrot - were mostly the influence of Vernon and Irene Castle, a husband-wife dance team. However, it was Europe as their music director and the orchestra he formed that were the real engine behind their popularity. Europe's story is an inspiration and I have always been confused as to why no one has ever made a movie of his life, especially about the band he put together that went to the First World War and brought honour and glory to both his race and to America. Here is a clip from the "Jazz" series:

 

    

Let's have a look at the man who "made a lady out of Jazz." Paul Whiteman, more than any other artist, brought the basically marginalized music called Jazz into the mainstream. He smoothed the rough edges and made the infectious rhythms more palatable to the American audience. Some say he made jazz commercial and took all the soul out of it. This is something we will see over and over again throughout the course - white artists taking black music and make it more accessible to a wider audience. Is it a good thing? Yes and no, i suppose. You decide - does he deserve to be known as the King of Jazz? Once again, here is a clip from the "Jazz" series:

    

Finally, here is a short clip that looks at "Show Boat," a Broadway musical that broke many of the boundaries over what was acceptable subject matter for Broadway shows.

 

BABY STEPS

Last week we looked at the cauldron that American Pop Music springs from: the sounds and songs, the folk tales and melodies, the emotions and the longings brought to the North American shores by wave after wave of immigrants. Many of these people came searching for a new life, broader horizons and vistas, more promising futures. Others, of course, had no choice in the matter. Over two millions Africans were brought across the ocean to work the fields and farms as slaves, bought and paid for. This friction and resentment will run as a steady chasm through American life culturally, politically, socially, spiritually from its earliest days to the present. Race is the elephant in the living room in America and has been both a source of shame and a source of pride. What is heartening for us, however, is the music that grows out of this experience.

This week, we look at the "baby steps" of the music we hear today. We get introduced to Stephan Foster, America's first real songwriter. His songs are still performed today and some, for example "Hard Times Come Around No More", have as much power as they did when they were first performed. His work is a part of our collective memory and I will venture a guess that each and everyone of us has heard a Stephan Foster song somewhere in our past. Unfortunately, most of his songs were written for minstrel shows, a misunderstood, though rightfully shameful, form of entertainment that sprung up mostly after the Civil War. Minstrel shows were a great deal more complicated than they would appear on the surface and you owe it to yourself to do a little research on them. The Internet is full of resources you can garner information from.

The following is a short clip from a series entitled "The Great American Song Book," which tells the history of American pop music through the use of movies clips from the 30s and 40s. It is enlightening, to a degree, but it is hard to look at the footage showing minstrel shows without thinking "What the hell were they thinking???"

 

  

 Shortly after this period, in the American South, Ragtime gets invented and Ragtime will dominate popular music for decades. It was developed as a dance rhythm and spread across the country like a virus. Ironically, one of the most popular dances that emerged from this rhythm was "the Cakewalk," a dance that white Americans saw black people doing and quickly expropriated it. The irony is that blacks developed the dance as a way of making fun  of how white people danced and the millions of whites dancing "The Cakewalk" had little idea of its origins. Sweet revenge in a way, eh? Here is another short clip from "The Great American Songbook".

Ragtime, with its infectious rhythms and jaunty syncopation caught on and became, for a short period, the most listened and danced to form of music in America. everyone wanted to learn how to play the complicated style and many families bought pianos, both regular and player pianos, just so they could enjoy the music at home. Here is a YouTube cartoon that illustrates the left and right hand syncopation.

 Here is a YouTube clip i found that someone put together during the Obama race for President in 2008. At the time, America was struggling with whether it was ready or not for a black President. ironically, in some of the black communities, the question started to arise as to whether Obama was indeed "black enough." In the author of this clip's investigation what it means to be black in America, he came across the idea of minstrel shows and he has provided a wonderful little history of this fascinating but confusing part of American musical history.

 Finally (because this must be as exhausting to read as it is to write . . .lol), here is another clip from "The Great American Song Book" that deals with Tin Pan Alley - a form of music that without which, Michael Buble would be just another hapless Canadian singer performing as the opening act at Casino Rama.

LET THE DISCOVERY BEGIN . . .

Here is a clip from Ken Burn's amazingly insightful and comprehensive documentary series "Jazz:." In it, we can see the beginnings of Popular Music in America and how the diversity of influences are still heard today. Clearly, as this clip illustrates, the African-American stream in American music is strong, vibrant, and wide-reaching, turning New Orleans into the epicenter of much of the music to follow. When you watch the clip, can you hear the roots of any of the music we listen to today? Can you hear the echoes of the past in the sounds of today?

The flip side of this, of course, is the huge influence the European immigrant experience has given to the cultural and musical landscape of America. This is a clip from a wonderful four-part documentary entitled "American Roots Music." In it, we see the early roots of country music and how each group that arrived on the shores of America brought their music with them and they blend together to form something different and unique. Again, does this music sound alien and strange to you? Is it too far in the past to move or interest you today? Post your responses and let's see where the dialogue takes us.

WELCOME

Welcome

(sound of trumpet fanfare) BRAD REED ENTERS THE BLOGOSHPERE KICKING AND SCREAMING - FILM AT 11 . . .

So after years of much resistance, I have decided to finally start blogging - however - with a difference. Unlike many of the other blogs I have seen, I don't want this to be a ego-driven, navel-grazing, vehicle of narcissistic ramblings. Instead, the main purpose for this blog is to provide a space for my online students in GHUM 1040 -"Good Vibrations: The Evolution of Pop Music" -  to discuss the issues, concerns, discoveries, and insights that you and I will develop over the course of the semester. Our course moves from the early days of American Popular Music to whatever we are listening to today and my experience has shown me that students - especially online students - need a forum to discuss the material and their discovery of it. It is my hope that this blog provides that forum.

Music - especially popular music - needs to be alive to be vital. In a somewhat sterile environment like online learning, that vitality can sometimes gets lost. What I hope to achieve here is to apply "jumper cables" to our material - to use video and sound clips, interviews, articles, YouTube pages, and whatever else we find interesting and relevant to give our course depth and substance that we might lack if we limit our exploration to just the textbook and PowerPoints.

This will not be done by me alone. Effective online teaching occurs on both sides of the computer screen. You have insights and perceptions about the music and other course material that is just as valuable as mine. Let's share what we know and feel with each and let's use this space as the place to do it.

I am looking forward to this new experience and hope that you be will as excited as I am. Let's see what we can each discover in this journey through the Evolution of Pop Music. As the old Louis Jordan song goes: "Let the Good Times Roll!!!"