Starr-Waterman

American Popular Music

Chapter 3: “Catching as the Small-Pox”: Social Dance and Jazz, 1917‒1935
Lecture Outline

I. Technology and the Music Business

a. Production and consumption of popular music influenced by new technologies
i. Radio
ii. Sound film
b. New institutions to protect rights of composers and music publishers
c. Great Depression
i. Affected phonograph and film industries
ii. Helped boost popularity of radio: provided customers a cheaper way to
hear a variety of music, both recorded and live
iii. Music industry became increasingly centralized
iv. Record industry: rapid expansion after WWI followed by precipitous
decline
1. Increasing reliance on phonograph records rather than sheet music
to popularize songs and artists
2. 1919: first hit song to be popularized in recorded form before it
was released as sheet music
a. “Mary” composed by George Stoddard and performed by
Joseph C. Smith’s Orchestra
3. “Novelty”: term commonly used as a sales gimmick
d. Early 1920s: nearly 100 million records being pressed each year
e. 1925: electric recording
i. Microphone: replaced older system of acoustic recording, where
performers had to project into a huge megaphone; “high-fidelity”
technology that allowed recording engineers greater latitude in
manipulating musical sounds to produce certain effects
1. Allowed engineers to isolate and amplify sounds, including an
individual human voice
a. New manner of singing: intimate style called crooning
f. Radio network: new medium
i. 1906: first radio program in the United States broadcast
ii. After WWI, military restrictions on broadcasting encouraged the growth
of the industry
iii. 1920: first three commercial radio stations established
iv. Network radio developed
1. 1926: first nationwide commercial radio—National Broadcasting
Company (NBC)
2. Followed by Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), Mutual
Broadcasting System, and American Broadcasting System (ABC)
 v. Popular music: staple of commercial radio
1. Stations carried live broadcasts of dance bands and singers
2. Music stars created by radio
vi. 1930: further expansion of music broadcasting
1. Superstar crooners: Rudy Vallee, Bing Crosby, Russ Colombo
2. Sponsors: competed for access to top shoes and stars
3. Disc jockeys: radio announcers who played records and provided
entertaining patter
a. Make Believe Ballroom (1932)
g. Sound film
i. Introduced in 1927
1. The Jazz Singer (1927): based on a successful Broadway play,
starring Al Jolson, a vaudeville superstar. The film tells the story
of a Jewish cantor’s son who becomes a success singing “jazz”
songs in blackface.
ii. The Broadway Melody (1929): The first “all talking, all singing, all
dancing” film musical, released by MGM. It won an Oscar in 1930 for
best picture of the year, helping establish musical cinema as a legitimate
form
iii. 1929: smaller studios wiped out by Depression, and control consolidated
in the hands of the major studios
h. Licensing and copyright agencies: set up to control the flow of profits from the
sale and broadcast of popular music
i. ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers):
founded in 1914 to attempt to force all business establishments that
featured live music to pay fees for the public use of music
1. ASCAP won its case in 1917: all hotels, theaters, dance halls,
cabarets, and restaurants required to purchase a license from
ASCAP before they could play music written or published by a
member of the organization
2. Similar rulings regarding radio stations and motion picture studios
II. “Freak Dances”: Turkey Trot and Tango
a. Intensified influence of African American dance
i. 1910: craze for orchestrated versions of ragtime songs
1. Fads loosely based on black styles: Texas Tommy, turkey trot,
bunny hug, grizzly bear, Boston dip, one-step, fox-trot, etc.
a. Developed in clubs and dance halls in cities, observed by
vaudeville performers who put them into their acts
ii. WWI: variety of ensembles responding to public demand for new styles of
syncopated dance music
1. Typical cabaret dance band: violin (lead melodic instrument), two
or more brass instruments, two or more reed instruments, and a
 “rhythm section” made up of piano, banjo or guitar, and drums,
sometimes a string bass or tuba
2. Dance halls played music in strictly prearranged sequences or
“programs”
3. Early 20th century dance bands: began to make decisions on the
spot and take audience requests
4. Popular songs of Tin Pan Alley: arranged for singer with dance
band or strictly instrumental
5. Rise of hundreds of dance halls and cabarets
a. Cabaret: term by mid-1910s that signified any
establishment offering food, drinks, floor shows, and
dancing: laboratory for new dance steps and major source
of employment for musicians
b. Turkey trot: dances like it represented a departure from the restrained movements
that previously dominated social dancing among white middle and upper classes
i. Ragtime dances regarded as a threat to public morality
ii. “bumpers”: mechanical devices placed between the bodies of dancers to
keep them separated
iii. The United Neighborhood Guild of Brooklyn: outlawed certain dances
within borough limits
iv. Prohibition: illegal alcohol consumption associated with “racy” cabaret
atmosphere
c. Ragtime arrangements for the ballroom
i. Phonograph recordings of ragtime-influenced dance bands from 1910s and
1920s: little experience in syncopated music at the time for most
audiences
d. Tango: developed in late 19th-century Buenos Aires
i. Blend of European ballroom dance music, Cuban habanera, Italian light
opera, and the ballads of the Argentine gauchos (cowboys)
ii. Introduced to New York City by Maurice Mouvet in 1910
iii. Appeared in a Broadway revue The Sunshine Girl (1913) with Irene and
Vernon Castle
1. Performances of the turkey trot and the tango created a sensation
iv. Tango tea: afternoon event at which society women took dance lessons
with young male instructors
v. Rudolph Valentino: dance teacher and gigolo who became a star of silent
film
1. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)
vi. Main feature of the tango: bent-knee posture
1. Common to many African-influenced dance traditions in the
Americas
2. Freed up the dancers’ hips and upper body
3. Americanized tango by the Castles was an antiseptic version
 vii. Passionate associations: evoked by insistent four-beat pulse, dramatic
changes in volume, and sudden starts and stops
viii. Typical instrumentation included a bandoneón, violin, bass, and piano
III. James Reese Europe and the Castles
a. Vernon and Irene Castle: biggest media superstars of the years around World
War I
i. Vernon Blyth: Englishman who stumbled into American show business
ii. Irene: born in New Rochelle, NY, rejected as a stage dancer for being too
awkward
iii. 1912‒1918: did more than anyone to change the course of social dancing
in America
1. Attracted millions of middle-class Americans into ballroom classes
2. Expanded the stylistic range of popular dance
3. Established image of mastery, charisma, and romance later seen in
teams such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
iv. Vernon: responsible for the couple’s choreography and breaking complex
dance movements into manageable sequences (figures) that could be
easily learned by nonprofessionals
1. Asserted that knowledge of six basic movements was sufficient for
the “average ballroom tango”
v. Elizabeth Marbury: New York City socialite wrote the intro in the Castles’
dance instruction manual, Modern Dancing; introduced Castles to NY
society, franchised their name and photo images, and made sure that they
took advantage of mass media
1. Castle Park: Coney Island
2. Castles-by-the-Sea: Long Beach
3. Castles-in-the-Air: Manhattan
b. James Reese Europe (1880‒1919): African American musical director hired by
Vernon and Irene Castle.
i. Gained a reputation as an accomplished pianist and conductor, playing
ragtime piano in cabarets and acting as music director for all-black
vaudeville revues
ii. 1910: founded the Clef Club: functioned as social club, booking agency,
and trade union for African American musicians
1. Booked musicians in dance halls, ballrooms, and Carnegie Hall
iii. 1913: Castles attended a private society party where they danced to
Europe’s Clef Club Orchestra
1. 1913‒1918: composed music for all the Castles’ “new” dance steps
and provided musicians for live engagements
iv. Career as a popular dance musician skyrocketed, but continued to devote
energy to establishing a black symphony orchestra that would specialize in
the works of African American composers
1. Interrupted in 1916 when he went to WWI
 a. “Hell Fighters”: company of soldiers
i. Hell Fighters Band: sensation with concerts in Paris
1. Took band on US tour after the war
2. Stabbed by a band member after an
argument and died in 1919
IV. Listening Guide: “Castle House Rag”
a. Music by James Reese Europe, performed by James Reese Europe’s Society
Orchestra, recorded 1914
i. 1913: Europe’s Society Orchestra became the first black group to sign a
contract with a record company
ii. Musical influences: ragtime, marching band
iii. Form: AABBACCDDEEF
V. Jazz as Popular Music: The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the Creole Jazz Band, and
Louis Armstrong
a. Jazz craze: next stage in the “African Americanization” of ballroom dance
b. Jazz: sometimes called “jass” or “hot music”: emerged in New Orleans, LA,
around 1900
i. New Orleans: gateway between US and Caribbean
1. Culturally distinct white, Creole, and black communities
2. Hybrid musical culture
3. Jazz: black musicians who lived “uptown” and were surrounded by
genres such as the spirituals and the blues, Creole musicians who
lived “downtown” and more likely to have received formal
European-style musical training
c. Origins of jazz: term carried multiple meanings in New Orleans
i. Music: emerged from confluence of traditions: ragtime, marching bands,
Mardi Gras and funeral processions, French and Italian opera, Cuban
habanera, Tin Pan Alley songs, spirituals, and the blues
d. Earliest jazz bands
i. Dance bands: violin, guitar, mandolin, string bass, and sometimes a wind
instrument
1. Rowdy contexts for social dancing: addition of drum set, cornet or
trumpet, trombone, and clarinet, which could project over the noise
of a boisterous crowd
e. First recordings: made in New York City and Chicago (no studios in New Orleans
at the time)
i. First recording to be labeled “jass” was made in 1917
ii. Nick LaRocca (1889‒1961): leader of a white group from New Orleans
called the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, recordings of “Libery Stable
Blues” and “Dixieland Jass Band One-Step” were released in 1917
iii. Controversy about relationship of music played by Original Dixieland
Jazz Band on the first phonograph records designated as jazz to the style
played by African American musicians in New Orleans
 1. LaRocca: patently false claim that white musicians had invented
jazz
VI. Listening Guide: Early Jazz Recordings
a. “Tiger Rag,” written by Nick LaRocca; performed by the Original Dixieland Jazz
Band, recorded 1918
i. “frontline” of three wind instruments: cornet, clarinet, trombone
ii. Rhythm section: piano and “trap set” consisting of snare drum, tom-tom,
cymbals, and wood block
iii. Cornet typically carries the main melody
iv. “collective improvisation”: the players simultaneously embellish their
parts with personal touches
v. Syncopation: cornet player plays a syncopated pattern
vi. Stoptime: musical trick in which the band stops abruptly for a few beats
and one instrument plays a brief solo
vii. Unusual instrumental techniques: glides and slides—increased sense of
novelty
b. “Dipper Mouth Blues,” written by King Joe Oliver; performed by the Creole Jazz
Band; recorded 1923
i. One of the earliest recordings of African American jazz musicians from
New Orleans—identified as the first authentic evidence of a mature jazz
style
ii. King Joe Oliver (1885‒1938): cornetist, played in brass bands, dance
bands, and small groups in New Orleans, popularity crossed economic and
racial boundaries
1. 1918: moved to Chicago to join the Creole Jazz Band
2. 1922: led the group, took up residence at Lincoln Gardens
(ballroom)
3. Success of the group attributed to Oliver’s skill as a bandleader
4. Style: emphasized short melodic phrases and four-square rhythm
a. Repertory of expressive musical gestures
b. Known for use of mutes
iii. Syncopations played more smoothly than “Tiger Rag”
iv. Improvisation plays a prominent role
v. Made up of three basic sections
vi. Disciplined balance between improvisation and composition
VII. Louis Armstrong
a. Louis Armstrong (1901-1971): built a six-decade musical career that challenges
the distinction between artistic and commercial sides of jazz music
i. Established certain core features of jazz: rhythmic drive, swing, and
emphasis on solo instrumental virtuosity
ii. Profoundly influenced the development of mainstream popular singing
during the 1920s and 1930s
b. Life and musical development
 i. Born into poverty in slums of New Orleans
ii. “black” as opposed to Creole
iii. Migrated to Chicago to join the band of his mentor King Joe Oliver
iv. Playing second cornet developed his musical sensitivity and knowledge of
harmony and countermelody
v. 1924: joined Fletcher Henderson’s band in New York City—pushing the
group in the direction of a hotter, more improvisatory style that helped
create the synthesis of jazz and ballroom music that would later be called
swing
vi. Sophisticated, flowing solos, long syncopated phrases—strong influence
on New York jazz musicians
vii. 1930s: best known black musician in the world
viii. Listening Guide: Louis Armstrong
1. “West End Blues” (1928)
a. Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five
b. Development of jazz as an art form
c. 15-second trumpet cadenza begins the piece
d. First section in a slow, stately tempo
i. First time—Armstrong plays the melody, second
time—trombone takes lead, third time features a
call-and-response duet between the clarinet and
Armstrong scatting
ii. Earl “Fatha” Hines: innovative and varied piano
solo
e. Final chorus: carefully arranged, with clarinet holding a
long note, trombone playing squarely on the first beat of
each phrase, and piano and banjo holding a steady pulse—
Armstrong’s elaboration on the melody
f. No crooners able to appropriate Armstrong’s rough,
gravelly tone color, rhythmic drive, or gift for
improvisation, but all influenced by his treatment of
popular songs
2. “Ain’t Misbehavin’” (1929)
a. Composed by Thomas “Fats” Waller (1904‒1943), featured
in Broadway show Hot Chocolates (1929)
b. Complete sung refrain heard between two instrumental
statements of the same music
i. Both instrumental sections spotlight Armstrong on
trumpet
c. Use of “scat” singing (employing nonsense syllables) in the
bridge
d. Humor in music: “false endings” and quotations (from
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue)
 ix. Armstrong often spoke of the importance of maintaining a balance
between improvisation and straightforward treatment of the melody
1. Performances infuse his warm and ebullient personality—
precursor to highly personalized treatments of songs of later genres
x. Professional longevity—became the oldest musician ever to score a
number one hit with his version of “Hello Dolly!” and the first to push a
Beatles record off the top charts
1. Last hit record re-released with a movie after his death (Good
Morning, Vietnam, 1988)
VIII. Dance Music in the “Jazz Age”
a. Jazz Age: era in popular culture in America
i. Subculture emerged in white upper and middle classes: “jazz babies” and
“flappers,” “jazzbos,” or “sheiks”
1. Movement involved a blend of elements from “high culture”: F.
Scott Fitzgerald novels, Pablo Picasso paintings, plays of Eugene
O’Neill, and popular culture—music, dance, and speech modeled
on black American prototypes
b. African American influence on musical tastes and buying habits of white
Americans
i. Noble Sissle (1899‒1975) and Eubie Blake (1883‒1983): songwriting
team who launched the first successful all-black Broadway musical,
Shuffle Along
1. “I’m Just Wild About Harry” and “Love Will Find a Way”
2. Portrayed romantic relationships between black characters without
resorting to degrading stereotypes
3. Seating arrangements in theatre: blacks could sit in sections
previously reserved for whites
4. Racial inequality: musicians in the orchestra had to memorize their
parts to appear to be playing by ear, reinforcing the belief that
black musicians were not able to read music and that their ability
was just natural
c. Segregation in dance orchestras
i. Most successful orchestras able to extend appeal across racial boundaries
ii. “race music”: special segregated catalogs from record companies
iii. Most popular black dance bands listed in the mainstream popular catalogs
iv. 1920s: white jazz fans began to frequent nightclubs in African American
neighborhoods
1. Harlem’s famous Cotton Club
a. Duke Ellington developed a style he called “jungle music”
v. African American musicians had to work through the stereotypes of
blackness prevalent in white society
vi. The most economically successful dance bands: led and staffed by white
musicians
 1. Many bands specialized in one of three main categories to attract a
particular audience: “hot,” “sweet,” or “Latin”
d. Paul Whiteman
i. Paul Whiteman (1890‒1967): leader of the Ambassador Orchestra, fine
musician and astute businessman, assumed title “King of Jazz”
1. Widened market for jazz-based dance music (paving the way for
the Swing Era)
2. Hired brilliant young jazz players and arrangers
3. Established level of professionalism widely imitated by dance
bands on both sizes of the color line
4. Defended jazz against its moral critics
ii. Seven-piece dance band prior to WWI
iii. Enlisted in the Navy, and directed a 40-piece concert band
iv. After the war, played at a hotel and became a favorite of Hollywood film
stars
v. “Whispering”: arrangement played at a medium tempo, with a bouncy
fox-trot rhythm appropriate for ballroom dancing in the style popularized
by Irene and Vernon Castle
1. Mix of syncopation and careful arrangement, rhythmic pep and
gentility—became the core of Whiteman’s symphonic jazz
2. Record sold out of stores nationwide
3. First of amazing string of hit records
a. 1920‒1934: Whiteman had 28 number 1 records, and 150
in the top ten
4. Ambassador Orchestra expanded number of players
a. Hired pioneering dance band arrangers to craft his band’s
book (library of music)
b. Promoted jazz-influenced crooners
vi. Jazz, autobiography
1. “jazz missionary”: attitudes common among white Americans in
1920s and 30s
a. Jazz music, and African American culture in general—
defined either negatively or by the absence of certain
criteria of civilization
2. Begins his book by identifying African music and the slave trade
as origin points of jazz, but African Americans are absent from the
rest of his story and his orchestra
3. The King of Jazz (1930): Sound film in which Paul Whiteman
appears as a magician stirring a bubbling cauldron into which
ingredients of jazz are thrown: English ballads, Scottish bagpipes,
Irish gig, Austrian waltz, Italian opera, Spanish flamenco, Russian
balalaikas, but no evidence of ethnic groups most responsible for
 jazz: African Americans, and its inclusion in popular song, theater,
and film (Jewish immigrants)
e. Influence of jazz on youth
i. Jazz associated with feeble-mindedness, crime, and immorality, and
explicitly linked with immigration and interracial sex as causes of national
degeneration
ii. Primary motivation was really to prevent musical mixing between blacks
and whites out of fear that intermingling might encourage interracial
miscegenation
f. Mainstream popular music and jazz
i. White audience initially regarded jazz as an updated form of ragtime
ii. Positioned in the music business as a kind of novelty music
iii. Jazz as heady, daring, humorous, slightly dangerous—a way to experience
black culture without having to come in proximity with black people
iv. Potential audience—expanded as a result of South-North migration during
WWI
1. Seeking employment in factories—southerners moved to northern
cities
IX. Listening Guide: “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo”
a. Written by Duke Ellington and Bubber Miley; performed by Duke Ellington and
His Washingtonians; recorded 1927
b. Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899‒1974): widely regarded as one of the
most important American musicians of the 20th century
i. Middle-class background, received musical training from a young age
ii. Began to hang around bars and pool halls where ragtime pianists played
iii. Formed his first dance band while still in high school
iv. Entrepreneurial side and personal charm: when customers for commercial
sign painting asked him to make a sign for dance or a party, he would ask
if he could play for them
v. 1920s: band began playing syncopated dance music in New Jersey and
New York City
vi. 1923: four-year engagement at a Broadway nightspot called the Kentucky
Club
1. 1924: first recording
a. Heard by song publisher and promoter Irving Mills—
recording contract with Columbia Records
i. Regular engagement at Cotton Club
vii. Experimenter: fine jazz pianist, but it has been said that the orchestra was
his real instrument
1. Devised unusual musical forms
2. Combined instruments in unusual ways
3. Created complex, distinctive tone colors
4. Described his approach as akin to creating visual textures
 c. “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo”: Washingtonians theme song
i. James “Bubber” Miley (1903‒1932): South Carolina‒born trumpeter
who was influenced by King Joe Oliver’s use of mutes; created his
signature sound by combining two kinds of mutes and creating a deep
growl in his throat
d. Washingtonians
i. Ten-piece band with six horns—three brass, three reeds, rhythm section—
piano, bass, drums, banjo
1. Bouncy, “two-beat” rhythm
ii. Soli: all horns play the same melody together in harmony
X. The Rise of Latin Dance Music: “El Manicero”
a. 1930s: Bands staffed with Latin American musicians began playing refined
arrangements of South American and Caribbean dances in ballrooms of NYC
i. Strongest impact from Cuba
b. Cuban dance styles from two genres:
i. Son: late 19th-century rural song tradition that migrated to the cities,
where it was performed by groups called conjuntos
1. From sonar, “to sound”—used in many parts of Latin America
2. Cuban son developed in island’s countryside by farmers and
workers on sugar plantations
3. Strophic song form alternating verses with vocal refrain (estribillo)
4. Variety of instruments used to provide a polyrhythmic
accompaniment
5. Combination of African and Iberian elements—complex
polyrhythms and call-and-response singing, with style and poetic
form from Spanish folk traditions
ii. Danzón: mildly Africanized style of ballroom dance music performed in
urban ballrooms by larger, more formal ensembles called orquestas
c. Justo “Don” Azpiazú (1893‒1943): leader of a major Cuban dance band, Don
Azpiazú’s Havana Casino Orchestra
i. His group gave American audiences their first taste of authentic Cuban
music
ii. “El Manisero”—(The Peanut Vendor)—song composed by Cuban pianist
Moises Simon and sung by Antonio Machin
1. Variant of the Cuban son called a pregón: vocal improvisation
modeled on the calls of street vendors in Havana
2. 1930: Havana Casino Orchestra recorded the song
a. Labeled a “rumba fox-trot”
3. Repeated rhythmic pattern called the clave: “heartbeat” of Cuban
music
a. Pattern derived from West African music
4. Thirteen-piece ensemble: three percussionists, string bass, piano,
tres (small guitar), and two violins
 5. One of the best-selling records of 1931
XI. Key Terms
Conjuntos Microphone Sound film
Disc jockeys Pregón Stoptime
Jazz Age Radio
Licensing and Radio network
copyright agencies Soli

XII. Key People

Edward Kennedy James Reese Europe Nick LaRocca
“Duke” Ellington Justo “Don” Azpiazú Noble Sissle
Eubie Blake King Joe Oliver Paul Whiteman
James “Bubber” Louis Armstrong Vernon and Irene
Miley Castle