The record changer (Jan-Feb 1945)

Ion Vorhees. Fud Livingston joined Vhiteman. Bennie Klein played with ,ouis Katzman, Don Vohrees, Fred Rich, ;ddie Elkins, Roger Wolfe Kahn. Of the roldkette players, Trumbauer went to lay Miller, Gene Rodemich, Max Goldian, the Benson Orchestra and Paul Vhiteman; Bill Rank joined Whiteman; fhelsea Quealey joined Whiteman and [ed Wallace; Andy Secrest joined Ted J/eems. Of the white New Orleans muEcians, Manone joined Charlie Straight, lass Hagan and Ray Miller; Beauduc pined Fred Rich; Brunis went to Ted Lewis; Bennie Kreuger of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band joined Rudy Vallee p-the list could be extended ad nauseam. The inevitable result was the decline if improvization — not only as a band •ractice but also as a musical discipline. Musicians came to rely on the score and ost their initiative in the process. Jimmy Dorsey said at the time — and his was before he himself had become a •and leader — "I think it is suicide for a azz musician to work with such (comnercial) outfits because he soon burns limself out and becomes careless. Whenver he does get a break for a solo he eels nervous and restrained." And Jack iusin said : "It has forced some of the inest white musicians to ruin their perionalities by losing themselves in these weet society orchestras, pandering to heir audiences' tastes." The position was still worse among Slegroes— and not among musicians ilone. Unemployment among Negroes of ill classes was heavier than among corresponding groups of whites. Negro savngs and investments ceased to exist /vhere white savings and investments nerely decreased in value. Southern Negroes migrated northward in search of a /anishing subsistence wage. New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit abiorbed the bulk of this gigantic Negro nigration. By 1930, one-half of the enire northern Negro population had :rowded into the labor market of these tour cities ; as a result, the wage level mally fell below the subsistence minihum. Race prejudice had long forced an increasingly larger proportion of urban Negroes into various branches of the entertainment trade. Among these branches, nusic, as was to be expected, showed the worst rate of distress, the highest rate of unemployment, the most steeply declining rate of income and the most severe need :>f relief. Negro musicians were forced lo accept any job they could find. Two of the greatest musicians of the race, Sidney Bechet and Tommy Ladnier, ran shoe shine and repair tailoring shops to tide themselves over the depression years. Others, like Charlie Green, died literally of starvation. This vast impoverishment of the oldtime jazz musicians was balanced by the opulence of the new music industry that had arisen phoenix-like out of the ashes of the depression. The growing concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands showed itself in the growing trustification and cartellization of the music trade. Song writing had become an industry. Radio had become big business. Theaters, night spots and hotels had merged into chains. Broadway and Hollywood capital flowed into song writing and band management. A closely woven net of financial strings began to enmesh the musicians. Music was no longer something you played as you liked it ; you now were told how to play it. So much money was now invested in each "hit tune" that the investors could no longer permit it to be submerged in the contrapuntal intricacies of old-time jazz ; thus harmonization replaced counterpoint, arrangement replaced improvization, and Tin Pan Alley tunes replaced folk tunes. So much money had at the same time been invested in each band that the band manager could no longer afford to let the musicians play as they liked. In the old days the musicians could take occasional busmen's holidays to play music as they thought music should be played; they still made enough money to earn a living. But now they had to make money for a whole dragon's tail of hangers-on and go-betweens — managers, bookers, agents, pluggers, publicity men, girl singers and front men. To pay for these vast new overheads, the music had to be tailored to a much wider public than jazz had ever been able to attract. This process of making jazz intelligible to the moron was based on a simple recipe : Mix the phrasing of New Orleans jazz with the arrangement and orchestration of sweet jazz and the result will be swing music. The logic of the process was based on the assumption that the common denominator of all audiences is the lowest intelligence prevailing among them. The argument then proceeded in this fashion : The people who know their jazz will have no difficulty in understanding the new "swing" idiom. They may be bored by it, but for lack of anything better they'll come and listen to the swing bands anyway. In contrast to them, the people who don't know anything about music will simply stay away from the dance halls if they don't understand the music. Thus, to get the biggest 9