Week 2

As we come into the 20^th Century with our primordial ooze of folk music and work songs, they meld together to create something new: American Popular Music, beginning with ragtime and the proto-big band jazz of the 20s.  Gershwin, Joplin, Louis Armstrong all begin giving us the start of commercialized American popular music.  The forms take on the work song format, but they include traditional orchestra instruments like string bass, trumpet, and clarinet, and also the piano.  This new outdoor clarinet from Belgium was just coming onto the scene, although it would be clarinet and trumpet that we would hear doing the counter melodies and solos in I Got Music.  It would be the big bands of the 1940s that would fully incorporate Adolphe Sax’s creation into jazz and popular music.  Grainger loved the Sax for its tuning capabilities and used it in his contemporaneous music almost to death, and in popular music today it is often relegated to be of a more schmaltzy “love” nature (as well as an even more erotic nature), but it would be the big bands that followed Gershwin that would use it to its best ability. 

The Tiger Rag is a chart that has been around in many incarnations, much like Barbara Allen from last week’s listening.  I’ve listened to it today on a calliope-like instrument and from the Auburn Marching Band.  I played the “Tuba” Tiger Rag version at University of Wisconsin.  It’s a jazzy, proto-big band rag with everything we’d expect from music of this time.  The bass gets stronger and more prolific, and is soon to become what we know from jazz bands. 

Much of the music of this time is thin to my ears because the string bass (and later the electric) haven’t been fully appropriated from the orchestra halls.  I can hear this clearly in My Blue Heaven.  It’s a jazz ballad (indeed readily available from stock arrangers for all level of public school big band), but the piano is the main accompaniment with little or no percussion or other rhythm section.  When we get to the 30s and we have this instrument fully integrated, my ears become much happier.  

Week 1

Folk music has been a compositional basis for music for centuries.  Master composers such as Vivaldi, Handel, Holst, Grainger, and Beethoven have all woven folk music into their masterworks.  The popular or vernacular music of America is the same.  Barbara Allen is just case in point.  From our “Old Time Music” in this week’s listening, we hear a British folk song (I can’t find any information quickly that it has Welsh origins, but I might be thinking of The Ash Grove) that has become an American folk classic.  In my research, I heard Art Garfunkel cover it, and he’s not the only.  Like Swansea Town or Danny Boy, it stays with us, centuries after inception.  Art Garfunkel’s version combines his “folksy” ways, popular music, and “legit” sounds to bring us something very memorable, with Art’s tenor voice lilting above the stratosphere on the part. 

Unique American folk music goes back as far as Stephen Foster and even further.  How many of his folk songs can be found in the wind band music of Grundman or LaPlante?  The Irish connection comes through in one of my research recordings, John McCormack trills it for us with his light Irish brogue.  No bassline has been developed yet, and the piano parts are very classical in nature, but, along with Barbara Allen (which, itself, turns up in several versions of A Christmas Carol as one of the folk songs sung by young Scrooge and Marley at a party hosted by their first employer), is a folk song that grounds Americana and forms the formation of what is to come. 

The slave work songs are the other component that we need to form American popular music of the early 20^th Century.  Long John, which uses a great deal, understandably, of African tribal rhythmic techniques, gives us that second component.  As we take these work songs and spirituals and combine them with our folk songs, while exploring other styles, we get the early jazz of the 20^th Century, which then will delve into pop music. 

Week 7

We’ve shifted in this module from the style-line of jazz-big band+blues-rock to something more unique and less grounded in the above line.  Prince embodies 80s and 90s pop rock with a techno-flavor.  Dubstep, Europop, Techno are all more rooted in the styles of When Doves Cry than When Doves Cry is in what has come before.  Electronic instruments and synthesizers are used for more music making than ever before and in more unique ways than ever before too, and proto-synths are being used here.  The shift to the focus being on the performer rather than on the chart or the listeners being active participants in the dance is in full shift.  Soon, Whitney Houston will solidify this with her rendition of the National Anthem, something that will mark the fullness of The Time of ME! and will continue right through Renee Fleming’s rendition this past Super Bowl.  When Doves Cry is boring.  The bass line, a driving force of rhythmic cohesion in other styles is bland and has little influence.  The drum set, rather than the bass (electric or acoustic) has taken the bass part’s role in time keeping and cohesion with boring, simple patterns and limited fills.  To me, Prince isn’t innovative, he’s simplistic.  Not my style. 

Nirvana and Smells Like Teen Spirit… I rather prefer the Weird Al satire myself, but this came first.  It is so different from Prince, and as different from Prince is as Prince is from what has come before.  Our two required listening examples this week are so diametrically opposed from one another.  This is still Rock, with a pulsing bass line, and my observations about Prince are completely the opposite here, as the bass line is handled by the electric bass.  There are extended guitar solos, and we’re back to the music being about the music.  At least until they smash their guitars in some live performance of the chart.  Pity that Nirvana wasn’t able to stay on the scene for too long. 

Prince stands out in this week’s listening as one of the major pivot points in popular music history.  Much of the remainder of the listening, including Aerosmith, Van Halen, and the like, are all similar to Nirvana than they are to Prince.  The bass grooves, the set is interesting, and the groups are about the music.  It might have a nice beat that you can thrash to, but the music is about the music.  

Week 6

I don’t think there’s a chart in Carlos Santana’s book that I don’t like, even if I’m not a fan of his music, and by fan I simply mean, he’s not an artist I sit down to listen to with regularity.  Certainly when I’m flipping through the vast array of options on my XM Radio while driving, a Santana chart all but guarantees that I’ll stop on that station and listen.  I just don’t own any of his albums, nor do I make an effort to listen to him.  However, after listening to Oye Como Va with a critical ear this week, that’s really a shame.  His Wikipedia article credits him with fusing Rock and Latin American rhythms and using blues lines in his guitar playing.  While Wikipedia is, perhaps, not the most academic resource, this statement about his music certainly shows in Oye Como Va.  I can hear grooves and lines that have their basis in the blues, he has extended guitar solos that are very evocative of blues charts we listened to back in Module 4.  I can hear the connections to big band (and jazz itself harkens back to African grooves) within the Afro-Latino styles, and the added Latin percussion completes the flavor.  It’s not surprising to me that versions of Oye Como Va appear in the books of many public school jazz bands.

When I was a lowly high school freshman, Wayne’s World made its jump to the big screen, a funny, memorable flick from a funny, memorable SNL sketch.  My knowledge of rock ‘n’ roll at the time was very limited (I wasn’t one of the “cool kids” either), but this movie introduced me to more of Queen than just We Will Rock You (which, at the time, and even today, I found to be not the greatest sports anthem, but the most annoying), as well as the music of Led Zeppelin.  I clearly recall the scene in the music store with the “No Stairway to Heaven” signs in the store as Wayne takes the Fender Stratocaster, “No Stairway.  Denied.”  Between Wayne’s World and the No Quarter collaboration, I really came to like a lot of Zeppelin’s charts, but I never saw the appeal of Stairway.  I suspect it’s because I’m not a guitar player, so that “famous riff” at the start does not resonate with me in a personal way.  Listening to this chart now, with much more mature ears, the tune is brilliant.  A chorale at the beginning?  Then a prolonged rock section?  As a concert band guy, this blows me away.  It’s not the rhapsodic hodge-podge that is Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, it’s a Bach Little Prelude and Fugue, a Clifton Williams piece, Carter’s Overture for Winds, McBeth’s Chant and Jubilo.  It follows format that really works for me with the maturity I now possess in my musicianship. 

Are Talking Heads the “gateway drug” to George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic or is it the other way around?  I only know Talking Heads for Burning Down the House, which was influenced by Clinton and his group, and they date back to doo-wop.  The question makes sense in terms of this listening, despite our Talking Heads chart for the week being prior to Burning Down the House, as Talking Heads claim to have gotten the idea from a Parliament-Funkadelic show.  I think I need to familiarize myself with that group too.  With the advancement in electronic technology, our Talking Heads chart has an early 80’s sound to it, despite its 1977 premiere, yet the structure is very much rock with roots all the way back to the blues. 

The bulk of the remainder of this week’s listening are charts that I’m familiar with from either the Saturday night “Super Gold” that I’ve referred to many times or pep band tunes.  The listening gives me great pause to connect to our Curriculum Unit project and the accuracy and history of the charts. 

Week 5

The listening for this week is a fascinating collection of the historical “heart” of popular music.  It’s appropriate that we have so many great Beatles charts this week as it coincides with the 50^th Anniversary of their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.  With them, we have Motown and the Beach Boys.  The listening is actually a collection of the original “boy bands.” 

Good Vibrations has a much more “modern” sound than the bulk of the listening we have.  The electric guitar parts use sounds that are unique for their time.  Most electric guitar lines of the time sound just like basic rock guitars, where Good Vibrations utilizes something akin to distortion pedals.  I am not conversant in guitar lingo beyond this, so I’m not quite able to articulate what I hear, but I’ve always thought that this chart was more of a late 1970s tune than the mid-60s.  Perhaps it was my own exposure to the chart on the Saturday night “Super Gold” oldies program on the local radio station that my parents listened to (I’ve referenced this in my discussion posts), so I heard it out of context, but it always struck me as later than it actually was. 

The four Beatles charts are as different from each other as they are from any of the other listening for this week.  They contain lyrics that are of significant poetic quality, ballads, and straight rock ‘n’ roll.  Please Please Me appears in tons of pep band books, and is a chart that’s stood the test of time, as are Hard Days Night and Eleanor Rigby (and Lady Madonna for that matter).  The Beatles tunes are also interesting in that they use a great deal of interesting harmonies.  Suspensions and double suspensions (a la Bach) abound throughout.  

Week 4

Frank Sinatra’s ballad of Nancy is so different than the ballads we listened to last week.  Sinatra’s voice and phrasing are so unique to him and a style of his own.  The band baking him up isn’t a big band like the big bands of the 40s were from last week’s listening.  Although Miller and Basie certainly employed strings, with Sinatra, the strings are big, warm, and part of the overall tonal weight.  Even in previous ballads that employed them, the strings in last week’s big bands weren’t so full; the brass and saxes were the tonal picture with the strings adding color.  Sinatra weaves around with very little popular form to this ballad.  The only hook is “Nancy with the laughing face,” and that occurs sparingly.  There is not really a chorus section, the verses move from one to another. 

In listening to Louis Jordan’s Choo-Choo Boogie right after, the contrast from the two charts is so stark.  The style of Jordan’s chart is really a bridge between big bands (with large elements) and 50s rock’n’roll.  There are big brass and sax hits, instrumental solos, and no big strings.  I’d argue that this has much more in common with In the Mood than Nancy does, yet Nancy is jazz, and the Choo-Choo Boogie really borders on proto-Elvis rock’n’roll.  I head more in common with this and Crazy Little Thing Called Love from my Song Share than I do with the Sinatra chart.  Jordan’s chart is very structured and formal, with verses and chorus predictably interwoven. 

As much as my parents loved Chuck Berry, I’m pretty sure that Maybelline uses the rhythmic underpinning of a quick-step march with rock’n’roll imposed on the top.  This chart is just as different as the previous ones this week.  When you throw some swing on the ride to help the “boom chucks” on the set, Charlie Brown is quite similar, with the other exception being the brief pauses for the “why is everyone always pickin’ on me?” hooks and the slight tempo changes in the verses.  The chorus cooks along with a nice “boom chuck” pattern, similar to the Chuck Berry chart.  A third chart this week, Long Tall Sally is quite similar to these charts in form and structure, although Little Richard does much more with harmonies in the piano.  I am of the mind that his hook is “ooooo-oooo-uuuuh!”  Although I am of the mind that it’s his personal hook, rather than just one for the song.

Elvis gives us something completely different, yet totally rooted in everything we’ve listened to this week.  Gone is the big brass from Choo-Choo Boogie.  The big, big strings from Sinatra are gone too.  Elvis strips the big band sounds and the Sinatra additions down to an electric bass, a piano doubling the bass more than anything, yet with deemphasized comping, and then all the brass hits that we’re used to hearing in big band charts of similar structure covered by voices on bops, oos, and ahs.  A mediocre arranger could take Don’t Be Cruel and arrange it out for full big band (such as Miller or Basie) or even Sinatra orchestra and have a very viable chart in those styles.  Elvis uses a guitar as well, but mainly it stays out of the harmonic picture and just reinforces the rhythms.  Drum set is largely out of the way with a simple swing pattern on, I believe, the hi-hat, rather than the ride cymbal, which, although it’s still a swing pattern, is a rock-style departure from the driving ride of jazz.  There are other Elvis charts on the optional listening list for this week, and they all use this same minimalism of the big band instrumentation.