[78-L] Fw: The 5 most influential 78s ever/ Charlie Parker

[simmonssomer]

What kiled the big bands? Probably because new generations want to make 
their own discoveries and most likely they'll be as different from the 
previous ones as they can make it. It's the way of our species.
Further there was the recording strike and the subsequent advent of the 
vocalists. The jitterbug was old stuff (after all pop music is /was for 
dancing) and the call-response, single section at-a-time big band sound was 
sounding tired especially the frenetic, hollow flag wavers. Big turn-off.
Still, we were not yet ready to dump tonality (still aren't) so we all sang 
together...like birds of a feather.
Besides, eventually you couldn't get the chicks with a trombone or sax 
anymore.. Needed a guitar.
Go with the flow.

Fiction and fact from Al's almanac.

Al S.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Francesco Martinelli" <francesco.martinelli at gmail.com>
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 11:35 AM
Subject: [78-L] Fw: The 5 most influential 78s ever/ Charlie Parker


> My questions remains unanswered, or rather you subtly change categories
> between jazz  styles and other genres:
>
>> "The general public, being less sophisticated but probably very honest in
>> their more conservative taste, wouldn't follow beyond the point at which
>> *tonality* was left as THE base of musical activity, and turned their
>> minds and ears to more accessible and listenable GENRES."
>
> (my emphasis). In other words, the great unwashed turned to rock'n'roll
> because of Charlie Parker.
>
> I rephrase my question: what killed the big bands and swing music? What
> prevented the masses to keep listening to the previous musical styles,
> offered commonly and copiously both live and on record? Why the advent of 
> a
> new style of music in small circles drove the public away from, say,
> Hampton
> and other big bands (who kept a dwindling following)? More to the point,
> why
> the "new swing" of the 80's for example is not nearly as good as the
> originals of 40 or 50 years before? Or you listen to the Cherry Popping
> Daddies and you enjoy it like Basie?
> Or you think that the critics and the avantgarde musicians could prevent
> them to play as well, and also prevent latest composers to compose another
> Cavalleria? (why should they other than for being evilish, is another
> matter - as far as I can remember Schoenberg did not achieve fame or 
> power,
> nor Parker did)?
>
> Besides, tonality and harmony are most emphatically NOT universal
> mathematical concepts (the mathematics are, not the sounds) but an
> historical product of a specific development in music, relative to a tiny
> (even if dominant) fraction of the globe, its history and its population,
> and depend on a specific convention (equal temperament). Being both a
> confessed dodecaphonist and a confirmed free-jazzer, not to mention a
> dedicated listener to non-European musics, I have to tell you that there
> are
> multitudes on the planet that listen with pleasure to seconds or 
> microtonal
> intervals, finding european polyphonic music unbearably tuneless, raw,
> unmelodic an monotonous (read any testimony of Chinese or Arabic traveler
> to
> Europe). Your conception of "singable melodies and danceable rhythms" is
> widely different from "folks" in other areas of the planet, unless you can
> tell me that you can sing along pygmies' music (seconds) and korean opera
> (microtonal) respectively more popular there than Andrews Sisters and
> Verdi.
> I do not speak Chinese, and for me they only make funny sounds, but I know
> that for them is the same. Ignorance prevents enjoyment, and vice
> versa.....
>
> FM
>
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