The NRR Project #45: 'Crazy Blues' (1920)

‘Crazy Blues’

Composer: Perry Bradford

Performed by Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds

Recorded: August 10, 1920

3:26

To begin with, the blues were never really just the blues. By the time Mamie Smith recorded “Crazy Blues” in 1920, becoming the first African-American to sing the blues on record, blues concepts and forms had already infiltrated American music. However, her recording sold more than a million copies, sparking a storm of interest and a host of followers, and codifying a genre of music.

Pioneers such as Ma Rainey, while on vaudeville tours at the turn of last century, heard early blues sung by non-professionals and started to pick up the vocabulary, pulse, and feeling of the music. However, when it came to black music, the mainstream taste of the time ran to what were termed “coon” songs – racist and derogatory comedy songs that emphasized stereotyped black behaviors, sung by “coon shouters” (oddly, these were mostly white women, in and out of “blackface” makeup).

Even African-American musical giant W.C. Handy, composer, bandleader, and “father of the blues,” infused elements of ragtime and proto-jazz into his pioneering compositions such as “Memphis Blues” in 1912. That tune was first sung on record by a Caucasian, Morton Harvey, two years later. It was a staid rendition, not “hot” nor deeply felt, delivered as a kind of novelty number. Soon, these pseudo-blues became the province of white female singers such as Nora Bayes and Marion Harris.

Pianist, singer, and composer Perry Bradford convinced Okeh Records’ A&R director Fred Hager to take a chance and record Mamie Smith. She had appeared in Bradford’s 1918 revue Made in Harlem, and she had a strong, clear contralto voice that transferred onto acetate well using the acoustic recording techniques of the day. Despite reported pushback from groups that didn’t like the idea of a black singer making records, Hager went ahead.

Revenue trumped racism. Copies of the record sold by the hundreds of thousands, not just to African-Americans customers but whites as well, rich as well as poor. Here was a genre of music, a sibling of newly-born jazz, which really connected with listeners and exploded into the big time. Soon singers such as Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Alberta Hunter were drawing audiences all across the country. Soon, despite the record industry’s attempt to ghettoize the music by classifying African-American recordings as “race records,” they were welcomed into everyone’s consciousness.

Smith’s accompanists were black, too – Ernest Elliott on clarinet, Leroy Parker on violin, Johnny Dunn on cornet, Walter “Dope” Andrews on trombone, and either Willie “The Lion” Smith or Bradford himself on piano – both men claimed the distinction in later years. “Crazy Blues” is not traditional, straight blues – Bradford artfully interpolated enough variation to make it unique. However, all the elements are there – the repeated phrases, the mournful elegance of the lyrics, and most importantly the undisguised feeling that distinguished the blues from the pallid offerings of the pop hits of the day such as “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” and “Whispering.”

The raucous interplay of the instrumentalists are in keeping with the organized chaos of early jazz orchestration, none of it laid out on paper but rather made up on the spot in what were known as “head” or “hum” arrangements. The strong rhythmic sense propels the song, particularly the step-down note sequences between chord changes (that familiar “wah-wah-wah” sound). Dope Andrews’ performance on trombone is a distinctive and delightful feature, using the “tailgate” or “smear” slide technique that allowed the trombonist to flow from one note to the next with ripe abandon.

Smith sings full-out, bending the notes or sidling up to them rather than landing on them with the precision of a conventional vocalist. It’s an urgent, raw sound, one that demands attention. Even though the lyrics are despairing (“I can’t sleep at night/I can’t eat a bite”), there’s something positive and assertive in her delivery that affirms a key part of the blues – the idea that the singer is working through their emotions, purging themselves of the hopelessness that inspired the song in the first place, using the music to come out on top. No wonder people were knocked out by it.

Interestingly, the last verse of “Crazy Blues” is often altered or omitted by singers and scholars. It’s an egregious example of minority-on-minority racism. “I’m gonna do like a Chinaman, go and get some hop/Get myself a gun, and shoot myself a cop,” Smith sings.

Prejudice against Asian immigrants, and Asian-Americans, was just as rife as anti-black sentiment at the time. Anti-“Chinese” riots had been recorded since the 1870s, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was on the books. The stereotype of Chinese as pidgin-English-speaking opium addicts who constituted a “Yellow Peril” that consciously sought to destroy Western civilization was entrenched in the culture. Bradford cast his despairing singer into an imagined situation where they could end their misery by bringing on death through killing a police officer, a disturbing projection of a transgressive desire.

Later performers would change the words; on Leon Redbone’s 1977 album Double Time, he artfully slurs and mumbles the offending passage. The lyrics in question are a blemish on an otherwise transformative, landmark composition.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: Al Jolson sings Swanee.

The NRR Project #44: 'Tiger Rag'

‘Tiger Rag’

Composition origin unknown

Performed by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band

Recorded: March 25, 1918

3:11

  

Define jazz. Go ahead, give it a shot. Its very slipperiness, its looseness, its inclusiveness, its constant evolution and convolution, is perhaps a definition in itself. Robert Christgau termed it “inventing meaning while letting loose,” and that’s close enough for me.

The birth of recorded jazz is here with this squawky recording of five white guys playing music created by African- and Latin-Americans, an appropriation familiar to students of this country’s cultural history. To the uninitiated, it sounds like a riot in a music store – a raucous and random compendium of blatts and squawks, trills and slides, polyphonic discoordination. The mainstream initially characterized it as a fleeting novelty, nothing more.

Although the Original Dixieland Jass (later, Jazz) Band copyrighted the tune, its origins are much older. “Tiger Rag” had long been considered a “standard” by the early jazz bands in New Orleans, where it was born without historical documentation. It went by various names – “Weary Weasel,” “Number Two Blues,” “Play Jack Carey” (after the New Orleans trombonist who made his instrument growl), and others. It’s a mashup – various cels of repeated phrases that serve as templates, beds for improvisations, call and response, the fragmentation and juggling of notes among the players. (The Band originally recorded the piece on August 17, 1917, but they did so for Vocalion using a strange and soon to be outmoded vertical-cut recording process, instead of the familiar lateral, outside-in tracking that became standard.)

But there’s a through-line underneath, a strong, syncopated, swinging motor that drives an aggressive assertion of unity through diversity, a loose confederation of soloists sharing time and tempo. Jazz burst forth in a tepid time musically, drugged with delicacy, sentiment, and the insipid imitation of European song models. The only “stirring” music was written for marching bands. The bold, insistent assertion of “Tiger Rag” made it a hit.

The bearers of these glad tidings were musicians from New Orleans, brought up first to Chicago and then New York to capitalize on the sudden demand for hot music to dance to in tony nightclubs. When Cornetist Nick LaRocca, clarinetist Larry Shields, trombonist Eddie Edwards, pianist Henry Ragas, and drummer Tony Sbarbaro began their gig at Reisenweber’s Café in Manhattan in early 1917, they sparked a craze and started a musical revolution. Soon trainloads of Crescent City musicians were headed north to make some money and spread the new musical gospel.

It helped immensely that jazz was a vernacular music, rather than an art music that required years of training and a submission to an academic tradition and repertoire, dragged down into dullness through tradition and politesse. It was rough, crude, participatory, and eminently replicable, something you picked up “by ear” through participation and kept in unwritten “head arrangements,” a trial-and-error ethos that’s stuck with it to this day and kept it vital. With jazz there was freedom and a chance for the individual voice to soar – even if it had to roar above the other creatures in its pandemonious musical zoo.

“Tiger Rag,” covered countless times in countless ways since its debut recording, became one of the foundations of jazz development, along with other gems like “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “Indiana,” “Didn’t He Ramble,” “Careless Love,” “St. Louis Blues,” “Keep A-Knockin’,” and other tunes that would influence everything that came after them.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: Mamie Smith sings Crazy Blues.

The NRR Project #43: 'After You've Gone'

‘After You’ve Gone’

Music: Turner Layton

Lyrics: Henry Creamer

Sung by Marion Harris

Recorded: October 18, 1918

3:22

“After You’ve Gone” represents a turning point. Up until it became a hit, “black” and “white” musics stayed in their respective corners. Bluesy music wasn’t even thought to be fit for recording. When it finally was, it was classified as fit only for “race records,” not for right-thinking Caucasians, who were still awash in sentimental ballads and waltz tunes. After it hit, the mainstream move away from the stilted, pallid songs of the day began in earnest, sparking the collective creation of the Great American Songbook.

The tune was composed by African-American vaudeville partners Layton and Creamer, who supplied many shows and revues around Manhattan with material – the Ziegfield Follies, for one. Though civil rights were still abysmal, finally black artists were finding their work valued. It gave them a toehold in the entertainment world that would lead to other opportunities.

The song is definitely built on a blues lament – it’s a classic you’ll-be-sorry-for-leaving-me song. The cadences are long and loping, with a series of descending chords that make the singer feel as though they’ve stepping down into the phrases. Meanwhile, the poignant runs up and down to the “gone” notes actually convey woefulness. Songwriting is starting not to tell but to show, to embody strong and intense emotion in the music itself, in compact unis, all tied together to reinforce an overarching theme. The architecture of pop is under invention.

The lyrics are direct and conversational, and reflect the growing idea in American songwriting that a song is personal, sung to an imaginary individual, instead of just belted out to the crowd. The song tells a story, and conveys a perspective – a two-minute miracle. This, along with a melody that welcomes harmony and variation, resulted in it being one of the most recorded standards ever.

The delivery of Marion Harris in this recording is stiff and polite. It would take the 1927 recordings made by Last of the Red Hot Mamas, Sophie Tucker (covered earlier her in the series) and Empress of the Blues Bessie Smith to really give the material the swing and heft it deserves. Since then, it’s been recorded countless times, in all kinds of tempi and arrangements. It’s indestructible.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: Tiger Rag. 

The NRR Project #42: Early Heifetz recordings

Acoustic recordings

Jascha Heifetz, violin

53 sides recorded between Nov. 9. 1917 and Dec. 19, 1924

What would it be like to be the best ever at something? The epitome, the paragon, the pattern of perfection? It is painful, wonderful? Both? Is the expression of genius-level talent inevitable?

Case in point -- Jascha Heifetz. Born in Lithuania in 1901, he was the son of a violin teacher who noted his responsiveness to his playing in the child’s infancy. Lessons began at age 2, and his status as a prodigy spread quickly. By 1911, he was giving outdoor concerts in Odessa that drew thousands.

The looming Russian Revolution prompted the Heifetzes to flee the hard way – to the East, across Siberia and the Pacific to America. Heifetz’s appearance at Carnegie Hall on October 25, 1917 electrified the musical world and led his lifetime recording relationship with Victor Records (later RCA).

The records in this selection were made over 16 sessions, all using the acoustic recording process. This literal analog method of reproduction was best for brass, all right for vocals, piano, and high-register strings – and deadly for many others without a crisp sound that cycled between 250 and 2500 Herz. Heifetz’s strength, speed, accuracy all come through loud and clear.

Heifetz’s preternatural technical skill meant that he could leap over the first and highest hurdle to instrumental mastery. (Yes, he practiced diligently nonetheless.) After a century of so of robust, flamboyant, and sentimental showmanship in violin soloists, Heifetz focused on eliminating all affectation – paring everything back to the notes on the page and how to express them as cleanly as possible. This led to accusations of robotic performances later in his career. However, it’s evident that he was merely locked into a laser-like intensity of focus that precluded excessive gestures.

The pieces recorded here are very much a part of the violin repertory of the time – concert pieces, many considered “light,” lyrical works by Sarasate, Paganini, transcriptions by Fritz Kreisler, the last of whom was the top-dog fiddler of the day. Heifetz subordinates himself to the needs of the piece he is playing rather than imposing a style. His dedication to clarity, clarity, clarity markedly narrowed the gap between the composers’ intents and the listeners’ ears.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: After You’ve Gone. 

The NRR Project #41: 'Over There'

‘Over There’

Written by George M. Cohan

Singer: Nora Bayes

July 13, 1917

2:54

Evangelical interventionism.

This and other songs were part of a massive effort to turn a neutral U.S. population into one willing to send its sons off to die in a foreign war. It birthed the American Century, making the country a full-fledged major power. The repercussions were vast. Let’s break it down:

On November 7, 1916, Woodrow Wilson won his second term as U.S. president, in one of the closest contests in the history of the office. World War I had been raging since the summer of 1914, and Wilson’s campaign platform leaned hard on neutrality. “He kept us out of war” and “America First” were his slogans.

This was in keeping with America’s nominal isolationism. George Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796 famously adjured the country not to involve itself in foreign affairs: "Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?" The concept has been permanently misremembered as the “caution against entangling alliances,” but the idea is the same.

He hired George Edward Creel, a muckraking journalist, who founded the Committee on Public Information, a government-sponsored propaganda agency. It issued government press releases, produced "morale-lifting" materials, and enforced press censorship at the behest of the War Department.

The first nationwide effort to influence public opinion was massive and thorough. Instead of being presented as just another geopolitical conflict between yet another combination of nation-stats, entry into the War was portrayed as a new Crusade. It was "the War to End All Wars," the "War to Make the World Safe for Democracy." Through the press, posters, movies, radio, bond drives, public rallies, and songs, the CPI sold the war to the people.

Isolation and peace-mongering were tantamount to treason, and songs such "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier" disappeared from the music-store racks.

We've met brash George M. Cohan before in this series (link here). "Over There" was his last and biggest hit, the epitome of his peppy style. Shortly after war was declared, he jotted it down. It's a perfect little marching song -- urgent, repetitious, catchy. The lyrics are a perfect evocation of the (manufactured) spirit of the day:

"Johnnie get your gun, get your gun, get your gun
Take it on the run, on the run,
Here them calling you and me, every son of liberty!
Hurry right away, don't delay, go today,
Make your daddy glad to have had such a lad
Tell your sweetheart not to pine,
To be proud her boy's in line . . . .

Over there! Over there!
Send the word, send the word, over there!
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming
The drums rum-tumming everywhere!
So prepare, say a prayer
Send the word, send the word  to beware
We'll be over, we're coming over,
And we won't come back 'til it's over over there!"

It makes you want to sing along, march along, join in. It gives the unwary an image of war as a lark crossed with a divinely ordained mission. Cohan asked singing star Nora Bayes ("Shine On, Harvest Moon") to be the first to record it. He clear, strong, straightforward delivery is perfect.



The number of WWI songs is profuse. "Over There" is only  the best-known; others include gems such as "Hock the Kaiser," "Hello, Central, Give Me No Man's Land," and "If He Can Fight Like He Can Love, Good Night Germany!" The mixture of martial ardor and rank sentiment is an appropriate disconnect for a war that was supposed to be fought for noble reasons, but wound up creating a "lost generation" of disabused humanity.

By June 26, 1917, th first U.S. troops arrived in Europe. Eventually, more than four million American men enlisted, and tow million served overseas. The conclusion of the war 18 months left America indisputably an international force.

Thee demonization of Germany and its culture affected many in the U.S. Steinbeck records the shunning his German-American family experienced by suspicious neighbors. My German-American grandfather joined the cavalry, and made it only as far as New York by Armistice Day. He still wound up changing the spelling of his funny-sounding name, and its pronunciation.

In terms of the nation's psyche, the repercussions were even greater. One of the CPI's young propagandists was Edward Bernays. He studied the propaganda efforts and decided that the same techniques could be applied to any situation requiring mass persuasion. He bcame the father of public relations, what he termed "regimenting the public mind." His offspring -- the advertising industry.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: the early Heifetz recordings.

The NRR Project #39: The Bubble Books (1917 – 1922)

The Bubble Book

Written by Ralph Mayhew and Burges Johnson; illustrated by Rhoda Chase

Singer: unknown; perhaps Henry Burr

14 iterations, 1917 -- 1922

Multimedia. It’s ubiquitous now, but this was one of the first attempts to combine sound and image – a quite successful attempt that helped entrain young imaginations. But was it progressive or pathetic? Allow me to go on a tangential ramble . . .

I will not insult your intelligence by doing other than pointing to Cary O’Dell’s comprehensive and eloquent essay on the subject, which you should now pause and read immediately here. (Even more great information here at Little Wonder Records & Bubble Books.)

For our purposes, they were carefully crafted, sturdy little artifacts, little books containing “three 5 ½-inch discs to accompany the three nursery rhymes printed in the books.” The authors were Ralph Mayhew and Burges Johnson; Rhoda Chase did the beautiful illustrations. It is thought that the popular Henry Burr recorded the songs.

They sold millions of copies. Kids loved them. Parents loved them. Remember, until electrical motors were introduced, all gramophones were spring-driven and required cranking. Gramophone needles were cheap; they came in boxes and their frequent replacement was encouraged. This is known in parenting circles as “giving the kids something to do.” It was a welcome distraction.

There’s no doubt it was an educational aid as well. The tradition of early attempts to plow through more and more complex words by “sounding it out” is made much easier when your infant eye can match the incomprehensible spelling of a familiar word. The tricks of phonetic language, the paths phrases follow, the cadences at the base of the language, and the vast eccentricities of English, were never more well-served.

Other people might argue that it was just another step into unreality, dwelling in the metaphoric media world instead of staying grounded in direct, literally unmediated everydayness.

I don’t know. I never ran across these, but of course my generation of children had picture books wed to two-sided, 45-rpm records that told the story and made a beeping sound when it was time to turn the page. Later, Disney and many other companies made long-playing records on the same principle, and so it unfolds as each new step in technology carries it forward in some iteration.

Which makes me think it’s ubiquitous and needed. We hunger for stories, no matter the form. I crammed myself into corners, bowed with books, reading my way out from under. We played and sang along to our childhood story-records; poignant, maybe, but not pathetic.

In contrast, certain child-friending devices come off today as rather frightening. Who remembers Teddy Ruxpin? A frightening doll that could talk and had limited eye motion, a resident of the Uncanny Valley. Powered by large batteries shoved up its backside. It “read” stories on interchangeable cassettes, and it remains something I still suspect Stephen King conjured up as a practical joke.

But I digress. Hypnotized now by our digital lives, it’s educational to peruse these quaintly analog ancestors. Part of the mission of the “Harper Columbia Book that Sings” was to create a new generation of customers. It worked.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: ‘Listen to the Lambs.’

Rockies game review: or, why I’m not a sportswriter

Seattle Mariners @ Colorado Rockies

May 29, 2017

1:10 p.m.

  

If you’da told me the Rockies were going to be in first place in the National League on Memorial Day this season, I’d have kicked you right near in the viaduct. The Rox have a long tradition of flaming out right after April, and considering the ludicrous amount of injuries we opened the year with, it seemed like now less than ever they deserved another shot from this enthusiastic but gun-shy fan. Our prospects, literally and figuratively, didn’t look good.

I waited ‘til yesterday to go – surprisingly, it was not hard to get tickets. (The previous day’s game was a sellout.) The Bolder Boulder and other holiday activities sucked away some potential crowd members, although a few people with insane stamina, still in their racing bibs, showed up to the game.

It was slightly disheartening, but familiar, to watch the Rockies lose. However (a Rockies fan must always seek qualifiers) there was definitely a different kind of losing going on in this game. This was close. Traditionally, the hit-happy bunch are let down by a series of exploding starting pitchers, who are then replaced by a dreary litany of failed relievers down the years –nay, decades, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory time and again.

Yesterday, our pitchers as a group (we used five, they used seven) suffered from a kind of dreaminess. They seemed to hurl the ball in a state of Borgesian lassitude, as though they were not quite sure any of this was real or not. This caused them to run the count up to 3-0, again and again. Despite the then heroic shakes of their respective heads, pulling them back to consensual reality, and a few strikes thrown, often as not our pitchers were getting pulled with only one or two outs and the bases loaded. You can’t keep this kind of foolishness up for long without getting punished for it.

 Otherwise, it was a good, clean game, full of swats (17 total hits, 11 runs) and no errors. Time crept by as the pitchers kept changing; the good old Rockies employee who runs gear out from the bullpen when pitchers change and then dashes back, to wild acclamation from the crowd, got worked. It would be easy to cite Parra for his ill-advised steal attempt that killed the 4th as well as some momentum, but it's a standard move. If he'd made it I'd be saying the opposite,so what do I know? In the end the Mariners just did, as Grandpa used to say, more gittin’.

In the stands, we kept our scorecards and cracked wise, one ear on the radio. The usual scoreboard shenanigans kept everyone amused, and there was plenty of hat-doffing and singing and moments of silence for Memorial Day. (What has happened to the interactive magic of the hapless fan out there trying to catch a fly ball, or replacing a base, for prizes, between innings? Is there some kind of liability issue? Has the nnany sstate taken even this away from us?) And, as I predicted, the giant anthropomorphic tooth won the mid-inning race around foul ground, maintaining a lead from the beginning over the anthropomorphic toothbrush and anthropomorphic toothpaste. Not bad.

And, oh yes, when did I predict it would rain? 2 p.m. When did it start raining? Exactly. And who was happy I brought two ponchos? Yes, that is right. Father is right.

Oh, yes. They beat us, 6 to 5.