Cliff Edwards: Fascinatin’ Rhythm, Wolverines: When My Sugar Walks Down the Street, Goofus Five: Everybody Loves My Baby, King Oliver: Canal St. Blues, California Ramblers: Tessie Stop Teasing Me, Cliff Edwards: Somebody Loves Me, Wolverines: Susie, Henderson: Shanghai Shuffle, Morton: Shreveport Stomp, King Oliver: The Southern Stomps, I Ain’t Gonna Tell Nobody, NORK: Weary Blues, Tiger Rag, Oliver: Chattanooga Stomp, Morton: The Pearls, The Little Ramblers (Moore, Davis, Rollini, Brodsky, Fellini, King): Deep Blue Sea Blues, I’m Satisfied Beside That Sweetie of Mine, Those Panama Mamas.
The New Yorker dialect of Ira Gershwin with Cliff Edwards driving the ukelele, who introduced Fascinatin’ Rhythm on Broadway. Compare to Jobim’s version a la bossa nova. Then the young very good Wolverines without Bix and The Goofus Five with Bill Moore-Bobby Davis-Adrian Rollini in a novelty groove. Then Henderson/Redman gravitas with an Armstrong solo. Oliver stomps from a year earlier with Armstrong. Morton and NORK provide interludes and then Rollini’s ramblers go novelty for its own sake. The way it was in 1923 and 1924, What a difference a year makes.
Syncopation primed earlier generations going far back. More recently George Walker and Bert Williams, Souza marches, Joplin ragtime, Creamer and Layton, vaudeville, banjo ragtime, together circulating as a national music on the theater and tent circuits. Thereupon emerging everywhere as in Carter Family and Opry, bluegrass, honky tonk, Western, r’n b, rockabilly. Also New York provided the Blues record craze with Bessie Smith recording star for Columbia among 40 or more such stars.
Ira Gershwin catches the infectious jazz rhythm from his brother. Compare to Hart’s I’ll Take Manhattan and Staten Island Too as a relaxed melodic answer for externality impinging from all directions in high density. But to the local poet Hart, New York is a romantic haven for all who come. If you’re going to NYC, don’t necessarily wear flowers in your hair, but if you stay you may become a naturalized New Yorker.
It used to be Dutch, not a source of much Americana, rather keeper and sponsor of more professional traditions as in James P., Fats. Carnegie Hall aspirants. Marion Harris superstar participated in jazz integration, moved to Columbia Records to sing WC Handy. Professional jazz players later congregated at the Rhythm Club. This is distinct from brass bands convening for New Orleans parades.
If you make it in NY not necessarily true you make it anywhere. Sinatra being from NJ. Also Basie. If you make it in NJ you probably can make it anywhere. But if you make it in New York not necessarily, like Lee Konitz.Or if you make it in America you don’t necessarily make it in NY. Oliver and Morton did some of their best work there but were not greeted with the adoration later generations would heap.
This perhaps elucidates what narrowed jazz to its current boutique status which is not bad just not best selling. While detached from its Southern and American functions like dances, there were too few like Ray Charles, Lee Morgan, Horace Silver turning out danceable tunes. Compare this to polka which is purely a dance music. Or marching bands. From America came C&W, blues, rock, soul, spirituals, gospel, etc. all inspiring movement but defined as distinct from jazz. But what of Fats Domino, certainly welcome at any jazz festival. NY sounds have also diffused into America, hip hop, stride, Monk, bebop, Tin Pan Alley, doo wop, salsa. Jazz took some losses with the passage of time and generations. But entertainment remains, Basie, Louie Prima. Armstrong kept turning out hits with a New Orleans jazz concept and no need to prove anything. Jazz keeps on rocking in rhythm.
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