Swing music

The piece of music that this paper will focus on is “Sing Sing Sing” by Benny Goodman. “Sing Sing Sing” is a fast pace swing song that features mainly trumpets and saxophones, a driving drum, and an unmistakable solo by the famous clarinetist- Benny Goodman. Benny Goodman was one of the driving forces of band desegregation during his time as a bandleader. “Sing Sing Sing” by Benny Goodman was a killer diller number, a popular dance piece, that embodies the swing era, and brought jazz out of the…

Swing Dance begin in 1920s and 30s in America. In 1930s the words Lindy Hop, Jitterbug, and Swing were all interchanged terms. How the dance was discovered you may ask in the 1920s the black community were dancing to contemporary Jazz music and the discovered the Charleston and the Lindy Hop which was originated in Harlem. Something that I found really interesting is in 1936 Philip Nutl, was president of the American Society of Teachers of Dancing said that swing would not last. Here it is 2016…

Basie was a swing big band leader who began playing piano in the 1920s. He was born in New Jersey, and took stylistic influences from New York musicians such as Fats Waller (Yanow 155). He rose to prominence as a part of the Bennie Moten Orchestra, and then led his own orchestra after Moten’s death in 1935 (Yanow 155). As a bandleader, Count Basie was able to develop his own innovative style that significantly influenced the way jazz developed past the 1940s. His band was one of the top swing…

Shaw ‘Nuff by Dizzy Gillespie and His All-Star Quintet may come across as swing after only a single play but, as the ear parses out what it is actually hearing, it begins to sound more like a combination of the best parts of swing and traditional jazz. The quintet is composed of a saxophone, trumpet, piano, double bass, and drums. The trumpet has its own unique sound, which could come from either a mute or the style in which the musician is playing. The bass does more than keep time, which is…

Music today is all because of changes then. The musicians today were influenced by those before them. Joe King Oliver influenced Louis Armstrong by training him and because of Oliver moving to Chicago, Armstrong got his start in Kid Ory’s band. Jelly Roll Morton, Joe King Oliver, Sidney Bichet, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington all changed things for musicians today. Jelly Roll Morton grew up in New Orleans and started playing piano at the age of 10. In 1904 he began traveling, playing the…

Do you love jazz music? Louis Armstrong became an amazing coronet player. He had a rough start in life, but overcame challenges. At first he wasn’t really out there for playing the cornet, but overtime jazz music became very popular and he became famous. Louis Armstrong was born August 4th, 1901. His dad, William Armstrong, was a mentor who also played the cornet and he was still only a little kid when his dad has left the house. Even then his mom left him, shrieking her parental…

Cuban jazz pianist and composer, David Virelles, has been widely solicited by the attentive musicians on the current scene, who immediately recognized his outstanding creative capabilities. In the recent past, he has played key roles in projects led by trumpeter Tomasz Stanko and saxophonists Henry Threadgill and Chris Potter. As a leader, Virelles always brings heritage into the game, and both Continuum (Pi Recordings, 2012) and Mboko (ECM, 2015) received accolades from the specialized media…

The form of “jazz dancing” has altered a lot over the last several decades, much like the rest of American Musical Theatre. Choreographers like Steven Hoggett (Once) and Andy Blankenbuehler (Hamilton) have taken their new conceptual ideas and formed them into dance styles that are now being seen in musicals around the world. However, the classic names of Broadway like Jerome Robbins, Michael Bennett, Bob Fosse and Agnes De Mille have left their mark on the world of Musical Theatre dance forever.…

The song “Flamenco Sketches” by the Miles Davis Sextet has the cool jazz sound with the modal jazz style. The song has a light and soft sound with simple melodic improvisations. A traditional rhythm section maintains a steady rhythm throughout the song, but this rhythm section uses countermelodies to add colorations during the improvisations. The pianist is constantly playing a soft melody underneath the improvisations and sometimes mirroring the melody played by the improviser. The bassist…

The masterful, classic composition “Potato Head Blues” by legendary musician Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven band is widely regarded today as one of Armstrong’s finest recordings. This song is a quick-paced jazz melody with the trumpet along with the piano providing what I believe is to be a 4 beat per measure rhythm. “Potato Head Blues” also sounds different from that of Joplin Rags since I counted 2 beats per measure. The song also does not seem to have much variation with a constant…