83-566: James Francis Dorsey (February 29, 1904 – June 12, 1957) was an American jazz clarinetist , saxophonist , composer and big band leader. He recorded and composed the jazz and pop standards " I'm Glad There Is You (In This World of Ordinary People)" and " It's The Dreamer In Me ". His other major recordings were " Tailspin ", " John Silver ", " So Many Times ", " Amapola ", "Brazil ( Aquarela do Brasil )", " Pennies from Heaven " with Bing Crosby , Louis Armstrong , and Frances Langford , "Grand Central Getaway", and " So Rare ". He played clarinet on
166-518: A "form of art music which originated in the United States through the confrontation of the Negro with European music" and arguing that it differs from European music in that jazz has a "special relationship to time defined as 'swing ' ". Jazz involves "a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role" and contains a "sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror
249-694: A Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey commemorative postage stamp. In 2009, the Recording Academy added the 1942 recording of "Brazil ( Aquarela do Brasil )", by Jimmy Dorsey & His Orchestra, to the Grammy Hall of Fame . Dorsey and his band made a number of V-Discs when the program was in operation. Jimmy Dorsey's recordings were posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame , which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance." Jazz Jazz
332-526: A coherent tradition". Duke Ellington , one of jazz's most famous figures, said, "It's all music." Although jazz is considered difficult to define, in part because it contains many subgenres, improvisation is one of its defining elements. The centrality of improvisation is attributed to the influence of earlier forms of music such as blues , a form of folk music which arose in part from the work songs and field hollers of African-American slaves on plantations. These work songs were commonly structured around
415-473: A drum made by stretching skin over a flour-barrel. Lavish festivals with African-based dances to drums were organized on Sundays at Place Congo, or Congo Square, in New Orleans until 1843. There are historical accounts of other music and dance gatherings elsewhere in the southern United States. Robert Palmer said of percussive slave music: Usually such music was associated with annual festivals, when
498-410: A limited melodic range, sounding like a field holler, and the guitar accompaniment was slapped rather than strummed, like a small drum which responded in syncopated accents, functioning as another "voice". Handy and his band members were formally trained African-American musicians who had not grown up with the blues, yet he was able to adapt the blues to a larger band instrument format and arrange them in
581-460: A multi- strain ragtime march with four parts that feature recurring themes and a bass line with copious seventh chords . Its structure was the basis for many other rags, and the syncopations in the right hand, especially in the transition between the first and second strain, were novel at the time. The last four measures of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899) are shown below. African-based rhythmic patterns such as tresillo and its variants,
664-617: A musician, Jimmy Dorsey performed with various ensembles and artists, including the Scranton Sirens, The California Ramblers, Red Nichols , Jean Goldkette , Frankie Trumbauer , Ben Pollack , and Paul Whiteman . He played the clarinet solo on the iconic 1927 jazz standard " Singin' the Blues ", with the Frankie Trumbauer Orchestra featuring Bix Beiderbecke (which would, a half-century later, be inducted into
747-595: A number of Hollywood motion pictures , including That Girl From Paris , Shall We Dance , The Fleet's In , Lost in a Harem with Abbott and Costello, I Dood It , and the bio-pic with his brother Tommy, The Fabulous Dorseys in 1947. In 1938, Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra also appeared in a movie short performing many of his hits including "It's the Dreamer in Me", "I Love You in Technicolor", and "Parade of
830-660: A popular music form. Handy wrote about his adopting of the blues: The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect ... by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key
913-439: A repetitive call-and-response pattern, but early blues was also improvisational. Classical music performance is evaluated more by its fidelity to the musical score , with less attention given to interpretation, ornamentation, and accompaniment. The classical performer's goal is to play the composition as it was written. In contrast, jazz is often characterized by the product of interaction and collaboration, placing less value on
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#1732780618423996-462: A significant departure from his earlier work. This final recording sold 500,000 copies and earned him a gold record. Jimmy Dorsey is considered one of the most important and influential alto saxophone players of the Big Band and Swing era, and also after that era. Jazz saxophonists Lester Young and Charlie Parker both acknowledge him as an important influence on their styles. Dorsey appeared in
1079-492: A single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands , Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near
1162-416: A soloist is supported by a rhythm section of one or more chordal instruments (piano, guitar), double bass, and drums. The rhythm section plays chords and rhythms that outline the composition structure and complement the soloist. In avant-garde and free jazz , the separation of soloist and band is reduced, and there is license, or even a requirement, for the abandoning of chords, scales, and meters. Since
1245-620: A total of six guest appearances. Competitive ratings from NBC 's popular Perry Como Show forced Stage Show into early cancellation. In 1956, after Tommy Dorsey died from choking in his sleep, Jimmy took over leadership of the orchestra. Around that same time, Jimmy was diagnosed with throat cancer . He died on June 12, 1957, at age 53 in New York City. Broadcasts of Jimmy Dorsey and The Fabulous Dorsey Orchestra on NBC Bandstand survive from December 24-28, 1956, and December 31, 1956-January 1, 1957. At least two other extant broadcasts from
1328-500: Is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans , Louisiana , in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues , ragtime , European harmony , African rhythmic rituals, spirituals , hymns , marches , vaudeville song, and dance music . Since the 1920s Jazz Age , it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music . Jazz
1411-529: Is a "white jazz" genre that expresses whiteness . White jazz musicians appeared in the Midwest and in other areas throughout the U.S. Papa Jack Laine , who ran the Reliance band in New Orleans in the 1910s, was called "the father of white jazz". The Original Dixieland Jazz Band , whose members were white, were the first jazz group to record, and Bix Beiderbecke was one of the most prominent jazz soloists of
1494-693: Is a fundamental rhythmic figure heard in many different slave musics of the Caribbean, as well as the Afro-Caribbean folk dances performed in New Orleans Congo Square and Gottschalk's compositions (for example "Souvenirs From Havana" (1859)). Tresillo (shown below) is the most basic and most prevalent duple-pulse rhythmic cell in sub-Saharan African music traditions and the music of the African Diaspora . Tresillo
1577-469: Is characterized by swing and blue notes , complex chords , call and response vocals , polyrhythms and improvisation . As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles , biguine , ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation . However, jazz did not begin as
1660-493: Is heard prominently in New Orleans second line music and in other forms of popular music from that city from the turn of the 20th century to present. "By and large the simpler African rhythmic patterns survived in jazz ... because they could be adapted more readily to European rhythmic conceptions," jazz historian Gunther Schuller observed. "Some survived, others were discarded as the Europeanization progressed." In
1743-400: Is that jazz can absorb and transform diverse musical styles. By avoiding the creation of norms, jazz allows avant-garde styles to emerge. For some African Americans, jazz has drawn attention to African-American contributions to culture and history. For others, jazz is a reminder of "an oppressive and racist society and restrictions on their artistic visions". Amiri Baraka argues that there
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#17327806184231826-476: Is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm , a slang term dating back to 1860 meaning ' pep, energy ' . The earliest written record of the word is in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times in which a minor league baseball pitcher described a pitch which he called a 'jazz ball' "because it wobbles and you simply can't do anything with it". The use of the word in a musical context
1909-625: The Atlantic slave trade had brought nearly 400,000 Africans to North America. The slaves came largely from West Africa and the greater Congo River basin and brought strong musical traditions with them. The African traditions primarily use a single-line melody and call-and-response pattern, and the rhythms have a counter-metric structure and reflect African speech patterns. An 1885 account says that they were making strange music (Creole) on an equally strange variety of 'instruments'—washboards, washtubs, jugs, boxes beaten with sticks or bones and
1992-465: The Grammy Hall of Fame ). After returning to the United States from his European tour, he worked briefly with Rudy Vallee , and with several other bandleaders; and likewise with his brother Tommy—including starting their famed eponymous band. He appeared on at least seventy-five radio broadcasts, many of them with his brother. He was a member of Nathaniel Shilkret 's orchestra, on programs such as (starting in 1937) "The Music That Satisfies" (also known as
2075-471: The swing era of the 1920s–40s, big bands relied more on arrangements which were written or learned by ear and memorized. Soloists improvised within these arrangements. In the bebop era of the 1940s, big bands gave way to small groups and minimal arrangements in which the melody was stated briefly at the beginning and most of the piece was improvised. Modal jazz abandoned chord progressions to allow musicians to improvise even more. In many forms of jazz,
2158-948: The 1920s. The Chicago Style was developed by white musicians such as Eddie Condon , Bud Freeman , Jimmy McPartland , and Dave Tough . Others from Chicago such as Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa became leading members of swing during the 1930s. Many bands included both Black and white musicians. These musicians helped change attitudes toward race in the U.S. Female jazz performers and composers have contributed to jazz throughout its history. Although Betty Carter , Ella Fitzgerald , Adelaide Hall , Billie Holiday , Peggy Lee , Abbey Lincoln , Anita O'Day , Dinah Washington , and Ethel Waters were recognized for their vocal talent, less familiar were bandleaders, composers, and instrumentalists such as pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong , trumpeter Valaida Snow , and songwriters Irene Higginbotham and Dorothy Fields . Women began playing instruments in jazz in
2241-585: The 1950s, always updating the sound of his band, but the big band business was beginning to decline. Dorsey employed pianist and arranger Joe Lipman in 1939 (who had just left Bunny Berigan ); he contributed heavily to the repertoire of the band and success of the recordings through the next three years. Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey reunited on March 15, 1945, to record a V-Disc at Liederkranz Hall in New York City. Released in June 1945, V-Disc 451 featured "More Than You Know" backed with "Brotherly Jump". The songs featured
2324-451: The 1950s, many women jazz instrumentalists were prominent, some sustaining long careers. Some of the most distinctive improvisers, composers, and bandleaders in jazz have been women. Trombonist Melba Liston is acknowledged as the first female horn player to work in major bands and to make a real impact on jazz, not only as a musician but also as a respected composer and arranger, particularly through her collaborations with Randy Weston from
2407-509: The Black middle-class. Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre, which originated in African-American communities of primarily the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from their spirituals , work songs , field hollers , shouts and chants and rhymed simple narrative ballads . The African use of pentatonic scales contributed to
2490-464: The Caribbean. African-based rhythmic patterns were retained in the United States in large part through "body rhythms" such as stomping, clapping, and patting juba dancing . In the opinion of jazz historian Ernest Borneman , what preceded New Orleans jazz before 1890 was "Afro-Latin music", similar to what was played in the Caribbean at the time. A three-stroke pattern known in Cuban music as tresillo
2573-808: The Chesterfield Quarter Hour). Glenn Miller arranged and played trombone on several early sessions that he and his brother Tommy did together for OKeh Records , including "The Spell of the Blues", " Let's Do It ", and "My Kinda Love"—all with Bing Crosby on vocals. In 1927, the brothers created the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra and signed with Okeh Records. For some of their sessions, Glenn Miller would join them as trombonist, arranger, and composer; composing " Annie's Cousin Fanny ", " Tomorrow's Another Day ", " Harlem Chapel Chimes ", and " Dese Dem Dose ". Their first song to chart
Jimmy Dorsey - Misplaced Pages Continue
2656-589: The Milk Bottle Caps". Films in which Dorsey appeared: Dorsey co-wrote the jazz and pop standard "(In This World of Ordinary People) I'm Glad There Is You " with Paul Madeira, also known as Paul Mertz, in 1941. Mertz had been a pianist with the Jean Goldkette orchestra in the 1920s and had worked in Hollywood. Sung by Dorsey vocalist Bob Eberly , it was released on Decca as 4197B in 1942. It
2739-468: The Milk Bottle Caps," "John Silver" and "Dusk in Upper Sandusky," and included musicians such as Bobby Byrne , Ray McKinley , Donald Matteson and Skeets Herfurt along with vocalists Bob Eberly and Kay Weber. Dorsey left Crosby in 1937, to concentrate on his own career, and he did well commercially, although he was overshadowed by Benny Goodman , whose big band had "grabbed center stage" in
2822-593: The Roseland Ballroom, for less than a week before traveling to Florida, as his health was failing rapidly. At the time of his death, Jimmy's final hit song, "So Rare", reached the number-two spot on the Billboard charts, becoming the highest-charting song by a big band during the first decade of the rock-and-roll era. With an arrangement heavily influenced by R&B saxophonist Earl Bostic , it marked Dorsey's attempt to acknowledge rock music and marked
2905-665: The Starlight Roof at the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel . He entertained audiences with a light elegant musical style which remained popular with audiences for nearly three decades from the 1930s until the late 1950s. Jazz originated in the late-19th to early-20th century. It developed out of many forms of music, including blues , ragtime , European harmony , African rhythmic rituals, spirituals , hymns , marches , vaudeville song, and dance music . It also incorporated interpretations of American and European classical music, entwined with African and slave folk songs and
2988-709: The age of seven, Jimmy was already playing with his father's band. He made his first public appearance at the age of 9 while playing trumpet with J. Carson McGee's King Trumpeters in New York in 1913. He switched to alto saxophone in 1915, and then learned clarinet . Jimmy Dorsey played on a clarinet outfitted with the Albert system of fingering, as opposed to the more common Boehm system used by most of his contemporaries including Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw . With his brother Tommy playing trombone, they formed Dorsey's Novelty Six, later called Dorsey's Wild Canaries, one of
3071-569: The band, keeping the Dorsey Brothers name in hopes his younger brother would return; in September 1935, the Dorsey Brothers band became "Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra", and he signed with Decca Records . In December, 1935 Dorsey's first song with the band, "You Let me Down", would reach the charts. For the next two years, Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra would provide accompaniment for Bing Crosby 's Kraft Music Hall radio show. The band
3154-552: The blues are undocumented, though they can be seen as the secular counterpart of the spirituals. However, as Gerhard Kubik points out, whereas the spirituals are homophonic , rural blues and early jazz "was largely based on concepts of heterophony ". During the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play European instruments, particularly the violin, which they used to parody European dance music in their own cakewalk dances. In turn, European American minstrel show performers in blackface popularized
3237-558: The brothers and their orchestra appeared on Jackie Gleason 's CBS television program. The success of that television appearance led Gleason to produce a weekly variety program, Stage Show , hosted by the brothers on CBS from 1954 to 1956. The show gave other big band leaders hope in a business that was steadily declining for them. In January 1956, the Stage Show made history with the network television debut of Elvis Presley . Promoting his early recordings for RCA Victor , Presley made
3320-514: The charts in 1941. They continued singing with his band for future records and motion picture appearances. Kitty Kallen sang with the Jimmy Dorsey orchestra following Helen O'Connell's departure in 1942. Jerry Lewis ' first wife Patti Palmer (birth name Esther Calonico) was a singer with his orchestra for less than a year, starting about 1944. Despite personnel changes, Jimmy remained one of the top big band leaders after World War II and into
3403-452: The combined orchestras of Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey. In 1947, Jimmy signed with MGM Records and in the same year, the brothers would put aside their tensions to film The Fabulous Dorseys . The film was a look inside the brothers' lives from practicing as children, to making it big as adults; the brothers played themselves in the film. It also highlighted their struggles leading the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra and showed what their lives were like on
Jimmy Dorsey - Misplaced Pages Continue
3486-473: The contribution of the composer, if there is one, and more on the performer. The jazz performer interprets a tune in individual ways, never playing the same composition twice. Depending on the performer's mood, experience, and interaction with band members or audience members, the performer may change melodies, harmonies, and time signatures. In early Dixieland , a.k.a. New Orleans jazz, performers took turns playing melodies and improvising countermelodies . In
3569-555: The development of blue notes in blues and jazz. As Kubik explains: Many of the rural blues of the Deep South are stylistically an extension and merger of basically two broad accompanied song-style traditions in the west central Sudanic belt: W. C. Handy became interested in folk blues of the Deep South while traveling through the Mississippi Delta. In this folk blues form, the singer would improvise freely within
3652-509: The early 1920s, drawing particular recognition on piano. When male jazz musicians were drafted during World War II, many all-female bands replaced them. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm , which was founded in 1937, was a popular band that became the first all-female integrated band in the U.S. and the first to travel with the USO , touring Europe in 1945. Women were members of the big bands of Woody Herman and Gerald Wilson . Beginning in
3735-480: The education of freed African Americans. Although strict segregation limited employment opportunities for most blacks, many were able to find work in entertainment. Black musicians were able to provide entertainment in dances, minstrel shows , and in vaudeville , during which time many marching bands were formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs, and brothels, as ragtime developed. Ragtime appeared as sheet music, popularized by African-American musicians such as
3818-593: The emergence of bebop, forms of jazz that are commercially oriented or influenced by popular music have been criticized. According to Bruce Johnson, there has always been a "tension between jazz as a commercial music and an art form". Regarding the Dixieland jazz revival of the 1940s, Black musicians rejected it as being shallow nostalgia entertainment for white audiences. On the other hand, traditional jazz enthusiasts have dismissed bebop, free jazz, and jazz fusion as forms of debasement and betrayal. An alternative view
3901-525: The end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines. The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop , which introduced influences from rhythm and blues , gospel , and blues to small groups and particularly to saxophone and piano. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode , or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as did free jazz , which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in
3984-556: The entertainer Ernest Hogan , whose hit songs appeared in 1895. Two years later, Vess Ossman recorded a medley of these songs as a banjo solo known as "Rag Time Medley". Also in 1897, the white composer William Krell published his " Mississippi Rag " as the first written piano instrumental ragtime piece, and Tom Turpin published his "Harlem Rag", the first rag published by an African-American. Classically trained pianist Scott Joplin produced his " Original Rags " in 1898 and, in 1899, had an international hit with " Maple Leaf Rag ",
4067-776: The first jazz bands to broadcast. In 1924 he joined the California Ramblers (who were based in New York City ). He did much freelance radio and recording work throughout the 1920s. The brothers also appeared as session musicians on many jazz recordings. He joined Ted Lewis 's band in 1930, with whom he toured Europe. The same year, he played clarinet on the iconic jazz standard " Georgia on My Mind " in 1930 with Hoagy Carmichael and His Orchestra which featured Bix Beiderbecke on cornet . Dorsey married Jane Porter in 1928, and they had one daughter, Julia. Jane Porter and Dorsey divorced in 1949. During his early days as
4150-415: The first written music which was rhythmically based on an African motif (1803). From the perspective of African-American music, the "habanera rhythm" (also known as "congo"), "tango-congo", or tango . can be thought of as a combination of tresillo and the backbeat . The habanera was the first of many Cuban music genres which enjoyed periods of popularity in the United States and reinforced and inspired
4233-532: The habanera rhythm and cinquillo , are heard in the ragtime compositions of Joplin and Turpin. Joplin's " Solace " (1909) is generally considered to be in the habanera genre: both of the pianist's hands play in a syncopated fashion, completely abandoning any sense of a march rhythm. Ned Sublette postulates that the tresillo/habanera rhythm "found its way into ragtime and the cakewalk," whilst Roberts suggests that "the habanera influence may have been part of what freed black music from ragtime's European bass". In
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#17327806184234316-512: The individuality of the performing jazz musician". A broader definition that encompasses different eras of jazz has been proposed by Travis Jackson: "it is music that includes qualities such as swing, improvising, group interaction, developing an 'individual voice', and being open to different musical possibilities". Krin Gibbard argued that "jazz is a construct" which designates "a number of musics with enough in common to be understood as part of
4399-424: The influences of West African culture. Its composition and style have changed many times throughout the years with each performer's personal interpretation and improvisation, which is also one of the greatest appeals of the genre. By the 18th century, slaves in the New Orleans area gathered socially at a special market, in an area which later became known as Congo Square , famous for its African dances. By 1866,
4482-460: The instruments of jazz: brass, drums, and reeds tuned in the European 12-tone scale. Small bands contained a combination of self-taught and formally educated musicians, many from the funeral procession tradition. These bands traveled in black communities in the deep south. Beginning in 1914, Louisiana Creole and African-American musicians played in vaudeville shows which carried jazz to cities in
4565-578: The late 1950s into the 1990s. Jewish Americans played a significant role in jazz. As jazz spread, it developed to encompass many different cultures, and the work of Jewish composers in Tin Pan Alley helped shape the many different sounds that jazz came to incorporate. Jewish Americans were able to thrive in Jazz because of the probationary whiteness that they were allotted at the time. George Bornstein wrote that African Americans were sympathetic to
4648-455: The late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music 's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in the 21st century, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz . The origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history
4731-955: The many top players he employed, such as George Brunies , Sharkey Bonano , and future members of the Original Dixieland Jass Band . During the early 1900s, jazz was mostly performed in African-American and mulatto communities due to segregation laws. Storyville brought jazz to a wider audience through tourists who visited the port city of New Orleans. Many jazz musicians from African-American communities were hired to perform in bars and brothels. These included Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton in addition to those from other communities, such as Lorenzo Tio and Alcide Nunez . Louis Armstrong started his career in Storyville and found success in Chicago. Storyville
4814-512: The mid-1930s. Dorsey's main vocalist was Bob Eberly , considered to be the best in the music business, and in 1939, Helen O'Connell joined the band, and the idea to have them perform duets proved to be highly successful. She and Bob Eberly possessed a "boy and girl next door" charm, and their pairing produced several of the band's biggest hits. Many of the Eberly-O'Connell recordings were arranged in an unusual 3-section "a-b-c" format. This format
4897-527: The month of December 1956 are available. Recordings of the band from their winter 1957 tour have not surfaced. These recordings would provide the last aural evidence of Jimmy Dorsey's work, which otherwise is the NBC Bandstand broadcast from January 1, 1957. It was once thought that Dorsey's last appearance was in Joplin, Missouri , on March 12, 1957; but, he did lead the band starting on March 19, 1957, at
4980-697: The music internationally, combining syncopation with European harmonic accompaniment. In the mid-1800s the white New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk adapted slave rhythms and melodies from Cuba and other Caribbean islands into piano salon music. New Orleans was the main nexus between the Afro-Caribbean and African American cultures. The Black Codes outlawed drumming by slaves, which meant that African drumming traditions were not preserved in North America, unlike in Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere in
5063-583: The music of New Orleans with the music of Cuba, Wynton Marsalis observes that tresillo is the New Orleans "clavé", a Spanish word meaning "code" or "key", as in the key to a puzzle, or mystery. Although the pattern is only half a clave , Marsalis makes the point that the single-celled figure is the guide-pattern of New Orleans music. Jelly Roll Morton called the rhythmic figure the Spanish tinge and considered it an essential ingredient of jazz. The abolition of slavery in 1865 led to new opportunities for
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#17327806184235146-404: The northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime had developed, notably James Reese Europe 's symphonic Clef Club orchestra in New York City, which played a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall in 1912. The Baltimore rag style of Eubie Blake influenced James P. Johnson 's development of stride piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides
5229-618: The northern and western parts of the U.S. Jazz became international in 1914, when the Creole Band with cornettist Freddie Keppard performed the first ever jazz concert outside the United States, at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre in Winnipeg , Canada. In New Orleans, a white bandleader named Papa Jack Laine integrated blacks and whites in his marching band. He was known as "the father of white jazz" because of
5312-500: The period 1820–1850. Some of the earliest [Mississippi] Delta settlers came from the vicinity of New Orleans, where drumming was never actively discouraged for very long and homemade drums were used to accompany public dancing until the outbreak of the Civil War. Another influence came from the harmonic style of hymns of the church, which black slaves had learned and incorporated into their own music as spirituals . The origins of
5395-494: The plight of the Jewish American and vice versa. As disenfranchised minorities themselves, Jewish composers of popular music saw themselves as natural allies with African Americans. The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson is one example of how Jewish Americans were able to bring jazz, music that African Americans developed, into popular culture. Benny Goodman was a vital Jewish American to the progression of Jazz. Goodman
5478-459: The post-Civil War period (after 1865), African Americans were able to obtain surplus military bass drums, snare drums and fifes, and an original African-American drum and fife music emerged, featuring tresillo and related syncopated rhythmic figures. This was a drumming tradition that was distinct from its Caribbean counterparts, expressing a uniquely African-American sensibility. "The snare and bass drummers played syncopated cross-rhythms ," observed
5561-676: The pre-jazz era and contributed to the codification of jazz through the publication of some of the first jazz sheet music. The music of New Orleans , Louisiana had a profound effect on the creation of early jazz. In New Orleans, slaves could practice elements of their culture such as voodoo and playing drums. Many early jazz musicians played in the bars and brothels of the red-light district around Basin Street called Storyville . In addition to dance bands, there were marching bands which played at lavish funerals (later called jazz funerals ). The instruments used by marching bands and dance bands became
5644-410: The rhythm and bassline. In Ohio and elsewhere in the mid-west the major influence was ragtime, until about 1919. Around 1912, when the four-string banjo and saxophone came in, musicians began to improvise the melody line, but the harmony and rhythm remained unchanged. A contemporary account states that blues could only be heard in jazz in the gut-bucket cabarets, which were generally looked down upon by
5727-499: The road. Despite the brothers coming together for the movie, Jimmy continued to lead his own band until the early 1950s. In 1950, Jimmy moved to Columbia Records and his brother offered him a seat in the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. In 1953, Tommy and Jimmy would rename the band, the "Dorsey Brothers Orchestra." Tommy was the leader of the group, and made Jimmy both the co-leader and featured soloist. On December 26, 1953,
5810-582: The seminal jazz standards " Singin' the Blues " in 1927 and the original 1930 recording of " Georgia on My Mind ", which were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame . Jimmy Dorsey was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania , United States, the first son of Theresa Langton Dorsey and Thomas Francis Dorsey. His father, Thomas, was initially a coal miner, but would later become a music teacher and marching-band director. Both Jimmy and his younger brother, Tommy Dorsey , were musically active during their childhoods and by
5893-500: The twice-daily ferry between both cities to perform, and the habanera quickly took root in the musically fertile Crescent City. John Storm Roberts states that the musical genre habanera "reached the U.S. twenty years before the first rag was published." For the more than quarter-century in which the cakewalk , ragtime , and proto-jazz were forming and developing, the habanera was a consistent part of African-American popular music. Habaneras were widely available as sheet music and were
5976-575: The use of tresillo-based rhythms in African-American music. New Orleans native Louis Moreau Gottschalk 's piano piece "Ojos Criollos (Danse Cubaine)" (1860) was influenced by the composer's studies in Cuba: the habanera rhythm is clearly heard in the left hand. In Gottschalk's symphonic work "A Night in the Tropics" (1859), the tresillo variant cinquillo appears extensively. The figure was later used by Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers. Comparing
6059-498: The writer Robert Palmer, speculating that "this tradition must have dated back to the latter half of the nineteenth century, and it could have not have developed in the first place if there hadn't been a reservoir of polyrhythmic sophistication in the culture it nurtured." African-American music began incorporating Afro-Cuban rhythmic motifs in the 19th century when the habanera (Cuban contradanza ) gained international popularity. Musicians from Havana and New Orleans would take
6142-500: The year's crop was harvested and several days were set aside for celebration. As late as 1861, a traveler in North Carolina saw dancers dressed in costumes that included horned headdresses and cow tails and heard music provided by a sheepskin-covered "gumbo box", apparently a frame drum; triangles and jawbones furnished the auxiliary percussion. There are quite a few [accounts] from the southeastern states and Louisiana dating from
6225-500: Was "Coquette" with vocals from Bill Dutton in June, 1928. Their song, " Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love) " with vocals by Bing Crosby, was their first to reach the top ten charts. Despite their success, the brothers frequently disagreed over management of the band and their conflict would come to a head in May 1935 when, after an onstage disagreement, Tommy stormed off. Afterward, Jimmy continued
6308-565: Was also released on Decca 18799A with Dee Parker in 1946. Jimmy Dorsey had eleven number one hits with his orchestra in the 1930s and the 1940s: In 1935, he had two more number ones as part of the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra: "Lullaby of Broadway" and "Chasing Shadows". His biggest hit was " Amapola ", which was number one for ten weeks in 1941 on the Billboard pop singles chart. In 1996, the U.S. Postal Service issued
6391-497: Was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune . Its first documented use in a musical context in New Orleans was in a November 14, 1916, Times-Picayune article about "jas bands". In an interview with National Public Radio , musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying: "When Broadway picked it up, they called it 'J-A-Z-Z'. It wasn't called that. It
6474-516: Was featured on 73 programs, from December 1935 to July 1937; they also backed Crosby on his commercial recordings during this time. In 1936, Bing Crosby released the single " Pennies from Heaven " recorded with the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra on Decca Records. The early band was considered more jazz-oriented than his brother's, and in response the band recorded instrumental swing classics: "Dorsey Stomp," "Tap Dancer's Nightmare," "Parade of
6557-433: Was major ... , and I carried this device into my melody as well. The publication of his " Memphis Blues " sheet music in 1912 introduced the 12-bar blues to the world (although Gunther Schuller argues that it is not really a blues, but "more like a cakewalk"). This composition, as well as his later " St. Louis Blues " and others, included the habanera rhythm, and would become jazz standards . Handy's music career began in
6640-710: Was reportedly developed at the insistence of a record producer (then called an A&R executive) who wanted to feature both singers and the full band in a single 3-minute 78 rpm recording. Eberly sang the first minute, usually as a slow romantic ballad, the next minute featured the full band backing Jimmy's saxophone , and the last minute was sung by O'Connell in a more up-tempo style, sometimes with lyrics in Spanish. Almost every record released during 1939–1943 were hits, but especially their Latin American stylized songs like "Amapola", "Maria Elena", and "Green Eyes", which topped
6723-440: Was shut down by the U.S. government in 1917. Cornetist Buddy Bolden played in New Orleans from 1895 to 1906. No recordings by him exist. His band is credited with creating the big four: the first syncopated bass drum pattern to deviate from the standard on-the-beat march. As the example below shows, the second half of the big four pattern is the habanera rhythm. Okeh Records Too Many Requests If you report this error to
6806-651: Was spelled 'J-A-S-S'. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, you wouldn't say it in front of ladies." The American Dialect Society named it the Word of the 20th Century . Jazz is difficult to define because it encompasses a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years, from ragtime to rock -infused fusion . Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, such as European music history or African music. But critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt argues that its terms of reference and its definition should be broader, defining jazz as
6889-536: Was the leader of a racially integrated band named King of Swing. His jazz concert in the Carnegie Hall in 1938 was the first ever to be played there. The concert was described by Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history". Shep Fields also helped to popularize "Sweet" Jazz music through his appearances and Big band remote broadcasts from such landmark venues as Chicago's Palmer House , Broadway's Paramount Theater and
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