Week 4 - 1920s

Question 1

Bessie Smith

Answer 1

– Known as the empress of the blues was discovered by ma Rainey

• first recording sold over 2 million copies
• her blues lyrics were autobiographical and told of a difficult life
• died in 1937 following a car accident said she was denied admission to hospital because of her skin color

Question 2

Buddy Bolden and King Oliver

Answer 2

The first great cornetists in Nola
- not as well documented as Louis Armstrong however when we hear his playing we’re hearing the work of the third great master in a tradition

Question 3

Louis Armstrong

Answer 3

• premier America music icon form and New Orleans in 1901
• admitted to the cities colored waifs home for boys after shooting gun on nye
• 1922 was asked by King Oliver to join his Creole Jazz band
• married Lillian harden the bands pianist
• and New York City he recorded with Bessie Smith on the St. Louis Blues
• innovator of scat singing in the late 20s
• dubbed as Satchmo for Satchel mouth is also known as pops
• aspects of his virtuoso playing are incredible speeds, swinging rhythms, vocal like phrasing and effects, rips, high notes, and immense lyrical tone

Question 4

Ferdinand ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton

Answer 4

• First great jazz composer New Orleans

- led his group the red hot peppers through a series of recordings that showed complexity and imagination

Question 5

Jerome Kern

Answer 5

• giant of US songwriting and musicals with roots and tin Pan Alley
• wrote ‘all the things you are’ ‘the way you look tonight’ ‘fine romance’ and the musical Showboat

Question 6

Irving Berlin

Answer 6

• premier American songwriter with roots in Tinpan Alley
• Russian immigrant given name Israel baline grew up in New York City
• never learn to play piano properly or to read music relied on instrument called a trans posing piano and hired assistance to transcribe his melodies notably he did write his own lyrics
• wrote ‘white Christmas’ ‘cheek to cheek’ and ‘God bless America’

Question 7

George Gershwin

Answer 7

• Composer of Rhapsody in blue, Porgy and Bess, and numerous American all time favorites
• Born Jacob Gershowitz in 1898 to Russian immigrants in Brooklyn
• began his career in Tinpan Alley I have a song plugger
• his brother Ira Gershwin wrote his lyrics
• was admired by Maurice ravel, Arnold Schaumburg and others
• godsman suffered from brain tumors and forgot to compositions while performing them
• Gershwin did not survive surgery he died at age 38 in Hollywood

Question 8

Birth of jazz

Answer 8

The three main ingredients to jazz =
blues, Ragtime, and brass band music
Ragtime was not intended by Joplin to be improvised, however ragtime was highly syncopated and this influence jazz. From the blues jazz received it’s improvised lyrical and expressive characteristics. From brass band music, jazz received its emphasis on brass I nstruments over strings as well as complex arrangements and instrumentation

Question 9

Tinpan Alley

Answer 9

10 Pin Alley was the nickname given to an actual street in Manhattan 28 between Broadway and sixth Avenue. It became a generic term for all publishers of popular American sheet music regardless of its graphic location. Before the 1890s such a patient a composer lyricist and publishers of popular music did not exist. Tinpan Alley declined at the birth of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s

Question 10

Rhapsody in blue

Answer 10

Commissioned by Paul Whiteman in 1923, Gershwin forgot about the commission and had to produce Rhapsody in blue in three weeks