JAZZ
The Jazz Age Junkie is no expert on jazz, but takes a hedonistic approach to the subject. In other words, she knows what makes her feel good, and she listens to it whenever she gets a chance.
So rather than trying to explain it, here is a list of the Jazz Age Junkie’s favorite artists and a sampling of their musical art.
Hot Jazz
It is hot jazz (that began in New Orleans and spread across the country) that embodies the spirit of the jazz age. Some people call it traditional jazz, others New Orleans jazz or Dixieland, but whatever you call it, it makes the Jazz Age Junkie want to get up and dance.
Louis Armstrong
The “Father of Jazz.” He taught himself to play and is considered by many to be the first great jazz soloist.
St. Louis Blues
Fats Waller
Before Zoloft there was Fats Waller. He was the original anti-depressant. Fats was a master of stride piano, a style that makes the Jazz Age Junkie happy even against her will.
Ain’t Misbehavin’
Duke Ellington
The prolific Duke was a jazz pianist who wrote or collaborated on more than one thousand compositions. He was the leader of the Duke Ellington Orchestra from 1923 until his death in 1974.
East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
Buddy Bolden
Often called the “first man of jazz,” Buddy is said to be the first to bridge the gap between ragtime and jazz. Buddy’s life rivaled Bix’s in the tragedy category, and even more tragically, he was never recorded. Here are some of his tunes that have been passed down from a time when jazz was still known as “jass.”
Buddy Bolden’s Blues
Dixieland
Don’t Go ’Way, Nobody
Bix Beiderbecke
Bix’s story is one of the saddest in jazz, and there are a lot of sad stories swirling around this music that seems so happy on the surface, but with tragedy nipping at its heels. He was a self taught genius of the cornet, whose style influenced the future of jazz for all time.
Sorry
Davenport Blues
Composers
Although Charles Ives and Aaron Copland were great composers during the Jazz Age, only one (in the opinion of the Jazz Age Junkie) truly captured the spirit of the age.
George Gershwin
One of the greatest composers of the 20th century, Gershwin’s music was Jazz Age perfection. There is something quintessentially New York about Rhapsody in Blue, but An American in Paris also captures a great Jazz Age City (the place where Art Deco was born) in a musical score.
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Rhapsody in Blue: Rhapsody in Blue - George Gershwin - New York City
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An American in Paris: George Gershwin - "An American in Paris"
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Porgy and Bess (with librettists Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward)
Songwriters
Irving Berlin
The incredibly prolific Irving Berlin is said to have written 1,500 songs, including the scores of 20 Broadway shows and 15 Hollywood movies. Here below are only four, but they are all the cat’s pajama’s.
*The Jazz Age Junkie has to confess that the first time she saw this song performed it was by Dr. Frankenstein and his monster (Young Frankenstein, 1974), and although she still sometimes laughs when she hears it, the clip above of Harry Richman has somewhat replaced that original memory and now makes her smile instead.
Cole Porter
A genius of words and music, Cole Porter captured his time with vintage specifics that we sometimes have to Google to understand. But you have to love the lyrics of “You’re the Top,” especially “You’re the National Gallery, you’re Garbo’s salary, you’re cellophane!”
George and Ira Gershwin
The Gershwin brothers wrote more than a dozen Broadway shows together, featuring many memorable songs with words by Ira and music by George. To quote Cole Porter, “they’re the top.”
Singers
In the Jazz Age, they called a wide variety of music jazz. Songs that we would call pop songs today, were called jazz in those days. Listen to Al Jolson singing “Toot, Toot, Tootsie!” That was jazz (even the whistling). Listen to Helen Kane singing “I Want To Be Bad.” That was jazz. Listen to “Stardust” by Hoagy Carmichael. That was jazz (whistling again!).
Annette Hanshaw
In her short recording career, “The Personality Girl” recorded about 250 sides. She was thought of as a flapper, but she was also the musical voice of abandoned women with songs such as “Daddy, Won’t You Please Come Home,” “Moanin’ Low,” and “Am I Blue.” Listed below are some more upbeat songs, the favorites of the Jazz Age Junkie.
Ruth Etting
Known as “America’s Sweetheart of Song,” Ruth Etting had a voice that sounded Jazz Age perfect.
Helen Kane
Helen Kane’s kewpie-doll face may have been the inspiration for Betty Boop, but she stole her little-girl sound from Esther Lee Jones, known as Baby Esther, a singer from Harlem. In a famous court case, Kane sued Fleischer Studios for stealing her signature “boop-oop-a-doop” style to use it for Betty Boop, but the judge ruled that she couldn’t prove it was unique to her. Unfortunately, there are no recordings of Baby Esther, but here are three of Helen Kane’s, including “I Want To Be Bad,” a lampoon of the double standard for men and women of the time, and a personal favorite of the Jazz Age Junkie.
Ethel Waters
Before she was the gray-haired matron we remember from movies of the 40s, 50s and 60s, Ethel Waters was billed as “Sweet Mama Stringbean,” a hotsy-totsy blues singer on the Southern vaudeville circuit. In 1933 she introduced “Stormy Weather” at the Cotton Club.
Bessie Smith
Dubbed the “Empress of the Blues,” she was the most popular blues singer of the 1930s. She made 160 recordings for Columbia, accompanied by such greats as Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher Henderson and more.
Hoagy Carmichael
One of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s and 1940s, Carmichael composed several hundred songs, including four of the most recorded American songs of all time: “Stardust” (1927), “Georgia on My Mind” (1930), “The Nearness of You” (1937) and “Heart and Soul” (1938).
How to Hear Hot Jazz in the 21st Century
To hear hot jazz (or any music of the era) live these days you have to search it out. The SF Jazz Center has precious few nights devoted to hot jazz. Get your fix of Hot Jazz Here:
Jazz Bash Monterey (Monterey, CA)
This is not the Monterey Jazz Festival; it’s a three day stay in hot jazz heaven that happens once a year in the spring.
Dancers and Dances
Everybody danced. The Charleston, the foxtrot, and eventually the swing. After the repeal of Prohibition, nightclubs with big dance floors opened everywhere. But on the stage and in the movies hoofers mostly tapped. Fred and Ginger combined tap with ballroom and even ballet. Broadway shows had incredible numbers of people tapping together. And in Paris, Josephine Baker did the “danse sauvage.”
The Nicholas Brothers
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Nicholas Brothers in Stormy Weather (A few years later…What were their legs made of?)
Josephine Baker
Josphine was the sensation of Paris in the 1920s with her Danse Sauvage or Banana Dance.