Reading and Listening Guide

Week 13—Nov. 18: Swing and Bebop

John Chilton, “Billie at Café Society” from The Billie Holiday Companion: Seven
Decades of Commentary, edited by Leslie Gourse

Both of today’s readings name-check several well-known jazz musicians, as well as

several other musicians who are now less well known. If you are new to jazz, this laundry
list of names can be overwhelming. However, it’s important for you to notice how
interconnected the jazz community is and still remains: that musicians perform and
record with each other frequently—often playing somewhere seven days a week—and
that bands or ensembles are often only together for a short period of time. Typically, a
jazz musician will move on to another gig, and perform and record with a different
collection of musicians, every few months. This is possible because the musicians we are
covering this class all live and work near each other in New York City.

Concerning that imposing laundry list, let me make it easier for you: Of the many names
listed in this chapter concerning Billie Holiday, be sure to note clarinetist and bandleader
Artie Shaw, pianist and bandleader Count Basie, tenor saxophonist Lester Young (who
performed and recorded with Basie and Holiday), and tenor saxophonist Coleman
Hawkins. Each of these musicians is big in the jazz community. Note also tenor
saxophonist Ben Webster, who is best known for working with Duke Ellington.

Now, per usual, here is a list of questions to guide you through the main points of the
reading:

1. Holiday left clarinetist Artie Shaw’s band, and was replaced by singer Helen
Forrest. Why would Shaw be pressured to replace Holiday? Why did these same
people prefer Forrest?
2. In February 1939, Holiday began a residency singing at Café Society in
Greenwich Village in New York City. What kind of clientele did she attract? Note
that Café Society was an integrated club, where black and white customers could
sit next to each other, and that this was very unusual in 1939.
3. Chilton writes how “Strange Fruit” transformed Holiday from club singer to “La
Grande Chanteuse.” What kind of songs did Holiday perform before she began
singing “Strange Fruit”? How is this song different lyrically from other songs in
her repertoire? Why did Holiday record this song for Commodore instead of her
regular record label, Columbia?
4. Barney Josephson, the owner of Café Society, said that Holiday’s voice was
“small, like a bell that rang and went a mile.” Listen to the recording of “Strange
Fruit.” How does his description apply to this recording?
5. Lester Young took Holiday to an after-hours jam session in Harlem after her set at
Café Society. How are these jam sessions different for a musician than a set at a
typical club gig? Who does Young compete with at this session? For which “title”
are they competing? Though it may seem tangential concerning Holiday’s career,
 the culture and attitudes of these jam sessions become integral to the community
of musicians who invented bebop. Speaking of bebop musicians…

Dizzy Gillespie, “Minton’s Playhouse” from To Be, or Not… To Bop

Like every bebop musician who played at Minton’s, Gillespie initially made his living
performing in big bands, and learned his craft from the previous generation of big band
musicians. For example, in this selection from his memoir, Gillespie writes that he
worked for trumpeter Cootie Williams (best known for his work with Duke Ellington),
alto saxophonist Benny Carter, and bandleader Cab Calloway. He also writes about
several older musicians who inspired him and his peers, such as guitarist Charlie
Christian, bassist Jimmy Blanton (also known for his work with Ellington), and trumpeter
Roy Eldridge (this is the “Roy” that Gillespie refers to several times in the reading).

Of course, Gillespie also writes about his peers: the generation of musicians that invented
a style we call “bebop.” Among the many performers that he discusses, take note of
pianist Thelonious Monk, pianist and arranger Tadd Dameron, drummer Kenny Clarke,
bassist Oscar Pettiford, and alto saxophonist Charlie Parker.

Here are a few questions to guide you through the reading:

1. Note that the period of Gillespie’s career recounted in this chapter from his
memoir begins in 1939, the same year Holiday performed at Café Society. What
are Gillespie’s two “means of access to experience” at this time? How does this
correspond to the Holiday reading?
2. What club hosted the jam sessions that Gillespie attended? Who worked at this
club?
3. Gillespie explains how Monk invented a chord that is characteristic of the modern
bebop style: Monk called it a minor-sixth chord with the sixth in the bass; today,
we call it a minor seventh chord with a flatted five, or a half-diminished seventh
chord. I’ve included Gillespie’s “Woody ‘n’ You,” recorded under Coleman
Hawkins, as one of your listening assignments so you can see and hear what
Gillespie is writing about. I’ve also scanned the Real Book lead sheet for this
song and transcribed the A section of this song into “classical” notation to help
you. After a piano introduction, you can hear the harmony in the woodwinds, and
the lead melody played by Gillespie’s trumpet, all of which is audible behind
Hawkins’ immense and imposing saxophone line. Listen close, and you’ll hear it.
4. Gillespie traces the beginning of the bebop style to 1939, and yet a bebop record
is not professionally recorded and commercially available until 1945. Why is
that?
5. Kenny Clarke is credited with inventing a new approach to drumming that is
associated with bebop. What are the two terms for Clarke’s rhythmic innovations?
What do they mean? Though he does not play on Parker’s “Ornithology,” you can
certainly hear these innovations during the rests in the melody in this song’s
theme.
 6. Notice that both Gillespie and Clarke talk about how, in the bebop community,
“everyone was studying.” Why is this important? What is the political implication
of this for Clarke?
7. Finally, Gillespie writes about Charlie Parker, who came to New York in 1942.
How was Parker’s phrasing different than his peers and predecessors? To help
you hear and see this new style of phrasing, look at the PDF of Parker’s solo that I
uploaded to Blackboard. Before Parker, most musicians soloed in four-bar
phrases, much like a melody can be broken into two or four-bar phrases. Where
do Parker’s phrases begin and end? How are his accents different?

Brief listening notes:

Duke Ellington & His Orchestra (recording as The Washingtonians), “Black and Tan
Fantasy” (1927)

Ellington made his first record in 1924, and his last in 1973. Though he wrote and
recorded dozens of famous songs during the Swing era, I chose this earlier piece, which
we can compare to Armstrong’s “West End Blues,” recorded the following year. Notice
how evocative Ellington’s music sounds: where “West End Blues” is a string of gorgeous
solos with accompaniment, “Black and Tan Fantasy” is a drama in which each chorus
acts like a scene in a larger, grander narrative. This is characteristic of Ellington, who
wrote most of his own material. Notice the quotation from Chopin’s Funeral March that
closes the piece.

Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit” (1939)

Holiday made her first record for Columbia records in 1935. As you read in the chapter
from Chilton’s Holiday biography, “Strange Fruit” was unusual for her, or for anyone, at
that time. Be sure to consult questions 3 and 4 above concerning Holiday and this
recording.

Benny Goodman & His Orchestra featuring Peggy Lee, “Why Don’t You Do Right?”
(1942)

Goodman is the King of Swing, of course, and Peggy Lee is a pop singer par excellence.
That said, I chose this recording mostly to function as an example of the typical big band
performance with a vocal feature in the early 1940s. This is the kind of band and
professional opportunity that Holiday had with Artie Shaw, and, to a lesser extent, Count
Basie. And this is the kind of band that musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie
Parker played in before their famous bebop recordings in the mid-1940s. I intend no
disrespect to Goodman, however: his commercial breakthrough in 1936 inaugurated the
Swing era, and, despite the racist conventions of the time, he hired both pianist Teddy
Wilson and vibraphonist Lionel Hampton as featured soloists in his band, and he
discovered Charlie Christian, the black musician who invented the modern electric guitar
style. Not bad, eh?
Coleman Hawkins, “Woody ‘N’ You” (1944)

Like Ellington, Hawkins had a long career. He was a soloist in Fletcher Henderson’s
band in the early ‘20s, hired Gillespie in the ‘40s, played on Monk’s Music with John
Coltrane in the ‘50s, and recorded with both Ellington and the jazz avant-garde in the
‘60s. Lesson: the Hawk could play anything. As discussed above, “Woody ‘n’ You” is a
Gillespie composition, and I chose it to illustrate the points made above, especially
concerning half-diminished seventh chords under question 3. Be sure to look over the
uploaded lead sheet and transcription.

Charlie Parker Septet, “Ornithology” (1946)

Parker is the musician most associated with the bebop style, and “Ornithology” is one of
his classic Dial recordings. As noted above under question 7, Parker’s phrasing was
original and influential. If you’ve never heard Parker before, this phrasing is difficult and
bewildering. But stick it out, and you’ll find plenty of rhyme and reason to it. Be sure to
look at the transcription of Parker’s solo on the attached PDF (this was transcribed by
Thomas Owens; Parker did not write out his solos). See where his phrases begin and end,
and how they elude expected four-bar phrases. Also, notice that he accents certain notes
within his stream of pitches, and that these accents organize his melodies into
recognizable and shapely melodic lines.

Bebop songs typically begin with a “head,” or main theme, which is followed by several
instrumental solos, and ends with a restatement of the theme. Themes usually follow the
structure of a chorus: AABA. In “Ornithology,” the theme lasts until 0:40, and Parker
takes the first solo. Like many bebop compositions, “Ornithology” is a contrafact, which
means that it is a composition where a new melody is written to an existing chord
progression. In this case, the chord progression is from “How High the Moon.” We will
go over this in class on Thursday.

Miles Davis Quintet, “My Funny Valentine” (1956)

Bebop is the lingua franca of modern jazz, which means that it became the unifying
language of subsequent generations of jazz musicians. In short, the sound of jazz became
the sound of a soloist performing over sympathetic accompaniment; after bebop,
musicians soloed for a far greater length of time than what you would expect to hear in
the preceding big band era. Miles Davis played trumpet with Parker, and can be heard on
“Ornithology.” However, he is known for a far mellower aesthetic. In the mid-‘50s, he
led a quintet with pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Philly Joe Jones,
and, most importantly, a young tenor saxophonist named John Coltrane. This quintet
usually played “standards,” which are Tin Pan Alley songs that became part of the
repertoire that pop singers and jazz musicians were expected to know, and with which the
audience was intimately familiar. “My Funny Valentine” opens Davis’s classic Cookin’
with the Miles Davis Quintet.

John Coltrane, “Acknowledgement” from A Love Supreme (1964)

We don’t have time to cover contemporary jazz, but you just have to hear this one. A
Love Supreme is a suite Coltrane recorded with his classic quartet in 1964: McCoy Tyner
on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. After a brief introduction,
you can hear the simple three-note motive that ties this entire movement together. Like
much contemporary jazz, Coltrane wrote original themes whose form broke from Tin Pan
Alley conventions: you could not expect a simple AABA form, or the familiar changes of
Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm,” which were so popular with jazz musicians after the bebop
era. Frankly, sometimes you couldn’t depend on recognizing any conventions at all. By
1964, jazz was a very personal language for many performers, and musicians could play
however they wished and still call it jazz. Coltrane was an influential musician because of
this “free” approach to the jazz tradition, as well as for his rigorous technique and
virtuosity, and for the deep-seated spirituality he expressed through his music. Sadly, he
died in 1967 at the age of 40. (By the way, if you missed the motive, just wait until the
end: Coltrane will sing it for you like a prayer to God.)

Bradley Sroka