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228
b. African- derived techniques in melody
i. rhythmic interjections
ii. vocal glides
iii. percussive vocal sounds
iv. use of blue notes
3. improvisation created polyphonic texture
4. Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong (1901–1971)
a. brilliant trumpet player, improviser
b. transformed jazz into a solo art
c. “scat- singing” influenced Billie Holiday
d. most impor tant force in development of
twentieth- century jazz
II. The Jazz Singer Billie Holiday
A. Billie Holiday (1915–1959)
1. blues singer, known as Lady Day
2. born in Philadelphia, grew up in Baltimore
3. little formal education; no formal vocal training
4. moved to New York, prob ably worked as a
prostitute
5. sang in clubs, Brooklyn and Harlem
6. 1933 recorded with white clarinetist Benny
Goodman
7. broke color barrier: sang in public with a white
orchestra
8. memorable recordings
B. Billie’s Blues
1. written by Billie Holiday
2. chorus: single statement of a melodic- harmonic
pattern
3. vocal verses: intersection between jazz and
blues
C. LG 48: Holiday: Billie’s Blues (recorded 1936)
1. 12- bar blues: short introduction, six choruses
2. laid- back slow tempo, steady accompaniment
3. vocal choruses 2, 3, 6
OUTLINE
I. Roots of Jazz and Blues
A. Primary antecedents
1. West African musical traditions
a. eighteenth- century slaves: call and response,
vocal inflections, storytelling techniques
b. nineteenth- century Amer i ca: work songs, ring
shouts, spirituals
2. Euro- American vernacular traditions; minstrelsy
3. music from the Amer i cas, ragtime
4. musicians blended styles
a. jazz and blues
b. jazz and Euro- American cultivated music
B. Blues
1. post– Civil War, Mississippi Delta
2. derived from works songs of Southern African
Americans
3. ele ments of folk songs: poor Euro- Americans in
Southern Appalachians
4. country, rural blues
a. singer, steel- string guitar
b. voiced difficulties of everyday life
c. three- line stanza, first two identical
d. blue notes: “pitch bending”
e. standard harmonic progression, 12 or 16 bars
in length
C. New Orleans Jazz
1. fusion of ragtime and blues with other traditional
styles
a. spirituals, work songs, ring shouts, Ca rib bean
and Euro- American styles
2. music from Congo Square, pre– Civil War
a. strong under lying pulse, syncopations,
polyrhythms
American Intersections: Jazz and
Blues Traditions
CHAPTERfi56
3. cool jazz
a. laid- back style, dense harmonies
b. lower volume levels, moderate tempos, new
lyricism
c. principal exponent: Miles Davis, trumpet
4. 1950s West Coast jazz
a. small group, cool- jazz style
b. mixed timbres, often without piano
c. contrapuntal improvisations
d. Dave Brubeck Quartet, Gerry Mulligan Quartet
B. Latin influence
1. 1930s and 40s Latin dance music (rumba),
mainstream
2. dance rhythms, percussion instruments (conga
drum, bongos, cowbells)
3. integral to late 1940s bebop style
4. Brazilian and Cuban ele ments in later de cades
OVERVIEW
This chapter discusses the intersections of blues, jazz, and the
offshoot genres of big- band swing, bebop, cool, and Latin jazz
in American popu lar music of the early and mid- twentieth
century. Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington are noted as impor-
tant figures in establishing the legacy of these traditions.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. To understand the musical traditions of blues and New
Orleans jazz as significant markers of early jazz in
Amer i ca
2. To recognize the music of Billie Holiday and Duke
Ellington as representative of blues and jazz styles of the
1930s and 1940s
3. To understand the later manifestations of jazz expression
in the genres of bebop, cool, and Latin jazz
LECTURE SUGGESTIONS
1. Play for students a major scale, a pentatonic scale (minor
form), and a blues scale, all in the same key. Ask students
to recognize the intervallic differences and similarities
among the scales. Emphasize the lowered third, fifth,
and seventh of the blues scale as “blue notes.”
2. To illustrate the musical connections between ragtime,
blues, and New Orleans jazz, play Scott Joplin’s piano
roll of Maple Leaf Rag followed by Jelly Roll Morton’s
version. Ask students to compare Morton’s version with
Joplin’s. Emphasize the improvisational approach and
a. masterful rhythmic flexibility
b. jazz embellishments: scoops, dips
4. chorus 4: clarinet improvisation
5. chorus 5: “gut bucket” trumpet (raspy tone
quality)
III. Duke Ellington and the Swing Era
A. Big band, or swing, era: 1930s and 40s
1. arranged and composed music
2. Duke Ellington’s big-band style won wider
audience
a. black and white audience
b. dance clubs, hotel ballrooms
B. Edward Kennedy (“Duke”) Ellington (1899–1974)
1. born in Washington, D. C.
2. jazz pianist, composer, arranger, band leader
a. famous recordings, film music
b. brought jazz art to new heights
3. major artistic figure of the Harlem Re nais sance
4. 1920s, The Washingtonians played in New York
jazz clubs
a. Cotton Club in Harlem
b. 1930s and 40s: toured Amer i ca and Eu rope
c. need for arranged, composed music
5. 1939, began collaboration with Billy Strayhorn
(1915–1967)
C. Take the A Train
1. Billy Strayhorn, composer, arranger
2. epitomizes swing style
3. rich orchestral palette
4. recording features Ellington on piano
D. LG 49: Strayhorn: Take the A Train, by the Duke
Ellington Orchestra (recorded 1941)
1. 32- bar song form (A- A- B- A), 3 choruses
2. piano introduction, syncopated chromatic motive
3. Chorus 1: saxophones pres ent melody
a. call- and- response: saxophones; muted trum-
pet and trombones
4. Chorus 2: muted trumpet, masterful improvisa-
tion, bent notes, shakes, glissandos
5. Chorus 3: unmuted trumpet solo
6. Coda: signature closing
a. two repetitions of A, softer closing with saxo-
phone riff
IV. Bebop, Cool, Latin Jazz
A. Rebellion against big- band jazz
1. late 1940s bebop (or bop): word mimics two- note
trademark phrase
a. fast tempos, complex harmonies
b. leaders of bebop movement:
i. Dizzy Gillespie, trumpet
ii. Charlie Parker, saxophone
iii. Thelonius Monk; piano
2. substyles of bebop: cool jazz, West Coast jazz,
hard bop, soul jazz
230 | Chapterfi56
a blues singer who sang in a jazz style (i.e., with instruments).
If this becomes a point of confusion for your class, address the
complexity of these competing yet compatible concepts and the
limitations that too- rigid genre bound aries place on capturing
the essence of these styles and art forms. For a thoughtful read-
ing of the intersections of blues and jazz, see Leroi Jones
(Amiri Baraka), Blues People (New York: William Morrow,
1963), Chapter6: “Primitive Blues and Primitive Jazz.”
SUPPLEMENTAL REPERTORY
SUPPLEMENTAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cohen, Harvey G. Duke Ellington’s Amer i ca. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 2010. A captivating biography with
the women who recorded them.
Giddins, Gary, and Scott Deveaux. Jazz, 2nded. (New York: Nor-
ton, 2015). A comprehensive history of jazz from the nineteenth
century to the beginning of the twenty- first.
YOUR TURN TO EXPLORE
lilting swing rhythm of Morton’s jazz version. Follow
these examples with a blues from Morton’s cata log (e.g.,
Honky Tonk Blues, Mamie’s Blues). Ask students to iden-
tify both the classic features of these blues (blue notes,
repetitive poetic- musical structure) as well as the jazz
components (improvisation, swing rhythm).
3. Have students form pairs and identify the role of each
instrument in Billie’s Blues. Ask the pairs to describe
how the instruments function in de pen dently and collec-
tively in the ensemble. How do the instruments interact
improvisation in this piece and emphasize them as a
common feature of 1940s big- band swing. Play other
versions of Take the A Train from the dif fer ent genres
discussed in this chapter. For a bebop version, see Clif-
ford Brown and the Max Roach Quintet’s recording from
ASSIGNMENT SUGGESTIONS
1. Listen to the lyr ics of Billie’s Blues. What is this song
about? How do the lyr ics reflect the meaning of “blues”?
How does the music reflect this meaning?
2. Compare the blues of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holi-
American Intersections: Jazz and Blues Traditions | 231
ready to the take the A train to Sugar Hill in Harlem. Fitzger-
ald wisely only sings the text all the way through in the first
chorus, allowing the harmonic structure of the 32- bar form
to provide a foundation for the choruses that follow: a scat
chorus, and then three choruses featuring virtuosic interplay
between the two trumpet soloists. At 4:11, the quick short dis-
coda, whereas Fitzgerald keeps us guessing up until the very
end. The homophonic syncopation in the brass and “train”
from the introduction returns, and Fitzgerald provides snip-
pets of the text to new melodies as the instruments fade
quickly into the distance. While both versions are creative,
Ellington’s band version seems more like a dance tune, while
Fitzgerald asks you to sit down and listen!
RUBRIC
— The student has answered, in an or ga nized way, the main
— The student provides details in terms of title, composer,
and performers.
— The student references specific places in the piece by
referring to the 32- bar form, whenever pos si ble, and
using timings to note specific moments in each
per for mance.
In this recording, Ella Fitzgerald takes on a dif fer ent vocal
jazz styling than that of Billie Holiday in Billie’s Blues, nota-
bly at the very beginning of the track, where she sings
improvised melodies in a back- and- forth dialogue with the
orchestra. She is singing in a scat style, using nonsense syl-
lables that serve to imitate the sounds of trains and of
“ANOTHER HEARING” SAMPLE
MINI- ESSAY & RUBRIC
Part 6, LG 49, p.fi346
Compare/contrast per for mances of Strayhorn, Take the A
Train (Ellington vs. Fitzgerald)
While both Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald maintain
some semblance of the 32- bar song form of Strayhorn’s Take
the A Train, Fitzgerald’s per for mance is freer in its elabora-
tion of the melodies, improvisational scat flourishes, and
it is no surprise that Fitzgerald’s cover opens the same way,
acting as a familiar signal for the tune. However, the exten-
sion of the introduction and more obvious mimicry of a train
lets the listener know that this is a version all her own. Inter-
spersing her scat- singing between the blaring “train whistle”
trumpets creates something almost like a tone poem in the
