Centuries of Sound

It seems like an obvious thing to say that the Second World War was A Bad Time, at least it seems obvious to me. Half a decade of some of the most terrible, miserable events of all time – or more than half a decade, the last war-free mix was 1938 and even that included the ominous events of Munich – and even when things were going the right way for the last couple of years, there was the committing and uncovering of war crimes to deal with. It says something unfortunate about our society that this is the one period we focus on the most – put on a history documentary and there’s a 50/50 chance that it will concerned in some way with WWII. Foolishly, when I started on these mixes I thought it would attract a new audience, but people interested in tanks, military tactics and Hitler’s private life are by no means guaranteed to be also interested in social history and culture of the early 40s – in fact, beyond a couple of totemic songs, the sounds of the era seem to have disappeared from culture more than any time since the dawn of the jazz age. It didn’t help of course that the recording industry was blighted by long-running industrial disputes, lack of resources for recording and touring, with many musicians sent off to fight.

History has not finished by any means in 1946 – this is, of course, the start of The Cold War, the year of the “Iron Curtain” speech – but it has at least faded enough into the background for cultural life to resume. There is a sense here of people getting back on track after a derailment, though if you were dropping in here, you might not even have that sense, so little reference is made to recent events.

We aren’t picking up where we left things in the 30s, of course. The big bands have largely split, and those reforming are already largely nostalgia acts. Their singers have fame and record contracts of their own now, and no need to go on tour with a radio in every home. Tastes have also changed in innumerable ways; blues has become rhythm & blues, swing has become be bop, country has become western swing (all of these much more complicated than that of course – these genres are barely formed, these musicians in dialogue – often literally – with one-another.)

You may find this mix surprisingly relaxed, mellow, yet forward-looking, even futuristic, and more of a world tour than usual. This is deliberate – rather than arbitrarily dividing the year up, the lack of news allowed me to experiment with form a little. As it took shape, I realised that it was settling into a groove that I didn’t really want to disturb – it fitted the feeling of liberation, of finally being able to look to the future, and not dwell on Earthly realities, for the moment.

Part two, of course, has its own distinct feel -but we’ll leave that for next time.

Tracklist

Introduction

0:00:00 Miguelito Valdes With Noro Morales’ Orchestra – Rumba Rhapsody (Clip from BBC war reporters visit to the Netherlands) (Clip from The Big Sleep) 0:02:56 BBC – Television Is Here Again 0:03:33 Dizzy Gillespie Big Band – Things to Come

January

(Clip from BBC – Television Is Here Again) 0:06:51 Henry Red Allen – Count Me Out (Clip from It’s A Wonderful Life) 0:09:34 Amos Milburn – My Baby’s Booging 0:11:47 Charlie Parker Septet – A Night In Tunisia (Two Versions) 0:15:08 Lennie Tristano Trio – Interlude [aka A Night In Tunisia] (Clip from World News In Review) 0:18:19 Woody Herman Orchestra (cond. by Igor Stravinsky) – Ebony Concerto Part 1 (Clip from War Victims Find Haven In America) 0:21:16 Harry James – You’ll Never Know 0:24:20 Don Byas – Gloria (Philip Larkin – Going) 0:27:18 Coleman Hawkins And Orchestra – You Go To My Head (Alan Lomax – Calypso After Midnight Introduction) 0:31:13 Ella Fitzgerald feat. Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five – Stone Cold Dead In The Market 0:33:50 Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys – Bob Wills Boogie 0:36:52 Nat King Cole Trio – Route 66

February

(Clip from Truman Speaks To Pathe News) 0:39:48 Baron Mingus & His Octet – This Subdues My Passion (Clip from World News In Review) 0:42:41 Spike Jones & His City Slickers – Laura (Clip from World News In Review) 0:45:50 Duke Ellington & His Orchestra – Happy-Go-Lucky Local 0:48:43 Duke Ellington – Bond Promo 4 0:49:52 Kenny Clarke and his 52nd Street Boys – Epistrophy (Clip from The Big Sleep) 0:52:59 Manik Verma – Charkhi Vale O 0:55:49 Hermanos Huesca – La Bamba (Clip from BBC – Television Is Here Again) 0:59:00 Boyd Raeburn – Body And Soul 1:01:59 Chanteurs A La Croix De Cuivre – Batata Dia Bwanga 1:04:46 Sister Ernestine Washington – God’s Amazing Grace 1:07:32 Billie Holiday – Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?

March

(Winston Churchill – Iron Curtain Speech) 1:09:40 Woody Herman Orchestra (cond. by Igor Stravinsky) –...

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“The parties were bigger. The pace was faster, the shows were broader, the buildings were higher, the morals were looser, the liquor was cheaper.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

If you could chose any era to live in, the decades between 1910 and 1950 would probably not be the most immediately appealing. Aside from two world wars, a great depression, and the worst pandemic in history, the era was marked by civil unrest, often for good cause, but whose benefits would not be felt until the dust settled many years later. However, in the middle of this maelstrom, we have a period of peace and prosperity, a boomtime for the creative arts, in short “the twenties” – a decade which is shorthand for a cornucopia of culture in the way “the thirties” and “the forties” absolutely aren’t. “Golden times” like these are usually best treated with a pinch of salt – most people tend to be to some degree nostalgic about their youth, particularly writers – but perhaps this time we can take it a little more seriously. The shift which seems to have happened in this time seems if anything like the half-century was saving up its changes and released them all at once while the sun was shining and it wasn’t otherwise occupied.

The dawning of universal suffrage surely had a role here. Even more so, the population of the world shaking itself loose from the incredible suffering of the 1910s. But perhaps the greatest part was played by a series of innovations – some of them technological (as we will get to in a few years) and some the unintended consequences of an ill-thought-out law – prohibition.

From January 17th, 1920, when the Volstead Act went into effect, the USA saw a nationwide ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The sheer logistics of such a thing in a country with such a tradition of alcohol consumption when anyone with minimal expertise could make their own, well, it didn’t make any sense and it still doesn’t. Organised crime immediately began to take over the alcohol business, and consumption shifted from the old bars and hotels to speakeasies. The managers of these places had no stock in the entertainment establishment, and no interest in going through the process of booking well-known vaudeville acts, who probably wouldn’t want to be seen there anyway.

Instead, they hired jazz bands. Touring / recording groups from around the country had residencies in clubs in Chicago and New York where they could practice and innovate every night in front of an audience. The nascent genre, which had been coasting for a few years after its initial explosion, suddenly got a new lease of life. The likes of Armstrong, Ellington and Fats Waller developed their sound in front of sometimes multi-racial audiences. The often regressive instinct of proprietors to be “respectable” had dissipated – what role could censorship ever play in a place whose entire existence was already illegal, and paid for with bribes?

This isn’t to say that all of this has yet seeped through the cracks into recorded media. While (inspired by the success of “Crazy Blues”) Okeh were releasing their series of “race records,” they were still exclusively operating out of New York, and their competitor Paramount Records would not start releasing this sort of recording until the following year. The rest of the music industry was still firmly stuck in the 1900s, releasing the sort of sentimental ballads and d-grade operetta they had been since they’d formed, likely the same singers and the same management too. Occasionally they would put something out by a dance band, and occasionally they would strike gold, but such things do not seem to be generally part of the business plan.

So as far as the mix is concerned, we are still operating on the margins, but the margins are expanding, cracks are forming, soon this wonderful infection is going to be irresistible in its spread.

Tracks

0:00:17 Harry E. Humphrey – Santa Claus hides in your phonograph (Excerpt 1) 0:00:32 American Symphony Orchestra – Ride of the Valkyries 0:01:30 Harry E. Humphrey – Santa Claus hides in your phonograph (Excerpt 2) 0:01:41 Zez Confrey – Kitten On The Keys 0:04:42 Shelton Brooks &am...