The History of Jazz (30 page)

Even so, it is important to acknowledge the advantages enjoyed by Goodman and other white jazz artists during the era. Unlike the black bandleaders, they were more readily accepted by mainstream America. They typically encountered easier working conditions, stayed at better accommodations when on the road, received higher pay, and had more secure careers. They were not forced to suffer the indignities of racism that even the finest black jazz musicians faced on a regular basis. Nor were they quite so likely to find their music borrowed—or sometimes stolen outright—by other performers, a process all too familiar to Henderson and many other African American jazz artists. In aggregate, these were tremendous advantages for a white musician trying to build a career in jazz during this period. Henderson, even if he had been far more ambitious and focused on gaining popular acclaim, could hardly have matched the heights to which Goodman brought swing music, if only for these reasons.

The final building block in Goodman’s creation of a premier jazz orchestra lay in his reconfiguration of the band’s rhythm section. Jess Stacy, an exciting pianist in the Hines mold, had an immediately positive impact on the ensemble as both an improviser and an accompanist. Guitarist George Van Eps may have lacked Stacy’s skill as a soloist, but as a rhythm player he was a world-class talent. His tenure with the Goodman band was all too brief, but when he departed in 1935, he left behind a student, Alan Reuss, who was Van Eps’s equal in providing inventive chordal support in a big band setting. But the most celebrated addition to the Goodman band during this period was drummer Gene Krupa. Within a matter of months, Krupa would become the most widely known drummer of his day, and though his influence later waned in the jazz world, his role in bringing the percussionist out of the background and into the limelight has left a permanent stamp on the music. Krupa’s approach to the drums, for all its showmanship, was surprisingly unsyncopated and gleefully ignored the two great hooks of jazz rhythm—accenting the backbeat and swinging the downbeat—in favor of a relentless on-the-top groove. Krupa was similarly unconcerned with the other emerging directions in jazz drumming—exploring the melodic possibilities of the drums, or moving the center of the beat to the ride cymbal, or freeing up the instrument from the ground rhythm—trends that would come to define the future of jazz percussion. If anything, Krupa’s approach, with its bottom-heavy snare and bass drum pulsations, recalled the earliest roots of jazz drumming, with its evocation of military music and marching bands, or perhaps pointed even further back, to the music’s African origins. But, for all these anachronisms, Krupa excelled in swinging a dance band, which he did with the energy of a dynamo. The adulation of Krupa’s audience lasted only a few brief years before a 1943 arrest for the possession of marijuana precipitated a backlash. His career would continue for another three decades, but Krupa would never again be so popular, the lasting taint of this scandal combined with changing styles and the critics’ indifference (partly a reaction to his earlier fame) ensuring that his activities would be restricted to the margins of the jazz world. But in the years leading up to World War II, Krupa’s throbbing attack defined the sound of jazz drums for most listeners. All in all, the Goodman rhythm section was without peer at the time. Not until Count Basie put together the supple foundation for his group—utilizing the skills of Jo Jones, Walter Page, Freddie Green, and Basie himself—would a jazz orchestra boast a more swinging sound.

Let’s Dance
lasted only twenty-six weeks before being dropped by the network in May 1935. But Goodman had already parlayed the exposure generated by the show into new opportunities. The band’s affiliation with the Victor label had begun the previous month, and within a matter of weeks the ensemble had recorded a number of important sides, including “King Porter Stomp,” “Sometimes I’m Happy,” “Blue Skies,” and “The Dixieland Band.” Relying primarily on medium and uptempo numbers, Goodman asserted his commitment to hot jazz, transforming everything from Irving Berlin’s saccharine waltz “Always” to the holiday perennial “Jingle Bells” into swinging 4/4 time. Ballads played a modest role in the group’s sound, but were not beyond its expertise, as witnessed by Goodman’s poignant recording of Gordon Jenkins’s “Goodbye,” a pensive piece that became a signature song for the band.

As if these multifaceted achievements were not enough, Goodman formed a second unit that summer, a trio with pianist Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa, and recorded a small body of work with that band that ranks among the finest jazz combo music of the period. The various Goodman splinter bands were not the first racially integrated jazz groups, but they were the most prominent of their day. Here the influence of Hammond, for whom artistic and political issues often coalesced, again made itself felt. Goodman, for his part, was motivated more by his zeal for musical excellence than by any desire to be a social crusader. But in his choice of Wilson (as in his hiring of Lionel Hampton and Charlie Christian for later Goodman combos), the clarinetist could achieve both aims without compromise. In particular, Wilson proved the perfect pianist for the chamber music ambiance that Goodman was refining with his small bands. Boasting a clear, singing piano tone—one as appropriate for a Mozart piano concerto as for a swing combo—and a subtle sense of dynamics, Wilson offered a more delicate variant of jazz piano than that practiced by a Hines or a Waller. The influence of other pianists can be traced in his playing, but Wilson stood above most of his contemporaries in his ability to adapt these influences into something new and distinctive. For example, Wilson had studied Hines carefully, but after an early period of emulation, found a way of assimilating this predecessor’s percussive melodicism into a smoother, more legato style— executed with a sense of relaxed control that became a Wilson trademark. This same ability to digest and recast the jazz piano tradition was evident in Wilson’s harmonic and rhythmic conception. Here one could detect Wilson’s allegiance to the model set by the Harlem stride players, but with one important difference: excess notes were now pruned away, leaving a sparser musical landscape in which much of the swing is felt by implication. In this regard, Wilson represented a halfway point between the florid virtuosity of a Tatum and the minimalistic stylings of a Basie. Wilson’s work on the trio version of “Body and Soul” from July 1935 reflects the distinctive virtues of his playing. The swinging tenths played by the left hand provide a firm harmonic foundation for the combo—so much so that the absence of a bass player is hardly noticed—while Wilson’s right-hand lines ring out with pristine clarity. If there was a weakness to his playing, it lay in an overuse of ornamental runs—here the Tatum influence predominates—a habit that would be exacerbated in later years, causing much of Wilson’s postwar work to sound formulaic. But in the best of his early recordings—solo efforts such as his 1937 renditions of “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” and “Don’t Blame Me,” the small-band projects with Goodman, and his sessions with Billie Holiday—Wilson earns respect as one of the finest jazz pianists of his generation.

The association with Wilson and Henderson may have pleased jazz fans, but the general public did not embrace Goodman’s big band work until the group’s nationwide tour during the summer of 1935. Even then, the Swing Era almost never took wing. Setting out in mid-July, the band played mostly one-nighters, sometimes for as little as $250 per night—by comparison, Goodman’s rates would jump to $2,000 after his rise to fame—until the ensemble arrived in Denver for a much-anticipated engagement at a local dance hall. The audience reacted negatively, almost with hostility, to Goodman’s swing music—so much so that the ballroom’s manager tried to cancel his contract with the band after only one night. To placate the tastes of the local public, Goodman switched to playing tepid stock arrangements and even considered abandoning the hotter approach. After Denver, the group continued to limp along from gig to gig until a surprisingly enthusiastic response to the band’s swing numbers in northern California gave Goodman renewed hope. But this reaction was mild compared to the fan response at the Palomar in Los Angeles a few days later. Swarming the bandstand in their excitement, the audience sent a signal, one soon heard all over the nation, that Goodman had tapped into something real.

Within weeks, Goodman’s records dominated the charts on the West Coast, with the clamor gradually spreading eastward. For a follow-up engagement in Chicago, Goodman had the band promoted, for the first time, as a “swing band”—a new term, but one quickly picked up by others. The same day the Goodman band opened in Chicago,
Variety
launched a new weekly column titled “Swing Stuff,” indicating that the industry power brokers were also paying notice. The Chicago booking, initially slated for one month, was extended to a half-year. By the time of Goodman’s triumphant return to New York in the spring of 1936, his band was, without a doubt, the biggest draw in the music industry.

The Swing Era was under way in full force. For over a decade, swing music would remain the paradigm for popular music in America. If jazz ever enjoyed a golden age, this would be it. And through especially fortuitous circumstances, this was equally the golden age of the American popular song. In tandem, these two forces would create a musical revolution unparalleled in modern times, one in which the highest rung in artistry could be achieved without compromising commerciality. Never again would popular music be so jazzy, or jazz music so popular.

It is tempting to view the Palomar engagement as delineating a sharp break in the history of American popular music, with the new style replacing the old, hot surplanting sweet, in a sudden tectonic shift of sensibility. But long before Goodman’s success, a handful of white bandleaders had experimented with a hotter, more jazz-oriented style of dance music, and their efforts helped develop both an audience and the personnel for the later swing bands. Among others, the Whiteman, Goldkette, and Pollack ensembles, as we have seen, attempted—and to a great extent managed—to find a halfway point in which both styles, hot and sweet, could play a role. And though these bandleaders never embraced jazz with the fervor of an Ellington or Henderson, they created a body of ambitious recordings and spawned the next generation of white swing bands—such as the Casa Loma Orchestra and the Dorsey Brothers—that would delve even more deeply into hotter currents.

The Casa Loma band, in particular, cultivated a small but devoted following on college campuses that would help pave the way for Goodman’s later success. One of Jean Goldkette’s ensembles known as the Orange Blossoms, formed in Detroit in 1927, served as the immediate predecessor of this band. The group reformed in 1929 as a cooperative, a rare approach to organizing a band, then as now. Taking the democratic structure of the band to heart, the members also set about electing a leader, deciding on Glen Gray, a statuesque and charismatic alto saxophonist, to preside over the group. Gray inherited a band that had already focused on hot jazz, largely under the inspiration of banjoist Gene Gifford’s arrangements. In October 1929, this group undertook its first recording session newly christened as the Casa Loma Orchestra. The band explored a wide range of styles, but its uptempo charts generated the most enthusiasm. Galloping along at around 250 beats per minute, numbers such as “Casa Loma Stomp,” “Black Jazz,” and “Maniac’s Ball” tested the stamina and footwork of the ballroom regulars as few white bands dared to do. But this forward-looking orchestra pushed at more than just the tempos of the tunes. At a time when soloists on recordings were routinely restricted to eight-or sixteen-bar statements, the Casa Loma was willing, for example, to let Clarence Hutchenrider punch out a stirring sixty-eight-bar baritone solo on “I Got Rhythm.” Above all, the tight ensemble work of the Casa Loma Orchestra stood out. Even at the fastest tempos, the sections never faltered, never fell out of sync.

All of these elements would come to influence Goodman: the swinging charts, the focus on hot solo work, the emphasis on perfectly executed ensemble passages. Less heralded than the Fletcher Henderson connection, the Casa Loma Orchestra’s impact on Goodman—and, through him, on countless other swing bands—may have been just as important. But even more telling, the Casa Loma’s ability to build an audience among college students and younger fans also foreshadowed the demographics of the Goodman phenomenon. Setting a pattern that has lasted until the present day, the teenagers and young adults of the late 1930s and early 1940s not only dictated the musical tastes of the nation, but did so in a manner that their parents often could not understand. With its fast tempos, extroverted solos, and unrelenting syncopations, the Casa Loma Orchestra was forging a music distinctly not for the fainthearted. Do we err in describing this as music of
rebellion
—in particular, the rebellion of white youngsters in middle America?

Swing music was taken up by the new generation, searching for its own identity, developing its own way of life. In the new era of mass media and mass marketing of entertainment, the potential for music to symbolize, establish, and communicate one’s lifestyle (soon to become an important concept) emerged as one of the defining attributes of popular recordings. Favorite songs, performers and bands, radio stations: all increasingly played an emblematic role in defining each new generation in contrast to the previous one. This supra-musical aspect of jazz, which we first glimpsed in the attitudes of the white Chicago jazz players of the 1920s, now became a broader cultural phenomenon with the epidemic of swing fever afflicting America’s youth, circa 1935. Perhaps one goes too far to describe this shift as the Woodstock of the 1930s, but a cultural change was set in motion during this period that set the pattern for many later developments—an initial rupture between the musical tastes of the young and old that would repeat and widen to an enormous chasm some twenty years later with the advent of rock and roll.