130-461: George Allen Russell (June 23, 1923 – July 27, 2009) was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and theorist. He is considered one of the first jazz musicians to contribute to general music theory with a theory of harmony based on jazz rather than European music, in his book Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (1953). Russell was born in Cincinnati, Ohio , on June 23, 1923, to
260-507: A "form of art music which originated in the United States through the confrontation of the Negro with European music" and arguing that it differs from European music in that jazz has a "special relationship to time defined as 'swing ' ". Jazz involves "a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role" and contains a "sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror
390-480: A big band was not novel, as it had been done by Paul Whiteman and others since the 1920s. Shaw updated the idea with the music trends of the 1940s. Strings gave him a wider tonal palette and allowed him to concentrate on ballads rather than the fast dance songs of the swing era. Shaw was at or near the top of the list of virtuoso jazz bandleaders. The band was showcased on the Burns and Allen program every week. In 1940, at
520-526: A coherent tradition". Duke Ellington , one of jazz's most famous figures, said, "It's all music." Although jazz is considered difficult to define, in part because it contains many subgenres, improvisation is one of its defining elements. The centrality of improvisation is attributed to the influence of earlier forms of music such as blues , a form of folk music which arose in part from the work songs and field hollers of African-American slaves on plantations. These work songs were commonly structured around
650-400: A contract to make a will between them. In July 2006, a Ventura, California , jury unanimously held that Keyes was entitled to almost one-half of Shaw's estate, or $ 1,420,000. In 1980, Shaw donated his papers, most of which amounted to his music library of over 700 scores and parts and approximately 1,000 pieces of sheet music, to Boston University . In 1991, the collection was transferred to
780-467: A drum made by stretching skin over a flour-barrel. Lavish festivals with African-based dances to drums were organized on Sundays at Place Congo, or Congo Square, in New Orleans until 1843. There are historical accounts of other music and dance gatherings elsewhere in the southern United States. Robert Palmer said of percussive slave music: Usually such music was associated with annual festivals, when
910-546: A force in popular music and jazz before retiring from music completely in 1954. Arthur Jacob Arshawsky was born on May 23, 1910, in New York City to Sarah ( née Strauss) and Harold "Harry" Arshawsky, a dressmaker and photographer. The family was Jewish; his father was from Russia, his mother from Austria. Shaw grew up in New Haven, Connecticut , where his natural introversion was deepened by local antisemitism . He bought
1040-501: A group of session musicians in Hollywood, trying to combine strings and woodwinds with a jazz band. The result was the hit "Frenesi". He was hired as bandleader for the Burns and Allen Show broadcast from Hollywood. He organized a band that was modeled after his swing band concept of the late-1930s with the addition of six violins, two violas, and one cello. The addition of a string section to
1170-410: A limited melodic range, sounding like a field holler, and the guitar accompaniment was slapped rather than strummed, like a small drum which responded in syncopated accents, functioning as another "voice". Handy and his band members were formally trained African-American musicians who had not grown up with the blues, yet he was able to adapt the blues to a larger band instrument format and arrange them in
1300-454: A longhair, impressed with my own ability. Nothing could be farther from the truth. My faith in dance music — I refuse to call it swing — borders on the fanatic. I have the utmost respect for the many real musicians who are creating a new music as important as the classics, but I have no respect for musical clowns who lead an orchestra with a baton and a quip. However, more power to them if they can make it pay." When Shaw told his agents that he
1430-572: A major pop artist within short order. The record eventually became one of the era's defining recordings. Musically restless, Shaw was also an early proponent of what became known much later as Third Stream music, which blended elements of classical and jazz forms and traditions. His music influenced other musicians, such as Monty Norman in England, whose " James Bond Theme " features a vamp possibly influenced by Shaw's 1938 recording of "Nightmare". Shaw also recorded with small jazz groups drawn from within
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#17330859773661560-460: A multi- strain ragtime march with four parts that feature recurring themes and a bass line with copious seventh chords . Its structure was the basis for many other rags, and the syncopations in the right hand, especially in the transition between the first and second strain, were novel at the time. The last four measures of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899) are shown below. African-based rhythmic patterns such as tresillo and its variants,
1690-421: A nervous breakdown, soon after which she divorced him. In 1940, before eloping with Lana Turner , Shaw briefly dated actresses Betty Grable and Judy Garland and, according to Tom Nolan's biography, had an affair with Lena Horne . Apart from his interest in music, Shaw had a tremendous intellect and almost insatiable thirst for intellectual knowledge and literature. During his self-imposed "sabbaticals" from
1820-427: A part of the celebrity culture of the period, with its professional obligations. He told Metronome magazine: "I don't like the business of music. I'm unhappy in the music 'business.' Maybe I don't even belong in it. I like the music part, but for me the business part just plain stinks." Shaw also resented the constant pressure imposed on him by networks, agencies, publishers, and promoters. He summed up his feelings in
1950-482: A period of renewed introspection. After his discharge, he entered psychoanalysis and began to withdraw from music in favor of a writing career. His autobiography, The Trouble With Cinderella: An Outline of Identity , was published in 1952 (with later reprint editions in 1992 and 2001). Revealing downbeat elements of the music business, Shaw explained that "the trouble with Cinderella" is "nobody ever lives happily ever after." He turned to semi-autobiographical fiction with
2080-652: A popular music form. Handy wrote about his adopting of the blues: The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect ... by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key
2210-564: A position he held for many years. As Russell toured with his own groups, he was persistent in developing the Lydian Concept. He played the Bottom Line, Newport, Wolftrap, The Village Vanguard, Carnegie Hall, Sweet Basil and more with his 14-member orchestra. In the 1970s Russell was commissioned to write and record three major works: Listen to the Silence , a mass for orchestra and chorus for
2340-439: A repetitive call-and-response pattern, but early blues was also improvisational. Classical music performance is evaluated more by its fidelity to the musical score , with less attention given to interpretation, ornamentation, and accompaniment. The classical performer's goal is to play the composition as it was written. In contrast, jazz is often characterized by the product of interaction and collaboration, placing less value on
2470-490: A reporter: "In the world we live in, compulsive perfectionists finish last. You have to be Lawrence Welk or, on another level, Irving Berlin , and write the same kind of music over and over again. I'm not able to do that, and I have taken the clarinet as far as anyone can possibly go. To continue playing would be a disservice." He spent the rest of the 1950s living in Europe. In 1983, after years of prodding by Williard Alexander,
2600-484: A saxophone by working in a grocery store and began learning the saxophone at 13. At 16, he switched to the clarinet and left home to tour with a band. Returning to New York, he became a session musician through the early 1930s. From 1925 to 1936, Shaw performed with many bands and orchestras; from 1926 to 1929, he worked in Cleveland and established a lasting reputation as music director and arranger for an orchestra led by
2730-429: A self-penned 1939 Saturday Evening Post article: "My job is to play music, not politics, and my only obligation is to the people who pay to listen to me. I don't attempt to ram hackneyed, insipid tunes down the public's throat just because they've been artificially hypoed to the so-called 'hit' class. This policy of trying to maintain some vestige of musical integrity has, naturally, earned me enemies, people who think I'm
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#17330859773662860-492: A single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands , Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near
2990-416: A soloist is supported by a rhythm section of one or more chordal instruments (piano, guitar), double bass, and drums. The rhythm section plays chords and rhythms that outline the composition structure and complement the soloist. In avant-garde and free jazz , the separation of soloist and band is reduced, and there is license, or even a requirement, for the abandoning of chords, scales, and meters. Since
3120-622: A swing concert at the Imperial Theater in New York. During the swing era , his big bands were popular with hits like " Begin the Beguine " (1938), " Stardust " (with a trumpet solo by Billy Butterfield ), "Back Bay Shuffle", " Moonglow ", "Rosalie", and " Frenesi ". The show was well received, but was forced to dissolve in 1937 because his band's sound was not commercial. Shaw valued experimental and innovative music over dancing and love songs. He
3250-538: A white father and a black mother. He was adopted by a nurse and a chef on the B & O Railroad , Bessie and Joseph Russell. Young Russell sang in the choir of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and listened to the Kentucky Riverboat music of Fate Marable . He made his stage debut at age seven, singing "Moon Over Miami" with Fats Waller . Surrounded by the music of the black church and
3380-492: Is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans , Louisiana , in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues , ragtime , European harmony , African rhythmic rituals, spirituals , hymns , marches , vaudeville song, and dance music . Since the 1920s Jazz Age , it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music . Jazz
3510-519: Is a "white jazz" genre that expresses whiteness . White jazz musicians appeared in the Midwest and in other areas throughout the U.S. Papa Jack Laine , who ran the Reliance band in New Orleans in the 1910s, was called "the father of white jazz". The Original Dixieland Jazz Band , whose members were white, were the first jazz group to record, and Bix Beiderbecke was one of the most prominent jazz soloists of
3640-663: Is a fundamental rhythmic figure heard in many different slave musics of the Caribbean, as well as the Afro-Caribbean folk dances performed in New Orleans Congo Square and Gottschalk's compositions (for example "Souvenirs From Havana" (1859)). Tresillo (shown below) is the most basic and most prevalent duple-pulse rhythmic cell in sub-Saharan African music traditions and the music of the African Diaspora . Tresillo
3770-469: Is characterized by swing and blue notes , complex chords , call and response vocals , polyrhythms and improvisation . As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles , biguine , ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation . However, jazz did not begin as
3900-486: Is heard prominently in New Orleans second line music and in other forms of popular music from that city from the turn of the 20th century to present. "By and large the simpler African rhythmic patterns survived in jazz ... because they could be adapted more readily to European rhythmic conceptions," jazz historian Gunther Schuller observed. "Some survived, others were discarded as the Europeanization progressed." In
4030-1013: Is highly regarded). In 1964, Russell, who as a half black man was dismayed by race relations in the United States, moved to Scandinavia . He toured Europe with his sextet and lived in Scandinavia for five years, teaching at Lund University . In 1966, he was part of the first Pori Jazz festival. Through the early 1970s, Russell did most of his work in Norway and Sweden . He played there with young musicians who would go on to international fame: guitarist Terje Rypdal , saxophonist Jan Garbarek and drummer Jon Christensen . This Scandinavian period also provided opportunities to write for larger groupings, and Russell's larger-scale compositions of this time pursue his idea of "vertical form", which he described as "layers or strata of divergent modes of rhythmic behaviour" . The Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature , commissioned by Bosse Broberg of Swedish Radio for
George Russell (composer) - Misplaced Pages Continue
4160-468: Is one of the two most splendid books about music; the other is My Musical Language by Messiaen . Though I'm considered a contemporary music composer, if I dare categorize myself as an artist, I've been strongly influenced by the Lydian Concept, which is not simply a musical method—we might call it a philosophy of music, or we might call it poetry." The major scale probably emerged as the predominating scale of Western music, because within its seven tones lies
4290-400: Is that jazz can absorb and transform diverse musical styles. By avoiding the creation of norms, jazz allows avant-garde styles to emerge. For some African Americans, jazz has drawn attention to African-American contributions to culture and history. For others, jazz is a reminder of "an oppressive and racist society and restrictions on their artistic visions". Amiri Baraka argues that there
4420-468: Is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm , a slang term dating back to 1860 meaning ' pep, energy ' . The earliest written record of the word is in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times in which a minor league baseball pitcher described a pitch which he called a 'jazz ball' "because it wobbles and you simply can't do anything with it". The use of the word in a musical context
4550-590: The Lydian mode with the more consonant augmented fourth, the player or composer gains the tonal freedom that facilitates modal playing over chords with a major third. Lydian major-third chords are specified with a ♯ 11, which is equivalent to the ♯ 4 in the scale. Miles Davis reportedly summarized the LCC succinctly by saying, "F should be where middle C is on the piano" [white notes: F-F = Lydian major, rather than Ionian major = C-C]. The Lydian Chromatic Concept
4680-620: The Atlantic slave trade had brought nearly 400,000 Africans to North America. The slaves came largely from West Africa and the greater Congo River basin and brought strong musical traditions with them. The African traditions primarily use a single-line melody and call-and-response pattern, and the rhythms have a counter-metric structure and reflect African speech patterns. An 1885 account says that they were making strange music (Creole) on an equally strange variety of 'instruments'—washboards, washtubs, jugs, boxes beaten with sticks or bones and
4810-509: The Pacific theater . After 18 months playing for Navy personnel, (sometimes as many as four concerts a day in battle zones, including Guadalcanal ), Shaw returned to the U.S. in a state of physical exhaustion and received a medical discharge. After the war, the popularity of big bands declined, as Crooners and Bebop began to dominate the charts. Shaw credited his time in the Navy from 1942 to 1944 as
4940-598: The Radio Orchestra , was first recorded in 1968, as an extended work recorded with electronic tape. It continued Russell's continuing exploration of new approaches and new instrumentation. Russell returned to America in 1969, when Gunther Schuller assumed the presidency of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and appointed Russell to teach the Lydian Concept in the newly created jazz studies department,
5070-471: The swing era of the 1920s–40s, big bands relied more on arrangements which were written or learned by ear and memorized. Soloists improvised within these arrangements. In the bebop era of the 1940s, big bands gave way to small groups and minimal arrangements in which the melody was stated briefly at the beginning and most of the piece was improvised. Modal jazz abandoned chord progressions to allow musicians to improvise even more. In many forms of jazz,
5200-943: The 1920s. The Chicago Style was developed by white musicians such as Eddie Condon , Bud Freeman , Jimmy McPartland , and Dave Tough . Others from Chicago such as Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa became leading members of swing during the 1930s. Many bands included both Black and white musicians. These musicians helped change attitudes toward race in the U.S. Female jazz performers and composers have contributed to jazz throughout its history. Although Betty Carter , Ella Fitzgerald , Adelaide Hall , Billie Holiday , Peggy Lee , Abbey Lincoln , Anita O'Day , Dinah Washington , and Ethel Waters were recognized for their vocal talent, less familiar were bandleaders, composers, and instrumentalists such as pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong , trumpeter Valaida Snow , and songwriters Irene Higginbotham and Dorothy Fields . Women began playing instruments in jazz in
5330-451: The 1950s, many women jazz instrumentalists were prominent, some sustaining long careers. Some of the most distinctive improvisers, composers, and bandleaders in jazz have been women. Trombonist Melba Liston is acknowledged as the first female horn player to work in major bands and to make a real impact on jazz, not only as a musician but also as a respected composer and arranger, particularly through her collaborations with Randy Weston from
George Russell (composer) - Misplaced Pages Continue
5460-873: The 1990 National Endowment for the Arts American Jazz Master Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships , and the British Jazz Award, among others. He has been elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, won the Oscar du Disque de Jazz Award, the Guardian Award, the American Music Award, six NEA Music Fellowships and numerous others. He taught throughout the world, and was a guest conductor for German, Italian, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish radio groups. Jazz Jazz
5590-413: The 73-year-old Shaw organized a band and selected clarinetist Dick Johnson as bandleader and soloist. The 58-year-old Johnson, an accomplished woodwind and saxophonist and native of Brockton, Massachusetts , was no stranger to jazz having recorded numerous albums of his own and had idolized Shaw's playing throughout his life. Shaw's music library, which was the product of his almost 20 years of activity in
5720-499: The Black middle-class. Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre, which originated in African-American communities of primarily the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from their spirituals , work songs , field hollers , shouts and chants and rhymed simple narrative ballads . The African use of pentatonic scales contributed to
5850-401: The C major scale with a raised, or augmented , fourth tone. The resulting scale, with an augmented fourth (F ♯ ) instead of a perfect fourth (F), has more consonance than the conventional Ionian diatonic major scale over chords, avoiding the dissonant half-step from the major third (E). With the conventional major scale, dissonance is avoided by omitting the perfect fourth; by using
5980-460: The Caribbean. African-based rhythmic patterns were retained in the United States in large part through "body rhythms" such as stomping, clapping, and patting juba dancing . In the opinion of jazz historian Ernest Borneman , what preceded New Orleans jazz before 1890 was "Afro-Latin music", similar to what was played in the Caribbean at the time. A three-stroke pattern known in Cuban music as tresillo
6110-709: The Cité de la Musique in Paris in 1994; and It's About Time , co-commissioned by The Arts Council of England and the Swedish Concert Bureau in 1995. In 1986, Russell toured with a group of American and British musicians, resulting in The International Living Time Orchestra. He played with Dave Bargeron, Steve Lodder, Tiger Okoshi, Mike Walker, Brad Hatfield, and Andy Sheppard. Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization re-conceptualized
6240-634: The Little Orchestra Society; on the preceding day (19 February) Shaw had performed the Mozart concerto in Newark (NJ) with Scherman and the L.O.S. In July 1954, Shaw undertook a brief Australian tour for promoter Lee Gordon on which he shared the bill with drummer Buddy Rich and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald . After completing that tour Shaw stopped playing the clarinet, citing his own perfectionism, which, he later said, would have killed him. He explained to
6370-566: The Norwegian Cultural Fund; Living Time , commissioned by Bill Evans for Columbia Records ; and Vertical Form VI for the Swedish Radio. With Living Time (1972), Russell reunited with Bill Evans to offer a suite of compositions which represent the stages of human life. His Live in an American Time Spiral featured many young New York players who would go on to greatness, including Tom Harrell and Ray Anderson . When he
6500-571: The Space Age (1960) was an even more ambitious big band album, featuring the unusual dual piano voicings of Bill Evans and Paul Bley . Russell formed his own sextet in which he played piano. Between 1960 and 1963, the Russell Sextet featured musicians like Dave Baker and Steve Swallow and memorable sessions with Eric Dolphy (on Ezz-thetics ) and singer Sheila Jordan (their bleak version of " You Are My Sunshine " on The Outer View (1962)
6630-658: The Starlight Roof at the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel . He entertained audiences with a light elegant musical style which remained popular with audiences for nearly three decades from the 1930s until the late 1950s. Jazz originated in the late-19th to early-20th century. It developed out of many forms of music, including blues , ragtime , European harmony , African rhythmic rituals, spirituals , hymns , marches , vaudeville song, and dance music . It also incorporated interpretations of American and European classical music, entwined with African and slave folk songs and
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#17330859773666760-535: The United States in 1962, and an expert fly fisherman . In his later years, Shaw lived and wrote in the Newbury Park section of Thousand Oaks, California . Shaw died on December 30, 2004, aged 94. According to his publicist, he had been "in ill health for some time, but I don't know the specific cause of death." Shaw had been diabetic since the 1980s. In 2005, Shaw's eighth wife, actress Evelyn Keyes , filed suit, seeking one-half of Shaw's estate , pursuant to
6890-681: The band made its official debut on New Year's Eve 1984 at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle , New York, the same launching pad for many bands of the swing era decades earlier, when Shaw and his bands were in their prime. Shaw appeared with the band throughout its first few years, limiting his role to being its conductor and front man, while leaving the clarinet playing duties to Johnson. In 1985, another week-long series of strenuous rehearsals followed during which Shaw added more repertoire, including many arrangements and compositions that were from
7020-601: The band taking a final segue to Shaw's theme song Nightmare. In 2000, filmmaker Ken Burns interviewed Shaw at his home for his PBS documentary/miniseries Jazz where Shaw appears in multiple segments. His last major interview was in 2003, when he was interviewed by Russell Davies for the BBC Television documentary, Artie Shaw – Quest for Perfection . The documentary includes interviews with surviving members of his original bands, Johnson, and other music industry professionals. A self-proclaimed "very difficult man," Shaw
7150-493: The band" in 1940. He named it Artie Shaw and the Gramercy Five after his home telephone exchange . Band pianist Johnny Guarnieri played harpsichord on the quintet recordings, and Al Hendrickson played electric guitar. Trumpeter Roy Eldridge became part of the group, succeeding Billy Butterfield . In 1940, the original Gramercy Five cut eight sides, then Shaw dissolved the band in early 1941. The Gramercy Five's biggest hit
7280-490: The band's personal appearances to military bases in California. In August 1945, his contract with RCA ended and he signed with an independent label, Musicraft . He made a few records for Musicraft before the band broke up, and all of the recordings for Musicraft from 1946 were staffed by top-notch session musicians. The big band was back in the studio, this time including strings. On these Musicraft recordings in 1946 Shaw featured
7410-662: The big bands which played on the Ohio Riverboats, and with a father who was a music educator at Oberlin College , he began playing drums with the Boy Scouts and Bugle Corps, receiving a scholarship to Wilberforce University , where he joined the Collegians, a band noted as a breeding ground for jazz musicians including Ben Webster , Coleman Hawkins , Charles Freeman Lee , Frank Foster , and Benny Carter . Russell served in that band at
7540-552: The blues are undocumented, though they can be seen as the secular counterpart of the spirituals. However, as Gerhard Kubik points out, whereas the spirituals are homophonic , rural blues and early jazz "was largely based on concepts of heterophony ". During the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play European instruments, particularly the violin, which they used to parody European dance music in their own cakewalk dances. In turn, European American minstrel show performers in blackface popularized
7670-479: The composition Miles on his 1957 album Milestones . Davis and Evans later collaborated on the 1959 album Kind of Blue , which featured modal composition and playing. John Coltrane explored modal playing for several years after playing on Kind of Blue. His Lydian Concept has been described as making available resources rather than imposing constraints on musicians. According to the influential 20th century composer Toru Takemitsu , "The Lydian Chromatic Concept
7800-473: The contribution of the composer, if there is one, and more on the performer. The jazz performer interprets a tune in individual ways, never playing the same composition twice. Depending on the performer's mood, experience, and interaction with band members or audience members, the performer may change melodies, harmonies, and time signatures. In early Dixieland , a.k.a. New Orleans jazz, performers took turns playing melodies and improvising countermelodies . In
7930-541: The development of blue notes in blues and jazz. As Kubik explains: Many of the rural blues of the Deep South are stylistically an extension and merger of basically two broad accompanied song-style traditions in the west central Sudanic belt: W. C. Handy became interested in folk blues of the Deep South while traveling through the Mississippi Delta. In this folk blues form, the singer would improvise freely within
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#17330859773668060-506: The early 1920s, drawing particular recognition on piano. When male jazz musicians were drafted during World War II, many all-female bands replaced them. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm , which was founded in 1937, was a popular band that became the first all-female integrated band in the U.S. and the first to travel with the USO , touring Europe in 1945. Women were members of the big bands of Woody Herman and Gerald Wilson . Beginning in
8190-480: The education of freed African Americans. Although strict segregation limited employment opportunities for most blacks, many were able to find work in entertainment. Black musicians were able to provide entertainment in dances, minstrel shows , and in vaudeville , during which time many marching bands were formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs, and brothels, as ragtime developed. Ragtime appeared as sheet music, popularized by African-American musicians such as
8320-588: The emergence of bebop, forms of jazz that are commercially oriented or influenced by popular music have been criticized. According to Bruce Johnson, there has always been a "tension between jazz as a commercial music and an art form". Regarding the Dixieland jazz revival of the 1940s, Black musicians rejected it as being shallow nostalgia entertainment for white audiences. On the other hand, traditional jazz enthusiasts have dismissed bebop, free jazz, and jazz fusion as forms of debasement and betrayal. An alternative view
8450-525: The end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines. The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop , which introduced influences from rhythm and blues , gospel , and blues to small groups and particularly to saxophone and piano. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode , or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as did free jazz , which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in
8580-402: The ensemble with New York musicians until March 1941. While taking a few months' vacation in the spring of 1941 to reassess what to do next, Shaw recorded in another small-group format with three horns and a four-man rhythm section with the addition of a dozen strings. By September, he formed a big band with seven brass, five saxes, four rhythm, and fifteen strings. On December 7, three months into
8710-556: The entertainer Ernest Hogan , whose hit songs appeared in 1895. Two years later, Vess Ossman recorded a medley of these songs as a banjo solo known as "Rag Time Medley". Also in 1897, the white composer William Krell published his " Mississippi Rag " as the first written piano instrumental ragtime piece, and Tom Turpin published his "Harlem Rag", the first rag published by an African-American. Classically trained pianist Scott Joplin produced his " Original Rags " in 1898 and, in 1899, had an international hit with " Maple Leaf Rag ",
8840-457: The first white band leader to hire a full-time black female singer to tour the segregated Southern U.S. However, after recording "Any Old Time", Holiday left the band due to hostility from audiences in the South , as well as from music company executives who wanted a more "mainstream" singer. Like his main rival, Benny Goodman , and other leaders of big bands, Shaw fashioned a smaller "band within
8970-415: The first written music which was rhythmically based on an African motif (1803). From the perspective of African-American music, the "habanera rhythm" (also known as "congo"), "tango-congo", or tango . can be thought of as a combination of tresillo and the backbeat . The habanera was the first of many Cuban music genres which enjoyed periods of popularity in the United States and reinforced and inspired
9100-532: The habanera rhythm and cinquillo , are heard in the ragtime compositions of Joplin and Turpin. Joplin's " Solace " (1909) is generally considered to be in the habanera genre: both of the pianist's hands play in a syncopated fashion, completely abandoning any sense of a march rhythm. Ned Sublette postulates that the tresillo/habanera rhythm "found its way into ragtime and the cakewalk," whilst Roberts suggests that "the habanera influence may have been part of what freed black music from ragtime's European bass". In
9230-425: The height of his popularity, the 30-year-old Shaw earned up to $ 60,000 per week. In contrast, George Burns and Gracie Allen were each making $ 5,000 per week during the year that Shaw and his orchestra provided the music for their radio show. He acted on the show as a love interest for Gracie Allen. Shaw's contract was renewed for another 13 weeks when the program was moved to New York. Shaw disliked having to be
9360-507: The individuality of the performing jazz musician". A broader definition that encompasses different eras of jazz has been proposed by Travis Jackson: "it is music that includes qualities such as swing, improvising, group interaction, developing an 'individual voice', and being open to different musical possibilities". Krin Gibbard argued that "jazz is a construct" which designates "a number of musics with enough in common to be understood as part of
9490-424: The influences of West African culture. Its composition and style have changed many times throughout the years with each performer's personal interpretation and improvisation, which is also one of the greatest appeals of the genre. By the 18th century, slaves in the New Orleans area gathered socially at a special market, in an area which later became known as Congo Square , famous for its African dances. By 1866,
9620-455: The instruments of jazz: brass, drums, and reeds tuned in the European 12-tone scale. Small bands contained a combination of self-taught and formally educated musicians, many from the funeral procession tradition. These bands traveled in black communities in the deep south. Beginning in 1914, Louisiana Creole and African-American musicians played in vaudeville shows which carried jazz to cities in
9750-567: The late 1950s into the 1990s. Jewish Americans played a significant role in jazz. As jazz spread, it developed to encompass many different cultures, and the work of Jewish composers in Tin Pan Alley helped shape the many different sounds that jazz came to incorporate. Jewish Americans were able to thrive in Jazz because of the probationary whiteness that they were allotted at the time. George Bornstein wrote that African Americans were sympathetic to
9880-455: The late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music 's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in the 21st century, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz . The origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history
10010-634: The later years of his career Shaw had never recorded. By 1987 though, Shaw was no longer touring with the band, quietly content that Johnson and the band kept true to Shaw's band spirit and vision. He would, however, show up on occasion "just to hear how things sounded". Shaw made several musical shorts in 1939 for Vitaphone and Paramount Pictures . He portrayed himself in the Fred Astaire film, Second Chorus (1940), which featured Shaw and his orchestra playing Concerto for Clarinet , and his 1940–41 Hollywood period Star Dust band can be heard throughout
10140-924: The many top players he employed, such as George Brunies , Sharkey Bonano , and future members of the Original Dixieland Jass Band . During the early 1900s, jazz was mostly performed in African-American and mulatto communities due to segregation laws. Storyville brought jazz to a wider audience through tourists who visited the port city of New Orleans. Many jazz musicians from African-American communities were hired to perform in bars and brothels. These included Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton in addition to those from other communities, such as Lorenzo Tio and Alcide Nunez . Louis Armstrong started his career in Storyville and found success in Chicago. Storyville
10270-549: The matching of scales with chords . While the conventional approach to the diatonic major scale is founded on the tones of the Ionian major scale in accordance with classical theory (C, D, E, F, G, A, B for the C major scale, etc.) the LCC derives the scales based on the series of fifths stacked from the root tones of chords with a major third . In the key of C, the stacked fifth series includes C, G, D, A, E, B, and F ♯ , which provide an alternate seven tone division for
10400-468: The middle of a conflagration. On impulse, I went to the front row of the band where Les Robinson, first alto man, was sitting, and I said, 'Pass the word. This is two weeks' notice.' It went through the band and we played the rest of that show with a pall over it. Anyway, I joined the Navy." During World War II, Shaw enlisted in the United States Navy and shortly after formed a band, which served in
10530-480: The morose "Nightmare", with its Hasidic nuances, as his theme rather than choosing a more accessible song. In a televised interview in the 1970s, Shaw derided the "asinine" songs of Tin Pan Alley that were the lifeblood of popular music and which bands, especially the most popular (such as his own) were compelled to play night after night. In 1994, he told Frank Prial of The New York Times : "I thought that because I
10660-471: The most fundamental harmonic progression of the classical era ... thus, the major scale resolves to its tonic major chord. The Lydian scale is the sound of its tonic major chord. George Russell died of complications from Alzheimer's disease in Boston, Massachusetts , on July 27, 2009, according to his publicist. He received a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1989. In his career, Russell also received
10790-492: The most important new releases of the past several decades" and earned Russell two Grammy nominations in 1985. Russell wrote 9 extended pieces after 1984, among them: Timeline for symphonic orchestra, jazz orchestra, chorus, klezmer band and soloists, composed for the New England Conservatory's 125th anniversary; a re-orchestration of Living Time for Russell's orchestra and additional musicians, commissioned by
10920-570: The music business, contained numerous arrangements of monumental status of popular music in addition to many original big band jazz compositions of the era. It was a collection of music arranged by some of the foremost composer/arrangers of the period, much of which was sketched out by Shaw himself and filled in and completed by his orchestrator/arranger collaborators, among them Jerry Gray , William Grant Still , Lennie Hayton , Ray Conniff, Eddie Sauter , and Jimmy Mundy , among others. Shaw rehearsed his new band, (based out of Boston, Massachusetts), and
11050-624: The music business, his interests included studying advanced mathematics, as cited in Karl Sabbagh 's The Riemann Hypothesis . In 1946, Shaw was present at a meeting of the Independent Citizens' Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions. Olivia de Havilland and Ronald Reagan , part of a core group of actors and artists who were trying to sway the organization away from Communism , presented an anti-Communist declaration which, if signed,
11180-679: The music internationally, combining syncopation with European harmonic accompaniment. In the mid-1800s the white New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk adapted slave rhythms and melodies from Cuba and other Caribbean islands into piano salon music. New Orleans was the main nexus between the Afro-Caribbean and African American cultures. The Black Codes outlawed drumming by slaves, which meant that African drumming traditions were not preserved in North America, unlike in Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere in
11310-578: The music of New Orleans with the music of Cuba, Wynton Marsalis observes that tresillo is the New Orleans "clavé", a Spanish word meaning "code" or "key", as in the key to a puzzle, or mystery. Although the pattern is only half a clave , Marsalis makes the point that the single-celled figure is the guide-pattern of New Orleans music. Jelly Roll Morton called the rhythmic figure the Spanish tinge and considered it an essential ingredient of jazz. The abolition of slavery in 1865 led to new opportunities for
11440-460: The northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime had developed, notably James Reese Europe 's symphonic Clef Club orchestra in New York City, which played a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall in 1912. The Baltimore rag style of Eubie Blake influenced James P. Johnson 's development of stride piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides
11570-596: The northern and western parts of the U.S. Jazz became international in 1914, when the Creole Band with cornettist Freddie Keppard performed the first ever jazz concert outside the United States, at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre in Winnipeg , Canada. In New Orleans, a white bandleader named Papa Jack Laine integrated blacks and whites in his marching band. He was known as "the father of white jazz" because of
11700-480: The orchestra. Inspired by hearing Thelonious Monk 's " 'Round Midnight ", Russell moved to New York in the early 1940s, where he became a member of a coterie of young innovators who frequented the apartment of Gil Evans on 14 West 55th Street , a clique which included Miles Davis , Charlie Parker , Gerry Mulligan , and John Lewis , later the music director of the Modern Jazz Quartet . In 1945–46, Russell
11830-495: The period 1820–1850. Some of the earliest [Mississippi] Delta settlers came from the vicinity of New Orleans, where drumming was never actively discouraged for very long and homemade drums were used to accompany public dancing until the outbreak of the Civil War. Another influence came from the harmonic style of hymns of the church, which black slaves had learned and incorporated into their own music as spirituals . The origins of
11960-487: The plight of the Jewish American and vice versa. As disenfranchised minorities themselves, Jewish composers of popular music saw themselves as natural allies with African Americans. The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson is one example of how Jewish Americans were able to bring jazz, music that African Americans developed, into popular culture. Benny Goodman was a vital Jewish American to the progression of Jazz. Goodman
12090-459: The post-Civil War period (after 1865), African Americans were able to obtain surplus military bass drums, snare drums and fifes, and an original African-American drum and fife music emerged, featuring tresillo and related syncopated rhythmic figures. This was a drumming tradition that was distinct from its Caribbean counterparts, expressing a uniquely African-American sensibility. "The snare and bass drummers played syncopated cross-rhythms ," observed
12220-672: The pre-jazz era and contributed to the codification of jazz through the publication of some of the first jazz sheet music. The music of New Orleans , Louisiana had a profound effect on the creation of early jazz. In New Orleans, slaves could practice elements of their culture such as voodoo and playing drums. Many early jazz musicians played in the bars and brothels of the red-light district around Basin Street called Storyville . In addition to dance bands, there were marching bands which played at lavish funerals (later called jazz funerals ). The instruments used by marching bands and dance bands became
12350-479: The ranks of the big bands he led. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1944, during which time he led a morale-building band that toured the South Pacific. Following his discharge in 1944, he returned to lead a band through 1945. Following the breakup of that band, he began to focus on other interests and gradually withdrew from the world of being a professional musician and major celebrity, although he remained
12480-410: The rhythm and bassline. In Ohio and elsewhere in the mid-west the major influence was ragtime, until about 1919. Around 1912, when the four-string banjo and saxophone came in, musicians began to improvise the melody line, but the harmony and rhythm remained unchanged. A contemporary account states that blues could only be heard in jazz in the gut-bucket cabarets, which were generally looked down upon by
12610-535: The same pop tunes over and over. In an interview, he explained, "'Begin the Beguine' is a pretty nice tune. But not when you have to play it 500 nights in a row." Finally, in frustration, he walked off the Café Rouge bandstand while on the air, and quit the band two days later. He departed for Mexico, and the band continued without him into January but eventually broke up. After Shaw returned from Mexico in 1940, and still under contract to RCA Victor , he experimented with
12740-423: The same time as another noted jazz composer, Ernie Wilkins . When called up for the draft at the beginning of World War II , he was hospitalized with tuberculosis , during which he was taught the fundamentals of music theory by a fellow patient. After his release from the hospital, he played drums with Benny Carter's band, but decided to give up drumming as a vocation after hearing Max Roach , who replaced him in
12870-633: The soundtrack. The film garnered him two Oscar nominations for Best Score and Best Song ("Love of My Life"). He collaborated on the love song "If It's You", sung by Tony Martin in the Marx Brothers ' film The Big Store (1941). On March 2, 1950, he was the mystery guest on the fifth episode of What's My Line? and on August 31, 1952, was part of the panel. During the 1970s he made appearances on The Mike Douglas Show and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson . Many of his recordings have been used in motion pictures. His 1940 recording of " Stardust "
13000-594: The three short novels in I Love You, I Hate You, Drop Dead! (1965, reprinted in 1997), which prompted Terry Southern 's comment: "Here is a deeply probing examination of the American marital scene. I flipped over it!" Shaw's short stories, including "Snow White in Harlem", were collected in The Best of Intentions and Other Stories (1989). He worked for years on his 1,000-page autobiographical novel, The Education of Albie Snow , but
13130-407: The three-volume work remained unpublished. After his discharge in 1944, he formed another band, this time what could be considered a modern big band in that it contained what is now considered the standard eight brass and five saxes. It did not include any strings and was based in Hollywood, California, where Shaw was living. He continued to record for RCA Victor, as he had before the war, and limited
13260-593: The tour, the 31-piece band was in the midst of a matinee performance in Providence, Rhode Island, when he was given a note about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor . The note instructed him to tell military personnel to return to their bases. Shaw was shaken by the news, as he told interviewer Freddie Johnson in 1994: "Everything seemed to pale into insignificance, and I had to go back out on stage and announce " Star Dust " or something, and it sounded so fatuous. Here we were in
13390-500: The twice-daily ferry between both cities to perform, and the habanera quickly took root in the musically fertile Crescent City. John Storm Roberts states that the musical genre habanera "reached the U.S. twenty years before the first rag was published." For the more than quarter-century in which the cakewalk , ragtime , and proto-jazz were forming and developing, the habanera was a consistent part of African-American popular music. Habaneras were widely available as sheet music and were
13520-566: The use of tresillo-based rhythms in African-American music. New Orleans native Louis Moreau Gottschalk 's piano piece "Ojos Criollos (Danse Cubaine)" (1860) was influenced by the composer's studies in Cuba: the habanera rhythm is clearly heard in the left hand. In Gottschalk's symphonic work "A Night in the Tropics" (1859), the tresillo variant cinquillo appears extensively. The figure was later used by Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers. Comparing
13650-611: The violinist Austin Wylie. In 1929 and 1930, he played with Irving Aaronson 's Commanders, where he was exposed to symphonic music, which he would later incorporate in his arrangements. In 1932, Shaw joined the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra and made several recordings with the outfit including " It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) " and "Fit as a Fiddle" . In 1935, he first gained attention with his "Interlude in B-flat" at
13780-407: The works done for Gillespie and DeFranco. Russell began playing piano, leading a series of groups which included Bill Evans , Art Farmer , Hal McKusick , Barry Galbraith , Milt Hinton , Paul Motian , and others. Jazz Workshop was his first album as leader, and one where he played relatively little, as opposed to masterminding the events (rather like his colleague Gil Evans). In 1957, Russell
13910-498: The writer Robert Palmer, speculating that "this tradition must have dated back to the latter half of the nineteenth century, and it could have not have developed in the first place if there hadn't been a reservoir of polyrhythmic sophistication in the culture it nurtured." African-American music began incorporating Afro-Cuban rhythmic motifs in the 19th century when the habanera (Cuban contradanza ) gained international popularity. Musicians from Havana and New Orleans would take
14040-493: The year's crop was harvested and several days were set aside for celebration. As late as 1861, a traveler in North Carolina saw dancers dressed in costumes that included horned headdresses and cow tails and heard music provided by a sheepskin-covered "gumbo box", apparently a frame drum; triangles and jawbones furnished the auxiliary percussion. There are quite a few [accounts] from the southeastern states and Louisiana dating from
14170-583: The young singer Mel Tormé . On some of the sides, Tormé was also featured with his vocal group the Meltones. In the late 1940s Shaw commissioned Norman Dello Joio to compose a solo work; Shaw premiered the resultant Concertante for Clarinet and Orchestra with the Chautauqua (NY) Symphony on 23 July 1949, Franco Autori conducting. Shaw again performed the work in Town Hall on 20 February 1950 with Thomas Scherman and
14300-524: Was "Summit Ridge Drive", one of Shaw's million-selling records. His last prewar band, organized in September 1941, included Oran "Hot Lips" Page , Max Kaminsky , Georgie Auld , Dave Tough , Jack Jenney , Ray Conniff and Guarnieri. The long series of musical groups Shaw subsequently formed included Lena Horne , Helen Forrest , Mel Tormé , Buddy Rich , Dave Tough , Barney Kessel , Jimmy Raney , Tal Farlow , Dodo Marmarosa , and Ray Conniff . He used
14430-413: Was Artie Shaw I could do what I wanted, but all they wanted was 'Begin the Beguine'". Throughout his career, Shaw had a habit of forming bands, developing them according to his immediate aspirations, making a quick series of records, and then disbanding. He generally did not stick around long enough to reap his bands' successes through live performances of their recorded hits. Following the breakup of what
14560-567: Was able to form an orchestra for his 1985 work The African Game , he dubbed it the Living Time Orchestra. This 14-member ensemble toured Europe and the U.S., doing frequent weeks at the Village Vanguard , and was praised by New York magazine as "the most exciting orchestra to hit the city in years." The work The African Game , a 45-minute opus for 25 musicians, was described by Robert Palmer of The New York Times as "one of
14690-445: Was again hospitalized for tuberculosis for 16 months. Forced to turn down work as Charlie Parker 's drummer, during that time he worked out the basic tenets of what was to become his Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization , a theory encompassing all of equal-tempered music which has been influential well beyond the boundaries of jazz. During this period he also studied composition with Stefan Wolpe . The first edition of his book
14820-422: Was already his second band in 1939, he rarely toured at all and, if he did, his personal appearances were usually limited to long-term engagements in a single venue or bookings that did not require much traveling, unlike many bands of the era that traveled great distances doing seemingly endless strings of one-night engagements. Shaw did many big band remote broadcasts. Throughout the autumn and winter of 1938, he
14950-540: Was an American clarinetist, composer, bandleader, actor and author of both fiction and non-fiction. Widely regarded as "one of jazz's finest clarinetists", Shaw led one of the United States' most popular big bands in the late 1930s through the early 1940s. Though he had numerous hit records, he was perhaps best known for his 1938 recording of Cole Porter 's " Begin the Beguine ." Before the release of "Beguine," Shaw and his fledgling band had languished in relative obscurity for over two years and, after its release, he became
15080-481: Was an innovator in the big band idiom, using unusual instrumentation; "Interlude in B-flat", where he was backed with only a rhythm section and a string quartet , was one of the earliest examples of what would be later dubbed Third Stream . His incorporation of stringed instruments could be attributed to the influence of the classical composer Igor Stravinsky . In addition to hiring Buddy Rich , he signed Billie Holiday as his band's vocalist in 1938, becoming
15210-488: Was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune . Its first documented use in a musical context in New Orleans was in a November 14, 1916, Times-Picayune article about "jas bands". In an interview with National Public Radio , musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying: "When Broadway picked it up, they called it 'J-A-Z-Z'. It wasn't called that. It
15340-640: Was for the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, the two-part "Cubano Be, Cubano Bop" (1947), part of that band's pioneering experiments in fusing bebop and Cuban jazz elements. "A Bird in Igor's Yard" (a tribute to both Charlie Parker and Igor Stravinsky ) was recorded in a session led by Buddy DeFranco the next year. Also, a lesser known but pivotal work arranged by Russell was recorded in January 1950 by Artie Shaw entitled "Similau" that employed techniques of both
15470-433: Was major ... , and I carried this device into my melody as well. The publication of his " Memphis Blues " sheet music in 1912 introduced the 12-bar blues to the world (although Gunther Schuller argues that it is not really a blues, but "more like a cakewalk"). This composition, as well as his later " St. Louis Blues " and others, included the habanera rhythm, and would become jazz standards . Handy's music career began in
15600-661: Was married eight times. Two marriages were annulled; the others ended in divorce: Jane Cairns (1932–33; annulled); Margaret Allen (1934–37); actress Lana Turner (1940); Betty Kern, the daughter of songwriter Jerome Kern (1942–43); actress Ava Gardner (1945–46); Forever Amber author Kathleen Winsor (1946–48; annulled); actress Doris Dowling (1952–56), and actress Evelyn Keyes (1957–85). He had two sons, Steven Kern (with Betty Kern) and Jonathan Shaw (with Doris Dowling). Both Lana Turner and Ava Gardner later described Shaw as being extremely emotionally abusive. His controlling nature and incessant verbal abuse drove Turner to have
15730-663: Was often heard from the Blue Room of the Hotel Lincoln in New York City. After touring in 1939, he led the house band at the Café Rouge of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. He was the headliner of a radio series with comedian Robert Benchley as emcee. Shaw broadcast on CBS from November 20, 1938, until November 14, 1939. Shaw became increasingly disillusioned with not having time to develop new arrangements, and having to play
15860-561: Was one of several composers commissioned by Brandeis University to write a piece for their jazz festival. He wrote a suite for orchestra, All About Rosie , which featured Bill Evans among other soloists, and has been cited as one of the few convincing examples of composed polyphony in jazz. Members of the orchestra on his 1958 extended work, New York, N.Y. , included Bill Evans, John Coltrane , Art Farmer, Milt Hinton , Bob Brookmeyer , and Max Roach , among others, and featured wrap-around raps by singer/lyricist Jon Hendricks . Jazz in
15990-431: Was published by Russell in 1953, while he worked as a salesclerk at Macy's . At that time, Russell's ideas were a crucial step into the modal music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis on his classic recording, Kind of Blue , and served as a beacon for other modernists such as Eric Dolphy and Art Farmer . While working on the theory, Russell was also applying its principles to composition. His first famous composition
16120-629: Was set to run in newspapers. There was bedlam as many rose to champion the communist cause, and Shaw began praising the democratic standards of the Soviet constitution. In 1953, Shaw was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee for his leftist activities. The committee was investigating a peace activist organization, the World Peace Council . , Shaw was also a precision marksman , ranking fourth in
16250-471: Was shut down by the U.S. government in 1917. Cornetist Buddy Bolden played in New Orleans from 1895 to 1906. No recordings by him exist. His band is credited with creating the big four: the first syncopated bass drum pattern to deviate from the standard on-the-beat march. As the example below shows, the second half of the big four pattern is the habanera rhythm. Artie Shaw Artie Shaw (born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky ; May 23, 1910 – December 30, 2004)
16380-647: Was spelled 'J-A-S-S'. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, you wouldn't say it in front of ladies." The American Dialect Society named it the Word of the 20th Century . Jazz is difficult to define because it encompasses a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years, from ragtime to rock -infused fusion . Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, such as European music history or African music. But critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt argues that its terms of reference and its definition should be broader, defining jazz as
16510-477: Was the first codified original theory to come from jazz. Musicians who assimilated Russell's ideas expanded their harmonic language beyond that of bebop, into the realm of post-bop . Russell's ideas influenced the development of modal jazz , notably in the album Jazz Workshop (1957, with Bill Evans and featuring the "Concerto for Billy the Kid") as well as his writings. Miles Davis also pushed into modal playing with
16640-529: Was the leader of a racially integrated band named King of Swing. His jazz concert in the Carnegie Hall in 1938 was the first ever to be played there. The concert was described by Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history". Shep Fields also helped to popularize "Sweet" Jazz music through his appearances and Big band remote broadcasts from such landmark venues as Chicago's Palmer House , Broadway's Paramount Theater and
16770-956: Was used in its entirety in the closing credits of the film The Man Who Fell to Earth . Martin Scorsese also used the Shaw theme song, "Nightmare", in his Academy Award -winning Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator . Canadian filmmaker Brigitte Berman interviewed Hoagy Carmichael , Doc Cheatham , and others including Shaw for her documentary film, Bix: Ain't None of Them Play Like Him Yet (1981) about Bix Beiderbecke , and afterward she went on to create an Academy Award -winning documentary, Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got (1985), featuring extensive interviews with Shaw, Buddy Rich, Mel Tormé, Helen Forrest, and other musicians, in addition to Shaw's eighth wife, actress Evelyn Keyes . The documentary ends with Shaw rehearsing his new band with co-leader Johnson present and rolls to credits perhaps quite fittingly with
16900-402: Was walking away from the big band, they warned him that he couldn't do that; he had a million dollars in contracts that had to be honored. Shaw didn't care, and responded, "Tell 'em I'm insane. A nice, young American boy walking away from a million dollars, wouldn't you call that insane?" Shaw broke up the Hollywood band, keeping a nucleus of seven musicians in addition to himself, and filled out
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