The Pop of Yestercentury

The best definitions of swing come down to musical demonstrations rather than notated examples. Yet, in many cases, even eighth notes (“one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and”) seem to be kryptonite for it.

Somehow, the hot music of the twenties and early thirties, the jazz that many historians say was not yet Jazz, got it done. Take Prince Robinson’s tenor saxophone solo on “Worn Out Blues” with Clarence Williams’s Washboard Band:

It starts out smothering the listener in chains of choppy broken chords. Before a hip jazz historian might adjudge “old-fashioned,” Robinson responds to his own opening with looser phrasing in repeated note statements. He turns this little game of rhythmic contrast into a beautifully unified and utterly swinging solo. On a second take of the same tune from this session (403973-B), he doubles down on the tenser phraseology. For the out chorus in both takes, Robinson—ever the professional—matches trumpeter Charlie Gaines’s more “modern” lead. Robinson wasn’t old-fashioned; he was multi-fashioned.

He had been recording since the mid-twenties, and in all likelihood been playing for even longer. He would have heard many different styles, including the gradual loosening of the beat that came to be synonymous with jazz. Rather than viewing these changes as developments (as though jazz was moving from prototype phase to beta-testing), the man had heard plenty and knew how to use it all.

The technique of alternating swung and even eighths goes back at least to Coleman Hawkins’s seminal solo on “The Stampede” and its even eighth note break in 1926. Yet Robinson inserts these machine gun lines as an integral part of his playing in a post-Armstrong, pre-swing 1930 setting. That is a daring act of individualism.