[78-L] The 5 most influential 78s ever

[Erwin Kluwer]

About KO KO Charlie Parker:

Found this somewhere on the web:   It largely underlines my motivation
of including this record in my major 5 list:

Charlie Parker's recording of Koko is an extraordinary creation.the
sound of boundaries being busted and rules being broken, of a genius
improviser tearing up the rulebook with ferocious virtuosity.

Koko was one of the recordings by Parker in late 1945 that
revolutionised jazz, along with Billie's Bounce and Now's The Time.
This was the first time that the wider public got to hear the radical
new approach to jazz that the beboppers were pedalling, and these
recordings became as influential as Louis Armstrong's 1920s Hot Fives
and Hot Sevens in shaping the future direction of jazz.

All of the pieces that Parker and his band recorded in 1945 were
ground breaking, but Koko was the most shocking. His technique at this
speed is mind boggling, and contemporary players were simply stunned
at his mastery of the alto saxophone. But over and above sheer
technique Parker created lines of great beauty and melody, with
astonishing facility. His lines are logical, surprising and endlessly
inventive.

Other aspects of Parker's revolutionary approach are brilliantly
showcased on Koko. There is his tendency to play phrases of odd bar
lengths - three-bar, five-bar and seven-bar fragments mingle with the
standard two- and four-bar phrasing common to jazz. Then there's his
astonishing rhythmic invention. His lines are full of surprising
swirls and eddies, unexpected twists and turns, as melodic motifs are
picked up and hurled in new directions like a cork in a fountain.
Parker had a distinctive tendency for downward moving lines, but there
are always surprises, big leaps to upper non-chord tones that were
unheard of at the time - 9ths, 11ths and 13ths are often emphasised
over standard harmonies.

 But Koko is not the kind of music one wishes to hear often. It is
disturbing, in the way that some of Schoenberg is disturbing.















On 10/31/08, Erwin Kluwer <ekluwer at gmail.com> wrote:
> Allow me to elaborate rate a bit more on my choices:
>
> With influential I actually mean influence in the widest sense: on
> contemporary artists, later generations, recording industry, even
> influence on reissues today
>
> First Caruso G&T (Germania arias)
>
> First modern tenor. Every tenor after him has modeled himself more on
> less on Carusos style. before that the Italian tenor was a provincial
> style and not popular outside of Italy. Only after Caruso most of the
> big name singers could be persuaded to record. Of course the Caruso
> influence is trough all his records, but this one started it all...
>
>
> ODJB (yes!)  Livery Stable Blues
>
> Some people seems to agree on this one
>
>
> Blind Lemon Jefferson Got the Blues/Long Lonesome Blues
>
> First guitar hero!  Only after this record (wich was big southern hit)
> rural male guitar playing  blues artists were invited to make records.
> Starting the long Charley Patton/Robert Johnson later Muddy Waters
> Line...
>
> That generation againinspired white boys (Elvis,among others) to pick
> up the guitar an started the white guitar hero line, still continuing
> to this day.
>
> The guitar style on this record became a model of its kind an for
> decades it echoed trough the solos of almost every "single"string
> guitar player( like BB King, T bone Walker, etc  )I truly think this
> record started it all (not saying it wouldn't have happened without
> this record of course...But to me this particular record is a focal
> point in that development)
>
> Run out of time now
>
> Later a bit more aboyt my choices for KOKO and Elvis on SUN
>
> Erwin
>
>
>
> On 10/31/08, fnarf at comcast.net <fnarf at comcast.net> wrote:
> > From: "Steven C. Barr" <stevenc at interlinks.net>
> >
> > > Also, remember that in 1917 the band's popularity in NYC, Chicago and N.O.
> > > would have
> > > influenced ONLY the music fans in those three cities...! 99.9% of the US
> > > "public" would
> > > have never heard the band or its style had not the record been
> > > available...?!
> >
> > That's true. Although I can verify that in huge swathes of the country jazz was known almost entirely through hilariously inaccurate and sensationalist newspaper articles, although there presumably were aficionadoes who got their hands on the records. But jazz seems to have been one of those things that (some) people were just plain ready for, even if they didn't know what it was. I'm thinking of little local "scenes" like those that produced people like, for instance, Hoagy Carmichael in Indiana or Bing in Spokane. I remember reading about Carmichael's tutelage under Reg DuValle, early regional jazz pianist (did he ever record?) but I don't remember if he specifically knew the ODJB records.
> >
> > I'd love to know more about early record sales, particularly outside of New York. I know that in the VERY early days, the Bert Williams days, records were something found mostly in the Big Apple, not in the rest of the country so much -- in jazz, as in baseball (i.e., in Ken Burns's worldview), New York gets perhaps more than its share of the limelight. I'd love to know who the first people to listen to jazz records in, say, Seattle were, and when, and what. I have a suspicion it's connected to the vaudeville attendees, looking for something a little wilder to listen to at home.
> >
> > But I also have a suspicion that the vast majority of home gramophone listeners had very middlebrow tastes, with just four or five 78s of popular instrumental tunes, maybe a Caruso if they were somewhat refined (or Italian) enough to like opera. That's based on my own family history and that of the estate sales I've been to in the Northwest. Jazz records were pretty thin on the ground in the western half of the US in the 78 days! Even Paul Whiteman would have been far too outre for the good Norwegians and Scots of my grandfather's day.
> >
> > Please pardon my rambling!
> >
> > --
> > Steve
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