Between the World Wars, radio took over pop culture. Radio stations, and record producers, segregated music and musicians.
It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing:
o Radio Greats of Swing
§ King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, “Shake It and Break It” 1930
§ Count Basie, “Swingin’the Blues” 1941
§ Duke Ellington, “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing” 1943
o Big Band era (1935-1945)
§ Benny Goodman, “Sing,Sing, Sing” 1937
§ Glen Miller, “In the Mood” 1940
o Western Swing
§ Bob Wills, “San Antonio Rose” 1944
Scat Singing
o Scatting, or making up nonsensical lyrics, had been part of ragtime and jazz since the turn of the century before, but it was introduced to the general public in a 1926 record by Louis Armstrong, “Heebie Jeebies.” His lyric sheet fell in the middle of the song and he started scatting.
o Louis Armstrong, “Heebie Jeebies” 1926
o Cab Calloway, “Minnie the Moocher” 1931
o Ella Fitzgerald, “How High the Moon” 1947
§ Compare: Scatman Crothers (you may remember him from The Shining), “I’m a N****r Man” 1975 This is very powerful usage of the n-word in defiance of white society and oppression.
· Sonny Boy Williamson I, "Stop Breaking Down" 1945
Queens of Jazz and Blues
· 1920s
o Ma Rainey, “See See Rider Blues” [with Louis Armstrong], 1924
o Bessie Smith, “I’m Wild about That Thing,” 1929
· 1930s
o Mildred Bailey, “All of Me” 1931 [Native American]
o Billie Holliday, “Strange Fruit,” 1939
Gospel Blues
Blind Willie Johnson
Reverend Gary Davis
Dirty Blues
o Some early blues singers could be as raunchy as any modern rapper, and –like rappers –often had both a “real version” of songs that they played live in clubs and a “radio edit version” that was cleaned up. Many of those “dirty blues” songs were recorded, though, in the 1920s and 1930s.
o Clara Smith
§ “It’s Tight Like That” 1929
o Sweet Emma
§ “I Ain’t Giving Nobody My Jellyroll” written in 1919, this version recorded decades later. “Jellyroll” was slang for vagina
o Lucille Bogan
§ NOTE: the slang word that appears in these songs, which is short for “cockleshell”, referred to female genitalia and didn’t become slang for male genitalia until around WWII.
§ “Shave ‘Em Dry” 1934 (the expression "shave 'em dry" meant give it to them straight, pulling no punches)
§ “’Til the Cows Come Home” 1934
Jump Blues
o Mixture of blues and jazz swing, danceable with a boogie beat (repetitive, up-tempo, danceable). When electric guitar is added in the late ‘40s, rhythm and blues is born
o Lionel Hampton, “Flying Home” 1942
o Early Greats
§ The Carter Family, “Worried Man Blues”
§ Jimmie Rodgers (The Singing Brakeman) “Blue Yodel (T for Texas)”
o Grand Ole Opry, est. 1925 preceded by National Barn Dance, in Chicago
§ Uncle Jimmy Thompson, “Lynchburg”
§ Uncle Dave Macon, "Sail Away, Ladies"
§ DeFord Bailey, “John Henry”
Working Class Folk & Protest Music
o Woody Guthrie, "I Ain't Got No Home in This World Anymore"
§ Compare: “Sixteen Tons” By Tennessee Ernie Ford, 1955
o Leadbelly, “Bourgeois Blues”
o Pete Seeger
§ “Ballad of Barney Graham” (Graham was the United Mine Workers leader murdered in Fentress County, TN, during a 1932 coal miners' strike)
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