The Swing Movement of the 30's - Case Study Example

Full and number of The Swing Movement: Music of Yesterday, Influence of Today Young people today think aboutswing music, if they think about it at all, as the music of their grandparents. What one hears on the Grammies today hardly seems to resemble the sounds that emanate from grandfather’s old 78’s on the even older record player sitting in his living room. His contention that “those were the days” does not resonate to a new generation several times removed. And yet, when one analyzes the swing movement in the context of its time, the innovation and evolutionary movement it brought to American music can not be denied—an evolution still on going. Swing music, an extension of earlier blues and jazz movements, arrived on the scene in the early 1930s and by the mid-thirties had become all the rage. Strong rhythm sections of double bass and drums coupled with trumpets, trombones, saxophones, clarinets, and an occasional stringed instrument, emitted medium to fast tempos and swing rhythms enjoyably danceable. Soloists or band singers made the music not only danceable but pleasant to listen to as well. The evolution of swing can be traced from styles of jazz in the very early part of the century, particularly from New Orleans, through the nineteen twenties arranged with simple two-beat rhythms, at times including more complex improvisation popularized by early black musicians. There is little doubt that the genesis of swing was the black music of an earlier era. "This brings to mind the fact that prominent white orchestra leaders, concert singers and others are [were] making commercial use of Negro music in its various phases. Thats why they introduced "swing" which is not a musical form" (Handy 292). This criticism is disputed by many in the musical world. The swing band movement of the thirties can be directly traced to the latter part of the twenties, as larger orchestras using written arrangements began to emerge with their happy, freewheeling big band sound—a stylistic shift incorporating four beats combined with a smooth syncopated melodic feel. By the mid-nineteen thirties the sounds of the big bands and the era itself was in full swing. The popular style of bandleaders such as Benny Goodman and Count Basie became the driving force of American popular music. With the onset of bands like Goodman’s there arrived a further evolution to accommodate the musical style. Many earlier bands, adapting their compositional style to accommodate the new sounds, were including melodic arrangements. Some, given to earlier improvisational styles ala blues and original earlier jazz patterns, included less improv in their arrangement to please a dancing, listening public. Goodman, however, while going along with this trend to a degree, often allowed his drummer, the renowned Gene Krupa, to go off on wild riffs in the middle of an otherwise swing-style arrangement. A cut above the normal swing band, Goodman regularly incorporated more sophisticated elements of jazz and influences from other forms of music, including classical. A schooled classical and jazz musician, “Benny Goodman..."The King of Swing"...[was praised by].... Critics [who] also praised his playing of the clarinet. He was the first jazz clarinetist to play with symphony orchestras” (Birth of Jazz, Voice II par 12)  Other renowned big-band leaders of the Swing Era also made their mark, half of which in the 1930s. “Two of the seminal leaders during this period—Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington—had directed their own bands as early as 1923 and 1924, respectively.” (Oliphant 39). Few would survive past the 1930s except Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, and Harry James. Of the four, Basie is perhaps the most prominent. Whatever the reason for Goodman’s huge success, he is credited for paving the way in the thirties for black swing bands including Basie. Already known in the twenties for his innovative jazz style Basie and his orchestra succeeded in attracting white audiences with the same enthusiasm as Goodman. Following in the path of jazz great Bennie Moten’s original “concept of orchestral jazz” (Schuller 219), Basie made famous “an infectiously swing style” (Schuller 219) more jazz oriented and improvisational than that of his contemporaries. Rooted in the riff style of the 1930s swing-era big bands, well into the forties and fifties the “Basie orchestra played with the forceful drive and carefree swing of a small combo. They were considered a model for ensemble rhythmic conception and tonal balance (Count Basie Biography par 2). While compared as such to the great Duke Ellington’s band, it is Ellington who is more noted for his arrangements that while “moving around in that [a] restricted [swing format]” (Schuller 221), still managed to be musically creative in ways never achieved by the majority of white swing orchestras which played a more commercial brand of swing. The basis of this creativity is generally acknowledged to have been founded in the black musicians’ jazz roots in Harlem and Kansas City--the latter music, heavily jazz oriented, is considered by some to be the real roots of the swing movement. Regarding the music’s genesis, while some, short sited, trace the beginning of the swing era to the arrival of Goodman, jazz historians put swing’s actual birth to Chick Webbs stand in Harlem in 1931. And while Webb’s nightclub music failed to catch on at the outset of the Depression, he and another jazz icon, Fletcher Henderson, a bandleader, “lent his arrangement talent to Goodman” (Olifant 60). Goodman, popular with white audiences was receiving more publicity and Henderson’s arrangements added to his repertoire, providing what many today see as Goodman’s distinctive sound. Taking off, Goodman’s music and ‘borrowed’ sound remained at the forefront for the better part of ten years, aided by Henderson “hot swing” arrangements and boogie woogie style. (Olifant 61). Speaking of swing’s progress from black jazz of the twenties to the thirties onward, famed trumpet player Louis Armstrong once dismissed the progression into swing as inconsequential. "Ah, swing, well, we used to call it ragtime, then blues–then jazz. Now, its swing. White folks yoall sho is a mess. Swing" (Handy 292)! Yet an inconsistency appears here in what is described as Armstrong’s actual contribution to swing as one of its conductors from its original jazz form to swing. Armstrong’s virtuosity increased the importance of solo work in the era and “established the rhythmic approach to improvisation which became known as "swingin," (Olifant 62), and which led to swing as a specific genre of jazz. In the 1936 book Swing That Music, Armstrong discussed his personal experiences in jazz, as well as the evolution of jazz and the transition from jazz to swing. He takes care to differentiate between what he terms commercial “sweet” swing and the real thing, comparing the musician who plays for a popular orchestra with a writer who only writes for popular magazines “that keeps him writing the same thing year after year” (Armstrong 29). What Armstrong is discussing is the mundane nature of commercial music and its loose if any association with real swing music. Today music is differentiated in much the same way, causing many a musician to complain that selling commercially keeps them from being truly creative. As singer Joanie Mitchell describes it in her original song, “I Was a Free Man in Paris:” “stoking the star maker machinery behind the popular songs.” So we have Armstrong in his memoire does not deny the evolution of jazz into swing but questions the quality of the evolution in too many instances and by too many musicians interested only in being popular with the masses. What Armstrong is saying is that good swing musicians do come from jazz background, and good swing band leaders should want the excellent musicians that can go off the score, be original, and give the band a special unique flavor and sound. In Armstrong’s opinion, if either musicians or conductors do not understand this, they will produce commercial music not worthy of the musical form, swing. “And there are plenty of them out there” (Armstrong 40). Enhancing the critical view of the movement, like jazz, no doubt, swing evolved from African American music, and its impact on the overall American culture was so great that an entire musical era was named for it. Like the Jazz Age before it, black artists and musical art had once again exerted its influence on white society as no other black influence had ever succeeded in accomplishing anywhere. As is true with many cultural trends bemoaned by purists like Armstrong, by “...the late thirties—swing had itself become a commercially formularized music. As Duke Ellington put it in 1939: "Swing is stagnant" (Schuller 201), waiting to evolve? Up until the swing era, jazz had been held in high regard by the most serious musicians around the world, including classical composers like Stravinsky, who wrote his “Ebony Concerto” for jazz bandleader Woody Herman. It is described by the Center for Jazz Arts as "a jazz concerto grosso with a blues slow movement” (“Ebony Concerto” par 1). Swing, on the contrary, with its "dance craze" identity, ended up being regarded as a degeneration of pure jazz towards light entertainment, more a commercial industry to sell records to the masses than a form of art. Yet, as a valid evolutionary musical process, the big band swing formulas of arranged formats, no doubt to Armstrong’s liking, eventually gave way to musicians capable of significant solo work. (Schuller 221) As this evolution surely took place, to dismiss the notion that swing, in any form, evolved from jazz seems counterintuitive. Whether the original black artistic form was somehow misused and hijacked for white commercial purposes may be arguable. That popular bands and band leaders certainly promulgated the evolutionary process through swing is undeniable. That the movement originated in Dixieland seems logical from a musicology perspective. Its reach and popularization by an American public steeped in the Depression and threats of war can not be denied. From “commercially successful but bland, neo-jazz played by show and dance orchestras like Paul Whiteman...” to Glenn Miller and his experimentation with “a more orchestral range of colors...” swing arrangers including Fletcher Henderson “combined harmonic sophistication with danceable rhythms and compelling individual improvisations” (Between the Wars par 3). For many students of American music, "big band" swing represents a pinnacle of American musical form...Whatever its aesthetic merits, swing music characterized the popular culture of the 1930s. The music played constantly on records and on radio, and reached virtually every city in America through swing bands incessant touring. Historians have seen in "the swing era" not just music but culture, a distinctive, generational culture of swing jazz with its own dances, clothing styles, and most notably, slang. (Between the Wars par 3-4) Surely the 1930s and 1940s were ripe for the happy upbeat sounds of swing. Beginning with the Depression and moving into the 1940s pre- and World War II Era, swing lent itself to the upbeat rhythms, romantic ballads and bebop culture to a generation threatened by poverty and war. Rumbling of the Civil Rights movement were being heard in the South, the birthplace of blues and jazz, and demands for black recognition everywhere, including the arts, may have had a distinct bearing on the wide acceptance of swing as an evolution of jazz. From the jazz crazed roaring twenties and prohibition to the desperation of the Dust Bowl to rumors of war in Europe, swing as a natural child of the jazz area was happy and kept people’s minds off of the cold realities of life. Conclusion Undoubtedly, true to jazz principles [always and sometimes] or not, big bands and swing were the focal point of a Swing Era which became as popular as it did because of its relationship to dancing. Admittedly, “swing bands did not always play jazz... but were approached from a jazz viewpoint” (Gitler 3). Given that, one might argue that the movement was not entirely evolved from jazz, but it was evolved. Gitler states firmly that “Swing , like the styles of jazz that preceded it, was essentially a black expression” (3) brought to popularity in the 1930s by mostly white orchestras. Yet, in a short period of time jazz oriented black orchestras had become popular too, playing an additionally evolved form of swing closer to the originality and sophistication of jazz in its purest form. And though Benny Goodman may have been dubbed “The King of Swing,” others probably playing a closer and truer version of the form were more worthy of the title, depending upon how one views swing. Young black musicians in the 1940s, bored with what they saw as uninnovative and restrictive music of white swing, were striking out on their own, thus bringing a whole new swing form to American culture, perhaps without them even knowing it. “Tired of the repetition of the riff-derived arrangements and lack of solo space in the big bands” (Gitlan 3), young musicians were striking out on their own, creating and performing bebop in clubs. While swing as popularly conceived and played by white orchestras might not have represented the evolution of jazz in its purest form, it can be viewed as a necessary step in the process—albeit a possible sidestep. Yet musicological lines from bebop to the rap and hip hop of today can be clearly drawn. The same can be said for swing as a link in the musical chain both in its commercial big band and jazz oriented purist forms. Works Cited Armstrong, Louis. Swing That Music. New York: DeCapo Press, 1993. www.google.com “Between the Wars. Tap Your Knowledge Box: The Swing Era.” (no date). Accessed November 28, 2010 at: http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/hist409/swing.html “Birth of Jazz: How an American Musical Form Came into the World.” August, 7, 2005 on VOANews.com. Accessed November 30, 2010 at: http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/a-23-2005-08-07-voa6-83124102.html “Count Basie Biography 1904-1984.” 1994-2010 from Encyclopedia Brittanica. Accessed November 30, 2010 on: http://www.biography.com/articles/Count-Basie-9201255?part=2 “Ebony Concerto” by Stravinsky on Center for Jazz Arts. Accessed November 27, 2010 on: http://www.centerforjazzarts.org/classical_2c.html Gitler, Ira. Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Handy, William Christopher. Father of the Blues. New York: MacMillan, 1941. Oliphant, Dave. The Early Swing Era, 1930 to 1941. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Schuller, Gunther. The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Read More