© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all
rights reserved.
There are times
when I enjoy just hearing the music while visualizing it through the use of
“videos” developed with the help of the world-class graphics team at CerraJazz LTD .
As I’ve noted
before on these pages, there is a limit to how effectively writing about Jazz
conveys what’s going on in the music.
And, although it is
inherent in the nature of blogging, it’s difficult to write about Jazz all the
time.
Trying to maintain
a steady stream of written content on the subject sometimes makes me feel like
E.B. White of The New Yorker when he
said: “Life's meaning has always eluded me and I guess it always will. But I
love it just the same.”
Perhaps the Pulitzer-prize
winning Mr. White will allow me to rephrase this marvelous insight to read: “ …
Jazz’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess it always will. But I love it
just the same.”
When I’m feeling
this way, I find solace in listening to and “looking at” Jazz.
From time-to-time,
then, I stop, collect a bunch of photos, album covers and graphics, add an
audio track of splendid Jazz, and sit back and savor it all.
My latest
undertaking in this regard is The Art of
Jazz Trombone:
Gunther Schuller’s
essay, The Trombone in Jazz, in Bill
Kirchner, ed., The Oxford Companion to Jazz [New York
“The trombone is
the only instrument in the Western music tradition that is virtually unchanged
in its basic construction (shape and size) and technical function since its
first appearance in the late fifteenth century. All other instruments—whether
the violin, the organ, or even the trumpet—have experienced important changes
or physical additions (such as valves on trumpets). Although a valve trombone
was developed eventually in the early nineteenth century, it never replaced in
classical music or in jazz the so-called slide trombone, the instrument with
which this article will be primarily concerned.
Thus, given the
trombone's stable and venerable history, it is somewhat ironic that it was
originally developed as an offshoot of the Renaissance slide trumpet, in use in
late medieval music, extending the brass family's registral range to the tenor
and baritone regions. Moreover, from its very beginnings the trombone, with its
inherent agility of movement and potential freedom from fixed pitches (a limitation,
for example, for valved or keyed instruments), was considered no less versatile
than a violin or cornetto. This goes a long way toward explaining the
instrument's central and consistent place in the music literature of the last
five hundred years.
This intrinsic
versatility also accounts for the prominent role the trombone has played in
jazz from its inception and even in its prehistory, rivaled only by the
trumpet and possibly the clarinet. Late nineteenth-century ragtime ensembles,
the concert bands prevalent all over the United States and the Americas, and
especially the brass and parade bands so popular in New Orleans around the turn
of the century all featured the trombone in a variety of musical functions,
ranging from soloistic to accompanimental, from individual to ensemble roles.
Thus it cannot come as a surprise that in the earliest manifestation of jazz
(i.e., the New Orleans collective ensemble style) the trombone was a
preeminent, indispensable member of the so-called three-instrument front line:
cornet (or trumpet), clarinet, and trombone. In that typical formation the
three instruments were assigned quite specific roles, with the trombone
providing commentary asides, countermelodies, and harmonic fill-ins to the main
tune played by the cornet and the clarinet's high-register obbligatos, in
general providing a link between the melodic/thematic material and the rhythm
section, even occasionally and intermittently participating in both areas.
Much of the earliest "jazz" in the first two decades of the century—before
it had even acquired the name jazz
and before the advent of jazz recordings in 1917—was played outdoors, at
picnics, church functions, fraternity dances, or funeral processions and on advertising
wagons, with the trombonist usually positioned at the back of the wagon so that
he could freely manipulate his five-foot-long slide. This type of playing
acquired the name tailgate. It
featured a copious use of glissandos, a sliding effect endemic to the slide
trombone and not particularity practical on other wind instruments; it later
became an overused cliché in Dixieland bands and the 1940s New Orleans
In the earliest
decades of the century, the musician who contributed most to the evolution of
the trombone in jazz was Kid Ory. An early specialist in the tailgate style, he
developed stylistically along with the advances in jazz in the 1920s, working
effectively with such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong (Hot Five) and Jelly Roll
Morton (Red Hot Peppers). A fine example of his playing can be heard on
"Ory's Creole Trombone/Society Blues," recorded in 1922 in Los Angeles
Two other fine
early trombonists were George Brunis (originally Brunies) and Jim Robinson.
…
… [Many of the
earliest Jazz] musicians were essentially self-taught and initially non- or
semiprofessional, playing in simple, relatively crude personal styles. But
under the influence of a number of dramatic developments in jazz in the 1920s,
musicians—trombonists, of course, included—began to rise to new challenges. It
was during the early 1920s that jazz developed into the major dance and
entertainment music of the country and became a viable profession in music
(even for blacks); the initial small groups in jazz (quintets, sextets,
septets) expanded to ten-and twelve-piece orchestras; composers and arrangers
gradually created even more sophisticated performance demands (both in terms
of solo improvisations and ensemble work); and, even more compelling, major
innovative virtuosos, such as trumpeters Armstrong, King Oliver, and Jabbo
Smith and trombonists Jack Teagarden and Miff Mole, challenged the whole field
to reach out to new technical and creative heights….
The 1920s saw a
number of other outstanding trombone players come to the fore, among them
Claude Jones, Vic Dickenson, J. C. Higginbotham, Benny Morton, Dicky Wells,
Sandy Williams, Trummy Young, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, and, last but not
least, the three remarkable players associated with Duke Ellington's orchestra:
"Tricky Sam" Nanton, Juan Tizol, and Lawrence Brown. Although most of
these players were not major innovators, technically and creatively, they did
build in various personal ways on the advances of their immediate brass-playing
predecessors. …
Another remarkable
trombone section, totally different from Ellington's was that of Stan Kenton's
orchestra. Beginning in the mid-19408, its style initiated and set by Kai
Winding, it revolutionized trombone playing stylistically, especially in terms
of sound (brassier, more prominent in the ensemble) and type of vibrato
(slower, and mostly lack thereof), as well as by adding the "new
sound" of a bass trombone (Bart Varsalona, later George Roberts). The
Kenton trombone section's influence was enormous and pervasive, and continues
to this day. Although the section's personnel changed often over the decades,
it retained an astonishing stylistic consistency, not only because such
stalwarts as Milt Bernhart and Bob Fitzpatrick held long tenures in the
orchestra, but because incoming players, such as Bob Burgess and Frank Rosolino
and a host of others, were expected to fit into the by-then-famous Kenton brass
sound.
But the biggest
breakthrough on the trombone toward full membership in the bop fraternity was
accomplished by J. J. Johnson, who essentially proved convincingly that
anything Gillespie could do on the trumpet could now also be matched on the
trombone. Johnson is regarded as the true founder of the modern school of jazz
trombone, developing astounding (for the time) speed and agility on the instrument,
and thus becoming a charter member of the bop evolution/revolution. ….”
