Watch It -- Jazz: Swing, Pure Pleasure
Swing: Pure Pleasure
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Take a few minutes and watch the first hour of Ken Burn's production called "Swing: Pure Pleasure." It is part of a series he did on jazz. This episode is perhaps the best in the series. I like it for all the video clips and photos that Burns brings together to showcase many of the bands and important exponents of swing jazz.
Make note of the following items:
- How did Benny Goodman become popular and why?
- How did swing function as an anecdote for the Depression?
- How did swing rescue the recording industry?
- What made these bands so popular?
ALTERNATIVE SITE FOR "Swing: Pure Pleasure"
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTA5NzQ0MTQ4.html
Links to an external site. NOTE: This link has many advertisements preceding the video. The video links to a Chinese site, which uses Chinese subtitles. I have tried other sites but those usually take down the video at some point. That is unfortunate, but the Chinese site is stable and cost free. You may find alternative streaming sites that you can use, which may cost up to about $5 if you prefer to go that route.
Jimmie Lunceford (1902 - 1947) was considered to have the most "entertaining" show band during the swing era. He accomplished this by drawing upon the inspiration of Vaudeville and the idea of presenting jazz as a series of variety acts, one after another; and if one of these acts did not work (assuming you had several to draw upon) surely another would. In this clip, you will see examples of him utilizing the relatively new film media. He used superb musicians in his band and had them do little choreographed routines to showcase their talents. Lunceford's band embodies one of the hard rules of entertainment. That is, an entertainer has to reach out and give the audience what it wants. Lunceford did this better than any of his contemporaries. Contrast this approach with modern jazz, in which musicians gave up the idea of reaching out to entertain in favor of playing the music as artists, serious in their intent, and out to satisfy a single, most important critic--oneself, not necessarily the audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNfUtfdwTes
Cab Calloway (1907 - 1994) also represents one of the more consummate entertainers from the swing era. Like Lunceford, Calloway employed superb musicians. He was known also for jive talk, which was a type of underground slang that circulated among jazz musicians of the time as well as gangsters who frequented the clubs where jazz musicians performed in the 1930s.
Here is a clip of a performance in which Calloway features the Nicholas Brothers, who themselves grew up watching Vaudeville acts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8yGGtVKrD8
Links to an external site.
Here is another interesting clip (1933) which features Cab Calloway's voice in the the cartoon character Betty Boop in "The Old Man of the Mountain." Consider it an example of how jazz reached into American popular during the 1930s and early 1940s. Betty Boop was an iconic cartoon character inspired by the caricature of the "flapper" in the 1930s. According to Wikipedia flappers were
... a "new breed" of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoJkxNa6v14
Links to an external site.
Artie Shaw (born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky; May 23, 1910 – December 30, 2004)
The above examples, with the exception of Goodman, all lean more toward the entertainment side, more than the quality of the music. Shaw was known for being the best clarinetist in the technical sense to come out of the swing era. Here is a clip of Artie Shaw's band performing "Begin the Beguine," a popular tune written by Cole Porter. Shaw's approached the music without the hard driving rhythmic sensationalism of Goodman. His focus was more on delivering excellent, quality music. The only criticism to offer may be that his music was too "tight."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCXVxE_YeP4
Links to an external site.
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974)
Duke Ellington was another musician who considers the music more important than the vaudeville antics that many bands incorporated during the swing era. Ellington wrote and arranged great music for his band. The music he wrote was imaginative and exquisite. Here is a clip of him performing "Take the A Train," one of his signature songs. He named it after the train that took passengers from lower Manhattan to Harlem where in the 1930s the major jazz clubs were located. Ellington wrote over a 1000 tunes, and his career spans 50 years. He was one of the few big band leaders that maintained his band after WWII ended. Probably, Ellington's most important contribution is mention in Wikipedia:
Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big-band, and thanks to his eloquence and charisma, Ellington is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other traditional musical genres.