More Jazz
REALLY THE BLUES? A Blues History.
Vol. 1, 1893-1929
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Various performers, including the Unique Qrt (voc); Fisk University Qrt (voc); Afro-American Folk Song Singers (voc); Bert Williams (voc); James Reese Europe O; Victor Military Band; Prince’s Band; Wilbur Sweatman O; Paul Whiteman O; Marion Harris (voc); King Oliver (ct); King Oliver O; Al Bernard (voc); Mamie Smith (voc); Nick Lucas (gtr); Ethel Waters (voc); Jelly Roll Morton (pn/ldr); James P. Johnson (pn); Bessie Smith (voc); Homer Rodeheaver (voc); Louis Armstrong (tpt); Eddie Cantor (voc); Bennie Moten O; Ed Andrews (gtr/voc); Rosa Henderson (voc); Butterbeans and Susie (voc); Blind Andy (gtr/voc); Bix Beidberbecke (ct); Tommy Ladnier (tpt); Sylvester Weaver (gtr); Hersal Thomas (pn); Dixieland Jugblowers; Ma Rainey (voc); Papa Charlie Jackson (gtr/voc); Blind Blake (voc/gtr); Roosevelt Graves (gtr/voc); Papa Stovepipe (gtr/voc); Blind Lemon Jefferson (voc/gtr); Duke Ellington O; Jimmy Blythe (pn); Sippie Wallace (voc); Ruth Etting (voc); Lee Morse (voc/gtr); Len Spencer (voc); Red Nichols (ct); Sol Hoopii (gtr); Paul Robeson (bs); Tampa Red (gtr/voc); Benny Goodman (cl); Lonnie Johnson (gtr); Eddie Lang (gtr); Pinetop Smith (pn/voc); Johnny Dodds (cl); Cliff Edwards (voc); Earl Hines (pn); Helen Morgan (voc); Arizona Dranes (pn); Frank Trumbauer (c sax); Blind Mamie Forehand (voc); George Gershwin (pn); Cannon’s Jug Stompers; Cookie’s Ginger Snaps; Hazel Smith (voc); Buddy Boy Hawkins (voc)
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WAVE HILL RADIO ARCHIVE 6028, mono (9 CDs: 11:49:55) Distributed by Music & Arts Programs of America
The blues evolved from African-American gospel music, field songs, chants, and hollers. This music was often sung in mixed or minor keys, sometimes modal, which led to the prevalent use of the flatted third (more modern blues from the mid 1940s on also included the flatted fifth). In rural white communities, it evolved from church music, shape-note singing, and folk and work songs. But shortly after the blues were born, they were co-opted by popular and jazz musicians, who blended them with marching band and ragtime music. The blues’ rather monotonous melodic style and 12-bar choruses were changed by these musicians in different ways—by pop music to conform to commerciality, by jazz musicians in a creative way that respected the music’s roots. By 1937 it evolved further into denser and more complex musical forms—classical, jazz, and a mixture of both. Concurrent with this absorption, of course, is the “pure blues” tradition, musicians from the Mississippi Delta, Texas, Georgia, or Florida, generally a single vocalist with a guitar or zither—acoustic at first, later electric.
The question, then, is not so much “What is the blues?” as “What
isn’t
the blues?” And what the blues really isn’t, despite protestations to the contrary, is pop music played or sung in whatever herky-jerky style was/is prevalent at the time, whether that herky-jerky style is ragtime or rap. Of course, sincerity of delivery goes a long way toward erasing this line. There’s a huge gap in quality and meaning between Prince’s band playing
St. Louis Blues
and the same piece sung by Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong on cornet obbligato.
Thus there are four types of music that can legitimately be called blues: rural singers with a guitar or autoharp, singing songs of personal experience, angst, or heartbreak; guitar or piano solos by same, peripherally including boogie-woogie, which is a sped-up jazz piano blues style played in eight-to-the-bar rhythm; “classic” 12-bar blues songs, generally about losing a man or gaining one, sung by chanteuses with piercing voices; and jazz tunes written in a 12-bar structure, usually with a more formal or at least a more complex or interesting melody, played (and/or sung) by musicians expressing themselves poignantly and plaintively within that form. Again, sincerity of delivery overrides content or structure.
Allen Lowe, whom I’ve not heard of previously though he also produced a massive set of 36 CDs on the history of jazz (
That Devilin’ Tune,
Wave Hill 6003-6006, four nine-CD sets), gives us here the first of four nine-CD boxes on his personal history and overview of the blues. The set is a hodgepodge of African-American gospel, folk, and work songs (lots of the former), white gospel, folk, and rural blues, jazz-blues, pop blues, classic blues, ragtime, and many pop singers and bands performing schlock tunes loosely related to the blues. There are even blues songs—sometimes just tunes with the word “blues” in the title, or 12-bar pop tunes sung by hokey white vaudeville performers—that will set your teeth on edge (at least they did mine). And there is way too much of this kind of material to suit me. Lowe also includes some excellent jazz that is not the blues at all, records by Red Nichols and Bix Beiderbecke (of which
Toddlin’ Blues
comes the closest), but there is so much effluvium that it becomes wearing—not to mention diluting the quality and intent of the set. Occasionally you get a hip white singer who does a great job on the material (Marion Harris and the unjustly neglected Lee Morse, for example), but all too often it’s a performer who makes your skin crawl, or yet another cornball band (of which the worst is Paul Whiteman, an important figure in the blending of jazz and classical forms but certainly not the blues, and whose band played in a stiff, usually unswinging style).
I could understand how just “some guy who collects records” could sit around and play these things without cringing (I’ve met several of these), but I find it puzzling why Lowe, a professional jazz musician, inflicts so much pop drivel on the listener and then makes such comments as “I like it, so there.” That is not a reason for inclusion. I happen to like one of the discs he includes, Eddie Cantor’s
If You Do What You Do,
but I’d
never
play it for someone and call it a blues performance. I suspect that if Lowe did a history of Latin music he’d include Rosie Clooney’s
Come On-A My House,
Perry Como’s
Papa Loves Mambo,
the Ames Brothers singing
The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane,
and Percy Faith’s
Delicado
(which I happen to like, but which certainly isn’t authentic Latin music).
More interestingly, there are many important white and black jazz-blues musicians left out: the Mound City Blue Blowers (who were directly influenced by black street musicians), Pee Wee Russell, Jack Teagarden (also a great blues
singer
), Henry “Red” Allen (where’s
Biffly Blues
?), and Lee Collins. Russell, Teagarden, and Allen make solitary appearances in Vol. 2 (Allen only as accompanist to blues singer Victoria Spivey), but all of them should have been in Vol. 1. Bix was a great jazz musician but no blues player, and Freddie Keppard, who makes several appearances here, was a stiff musician who couldn’t even swing, let alone inflect his playing with blues feeling.
My other complaint concerns the supposed “state-of-the-art” remastering. All the records have a very flat, two-dimensional sound that in many cases erases the ambience of the original discs yet retains a sizeable amount of crackle, hiss, and record noise. I’ve owned several original-issue, late-’20s Victors, as well as the OKeh pressing of
Jazz Me Blues
and
Sorry
by Bix and his Gang, and the sound quality had a
lot
more presence and ambience. Some of these records have so much surface noise that they sound like Niagara Falls (I was able to clean some of them up in less than 10 minutes using Goldwave). If you want to hear what real state-of-the-art remastering of old and often-defective records sounds like, I would direct you to
Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry
on Archeophone 1005. These are virtually flawless.
As for the good, Lowe has unearthed some very rare records by the Fisk University Quartet, Afro-American Folk Singers, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, pianist Hersal Thomas, early blues slide guitarist Sylvester Weaver, gospel pianist Arizona Dranes, blues singer Rosa Henderson, several passionate gospel singers and choirs, a couple of old Cajun blues bands, and white Appalachian folk and blues singers. Lowe apparently likes the unjustly maligned Mamie Smith as much as I do (was there any hipper singer, black or white, in 1920–21 than Mamie?), even though he “admits” that she was more of a vaudeville singer (the recordings show otherwise; her performances are pure jazz-blues). Sol Hoopii, whose last name is misspelled here (omitting the second I), plays a surprisingly bluesy version of
Tin Roof Blues
on Hawaiian guitar. Blind Blake simply blows me away—casual hipness that masks extraordinary guitar virtuosity. Added to the handful of white performers who “got it,” these make up roughly half of the records on this set, and I am not ungrateful for these—they are pretty rare items. Lowe rightly includes Gershwin’s second piano prelude, which I’ve yet to hear played with the bluesy inflections it seems to cry out for.
Really the Blues?
comes with its 72-page booklet on a CD-ROM. This is a commendable bow to “green” technology, but frankly, I don’t enjoy reading a 72-page booklet on my computer screen. The discographical information is very sketchy, with musicians’ names usually omitted. I personally don’t give a hoot about matrix numbers, which I find superfluous, but I do want to know who’s playing on each side if such info is available, and most of the time it is. In short, a fascinating and valuable resource set, but caveat emptor.
Lynn René Bayley
