This week, our reading selections and listening examples all center around the time periods from roughly 1917 to 1940, covering social dance music, Jazz, and the golden age of Tin Pan Alley songs. The post World War I era was a time for tremendous development of the American culture, through the mediums of song, film, and radio. Several significant events had a profound effect on the music industry and how music was consumed by the larger public. Starr and Waterman (2014) note, “One important shift in the industry was the increasing reliance on phonograph records, rather than sheet music as the main means of promoting songs and artists. The year 1919 saw the first hit song to be popularized in recorded form before it was released on sheet music” (p. 75). Consumers of music benefitted in this time period from advances in technology, in many forms. Transportation accessibility allowed for easier travel for musicians, enabling greater lengths of trips in shorter times, expanding their audiences. Recording advances, such as the electric microphone enhanced the quality of sound, and the development of radio networks expanded opportunities for audiences to experience performances from remote broadcasts at concert venues (p. 77) Even in this period of media expansion into the home, the desire for people to connect in groups around music, as Starr and Waterman note, “The years around World War I saw the rise of hundreds of dance halls and cabarets in cities across America” (p. 79).
Castle House Rag
The music played in dance halls at the time would have been performed by ensembles of hired musicians. James Reese Europe was an African-American musician hired as the musical director by Vernon and Irene Castle, known as media superstars for their approaches to dance and choreography in the World War I era. Reese’s groups became highly regarded for their ability to perform syncopated music and challenging arrangements of ragtime and tango music, even with rather robust instrumentation for the time. One of our listening examples this week, “Castle House Rag,” is a rather quick ragtime selection, which is played an exceptionally brisk pace. The melody is relegated to the string section, with a rather pronounced rhythmic treatment from the snare drum. Upon the first listen, a very strong parallel can be drawn to music that would have accompanied the earliest movies, and my first impression was that this tune could been used for an animated picture, such as the original Disney short, “Steamboat Willie.” The recording is very lo-fidelity, which speaks to the necessity for the development of the electric microphone, in order to fully communicate the tone color of the actual performance.
April Showers (both versions)
The discussion of the necessity for development of the electric microphone is evidenced by the two recordings of “April Showers,” performed by Al Jolson in 1921 and 1932, respectively. Each of the recordings feature a very distinctive approach to over-exaggeration of the consonants to emphasize certain words, embellishing the word painting distinctive of classical choral music 100 years earlier, such as the music of Schubert. An example of this approach is the overall crescendo on each iteration of the words that describe flowers, such as daffodils or violets, as if the word is blooming. This over-exaggerated style of singing, known as crooning, developed out of the necessity to sing or perform louder on a theatre stage. The first recording however has a very compressed, or squashed sound, which reduces the instrumental color of the accompaniment into a narrow equalized band. The mix predominantly features the voice, with the instruments very muted, comparatively, likely due to the placement of a sing mono mic for the recording. Conversely, the later recording is a more modern balanced sound, with more musical tone color from the voice as well as the instruments. The newer microphone technology affords the performers the ability to emote far more effectively. The second recording also speaks to the popularity of the tune, becoming a standard performed by Bing Crosby, Mel Torme, and Cab Calloway, to name a few.
My Blue Heaven
The Gene Austin performance of the Walter Donaldson tune, “My Blue Heaven,” is an example of the Tin Pan Alley song style. Similar to “April Showers,” Austin represents the crooning performance style, exaggerating specific key words in each musical phrase, personifying the peaceful concepts that are communicated through the text. There is considerable interplay between the instrumentalists and the singer, notably the call and response within the chorus section. Another interesting development in the song is the use of a scat-singing section in the middle of the piece. In the video, "Walk On By - The Story Of Popular Song,” the concept of interplay within the music scene was explored, and this narrative seems to be evidenced in “My Blue Heaven.” What was happening in Jazz was what was developing in the popular music style, such as the development of scat-singing by Louis Armstrong, an exceptional trumpet player in the Jazz genre, which created a crossover opportunity for the style to become integrated into the popular music genre. It is interesting to note the further argument that Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong needed each other: Crosby learned the concepts of scat singing, and the resulting popularity that was afforded to the style made Armstrong more approachable to the American musical consumer.
I Got Rhythm
The culmination of this week’s listening is found in a recording of “I Got Rhythm,” recorded by the incomparable Ethel Merman. This George and Ira Gershwin tune was written for the musical Girl Crazy, and is written in the typical AABA song style of the period. The syncopated rhythms throughout encourage the listener to tap along, and the interplay of instrumentalists and vocalist are intriguing. Merman sets up the scene in an introduction that is reminiscent of the recitative style from the Baroque opera style. In contrast to the opera, this musical theatre aria is an incredibly up-tempo number that features the full throttle singing that is distinctive to Ethel. [TV Performance of the main section]
References
Starr, L., & Waterman, C. (2014). American popular music: From minstrelsy to MP3 (Fourth ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
References
[Roy ]. (2011, July 3). Walk On By - The Story Of Popular Song (BBC Documentary 2/23). [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OlXaRz87UU#t=111.
No comments:
Post a Comment