New Orleans jazz musicians often composed their own jazz solos by ear over time, which came off as improvised to their audiences. As asserted by Bob Wilber, New Orleans clarinetist and saxophonist Sidney Bechet gave his students his “improvised” solos on popular jazz standards as a pedagogical tool. The most famous manifestation of Bechet’s gifting occurs in the standard, “The Sheik of Araby,” recorded by the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1932 and Sidney Bechet’s One-Man Band in 1941. In the former case, Ellington hired former band member and rising star Bechet as an arranger for this standard. Instead of sending in manuscripts, however, Bechet arrived in-person to teach the band and their soloist, Johnny Hodges, his arrangement, leaving trombonist Juan Tizol and others to quickly transcribe what he taught. Using archival evidence from the Smithsonian Institution from this session in 1932 and my own transcriptions of recordings from 1932 and 1941, I argue that Bechet taught Hodges his own improvised soprano saxophone solo, allowing him, as his former student, to embody Bechet’s persona while injecting moments of his own individuality. With the 1932 recording in mind, Bechet’s own recording of the solo in 1941 offered him the opportunity to recreate and recontextualize his musical creation. These two recordings are remarkable in their own right, but this relationship reveals essential musical and historical context for both pieces.
As a towering figure in music in the twentieth century, John Coltrane has made innumerable contributions. One of the most significant aspects of his career are his blues compositions and improvisations. Many of Coltrane’s written blues heads, as well as his opening and closing solo choruses, follow sentential structures. Somewhat surprisingly, this particular part of his output has been left underexplored in existing research projects. In hopes of also contributing to a fairly recent discussion that centers around efforts to revamp the sentential paradigm, I introduce the formal type of the “blues sentences,” and contrast it with the riff blues, and other designs. Moreover, I also introduce the riff-sentence hybrid and the two subcategories of through-composed blues types (a) line-driven melodies and (b) modular melodies. In the effort to establish a sentential perspective, I do not dismiss traditional bar form readings but rather supplement my interpretations with them in order to highlight the respective advantages and disadvantages.
In the rich and complex history of women in jazz, Lil Hardin Armstrong’s All-Girl Orchestra, sometimes referred to as either the Harlem Harlicans or the Chicago Creolians, stands out as being particularly mysterious. Often referenced but never discussed in any detail, accounts of Hardin’s group are limited, usually vague, and often possess glaring inconsistencies, including the years that the band was active, conflicting accounts of the band’s activities, and even disagreement on the name of the group itself. However, through detailed archival research, a rich and comprehensive story can be pieced together that not only provides missing specifics, such as the band’s personnel, tour dates, and business dealings, but also offers insights into Hardin’s motivations for leading the group and the obstacles she encountered. Fuelled by a desire to adopt the modern compositional and arranging techniques of the emerging swing movement and managed in close collaboration with bassist/cellist Olivia Shipp and violinist Mae Brady, Hardin and her All-Girl Orchestra serves as a flashpoint in early jazz history, not just for female-driven entrepreneurship, but of pioneering creativity and an inter-generational mentorship that had a far-reaching impact on the early development of the African-American ‘all-girl’ swing band movement of the 1930s and 40s.
In this piece, I consider concepts of time, the history of archives and provenance, how time is considered in archival arrangement and description, and how these speak to my experiences completing the processing of three interrelated record groups at the Institute of Jazz Studies that center on the great Mary Lou Williams: the Mary Lou Williams Collection, the Mary Lou Williams Foundation Collection, and the Peter O’Brien papers. It is hoped that the piece will provide insight into the perspectives I find retrospectively meaningful when reflecting on the work of processing those materials and preparing the related finding aids, perspectives which draw from literature, philosophy, science, film, and music. I am indebted to my colleagues, including one I never had the pleasure to meet, Annie Kuebler, who preceded me in working on the collections.
