New Orleans and Jazz History

[JSngry]

I've seen no hard data one way or the other, but I do see it suggested that the most efficient way to get between New York and New Orleans prior to good rail service was by ship.

So, things come in, things go out, nobody keeps a record. God only knows what went where when.

What we do know is that Louis Armstrong/Sidney Bechet took the input (whatever it might have been) and changed the output once and for all. Once that happened, we know what we are dealing with going forth 

[AllenLowe]

49 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

Sorry. I was googling Geeshee's book (which looks great - a definite purchase), then the website went down for me. 

The Eubie Blake track is pretty eye opening. Obviously the opening presentation of the theme seems like ragtime, and throughout the track it does resolve back into that, but it has the pulse that is unmistakable.

Two points:

First, are we already not into recorded jazz history by this point? Perhaps records were slow to disseminate, but Blake could have been playing the 'new sound'? I think the key point though is that here is a musician from the North and from the preceding generation who already has the very different rhythmic feeling mastered, maybe because it wasn't new to him. 

Second, are there any examples of Northerners (or non-New Orleans musicians) playing jazz horns at this early stage? Even textual references? I realize that the horns and the polyphony are not the key markers of the emergence of early jazz (as opposed to the rhythmic switch) but it is noticeable that the examples of non-New Orleans jazz, whether Blake or Willie The Lion Smith etc, are piano players. The James Reese Europe records do feature horns, but seem to me to be very definitely on the ragtime side, but this could be a factor of having to arrange for such a large band.

I must say that the reminder of Sidney Bechet and the indirect reference to Freddie Keppard’s Original Creole Orchestra up thread do seem to me to tilt the balance somewhat in favour of a stronger New Orleans connection. That really is a very substantial number of key musicians linking to New Orleans.

I'm interested. How does it compare to the Michael Ondaatje book? 

This stuff really burns. Next time I'll go to a nice clean concert hall. 

one thing I will say is that Blake recorded a piano roll of that piece in 1917, and may have written it 5-10 years earlier.

[JSngry]

Oh, Jelly Roll...like all superior liars, there's always enough truth mixed in with the lie to keep the ball rolling... 

[Rabshakeh]

13 minutes ago, AllenLowe said:

My next project (probably next spring) is on Black country, and you might be surprised at how many black string bands recorded in the 1920s and 1930s.

Okay. Count me in for that. 

[JSngry]

In the gift shop of the Booker T. Washington National Monument (at least when we visited there in the late 1990s) they had various LPs of Black String Music, mostly "historical" but a few of recent vintage, for sale in a big box. They had apparently learned some kind of lesson because on the front of the box was the none-too-subtle Magic Marker message NOT BLUES!!! NOT JAZZ!!! 😂😂😂😂😂

[Rabshakeh]

39 minutes ago, JSngry said:

In the gift shop of the Booker T. Washington National Monument (at least when we visited there in the late 1990s) they had various LPs of Black String Music, mostly "historical" but a few of recent vintage, for sale in a big box. They had apparently learned some kind of lesson because on the front of the box was the none-too-subtle Magic Marker message NOT BLUES!!! NOT JAZZ!!! 😂😂😂😂😂

That's good, although of course...

1 hour ago, AllenLowe said:

My next project (probably next spring) is on Black country, and you might be surprised at how many black string bands recorded in the 1920s and 1930s.

What's "black country", by the way? Does "black country" here mean African American musicians playing their own old timey string band music? Or is this Country country, in the Jimmie Rodgers sense of white blues, but played by African American musicians? If the latter what percentage of what you'll be talking about is pre-war?

[JSngry]

When asked (and I had to ask, because I knew a little bit about what it was), they described it as "bluegrass"... 😃

[Rabshakeh]

1 minute ago, JSngry said:

When asked (and I had to ask, because I knew a little bit about what it was), they described it as "bluegrass"... 😃

What is the connection with Booker T Washington? Was he a keen mandolinist?

[kh1958]

10 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

I am referring to free jazz musicians for Fort Worth, rather than early jazz musicians. If one is counting musicians' places of origins, which is certainly a reasonable way to trace where a scene developed, then it might look like Fort Worth was an important local point of development for free jazz. But they were just Ornette Coleman's friends, whom he took with him as he went.

 

As explained to me by Charles Moffett's brother one evening at a Charnett Moffett concert, there was only one high school in Fort Worth for black people in the 1950s: I.M. Terrell.  And that school had a bandleader, G.A. Baxter, who apparently was a great teacher. All of Ornette Coleman, King Curtis, Dewey Redman, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Cornell Dupree, Prince Lasha, Julius Hemphill, John Carter, and Charles Moffett were his students, to name the best known.

https://texashighways.com/culture/art-music/fort-worths-i-m-terrell-high-school-has-a-legacy-of-inspiring-jazz-standouts/

Edited September 23, 2023 by kh1958

[JSngry]

23 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

What is the connection with Booker T Washington? Was he a keen mandolinist?

https://www.nps.gov/bowa/index.htm 

No more than 10 miles from my late in-laws retirement house. Passed by there for years, they had no idea what it was. Finally talked them into going. Pretty well-kept grounds of no small historical importance.

Calling it a "gift shop" is perhaps careless, "visitor center" would be more like it. But they sold records!!!! 

[AllenLowe]

1 hour ago, Rabshakeh said:

That's good, although of course...

What's "black country", by the way? Does "black country" here mean African American musicians playing their own old timey string band music? Or is this Country country, in the Jimmie Rodgers sense of white blues, but played by African American musicians? If the latter what percentage of what you'll be talking about is pre-war?

this is very complicated, but essentially it fits the sound of rural music shared by whites....most if not all pre-War. It is complicated, yes, old timey and non-blues.

[JSngry]

Also, not immediately relevant, but eventually:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lesser-known-history-african-american-cowboys-180962144/

[Niko]

Re early horn players from outside New Orleans (and the San Francisco angle, and Dallas) how about Reb Spikes (wiki)? (I started reading Tom Stoddard's Barbary Coast about early (1910-15) SF jazz earlier this year but then switched to the Gushee book but haven't gotten back to Stoddard yet... fascinating stuff)

Edited September 23, 2023 by Niko

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, Niko said:

Re early horn players from outside New Orleans (and the San Francisco angle, and Dallas) how about Reb Spikes (wiki)? (I started reading Tom Stoddard's Barbary Coast about early (1910-15) SF jazz earlier this year but then switched to the Gushee book but haven't gotten back to Stoddard yet... fascinating stuff)

That's really interesting. I don't actually know any of this. Was there still an NO connection there? 

[Big Beat Steve]

12 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

I'm interested. How does it compare to the Michael Ondaatje book?

Re- the "Tiger Rag" novel:

I cannot compare because I don't know the author you mention. I suggest you read up on its "storyline" online (to get an idea of what to expect) and then just pick up a copy if one comes your way at a price you are wiling to invest, and then you read this strictly as a novel. And then let your mind wander while reading and just wonder "what if it actually happened that way and we just have no way of knowing or proving it?"

 

10 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

What's "black country", by the way? Does "black country" here mean African American musicians playing their own old timey string band music? Or is this Country country, in the Jimmie Rodgers sense of white blues, but played by African American musicians? If the latter what percentage of what you'll be talking about is pre-war?

Just one "teaser" to give you an idea of what forms early Black music documented on records ALSO took (this compilation includes jazz and blues in the stricter sense but also goes beyond it):
http://www.oldhatrecords.com/cd1003.html

[Rabshakeh]

7 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Re- the "Tiger Rag" novel:

I cannot compare because I don't know the author you mention. I suggest you read up on its "storyline" online (to get an idea of what to expect) and then just pick up a copy if one comes your way at a price you are wiling to invest, and then you read this strictly as a novel. And then let your mind wander while reading and just wonder "what if it actually happened that way and we just have no way of knowing or proving it?"

Sounds interesting. The Michael Ondaatje one is on similar lines, I think. A novelisation of Bolden. I think (I have read neither) that the Ondaatje may focus more on the pathos of Bolden's life and mental illness, which had always been a turn off for me: I have read Geoff Dyers' But Beautiful....

Tiger Rag sounds less of a put off so I'll search that out.

11 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Just one "teaser" to give you an idea of what forms early Black music documented on records ALSO took (this compilation includes jazz and blues in the stricter sense but also goes beyond it):

http://www.oldhatrecords.com/cd1003.html

I used to own this record. I remember being very excited by it when it came out. It and the other comps by Old Hat were really precious to me when I was really really getting into music in my 20s. 

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Just one "teaser" to give you an idea of what forms early Black music documented on records ALSO took (this compilation includes jazz and blues in the stricter sense but also goes beyond it):

http://www.oldhatrecords.com/cd1003.html

What motivated the question is because my particular sweet spot in pre-war Southern US music is the piedmont and 'hillbilly blues' stuff. In particular, musicians like Frank Hutchison and Luke Jordan, but also early Willie McTell or even the Carter family, when they sing blues tunes. That is a personal favourite kind of music, quite apart from interest in how jazz, blues or whiskeyjug washboard breakouts evolved. It's a point where I think one can hear Blues, now capitalised and more or less fully formed, being handed back and forth across the colour line, for the first time as it's own thing, against a still dominant background of white 'mountain music' (i.e., pre-Bluegrass folk and old timey). I love it because it is blues but it is very fragile, often with quite light, soft vocals. That's the music that then gets gets semi-codified as "Country" the genre, through the influence of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carters. What I was sniffing around looking for was whether the book is going to concentrate on African American musicians that might fall into that category of early or proto-Country (i.e., Country the genre) or whether it will be more about African Americans playing in the wider genre of southern white music, which is what I think, from the response, it will cover. I'm not sure whether Black responses (influence or reaction) to Hillbilly blues does fall within that category or not, given that this music is definitely "Blues", but if "Country" the genre is a part of it I assume it would, since that is arguably a style of Blues in itself.

Sorry. Rambling. And off topic.

1 hour ago, Rabshakeh said:

I used to own this record. I remember being very excited by it when it came out. It and the other comps by Old Hat were really precious to me when I was really really getting into music in my 20s. 

Also, the medicine show one is really really good. Strong recommendation from this side if you don't already know it.

[Rabshakeh]

Whilst we are on the string band topic, and bringing it back a bit to the subject at hand, what is the view on the link between African American string band traditions and early jazz polyphony?

There's a few blues fiddle tracks on one of the Old Hat comps (I think the Memphis one called Violin, Sing The Blues) that I remember really reminding me of early jazz, with an interplay between vocals, violin and guitar that is quite similar to the trumpet, clarinet and rhythm interplay that sounds so esoteric the first time you encounter early jazz.

From my current vantage point I'm not all that certain, or less impressed with the fact than I was when I was younger. It could just as well be jazz influence, or both kinds of music having some sort of similar rhythmic substrate. Memphis blues is so closely interbred with jazz that it is hard to tell.

[Big Beat Steve]

1 hour ago, Rabshakeh said:

Also, the medicine show one is really really good. Strong recommendation from this side if you don't already know it.

I do have that one too. Bought shortly after the "Sure Do Pull Some Bow" CD.

As for your other questions/remarks regarding early rural black/white cross-polliation (either white blues or black country), I think Allen Lowe is THE person to answer this in detail. 
 

[JSngry]

Are we totally not considering any residual/subliminal African influences? Or are we accepting that as a given? 

[AllenLowe]

4 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

What motivated the question is because my particular sweet spot in pre-war Southern US music is the piedmont and 'hillbilly blues' stuff. In particular, musicians like Frank Hutchison and Luke Jordan, but also early Willie McTell or even the Carter family, when they sing blues tunes. That is a personal favourite kind of music, quite apart from interest in how jazz, blues or whiskeyjug washboard breakouts evolved. It's a point where I think one can hear Blues, now capitalised and more or less fully formed, being handed back and forth across the colour line, for the first time as it's own thing, against a still dominant background of white 'mountain music' (i.e., pre-Bluegrass folk and old timey). I love it because it is blues but it is very fragile, often with quite light, soft vocals. That's the music that then gets gets semi-codified as "Country" the genre, through the influence of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carters. What I was sniffing around looking for was whether the book is going to concentrate on African American musicians that might fall into that category of early or proto-Country (i.e., Country the genre) or whether it will be more about African Americans playing in the wider genre of southern white music, which is what I think, from the response, it will cover. I'm not sure whether Black responses (influence or reaction) to Hillbilly blues does fall within that category or not, given that this music is definitely "Blues", but if "Country" the genre is a part of it I assume it would, since that is arguably a style of Blues in itself.

Sorry. Rambling. And off topic.

Also, the medicine show one is really really good. Strong recommendation from this side if you don't already know it.

I apologize for not going into greater detail, as I am in the middle of two insanely complicated projects right now, but to your question about polyphony - it might be related to the very unified independence of African rhythms, the way in which they divert and then return to the pocket. But truthfully, African music is not an area I know enough about to speak definitively. I would refer you to the writings of Gerald Kubik, who has written spectacularly on this and other related topics.

2 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

I do have that one too. Bought shortly after the "Sure Do Pull Some Bow" CD.

As for your other questions/remarks regarding early rural black/white cross-polliation (either white blues or black country), I think Allen Lowe is THE person to answer this in detail. 
 

I hope to do this in my Black Country project, though I did write about that a bit (I think) in Turn Me Loose White Man,

[Rabshakeh]

39 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Are we totally not considering any residual/subliminal African influences? Or are we accepting that as a given? 

Taking it as a given.

[Rabshakeh]

3 hours ago, AllenLowe said:

I would refer you to the writings of Gerald Kubik, who has written spectacularly on this and other related topics.

I see that he has a book called Jazz Transatlantic. Is that the one to which to go?

[AllenLowe]

3 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

I see that he has a book called Jazz Transatlantic. Is that the one to which to go?

I haven't read that one, but you can't go wrong with his stuff.

[mjazzg]

13 hours ago, AllenLowe said:

I haven't read that one, but you can't go wrong with his stuff.

But, I just checked the Amazon listing and there's a five star review describing as 'indispensable' from a certain Allen Lowe 😄

Synopsis makes it sound fascinating