Billy Wilder's 1964 film Kiss Me Stupid re-used some Gershwin songs used previously (during the composer's lifetime) and introduced some new ones (posthumously). The new songs were released to the public for the first time from the composer's musical notebooks.

Works: Gershwin: 'S Wonderful,I'm a Poached Egg,All the Livelong Day,Sophia.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Film

Contributed by: John Andrew Johnson

Current copyright law discourages the vital reinterpretation of existing music that defines jazz aesthetics. It privileges the composer of a borrowed work as the sole owner, regardless of the meaningful and original transformations a new musician may bring to or derive from an existing chord progression or tune. Within the framework of current copyright law, the kind of borrowing, referencing, and reworking of existing music that characterizes the evolution of jazz is considered unoriginal and thus not up to the standards required to adhere to the law. Revisitation is essential to jazz, ranging from oblique reference to the arrangement and performance of standard songs. Therefore, a narrower definition of what is legally “derivative” must be introduced into copyright law, in order to protect and valuate the highly original contributions of jazz musicians who generate new works and interpolations from existing music. Given the musical originality of many such interpolations, copyright law should consider these to be transformative, and thus not only protected under fair use analysis but also privileged as original compositions, protected under the law. Moving forward, similar considerations may be applied to digital music compilation, since the ability to transform sources and create collages generates new modes of meaning in a similar way to jazz.

Works: John Coltrane (performer): Summertime (1944); Art Tatum (arranger and performer): Cherokee (1946); Live Crew: Oh, Pretty Woman (1951); Miles Davis (arranger and performer): Love for Sale (1951-53); Keith Jarrett (performer): I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good (1959).

Sources: George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin: “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess (1944), I Got Rhythm (1948-49); Ray Noble: Cherokee (1946); Vincent Youmans and Irving Caesar: Tea for Two (1948); Joseph Kosma and Jacques Prévert: Autumn Leaves (1948); Roy Orbison: Oh, Pretty Woman (1951); Cole Porter: Love for Sale (1951-52); Duke Ellington and Paul Francis Webster: I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good (1959).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Molly Covington

Current copyright laws do not adequately support the forms of musical borrowing prevalent in hip-hop. The use of pre-existing recordings in hip-hop samples simultaneously violates the protected rights of both the existing musical composition and the recording of that musical composition. Sampling continues to be viewed as theft rather than a source of innovation within music. Aesthetic values prevalent in hip-hop, such as oral tradition, textual emphasis, repetition, polyrhythm, and borrowing, need to be situated in a broader context of musical aesthetics and, consequently, legal treatment of borrowing practices. Treating hip-hop as theft or plagiarism robs it of its rightful place within the historical context of musical borrowing in many different kinds of music. Modifications to current copyright laws, such as payment structures and differentiation of different types of sampling, are necessary to address the legality of hip-hop sampling.

Works: Irving Gordon (songwriter), Natalie Cole (performer): Unforgettable (562); Beastie Boys: Pass the Mic (570-72); N.W.A.: 100 Miles and Runnin' (574-76); Biz Markie: Alone Again (580-81); Handel: Israel in Egypt (601-603, 610).

Sources: James Newton: Choir (570-72); George Clinton (songwriter), Funkadelic (performers): Get off Your Ass and Jam (574-76); Gilbert O'Sullivan: Alone Again (Naturally) (580-81); Dionigi Erba: Magnificat (601-603, 610).

Index Classifications: General, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Amanda Sewell

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

An analysis of Leonard Bernstein’s numerous arrangements of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which he made throughout his career, illustrates Bernstein’s controversial conviction that the piece was structurally flexible. They also reflect Bernstein’s ambivalent relationship with the piece and with Gershwin, which is also evident in his interviews and essays. Bernstein’s earliest arrangement was written in 1937, when he was still a teenager, and his 1959 recording of the performance with the BBC is one of the best-known versions of the piece today. Certain omissions, stylistic aberrations, reorchestrations, and score annotations in Bernstein’s arrangements offer clues to his developing relationship with the piece and potentially to which editions of the score he knew best.

Works: Leonard Bernstein (arranger): Rhapsody in Blue [1959 version] (75-77, 90-92), Rhapsody in Blue [1937 version] (82-89), Rhapsody in Blue [1938 version] (90).

Sources: George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (73-96).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Molly Covington

By the 1960s, Rhapsody in Blue was generally not considered authentic to the African American jazz tradition, as it had become a standard of the more classicized genre of “symphonic jazz.” Duke Ellington was one of the few African American composers to engage with the piece regularly over the course of his career, allowing us to trace his relationship to the music over time. On his 1963 album Will Big Bands Ever Come Back?, Ellington and co-arranger Billy Strayhorn sought to create a more authentic, less classicized version of the piece through the reorchestration and reorganization of musical themes and by recasting the piano part in a more typical jazz role, comping chord changes and taking improvised solos. This 1963 arrangement stands apart from Ellington’s earlier arrangements of the piece. The earliest, from 1925, differs little from Ferde Grofé’s popular 1924 arrangement for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, and it was likely thought of as a crowd-pleaser in a time when the Ellington band worked primarily on tips. His 1932 arrangement was likely also composed to please audiences, but here Ellington is more harmonically and thematically experimental, while maintaining the overall structure of the original. Ellington’s 1963 version was described by David Schiff as a “brilliant act of deconstruction—and renewal.” Ellington and Strayhorn’s arrangement was meant to be a historical retrospective as much as anything, and it achieves its historicism through stylistic allusions to earlier styles of both “black” and “white” jazz. But an even more telling historical narrative of jazz at large may be traced in the stylistic progression of Ellington’s three arrangements.

Works: Duke Ellington (arranger and performer): One O’Clock Jump (97), Woodchopper’s Ball (97), Rhapsody in Blue [1925 version] (101-3), Rhapsody in Blue [1932 version] (104-10); Duke Ellington (arranger and performer) and Billy Strayhorn (arranger): Rhapsody in Blue [1963 version] (110-17); Robert Sadin (arranger) and Marcus Roberts (performer): Rhapsody in Blue (115).

Sources: George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (97-115); Count Basie: One O’Clock Jump (97); Woody Herman: Woodchopper’s Ball (97); Ferde Grofé (arranger): Rhapsody in Blue (101, 107).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Molly Covington

George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue has been used in many visual contexts such as films, television programs, and advertisements, and in the process has gained a sort of inherent meaning associating it with success, the American Dream, New York, and modernity. The visual usage of the music then capitalizes on these new meanings. It was Woody Allen’s film Manhattan in 1979 where the piece, along with other Gershwin songs, was strongly associated with New York City, later reinforced by Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead and Disney’s Fantasia 2000. Tied to the connection with New York, the piece is also an emblem for success. The association with success is then further reaffirmed by the usage of Rhapsody in Blue in United Airlines’s longstanding advertising campaign. At first, the piece was used to evoke class and elegance, but over the course of the ad campaign the piece began to signify the success of an American-based airline as the commercials couched the music in different styles like East Asian and western fiddle two-step. Later advertisements in the early 2000s used Rhapsody to harken back to United’s past during a period of economic downturn and bankruptcy and focus on an uplifting and rebirth of the airline. United also used the music in a physical space in the O’Hare airport terminal to emphasize the “fun” of air travel, though it was far removed from the original work.

Works: Irving Rapper (director): Rhapsody in Blue (149-50); Woody Allen (director): Manhattan (149-53); United Airlines: advertising campaign 1987-present (“Nation’s Business”, “Pacific Song”, “Playing Our Song”, “Mileage Plus”, “Rising”, “It’s Time to Fly”, “Interview”, “Dragon”, “Heart”) (149, 158-73); Eric Goldberg, et al (directors): Fantasia 2000 (149, 153); Martin Scorsese (director): Bringing Out the Dead (153); Mark Kirkland (director): The Simpsons: “Elementary School Musical” (155-56); Brad Falchuk (director): Glee: “New York” (155-56); Baz Luhrmann (director): The Great Gatsby (156-58); Gary Fry: Rhapsody Ambiance (170-72).

Sources: Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (148-73).

Index Classifications: 1900s, 2000s, Jazz, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

In a study of George Gershwin's historical relationship with jazz, it is suggested that the composer's songs continue to be attractive to jazz musicians because of their rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and formal characteristics. For instance, Gershwin tended to repeat notes in his melodies, allowing for the performer to embellish harmonically and rhythmically, as was exemplified by Billy Holiday's recording of Oh, Lady Be Good! In other instances, Gershwin songs are favored because their harmonies can be separated from their melodies, as in Nice Work If You Can Get It. Songs like Somebody Loves Me and The Man I Love contain repeated four-measure phrases, a characteristic musical succinctness that improvisers have long found inviting.

Works: George Gershwin: How Long Has This Been Going On? (188, 200), I Got Rhythm (188, 190, 201), They Can't Take That Away From Me (188-90, 200), A Foggy Day (188-90, 198, 201), Fascinating Rhythm (188,199), Oh, Lady Be Good! (189-90, 193-94, 196-97, 200), Nice Work If You Can Get It (190, 195-96, 198, 201), Bess, You Is My Woman Now (193, 200), The Main I Love (193-94, 197, 200-201), But Not For Me (193), Summertime (195,197, 201), Embraceable You (197, 199, 200-201), Somebody Loves Me (197-98, 200-201), Liza (198), Someone To Watch Over Me (198), Soon (198), Our Love is Here To Stay (198), 'S Wonderful (200).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Popular

Contributed by: Eytan Uslan

Analyzing the music of Billy Strayhorn introduces many issues related to historicizing race, sexuality, and gender identity in the context of mid-century jazz. Two works in particular—Strayhorn’s songs for Federico García Lorca’s The Love of Don Perlimplin for Belisa in Their Garden and Strayhorn and Duke Ellington’s adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite—involve a fictive collaboration with gay figures from the past and address issues of black queer identity and desire. In fall 1953, Strayhorn composed four pieces for a production of Perlimplin by the Artist’s Theatre collective in Greenwich Village. Strayhorn’s music effectively sets the queer topics of Lorca’s text and the Artist’s Theatre production. Strayhorn’s collaboration with Ellington on an arrangement of The Nutcracker Suite to be released as an LP in 1960 also deals with issues of queer aesthetics. For one, working with a removed (dead) collaborator points to the asynchronicity or queer temporality that shaped Strayhorn’s work. Although some critics panned the LP as a crude parody, Strayhorn’s reworking of Tchaikovsky’s music is sophisticated in its relocation and translation of the original text. For instance, in the Arabian Dance movement, Arabesque Cookie, Strayhorn transforms Tchaikovsky’s sonic signifiers of exotica into modern jazz signifiers, akin to tunes like Caravan. Arabesque Cookie can also be likened to the blend of primitivism and stylized modernity of the queer black dandy as well as Afro-Orientalist imagery in Hollywood films. Overall, Strayhorn’s work on Perlimplin and his arrangement of The Nutcracker Suite provide a new queer historical framework for understanding his position in the Ellington Orchestra and the way his personal relationship with Ellington is portrayed in literature.

Works: Billy Strayhorn (with Duke Ellington): The Nutcracker Suite (793-813)

Sources: Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker Suite (793-813)

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Matthew Van Vleet

A dynamic or cyclical notion of influence allows for a more sophisticated approach to understanding the relationship between twentieth-century classical music and Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. While numerous scholars have generated a long list of influences to Davis’s album, multiple techniques and sources invite further consideration. There are three categories of art music that serve as sources to Kind of Blue: late-romantic and impressionist music, American classical modernism, and Stravinsky ballets. In the first category, Rachmaninoff’s and Ravel’s works include general harmonic, intervallic (specifically concerning vamp patterns), and tonal elements that can be found in the songs So What and Flamenco Sketches, while Khachaturian’s use of non-diatonic melodies over tonal harmonies can be found across Davis’s entire album. In the second category, widely spaced leaps and upper-register sonorities from Copland’s music of the 1940s can be found in So What. In the final category, Stravinsky's ballets provide a procedure of fragmentary melodic variation that relates to Davis’s own “melodic variation” in his solos on every song. That these particular classical styles influence Kind of Blue on different levels indicates that “modal” jazz is a meaningful term to describe the album's musical language.

Works: Miles Davis: Kind of Blue.

Sources: Ravel: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (53-56), String Quartet in F Major (56-57); Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 40 (53-57); Khachaturian: Gayane Suites (57-58); Debussy: Images No. 1 (“Reflets dans l'eau”) (58); Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man (58), Appalachian Spring; Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (59-60), Petrushka (59-60).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein

Rap music, and in particular the practice of sampling in rap music, can be grounded within a larger context of African-American interest in imitation. Early examples of imitation in slave culture suggest interests similar to sampling, namely the desire to reconfigure aspects of dominant culture into strictly African-American forms. Sampling can be seen as a way to archive interactive historical material. Rap artists use new language to describe their use of samples, and acknowledge their sources to avoid legal trouble. EMPD, for example, thanks their sources and introduces their raps by indicating which pre-existing compositions the new rap embodies.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Felicia Miyakawa

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Within a study of Scott Joplin and his compositions, several cases of borrowing or modeling are explored. The most imitated Joplin piece was Maple Leaf Rag, his biggest hit. Also imitated to some extent were Elite Syncopations,Palm Leaf Rag, and Original Rags. Many imitations were little more than plagiarisms. Joplin's imitations of himself, however, were brilliant. Gladiolous Rag,Rose Leaf Rag, and Cascades preserve what Joplin apparently felt were attractive structural elements of the Maple Leaf Rag. Also noteworthy is the possibility of Irving Berlin's Alexander's Ragtime Band borrowing from Joplin's Treemonisha.

Works: Settle: X.L. Rag (51, 68); Etter: Whoa! Maud (52, 69); Butler: The Tantalizer (67); Donaldson: Latonia Rag (68); Nonnahs: That's Goin' Some (68); Tournade: Easy Money (113); Scott: A Summer Breeze (113); Morton: Fuzzy Wuzzy Rag (113-14); Verge: Who You Heiffer (131); Joplin: Cascades (136-38), Gladiolous Rag (169-72), Rose Leaf Rag (169-72); Berlin: Alexander's Ragtime Band (210-12).

Sources: Joplin: Original Rags (50-51), Maple Leaf Rag (67-69, 136, 152, 169-70, 179, 182-83), The Entertainer (108-10), A Breeze From Alabama (110-12), Elite Syncopations (113-14), Palm Leaf Rag (130-32), Treemonisha (210-12).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Eytan Uslan

Louis Armstrong's prolifically wide-ranging tastes regarding art and music find their outlet in his incorporation of operatic fragments in his improvised solos. Armstrong was inclined to imitate operatic gestures such as recitative style, as exemplified by his solo in Blue Again. Armstrong also played operatic cadenza-like passages in certain breaks, such as in I Can't Give You Anything But Love (234). In other instances, Armstrong quoted operatic themes, such as Verdi's Rigoletto quartet and "Vesti la giubba" from Pagliacci. By quoting Pagliacci and Rigoletto, he was showing that his artistic influences were not limited to the pantheon of New Orleans cornet virtuosos of the early twentieth century. Armstrong did not distinguish between "high" and "low" art; it was all jazz to him, and his quotations of well-known music are a demonstration of this belief.

Works: Louis Armstrong: Cornet/Trumpet solos on Araby (220), Blue Again (222, 235), New Orleans Stomp (223), Dinah (223-24, 234, 236), Tiger Rag (225), New Tiger Rag (225); Armstrong and Bechet: Jazz improvisations on Kansas City Man Blues (228), Texas Moaner Blues (229); Louis Armstrong: Cornet/Trumpet solos on Potato Head Blues (229); Armstrong and Bechet: Jazz improvisations on Cake Walking Babies from Home (230, 234); Louis Armstrong: Cornet/Trumpet solos on West End Blues (231-36); Armstrong and Bechet: Jazz improvisations on Mandy Make Up Your Mind (232), Early Every Morn (233); Louis Armstrong: Cornet/Trumpet solos on Beau Koo Jack (235), Once in a While (235), Can't Give You Anything But Love (235).

Sources: Verdi: Rigoletto (218, 222-23, 231-32); Gounod: Faust (220); Ponchielli: Dance of the Hours (221), Gershwin: Lady Be Good! (223); Sindig: Rustle of Spring (225); Leoncavallo: Pagliacci (225); Porter Steele: High Society (227, 232); Bizet: Carmen (231); Eva Dell'Acqua: Villanelle (232-33); Suppé: Poet and Peasant Overture (233).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Eytan Uslan, Marc Geelhoed

Critics of Cecil Taylor’s recordings have incorrectly accused him of abandoning tonality and emphasizing texture in his improvisations. Pitch-class set analysis of Taylor’s improvisations, however, reveals a much closer connection between Taylor and his predecessors than previously acknowledged. Two recordings of Thelonious Monk and Denzil Best’s Bemsha Swing, one by Monk in 1955 and one by Taylor in 1958, demonstrate this close connection. Monk uses only a small collection of pitch-class sets and pitch-class operators for many of his improvisations, all in the context of standard bebop extended tonality. Taylor uses sets that imply traditional jazz scales and derive from Monk’s improvisations. By applying pitch-class operations, particularly multiplication, to these sets, Taylor gradually removes them from a tonal context.

Works: Thelonious Monk and Denzel Best (composers) and Cecil Taylor (performer): Bemsha Swing (219-31).

Sources: Thelonious Monk and Denzil Best (composers) and Thelonious Monk (performer): Bemsha Swing (207-19).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein

An accomplished jazz composer and arranger who is little-known today, Melba Liston was able in her arrangements of existing compositions to render dramatically altered versions of existing works that highlight her own compositional ingenuity—namely, her unique harmonic and melodic language as well as her command of sophisticated motivic material. Her original compositions incorporate elements from other musical traditions, particularly African rhythms. Geof Bradfield’s 2012 composition Melba! takes Liston’s music as a model in a variety of ways. Bradfield sought, through careful analytical study of Liston’s musical scores (drawn from the CBMR archives), to take her use of African rhythms and themes as a model for his own compositions. He also sought to identify works by Liston that he could revise, arrange, or orchestrate. Both of these initiatives began with the analytical study presented here, which has resulted in a musical composition by Bradfield that not only borrows directly from Liston (using fragments of her music as source material), but programmatically celebrates her contribution to jazz. More broadly, Melba! incorporates stylistic elements drawn from a survey of Liston’s original compositions, as well as her collaborations with figures like Dizzy Gillespie and Randy Weston.

Works: Geof Bradfield: Melba!

Sources: Mary Lou Williams: Virgo (87); Melba Liston: “Bantu” from Uhuru Africa (88-92), African Sunrise (89-92), Just Waiting (90-92), Len Sirrah (92); Melba Liston and Elvin Jones: And Then Again (92); Melba Liston and Randy Weston: Cry Me Not (93).

Index Classifications: 2000s, Jazz

Contributed by: Molly Covington

Billie Holiday was quoted as saying that she wanted the “feeling” of Bessie Smith with the “style” of Louis Armstrong. Two Holiday songs, Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness if I Do and I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues, serve as clear homages respectively to Smith and Armstrong, each of whom recorded the songs well before Holiday. Both the style and feeling are identifiable by three vocal metrics: quality (dynamics/intensity), space (range/range-based timbre), and articulation (enunciation/rhythmic emphasis). Detailed transcriptions of the Smith, Armstrong, and Holiday recordings of these song, including dynamics, bending of pitches, and rhythmic manipulation show not only that Holiday was strongly influenced by her predecessors, but also that elements of vocal quality, space, and articulation that Holiday actively wanted to emulate appear in her performances of these songs.

Works: Porter Grainger and Everett Robbins (composers) and Billie Holiday (performer): Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness if I Do; Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler (composers) and Billie Holiday (performer): I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues.

Sources: Porter Grainger and Everett Robbins (composers) and Bessie Smith (performer): Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness if I Do; Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler (composers) and Louis Armstrong (performer): I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein

As a well-constructed song, Cole Porter's What Is This Thing Called Love? became a popular source tune for jazz musicians. James P. Johnson's 1930 recording displays stride and boogie-woogie patterns, and only slightly modifies the chord progression. More drastic alterations are exhibited by Clifford Brown and Sonny Rollins in their 1956 recording with the Max Roach Quartet. In this case, the tune was highly ornamented and expanded, non chord-tones were emphasized during solos, and the tempo was twice as fast as prior versions. Brief analyses of treatments by Sidney Bechet, James "Bubber" Miley, Ella Fitzgerald, John Hardee, Bill Evans, Marian MacPartland, and Thad Jones attest to the variety of ways in which jazz musicians developed different perspectives on What Is This Thing Called Love?

Works: Porter: What Is This Thing Called Love?

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Eytan Uslan

The production of printed stock arrangements of jazz music in the 1920s and 1930s has typically been downplayed in jazz history compared to improvisation, but it is no less important to the dissemination of jazz. Stock arranger Archie Bleyer is remembered by black and white musicians alike as producing some of the finest jazz stocks of the era. By the late 1920s, stock arrangements produced by large publishing houses had developed a consistent formula and allowed dance bands to quickly incorporate new popular tunes into their repertoire. Bleyer, who went on to have a long industry career as a bandleader and arranger, produced many influential stock arrangements and is credited with being one of the first arrangers to regularly add sixths to chord voicings. His stock arrangement of Business in F, an original composition, exemplifies his incorporation of stylistic elements from both black and white jazz bands. His stock for Maceo Pinkard and Mitchell Parrish’s Is That Religion was another popular selection recorded by several different bands. In his arrangement, Bleyer adapts the faux-gospel Tin Pan Alley song into a hot jazz orchestration, adding spaces for solos and syncopated riffs. The three recordings of Is That Religion by Billy Cotton, Duke Ellington, and Cab Calloway realize the same arrangement in radically different ways, again highlighting the dynamic relationship between arrangement and improvisation in early jazz music.

Works: Archie Bleyer (arranger): Is That Religion? (153-58)

Sources: Maceo Pinkard and Mitchell Parrish: Is That Religion (153-58)

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Matthew Van Vleet

Since its premiere in Gershwin's 1930 musical Girl Crazy, the song I Got Rhythm has been performed, arranged, and recorded countless times. In these subsequent realizations of Gershwin's song three approaches can be identified in which the original material is treated as (1) a song played and sung by popular performers, (2) a jazz standard, a piece known and frequently played by musicians in the jazz tradition, and (3) a musical structure, a harmonic framework upon which jazz instrumentalists have built new compositions. These new compositions, called contrafacts, include examples such as Duke Ellington's 1940 Cotton Tail, Charlie Parker's 1940 Steeplechase, Parker and "Dizzy" Gillespie's 1945 Shaw 'Nuff, and many others. Tables listing titles of Parker I Got Rhythm contrafacts and recordings of I Got Rhythm contrafacts (up to 1942) are included.

Works: Ellington: Cotton Tail (229-30), Parker: Steeplechase (232), Red Cross (232), Moose the Mooche (233), An Oscar For Treadwell (233); Parker and Gillespie: Shaw 'Nuff (239).

Sources: Gershwin: I Got Rhythm (213-44).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Popular

Contributed by: Scott Grieb

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Although Thelonious Monk is primarily recognized for his original compositions, a look at his engagement with popular song can yield insight into his musical development during the early 1940s. It was during this time that Monk composed many of his later-recorded originals, and yet as a house pianist at Minton’s, Monk probably spent much of his time playing with other soloists on standard tunes. Monk’s application of idiosyncratic dissonances and tritone substitutions to songs as familiar as Lulu’s Back in Town and There’s Danger in Your Eyes, Cherie go beyond parody or eccentricity. They also cannot be thought of strictly as a modernist revolt against the commercialism of Tin Pan Alley “tunesmiths.” Instead, Monk’s arrangements of standards, both in studio recordings and live performance, can be regarded as interpretations. As such, they expose the seeds of his compositional style and serve as an autobiographical inscription of his Tin Pan Alley roots.

Though it is possible that Monk developed his personal style of composition and then applied that style to standards, it is equally possible that he derives his harmonic style from his reshaping of standards, given that the standards he chose to perform and record often lend themselves to Monk’s preferred reharmonizations. This is the case in his 1971 performance of Gershwin’s Nice Work If You Can Get It, in which Monk aggressively foregrounds dissonances which were subtle in the original. In either case, it benefits our understanding of Monk as a composer to acknowledge his true affection for popular song (as opposed to a modernist revolt against it), and it is likely that this affection is common among other bebop artists as well.

Works: Thelonious Monk (performer): Lulu’s Back in Town [1959 version] (170), There’s Danger in Your Eyes, Cherie [1959 version] (170), Tea for Two [1956 version] (170), Sweet Loraine [1941 version] (171-72), Nice Work if You Can Get It [1941, 1971 versions] (174-77), Ghost of a Chance [1957 version] (177-78), April in Paris [1957 version] (178-83); Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie: Koko (172-73).

Sources: Harry Warren (music) and Al Dubin (text): Lulu’s Back in Town (170); Vincent Youmans (music) and Irving Caesar (text): Tea for Two (170); Cliff Burwell (music) and Mitchell Parish (text): Sweet Loraine (171-72); Ray Noble: Cherokee (172-73); George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin: Nice Work if You Can Get It (174-77); Victor Yang: (I Don’t Stand a) Ghost of a Chance (177-78); Vernon Duke: April in Paris (179-81).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Molly Covington

This book examines the development of bebop from artistic, social, and commercial perspectives, beginning in the Swing Era and progressing through the 1940s. The repertory at jam sessions in the early 1940s was based primarily on a few familiar chord progressions, notably the blues, Gershwin's I Got Rhythm, and a handful of other pop song "standards" of which How High the Moon and Whispering were among the most frequently used. The economics of the recording industry promoted the composition of new melodies over existing chord progressions; having a new, colorful title would attract buyers, and by calling it a new work the record company could avoid paying royalties to the copyright owners of the song from which the chord progression was taken. In addition to using existing chord progressions in new songs, bebop musicians often borrowed material from each other and incorporated it into new compositions and arrangements. Moreover, musical borrowing in the form of quotation within improvised solos was both a ubiquitous and a controversial presence in bebop. Charlie Parker frequently inserted clearly recognizable quotations from jazz or popular sources into solos in live performance, but some performers criticized Parker for diluting his music. In other instances, European art music directly influenced jazz: stride pianists used materials from opera or "light classics" in a new idiom. For some bebop musicians, borrowing (or at least recognizing borrowings) was less important. Struggles over the definition of "the work" pervade any discussion of quotation in jazz, and such discussion must recognize the multiple "composers" at work in a jazz performance: the nominal composer who notates a song, and the improviser who re-composes the score in live performance.

Works: Thelonious Monk: The Theme (224), Rhythm-a-Ning (224), 52nd Street Theme (292), Hackensack (403): Dizzy Gillespie: Salt Peanuts (292, 421), Things to Come (433): Coleman Hawkins: Mop Mop (292, 306-7), Rainbow Mist (309), Father Co-operates (326), Bean at the Met (326), On the Bean (330), Stumpy (330), Rifftide (390), Bean Stalking (394), Too Much of a Good Thing (401), Bean Soup (403-5), Hollywood Stampede (404-5); Charlie Parker: Red Cross (307, 374); Benny Harris: Ornithology (323, 382); Howard McGhee: New Orleans Jump (362), Sportsman?s Hop (391, 393); Billy Eckstine: Good Jelly Blues (341-3, 424); Jerome Kern: All the Things You Are (342-43, 424).

Sources: George Gershwin: I Got Rhythm (203, 224, 292, 305, 306-7, 326, 374, 421), Lady Be Good (390, 403); Nancy Hamilton and Morgan Lewis: How High the Moon (305, 323, 326, 382); John Schonberger, Malvin Schonberger, and Richard Coburn: Whispering (305, 330); Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton, and Johnny Green: Body and Soul (309); Dizzy Gillespie: Salt Peanuts (326-28), Be-Bop (362, 404-5, 433), Groovin' High (403-5); Rachmaninoff: Prelude in C-Sharp Minor (342-43, 424); Igor Stravinsky: Petrouchka (360n); Benny Goodman, Edgar Sampson, Clarence Profit, and Walter Hirsch: Lullaby in Rhythm (391, 393); Jesse A. Stone: Idaho (394); Kay Swift and Paul James: Fine and Dandy (401); Ben Bernie, Ken Casey, and Maceo Pinkard: Sweet Georgia Brown (404-5); Benny Harris: Ornithology (404-5); Vincent Youmans and Irving Caesar: Tea for Two (405); Billy Eckstine: Good Jelly Blues (424).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Paul Killinger, Amy Weller

Index Classifications: General, 1900s, 2000s, Jazz, Popular

The myth that the black spiritual was completely derived from white folk hymns is one of the most pervasive in the literature about black folk music. Early studies of black folk music such as Richard Wallaschek's Primitive Music (1893) and George Pullen Jackson's White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands (1933) relied solely on transcriptions, a process which does not account for performative and aural contexts of folk music. In effect, these studies mistakenly equated transcriptions with the music as it was performed and thus tacitly assumed that any deviation from the diatonic scale was due to a performer's misinterpretation of music of white origins. These analyses do not account for the process of syncretism which had to have taken place between African- and European-derived musical elements in the development of the black spiritual.

Index Classifications: 1800s, 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Amanda Sewell

Barry Manilow and Adrienne Anderson wrote two versions of the 1975 hit "Could it be Magic." The first version was intended for the LP and FM radio airplay, while a substantially shortened second version was intended for a 45 single and AM radio airplay. "Could it be Magic" quotes intact a substantial amount of Chopin's Prelude Op. 28, No. 20 in C minor; the first version of the song begins with measures one through eight of the prelude and ends with measures nine through thirteen of the prelude. There are several possible reasons for quoting Chopin: this could be simply another example of the growing number of rock musicians who quote classical music; the composers seem to share a fascination for modal ambiguity with Chopin; Chopin's preludes have become part of a narrow canon of classical music known to composers of all musical genres; and the constant demand for novelty in the popular music industry has encouraged popular music artists to draw from other styles to ensure quick composition. The two versions of Manilow's song allow us to examine how a popular artist responds to the demands of different media.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Felicia Miyakawa

Jazz today can be considered part of the avant garde movement of the early twentieth century. One of the common characteristics of the avant garde is pastiche, a characteristic jazz shares, particularly in improvisatory virtuosic solos. The purpose of such pastiche is to call into question the distinction between high and low art. Soloists such as James Moody, Lester Young, and Louis Armstrong regularly quoted other works from both the classical tradition and the popular tradition. Juxtaposing a jazz melody with a quotation from the classical tradition provides irony for the listener, who will understand at least that the quotation comes from an entirely different genre of music. A list of several examples is included.

Works: James Moody, Body and Soul (92, 104); Louis Armstrong, Ain't Misbehavin' (93); more in footnotes.

Sources: Percy Grainger, Country Garden; George Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Felicia Miyakawa

Jazz has always been a music of mixture that borrows from other traditions, encompassing both free and fusion styles. Examples of musical borrowing and reworking are more overt in jazz fusion which draws on references from rock, popular, ethnic, and classical traditions, creating hybrid jazz styles that appealed to wider audiences. Miles Davis played an important role in propagating jazz fusion with his commercially successful album Bitches Brew (1970), which combined rock and jazz idioms. Davis continued the fusion aesthetic in his work for the film Jack Johnson, in which his producer producer Teo Macero spliced bits from Davis’s performance of Shh/Peaceful and inserted them into Davis’s Yesternow for the score to achieve a new and disjunct sound. Sampling proved a commercially viable technique for other groups as well, including A Tribe Called Quest and Us3. However, these bands were more parasitical than fusion (unlike Miles Davis) because they stole catchy licks and grooves from older jazz styles to use as raw material, rather than sources of style or new ideas.

Works: Miles Davis: Yesternow (327); Jaco Pastorius (performer): Donna Lee (330), God Bless the Child (332); A Tribe Called Quest: The Low End Theory (334); Bill Laswell: Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969-1974 (335).

Sources: Miles Davis: Shh/Peaceful (327); Charlie Parker: Donna Lee (330); Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr.: God Bless the Child (332).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Sarah Kirkman

A jazz performer’s improvisation on a given model can provide insight into that performer’s understanding of the model’s essential elements. What the performer preserves, avoids, and manipulates from the model can indicate not only that performer’s competency, but also their inventiveness. Django Reinhardt’s 1939 recording of Isham Jones’s I’ll See You in My Dreams is one such example. In the context of a rhythmically repetitive structure, Reinhardt creates variety by alternatively highlighting and obscuring phrase boundaries. In cases of the former, Reinhardt includes chromatic turns at midpoints and endings of choruses. In cases of the latter, Reinhardt repeats rhythmic motives across phrases. Additionally, Reinhardt’s use of paraphrase and thematic improvisation demonstrates a deep understanding of the melody from Jones’s model. When paraphrasing, Reinhardt preserves between one and six measures of the melody; longer paraphrases, however, are rare. In thematic improvisations, Reinhardt highlights an important large-scale melodic connection in one of two ways. In the first, he foregrounds the connection as a short melody and plays it repeatedly; in the second, he increases the technical virtuosity of his improvisation while maintaining the melodic outline of the model.

Works: Isham Jones (composer) and Django Reinhardt (performer): I’ll See You in My Dreams (41-58).

Sources: Isham Jones: I’ll See You in My Dreams (41-42).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein

French literary translator Mimi Perrin’s vocalese songs for her vocal jazz group, Les Double Six, offer a unique perspective on the interrelationships between music, language, and culture through her adoption of literary translation aesthetics in a musical practice. Vocalese is a vocal jazz practice in which a singer sets lyrics to an instrumental solo and transforms it into a song. While this practice was not invented by Perrin, what sets her versions apart is the careful way she writes her lyrics so that the vocal sounds produced by the singers mimic the instrumental sounds of the source material. Perrin composed her vocalese by first translating instrumental sounds into phonemes: saxophone attacks become labiodental fricatives, brass attacks become alveolar plosives, and so on. The semantic meaning of the text is secondary to the process of translating instrumental sounds into French phonology. In translation terms, what Perrin does is a kind of homophonic intersemiotic translation, approximating the sounds of a non-linguistic text but not necessarily its meaning. This contrasts with contemporary American vocalese composer Jon Hendricks, who begins with a semantic connection to the instrumental pieces he sets rather than a phonemic connection. To non-French-speakers, Perrin’s translations provide a sonic experience somewhere in between hearing (but not understanding) a French text and hearing nonsense scat syllables. The aesthetics of literary translation further inform what Perrin does with her music. In order to capture the rhythmic feel of swing, Perrin modifies her French with an unusual number of elisions and monosyllabic words, even to the point of confusing some French speakers. Beyond their importance as metaphorical translations of instrumental music, Perrin’s vocalese songs exemplify the cross-cultural translation and adaptation at the heart of global jazz culture.

Works: Mimi Perrin (lyricist and arranger): Blues in Hoss’ Flat (93), Doodlin’ (94), La complainte du bagnard (94-95), Les quatre extra-terrestres (96-97), A Night in Tunisia (99) Un tour au bois (99-100); Jon Hendricks (lyricist and arranger): Doodlin’ (93), Moanin’ (95); Four Brothers (97)

Sources: Count Basie Orchestra: Blues in Hoss’ Flat (93); Horace Silver: Doodlin’ (93); Bobby Timmons: Moanin’ (94-95); Jimmy Giuffre: Four Brothers (96-97); Dizzy Gillespie: A Night in Tunisia (99); Quincy Jones: Walkin’ (99-100)

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Matthew Van Vleet

The South-Grappelli recordings of Bach's Double Violin Concerto with Django Reinhardt in 1937 were, in addition to an aesthetically adventurous experiment, a socio-political statement based on the diverse musical and cultural backgrounds of the performers. The recordings were organized by Charles Delaunay, who convinced the reluctant violinists to record Bach's score without rehearsal. The first recording corresponds highly to the score: only a handful of ornamentations decorate the violinists' notes, and Grappelli omits some of his part. The second recording involves a much freer interpretation of the Bach original by both violinists, and Reinhardt's accompaniment is highly altered. In both cases, most of Bach's music was omitted so that the recordings could fit on a 78 rpm disc.

Works: Stéphane Grappelli and Eddie South: Interprétation Swing du Première Mouvement du Concerto en Re Mineur de Jean-Sébastien Bach (336-40, 351-54), Improvisation sur le Première Mouvement du Concerto en Re Mineur de Jean-Sébastien Bach (336-40, 351-54).

Sources: Johann Sebastian Bach: Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043 (335-54).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein

Vocalese, as referred to in jazz, is the name for a vocal composition created by setting newly composed lyrics to music taken from existing recordings of jazz instrumental music, including the improvised solos. The resulting compositions often require a high degree of vocal virtuosity because the singer is performing music that is not idiomatic for the voice. This practice, which began in the early 1950s and remains popular today, has been unjustly marginalized by most jazz critics, mainly because it does not involve improvisation. Some examples of vocalese are Eddie Jefferson's 1952 Moody's Mood for Love, based on James Moody's I'm in the Mood for Love, Jefferson's version of Charlie Parker's Now's the Time, Jefferson's version of Dizzy Gillespie's Night in Tunisia, and John Hendrick's version of Gillespie's Night in Tunisia.

Works: Jefferson: Moody's Mood for Love (292-94).

Sources: Moody: I'm In the Mood for Love (292-94); Parker: Now's the Time (291); Gillespie: Night in Tunisia (292-93).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Scott Grieb

Transcribing jazz improvisations should entail more than note-by-note recording, especially for advanced performance students. Three additional steps reinforce the pedagogical benefits of transcription: an overall description of what occurs in an improvisation, an assessment of the musical parameters that the improvisation highlights, and an application of that assessment to creating improvisations in a similar style. Analyses of three interpretations of Body and Soul by Bill Frisell, Cassandra Wilson, and Keith Jarrett encourage three different approaches to improvisation. From Frisell, an improvisational model includes incorporating looping technology for repeating aleatoric motives. From Wilson, an improvisational model encourages a singer to replace the notes of a song while keeping its lyrics. Finally, from Jarrett, an improvisational model provides a performer with preset motives that can be manipulated with a large-scale formal trajectory in mind.

Works: Johnny Green: Body and Soul as performed by Bill Frisell (64-66), Cassandra Wilson (66-69), and Keith Jarrett (70-75).

Sources: Johnny Green: Body and Soul (61-62).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein

Reactions to Art Tatum have been divided between admiration of his technical proficiency and criticism of his perceived lack of creativity. Both of these stances, however, ignore the complex intertextual nature of Tatum's music. Tatum's music from throughout his career contains a significant number of quotations of tunes recorded by others during the 1920s and 1930s, recordings which Tatum would have heard and which might have had a greater impact on him than on many other musicians because of his partial blindness and his resulting difficulty in reading sheet music. Two consistent features in the majority of Tatum's quotations are the retention of the original melody, and the ornamentation of that melody in a manner which embellishes without comment or critique. The result is a relationship--frequently dialogic--between the original and the quotation.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Paul Killinger

John Oswald's now infamous works were created through analogue and digital editing and recombining of pre-existing musical material. Oswald adjusted the speed, timbre, pitch, and other aspects of various fragments of music and then combined and layered them to create a type of musical collage. In 1989, he generated a great deal of controversy with the release of his album Plunderphonics, which consisted of exclusively borrowed material. Though Oswald had produced the album at his own expense and was receiving no profit from the endeavor, giving the copies away to libraries, radio stations, and others for free, legal action was taken by Michael Jackson, CBS Records, and the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA). Oswald was forced to destroy the Plunderphonics master copy and any remaining copies in his possession. Since then, Oswald has produced Rubaiyat for Electra Records' 40th anniversary and the two-CD set Plexure. In Plexure, Oswald plays with the "threshold of recognizability" or the amount of material a listener must hear to identify the original source.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Sarah Florini

Duke Ellington’s and James P. Johnson’s concert jazz compositions of the 1930s and 1940s embody an urban-entertainment vision for racial uplift developed a generation earlier that promotes the high art potential of Harlem’s popular music. Ellington’s 1935 concert film Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life exemplifies the glorified entertainment aesthetic and symphonic jazz idiom developed in Tin Pan Alley and Harlem musical theater in the 1920s. An early example of symphonic jazz emerging from entertainment circles is Will Marion “Dad” Cook’s 1924 stage revue Negro Nuances. The production (which predates Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue) presents a version of the Africa-to-Dixie-to-Harlem narrative later used by Ellington in Black, Brown, and Beige. Musically, Negro Nuances is a pastiche of recycled material—some by Cook himself—arranged for Cook’s twenty-five-piece orchestra. The vaudeville aesthetic of the late 1920s and early 1930s was also influential in establishing stylistic formulas for arranging spirituals and vernacular music for an orchestral idiom. J. Rosamond Johnson’s choral arrangements of W. C. Handy’s St. Louis Blues for a 1929 short film of the same name and Rhapsody in Blue for the 1931 review Rhapsody in Black: A Symphony of Blue Notes and Black Rhythms exemplify the shifting textures and spectacle of musical theater arranging. For Ellington and James P. Johnson, both of whom worked in the entertainment space, the leap to symphonic jazz works was relatively small. James P. Johnson’s Mississippi Moan: Symphony Poem, Drums: Symphonic Poem, and Ellington’s Symphony in Black all closely adhere to the production number model and incorporate the sonic tropes of the Harlem stage. A critical understanding of these symphonic jazz works in terms of Afrological vernacular modernism highlights their artistic value and cross-cultural exchange.

Works: Will Marion Cook: Negro Nuances (330-333); Spencer Williams: Moan, You Moaners! (Fox Trot Spirituelle) (336-37); J. Rosamond Johnson: score to St. Louis Blues (337-42), Rhapsody in Blue from Rhapsody in Black: A Symphony of Blue Notes and Black Rhythm (345-47); Duke Ellington: The Blackberries of 1930 (344-45); James P. Johnson: Mississippi Moan: Symphonic Poem (347-51)

Sources: James P. Johnson: Runnin’ Wild (330-333); Anonymous: Deep River (336-37); W. C. Handy: St. Louis Blues (337-42); Stephen Foster: Swanee River (344-45); George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (345-47); Perry Bradford and James P. Johnson: Echoes of Ole Dixieland (348-49), Mississippi River Flood (348-51); James P. Johnson: Yarnekraw: A Negro Rhapsody (350)

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Popular

Contributed by: Matthew Van Vleet

Billie Holiday's recordings reveal a sophisticated use of tempo rubato, the slowing-down and speeding-up of a melody over a steady accompaniment. While Holiday's version of a tune rarely strays from the pitch material of the original, the rhythmic comparison is considerably more complex. Holiday tends to begin her lines or melodic fragments late relative to the accompaniment, yet she catches up to the accompaniment by the end of the passage. In fact, Holiday takes the given melody at a faster tempo than the original. Transcriptions of Holiday's recordings indicate that the ratio between her tempo and that of the accompaniment is as advanced as 6 to 5 or 7 to 5, a much higher ratio than similar procedures found in African, Afro-Cuban, and African-American music (such as the music of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith).

Works: Cole Porter: What is This Thing Called Love as performed by Billie Holiday (182-92) and Ella Fitzgerald (185-86); Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons (composers) and Billie Holiday (performer): All of Me (192-94).

Sources: Cole Porter: What is This Thing Called Love (182-92); Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons: All of Me (192-94).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein

Interculturalism, musical borrowing from multiple cultures, is a burgeoning trend in twentieth-century art music, theatrical music (opera, musicals, Gesamtkunstwerks), film music, and popular music. "World beat," an aesthetic that fuses popular styles from different parts of the world, is one manifestation of interculturalism. Interculturalism creates meaning in musical works, which manifest as political statements, instructional tools, "syntheses of styles, cultures and perspectives," or works that embrace or reject particular cultural values. These extramusical meanings result from various intercultural borrowing techniques, including patchwork, collage, and "suggestive" allusion (stylistic and pertaining to specific works).

Works: Dissidenten: Sahara Electric (190); Toshi Tsuchotoris: score to Mahabharata (192); Bob Telson: score to Sister Suzie Cinema (192-93), score to The Gospel at Colona (193), score to The Warrior Ant (194); Philip Glass: Satyagraha (196), Akhnaten (197-98); John Cage: Truckera (200), Europeras 1 &2 (200-201).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Film

Contributed by: Victoria Malawey

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Popular

Jazz analysts have frequently pointed to Thelonious Monk's Criss Cross as an exemplar of motivic development and coherence in jazz literature. Full transcriptions of Monk's four recordings of Criss Cross, previously unavailable in analytical literature, confirm and elaborate on this claim. Monk's melody is composed entirely of three measure-long motives and variants of those motives. His improvisations incorporate these motives at their respective places in the original melody. In both the main statement and solo sections of two recordings from 1963 and 1971, Monk augments the motives rhythmically, changes the timings of some eighth-note passages, enriches the accompaniment in the left hand, and adjusts the lengths of concluding notes. Monk's solos occasionally deviate from motivic coherence, especially in two recordings from 1951. Deviations most often occur, however, when previous solos by members of Monk's band focus more on harmonic and scalar improvisation than motivic improvisation. Milt Jackson and Sahib Shibab, both on the two 1951 recordings, use a vocabulary that consists of bebop and quotation. In contrast, Charlie Rouse, on the 1963 and 1971 recordings, maintains motivic coherence in his improvisations with Monk's theme.

Works: Thelonious Monk: Criss Cross as recorded in 1951, 1963, and 1971.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein

Jazz pianist Dave McKenna's recording of Rodgers and Hart's Have You Met Miss Jones? reveals clever improvisational strategies, procedures, and devices. For instance, throughout the multiple improvised choruses McKenna slowly expands in register, creating a sense of large-scale unity. In one instance, McKenna also borrows melodic material from the song How to Handle a Woman by Lerner and Loewe. McKenna also uses a "polymetric riff" and when returning to the "head," his restatement of the melody recollects salient features from the improvisation. McKenna's insertions of fragments of the melody within his improvised choruses reveal that in this case, the performer does not improvise simply over harmonic changes, but also keeps the original tune in mind.

Works: Rodgers/Hart: Have You Met Miss Jones? as performed by Dave McKenna.

Sources: Rodgers/Hart: Have You Met Miss Jones?; Lerner/Loewe: How to Handle a Woman (293).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Eytan Uslan

Jazz performers and composers adopted the chord structure of George Gershwin's 1930 song I Got Rhythm both as a useful improvisational vehicle and as supporting harmony for newly composed melodies. Gershwin's chord structure, known as "the Rhythm Changes," was subjected to a variety of harmonic alterations by subsequent users, including adding chords between two original chords, changing minor chords into major, and substituting new chords for selected originals. The resulting variety of versions of "the Rhythm Changes" is so great that there is no "standard" version used by a large number of jazz performers or arrangers. Sonny Rollins's Oleo, and J. J. Johnson's Turnpike (both included here in notated versions) are two frequently played examples of the many new melodies composed to "the Rhythm Changes." They include extensive alterations to Gershwin's original chords. A partial list of other compositions based on "the Rhythm Changes" is included, as well as a list of recordings of these compositions.

Works: Johnson: Turnpike (216-17); Rollins: Oleo (217-18).

Sources: Gershwin: I Got Rhythm (203-19).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Scott Grieb

Henry Mancini’s score for Touch of Evil (1958) is innovative for its new approach to diegetic cues rather than continuous background music, and for its use of jazz and rock idioms. The music does work as a suturing effect (connecting the audience to the setting) but rather destabilizes the perception of time and place and emphasizes contradictions and incongruity within the film through its hybrid nature. Jazz is itself a hybrid genre of West African and European music; Mancini’s genres of choice for this film were also a hybrid of Afro-Cuban and cool jazz, as well as mariachi. These musics were chosen to signal an emphasis on race within the film, particularly with different cultural motifs associated with different characters, regardless of the actual race of the actors. Though some critics, particularly jazz musicians, found Mancini’s score to be “faux jazz,” it was still pioneering for the time, introducing popular music sounds into what was previously pseudo-classical and Romantic era music. Different versions of the film further problematize Mancini’s score. The most recent version from 1998 cuts his theme entirely, removing most of his influence from the movie, in an attempt to follow director Orson Welles’s desire to limit the film to only diegetic music.

Works: Orson Welles (director): Touch of Evil (226-40).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

In the early 1920s, when public familiarity and associations with jazz were amorphous and inconsistent, Irving Berlin cultivated a sense that his theatrical music defined jazz. In addition to textual and musical references to ragtime or blues characteristics, Berlin used quotations of his own music, which had already gained ragtime associations, to reinforce this idea. One notable example is Berlin's quotation of his earlier songs Alexander's Ragtime Band, Everybody's Doing It Now, and The Syncopated Walk in his 1921 Everybody Step. Berlin's self-borrowing ranged from nearly exact quotation of a full phrase of both music and lyrics to more subtle use of one- or two-measure units of rhythms, fills, or pick-ups that were nevertheless recognizable as being drawn from his earlier pieces. The earlier songs' associations with jazz implied that Berlin's newer music also fit into the genre. To further build upon this personal jazz lineage, Berlin borrowed from Everybody Step in later works.

Works: Irving Berlin: Everybody Step (698-10), The Syncopated Vamp (706, 708), Pack Up Your Sins and Go to The Devil (710-12).

Sources: Irving Berlin: Alexander's Ragtime Band (706-07, 709-10), Everybody's Doing It Now (706, 708-09), The Syncopated Walk (706-09), Everybody Step (710-13).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Popular

Contributed by: Paul Killinger

Applying the technique of a "song profile," or the compositional and performance history of a tune that reveals socially constructed meanings, to Irving Berlin's Blue Skies reveals several borrowings that suggest reinterpretation. Many of Berlin's songs reflect a Jewish tradition, incorporating modal mixture and chromatic inflection. Although this tradition is not uniquely Jewish, listeners interpreted as such in Manhattan in Berlin's day. Looking at the tune history of Blue Skies demonstrates the shift from its Jewish origins in the 1920s to subsequent revisions that change its ethnic associations. A performer such as Belle Baker, for example, who sang the song in Betsy, attempted to identify directly with Jewish culture, whereas Al Jolson, who played straightforward and jazzy renditions in The Jazz Singer, gave the song, in addition to its Jewish characteristics, jazz overtones. Benny Goodman and Mary Lou Williams employed allusion; Bing Crosby crooned a slow, balladic version and marketed it toward a broader, Caucasian, middle-class audience. Through contrafact, Thelonius Monk virtually disguised the source in In Walked Bud, while Ella Fitzgerald used scat. Willie Nelson and Pete Seeger reinterpreted the song further to represent an American folk song. Above all, the transcendent power of the tune proves the "assimilative power of Jewish culture" and effectively reinforces its roots.

Works: Rodgers and Hart: Betsy (552-57); Berlin: Blue Skies as performed by Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (557-59), Fletcher Henderson and Benny Goodman (559-63); Mary Lou Williams: Trumpet No End, arrangement for Duke Ellington (560-62); Berlin: Blue Skies as performed by Bing Crosby (563-65); Thelonius Monk: In Walked Bud (566-69); Berlin: Blue Skies as performed by Ella Fitzgerald (569-70), Willie Nelson (570-71), Pete Seeger (571-72).

Sources: Berlin: Blue Skies (537-38, 540-44, 547, 549-52, 572-73).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Popular

Contributed by: Katie Lundeen

Kurt Weill originally conceived the third dream sequence in Lady in the Dark as a minstrel show, but lyricist Ira Gershwin preferred Gilbert and Sullivan as a model, particularly Trial by Jury. Early drafts and the final version include many parallels and echoes in the text. Weill joined in by borrowing the Mikado's entrance song from The Mikado for the entrance of the jury.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: J. Peter Burkholder

Duke Ellington and Bubber Miley’s 1927 composition Black and Tan Fantasy exhibits a variety of contrasting idioms, adopting stylistic elements from blues and jazz, as well as quotations from a well-known spiritual and one from Chopin’s second piano sonata. The concept of “signifying,” put forth by Henry Louis Gates Jr., illuminates a fundamental strategy for quotation in jazz: repetition and revision. The intersection of these strategies in Black and Tan Fantasy is expressed both on the level of quotation and on deeper levels within the borrowed material of the piece. For example, the spiritual Hosanna, quoted in the opening phrases, is in turn a revision of Stephen Adams’s The Holy City. The tensions between old and new, black and white, and secular and sacred that result from Ellington and Miley’s juxtaposition of styles and sentiments generate sophisticated instances of ironic play. This ironic play can subsequently be seen as participating in the ongoing tradition of troping in African American art-culture, as described by Gates.

Works: Duke Ellington and Bubber Miley: Black and Tan Fantasy; King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band: Chimes Blues (62-63); Johnny Dodd: Weary City (62-63); Felix Arndt: Desecration Rag (63-64).

Sources: Anonymous (Spiritual): Hosanna (51-52); Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 35 (51-53, 63-68); Stephen Adams: The Holy City (51-53, 58-67).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Molly Covington

See annotations for individual chapters.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Popular

Jazz musicians--particularly African-American musicians--draw upon many sources of knowledge from multiple traditions, and their borrowings are characterized by a sophisticated familiarity with practices from traditions to which they may not traditionally have been thought to belong, as well as a virtuosic and playful tendency to transform the materials they borrow to ironic effect. John Coltrane's position within the world of improvised African-American music did not prevent him from appreciating certain elements of European-American musical theater song in My Favorite Things as sung by Mary Martin. Furthermore, his transformed version of Martin's simple delivery of the Rodgers and Hammerstein tune demonstrates a confidence that African-American musical aesthetics could improve European-American music. Roland Kirk's Rip, Rig, and Panic countered assumptions that he would be unfamiliar with Western art music by citing multiple influences from Edgard Varèse, but did so in an irreverent way that implies multiple meanings and motivations. Not all borrowings must be intercultural or even inter-generic: Jaki Byard's Bass-ment Blues makes ironic references to other styles within the jazz tradition. Intermusical relationships can be ambiguous and still communicate: intention does not necessarily need to line up perfectly with perception. A listener has some liberty to interpret a communicative gesture, although each side should be working with a certain amount of shared knowledge and experience.

Works: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (songwriters), John Coltrane (performer): My Favorite Things (292-99); Roland Kirk: Rip, Rig, and Panic (300-302); Jaki Byard: Bass-ment Blues (302-5); Ralph Peterson, Jr.: Princess (306-8).

Sources: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (songwriters), Mary Martin (performer): My Favorite Things (292-99); Edgard Varèse: Poème électronique (300), Ionisation (300).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Paul Killinger

In Jazz, quotations of, transformations of, or allusions to existing music are part of a tradition of irony and signifying in African-American music. Most of these quotations, transformations, and allusions are found within improvisations. Allusions to other pieces can function as homage, irony, criticism, or artistic improvement on the original. The success of quotations and allusions depends on the listener's familiarity with the repertoire in question.

Works: Roland Kirk, Rip, Rig, and Panic (121-23).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Felicia Miyakawa

One of the central questions in jazz research is the relationship of a specific jazz musician to his or her jazz predecessors. Harold Bloom’s anxiety-based model of influence, despite its current popularity across the humanities, is not an effective starting point in the ethnomusicological discourse surrounding quotation or allusion in jazz. Alternatively, Henry Louise Gates Jr.’s model of “Signifyin(g)” offers a better tool for understanding jazz musicians’ relationship to their precursors, as well as the ways they can generate meaning from this tension. Gates’s model is better for two reasons. First, it directly addresses jazz music and folk improvisation in addition to literary traditions whereas Bloom’s model focuses on literature. Second, it reflects the vernacular, communal nature of African American art versus the refinement and monolithic originality idealized by nineteenth-century authors. In other words, the influence of predecessors is felt joyfully rather than anxiously in jazz improvisation, and musical quotations tend to reflect homage. In the context of “Signifyin(g),” Joe Henderson’s quotation of a motive from Charlie Parker’s Buzzy in a chorus of his 1965 recording If, or in his 1981 recording of Freddie Hubbard’s Bird Like, generates a joyful dialogue between the performer and an audience or ensemble who would recognize the reference, rather than an anxious dialogue between the performer and his predecessor. Repetition, interpretation, and transformation rest on the assumption of a communal language which accurately reflects the nature of mainstream jazz improvisation more broadly.

Works: Joe Henderson: If (10-11, 13); Joe Henderson (performer) and Freddie Hubbard (composer and performer): Bird Like (10-17).

Sources: Charlie Parker: Buzzy (10-17).

Index Classifications: General, 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Felicia Miyakawa, Molly Covington, Matthew G. Leone

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

In bebop music, especially that of Charlie Parker, new compositions were created by composing new melodies to pre-existing chord progressions and forms. By analogy to contrafactum (the practice of fitting a new text to a pre-existing melody), which dates from the Middle Ages or earlier, this technique is called "melodic contrafact." The two most common songs or forms that provided the harmonic and formal material for contrafacts were George Gershwin's I Got Rhythm and the twelve bar blues. Many bebop contrafacts, like Parker's Ornithology,Perhaps, and Cool Blues, employed previously used improvisational "riffs" (short melodic-rhythmic passages). Pragmatic applications of the jazz contrafact include the "jam session," wherein musicians who did not regularly perform together would congregate and improvise on these familiar chord progressions, and recording sessions in which there was a very limited amount of time to record unrehearsed material. In addition, recording companies could avoid paying royalties to the composer of the source song because the chords of a song were not protected by copyright laws. Contrafacts and their harmonic innovations were an outgrowth of bebop ideology, which was characterized by Afro-centrism and emphasis on virtuosity.

Works: Bechet: Shag (3); Parker: Dexterity (3, 13), Ornithology (4, 17), Scrapple From the Apple (4, 13, 19), Now's the Time (4), Relaxin' at Camarillo (4), Klactoveedsedstene (4, 13), Billie's Bounce (4), The Jumpin' Blues (7), Perhaps (7-8), Cool Blues (8, 19); Gillespie: Dizzy Atmosphere (8), Salt Peanuts (9-10); Ellington: Cotton Tail (9); Sampson: Don't Be That Way (9), Carter: Pom Pom (10); Parker: Red Cross (12), Tiny's Tempo (12), Bongo Bop (13-14), Dewey Square (13), The Hymn (13), Bird of Paradise (13), Bird Feathers (13), Quasimodo (14-15), Parker/Gillespie: Moose the Mooche (17, 18), Yardbird Suite (17); Parker: Klaun Stance (18).

Sources: Gershwin: I Got Rhythm (3, 5, 8-13, 17); Kern: All the Things You Are (13, 18); Gershwin: Embraceable You (15); Kern: The Way You Look Tonight (18).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Scott Grieb, Eytan Uslan

The reception history of Charlie Parker as a thoroughly original artist overlooks the influence of popular music on the altoist's recordings and performances. An exaggerated focus on technique over context in jazz performance pedagogy ignores this crucial historical element of Parker's musical development. Parker's colleagues and bandmates provide anecdotal evidence that he not only knew popular tunes, but played and practiced them frequently. Schenkerian analysis demonstrates that some of Parker's compositions correspond strongly to popular tunes both melodically and harmonically. This applies even to Parker's use of altered and extended harmonies, which can be found in many popular tunes that predate Parker's career.

Works: Sam H. Stept (composer) and Charlie Parker (performer): I'm Painting the Town Red (86); Charlie Parker: Ballade (87), Confirmation (87-89), My Little Suede Shoes (89-91); George Gershwin (composer) and Charlie Parker (performer): Embraceable You (92); Charlie Parker: Koko (93-96).

Sources: Sam H. Stept: I'm Painting the Town Red (86); Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler: As Long as I Live (87); Herb Magidson and Allie Wrubel: (I’m Afraid) The Masquerade is Over (87-89); Henri Giraud: Pedro Gomez (90), Le petit cireur noir (90); Zequinha de Abreu: Tico-Tico (90); George Gershwin: Embraceable You (92); Sam Coslow: A Table in a Corner (92); Ray Noble: Cherokee (93-96).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein

Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust did not start out as a slow song, but instead an instrumental piece with a fast tempo. The song shares a number of unusual melodic fragments with Bix Beiderbecke’s interpretation of Singin’ the Blues and Louis Armstrong’s Dardanella. The three-note pickup to the chorus later associated with the words “Sometimes I...” is also found in the choruses to popular songs Poor Butterfly and Rose Room. Carmichael first recorded the piece in 1927. The band Mills’s Merry Makers, led by Irving Mills, recorded the first slow version less than a year later. Carmichael, however, credited the tempo change to Isham Jones’s later recording, on which Carmichael was the pianist. Carmichael wrote lyrics to Stardust even before it was recorded for the first time as an instrumental work, but Mitchell Parish, a staff writer for Mills, wrote the lyrics that Bing Crosby sang in the 1931 release of the first version with voice. Crosby and Louis Armstrong are among a handful of artists who have recorded multiple versions of Stardust, indicating its endurance as a jazz standard.

Works: Hoagy Carmichael: Stardust (151-53); Hoagy Carmichael: Stardust as performed by Mills’s Merry Makers (153-54), Isham Jones (154-55), Bing Crosby (156-57), Louis Armstrong (157-58), and Benny Goodman (159).

Sources: J. Russel Robinson, Con Conrad, Sam M. Lewis, and Joe Young (composers) and Bix Beiderbecke (performer): Singin’ the Blues (152); Felix Bernard, Johnny S. Black, and Fred Fisher (composers) and Louis Armstrong (performer): Dardanella (152); Raymond Hubbell: Poor Butterfly (152); Art Hickman: Rose Room (152).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein

Popular songs can accrue meaning through their place in films. Although the concept of filmic leitmotivs is generally reserved for classical music, it can also apply to uses of popular music. In the case of Benny Goodman’s Sing Sing Sing, the filmic and cross-filmic leitmotivs associate the song not only with the Swing Era in general but also with a feeling of danger and wildness. Neither of these associations comes from the song alone; despite its popularity, the song came at the end of the Swing Era and was not a part of that period’s heyday, and there was no original connotation of danger for the song. The inclusion of Sing Sing Sing began in films with diegetic music, such as its use in dance and concert settings in Hollywood Hotel (1937) and The Benny Goodman Story (1956). These instances help to set up the aural connotation of the music with the essence of the Swing Era. Later uses did not need to be diegetic to evoke these images of the Swing Era, since associations with the music had already entered audience consciousness, and led to mimicked allusions to the song in other films. Later usages with Nazis in Swing Kids (1993) and Hell in Deconstructing Harry (1997) further cement the music’s “dangerous” connotation.

Works: Busby Berkeley (director): Hollywood Hotel (35); Valentine Davies (director): The Benny Goodman Story (36-38); Shinobu Yaguchi (director): Swing Girls (38-39); Thomas Carter (director): Swing Kids (40-41); Michel Hazanavicius (director): The Artist (41); Charles Russell (director): The Mask (41); Anthony Hickox (director): Waxwork (41); Patrice Leconte (director): La Fille sur le Pont (41); Woody Allen (director): New York Stories (41-42), Manhattan Murder Mystery (41-42), Deconstructing Harry (41-43).

Sources: Benny Goodman: Sing Sing Sing (33-43).

Index Classifications: 1900s, 2000s, Jazz, Film

Contributed by: Emily Baumgart

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

The album Broadway the Hard Way is a prime example of Frank Zappa's use of quotation and allusion to generate and alter meaning within his works. Zappa accomplishes this by invoking what he refers to as "Archetypal American Musical Icons." These icons are commonly known, readily recognizable material from American mass culture, such as the theme from The Twilight Zone or The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and carry with them connotations and associations that Zappa then manipulates to expressive ends. The associations carried with "Archetypal American Musical Icons" are deliberately invoked to create a subtext within a song that supplements and generates meaning. Zappa will also often alter a song's original meaning by adding style allusions and quotations to create a new subtext, a procedure referred to as "putting the eyebrows on it." An appendix outlines borrowings and allusions in portions of Rhymin' Man,Promiscuous, and Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk.

Works: Zappa: Dickie's Such an Asshole (40-41), When the Lie's So Big (42), What Kind of Girl? (42), Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk (43-44, 57-58), Rhymin' Man (44-48, 53-54), Promiscuous (49, 55-56).

Sources: William Steffe: Battle Hymn of the Republic (40-44); Marius Constant: Theme from The Twilight Zone (44-48, 53, 57); Lalo Schifrin: Theme from Mission Impossible (44-48, 53); Hava Nagilah (44-48, 54); Hail to the Chief (44-48, 54); La Cucaracha (44-48, 54); Julius Fucík: March of the Gladiators (44-48, 54, 57); Milton Ager: Happy Days are Here Again (44-48, 54); Frère Jacques (53-54); Ennio Morricone: Theme from The Untouchables (53); Berton Averre and Doug Fieger [The Knack]: My Sharona (54); Rock of Ages (57-58); Dixie (57-58); Richard Berry: Louie Louie as peformed by The Kingsmen (58).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Popular

Contributed by: Sarah Florini

[Need annotation for discussions of borrowings within African-American tradition.] Within the context of her comprehensive volume on the musical tradition of black Americans, Southern briefly discusses the use by white Europeans and Americans of specific music and of musical styles of black Americans. She focuses on ragtime (pp. 331-32), jazz (pp. 395-97), and rhythm-and-blues (pp. 498-500).

Works: Debussy: Children's Corner (331-32); Stravinsky: Piano-Rag Music (331-32), Ragtime (331-32), L'Histoire du Soldat (331-32); Satie: Parade (331-32); Hindemith: Piano Suite (1922) (331-32); Carpenter: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1916) (331-32), Krazy Kat (395-97), Skyscrapers (395-97); Krenek: Johnny spielt auf (395-97); Milhaud: La Création du Monde (395-97); Ravel: Piano Concerto in D (1931) (395-97); Walton: Façade (395-97); Stravinsky: Ebony Concerto for Dance Orchestra (395-97); Copland: Music for the Theater (395-97), Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1927) (395-97); Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (395-97), Concerto in F (1925) (395-97), An American in Paris (395-97).

Index Classifications: 1800s, 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Susan Richardson

Analyses of improvised jazz music have focused either on musical-structural or group-interactive elements. For the Art Ensemble of Chicago, an avant-garde jazz collective founded in the late 1960s by Roscoe Mitchell, musical-structural and group-interactive elements are inseparable. Two live recordings demonstrate an interactive framework in which members of the group refer to multiple Art Ensemble compositions to build up to a full-length performance of a single work. Within a single interactive framework, performers freely incorporate bass lines, melodic fragments, timbres, and rhythmic motives associated with these compositions.

Works: Roscoe Mitchell (composer) and The Art Ensemble of Chicago (performers): A Jackson in Your House (60-61); Lester Bowie and Don Moye (composers) and The Art Ensemble of Chicago (performers): Mata Kimasu (61-65).

Sources: Roscoe Mitchell: A Jackson in Your House (60-61), Duffvipels (60), Get in Line (60); Albert Ayler, Bells (61); Lester Bowie and Don Moye: Mata Kimasu (61-65); Roscoe Mitchell: People in Sorrow (63).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein

Melodic quotation is the process by which a jazz instrumentalist quotes melodic fragments from one or more jazz compositions, while improvising on another. This technique is used to import various elements from the source material, such as the imagery of the lyrics or title. Depending on how they are combined, these elements can generate meaning through ironic juxtaposition, thematic unity, or narrative coherence. Additional meaning may be generated by the ways and the degrees to which the quotation is altered in the moment. This is both a musical and rhetorical phenomenon, and recognition by the listener is required. Since quotations may come from multiple sources—of varying degrees of obscurity—different levels of competence will result in a unique meaning for each listener. Melodic quotation in jazz improvisation is still seen somewhat as gimmick and is not as likely to be heard on commercial recordings as it is in live performance in small clubs. Despite this, the technique merits consideration, especially for studies of audience experience.

Works: Dexter Gordon (performer): There’s a Small Hotel (6-7); Jimi Hendrix (performer): The Star-Spangled Banner (20).

Sources: Wagner: “Bridal Chorus” from Lohengrin (6); Richard Rodgers (composer) and Lorenz Hart (lyricist): There’s a Small Hotel (6-7); Francis Scott Key (lyricist): The Star-Spangled Banner (20); Daniel Butterfield: Taps (20).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Molly Covington

New York jazz quartet Mostly Other People Do the Killing (MOPDtK)’s 2014 album Blue, a detailed, note-for-note recreation of Miles Davis’s 1959 album Kind of Blue, calls attention to the sonic materiality of music and encourages listeners to rethink what constitutes a musical work. Founded in 2003, MOPDtK has long taken a playful, irreverent approach to jazz history that exemplifies Fredric Jameson’s conception of postmodernism. In preparing to record Blue, the members of MOPDtK meticulously transcribed each instrumental part and rehearsing the nuances of each Kind of Blue performance to achieve maximum fidelity. The album’s liner notes are a reprint of Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” a 1939 spoof of literary criticism concerning a word-for-word recreation of Don Quixote, implying that Blue is a musical actualization of Borges’s premise. This connection supports the assessment that Blue is about the meaning of artistic works and authorship. However, this understanding does not account for the materiality of music specifically. Kind of Blue sounds the way it sounds because of the specific musicians, their specific bodies and experiences, the specific space it was recorded in, and the specific technologies used to record it, all of which contributed to the sonic vibrations that constitute Kind of Blue, and none of which Blue can recreate. From the perspective of musicking assemblages—that is, thinking of music as sonic energy circulating within material arrangements, not rarefied objects—asking if Blue sounds like Kind of Blue is irrelevant; there is no singular musical object “Kind of Blue” to compare to. While there are many possible interpretations of Blue, it can disrupt listening habits and encourage a kind of listening that goes beyond assessing static musical works.

Works: Mostly Other People Do the Killing: Blue (99-114).

Sources: Miles Davis: Kind of Blue (99-114).

Index Classifications: 2000s, Jazz

Contributed by: Matthew Van Vleet

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Thelonious Monk’s 1955 album Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington demonstrates both a fluid definition of the “mainstream ” as it emerged in the mid-1950s, as well as some of the ways Monk responded musically to its commercializing forces. During this decade, musicians and critics alike were formulating a new definition of the jazz mainstream that accounted for styles that fell between traditional swing and modern bebop styles. Monk’s producers, Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer Jr., were sensitive to the new commercial pressures of mainstream appeal, and Monk’s “Ellington album” was a tool for drawing a wider audience to an artist whose reputation for difficulty was well-known. The result, however, was not an ideal synthesis of old and new styles. There are moments of musical interest, as in the clever harmonies in the introduction to “Mood Indigo” and the impressive double-time solo on “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart.” In general, however, Monk plays with the detachment of someone who, as Keepnews suggested, had never seen the pieces before. This can be interpreted as a simple lack of familiarity with the music (however unlikely, since the songs were chosen for their popularity), or else as an expression of protest to commercializing forces. Although the Ellington album—by admission of the producers—was an attempt to bring Monk’s music to a mainstream audience, the lack of any drastic stylistic evolution between prior and subsequent albums Monk recorded with Prestige and Riverside indicates that it is not Monk’s music that changes over the course of the 1950s, but rather its critical reception and the definition of the jazz “mainstream.”

Works: Thelonious Monk (performer): These Foolish Things [1952 version] (235), Black and Tan Fantasy [1955 version] (237), It Don’t Mean a Thing [1955 version] (238-9), Mood Indigo [1955 version] (238), I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart [1955 version] (238-9), Solitude [1955 version] (239), Sophisticated Lady [1955 version] (239).

Sources: Duke Ellington: Sophisticated Lady (228), I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good) (228), Mood Indigo (228), It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing (228), I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart (228), Caravan (229), Black and Tan Fantasy (228).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Molly Covington

“Outside” playing in the 1960s was defined as the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic influence of newer movements in jazz on more traditional jazz performance. Two groups in the mid-1960s, the Charles Lloyd Quartet and the Miles Davis Quintet, incorporated avant-garde techniques into their improvisations of standard tunes. The pianists for each group, Keith Jarrett and Herbie Hancock, implemented significant harmonic and metrical disruption during their improvisations. Transcriptions of the final chorus-and-a-half for their respective improvisations on Autumn Leaves illustrate a wide variety of such disruptions. Jarrett combines polymeter, accent shift, and chords in conflict with the original harmonic structure at the end of his third chorus; he uses polyrhythms such as triplets in the beginning of the fourth chorus; and he negates the harmonic scheme of the second half of the chorus by transposing chords down by whole step, where the original tune cycled through the descending circle of fifths. At the end of his fifth chorus, Hancock also uses polymeter and accent shift; however, the chorus ends with dissonant chromatic planing instead of highlighting a consonant chord distant from the original harmonic scheme. At the beginning of his sixth chorus, Hancock eliminates any sense of metric identity by playing chords at seemingly arbitrary attack points. Overall, both Jarrett and Hancock use avant-garde techniques to heighten the intensity of the juncture between the second-to-last and last choruses of their improvisations.

Works: Joseph Kosma: Autumn Leaves as performed by Keith Jarrett (285-90) and Herbie Hancock (290-98).

Sources: Joseph Kosma: Autumn Leaves (281-85).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein

André Hodeir was perhaps the first writer to apply the term paraphrase to jazz. He used the term in 1956 to describe a type of improvised melody that lies between two extremes: the unaltered, original melody (called the “head” by jazz musicians) and the ostensibly new melody (called the “chorus phrase”) created by the jazz improviser over the harmonic framework of the original melody. In jazz pianist Oscar Peterson’s 1965 recording of Victor Young’s 1946 song Stella by Starlight, Peterson begins with a version of Young’s melody that stays close to the original, but departs from it sufficiently so as to warrant being designated as paraphrase. In the 1960s Peterson continued to begin performances of Stella by Starlight with this same paraphrased version of the song. It thus represents Peterson's “composed” version of the original melody.

Works: Peterson: Stella by Starlight (25-43).

Sources: Young: Stella by Starlight (25-43).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Scott Grieb

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a particular subgenre of hip-hop arose, defined by its use of musical gestures, lyrical references, and images already encoded into popular audiences’ conception of jazz at that time. By the late eighties, due to the “jazz Renaissance” of that decade, jazz was deeply associated with “high art” and often discussed as an analog for an American classical tradition. As such, it brought with it a complex of hierarchies and standards for authenticity that jazz rap artists navigated in forging personal, artistic identities. Jazz “codes,” or musical elements which had been definitively associated with jazz (such as acoustic walking bass, muted trumpets, and other brass instruments) could be deployed concretely as samples or through the inclusion of jazz musicians in actual performance. They could also be deployed allusively, as timbral, lyrical, and rhythmic topics. Notably, these codes are demonstrably different from the gestures used in other subgenres of rap at the time, and can be found in the works of groups such as De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Gang Starr, and Digable Planets.

Works: A Tribe Called Quest: Verses from the Abstract (55), Check the Rhime (56), Jazz (We’ve Got) (56), Excursions (56-57); Digable Planets: Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat) (58-63), It’s Good to Be Here (60-61), Swoon Units (61).

Sources: The Last Poets: Time (58).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz, Popular

Contributed by: Molly Covington