If a critic makes an innocent typo today, you can leave a comment, post a response, or email an entire argument. Yet the critic who slammed your favorite album decades before your birth can’t even get a curt letter. Ironically, their comments might be the most grating. Yesterday’s criticism sometimes calcifies into common wisdom. 

Take George Frazier’s record review column in the December 1933 issue of Jazz Tango Dancing. It includes coverage of Columbia 2835-D: two sides by Benny Goodman directing a studio group including Gene Krupa, Joe Sullivan, and Jack Teagarden. Today, it seems like a pickup group of legends in the making. At the time, it was a new record to review, and it didn’t impress Frazier.

He compliments all the familiar names. Tenor saxophonist Art Karle earns special praise. Frazier also gives Columbia credit for its recent jazz releases. He’s otherwise dismissive of both “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues” and “Ain’t Cha’ Glad.” The review ends by pronouncing the disc “far superior to the general run of current American recordings,” but that’s an afterthought. Immediately before, in the second-to-last sentence, Frazier warns that “it would be wrong to imply that this disc is absolutely without any commercial taint.”

There’s nothing unusual or elitist about assessing jazz content for a jazz magazine. But Frazier goes beyond stylistic analysis. He’s not just suggesting readers endure those parts. He’s providing a warning. This jazz is “tainted” with popular elements. It’s the aesthetic equivalent of noting the presence of gluten to someone with celiac disease.

He singles out Teagarden’s concluding cadenza on “Ain’t ‘Cha Glad” as “a display of technique rather than [an] intrinsic hot break” right before bringing up the commercial contamination. Maybe the muted trumpets behind Goodman’s first chorus reminded him of “sweet” bands—another category established by filtration from what Frazier later calls the “true hot.” 

It’s harder to parse the objections to “I Gotta’ Right to Sing the Blues.” Frazier might have disliked its arranged introduction, prominent ensemble backgrounds, or the big theatrical band climaxes at the end of soloists’ phrases. He also finds Teagarden’s voice insufficiently rich.

Maybe Teagarden was mellowing his sound for this pop tune. A knowledgeable friend points out that Goodman kept his ears on the market. The musicians may not have noticed or even cared about the commercial connotations of Arthur Schutt’s arrangements. Maybe they appreciated touches like the coppery brass pecks behind the warm grain of Goodman’s clarinet. Goodman, Krupa, Schutt, and Teagarden worked together regularly. It’s unlikely anyone was complaining about playing these charts. 

Were these musicians adding these touches to achieve a pop sound? Or were they simply musicians making musical choices who happened to be waxing a record aimed at a broad audience? Were any of these labels on the musicians’ minds? Did Teagarden simply need a glass of water? As this friend also points out, these gentlemen may have been grateful just to play music for money during the Great Depression.  

Frazier likely didn’t have room to outline every offending touch, and it might have been unnecessary. There was enough there—meaning anything there—to remind listeners of other music that wasn’t hot or hip. Frazier wasn’t the first or last critic concerned with purifying jazz of its commercial contaminants, but this is a pristine sample in the archaeology of this critical tendency.

That tendency arose for valid reasons. Scholars often point out that the word “jazz” was once a marketing term as well as a musical label. It signified both Johnny Dodds’s and Ted Lewis’s clarinets. Some people just thought of Lewis’s top hat and stage comedy. Jazz lovers like Frazier had seen promoters, fans, journalists, and even musicians label almost any form of upbeat popular music as “jazz.”  By 1933, if not sooner, enough seemed to be enough for them. They wanted to set the public straight. They had to filter out “commercial” elements from an art form they loved that was still in its early stages of development. Frazier was helping people find real jazz and avoid—or at least be aware of—pop filler. It’s criticism as a buying guide, a consumer report for art music.

Opinions like these trickle down and embed themselves in discussions about music until they seem basic to the conversation. Gunther Schuller published Early Jazz three and a half decades after Frazier’s article. Reading Schuller’s book 60 years later, the stakes go beyond taste. Schuller mentions the “intrusion” by or the “intruder” of “Tin Pan Alley,” “commercial popular music,” and similar music throughout the book. Noting that “the first inroads of popular music into jazz” came early in the music’s history, Schuller surmises that “it was as if pop music and commercial interests had been standing by in the wings, ready to move in on the fledgling music.”  

The implication was that, during the twenties, a calculating, even predatory, entertainment industry forced things that didn’t belong into jazz without the creative input of jazz musicians. Seen in this light, enjoying a pop act is more than square; it’s fraternizing with the enemy. Pity the poor musicians who wanted to play the stuff. 

Early Jazz is now one of the most influential works of jazz history. 50 years after Frazier’s passing, this sharp distinction between “pop” and “jazz,” between commerce and art, remains popular enough. People like to dismiss criticism, and someone’s distaste shouldn’t affect your taste, but it’s interesting to note how often you slip on the spilled ink.

More recently, in 2023, one scholar noted that “in the 1920s, jazz arranging gave white men the ability to own and accumulate musical property and therefore expand their control over the market.” There’s a lot to discuss in this single phrase, let alone the rest of the paper. The cultural issues behind jazz history are important, and this paper focuses on a broader discussion of them. 

Yet this statement resembles a common musical argument about this period: bands got bigger, arrangements got more complicated, everyone was trying to get in on the jazz act, and audiences couldn’t discern the musical quality of Paul Whiteman versus Duke Ellington (which is like asking someone to say which love story is best).  

To this scholar’s credit, other parts of their paper critique the assumption that arrangement is by definition commercial and antithetical to real jazz. They also don’t rule out the possibility that people can have profit motives and creative goals. Yet some critics are not as fair. To some listeners, it doesn’t take much to stamp a musician as a sell-out, and why bother listening to a sell-out? 

These are some particularly illustrative but admittedly isolated examples. There are plenty more in academic journals and internet forums. In contrast to these assumptions about commercial music, bandleader Harold Leonard had high hopes for music that was sonic furniture to many people.

As Colin Hancock’s outstanding bio and playlist explain, Leonard was an incredibly popular musician in his time, leading a band that could get hot but likely didn’t achieve commercial success strictly playing jazz. In a column directed specifically at musicians leading hotel dance orchestras, he closes with a section titled “Leader Must Like His Work,” advising his fellow working musicians to respect the music even as they watch their bottom line:

Before closing, however, I want to stress one important point—the dance orchestra leader must be sincere. He must have a constant interest in his work, a love for it akin to that of the leader of a symphony orchestra. He must appreciate and study the music he plays and concentrate on the methods which he thinks will aid in the betterment of his orchestra’s playing. Only in this way can the dread monotony, the feeling of “the same old thing” that has brought grief to many a good orchestra, be avoided. The orchestra leader must be so intensely interested in his work, so absorbed in a constant attempt to improve the playing of his orchestra that any feeling of monotony will be lost in his love and appreciation of the work he is doing.

Frazier might have hated Leonard’s music, but even he would have appreciated the intent behind it. The supposed “taint” of commercialism could have just been different but equally sincere music. Whatever the commercial sound is at any given time, does it also get to be sound?

Leo Reisman is probably best known among jazz aficionados for featuring Bubber Miley both live and on his Victor recordings. An important collaborator with Duke Ellington and influential trumpet stylist, Miley had to play behind a screen with the white bandleader-violinist on live dates. Nearly a century later, Reisman usually comes up in discussions about disgusting racial politics or as the bandleader who happened to be there for Miley’s searing outbursts, like those of “Puttin’ on the Ritz”:

As for the rest of Reisman’s music—hundreds of records and some film appearances across an active musical career spanning decades—he more often played sophisticated dance music in commercial settings. Record collectors sometimes note that while Reisman could get hot on record during the twenties, he later segued into (relatively) sedate, lushly arranged music. For at least one commentator, this meant “abandoning the jazzy hot dance arrangements of the 1920s and turning to more banal, traditional ballroom sweetness.”

Some of Reisman’s music may have been labeled “jazz” during the twenties. A century later, there are important cultural and critical distinctions between jazz by the likes of Ellington and Louis Armstrong versus jazz-influenced popular artifacts once deemed “jazz,” not to mention music well outside the tradition by Reisman and others. In fact, most historical discussions of popular music don’t mention Reisman. Yet a contemporary profile allows some insight into his music (as opposed to its social context or the leader’s popular appeal and financial success).

In an article for Jacobs’ Band Monthly of November 1925, George Allaire Fisher singles out Leo Reisman as “the most successful, artistically [emphasis mine], of the many popular orchestras that are now so busily engaged in this broad land of ours in churning up sound waves.” The caption to the accompanying image of Reisman—posed like a pensive intellectual and determined artist with tumbling hair, head resting on an outstretched palm, and a reflective but calm stare into the camera—says that he “demonstrated the broad difference between ‘just [emphasis mine] jazz’ and ‘modern American music’ artistically presented.” Fisher also praises Reisman for  “dance music played so that it was at the same time as musically interesting and as intriguing [as] a dance rhythm.”

The praise rests on some elitist assumptions. There’s unfair (but common for the time) minimization of jazz. There’s also the implication that musical interest and danceability are two separate but unequal criteria. Fisher doesn’t disregard dancing; he even quotes the respected classical pianist Mischa Levitzki declaring Reisman’s work as “the best dance music [he] ever danced to.” Composer Darius Milhaud shared this opinion. But Fisher positions musical interest—pure formal listening—over dancing. There’s real deal musical appreciation, and then there’s this enjoyable activity that doesn’t get music in some absolute sense. Even Fisher’s choice of sources seems intentional. The implication is that dancing is fun, but these authorities from the world of European art music know art when they hear it.

This elitism feels ironic given Fisher’s elevation of popular music to an aesthetic object. He offers critical admiration for an orchestra playing popular tunes for dancers and shows. He’s not just profiling a band that rakes in cash and fans. He’s analyzing what makes their work musically worthwhile. For example, he describes the band’s “beauty of tone color… variety…symmetrical precision, melodic beauty…proportion…balance in instruments and arrangements.” Beyond having a good beat, Fisher unpacks what he hears under all the tapping feet:

While maintaining a steady rhythm, Reisman secures the effects even of rubatos and accelerandos by the way in which instruments are balanced against each other and by the subtlest sort of syncopation. He moreover uses every possible effect of tone color, shading, melodic variation, and dynamics so that there is a continuous but always pleasing variety … He also plans the rhythm and dynamics so that the music has a lift between the strong beats rather than a thud on each strong beat … the effect of the music is to carry them along …

Fisher’s use of technical terms, discussion of dynamics and other musical details, and his attention to the level of thoughtfulness in this music probably surprised many readers. This was popular music (as opposed to “serious music”). The suggestion that popular music could be serious probably confused some readers. It likely confused  Fisher’s colleagues at Jacobs’ Band Monthly.  Several of them thought that only conservatories and concert halls offered music worth considering as music. They certainly said so in their columns.

The Leo Reisman

The rejection of American popular music at the time included what many called “jazz,” whether it meant Louis Armstrong, Ted Lewis, or Leo Reisman. Jazz has now mostly shed its associations with popular music. We hear it in conservatories and concert halls. We read musicological analysis of Armstrong’s music once reserved for the likes of Bach. Reisman played symphonic, through-composed dance music that is largely forgotten in historical discussions. The suggestion that he could be “better than jazz” might now seem preposterous.

At the time of Fisher’s profile, Reisman and his band were playing at the Hotel Brunswick in Reisman’s hometown of Boston. The 28-year-old violinist was already an industry veteran. He began plugging songs in a music store by age 12, attended the New England Conservatory, and briefly worked in Baltimore as a symphony musician and salon orchestra leader before coming home to continue leading dance bands. By 1929, he was playing fancy spots in New York City while recording for Columbia and broadcasting over WBZ.

Reisman was also a cultural pioneer. In addition to hiring Miley, Reisman featured Johnny Dunn in his “Programme [sic] of Rhythm” concert at Boston’s Symphony Hall on February 19, 1928. Some audience members walked out to protest a Black musician playing onstage with the band. But critic and dancer Roger Pryor Dodge remembered Dunn playing “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” as the only highlight of hearing Reisman, who otherwise only played “the most discouraging trash…the same attempt to use [jazz] without respecting it.”

Reisman was not a jazz musician. Improvisation, the blues, and the unique rhythms of jazz were not his priorities. Yet he was a musician with his own musical priorities alongside his business motives. He outlined these priorities and advised dance band leaders and musicians throughout a series of columns for Jacobs’ Band Monthly. Reisman had ideas about dance music. It was not just a way to make a living or get his name on the marquee.

Plenty of listeners stop Reisman’s recording of “What is This Thing Called Love?” right after Miley’s full chorus paraphrase solo. Some wait until after the vocal to hear his obbligato behind the vocalist. They’re there for the jazz. The “sweet” stuff is too often dismissed as commercial filler that jazz artists had to endure.

Miley gets plenty of space on “What is This Thing Called Love?” But the ensemble work reminds us that the “filler” was the livelihood and craft of musicians like Reisman:

After the vocal, soft strings, with maybe a flute in the mix, create a thicker texture and slightly louder dynamics. Up to this point, the surface texture has been light: just trumpet and vocal with a few light violin tremolos and a prominent bass. The strings prepare the way for the full ensemble. The verse can sometimes seem like an afterthought, so introducing both the full band and the verse in one sweep makes an impact. It also introduces a purely symphonic effect, contrasting with the jazz solo and sweet vocal with jazz accompaniment. The subtone clarinet adds more atmospheric contrast; we start with hot lyricism and end with whispering introspection.

The whole thing is so well choreographed in its exploitation of texture and scale. The carpet of strings, dramatic crescendos, and ballroom-friendly atmosphere may not work for everyone. But they do work on their terms.

Ironically, a romantic title like “Twilight, the Stars, and You” shows us the hotter side of the Reisman band and a possible peek into what Fisher heard around this time:

This might be what Dodge meant by “use [of jazz] without respecting it.” There’s a solid beat for dancing. It doesn’t have the same elasticity and accent of jazz, but it’s far from sleepy. There are saxophones, the quintessential jazz instrument of the Jazz Age, but they’re playing smooth, legato melody over pumping bass with crisp brass syncopations. The sax and violin duet doesn’t try to be jazz. Instead, it spins ballroom melodic deconstruction: the sax keeps the tune available to the listener the whole time while the violin takes it apart.  

There’s some hot trumpet followed by violin and woodwinds, cooling things down. The trumpet returns, muted and soft, right before a rhythmic ensemble. A clarinet obbligato injects more jazz flavor, but things end on a chiming piano coda. The arrangement lets the musicians and dancing listeners have their hot and get their sweet, too.

On the other hand, “Just a Gigolo” may be what collectors who lament Reisman’s later work had in mind. It’s as sweet and symphonic as it gets—but not banal:

A muted trumpet hints at the melody over descending winds, starting the record on a curiously suspended feel for a dance record. A brighter, clarinet-led sound finishes the intro before the first chorus with strings. It’s tempting to dismiss this as sentimental, generic, or dated. Still, the violins’ slurred articulation makes the melody sound like it’s intoned through a resonator. Things become popular for a reason.

When the brass takes over the next chorus, they’re backed by reedy saxes (perhaps led by the tenor). Brass over saxes is nothing innovative per se, but the sections are not in dialogue like on a Fletcher Henderson chart. They’re massed for a voluminous effect that makes this already expanded band sound even bigger and richer. A symphonic-style transition leads to the verse, where those brawny saxes take the lead with lower brass adding further depth. And we’re only halfway through the record.

The level of attention devoted to cutting a three-minute record is inspiring. Critics may describe this music as “over-arranged,” which begs the question of whether music can ever be over-improvised. Of course, it all depends on the music.

Music That’s Also Popular

No one would expect a jazz documentary to include Reisman. Most of his repertoire did not sound anything like jazz as it’s commonly understood today. Jazz purists sometimes reject his music for that reason. Unsurprisingly, jazz musicians of the time (just like today) were less doctrinaire. Some were just earning paychecks. But interviews and diaries show that many musicians enjoyed playing in different musical environments.

Reading some later coverage, it can seem like this was music exclusively for brainwashed consumers shuffling background music at social events. But the attentive dancers who appreciated the sounds on top of a steady beat; the listeners, seated and dancing, who savored the musical details; the musicians who enjoyed the music (and the steady gig): they all heard something.

Especially in the pre-rock era, jazz had a significant impact on American popular music, and many musicians moved freely between the two worlds. These interactions between jazz and popular music may earn the latter a passing mention in jazz histories. But for some jazz historians and writers, these are compromises (not exchanges). They hear jazz influences in popular music as “close-but-no-cigar” imitations or shameless appropriation.

You can find examples of subpar music in any genre, and there are plenty of people ready to dissect them, but analysis of the best work may be swept aside. That includes many dance bands; big bands (as opposed to “swing” or “jazz big bands”); studio orchestras; and even so much well-orchestrated, sincerely performed music filed under “Easy Listening” by the local download conglomerate. The best examples of twentieth-century instrumental popular music often land in historical limbo. They’re not jazz, and they’re no longer popular, but they are music. What can we listen for now?

Going forward, I will cross-publish here on WordPress and on Substack. If you’re reading this and want to keep reading, you don’t need to do anything. But if you prefer, you can now also read my posts at Substack. Just click the pile of papers below to subscribe there.

Also, thank you so much for reading!

Here’s an unusual find (for me) from browsing used record shops during a vacation: a 78-rpm recording on a South African label featuring a widely known band from that country:

I’m unable to precisely date this record. Gallotone Singer was a label from the Gallo (Africa) Ltd. company, operating out of Johannesburg, and in use by at least the mid-30s. Sonny’s Jazz Revelers was also active around the same time. Directed by saxophonist Sonny Groenewald, the group originated in Cape Town and toured the country, playing a blend of jazz and their hometown’s dance music.

Sources I’ve read classify Sonny’s Jazz Revelers as part of the langarm tradition, a South African ballroom dance style and social gathering popular among Black communities. Langarm developed out of vernacular dances with a pronounced influence from American jazz. The saxophone is vital to the music and setting, often played with a prominent nasal tone and vibrato.

On this record, instead, the two-saxophone lead plays with a rich, bright sound and varying degrees of collective improvisation. The pianist receives a good share of solo space. Their dialoging phrases and ringing syncopations add to the overall light spirit and heavily accented rhythm.

The Revelers also trot through beloved jazz standards from the twenties. The repertoire, combined with the double saxophones and earnest melody choruses, reminded me of dance bands from that era: a warm, rhythmic throwback. An astute musician-friend compared it to a mid-twenties dinner club band—if they got to record electrically!

I’m unsure how a South African record ended up in a record store bin in the mountains of New England, but it was mine for two dollars. I hope you enjoy it. Please note that all of the above is a broad summary of cursory research. Further information and corrections are welcome.

Reed player Garvin Bushell began his career accompanying vocalists in the early 20s:

He played with some of the greatest names in jazz, even providing some of the earliest recorded examples of jazz bassoon:

Bushell moved on to playing lead alto for Cab Calloway and Chick Webb during the swing era:

He was still playing during the so-called “Dixieland revival”:

But he also performed with ultra-moderns like John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy:

Bushell heard and played a lot of music. His autobiography was bound to have great stories and insights into jazz history. But he was just as fascinating when it came to describing the sound of jazz across six decades: regional styles, different approaches to blues, the links and distinctions between ragtime and jazz, musical cross-pollination between cultures, and more.

His references to two- and four-beat styles in early jazz are especially intriguing. This is a popular topic among historians and musicians. It’s safe to say that the recollections of an ear witness published in 1988 are now part of the discourse. But even on their own, Bushell’s comments remain an insightful travelogue and a peek into unexplored routes in jazz history.

Rhythms and Regions

Bushell’s autobiography, Jazz from the Beginning, was first published in 1988 with a revised edition in 1998. It expands on (and corrects) a lot of material from an article published in three parts for The Jazz Review in 1959, “Garvin Bushell and New York Jazz in the 1920s.” Nat Hentoff gets the byline, but it’s mostly Bushell’s words. It’s telling that Bushell’s autobiography incorporates a large chunk of a regional exploration.  Geography is a significant part of his musical accounts as well as his personal journey. He traveled extensively, starting when he was barely into his teens, amidst a lot of exciting changes in American popular music.

Bushell first left his hometown of Springfield, Ohio, in 1916 as part of a traveling circus band. The group played in Florida and “parts of the South” as well as Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky.  The music, as well as the experience, left a deep impression. Decades later, alongside remembrances of long hours and lowered standards of hygiene, he recalled the circus band’s repertoire and rhythmic feel:

“…we’d ride on a wagon for the parade and play ‘Beale Street Blues’ or ‘The Memphis Blues’ or ‘The Entertainer’ in fast tempo, or else some old military marches. Other bands played them two to the bar, [but] we’d play them four to the bar.”

Bushell’s bandmates were from Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee, but he grew up hearing bands play in four. He points out that “the jazz bands, however, that I’d heard in Springfield or had heard about [e.g., Freddie Keppard’s Original Creole Orchestra from New Orleans] played in four.” He also notes that among early vaudeville musicians, circa 1920–21, “everybody played four beats.”

Bushell associated the “‘two’ tempo” with ragtime and four with jazz, going back to his earliest music lessons:

“Ragtime, as it was called then, had the technical essence that was later required in jazz. While ragtime was always played in a moderate or fast ‘two’ tempo, jazz merely slowed it down to a fast or medium ‘four.’ Most of all, the old rags had a melodic pattern. Therefore, I began to study rags on piano and omit the melodic pattern, just improvising on the harmonic pattern.”

When Bushell moved to New York City in 1919, he heard that “Negro dance bands in New York played fox trot rhythm and still adhered to the two-beat rhythmic feel.” He does mention “dance bands” here, as opposed to the “jazz bands” he heard playing in four. While the two terms were often interchangeable in American popular music after World War I, Bushell’s usage seems intentional.

In the same passage, he singles out Tony Sbarbro, drummer for the ODJB, as “about the only jazz [emphasis mine] player I heard doing it in two.” Bushell is writing about jazz going back to years before the ODJB released what many consider the first jazz record. Harsh critics depict two-beat jazz as already outdated by the middle of the twenties. Maybe some listeners accustomed to jazz in four heard what the ODJB was doing in the late teens and thought they were rebels!

Who Played How, Where, and When?

Later commentators usually discuss the comparatively looser four-beat feel as a Southern influence during jazz’s development. Some narratives treat the two-beat style as a relic of an archaic eastern style supplanted by the migration of Southern musicians, especially New Orleanians in Chicago. It can seem like the twenties started in two and ended in four. But one of the earliest working jazz musicians tells us that, by the start of the decade, playing in two was rare.

Most of Bushell’s colleagues in the circus band were from lower Southern states. Ohio is a smaller midwestern state that borders two Southern states, so the shared rhythmic approach may not be surprising. Vaudeville, on the other hand, was a popular nationwide entertainment by the turn of the century. Bushell tells us that most, if not all, of the musicians on the circuits played in four. That indicates an early and widespread adoption, suggesting perhaps that:

• The majority of vaudeville musicians were of Southern or Southern-adjacent origin.
• Southern musicians were already a well-established influence.
• Different musical communities across the country shared parallel tendencies.
• Professional musicians in this part of the industry were developing common repertoire and musical practices.
• It was all mere coincidence.

Jazz scholars can offer better hypotheses. I’m comfortable ruling out essentialist explanations. Bushell’s remarks remind us that there were multiple musical communities reflecting a range of cultural and musical identities. Saxophonist, composer, and music historian Allen Lowe often discusses the excitingly messy, non-linear path of American music and how Black culture in particular was not a monolith. Regions, class, and many other distinctions shaped different perspectives and aesthetics, even as individuals, communities, and styles bridged and influenced each other.

In New York City, for example, musicians born there or who “had been in the city so long they were fully acclimated” were, by Bushell’s account, trying to forget Southern traditions, including playing blues and other “low element” music.” Nonetheless, Bushell still talks about jazz bands in the Big Apple, groups who “improvised in the cabarets” with “a different timbre from the big dance  [emphasis mine] bands.”

He describes a distinct form of jazz that “leaned to ragtime conception—a lot of notes” without a blues sensibility. “There wasn’t an Eastern performer who could really play the blues,” admits Bushell. “We later absorbed it from the Southern musicians we heard, but it wasn’t original with us.”

This vestigial branch of the jazz history tree is not as well-documented as other styles. By 1922, Bushell says he and fellow eastern musicians “were certainly influenced by New Orleans jazz.” Southern musicians, for example, from Louisiana and Texas, were also influencing players in the Midwest. That means he was a witness to a brief but fascinating and often unexplored chapter in jazz history.

Musician, Witness, and Historian

Of course, these are excerpts from a single musician’s observations made decades later. Bushell also makes a lot of associations about parts of the U.S. regarding how musicians played (as well as some comments about how well they played it). Like most generalizations, attributing a particular musical style to a specific region can get tricky.

But this is what Bushell heard, and he was far from an ordinary witness. He was also able to recall and document what he heard, which isn’t always a given. I’m not a creative or a psychologist, so I won’t analyze professional musicians. But I believe that deeply rooted practices don’t always lend themselves to self-conscious analysis or precise linguistic description. Most musicians were probably too busy playing music to take notes on music history. They were participants, not chroniclers. This is not a criticism. Bushell doubled as history maker and chronicler as well as obbligato clarinet, lead alto, bassoonist, and whatever else the music demanded.

Here’s six minutes of Bushell’s smart, vivid spoken soundography:

I didn’t worry about my regional accent until I got to college. My speech didn’t change when I got there, but for the first time, I met people who commented on my speech. They never insulted me, but for the first time, I wondered if I “talked weird” or “didn’t speak properly.”

One professor enjoyed repeating certain words I used when answering questions in class, playfully drawing attention to my accent while demonstrating the proper pronunciation. They didn’t correct me on names or jargon. They’d just find some unremarkable word amusingly incorrect. If I dropped an “r,” they’d lodge it back into place. If I slurred a fricative, they’d over-enunciate it (e.g., “THose THings, Andrew?”). They especially liked to sharpen my softened “t’s” (“Yes, in the capiTal…”).

My Spanish professor was more diplomatic. When my regional accent came out—for example, asking “day don-day err-ess” and not “¿de dónde eres?” or accenting the wrong half of “hablo”—they would offer corrections in a neutral tone. They also politely addressed some of the pronunciations I picked up from Puerto Rican and Dominican friends back home. My Italian professor was not as generous when an occasional Sicilian pronunciation slipped into my answers. I grew up hearing some phrases from neighbors. I thought of them as just another way to speak Italian, but this Milanese-born speaker literally didn’t want to hear it.

In their own way, all three teachers were telling me “that’s not the way it should sound.” They were teaching me that proper pronunciation, inflection, and rhythm were just as important as vocabulary and grammar. Without the right sounds, I might be saying something but not speaking the language.

For my Spanish teacher, it was a practical matter. The correct sound allowed students to communicate effectively within that linguistic idiom. My Italian teacher was concerned with authenticity. For them, variations obscured the more refined usage. “People may speak any way they choose, but they’re not speaking Italian.”

My amateur elocution coach’s suggestions didn’t make the same impact. Beyond the fact that they were teaching a political science course and not an English seminar, their guidance pointed toward social convention rather than linguistic precision or cultural pride. It felt like a stylistic preference rather than a claim about cultural authenticity. They objected to how I said what they clearly understood.

“That’s not the way it should sound” could also be a statement of elementary music criticism. The notes, the pitches and rhythms may be correct. But if elements like timbre, articulation, phrasing, or dynamics are off, the music might “sound funny” enough to fall short of some aesthetic threshold. It’s something more than a local derivative or creative choice. Depending on the listener, missing the mark might mean more than disliking the music; they may hear a crass imitation, dilution, or an insult to that tradition and its community.

These distinctions often appear in discussions of all the pre-, para-, and formerly-known-as-jazz recorded during the twenties. Ironically, Jazz Age listeners consumed a lot of music that, today, wouldn’t earn the name even by the loosest standards. A century ago, “jazz” was as much a marketing term as a musical description. It’s now easy to dismiss a lot of this music based on anything even approaching jazz content (which too often leads listeners to dismiss it as music entirely). Yet the twenties also produced a lot of music audibly influenced by what is now commonly accepted as authentic jazz of the time.

Take Joseph Samuels’s “Bugle Call Rag.” The tune is one of the earliest jazz standards. It’s received hundreds of hot treatments, starting from its inaugural recording by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings (two of whose members composed the tune), less than a year before Samuels and his band recorded it in May 1923.

At the time, New Orleans-style jazz (or New Orleans via Chicago-style jazz) was growing in popularity and influence to become the dominant style of jazz. It is an obvious influence in terms of repertoire and instrumentation in Samuels’s “Bugle.” The musicians don’t sound hesitant within these influences. They’re not struggling to play together or maintain musical momentum. Still, in terms of rhythm, inflection, and emotional impact, Samuels’s record may subvert contemporary expectations about what “jazz” was supposed to sound like:

Beyond flatted notes or bent tones, there’s not much of a blues sensibility here. That might be a summary judgment against this record being “jazz.” There are shades of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band without the intense, sometimes manic energy found on their records. The Samuels group is far from the earthy, seamless polyphony of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. Musicologists often discuss jazz musicians doing things “between the beats.” This band thrives on the beat—specifically up-beats and off-beats. Their syncopation is deliberate and intense. Their eighth notes are confidently symmetrical.

Jules Levy Jr.’s clean tone, pinpoint attack, and sheer volume make for a sober lead. With the second trumpet in close harmony, this group revels in the ringing metallic blast of a brass band. Listeners accustomed to the styles of Oliver, Louis Armstrong, or Bix Beiderbecke may dismiss Levy as stiff. Or they might hear his melodic bedrock creating dynamic tension with Samuels and Ephriam Hannaford’s trombone. Oliver, a musician who insisted on a solid lead, might have appreciated Levy’s work for its directness and solidity. Hannaford’s gruff smears border on self-effacing, but they fill out the ensemble while contrasting with Levy’s bright melody and Samuels’s piercing commentary.

The leader’s novelty style—scoops, slurred lines, tone wilting and slicing—sticks out from the start. “Gas pipe” clarinet often prioritizes comedy. Based on recollections by Eddie Condon and other contemporaries, this style already embarrassed some musicians. It’s an obvious departure from the high-flying runs and statelier presence of New Orleanians trained in collective improvisation. For later jazz writers, the style was synonymous with corn and inauthenticity.

It’s easy to hear Samuels as a joker. But disliking the comedy nearly a century later doesn’t mean he was a poor comedian. Plus, his clarinet makes its own musical sense. It’s the only woodwind in the front line, alongside two trumpets and a trombone, atop a voluminous tuba. Those spikes of reed amidst all that brass create a distinct texture. So do the tart notes piercing Jules Levy Jr.’s lead trumpet.

The arrangement includes an improvised solo chorus, now practically an axiom in jazz. Yet this one comes from a pre-Louis Armstrong hot music continuum (an oxymoron for some purists). The soloist’s tone is plush rather than brilliant. There are no spectacular displays of technique tossed out with sweatless ease. At the time, a solo was a facet of the ensemble; it was seasoning but not the main course. Here, the band parting ways for a lone voice creates a novel effect. What trumpeter wouldn’t be proud of this warm, plump tone and wordless couplets briefly taking the regiment in a different direction?

Joseph Samuels and his band did not swing like any of the landmark jazz players of the time or since. Their rhythmic approach coalesced among musicians from other parts of the country with different musical priorities and cultural backgrounds. On paper, there’s no reason to think these musicians would sound like musicians from New Orleans. It might be the equivalent of assuming that New Yorkers should should sound like Bostonians.

But is the difference closer to what my Spanish teacher pointed out, and maybe even what offended my Italian instructor, or is it more like whatever my politics professor was getting at? Is it jazz with a different accent, its own regional dialect, or just linguistic butchery?

I had several courses with that political scientist/diction coach. The more they repeated my words aloud, the more I repeated theirs in my head. People can easily guess the origins of my speech, but it was hard to place this teacher’s vocal mannerisms.

They mostly spoke with a mid-Atlantic, “general American” accent. But they pronounced certain words with a form of what might have been Received Pronunciation, a proper-sounding English accent. But the sound depended more on sentence placement than the word itself. For example, “after” never stood out until it began a sentence and became “Aft-hur.” At other times, words took on a nasal purposefulness. The professor would introduce a contrasting idea with “How-AY-ver…” Random regional inflections materialized during hurried sentences. Something would be “dam-neer im-PAH-Cybil” or “sound an oh-ful lot like” something or other.

Maybe they lived in several different places. Or perhaps they were putting on airs. Was it a genuine expression or a contrived fabrication? If this individual was faking it, but it still sounded interesting, would it matter? Is there more to adopting an accent than just its sound?

If you love jazz but must know who took that two-bar break, or if the identity of the third sax chair enriches your listening, then you’ve probably checked, relied on, doubted, or otherwise consulted Brian Rust‘s works. Rust wrote multiple discographies, books, articles, and more. He’s probably best known for Jazz Records: 1897–1942 and the American Dance Band Discography, 1917–42. These two tomes raised the bar for discographical research and continue to guide listeners’ experiences. Plenty of record collectors and listeners still swear by them.

While many of Rust’s other works focus on a particular record company or musician, Jazz Records and the ADB cover a wide scope. Overlap and contradiction come as no surprise, especially since they raise two tricky questions: what’s the definition of “jazz,” and what’s the difference between a jazz band and a dance band?

The questions may seem so broad as to be meaningless. Few listeners need to classify music to enjoy it. Examining how Rust determined what got into each book may even seem like hairsplitting. But broad questions lead to interesting guesses, and many listeners who don’t seem to care about labels still rely on them. As for Rust, he was a passionate jazz aficionado and a discriminating ear witness to a lot of music. His spilled ink continues to inform many listeners, so it’s worth considering the thought behind the data.

Jazz is Music

While it can sometimes seem that way, Brian Rust did not write the first jazz discography. As Rust told audio engineer and friend Nick Dellow (whom he had known for over 30 years), he knew and admired pioneering works like Delaunay’s Hot Discography and Carey and McCarthy’s multi-edition Jazz Directory (especially the directory’s structure). Still, he felt they didn’t provide enough information about the records and left too many gaps.

Gifted with a memory like a hard drive, Rust had been compiling data for decades. He began thinking about writing his own discography while working as a music programmer for the BBC shortly after World War II. In 1960, he left that position to work on Jazz Records full-time, self-publishing it the following year.

As music historian Elijah Wald notes, “Rust was not trying to create a jazz canon” but “compiling reference works for record collectors.” Jazz Records lists hard data about recording sessions and records but begins with an abstraction right from the title. Stating a precise definition of jazz has been problematic since the word’ introduction, but Rust’s concept isn’t much more exact. He doesn’t even start with one kind of jazz.

From at least the introduction to the second edition of Jazz Records (published a year after the first), Rust drew a clear line between “traditional” and “modern” jazz, noting that his discography focuses on the first. Understandably, Rust wanted to impose limits in terms of space. Those practical boundaries keep the work manageable.

He also explains that this scope is for the sake of readers specifically interested in traditional jazz, and by extension, a timesaver for listeners focused on the modern variety. These are all practical, even considerate reasons expressed in neutral language. Rust may be more interested in traditional jazz, but in Jazz Records, this interest comes off as simply one listener’s preference.

In other works, Rust was more candid about his opinion of modern jazz. “I refuse to accept modern jazz as being any kind of jazz in the real sense of the word,” he told Dellow, going as far as to say, “it actually nauseates me.” Of course, some listeners enjoy both varieties. But Rust was writing a book about music that he classified as jazz to the exclusion of whatever some people had started calling “jazz.” Rust outlines his scope in terms of what’s not there. He relies more on implication and association than description and identity. This approach resembles the suggestion that “if you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know”—which suffices until the discussion broaches all the things that are not jazz.

(Many thanks to the preeminent Armstrong biographer Ricky Riccardi for pointing out this phrase as a modified version of Armstrong’s actual quote on the cover of Time, February 1949: “When you got to ask what it [i.e., music] is, you never get to know.”)

By the fourth edition (1975), Rust’s introduction included more musical language. He states the “basic precept of [traditional] jazz” was “improvisation (or what sounded like it) on a melody against a steady rhythmic pattern in 2/4 or 4/4.” For such a “basic” precept, it lays down some firm lines. Excluding things like triple meter, chordal improvisation, and free tempo leaves out a lot of music!

Including music that sounds improvised might expand the boundaries, but how far will vary by listener. “What sounds like improvisation” also describes a lot of music, not just jazz. Arguably, every type of music aims to create an energetic, organic performance that “hides” all the preparation. To take an obvious and broad example, the best performances of European art music, especially chamber works, receive praise for their sense of spontaneity, the way the musicians phrase and breathe together, the naturalness they bring to pieces that may have been performed perhaps thousands of times over multiple centuries. A lot of that music is made on top of a steady duple meter pulse (in many cases by a continuo that resembles a rhythm section in musical function).

Rust refers to something that listeners recognize when they hear it. There are obvious musical differences between what a Baroque violinist plays over La Folia variations versus a jazz clarinetist on “I Got Rhythm.” Rust isn’t a musicologist, and Jazz Records isn’t a music theory textbook; further elaboration was beyond his scope. But it’s still unclear what makes some examples of jazz “sound like” improvisation enough to be jazz. Rust often singles out his favorite improvised music; he’s less generous in naming exemplary music that sounds improvised. Like most things that are only identified through experience, they’re apparent to the person experiencing them but often remain mysterious to others.

In Jazz Records, Rust says that the impression of improvisation—real or really convincing— defines jazz. Elsewhere, Rust says that jazz doesn’t have to be improvised, but the best jazz is improvised. In The Dance Bands (a different book from ADB), he explains how Paul Whiteman, by trying to orchestrate jazz, failed to grasp a “basic fact” about it: “the most free and spontaneous results were obtained from musicians who knew and understood the idiom and each other.” From this perspective, improvisation may not define jazz, but it is an indicator of the quality of any jazz performance.

Rust was either defining jazz as an improvised music or as music that is best when it’s improvised. That means written music has a higher burden of proof to be considered “jazz,” or it’s at a critical disadvantage when it comes to quality. Either way, there’s an underlying attempt to assess jazz content.

Degrees of Jazz

In the introduction to the fourth edition of Jazz Records, Rust uses phrases like “jazz, actual or alleged” and “jazz music, or what was regarded as such.” He implies some difference between jazz, jazz-influenced music, and popular music that uses the term with varying degrees of musical accuracy.

Reading between the lines, some broad categories emerge:

• “Actual” jazz that people may or may not have danced to after World War I and during the twenties
• “Alleged” jazz that people thought was jazz and used for dancing during that period
• “Dance music with obvious jazz flavoring” (presumably, as opposed to dance music with other degrees of jazz flavoring)
• “Romantic popular music”
• Actual jazz “reactivated in modern form” (i.e., music of the big band era)

Rust also makes it a point to include various precursors and offshoots of jazz, such as:

• Vocal records and blues singers accompanied by jazz musicians
• “Important and interesting” ragtime
• Music with syncopated rhythm from 20 years before jazz (presumably meaning the turn of the century, since Rust states that the Original Dixieland Jazz Band “made the first recording acknowledged to be of ‘jass’ [sic] music”)

These are not explicit styles or rigid categories. They probably weren’t even conscious distinctions for Rust. They’re broad associations of different musical and cultural objectives, all of which overlap to varying degrees. They raise more questions about a specific musician or band than they allow neat sorting by general musical qualities. Whether pre- and para-jazz belong in a jazz discography is a subject unto itself.

The point is that jazz is an entity that’s distinct from all that other music, even as that other music capitalizes on it. There is an authentic form of jazz found in increasingly pure forms, and by extension, that may be incorporated in other music to the point of dilution. That other music may contain different degrees of jazz, but it’s still not jazz per se. This assumption allows Rust to admit a lot of records based on their having some amount of “jazz interest,” while leaving the door open to others and slamming it shut on many more.

Joseph Samuels is a useful example. The section on Samuels in Jazz Records begins with a caveat:

The following titles from the vast number recorded under Joseph Samuels’s direction between 1919 and 1925 are of some interest as jazz; others may prove of comparable interest.

Like so many other bandleaders, Joseph Samuels was audibly influenced by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, one of Rust’s most beloved jazz artists. But Samuels could dial up the novelty effects beyond even the ODJB’s expectations and played a lot of schmaltz all in a day’s work. He often led large combinations with a starched brass band aesthetic that was tensely syncopated and rhythmic in a way that was hundreds of literal and figurative miles from New Orleans. Samuels was also more flexible when it came to instrumentation and the selection of sidemen. Depending on the band’s size, its arrangements were more complex compared to the ODJB and similar groups.

Jazz? Jazz-like dance music? Ragtime with a distinguishable influence on or from jazz? Improvised? Spontaneous-sounding arrangement? Whatever the music is matters less than what readers won’t find if they’re using Jazz Records to shop Samuels’s records: all the waltzes and 6/8 numbers; romantic popular songs with slow tempos and vocalists emoting about love; novelty instrumental solos; and other music we know is not jazz—unless there’s an errant hot solo or collectively improvised ensemble.

Rust wrote Jazz Records for like-minded record collectors. As Wald points out, Rust “thought it most useful to separate jazz recordings from the more general fare included in his equally voluminous ADB. There are several years between the first editions of Jazz Records and ADB. It’s unclear when Rust conceived of or began writing ADB, but he likely distinguished between jazz and jazz-influenced dance bands throughout his life.

But how did he evaluate bands that rely mostly or exclusively on written music with an obvious jazz influence but still don’t make the cut? If they don’t have improv, do they mean anything?

Bands That Played Music

Published in 1975 with a second, presumably expanded edition four years later, ADB is even harder to pin down in terms of musical content. Rust begins by noting that, since many other works already cover jazz, this discography will focus on dance bands “that provided entertainment, pleasure, diversion, and relaxation…from the sweet romantic styles of Guy Lombardo and Wayne King to the vivacious ‘swing’ of the Dorseys, from the performances bearing indelible date-stamps somewhere in the twenties to timeless masterpieces by, often, the same bands during the same or later periods.”

Providing “entertainment, pleasure, diversion, and relaxation…” describes the social and cultural role of different bands. Jazz also accompanied those activities and feelings, but Rust uses musical language to curate it. He focuses on extra-musical considerations for his dance band discography. ADB assembles different bands that played a range of music so broad it’s almost beside the point. A reader might assume that “dance bands” refers to a social phenomenon and that the music was an accessory to other activities (while jazz has an artistic purpose beyond its social dressing).

Rust’s examples add to the musical ambiguity. Jazz Records describes swing as “jazz reactivated in modern form,” so it’s unclear why, by at least the fourth edition, Dorsey’s big band work gets double-booked. To be fair, that might have been a concession since Rust was now using an outside publisher. Earlier editions of Jazz Records stick to Dorsey’s looser small-group dates. Regardless, Dorsey’s swing, King’s waltzes, and Lombardo’s “sweetest music this side of heaven” accomplish very different musical ends.

Things get stickier from there. A waltz by Nathan Glantz like “A Kiss in the Dark” is, of course, found in the ADB. It’s not hot, but it is a beautiful Victor Herbert song showcasing the saxophonist’s mellifluous runs and rich sustained tones—a revelation for anyone who only associates Glantz with laughing effects and a sound like Crisco. It’s music that people happened to have danced to, but for some, it may also reward pure listening.

“San,” on the other hand, is a mostly orchestrated hot number. It’s also an exciting example of what “jazz” meant to Glantz and his fellow New York City studio regulars. Close listening reveals the invention on display when it comes to melodic paraphrase: selling the song while making it one’s own.

Maybe that’s why Rust included it in both the jazz and dance band discographies. “Who Loves You Now”? is another hot rhythmic side with plenty of solos, but it’s only listed in ADB. (One very reliable source attributes this side to Adrian Schubert, not Glantz, but the point stands.)

These inconsistencies don’t invalidate Rust’s work. Humans can still enjoy music even when it’s not correctly categorized, though they may assume things based on where they find the music. It’s still interesting to consider a distinction—one that divides roughly 4,000 pages of music—that might seem like a supermarket having separate aisles for “produce” and “citrus foods.”

The closest musical qualifier Rust provides for dance bands is a distinction between playing dance music “hot” versus “straight.” “Hot style” as allows solo or ensemble improvisation, while the straight approach “does not deviate as much as a quaver from what is written in the score.” In The Dance Bands, Rust explains that the “best kind of dance music…used the ‘hot’ idiom [i.e., improvisation] as flavoring.” He practically brags about how, even as a little boy, before hearing “real jazz,” he still “knew the difference between the best kind of dance music, which used the ‘hot’ idiom as flavoring as an expert chef uses pepper, and the more ordinary kind, which did not. In other words, the best dance music gets as close to jazz as possible.

The best kind of jazz is improvised, and the best dance music uses the hot idiom, which is improvisation. This reductio ad jazz means that, when there is more than one player per part in a band, the bar for meeting that “basic precept” of jazz is much higher. The larger the band, the more it tends to rely on written music, memorization, rehearsal, routined solos, etc. Rust didn’t comment on whether or how much planning is compatible with authentic jazz. But he implies there is such a thing as authentic jazz. His full comment about Paul Whiteman is illustrative:

While it could be scored, the best, most free, and spontaneous results [in jazz] were obtained from musicians who knew and understood the idiom and each other. Any other approach would be at best paying a kind of lip service to the new idiom.

“Improvisation” begins to seem like a shorthand for something real that some musicians may omit, fake, or simply botch. That means understanding “jazz” means watching out for phonies. Jazz can be “contaminated.” It’s music that is vulnerable to misunderstanding; beyond playing jazz poorly, people can get it wrong. Rust wants to get jazz right.

On the other hand, “music for dancing” includes everything from the one-step to the mazurka. ADB is full of waltzes, tangos, Paso Dobles, and fox trots at all ends of the hot spectrum. There’s not enough space to discuss the “best kind” of any one of these kinds of music. Lumping them all together in this way, the reader might assume that such considerations aren’t as important. For Rust and many others, those things are either not as vulnerable to misunderstanding or the errors are not as consequential. The stakes are higher when it comes to jazz.

Musical Value

It’s hard to imagine a writer compiling a 2,200-page discography just to delineate what shouldn’t be called jazz. Rust obviously appreciated both “jazz” and “dance bands” on their own terms. In the introduction to his book on British dance bands, Rust credits Paul Whiteman and Art Hickman for showing his home country “that ‘modern’ dance music was not the general mayhem that detractors of real jazz claimed it to be.” He provides a passionate defense of all that not-jazz against its critics in The Dance Bands:

Interwar-period dance music stemmed from the original jazz…Jazz characteristics or flavoring usually give a more inspired and inspiring performance, [but] the average dance band on either side of the Atlantic was not a jazz band and had no pretensions in that direction. It thus seems a little unfair, if not stupid, for jazz “experts” to dismiss as worthless the work of many of the great bands merely because they do not play music coming within the narrow confines of jazz definition.

“Not jazz” is not necessarily a criticism of (whatever counts as) dance music for Rust. But even the book titles illustrate a hierarchy. One is a discography of recordings of jazz, a (supposedly) specific form of music, while the other collects bands playing all types of music. One frames an art form, and the other frames everything else that helped people dance, relax, forget their troubles, and do other things as music played.

Different references to chronology also suggest his critical priorities. The first two editions of Jazz Records covered jazz through 1931, with later editions expanding through 1942. Rust wanted to keep the book’s length manageable even as he covered more music. He also positions the recording ban between August 1942 and November 1944 as a point of demarcation for “modern” jazz. The scope of time in Jazz Records is a practical and musical consideration.

ADB mentions Rust’s openness to both “timeless masterpieces” and “performances bearing indelible date-stamps” (with the implication that the twenties produced an unusual amount of now-dated music). The assumption seems to be that whatever the dance bands played, their repertoire admits ephemera. Jazz Records doesn’t draw that distinction; the music seems, by nature, transcendent. My Kind of Jazz states his point outright:

There are various kinds of jazz, all coming within the original definition and requirements…but they do not bear date stamps or sell-by dates. If they do, it simply means they are not jazz of the best kind in any variant of the basic idiom, that some contaminating ersatz [italics Rust] element has been allowed to enter into the performance.

It’s unclear if expired jazz is inferior jazz or not jazz, but the point is that the real thing is timeless. Jazz is not a “creature of fashion.” Rust compares the music to “a Mozart divertimento or a Haydn symphony” in that regard.

Referencing Mozart’s divertimenti—as opposed to his string quartets, piano concertos, or operas—is an interesting choice. A divertimento was intended to be light music for easy consumption at a particular occasion. Not every piece of music by the great composers was considered “great” in its time. Yet they’re still with us, and we continue to mine more “great” music from the past. Rust (perhaps inadvertently) illustrates that anything can be “timeless” if we choose to enjoy it.

The Stakes

To illustrate his point about improvisation and jazz, Rust uses the particularly loaded example of Paul Whiteman. For some (like me), the Whiteman band’s crack musicianship—in scoring and playing—makes it easy to forget or at least not overthink the level of preparation behind the music. For others, Whiteman’s music is as close to jazz as Milhaud or Chicago. To many, Whiteman is especially problematic beyond any musical factors. Whiteman was a white bandleader who achieved incredible popular success by incorporating jazz into his music. He also made some condescending remarks about jazz and, by extension, Black American culture.

Yet Rust also surprises us with some loaded examples in the other direction: bands that many would easily classify as “jazz” and which Rust includes in Jazz Records while suggesting they might’ve gone into the other book. In My Kind of Jazz, he differentiates the Duke Ellington band’s work as a jazz group from its work as a dance band. Noting that Ellington recorded many songs he didn’t compose, Rust admires Ellington’s performance of Tin Pan Alley songs and show tunes from Broadway as “light years away” from recordings of the same material by “any other band, British or American.” But to him, that didn’t mean they “at once and automatically became jazz performances.” They are excellent “viewed as dance recordings, which is all most of them were intended to be.”

Although he doesn’t provide any examples, the Ellington band’s 1940 Victor recording of “There Shall Be No Night” is a decent candidate. It’s not an Ellington composition (with lyrics by Gladys Shelley and music by Abner Silver). Aside from Ben Webster’s melodic paraphrase in the bridge of the first chorus and Ellington’s piano obbligato behind Herb Jeffries’s vocals, there are no instrumental solos. There are lush, glistening sax textures; a smooth, medium-tempo beat with light, symmetrical accents that make the rhythm clear enough even for the most rhythmically challenged dancers; and a clean-toned, vibrato-saturated lead trumpet, as well as Herb Jeffries’s crooning. 

Jazz scholar and Ellington biographer Mark Tucker described “There Shall Be No Night” as “veering toward the sound of commercial sweet bands.” That’s not damning in itself, and it seems to be in the same taxonomic territory as Rust’s “jazz versus dance band” language. ADB includes Eddy Duchin and Dick Jurgens’s recordings of the song. To some, by comparison, Ellington’s performance might sound like a hell-raiser. All three records are in a similar musical space, which makes the inclusion of Ellington’s version in Jazz Records confusing.

My Kind of Jazz goes on to note that Fletcher Henderson “produced many fine examples of how a big dance band [emphasis mine] could play jazz, due mainly to the abilities of its individual soloists,” specifically during the 1926–27 period. Rust describes McKinney’s Cotton Pickers as a dance band playing pop tunes, though they do “invest each one with real jazz feeling.” Cab Calloway led “a big show band,” and “as with most bands of its size and type, it played jazz only very sparingly.” All of these bands appear in Jazz Records (at least starting with the second edition). None of them appear in ADB.

ADB readers will categorically not find “records by obviously jazz-orientated bands” such as Count Basie, Ellington, and “the other negro units…as they are all covered by the jazz discography.” Yet Willie Bryant, whose smooth sax section earned him billing as “the colored Guy Lombardo” alongside his swing records, is not in ADB and doesn’t appear in Jazz Records until the fourth edition. As for the jazz-oriented white bands of Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller, Rust’s modesty enabled him to dodge collating their extensive work. Instead, ADB directs readers to Connor and John Flower‘s respective “detailed” discographies.

Other white jazz-infused dance bands and/or danceable jazz bands are trickier. Artie Shaw “never produced anything but good quality dance music of the period, flavored with ersatz [italics Rust] jazz” and was not included in the jazz discography—until the third edition. It’s the same for Woody Herman, who Rust thought was merely “cashing in on” bebop with his “loud, brash, show band.” Published eight years after the first edition, the third edition of Jazz Records was also the first one published by a company (rather than self-published by Rust), so these additions may have been a concession to Storyville Publications. These inconsistencies point to something other than the sound on the record.

Whatever worthwhile dance music or “real jazz feeling” meant to Rust, he knew it when he heard it. It’s unclear if seeing the musicians behind it was a factor. Rust frequently said that he was attracted to music by Black musicians on record before he knew they were Black. His comments imply that the sound of the music came before the sight of the players.

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s records were his introduction to jazz. Many commentators still dismiss the ODJB as white pop stars cynically cashing in on the authentic artistic creations of Black Americans. Rust remained a lifelong devotee and defender of the group. He insisted that the ODJB recorded what many consider the first jazz record based strictly on musical merit. “There was nothing that sounded like the ODJB before they recorded,” Rust told Dellow, “or at least we have no evidence that there was.”

When it came to Black musicians in New Orleans, who many believe influenced the ODJB, Rust offers another hot take (no pun intended):

The Black pioneers from New Orleans who lived long enough to make records in the revivalist period, musicians like Bunk Johnson, Kid Rena…well, quite frankly, the records they made were appalling. I mean, if they didn’t play any better in 1912 than they did in 1942 or whenever it was, well, I’m not surprised they weren’t more successful. At least you can’t level the criticism at the ODJB that they didn’t play in tune. They always did, spot on the note every time, and that’s despite the fact that, with the exception of Eddie Edwards, none of them could read music.

Claims of musical color blindness often invite criticism. Jazz Records includes several jazz and/or jazz-influenced works by commercially successful white dance bands like the Benson Orchestra of Chicago and Guy Lombardo. On record, the music is pretty hot, yet jazz scholar William Howland Kenney argues that relying on strictly musical elements when defining jazz is too vague. This “essentialist” approach (e.g., Gridley’s Jazz Styles) ignores important historical context.

Commercial dance bands, to Kenney, enjoyed such a privileged social and financial position—in terms of race, industry connections, and social standing among other material factors—that they do not belong in a jazz discography, regardless of the music they played. That goes for Black groups such as Doc Cook and Charles Elgar, bands that mostly played ballroom music and likely recorded “jazz-like material” only under pressure from recording companies. Rust classifies them as jazz records, but Kenney argues that “pair[ing] within the definition of jazz those musicians who specifically rejected the label and those who were not allowed to record anything but jazz does a historical injustice to the jazz musicians.” Kenney suggests that these records by Elgar, Lombardo, and others “might be gathered, with more historical accuracy, into a separate Hot Dance Band discography or into a subsection of a dance band discography, even when a recognized jazz musician soloed.”

Unsurprisingly, it’s harder to peg Rust’s approach to race and social class. The sound on the records played a significant role in Rust’s placement, seemingly overshadowing racial or cultural factors. At the same time, his comments about musical color blindness notwithstanding, Rust may not have been entirely neutral when it came to matters of identity. After all, a huge part of his job was determining who played the music.

His introduction to the second edition of Jazz Records says that “recordings of Negro vocal music, secular and sacred” deserve their own discography, unifying a wide range of music under a racial identity. Elsewhere, Rust singled out Black musicians for bringing “that extra warmth that musicians of their race always [bring] to dance music AND [emphasis Rust] jazz.” He also singled out the Original American Ragtime Octet’s 1912 London visit as a sea change for dance music in Great Britain, specifically for “proclaim[ing] the vitality of syncopated music derived from the American negro.”

These comments suggest that Rust may have heard the players’ background, picking up on musical elements unique to the Black American musical idiom, even if he was truly indifferent to the identity of the musicians on record—assuming that’s ever possible. Rust might have thought that his preferred type of “pepper” was best applied by one group of chefs, even as he felt that everyone could share recipes. Maybe he was less concerned with race in jazz than with the race relations that jazz made possible.

Rust assigned the “basic precept” of jazz primarily to “traditional” jazz. In bop and other modern jazz, “the rhythmic background had become more complex and the improvisation extended to the harmonies,” with the result that “many jazz enthusiasts refused to accept the new form as jazz at all.” Alongside the musical description, by at least the fourth edition, Rust added a lengthy parenthetical comment:

One leading practitioner in the [modern] idiom publicly denied that what he played was jazz, a name he associated with “Uncle Tom-ism” and “Jim Crow” attitudes between the races that had hitherto enjoyed playing a joint contribution to musical culture in the twentieth century without rancor or misgivings.

On paper, the statement may seem like a glib oversimplification of a complex historical period and a range of cultural issues. The description of the “hitherto” period was likely Rust’s addendum to the musician’s critical commentary that seems to ignore the speaker’s experience. Rust may have known there was far more to say but opted for sharing a more general opinion in the interest of brevity (which itself assumes we can ever be brief or rely on one’s opinion when it comes to these matters).

His words also come across as a statement of disappointment. If Rust could demonstrate, beyond any doubt, that traditional jazz was a music defined by its capacity to bring people together and elicit the most authentic form of creativity from musicians, any musical definition would be beside the point. Assuming Rust believed this to be the case, no wonder jazz was so important to him.

“Music that brings people together” would be a hopelessly vague category, so maybe it’s impressive that he even approached the level of specificity found in Jazz Records and ADB—though it does beg the question: if jazz eliminates “rancor and misgivings,” what does that other music do?

Calling any system of musical taxonomy “idiosyncratic” may be redundant. Rust’s categories were deeply personal, just like his love of music. He was also one person taking on a staggering project. The lines between the two subjects were bound to get blurry. Figuring out how he drew them may not define precise borders, but it demonstrates a singular approach to cartography. And if his labels defy precise explanation and raise more questions, may we all leave such a legacy.

Sources (in Abbreviated Format)

Nick Dellow:

• Interview with Brian Rust printed in VJM, part one and part two
• Interview with Rust, audio version
• Miscellaneous email correspondence

William Howland Kenney, “Historical Context and the Definition of Jazz: Putting More of the History in ‘Jazz History’” in Jazz Among the Discourses, ed. Krin Gabbard, Duke University Press, 1995.

Tom Lord, The Jazz Discography (online)

Brian Rust:

• The American Dance Band Discography 1917-1942, second printing (Arlington House, 1979)
• British Dance Bands on Record, 1911 to 1945
• The Dance Bands (Arlington House, 1974)
• Jazz Records, 1897–1931
  • Second edition (Self-published, 1962)
  • Third edition (Storyville Publications Ltd., 1969)
  • Fourth edition (Arlington House, United States, 1978)
• My Kind of Jazz (Elm Tree Books, 1990)

Mark Tucker, liner notes to Duke Ellington: The Blanton Webster Band (RCA Bluebird, 1986)

Elijah Wald, “Louis Armstrong loves Guy Lombardo! Acknowledging the Smoother Roots of Jazz” in Jazz Research Journal, May 2007

Gratitude

Special thanks to Nick Dellow for generously sharing his insights into Brian Rust and his thought-provoking conversation as well as copies of multiple editions of Rust’s discographies. Thanks also to Aaron Keebaugh, Ricky Riccardi, and Michael Steinman for their editorial suggestions, encouragement, and eagle-eyed proofreading notes. Special thanks to anyone who took the time to read this long post!

In music, labels supposedly don’t matter. Yet this ad (shared by a collector via Facebook) might surprise even some of the most liberal non-categorizers:

So would this editorial by George L. Stone in the April 1925 issue of Jacobs’ Band Monthly (from the generous Ralph Wondraschek’s ample library), published in the middle of the “Jazz Age”:

Jazz is not strictly an undesirable type of music. It is a snappy, up-to-date style of music enjoyed by most people, provided it is played right. [Joseph Knecht]’s orchestra (broadcasting from New York) plays music that is enjoyed by thousands. [Don Bestor]’s orchestra of Chicago and Dok Eisenbourg’s “Symphonians” of “Boston” also play likewise.

Most jazz histories do not and probably don’t need to include Knecht, Lombardo, and Eisenbourg. Bestor may get mentioned as the director of the Benson Orchestra of Chicago, which included Frank Trumbauer and other jazz players more likely to appear in those histories. Lewis and Whiteman are more likely to appear in jazz histories because they employed so many important jazz figures.

Yet the general musical output of these bandleaders would no longer be classified as jazz. For some listeners, referring to them as jazz musicians, let alone “masters,” would seem confusing, comical, or even frustrating.

For many, “jazz” is more than a category for sorting music. It refers to an art form synthesizing authentic emotion and technical accomplishment into a historic musical medium. It’s a history of social and cultural achievements and hardships that continues to shape the world. It’s a collection of stories: joyous, hopeful, sad, funny, infuriating, triumphant, and brave.

Using the term “jazz” in a careless way is about more than miscategorizing music (though that’s not inconsequential, either). For some, misapplication reflects racial appropriation, social injustice, and deeper cultural issues beyond the sound of the music. If labels don’t matter, I’d hate to see what does.

Scholars and historians have covered the origins and shifting applications of the word as well as the many misunderstandings of its original meaning. Most recently, Lewis Porter published a detailed and informative (yet clear and succinct) discussion about how a slang term for “lively” developed into such a vital and sometimes controversial signifier.

Yet alongside the socio-political, philosophical, etymological, and artistic debates, there is still the sound of the music played by Lewis, Lombardo, and Whiteman, as well as Nathan Glantz, Sam Lanin, Ben Selvin, and a thousand other examples of “jazz” that’s no longer or supposedly never even was jazz. The varying degrees of jazz influence and presence of bona fide jazz musicians in these bands frequently place them in the vicinity of jazz, proper.

To many jazz purists, actually saying you like the MUSIC (as opposed to just the hot records or the ten seconds of solo improvisation on a single side) is like admitting to a taste for American cheese: something that elitists reject as a supposedly bastardized version of the more authentic item that is purer, created with sincerity, and healthier for you.

Comparing food and music might seem glib, but they’re both important cultural elements that reflect our tastes and even our values. Or they’re both mass-produced products we mindlessly consume as a distraction. Examples of each alignment might seem clear-cut. But I know people with eager tastebuds and discriminating palates who can explain their favorite varieties and culinary uses of American cheese at length. I’ve also met people who don’t know why they only buy imported brie.

Likewise, I’ve had plenty of conversations with audience members at Symphony Hall who have no idea what they’re about to hear or if they liked what they just heard. I’ve also met musicians whose insights into the loudest, grungiest, most impenetrable varieties of metal or the simplest, catchiest pop earworms made me run to the record store.

More often, the history, purpose, design, or simple thought behind popular, mass-produced, commercial works is assumed to be secondary, inferior, or non-existent. A jazz performance is “art,” while whatever the “dance bands” led by Selvin and the others were doing—which jazz players had to suffer through just to earn a living—was mere “entertainment.” Jazz is often framed as a perennially progressive art form that transcends time. Entertainment, popular music, commercial products, etc., are, by definition, of the moment and always on the conveyor belt to historical amnesia. Lawrence Gushee, in his liner notes to the LP Steppin’ on the Gas: Rags to Jazz, 1913–27 (New World Records, 1977) provides an elegant summary:

Ragtime and jazz were both a part of the popular dance and entertainment music of the United States and separate from it. They used many of the same conventions of musical vocabulary and form as popular music and were symbiotic with the vocal and dance styles of an age. But in exploring musical vocabulary and form, and in striving for artistic control and imagination beyond the requirements of a functional music, they transcended the limits we usually set to popular music and have proved durable in a way that most commercial, fashionable music is not.

Maybe Gushee is making a value judgment, suggesting that the “durable” works are inherently better. Or, this might be a historical point: Things that later generations happen to find endurable are often evaluated as “better.”

Some music does focus on musical experimentation. Or, more accurately, some musicians get to or are more interested in various degrees of experimentation. But what about creative variation within a form?

Louis Armstrong’s expressive and virtuosic flights interest me as a self-taught music student and excite me as a human being. But so does something like Mike Markels and his band on “Say, Persianna, Say”:

I’m still grateful to Colin Hancock for introducing me to this side and for his incredible musical and scholarly contributions to this music.

Eddie Davis’s violin on “Say, Persianna, Say” is not a “hot” obbligato, but an interesting second voice that adds both texture and spark to a melody the listener has already heard a few times by that point in the record. Saxophonist Loren McMurray shuffles registers, articulations, and textures for further variety: Compare the rich, coppery, tenor-like middle register variations alongside the high-register violin in the last chorus with his signature percussive slap tongue in the minor-key verse and his silkier upper register in the first chorus. Fred Schilling is a great ensemble trombonist with a broad sound that lets the other parts float through it. Keith Pitman’s bass sax provides such a firm resonant sound, both rhythmically and tonally; I get the impression of tectonic plates letting everything slide effortlessly along on top, until you focus a little and hear the strength under all of it.

These exotica tunes seem like period novelties now, and their broad stereotypes often range from confusing to offensive. But they also offer some interesting musical material with multiple strains, different keys, and different rhythmic feels. On Joseph Samuels’s recording of the tune, Nathan Glantz’s sax turns it into a cantorial aria!

I’m astounded by the musicianship on display, the sense of balance and inventiveness within the convention of verse-chorus variations, how the musicians walk a tightrope between selling the tune and constantly varying it. None of this may be unique, groundbreaking, technically original, or even improvised. I don’t know if this is jazz or how to define the word, but I do believe Richard Feynman when he says that “Everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”

It’s difficult to get past the temporal prejudice that prefers music from the present or music from the past we in the present deem relevant. More importantly, the insistence on timelessness, on transcendence, leaves a lot of music out of the picture. This may be the point, but even if it leaves room for a broad acceptance of what “sends” any listener, what if transcendence isn’t the sole or even the best filter?

Theodore Gracyk, in Listening to Popular Music: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Led Zeppelin, makes a productive point about expecting or only selecting the transcendent:

This fixation distracts us from the possibility that our less intense experiences of music are also aesthetically valuable. Intensity is not the only aesthetic property worth experiencing.

A rarefied definition of “art” often includes a transcendent quality, some ability to take us out of the present and into something supposedly eternal. Popular music can inspire these transcendent moments, but they’re not the most common or even most important aesthetic encounters. Some “good music” can actually be part of the routine, mundane, everyday experience.

Yet fixing art as superior to or constantly having to overcome entertainment already stacks the deck. Gracyk reminds us that “art” has become an honorific, an elevated status that some pop music may or may not reach. But there were also neutral uses of the term as a description for any creative work. The idea that art has to express something about the genius behind it developed in the nineteenth century. Works like R.G. Collingwood’s The Principles of Art differentiated “art” as something that expressed an artist’s emotion versus what is enjoyable or entertaining. Gracyk explains that this was partially a reaction to the expansion of art through commercial avenues. As access to creative works increased and became more common, “art” was associated with something rare, something special, that a genius created to express themselves:

The general theory of expressive genius was originally a reactionary attack on the expanding commercialization of art and culture. If art is the expressive product of genius, deciding that something is art requires recognition of it as something rare and particularly valuable. Entertainment music simply could not count as art, and its lack of genius could be used to make the case against it…

The expressive intent behind a lot of music has always seemed, to me, more a matter of telepathy than musicology. The larger point is that using “art” as an honorific (rather than a classification) has a history; it’s not the only way to define things, and it never was. From another perspective, being “art” doesn’t make a work good or bad; it just means it’s a creative work.

What happens when we listen to all the jazz that’s no longer jazz as a creative work, a musical artifact, as a piece of art (even if it still has no business in Jazz History syllabus)?

For starters, we stop judging it as a jazz performance (or “jazz” as defined decades after the music was performed). Because of its proximity to jazz, a lot of this music is discussed, anthologized, and referenced alongside what historians and musicologists categorize as authentic jazz. That’s no surprise. But it’s also evaluated against jazz.

For example, reading Albert McCarthy discussing the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra in The Dance Band Era (Chilton, 1982), a reader might conclude that a dance band was not necessarily the same as a jazz band, but the better ones were. It’s a dated example of a still-common way to hear a lot of music:

The [Coon-Sanders] band had no major jazz stylist capable of sustaining lengthy solos. [Arranger and co-leader Joe Sanders] compensated for this by restricting solo space, leaving room instead for frequent breaks…Some of the breaks [may be] fully scored, though they normally give the impression of spontaneity.

Setting aside McCarthy’s verdict on the band’s soloists, the implication is that if the Coon-Sanders band had “better” soloists, it would have sounded different. Soloists were the preferred musical outlet, so reliance on arrangement must have been a compromise.

It’s unclear if McCarthy based his comments on information from Sanders or other band alumni or if he was making an educated guess. So, it’s uncertain whether Sanders was compensating or simply creating the music he and presumably his co-leader, Carlton Coon, wanted to play. It’s even possible that the musicians also wanted to play it regardless of their soloistic capabilities. Whether audiences heard a compromise or even cared is unclear, though Coon and Sanders led one of the most popular dance bands of its time.

Among other reasons for that popularity, McCarthy singles out the group’s “technical expertise and a relaxed rhythm.” Listening to the band’s records, their infectious rhythm and wailing brass and reed sections obviously reflect deep jazz influences. Jazz was an audible influence on dance bands of the twenties and big bands of the swing era (not to mention almost all branches of early- to mid-twentieth-century American popular music).

Defining “jazz” is complicated, involving social issues beyond the notes. However, discussions of the music usually focus on improvisation, blues, and a certain rhythmic flexibility. For McCarthy, Coon-Sanders scores points for its rhythm, but the group’s lack of soloists means it has to lean on scored ensembles rather than improvising soloists. In an ideal musical setting, to McCarthy, a band *should* showcase improvising soloists, but it can end up relying on arrangement and the “impression of spontaneity,” but never the real thing. This is a jazz-centric assumption (which is ironic given the book’s subject).

Twenties “dance bands” like Coon-Sanders, swing era “big bands” in Brian Rust’s American Dance Band Discography (and not in his jazz discography), and similar groups were in the kitchen with jazz, closely watching it cook and borrowing ingredients for a different recipe. But the musical values commonly associated with jazz were just one piece of these non-jazz groups’ music-making. Even in their hottest, jazziest, most swinging moments, there were other considerations, including musical priorities, at play.

The distinction between what does or doesn’t count as jazz and what music or which musicians align with its historical and artistic values involves complex, challenging issues of race, appropriation, economic and social equity, and other cultural-historical issues beyond the sounds heard on the records. The most commercially successful musicians and their fans using “jazz” as a broad label for popular music can seem confusing and even insulting.

Yet here, McCarthy is making a statement about what he hears on a record. He’s considering why a piece of music sounds the way it does and then explaining it based on what he expects jazz to do. Given these groups’ stylistic and historical vicinity to pioneering jazz musicians, often including those artists in their ranks, critics and historians frequently evaluate popular music of the pre-rock era in terms of jazz. They assume bands like Coon-Sanders had (or should have had) the same musical priorities. They either ignore these groups for lacking those musical qualities, reduce their music to a poor attempt at emulating jazz, or dismiss it as cynically adapting jazz’s superficial features for commercial success.

Criticism like this often comes across like evaluating a Chinese restaurant based on its coq au vin. It also presumes a lot about what musicians on the record may have found rewarding or what they thought of written music.

In his dissertation, Written Music in Early Jazz (CUNY, 1997) David Chevan describes how trombonist Clyde Bernhardt sought opportunities that tested his formal musical training alongside playing hot with jazz groups:

By November [1928], [Bernhardt] was more interested in backing shows in clubs than playing dances…Richard Cheatham’s orchestra at the Club Alabam in Newark…excited Bernhardt because of the quality of the ensemble. It “could play behind acts, chorus girls, and full shows. Play in different tempos, different styles, and segue from one to another.”

As part of the Whitman Sisters dance troupe, Bernhardt appreciated the sound of the troupe’s band and a venue’s house orchestra playing together:

When the orchestra played theaters with large house orchestras, the groups were combined, parts were doubled or alternated, and the sound, to Bernhardt’s ears, was “terrific . . . so rich and heavy.”

This was not a musician who just wanted to jam or found orchestrated parts and so-called “commercial music” limiting. Chevan lists several other musicians, including Coleman Hawkins—a crucial figure in the development of improvised jazz saxophone—seeking “environments that would challenge all of their various skills, as readers, interpreters, and improvisers. They did not wish to be confined to a single category of music but thought of themselves, like Willie Humphrey, as ‘musicians.'”

Chevan’s mentioning of Humphrey is a reference to an interview he conducted with the New Orleans clarinetist. When Chevan asked Humphries if Fate Marable hired him based on his skills as jazz musician (presumably meaning some degree of improvisation in up-tempo numbers), Humphreys replied, apparently somewhat annoyed, that “You had to be a musician [Humphrey’s emphasis], ’cause that’s the only way you could get on there; you had to know how to read.” Maybe the Coon-Sanders band just loved being musicians.

Jazz lovers enjoy hunting down an eight-bar hot solo amidst otherwise arranged performances or a wild collectively improvised chorus breaking out in the middle of an otherwise sedate record. Jazz discographies include dance band records based on the proportion of solos heard on the recording. For jazz lovers (like this writer), this approach rewards their focused listening with great music and unexpected instances of a beloved art form. And it’s important for understanding the history of the music now defined as “jazz.” Subjective commentary from nearly a half-century ago about a dance band that may or may not have improvised and might have done it infrequently, poorly, etc. may not matter much when it comes to jazz history. But a critical lens that’s still applied to a lot of music I’m interested in matters to me. For other listeners, maybe the music “speaks for itself.” Music history, scholarship, and criticism enhance my listening. Critical lenses like these foreclose discussion.

How much music has been left out of music (as opposed to cultural) history because it did not sound like jazz as we now understand it? What musicians never made it into jazz history’s halls, and never belonged there even by their own standards, but never found shelter?

For a more recent example of this line of thinking taken to an interesting conclusion, read what Ted Gioia makes of Ben Selvin in his article, “All Bad Music Will Eventually Disappear“:

The biggest hit of 1930 was “Happy Days Are Here Again” by Ben Selvin, but that didn’t match the sales of his most famous song, “Dardanella”—which, by some accounts, was the bestselling tune of the early decades of the twentieth century. How many music fans recognize Ben Selvin—the Taylor Swift of a century ago (I exaggerate, but just slightly). There are still people alive today, who remember those years, but Ben Selvin is already forgotten. Nobody puts “Dardanella” on their playlist. And for a good reason—it’s a piece of lightweight fluff. And the same is true of many other hit songs from the 1920s and 1930s.

Gioia’s larger point is that time sorts the artistic wheat from the chaff of fads, frauds, and mere entertainment:

Time relentlessly destroys almost every artistic reputation. Only a few works survive this brutal process, and they must possess some special merit—something far greater than a newsworthy award or favorable reviews—to gain the allegiance of posterity…We don’t need to destroy the bad stuff, because there’s some kind of quasi-evolutionary process at work that will eliminate it anyway. But goodness is more fragile and needs our support.

I’m not sure what “posterity” means here. Likewise, when Gioia says that “Eddie Fisher might have been a huge star in his day, but today’s musicians are unconvinced of his centrality,” I’m not sure which musicians count or make it onto the committee. Suffice it to say I’m no Ted Gioia, and maybe that’s why I believe “centrality” is not the same thing as “interesting.” I also know people—including knowledgeable musicians and historians—who do put “Dardanella” on their playlist, literally or figuratively, and presumably not their “Lightweight Fluff” playlist or “Music With No Lasting Value” compilation.

About 240K readers subscribe to Gioia’s blog, but we don’t need to review his social media metrics or book sales. It’s safe to say that an impressive amount of people read his work and admire his scholarship and insights. I’m one of them (and I’ll admit to telling him through fan mail). Maybe it’s just more subjective commentary, but some subjectivities make bigger impacts than others. This one makes me wonder if I’m thinking too hard about “fluff.”

Then, I read about the “goodness” that needs our support and realize it’s the other way around: Our support creates the goodness. Gioia says that “These songs have disappeared from the public’s consciousness, and no critic had to lift a finger to make it happen.” But what happens when critics lift their fingers to keep things around?

As for what you call it, I have no idea, but Mark Berresford offers some sound advice regarding labeling:

I prefer the term “syncopated music” because it transcends the rather artificial boundaries that [other labels like early jazz, hot dance, popular music, etc.] imply. It can describe Edgar Cantrell and Richard Williams’s amazing London 1902 banjo/mandolin and vocal recordings, a crossover between minstrel, ragtime, folk and blues. It also includes material by James Europe’s Society Orchestra, George Fishberg’s stomping piano accompaniments to the Trix Sisters on their 1921 recordings and Ory’s Sunshine Orchestra equally well. I think “difference” is a modern concept. At the time it was all the same, just as Paul Whiteman was the “King of Jazz” in the eyes of John Q. Public!

Thank goodness for all the nuanced musical analysis and historical research that independent researchers and historians as well as a few institution-based scholars offer about all that pre-, para-, pseudo-, and non-jazz. I’m flattered knowing that, among my 0.0083% of 240K subscribers, some of them might even be reading this ramble. They understand this music as music. For them, it’s not a compromise, a stylistic stepping stone, or a Bizarro clone.

The broader academic and critical discourse, the books and writers more often found in graduate seminars or national bestseller lists, are not so catholic. That’s unfortunate because they’re missing out. Those conversations seem to go in very different directions depending on whether you mention King Oliver or Earle Oliver, and one road will be rockier. I look for sturdy pavement under both of them.

Thanks for reading.