[Dixielandjazz] Duke's band-one example

[Charles Suhor]

A version of the comments below was part of an off-list message to Marek Boym. But since the topic is "swinging," and the examples are from Ellington's bands, I thought I'd add it to this strand.--Charlie

 I (and many others, like Gunter Schuler, Marshall Stearns, Ted Goia) believe  it was the mid- and late 20s recordings of the Hot 5 & 7, Louis and Hines, Bix, Jelly's band, etc., that defined "swinging" for the jazz community, as opposed to zippy "getting hot". The internal evidence--listening to the recordings--supports that.  (I'll grant there are exceptions to this, but they don't disprove the observably overwhelming changes.) Ellington's early recordings underline this. The 1925 recording below is replete with chunky ragtime phrasing and other signs of pre-jazz. Fast forward to 1930, and the soloists have mostly assimilated a swinging jazz conception. Dig Bigard, in particular. And behind him Duke is actuallly COMPING, prefiguring piano backup of the swing and bop eras. 
Bottom line--after the teens and early 20s, most jazz moved to a more fluid conception--I'm okay with saying that the playing "evolved." The trad revivalists, starting roughly with Lu Waters, returned to some of the earlier elements, IMO without capturing the core emotional essence of the foundational players. 

Charlie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5g8IBsx8t4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaSKL1iqpf8
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On Feb 3, 2015, at 4:12 PM, ROBERT R. CALDER wrote:
> 
> Duke Ellington's models were "the stride pianists who swung like Hell"?
> Which stride pianists and when, and when did stride pianists BEGIN to "swing like Hell"?
> 
> Ellington started really to swing when in the wake of a general enthusiasm for King Oliver's band, roughly the band later led by Louis Russell, he signed the New Orleans bassist Wellman Braud. There was also a saxophonist who disgraced himself by way of a lawsuit -- when he left Oliver for Ellington he brought along a piece of music which it was not his to bring. There was also Barney Bigard, and there was Cootie Williams, protege of a legendary Southern trumpeter called Chris Kelly, and before there was Cootie there had been Bubber "It don't mean a thing..." Miley, who went with Garvin Bushell to listen to what was being done in Chicago --  and of course Duke Ellington was one of the first pianists to record with Sidney Bechet (alas documentation is thorough only as far as confirming they did work together, there is no audio record).
> 
> Ellington certainly swung in "Hot and Bothered" and that species composition has been taken up by later stride pianists, Clarence Profit to Johnny Guarnieri, Dick Wellstood etc...  But when did stride pianists start to SWING rather than present virtuoso rhythmic tours de force?   
> 
> 
> If I was not temporarily working on half a computer I could name a recomposition by Willie the Lion Smith on a strong basis of Chopin, which really belongs to the high speed hotandbothered Ellington genre, though either a solo or trio number (the latter in a 1949 broadcast in Switzerland) -- anyway this I think represents not something the young Ellington could have learned from around 1920,  but a development of timing and phrasing which needed the schooling of musicians from a lot of American locales.  
> 
> 
> After the western and southern influences arrived, notes played in the north east tended to be less unbending. 
> 
> Of course according to one of the moods of Kenny Davern, Ellington just stole everything.  
> 
> I really miss the flash and twinkle of Kenny's eyes as he delivered a narrative. Happily some impression survives of the witty glint in Arbors CD liner photos.  Intonation,
> 
> which means almost everything 
> 
> 
> Robert R. Calder 
> 
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