The record changer (Mar 1945-Feb 1946)

has the greatest variety. Lewis's clarinet has that staccato rhythm that the Chicago school's 'all out' used. Bunk plays his low tone wails in the last two choruses. Walk Thru The Streets Of The City is pretty even. Bunk does some very nice playing after Lewis's solo. When You Wore A Tulip is the most inventive side of the group. Bunk varies the second chorus just enough. George Lewis's solo is beautiful especially as he takes the melody down on his low register. Robinson has a few rightly placed tailgate slides in this chorus. The next chorus of Bunk's is very inventive. Jim takes a staccato but very rhythmic chorus with Lewis taking the second half. It is a fine side. Darktown Strutters' Ball is the most successful side. A fine tune and Bunk plays each of his first four choruses quite differently. Lewis has a very beautiful spot in the second half of his chorus. He plays three of his high notes but in a strict rhythm of two to a bar. To hear his clear tone coming out in this fashion is very stirring. Jim has a fine rhythmic solo and then in the next we can hear his wonderful long note work behind Bunk. Bunk plays a descending passage in this chorus that we do not often hear him do. I am continually finding new material in this and the Tulip side. Bunk's band is now in New York City. It is probably the first time that real New Orleans music has been available to a New York audience. It is a fine experience to hear 'them. We all came to jazz in various ways. The usual introduction / is accidental, since we either hear it as the background in some such place as a bar or dance to it. In this sense it becomes a pattern of sound behind other activities. Discrimination can start then, either for good or bad. Even the most undiscriminating can understand and fully enjoy Bunk and this enjoyment may very easily lead into a discrimination both from hearing Bunk in person and listening to his records. Bunk is old and sometimes on off nights, when he gets up to play, the remembrances of the past lead him into what his lips may not be able to execute. If this was the rule no amount of past glory would make me still praise him in the same breath as the younger George Lewis and Jim Robinson. But it is not the rule, and Bunk Johnson brings forth in his own way and in his own time a music equal in its single fashion to the collective feeling of the band. QUESTIONS (Continued from page 9) cal and dynamic punctuation as well as for variations of tone color. The blues has later been adapted for instrumental performance by jazz musicians. In nucleus, the blues form contains all the characteristics of jazz, and must therefore be considered as the fundamental and most characteristic material of jazz — melodically,. '• harmonically, rhythmically and tonally. I have changed your A froAmerican here, you will see, to American Negro. After all, the blues is 100% Negro, and ragtime is 75% white, in their origins; and it isn't consistent to describe both as just Afro-American, unless you're going to define the term very carefully. Boogie-woogie has gone badly off the rails. The "at least half a century" is, I'm afraid, ridiculous. That would take us back to 1875, and_ I suggest that there is no evidence of its existence before 1923. And you go on to say that it incorporates secondary rag, which was a late ragtime feature— 1910! I know nothing of turpentine camps bar the legends in Jazzmen, but whatever their place in history, they can be omitted from a definition. Is boarding-house pianists a misprint for bordelhouse, or what? The phrase conjures up visions of Guildford Street W. C, not a lumber camp. Is "the bottom blues" another misprint, or are you being rude?10 The reference to "a treble bass with the melody in the left hand" is confusing, and I can't line it up with anything I know in boogie-woogie bar Yancey's breaks in Yancey Stomp.11 More important than these quibbles is that it is definitely not correct to say that boogie-woogie is in 8/8 time. Merely doubling the bass notes does not alter the time-signature. The test is how many beats (stresses) there are in each bar, or in other words, how many times you tap your foot. Try tapping eight times to the bar of any b-w record, and you'll see the point. Anyway, if the bass is in dotted eighths and sixteenths (Honky^Tonk Train), each of the four beats in the bass is not divided into equal halves, but into two notes of which the first is twice as long as the second ( for dotted eighths and sixteenths are never played exactly in iazz, but always turned into 10 See point 7. The bottom land of .the Red River valley is the original "blues country" Rolling bass blues go back further than 1875. "That's it triplets). So if you did want to enumerate each bass note separately, you I would have to divide the bar into 12, not 8. 12 Finally, on the harmonic side, there ! is no chromaticism (not "chromatism", as you or your printer has it) in j boogie-woogie, or in any American or 1 European folk music, or in any jazz j before Ellington. Nor is chromaticism a "gay" characteristic anyway. It is chromaticism that gives Sophisticated Lady that curiously jaded atmos ! phere.13 I think we'd better start atresh in the search for a definition of boogie : woogie. Here goes : Boogie-woogie is an onomatopoeic j term first applied in the mid-twen j ties by Clarence "Pinetop" Smith to | a distinctive form of piano playing | which originated among self-taught ' Negro pianists as an adaptation to the piano of the vocal blues. The j form and harmony are identical with the blues, and almost invariably a twelve-bar theme is chosen. In j boogie-woogie playing the right hand 1 performs a free improvisation,] sometimes consisting of melodic] phrases imitative of blues singing, j sometimes of syncopated rhythmic i patterns derived from ragtime; the left hand provides a steady "walking" or "rolling" rhythm as an accompaniment. The left-hand part continues unvarying from the beginning of the piece till the end, changing neither in rhythm or pattern, but only in position on the keyboard, to comply with the harmonies of the composition ; the, rhythms used are reminiscent of the traditional strummed or arpeggioed guitar ac j companiments to blues singers, in imitation of which it is probable that piano boogie-woogie had its origin. The technique of the boogie-woogie pianists is strongly percussive, and the appeal of the music lies in the conflict between the turbulent righthand rhythms and the steadv lefthand rhythm. That "probable" is bad, isn't it — after I told you off for using indefinite language. But the guitar origin is; only a suggestion, though it seems to I me very likely.. If you agree, the "probably" clause can be cut in due course. Here, anyway, is something to be working on." * * * 13 An elegant piece of theory. In practice, however, all boogie is written out in 8/8 time. Look at the sheet music. 13 Nevertheless, it's the chromatic treble, made up of passing notes, grace notes and all kinds of neighboring tones which gives ] the bright coloring to the boogie. Again, just look at the sheet music if your ear doesn't tell you what goes on. N 0 V E M D E R , 19 4 5 28 THE RECORD CHANGER