I had bookmarked these videos a while ago and then forgotten about them. I finally got around to watching them. They are a great introduction to the history of New Orleans style brass band music. It was made as part of the Historic New Orleans Collection’s exhibit, Dancing in the Streets: Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs of New Orleans. They are really well done and worth a watch.
Category: History
J.C. Higginbotham’s Solo On “Mint Julep”
Over a year ago I had started rehearsing with a band that was going to be performing Jelly Roll Morton’s tune, Mint Julep. I began transcribing J.C. Higginbotham’s solo from Morton’s recording, but when the pandemic hit we stopped getting together and I forgot to finish transcribing the solo. While recently going through some notes I found my transcription half completed. It’s not a terribly difficult solo to transcribe, so I powered through and got it finished. Here’s the recording for you to listen to Higginbotham’s solo.
I like this solo because it’s different from Kid Ory’s style from the same time period. Where Ory would have taken more of a “tailgate” approach, Higginbotham’s solo is more trumpet-like.
Here’s a PDF link to the solo if you want to print it out for yourself. As always when I post a transcription, I suggest that you don’t trust my work. The real value in learning solos isn’t so much to be able to play the notes from the page, but to train your ear and really pick up on the nuances that the soloist uses. There’s a lot in this solo that isn’t really possible to notate, but by repeatedly listening, singing, and playing along with the recording you’ll start to pick up on them and be able to incorporate them into your own playing more naturally.
Donald S. Reinhardt Plays “Blue Bells of Scotland”
Former Reinhardt student, Rick Gordon, recently found an old cassette tape of Reinhardt performing Blue Bells of Scotland, by Arthur Pryor, from June of 1926. Reinhardt would have been 18 years old at that time. Check it out.
It’s extremely impressive playing for anyone, let alone someone who is only a young adult! Consider also the recording technology of the time required musicians to get everything in a single take, you couldn’t go back and punch in to clean things up.
I was curious about where this recording lined up with the story Reinhardt wrote in his book, Encyclopedia of the Pivot System. In the preface he described how he became interested in studying a physical approach to brass technique, after years of studying with 18 “so-called brass instrument instructors.”
One day prior to the advent of the bell lock, I knocked the bell section off the slide section of the instrument while inserting a mute. The bell struck the sharp outer edge of the tympani rim and fell to the floor. The tuning slide was completely flattened, rendering the horn unplayable When I had it repaired, the repairman neglected to replace the balancing weight, making the horn extremely front-heavy. As soon as I tried to play the unbalanced instrument, I noticed that I could play a very weak high Bb. Since this was the first high Bb that I ever played, I was naturally quite elated. In trying to analyze this phenomenon, I realize that since the instrument was decidedly front-heavy, the membrane (red) of my lower lip had moved in a slightly over my lower teeth. This was because the horn angle was considerably lower than before. Thus, the fact that my jaw was slightly more receded than usual permitted the lower lip membrane to move slightly in and over my lower teeth, increasing my embouchure compression.
Encyclopedia of the Pivot System – Donald S. Reinhardt, p. IX-X
Based on the above description of Reinhardt’s abilities before this event, it must have happened before he made this recording. But based on the information he put in the Encyclopedia, I would date this event happening around the same time, perhaps a year or two later, which is curious. My dating of this tuning slide accident is based on other things he wrote in his preface.
He states that he began studying music formally at the age of 8 (violin and music theory). After two years he decided he wanted to play a brass instrument (he preferred French horn), but his father kept him on violin for another year until he began taking brass lessons. This would have been at the age of around 11 (age of 8+2 years of violin+1 year of his father insisting he stay on violin). Then later he studied “thirteen and a half years of trombone lessons,” frustrated because of his range difficulties. That puts the date of the tuning slide accident somewhere around his young 20s.
Ralph Dudgeon, in his 2000 article for the International Trumpet Guild Journal, “Credit Where Credit is Due: The Life and Brass Teaching of Donald S. Reinhardt,” suggests this happened even later. Dudgeon states, “Apparently, it was in this period [in the early 1930s] that Reinhardt studied with the ’18 so-called teachers.”
Why worry about this timeline in the first place? Well, first and foremost I’m curious and my academic background has trained me to look for the details in order to put things into the context for a bigger picture. If this was recorded before his tuning slide accident, then something is off in Reinhardt’s preface to the Encyclopedia. Maybe his dates in the preface were off or maybe the recording was made when he was older. Perhaps Reinhardt exaggerated his playing difficulties for effect.
My teacher, and former student and friend of Reinhardt’s, assumes that the tuning slide accident must have happened in early high school. If so, that would make the most sense based on the quality of Reinhardt’s playing on this recording.
Recreating Ancient Greek Music
Ancient and early music is not one of my main interests, but I found the following documentary on YouTube fascinating.
First choral performance with reconstructed aulos of reconstructed ancient scores of Athenaeus Paean (127 BC) and Euripides Orestes chorus (408 BC), with the evidence presented and explained by Professor Armand D’Angour, Jesus College Oxford.
I found the discussion about the double pipe tuning particularly interesting. The construction of each pipe is such that they aren’t fully chromatic. By tuning each pipe a half step apart the piper is able to play a melodic line that would not be possible otherwise.
Ancient Stone Tools Are Actually Early Musical Instruments
Back when I taught at Adams State College in Alamosa, Colorado I used to go hiking around the Great Sand Dunes National Park. It’s an interesting area, right next to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the San Luis Valley. The sand dunes are formed by wind, rather than water. The area was also the home to Native Americans from at least 5,000 years ago. Stone tools discovered by archeologists decades ago were perplexing because while they were clearly made by humans, they didn’t have the correct wear marks on them to indicate that they were used as tools for grinding.
Enter archeologist, Marilyn Armagast Martorano. She spent years examining these rocks without coming up with a good explanation. Then someone sent her a video showing lithographs, musical stones. It dawned on Martorano that the stone tools might actually be musical instruments. As it happens, she was probably right.
If you’d like to get an idea what these stone musical instruments sounded like, watch here’s a YouTube video. Also, go to the Colorado Public Radio’s page where you can also get the chance to try them out (virtually) yourself.
432 Hz Tuning – Fact vs Fiction
I posted about this topic a while back, but I recently came across a very nice article by Assaf Dar Sagol called 432 Hz Tuning – Separating Fact From Fiction.
432 Hz. The magic number everybody is talking about. It is said to be the natural frequency of the universe, to have cosmic healing powers and to attract masses of audience to our music. Just by tuning our music less than a semitone below our standard A=440Hz we are promised direct access to the universe’s hidden treasures.
There are many articles presenting so-called “scientific evidence” in favor of 432 Hz. But how much of what are being presented with is fact, and how much of it is fiction? Let’s find out!
Sagol goes through several myths and claims about 432 Hz being a special note somehow and offers an overview of the actual history and science behind those claims – including linking to his sources. Real history and science are always so much more interesting then pseudo-history and pseudo-science.
Bozo As Played By Ed Coffee
One of my favorite bands to play with is the Low-Down Sires. We strive to recreate the spirit of early jazz styles as authentically as possible, frequently even through recreating performances of groups that pioneered the style. One tune we recently added to our repertoire is Bozo, as recorded by Clarence Williams (featuring King Oliver).
After learning to play this solo, we discovered that the tune “Bozo” appears to be a plagiarized version of “Tozo,” by Fletcher Henderson. Check out what the blogger for Pop From Yestercentury noticed in his post, Tozo and Bozo.
Regardless of who originally composed this tune, here is the melody/paraphrase of this tune as played by trombonist Ed Coffee on the Clarence Williams recording of “Bozo.” Check out the first four measures and think about the historical context of the melody and chord.
Listen closely to the recording on the embedded video above and let me know if you hear it the same. I hear the harmony pretty clearly as an Eb7 chord. While an Eb7 chord isn’t all that unusual in a tune in G major during this style period, having it right at the beginning of the tune is odd. Even more strange is the A natural and E natural (enharmonically Fb) in the melody notes.
For a jazz tune composed at least as early as 1927 this is harmonically surprising, very much ahead of its time. This is quite early in jazz for an altered dominant chord. You will find examples in swing style tunes, but it’s not until the emergence of bebop where this sort of harmonic relationship becomes common.
In the context of this tune, which is in the key of G major, an Eb7 chord more commonly leads by resolving down a half step to the dominant, D7. In “Bozo” it skips the dominant chord and jumps immediately to the tonic, but only after a fairly long time. In most jazz tunes of this time period it’s not uncommon for chords to remain static for so long, but a harmonically sophisticated chord of this type would normally not sit statically for so long.
Then there’s the altered extensions of this chord. Looking forward again to the 1940s and later, it became common in jazz to alter the dominant chord extensions by altering certain chord tones like the 9ths and 11ths. It’s unusual in a jazz tune from the late 1920s.
As an interesting aside, I’ve often heard of this chord relationship (VI7 chord) as called the “pineapple chord,” but never understood the context of why. My formal music theory background compares it to the Neapolitan chord, but my jazz theory background things about it as a tritone substitution to the V chord.
Does anyone know why “pineapple chord” has become a common term for this chord function?
The link below is a PDF to my transcription of the melody/paraphrase. As always, take it with a grain of salt and check it yourself for errors. Let me know if you find any.
The Greatest Baroque Composer You’ve Never Heard Of
What do you think of the Missa Salisurgensis (Salzburg Mass)? I had never heard of this piece before coming across The Greatest Baroque Composer Never Known.
As a choirmaster in 1870s Salzburg, Innocenz Achleitner often saw sheet music treated in a less-than-reverent manner. It might be scattered across a composer’s desk, crammed into vocalists’ folios, or even marred with personal notes about bowings or breath marks. Never before, however, had he seen it wrapped around vegetables.
Only about 80% of men at the time were literate enough to sign their own name, so it’s possible Achleitner’s greengrocer didn’t recognize what the marks on his packing material meant, especially since each page stretched roughly 80 centimeters tall and resembled something more like newsprint rather than a standard sheet of music. The choirmaster knew better, of course, and quickly convinced his grocer to hand them over.
Read further through the article to learn more about this piece and how musicologists have tried to piece together who the composer of this piece of music really was.
On Learning the “Classics”
I recently came across an interesting blog post Ronan on his Mostly Music blog. This post, entitled 21st Century Bebop, asks some good questions that jazz educators might want to consider.
In a musical world which has moved away from traditional jazz repertoire, at least as far as the vast majority of the general public is concerned, what is the relevance or otherwise of these skills – playing standards, playing changes, playing common repertoire, the swing idiom etc. etc. ? Why, the question is often asked, should we spend so much time teaching a type of music that hasn’t been popular for over 60 years? What is the relevance of standard repertoire in the 21st-century, and are we holding onto this type of teaching out of some misguided sense of loyalty to the past?
Years ago, when I was still teaching in academia, I was sitting in on a juried recital for a drummer jazz studies major. He was accompanied by a couple musicians that he played around town frequently with and they seemed to draw the music primarily from the tunes they play on their gigs. The performance was excellent, but I was concerned about the lack of variety I heard. Afterwards, I commented to the student’s studio instructor that I wanted to hear something in the swing style and was confused when he insisted that there was. It took me a moment to realize that while I was talking about a jazz style and repertoire from the 30s and 40s, his instructor was thinking of something that had swing 8th notes.
It still seems strange to me that an undergraduate student completing a bachelors degree in jazz studies would go through 4 years of higher education and not be required to demonstrate a familiarity with performing in jazz styles developed prior to the 1950s or 60s. Perhaps it’s my professional bias as a trombonist to find myself performing traditional jazz and swing styles more than a drummer might, but I see a familiarity with the history of the style to be more than simply being professionally ready to play a gig where you need to play in a non-contemporary jazz style. Ronan addresses this too.
So – technique, aural training, harmonic knowledge, rhythmic skills, reading skills, musical memory, deep listening, understanding of form and the ability to instantly create melodies over moving harmony. All of these are necessary in order to able to be able to play standard jazz material. This is a serious set of skills for any musician venturing into the professional music world, and some or all of them are transferable into any kind of musical situation you may be find yourself in.
I would take this a step further. I may be misremembering who exactly said this (and I may even be making this up entirely, but the point is still valid), but I think it was Wynton Marsalis who said it’s equally important for jazz students to get experience learning to play “classical” music as well. First, the pedagogy and practice on development of instrumental technique has been refined already with classical studies to a point that I still don’t see with jazz methods. The skill set you will learn from performing a classical recital or performing in an orchestra or concert band is going to benefit in a way that playing in a jazz combo just can’t provide. For example, if you’re performing a solo concerto you are going to have to have the chops to make it through all the movements and play what’s on the page, whereas when we improvise we unconsciously make choices that we already have the technique to play. Classical music challenges jazz musicians to improve their skills and become familiar with phrasing, articulations, and other nuances that you just won’t get playing contemporary jazz.
And, for that matter, I make the same argument for classical musicians learning to improvise and become familiar with jazz styles. I’ve listened to and played many pops concerts and noticed how uncomfortable the classical musicians sounded trying to phrase and articulate jazz and pop styles.
Of course we’re all going to have our personal preferences and strengths. There are some musical styles that I have little to no interest in learning to perform and others that I have made a conscious effort to become as good as I can playing. However, my experience has been that becoming a well rounded musician has been beneficial to performing in my preferred styles. Furthermore, my abilities as a “musical chameleon” have made it possible for me to work successfully as a professional musician and music educator in a wide variety of situations that many of my peers cannot.
Stylistic Playing – Traditional Jazz versus Modern Jazz
I recently read a great essay by trumpet player Gordon Au about playing traditional and modern jazz styles. I’ve played a couple of times with Gordon in swing dance bands at Lindy Focus. Gordon was such a fantastic swing player that I assumed that he specialized in playing in older jazz styles. As it turns out, he is equally skillful in modern jazz playing and has quite a bit to say about the different “camps” promoting different jazz styles.
As a musician who has extensively studied and performed both traditional and modern jazz (alternatively, read: early, Dixieland, 1920–30s; vs. contemporary, avant-garde, post-bop, etc.), it saddens me to see fans in either camp bashing the other. On the one hand, I don’t understand it because they’re so similar—part of the same tree!—blood relatives separated by hardly any time at all. (More practically: how far can you subdivide an already miniscule fan base, and why would you?) On the other hand, I totally understand it because while they’re both jazz, they’re quite different, separated sometimes by very contrasting goals and aesthetics. And that surface similarity concealing inner difference is a prime recipe for sibling rivalry.
I too find it interesting and somewhat disconcerting how otherwise accomplished jazz musicians don’t demonstrate stylistic playing outside of their particular area of interest. In particular, I’ve found that excellent modern jazz players will often not be able to play a convincing solo in a swing or early jazz style. Frequently musicians that I hire to play big band don’t know standard Swing Era phrasing and nuances that make a chart by Fletcher Henderson, for example, sound different from Maria Schneider. There are some musicians I frequently play with that specialize in earlier jazz styles and struggle if the music is more modern. At least, that’s not uncommon among the musicians I happen to work with most frequently. I should also say that there are some musicians in my area that are virtual chameleons, like Gordon, and you would swear they specialize in whatever they happen to be playing.
In my opinion, attentive and extensive listening is the key to performing whatever you’re playing in an appropriate stylistic manner. You must know what it’s supposed to sound like before you can interpret it. Serious jazz musicians should spend some time doing some transcribing in all styles in order to make they phrasing, note choice, rhythmic language, vibrato, articulations, and other nuances sound natural while playing in any jazz style.
Gordon has some great points to make regarding the different arguments between traditional and modern jazz enthusiasts and is a great read. Go over and check it out and if you have the chance to hear him play live, jump on it!