St. James Infirmary

In King Oliver’s version of St. James Infirmary, it seems that all the improvisation occurs one after another once the melody has been played through once. It is clear that the first bars are not improvisation, as more than one instrument is playing the same melody. However, once it is just one lead instrument with accompaniment, the lead instrument will play their own solo, which is not necessarily perfectly in time with the tempo. In some cases, there is syncopation occurring so that the solo does not seem so stiff and premeditated. In contrast, A Cab Calloway’s version does not feature all the solos back to back. Additionally, there is much less improvisation throughout the piece. Instead, there are many unison lines, such as the trumpet melody after the vocals. The only solos that exist are a saxophone solo preceding the vocals and a trumpet solo near the end. The saxophone solo, compared to King Oliver’s solos, is much more frantic feeling and seems heavily out of time. This however could also reinforce the feeling of spontaneity. It is unclear if the single trumpet line at the end is a solo or not, since compared to the earlier saxophone solo, it is much more composed and has a more predictable series of steps and leaps.

Comments

[Albert Martinete]

I agree, I also found that most of these songs had back-to-back improvs. Especially in Sidney Bechet's "St. Louis Blues," I noticed at least three improvs one after another with different instruments.

[AndrewPascoe]

Hello, students,
As per Ben's instructions, I've divided the posts in this topic into groups. The divisions aren't perfect, but it seems like you would be interesting in discussing the emotional content of these songs.

What is it that makes a song emotional? How can you tell if a song is sad or happy? How does the instrumentation and arrangement affect the emotional content of a song? Since an improvisor has the ability to inject his own temporal emotions into a piece, how does this play with the pre-written parts of the performance? What makes an artist want to convey a particular emotion?

The posts I think you should all look at are here:

Inder suggests that the emotional content of the songs is based on the times and places they were recorded: http://benleedscarson.com/earlyjazzevolution/2009/10/28/improv-comparison-basie-and-armstrong.html

Zachary suggests that the true gift of jazz is that players get to express how the feel in a particular moment. But how is this limited by the predetermined arrangements of the song?: http://benleedscarson.com/earlyjazzevolution/2009/10/28/louis-vs-duke.html

--Andrew

[RyanAtchley]

I also noticed that there's almost a rhythm between the improvisation in correlation to the melody. I think this is due to the melody of the song, as it starts off almost flowing but halfway towards the end of the song incorporates spontaneity into the end of the piece. This may be due to the artist feeling comfortable and trying to mix it up a bit towards the end of the song, or maybe they just thought it worked better towards the end. The unison of the work attributes it a comfortable "flowing" feel to the song.