Since the l890s, America has nourished its one and only, truly indigenous art form, Jazz. Until the l950s, jazz was America's popular music. Jazz has now proved to be a viable, progressive, and active art, one that is known around the world. As with any great style of music, jazz has produced artistic giants. Musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, and Charlie Parker have clearly advanced not only jazz but music in general.
Some people say that jazz has had a true revival in the l980s. Jazz clubs are either reopening or starting; courses in jazz appreciation and history, along with jazz performance groups, are being offered in many academic institutions, ranging from elementary schools to the most prestigious universities. But is this l980s revival truly a revival or is it merely a continuance of the jazz evolutionary process? Jazz music has
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never disappeared, and this art form should continue to grow and be enjoyed by its musicians and its audiences.
Not only is jazz recognized as a great musical art form in America, its importance is supported throughout the world (perhaps even more than in its birthplace, America). Quincy Jones relates a comment associated with the worlds view of jazz compared to America's:
"Funny, but the Europeans understood the change in music better than the Americans. I did a [U.S.] State Department tour with Dizzy [Gillespie] in '56, and we got more trouble from the U.S. Information Agency than we did from anybody else. When we went to North Africa, the USIA people there thought Dizzy was a baseball player-- Dizzy Dean. They didn't have a clue. After the tour, we went to the White House. [Richard] Nixon was vice-president, and he asked Dizzy, 'Was the tour fun?' And Dizzy said, 'It was the most fun I've had since I've been black.' I never forgot that line."67
Though started as a passing fad in the l950s, rock music too has grown into an art form in a very short period of time. With its roots in jazz, this new music of rock has become America's most popular style of music. Just like jazz, rock has progressed through different style periods and it has had its truly great musicians such as Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles.
Rock music today continues its evolutionary process just as jazz does. The history of jazz and rock is important to artistic and musical evolution in America and throughout the world.
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Appendix A
Names of Rock Bands
Throughout the history of jazz and rock there have always been items of interest which may or may not be of importance to the musical evolution, yet some of these items may be of interest because of their own unique trivia. One such item regards the names of rock bands. The following is an excerpt from an article written by Peter B. King of the Scripps Howard News Service titled, "Names of Bands Range From Ridiculous to Repulsive."
Oh immortal rock'n'rollers! Who among us can forget Ultimate Spinach, the Strawberry Alarm Clock or Gang of Four? True, we may not remember their music, but their wondrous names echo through the corridors of time.
Whimsical, profound or merely shocking, names have been sticking like syrup from the earliest rock'n'roll to the psychedelic era to the nihilism of the latest trash.
Before the dawn of rock, solo performers, rather than groups, got the best tags-- especially blues and R+B performers. Certainly Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Sleepy" John Estes, Little Miss Sharecropper, and Bull Moose Jackson certainly have a ring to them.
With the advent of rock in the early l950s came band names that fascinate us simply because they so effortlessly conjure up that era. Bands singing humorous songs picked names to match--Dicky Doo and the Dont's. the Trash Men, and Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers. But most names until l964 or so were just plain lame. How about Dannie and the Juniors, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, or Joey Dee and the Starliters?
With the British Invasion, things loosened up a bit. The Rolling Stones and the Pretty Things were certainly offbeat. Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders presaged the psychedelic world to come. The most memorable British name? I vote for the Troggs, from troglodytes or cave dwellers. Appropriate for a group that did, "Wild Thing."
On our side of the ocean, don't forget ? and the Mysterians, the Delfonics, or Archie Bell and the Drells. (Does anybody know what a Drell is?)
The first great flowering of names took place during the psychedelic era of the mid-'60s. Obviously, it did away with the need to name a group in the plural. But it changed far more than that, legitimizing every imaginable kind of wierdness. . . Some of the more outrageous: Blue Crumb Truck Factory, Colossal Pomegranate, The Drongos, Family Cow, Finger of Scorn, Freudian Slips, Frumious Bandersnatch, G String Quartet, Granny Goose and the Soul Ships, The LBJs, Little Miss Cornshucks and the Loose Troupe, Magnesium Water Lilly, Martha's Laundry, William Penn and his Pals,
106 Transatlantic Chicken Wicken No. 5, Truman Coyote, The Vast majority, The Vast Minority, and Peter Wheat and the Bread Men.
Not that you had to be from San Francisco to have a good name in the late '60s or early '70s. The Floodgates had opened: The Lovin' Spoonful took their name from a sexy folk-blues tune by Mississippi John Hurt. Pink Floyd's name also goes back to folk- blues--it's a combination of the names of two Georgia singers: Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. . . Judas Priest picked up on a Bob Dylan song, "Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest.". . .
The next trend in names blew in with the punk scene in the late l970s. The Sex Pistols, certainly, was a terrific name for its genre--threatening and nasty enough to sum up in two words the angry pose of an entire subculture. For more choice examples of punk names (some, alas, not printable in a family newspaper), let's turn to a copy of the Village Voice, dated August 14, l978, at punk's peak. Among the bands advertised: Erasers, the Cramps, Stillettos, Miamis, the Shirts, the Rudies, the Nuns, Shrapnel, the Dead Boys, the Misfits, the Ghosts, the Terrorist, the Brats, Murder Inc., Tight Squeeze, Fractures, and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. And in their quest to be repulsive, bands even looked to Nazi Germany. Joy Division took its name from the prostitutes attached to Hitler's army.
The ugliness of punk tradition lives on today in heavy metal and thrash, which combines elements of metal and punk. For example: Slayer, Violence, Anthrax, Death Angel, Nuclear Assault, and Overkill. Or how about Megadeath, Rigor Mortis, Armored Saint, Guns 'n' Roses, Metal Church, Lizzy Borden, and Iron Maiden, which is the name of a medieval torture device. Trash also has graced us with probably the most offensive name of all time--Sharon Tate's Baby.
Of course, bands who wouldn't be caught dead playing metal or trash have interesting names. Take Mr. Mister, a-ha, 10,000 maniacs, Scritti Politti, or the Bonedaddys. One of my favorites is The Sex Clark Five, which of course is an alteration of the old Dave Clark Five. Isn't that absurd?
Appendix B
Top 100 Rock Albums
The following is a list of the top twenty albums along with other selected albums excerpted from the, "Top 100 Rock 'n' Roll Albums of All Time," from Paul Gambaccini's book polling 81 critics from around the world (listed in the "USA Today" newspaper, March 24, l987).
1. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band," the Beatles. 2. "Born to Run," Bruce Springsteen.
3. "Blond on Blond," Bob Dylan. 4. "What's Going On," Marvin Gaye.
107 5. "Born in the U.S.A.," Bruce Springsteen.
6. "The Sun Collection," Elvis Presley.
7. "The Velvet Underground and Nico," the Velvet Underground and Nico. 8. "Pet Sounds," the Beach Boys.
9. "Astral Weeks," Van Morrison. 10. "The Beatles," the Beatles.
11. "Exile on Main Street," the Rolling Stones. 12. "Let It Bleed," the Rolling Stones.
13. "Abbey Road," the Beatles.
14. "Songs in the Key of Life," Stevie Wonder. 15. "Dark Side of the Moon," Pink Floyd. 16. "Live at the Apollo, Vol. 1," James Brown. 17. "Revolver," the Beatles.
18. "Highway 61 Revisited," Bob Dylan.
19. "Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols," the Sex Pistols. 20. "Who's Next," the Who.
21. "Rubber Soul," the Beatles. 23. "Thriller," Michael Jackson. 25. "Blood on the Tracks," Bob Dylan. 30. "Tapestry," Carole King.
33. "Beggars Banquet," the Rolling Stones. 36. "Live!," Bob Marley and the Wailers. 38. "Innervision," Stevie Wonder.
42. "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," Simon and Garfunkel. 45. "Synchronicity," the Police.
47. "The Unforgettable Fire," U2.
65. "Here's Little Richard," Little Richard. 71. "Beatles For Sale," the Beatles.
72. "Sports," Huey Lewis and the News. 75. "King Creole," Elvis Presley.
85. "Imagine," John Lennon. 87. "Making Movies," Dire Straits.
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Appendix C
Music Definitions
Definitions (List of Musical Terms) :
(some of the preceding definitions are excerpted from: Mark C. Gridley, Jazz Styles, 3rd. edition, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,1988).
ax: most general slang name for any instrument. Ballad: a slow jazz or rock composition.
big band: an ensemble of ten or more performers.
blue note: a pitch between either: a major third and minor third; a perfect fourth or perfect fifth, or; a minor seventh or major seventh of the scale.
bomb: a pronounced accent played by the drummer.
break: the portion of a piece in which all band members stop playing except the one improvising the solo. The tempo and chord progressions are maintained by the soloist, but, because the band has stopped, it is called a stop-time. Rarely do such breaks last longer than two to four measures.
bridge: the B part of an AABA composition; also known as the channel, the release, or the inside.
chops: slang term for music performance facility.
comping: syncopated chording which provides improvised accompaniment for simultaneously improvised solos, flexibly complementing the rhythms and implied harmonies of the solo line.
counterpoint: two or more melodic lines of approximately equal importance sounding together.
double-time: a sudden doubling of the tempo.
double-time feeling: the feeling that a piece of music or a player is going twice as fast as the tempo, although the chord progressions continue at the original rate.
109 fill: in general, anything a drummer plays in addition to basic timekeeping patterns; in particular, a rhythmic figure played by a drummer to--1) fill a silence, 2) announce the entrance or punctuate the exit of a soloist or other section of the music.
gig: concert, performance, or job.
head: the melody or prewritten theme for a composition.
head chart: a band arrangement that was created extemporaneously by the musician. high-hat: a part of the drum set where two cymbals are brought together by the use of a foot pedal. Usually used in jazz to help keep the time. Also called the sock cymbal. horn: general label for any wind instrument.
jam session: a musical get-together where improvisation is stressed.
laid back: an adjective used to describe a feeling of a relaxation of the jazz musical and rhythmic line.
lick: a phrase or melodic fragment.
ride cymbal: the large cymbal suspended over a drum set, struck by a drum stick to set timekeeping patterns called ride rhythms (the most common being: ching-chick-a-ching- chick-a).
riff: 1) phrase, 2) melodic fragment, 3) theme, and 4) a short section of music played over and over.
turnaround: a short chord progression that occurs just prior to the point at which the player must "turn around" to begin another repetition of a longer chord progression. vamp: a short chord progression which is repeated many times in sequence. Often a vamp is used as an introduction or ending.
Appendix D
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Excerpted from an article written by David Barton in the Sacramento Bee 3/15/87:
What, exactly, would it mean? First, simply to be No. 1, you must be so in Billboard [magazine]. Because of Billboard's size and influence--it reportedly has the largest and most efficient charts staff--the magazine is considered the "charts of record." The weekly magazine has been around for nearly a century and its weekly charts are reprinted in newspapers across the country. They are almost always the charts quoted as the definitive source.
If you are not No. 1 in Billboard, you're not No. 1.
That stature is determined by a staff of 23. They work in New York, Nashville, and Los Angeles, and log some 800 hours per week on the phone and in front of the computer screen in the weekly compilation of Billboard's 21 charts.
The Top 200 album chart is based exclusively on sales reports, which are filed by 205 retail "contacts." Those contacts represent almost 4,500 retail outlets around the country, since one "contact" could be the head office of a retail chain, such as Wherehouse Records, which might represent as many as 700 stores.
Of the 205 outlets reporting, Billboard uses about 160 per week so that no one knows exactly whose reports are being used. Of those 160, the larger accounts (about two-thirds) are "constant" and the remaining third, most of them smaller accounts, are "rotating," randomly chosen each week by the computer.
Reporting contacts are "weighted," divided by sales volume into seven or eight categories. An enormous chain is worth more than a mom-and-pop store because it sells more records. The standing of each record is then multiplied by the "weight" the contact has been assigned and the points tallied with totals from other contacts.
111 The Hot 100 chart follows a similar formula, but also includes airplay figures, according to Michael Ellis, who overseas Billboard's Hot 100 and several other charts. Besides sales reports, Billboard gets reports from 225 radio stations (a small sampling of the nation's 10,076 radio stations). The stations give Billboard their current play lists, and Billboard gives each record a value based on its play-list position. It then multiplies the figure by a "weight," which is a measure of the stations' average number of listeners per week. A station that has more than a million listeners per week has a weight of 2.5, while the smallest stations (with less than 100,000 listeners per week) are given a weight of .5. In between are stations with weights of 2.0, 1.5, and 1.0. That figure is then totaled with other figures gathered from around the country, balanced with the sales figures, and a chart position is determined.
That's how Billboard uses the industry. The industry [record stations and record stores] uses Billboard, but not quite so comprehensively. Billboard is only part of the radio programmer's guide. Many stations prefer the more detailed, radio-focused charts published by the weekly tabloid, Radio and Records. College radio stations usually follow the charts in the College Music Journal. Dozens of tip sheets cover smaller, [separate] regions of the country. Those regional differences are crucial, because every radio station is, at bottom, a local one.
So what does it all mean? The charts are important for partial insight into the current music business scene, for their entertainment value, their use as sales tools, and for the clues they offer to the state of music itself.
Appendix E
112 The following is an excerpt from a newspaper article written by Leo N. Miletich, Sacramento Bee, 3/1/87 [originally written for Reason magazine].
Music hath more than the power to charm wild beasts; according to some people, it can drive the beast in you wild.
The current overreactive surge of music mania fueled by preachers, "concerned parents" and exploitative politicians leaves the average person with the idea that this is something dreadfully new, an unparalleled threat never before seen. In fact, it's something as old as music itself, which proves that people never learn from their mistakes, or else are just ignorant of the past.
"Music was invented to deceive and delude mankind," the Greek historian Ephorus declared in the fourth century before Christ. The suspicion was carried over in the works of Aristotle ("The flute is not an instrument which has a good moral effect; it is too exciting") and Plato ("Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them"). Neither man seemed inclined to march to the tune of different drummers. Or flutists.
A Vienna ordinance of l572 on public dancing stated, "Ladies and maidens are to compose themselves with chastity and modesty and the male persons are to refrain from whirling and other such frivolities." Violators were fined.
Author Jeremy Collier (l650-l726) decreed in A Short View of the Immortality and Profaneness of the English Stage that "Musick is almost as dangerous as Gunpowder. . . and a publick Regulation might not be amiss."
In An Irreverent and Thoroughly Incomplete Social History of Almost Everything, Frank Muir describes the effect of the waltz when it was introduced into England from Germany in 1812: "Guardians of public morality immediately pronounced the waltz to be 'will-corrupting,' 'disgusting,' 'immodest'; an 'outright romp in which the
113 couples not only embrace throughout the dance but, flushed and palpitating, whirl about in the posture of copulation.' "
It seems the dancers were not the only one heatedly panting. What would they have thought of Soul Train?
Today we take ragtime in stride, but in its heyday--perhaps because its roots were in bawdy house parlors, performed by itinerant black musicians like Jelly Roll Morton and Scott Joplin--ragtime was strenuously condemned. The newspaper Musical Courier declared in July, l899:
"A wave of vulgar, filthy and suggestive music has inundated the land. Nothing but ragtime prevails, and the cake-walk with its obscene posturing, its lewd gestures. . . Our children, our young men and women are continually exposed to its contiguity, to the monotonous attrition of this vulgarizing music. It is artistically and morally depressing and should be suppressed by press and pulpit."
Violinist Maude Powell made a similar demand in a l913 speech before the National Federation of Musical Clubs in Chicago:
"I am heartily in favor of a board of censorship for the unspeakable de- praved modern popular song. It's effect on young folk is shocking. The vicious song is allowed in the home by parents, who, no doubt, have not troubled themselves to look at the words. As a result, the suggestive meanings are allowed to play upon immature minds at a dangerous age. It is allowed from the popular song the the popular suggestive dances spring. Together and apart, they are a menace to the social fabric."
Two years later, the New Orleans Times-Picayune editorialized against the music that is now a trademark of that city. Jazz, the paper insisted, "is the indecent story syncopated and counterpointed," a form of "musical vice" with no value, "and its possibilities of harm are great."
Possibilities of harm? In l986, the parents of a teenage boy who killed himself while listening to heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne's "Suicide Solution" sued the singer, arguing that a low-noise hum on the record somehow had a disturbing influence on the boy and made him more lyrically pliable. But a judge dismissed the suit, giving
114 First Amendment protection to the song. The ruling also means listeners are responsible for their own behavior. . .