Customer Reviews

The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945 (History of Jazz)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

To get some idea of the achievement between these pages, just stop to think that Gunther Schuller listened to some 30,000 recordings, famous and obscure, from the period between 1930 and 1945, in chronological order for each band or performer. It took him fourteen years.

Now you might think after all that that he would emerge with brain so fuzzy, ears so buzzed, that he could not write intelligently about the music, so submerged had he been for so long. But au contraire--this is the most lucid, the best anthology of any jazz era I've ever seen. No one could argue it isn't the most comprehensive. Schuller analyzes bands big and small, famous and unknown, national and "territory."

Some of his opinions go against the critically-accepted grain, which seems to have ruffled a few other reviewers here, but his point of the survey, I think, was to go beyong "lazy, complacent listening" and evaluate each work afresh. So we have a Count Basie orchestra that, while indisputably fine, isn't quite the jazz sin qua non that it's often held out to be. As Schuller points out--accurately, I think--Basie's band was a triumph because of the magnificent soloists, but frankly the arrangements were often uninspired and formulaic, the tunes undistinguished, the colors and contrasts minimized. This made me realize why I never liked other midwestern territory bands as much as the Count's: they generally didn't have the soloists, and without stellar soloists (and not just "good" soloists) it's hard to sustain interest in riffs and themes which quickly become routine. This may upset the apple cart with some people, but I think Schuller is on the money.

Similar, his assessment of Benny Goodman is generally spot-on, though I think I like some of the band's soloists more than he does and give them more credit than he does. However, he is mostly evaluating BG's studio recordings, and that band was far better live. (All bands are better in front of a live audience, of course, but the difference with BG's 30s group is truly stunning.) But Babe Russin was quite the fine understated tenor soloist, Chris Griffin was very underappreciated on trumpet (as was earlier Goodman trumpeter Nate Kazebier--hope I'm spelling that right). Jess Stacy is one of the unsung heroes of swing piano, especially as an accompanist (some of his best comping is on the 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert). Schuller basically ignores these sidemen. Even Ziggy Elman gets the short shrift, with a focus on his schlocky popular stuff instead of some of his logically-constructed solos. But I guess, even with 30,000 recordings under your belt, some performances are bound to escape your notice.

Schuller's chapter on Ellington could itself be a course at a university. You could indeed buy the book just for this section and play through all the recordings mentioned and come away far more knowledgeable about Duke, about jazz, and about music and composition in general. Discussing Schuller's take on Ellington is beyond the scope of this review, save to say it makes for pages and pages of fascinating reading.

Schuller also manages to cut through the Artie Shaw mystique (more BS than mystique, he feels; Shaw, with his verbal fecundity and limited knowledge of European art, was able to snow some jazz and pop writers, but he's just no match for Schuller). And he makes the interesting observation that Glenn Miller played far more true swing than he is credited for (though it was hardly innovative or even often very exciting swing) and Tommy Dorsey played far less, sticking with the Chicago/Dixieland two-beat style long after it had gone out of favor, until about 1940 (!). A lot of Dorsey's music is actually very hokey--"Mickey Mouse"--yet he is usually taken more seriously as a swing musician than Miller.

On the subject of smaller bands and lesser-known leaders from this period, Schuller points out how underappreciated Cab Calloway, Erskine Hawkins and Jimmy Lunceford were, and how relatively overrated Lionel Hampton, Bunny Berrigan and Louis Armstrong (of this period; the innovative Armstrong of the 20s was covered in his Early Jazz book) were. Again, these views--backed up by extremely thorough analysis and stoic discussion, will ruffle a lot of feathers among emotional keepers of the flame, but I find his analysis to be rather spot-on. Also invaluable is his clear-headed discussion of Art Tatum's strengths and weaknesses.

The book is chock full of examples in music notation, and in some instances whole solos and passages are written out. That may scare off some who cannot read music, but it shouldn't. It will largely help to have the recordings in the CD player, ready to go, so the reader can follow along with the notation. And everyone will not follow every discussion of harmonies, scales and chord progressions--no matter. You don't have to understand everything to get a lot from this work, and repeated readings will benefit you as well. Just don't show it to anyone to whom jazz is a religion, and its players are holy priests; they won't appreciate some of Schuller's deconstructions.

Incidentally, Schuller is supposedly working on a volume III that deals with the bebop era and the development of "modern" jazz. (The first volume of this series dealt with pre-1930s jazz and is also a classic.) Considering how much time the present book required, I hope he lives long enough to finish this magnificent project.

Unlike a previous reviewer, I find Schuller's "biases" quite refreshing. He is unafraid to distinguish the outstanding from the merely imitative or blantantly commercial, whether in comparing bands or musicians or in pointing out the strong points and weak points of individual artists.

While not providing individual biographies, he does manage to put the music into a social/economic context and does better than any other writer in speaking frankly about the interplay between black and white artists during this era without prejudice on either side.

Where to begin? Schuller wants to talk about everything - he doesn't want to miss a single band. It's not like Vol. 1 - Early Jazz where he aims and fires. Here everything is scattershot, all over the place. And two ideas come back over and over in a kind of subconscious fashion: one, the idea that riffing is a sign of knee-jerk, insufficently compositional thinking; two, that innovation in Jazz is connected to being "ahead of one's time". If I had lots of time on my hands, I'd catalog these recurrences - Oxford University Press, you're supposed to catch these things! For all of his knowledge, Schuller is insufficiently scholarly - the chapter on Basie is absurd in its criticisms of Basie for not being a compositional thinker like Ellington. I hate to get all racial, but it seems like Schuller doesn't appreciate many of the blacker aspects of Black music. And it's fine that Schuller didn't do all of his own transcriptions - but he should've at least approved them all. Bobby Stark's solo showing up next to a passionate discussion of Red Allen's solo on Henderson's King Porter Stomp gave that one away...

What did I learn from this book? Well...it made me go out and check out Bob Crosby's band more. The section on Horace Henderson was really informative. The book is filled with great things, but even on the level of basic syntax and sentence structure there are so many problems. Just to pick out one of many tortured phrases - Page 253:"I am referring to the curious fact that Basie's music is rarely memorable thematically ( nor is it in terms of timbre or color ). Nor is it WHAT? In speech, we'd understand: "memorable" . But this is supposed to be a History...how hard would it have been to bring this all in line?

If it weren't the only book of its kind...but it is. Someday there'll be more, and we'll be able to appreciate the good things about this one, and forget about the anomalies and longeurs. I hope I'll be around to see that day.

As far as I know it, this is the most comprehensive book on swing music available. Gunther Schuller is interested in music, not life histories, so biographical information on musicians is scarce. The music, on the other hand, is described and analyzed thoroughly, with great originality and enthousiasm, including information on cross-links, influences, analyses of arrangements, song structures and solos.
I don't believe anyone will read this book from the beginning to the end: each chapter is about a separate artist, and an overall history is lacking. Moreover, one really needs to be able to listen to the described music to enjoy the book, but this is also its strong point: one becomes really eager to listen to the jazz described, often with 'new ears' provided by the author. As a reference book and as a tool to explore jazz between 1930 and 1945 with, "the swing era" is unsurpassed.

This voluminous tome is not your usual collection of reminiscences and short biographies of the big bands and their leaders (like those of George T. Simon or Richard Grudens), let alone a hagiography ('everything was better in the old days'). There are not even any photos or other illustrations. The book is an in-depth study of the development of jazz during the swing era. It is devided into sections concerning the major figures who shaped the development of swing (Ellington, Armstrong, Goodman, Lunceford, Basie etc.), a section on the great soloists (Hawkins, Norvo, Hines, Webster, Tatum, Teagarden, Allen, Russel, Wilson, Eldridge etc.), on the great black bands (Kirk, Mills Blue Rhythm Band, Webb, F&H Henderson, Erskine Hawkins, Calloway etc.), on the white bands (Casa Loma, Miller, Barnet, Shaw, T&J Dorsey, Herman, James, Kenton and even on Clinton, Chester etc.) territory bands (Leonard, Towles, Boots & His Buddies etc.) and the small bands.
He assesses the performers' strengths and weaknesses, comparing their relative merits, putting their achievements in the right perspective (e.g. Casa Loma and Horace Henderson are finally given the credit they are due, Calloway and Miller are given a much fairer treatment than other jazz studies have done), often illustrated by transcriptions of the music in question (even writing out solos, which must have been a fiendishly difficult thing to do).
Far from being an arid and academic work however, it is very well written in wonderful English which can be full of praise if something's good and delightfully scathing if something's not. A man like Artie Shaw, who often blew his own trumpet (if you'll forgive the pun) while savaging others, is relegated to his proper place with sweeping arguments based on aural evidence.
Schuller listened to literally thousands of recordings to form his opinions and the book invites the reader to do the same. When you do (as I did), you'll find that quite often he is right in his conclusions. Since music is also a matter of taste you may not always agree despite his being right.
In the almost ten years I've owned this book I have almost read it to pieces, jumping from chapter to chapter, always finding something new to discover.
The greatest asset of the book is that it made me listen again in depth to recordings and bands I took for granted, plus that it made me dicover music and bands I would not have otherwise given serious consideration (like Boots & His Buddies) and that it helped me form an opinion of my own of what I like and what not and why. As such I can not praise the book too highly.

Sculler's second volume of the history of jazz, is momumental. He does a fine job of covering all those you've heard of, Goodman, Basie, Ellington, and then the ones you haven't. He tries to include anybody and everybody, which makes the book a little overwhelming, but on the whole it works. This book is not for the beginner, or one wanting an introduction to the Swing Era. For those, however, who are allready aquainted with jazz, and want a more in depth look at jazz in its prime time, this is a must!

Mr. Schuller, Must I plead like Oliver Twist. I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for you to publish Volume 3, on the Bebop Age. I finished "The Swing Era" at least a decade ago. An admirable tome indeed. It finished with you hinting at a sequel. I am now slowly going deaf and not able to enjoy music as I once did. Your writings on jazz and swing are therefore even more important to me. I was particularly looking forward to your promised dissertation on Charlie Parker. You publish other new music books but the status of the Bebop Age is never discussed. Can you at least consider working on issuing the Charlie Parker section of Book III - before I go entirely deaf, or, you or I die! Just in case I go before BOOK III comes out I will happily order a pre publication copy now. Then will arrange for exhumation and reburial with that copy in my cold, dead hands and to have a nightlight fitted. You cannot leave us all hanging in the air like this century after century. From the land of my birth hear my cry, "It's just NOT British!"

This work gives a thorough look at the bands, and their members, who played during the swing era. It explains how they formed, what influences earlier and contemporary bands had on their playing and how the changing of individual members altered their style.

It gives many specific musical examples (some in written form for the first time). It traces the evolution of jazz into the be-bop form. It gives some biographies of outstanding individuals.

All in all, this work is an important reference tool for anyone who wishes to understand how music changes with the times. Thoroughly recommended (but not if you just want a light read).

This book was used for a history of music class that I took at an Ivy League school. The reason it was chosen is that it is the most comprehensive work on the swing era in jazz. However, the book has a huge flaw: although there are tons of scores and technical details as well as personal accounts and anecdotes (to suit all types of readers), the author leaves his pronounced bias on everything. He is very passionate about swing music, it is obvious, but many of his descriptions and comparisons are practically worthless to the student of music. It sounds as if he was getting intoxicated by his own play with words.

I can't figure out who would be the ideal reader -- besides Schuller himself. Musicians would probably be annoyed by the author's strong and poorly supported opinions that fill the pages. People with no musical backgrounds would dislike it because it is too technical in many places (you lose a lot if you can't read notes and don't understand the lingo). The only redeeming quality is the sheer scope of the book, so it may be useful to a student taking a survey course on jazz/swing. Even in the last case, you will be frustrated by the lack of organization. You won't be able to figure out where a certain band played/originated (or it will take you an hour to find out) but he'll tell you how the glissando at the end of the third chorus of their most obscure song was more loaded with energy than Paganini's works combined.

In a nutshell: very comprehensive and yet very biased presentation of swing.

I found this reference to be useful, but I was looking for lists of hits by the artists, and there was only a brief timeline of some hits. That timeline was good to have, however.