![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotMore from KIND OF BLEUGH:
Question 1: Is it correct to say that during the '40s and '50s the usage of the word "jazz" both narrowed and changed so that what it denoted became more consistent and less varied and contradictory (but conversely, when there was a controversy over jazz taxonomy it was more fraught than it had been in decades past, and of course the relative taxonomic stability didn't last) and so that what was retrospectively considered historically part of "jazz" (from Buddy Bolden through to bop) was narrower than what had actually been called "jazz" in the '10s through '40s? (No idea what was being called what in the 1890s-'00s.)
Question 2: So is my impression correct that, prior to this narrowing and shifting, terms like "jazz" and "blues," and later "swing" (and what about "western swing"? and "country"? and "pop"?*) had significant overlap, that a broad range of dance music could be considered all three (or six)? How was someone like, say, Big Joe Turner classified when he was performing in the 1930s? If a time warp had let people in 1934 hear "Shake, Rattle And Roll" (either version) would it have been obviously "something other than jazz" to them? (Hat-tip to Swanstep @36 under My Own Private Record Club.)
Data note: Otis Ferguson (died 1943) considered Fred Astaire a jazz figure (probably more for dancing than singing, but also taken as a whole).
Question 3: The role of improvisation and length of solos had a lot to do with the reconfiguring, right? And making a fetish of them? (Assuming I'm right about the nomenclature being reconfigured.) Also, the role of dance.
Question 4: What about singers? In the era covered by Mark, the early LP era, Miles may be the elephant in the room as regards the future, but singers — significantly absent from Mark's list of "jazz expansive" — were the elephants of the present. E.g., in the late '50s Dinah Washington could be considered simultaneously the most popular jazz singer in the world and the most popular blues singer in the world, but she seems now to have been written out of both of those categories. (Or am I wrong about that?)
What about Nat King Cole?
*UPDATE: "Folk" should be in there too. (I remember reading somewhere that through the '40s "folk" was a viable term for a lot of what was eventually called "country," that it was the association with the left and with communism that doomed the word "folk" in this usage (and encouraged it in others). Of course, "I remember reading somewhere" is not a very useful citation.) Um, and while I'm in the update section, let's note that there was a famous movie in 1929 featuring Al Jolson that was called The Jazz Singer.
Question 1: Is it correct to say that during the '40s and '50s the usage of the word "jazz" both narrowed and changed so that what it denoted became more consistent and less varied and contradictory (but conversely, when there was a controversy over jazz taxonomy it was more fraught than it had been in decades past, and of course the relative taxonomic stability didn't last) and so that what was retrospectively considered historically part of "jazz" (from Buddy Bolden through to bop) was narrower than what had actually been called "jazz" in the '10s through '40s? (No idea what was being called what in the 1890s-'00s.)
Question 2: So is my impression correct that, prior to this narrowing and shifting, terms like "jazz" and "blues," and later "swing" (and what about "western swing"? and "country"? and "pop"?*) had significant overlap, that a broad range of dance music could be considered all three (or six)? How was someone like, say, Big Joe Turner classified when he was performing in the 1930s? If a time warp had let people in 1934 hear "Shake, Rattle And Roll" (either version) would it have been obviously "something other than jazz" to them? (Hat-tip to Swanstep @36 under My Own Private Record Club.)
Data note: Otis Ferguson (died 1943) considered Fred Astaire a jazz figure (probably more for dancing than singing, but also taken as a whole).
Question 3: The role of improvisation and length of solos had a lot to do with the reconfiguring, right? And making a fetish of them? (Assuming I'm right about the nomenclature being reconfigured.) Also, the role of dance.
Question 4: What about singers? In the era covered by Mark, the early LP era, Miles may be the elephant in the room as regards the future, but singers — significantly absent from Mark's list of "jazz expansive" — were the elephants of the present. E.g., in the late '50s Dinah Washington could be considered simultaneously the most popular jazz singer in the world and the most popular blues singer in the world, but she seems now to have been written out of both of those categories. (Or am I wrong about that?)
What about Nat King Cole?
*UPDATE: "Folk" should be in there too. (I remember reading somewhere that through the '40s "folk" was a viable term for a lot of what was eventually called "country," that it was the association with the left and with communism that doomed the word "folk" in this usage (and encouraged it in others). Of course, "I remember reading somewhere" is not a very useful citation.) Um, and while I'm in the update section, let's note that there was a famous movie in 1929 featuring Al Jolson that was called The Jazz Singer.
no subject
Date: 2015-04-03 06:16 pm (UTC)Think you and I might be talking past each other a bit on my Question 3. Yes, radio and the new record formats play a driving role, but nonetheless certain musical elements are highlighted as "jazz" more in the '50s than previously, and others suppressed (though not by everybody); of course, this is hardly independent of the needs of the record companies — as you point out, long vamping fits the new LP.
But what's really of concern for me isn't just the reconfiguration in the '50s (and my account suppresses the fact that there are earlier reconfigurations as well, for example that caused by the introduction of the word "swing"), but also (i) the backwards reconfiguration whereby what constitutes the history of jazz is also narrowed and made more consistent, and (ii) the question as to what in the '50s and early '60s your seven albums likely won't get us to.
To look at ii briefly, is there a way that any of your seven albums can lead someone to, say, the guitar solo in "Rock Around The Clock"? To Dinah Washington? I don't know, only having listened to several of your recommendations so far. And it isn't a defect of the list if none of them do, just an indication of where you're aiming. It wouldn't be a serviceable jazz list if it led to all music in the history of the world.
The back-configuring is more interesting. Louis remains indisputably a jazz master in the reconfiguration, but what makes him a jazz master probably reconfigures. E.g., the solo at the start of the 1928 "West End Blues" becomes significant for, among other things, foreshadowing bop. But I don't think jazz history makes as big a deal of his, say, popularizing a body of song. Whiteman keeps a foot in the history of jazz for fostering Bix Beiderbecke but not for fostering Bing Crosby. Benny Goodman becomes more significant for having employed Charlie Christian than for having made popular dance music. And so forth.
I'm hardly against such reconfiguring, which is about people inventing the parentage that they most need. And I'm not against our inventing and twisting terminology any way we want to if it helps us understand the past. But inventing parentage and understanding the past are different projects: inventing parentage is really about the future.
Now this takes us afield from what you were trying to do in your post. But to bring up one of my own pet concerns: inventing parentage often creates bad history. I'm too ignorant to put forth any jazz history, but in, for example, thinking of the history of science, Thomas Kuhn is emphatic that one is making a huge mistake to, e.g., treat someone like Kepler as fundamentally a precursor to Newton. Of course, we wouldn't even bother with Kepler if what we now know as Kepler's Laws didn't end up fitting with Newtonian laws of motion; but Kepler himself obviously had no inkling of laws of motion that would be discovered in the future; rather, in creating his laws of planetary motion he was doing something that was of a piece with his trying to, for instance, relate planetary motions to musical harmonies. And Kepler comes across as a stronger, better thinker and scientist if you see how one aspect of his work connects to another rather than if you divide his work into the good stuff that we consider science because it later fits the Newtonian project versus the bad weird stuff that we've cast aside as something else. (Again, this isn't addressing your concerns here, which aren't about understanding the 1920s.)
no subject
Date: 2015-04-03 06:17 pm (UTC)Btw, was there any "jazz radio" prior to the mid '70s, not counting a specialty show here or there? In any event, from what I can tell, jazz radio these days divides into two: (A) public radio and college radio, which define jazz more or less as respected jazz histories do (though I'll bet there's more emphasis these days on Latin jazz and non-American jazz scenes than the histories give), and (B) smooth jazz stations, which I listen to about once a year, and which invariably play a lot of Stevie Wonder.
no subject
Date: 2015-04-03 06:17 pm (UTC)