Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: GUEST,Will Fly, on the hoof
Date: 04 Jun 09 - 03:28 AM

It's worth having a comparative listen to Whiteman's recordings from the 20s and those of King Oliver's band in his Chicago days. Oliver's band was a true jazz orchestra, with musicians like the young Armstrong on cornet. If you get the chance, check out his recording of "Deep Henderson" - one of the most amazing tracks from early jazz - with it's unusual chords and surging melody. Difference as chalk is from cheese by comparison with Whiteman.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Leadbelly
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 03:30 PM

Stringsinger:"Whiteman didn't turn jazz into classical music but he did give Eddie Lang, (the world's first notable acoustic jazz guitarist), Joe Venuti, Bix and other jazz musicians work that they wouldn't have gotten easily otherwise."

Looks like a duplicate of what Jean Goldkette did. All of them mentioned by you and some others have had jobs in several bands of Goldkette: Bix, Trumbauer, Venuti, Lang, J. and T. Dorsey...and so on.

Originally, Goldkette came from the classical angle and has had an abition to become a concert pianist. And indeed, in the 50's he made concert appearances, including solo performances with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Without a doubt, he was a real musician, born in Greece.

Although this is a thread about Whiteman, I would like to underline Goldkette's place in jazz history. Especially his Victor Recordings (from 1924 to 1928) are really great documents of jazzy dance music.

That's it!

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: M.Ted
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 02:36 PM

Elijah Wald isn't insulting anyone--his title draws an ironic parallel between the influence that Whiteman and The Beatles had--some of you are just looking for things to get upset about--

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 02:26 PM

Disclaimer- I am no music historian, just interested in music of all kinds (except rap and such-like) and read a bit about it as well.

Will Fly- Indirectly, you hit on one of the short-comings of Oliver's books. He does not trace the evolution of his subject. Morton, your example, in his early days is covered, but not his later development. In many interviews, Morton gave questioners what they wanted- tidbits about the bordello days, not all accurate.
Of course ragtime was important in turn-of-the-century N. O., as it was all over the country, and was part of Morton's background. Along with other N. O. blues-based musicians, probably all of whom played ragtime, he moved on to Chicago; others to New York, and abroad, where they developed and drew on many sources.

(One digressional point about ragtime- it was a very disciplined form, developed mostly by trained composers such as Joplin (classically trained), and later developed some quite free variations.)

Like many other N. O. musicians, Morton moved on, in his case to Chicago where musicians, black and white, gathered from all over the country. It was in Chicago after WW1 that jazz became full-fledged during the 1920s. Oliver, Armstrong, Johnson, Hines (classically trained), Billy Strayhorn (classical training), Dodds, Armstrong, Beiderbecke (classically trained) to name a few. Others went to NY, but Chicago was an informal college where musicians of varied backgrounds and interests came together. The term 'jazz' (many unsupported speculations as to origin of the word) came into common use there.

Jazz has continued to diversify, as others have pointed out, drawing in elements from all over the world.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Lox
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 02:21 PM

The assumption that Jazz black Jazz musicians didn't have a full awareness of european classical music is offensive to them. They damn well all did.

As every armchair historian knows, slave owners had house slaves and slaves who worked in the fields.

There is much hat is sensitive and complex about that subject that I am going to conveniently sidestep.

However, what I will say is that it was a matter of some social status to have slaves who could play music to high standards.

As a result, there were many talented slaves who received music tuition in the western classical style (classical here includes everything from medieval through to whatever was contemporary.)

This included european theories of harmony, and most importantly diatonic chord theory within the framework of the european theory of functional harmony.

Some of these musicians were utter virtuosos.

This is arguably the real birthplace of Jazz.

The slaveowners house was a place where two traditions met and merged.

White folks heard the blues and Black folks learned about the 12 note scale and how to establish and move between key centres.

Those white folks who had the guts to be interested in the music that resulted (I'm guessing young and rebellious) brought the result into their drawing rooms, while those talented young slaves would invest some of their traditional african soul into the theory they were learning an Kaboom - a new art form is born.

It would no doubt have flourished more among African americans as they were not restricted by the same taboos, but to say that it did not flourish at all amongst white would be a misnomer.

It is in this way that I defne it as having an African parent and a European parent.

The two genetic codes (this is a musical metaphor) combined in the womb of Americas heartland to produce a child that did not fit.

This illegitimate embarrassing music was similarly shunned and viewed as ungodly, the work of the devil etc in a way that blues and gospel weren't.

It was beholden to no man and represented an ideal seperate from any that had come before.

Take away the chord theory and there is no jazz - the music remains in one key and the harmony remains lacking in theoretical complexity.

Take away the blues and you are left with frilly shirts and stuffy jackets in the hot sun and inapproprate hot drinks on the lawn.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 12:29 PM

I hasten to say that I'm sure that posters to this thread already knew what "swing" and "jook" mean. But I'm mindful of the fact that some people may arrive at this thread from Internet search engines and may not have known the meaning of those words.

I;m providing this explanation of why I sometimes define terms because I don't want people to think that I think that I can teach people about jazz. I'm well aware that I'm a beginning student of jazz.

As is the case with other subjects discussed on Mudcat, my approach is as a community folklorist and not as a musician/vocalist. And in that folklorist/student role, I very much appreciate learning from those of you who are or were active musicians and/or vocalists.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 12:03 PM

With regard to the etymology of the word "jook", see also this comment written by Lynn Fauley Emery in that same above mentioned book on Black dance:

"Despite the ban of the church and the chagrin of the civic leaders [in the 1900s], the Negro continued to dance. Segregated public dance halls developed throughout the South. There also developed a peculiar institution called the jook, or jook house. Jook is the anglicized pronunciation of "dzugu", a word from the Gulluh dialect of the African Bambara tribe meaning "wicked". Jook came to mean a Negro pleasure house: either a "bawdy house or house for drinking and gambling. It was in these jooks that "the Negro dances circulated over the world" were created. Before being seen on the stage by the outside world, these dances made the rounds of the Southern jooks."

Source-Zora Neale Hurston, "Mimicy", in Nancy Cunard, Negro Anthology (London: Wishard and Co; 1934); p.44

Emery also adds this comment to the note about the Black Bottom and other "Negro dances"-"Music in the jook houses was frequently provided by a large, gaudily decorated, coin-operated phonograph; hence the origin of the term juke-box".

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 12:01 PM

I have written some posts in this thread about jazz dances, including the Black Bottom. In my post about the Black Bottom the implication is that "bottom" means "butt". However, Lynne Fauley Emery, author of Black Dance From 1619 to Today (Princeton: Princeton Book Publishers, Second Revised Edition; 1988;p 221) gives a different origin for the name of that dance:

"According to [Zora Neale] Hurston, one of the dances originating in a jook was the Black Bottom. This dance "really originated in the jook section of Nashville, Tennesse, around Fourth Avenue. This was a tough neighborhood known as the Black Bottom-hence the name"...

Source noted-Zora Neale Hurston, "Mimicy", in Nancy Cunard, Negro Anthology (London: Wishard and Co; 1934); p.44

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 11:34 AM

Speaking of how other things influenced jazz and how jazz influenced other things, here's an interesting brief essay entitled "Learning to Swing" from Ralph Ellison's book Shadow and Act. That essay is included in Daryl Cumber Dance's anthology From My People-400 Years of African American folklore (New York; W.W. Norton & Company; 2002; p 195) :

"You see jazz was so much a part of our total way of life that it got not only into our attempts at playing classical music but into forms of activities usually not associated with it: into marching and into football games, where it has since become a familiar fixture. A lot has been written about the role of jazz in a certain type of Negro funeral marching, but in Oklahoma City it got into military drill. There were many Negro veterans of the Spanish-American War who delighted in teaching the younger boys complicated drill patterns, and on hot summer evenings we spent hours on the Bryant School grounds (now covered with oil wells) learning to execute the commands barked at us by our enthusiastic drillmasters, And as we mastered the patterns, the jazz feeling would come into it and no one was satisfied until we were swinging. These men who taught us had raised a military discipline to the level of a low art form, almost a dance, and its spirit was jazz."

-snip-

Here are two definitions of "swing" from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_jazz

"Swing music, also known as swing jazz or simply swing, is a form of jazz music that developed in the early 1930s and had solidified as a distinctive style by 1935 in the United States. Swing uses a strong anchoring rhythm section which supports a lead section that can include brass instruments, including trumpets and trombones, woodwinds including saxophones and clarinets or stringed instruments including violin and guitar; medium to fast tempos; and a "lilting" swing time rhythm. Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise a new melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of bandleaders such as Benny Goodman and Count Basie was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1945.

The verb "to swing" is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong rhythmic "groove" or drive." "

-snip-

So when Ellison wrote that no one was satisfied until they were "swinging", he meant that second definition-"playing [making music] that has a strong rhythmic "groove" or drive."

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Terry McDonald
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 09:40 AM

'Most jazz musicians were well aware of European classical music....'

Time to bring in the MJQ?

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 09:26 AM

PoppaGator, all you have to do is read what they said about black musicians.

Azizi, I think it's indisputable that the leading exponents of jazz historically were black.
I have no problem with this personally and Louis and Bird are two musical heroes of mine.

I also enjoy Bix and Teagarden, and "modernists" such as Lee Konitz, Lennie Tristano, Bill Evans (a jazz genius), Diana Krall and the new young revivalist, Bria Skonberg.
I enjoy Eddie Condon's get-togethers and the S.F. Revival of trad. (All whites)
But if it were not for the lesser known black jazz musicians of the twenties and thirties,
none of the above would have happened.

Keep your eye on the young African-American bass player, Esperanza Spalding. She can play and she can sing! (Check YouTube for all the above).

Whiteman didn't turn jazz into classical music but he did give Eddie Lang, (the world's first notable acoustic jazz guitarist), Joe Venuti, Bix and other jazz musicians work that they wouldn't have gotten easily otherwise.

Italian influences in jazz have yet to be investigated. Some of the great acoustic guitarists were of Italian extraction, Eddie Lang, Bucky Pizzarelli, Tony Mottola, Venuti (violin) and more. Louis Prima and Keely Smith, Tony Bennett are some of the singers.

Also, there was a kind of Jewish swing popularized by Bunny Berigan, Benny Goodman, Ziggy Elman and others. Jazz has grown historically into an international art form started by African-Americans. It is home-grown American although there is a European form of jazz now which differs from the US.

Ironically, there are more jazz festivals featuring top US players in Europe than in the US.
US jazz musicians are not rewarded financially. I think Wynton Marsalis should be given credit for reviving an educational approach to the public's interest in jazz.

Early jazz is related to African-American folk music. The blues was foundational in its musical form as a guide to developing jazz solos and repertiore. Charlie Parker was a great blues musician because he took the form to a new musical level. Of course, so did Louis and Jelly Roll.

Banjo players should know about Elmer Snowden and Johnny St. Cyr.

I see jazz as kind of an extension of folk music which became more rarified through be-bop and beyond. But it's roots are distinctly African-American and as a result, distinctly American.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: matt milton
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 05:41 AM

haven't read the book, so can't comment on whether or not Elijah Wald actually said this or not, but I don't think jazz really was "gentrified" in that way. The very existence of the work of Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, late Coltrane, Sun Ra and free jazz in general just goes to show that if there was any gentrification, it only went so far. Most jazz musicians were well aware of European classical music. they didn't need anyone like Paul Whiteman or Gershwin or Gil Evans to guide them to it.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Lox
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 05:03 AM

Q,

Thanks for your posts. All interesting. And I utterly agree that Elijah Wolds comments are insulting to all Jazz musicians - including Duke Ellington whose jungle Jams, though originally designed for entertainment, are now revered as art, and Miles Davis, a very politicized and self respecting black man who was all about art music, yet played bebop with the best of them.

Jazz is free - has no master - is not owned by anyone.

It is defined by those who play it not by those who wish to politicize it from the outside.

Some have beautifully politicized it from the inside, but none of that has any bearing on the point of view its commentators.

Jazz ritually defies its commentators.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 01:57 AM

Q - I would, with respect, take issue with just one of your comments above - that Morton was thought of as a "blues, not jazz, artist". Paul Oliver - who I knew briefly in the '60s - wrote many solid books and articles on jazz and blues, but "Screening The Blues" is, IMHO, not gospel (pun intended).

A good, long listen to Morton's output on conventional labels and on the Library of Congress recordings demonstrates that, while Morton certainly had a grounding in blues, he also had a solid grounding in the classical repertoire and in ragtime, and made a major contribution to jazz. I've never personally thought of him as a blues musician - in spite of what Paul might have written.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:34 PM

From a post by Elijah Wald in another thread (121094), the title of his book "comes from a parallel I draw between them [Beetles] and Paul Whiteman, who is widely condemned for almost destroying jazz by turning it from black dance music into white art music."

Glad I saw his note, which in my mind condemns his book. I will not purchase it.

Beetles

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:13 PM

Paul Whiteman's orchestra was typical of the jazz bands of the 1920s-1930s.
The "King" quote that starts this thread perhaps is based on the title of a book by Joshua Berett, "Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman, Two Kings of Jazz," Yale Univ. Press.
(Would that make the music of Armstrong "white-washed, white approved"?)

Part of the problem here is the definition of jazz.
Jazz does have the blues contribution, a very important one, from Black Americans of the south, but it also has ragtime (mixed ancestry), marching band and popular American music components.

One pillar was the early New Orleans fusion of blues and marching band, *hymns and spirituals, with popular dance music of the time, most of the musicians Black.
(*"When the Saints Go Marching In" is a gospel song by a white composer, c' 1890s- don't know which N. O. band first latched on to it.

The other pillar took shape in San Francisco, Chicago, New York and other cities in between; largely a fusion of ragtime and popular music. It was developed by both black and white musicians (yes, the whites got the publicity, but history always gives the nod to the top dog). Bix Beiderbecke, like Armstrong, was a great cornetist of the 1920s.
Not until these two pillars united did jazz develop into a fully-fledged musical form. This began about the time of WW1 and developed into the great jazz age of 1920-1940.

Bolden, Morton and other c. 1890-1910 musicians of New Orleans and the Delta are thought of as blues, not jazz, artists, although jazz cannot be imagined without their contributions. See Paul Oliver, "Screening the Blues."

Of course to most white Americans, 1910-1940, their world was white and they knew only white musicians.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Eve Goldberg
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:06 PM

I think Dinah Washington was known as "Queen of the Blues." Bessie Smith was the "Empress of the Blues," and Billie Holiday, of course, was "Lady Day."

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 06:46 PM

While there's little doubt that appellations such as "the king" or "the greatest" are to a large degree marketing/promotional strategies, my main concern about the "Paul Whiteman- King of Jazz" title and the ODJB claim that they were the creators of jazz, is that lots of folks may believe that without giving attention and credit to those who were the originators of jazz and because of their musical skills and innovations deserve the title of king much more than the person mainstream media promotes.

What I'm saying is that race plays a big factor in who mainstream media promotes and- as Brenda Dixon Gottschild described it-White American continuously takes Black cultural products like jazz and "launders [them] in the appropriation-approximation-assimilation white-wash cycle and are distilled/finessed to a white approved version." I consider Paul Whiteman and ODJB to be the "white washed white approved versions".

My core reason for starting this thread was to give more time (if not equal time) to the consideration and study of African American contributors to jazz which after all is a combination of iAfrican and European music making strategies.*

*I changed the order that Q gave in his latest post to reflect that the fact that the origin of jazz came from Black people and not White people. As to which musical influences is greater-African or European-I know too little about jazz to judge.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 06:14 PM

Harking back to some of the earlier discussion, Bolden is not considered a jazz musician but a blues artist, who expanded on the barrelhouse blues. Early groups in New Orleans took blues, military band music, religious ragtime and popular music and brought it together into something that evolved in several directions.They were a pillar of jazz, although not the whole.

Jazz incorporated African-American idioms, Dixieland, popular and all the other musical subgroups into a more demanding and sophisticated form, its practitioners familiar with a wide range of music. Some elements cited as African-American, such as improvisation, polyphony, and syncopation are known in many cultures including "Western," and came into and then out of popularity more than once. Jazz is a combination of European and African-American music, more recently adding Latin and Asian elements and performers.
Beiderbecke, Whiteman, Goodman, Hines, Ellington, and blues- and ragtime-influenced artists like Armstrong, Joplin and many others mentioned and unmentioned contributed to the development of modern jazz.
Ellington and Goodman were at home with symphonic groups; Hines, to mention just one, was excellent at improvisation, like many of the classic musicians of the past- and perhaps a precursor of the likes of Jarrett.

Jazz as a term came from the West Coast just before WWI; it was adopted by musicians very gradually.

Somewhere I read that Ellington said, "It's all music." Trying to define or put boundaries on jazz is self-defeating. I also dislike appellations such as "the king," or "the greatest." At best, application of those 'terms' is fleeting, and indicate personal or group preference.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: greg stephens
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 06:02 PM

All the royal/titled musicians so far mentioned have been men. So a round of applause for zydeco accorionist Queen Ida, please.
And while we're at it, let's mention Andy Razaf, who wrote the lyrics for Honeysuckle Rose and Ain't Misbehavin' etc, because he was a real Prince, of Madagascar no less.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 05:43 PM

Opps! Mistake number-but who's counting?

:o)

Rufus Thomas does Funky Chicken

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwlGNNqGf_g&feature=related

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 05:41 PM

I don't want to give the false impression that The Stanky Legs is danced like the Black Bottom. In some ways its more like the Charleston. In the Stanky leg one leg at a time is rhythmically lowered to the ground. I can't adequately explain it-and I definitely can't dance it.

If you want to see how its done-click on the link and watch that video and others.

**

BTW, I'm not denying that the word "funky" in those old songs probably referred to "stinky" smell, but the word "funky" has other meanings too. For example, in the Rufus Thomas 1973 R&B dance song "Funky Chicken", "funky" means dancing really good. And dancing really good often means dancing sensuously.

Click this link to see the funky chicken (which is a probably a modern version of the African American plantation dance "The Eagle Rock" and "cutting the pigeon wings".

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 05:19 PM

For what its worth, from my observation, the late 1980s, early 1990s dance "Da Butt" was danced the same or very similarly to the Black Bottom and not the Funky Butt-meaning the women certainly did not "raise their dresses or skirts to show their petticoats" but did the wining, grinding Black Bottom moves as described above. While "doin the Butt" the men would sometimes slap their female partner's behind or might hold it as mentioned above.

Another African American dance from the 1990s (or was it the 1980s?) in this same family was The Bump. The Bump was performed by bumping your hip to your partner's hip, and is a true descendant of the old dance Gottschild wrote about, "The Fanny Bump".

Also, Gottschild was right that the African American social dances* keep recycling African dances and older African American dances. One of the newer Black R&B dances is Do The Stanky Leg. Even the name of that dance's its name shows its lineage to the "Funky Butt"-"stank" means "stink" and so does "funky": And when the singers say "Hit that boody do", you can really see the continuation of the Black Bottom dance.

*The Caribbean butt wining dances also reflect certain African dance movements.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 05:09 PM

Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Professor Emerita of Dance Studies at Temple University, a senior consultant/writer for Dance Magazine and performer with her husband, choreographer Hellmut Gottschild, has written a number of books about Black American dance. I found these descriptions of the Black Bottom and The Funky Butt in the Google Books presentation of Gottschild's 2003 book The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)

...[the Boomps-a-Daisy was] "a party dance among young people and adults", to waltz tempo "partners bumped hips sedately as the special lyrics indicated…"this dance, like all twentieth-century fad dances, is rooted in black traditions. The decorous Boomps-a-Daisy is clearly a white dance. Although bumping body parts wasn't one of its steps, the ur-buttocks dance of the early twentieth century is the Black Bottoms. According to Stearns and Stearns this dance was performed in Southern African American communities before 1910. African American dance songwriter Perry Bradford revamped his 1907 version of Jackson Rounders' Dance because people did not appreciate the connotation in the title. (Rounder was slang for pimp). He revised the lyrics and renamed the song and the concomitant dance The Black Bottom. The sheet music was published in 1919. It did not reach the white community as a fad dance until it introduced on Broadway in George White's Scandals of 1926. By then it was a watered down version of what was probably a bawdy original" The chief gesture that survived on the ballroom floor was a genteel slapping on the backside along with a few hops forward and back" . But the original, black Black Bottom required the dancer to "get down" in posture and attitude, rotate the hips and articulate them in movements known as the Mooche and Mess Around both of which involve full rotation of pelvis in a flexible, unbound manner that is commonly called a Grind. The behind wasn't gently tapped, but grabbed and held to accentuate the rotation. Even earlier than the Black Bottom was the dance the Fanny Bump, practiced in the turn of the century in grass roots black communities, the name of the dance an indicator of its principal movement. Da Butt had a similar bawdy precedent in a dance known as The Funky Butt, as described by one of the Stearn's informants and dating back to 1901. "Well, you know the women sometimes pulled up their dresses to show their pretty petticoats …and that's what happened in the Funky Butt" …[Then, recalling a particular woman who was a specialist in this dance] When Sue arrived…people would yell 'Here comes Big Sue!. Do the Funky Butt, Baby!' As soon as she got high and happy, that's what she'd do, pulling up her skirts and grinding her rear end like an alligator crawling up the bank." As outrageous as Da Butt seems in the music videos of the early 1990s, it is simply a recycled Africanist with a new spin put on it for a new era-and that is the story of the all the popular social dances of the twentieth century and will probably be the same story for the twenty first. The movements come from Africa with Africans and were transformed first into plantation dances, then into minstrel dances, then social dances on the ballroom floor. By the time they reach mainstream venues, they've been laundered in the appropriation-approximation-assimilation white-wash cycle and are distilled/finessed to a white approved version. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the approximation part of this equation is occasionally, if not frequently, omitted, and black dances are wholly appropriated and directly included in the white culture-and indication of the blackening of white America".

http://books.google.com/books?id=1mC9vO5z77QC&dq=the+black+dance+body++gottschild&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=HJQlStr


-snip-

[transcribed without the numbers for the footnotes]

My guess is that the Sterns are Marshall Stearns and Jean Stearns, authors of Jazz Dance: The Story Of American Vernacular Dance

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 04:33 PM

Thanks to all who have responded to my questions about the "funky butt" song & dance and my question about titles in jazz names.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Terry McDonald
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 04:13 PM

Azizi - to answer you question about titles, three spring to mind:

Count Basie
Earl 'Fatha' Hines
and 'Sir' Charles Thompson.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 03:56 PM

No aural recording of Bolden's exists, so actual wording is hearsay.
The Atrium, Univ. of Guelph.
Bolden

There was a hoax about a Bolden recording a couple of years ago.

The version by Jelly Roll Morton, quoted by Will Fly, is at redhotjazz.com, but that site is unobtainable today.

Bolden was institutionalized after going insane in 1907 as the result of a heat stroke, supposedly while marching and playing with a band.

In 1909, Louis Jones, a friend, wrote,

"Buddy Bolden began to get famous right after 1900 come up. He was the first to play the hard jazz and blues for dancing. Had a good band. Strictly ear band. Later on Armstrong, Bunk Johnson, Freddie Keppard- they all knew he began the good jazz. John Robichaux had a real reading band, but Buddy used to kill Robichaux anywhere he went. When he'd parade he's take the people with him all the way down Canal Street. When he bought a cornet he'd shine it up and make it glisten like a woman's leg."
W. R. Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University. Quoted in "Coming Through Slaughter," by Michael Ondaatje.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Will Fly
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 02:48 PM

The version I heard from Jelly Roll Morton's (I think) L. of C. recordings:

"Thought I heard Buddy Bolden say,
He's dirty, he's nasty, take him away.
Dirty nasty stinky butt, take him away,
I thought I heard him say.

Thought I heard Buddy Bolden shout,
Open up the window, let the bad air out,
Open up the window, let the bad air out,
Thought I heard him shout."

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 02:39 PM

"etc., there is more but I don't have Hurt's recording."

The MJH recording I have has exactly those three verses you quote, plus the "Buddy Bolden" final verse I quoted above. In between, he plays an instumental-only verse and another verse where he just sings fragments of the lyric.

I've also heard, elsewhere, the verse about hearing the "Judge say . . . take him away." Not always named Fogarty. This is a thoroughly folk-processed song!

Incidentally, "(guitar answers)" could be inserted, correctly, after the second line of each verse as well as the first.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 02:03 PM

Many stories about Buddy Bolden, and about Funky Butt; it is possible that one or two might have some truth to them.

Several stories (One of the sites linked below) say that one of Bolden's sidemen (names change) heard someone singing:
Thought I heard Miss Suzie shout
Open the window and let the breeze blow out.
He took the phrase and made up "Funky Butt"

Many 'verses,' changed at the whim of the singer, perhaps only the first stayed constant. The form comparable to a chantey, or some work songs.

One that may be close to the original may be heard here (Don't have time to transcribe it now): Funky Butt Jazz Band

The one started by PoppaGator is close:
Mississippi John Hurt, recorded for Library of Congress:

I thought I heard somebody say
(Guitar answers) [I think a horn in Bolden's]
Funky Butt, Stinky Butt, take it away
'cause I don't like it nohow.

See that girl with the red dress on
(Guitar answers)
Funky butt, funky butt, sure as you're born,
well. I don't like it nohow.

You see that girl with the blue dress on,
(guitar answers)
She got stinky butt, funky butt, leave it alone
'Cause I don't like it nohow.
[etc., there is more but I don't have Hurt's recording.

Funky Butt

The dance seems to be a later innovation. The site www.streetswing.com also is unavailable today; it has the story.

Another verse- forgotten the source:
I thought I heard Judge Fogarty say
Give him thirty days, take him away.
Give him an old broom to sweep with, take him away.

More will be found with google. Does any recording exist with Bolden's version? He went insane before 1910 and spent many years in the asylum, where he died.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 01:12 PM

Re: "Funky Butt" ~

Mississippi John Hurt played and recorded a version of "Funky Butt Blues" that includes, as the final verse:

I thought I heard Buddy Bolden shout
Open up the windows and let the bad air out
'Cuz I don't like it nohow.

Now, the song "Buddy Bolden's Blues," as performed by any number of traditional-jazz players and bands in New Orleans, includes the musical phrase that consitiutes each verse of the John Hurt version, but also includes an additional few lines of melody per verse.

(I taught myself the MJH song last year during evacuation for Hurricane Gustav; when I'm playing that song ~ that abbreviated version ~ it's hard for me to think of the other phrase that is included in the trad-jazz song. Someday, I'd like to incorporate "the rest of the song" into my guitar arrangement.)

I'm pretty sure there was a "Funky Butt Hall" in New Orleans back in the 1880s/90s, a place where some of the very first jazz was played. (You could look it up in the various early-jazz history books.) The name of the venue seems to have been derived from the human stink emanating from a crowded floor of enthusisatic dancers, sweating in the New Orleans heat back in those pre-air-conditioning days. However, the lyrics to the song seem to be about, er, um, flatulence. Maybe the management served red beans and the dancers were sweating and farting...

More recently, a contemporary nightclub called the Funky Butt was operating on North Rampart Street,on the edge of the French Quarter and just across the street from Congo Square/Armstrong Park. The club reopened for a while after Katrina, but has gone out of business since then.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 01:05 PM

BTW, I'm curious about other nobility tag names or nobility titles that were conferred on jazz musicians.

I know about "King Oliver", but don't know if he chose that name or other people gave it to him because of his musical stature.

And I read somewhere that Nat "King" Cole was given his nickname from a drunken patron who joked about the Mother Goose rhyme "Old King Cole/was a merry ole soul". Is that true?

What other jazz musicians had king tag names, nicknames, or titles?

Off the top of my head I can think of one-Duke Ellington.

So how did Edward Kennedy Ellington become "Duke Ellington"?

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 12:54 PM

Ahah!!

I did it- my third posting mistake of the day and all on this thread. I meant to remove the word "a" from the second sentence of my post which preceded this one. But I was so concerned that I get the italic font right, that I forgot to remove that word. That sentence should read

So I'm not that innocent about jazz nor am I that innocent about certain other things which need not be mentioned here.

Not that this has anything to do with the subject of this thread.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 12:50 PM

Well, Lox, my ex-husband was a jazz musician. So I'm not that innocent about jazz nor am I that innocent about a certain other things which need not be mentioned here.

[Should I say LOL? Naw.]

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Lox
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 12:28 PM

*sigh*

I've seen it so many times before ...

it starts with an "innocent" interest in Jazz - and suddenly its all out of control ...

You'll be 'lol'-ing next ...

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:35 AM

100

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:25 AM

My mother used to say "But me no buts" (meaning don't make any excuses).

Already this morning I messed up by leaving a word out of a sentence and by not closing out the HTML command for changing the font to italics back to the regular font (whatever it's called).

What in the world will I do next?

:o)

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Lox
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:11 AM

Azizi,

You should take better care where you put your but ...

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 08:32 AM

I forgot a "but" in that post but you can assume it's there.

Speaking of which, I was surprised by the mention of "Funky Butt" in that Jazz Masters of New Orleans book

"...Bolden's singer, Lorenzo Stall, would offer these words to the melody known (still known) traditionally along the Mississippi as Funky Butt, known commercially as a theme in St. Louis Tickle, and known in New Orleans as Buddy Bolden's Blues".

-snip-

I think there was also some mention in that book of a nightclub named the "Funky Butt". I wonder if the "Funky Butt" song had a particular dance movement associated with it which was called the"Funky Butt"and if it looked anything like the 1988 hit R&B song by Experience Unlimited (EU) "Da Butt" (also given as "Doin Da Butt" and "Doing The Butt"). That song was featured in a Spike Lee movie whose name escapes me, but that YouTube video was recently pulled. Here's another video of that dance as performed in a school talent show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1tkEHI3_cM

In case anyone is interested, the words to that song are found here.

Does anyone know where I can find the words to that Bolden's "Funky Butt" song and more information about it, including its date?

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:57 AM

Hello Eve Goldberg.

For the record ,(if you will excuse the unintended pun), the chapter title from Elijah Wald's book was the inspiration for this discussion. By no means should this thread be considered badmouthing that book which I fully intend to read, and which I'm sure other posters to this thread intend to read.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:19 AM

I've always been a Fred Fauntleroy man myself.

Fred developed his chops in colliery bands of the South-East Northumbrian coalfield in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. The first evidence we have of him as an actual band-leader is when Fred Fauntleroy and his Gay Serenity Twentieth Century Orchestra play at the wedding of the Wetherstone twins Eustace and Edwin at Coldharbour Castle (as the hall was then still known) on Saturday the 12th of May 1906 - after which his presence is felt right up to his death in the fire that razed Coldharbour Hall on the night of June 21st 1952. Eyewitness accounts have him singing the ballad of Tam Lin self-accompanied on a musical-saw (and playing solos on a Tibetan thigh-bone trumpet) during the Halloween festivities at Coldharbour Hall in 1928. In an age before 'World Music', 'Free-Jazz' and such-like 'Exotica' - even before 'Folk Music' - Fred Fauntleroy was passionately ploughing his own idiosyncratic furrow, unrecorded but for a limited number of disks of his arrangement of Irving Berlin's Monkey-Doodle-Doo (as featured in the Four Marx Brother's hit stage show & debut movie The Cocoanuts) were issued in 1929, although without the twenty-minute 'jungle-music' interlude that made this such a hit with the bright young things who attended the Easter Ball at Coldharbour that same year. As singer Kathleen Carr recalls in her 1953 memoir Monkey-Doodle-Don't:

"We recorded it in the pillar-hall of the New House - Coldharbour Also - not the Hall as has been reported elsewhere. Fred was quite beside himself over the disappearance of his echo-cornet for which the arrangement was specifically scored. Rumour had it that it was taken by Caedmon Cuckfield, but as this was proved false, Fred was forced to make do with the old silver shepherd's crook cornet he used to play in the colliery band - which wasn't too bad in the event, just a little culturally displaced that's all. Not that Fred wasn't proud of his roots, just a little uncomfortable with them - no doubt wary least they spring up again and drag him down with the rest of what Mr Marx laughingly called the proletariat."

For more on Coldharbour Hall (&c.) see Coldharbour : A Brief History as of 1911.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Eve Goldberg
Date: 01 Jun 09 - 11:19 PM

Hi all,

I've been enjoying reading this discussion. Azizi started this thread in response to the one about Elijah Wald's new book, which has a chapter called "The King of Jazz," about Paul Whiteman.

The book isn't out yet, but from my reading of the synopsis and from what I know of Elijah Wald's writing, my guess is that the title of the chapter is ironic, and doesn't necessarily reflect Elijah Wald's opinion about Whiteman.

Just thought I'd throw that in there.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 01 Jun 09 - 01:41 PM

Frank, I know that the best way to really knowjazz (and any other music) for non-musicians/vocalists like me is to listen to lots of it.

But if there weren't discussion threads like this one, there'd be a lot of interesting stories and opinions that I (and others) wouldn't be able to read and learn from. And I (we) wouldn't know which musicians/vocalist to look up (and look up to).

I guess the key is knowing what is truth and what is fiction. Knowing that experienced musicians such as yourself consider most jazz criticism to be moronic helps to make me more cautious about what I read.

Maybe that book I've been quoting from isn't the truth and nothing but the truth. But it has added to an interesting discussion.

I look forward to more insights and opinions (are they the same thing?) from you and from all other posters to this thread.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 01 Jun 09 - 01:16 PM

Sidney Bechet was a clarinet player first, and then adopted the soprano sax, which is a very similar* instrument. By the time he had become firmly and permanently settled in France, he had largely switched over from clarinet to soprano, and was arguably the first jazz soprano player.

(*For those who don't already know: the standard soprano sax is straight like a clarinet, not bent like the other saxophones ~ although there is such a thing as a soprano shaped like a standard sax; it looks like a miniature instrument.)

I think it's pretty harsh to pass judgement on the ODJB as "out and out racists." How can we know that? They obviously loved black music enough to adopt it as their own, and were the first to bring the music of Black New Orelans to the rest of the world. At this late date, there's no way for us to know what was in the heart and mind of each individual band member, whether or not his affection for the music extended to respect for black people, etc.

I suppose that we can make our own judgements about how well they understood the music they had set out to emulate, but then we don't have recordings of jazz being played by anyone earlier than the ODJB, black, white, or Creole. So, we'd only be guessing about how faithfully the white guys were recreating the sound of jazz as it existed at that very early stage of development.

We do know (from letters, oral history, etc.) that white musicians played with the first generation of black jazz players, but only in "private" jam sessions, house parties, etc. Integrated bands could not legally appear in public in Louisiana at that time ~ in fact, not until the early 1970s (!?!)

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 01 Jun 09 - 12:37 PM

Azizi, Louis didn't get that much from Bunk. There were plenty of NO trumpet players around that could have influenced Louis. All you have to do is listen to the two styles of playing to know this.

Louis would never have sounded like Busse, Bunk or no Bunk. Jazz criticism is a lot of bunk period. The best index into the study of jazz is your own ears.

The idea that Whiteman was the "King of Jazz" is not only ridiculous but denegrating to the musicians who really played the music. If it wasn't for Bix, Lang, Venuti, Pinkatore and many of the real jazz musicians in that band, Whiteman would be a footnote in jazz history.As it was, the trumpet section had a note on their scores to wake Bix up at measure 43.

Diminished seventh chords were not a staple of the more folk-based early jazz. They were approximated to a limited degree by the early N.O. marching bands since they were used in Sousa Marches etc. But Bunk didn't do much with them. But Louis did.
Actually George Lewis did more with them then Bunk. Bunk's style was typical of the time, a strong lead centered around the tune to hold the band together with an absence of the solo of which Louis Armstrong was the pioneer.

King Oliver was Louis' main influence in Chicago. Also, Louis' mighty chops came out of his playing on the riverboats.

PDQ, I know Barbara. She is very knowledgeable. I've heard her many times.

Azizi, there is a fine six-string banjo player, Johnny St. Cyr who Louis loved. His accompaniment on "Heebie Jeebies" is innovative. I think that Django probably had heard him and might have induced him to take up the six-string banjo prior to the guitar.

Art, I don't hear any "schmaltz" from Bechet like you do with Benny Goodman. His wide New Orleans vibrato sounds different than the "krechts" you hear in Klez. I think Bechet's best work is earlier with the bands from N.O. although the French probably would not agree with me. The word out on "Bird" (the movie) is that Eastwood picked the worst day in Bird's life to depict it. Bird had a terrific sense of humor (evidenced in his playing) that was lost in Clint's gloomy story. Bird loved Woody Woodpecker and quoted him in his playing on occasion. Two major tragedies as junkies were Bird and Bill Evans, superlative musicians.

Aziz, the ODJB were out and out racists. They may have popularized black music ala Elvis to the white public but despite the fact they played well were not really representative of the New Orleans style of early jazz. Bix studied La Rocca but did far more with it. Bix might be credited for the so-called "modern" style of jazz which borrowed from the musical French impressionists such as Ravel and Debussey. His piano solo "In A Mist"
even predates Gershwin and has an unusual sophisticated and clairvoyance for it's time.

Jazz criticism is almost an oxymoron. Sometimes you have to take the oxy out.

The best thing is to really listen to the music. It tells you everything.

Frank

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Azizi
Date: 31 May 09 - 10:11 PM

Art, a jazzman's wife getting angry at him? Never happen.

:o)

**

Moving right along, and speaking about the King of Jazz, check out this excerpt from Jazz Masters of New Orleans:

"After Bunk Johnson's death, Louis Armstrong disclaimed that he had been "his teacher" and declared that Joe Oliver was still his idol and "the King". But New Orleans players knew that Bunk was in no formal sense Armstrong's "teacher", and if Armstrong had learned basic lessons from Oliver, nevertheless Armstrong had heard Johnson, followed him and tried to emulate him, his tone, his vibrato, his ideas, as Armstrong himself said. They declared that Armstrong's first recorded solo, on Canal Street Blues with Oliver, came from Johnson's blues playing. And they knew, more importantly perhaps, that Bunk Johnson had brought an important technical knowledge of music, of the cornet, of harmony (particularly inverted and diminished chords) into New Orleans jazz at an early stage. And they knew that the more relaxed, legato phrasing of Armstrong, of Buddy Petit, and of Oliver himself when he was using it rhythmically reached back, not so much to Buddy Bolden and Freddy Keppard, but to the tradition of the second cornet founded by Bunk.

"If it wasn't for Louis Armstrong", a New Orleans musician has remarked, "everybody would be phrasing like Henry Busse". If it hadn't been for Bunk Johnson, one might add, perhaps Louis Armstrong would too."

pp 225-226

-snip-

For more information on Buddy Bolden, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Bolden

For more information on Bunk Johnson, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunk_Johnson

For more information on Joe "King" Oliver, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Oliver

For more information on Louis Armstrong, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Armstrong

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 31 May 09 - 09:59 PM

Aha - here he is on clary ...


sadly not a video but beautiful nonetheless!!


And there ain't nothing bad about his band either.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 31 May 09 - 09:50 PM

By the way, something that has been bugging me is the sound that Sydney Becheet makes ...

... I never paid attention to what instrument the sleeve said he played, but i always assumed it was a soprano sax as I play the clarinet and I have never heard one sound like Bechet sounds.

I don't know the ter "Kletzmer clarinet" so I don't know iff this is what is meant by that term, but i did have a look online for Bechet to see what he plays and I found this.

Sit back and Enjoy one of western musics great innovators.

Bechet on Soprano Sax

My money is on him being the one in the white suit.

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 31 May 09 - 08:51 PM

Beautiful snippets thanks Art,

Keep 'em coming.


I finally invested in a book - the picador book of Jazz.

I'll start reading it next week.

When I'm in college on wednesday I'll see what resources there are on this subject.

I anticipate discovering a big fat hairy debate!!

Subject: RE: Paul Whiteman-King of Jazz?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 31 May 09 - 08:24 PM

My opinion: Bechet was probably one of the first Klezmer clarinetists.


Bix never could read music. He was simply a "natural" musician who could play just about anything just by jumping in and playing by ear pretty much. Because he couldn't read music, he wasn't allowed in the Union. That meant no cabaret card in New York--and without the card, he wasn't allowed to play. It drove him nuts for years. 'Twas one of the reasons he drank.

Red Rodney (white) was playing trumpet in a be-bop combo of Charlie Parker's when they toured the southern bars. To have a white guy playing with blacks was verboten down there then. So Bird told the cops that Rodney was an albino----and it worked. Clint Eastwood directed the film biography of Charlie Parker ("BIRD") and featured this incident prominently. Forrest Whittaker played Bird.

I listen to more jazz than not these days. Too many memories in folk stuff I guess.

Just some interesting snippets.

Art