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smooth arrangements and syncopated beat, achieved with unusual instrumentation, captivated the dancing couple at a swank Manhattan party. The Castles teamed up with Europe, performing with his Exclusive Society Orchestra around the country. The musicians also found work at the Castle House, Vernon and Irene s dance school. Previously, Europe had organized the Clef Club, an informal union and booking agency for local black musicians. In 1912, he played New York s prestigious Carnegie Hall with a group of Clef Club players. At the time, Clef s working band lineup might include banjo, mandolin, violin, clarinet, cornet, and drums. The first dance craze demanded specialized accompaniment, small groups such as Europe s who could play syncopated riffs. It sounded easier than it was. Though accompaniments at dance halls and performances were usually live, dance mania fueled rather than impeded phonograph and record sales. These smaller groups, with their percussive melodies and pronounced beat, were tailor-made for the primitive recording studio. In fact, their syncopated sound was more easily duplicated by phonograph than by local musicians. A volatile substance, ragtime changed as it grew in popularity. By the late teens, the sound had morphed into something eventually called jazz. Louder, looser, more improvised and more exciting than ragtime, jazz brought drums and percussion to the fore. The instrumental emphasis switched from solo piano to saxophone and trumpet breaks, played with hot flashes of sexual urgency. And yes, you could still dance to it. chapter 2 WAR ON CANNED MUSIC JAZZ AND ITS COUNTRY COUSIN, the blues, continued the dance boom after World War I. Reaching its peak during the late twenties, the jazz and blues craze coincided with the adolescent phase of the record industry. Pressure from another growing technology put the phonograph to its first external test. The rise of radio nearly submerged the record player. In the second half of the 1920s, electrical recording salvaged the situation with vastly improved sound quality. Microphones and amplifiers replaced horns and recording phonographs; the job description for a musician profoundly changed as a result. The purpose of making records shifted away from audio documentation and moved toward aural creation. The increased volume and heavy bass provided by radio s electronic amplification as opposed to the speaker horns of early phonographs was perfectly suited to pop tastes of the period. Radios were smartly marketed as pieces of furniture in a variety of styles, a fine addition to any living room. Phonographs, especially the ever-popular Victrola, were utilitarian by comparison. The Christmas shopping season of 1924 signaled a showdown between the fledgling home entertainment systems, and phonographs came up short. In the following year, the once-booming Victor Talking Machine Company lost $6.5 million. (Tellingly, the Radio Corporation of America would buy Victor in 1929.) As much as the music, the sound of radio loud, clear, smooth, bass heavy, not tinny became the next craze. Then came 1929. Another economic boom bites the dust. The Great Depression set the scene for the second format war. Through thick and thin, music technology served as America s engine of cultural integration, decades before the civil rights movement. In the days before the advent of commercial radio, a blues singer named Mamie Smith inaugurated the pop tradition of crossover. Her 1920 recording Crazy Blues caught fire with a broad audience. Cut for the tiny Okeh label, Crazy Blues by Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds appealed to black and white listeners alike. This catchy twelve-bar plaint sold more than 70,000 copies, paving the way for the blues stars Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, and Alberta Hunter. Smith s Crazy Blues session employed all black musicians, another significant precedent. The first black blues singer to be commercially recorded, Smith was recruited and recorded by talent scout Ralph Peer. He was a pioneer, too. Peer identified the markets for race and hillbilly music, and coined those terms for the record industry. Some things remained the same. Later in 1920, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band enjoyed equal or better success with an instrumental reading of Crazy Blues. The white group s version benefited (if that s the word) from a kazoo solo. The jazz and blues fad fueled and funded a wave of independent record companies in the twenties: Black Swan, Brunswick, Paramount, Vocalion, and dozens more. Despite their broad-based appeal, releases from these labels were largely absent from the airwaves. Images of F. Scott Fitzgerald, flappers, and flaming youth cloud the rearview mirror. In musical terms, the Jazz Age was more a cultural phenomenon than a commercial revolution. Bear in mind, however, that most blues recordings of the 1920s represented urbanized versions of the southern backwoods sound not folk music, but pop records. The acoustic blues of the Mississippi Delta begins its crossover journey decades later. Jazz was urbanized music by definition: born in New Orleans, exported to Chicago when Kid Ory and Louis Armstrong hopped a northbound train. Just like Enrico Caruso twenty years earlier, Armstrong was a natural in the studio. Their performances didn t have to be adjusted or adapted to technology; amplifier and microphone magically captured their full effect. The electrical recording [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |