In music, “authoritative writing” sometimes means making music history and music criticism feel synonymous. Take the following quote:

The earlier minstrel-concert-vaudeville orchestras of Wilbur Sweatman, Will Marion Cook, James Reese Europe…were gradually supplanted [and diluted] by Vincent Lopez, Ben Selvin, Earl Fuller (with Ted Lewis), and Paul Whiteman, who supplied the ‘new’ jazz music, polished up for dancing.

Most of this passage comes from Marshall Stearns’s 1956 book The Story of Jazz. An editor for the journal of the E.E. Cummings Society added the bracketed text when quoting Stearns in the spring 1994 issue.

It’s just two words, but they make historical description and aesthetic judgment seamless. “Polished up” suggests a glossier presentation, perhaps at the expense of the music’s visceral appeal. But Stearns was describing how that second group of bandleaders merely repackaged the first group’s music. The ironic scare quotes imply there was nothing significantly different about what they were playing; they just got more attention.

For the journal’s editor, Stearns—one of the most respected jazz writers of all time—needed correction. “Dilution” goes beyond influence, imitation, or even appropriation. It means taking something pure and dissolving its salient qualities until the source is either ineffective or unrecognizable.

Bob White’s article in Music and Rhythm magazine of April 1942 used the same term for the Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s “diluted music.” For him, the ODJB’s music was one step removed from Black southern musical idioms, which in turn influenced the “white cornet style” now twice removed from the source. His examples of this style include Bix Beiderbecke, Red Nichols, Jimmy McPartland, Bill Moore, and other trumpeters who frequently played with the dance bands mentioned above.

Tom Stoddard uses a variant of dilution in Pops Foster‘s autobiography. Describing the jazz scene in St. Louis, Stoddard explains that by 1923, jazz bands there “were really dance orchestras cut in the new style and tailored to the requirements of ballroom audiences.” The “pure New Orleans style was being submerged.” In case Stoddard’s intent wasn’t clear, he also notes this was “the only untoward aspect of working in St. Louis.”

This type of analogy comes up often while researching the hot dance, sweet bands, rag-a-jazz, and other nearly/not-jazz surrounding the pioneering jazz artists. These are just a few examples from older sources, but it’s still common enough. In one recent talk, a historian describes Paul Whiteman softening jazz idioms to make them more digestible and filtering them to make them more palatable.

The underlying claim is that a lot of popular music from the pre-World War II period was not simply jazz-influenced; it was a watered-down version of some “real thing.” Whatever these bands were doing, whether it was shameless profiteering or well-intended but ultimately cornball simulacra, it was inferior for its adulteration of jazz.

Unsurprisingly, this argument arose almost as soon as the “diluters” arrived on the scene. Sidney Bechet was worried about it as early as 1921. In Bechet’s autobiography, he draws a line of musical decay from recording to orchestration:

These companies got to adding all sorts of instruments. They began adding saxophone in bands: there’d never been a saxophone when we played. About 1921, they even took out the clarinet. And they began having three, four saxophones. And they got arrangers to arrange all these pieces for things like that. Oh, we had arrangers back in New Orleans, but you don’t play just because there’s an arranger. He isn’t going to be able to show you how to play…not if you know inside yourself where it is the music has to go.

Bechet doesn’t seem to consider that musicians (not record companies) might have chosen these orchestral setups. Bechet was a purist to the point that, despite the presence of clarinet trios, obbligatos, and solos on many hot dance records as well as waltzes and sweet numbers, he could complain that labels “took out” that instrument.

Bechet doesn’t use the same metaphor, but he alludes to the same types of ensembles deviating from where music “has to go.” If one musical approach becomes an objective rather than an option, then anything else will seem like it’s drowning out the authentic item. It probably also seems strange that musicians might want to play that type of music or that audiences choosing it were anything other than poor, beknighted saps.

While Stearns’s choice of “supplanted” seemed to have understated things for the person quoting him, there were practical reasons for the success of these bands. Larger, arranged ensembles eclipsed small improvising bands playing wild polyphony at breakneck tempos inspired by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. The bands, in turn, were responding to how people responded to music. In a paper on dance music in Great Britain during the 1920s, Mark Hustwitt notes that dance teachers even held conferences throughout the decade to standardize dance steps and rein in excesses they observed in ballrooms.

It may stink of the encroachment of rigid formality on free spirits. But if you liked a clear melody and more modest tempos, these changes might have sounded like a godsend. For some, they were a welcome move away from pre-WWI dancing and its improvised, more unpredictable steps. Hustwitt notes that many dancers preferred the more regular patterns, which also made it easier to partner up with a sweetheart.

As for the musicians, it’s interesting to consider the diluters having musical values in addition to financial objectives. Several autobiographical materials by Lopez, Selvin, Whiteman, and other “commercial” bandleaders fill in those blanks. They also omit many critical social and economic issues in the music business and the complex influence of Black music on American popular culture. There’s a lot more than just “difference” at work in their music, but there’s also much more than jazz music there.

Obviously, this metaphor comes up often in discussions of popular art forms. It’s not even the only recurring criticism for this little swath of music. It’s possible to run through other arguments, including:

Even for the few of you reading, such a taxonomy might seem even more abstract. It’d be even less uplifting.

Still, the “dilution” metaphor is interesting for its recurrence and the questions it raises. It’s a specific way of describing and dismissing this music, one that keeps coming up and seems based on listening for one type of music rather than listening to that swath.

To beat the metaphor into the ground further, it’s like asking a wine critic to recommend something else from the bar. Are there legitimate reasons to enjoy other beverages, and even the occasional cola?

I had the pleasure of covering this beautiful, deeply personal debut release from a young artist for Early Music America. This is outside the usual music discussed on this blog, but I’m grateful to those of you still reading, and I hope you might also enjoy this music. You can listen to some tracks through the link above.

I’m thankful that I get to cover music for Early Music America, like a beautiful and moving new recording of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion by San Francisco’s Cantata Collective directed by the esteemed conductor Nicholas McGegan. The article is online here. If you’re interested in things I’m writing about beyond jazz and hot dance bands, I hope you enjoy it.

Sonny Rollins passed away yesterday at age 95. His enormous contributions as a creative voice and his importance as a link to the past are obvious. This is a huge loss (to understate things greatly).

Most of the music heard on this website comes from a different time and from different creative priorities than those usually associated with Sonny Rollins. Yet aside from the importance of his legacy in itself, I’d suggest that he also played pretty damned “hot.”

Here’s one of my favorite examples:

Rollins plays the first solo on the recording, the stop-time one filled with all the little melodies that easily get stuck in your head and which swings like mad between blazing lines likely full of harmonic and thematic nuances that more sophisticated ears will pick up on. His colleagues are similarly cerebral and fiery. The whole session feels like the hippest think tank in the world: I know I don’t understand everything, but I’m happy to have some things sail over my head.

Literal dissertations have been written about his work, so I hope it doesn’t seem reductive to praise him for some simple pleasures.

Rest in peace, Mr. Rollins, and condolences to his loved ones.

A recent blog post about the roots of early jazz drumming includes several examples of ragtime, popular dance, and other pre- and proto-jazz. Among other elements, the writer contrasts the “irreverence and willingness to go rogue and damn the torpedoes” of jazz with the feel of “just too many rules being followed.” It wasn’t even close to the writer’s main point. They focused on musical examples. But I still kept coming back to it.

The contrast between following and saying “fuck it” to the rulebook intrigued me, because a lot of the music on this website doesn’t fall into either category. Take this Eddie Elkins record (in a beautiful transfer):

*Please follow the link to the YouTube video for further discographical and personnel details.

It starts with a brass fanfare answered by a suspension-filled sax response, an immediate contrast between a traditional sound and modernistic dissonance. In the first chorus, the tenor sax punches things up just enough under the alto’s lead—which adds its own ornaments to the melody—and gradually strays further without ever diverging into full-blown obbligato. They even give their fellow saxophonist in the rhythm section some room, introduced with a harmonized ascending phrase leading into his break. But the sax duo essentially sticks to the melody.

The melody also stays clear in the next chorus, a coy muted trumpet with growling syncopations at the break, followed by a smirking pyramid effect. Next, paring things down to alto with just banjo (and maybe faint piano?) provides textural contrast. On the dance floor, it might’ve also allowed a quieter moment to lock eyes with your partner before the big tutti transition into a wild collective finale. The saxes then take even greater liberties. There’s a brief softening immediately after the alto’s ecstatic break, fading into a moment of tender trombone lead, right before things finish unbuttoned and the alto’s dirtiest sound yet.

This recording comes from a brief but productive point in the history of American popular instrumental music. The wild small-group style inspired by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band was giving way to larger ensembles that used some degree of prepared music with clearer melodies and smoother rhythms. It was also before New Orleans-style jazz and other Black musical idioms achieved wider impact through more spacious rhythms, blues sensibilities, and improvisational breadth.

The tune is from the musical Bombo, featuring Al Jolson, who made the song and the production a hit. People bought records to hear the hit tune and have fun. But at least a few people dancing at home must’ve actually listened to the record and appreciated the Elkins tentet’s hot deconstruction.

They always keep selling the song, but you can always hear the singers. They tread the line between composition and interpreter, arrangement and improvisation. It’s no stretch to imagine that a few of the musical ideas on this record weren’t even on the sheet music. They may have been thought out on the spot or in advance by the players. The inflection and drive certainly weren’t written down. Either way, it was neither simply following a score (and what good music does?) nor on-site invention of new melodies.

It creates fascinating tension, much like the crisp feel of many of these New York society groups, which are often criticized as “jerky.” That’s a fair description if the only rhythmic rubric is jazz as it’s understood now. Dancers probably heard this number between waltzes, tangos, and all types of music. It would’ve shaken things up for them. It would have been a good time subtly chipping away at convention: subversion, not irreverence. And it had a catchy tune you could dance to.

Apparently, it was also nothing to scoff at in terms of musicianship. Saxophonist and Elkins alumnus Batty DeMarcus described a very specific “New York tempo” or “society tempo” heard at functions such as afternoon tea at the Ritz, the Plaza, or Delmonico’s when he first arrived in New York City circa 1920:

The New York tempos were different from any place else in the country. Unless you played those, you just weren’t going to make it in a nightclub or anywhere else. The recordings, yes, they could make the recordings alright, cause they sold all over the country. But so far as playing in a nightclub or a supper club, or a butter-and-egg joint like the Silver Slipper or [inaudible], you had to play the New York tempos. And the boys didn’t accommodate themselves to this absolute rule. And so they never made it.

*Thanks to the outstanding musician/historian Colin Hancock Esq. for sharing the DeMarcus interview.

DeMarcus notes that this tempo was specific to New York and unlike anything played by bands from New Orleans or Chicago. It even tripped up visiting bands, causing the likes of Isham Jones, Gene Rodemich, Johnny DeDroit, and Paul Ash to flop!

Something as simple as sticking to a strict tempo could make or break a band. The musicians chafing under these conventions are now our heroes. The ones who were content to master them aren’t depicted as villains, but they’re often passed over as also-rans. If the jazz musicians were the rule-breakers, who wants to blog about rule-followers?

Note that the writer quoted above merely said there were “too many rules being followed” for their purposes. Variety is the spice of life. Just listen to that Elkins record. As for whether it constitutes jazz, read that Elkins record. Also, visit Mr. Sperrazza’s blog.

From roughly the end of World War I through the post-WWII era in the United States, if you enjoyed music, chances are you went to hear it live and dancing was a big part of your social life. That meant relying on the presence of a band ready to play the newest music and your old favorites. To satisfy that demand, publishers supplied commercially available scores, orchestrating the latest hits so the average working band could play them with minimal instrumentation and without needing virtuoso players.

Countless bands relied on this sheet music across decades. Some of the most exciting and beautiful music on record was the result of musicians sticking to or “doctoring” these creations. The Jazz Age, syncopated music, the Swing Era, the big bands, traditional pop: whatever it’s called, it owes a lot to “stock arrangements.” Yet the term may now get the qualifier “just a.”

Mention a favorite recording, and someone might note its use of a stock arrangement the same way they mention that your beloved family heirloom was factory-made. ”Mass-produced” means “generic,” and “commercial” is mutually exclusive of “creative.”

Then, there’s Arthur Lange. He was one of the most prolific and commercially successful stock arrangement writers of the twenties. Every band at that time likely played at least one of his charts. Every arranger probably read his book on the subject. He made plenty of money, and he may not have even considered the work his highest artistic calling. But he was also one of the most inventive and thoughtful musicians in the music business. He had strong opinions and stronger standards when it came to music, even music designed for maximum accessibility.

Not Quite Ready for Classical

Born in 1889 in Philadelphia, Lange got an early start in music, but his rise to the top was not a foregone conclusion. His mother was a classically trained pianist with familial connections to a conservatory in her hometown of Breslau, Poland. His father was a professional brushmaker who played drums on the side since immigrating from Germany. Lange was repeating the exercises he heard his mother’s piano students playing by ear at the age of five. But he lost interest in music by age eight and didn’t play much until picking up the violin two years later. Even then, in his words, he was “a rotten violin player.” Apparently, he was good enough to play in and help lead a youth orchestra organized by Philadelphia’s well-known department store, Wanamaker’s. Playing the violin led Lange back to the piano. Copying instrumental parts from piano scores sparked an interest in orchestration.

Lange mostly grew up on classical music, and the popular music of the time didn’t impress him. “There wasn’t enough pop music to get excited about,” Lange recalled, “or to be a temptation for the student to forsake classical music.” Lange and most of the music students around him wanted to be concert performers or composers (not commercial musicians). He didn’t develop an interest in popular music until age 15, when he realized his instrumental talent was insufficient to become a concert artist. He decided to pursue popular music professionally while continuing to study and compose classical music, “daydreaming” about conducting his own symphonies, or at the very least, operettas. Any of those paths, to Lange, would have been “something better than the pop field offered.” He felt competent enough for popular music, though.

By this point, his mother’s illness—not some innate desire to pursue music—forced him to live with his father (and his father’s mistress) in the nation’s musical capital, New York City. For what sounds like a compromise, Lange threw himself into his chosen musical path. He initiated a letter-writing campaign to dozens of publishing firms, essentially “cold-calling” for work until he landed a job at the publishing house owned by Charles K. Harris. Harris wrote of one of the first blockbuster popular songs, “After the Ball.” Working for him was the first fortuitous step in Lange’s second-place career choice.

A Sponge for the Craft

Lange was just 16 when he joined Harris’s company, mostly doing office work and gaining some musical experience before getting fired for writing his music on company time. He quickly landed on his feet, getting a job as an arranger for Joseph W. Stern & Co. At this stage, Lange seemed more focused on gaining experience and earning income in the music business rather than mastering a specific craft. Working as an arranger and orchestrator still allowed him to develop his creative voice.

An orchestrator writes instrumental parts based on pre-existing material, such as a piano score. The job requires understanding everything from transposing within the key and range of each instrument to familiarity with the conventions for instrumental roles (lead, harmony, etc.), down to knowing when to avoid open strings on the violin, which Lange learned the hard way when he asked an arranger he looked up to review one of his earliest scores. Orchestration is an important role, but Lange was clear that it was different from arrangement.

An arranger, as Lange explained, turns notes into a song. The arranger transcribes the songwriter’s music—sometimes just from them humming a tune—and, “as a rule,” writes the underlying harmonies and rhythmic accompaniment. Before the explosion of dance tunes, arrangers created dance versions of music not intended for dancing: resetting the rhythmic structure (e.g., turning ballads into waltzes or marches into two-steps), adding a rhythmic accompaniment, and writing music to fill out those long notes that sound beautiful in a ballad but just kind of hang there in a dance number.

From the start of his career, Lange paid special attention to “figuration,” the phrases and decorations an arranger adds under and alongside the melody. Lange especially admired Frank Saddler’s figuration among other aspects of his work. As Eric Davis explains in his doctoral dissertation on Saddler, he was the most in-demand Broadway arranger from 1909 until his death in 1921, “scor[ing] more than 60 shows—an unprecedented accomplishment that has never been repeated, and the anecdotal record suggests that he may have been involved in creating orchestrations for many more productions.”  Lange’s description of Saddler summarizes the arranger’s art at its best:

His approach was entirely fresh and different…he would incorporate novel effects in his orchestrations…In many cases, they were greatly responsible for the success of the shows…[It was] an unusual approach and technique for which Saddler was both admired and envied.

Writing his memoirs decades later and well into his own career, Lange still admired Saddler’s contrapuntal lines in the piano accompaniment to Harris’s 1906 song “Somewhere.” It’s an interesting look at what catches a musician’s ear and the influences in Lange’s work.

Already taking inspiration from his role models, Lange’s first arrangement for Stern—Tom Kelly and Earl Jones’s “I Like a Little Lovin’ Now and Then”— included original ideas that resulted in what he described as the first “modern number for a music publisher.” Writing a piano arrangement of the waltz from Lehar’s then-popular operetta The Merry Widow, Lange contributed an original harmonization (later admiring his younger self’s brashness while still judging it “in bad taste”). Among other assignments, Lange arranged “Marie from Sunny Italy,” Irving Berlin’s first published song.

After losing his job at Stern, Lange moved to Rose and Snyder Company and then to Joe Morris from 1913 to 1918, hired as a songwriter but responsible for arranging his own tunes. Along the way, he also played piano in movie theaters, conducted theater shows, and worked as a freelance pianist and arranger for various orchestras. His published work from this period attests to the wide range of music he played and heard, ranging from patriotic tear-jerkers to more ribald popular numbers and a fair amount of ragtime.

In 1918, as Lange described it, “the songwriting business goes to Hell [due to] prices, dime stores, competition, paying the acts.” The always-practical Lange returned to full-time arranging, including work outside song publishing. When Lange “ghostwrote” the arrangements for Silvio Hein‘s latest musical, the venerated Broadway songwriter and producer could hear his contracted arranger hired a sub; the scores sounded too good. Lange now had newfound confidence in his arranging ability. He took his next job as an arranger, now with Fred Fisher, where he also met his longtime business partner, Ernest Klapholz.

A Composer’s Arranger

Lange thought that songwriting experience gave him insights into the process that endeared him to Fisher’s songwriters. Even with the pressure of deadlines, Lange insisted that, before he could start an arrangement, he had to “live” with a tune until he felt like he had written it. When Lange said that “a good arranger is a natural composer regardless of whether he ever composes anything,” he was likely referring to the composer’s mindset as well as the act of composition. Lange would add his own harmonic ideas and figuration, but he worked hard to understand each songwriter’s style. Lange’s goal was for the final product to “sound as if the composer himself had arranged it.”

To Lange, a good tune didn’t need much input from an arranger, but the right arrangement could make a poor tune into a hit. “The arranger today is just as important in the success of a tune as the composer” for Lange, who added that “some melodies would never get anywhere without a first-class arrangement.”

Lange felt that his own songs of “the banal variety,” as opposed to his “musicianly [sic]” tunes, became the hits. This might be an example of the artist being their own worst critic. Lange may have simply had a knack for what appealed to many people at the time—even if what appealed to them struck him as “banal.” It’s still popular to joke that the cream rarely rises to the top in popular music, but does the majority prefer “bad” work, or is the work deemed “bad” because they prefer it?

The flip side of Lange’s aesthetic hierarchy was a commitment to excellence in his own work. He admitted to an “inner urge to rise above mediocracy [sic?]” driving him to “do a more artistic job than the other guy.” From the outset, Lange was determined to create something original and creative—even if he was pursuing popular orchestration strictly for what he called “do-re-mi [i.e., “dough” or money].” 

Lange’s arrangement of “Dardanella” was his ideal of a “compromise between the banal and the artistic.” It was also responsible for his breakout success, but Lange had a comically nonchalant recollection of how he first heard the song and created its signature touch. It began with Felix Bernard submitting the song to Fisher’s company as an untitled instrumental in 1918. Alfred Bryan provided the title and lyrics, and then Lange got to work: 

When I first heard “Dardanella” as played by Felix Bernard, the bass wasn’t as jet clarifide [sic] as it stands today. Bernard had no doubt heard a rumbling bass figuration in his travels and visits to places of ill repute where the piano player played by ear and always had a cigarette hanging from his mouth…This sort of rumbling bass was very unpractical for commercial purposes, so Fred Fisher asked me to see what I could do with it. In other words, I was asked to civilize this rumbling bass.

Joseph Knecht’s band at the posh Waldorf-Astoria auditioned Lange’s arrangement for the publishing firm, and everyone knew they had a hit—except Fisher. He thought the bass was too difficult to play and shelved “Dardanella.” Six months later, Lange was at Leo Feist’s company, but Fisher’s staff had gone over their boss’s head and distributed copies of the arrangement. In Lange’s words, “some unbelievable power of justice” prompted Ben Selvin to actually record the number.

“Dardanella” became a record-breaking seller in 1919, everyone in the music business learned Lange’s name, he became swamped with work, and that bass ostinato still sticks to people’s ears.

After Feist, in 1922, Lange took a job as an arranger at Waterson, Berlin, & Snyder while also freelancing for other publishing firms. Stock arrangement would have kept him busy enough, but Waterson and multiple other companies also contracted Lange to write “special” arrangements outside the mass-published scores for multiple firms. Fortunately, Lange had a solid work ethic and a knack for working fast while staying inventive (for example, converting Irving Berlin’s “Remember” from a waltz to a fox trot by dropping the verse while incorporating parts of it into the chorus).

Lange was one of the first composers to arrange classical works for the dance orchestra (a trend of the twenties that met with a range of reactions). He claims that his stock arrangement for “Yearning” was the first to have an independent clarinet part.

Lange also mentioned “Jealous” as the first dance tune issued without a verse. Less than a year earlier, in the January 27, 1923 issue of Music Trades magazine, one business editorial observed that “the verse doesn’t usually mean a thing [and is] something to get over with in a hurry.” Lange may have been codifying public taste rather than initiating a trend, and it’s sometimes difficult to confirm “firsts” in music. Either way, it shows a musical awareness of where popular taste was headed.

Lange said that a key part of being a successful arranger was always knowing “the many professional tricks and customs” popular in arrangements at any time. His advice may seem like calculated trend-hopping. The word “tricks” might seem reductive, but it was a common enough and neutral phrase at the time. His first arrangement included what Lange proudly called his “tricks” that became part of the song. James P. Johnson, just five years younger than Lange, used “tricks” to describe his own musical ideas. Lange’s advice also has the air of a craftsman always expanding his skills. Original creation is one tool, but it’s not the only thing in the box.

Lange’s Style on Record

The Waterson firm also owned the Cameo Record Corporation. Lange would make some of his first recordings as a bandleader on that label. In the days when labels released music under multiple band aliases without personnel attributions, recordings issued under “Arthur Lange and His Orchestra” and presumably using his charts are a welcome opportunity to zero in on Lange’s style.  He had been directing a dance band since at least 1921 to rave reviews at venues in Brooklyn, Long Island, and Manhattan. It was yet another tool in his professional kit. Also, a band under his leadership was probably a convenient lab for experimenting with scores. 

Lange thought of the dance orchestra as “essentially a wind band augmented by certain other instruments such as the violin, piano, banjo, and drums.” The three-piece saxophone section is its “backbone,” which is then “reinforced by brass.” The “wind band” (i.e., the brass and saxes) remains the “foundation,” and the rhythm section is there to “augment” it. While giving the rhythm section an auxiliary role, Lange said that rhythm was crucial to music in the United States since he thought that Americans “listen with their feet.” From this perspective, the arranger must ensure the melodic instruments rock and swing as much as they sing and provide color. 

That’s probably why many of his best sides for Cameo stand out as much for their syncopation as their orchestral details. For example, there’s the catchy saxophone section phrases responding to the brass on “I’ll Be In My Dixie Home Again Tomorrow”:

The suspensions in the introduction and the sax section’s counterpoint in the first chorus on an otherwise romping “Carolina in the Morning”:

Or the sheer stomp of “Big Boy,” aided by the score’s brass accents and the band’s playing:

These sides feature first-call dance band pros like Gene Fosdick, Tommy Gott, Earle Oliver, and Lou Raderman.  Many of them played on Cameo sides contracted by Lange’s colleague at Cameo, Bob Haring, and issued as the Dixie Daisies. They incorporate more overt jazz influences, such as collective improvisation and more pronounced rhythmic inflection. At the same time, they alternate New Orleans-style polyphony, still popular at the time, with the arranged hot dance style that musicians like Lange were developing.

Lange and Haring likely swapped musicians and arrangements and may have shared aliases on records like the “Velvetone Dance Orchestra” sides. To my ears, Haring’s arrangements use tighter section voicings and more lyrical figures, versus the split sax section writing and punchier lines in Lange’s charts. Haring’s writing, to me, more often seems to assign the lead to solo instruments, including baritone sax and guitar, and to the strings.

Success Through High Standards

After a short hiatus, likely due to a packed work schedule, Lange returned to public bandleading in September 1923 with a bang as the Cinderella Ballroom’s inaugural act. Then, in February 1924, trade publications reported that Lange ceded leadership of his band to the teenage bandleading prodigy Roger Wolfe Kahn while continuing to arrange for and rehearse the group. But by June, Lange was leading a band the press described as “unknowns” at New York’s Fay Follies club and the Strand Theatre, among other venues. 

Somehow, he also found time to rehearse Irving Aaronson’s band at the Hofbrau and briefly manage Peter Van Steeden’s band. He parted with Kahn for good in September. By September 1925, Lange reported giving up his dance band to focus exclusively on arranging, but he never seems to have stopped leading studio sessions for Cameo. By mid-1926, he was leading a band for the show Honeymoon Trail and briefly at the Monte Carlo before finally stepping away. He told reporters he simply didn’t like directing a jazz band.

Even with the quality of his records and positive reviews at the time, Lange seemed ambivalent about bandleading. He may have simply preferred to work behind the scenes. He could still play a key role in shaping a band’s sound. He could also enforce rigorous standards. Under Lange’s coaching, for example, Kahn’s musicians had to memorize their parts (rather than use sheet music) on jobs. 

Lange was also unequivocal about the superiority of European orchestras. Those musicians were more likely to have received formal training from conservatories, while American musicians could “just pick up an instrument and enter an orchestra.” Fortunately, for Lange, the arranger’s “ingenuity for obtaining beautiful results for small orchestra” could “overcome” the “shortcomings of the American musician” and “lack of individual perfectness [sic].” This from someone who had worked with some of the top studio musicians in the country!

These remarks again point to a discernment that approaches elitism. On the other hand, these high standards had brought Lange far. He may have started writing arrangements because he couldn’t compose symphonies professionally, but it paid off literally and figuratively. By 1926, he received $150 per chart, the highest rate for any arranger. He signed exclusively with Shapiro, Bernstein, & Co. for a two-year, $50K contract (about $450K in 2025), a new record for arrangers. Press coverage from the time liked to repeat the phrase, “If it’s a Lange arrangement, it’s okay without seeing it.”

The same year, Lange literally wrote the book on arranging for dance bands. 1926’s Arranging for the Modern Dance Orchestra was the first comprehensive guide to writing for a popular instrumental ensemble. In Dance Band Arrangers, 1900–1960, Keith Robinson highlights Lange’s “originality in thinking about orchestration and how homogeneity of sound could be obtained with such a limited group of instruments.” Examples include Lange’s insights into the use of mutes, novel roles for rhythm-section instruments like the banjo, and his division of instrumental tonal groups. Lange offered an extensive list of instrumental combinations, classified as “open, piercing, etc.,” to achieve a variety of textures. He also spent whole chapters on writing duets and trios, skills he shows off in his own charts. David Chevan, in his dissertation Written Music in Early Jazz, explains that a large number of stock arrangements in the twenties increasingly employed these techniques, pointing to the surprising complexity of many stocks (versus some historians’ stereotyping of them as simplistically functional).

Whatever else Lange may have thought about the cultural value of popular music versus other musical traditions, he understood that popular music had its own possibilities and standards of excellence. His introduction to the book states outright that “the problem of arranging for dance orchestra is entirely different from that of scoring for the symphony or concert orchestra and must be attacked in a different way.” It codified existing arrangement practices of the time in the context of popular music. Many contemporary readers said it was also easy to understand.

As a contemporary reviewer observed, Lange’s book put the practice of dance band arrangement into overarching conceptual terms, pointing to a distinct musical discipline. The book remained hugely influential even decades after its publication. Lange was now definitely able to write his own ticket. It was an impressive accomplishment for a former “rotten violinist” who didn’t think much of popular music.

Serious Music

By 1928, Lange had negotiated a contract with MGM, moving to Hollywood the following year and becoming its musical director for all recordings. He went on to earn several Oscar nominations and other honors for his film work. He was just as hardworking and thoughtful in his film work. Several editorials from the thirties and forties show him reflecting on the industry’s state and his aspirations for the medium.

Scrapbooks show Lange had been working on solo piano works and chamber pieces since at least the 20s. But his papers marked 1928 as the year he “begins serious musical composition.” If Lange was ambivalent about leading dance bands, he was clearly passionate about conducting concert orchestras:

When I am in front of an orchestra, I feel like a king in my own domain. However, not in the sense of superiority. I merely get a sense of the supreme control of the work that is to be done. I feel separated from all the small things in life. In other words, I am alone at home in my own world. I get great satisfaction from working out delicate balance and effects which are in the score. I get a chance to express the emotional side of me. It is the language in which I can speak the best…I take great delight in working out any score that has never been played before, especially if it is well-orchestrated and the composition has a genuine emotional quality.

Despite not having as much interest in jazz, especially as it’s now understood, these comments show a musician who didn’t need improvisation for self-expression, to feel “at home” in an aesthetic element, or for the excitement of discovery. By 1939, he had founded Co-Art Records, a label devoted to contemporary American composers—like him. He earned critical acclaim both as the founder of the Santa Monica Symphony in 1947 and as a conductor of his own works with that orchestra. Golden State University awarded Lange an honorary doctorate in 1956. He passed away that December.

Lange’s comments about “serious musical composition” and other judgments might seem unusual to those who enjoy his work for dance bands. “Serious music” may have denoted “European classical music.” Yet Lange still treated “popular, syncopated, dance, jazz, etc.” music for a mass market as something to be done seriously. He had practical motives for being good at his job:

I’ve been active in every branch of the music business…My musical career is so checkered that it sometimes becomes difficult for others, as well as myself, to associate my activities in any one specific category. What am I? I’m a musician, a general practitioner in music who has, through circumstance, been required to scatter his talents in all directions. Sometimes for money, sometimes not, depending on whether my artistic nature has come to the fore, or whether common sense tells me that I must pay my bills.

But paying the bills was never an excuse for Lange to forget his musical personality:

What is an arranger? Isn’t he, too, a composer? If he is to be considered a fine arranger, doesn’t he contribute his own creative ideas? I never am satisfied with musical material in the raw. I just can’t help giving up part of myself when making an arrangement. I did this back.

As his music and recollections show, Lange recognized that what he did was work while insisting on the dignity of that labor. He was neither a tortured artist reluctantly ignoring his muse nor a relentlessly profit-driven industry insider kowtowing to ephemeral trends. He does offer a good example of commercial success and individual creativity going hand in hand. It was not an unbridled, unbounded creativity beyond the concerns of filthy lucre, but if we only judged music by that rubric, how much would be left?

Thanks

Vince Giordano, Colin Hancock, and Gavin Rice continue to shed light on the arrangements and broader musical and cultural context of this period. Thanks so much to these knowledgeable and passionate musicians for their generosity of time and for sharing their insights into this music, even while they’re among the busiest musicians in hot music today.

Sources

• Arthur Lange, “I Grew Up in Tin Pan Alley” for Turntable (undated)
• —Arranging for the Modern Dance Orchestra (self-published, 1926)
• —Lange, papers at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (various undated)
• Scott E. Brown, Speakeasies to Symphonies: The Jazz Genius of James P. Johnson (Univ. of Mississippi Press, 2026)
• David Chevan, Written Music in Early Jazz (PhD dissertation for City Univ. of New York, 1997)
• Eric Davis, The Contribution of Frank Saddler to the Art of Orchestration for the American Musical Theatre (PhD dissertation for Univ. of South Carolina, 2018)
• Richard DuPage, “More About Fud” for Record Research, Vol. 0, no. 25 (November–December, 1959)
• Javier Soria Laso, multiple personal conversations and communications about discography and personnel
• Keith Robinson, Dance Band Arrangers 1900–1960 (self-published, 2023)
• Ralph Wondrascheck with additions by Randy Skretvedt and Bryan S.Wright, liner notes to Dixie Daisies: Hotsy Totsy Town, 1922–23 (Rivermont BSW-1172, 2021)
• Various articles from Billboard, Down Beat, Hollywood Filmograph, Jacobs’ Band Monthly, Metronome, Music Trades, Sunday Starr (DC), Times (LA), and Variety, among others

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It’s no surprise that yestercentury’s verdicts on jazz included plenty of praise and lots of bile. New music always gets the same criticisms: lacking quality, spreading immorality, derivative of older music, and a lot of racist claims ranging from veiled to brazen but uniformly disgusting. Yet as jazz spread across the United States and the world, some voices took a middle ground. For them, jazz wasn’t worth the venom. It was neither great music nor a threat. It was harmless fun, but jazz still served an important purpose: helping people appreciate music deemed better than jazz. 

One writer spelled out jazz’s edificatory potential in the June 15, 1924, issue of Talking Machine World. Profiling bandleader Henri Berchman, the reporter described a “modern dance orchestra” that took pride in playing both popular and classical works. This band appealed to audiences who were “interested in real popular music and, at the same time, have an inborn taste for better things.” These “better-class orchestras” would “lead those of strictly popular taste into an appreciation of the classical.” 

At least jazz haters assumed the music had some power; people don’t mourn the loss of artistic standards or forecast the downfall of civilization unless they perceive a threat. This didactic assessment of jazz doesn’t even give the music that much credit. Jazz is not a threat; it’s homeopathic music appreciation. Judgments like these seem more surprising for their effortless condescension.

The August 1924 issue of Etude magazine, dedicated to “The Jazz Problem,” is like a compendium of contemporary outlooks on jazz. Its descriptions ranged from music for a country that lost its soul to conductor Leopold Stokowski hearing jazz as “new blood [flowing] in the veins of music.” Ironically, Paul Specht, one of the most popular bandleaders of the time, neatly summarizes jazz apologetics:

This form of music is a forceful stepping stone to stimulate interest in the study of music; a step of musical development, distinctly American, that is teaching the public to better appreciate our big symphony orchestras.

Paul Whiteman takes the perspective a step further, suggesting his music opens audiences to other pieces of high culture:

We cannot expect the man in the street, with a Police Gazette in his hands, to pay a large price to see Ibsen’s Ghosts. He must be educated up to Ghosts. He will be fascinated by jazz and use it as a suspension bridge to better things.

Whiteman was one of the most successful popular musicians in American history. He also frequently defended popular taste. In his book Jazz, Whiteman makes a lengthy point about good taste and popular demand not being mutually exclusive, insisting that “the so-called masses have considerable instinctive good judgment in matters of beauty that they never get credit for.” He’s also skeptical, almost resentful, of “certain high and mighty art circles.” Whiteman advises that “the Denver [Whiteman’s hometown] boys who haven’t grown up to conduct orchestras and police reporters who haven’t got jobs as critics have sound opinions, too, and we ought to listen to them.”

It’s not that strange to hear Specht and Whiteman advocate for their music as a path to high art. They were key players in the growing popularity of jazz-influenced dance bands. They also saw these bands and their arrangements grow in size and complexity. Specht, Whiteman, and other bandleaders probably just understood which elements of their music might appeal to the elitists. They didn’t make music to pander to longhairs, but creative pursuits and marketing sometimes align. 

Some members of the musical establishment found symphonic jazz and imaginative “special” arrangements promising. Composer and critic George Hahn heard the development of bigger bands and more sophisticated arrangements as jazz finally “being done artistically.” In his essay “Modern Arrangers Are Synthetic Composers” (Jacobs’ Band Monthly, September 1923), Hahn notes how “the erstwhile blatant jazz has given way to smoothly flowing, beautifully voiced harmony and rhythm” thanks to “arrangers and directors who took the raw jazz as it came from New Orleans and change[d] it into the aristocratic variety we have today.” 

Hahn thought jazz could redeem itself through advanced compositional techniques and curbing improvisation. Others still heard a means to a higher end. In his essay for Etude, composer Percy Grainger compliments jazz for advances in instrumentation comparable to those of Beethoven and Wagner. Grainger goes as far as describing jazz as “near-perfect and delightful popular music and dance music.” Like all dance music, it provides excitement, relaxation, and sentimental appeal.

Grainger’s description might seem like one of the more charitable ones. Yet alongside his confusing, borderline offensive pseudo-ethnomusicology (i.e., jazz as the “combination of Nordic melodiousness with Negro tribal rhythmic polyphony”), he declares jazz some of the “finest” popular music in history but “nothing more.” Grainger comes off as pompous rather than antagonistic, and more insulting for it:

The laws which govern jazz and other popular music can never govern music of the greatest depth or the greatest importance…The world must have popular music…But there will always exist between the best popular music and classical music that same distinction that there is between a perfect farmhouse and a perfect cathedral.

To Grainger, popular music doesn’t make demands on the listener, while classical music demands “length and the ability to handle complicated music,” signs of superior intelligence. He allows that jazz can help educate children, but parents and educators must ensure youngsters also “drink the pure water of the classical and romantic springs.” 

This is praise with damning consequences. Grainger consigns jazz to (at best) an educational role, while remaining a diversion for simple minds. If any adults are listening to jazz, they’re free to enjoy the farmhouse, but they only get to Heaven if they can find their way to the church. The imagery of purity—presumably versus dilution or even pollution—feels especially ironic from a composer known for experimental music that explicitly rejected traditional classical structures and his pioneering role in folk music revival.

These are just a few examples, and they were less prevalent than outright condemnation, but arguments for jazz as classical music’s training wheels emerged often enough. They form a unique corner of the early reception of jazz. They share the same focus on cultural hierarchies as the outright condemnations. Still, their patronizing equivocation lets some music squeak through, music that people who heard Ted Lewis and Paul Whiteman as equally hateworthy would never allow.  

It’s no accident this line of thought coalesced around a lot of music many now consider at the margins or completely beyond jazz. The overwhelmingly white composition of jazz commentators at the time will either seem predictably offensive or still shockingly ignorant. The word “jazz” covered a lot of musical and cultural ground during the twenties. Yet whether it was Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman, Joe Oliver, or Earle Oliver, the harshest critics seemed to be battling for the country’s soul. This high-handed middle ground seemed to be waging a cold war for America’s brain. Neither campaign was needed. At least judging people based on their taste is a last-century problem.

At least by the time of his sixth musical, Jerome Kern was no fan of jazz. According to the “Melody Mart” column in the April 26, 1924, issue of Billboard magazine, jazz drove the Broadway composer to bar publishers from printing orchestrations of songs from Sitting Pretty, Kern’s newest show.

It was partially an economic decision. Sheet music, record, and theater sales were crashing. Many blamed radio for offering too much free music. Audiences supposedly got sick of the latest songs too soon. With Kern’s embargo, the only place to hear numbers like “Shufflin’ Sam” and “Bongo on the Congo” as envisioned for the stage would be the stage. In theory, demand at the box office, record shop, and your local sheet music seller would shoot up.

Yet this was about more than the bottom line. Kern was a composer as well as a businessman. He wanted his music performed as he wrote it: 

By keeping his numbers away from jazz leaders, who mutilate the music, sheet music sales of the show numbers will be fair enough due to the patron who hears them in the production … [Kern] was against the jazz orchestras butchering a song so that the public never knew what it really was … There was no way to prevent the so-called special arrangements being made by phonograph record artists who wanted and had to be different.

People could buy lead sheets with lyrics and piano accompaniment, but jazz musicians wouldn’t find stock arrangements waiting to be mangled with their improvisations and slick effects. 

Discouraging musicians from following their creative instincts, demanding they stick to a written part, privileging published composition over bandstand invention: It might be the triumph of crass commercialism and mass culture over artistry. Yet it might also reflect something less cynical and much simpler, a musical ideal as common in the 1920s as the 2020s, something that proud songwriters and the average Jazz Age music consumer could both agree on: hearing a tune. 

Supply and Demand, Creativity and Taste

Kern and his fellow songwriters considered themselves artists, too. They also wanted to create music for audiences to enjoy. Jazz blogger (and my dear friend) Michael Steinman points to Richard Rodgers and lyricist Lorenz Hart making their demand literal and singable in “I Like to Recognize the Tune.” In his autobiography, Rodgers elaborates on the philosophy behind the song’s pointed title:

We voiced objection to the musical distortions then so much a part of pop music because of the swing band influence. We really had nothing against swing bands per se, but as songwriters, we felt it was tough enough for new numbers to catch on as written without being subjected to all kinds of interpretive manhandling that obscured their melodies and lyrics. To me, this was the musical equivalent of bad grammar. On the other hand, once a song has become established, I see nothing wrong with taking certain liberties. A singer or an orchestra can add a distinctive, personal touch that actually contributes to a song’s longevity. I can’t say I’m exactly grief-stricken when something I’ve written years before suddenly catches on again because of a new interpretation.

Popular musical styles had changed by the time the song was published in 1939, but the sentiment remained evergreen. The difference was that many American popular standards were not yet “established” during the twenties. Songwriters at the time might’ve felt like an author watching a film version of the novel they just got published.

Tin Pan Alley was a huge commercial complex. An entire industry of composers and lyricists supplied romantic songs, dance numbers, novelty tunes, topical ditties, and anything else people could sing, dance, relax, laugh, neck, or cry to. But the music industry was also a creative site. Some people worked hard and took pride in their product—even if it also allowed them to pay rent or buy a second Packard. 

On the other side of supply, there was demand from audiences, who weren’t looking to make anyone rich. Some just wanted good lyrics set to a catchy melody. Others were more discerning. Both reflected preference for song. 

Ironically, by the beginning of the Jazz Age, many dancers and listeners wearied of wild improvisations and careening ensemble lines that obscured the tune (while, of course, many others couldn’t get enough). By December 1921, Dance Review reported that “artistic, refined effects” and “carefully worked out novelty choruses” were already overshadowing “loud ‘jazzy’ playing.” William Howland Kenney points to one editorial, titled “The First Fight on Jazz” in the New York Clipper of August 16, 1922, that captures the outcry for a clear tune:

A popular tune is played by one of the jazz orchestras. The orchestration for it has been furnished by the publisher at a considerable cost, but as rendered by many of the orchestras, few that had heard it in the song form or played on the piano would recognize it … A well-written melodious number is so buried under the jazz antics [emphasis mine]…the audience can scarcely recognize the melody.

Popular tastes constantly change, yet this trend was toward the status quo: a solid tune. The frantic counterpoint associated with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and its imitators was already out of fashion when Kern issued his edict. Large dance bands with brass, reed, and rhythm sections using written arrangements became popular. By November 1926, Orchestra World was covering Tom DeRose’s five-piece New Orleans Jazz Band as a throwback to “good old Dixieland-style jazz” that still played “the more barbaric type of syncopation.” The five-piece ODJB took the country by storm only a little over a decade earlier, a lifetime in American popular music.

Pragmatic music industry officials also had a stake in a solid tune. David Jasen describes this as an era when a song’s publication was more important than its performance by a particular artist. A song was successful if it sold sheet music and records. Several bands might record the same tune for different record labels. Music lovers might buy any recording they could get; they just wanted to hear the song. Yet, as Kenney notes, “jazz polyphonies even endangered the well-established musical arrangements that turned out hit melodies.” He meant more than arrangements on stave paper:

Record companies paid royalties to the sheet-music publishers whenever they issued a recording of a published song. According to Variety, recording company studio managers kept lists of numbers they wanted to record and invariably passed the list first to “the[ir] premier orchestra” which picked all the “hit numbers, that is, tunes that had already sold exceptionally well in sheet-music form.”

A complex industry thrived on literally selling songs. To business stakeholders, if the public was paying attention to a band, they weren’t necessarily focused on the tune. Following that band’s gigs or buying every record they cut didn’t necessarily yield the publisher any direct royalties. 

With recording companies eager to keep their slice of the market, business interests viewed bands as vehicles for their tune (not the other way around). Studio ensembles proliferated: house bands and musicians contracted specifically for record sessions, recording Tin Pan Alley’s constant output, often steered in more conservative musical directions. 

These may sound like suboptimal conditions for jazz or any form of personal creativity. Yet musicians don’t stop being creative when they read (or write) music. So-called commercial musicians came up with some clever, if sometimes ultra-subtle, musical ideas. The alleged constraints inspired some inventive music.

Variation Through a Theme

If you have to repeat a melody, switching up who plays it goes a long way. Instrumental timbre provides one of the simplest but most powerful joys of music. The best dance records of the period display an impressive degree of variety using “just” the tune by changing orchestration, rhythmic accompaniment, and instrumental texture between and even within strains. 

Other arrangers leveraged these ideas while taking greater thematic liberties. Some soloists developed the song into brand new melodies while expanding on the harmonic possibilities of the underlying chords. Yet the best “commercial” arrangers choreographed instruments while keeping the tune front and center. Nathan Glantz’s rendition of “By the Light of the Stars” is a great example. 

Recording for Edison as the “Tennessee Happy Boys,” Glantz and his band stay close to Arthur Sizemore,  George Little, and Larry Shay’s Tin Pan Alley piece. They lodge it firmly in listeners’ heads. Publisher Jerome H. Remick might have thought this was simply a band doing its job, but I’ve also had the sound of Glantz and his band playing the song stuck in my head for years:

On the first chorus, the tenor saxophone plays the lead softly in long, lyrical lines that would fit in a hotel ballroom. The trumpet syncopates the lead on top without losing the tune. Playing the unadulterated melody as a foundation, the trumpeter can take greater liberties without “mutilating” the tune. It’s a simultaneous straight and hot treatment.

At the bridge, the alto sax bends and elongates the melody with jazzy licks but never discards it. The trombone and ensemble split the verse, trombone laying down the melody right on the beat and answered by raggy trumpet. The sax section pares the next chorus down to clipped accents over a shuffling accompaniment; the song is still there, just more by implication than full recapitulation. The trombone adds a gruff surface to the bridge, the alto sax is more lyrical on the verse, and the soprano sax’s bright, gooey color almost parodies the chorus. Yet it’s still easy to hum along with each segment. The tune is now familiar enough for the tenor sax to answer the ensemble’s stop-time reduction with looser hot phrases. By the end of the record, all melodic fetters are off, and the trumpet plays even hotter over cymbal backbeats.

The record balances composition and arrangement, the composer’s codified work and the musicians’ contributions, theme and variation. It’s a hot record, but for a listener looking for clear melody and a steady beat, it splits the difference and maybe opens their ears to other possibilities. 

Discographer and musician (as well as generous and knowledgeable expert) Javier Soria Laso says this is a stock arrangement, perhaps doctored by members of the group. If the shifts in instrumentation and subtle melodic/rhythmic alterations were part of the published orchestration, that just reveals a subtle hand at work. Every stock arrangement has an arranger behind it, and even the straightest of straight melody statements still needs a musician to play it.

The Art of Compromise

In jazz (as it’s commonly discussed today), the term “soloist” is often reserved for a musician extemporizing on the harmonic material of the song. Among historians and fans of early jazz, “hot solo” usually implies the melody was just a catalyst for the soloist’s ideas. 

So-called commercial musicians didn’t have either option. Yet that didn’t necessarily preclude creativity. Some thrived on the subtlest melodic paraphrase: crafting slight rhythmic and melodic alterations—hesitation, anticipation, elongation, ornamentation, articulation, doubled notes, timbral variation, etc.—to play with a song even as they kept playing the song. 

The best hands turned even a “straight lead” into a personal statement. The trumpet’s opening chorus on “Chloe” with Sam Lanin (d.b.a The Gotham Troubadours for Okeh) offers a master class in pinpoint inflection, embellishments, and slight rhythmic adjustment:

If a recording even allowed room for getting hot, it was definitely not on the first chorus of a new song. Yet even composer and publisher Charles N. Daniels (a.k.a Neil Moret) might have appreciated the way this trumpeter delivers his work. It’s clothed in a warm, smooth, harmon-muted sound. Ornaments and rhythm add momentum to the melodic line while keeping things singable. Syncopations on the second eight bars of the chorus sync with the brighter harmonies before a descending run complements the sax section’s ascending run when they take over. 

Of course, the idea that “it’s the singer (not the song)” isn’t unique to any form of music. Jazz, in particular, always had an affinity for it, going back to New Orleanians’ “ragging” a tune. There are countless examples of what Gunther Schuller, after Andre Hodeir, described as “a type of improvisation based primarily on embellishment or ornamentation of the melodic line.” Composer, instrumentalist, and music historian Allen Lowe explains how musicians ranging from James Europe’s syncopated orchestras to Earl Fuller’s defiantly chaotic take on the Original Dixieland Jazz Band “used phrasing and rhythmic variation as a means of pre-jazz invention before moving to the next step, which was to restructure melody as contained and related to the accompanying harmony.”

Maybe the trumpeter on “Chloe” was literally improvising (i.e., doing things on the spot), but it’s a different concept than what Lowe and Schuller describe. The proportion of musician-to-song feels different. The song isn’t source material; it’s the song. The song and the musician are not equals. The musician’s ideas are not the (main) point, yet there they are. If ears could squint, we’d “see” this trumpeter. It’s like virtuosic self-effacement.

The Threshold for Individualism

This example is from a record that might be described as “commercial music” of the period. It’s telling that Brian Rust’s jazz discography doesn’t include it. With his idiosyncratic distinctions between “jazz,” “dance music with obvious jazz flavoring,” “dance bands” playing all varieties of music, and other categories, Rust might have heard “Chloe” as “straight dance music,” something that “does not deviate as much as a quaver from what is written in the score.” 

This trumpeter had to sell that tune. Their knack for melodic paraphrase might be so subtle as to seem inconsequential. Still, it’s unlikely they were reading those inflections, embellishments, and slight rhythmic adjustments off the page. It begs the question of how much variation is needed to qualify as “improvised, original, creative, etc.” If you are coloring within the lines, you can still pick the colors. The lines might even inspire you.

As for the demands placed upon these musicians, they might feel like a limitation or even a violation. To some players at the time, it was just part of a job. Others would recollect how much these convictions chafed at them. Later musicians and listeners might even assume that liking—or even preferring—this sort of thing is objectively unhip. 

Musicians tamping down their creativity for the sake of commercial interests and a supposedly unadventurous audience is one of the oldest and saddest tales in the book. But for at least a few, it may have been a unique challenge or simply a different means of expression:

In some of our sweet arrangements in Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra, we get a chance to express our feelings, and when we carry the melody, we just sing it out as if we actually were vocalizing. It also means that you have to feel your music, too…
—Hymie Shertzer, “Tells Technique of the ‘Singing Tone,” Metronome, April 1940

If it wasn’t jazz, it wasn’t always a compromise. Some people even liked it.

Thanks so much to Colin Hancock for sharing his thoughtful ideas on this subject!