MusicX live from the house that I grew up in
so happy to hear you play the East St. Louis Toodle-oo after a few PRL requests! FWIW i went to undergrad with two great-nephews of Count Basie. Would love to hear your take on him too
That is so cool! Basie's band swung the most - they were the Stones to Ellington's Beatles!
imo the Count was mainly an arranger who found amazing new perspectives on other guys' tunes, much like you sir if i may say so.
0:00 Introduction: how SB learned to play music from a philosophy of learning standpoint;
including history of early Jazz
2:15 Childhood piano lessons (age 9 to 12), which ended due to an "oppositional" attitude
3:30 But interest sparked by George Gershwin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gershwin),
Rhapsody in Blue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_in_Blue): big, brash, wild and fun
5:00 Obtained piano reduction of Rhapsody in Blue; playing small sections, delving into the mechanics
6:10 The "secret sauce" was Jazz
7:00 Gershwin plays Gershwin: The Piano Rolls (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershwin_Plays_Gershwin:_The_Piano_Rolls):
a syncopated, jazz-adjacent sound
9:10 Tin Pan Alley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Pan_Alley), a "musical goldrush"
9:40 Back to basics, the library, leading to Ragtime; Scott Joplin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Joplin),
The Entertainer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entertainer_(rag))
10:30 Two elements to Ragtime: left hand, low note followed by chord, like a marching band;
right hand, syncopated rhythms, "playing the notes between the notes";
Joplin, Maple Leaf Rag (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_Leaf_Rag);
reminiscent of a banjo; SB not quite to Jazz, but figuring out the roots of these things
13:05 Jazz born in New Orleans around the turn of the 20th century: cultural melting-pot,
confluence of Ragtime, Blues, West African drumming, French Creole, Latin American, etc.;
the history of Jazz is "not a sanitized one," cf. Storyville (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storyville,_New_Orleans)
13:55 At age of about 13, SB finally got to Jazz with its first composer, Jelly Roll Morton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelly_Roll_Morton):
he took Ragtime and made it less square, gave more of a swing or bounce to it
15:35 In what pop culture places do you hear this sound? Randy Newman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Newman),
You've Got a Friend in Me (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ve_Got_a_Friend_in_Me) from Toy Story:
so movies are one place; also television and computer games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAA_zE5a3JQ)
18:45 Jelly Roll Morton wrote compositions in Jazz style, which at this point was largely improvisional,
giving it a bit more structure, having the polyphony of Jazz performance in mind
20:20 SB learnt about Louis Armstrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Armstrong),
first great soloist of Jazz, who played in King Oliver's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Oliver) band,
"very vocal ... sang through the trumpet," changed the way people played melodies, more lyrical
20:50 Oliver, West End Blues (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WPCBieSESI)
22:05 A separate school of piano, Novelty Piano style (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_piano),
around 1910s, more showy, interesting harmonic stuff, impressionist, recalling the music
of Claude Debussy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy),
Zez Confrey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zez_Confrey), Kitten on the Keys
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBxRRUj1bcA)
23:33 Eubie Blake (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eubie_Blake), Charleston Rag (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKbo3VovRtw)
24:15 Novelty Piano was meant to be played by people at home and using piano rolls; Gershwin adopted
many Novelty Piano techniques
24:43 Novelty Piano, merged with Jazz and Ragtime, producing Stride Piano, SB's main genre
25:25 James P. Johnson, the Father of Stride Piano, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_P._Johnson)
Carolina Shout, "the jam back in the day" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwhy5zxrAKI)
26:33 Other Stride Pianists: Fats Waller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fats_Waller),
Honeysuckle Rose (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG95faQCQUI), updated,
merged with Swing and Blues
27:25 The "final boss" (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/final_boss) of Stride Piano,
Art Tatum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Tatum): "Nobody's been able to top him, ever"
27:45 Most of what SB learned in piano was by "brute force" from the age of 13 to 16,
borrowing recordings from the library, trying to replicate little passages
28:30 Learning to improve was similar, assembling a "toolkit" of musical phrases (like learning to speak),
and switching between them; to improvise really means to create something spontaneously:
it takes many years and is an ongoing thing
29:30 Duke Ellington (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellington), "the culmination of all these things,"
all these different branches of music, Ragtime, Novelty Piano, Jazz, Swing, come together
1920s the Washingtonians (https://syncopatedtimes.com/the-washingtonians/), genius for matching different tone colors,
producing new sounds no one had heard before; East Saint Louis Toodle-oo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoDm_O71iYk)
31:55 Every one of Ellington's pieces is highly evocative: he also had formal training in the European
classical tradition and orchestration, cf. Maurice Ravel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Ravel)
32:50 Takeaways: (1.) Jazz evolved, like everything does; some Jazz musicians were more rigid,
others wanted individuals to shine more; "hot" versus "cool" Jazz, more for dancing or for listening;
different traditions, regional differences in New Orleans, Kansas City, New York; similar discoveries
made around the same time due to the Zeitgeist: cf. discovery of calculus by Isaac Newton
and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the same era, but independently
34:20 (2.) Use the source material when you want to learn something, and gain
specialized knowledge, don't "just let it be filtered through pop culture"; in the pre-Internet age
in some ways it was easier: easier to stay focused; discovery of the source material was like
finding a precious gem: when everything is at your fingertips, wins don't feel as good;
Development of multiple skill sets, as SB acquired skill in transcription and developing the ear;
stay focused, but without tunnel vision: to develop as a musician, or as a person, stay focused
but also stay curious, like Richard Feynman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman)
38:20 SB's memoir, Outside The Jukebox, available from the PMJ store (https://www.postmodernjukeboxshop.com/product/5QAMMJ044/outside-the-jukebox-book?cp=99989_99990)
and on Amazon
39:00 Chat: mentioning Professor Karen Karbiener (https://liberalstudies.nyu.edu/about/faculty-listing/karen-karbiener.html), Portable Professor
lectures on Walt Whitman (https://www.librarything.com/work/4500244/t/Songs-of-Ourselves-Walt-Whitman-and-the-Dawn-of-Modern-American-Poetry);
and Marian McPartland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_McPartland), Piano Jazz
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Jazz)
so happy to hear you play the East St. Louis Toodle-oo after a few PRL requests! FWIW i went to undergrad with two great-nephews of Count Basie. Would love to hear your take on him too
That is so cool! Basie's band swung the most - they were the Stones to Ellington's Beatles!
imo the Count was mainly an arranger who found amazing new perspectives on other guys' tunes, much like you sir if i may say so.
0:00 Introduction: how SB learned to play music from a philosophy of learning standpoint;
including history of early Jazz
2:15 Childhood piano lessons (age 9 to 12), which ended due to an "oppositional" attitude
3:30 But interest sparked by George Gershwin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gershwin),
Rhapsody in Blue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_in_Blue): big, brash, wild and fun
5:00 Obtained piano reduction of Rhapsody in Blue; playing small sections, delving into the mechanics
6:10 The "secret sauce" was Jazz
7:00 Gershwin plays Gershwin: The Piano Rolls (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershwin_Plays_Gershwin:_The_Piano_Rolls):
a syncopated, jazz-adjacent sound
9:10 Tin Pan Alley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Pan_Alley), a "musical goldrush"
9:40 Back to basics, the library, leading to Ragtime; Scott Joplin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Joplin),
The Entertainer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entertainer_(rag))
10:30 Two elements to Ragtime: left hand, low note followed by chord, like a marching band;
right hand, syncopated rhythms, "playing the notes between the notes";
Joplin, Maple Leaf Rag (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_Leaf_Rag);
reminiscent of a banjo; SB not quite to Jazz, but figuring out the roots of these things
13:05 Jazz born in New Orleans around the turn of the 20th century: cultural melting-pot,
confluence of Ragtime, Blues, West African drumming, French Creole, Latin American, etc.;
the history of Jazz is "not a sanitized one," cf. Storyville (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storyville,_New_Orleans)
13:55 At age of about 13, SB finally got to Jazz with its first composer, Jelly Roll Morton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelly_Roll_Morton):
he took Ragtime and made it less square, gave more of a swing or bounce to it
15:35 In what pop culture places do you hear this sound? Randy Newman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Newman),
You've Got a Friend in Me (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ve_Got_a_Friend_in_Me) from Toy Story:
so movies are one place; also television and computer games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAA_zE5a3JQ)
18:45 Jelly Roll Morton wrote compositions in Jazz style, which at this point was largely improvisional,
giving it a bit more structure, having the polyphony of Jazz performance in mind
20:20 SB learnt about Louis Armstrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Armstrong),
first great soloist of Jazz, who played in King Oliver's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Oliver) band,
"very vocal ... sang through the trumpet," changed the way people played melodies, more lyrical
20:50 Oliver, West End Blues (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WPCBieSESI)
22:05 A separate school of piano, Novelty Piano style (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_piano),
around 1910s, more showy, interesting harmonic stuff, impressionist, recalling the music
of Claude Debussy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy),
Zez Confrey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zez_Confrey), Kitten on the Keys
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBxRRUj1bcA)
23:33 Eubie Blake (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eubie_Blake), Charleston Rag (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKbo3VovRtw)
24:15 Novelty Piano was meant to be played by people at home and using piano rolls; Gershwin adopted
many Novelty Piano techniques
24:43 Novelty Piano, merged with Jazz and Ragtime, producing Stride Piano, SB's main genre
25:25 James P. Johnson, the Father of Stride Piano, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_P._Johnson)
Carolina Shout, "the jam back in the day" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwhy5zxrAKI)
26:33 Other Stride Pianists: Fats Waller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fats_Waller),
Honeysuckle Rose (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG95faQCQUI), updated,
merged with Swing and Blues
27:25 The "final boss" (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/final_boss) of Stride Piano,
Art Tatum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Tatum): "Nobody's been able to top him, ever"
27:45 Most of what SB learned in piano was by "brute force" from the age of 13 to 16,
borrowing recordings from the library, trying to replicate little passages
28:30 Learning to improve was similar, assembling a "toolkit" of musical phrases (like learning to speak),
and switching between them; to improvise really means to create something spontaneously:
it takes many years and is an ongoing thing
29:30 Duke Ellington (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellington), "the culmination of all these things,"
all these different branches of music, Ragtime, Novelty Piano, Jazz, Swing, come together
1920s the Washingtonians (https://syncopatedtimes.com/the-washingtonians/), genius for matching different tone colors,
producing new sounds no one had heard before; East Saint Louis Toodle-oo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoDm_O71iYk)
31:55 Every one of Ellington's pieces is highly evocative: he also had formal training in the European
classical tradition and orchestration, cf. Maurice Ravel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Ravel)
32:50 Takeaways: (1.) Jazz evolved, like everything does; some Jazz musicians were more rigid,
others wanted individuals to shine more; "hot" versus "cool" Jazz, more for dancing or for listening;
different traditions, regional differences in New Orleans, Kansas City, New York; similar discoveries
made around the same time due to the Zeitgeist: cf. discovery of calculus by Isaac Newton
and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the same era, but independently
34:20 (2.) Use the source material when you want to learn something, and gain
specialized knowledge, don't "just let it be filtered through pop culture"; in the pre-Internet age
in some ways it was easier: easier to stay focused; discovery of the source material was like
finding a precious gem: when everything is at your fingertips, wins don't feel as good;
Development of multiple skill sets, as SB acquired skill in transcription and developing the ear;
stay focused, but without tunnel vision: to develop as a musician, or as a person, stay focused
but also stay curious, like Richard Feynman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman)
38:20 SB's memoir, Outside The Jukebox, available from the PMJ store (https://www.postmodernjukeboxshop.com/product/5QAMMJ044/outside-the-jukebox-book?cp=99989_99990)
and on Amazon
39:00 Chat: mentioning Professor Karen Karbiener (https://liberalstudies.nyu.edu/about/faculty-listing/karen-karbiener.html), Portable Professor
lectures on Walt Whitman (https://www.librarything.com/work/4500244/t/Songs-of-Ourselves-Walt-Whitman-and-the-Dawn-of-Modern-American-Poetry);
and Marian McPartland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_McPartland), Piano Jazz
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Jazz)