Kansas City Jazz
With the Kansas City Jazz (in the relevant literature almost always written Kansas City Jazz ) a style of swing was created in a short period of time 1926–1938 , there called stomp. It is very blues-oriented and rhythmic. The repetitive chord progressions and the haunting riffs of the wind instruments are striking .
This playing style, which originated in Kansas City , Missouri, was first made famous by Bennie Moten's orchestra . The music of the bands of Jay McShann and Count Basie is representative of the style. These swing orchestras played with a drier tone and in a stomp-down and more danceable style than the bands on the east coast of the USA. Most of the pieces used simple riffs and head arrangements . The swing and bebop took over musical ideas from this style.
Count Basie in particular made this Kansas City style known nationwide in the USA and soon afterwards internationally.
On the simple blues basis of this style, Julia Lee and other musicians were able to contribute to rhythm & blues early on .
Emigration and urban blues
Around the beginning of the 1920s, a few facts played a role in the particular form of jazz in Kansas City: The rural population initially increasingly migrated to the city, as was also typical for Chicago and Detroit ; the rural blues she brought with her changed. He took on urban themes and connected with the music of the cities, for example the ragtime stride. The Ragtime was still popular in Kansas City, as well as the early jazz . Instrumentalists and singers deal with their mutual stylistic devices for the benefit of both. The ragtime stride adopted vocal phrasing. Every style of jazz could be heard in Kansas City. There an exchange between the primitive, raw and pure blues and the ragtime stride took place.
The blues singer not only nostalgically reminds the audience of "the good old (rural) times" (down home), but also had to deal with the modern current expression of the people and their attitudes towards the city. First, the ragtime piano players began to accompany the blues singers, which broadened their style as they had to adapt to them and reorient themselves vocalically. Often, however, the singers had a rhythmic concept that did not go well with the accompanist; But none of that prevented both of them from playing and recording together.
The emerging urban blues expressed city life, industrialization, dance music, party music and personal enjoyment. The music evolved and encouraged collective actions with a social function. The original sound of the blues was often retained and incorporated into the new styles. In Kansas City, instrumental blues was molded into an orchestral style that adopted blues riffs, breaks, and other inventions that pianists like Mary Lou Williams , Benny Moten, Count Basie, Pete Johnson, and Jay McShann from boogie woogie, other blues styles, Ragtime stride and the burgeoning swing style, and which began to exert a great influence in the following years.
There were local music groups in Kansas City that comprised between 8 and 10 people and were named accordingly Eight-Piece Band, Ten-Piece Band, etc. Even before jazz emerged, large-format Afro-American concert bands emerged from the military bands and entertained Kansas City with a mixed program: classical concert music, marches, popular music, plantation songs and spirituals. One of their teachers, Major N. Clark Smith, trained these groups with military drill training in basic music theory and performance practice, and another teacher, Professor Charles T. Watts, set up a private music institute teaching students. There was the Musicians' Protective Union, Local No. 627 ( Musicians Local No. 627 for short ) with its long-standing respected leader, President William Shaw. The Musicians Local required members to take part in an annual parade, enforced minimum wages and a kind of collective agreement for members and thus took on union duties at a time when African-Americans were still often excluded from unions.
In the general depression of the Great Depression , with Prohibition , with the longing for sweet music at the expense of the blues, and with a New Deal policy , the popularity of the new jazz music in Kansas City and parts of the Southwest set hopeful signs. While speakeasys , rough and ready taverns closed across the country , the blues remained popular in Kansas City and the southwestern United States.
Kansas City's "economy"
Kansas City, Missouri, was a commercial center and a wealthy city. From 1911 to 1938, the corrupt businessman and politician Tom Pendergast set the tone: he controlled alcohol smuggling and nightspots as well as city facilities, for example the police. He used his own cement factory for a large-scale “social” job creation program and earned money from it. He also had his party (Democrats) firmly in hand in Jackson County . The government he controlled was social, albeit for electoral reasons, and towards the end slipped into criminality.
Every day hundreds of merchants - with agricultural goods - searched Kansas City for the business that was also offered in the Black Quarter at the corner of 18th and Vine . The area around the corner of 18th Street / Vine Street and 12th Street was where most of the clubs and theaters were located. This formed a completely viable unit for cultural life, similar to Basin Street in New Orleans or 52nd Street in Bebop's New York. Kansas City had half a million inhabitants at the time, 10 to 15% of whom were African American. In 1939, Pendergast was jailed for half a million dollars in tax evasion. According to Arrigo Polillo, this amount did not correspond to the actual taxable sum, which could have been higher because his legal business was already generating billions in sales. Pendergast also got involved with the local mafia, Johnny Lazia. He was even said to have fraudulent elections.
Jazz musicians didn't have to go hungry in Tom Pendergast's Kansas City and had good earning potential. For example, in 1922 Moten was able to stick to his two-piece rhythm section, three wind instruments. Moten sat at the piano and formed the rhythm section with a drummer. The wind section consisted of trombone, cornet and saxophone or clarinet. Many musicians stayed there after their tours were over and looked for new work. The number of musicians organized in Local 627 rose from 87 to 347 members between 1927 and 1930. From 1933 the Depression became a problem for the musicians, even in Kansas City, and especially the big bands who, after unsuccessful underpaid tours, could no longer earn enough in Kansas City either. Often the musicians left their bands without engagement, or a band had to break up completely, like the Blue Devils .
The best places were the Sunset and the Subway Club , both run by the African American Piney Brown, who liked good jazz musicians. Reno was the name of the main club; he had a small gallery where you could hear the band well and inhale the marijuana of the unhindered smoking musicians for free. The Reno Club was divided and separated the dance floor, the bar and the restaurant, which was open to white and black visitors. Radio broadcasts were broadcast from the Reno Club and there were jam sessions. The bands von Moten, McShann with Dee Stuart or Basie had engagements there. The club was closed in late 1938 for tax evasion.
The Kansas City bands were initially unknown in the rest of the United States, as the record industry rarely sent mobile recording teams to the south and Kansas City. Only the Bennie Moten Orchestra was known nationwide. Moten's early recordings show the strong blues tradition ( e.g. Crawdad Blues , Tulsa Blues ) in Kansas City. Although he was successful with his style in New York, he did not expand it, but changed it in the direction of the stylistic swing variant of the band of Fletcher Henderson .
The bands and the style
The Kansas City bands had a rougher style than those in New York and a slightly over-the-top audience. Count Basie brought blues into the Moten Orchestra's arrangement along the lines of the Blue Devils ("Once a Blue Devil, Always a Blue Devil.") The demands of the shows and the music industry were not as strong in Kansas City as they were in New York, where exotic emotions were sought in the sounds of the jungle. The Kansas City crowd wanted to have fun, dance, and have a drink. The musicians could play as they wanted, although a direction of the music was pointed out by bands known outside of the city, such as the Moten Orchestra, and the style did not remain provincial. The demand on music was to express something, frustration, anger, joy or sadness; if it did not succeed, it had to be changed or was discarded.
For the transition from the head arrangements played by heart to the written arrangements in the period 1926–1929, there are specific incidents to report. Mary Lou Williams was instrumental in the success of Andy Kirk's band through her arrangements . Jesse Stones band beat Moten and Lee in a battle in 1926, after which Lee soon took him into his band as arranger. After the lost "battle" Lee (with Stones arrangements) against Moten in 1929, Moten had Basie and Eddie Durham arrange for his band.
In the Bennie Motens Orchestra, the riffs between the brass and woodwinds were tossed back and forth beat after beat and increased with precision to a climax that was first and foremost subordinate to the rhythmically driving requirements. For this, the guitar came into the orchestra and the bass began to run . The saxophonists preferred a dry tone and had a slower vibrato than those on the east coast.
The riffs were rhythmically and melodically distinctive two- or four-bar motifs (tone sequences), which, offset by the harmonies of the chorus at different levels, were incessantly repeated by the wind and rhythm groups over entire sections - often as a response game or counterpart to the solo . (A chorus corresponds to a run through the song form of the piece being played.)
The blues shouter
The city's blues singing was called Blues Shout, the singers were blues screamers or callers, the blues shouters. The tradition is similar to the Jubilee and Sermon sermons, with a heavy tone, and is more cheerful than the melancholy, profound and depressed rural blues.
Big Joe Turner , the "Blues Boss", stood on the street next to a blind blues guitarist and began to sing. He persuaded the pianist Pete Johnson to play in a duo with him and was quite successful with the Blues Shout. Turner later had rhythm and blues hits, including: "Chains of Love", "Chill is on", "Corrine, Corrina" and " Shake, Rattle and Roll ", which a short time later by Bill Haley and Elvis Presley was covered.
The boogie tradition also differs significantly from that of Chicago. The ragtime was popular in Kansas City, for example by Blind Boone (* 1864, † 1927) a concert pianist who played and taught a simple ragtime, and the composer James Scott , who conducted bands in the Eblon and Lincoln theaters. In this way, its own straight syncopation began to develop in Kansas City. Johnson played stride piano, shout piano and rural styles from skiffle to pulsating boogie woogie. Basie admired him and took up his role model. In his early years, Basie played more aggressively and competed with many artists. This engagement with other artists was a good prerequisite for his work in Kansas City. He later developed his thrifty style. The rhythmic discipline of boogie and stride cemented Basie's concept of jazz rhythm when he added the blues to orchestral arrangements. The whole development beyond Basie freed the blues from the impression that it was inferior to other styles. The expression of the blues expanded greatly during this time, through the example of many musicians, many styles of blues could be picked up, expanded and processed.
Pete Johnson plays in the boogie blues stride bass in decimals with fifths in between (or without them) and has rhythmically completely differently organized bass figures for the boogie than they are conventionally known from Chicago. You can hear that on boogie compilations with Chicago's Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis . Sometimes an introduction by him sounds like pure classical music, which effortlessly finds the transition to Turner's blues vocals, without slipping into boogie phrase-mongering in between.
Mary Lou Williams was a living example of this combination of styles. She mastered boogie woogie, blues, swing, bebop and other styles. In a brief history of jazz, she even presented her experience to the American President Jimmy Carter . She influenced some bebop musicians and arranged for Duke Ellington , who loved her.
Territory bands
Kansas City was a center that was visited by the regional " Territory Bands " of the Southwest USA. These bands were based in small towns and traveled in one nighters (jobs for one night) around these starting points, often covering several hundred kilometers between performances every day. The band leaders jealously defended their territory. If a bandleader wanted to play in another musician's sphere of influence, he had to ask his permission. These bands often had a kind of monopoly on gigs and jobs in the "province"; they accelerated the development of the Kansas City style through fierce competition. In the late twenties, more and more Territory bands came to Kansas City; the bands' spheres of influence overlapped, the choice of musicians and the exchange of musicians increased. Decisions about the popularity and effectiveness of a band were sought in the "battles" in front of an audience.
For example, on Sunday, April 18, 1929, George Ewing Lee's band Bennie Motens outpaced them in a battle of the bands in St Joseph, Missouri, in front of 4,000 visitors because he had better arrangements from Jesse Stone . This led to Moten including Bill Basie and Eddie Durham in the band to improve the arrangements and organize the band better. With Moten, the band already had a pianist, which is why Basie, in order to join the band as the “arranger”, had played something to Durham on the piano, which Durham would then arrange.
Territory bands were, for example, the Alphonso Trents Band in Texas and the Troy Floyd band around San Antonio, who made few recordings, but which did not do justice to Floyd's band. The Blue Devils came around the Oklahoma area: Walter Page had musicians like Jimmy Rushing, Count Basie, Buster Smith and Hot Lips Page in his band . Other bands were George Ewing Lee and His Novelty Singing Orchestra , in Kansas City, who played in Oklahoma City for a year from 1927 and then in the Southwest, Harlan Leonard and his Rockets in Kansas City, Lloyd Hunter in Omaha and Don Albert in San Antonio . Andy Kirk and the Twelve Clouds of Joy came from Oklahoma City (to Dallas), the George Morrison Orchestra from Denver , Jesse Stone and His Blues Serenaders from Atchison (Kansas) .
Union Local 627 hosted an annual musicians' ball and in 1929 a benefit concert with six Territory Bands to raise money (50 cents entry) for the new union building. Six bands played in the completely overcrowded Paseo Hall in front of around 2,200 people from early in the evening to early in the morning. The audience always inspired the bands to new heights. In addition to the well-known bands of George E. Lee, Bennie Moten, Andy Kirk and Walter Page, Paul Bank's Rhythm Aces and George Wilkerson and his Musical Magnets played .
Jam sessions
The jam sessions between 1933 and 1936 were important because they allowed the musicians to develop without being burned out by producers. The best musicians in town, all black, felt obliged to take part and put their reputation and ambition on the line to measure themselves against other musicians and newcomers and to improvise.
Kansas City was the end point of many TOBA - vaudeville tours for an exclusively African-American audience, which also included jazz bands. One of the most famous jam sessions, some of which will be remembered, is that of 1934 when Coleman Hawkins , who was in town with the passing Fletcher Henderson Band, faced and lost to Lester Young , Ben Webster and Herschel Evans . He got so involved that he missed the departure of the Fletcher Henderson Band and afterwards destroyed his new Cadillac in the chase. Count Basie denied the drama of this session; After all, it was something special that Hawkins had brought out his saxophone and played along, which he had never done before.
Especially the rhythm section of the jam sessions showed signs of fatigue because it played continuously. Mary Lou Williams was knocked out for the aforementioned jam session at four o'clock in the morning to jump in again. Sammy Price shared how, after going home at 10 p.m., and when he returned to the session at 1 p.m., he found that they were playing the same track as they had three hours before and had played continuously.
The jam sessions naturally took place with constantly changing horns, which is why the riffs and head arrangements played by heart were used there. Arrangements were only written down in the further course of development. The jam sessions in the confrontation with national jazz greats were one reason the Kansas City style did not stay local.
The sessions were attended by the Bennie Moten musicians and the musicians of Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy , who became famous with the arrangements by Mary Lou Williams. There were also soloists from the Territory Bands, musicians from regional bands in the Southwest of the USA. At such sessions you could meet young Charlie Parker , Sammy Price, Hot Lips Page , Jo Jones , Dick Wilson, Buster Smith, the above mentioned and Mary Lou Williams at the same time . Some bass players made the pilgrimage with shouldered bass from the neighboring city of Kansas City in the state of Kansas to the sessions.
However, the musicians did not earn any money at the jam sessions.
Performance locations
There were different ways for dance bands and blues shouters to perform.
The 18th and Vine District had some large dance halls and large annual Labor Day parades. The Labor Temple offered space for 2,000 people at dance events. In such an environment the "battles" between the bands took place. The Lincoln Theater with African American organization was a member of TOBA , the booking association of theater owners, and showed Vaudeville and Blues Shouters. The Eblon Theater opened in 1923 with seating for 1,000 people, and in 1928 the orchestra was replaced by an organ that Basie played. In 1933 it was converted into the Cherry Blossom Club , a swanky nightclub. Opened in 1928, the Pla-Mor Ballroom was one of the first venues that an African American band, the Chauncy Downs and his Rinkey Dinks (1927–1929), performed at a "white" venue.
These big venues were especially important for the big bands as a source of income.
Paseo Hall opened in 1924. Bennie Moten managed it with a program for African American people. The Paseo Hall had a huge dance floor and seating for about 2,000 people. Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington concluded their tours there with performances on Monday nights (and their arrangement technique was adopted as a model by the Kansas City bands). Mardi Gras was also celebrated there, for example. In 1941 it was sold to a church and converted into a lecture hall.
From 1931 to 1933, film and radio became more and more important because recordings decreased during the Depression and radio receivers were comparatively inexpensive to acquire. For example, Lester Young and John Hammond heard Count Basie on the radio and Lester Young contacted him. However, many stations only had a local range; the musicians tried to play on the stations that were broadcast nationwide.
The TOBA also constantly brought musicians through town, blues shouters, comedians, dancers and special performances.
The blues, which was first played on street corners and front entrances, was the first to find its way into cabarets, restaurants, variety shows and nightclubs as Urban Blues. Money was available in the clubs through the serving of alcohol during Prohibition (1919–1933), “tax relief” during the Great Depression (1929), gambling and betting. These clubs were important sources of income for smaller bands. Count Basie and Jimmy Rushing liked to play in the bigger bands there after work. While Rushing "officially" sang ballads, here he sang the blues.
End and Effects
Business in Kansas City stalled until 1940. On the one hand, John Hammond in particular signed numerous musicians who left Kansas City in 1938 , such as the Count Basie Orchestra . On the other hand, the Pendergast era came to an end, in 1938 the new governor ended vice and corruption. The raids made the musicians unemployed and the good income opportunities ceased. In 1938 a wave of musicians came to New York, a little later in a second batch of Charlie Christian and Charlie Parker , who no longer influenced swing but bebop .
After this time, the blues tradition became part of the rhythm and blues. The Kansas City jazz tradition went unnoticed throughout jazz. With Count Basie and Jay McShann, for example, you can hear the Kansas City style of the earlier time in later recordings after 1940, sometimes directly and unprocessed. You don't hear him anymore with Mary Lou Williams and Charlie Parker, but both continue to work a lot with the blues.
The Pendergast era in Kansas City was legendary ("If you want to get to know sin, forget Paris, go to Kansas City," wrote a journalist) and was made into a film by Robert Altman in the 1996 film Kansas City . According to his own statements, he knew the mood from his youth and tried to capture it with the great help of contemporary jazz musicians. Three storylines are intertwined in his film: The music, Pendergast and the Mafia, and a small story with studies of people, including the environment of Charlie Parker. The scene of false voters, bought for schnapps and a few dollars, who are carted to vote in trucks from the surrounding area, is revealing. Facades that were built for the film in original locations stood until the end of the 1990s.
Bruce Ricker made the 1980 documentary The Last of the Blue Devils , in which many of the people involved have their say.
In 1997 the American Jazz Museum was founded in Kansas City. Kansas City's Local 627, the African-American Musicians Union , which was founded in 1917, still exists . It is now known as the Mutual Musicians Foundation , but is located in the historic 18th and Vine District of Kansas City, Missouri, at 1823 Highland Avenue, as it once was. On August 25, 2005, the million-seller Kansas City, composed by Leiber / Stoller , was dated City council voted the city's official song.
literature
- Ross Russell: Jazz Style in Kansas City and the Southwest. University of California Press, Berkeley 1971, ISBN 0-520-01853-2 .
- Nathan W. Pearson, Jr.: Goin 'to Kansas City. University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1988, ISBN 0-252-06438-0 .
- Frank Driggs , Chuck Haddix: Kansas City Jazz. From Ragtime to Bebop - A History. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005, ISBN 0-19-530712-7 .
- Count Basie: Good Morning Blues. The Autobiography of Count Basie as told by Albert Murray. (Autobiography).
- John White: Kansas City, Prendergast and all that Jazz. In: John White, Brian Holden Reid (Eds.): Americana. Essays in Memory of Marcus Cunliffe. University of Hull Press, 1998. (Won Arthur Miller American Studies Prize in 1992)
Web links
- Official website of the American Jazz Museum
- Club Kaycee
- Musicians Local No. 627 , gives a very good overall impression of this time with many pictures and audio examples.
- Audio samples in Club Kaycee.
- Ken Burns Jazz Film
- For the area around 18th and Vine (English)
- The Blue Devils in the Red Hot Jazz Archive
- Bennie Motens Kansas City Orchestra at the Red Hot Jazz Archive
- Britannica Concise
- Paris of the Plains
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Britannica Concise
- ↑ Driggs, Haddix: Kansas City Jazz , pp. 31ff.
- ↑ a b c d e Billy Taylor: Jazz Piano . Wm. C. Brown, chap. 7: Urban Blues
- ↑ Driggs, Haddix: Kansas City Jazz , pp. 35ff.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Musicians Local No. 627
- ↑ a b Ken Burns jazz film material on Kansas City
- ^ A b c d Thayer Watkins: The Political Machine of Tom Pendergast of Kansas City, Missouri . applet-magic.com (English)
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Arrigo Polillo: Jazz: History and Personality of Afro-American Music . Herbig, German 1978, it. 1975;
- ↑ Driggs, Haddix: Kansas City Jazz , pp. 63f.
- ↑ The main reason for this, however, was the migration of musicians to the von Moten band and a high fine that Local 623 imposed on Walter Page. See Driggs, Haddix: Kansas City Jazz , pp. 96, 120.
- ↑ Robert Altman as a contemporary witness: Kansas City (film)
- ↑ Driggs, Haddix: Kansas City Jazz , pp. 134-137, 160, 167f., 181-182
- ↑ a b c Rainer Nolden: Count Basie. His life, his music, his records . Collection Jazz, Oreos.
- ↑ Liner Notes by Big Joe Turner, Story to Tell, Compilation from 1944 to 1950, with Pete Johnson, Past Perfect Silverline.
- ↑ Judgment of Wikipedia author Roomsixhu
- ↑ Roll em Pete
- ↑ a b c An impression of the background to the "battles of the bands"
- ^ Harlan Leonard in the English language Wikipedia
- ↑ Liner Notes for the soundtrack of the film Kansas City.
- ↑ Count Basie: Good Morning Blues
- ↑ Black faces . In: Berliner Zeitung , October 2, 1996. "Hollywood and jazz: Robert Altman tries to put music in the right light."
- ↑ The German edition, also under the title Good Morning Blues (Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1987), is allegedly shortened according to Rainer Nolden (Count Basie: His life, his music, his records. ) And the translation is sometimes incorrect, for Example "sixth" instead of "sixth"
Coordinates: 39 ° 5 ′ N , 94 ° 34 ′ W