Lecture 2 - The World Before Rock and Roll (1890s - 1940s)

Question 1

European American Stream - What dominated England’s music scene? What is it a predecessor of?

Answer 1

• ballads dominated England’s music scene
• predecessor of urban folk music, country and rock ‘n’ roll

Question 2

What is a ballad?

Answer 2

ballads consist of multiple verses that are all set to the same melody to tell a story

there is some sort of repetition in terms of the music but the words change. sometimes there’s choruses where there is both musical and lyrical repetition so it becomes catchy to listeners

Question 3

What is a strophe?

Answer 3

a form of the same music, often with pairs of verses and choruses

Question 4

What is a verse?

Answer 4

music is fixed (stays the same) but the lyrics change

Question 5

What is a chorus?

Answer 5

music and lyrics are fixed

Question 6

How did ballads first get around? How did they get around later? What happened to ballads as a result of this?

Answer 6

• oral tradition
• through broadsides between 17th to 19th century and sheet music in the early 20 century (written down)
• the lyrics became far less fluid than they were in the oral tradition. they began to always be performed the same because now they were written down

Question 7

What song is an example of a ballad? Who was it performed by? What type of form?

Answer 7

Song: Barbara Allen

Performed by Jean Ritchie who was an American folk singer

strophic form with 12 verses and no chorus

Question 8

What is acapella? What characteristics are present in Jean Ritchie’s song? What is this characteristic typical of?

Answer 8

acapella is singing without accompaniment of an instrument

characteristics: melodic ornamentation (where the singer noodles around the note or swoops up to the note). This is different from riffing because melodic ornamentation is an improvisation but with repetition

it is typical of Appalachian hill country singing where Jean Ritchie grew up

Question 9

What is the string band tradition? What countries did it come from? What instruments are present? Where was string band performed?

Answer 9

part of the European stream

UK, Scotland, Ireland and Wales

fiddles, guitars, mandolins, double basses, etc.

social, fun, secular contexts (not part of sacred or religious practices)

Question 10

How is the fiddle different from the violin? What song is a fiddle tune? Where did it come from? Who was it performed by? What year?

Answer 10

very similar in size but their sound and playing technique is different

“soldier’s joy”

from Scotland, written down in England

Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers

1929

Question 11

What is evident about the string band tradition? How many people in Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers band? What instruments did they use? What were they referred to as?

Answer 11

very repetitive, might have 2 contrasting musical ideas, we hear them a few times each, very flexible that way, fluidity in terms of length

the lead was Gid Tanner and 3 other musicians (all from Georgia)

they would play the fiddle, guitar, and banjo

• “hillbilly” which meant white, rural, country people

Question 12

What can be said about Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers?

Answer 12

they were slightly more sophisticated folks because they were exposed to urban musical styles and different types of music because they were able to travel

they were very adept on their instruments (high level of technical skills and fast passage work)

Question 13

What is a hallmark of the string band tradition? How is string band perceived?

Answer 13

each of the instrumentalists gets their chance to shine and be a soloist with the rest of the group backing them up and then play together with fast passage work and repeatedly

lively exciting music and dance-oriented

Question 14

What can be said about the 2 contrasting musical ideas in the string band tradition?

Answer 14

sometimes we’re not just going back and forth between them but we hear one a couple of times and the other a couple of times
maybe one of them we can hear the voice providing a contrast but the instrumentation stays the same

Question 15

Why were pianos not common at first?

Answer 15

• because they were imported and they were expensive

Question 16

What year did pianos become more common?

Answer 16

after 1850

Question 17

How did pianos start becoming common?

Answer 17

because of domestic piano making so they were affordable

Question 18

Who purchased pianos now? What did they become a sign of? What happened as a result of demand for pianos being high?

Answer 18

the people that purchased them were musicians who were musically literate

they became a sign of a successful family

piano factories were producing many pianos and there became a demand for music makers to make music and sheet music to sell

Question 19

Who was the first composer of American popular song and first to experience enough commercial success through sheet music sales to earn a living? What traditions did he draw on? What years did he make 200 songs in? His career benefitted him greatly from the demand of what? Why?

Answer 19

• Stephen Foster
• drew on European ballad tradition and German And Irish song types
• 1840’s, 50s, 60s
• from the growing demand for music played in the home because the songs he composed could be played on private pianos (families could play them on their home pianos)

Question 20

What song did Stephen Foster compose? What was it sold widely as? What form does it follow?

Answer 20

‘Jeanie with the light brown hair’

Sheet music

AABA popular song form (without an opening verse)

Question 21

What is AABA song form? What 3 options do composers have?

Answer 21

• we are referring to song sections. the first A section is when the singer starts to sing. the next A section is when the music repeats (NOT THE LYRICS) / repetition in the music, however, the A’ (prime) means that it varies slightly from the first A section
• composers have 3 options after this:
  1. to repeat
  2. vary
  3. or create contrast (this is when the B section comes up because it is something we haven’t heard yet)

Question 22

Stephen Foster died before what emerged? What year did he die? What was this place?

Answer 22

• Tin Pan Alley
• in the 1860s
• located in NYC where music publishers would have pianos in their offices and bring in aspiring composers and lyricists and they would try to come up with the next big hit and record it and transmit it through a radio

Question 23

What are songpluggers?

Answer 23

pianists and lyricists who worked at Tin Pan Alley and tried to write the next big hit

Question 24

When did sheet music sales start to go down? Instead of buying a piano, how did people listen to music? Why?

Answer 24

• at the start of the Great Depression in 1930
• through phonograph and radio (at this point, people were changing their priorities and movies also became a source of leisure time rather than spending money and buying a piano)

Question 25

How did Tin Pan Alley help songpluggers?

Answer 25

because they used Tin Pan Alley as a starting point. If they managed to come up with a number of hits, then they might be able to help people to start Broadway

sometimes, a person in Tin Pan Alley would do just the music, just the lyrics, or sometimes both

Question 26

‘After the Ball’ - Who was it performed by? What was he self-taught on? Why did he have to dictate his own music? What tradition is this song and what is it?

Answer 26

Charles K. Harris (Tin Pan Alley wanted him but he realized he’d make more money if he published his songs himself)

banjo

because he couldn’t read music

Waltz tradition which is a 3 beat dance with an emphasis on the first beat

Question 27

What song form/tradition is ‘After the Ball’? Why did he have a traveling singer?

Answer 27

• ballad tradition (this song tells a story) / AABA form and verse-chorus form
• he had a traveling singer because he would go from place to place to help distribute the song and make it popular

Question 28

The phonograph was the beginning of what? Who invented it? When was it invented? What came after the phonograph and what came after that one?

Answer 28

• the beginning of recorded music
• Thomas Edison (an American) but also at the same time, a French inventor named Charles Cros
• 1877**
• gramophone then the record player

Question 29

Who made the most American phonograph discs? How many minutes would these discs play for? How many minutes would the new 1904 discs play for? How many minutes would the 1940 discs (LP’s) play for?

Answer 29

• Columbia Records and the Victor Talking Machine Company
• 3-4 minutes
• 3-4 minutes on each side
• 15-20 minutes

Question 30

What was the trend of the phonograph? Why/how did it cause for the dehumanization of music?

Answer 30

• it became very common
• because it creates a distance between the audience and the musicians because now it is put on a discs rather than played in person but it allowed for the wide dissemination of music

Question 31

Why was the radio initially invented? When did they realize that the radio would be useful for musicians? How was music played on the radio? Why did the radio become popular?

Answer 31

• for military and maritime communications
• 1920’s
• they were initially performing live and later they started playing recordings
• because it was cheaper than the phonograph, piano and live tickets and you could have entertainment around the clock

Question 32

What is a “standard” and what are they referred to as? What is an example? What did they start off as? Who did they work with?

Answer 32

• songs from the 20’s and 30’s that are still heard today. also referred to as the Great American Songbook
• “I Got Rhythm” written and composed by George and Ira Gershwin
• they started off as songpluggers on Tin Pan Alley
• worked with Ethel Merman

Question 33

What musical was Ethel Merman in? What song did she perform? What were her trademarks? What form is the song?

Answer 33

• Girl Crazy, a musical by the Gershwin brothers
• “I Got Rhythm”
• control and breath, projects her voice, distinctive vocal timbre, nasal, brassy, empowered voice
• AABA form

Question 34

What is race music? Who came up with the term? What 2 examples fall under race music? What was the growing interest in the 20’s and 30’s?

Answer 34

• recordings of performances by African Americans for African American listeners
• Ralph Peer
• classic blues and country blues
• to find music on the periphery and push it to the center

Question 35

What kinds of styles and verbal performances did race music consist of? What is Black Swan? When was it opened? Who was one of the first black artists who had success in crossing over to white audience?

Answer 35

• styles: blues jazz, gospel choirs, vocal quartets and jug-and-washboard bands
• verbal performances: sermons, stories, comic routines
• Black Swan was the first black-owned record company which remained on the periphery because black audiences were listening to black artists and white audiences were listening to white artists so there wasn’t a crossover
• 1921**
• Bessie Smith

Question 36

What is an indie? What song did Bessie Smith cross over with and what type of race music is it? Who wrote the lyrics? Who was she accompanied by? What was he playing? What characteristics are present in the song?

Answer 36

• an independant record company
• ‘St. Louis Blues’; classic blues
• W.C. Handy
• Louis Armstrong
• cornet

-call-and-response between Bessie and cornet, syncopation, and improvisation

Question 37

When did the interest in blues blossom?

Answer 37

between 1920 and 1926

Question 38

Where did blues originate?

Answer 38

blues come from the deep south especially along the region of the Mississippi Delta all the way to east Texas

Question 39

What are blue notes? What song form is ‘St. Louis Blues’?

Answer 39

• found in Bessie’s ‘St. Louis Blues’. they are notes that have been modified or bent/flattened. they draw attention to the note and the word. found a lot in blues songs
• AAB(abab)C

Question 40

How would Blind Lemon Jefferson learn music? When did he have the opportunity to be recorded? What song? What did he play in the song? What did the song and country blues in general have?

Answer 40

• through the oral tradition because he was blind
• 1926
• “that black snake moan”
• the guitar and it sounds thing, putting the spotlight on the lyrics
• sexually explicit things

Question 41

How was Blind Lemon Jefferson’s voice in the song? What characteristics are present? What is a trademark of this song?

Answer 41

• nasal and clear vocal timbre
• call-and-response between voice and guitar
• the moans and ah’s and the decorations at the beginning of phrases

Question 42

Listen to:

Answer 42

• Barbara Allen
• Soldier’s Joy
• Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair
• After the Ball
• I Got Rhythm
• St. Louis Blues
• That Black Snake Moan