I had the pleasure of presenting at the Northeast Popular Culture Association’s virtual conference. The panel included fascinating topics by engaging speakers. As an independent researcher still finding my way, it was a privilege to join the discussion with these thoughtful scholars.

The presentation, “Nathan Glantz and the Saxophone in Late Imperial Russia,” drew on a post from this website and a follow-up post, along with my other research materials. You can read the slides below. After the presentation, I wrote the notes at the bottom of each slide to expand on the slides.

The actual presentation covered more ground with additional context and was more informal, so these are just the broad points. I hope you still enjoy it.

Saxophones are rare in European classical music, but when two esteemed conductors needed the job done, they called the “inventor of the laughing saxophone.” 

Nathan Glantz was a huge radio and recording artist during the twenties. He cut thousands of sides ranging from hot to sentimental to intentionally hokey. But he also moonlighted with the New York Philharmonic under both Arturo Toscanini and William Mengelberg on several occasions. His Carnegie Hall gigs included the sax solos for the United States premiere of Ravel’s Bolero and sitting in with the orchestra’s clarinet section during at least one concert. 

Harry Glantz, Nathan’s nephew and the orchestra’s principal trumpet, may have introduced his uncle to the organization. Yet Toscanini and Mengelberg were demanding conductors. Trumpeter Henry “Hot Lips” Levine told historian Mark Berresford that classical musicians knew and respected Glantz’s work in that repertoire. Glantz must have had the chops and professionalism to keep getting brought back, including for multiple Boleros.

Glantz came to the United States from Russia in 1904, but his early life and musical background are otherwise sketchy. Several collectors have speculated about conservatory training. Europe was the birthplace of the modern conservatory. It boasts a longer tradition and a greater number of these institutions. Coming from “the old country,” Glantz may have been more likely to have attended a conservatory. His facility with the classical repertoire further suggests the possibility. At this time, confirming his enrollment through official channels is difficult.

On the other hand, Glantz was around during a pivotal time for music education in Russia. Its culture looked even “older” than that of the rest of Europe, even as the empire struggled to modernize. As a Jewish subject, Glantz occupied a complicated, often dangerous social position. Access to the conservatory wasn’t out of the question, but it was far more difficult and not necessarily worth the effort. 

The Novelty of a Conservatory

By 1878, the year Glantz was born, the conservatory itself was still a new institution in Russia. The state only abolished serfdom in 1861. Up to that point, dedicated musical performers were often traveling virtuosos from outside Russia or serfs playing at the whims of the aristocracy. Amateur (i.e., unpaid) players from the nobility might be extremely talented, study at Italian conservatories, and play for large crowds in private salons or local theaters. But they ultimately pursued music between other responsibilities. Rural communities had robust musical traditions, but even most klezmer musicians made ends meet through other means. 

A “professional musician,” someone with advanced training who made music their full-time livelihood, was a revolutionary idea. The empire’s first conservatory, St. Petersburg, opened in 1862 (almost coinciding with the end of serfdom), followed by the Moscow Conservatory four years later. Until the opening of the Saratov Conservatory in 1912, St. Petersburg and Moscow were the only institutions officially recognized as “conservatories” in the empire. 

The idea of music as a credentialed vocation requiring higher education remained controversial through the turn of the century. Nationalists criticized the intrusion of the “pedantic” German conservatory model. The nobility defended music as a gentlemanly endeavor against turning it into a mere trade to earn money. State officials were divided about the rights that professional status would bring, including for musicians from lower social estates and marginalized people, especially Jewish subjects. 

By the turn of the century, as social historian Lynn M. Sargeant notes, “for music students of any faith, the St. Petersburg Conservatory represented the pinnacle of success.” Yet she also documents the long, gradual struggle to earn that reputation. Even after the conservatories’ founding, school officials fought for decades to secure privileges for their graduates and professional musicians.

These considerations don’t disqualify the possibility that Glantz attended a conservatory. They explain why he might not have cared about attending one. Uncertainty that he could enjoy the practical benefits of a diploma, entrenched attitudes toward new ideas about formal education, and perhaps no interest in formal training: Glantz might not have even had a reason to audition. 

Distance to the Conservatory

The conservatory was also a long way from home for Glantz, literally and figuratively. The Moscow Conservatory was about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) from the provincial town of Proskurov, Glantz’s home (now Khmelnytsky in modern-day Ukraine). That’s directly northeast as the crow flies, not accounting for actual routes between the two locations. St. Petersburg was even farther by about 200 kilometers. 

Besides the long distance, local authorities in Moscow forced the conservatory to restrict Jewish enrollment “off the books.” Unfortunately, the situation in Moscow was one of many examples of antisemitism, both institutional and unofficial, that Jews like Glantz faced throughout the Russian empire. During the 1890s, Moscow enforced a massive purge and segregation of Jewish military reservists previously granted permission to live there. Proskurov, Glantz’s home, is now synonymous with its 1919 pogrom, one of the most violent in recorded history.

Jews were otherwise barred from living in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and anywhere else outside the Pale of Settlement, the western region of Russia that Jews were restricted to live inside. But conservatory students could receive an exemption, and St. Petersburg didn’t face the same pressures as Moscow. By the first decade of the 1900s, the St. Petersburg Conservatory was both a safe environment for the large number of Jewish musicians studying under the likes of the renowned Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov and the target of anti-Semitic smears for that role. 

The city of St. Petersburg was also the cultural center for music in Russia during the first half of the nineteenth century. A school welcoming all faiths in a cosmopolitan city may seem ideal. But St. Petersburg probably seemed like another world to Glantz for several reasons. While industrial growth following the abolition of serfdom made Proskurov an urban industrial center, it doesn’t appear to have had an especially rich cultural scene (unlike its neighbors in the Ukrainian region such as Berdychiv and Odesa). 

Admission to the conservatory also required literacy in Russian rather than Yiddish, the primary and often sole language of many Russian Jews at the time. By one estimate, in 1897, Yiddish was the first language for 97% of Russian Jews. Even accounting for other Jewish students in his courses, Glantz would have likely been speaking a second language while away at school. Jewish residents made up half of Proskurov’s population that year. Like many urban centers in the region, Proskurov’s streets, schools, markets, and hospitals as well as its houses of worship were split along religious lines. 

Regardless of geographic distance, cultural familiarity, or local tolerance, one basic issue might have made up Glantz’s mind about the conservatory: paying for tuition, room, and board in the likely pricey imperial metropolis. His financial situation in Russia is unclear. According to passenger manifests, when he immigrated to the United States in 1904, he arrived with approximately $1,300 in 2026 dollars. That would have been all the money Glantz had (on record) to start a new life in another country, secure passage for his wife and daughter from Russia via England, and support them when they arrived, almost a year to the day later. His older brother, Pincus, immigrated four years before Nathan and lived in modest circumstances during his early years in the U.S. 

These numbers only hint at the brothers’ financial situation years after they left home. Earlier, in Russia, the Glantz family may have had the money to send Nathan to the conservatory. Whether they felt it was a good use of their money or felt comfortable letting him leave home is an even greyer area. 

Glantz would have been leaving his family and a tight-knit Jewish community in Proskurov. Life in St. Petersburg would likely have felt odd to a young man from a shtetl, especially as debates over nationalism and terms like “true Russians” grew wider and louder. Many Jews in Russia dreamed of the city and the conservatory, but we’ll never know if these Jews had the same vision.

Other Ways to Get to Carnegie Hall 

None of these obstacles are insurmountable, but many young people would be uncomfortable with them, especially for the sake of a still-debatable educational credential without guaranteed privileges. They don’t rule out Glantz attending a conservatory in Russia or anywhere else in Europe. They just complicate its likelihood. 

At the same time, they highlight the challenges he faced and some incredible possibilities. Admission to a conservatory is an accomplishment, even without considering whether the student has the practical means to attend or comes from the “right” demographic to get there. If Nathan Glantz did attend a conservatory, it’d be a remarkable accomplishment even if he never got to play with Toscanini. Another possibility is that Glantz didn’t even need a conservatory to earn the respect of the Buddy Rich of opera. Behind the chuckling sax and monochromatic photographs, there was quite a musician.

They also point to some other possibilities to explain his musical experience, including formal training without the conservatory in Russia or the variety of vernacular musical traditions likely found in his community. There’s still more to his story.

Abbreviated Bibliography

• Nathaniel Deutsch, The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement (2011)
• Niels Falch, From Oy to Joy: Jewish Musical Style in American Popular Songs 1892–1945 (2020)
• Gershon Swet, “Russian Jews in Music” in Russian Jewry, 1860–1917, ed. Frumkin et al (1996)
• James Loeffler, The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire (2010)
• Mannherz, Julia. “Nationalism, Imperialism, and Cosmopolitanism in Russian Nineteenth-Century Provincial Amateur Music-Making” in The Slavonic and East European Review (95, no. 2, 2017)
• Henry Sapoznik, Klezmer: Jewish Music from Old World to Our World (1999)
• —”Jews and Jazz: Before the Beginning” lecture presented by Yiddish Book Center (2021)
• Lynn M. Sergeant, Harmony and Discord: Music and the Transformation of Russian Cultural Life (2011)
• —”A New Class of People: The Conservatoire and Musical Professionalization in Russia, 1861-1917” in Music & Letters (85, no. 1, 2004)
• Jeffrey Veidlinger, Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire (2009)
• Diana Voskoboynik, “The History of the Jews in Proskurov, Ukraine,” honors thesis (2002)
• Jeffrey Wollock, “Historic Records as Historical Records: Hersh Gross and His Boiberiker Kapelye” in ARSC Journal (2007)
• Miscellaneous entries in YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (online) 
• I.I. Yugan, “History of the Establishment of Military Orchestras and Their Role in the State of Russia” in History of Pedagogy and Education Professional Journal of the fourth Community (2018, translated from Russian via Google Translate)
• Miscellaneous records online including ancestry.com, the New York Philharmonic, and Ellis Island

*Thanks to Mark Berresford for sharing his conversation with Hot Lips Levine!

I don’t like to get personal here. Even writing a first-person sentence felt off. But now felt like a good time for this note. So please feel free to close this window if it’s not interesting; believe me, I get it.

It’s safe to call the topics on this blog “obscure.” My web analytics certainly point to that label. That’s not a passive-aggressive attempt to curry support. It’s a fact.

Nathan Glantz will probably never rake in clicks like Louis Armstrong, who will, in turn, never earn the online numbers of Michael Jackson—who might now be losing to Taylor Swift in terms of internet metrics, and even she probably yearns for the president’s numbers. He’s not a musician, but if we’re just focused on stats, that seems beside the point.

On the other hand, when it comes to obscurity, and Glantz, two videos come to mind: first, a video of his music and a great example of why I enjoy it:

Maybe this recording does and means nothing to you. Still, it’s one of hundreds of videos on YouTube featuring Glantz’s records, and one of the many with a clean transfer of his music—that someone took the time to engineer and upload—with information and comments, meaning people took the time to research and then discuss what they heard. The video has nearly 600 views. Compared to web traffic around Swift or POTUS, that’s not even the shells of peanuts. But if our measure of obscurity was the latest hit single or most recent political attack, what else would count as obscure?

Let’s assume 1% of those viewers actually heard the whole side and thought, “not bad!” That means six people, potentially worldwide, enjoyed the same record, made over a century ago, that lasts barely three minutes and was likely never intended for posterity. Compared to traffic around my desk, it’s remarkable.

That brings me to the other video on my mind this morning, an interview with film writer Glenn Gers, discussing “insignificant” work:

The writing on this website is not art; it’s a discussion of what one person finds interesting about music they enjoy. And readers may not agree with any of Gers’s points.

But then there’s his point about the “success” of having 36 people subscribed to a YouTube channel. He uses that term without irony or understatement. To really dumb down his point, it’s a big world, and the passage of time often wears away renown, so attracting an audience, period, even if it doesn’t fill a stadium—even if it doesn’t fill a conference room—is success, and success in this big world during your short lifetime is amazing.

This website has more than 36 readers! It certainly doesn’t have anywhere near 600. But, according to my dashboard, double digits of people take time out to read it, including many I’ve never met, will never meet, and who may not be in the same time zone or (apparently) hemisphere as me. Imagine that many people in a room together talking about Nathan Glantz? I imagine them in my room, and I am grateful.

I, me, Andrew, always appreciate the people who read, comment, share, and otherwise take time out for the information and ideas on my website. Thank you. You remind me that “obscure” is a matter of scale, and scale is just which system of measurement we use.

Also, thanks for reading this far. Next time, back to the music and much less “I.”

In 1936, the Mills Music Publishing Company published Secrets of Dance Band Success, a collection of essays by popular bandleaders. Alongside recommendations for instrumentation, selecting tempos, and personnel management, the book included the following guidance:

Don’t begin with the idea of giving people what they like. Offer them something new and different. If they go for it in Keokuk[, Iowa], they will go for it on Broadway [in New York City]. Give people what you’ve got and make them like it. That’s the whole secret.

It’s advice for the road-weary bandleader trying out their original arrangements between background music during dinner hour and “Three Little Fishies” or for the section player doubling five instruments who’d rather be soloing on one, a hard-won but ultimately optimistic aesthetic credo.

Good music succeeds, regardless of where it’s played or who’s hearing it. And all music has the potential to be good music, so don’t follow trends or appeal to the lowest common denominator. Be willing to give audiences something they haven’t heard before, especially if it’s something that reflects your skill and imagination.

For musicians at the time, this advice must have sounded either refreshing or naive. That might still be the case. People say we live in cynical times. Maybe that has been the case for a while. Perhaps things have simply gotten worse or just become more obvious. Still, individualism is at the heart of jazz and great American popular music, so for Independence Day, I wanted to share that bandleader’s encouraging words.

“Playing” may mean music, another creative endeavor, or anything done for the sake of living (rather than survival or obligation). Whatever or however you “play,” please remember these inspiring words about doing it sincerely and for the sheer love of it, courtesy of Guy Lombardo.

As a postscript, some readers might think Lombardo is an ironic source of advice for playing what you feel. He certainly met the criterion for “dance band success”; audiences packed venues to dance to his signature sweet, smooth, swaying sound. But he was also a critical pariah. Critics still dismiss his music as shallow. As Ricky Riccardi’s linked article above discusses, the fact that Louis Armstrong enjoyed Lombardo’s music still causes cognitive dissonance among some jazz purists.

On the other hand, Lombardo’s autobiography outlines a careful process of song selection and an intuitive sense of “reading” a room of dancers. It’s filled with examples of his attention to musical details such as instrumental texture and section balance. While he seemed grateful for his popularity and financial success, he loved playing for audiences. Guy Lombardo cared deeply about music that appealed to a broad fan base—and which paid for multiple homes. Personally, if I listen to a Guy Lombardo record back-to-back with a Duke Ellington side, I just think, “What a great era for popular music.”

Enjoy your Fourth of July and every day.

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.