Dynamics Make it Interesting

A Bruce Springsteen quote: “I’m driving in my car/I turn on the radio.” The car radio gave me the impetus for my first blog about memorable music moments, and serves as a second inspiration for more. This time the focus is on dynamics. One of the definitions in Webster’s New World Dictionary defines dynamics as “relating to or tending toward change.” Then down the list, “the effect of varying degrees of loudness and softness in the performance of music.” Music students learn the basics of soft (p) and loud (f), as well as the gradual crescendos and decrescendos between them.

Back to the car. I was listening to the oldies station and was forced to another station by a song I couldn’t stand, and landed on the classical station. The DJ announced the mother of all classical pieces: “Beethoven’s Fifth.” How can you turn the channel from “Beethoven’s Fifth?” But how many of you have had the experience of listening to classical music in the car? More often than not it is a frustrating experience. Now you hear it, now you don’t. The obvious reason is the use of dynamics. Pop music rarely takes advantage of the effect of dynamics, unless it’s loud, louder, loudest. In fact if you’ve had studio experience, you know that the final mix on a pop song has the dB meter riding consistently just below the red. It’s a different story with instrumental classical music, where a huge part of the effect of a piece is the use of dynamics.

Let’s take a look at Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, in particular the First Movement. Everyone can hum the four note figure in their head, and Beethoven milks it for all it’s worth, loud and intense. At about 1:09, he pulls back and decreases the volume and emotion, only to build up again. In this particular clip we hear some terrific use of dynamics, in the beginning, and also at about 2:46, where we experience the masterful use of crescendos and decrescendos throughout the First Movement. Watch Toscanini as he makes sure that the French horn lick at 4:50 is appropriately soft. It’s also interesting to note that Maestro Toscanini had memorized all of Beethoven’s dynamics and needed no score. It all works because this is concert hall music. People are being as quiet as possible, and no road noise intrudes.

Though separated by a century, setting, instrumentation and an ocean, Count Basie displayed the same skill as Beethoven in the use of dynamic extremes to create excitement in his work. With acoustic music, the most obvious way to increase the volume of a band is to have more people play, with varying degrees of intensity. Look at this version of the Count Basie Orchestra and their arrangement of “All of Me.” This is classic Basie. The piece starts with just the rhythm section, Freddie Green chomping away on the guitar, and Basie handling the melody in the most subtle fashion. Just before the halfway point, at measure 15 and 16 (1:07), all the brass and saxes slyly pick up their horns and lay into a three-note figure that takes the dynamics of the band from double piano (pp) to triple forte (fff). Perhaps some of you have had the experience of hearing the Basie band play this chart. I heard it backstage at a concert and it scared the life out of me. Listen to the audience. They applaud the dynamics! It’s a great moment. And of course, it’s followed by a return to that subtle chunking rhythm, a driving force with minimal volume.

Jerry Dodgion

Saxophonist Jerry Dodgion is most associated with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, but in our interview from 1996 he cited his brief time with the Count Basie Band as thrilling and unforgettable. Jerry spoke of the unique ability of the band to play at both ends of the dynamic spectrum and still swing.

MR:   Did you get a chance again to record with [Basie]?

JD:   Yes, several years later. I didn’t even know it was with Count Basie which was good because I would have probably been nervous. I got a call for three days of recording with Chico O’Farrill on the answering service. And I showed up and it was Count Basie’s band. I’m looking around and I said am I in the right studio? So then I see Chico and I says I guess so. I mean that was really great. That was a lot of fun too. That was an album called “Basic Basie.” And I even played a few solos on that, which I was a little apprehensive about. I mean Lockjaw was on that too and he made that great recording of “Bewitched” on one of those dates. It was really wonderful to see this and be in there and be part of it happening. Because I loved the music so much and heard it on records so much, and heard the band in person. I heard the band in person a lot. And that band, the band of the ‘50s and ‘60s was an unbelievable ensemble band. Maybe it was really one of the best ever. They could play with the great swinging and feeling and the emotion and everything. But together. And the ensemble was just so together it was just thrilling. And the dynamics, unbelievable. I mean they could play softer than we’re talking now, the whole band. And you’d still hear the bass with no amplifier. Frank Wess would play the flute, Thad did some things with flute and bass, and you could hear him. Now I don’t know — when the amplification came in it changed everything, you know? The bass became louder than the band and you could not hear the flute unless you turned up the mic and when the flute player turns up his mic then the bass player turns up his mic and then there’s the guitar player, forget it. And here were — and there’s no end to this stuff. But the real sensitive part of playing acoustically, that band just was the best ever. I just, I couldn’t believe it.

Is there anything softer than triple pianissimo (ppp)? The only answer is silence. A rarely used effect in music is the total absence of sound. Two of my favorite musicians knew about it. Cannonball Adderley and Joe Zawinul had a productive working relationship from 1961-1970. Joe wrote many of Cannonball’s most notable pieces. Here’s an example from a live recording in Chicago. The “Country Preacher” Cannonball refers to is a young Reverend Jesse Jackson. Joe Zawinul composed the song and it starts in a meandering fashion with his electric piano lick followed by some Cannonball ruminations on the soprano sax. The band kicks into higher gear, reaching a crescendo at 2:23, ending with a snare drum whack by Roy McCurdy. What can follow that? How about three or four seconds of absolute silence, and then the most subtle entrance possible? Effective? Check out the crowd. They went crazy for the silence. That’s dynamic.

In a similar fashion, Samuel Barber, composer of the work “Adagio for Strings,” may have found himself in a musical quandary. Most people have heard all or part of this piece, as it has been broadcast at solemn occasions and notably employed in the Vietnam movie “Platoon.” This piece existed on its own for years and was first written as a string quartet. It is a marvelous example of the use of dynamics. No winds. No percussion. It’s simply a string orchestra at an imperceptible tempo, building and building, slowly stepping from one dynamic level to the next with rich harmonies. Barber’s composition climbs through seven highly emotional minutes, challenging the listener to stay engaged. Finally it builds to the point where you’re pleading for it to stop. And stop it does. What could possibly follow this heart-wrenching crescendo? Nothing but silence. A good three to five seconds of absolute silence is followed by a cautious reentry of the strings, allowing you to breathe again. This piece is not served well through your computer, so please plug it into your stereo system. Or, find a recording, turn out the lights, get rid of the video, and be absorbed by this piece.

Manny Albam

Arranger Manny Albam was interviewed in October of 1998. His work encompassed writing in the fields of jazz, popular music and classical orchestration. He spoke about dynamics and the potential power they have over audiences:

MA:   Subtleties work if you begin to manipulate the orchestra. And that is orchestration. And that is what dynamics in orchestration do[es] for the audience. You suddenly realize wow, they’re doing something I can’t quite hear, I’d better pay attention. That’s part of audience manipulation. I did things orchestrated on Broadway, not too much. I used to help other people and then I got my own thing to do. And I worked with George Abbott, Mr. Broadway, a great director and all that. And I wrote this great arrangement for one of the singers in the show and he called me over and he said “we don’t want applause at the end of that.” I said “no?” He said “no, we want that to dwindle off into the next scene and to be a smooth thing that will go right into the next scene.” And I learned something about that. They don’t want applause. If you want to bring the audience to their feet you write these big chords and the rhythm section and everybody’s wailing away, and the audience will go “hey! yeah!” and get up, “encore! encore!” You know, the show stopper. But these things are for dramatic changes that happen. No applause. I had to re-write the whole last twelve bars of the thing to bring it all down to nothing and then the whole thing would swing into place. Now once you learn things like that from other venues, in other words this is drama, this has nothing to do with music, but music has got a lot to do with drama anyway.

Dynamics leads to drama.

Tales of the Big Bands: Basie, Part 1

For many fans of big band music, the Count Basie Orchestra was the epitome of what an 18-person ensemble could and should sound like. Throughout his five decade career, Basie (a/k/a “The Chief”), held tight to his inner compass of what and how his bands should play. Though he was a man of few words, he made his feelings and intentions known through subtle but forceful direction. The Hamilton College Jazz Archive oral history project focused first on Basie alums and we are blessed with a wealth of material about Count Basie and his career. The first entry will focus on why his band sounded like it did.

We heard from Clark Terry in his conversation with Joe Williams at the end of our Ellington blog post. Clark spent time with both bands, and offers his opinion on Basie’s number one strength:

CT: I’ll tell you about this cat, Basie. Although Ellington was more endowed with harmony and theory and so forth, Basie was the king as far as tempo, and he taught us all the greatest lesson in the world and that is the utilization of space and time. They say he learned it through the medium of just socializing at Kansas City at the Cherry Blossom and the little places where you would have people sit, in a small room like this where you would have gingham tablecloths and he’d play a little bit with Jo Jones, and Walter Page, or Freddie [Green], and The Fiddler [Claude Williams], or whoever was there, and he’d go socializing. Bing-a-dink and he’d go over there socialize “yeah, baby, how you doing?” Bing-a-dink, go over there and have another taste over there and have two or three tastes. Meanwhile Jo Jones and Biggun [Walter Page] are still going [scats]. And he’d come in [scats]. So he was so endowed with rhythm and utilization of space and time, so he knew exactly the way a tune should be before you played it. Now the one, the best example is when Neal Hefti was writing for the band, he brought in a tune and passed it out, and Basie played it and Basie shook his head. He said “what’s the matter, you don’t like the arrangement, Chief?” He said “no.” He said “what’s wrong with it?” He said “the tempo.” Well the tune was about here [claps]. So he said “well what do you think it should be?” “About here” [claps slowly]. Well the tune was [scats]. He brought it in to be [scats slowly].

JW: That was “L’il Darling.”

CT: He heard it. Right away he said “uh oh.” And look at the result. If he’d a kept it up there it would have just been another also-ran tune. He was the king of space, time.

Basie’s band of the late 1930’s was the loosest of his aggregations, operating more like a large combo. Much of the music they played was created on stage or in rehearsals and called “head arrangements,” only to be written down later. Harry “Sweets” Edison talked of the challenge of becoming a part of such a swinging band, and associating with Basie’s fellow musicians:

MR: At the time you joined the Basie band, how much of the music was written out?

SE: We didn’t have any music.

MR: That was my question. Now how did that work? And how did you learn what to play when you first got in there?

SE: Well, that’s an interesting question. Because when I first joined the band, everybody in the Count Basie band had played with Bennie Moten’s band. So they all knew what they wanted to play. They all had notes to different — like “One O’Clock Jump,” “Swinging the Blues,” “Out the Window.” It was a head arrangement you know. They just, the brass section would get together and they would play, set a riff behind a melody Basie would play on the piano. The saxophones would go in to another room and they would set a riff. And when we all came back to the rehearsal hall, we’d all have an arrangement, you know? So that went on with me for about a couple of years. And finally I told Basie I said “I’m going to quit.” He says “why? You sound good.” I said “well all these arrangements that you play every night — I can’t find a note. I can’t find a note to ‘Swinging the Blues’ and playing it fast.” I haven’t had a chance...I really was disgusted.

MR: Discouraged, huh?

SE: Yes. So I said “I’d rather for you to take my notice.” He said “well if you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night.” So that’s what I did. He encouraged me to sit there. And it was very difficult. Because when they played a tune like “Out the Window” or of course “One O’clock Jump” wasn’t too fast, you could find a note, but “Jumpin’ at the Woodside.” Hell they’re playing and you’re trying to find a note to play, and it’s passed, and they’re finished before you can find a note.

MR: There’s no rehearsal time to do that. You’re playing every night, right?

SE: Sure, sure. But he encouraged me, and I stayed there for twenty years in and out you know. And had it not been for Count Basie, I wouldn’t be here with you, because nobody would have never heard about me. He gave me a chance and I had so much fun I don’t know why he kept me with the band because I was having a ball. You know every night was fun to me. Just absolutely — sitting next to Lester Young — gee whiz, what a thrill you know. Jo Jones. Walter Page. Freddie Green, Buck Clayton, sitting next to him — you know it wasn’t but three trumpets, Buck Clayton, Ed Lewis and myself; there was two trombones, and four saxophones. And four rhythm section. So I should have paid him to be in the band because I was having so much fun.

One of the first things an aspiring big band musician had to learn was the difference between two-beat and four-beat — a subtle but profound change in the basic feel of swing. Trumpeters Snooky Young and Gerald Wilson were both Basie alums and often played a musical game of tag team in and out of various bands. They talk about that subtle swing difference, when they were interviewed together on September 30, 1995 in Los Angeles:

GW: When I joined Count Basie, who do you think I was supposed to replace? Snooky Young. Snooky left the band. They were playing someplace, and Basie called me and he says “Snooky there had to go back East, Gerald,” and I played a couple of days with him at the Lincoln Theater. I think you left and so they didn’t have a trumpet player. So I went and played a couple of days at the Lincoln, and so Basie said “well look, Snooky had to go and he’s going to re-join us when we get to Chicago. You come on and go to Chicago with us and then Snooky will be back.” I said “fine” you know. So I left with the Count Basie Band, which I loved. I mean let me tell you, that was another great day for me to be able to join a band like Count Basie, because I was going to get a chance as a writer to sit where swing had really started. And remember that there was the original rhythm section, which they called the “All American Rhythm Section,” with Walter Page, Jo Jones, Count and Freddie Green. So for me that was going to be another education deal. Because I’m going to sit here now as a writer, I can just observe really what’s going on. And what’s going on with this swing. Because you must remember the Count Basie band and that rhythm section, they’re the ones that put the word in, the real meaning into swing. All bands had to change to that type of rhythm section. All bands. The Lunceford band would have had to change, Duke Ellington. Everybody. If you’re not playing this type of rhythm, you’re not into the newest form of rhythm that would finally take over the world. And because you must remember that bebop had no rhythm of their own. They had to use that same kind of rhythm in their first efforts. So it was a great day for me. But Basie had more in mind, by the way, because when we got to Chicago, Snooky didn’t show up. He didn’t show up. And I said, you know I thought I was going to come back home. But he had other ideas. He also needed a writer at that time. And I was the man.

MR: That must have been a thrill. Is it possible to put into words what that rhythm section did?

GW: Well you know, you remember Jo Jones was an innovator into drumming. Jo Jones was a real innovator. He had some things going that drummers had not been doing. Walter Page had been one of the first to start the walking bass rather than playing the root and the fifth. In other words Boom Boom BOOM Boom. In earlier days, they just played the one note. Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom. So Page started walking on the chords more or less. And Freddie Green, who had you know, nobody can play the guitar, rhythm guitar, like Freddie Green. To this day.

SY: That’s right.

GW: To this day. He never bothered about a solo.

SY: You know when I left Lunceford’s band and getting back to what he’s saying, I went directly into Basie’s band. And those two bands was night and day. I mean Lunceford’s rhythm was a two beat rhythm thing, you know. And it was great and all like that, but you’d come out of that and move into Basie’s band, I almost felt like I didn’t know how to read music. ‘Cause everything was laying so different.

MR: Especially for a lead trumpet, right?

SY: That’s right.

MR: Because you’ve got to be in sync.

SY: That’s right. And I had to learn how to play with Basie’s band, because, well, can you explain that better than I can? Because it’s very difficult, because you asked a question that kind of hit on that, and I left from one band and went directly into this band, this swing band what you’re saying. And I noticed a difference. But Lunceford had great rhythm and everything, but it was a two beat rhythm. And so most bands was playing two beats. Not like Lunceford’s band did though.

GW: Yeah, Lunceford had the two beats.

SY: They had the two beats, Lunceford’s band.

GW: But they had to get that, you know to play jazz, the ultimate jazz beat is when you’re playing four four. It’s the ultimate rhythm. And they had this thing. Jo had it going here, he had it going here, and it was the thing that all bands needed, and still to this day, I mean the band you play with now, all bands, you’ve got to have this.

The early 50’s were challenging years for big bands. Even the Basie band was struggling economically and the Count pared down to a 7-piece group for a number of years. Bassist Jimmy Lewis found that the Count’s knack for creating intense swing could be applied to a small group as well as a big band:

MR: Is this when Basie had the small group?

JL: Yes, the small group. We had Wardell Gray, Clark Terry, Gus Johnson on drums, Freddie Green on guitar, me on bass and like we used Bud DeFranco playing tenor. … We worked the Brass Rail [Chicago] down at the loop. We opened up one night and all the people were sitting at the table, and so Basie started off real soft. We started playing soft you know. I thought I was playing louder than anybody, I mean I’m just playing it. Basie says “don’t play so loud.” He said “they’ll hear ya.” So I cut down on the bass. And Basie set a tempo and then he’d watch the people’s feet. He said “okay, everybody’s starting to feel you over the conversation.” He said “now Gus, pick up your sticks.” Gus was playing with brushes. He said “pick up your sticks.” He said “we’ve got ‘em now.” And by the time we opened up, everybody turned and you couldn’t believe it. Buddy DeFranco walked out to the stand, and man, everybody would start to play. He and Clark Terry started doing tricks. Clark would take his horn, take the mouthpiece off and just put it in the end of a glass and blow you know, and make all kinds of funny sounds you know. And Gus Johnson, then here comes Wardell Gray. He’d walk up and he’d just play something like Lester Young. … And Freddie Green boy, he was like a metronome sitting there. And you couldn’t get away from him. The tempo might move up a little bit, I’d get excited, and Freddie would say “Come back here. Right here.” And boy that thing would take off. And Basie, he’d sit there and give signs. He had all kinds of signs. He’d do his face, you know when he’d want you to play louder or softer you know. And when he’d get ready to close a number he’d double his fists. And like if he wanted some excitement, he’d stand up from the piano and look at you. And boy, and Gus was sitting on the drums and you’d hear this thing, it sounded like it was coming up out of the floor. And boy the people just went crazy.

We will hear again from Jimmy Lewis in a subsequent Basie blog entry.

The heyday of the big bands occurred before the Civil Rights era. While some swing bands made tentative moves towards integration after the Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa combination, there was an obvious distinction between black and white bands for many years. Grover Mitchell, a Basie trombonist and an eventual leader of the band, reminds us why the Ellington and Basie orchestras were able to sound as they did:

MR: The Basie groups that you played with had some marvelous players, and some of the best ensembles that he had. Who were your favorite bandmates?

GM: Well we had some genius-level people you know. Ellington’s band and Basie’s band, the one thing that caused them in some way to be at the ability level that we were able to maintain was we, in the older days and prior to 1964, we couldn’t get jobs in studios you know. We couldn’t play at the networks and all that. And so Ellington and Basie had access to the greatest black musicians alive. In other words, that’s what we had to aspire to. And you couldn’t think of going to NBC or ABC or be in a Hollywood studio, which later I did, and quite successfully. But in those days they had access to the greatest black musicians available. The greatest. And so they had their choice. That’s something.

MR: That’s a really important statement. I haven’t heard it put quite that way.

GM: I know, most people won’t say it. They’re afraid to say it. But I know it. Because we would sit there and our greatest competition was each other because we, you know, until Clark Terry and those guys in 1964 and ‘63 started getting into the networks and all that kind of stuff. There was a couple of guys here and there you know; CBS was pretty good, they had a guy over there. And a New York contractor named Lou Shoobe, he was quite fair, and so some guys got jobs. But for the most part you couldn’t even dream of getting a studio job, it was just unheard of in those days.

Both Grover and Clark Terry spent time in Duke’s and the Count’s bands. It’s not a stretch to say that this is tantamount to a classical musician touting the fact that he spent one part of his career with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy then moved on to the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein.

Tenor saxophonist Frank Foster is high on the list of important Basie figures. He was one half of the two tenor team of Frank [Foster] and Frank [Wess], in the New Testament Band. Foster became one of Basie’s most dependable writers, but even he was subject to the Basie musical scrutiny.

MR: How about the first time you brought an arrangement to Basie?

FF: The first arrangement I brought to the Basie band was one I brought from Korea with me that I had played with a band in Korea. It was an original cha-cha-cha.

MR: No kidding.

FF: And the band needed a couple of Latin flavored songs for the dancers that they were playing. And they only had one mambo. So this was a mambo, not a cha-cha-cha.

MR: You wrote a mambo?

FF: Yeah. This was an original sort of thing based on a mambo groove, and it was very simple. And I brought it in to the band and we played it. And Basie encouraged me to continue writing. And the results of that encouragement were “Blues Backstage,” and “Blues in Hoss’ Flat,” and eventually “Shiny Stockings.” But it’s not all peaches and cream or roses as it were. If you could count the arrangements that were rejected as stacked up against those that were accepted, the stacks would be pretty even.

MR: No kidding.

FF: Right.

MR: So you’d take it into a rehearsal and did it take him a long time to decide?

FF: No. It never took him a long time. If the arrangement played down the first time and nobody had to decipher it as though it were hieroglyphics and it swung, it was in. Generally if it took too long and people had to labor over phrases and how does this go and what does this mean, and if it sounded like too much dissonance, or too many “pregnant nineteenths” as Basie used to say...

MR: Did he say that?

FF: Yeah he said “son, when you write an arrangement, don’t put too many pregnant nineteenths in there.” So I knew what he meant by “pregnant nineteenths.” And if was too busy, too overloaded, every time it got rejected. Which brings me to the story of “Shiny Stockings.” We were playing a place in Philadelphia called Pep’s Bar. And we’d just arrived in town that morning and we had to rehearse that day because it was customary to rehearse on the opening day of each nightclub engagement. For the Basie band that was practically the only time we ever rehearsed, was the opening day of an engagement at Birdland or Storyville or the Blue Note or the Crescendo or this place in Philadelphia. But we had arrived late and checked in late at the hotel, a long trip from somewhere. Everybody is tired, ill-tempered, hungry, and no one felt like rehearsing. You know we’d rather have done anything than rehearse. But we had to rehearse that day. And I brought “Shiny Stockings” in. And the first rehearsal of “Shiny Stockings,” it just sounded like a 43 car pile-up on the New York Thruway. Everybody ran into everybody. I said oh my, he’ll never play this song and I put so much into it. Well Mr. Basie must have heard something, because with that horrible rehearsal, he must have understood how tired everyone was and how unwilling we were to rehearse and that was the result of our attitudes. He must have heard something because we played it and played it and played it and I guess you could say the rest is history.

MR: I guess so.

FF: But many other songs that sounded like that in rehearsal never got played. And we had an expression, if we were rehearsing something and it wasn’t going well, either because it was too busy or the harmonies weren’t right or it sounded amateurish, we had an expression, “Pasadena,” which meant pass it in. And after we worked on that chart for about ten, fifteen minutes, Marshall Royal, who was the straw boss, he’d say “Pasadena.” And I guess this was sort of code terminology so that if the arranger was somebody outside the band, he wouldn’t know what we were talking about, but you’d see all this music converging on one spot, and it was being passed in.

MR: Well I guess it was a left handed compliment to say I was rejected by Count Basie.

FF: I’ll tell you, Basie, he would always make it up, because years after, this must have been in the early 60’s now, “Shiny Stockings” was introduced to the book in 1955, Basie pulled me over in the corner and he said “kid, you know you wrote that ‘Shiny Stockings?’” I said “yeah.” He said “you really put one down that time, boy.”

MR: It was five years later, huh?

FF: Yeah, right.

MR: He was a man of few words most of the time?

FF: Definitely. But every word meant something.

MR: Just like his playing, right?

FF: Right, exactly. Like his playing.

A non-Basie musician offered a brief story that summed up the respect and admiration that jazz musicians had for Basie and his band. Alto saxophonist Jerry Dodgion was never an official member, but did have the opportunity to play on the 1966 LP “Hollywood Basie’s Way.”

MR: You played on this particular record with Basie. Remember that one?

JD: Sure I do.

MR: Nice record. How did that come about?

JD: Well I knew almost everybody in the band because I’d gone to hear the band so much in those years. And one day Billy Mitchell called me and he said “what are you doing Thursday?” I said “I’m not doing anything, why?” He said “well would you like to make a recording date with Count Basie?” I said “that’s why I’m alive.” I mean that’s the dream, I mean unbelievable, I thought that’s never going to happen. Well he said Bobby Plater had to take off, because he was writing a date for Lockjaw that was scheduled at the exact same time so he couldn’t be there, so would I come in and play. I said great. So I got to play with Marshall Royal, with Basie, and that was always a dream too, you know, because [Royal was] the consummate lead alto player for that band. As Thad [Jones] used to say, “tailor made lead alto.” That was really a thrill. Wonderful.

It’s bittersweet to reflect on the fact that six of the nine Basie alums quoted here are now deceased.

Our next blog will spotlight road stories originating from Basie band members.

But Does It Swing?

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz is one of the prime sources for facts about jazz and its artists. They also scored well with an opinion. Their lengthy definition of “swing,” starts as follows:

Swing -- a quality attributed to jazz performance. Although basic to the perception and performance of jazz, swing has resisted concise definition or description.

We shouldn’t be surprised that it’s hard to define the magic of an artistic concept. It’s true in any art form that what makes a work stand out is, in the end, undefinable. We can look at the parts and discover some truisms about them. Jazz musicians know that when they see a series of eighth notes, which normally divide a beat into two equal parts, they play the first one longer than the second. This is a clearly definable part of swing. We know that swing music is almost always in 4/4 time, that it involves a combination of instruments working together, and that it is the basis for a whole genre of music that employs the name. Nonetheless we still try to specifically define the concept, and it’s been a favorite question of mine in gathering interviews for the Jazz Archive.

It is a logical question to ask of jazz drummers, who along with the bassists are most responsible for making things swing.

Drummer Ed Shaughnessy, who drove Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show big band, stated the following about swing. He had a certain affinity for the word “infectious.”

MR: Are you able, in talking to students or anybody in fact, to put what swing is into words?

ES: I finally think I can do it. I struggled with it for a long time. But I really think I can do it. The thing is before I do it I want to say to you how often swing is used as a noun representing the type of music. Right? They’ll say the swing bands of the 30’s and 40’s, right? And they played swing. We’re going to deal with it as — really how would you describe it if I’m going to go about swing as a feeling? Would we say it’s still a noun but it’s... I mean if I say “it swings” that’s like an adjective, isn’t it? Okay. Well I just want to make this clear to anybody who watches this tape. Because what I find the problem is sometimes is that youngsters, and even oldsters, they mix up the terms “to swing” and lock it in exclusively to jazz music. Now I think bluegrass music swing like hell. It swings. Now what is that swinging I’m talking about? Without drums, right? It’s infectious. The main thing I think that swing means, for me, is that it’s an infectious beat that makes you want to move, whether it’s to dance or to sit and tap your foot or to tap your hands, but it makes you want to move in a sense, and in a response to it. It brings something out in you. It gets into you. Maybe it makes you happy. But mostly it makes you want to get with it. Infectious is the best word I can use. That’s why I don’t like the fact that someone, who is very hard-headed about anything other than jazz, like if I say to them sometimes, well you know some of James Brown’s funk rhythms would swing you out into bad health. “Well I don’t like rock & roll.” I say look man [scats] — I say if you could hear that and you can’t move yourself, you are dead, they should embalm you see? But that’s a form of swing, do you know what I’m saying? If you hear a bunch of Africans playing [scats] and they’re playing that twelve-eight stuff like the Watusi people do, and even if you don’t see them dancing, if you hear that it’s infectious. It gets you going too. So to me, any music, like bluegrass, or jazz, or funk music or Watusi music, it’s infectious and communicates to you rhythmically, and gets a visceral thing going. That’s what I think swing is about. And I don’t think it’s an exclusive property of jazz. I really don’t. However, some people will play jazz and it doesn’t swing. That’s the part that I think people should understand. To be swinging is a certain feeling. You can have jazz people playing but it ain’t swinging too good see. So I think — I’m not going to say the mistake — but I think the error sometimes is to feel that if you’re playing jazz it’s necessarily swinging. No it’s not necessarily swinging. You know? It might be a little cerebral, a little abstract, and you don’t feel very much of that visceral communication. It might be very good, it might be very technical, but it isn’t kind of getting to you. That’s the absence of swing. That doesn’t mean other things can’t be there. Improvisation can be there. Imagination can be there. And feeling can be there. But I’ve heard for instance a bass and a drummer, both of whom were very good well known, and they don’t play good together. They are not compatible. It never settles into a good, unified pulse. So it isn’t swinging too good. That’s a good definition, don’t you think?

MR: I like it, I love the word infectious.

ES: I’m not saying because it’s mine, but I mean infectious is really what swing is about. Hey, yes. [snaps fingers] When I see audience, and I’m playing and I see some of that, it doesn’t have to be everybody, if I see just a smattering of that, I think we’re getting it across. And if I see nobody moving, I don’t think we’re getting it across.

I often have had the enjoyable task of booking highly respected jazz artists to perform at the college, sometimes grouping them together in unrehearsed ensembles. It’s interesting to hear the musicians talk afterwards in private about how things felt. You might assume that musicians at the top of their game can make things swing at will, no matter who the personnel may be. This is definitely not the case and I often overhear talk about which bassist and drummer don’t work well together, or which bassist, drummer and guitar player really lock in and make things swing.

Swing of course is not just rhythmic — there’s a harmonic component to the music that was developed in the mid-1930’s. Pianist and composer Steve Allen (yes, that Steve Allen) addressed this part of the definition of swing:

MR: Can you define for me when you hear something that’s really swinging, why? Why does one thing swing and the next thing doesn’t?

SA: The dominant factor is rhythm I think. Well people would think of that right out of the barn, but that isn’t all there is to it. There are certain ways of voicing instruments, if you’re talking now let’s say about a big band, 14, 15, 16 pieces, there are certain kinds of harmonies sometimes, now it’s so common we don’t even notice it or comment on it, but sometime in the late 30’s you began to hear more chords. Even if it’s a simple chord, a C chord let’s say, where they added the sixth note of the scale instead of the tonic. [scats]. Let’s see C-E-G, to those three notes they added the A which is the sixth note in the group. And why that sounds hipper, or cooler as they would say today, it’s not easy to explain in purely scientific terms, but that’s the way it is. That had probably happened first, even before it happened with instruments it happened with voices. If you listen to trios or quartets, there were no five group singing groups that I know about in the old days, until the Hi Lo’s and a group like that came along, they didn’t get that complex with their harmonies. But we all remember the term “Barber Shop Quartet” [sings] down by the ol’ mill stream. That’s nice stuff, but the harmonies are as simple as possible. Only the necessary notes are there. There’s no enrichment or adornment. But then about 1937ish or so a group called The Merrimacks, if you can find any of their old recording, play them sometime with this comment, you’ll see what I’m talking about. They were the first people to add the sixth and to add other harmonic enrichments — where they got them I don’t know, you’ll have to dig them out of the grave and ask them I guess. But you can hear it in their old recordings. Then from The Merrimacks, that opened the window of opportunity, I’m very big with clichés today, and you had groups like the Pied Pipers, the Mellowlarks, Mel Torme had a great group, the Meltones I think they were called, in which the harmonies were more typical of what was also happening at that time in voicing the reed sections, the saxophone sections, of orchestras. When they only had four notes, they could still put in the sixth and some enrichments, but when they added a fifth saxophone, which now all the big bands had had for years, somehow that enlarged the harmonic possibilities and we associated that kind of harmonic hipness, with big band with jazz, with swing.

If you want to go to the piano to see what Steve was talking about with the sixth chord, simply play a C-E-G and add the A, the sixth tone in the key of C. For a more authentic swing voicing, put the C on top (play E-G-A-C in your right hand from the bottom up). Play a single low C on the bass end. That’s a good swing chord.

In addition to being a feeling, swing was the popular music of the day from the mid-30’s to the late 40’s. But in the mid-50’s instead of swinging, kids wanted to rock. Rock music straightened the swing eighth notes out, as saxophonist Jerry Dodgion so succinctly stated, in an almost off-hand remark:

JD: In those days [the late 40’s] the pop music was still jazz oriented more so. Then later on it became more rock & roll, even eighth note oriented. So it changes, it’s changing all the time. I

MR: Can I just back up? You just said “even note oriented.”

JD: Even eighth note.

MR: Yes. See I never heard anybody quite describe ... we know how swing eighth notes go and how rock & roll eighth notes go, but no one ever exactly said the music became even note oriented. That’s very interesting to me.

JD: Well some drummers, if you talk to some drummers, they might tell you that. Because that’s a basic thing. It’s an even eighth note as opposed to the twelve eight, smooth flowing.

My own two cents about swinging, or establishing any infectious groove, is that when instruments are in balance you have a much better chance of success. The All-American Rhythm Section of the Count Basie Band of the 1930’s and 40’s, is often held up as the standard bearer of the swing rhythm section. I’m convinced that one thing they did that made them so successful was balancing their own volume. This was in the days before amplification, where the drummer played in a volume to match the acoustic bass and the acoustic guitar and the acoustic piano. That self-imposed balancing transformed four instruments into one unit. The rhythm section itself was one instrument. Call it what you will.

My personal concept about this was reinforced in 1996 when on an archive trip I was able to hear, on successive nights, the Capp/Pierce Juggernaut Big Band and the Count Basie Orchestra, at the time directed by Grover Mitchell. The Juggernaut bought into the concept of “mic everything” (make the big band bigger). Powerful indeed, but in my opinion this band did not swing unless you call swinging getting beat over the head. The next night, on the same stage, the Count Basie Orchestra, in the original Count Basie tradition, swung their butts off. With a mic for the soloist only and the rest of the band providing their own balance. They used their experience and musicality to create the groove. The sound man had little to do.

Does this blog entry provide a definitive description of swing? Of course not. Swing is magic.

Interchangeable Parts

Fortunately it’s been a busy summer gig-wise, with my own band, various sideman gigs, and the occasional stopping in to hear other local summer concerts and club dates. The last couple of weeks a phrase popped into my head that has to date back to junior high social studies, “interchangeable parts.” The phrase was first coined in the late 1700’s when some enterprising inventors figured out how to create firearms, muskets more specifically, using all the same interchangeable parts in case one part broke. Eli Whitney of cotton gin fame played some role in this invention. Somehow the phrase seems to apply both to my own work and what I see from my fellow musicians.

In this area, and I suspect in most music communities, you first get a gig, then you get a band. Unless you have a working group where you can afford to keep the same musicians employed almost full time, a leader is often required to fill in spots with various players. It all works out in the mix: the parts — whether they be drummers, bassists, guitarists or saxophonists — usually will fill the bill and the gig will go more or less as planned. Every musician, especially a leader, has his A list, his B list, and a C list (that hopefully he doesn’t have utilize). Once they get a gig they start making the phones work seeing if they can line up the best possible quartet, quintet, or big band to fill the date. A common exchange between local musicians might go as follows: “Hey I saw Steve the other night at Tiny’s.” “Oh yeah? Who’d he have with him?” There is mild curiosity as to how it would have sounded, and an underlying question as to what list am I on of Steve’s, as obviously I did not get the call.

Non-musicians may wonder how all this works out. If you think of a sports analogy it might make sense. You certainly could put a basketball team together and play a competitive game if you chose a good center, point guard, power forward, etc. They know how the game works. It may not be a championship team but they’ll be able to make a good showing. But unlike machine parts, the level of filling the spot in the mix will of course vary from athlete to athlete and musician to musician.

What gets people on my A list is not only how well they play. It’s almost a given that they don’t make any list unless they play competently. What determines the designated list is often what they don’t bring to the gig. I call it baggage: failure to be punctual, failure to understand what volume level is appropriate for the job, failure to play the appropriate style. If it’s a Rock & Roll date, playing in a progressive jazz style may impress the particular person who’s playing it (they may be self-impressed) but it will not fit the music. So a lot of things go into why you call a certain person, and obviously the player who plays well and does not carry baggage are those who are hardest to get because they’re on everyone’s A list

This process of filling holes for a gig happens at every level. If you’re an avid reader of LP liner notes, as I used to be and still am, you’ll sometimes notice an odd name in the listing for bands like Count Basie or the Duke Ellington Orchestra. If you knew the band you’d say “what’s that saxophone player doing on this LP?” It could be that the second alto player had a dentist appointment when they made the recording session and he couldn’t get there and they had to call a sub. I recall one memorable exchange with saxophonist Jerry Dodgion, who was recently quoted in another blog entry (June 7, “The Power of the Eighth Note”). I noticed Jerry’s name on a Count Basie record, “Hollywood Basie’s Way,” recorded in 1966. There was Jerry Dodgion playing second alto on this recording. Now Jerry Dodgion was never a full time member of the Count Basie Orchestra and I asked him about that. Here is the exchange:

MR: You played on this particular record with Basie [“Hollywood Basie’s Way”].

JD: Oh, that one.

MR: Yeah. Remember that one?

JD: Sure I do.

MR: Nice record. And how did that come about?

JD: Well I knew almost everybody in the band because I’d gone to hear the band so much in those years. And one day Billy Mitchell called me and he said “what are you doing Thursday?” I said “I’m not doing anything, why” He said “well would you like to make a recording date with Count Basie?” I said “that’s why I’m alive.” I mean that’s the dream, I mean unbelievable, I thought that’s never going to happen. Well he said Bobby Plater had to take off, because he was writing a date for Lockjaw that was scheduled at the exact same time so he couldn’t be there, so would I come in and play. I said great. So I got to play with Marshall Royal, with Basie, and that was always a dream too, you know, because [he was] the consummate lead alto player for that band. As Thad used to say, “tailor made lead alto.” That was really a thrill. Wonderful.

I’m positive Jerry did his utmost to act as an interchangeable part, filling the role seamlessly and making sure he stayed on Basie’s list.

The Curious Power of Eighth Notes

Do eighth notes gets eight beats? Do eighth notes get an eighth of a beat? Those of you who are reading this who know better are aware that an eighth note almost always gets a half a beat. It’s simply based on four. Eight eighth notes equal four whole beats, thus one eighth note is a half a beat.

In music, two eighth notes on the page indicate an even dividing of the beat: the downbeat and the upbeat. Musicians count them in different ways. Most music teachers say one-and, two-and. Some music teachers say tee-tee-ta (two eighth notes and a quarter note). Eighth notes figure prominently in some memorable musical phrases. Think of the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony: three eighth notes followed by a half note. Think of the chromatic foreboding introduction to the theme from “Jaws,” a series of eighth notes. You will have to decide which of those two is more important in music history.

A curious thing happened along the way to paired eighth notes. Generally speaking, until the beginning of the twentieth century, eighth notes were played as a down and an up evenly. The beat was divided in half, each half getting the same amount of time. When blues, and especially jazz, started to germinate in the southern U.S. around the turn of the century, eighth notes began to be played in more of a skipping fashion, the first half getting slightly more than the second half. We cannot point to one person who started this trend, although Louis Armstrong is credited with teaching the world how to swing more than anyone else. Indeed, the most obvious characteristic of what we now call swing music was the pairs of eighth notes played with the first half longer than the second half. The best example I can think of is Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.” If you look at it on paper, it’s simply a series of eighth notes. But the swing musicians learned that eighth notes were not played evenly. Each pair was played with the first half somewhat longer than the second half. When the arrangers and composers tried to write it down they found it was an inexact science. It’s not a dotted eighth plus sixteenth note, that’s too march-like. It’s more like the beat divided in three parts with the first two connected by a tie. It’s too technical to verbally describe, but we can hear it immediately. Swing music is based on “swinging” eighth notes. The eighth notes in classical music resisted the impulse to swing, thus widening the divide.

That’s not the end of the story, however. Curiously enough, after some fifty years of swinging eighth notes in popular music, they started to migrate back to where they started. I think we can point to the beginning of Rock & Roll: Chuck Berry and Little Richard for example as the transition. These musicians had half a foot coming out of the swing and rhythm & blues era, where eighth notes were unevenly divided and swinging. We can hear the transition in the music of Louis Jordan. Fairly quickly (think Jerry Lee Lewis) the eighth notes became straight again, played much like classical eighth notes and exactly like written on the page. This straightening out of the eighth notes became the biggest distinguishing feature between swing and what was subsequently called Rock & Roll. When a musician calls a tune and a drummer is not familiar with it, their first question would probably be “do you want me to swing it or play straight?” In other words, is it swinging uneven eighth notes or straight eighth notes.

I love the offhand comment that saxophonist Jerry Dodgion made about this in 1996. Jerry is a man who grew up in the swing era and makes his living as a jazz and swing musician. He was around to observe the transition and the profound effect it had on the music business and his own work.

JD: In those days the pop music was still jazz oriented more so. Then later on it became more Rock & Roll, even eighth note oriented. So it changes, it’s changing all the time.

MR: Can I just back up? You just said “even note oriented.”

JD: Even eighth note.

MR: Yes. See I never heard anybody quite describe ... we know how swing eighth notes go and how Rock & Roll eighth notes go, but no one ever exactly said the music became even note oriented. That’s very interesting to me.

JD: Well some drummers, if you talk to some drummers, they might tell you that. Because that’s a basic thing. It’s an even eighth note as opposed to the twelve eight, smooth flowing.

One eighth note by itself doesn’t make any difference. But two makes all the difference in the world. You can hear the transition happening in the recording studio with some of Chuck Berry’s early music where Chuck is wailing away on straight eighth notes and half his band is obviously swinging. The juxtaposition of the two says volumes more than any music history book can describe.