The Evolution of Jazz; 27; Jazz in the 30s and 40s, Part One

The evolution of jazz. A survey of American Art from Scott Joplin. The evolution of jazz. The tape recorded feature presented under the auspices of Northeastern University by the Lowell Institute cooperative broadcasting Council Nat Hentoff associate editor of Downbeat Magazine discusses the growth of jazz from its roots in Europe and Africa and considers the musical as well as the sociological forces that shaped it. Mr Hentoff last week in discussing the jazz of the 30s and early 40s I mention that some of the better small band recordings of that era were made by Lionel Hampton and a group of musicians from various bands who were brought together for recording purposes only

as another illustration of the changing jazz language harmonic melodic and rhythmic changes here as Jelly Roll Morton is recording first of his own shoeshine his dragon 1028 with himself on piano building for tuba Tommy Benford drums Lee blare bass when with Simeon clarinet would pick it trumpet and fields on trombone. And after that Hampton mixed group of 10 years later playing the same tune. I am.

I am I am and. I am. And.

I am. Ten years later Harry James on trumpet Benny Carter and Dave

Matthews on alto Herschel Evans by Bruce and tenor. They Kyle piano John Kirby bass Joe Jones on drums and Lionel Hampton on vibraphone in the same composition Jelly Roll Morton shoeshine is right. I don't have tons of early history also shows that I once again how jazz evolved

through a geographical into penetrations of musical influence he was born in Louisville Kentucky in 1914. His family soon moved to Birmingham Alabama then to Chicago. Lionel's childhood for the most part was spent in the latter setting at St. Elizabeths high school only for us took an active interest in music studying it in school and playing bass drum in the Chicago Defender band in the 20s. Lionel had the opportunity to hear some of the best drummers both those and Chicago and those who came in with the bands on tour. He had Louie Armstrong and other jazz men what helped shape the style and bring it to maturity. By the time he went to California at the age of 16 he was well on the way to being a jazz man himself. In California Hampton took a job as a night drug store attendant so that he could attend daytime classes and music at the University of Southern California. Still in his teens he joined Paul Howard's quality serenader with whom he recorded for Victor in the Serenade as he played drums and sang an occasional vocal in the band is when I was a young

trombonist named Lawrence Brown who was later to become a major jazz figure with Duke Ellington. His second important band job was with Les hypes orchestra which did considerable moving picture work and brown again was in that group in 1932. Louis Armstrong came out to the west coast he had just returned from England had no band of his own and through a special arrangement he fronted the last high group and Laurence Brown has recounted the impact of Louis on both himself and the other members of the band. When we set the pace for the unit and Lionel Hampton at 18 became drummer for the man whose work in jazz he had admired for so many years. Hampton later was with Goodman for some time and since then has led his own large band. There won't be time. To name let alone hear of the better big bands or small jazz units of the 30s and early 40s. They were the McKinney cotton pickers whom Don Redmond helped mold Redmond's own band Clyde Hopkins

orchestra that featured I've been home for quite a time. The Andy Cooke group for which Mary Lou Williams played piano for so long and arranged the correct band was based in Kansas City for some time. Kirk himself had been born in Kentucky. He had grown up in Denver playing his first music there and one of the earliest jazz bands in that section of the country in the 20s. And then a gig around Texas and Oklahoma before forming his own group. Here is a quick recording written by Mary the Williams with Mary the one piano called Froggy Bottom. You're out of.

Town. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am.

I am. I am. There was also the Jimmy Lunsford outfit where the arrangements claimed man and like son Oliver and magnificent large band drumming by Jimmy Crawford Lansford morning 19 to unfold in Mississippi went to high school in Denver where he was a pupil of Paul Whiteman's father. He graduated from Fisk University in 1927 started his own band that year while teaching music at a Memphis high school. Not until 1934

to gain real recognition playing in New York the Lunsford band stopped the show as promptly signed a follow Cab Calloway at the Cotton Club. From then until the band disbanded during the war it was one of the best known largest relatively low jazz orchestras in the country. Here are two facets of its work. First the blues played by Willie Smith one of the band's better known soloist on alto and I believe the trumpet here is Paul Webster. Pan.

To. Here is how they Lunsford band transmitted in a sense the Dixieland beat

accents on the second and fourth notes of the bar in their performance of baby won't you please come home with a vocal and tenor Joe Thomas Willie Smith again thanks it on. They do what you please come home. You know you.

Have pain and when you let you go that. Day. You know. That's. It. There was a Heinz both a major influence on the evolution of jazz piano and also like me the way he was a man who has always been a contemporary in his musical grasp of the

growing jazz language. It was his band that in the early days of modern jazz gave way to young musicians like Charlie Parker Benny Green and Dizzy Gillespie. And it was Hines who discovered the young Sarah Vaughan and then many other you know important figures in modern jazz to repeat Barry Ulanov description of Heinz. He plays a firm vigorous piano that has been effectively apostrophized as trumpet style more accurately described as trumpet with the band because while Earl is establishing the trumpets melodic line with his right hand he is setting up a large ensemble chords with his left splashes of counter rhythms tremolo sometimes suspending the beat. He's a master of suspended rhythms. With that characteristic ringing pedal tone he strikes out with four chords far removed from the C major and sets the seven fundamentals of blues piano. In 1928 Hines recorded for AQI as one of the most famous sets of jazz piano solos. And this is one of them.

Chicago high life. And here is Earl Hines with his nineteen forty large band in the Grand

Terrace. Stop. Son.

And here is a contemporary Earl Hines interpretation of one of the songs he has

long been identified with. Rosa A.