20. Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson and the piano jazz lineage

So far we’ve concentrated on ensemble jazz. But it’s easy to forget that before phonograph records and then radios, the most common music-making machine in American households was the piano. The ragtime craze had spread through sheet music. In some ways therefore it was to jazz’s disadvantage that improvisation was such an integral part of jazz, but thanks to Jelly Roll Morton and others, jazz was beginning to be written down.

Pianos everywhere

At the beginning of the 20th Century, pianos were mass-produced, and most people would have had access to a piano if they wanted, if not necessarily at home, then there would be a piano at a neighbour’s, or at church, in neighbourhood bars and community halls, though perhaps of variable quality.
 

 

James P. Johnson (whom we have met in passing already) said “In the years before World War One, there was a piano in almost every home, colored or white. [...]Most people who had pianos couldn’t play them, so a piano player was important socially”. (quoted in Shipton, A, p124).

Eubie Blake

This was precisely the environment Eubie Blake came up through; he initially had no piano at home, but his parents were so proud of his performances on neighbourhood pianos, that they eventually made the sacrifices necessary to buy one in instalments.

Born in 1883 in Baltimore, Maryland, Blake was an essential link between ragtime and stride. Alyn Shipton writes: “When I met him and heard him perform in 1976, he was still an impressive pianist, with a genuine sense of jazz timing in his solo breaks and right-hand figures, but who never quite seemed to have loosened his left hand from the stiff beat of 1880s ragtime”. (Shipton, p125).

Initially called Sounds of Africa when written in 1899, this tune was renamed Charleston Rag in 1919 to cash in on the popularity of the dance.

Boogie Woogie

Listen to the descending figure in the bass of the first theme. It’s a boogie-woogie-like device, although the theme is not a 12-bar blues, but one of a number of raggy themes that make up the piece. There are frequent changes of key, and in the other themes the left hand returns to a bass-note and chord style accompaniment.

James Lincoln Collier points out that Eubie Blake and the proto-jazz pianists from the Northeast were not steeped in the blues, as the New Orleans horn players were: “[...] though they had some contact with the black folk tradition through their churches and the working people who were emigrating from the South, they had little experience with the rural music on which the blues was built”. (JLC, 1978, p194).

Atlantic City

Indeed, that early proto-jazz piano style flourished in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which was experiencing a boom as a popular playground in the first decade of the Twentieth Century, and Blake and others flocked there for employment.

Amongst those finding work there in the years before World War I were James P Johnson and Willie “the Lion” Smith. Alyn Shipton quotes both these players as saying they learned boogie-woogie walking bass in Atlantic City from Southern pianists.

The Harlem style

 If, as Ted Gioia suggests, “the piano was to Harlem what brass bands had been to New Orleans” (Gioia, p95), then in some ways Atlantic City was the New Orleans of jazz piano: it was the early melting pot of music where the stride players honed their styles. And just as the New Orleans brass players had made their way to Chicago, so the stride players brought what they’d learned in Atlantic City back to Harlem.

James P. Johnson

James Price Johnson, born in New Brunwick, New Jersey in 1894, is traditionally cited as the “father of stride piano”. In his rag-inflected style you can hear the material - church music, dances, rags, blues, and reels - that brought him work. Johnson was, however, proud of his classical training, under Bruto Giannini, and it is this conflict between highbrow artistic merit and work that pays the bills that Ted Gioia draws attention to when he says that piano music in Harlem was a “battleground between these two visions of black artistic achievement” (p95).

Perhaps Johnson’s most famous composition is Carolina Shout, which became something of a test piece for Harlem Stride players:

Eubie Blake and James P. Johnson on CD.

For Blake, Morton and Cook recommend Memories of You on the Shout Factory label.

  

And for Johnson, they recommend Carolina Shout on the Biograph label.

15. Hartzell “Tiny” Parham

(Pianist, organist, band leader, Chicago)

Born in Canada in 1900, but raised in Kansas, Tiny Parham worked the “Territory Circuit”, but found his way to Chicago by 1925, where he first worked as a pianist and composer for hire, accompanying blues singers and soloists. Here he is with Johnny Dodds, playing one of Parham’s own tunes.

 Unusual arrangements
 He was a terrific accompanist, but as a band leader he produced some very unusual and quirky music, combining instruments in ways other jazz composers weren’t. Tuba and violin, anyone? Here’s his Voodoo:

 Some commentators find similarities with Ellington’s work at the time, but I think there’s a closer affinity with Jelly Roll Morton, perhaps best heard in this side, although Tiny’s own piano break is quite unlike Morton’s style:

So, an affinity. But it’s by no means a Jelly Roll rip off.

Jazz connections
 It’s easy to forget, as we concentrate on the Chicago scene, that jazz was not sitting still in isolation in the city, but was evolving elsewhere as well. Sometimes it is said that it was evolving independently in the other locations it had been seeded, but that’s not quite true either. Tunes and reputations were being disseminated by the Territory Circuit, but also by recordings.

Records
 Record distribution in the US was remarkable in the 20s, and people even in difficult to reach communities had access to recorded music. So the urban centres were much more into the jazz craze. When Louis Armstrong went on tour, he was amazed to hear his records being played in black neighbourhoods all over the country, “We were popular all through the Towns we passed through – Toledo Ohio – Cleveland – Detroit – Buffalo”. (Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words: Selected Writings). He was surprised to find he was already well-known in towns he’d never before visited.

Radio

A 1924 Operadio set

It was also jazz’s good fortune to take off just at the same time as radio broadcasting erupted. Beginning in 1920, the US soon had national broadcasting networks, disseminating music, light entertainment and news. By 1922, there were 30 stations in America, growing to 550 stations in 1923, by which year the popularity of radio had begun to hit sales of record players so much that record player manufacturers began to combine their machines with radio sets, though most of the approximately 3 million Americans homes by then owning radios still used crystal sets with earphones.

A family using a crystal set, 1922

So even if he had never heard Ellington’s band in person, Parham – and the other Chicago musicians – had certainly heard his records or broadcasts, just as the New York musicians had heard theirs.

The Mob
 The Chicago music scene – like local government and law enforcement – was run by the Mob. Even venues not directly owned by gangsters such as Al Capone could not operate without their say. Parham worked in a club directly owned by Capone, in the Cicero area of the city.

 Parham may have worked directly for Capone, but others couldn’t avoid indirectly working for the mob. Joe Glaser, who on paper owned the Sunset club, was described as “gangster connected”; in reality his club was controlled by Capone’s syndicate. Armstrong and Oliver worked at the Sunset, and Glaser was eventually to become Armstrong’s manager.

Turf wars
As the 20s progressed, turf war between the gangs became more and more heated, and musicians were getting caught in the crossfire. Often literally.

George Wettling, the drumming friend of Muggsy Spanier, remembered the intimidation and the guns of those times. “We would see those rods come up – and duck. At the Triangle Club, the boss was shot in the stomach one night, but we kept working”. (Shapiro and Hentoff, p130).

Jimmy McPartland recalled the North Side mob coming into the Friar’s Inn, which had Capone connections. “So it was late this night, and we were off the bandstand and sitting in the back, when all of a sudden – bang, boom, bang! Somebody was shooting a gun.

 Mike Fritzl was the boss there, and Mike says, ‘Play, play, fellers.’ We weren’t all that keen, but the shooting had ceased so we got up on the stand to play, and there was the bass fiddle all shot to pieces”.(Shapiro & Hentoff, p132).

Death
 Like many others, Tiny got out of Chicago at the end of the 20s. He toured throughout the 30s, and died in a dressing room in Milwaukee during a show in 1943.

Tiny on CD
 Morton and Cook recommend the Classics issue, Tiny Parham and his Musicians, 1926 – 1929.

At the moment, that's a bit pricey for the casual collector (the French company with the famous typo on its covers, "Chronogical", went out of business, and some of its issues fetch higher prices than others).

The other alternative on the market was the 2008 release, "Tiny Parham", on the Timeless label, remastered by the late John R.T. Davies, but currently has an asking price of more than £100.  You'd need to really want it for that (it's a single CD, not a boxed set!).

So to hear Tiny, but not his Orchestra, you might want to consider Tiny Parham & the Blues Singers "Complete Recorded Works" (ie, as an accompanist) on the Document label.  This collection has three tracks with Johnny Dodds, including 19th Street Blues, heard above.