Preaching Blues - Robert Johnson

Preaching Blues (1936) by Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson (1911 - 1938) is generally acknowledged to be one of the most influential, personal, and creative of the country blues singers. He has plenty of competition in this, including from Charley Patton, Blind Willie McTell, Bukka White, Skip James, Son House, and Sonny Boy Williamson.

But still... Johnson is the true legendary bluesman of the Mississippi Delta, and there is a genuinely amazing quality to this record - to most of his recordings. It was recorded relatively late, considering that the first recordings of such blues artists as Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charley Patton were made in the early to mid-twenties.

Robert Johnson died not long after this song was first released. It was only in the 90s that a couple of photographs of him surfaced. His life and death are obscured in the mists of time and blues legends, though recent scholarship has brought much to light. He died young, probably at the hands of a jealous lover who poisoned his drink. Someone said he died on his hands and knees, barking at the moon, but then there were always legends about his life. One of his songs (Crossroad Blues) led to the suspicion that he had sold his soul to the Devil at a country crossroads in exchange for the power he achieved as a musician. (This, of course, is a stupid lie. That was apparently somebody else. )

Robert Johnson’s collected output, finally released on CD, shot to the top of the charts in 1990.

There is good reason for legends to have accumulated around this astonishing singer and performer. There seems to be here all the authenticity, all the raw power, and all the emotion, of several lifetimes. Robert Johnson holds back nothing. When he sings of walking with the Devil he makes it real; that's a quality we appreciate in any recording, whether the performer talks of love and heartache or, as here, more existential matters. Francis Davis (History of the Blues) calls Johnson “the greatest of the Delta transcendentalists” (p. 124). In this song, the singer-songwriter Robert Johnson embodies the blues, taking this mysterious state of mind and compelling musical form and putting them together in the shape of a man walking. This occurs both in the music and, in some mythic way, in us, as we listen.

I don't dance, so I can't talk about dancing to this, but I do walk, and walking to this song makes good sense.

Now listen. Johnson’s work is clearly a forerunner of rock music - far more than of most other blues recordings - and several rock artists have covered his work, notably Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zepellin. However, unlike the work of these artists, there is nothing especially popular or very easy about this number. Robert Johnson here does not invite the listener in, but rather seems to challenge us, to confront us with a peculiar vision of a nightmarish world. My students are generally unimpressed, which is a shame. Clearly, they are not listening; many think its a woman named Robert. The challenge, I suppose, is too great for them, so they turn back to whatever they have on their ipods.

There are at least three major shifts in rhythm in the first 5 seconds of the song, and then a wailing, almost unearthly moan as if from some twisted soul to open the vocal.

Introduction Minutes/Seconds 0 – 2

First Chorus 6 - 48

A 6 – 25 Mmm mmmm—I’s up this mornin’, ah, blues walkin’ like a man.
A 25 – 37 I’s up this mornin’, ah, blues walkin’ like a man.
B 38 – 48 Worried blues, give me your right hand!

Second Chorus 49 - 1:17

A 49 - 58 And the blues grabbed mama’s child, tore him all upside down.
A 59 - 1:06 Blues grabbed mama’s child, and it tore me all upside down.
B 1:07 - 1:17 Travel on, poor Bob, just can’t turn you ‘round,

Third Chorus 1:18 -1:50

A 1:18 - 1:29 The blues, is a low-down shakin’ chill (Yes, preach ‘em now)
A 1:30 - 1:37 Mmmmm mmmmm Is a low-down shakin’ chill
B 1:38 - 1:50 You ain’t never had ‘em, I, hope you never will.

Fourth Chorus 1:52 - 2:23

A 1:51 - 2:07 Well, the blues , is a achin’ old heart disease (Do it now, you gon’ do it? Tell me all about it)
A 2:08 – 2:15 The blues, is a low-down achin’ heart disease
B 2:16 – 2:23 Like consumption, killing me by degrees

Fifth Chorus 2:24 - 2:52

A 2:24 – 2:34 I can study rain, oh oh drive, oh oh drive my blues
A 2:35 – 2:41 I been studyin’ the rain and, I’m ‘on drive my blues away
B 2:42 – 2:52 Goin’ to the ‘stil’ry, stay out there all day

The wailing voice and that extraordinarily percussive guitar are so compelling, so vivid, so dramatic, so expressive, that both - voice and guitar - seems to claim a kind of autonomy, each off doing its own thing as it were, almost spinning out of control, making their coming together in this recording all the more remarkable. Yet however independently voice and guitar seem to operate, each relies on the other, picks up from each other, challenges each other. This is typical in the blues, and in many other recordings, but here the challenges seem more confrontational, more edgy, and more dangerous. In this song the guitar does not so much accompany the singer as to compete with him for attention. They remind me of those stories of the ventriloquist's dummy taking over the show. There is something unearthly here—in a purely secular way. And it is a little scary.

Consider the second chorus in terms of its presentation of self - the self of the author and performer. First there is a “mamma’s child,” And the blues grabbed mama’s child, tore him all upside down. So we are in the third person here. (The good lyrics here say that the word at second #51 is me, as in the following verse, but I don't hear that at all.) We definitely hear me in the next verse, Blues grabbed mama’s child, and it tore me all upside down. He winds up the chorus talking directly about himself in the third person: Travel on, poor Bob, just can’t turn you ‘round. Johnson also refers to “poor Bob” in his Crossroads, begging the Lord to have mercy now, save poor Bob if You please.

The fear Johnson evokes in his songs, and which appears to be so real, derives in part, I think, from the creation of this persona, which he then proceeds to destruct, to tear apart. It is as if during this song he loses himself - literally - and never gets it back together, except of course that the control of the performer over the entire song itself belies our sense of someone out of control, and is testimony to the fact of an integral self, a paradox.

Nothing in his music dissembles, or goes half way. This is, of course, not always the case with his imitators and followers - even the very good ones.

One O'Clock Jump - Count Basie

...one can jump to a stomp and swing; stomp to a jump and swing; or swing to a jump and a stomp. - Albert Murray

Count Basie and His Orchestra:
Buck Clayton, Ed Lewis, Bobby Moore, trumpets
George Hunt, Dan Minor, trombones
Caughey Roberts, alto sax,
Jack Washington, alto and baritone sax
Lester Young, Herschel Evans, tenor sax, clarinets
Count Basie, piano, orchestra leader
Freddie Green, guitar
Walter Page, string bass
Jo Jones, drums
Eddie Durham, Buster Smith, arrangers
Recorded: July 7, 1937

This is the swing anthem - Basie's theme song - and to most people a familiar and fun piece of music, as are most all of the pieces found in the Complete Decca collection of Basie's recordings. [But, see below for some sad history.]

This is a head arrangement, deriving from and encouraging improvisation around its 12-bar blues pattern. It was a common number for this band - they called in Blue Balls until asked its name on the air and Basie looked at the clock. It is, above all, a riff number, based on a repeated melodic phrase. The repetition in this case becomes infectious and exciting as the soloists take turns improvising from chorus to chorus. And it becomes more than that, as repetition gives way to variation, building up layer upon layer of interactions and relationships. The marvel is that it remains as simple and as fun as it is, given the underlying complexities of its performance.

Don't look to me for explications of those complexities, as they are far beyond me.

Just listen.

Intro 1 - 10
The first ten seconds have Basie vamping a riff for 8 bars, with Jo Jones whispering on drums in the back.

First Chorus 11 - 27
Basie takes the first chorus, soloing on the piano, a very solid rhythm section - the best rhythm section of its day - accompanying.

Second Chorus 28 - 43
Basie takes the second chorus - a head arrangement will kick things off with a two chorus opener - starting with a few trills or tremolo in the upper register and finishing by modulating to a new key.

Third Chorus 44 - 1:02
Herschel Evans on tenor sax enters for his solo, accompanied by riffs from the brass section. Evans plays in the style set for the tenor sax by Coleman Hawkins, a big, almost gruff sound, powerfully elegant, rich, dark, romantic. Note the contrast - typical for big band swing numbers - between the soloing reed voice and the brass accompaniment. Their timbres are distinct, and used to set off one from the next.

Fourth Chorus 1: 03 - 1:17
George Hunt on trombone enters, and the timbral contrast shifts from the previous chorus so that now the brass is soloing up front and the reeds accompany in the back. It is this kind of thing, all very simple and clear throughout the performance, that contributes to the increasing levels of complexity in the communication, with each chorus adding layer upon layer of patterns.

By this chorus we notice that however fine the soloist is up front, the sax riffs in the background are beginning to insist. Lester Young on tenor will pick up what he is doing here with the accompaniment and play around with it in his solo next chorus.

Fifth Chorus 1:18 - 1:34
Now comes a high point, the entrance of Lester Young on tenor sax, whose playing contrasts markedly with both George Hunt's trombone from the previous chorus - their instrumental timbres are obviously distinct - and - notably - with the tenor sax of Herschel Evans from the third chorus. Though Lester and Herschel play the same instrument, the contrast between them is as telling as that between the reeds and the brass. Young's style of playing introduced a new and highly influential approach to the tenor sax, emphasizing its lyrical, sly qualities over the aggressive squawk of the Hawkins approach.

Anyway, Lester Young begins this chorus playing a single note using false fingerings, a method of finding alternate ways of hitting the notes on a sax with different fingers. This technique contributes to another sense of contrast and variation, albeit subtly. Done right, as here, playing a single note over and over again, with false fingerings for variation, builds intensity into the experience of listening in ways that echo other parts of the recording. In fact, Lester Young's solo here picks up stuff he was playing as riff accompaniment beneath Hunt in the previous chorus.

Sixth Chorus 1:35 - 1:52
This is Buck Clayton's trumpet chorus, with - as you would expect - the reeds riffing in accompaniment. Buck's first two phrases repeat exactly - reminding us of the difference between repetition and variation. On his third phrase he then starts the variation.

Looking back, we can see that after the two chorus opening on piano we have heard a sax solo with brass accompaniment followed by a brass solo with sax accompaniment, and then the same pattern repeated. Typically, the trumpet leads the ensemble, as the most commanding - brassiest - of instruments. Here, though, Buck is just one soloist among others. Notice how the sax riffs take on another tone in their support of this solo.

Seventh Chorus 1:53 - 2:09 Bill Basie returns for what some might call a piano solo, but sounds more like a duet with bassist Walter Page who walks the bass around the chorus, punctuated by Basie's high register chords. Walking bass lines are when the bass fiddle plays arpeggio accompaniment hitting every beat by ascending or descending the scale, keeping regular time. (Arpeggio means playing each note of a chord over time rather than all at once; so the chords are broken, as it were, and played as on a harp.)

This chorus brings out the piano-like qualities of Page's bass playing, while Basie's piano seems like its trying out some minimalist form of piano expression. The two voices sound incredibly good together.

Eighth Chorus 2:10 - 2:26
The ensemble kicks in for this and the remaining choruses - riff choruses, to be exact - in which the sax and brass sections trade twos. Trading twos simply means that one player or section plays two bars and then another player or section plays two bars in response. Given the range of effects derived from creative repetitions, variations, and contrasts thus far in the recording, it is appropriate that these final choruses give way to this unadulterated riff expression. In this and the remaining two choruses the brass section will play pretty much the same riff, though with varying degrees of intensity, while the saxes mix it up a bit. This is basic call-and-response communication.

Something we can easily lose sight of in this particular recording, though it is apparent once we see through its simplicity, is the intense competitive streak revealed by the trading-twos format. What the first player or section sets up, the second echoes, repeats, varies, and at the same time challenges - or perhaps a better way to put it would be to say responds to the challenge set up in the first voice. Thus the parallel phrasing of trading twos has built in to it an instinctive competition, further elaborating the layers of relationships set up throughout the recording.

Ninth Chorus 2:27 - 2:42
Here the saxes play the basic melody of the piece in the upper register as the brass section keeps to its riffing, now playing lower than the reeds.

Tenth Chorus 2:43 - 3:00
The reeds and the brass continue to riff it up in call and response, increasing the intensity to the end. Listen for Jo Jones on drums pounding out an emphatic beat from time to time as the record comes to a close.

Whew!

Here is the story of the Decca recordings. John Hammond, whose claim to have discovered Basie has some validity (unlike some of his other claims, I fear) wrote in his autobiography of how Basie got cheated in his first contract, with Decca.

Basie showed me the contract. It called for twenty-four sides a year for three years for $750 each year. To Basie, it seemed like a lot of money. To me, it was devastating- for both of us. There was no provision for royalties, so that for the period when Basie recorded 'One O'Clock Jump', 'Jumping at the Woodside', and the rest of those classic hits, he earned nothing from record sales. It was also below the legal minimum scale demanded by the American Federation of Musicians for recording.
Back in New York, I called Local 802 to protest these outrageous terms, and did manage to raise the per-side payment scale, but there was nothing the union could do to break the contract. Jazz Piano Online

Basie, of course, is not, alas, the only Black artist to have suffered in this way. He seems to have pulled out of it alright. His career was long, his success well-deserved, and his music brilliant.

Basie's the guy playing Vernon Duke's April in Paris with his band in the desert in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles.

When You're Smiling, Billie Holiday and Lester Young

When You're Smiling, Teddy Wilson and His Orchestra, January 6, 1938

Song by Fisher/Goodwin/Shay

Buck Clayton, trumpet
Benny Morton, trombone
Lester Young, tenor sax
Teddy Wilson, piano
Freddy Green, guitar
Walter Page, bass
Jo Jones, drums
Billie Holiday, vocal

Billie Holiday was a singer for the Basie Orchestra, but as luck would have it, they made no recordings. This is a sad poverty, because in spite of the many great recordings they each cut separately, there would have been some gems there, had a recording contract for the singer and the band together been possible. Given the choice, though, of the potential songs with the full band and those recordings with the small groups that were made, I think the small group recordings are undoubtedly better. Of course, they exist, which is by definition better. But I prefer, generally, small band jazz in the swing idiom to large band jazz, even when the large band is led by a Basie or an Ellington. I am certain that if we had Billie recording with the full group, as great as many of them would be, they would not match the small group recordings. We are blessed to have them.

And, in particular, blessed we are to have this one. This is one of those records people like Charlie Parker and countless others would have worn out by getting the needle on the record player to just over the right spot on the record, just about 2 minutes and five second into the song, to find the very end of Teddy Wilson's elegant and (for him) deeply felt chorus to the beginning of Lester Young's incomparable solo.

Everyone plays like a genius on this one, with Benny Morton's gutsy solo chorus to kick it off, and Buck Clayton's impeccable obbligato behind the singer, and maybe its their influence that sends Lester Young into the stratosphere to round out the number.

The song's form is AA'BC, meaning that the first two phrases repeat, but the second is with varation (A'), and after the contrasting bridge (B) instead of returning to the original material the chorus ends with yet another phrase (C).

Listen to the chord progression for the song here.

Introduction 0-4
Teddy Wilson

First Chorus 5 - 44

Benny Morton's trombone solo is incredibly smooth, holding out the notes, barely pausing for breath, as if to make of the whole chorus a single phrase.

Second Chorus 45 - 1:25

Billie Holiday keeps with Morton's breathless approach, but what surprises most here is the obbligato accompaniment by Buck Clayton. He does his own little dance out there behind her, with her, almost through her.

When you're smiling
When you're smiling
The whole world smiles with you

When you're laughing
When you're laughing
The sun comes shining through

But when you're crying
You bring on the rain
So stop your sighing
Be happy again

Keep on smiling
Cause when you're smiling
The whole world smiles with you

Third Chorus 1:26 - 2:04

Teddy Wilson's piano is a familiar accompaniment to Billie, swing feeling in gear, jaunty, clever, clear-headed.

Fourth Chorus 2:05 - 2:37

This is what it is all about. A kind of amused intelligence surfaces in the playing. As with most great solos, we hear the song and we don't, quite, because we are hearing another version, even another song, or as if we were hearing it again, after the song has been away and grown up, or something. In some cases, it sounds like the song we've been wanting to hear all along, though we are probably kidding ourselves in that case.

Coda 2:37 - 2:52

Buck Clayton plays the C section to bring the song to a close.

This Year's Kisses, Billie Holiday and Lester Young

This Year’s Kisses, Teddy Wilson and His Orchestra, January 25, 1937

Song by Irving Berlin

Buck Clayton, trumpet

Benny Goodman, clarinet

Lester Young, tenor saxophone

Teddy Wilson, piano

Freddy Green, guitar

Walter Page, bass

Jo Jones, drums

Billie Holiday, vocal

This is perfection. The composer is America's premier songwriter of the 20th century. The performers, many from the wonderful Count Basie's Orchestra, are among the very greatest of the swing idiom. Lester Young's full chorus tenor sax solo is brilliant, inaugurating a celebrated musical partnership with Billie Holiday that remains among the enduring glories of American music.

Just listen.

But first, listen to Gunther Schuller marvel at Billie's musical prowess:

As one listens to these sides, all from 1937, one is staggered by the realization that we are in the presence of a genius, a twenty-two-year-old girl in full artistic/musical maturity -- a girl who had already been a Harlem prostitute for five years of her young life, drug-addicted, with a chaotic, consistently masochistic love life, a constant witness to the seamier side of the black experience, and more. How such sublime art could flower and flourish in such an abysmal environment is not only a singular tribute to Billie Holiday but to the indestructible power and vitality of jazz itself.

For one not present at Billie's 1930s recording sessions, it remains mysterious as to how she learned these hundreds of songs - and so impeccably. The question arises not out of mere idle curiosity; it is a valid issue: first, because of the technical perfection of her performances, higher and more consistent than any of her accompanists (including even Teddy Wilson, but possibly excluding some of her rhythm section sidemen - like Kirby and Cole - with, to be sure, much less demanding assignments). Second, it is not possible to so thoroughly recompose and improvise upon that many songs without knowing them completely. You can only intelligently deviate from something - perform variations on it - if you know it deeply. (Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz 1930 - 1945)

The form is a minor variant of the AABA, with enough difference between the last A and the first two that it is noted with a ', hence, AABA'.

Intro: Teddy Wilson 0 – 7

First chorus 8 – 1:05

This is Lester Young with an extraordinary sound, new, exciting, different, less flashy than other performers of the day, a sound described as feathery and as lemony. These 32 bars are worth listening to over and over.

A 8 -20

A 21 - 33

B 34 - 51

A' 52 - 1:05

Second chorus 1:06 - 2:07

Here is Billie Holiday, who sounds even more pleased with things generally than usual. You know she’s smiling, after listening to Lester Young's incomparable performance. This was their first recording session together.

Listen to all those sound patterns in the lyrics: alliteration, consonance, and assonance This year’s crop of kisses… The metaphor comes from agricultural economics, which seems like an odd realm to evoke, but then the topic is love, so... Since the crop is sweet, we can assume the kisses are being compared with some kind of fruit. This particular crop, however, grows by the light not of the sun, but of the moon. The metaphor in the last line shifts to fashion. Both fruit and, er, frocks, are seasonal.

A

This year's crop of kisses
Don't seem as sweet to me.

Bennie Goodman provides some very gentle wailing obbligato to underscore and complete the phrases here.

(Don't tell anyone, but there is a grammatical error in the lyrics here, if you care about such things.)

A

This year's crop just misses
What kisses used to be.

B

This year's new romance
Doesn't seem to have a chance
Even helped by Mr. Moon above!

A’

This year's crop of kisses is not for me
For I'm still wearin' last year's love

Third chorus 2:08 - 3:11

Teddy Wilson on piano with Buck Clayton (2:33) on bridge, ensemble on the final eight.

Billie's Blues, Billie Holiday

Billie’s Blues, Billie Holiday and Her Orchestra, July 10, 1936

Bunny Berigan, trumpet

Artie Shaw, clarinet

Joe Bushkin, piano

Dick McDonough, guitar

Pete Peterson, bass

Cozy Cole, drums

Billie Holiday, vocal

This is a good song to listen to for getting the jazz blues idiom into our ears. When we can identify a chorus structure we can consider a song by its shape, and by learning to pay attention to each individual chorus as a particular unit we can make more sense of the individual contributions of the performers, all of whom in this case are superb and at the top of their form.

The short-lived, alcoholic Bunny Berigan was one of the top swing trumpeters as well as a successful vocalist himself. Artie Shaw was a matinee idol and an excellent jazz clarinetist and band leader, He was also, at the time, Billie's lover.

We can start with the nature of the blues lyric, and blues poetry, which consists of three phrases, the first two being variants of each other, and the third as a contrasting verse which also serves as a kind of resolution or completion of whatever is posed in the first two lines. Blues lyrics are typically both expressively and substantively interesting. Often they seem to be two things at the same time – important and trivial, or meaningful and meaningless, or planned and spontaneous. They may be angry, sad, happy, whatever. In this case, the emotions seem to jumble all together.

So we listen to the sound of her voice - her tone - which has both a soft and a hard-edged quality, and feels both rich and thin, both raspy and elegant, both slurred and precise, all at the same time. We listen for the character behind the words, who again seems to combine opposites: she sounds both tough or assertive and weak or passive. We listen to the words of the song; again there is this combination of upbeat joy, as in the first chorus (“I love my man, tell the world I do”) and some pretty rough stuff in the second (“My man wouldn't give me no breakfast wouldn't give me no dinner”). In the final chorus the singer sings about herself from the perspective of other men, again seeming to confirm her disparate, even bipolar nature.

We learn to get used to listening for things in a solo. Listening for what? Well, we just seek it out, whatever it is, wherever we can find it. The technical lexicon of music is not our concern here. When we listen to a solo we find whatever you find, but we learn to recognize it as an individual accomplishment, often as an assertion of individuality.

We learn also to listen to the accompaniment, particularly in the first chorus here to Cozy Cole on drums. We feel how they punctuate the rhythm of the piece and add a kind of rhetorical emphasis that almost says. “Here, listen up.”

As always in a jazz or blues, we try to see how the performers respond to each other. We think of it as a conversation.

Intro 00 – 7

Dick McDonough on guitar establishes a boogie beat going up and down the scale, in the first two bars and then Joe Bushkin joins in on the piano for the next two. This is the introduction to the piece, which takes four bars.

First blues chorus 8 – 32

This is a duet played in unison by Bunnie Berigan on trumpet and Artie Shaw on clarinet, accompanied by Joe Bushkin on piano, Cozy Cole on drums, Dick McDonough and Pete Peterson on guitar and bass, all filling in behind the soloists. Listen to the trumpet solo, how it handles itself and how it feels, and to where it starts and finishes. Now try to distinguish it from the clarinet, which now and then peels off on a solitary moan.

Second blues chorus 33 – 55

Here is Billie with Artie

Lord I love my man, tell the world I do!

I love my man, tell the world I do!

But when he mistreats me, makes me feel so blue.

Billie Holiday’s entrance here is incredibly joyous and heartfelt; you can almost tell she is smiling. Here Artie Shaw accompanies Billie, filling in by wailing off in the background.

Third blues chorus 0.56 – 1:20

Here Billie sings with Pete Peterson on bass and a line or two of Berigan

My man wouldn't give me no breakfast wouldn't give me no dinner, squawked about my supper and put me outdoors

Had the nerve to lay a matchbox on my clothes

I didn't have so many but I had a long, long ways to go

Fourth blues chorus 1:21 – 1:45

Artie Shaw's on clarinet solo with rhythm accompaniment.

1:46 – 2:11 Fifth blues chorus

Bunny Berigan on trumpet, starting out with an aggressive (and somewhat show-offy) growling.

Sixth blues chorus 2:12 – 2:37

Billie with the ensemble in a first rate final chorus.

Some men like me ‘cause happy, some ‘cause I’m snappy, some call me honey, others think I got money

Some tell me, “Baby, you built for speed!”

Now if you put that all together makes me everything a good man needs

Miss Brown to You, Billie Holiday

Miss Brown to You, Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra, July 2, 1935

Song by Leo Robin / Richard Whiting / Ralph Rainger

Roy Eldridge, trumpet

Benny Goodman, clarinet

Ben Webster, tenor sax

Teddy Wilson, piano

John Truehar, guitar

John Kirby, bass

Cozy Cole. drums

Billie Holiday, vocal

Note…two clichés of the Swing era:…that the title of the song is often the final lyric of the a phrases, and that cuts often end with the drum shot. There are also here the beginnings of a particular Holiday vocal signature or mannerism—she fades at the end of a phrase, without cutting the line off precisely. In the cuts to come, this turns into a downward glissando (slide) at the ends of phrases, usually to emphasize the final word of the line as well as the end of the musical phrase.

Listen especially… to Holiday’s timbre, to her delivery, and to her command of phrasing. She could ride any tempo and make it sound either effortless or hot, as she wanted. She had an unbeatable sense of rhythm, though less explosive than Louis Armstrong’s… Her interplay with the instrumentalists in the group was real jazz give-and-take, and her sense of phrasing, or placement of the lines, was the equal of anyone’s. (Jazz: A Listener’s Guide, James McCalla, 56)

With this song you can clearly feel the solidity of the AABA structure: repetition (AA), contrast (B) and return (final A). The players

Intro 0 – 5

Benny Goodman solo for a couple of bars

First AABA chorus 6 – 54

Benny Goodman with Teddy Wilson doing filligrees in the background. The tempo is somewhat stately, the pitch is in the middle register. The first A is from 6 - 17. The second A from 18 - 29. The bridge comes in at 30 – 41, and Goodman does some nice, firm things to establish the contrasting material of the bridge before Teddy Wilson contributes his return to the final 8.

Second AABA chorus 55 – 1:42

Billie Holiday vocal, Ben Webster in obbligato quietly in the background during the first 16 bars (AA) and Roy Eldridge comes in with his obbligato at the bridge.

A

Who do you think is comin' to town?
You'll never guess who!
Lovable, huggable Emily Brown
Miss Brown to you! (1:06)

A

What if the rain comes pattering down?
My heaven is blue
Can it be sending me Emily Brown?
Miss Brown to you! (1:18)

B

I know her eyes will thrill ya
But go slow, oh, oh
Don't you all get too familiar (1:31)

At the bridge Webster lays out on the obbligato accompaniment and Eldridge steps in on muted trumpet.

A

Why do you think she's comin' to town?
Just wait and you'll see
The lovable little Miss Brown to you
Is baby to me (1:42)
Yes, yes

Third AABA chorus 1:42 – 2:32

Teddy Wilson solos on next chorus, and she says “Knock it down” in front of the bridge at 2:03, the final A returning around 2:24.

Da capo return to conclude with BA 2:33 –3:03

Roy Eldridge trumpet solo takes them out on the final eight with the others filling in.

We see, then, that the four parts of the AABA chorus are tossed around from player to player, and that the final chorus may consist of only the BA sections.

What a Little Moonlight Can Do, Billie Holiday

What a Little Moonlight Can Do, Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra, July 2, 1935

Song by Harry Woods

Roy Eldridge, trumpet

Benny Goodman, clarinet

Ben Webster, tenor sax

Teddy Wilson, piano

John Truehart, guitar

John Kirby, bass

Cozy Cole, drums

Billie Holiday, vocal

"This one was taken at a cracking pace, as quick a beat as Billie ever sang over, but of course Goodman and Billie made it sound easy, while the rhythm section did the work." (Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon, Donald Clarke)

The form here is somewhat unusual. Instead of the standard AABA form each 32 bar chorus consists of 4 sections in the ABAB sequence, meaning the first four bars (A) are repeated as the third four bars and the second four bars (B) repeat as the final four.

Piano introduction 0 – 2

First ABAB chorus 3 – 57

Benny Goodman opens accompanied by the rhythm section of Cozy Cole on drums, Teddy Wilson on piano, and John Kirby’s bass. Listen to all of them, and also feel the uptempo beat—fast, fun.

The second A (at 32) begins with a little clarinet wail and picks up the tempo a bit - typical in jazz recordings. You can listen to this accomplished chorus as if you were watching a good dancer, proud of his work, and happy to show it off. The feeling is one of exuberance and skill, and also of belonging and contributing to a group effort.

Interval 58 - 59

They take a few bars to set up the girl singer...

Second ABAB chorus 1:00 – 1:58

Here is Billie Holiday's vocal. Listen to the quality of the voice. It is slightly slurred, relaxed, purring. She really makes a lot of the rhymes in the language, but makes more of the sounds themselves by expressively taking those ooo sounds in her own direction. Listen also for Teddy Wilson’s excellent comping in the background, filling in between the lines, as it were, with some pretty fancy fingering. If Goodman sounded exuberant in his second chorus, Billie sounds genuinely thrilled pleased as punch to be right here doing this right now.

A

Ooh, ooh, ooh! What a little moonlight can do ooh ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh! What a little moonlight can do to you!

B

You’re in love. Your heart's a-fluttering all day long
You only stutter cause your poor tongue
Just will not utter the words, "I love you."

A

Ooh, ooh, ooh! What a little moonlight can do ooh ooh
Wait a while till a little moonbeam comes peepin' through

B

You’ll get bold, you can't resist him
And all you'll say when you have kissed him is
"Ooh, ooh, ooh! What a little moonlight can do!"

Singers often exploit the purely physical dimension of language, where semantics gets left in the dust, as Billie Holiday does here with her ooh, ooh, oohs. (These come, of course, from the composer, who also composed the hit, "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bop Bop Boppin' Along.") It is a truism to note that a singer’s instrument is her voice; here the singer shows how true that truism is.

Notice how close she stays to the same note - the music is conjunct rather than disjunct - making the song expressive in her own way, taking advantage of what for other singers might be a disadvantage, that narrow range she had to work with.

Third ABAB chorus 1:59 -

Ben Webster, one of the most accomplished and inventive practitioners of the tenor sax. takes the first AB. His solo is from 1:59 - 2: 29. Let's here what Gunther Schuller says about him:

He was “one of the greatest and most consistent, invincible artists of jazz. …Webster was a storyteller who spoke through his horn. The inner poetry of his playing, swelling with imagery and meaning, was enriched by a constantly growing vocabulary of impressions and expressions. (Schuller, 578, 586)

Teddy Wilson takes the final AB section of that chorus, starting around 2:30, with the ensemble coming in at the last 8, starting around 2:43.

Now you can look back, or, listen back, to the solos of Goodman, Wilson, Holiday and Webster. Each stands out in its own way. Each also gets configured by its relation to the other, so that the performers are responding to the song - interpreting it as they play it - and to each other. The sense of communication is vividly felt in a light, joyous sort of way here.

I Wished on the Moon, Billie Holiday

I Wished on the Moon, Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra, July 2nd, 1935

Song by Dorothy Parker and Ralph Rainger

Roy Eldridge, trumpet
Benny Goodman, clarinet
Ben Webster, tenor saxophone
Teddy Wilson, piano
John Truehart, guitar
John Kirby, bass
Cozy Cole, drums
Billie Holiday, vocal

Donald Clarke says this:

Billie clearly liked the words and the sentiment of “I Wished on the Moon.” On her very first syllable, the first-person pronoun, she comes in ahead of the beat, then lapses into her swinging version of Southern languor: she has announced that the song is worth listening to, so that we tune in. In the second line of each verse, she omits the pronoun entirely; as for the last line of each verse, "Warm April days" and "It all came true" have the same number of syllables, but entirely different accents; she makes short work of that little inconvenience, and we don’t even notice it. Her singing is not so much lazy as conversational, yet never at the expense of the song; her vocal colour is unique: it is not slick but has a rough edge on it, like the voice the girl next door might have. And her time and her phrasing are that of a musical genius. This is both pop singing and jazz singing at their best; but then it is largely thanks to Billie that the two became almost synonymous, at least for a while…No arrangements and no amount of rehearsal could have resulted in better music, for these musicians were not only among the best of their kind, but they made a living performing every day for live audiences. They were recording their own work, not manufacturing product. (Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday, Donald Clarke)

Let’s meet some of the boys in the band. Here is what Gunther Schuller says:

Benny Goodman: More often than not one is struck by the fluency of Goodman’s musical ideas. Without being terribly original and certainly not profound, they are pleasing, generally in good taste, and at worse, innocuous. (Gunther Schuller, 14)

Teddy Wilson: Wilson has always been one of the most consistent of improvisers. This consistency is achieved… to some extent by taking very few risks stylistically and technically, by constantly improvising within a limited stylistic compass. Big surprises are rare in Wilson’s playing, and in fact there is a certain general predictability about his work. Listening to a lot of Wilson recordings in succession can become somewhat monotonous. Many solos duplicate each other, and the Xerox effect can have a numbing effect. And yet, one is not inclined to use the word “cliché” in regard to Wilson’s work, in part because it is, even at its least inventive, always in good taste with ample displays of his refined touch and clean sense of structural balance. (Gunther Schuller, 508).

Roy Eldridge: Eldridge’s risk-taking is that of an exuberant youthful virtuoso performer rather than that of a seasoned master composer. There remained in Roy’s performing throughout his playing days a boyish, devil-may-care spirit which in his younger days was fed by an enormous physical energy and technical facility. (Gunther Schuller, 452)

Ben Webster: I think Webster was a great poet, perhaps one of the few true poets jazz has had. He used notes and melodies, rarefied and precious at the end, like a poet uses words and metaphors, reduced to their quintessence and innermost meaning. As with most truly great art, Webster's cannot be fully explained. And when he played, it didn't need to be (Gunther Schuller, 590).

Introduction 00 – 07

Teddy Wilson on the piano establishes the tempo and the key. He plays four bars, which you should be able to count out by picking up the beat and counting out 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 four times until he stops playing.

These four bars are worth listening to as an introduction to Teddy Wilson's style. He moves effortlessly across the keyboard, and is unafraid of dazzling arpeggios. This is showy, but Teddy is not showing off. His work is precise, clean, and thoroughly engaging.

First AA chorus 08 – 42

This song is composed in a somewhat unusual, very simple format. Each chorus consists of 32 bars – you would count out 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 a total of 32 times for each chorus - broken into two similar sections of 16 bars each. Each section is given a letter, and since both are identical, the form is identified as AA. This is unusual because typically the form includes a B section - and sometimes a C as well - which provide contrasting material. There is no bridge in this song; we hear the tune and hear it again, and then repeat until the end. The result is, as I say, simple, and less dramatic than most songs that include a bridge.

In the first chorus Benny Goodman takes the first (clarinet) solo - first A – accompanied by Ben Webster (tenor sax) and Roy Eldridge (trumpet). Teddy Wilson plays the next 16 bars – the second A - bringing the first chorus to a close. Goodman and Wilson often played together, and their easy musical relationship is evident here. This is not a great tune, and neither soloist is trying very hard, because they don't need to; in fact, it would sound wrong if they did. It sounds right.

Second AA chorus 43 – 1:16

The second chorus follows the same sequence: Goodman, then Wilson. As is usual in jazz numbers, the second time something is played it is given more expressive qualities. Where before they were content to lay down the melody with some embellishments, here the embellishments are more prominent.

To me, Goodman’s solos on these choruses are more than just fluent, though fluent they are: easily confident and assured, melodically sure-footed and engaging, an exemplary if somewhat raffish complement to Teddy Wilson’s elegant piano and Roy Eldridge’s bouncy and brassy trumpet and Webster's warm, subtle undertones.

Third AA chorus 1:15 - 2:22

The third chorus (AA) is Billie’s vocal. Donald Clarke, quoted above, refers to her evident love of the lyrics. It is not just the feeling, when Billie Holiday sings, but the nuances of feeling that make the difference. Her attitudes engage not just the listener but the other players and the words themselves.

I wished on the moon for something I never knew;
Wished on the moon, for more than I ever knew;
A sweeter rose, softer skies, warm April days
That would not dance away.

You can hear Ben Webster's obbligato accompaniment come in as she sings about softer skies and warm April days. Players usually know the lyrics to the songs, and often the best of them will do various things to enhance them. Here, it seems to me that Webster takes his cue from these words - sweeter, softer, warm, dance away - and fits his music to the qualities they suggest.

I begged up a star to throw me a beam or two
Wished on a star, and asked for a dream or two
I looked for every loveliness, it all came true;
I wished on the moon for you

The lyricist, Dorothy Parker, was a New York writer of short stories and poems. She wrote some wonderfully funny and acerbic stuff, but these 8 lines are not among them. Doesn't matter.
Fourth AA chorus 1:22 – 3:01

The fourth “out” chorus (A) is the ensemble with Eldridge on trumpet taking the lead, with Goodman on clarinet filling in. Typically, the final chorus in a jazz number brings everything together and in a more expressive manner than before.

Listening to Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday is one of America’s great artists of the 20th century. In jazz her peers include the other jazz innovators such as Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and a small handful of others. Like them, much of her greatness stems from what she could uniquely bring to this style of music with her instrument, in this case her voice. Like them, the enormous influence she has had on subsequent performers is incalculable.

She is often referred to as a blues singer, which is correct, though also misleading. She is best identified within the swing idiom, which she helped to establish. Swing is a music and dance style that emerged out of the innovations of Louis Armstrong by the late twenties and early thirties. It is generally associated with larger bands than the combos from New Orleans and Chicago, though the groups Billie Holiday sang with were generally smallish. With swing music a light, propulsive beat seems to make dancers of all the performers, and rather than pitting a rhythm section and a front line against each other, with swing the rhythm section is joined by both a horn section and a reed section. Collective improvisation is out, but solo improvisation in swing music takes on even greater expressive qualities. So, how is Billie Holiday a blues artist? She brings to swing music an especially effective personal tone, so that her voice emerges more as an instrument like any other in the band than as someone standing apart singing the words. As a vocalist she is a fully fledged member of the band musically, which was not the case with most other singers.

One of Billie Holiday’s talents was an amazing control over a very limited melodic range; another was her phenomenal rhythm. Musicologist Gunther Schuller says she was “most comfortable between G and A. As a result she invariably compressed melodies into that range, often going beyond vocal necessity to the sheer joy of invention in smoothing out the contours of particularly rangy lines.”

Now, what’s so great about that? On the face of it, you might think that as good as she is, someone with a greater vocal range could be greater. Maybe someone who could reach all the notes might do better? Yes, there may be better singers, in the generally accepted sense of the term, but Billie Holiday’s ability to do so much with so little is more than just a feat. The range and intensity of the feelings she brings to the music—and these are feelings she shares with her many fans as they listen—are well expressed by this, again: “often going beyond vocal necessity to the sheer joy of invention in smoothing out the contours of particularly rangy lines.”

She makes these songs entirely her own, creating with each song a new way of expressing it, partly through exploiting her limited vocal range, partly through her sense of rhythm, partly through her keen awareness of who was playing with her, and also through an infectious enthusiasm and joy which propels most of her recordings. There is not less here, but more. The metaphors one thinks of include that she inhabits the song, living in it and sharing with the audience its life; that she wears the song, displaying how it looks on her as if it was a particularly fetching outfit; and that she has taken over the song, painting and coloring it and twisting and shaping it so that the song becomes something quite new.

Her influence has been profound, although not always beneficent. What she does so well - including express individual feelings within the confines of artistic production - others do not.

Billie Holiday’s work is noteworthy in part because many of the songs themselves are unpromising. Holiday takes virtually nothing from other recordings or interpretations of the songs she sings. She learned, instead, from two principal sources—and they were the best—Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. Louis Armstrong’s vocals transformed jazz singing—listen for example to his version of The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Bessie Smith’s astonishingly powerful and mesmerizing blues meant a lot to Billie Holiday, though their styles are markedly different—listen to anything Bessie Smith recorded, like Young Woman’s Blues. I expect she took many things from both of these vocal artists, in particular a sense of the authority of accomplishment that can be achieved by doing something as well as it can be done.

Unlike many other recordings, when the star vocalist is not singing the music remains extremely interesting. Another enormous talent Billie Holiday brought to her recordings was a knack for gathering other great artists around her, and bringing out their best. These are not just Billie Holiday songs, but the songs of an ensemble of some of the best performers of the day playing in a relaxed and joyful atmosphere—doubtless enhanced by various drugs, principally alcohol and marijuana.

It won’t take much work for most students to listen to her recordings, which are universally admired as masters of jazz interpretation even by those who find her particular style of singing not to their taste. When you know the melody, you are better equipped as a listener to follow what the soloists are doing with it. Most of her songs are in the 32-bar AABA song structure. though a few of her best-known works are 12-bar blues. We learn to listen to these songs by following the way each individual soloist, Billie and the instrumentalists—who are always worth listening to—approach the song, and how they contribute to its structure.

The players usually made four songs together in one long session in the studio; individual soloists take turns playing or singing the choruses; the rhythm section and sometimes other instrumentalists generally accompanying the others in their solos. When Billie sings these numbers—she increasingly would take the first chorus, thus setting the tone—she is just one other member of the band doing her thing.

A Brief Biography

In my humanities courses I try to steer clear of artist biographies; we have only a limited amount of time and the task is to learn and practice analysis and interpretation. In the case of Billie Holiday, her biography has become part of American legend, and has in some ways distorted our view of the artist. It is common to view Billie Holiday as a victim: of racism, of poverty, of drugs, of men, of you name it. She certainly suffered inordinately, and was mistreated by many, especially by authorities. When I listen to her work I don’t get that feeling at all. She sounds like someone in charge of things, at least while the recording plays.

There is an autobiography called Lady Sings the Blues (1956), which Billie Holiday claimed never to have even read; it was ghost-written by journalist William Dufty and published a few years before she died.

Billie Holiday’s given name was Elinore Harris. She was born in 1915 in Philadelphia General Hospital on April 7th, at 2.30am, if you’re interested. Her mother was 18 when Billie was born. Her father, Clarence Holiday, was a jazz guitarist. He never married Billie’s mother, and abandoned mother and child. Billie Holiday took her last name from her father, and her first name either from Billie Dove, an actress at the time, or from somebody else.

Billie Holiday was a cabaret singer when she started to record in the early thirties. The series of songs she made for Columbia in the 1930s under the general direction of John Hammond have always been popular with jazz fans; they boast the talents of some of the greatest performers of the day and are still astonishingly fresh and original. In later years, after her addiction to heroin, Billie Holiday recordings became almost unrecognizable to earlier fans; her voice seemed to reflect years of hard living. Many artists, however, prefer the later material for its deeply expressive qualities. Billie Holiday died at 3:20am (if you’re interested) on the 17th of July, 1959, in the Manhattan Metropolitan Hospital and is buried with her mother in St. Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx.

We know of 663 different recordings Billie Holiday made and that are available; put together they make up about 40 hours of music, plus 50 minutes of video (movies). She recorded 306 different melodies: 214 once, 42 twice and 50 three times or more.

What People Have Said

In mid-1935, Teddy Wilson was only twenty-two, and Billie just twenty. They made fourteen sides together that year, and they had already made history. (Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday, Donald Clarke)

One of the wonderful things about her is that she lights up some pretty average songs, and there's a playfulness on the earlier records. Then it gets far more intense, and you get the great duets, with Lester Young. Sinatra covered a lot of songs that she did. It's interesting that he took so much from Billie Holiday. It's an interesting tribute to her that a singer so self-possessed as Sinatra clearly took so much, and I feel it's because she just imprinted herself all over those songs. (Elvis Costello)

With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the US during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me. Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years. (Frank Sinatra)

She could take a tawdry tune and do it, turn it around forty different ways, which she used to have to do in night clubs, because, you know, she'd sing to tables, particularly in speakeasies. You see there was a, there was, there was no sound systems in speakeasies because that might get out into the street, so, so she would sing very quietly at various tables, and sing the same tune differently at each table. It was just an unbelievable feat, you know, just came absolutely natural to Billie. I never heard another singer who could do it this way. By this time I had gotten Billie a business association with Brunswick records and Vocalion records, and she could go into the studio any time.'(John Hammond).

Billie Holiday was a keen observer. She saw through lyrics and she saw through people. And she chose what and who she wanted. She sang every song not only as if she had written it herself, but as if she had written it that very morning. (Maya Angelou)

It is a truism to regard Billie Holiday as one of the great artists of jazz. But her art transcends the usual categorizations of style, content, and technique. Much of her singing goes beyond itself and becomes a humanistic document; it passed often into a realm that is not only beyond criticism but in the deepest sense inexplicable. We can, of course, describe and analyze the surface mechanics of her art: her style, her techniques, her personal vocal attributes; and I suppose a poet could express the essence of her art or at least give us, by poetic analogy, his particular insight into it. But, as with all truly profound art, that which operates above, below, and all around its outer manifestations is what touches us, and also remains ultimately mysterious. (Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era, 528)

So powerful is the mystery of her art and the fatal attraction of Billie’s tragic life that many writers and critics have been unable to resist reading their own personal creeds and philosophical tenets into her work. Thus many have seen only its tragic side, emphasizing the oppression of black artists, racism, the evil forces of commercialism: “the messenger of miser,” as Leonard Feather once put it. Indeed, latecomer to her work, drawn to it—like the non-musical intelligentsia and political left—by her recording of Strange Fruit (1939), were bound to see only the gloomy and, to put it plainly, more calculated aspect of her art, being unaware of the infectious joy and optimism of her early recordings. (Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era, 528-9)

I've never seen Billie Holiday as a victim. She just did what she had to do, dealing with what was going on in society at that time. I identify with the subject matter of her songs, which were mainly about her relationships with the men she chose. I think people may have assumed that she was the typical female victim being controlled by men, but I don't see it that way at all. I don't really see her situation as any different than mine, or that of most of the women I know. I think she had a lot of empathy for people, and she may have had some beautiful losers in her life, but inside every beautiful loser is a beautiful person trying to get out. And how many people always make the right choices and have these wonderful, happy relationships, anyway? Life ultimately is about passion, about feeling passion, and Billie Holiday was nothing if not passionate. (Lucinda Williams)

First, there's her voice, which was technically brilliant, but she also did something that a lot of technical singers can't do, which is convey a helluva lot of truth and emotion. She had a very self-aware, introspective voice, a voice of the soul. Much more important than the drugs was her sexuality, her sexiness. She seduces you immediately. And the other level that's so crucial was she had incredibly good sidemen. I can't tell you how important she is to me. Every time I sing, I pray to Billie Holiday to help me: the singers' saint. (Marianne Faithfull)

Most of these 1935-39 recordings, some with Teddy Wilson-led small groups, others under her own “leadership” (but all organized by John Hammond), are classics of jazz, not only because of Billie’s unique talent but because of the generally high quality and authentic creativity of the accompaniments. Indeed, accompaniments is a misnomer. Whereas on literally thousands of swing era recordings there is a clear qualitative gap between the vocals and their instrumental surroundings, in the case of Billie’s first hundred or so performances, she is an equal among equals. And the joy of these performances is that they are seamless creative entities, not mere instrumental accompaniments for a vocalist, but rather singer and musicians matching and inspiring each other. There is no need to wince or to be tolerant when the vocal comes on. (Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era, 532)

She is the tragic beauty, the self-destructive genius, and the sensual goddess. However, artists are as likely to be drawn to her, not because of her tragedy but because she is a kindred spirit. One who the world failed to protect. One who left us too soon… She is the means by which many writers locate and find confidence in the individuality of their own voices. Her legacy encourages risk and flight in the face of uncertainty and possible failure. The joy is in the journey, the very act of creation itself. (Farah Griffin)

It is impossible (and unnecessary) to enumerate the individual virtues of these many superior recordings. Though they may vary somewhat in quality, I dare say there is not one that is not worth hearing, that doesn’t have some outstanding moments, either vocally, or instrumentally, or both. (Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era, 532)'

Blue Horizon, Sidney Bechet

Blue Horizon, Sidney Bechet and His Blue Note Jazzmen, December 30, 1944

Sidney de Paris, trumpet
Vic Dickenson, trombone
Sidney Bechet, clarinet
Art Hodes, piano
Pops Foster, string bass
Manzie Johnson, drums

Sidney Bechet is another New Orleans jazz artist; he started earlier than Louis Armstrong and also pioneered in the jazz idiom and, in particular, the jazz solo. This tour-de-force is one of the great instrumental blues masterpieces of all time. Although it was recorded in the forties, it derives from the jazz Bechet helped to create in the 1920s.

Listen to the fine tremolo Bechet brings out of his instrument. Like all great jazz musicians, Bechet can bring everything about a song, from the sound of his instrument to the melody itself, to the very edge, where it appears as if it might just break off, without losing control. You may not notice how sure-footed some people are until you see them prance nimbly around a cliff. Here Bechet is in command throughout the piece, which is practically all clarinet solo. Richard Hadlock recalls some musical advice Bechet gave him regarding how to produce a tone:

“I’m going to give you one note today,” he once told me. “See how many ways you can play that note—growl it, smear it, flat it, sharp it, do anything you want to it. That’s how you express your feelings in this music. It’s like talking.” (quoted in Ted Gioa, The History of Jazz, p. 50).

Throughout the history of jazz, vocals have been made to sound like instruments (recall Louis’s scat solo on Hotter Than That) and instruments have been made to sound like voices. There is no question of simple imitation here, but rather the instrument starts to sound as personal and emotive as a voice while retaining its own distinctive sound.

There are six blues choruses (A – F), each of 12 bars, constructed, as usual, of three sections of four bars.

Minutes/Seconds:

A: a 0 – 12
a 13 – 27
b 28 – 41

B: a 42 – 57
a 58 – 1:11
b 1:12 – 1:24

C a 1:25 – 143
a 1:44 – 1:54
b 1:55 – 2:09

D a 2:10 – 2:20
a 2:21 – 2:37
b 2:38 - 2: 53

E a 2:54 – 3:08
a 3:09 – 3:23
b 3:24 – 3:37

F a 3:38 – 3:53
a 3 :54 – 4:08
b 4:09 – 4:25

For Sidney Bechet

by Philip Larkin

That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes
Like New Orleans reflected on the water,
And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes,

Building for some a legendary Quarter
Of balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles,
Everyone making love and going shares–

Oh, play that thing! Mute glorious Storyvilles
Others may license, grouping around their chairs
Sporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced

Far above rubies) to pretend their fads,
While scholars manqués nod around unnoticed
Wrapped up in personnels like old plaids.

On me your voice falls as they say love should,
Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City
Is where your speech alone is understood,

And greeted as the natural noise of good,
Scattering long-haired grief and scored pity.