An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 12 | FOUR GIANTS OF EARLY JAZZ 293

Moreover, Morton’s Red Hot Peppers numbers display his awareness of

the artistic possibilities of the phonograph record. The three-minute duration

of Black Bottom Stomp is fi lled not only with musical variety but a sense of nar-

rative rise and fall, leading to a climactic out chorus, a fi nal statement of the

B strain that brings the music to a fever pitch. Though Morton allowed his musi-

cians plenty of improvisational freedom in their solos (as they attested later in

interviews), he maintained a composer’s fi rm grip on the large-scale structure of

his records. Working at the dawn of electrical recording, Jelly Roll Morton antici-

pated the achievements of composer/record producers to be discussed in Part 4.

LOUIS ARMSTRONG: JAZZ SOLOIST

Except for their hometown, Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong held little

in common. They were men of different generations and temperaments. They

took different musical approaches, their career paths differed sharply, and there

is no record of the two working together. Yet both of these New Orleans natives

reached artistic fulfi llment in Chicago, a northern city whose environment

allowed jazz to fl ourish, both commercially and artistically.

Louis Armstrong was born in poverty in New Orleans in 1901, the son of a

laborer who deserted the family and a mother who worked as a domestic and

Listen & Refl ect

1. Because the full ensemble is playing identical rhythms in A^1 , it is apparent that that sec-
   tion was composed, not improvised. Simply by listening, how certain can one be whether
   musicians are improvising or playing precomposed material elsewhere in Black Bottom
   Stomp?


2. In terms of structure and arrangement, how does Black Bottom Stomp resemble Castle
   House Rag (LG 10.3) on the one hand and Dippermouth Blues (LG 12.2) on the other?
   Using your ear as a guide, compare the amount of composition and improvisation in each
   of these three records.


3. Compare the recorded sound of Dippermouth Blues with that of Black Bottom Stomp.
   Though separated by only three years, the fi rst was recorded acoustically (with a horn
   instead of a microphone) and the latter electrically. What differences can you hear?

timing section comments

2:28 B^6 Full ensemble in collective improvisation style; cymbal break in bars 7–8.

2:47 B^7 Tailgate trombone smears and tom-tom on the backbeat; the energetic trombone

break in bars 7–8 inspires a hot response from the clarinet in the following bars.

3:05 coda The out chorus expands the usual 2-bar closing fi gure into a 4-bar coda.

Listening Guide 12.3

Black Bottom Stomp

CD 2.11 JELLY ROLL MORTON AND HIS RED HOT PEPPERS

New Orleans

172028_12_280-304_r3_ko.indd 293 23/01/13 8:40 PM