Mary Lou Williams: Night Life

Mary Lou Williams is probably the most important female African-American jazz pianist. Williams was also a fine songwriter and arranger and she worked with major figures in jazz including Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. Williams was born Mary Scruggs in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1910.

Williams played with Duke Ellington’s band, The Washingtonians, in 1925. By the late Twenties she was pianist in the Andy Kirk’s band, “The Twelve Clouds of Joy.” While with Kirk, Williams supplied the band with the songs, “Cloudy,” and “Little Joe from Chicago.” Williams made her first recordings with Kirk in 1929/30 and recorded the piano solo sides, “Drag ‘Em” and “Night Life.” These solo sides would see Williams become a national name and brought her to the attention of Benny Goodman, Earl Hines, and Tommy Dorsey who all hired her as an arranger.

Williams became involved in the bebop movement of the Forties and wound up as a mentor of sorts for the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

In the Sixties, Williams began recording religious jazz music, and she continued recording prolifically until her death in 1981.

Williams best recordings can be heard on the following albums: “Mary Lou Williams Trio” (1944), “Signs of the Zodiac” (1945), “Piano Solos” (1946), “Black Christ of the Andes” (1964), “Zoning” (1974), “Mary Lou’s Mass” (1975), “The Chronological Classics: Mary Lou Williams 1927-1940” (1995), “The Chronological Classics: Mary Lou Williams 1944-1945” (1998) and The Chronological Classics: Mary Lou Williams 1945-1947” (1999).

W.C. Handy The Father of the Blues

William Christopher Handy will forever be remembered as “The Father of the Blues.” It was Handy who was most responsible for taking this regional folk music of the American South and turning it into another form of popular American music.

Handy was working as a popular minstrel bandleader when he heard blues music for the first time while stopping over in the Mississippi Delta. Handy would eventually write the first popular blues songs, “Memphis Blues,” ”St. Louis Blues,” Yellow Dog Blues,” and “Hesitating Blues.”

Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, in 1873. His father was pastor of a church in a nearby town. Handy’s upbringing was strict and his pious father viewed secular music and anything associated with it as instruments of the devil. It was with much secrecy then, that young W.C. Handy purchased his first instrument, a guitar. When his father found the guitar, Handy was instructed to return it. Handy moved on to organ and eventually acquired a cornet, the instrument with which he would be forever associated.

Handy joined a local band as a cornetist during his teens-a fact that he kept hidden from his parents. During the 1890s Handy traveled around Alabama in various bands playing the minstrel music that was popular at the time and working odd jobs to make ends meet. He eventually became the leader of the Mahara’s Colored Minstrels and toured The South with that band for three years.

From 1900-1902, Handy was recruited as a music teacher at the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes. Handy’s frustration with the college’s emphasis on European classical music and apparent lack of appreciation for American styles led to his resignation from his post.

Handy quickly rejoined his old band and set off on the road again. It was while on tour with the band in the Mississippi Delta that Handy heard the blues, a music that he described at the time as “the weirdest music I had ever heard.” Handy studied the blues as played by locals during subsequent visits to the Mississippi Delta, and by the time Handy and his band had relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1909, the blues was part of his repertoire. Handy wrote what is often coined as the first blues song, “Memphis Blues,” as a theme song for a Memphis mayoral candidate, Edward Crump. The song was originally titled, “Mr. Crump.”

Handy wrote subsequent songs with “blues” in the title such as “Beale Street Blues” and “St. Louis Blues” and became one of the first African-Americans to become wealthy by publishing songs. Handy moved his publishing business to New York City, in 1917, and set up offices in Times Square.

In early 1917, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band had made the first jazz recording with a side titled, “Livery Stable Blues.” Handy organized a band called Handy’s Orchestra of Memphis to make his own recordings for Columbia. The resulting sides contained music that was closer to blues than that which was recorded by jazz bands. Handy was not enamored with this new music, jazz, and tried to stick to tradition.

Handy recorded for various labels from 1917 to 1924 and recorded versions of his own songs, “Memphis Blues,” “Yellow Dog Blues,” and “St. Louis Blues,” among others. Handy’s renditions of these classic tunes are not considered as classics of the era, but they are of tremendous historical rather than aesthetic interest.

Among the limited compilation albums that may be found on Handy’s recordings are “Father of the Blues” (1980) and “Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey” (2003).

James P. Johnson: The Charleston

James Price Johnson was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1894. He was a ragtime turned stride pianist whose composition, “The Charleston,” became one of the anthems of the “jazz age” of the Twenties. Johnson and Jelly Roll Morton were probably the two pianists most responsible for taking ragtime music and turning it into jazz via the piano.

Although he started out playing ragtime music in the tradition of Scott Joplin, Johnson became the innovator of a jazz sub-genre of piano playing that was dubbed, “stride.” This piano style got its name from the walking or “striding” sound produced by the pianist’s left hand. Stride piano incorporated elements of the blues and it allowed for on the spot improvisation which is an essential characteristic of jazz music. Ragtime was a rigidly composed form of music which stifled improvisation.

A future jazz star, Fats Waller, would become Johnson’s protégé’, adopt his stride style, and later expose it to the masses.

Johnson was a prolific composer, and he wrote some of the most familiar compositions of the roaring Twenties. Aside from the Charleston, he penned, “You’ve Got to Be Modernistic,” “If I Could Be with You One Hour Tonight,” “Carolina Shout,” “Keep Off The Grass,” and “Old Fashioned Love,” among others. In addition to jazz and pop tunes, Johnson wrote waltzes, ballets and symphonic pieces.

Johnson’s finest recordings can be found on a number of compilation albums including the multi-volume “Chronological Classics: James P. Johnson” (1996) series and “Snowy Morning Blues” (1991), “Harlem Stride Piano” (1992), and “Father of Stride Piano” (2001).

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band: Livery Stable Blues

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band was originally an off-shoot of Stein’s Dixie Jass Band and started out under the leadership of cornetist, Nick LaRocca. By 1917, the band had moved from Chicago to New York, where in February of that year, they would make the first-ever jazz recording, “Livery Stable Blues/Dixie Jass Band One Step” for Victor.

The recording was a huge commercial success, and it introduced jazz to a nationwide audience. The huge sales of that first recording motivated other record labels to record jazz and thus sparked the spread of the music.

The initial incarnation of the band recorded several other excellent sides including, “Darktown Strutter’s Ball,” “Ostrich Walk,” and “Tiger Rag.” Their music was typical early Dixieland jazz, but the ODJB had some of the finest musicians in jazz music at the time including Larocca on cornet, “Daddy” Edwards on trombone, Henry Ragas on piano, and Larry Shields on clarinet.

The ODJB was a white band, and Larocca was a proud member of the white race who always maintained that it was not African-Americans who had created jazz, but white musicians. Larocca’a overt racism has probably hurt the reputation of the ODJB and encouraged many observers to write them off as simply a bunch of second-rate white musicians who only had the opportunity to make the first jazz recording due to the institutionalized racism of the time. However, this is clearly not the case. Freddie Keppard, an African-American cornetist, turned down the opportunity to make the first jazz recording, in 1916.

The ODJB reunited several times in the Thirties and toured Europe. Drummer Tony Sbarbaro was the only original member to appear on all the band’s recordings between 1917 and 1938.

Several compilations of the band’s early sides can be found including, “The Complete Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1917-1938)” (1995). The band also appears on several compilations of early recorded jazz.

Tommy Johnson: Canned Heat Blues

Tommy Johnson was country blues singer and guitarist from Terry, Mississippi. Johnson was born in 1896, and by the Twenties he was an established figure in Mississippi blues. The Sixties blues rock band, Canned Heat, took their name from the Johnson song, “Canned Heat Blues.”

Johnson was a dissolute figure who actively cultivated a sinister image through excessive drinking and stories that he had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his musical mastery. A similar mythology would later be attached to Robert Johnson.

Johnson made his first recordings for the Victor label in 1928 with the sides, “Canned Heat Blues” and “Big Road Blues.” Johnson also recorded for Paramount Records in two sessions, one from 1928 and another from the following year. These recordings proved Johnson to be a vocalist of great depth and a fine guitarist. Unfortunately, his recordings for Paramount, are of lo-fidelity.

Johnson’s classic sides can be found on the compilation, “Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order (1928-1929)” (1994).

Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell: How Long-How Long Blues

Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell comprised one of the most influential musical partnerships in the history of the blues. Singer and pianist Carr teamed up with the brilliant guitarist Blackwell Carr was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1905. Blackwell was born in Syracuse, South Carolina, in 1903. After both men had worked for several years as accompanists for other performers, they formed a duo in 1928 and made their first recordings for Vocalion records that year.

The duo’s first recording, “How Long-How Long Blues,” was a smash hit and a million-seller that ushered in a more polished urban sound for blues recordings. The money that the duo made from the song allowed Scrapper Blackwell to quit his bootlegging activities, but provided Leroy Carr with the means to exacerbate his already serious alcoholism.

Carr and Blackwell recorded several more classic sides between 1928 and 1935, including “Midnight Hour Blues,” “Mean Mistreater Mama,” “Blues before Sunrise,” and the song that seemed to foretell Carr’s early demise, “Six Cold Feet in the Ground.”

By 1935, Carr’s drinking had resulted in kidney failure and entire recording sessions were scrapped as a result. Carr died later that year of nephritis at the age of thirty.

Carr and Blackwell’s classic sides can be found on the following compilation albums: “Blues before Sunrise” (1962), “(1929-1935)” (2000), and “Naptown Blues” (1996),

Sidney Bechet: Clarinet Genius

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Sidney Bechet was a musical child prodigy born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1897. Bechet was so musically advanced as a child that he had already played with many of the top bands in New Orleans. Bechet was one of a few jazz musicians of his generation who could rival Louis Armstrong’s brilliance as a soloist.

In 1917, Bechet moved to Chicago. After a tour of Europe, Bechet returned to America with a new instrument, the soprano saxophone and he soon established himself as a master of the instrument. Bechet made his recording debut in 1923 with Clarence Williams. He appeared with Louis Armstrong on a classic session with the Clarence Williams Blue Five that produced superb sides such as “Cake Walkin’ Babies from Home.”

From 1925 to 1929, Bechet lived and played in Europe. While in Paris, Bechet became involved in a daylight gun fight with another musician that resulted in injuries to innocent bystanders. Bechet was imprisoned for a year as a result, and was deported upon release.

During the depression, Bechet supplemented his income by running a tailor shop with trumpeter Tommy Ladnier. Bechet and Ladnier subsequently recorded several outstanding sides of New Orleans jazz under the name, “New Orleans Feetwarmers.” In 1938, Bechet scored a big hit with his stirring rendition of the standard, “Summertime.”

Bechet returned to France in 1952 and continued to record hit jazz records. Bechet died in Paris, in 1959.

Bechet’s recordings can be found on a number of fine compilation albums, including the great two-volume, “Jazz Classics” (1950) and "Chronological Classics."

Ma Rainey Songs and Albums

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Bessie Smith was known as the “Empress of the Blues,” so it’s only fitting that her mentor and senior, Ma Rainey, should be forever remembered as “The Mother of the Blues.” Ma Rainey was born Gertrude Pridgett in Columbus, Georgia, in 1886. She acquired the moniker, “Ma,” after she married William “Pa” Rainey in 1904.

Rainey began performing music when she was 12-years-old, and she and her husband eventually became members of the legendary touring ensemble, F.S. Walcott’s Rabbit’s Foot Minstrels. From 1914, the Raineys became known as “Rainey and Rainey, Assassins of the Blues.” Ma Rainey eventually met Bessie Smith, and she acted as a mentor for the younger singer.

Mamie Smith became the first African-American woman to make a blues record in 1920, and the sensation that her recording, “Crazy Blues,” stirred led to record companies searching out other African-American blues singers. Paramount discovered Rainey in1923, and enabled her to make her first recordings. She went to Chicago in late 1923 to make her first record “Bad Luck Blues,” Bo-Weevil Blues,” and “Moonshine Blues.”

Rainey would record over 100 sides for Paramount over the next five years. She was marketed as “Mother of the Blues” among other tags. In 1924, she recorded with the young Louis Armstrong on “See See Rider Blues,” “Jelly Bean Blues,” and “Countin’ the Blues.”

As the Thirties approached, Rainey’s brand of Vaudeville blues was beginning to lose popularity, and Paramount failed to renew her recording contract. Rainey died in Rome, Georgia, in 1939, of a heart attack.

Ma Rainey’s best recordings can be found on the following compilations: “Ma Rainey” (1974), “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (1975), and “The Best of Gertrude “Ma” Rainey-Mother of the Blues” (2004).

George Gershwin Songs

George Gershwin was an American pianist and modern classical composer whose contributions to popular music fall within the realm of jazz. Gershwin was the first classical musician or composer who embraced the new 20^th century music of jazz and melded it with classical music.

Gershwin was born Jacob Gershowitz in Brooklyn, New York, in 1898, to Russian/Ukrainian parents. He studied piano from age ten under the tutelage of classical pianist Charles Hambitzer, who would remain Gershwin’s mentor until Gershwin was around 20-years-old.

Gershwin began his music career upon dropping out of high school at age 15, finding work as a songwriter of pop tunes in New York City’s famed Tin Pan Alley. His first successful song was the ragtime hit, “Rialto Ripples,” in 1917. Two years later he penned the famous song, “Swanee,” which would become a huge hit for Al Jolson. Gershwin also produced piano rolls for player pianos for the Aeolian company.

Gershwin began writing jazz songs in the early Twenties with lyricist Buddy DeSylva and his brother, Ira Gershwin. The team’s early songs included “Oh, Lady Be Good” and “Fascinating Rhythm.” These classic songs were followed by “Funny Face,” “I Got Rhythm,” and “Of Thee I Sing.”

In 1924, Gershwin wrote the jazz-infused modern classical masterpiece, “Rhapsody in Blue.” This famous work was introduced to the world by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in a New York City performance. Gershwin then headed to Paris with the ambition of furthering his classical training, but was rejected by several prospective mentors including Maurice Ravel. While in Paris, Gershwin penned another jazzy classical masterpiece, “An American in Paris,” which made its debut at New York City’s Carnegie Hall in 1928.

In 1929, Gershwin turned his attention to Hollywood and the burgeoning film industry that required his musical talents to write scores. He wrote the score for the film, “Delicious,” in 1929, but was upset when much of the music he wrote was scrapped by the film’s producers.

Gershwin, embittered by the treatment of the Delicious score, switched his efforts back to classical music and wrote the American folk opera masterpiece, “Porgy and Bess,” which contained some of Gershwin’s most brilliant compositions including, “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “I Got Plenty of Nuttin’,” and “Summertime.” Porgy and Bess was a commercial failure at the time, but has since become a staple of American opera and popular music.

Gershwin returned to Hollywood and wrote film scores, including the one for the Fred Astaire musical, “Shall We Dance.” In 1937, Gershwin died suddenly from the effects of a brain tumor.

Gershwin’s music is best heard on the following collections: “Rhapsody in Blue/An American in Paris (New York Philharmonic; The Columbia Symphony/ Leonard Bernstein)” (1959), ‘S Marvelous: The Gershwin Songbook” (1994) and “The Essential George Gershwin” (2003).