This week's installment of Off the Shelf takes me back in time. In my high school days, I was a bit obsessed with finding authentic big band sounds, which, sadly, was pathetically difficult in my tiny hometown. Somewhere, I ran across a couple of compilation discs with tracks of big band standards. These were called The Roots of Swing and Jive: Jungle Swing and The Roots of Swing and Jive: Jumpin' at the Woodside. I was drawn in by the inclusion of Cab Calloway, one of big band's great showmen and some other recordings of the Duke Ellington and Basie bands. These were most likely low-budget releases intended to capitalize on the late-1990s swing revival.
Like a baby bird, these were the recordings and sounds that I imprinted with as I began my journey into the tangled jungle of jazz and swing music. These weren't the first jazz CDs I'd picked up, nor were they the only ones I had to listen to, and the quality of the recordings isn't always great, but the content was exactly what I was looking for. Even now, I'm always on the hunt for "authentic" and "true" music; my reasoning then and now is: I can learn the most from the greats who set the standard for greatness. And these bands set the standard high. At the time, I didn't know who Les Brown was, or the prodigious talent of Artie Shaw, or even how influential Woody Herman was as a musician and bandleader, I just liked the music.
Starting with the "novelty" tunes, like Herman's Caldonia (who I was stunned to later learn was the singer of this rough and rollicking tune), and Calloway's Jungle Swing (a cute song-story about a monkey and a lion), I then studied the Glenn Miller sound and familiarized myself with Ellington's sax section. Louis Armstrong was a source of endless fascination: he was so versatile and inventive with his solos. He had a sound that was instantly recognizable and I dreamed of one day being good enough to have my own sound and being smart enough to get around a set of chord changes without getting too confused.
What probably bears noting is, there is a distinction between "dance" music and "jazz" music, though big band music fits under the grand heading of "Jazz Music". Embarrassingly, I didn't really understand this distinction completely until about five or six years ago. Dancers want reliable tempos with strong beats that are easy to dance to. In the big band heyday of the 1940s, many musicians were employed to play in dance bands. The Glenn Miller Orchestra was the quintessential dance band of the time; smooth enough, with a bit of a swing, and a high level of musicianship. Other notable dance bands of this type of swing include Paul Whiteman, Jean Goldkette, Rudy Vallee, and Guy Lombardo. This style of swing is light on improvisation, and heavy on form and section playing, often using a string section to round out the main band. Goodman and Herman (among other bands) both helped to push the style from "sweet" dance music to "jazz" music.
In other words, not all jazz music is danceable. And some of it isn't meant to be. (A telling quote from Artie Shaw: "I made it good enough to listen to.") This becomes more apparent as jazz music progressed from the big band tradition into bop and fusion. The music on these two discs is closer to the danceable tradition, and what most people think of when they hear "big band". The progression wasn't linear, historically; it was concurrent. True jazz music was on solid ground post-ragtime and dixieland style of the 20s and 30s, but the big band style pushed it all to the front of the stage, so to speak, albeit a bit diluted for the dancing masses. And electrification would soon bring it all crashing down.
This post could easily turn into several volumes of rambling jazz history, so, for now, I'll leave at this. The recordings on these two discs are a fair representation of the Golden Age of big band swing. Not exhaustive, but a reasonable mix of prime movers in the big band tradition, who retain a significant reputation for setting the standard of greatness.
No comments:
Post a Comment