The evolution of “Twisted”

Blog

“My analyst told me…that I was right out of my head…”

One of Joni Mitchell’s most popular songs, which helped establish her jazz credentials, “Twisted” from the “Court and Spark” album, came from music written and improvised by tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray. Later Annie Ross put lyrics to it.

Annie Ross built her lyrics on the Wardell Gray composition and solo

Wardell Gray’s original 1949 recording of “Twisted”

Wardell Gray (tenor), Al Haig (piano), Tommy Potter (bass), Roay Haynes (drums)

The Joni Mitchell version that everyone knows

Fun fact: Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong provided the verbal commentary around (2:00)

Click here to learn more about Wardell Gray

– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube

P.S. Our unique programming is made possible by help from people like you. Learn how you can contribute to our efforts here: Support Jazz on the Tube
Thanks.

The Hidden Roots of Jazz Harmony

Blog

“Basin Street Blues” – Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five (1928)
The barbershop quartet starts at 1:20

Louis Armstrong (voice and cornet), Jimmy Strong (clarinet), Fred Robinson (trombone), Mancy Cara, (banjo), Earl Hines (celeste and piano), Zutty Singleton (drum

At the 1:20 mark Hines stops playing the piano and leads the singing that supports Armstrong’s vocal solo, a role Armstrong was thoroughly familiar with going back to his childhood as a street singer.

Note that when the band comes back in after a short piano break by Hines, the piano drops out again and the “barbershop” harmonies come back (at 2:20) to support Armstrong’s cornet solo.

This was the “zone” where Armstrong was most comfortable throughout his career and all his artistry was rooted in it.

Before he mastered the horn, Armstrong sang lead (the improvising part) in a vocal quartet. He always considered his singing to be his primary art.

“Singing was into my blood more than the trumpet… I had one of the finest All Boys Quartets that ever walked the streets of New Orleans.” – Louis Armstrong.

Critics who think Armstrong’s singing was something added on later in his career as a sort of show biz pandering are just plain ignorant and have no ears.

Earl Hines, raised in Pittsburgh, was also thoroughly familiar with the Afro-American vocal art now known as “barbershop quartet” music. In fact, he was a trained barber.

See if you can hear the “barbershop” in the accompanying chords in this improvised piece by him:

“I don’t think I think when I play. I have a photographic memory for chords, and when I’m playing, the right chords appear in my mind like photographs long before I get to them.” – Earl Hines

There is a theory that the unique harmonies of American music derive from Liszt’s “Liebstraum” no. III, a composition published in 1850.

Presumably, these classical European composers were familiar with the Liszt piece yet not none of them referred to Liszt-influenced jazz harmony when talking about their American-inspired works.

That’s because they were not responding to Liszt-via-America harmony. They were responding to a unique harmonic system developed in North America by people of African (and possibly Native American) ancestry.

“Harmony” is not a monolithic thing”

Europe, the presumed birthplace of harmony (and that’s debatable), gave birth to many, many different harmonic systems.

For example, no one would confuse the music of Medieval times, the Renaissance, Monteverdi, Bach and Debussy. They are radically different and that difference comes from the harmonic system they’re using, each one a creation of a specific time and place (and in some cases a person.)

So when talking about “harmony,” it’s probably best to define where, when and whose harmonic system you’re talking about.

With this in mind, rather than say “jazz was created from European harmony and African rhythm”, it’s far more accurate to say that like many people before them, African-Americans devised their own harmonic system, informed perhaps by “European harmony”, but not from Europe.

(By the way, the “African” origins of jazz rhythm is also highly debatable, but that’s an article for another time.)

Here’s the kind of music European composers were responding to when they wrote their American-flavored pieces: inspired lyrical improvisation over syncopated barbershop harmonies.

Louis Armstrong plays “Star Dust” (1931)

The following film was made possibly in the 1940s and unfortunately I have no information about it. It’s a Hollywood version of how a typical “barbershop” group might perform.

I put it up to illustrates three things:

1. This is not a specialized, esoteric form of music just for barbershops or barbershop competitions. It’s how people commonly made and heard music in the pre-Internet, pre-TV, pre-radio, pre-record days.
2. Each part has a specific role to play and the straw hat singer plays the role Armstrong assumed in his own “All Boys Quartet” and with Joe Oliver, elaborating on the melody sung “straight” by a different part.
3. Vocal music and impressions of instruments (or makeshift ones) were probably exponentially more common that groups with actual instruments, especially in the early years of the music

Click here to visit Vic Hobson’s website.

Bonus: Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy – “I Only Have Eyes for You”
Another trumpet master who feels the great Afro-American vocal tradition

– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube

P.S. Our unique programming is made possible by help from people like you. Learn how you can contribute to our efforts here: Support Jazz on the Tube
Thanks.

The greatest band you never heard of – but heard a lot of

Blog

The Missourians started out in the 1920s as Wilson Robinson’s Syncopators. Then it became known as Andrew Preer’s Cotton Club Orchestra when it played in that venue.

Then the band changed its name to the Missourians in 1927 and took up residency at the Savoy Ballroom in New York City from 1928 to 1929.

Cab Calloway took control of it in 1930.

“Prohibition Blues” – The Missourians (1930)

Recorded February 17, 1930, New York, NY

Here’s how the band rocked with Cab Calloway as the front man the year of the transition. Note: NOT speeded up. This is how they played it.

“Some of these Days – Cab Calloway and the Missourians (1930)

Seven years later…on film.

“Some of these Days – Cab Calloway and His Orchestra (1937)

And then this!

Dorothy Donegan and Gene Rogers on pianos with audio visual effects portrayed not common until decades later. (Sony debuted its JumboTron at Expo ’85 in Japan.)

Hungarian Rhapsody…Swing! – Cab Calloway and His Orchestra (1944)

Members of the band over the years

Trombones

Claude Jones, Lammar Wright, Keg Johnson, DePriest Wheeler, Tyree Glenn, and Quentin Jackson.

Trumpets

R. Q. Dickerson, Dizzy Gillespie, Mario Bauza, Adolphus “Doc” Cheatham, Reuben Reeves (1931), Shad Collins (mid-1940s), Paul Webster (mid-1940s), and Jonah Jones.

Tuba

Jimmy Smith

Saxophones

Thornton Blue, Hilton Jefferson, Ben Webster, Leon “Chu” Berry, Chauncey Haughton, Rudy Powell, Andrew Brown, Walter “Foots” Thomas, Ike Quebec, Arville Harris (1931) and Jerry Blake.

Piano

Earres Prince, Benny Payne, Dave Rivera (mid-1940s)

Guitars

Eddie Durham, Danny Barker

Bass

Milt Hinton

Drums

Leroy Maxey, Cozy Cole, J. C. Heard (mid-1940s)

– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube

P.S. Our unique programming is made possible by help from people like you. Learn how you can contribute to our efforts here: Support Jazz on the Tube
Thanks.