Patented in 1897, the player piano (or pianola) became a hugely popular entertainment apparatus in middle- and upper-class American homes of the 1920s. It served two functions: as a regular piano, and as a piano capable of mechanically playing music inscribed on pi-ano rolls. These were rolls of paper perforated with tiny squares representing the notes; as the squares rolled over a “tracker bar,” they triggered a suction device that, in turn, controlled a lever of the keyboard. Piano rolls could be purchased like recordings, and were often made by celebrated musicians—Igor Stravinsky wrote an etude for pianola, and pianists as prominent as Scott Joplin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, George Gershwin, and Fats Waller introduced original music on rolls. As there was no limit to the number of squares that could be
cut into a roll, some pianists (notably Gershwin) would secretly cut the same roll twice, adding accompanying notes the second time. (This practice stymied custom-ers trying to learn how to play a piece by imitating such a roll. They would complain that Gershwin must have had four hands; turns out, he did.)
The player piano operated as a teaching tool: you could play the roll at any speed, and slow it down enough to study the depressed keys. As accompani-ment for a sing-along, it was arguably the world’s fi rst method of karaoke. The increased availability of radio and records in the later 1920s sped the player piano into obsolescence. Some rolls, however, have been col-lected on CDs, and although they have a mechanical, steely sound, they are as close as we can get to the ac-tual playing of otherwise unrecorded artists like Joplin.
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JAMES P. JOHNSON ■ 131
Joplin–style ragtime harmony in measures 7 and 8. Johnson, for all his fl ash-ing speed and hairpin changes, always exercises a composer’s control. Each strain is so distinct from the others (and in the C series, one chorus accents blue notes, another bass notes, another an insistent triple-chord pattern) that the listener is never lulled by repetition or familiarity. Th e entire performance is a well-ordered whirlwind.
LISTENING GUIDE
you’ve got to be modernistic
JAMES P. JOHNSON, PIANO
■ Label: Brunswick 4762; Snowy Morning Blues (GRP GRD-604)
■ Date: 1930
■ Style: Harlem stride
■ Form: march/ragtime (A B A C)
What to listen for:
■ stride piano accompaniment: a steady alter-nation of bass note and chord
■ whole-tone harmonies in introduction, strain A, and interlude
■ Trio (C) played seven times, with jazzy riffs
■ pianistic blue notes
INTRODUCTION
0:00 After an opening left-hand chord, Johnson’s right hand plays a series of descending whole-tone chords (triads derived from the whole-tone scale).
STRAIN A
0:04 Johnson plays the main melody in stride style, with the left hand alternating between bass notes and chords.
0:07 The end of the fi rst phrase is marked by a syncopation in the left hand.
0:10 The melody leads to a chromatic passage featuring whole-tone harmonies.
0:12 The opening melody is repeated.
0:16 A rising series of whole-tone chords resolves in a full cadence.
STRAIN A
0:20 Following march/ragtime form, Johnson repeats the strain.
0:29 He shifts the pattern in his left hand, playing the bass note one beat early and tempo-rarily disrupting the accompaniment with a polyrhythm.
STRAIN B
0:35 The next strain begins with left-hand bass notes alternating with right-hand chords. The pattern descends chromatically.
STRAIN B
0:50 Johnson repeats the strain an octave higher, adding a bluesy fi gure.
STRAIN A
1:05 The right hand is even higher, near the top of the piano keyboard.
INTERLUDE
1:20 To modulate to a new key, Johnson brings back the whole-tone harmonies and texture of the introduction.
STRAIN C (TRIO)
1:24 The trio is built around repetitions of a short riff.
1.19
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132 ■ CHAPTER 5 NEW YORK IN THE 1920s
STRAIN C
1:39 As before, the repetition is played an octave higher. The end of the riff pattern is re-duced to an emphatic blue note, achieved by playing two adjacent notes at the same time.
STRAIN C
1:54 The melody is now in the bass line, with the left hand playing each note twice.
2:01 The rhythmic pattern in the left hand intensifi es to three notes in a row.
STRAIN C
2:09 The right hand plays widespread chords in a polyrhythm against the basic meter.
2:17 Here (and again at 2:23), Johnson disrupts the accompaniment by shifting the position of the bass note.
STRAIN C
2:24 Against the same harmonic background, Johnson improvises a new riff.
STRAIN C
2:39 Johnson begins his riff pattern with a held-out chord.
2:45 For two measures, the right and left hands play together rhythmically.
2:47 The riff pattern shifts to the downbeat, changing the groove.
STRAIN C
2:54 Johnson plays his right-hand chords in a quick three-note repetition (similar to what we heard in the left hand at 2:03).
3:07 With a few short chords, he brings the piece to an end.
■ DUKE ELLINGTON BEGINS (1899–1974)
As the most important composer that jazz—and arguably the United States—
has produced, Duke Ellington played a vital role in every decade of its devel-opment, from the 1920s until his death in 1974. To this day, his music is more widely performed than that of any other jazz composer. Ellington achieved distinction in many roles: composer, arranger, songwriter, bandleader, pia-nist, producer. He wrote music of every kind, including pop songs and blues;
ballets and opera; theater, fi lm, and television scores; suites, concertos, and symphonies; music for personal homages and public dedications; and, most signifi cantly, thousands of instrumental miniatures. All of his music contains strong elements of jazz, even where there is no improvisation. He made thou-sands of recordings, more than any other composer or bandleader, some inad-vertently (he rarely discouraged fans with tape recorders) and others privately and at his own expense, to be released posthumously.
Ellington’s early breakthrough, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, defi ned four aspects of New York’s musical culture. Th e fi rst three were strictly mu-sical. (1) He clarifi ed the nature of big-band jazz, demonstrating potential beyond Whiteman’s imagination or Henderson’s achievement. (2) He solidi-fi ed the infl uence of stride piano as a jazz factor, employing it not only as a pianist himself but also as a foundation in orchestrations. (3) He proved that the most individual and adventurous of jazz writing could also be applied to popular songs.
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DUKE ELLINGTON BEGINS ■ 133
Duke Ellington—composer, arranger, orchestra leader, pianist—is regarded by many as the most accomplished fi gure in American music. Gifted musicians devoted their lives to his band, including guitarist Fred Guy (at front), baritone saxophonist Harry Carney (to his left), alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges (far right in middle row), and clarinetist Barney Bigard (to his left, here playing saxophone). Ellington is pictured at the piano and on the bass drum played by Sonny Greer, 1938.
Th e fourth area concerned his persona and proved no less vital to the standing of jazz and especially its relationship to the Harlem Renaissance.
Ellington, a handsome, well-mannered, articulate, and serious man, violated the assumptions about jazz as a low and unlettered music. A largely self-taught artist, Ellington earned his regal nickname with an innate dignity that musicians, black and white, were eager to embrace. He routinely disconcerted critics, but never lost the adoration and respect of fellow artists. In his refusal to accept racial limitations, he became an authentic hero to black communi-ties across the country for nearly half a century.
Edward Kennedy Ellington was born in Washington, D.C., to a middle-class family who encouraged his talent for music and art. He is said to have acquired his nickname as a child, by virtue of his proud bearing. In school (Armstrong High School, as it happens), Ellington’s painting won him a scholarship to study art at the Pratt Institute. Instead, he pursued and stud-ied the stride pianists who visited the capital. His fi rst composition, “Soda Fountain Rag,” written at fourteen, mimicked James P. Johnson’s “Carolina Shout.”
As a high school senior, Ellington organized a fi ve-piece band and found enough work to encourage him to try his luck in New York, in 1923. Th ere, at the Hollywood Club, which after two incidents of insurance-motivated arson returned as the Kentucky Club, he began to enlarge the band, focusing on growling, vocalized brasses and fi nding a creative ally in Bubber Miley, an in-novative trumpet player from South Carolina who enlarged on King Oliver’s expressive muting eff ects. Ellington called his new band the Washingtonians,
FRANK DRIGGS COLLECTION
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134 ■ CHAPTER 5 NEW YORK IN THE 1920s
and made a few records between 1924 and 1926, although they show little distinction.
By late 1926, Ellington began to reveal a style of his own, infl uenced by Miley, whose almost macabre, bluesy mewling—quite unlike Armstrong’s open-horn majesty—was ideally suited to Ellington’s theatrical bent. In crafting pieces with and for Miley, Ellington ignored Don Redman’s method of contrasting reeds and brasses, and combined his instruments to create odd voicings, thereby creating a new sound in American music. As presented in his fi rst major works, “East St. Louis Toodle-O” (Ellington’s version of a rag-time dance), “Black and Tan Fantasy,” and two vividly diff erent approaches to the blues, “Th e Blues I Love to Sing” and “Creole Love Call” (in which he used wordless singing as he would an instrument), the overall eff ect was mysterious, audacious, and carnal.