All language subtitles for JAZZ - 03 - Our Language (1924-1929)

[St. louis Bluesplaying]

man, voice-over:
What occasions the focusing
of attention on the negro?

Granted that white people
have long enjoyed the negro
entertainment as a diversion.

Is it not something different,
something more,

when they bodily
throw themselves into negro
entertainment in cabarets?

Now negroes go to their
own cabarets to see how
white people act,

and what do we see?

Why, we see them actually
playing negro games.

I watch them in that epidemic
negroism, the Charleston.

I look on and envy them.

They camel and fishtail
and Turkey,

they geechee
and black bottom and scrontch,

they skate and buzzard
and mess around--

and they do them all
better than I!

This interest
in the negro is an active
and participating interest.

It is almost as if a traveler
from the north stood watching
an African tribe dance,

then suddenly found himself
swept wildly into it,

caught in its tribal rhythm.

Maybe these nordics at last have
tuned in to our wavelength.

Maybe they are at last
learning to speak our language.

Rudolf Fisher,
The American Mercury.

wynton marsalis: I think that
when the martians come down here
and they start attacking people,

they're going to look
for everybody who can
play some blues.

They're gonna say,
"now who can play some blues,

cause we need that
feeling up here."

And if you can't play the blues,
well, they might zap you.

You know, but if
you can play some blues,
you pull your horn out,

they'll say,
"ok, you can come here."

[Therambleplaying]

Narrator: Jazz had been born
in New Orleans and brought up
in Chicago and New York,

but by the mid 1920s,

it was being played
in dance halls and
speakeasies everywhere.

The blues, which had once
been the product of itinerant
black musicians,

the poorest of
the southern poor,

had now fused with jazz
and become an industry,

with black record labels
as well as white ones competing
for the listener's dollar.

Dancing consumed a country

confident that the unprecedented
prosperity of the roaring
twenties would never end.

More than 100 dance bands
regularly crisscrossed
the wide-open spaces

between St. Louis
and Denver, Texas and Nebraska,
playing one-nighters.

They were called
"territory bands"--

the coon-Sanders nighthawks,
the alphonso Trent and doc Ross
and Troy Floyd orchestras;

Jesse stone's blue serenaders,
George e. Lee and his singing
novelty orchestra,

Walter page and his blue devils,
and Andy kirk's clouds of joy.

There were "all-girl" orchestras
on the road now, too,

including babe egan's
Hollywood redheads,

a band billed
as the twelve vampires,

and the parisian redheads,
who really came from Indiana.

Records, and then radio,

brought jazz to
locations so remote that
no band could reach them.

[Wea Bluesplaying]

Narrator:
Jazz continued to change--

an exuberant,
collective music now came to
place more and more emphasis

on the innovations of supremely
gifted individuals.

For the first time,
improvising soloists and singers

struggling to find
their own voices and to tell
their own stories

would take center stage.

Two extraordinary singers
would emerge--

bessie Smith, whose huge
recorded voice made the blues
big business in black america;

and Ethel waters, whose blend
of elegance and soulfulness

opened the door for
African Americans to a world
of entertainment

that had previously been almost
exclusively white.

A troubled high-school dropout
from Iowa named bix beiderbecke

would inspire a generation
of young white musicians

to believe that they, too,
could contribute to the music.

Duke Ellington would
take his youthful band into
Harlem's most celebrated club,

give its white patrons far more
than they bargained for,

and help create a whole
new language for jazz.

Meanwhile, Louis Armstrong
would make a series
of astonishing records

that would change all
of American music forever.

[Cornet chop sue Playing]

Gary giddins: As late as
the 1920s and probably for
some years afterwards,

you have all of
the Harvard brahmins,

the northeastern
musical establishment,

routinely meeting and discussing
where is American music?

How are we going to develop
a truly American music?

Of course, they're assuming
that they're going to find
the great American musician

in the only place they know
to look which is the academy,
their home.

And they assume it's going to be
in the only tradition they know,

which is in
the European tradition.

So they're not at all

conscious of the fact that

at the same time

that they're agonizing,

looking for an American bach,
that he's there,

but he doesn't
fit their description.

Marsalis: You listen to
his sound and all the musicians
imitated him.

Everybody on every instrument
tried to play like him.

Clarinet, saxophone,
bass, drums.

Duke Ellington once said
he wanted Louis Armstrong
on every instrument.

The rhythm was great,
the syncopation, like he,
just his rhythm,

you take something like
just the way he played,

de de de, de be doo dip, boo
be doo be oo doody oo doo dit...

He had that jump and that
bounce in his playing.

[Gully low bluePlaying]

Narrator: By 1925,p
Louis Armstrong had become
the greatest star

in Fletcher Henderson's
great band,

playing nightly
for white dancers at roseland,

the most popular ballroom
in New York.

Musicians everywhere bought
Henderson's records

just to hear Armstrong.

And shook their heads
in disbelief

at the power
with which he played.

But he was no longer happy
in the Henderson outfit.

He disliked the sloppiness of
the other members of the band

who drank too hard,
often arrived late--
and sometimes not at all.

"I was always serious about
my music," he remembered.

He felt that he was not
being featured often enough
with the band.

And he liked to sing now, too,

but Henderson thought his style
too "black" for roseland.

In November of 1925,
Armstrong quit Henderson's band
and returned to Chicago

where he joined
his wife lil's group
at the dreamland cafe.

[Hotter than tha Playing]

She insisted that
he be billed as "the world's
greatest trumpet player."

Such praise embarrassed him.

"I never did want to be a big
mucky-muck star," he recalled.

When he agreed to appear
at the vendome movie theater
with erskine Tate's orchestra,

and Tate asked him to
go on stage when he soloed,
Armstrong refused to do it.

He wouldn't leave the pit,

he said, for fear of alienating
the rest of the band.

But they shone a spotlight
down on him, anyway,

and when it found his gleaming
horn and he began to play,

sometimes hitting 50
high "c's" in a row as the crowd
counted along with him,

audiences went wild.

Armstrong: That's when
Chicago was jumping, too.

They was lined up
for blocks every night

to hear that old boy
hit that high "e."

[Laugh]

The guys would catch
that show every night

to see if I was going
to miss that note.

[Laugh] And I...

Interviewer:
Did you ever?

Armstrong: Why, miss it?

I had it in my pocket
all the time.

Narrator: One night, a promising
young horn player from Nashville

had the misfortune
of being asked to substitute
for Armstrong.

Doc cheatham: Louis came over
to me...He says, "doc cheatham."

I said, "yes."

He says, "how would
you like to work for me
at the vendome theater?

I want to take off
on a Thursday."

I didn't want to do it,

but I felt that I needed some
money in my pocket to eat on.

It was a big band,
fiddles and everything.

They didn't
notice me being there.

I was sitting there
with my cornet.

And so, they came down

to Louis' introduction,

and Tate's brother said,

"that's you."

So, I got up
and blew on the cornet.

De-da-da-Dee-da,
ba-ba-ba-Dee-da-dum-bum-bum.

The people started screaming.

You couldn't hear, I mean,
I never saw anything like it
in my life, for one second.

Then it stopped, it died.

The whole applause died,
died right down for nothing

'cause they, they noticed
that I wasn't Louis.

I felt like dropping dead!

[Heebie jeebiePlaying]

Narrator: It was
at the vendome that Armstrong
introduced a new novelty number

called Heebie jeebies
In which he sang--

and also improvised
sounds with his voice

in a way few had ever heard
outside of New Orleans.

There's an apocryphal story that
which of course means it could
or could not be true.

I think it was true.

That during the recording of
a song called Heebie jeebies,

the music slipped off the music
rack and onto the floor.

And time in the studios
in those days was so precious

that there was
no stopping and re-taking,

so he just started to play
the words with his voice

like he would with his
trumpet and that ended up
being called scat singing.

Armstrong: Well, we're playing
Heebie jeebies

I and got this music
and I don't know,

it slipped out of my hand,
and I looked in the control room

and the president of the okeh
record company keep saying

"go ahead, go ahead, keep on,"

and it dawned on me cause
we used to scat sing.

We didn't call it scatting then,

but we used to hum
like instruments,

[scats]

So when he said keep on,

I said [scats]

That's how Heebie jeebies
Went over.

When we were finished he said,

"well satchmo this is
where scatting was born."

Armstrong:
♪ those heebie jeebie blues ♪

♪ that they call it, boys ♪

♪ mix it in with
a little bit of joy ♪

♪ say, don't you know it ♪

Narrator: Armstrong's recording
of Heebie jeebie Swas released
in 1926

and was a hit in black
neighborhoods all across
the country.

♪ They call the heebie jeebies ♪

♪ yes, ma'am, mama's got
the heebie jeebies dance ♪

[Scatting]

♪ Say, come on now,
and do that dance ♪

♪ they call
the heebie jeebies dance ♪

♪ sweet mama ♪

Narrator:
"For months after that,"

the Chicago clarinetist
mezz mezzrow remembered,

"you would hear cats greeting
each other with Louis' riffs."

Armstrong's scatting,
mezzrow remembered,

"almost drove
the English language out of
the windy city for good."

Armstrong: Woo!
Got the heebie jeebies!

Man: What you doing
with the heebies?

I just had to have
the heebies!

[Backwat Ebluesplaying]

Woman: ♪ it rained
5 days and the skies
turned dark as night ♪

♪ well, it rained
5 days and the skies
turned dark as night ♪

Narrator: In the spring of 1927,
a train carrying a blues singer
and her band

stopped suddenly outside
a southern Ohio town.

A great flood had
inundated the valley,

and the railroad tracks
were covered by water.

The troupe had to be
ferried by rowboat to
the theater they were playing.

The audience asked her to
sing a blues about the flood.

She said she was sorry
she didn't know one,

but as soon as she got home
she wrote one out.

♪ Backwater blues done call me
to pack my things and go ♪

♪ backwater blues done call me
to pack my things and go ♪

♪ 'cause my house fell down
and I can't live there no more ♪

Narrator:
Her name was bessie Smith

and her public--
overwhelmingly black,
mostly poor--

always looked to her
to say what they could not.

[Downhearted blu Eplaying]

Narrator: Bessie Smith lived
the kind of life she sang about
in her songs.

♪ Gee, but it's hard
to love someone ♪

♪ when that someone
don't love you ♪

Narrator:
She had come up the hard way,

singing for pennies
on street corners at age 9.

But almost from the moment
she recorded Downhearted blues
In 1923,

Smith was the unchallenged
"empress of the blues."

♪ Trouble, trouble,
I've had it all my days ♪

Narrator:
"When I was a little girl,"

the gospel singer
mahalia Jackson remembered,

"I felt she was having
troubles like me.

She expressed something we
couldn't put into words."

♪ It seems that trouble's
going to follow me to my grave ♪

Narrator: Bessie Smith
sold so many records,

got so famous that she was cast
in an early sound film,--

one of the first to
feature black performers.

♪ My man's got a heart
like a rock cast in the sea ♪

♪ my man's got a heart
like a rock cast in the sea ♪

♪ my man's got a heart
like a rock cast in the sea ♪

Narrator: Smith drank hard
and had a fearful temper.

If she didn't like the way
things were going onstage,

she sometimes tore
the curtains down around her.

She could not abide rivals
and distrusted powerful
accompanists

for fear they'd
steal the spotlight.

Cheatham: After her
performance she sent for me.

And so I put my horn down
and went up there and she says,

"you little son-of-a-gun," say,
"you playing too damn loud."

Said, "don't play loud
like that on my..."

And she gave me hell,
"on, on my song."

So, I knew, I, I was playing
a little loud on the saxophone
at that time.

But that's, that's the only
problem I had with bessie Smith.

But she was a lovely person
to know

and could sing like the devil.

Smith:
♪ there ain't nothing I can do ♪

Narrator: One sweltering
July night in 1927,

Smith and her troupe
were performing under a tent
in Concord, north Carolina.

When a member of the band
slipped out for a breath
of fresh air,

he spotted half a dozen
members of the ku klux klan
headed their way.

The musician ran inside
and told bessie to run.

Bessie wouldn't hear of it.

She stormed out of the tent,
ran toward the klansmen instead,

shaking her fist and cursing.

"I'll get the whole damn tent
out here," she shouted.

"You just pick up them sheets
and run."

Faced with bessie Smith and
a tent full of her loyal fans,

the klansmen fled.

Smith returned to the bandstand
and began again to sing.

Smith: ♪ 't ain't nobody's
bizness if I do ♪

Narrator: "Nobody messed with
bessie," a niece remembered,

"black or white,
it didn't make any difference."

♪ If I go to church on Sunday ♪

♪ then just shimmy down
on Monday ♪

♪ 't ain't nobody's bizness
if I do, if I do ♪

Early: I play a lot of music
for my children,

but I think that the music
that I play for them

that I most want them
to listen to is blues.

There's something about
blues as an expression of
the human condition

that is just so powerful.

If there was no Ralph Ellison,
there was no Harlem renaissance,

no Marcus garvey,
no Elijah Muhammad,

no Frederick douglass,

black people hadn't achieved
anything else on this earth

but just the creation of blues,
it would make them,

it would still make black people
a seminally important people

in the creation
of the modern world.

[Stop and listen blu Eplaying]

Man, voice-over:
There's 14 million negroes
in our great country,

and they will buy records
if recorded by one of their own

because we are the only folks
that can sing and interpret
hot jazz songs

just off the griddle correctly.

Perry Bradford.

Narrator: The records
bessie Smith and her rivals made

were a sensation
in black communities
all over the country.

Newsboys sold blues records.

So did door-to-door salesmen.

Pullman porters carried copies
south with them and peddled
them at whistle-stops.

The Chicago defenderUrgedd
"lovers of music everywhere

and those who desire to help
in any advance of the race"

to buy the work of black
singers and musicians.

Before long, okeh, Paramount,
vocalion, and Columbia

had all developed
specialty catalogues meant for
black audiences--race records--

just as they had alread
special ethnic catalogues for
other minorities.

Race records were
soon selling more than
5 million copies a year,

and black entrepreneurs were
eager to get in on the action.

The pianist Clarence Williams
became an impresario

and made more money publishing
music, managing talent,

and producing records
than he ever had performing.

Black swan,
the first African-American
recording company,

was established with the slogan,

"the only genuine
colored record--others are
only passing for colored."

All stockholders, all employees,
and all artists were black.

Studs terkel:
And I'd have to travel,

travel by streetcar,
I'd pass the black belt.

I noticed places called
gallimaufry shops,

I saw records there--
jazz, I thought,

I found nickel and dime
used records,

they were called vocalion,
blue bird, okeh,

and there was big bill broonzy,
there was tampa red,

there was Memphis minnie,
there was peetie wheatstraw,

the high sheriff of hell,

devil's son-in-law.

There was

big maceo merriweather.

There was Memphis slim
and there were,

hearing, many was
double entendre, blues,

but I heard the blues.

I never heard music
like that before...

Ever.

♪ They took my baby
to the buryin' ground ♪

♪ and I watched the pall bearers
as slowly let her down ♪

Narrator: Meanwhile,
across the country,

from San Francisco
to New York City,

the jazz age showed
no signs of slowing down.

[Boot to booPlaying]

Man, voice-over:
It was an age of miracles,

it was an age of art,

it was an age of excess,

and it was an age of satire.

We were the most
powerful nation.

Who could tell us any longer
what was fashionable and what
was fun?

Scarcely had the staider
citizens of the republic
caught their breaths

when the wildest
of all generations,

the generation which had been
adolescent during the confusion
of the war,

brusquely shouldered them
out of the way and danced
into the limelight.

It was a whole race going
hedonistic, deciding on
pleasure.

The jazz age now raced along
under its own power

served by great
filling stations full of money.

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

[Davenport bluesPlaying]

Giddins: There were
a lot of young white musicians
around the country

who were trying to play jazz.

Some of them were
very talented musicians,

some of them were not, as usual,

but most of them,
certainly all the good ones,

knew that the really great
figures in the music were black,

and they were trying
to play like them.

They heard Louis Armstrong,
they heard Ethel waters sing,

or bessie Smith,
they heard Coleman Hawkins.

They said, "wow, these guys
are doing something with
these instruments.

I want to play that music."

Bix beiderbecke was the first
of the white musicians who had
unmistakable genius.

And so his importance to
a lot of the young white
musicians was,

"look, he proves it."

He proves that
we can play this music.

It's possible for
a white musician to make a real,

original contribution to jazz.

Narrator: Leon bix beiderbecke,

one of the most promising and
one of the most tragic figures
in the history of jazz,

emerged not from
the great cities of New Orleans,
Chicago, or New York,

but from the rural heartland.

He was born at 1934 grand Avenue
in Davenport, Iowa,

on march 10, 1903.

If his father, an industrious,
church-going presbyterian had
had his way,

his boy would have never
played a note of jazz.

From the age of 3, bix showed
unusual musical ability.

By the age of 8, he was
out-playing his piano teacher.

But he could not bear
authority of any kind

and never bothered to master
more than the rudiments of
written music,

a failing that added to
the self-doubt that would
haunt him all his life.

[Tiger r Playing]

When his older brother
returned from world war I

with a wind-up victrola
and an armful of records,

including Tiger rag,
By the original dixieland
jazz band,

bix was transfixed.

He played it
over and over again,

then borrowed a neighbor's
cornet and began to imitate
the raw new sounds he heard.

Before long, he was
hanging around the riverfront,

listening to the jazz bands that
performed aboard the steamboats
that docked at Davenport.

The musician who made
the biggest impression on him
was Louis Armstrong,

who was then just beginning
to make a name for himself.

Margo Jefferson:
What would he have heard?

Some kind of explosion, I think,

of rhythm and sound

possibilities that must have

matched things inside him
that he knew had nothing
to do with

what his parents wanted for him.

And to hear this music
would have broken all of that.

And that was clearly what
he needed to become something,
to become himself.

Narrator: Jazz music became
his obsession

and bix was soon good enough
on the cornet to play alongside
older musicians.

And he often joined them behind
the bandstand between sets to
drink bootleg gin.

His parents were horrified,

and in 1921, abruptly
pulled him out of high school

and sent him off to
a strict boarding school
in lake forest, Illinois.

[Tea Playing]

Narrator: If the beiderbeckes
had hoped their son

would abandon music
or the musician's life,

they were quickly disappointed.

Lake forest was only a short
train ride away from Chicago,

where Louis Armstrong would
soon be playing the best jazz
in america.

Within a week of
his arrival at school,

bix was writing home to tell
his brother that he had talked
his way into 3 black clubs

on the south side in
eager search of what he called
"real jazz niggers."

"I'd go to hell," he wrote,
"to hear a good band."

Marsalis: A musician loves
music and loves that instrument.

And when they hear someone
that's great on that instrument,

there's a mixture of great envy,
respect, and love,

you going out every night,

you hearing the greatest
musician in the world play--
Louis Armstrong--

and all you want to do
is be able to play.

You've been told
"don't listen to them,
and they're not doing it.

"These are niggers,
and they ain't playing nothing,

and this is some coon music,
and it's all a joke."

But you realize it's the most
serious thing you've ever

encountered in your life.

And then you realize that
you, too, are a part of it.

And it's got to be exhilarating
and terrifying at the same time.

Because to accept jazz music,

means that at a certain time,
you would have to accept

something about the humanity
of the United States negro.

[Goose pimpl Playing]

Narrator: Bix slipped into
the city so often to see
and hear his heroes play

that he was
expelled from lake forest.

His father angrily
ordered him home to Iowa

to work in the family
coal business.

Bix could bear only a few weeks
of weighing coal

before he returned to Chicago
to hear and play the jazz music
he loved.

Nothing else seemed
to matter to him --

his clothes were unpressed,
he mislaid possessions,

forgot what day it was,
carried his cornet in
a paper bag.

"Music was the one thing that
really brought him to life,"
a friend remembered.

"Not even whiskey could do it,
and he gave Itevery chance."

Sudhalter: Everybody drank
in those years, of course.

Social drinking

was something that,

especially in the music

business with its schedules

and strange hours, was rife.

But bix did it to extremes.

[Riverbo Ashuffleplaying]

Narrator: In 1924, bix joined
a band called the wolverines,

which played at
roadhouses and clubs in
Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

When the wolverines made
their first records for gennett,

they were a hit,
and bix beiderbecke
was the star.

Using an unorthodox system
of fingering,

he had developed a cornet style
unlike anyone else's--

bright, clear, and crisp.

Beiderbecke's distinctive sound,
the guitarist Eddie condon
remembered,

was "like a girl saying Yes."

man, voice-over: All my life
I had been listening to music,

but I had never heard
anything remotely resembling
what bix beiderbecke played.

For the first time I realized
that music isn't all the same,

that some people
play so differently from others

that it becomes
an entirely new set of sounds.

Eddie condon.

The harmonies and the beautiful
musical changes he played.

That was something new.

No one ever heard that played
those beautiful changes like
bix bei--no one.

[Clementinplaying]

Narrator: In 1926,
bix started touring with
the Jean goldkette orchestra--

the hottest
white dance band in america.

Artie Shaw: The first really
great white jazz band,

big band that is,
was Jean goldkette.

This band was composed of

fine musicians, and in it,

in the mid-twenties,

that band was unbelievable.

They're still,
you listen to records like,

let's say Clementine,
To this day, it swings like mad.

Narrator: The musical leader
of the goldkette orchestra,

and bix's best friend
in the band,

was the saxophone player
frank trumbauer, called "tram."

They were
opposites in many ways:

Tram was debonair
and business-like;

bix was disorganized
and insecure.

But for a brief time,

theirs would prove
one of the most creative
partnerships in jazz.

[Singin' the blu Eplaying]

Narrator: In 1927, as the stock
market soared to record heights,

trumbauer and bix recorded their
greatest hit, Singin' the blues.

trumbauer's opening solo
was light, relaxed and supple.

And beiderbecke's
brilliant chorus picked up
where trumbauer's left off.

James Lincoln Collier:
He had that lyric quality.

It had that rhythmic swing,

that conversational effect,
the sense of speech,

the sense that somebody
is talking to you,

saying something very important.

Narrator: Beiderbecke
and trumbauer's recording of
Singin' the blues

inspired a generation of young
musicians, white and black,

who would imitate it for years
and quote from it for decades.

Bix was becoming a success,
but his estrangement from
his father,

his persistent self-doubt,
and his growing dependence
on alcohol

threatened to sabotage
everything he had achieved.

[In a mi Playing]

Man, voice-over:
Bix loved jazz

but there are many kinds
of love: Joyous, zestful,
desperate.

There is a kind of love
that is a gloomy, confused
dependency,

never fulfilled
and therefore insatiable,

a love that asks more of
its object than it can give.

I felt that what
bix wanted from music,
jazz never truly gave him.

[Summertimplaying]

Man, voice-over: It was always
the music that explained things.

What it is that takes you out
of being just a kid and thinking
it's all adventure,

and you find there's a lesson
underneath all that adventure.

You come into life alone
and you go out of it alone,

and you're going to be alone
a lot of times when you're on
this earth--

and what tells it all,
it's the music.

Sidney bechet.

Giddins: Until 1925,
there was really only one
musician in the whole world

who could keep company
with Louis Armstrong and not
embarrass himself,

and that was Sidney bechet.

And there were records
that Armstrong and bechet
made together,

where bechet plays
with such brilliance,

both in his sound and his
maturity of his concept

and the complete absence
of frills and any kind of
sentimentality

and the way he swings and his
understanding of the blues.

He was a very profound musician.

Narrator: Back in November
of 1922, Sidney bechet,

the New Orleans clarinet-master,
had landed in New York after
nearly 3 years abroad.

He had just 10 shillings
in his pocket--

issued to him by British jailers
who had deported him

after he served 11 months
for a violent altercation
with a prostitute.

He was still only 25
and had yet to be recorded,

but he was already a legend
among jazz musicians,

both for the power
and brilliance of his playing

and for the belligerent
personality

which seemed to plunge him
into trouble wherever he went.

When he finally got into
the recording studio,

he was playing a new instrument,
the soprano saxophone.

[Cakewalkin' babiesPlaying]

The cornet or trumpet was
supposed to play the lead
in New Orleans jazz

but not if Sidney bechet
could help it.

His huge, throbbing sound
overwhelmed everyone who
played with him,

was unlike anything anyone
had ever heard before.

When Coleman Hawkins,

the saxophone star of
Fletcher Henderson's band,

was overheard saying
that New Orleans musicians
couldn't play,

bechet hurried down
to the band box club
to challenge him

and played so furiously
that Hawkins packed his horn
and fled the stand.

Bechet followed him down
the street, still playing.

He got a job with
James p. Johnson,

the Harlem stride piano master,

but quit when Johnson insisted
he stick to the arrangements.

He tried Duke Ellington's
orchestra, too,

but got fired after
he arrived 3 days late

and claimed that his
cab driver had gotten lost.

He opened a Harlem speakeasy--
the club basha--

only to back out after
a quarrel with his partner
over an exotic dancer.

Marsalis: Once, there was
a guy named garvin bushell.

He said, somebody knocked
on his door at like 3:00
in the morning,

and he said he opened
the door and it was
Sidney bechet

standing there with a dog.

And he says, "well, you know,

it's like 3:00 in the morning,
what's happening?"

And Sidney
looked at him and said,

"I heard that you had
a dog that you said was
more dog than my dog."

He's bringing his dog there
and he wants to see whose dog
is more dog.

And really, that you know,
that was Sidney.

You combine it with that type
of overwhelming musical genius,

which is the ability to hear,

to construct
these perfect lines,

to give his music organization,

and to just let that soul
come through.

That soul was something.

[Jungle drumPlaying]

Narrator: In 1925,
bechet's luck seemed to turn.

He sailed again for Europe
to join the all-black cast

of a new Paris musical,
La revue negre.

by now France--
and much of Europe--

had become fascinated
with Africa

and with African Americans
and the new music they made.

It all struck them as exotic,
romantic, "primitive."

La revue negre made
an international sensation

of the American dance the French
called "le Charleston,"

and an international star
of its lead dancer,

a teen-aged ex-chorus girl from
St. Louis named Josephine baker.

French critics called her
"the black Venus,"

compared her to a snake,
a giraffe, a kangaroo.

When she paraded
along the boulevards
with a live cheetah,

admirers speculated as
to which "animal" was more
wonderfully savage.

"The white imagination,"
baker admitted privately,

"is sure something
when it comes to blacks."

When baker left the show
to become a star on her own,

Sidney bechet found himself
touring with the remnants
of the cast--

Istanbul, Cairo, Berlin,
Oslo, Moscow.

They were bringing jazz
to regions so remote

that passersby sometimes
wet their fingers and rubbed
bechet's cheek

to see if the color came off.

In 1928, bechet was back in
Paris, living in montmartre,
and in trouble again.

[Dear old southlandPlaying]

Stanley crouch:
He's supposed to be playing
with this piano player,

and the story goes,
this piano player says,

"bechet. That was a d-minor 7th.

You playing the wrong chord."

Bechet is supposed to have
pulled a pistol out and said,

"Sidney bechet never
plays wrong chords."

He got in an argument
with somebody over the chord
changes to a song.

So the guy says,
the chord was one thing,
and Sidney says it was another,

he say, "meet me tomorrow
at 4:30 and we'll settle
this in a duel."

Bechet got in a gunfight
in Paris during rush hour.

Not, "I'll meet you here
at midnight," right?

Nothing like that.

If you gonna a gunfight in Paris
as a person who's not French,

it would seem to me
that you would want it
to be as late as possible

so as few French people
as possible might see you.

Not bechet.

Narrator: Bechet's bullets
missed his intended target,

but hit another musician in
the leg and slightly wounded
two women

who happened to
be standing nearby.

He was sentenced to
15 months in prison,

but was released
after 11 provided he left
the country immediately.

Marsalis: But that's how
serious he was about music.

He's going to kill somebody
over some chord changes.

And he had that look in
his face, too, see it's like
a certain type of look,

like when you, I've seen
pictures of him where,

you could see him smiling,
you know, he was devilish.

So he'd be talking he had that
look of like, "if you telling
me, I'm going to..."

You know, and that's how
his playing is,

and it has that light in it.

Early: White people were
hearing something in jazz

that says something deeply
about their experience.

I'm not sure that it would
have been this way if we were
not a country of immigrants,

and so many people who felt
kind of displaced.

You had this music that kind of
captured some feeling of that.

I think that that
was part of its amazing appeal

was how it spoke to feeling
out of sort and out of joint
and maladjusted.

[Dem trisker rebbin's chosid
Playing]

Woman, voice-over:
Chicago, 1910.

The streets are
inexpressibly dirty,

the number of schools
inadequate,

sanitary legislation unenforced,

the street lighting bad,

the paving miserable
and altogether lacking in
the alleys and smaller streets,

and the stables
foul beyond description.

Hundreds of houses
are unconnected with
the street sewer.

The older and richer inhabitants
seem anxious to move away as
rapidly as possible.

Jane Addams.

Narrator: In 1902,
a Jewish refugee from Poland
named David Goodman,

fleeing Russian persecution,
had moved his family

to the crowded West Side
of Chicago.

It was there on may 30, 1909,

that his wife dora gave birth
to their ninth child, Benjamin.

The family lived
packed together,

sometimes in unheated
basement apartments,

forced to move again and again
when there was too little money
to pay the rent.

There were days,
Benny Goodman remembered, when
"there wasn't anything to eat.

"I don't mean much to eat.

I mean anything."

Collier: The situation was
just impossible.

The father was working
shoveling lard in the meat yards
in Chicago,

and he would come home stinking
with the smell of the lard

and the animal refuse
that he had been dealing with

and Benny said
he never forgot that.

He remembered that all his life,
that smell.

Narrator: David Goodman was
determined that his children
would do better in america

than he had done.

And when he heard that
a neighbor's boys were earning
extra family income

by playing in a dance band,
he saw a way for his sons to
begin their climb.

Phoebe Jacobs: Well Benny did
go to Hebrew school,

as is the custom of
all good Jewish boys.

They go to cheder and they learn
how to be a bar mitzvah boy

and in going to
the Hebrew school,

they had instruments there.

And Benny went with his two
brothers and he was the smallest
of the trio of Goodman boys,

so he got the littlest
instrument,

the clarinet,

'cause it was very light.

His brother, Harry,

who was a big zaftig guy,

he got the bass.

So, that's how Benny
was introduced to music.

[Waitin' for kat Iplaying]

Narrator: Somehow,
David Goodman managed to
come up with 50 cents a week

to buy his 10-year-old boy
lessons from a classically
trained German clarinetist.

From the beginning,
Benny was unusually talented--

and unusually serious
about his craft.

He practiced every day,
religiously, all his life.

Collier: He was clearly
better than everybody else.

He was one of these guys
who was utterly confident,

even when he was 12 years old.

He was never shy about
standing up and playing,

he could walk out on a stage
anywhere, even as a little boy

and he was great,
he was completely confident
in what he could do.

I guess he treated the music
like a kid might

who loved baseball,
who loved his baseball bat.

His horn was everything to him.

And anything he could make
come out of it was exquisite,

and he was constantly
a perfectionist.

He was listening to
jazz in Chicago then.

There was a lot of jazz.

Louis Armstrong was there,

there were a lot of
wonderful musicians

and I guess Benny always adored
and respected the way

the black man handled his music.

Because all through
Benny's life,

he went up to Harlem
when he was in New York,

or in Chicago he would
go to the dance halls,

and he treated his horn
and his music

like a lover would
a gorgeous woman.

Narrator: Goodman listened to
all the great black clarinetists
in town--

Johnny dodds, jimmie noone,
buster Bailey.

By the age of 14, Goodman
was playing with pickup bands

made up of musicians
far older than he,

and he was making $15 a night,

3 times as much
as his father could earn

working 12 hours a day
in the stockyards.

He dropped out of school
to pursue music full-time.

In August of 1925,

he was playing at
the midway gardens,

an outdoor pavilion on
the south side designed
by frank Lloyd Wright,

when he got an offer
to go to California

to join a dance band led
by the singer Ben pollack.

♪ Oh, you're happy today ♪

♪ you may be gone... ♪

But Goodman was still only 16
and had to talk his parents

into letting him make
the long journey west.

Benny Goodman
was now earning enough
to feed the entire family.

Collier: So they bought
a newsstand for the father
so he could be outside.

It was better work, it was,
you know, easier, and in fact,

they even said to him,
"dad, you know you don't have
to work anymore,"

but he said, "no," he said,
"I'm a man, I'm going to work."

[Goodbyplaying]

Narrator: On the evening
of December 9, 1926,

on his way home from work,
David Goodman was struck by
an automobile.

He died without ever
having seen his son play
in a professional band.

He had been waiting,
he'd told his son,

'till he could afford a decent
suit so that he would not be
too conspicuous

among the well-dressed dancers.

For the rest of his life,
Benny Goodman could not mention
his father

without having his eyes
fill with tears,

but the tragedy,
combined with the hardship
and crowding of his youth,

would inspire in him
a relentless drive to
better himself.

In just 10 years, Benny Goodman
would become the most popular
musician in america.

[Organ grinder bluesPlaying]

Man, voice-over:
It was a sure-enough honky-tonk,

occupying the cellar
of a saloon.

It was the social center of what
was then, and still is,

negro Harlem's kitchen.

♪ Organ grinder ♪

♪ organ grinder ♪

Here a tall brown-skinned girl,

unmistakably the one guaranteed
in the song to make a preacher
lay his Bible down,

used to sing and dance her own
peculiar numbers,

vesting them with
their own originality.

She was known
simply as Ethel.

Rudolf Fisher.

Ethel: ♪ if you'll just cure my
organ of those grinding blues ♪

Narrator: Ethel waters,
one of the most influential
of all American singers,

was born in the red-light
district of Chester,
Pennsylvania,

the unwanted outcome of a rape.

By the age of 10,
she was the leader of a gang of
children of every nationality

who stole food to survive

and acted as lookouts
for the pimps and prostitutes

in their neighborhood.

"God," waters said later,
"made me tough, headstrong,
and resilient."

[My handy maPlaying]

She began her musical career
as a shimmy dancer and singer,

billed as
"sweet mama stringbean."

"I sure knew how to roll
and quiver," she remembered,

and soon found
herself appearing in black
theaters and tent shows

for $10 a week.

♪ He shakes my ashes ♪

♪ greases my griddle ♪

♪ churns my butter ♪

♪ strokes my fiddle ♪

♪ my man
is such a handy man ♪

♪ he threads my needle... ♪

Narrator: Some of her records
were in the bawdiest blues
tradition--

organ grinder blues,
Do what you did last night,
My handy man.

but unlike bessie Smith
and the other blues stars
of her time,

she had a light,
clear voice and specialized
in soft insinuation.

[I got rhythPlaying]

♪ I got rhythm, I got music ♪

♪ I got my man ♪

♪ who could ask
for anything more? ♪

♪ I got daisies... ♪

Narrator: In 1921, her manager
insisted she try what he called
"white time,"

the all-white
vaudeville circuit.

She was certain she would fail.

"I thought white people wouldn't
understand my type of work,"
she recalled,

"and I wasn't
going to change it."

But white people loved her:
One critic hailed waters as

"the greatest artist of
her race and generation."

♪ Days can be sunny... ♪

Narrator: She was singing
popular songs now,

the best songs from tin pan
alley's best songwriters,

infusing them with the passion
and artistry of the blues,

bringing that hybrid sound
to mainstream america for
the first time.

♪ I'm saying ♪

♪ I got rhythm, I got music ♪

♪ I got my man ♪

♪ who could ask
for anything more? ♪

♪ Lord, I got daisies
and they're in green pastures ♪

♪ I got my man ♪

♪ who could ask
for anything more? ♪

♪ Old man trouble,
I don't mind him ♪

♪ you won't find him
'round my door ♪

♪ I got starlight
and I have sweet dreams ♪

♪ I've got my man ♪

♪ who could ask
for anything more? ♪

♪ Who could ask
for anything more? ♪

Giddins: She made the transition
from blues to popular songs,

and she was able
to take those songs

and sing them in a way
that was modern and important.

They weren't torch songs

when she did them.

They weren't sentimental

when she did them.

They weren't flowery

when she did them.

And just to give you
one instance of how,

the kind of impact she had,

Sophie Tucker,
who was considerably older

and who was the queen of
vaudeville, a great, great star,

paid Ethel waters
money for singing lessons

when Ethel was just in her 20s,
and just getting started.

Because Sophie Tucker realized
that the day was changing,

and she better find out what
this new singing is all about.

Narrator: Waters' singing
influenced nearly every kind
of American popular music,

and she became
the first black woman

to headline at the palace
in New York.

She was for a time the best-paid
woman in show business,

black or white,

and had proven that it was
possible for black singers

to appeal to
every kind of audience.

♪ I'm just a woman ♪

♪ a lonely woman ♪

♪ waitin' on the weary shore ♪

Narrator: In 1929, she went to
Hollywood to appear in a film,

in which she sang Am I blue,

and utterly transcended the
stereotyped plantation setting.

♪ Woke up this mornin'
along about dawn ♪

♪ without a warnin'... ♪

Narrator: Waters would
be revered by generations
of singers.

Years later, Lena horne paid her
the highest possible compliment.

Ethel waters, she said,
was "the mother of us all."

♪ Am I blue? ♪

♪ Am I blue? ♪

♪ Ain't these tears
in these eyes tellin' you? ♪

♪ Am I blue? ♪

♪ You'd be, too ♪

♪ now he's gone
and we're through ♪

♪ am I blue? ♪

[Audience applauds]

[Doin' the froPlaying]

Man, voice-over:
White people began to come
to Harlem in droves.

For several years,
they packed the expensive
cotton club on lenox Avenue.

But I was never there,

because the cotton club
was a Jim crow club

for gangsters
and moneyed whites.

Nor did ordinary negroes like
the growing influx of whites
after sundown,

flooding the little cabarets
and bars,

where formerly only colored
people laughed and sang,

and where now, strangers were
given the best ringside tables

to sit and stare
at the negro customers,

like amusing animals in a zoo.

Langston Hughes

narrator:
The spider's web and the nest,

basement brown's,
and the hole in the wall,

the garden of joy,
and the bucket of blood,

the shim sham, and the hotcha,
and the yeah man,

Connie's inn,
and the catagonia club,
and small's paradise,

prohibition era Harlem
was now home to more
than 500 speakeasies,

most hidden behind non-descript
storefronts and tucked away
in alleys.

The most celebrated
was the cotton club.

It's wealthy white patrons
were eager to experience
for themselves

something of the same
supposedly "primitive"
excitement of black life

that had made Josephine baker
a star in Europe.

The club specialized in
lavish floorshows featuring
light-skinned chorus girls

billed as
"tall, tan, and terrific."

Though blacks were
barred as customers,

the cotton club was
Harlem's premier showcase,

and it was the dream of every
black bandleader to play there.

In 1927, word went out

that the gangsters
in charge of the club

were looking for
a brand-new band.

Man, voice-over:
New York Amsterdam news. ..

One of the brightest spots
in New York's night life is

Duke Ellington, conductor of
what leading judges have called

the foremost colored
jazz orchestra in america.

Ellington, until recently
now was a "comer."

Today he has "arrived."

Watch his dust from now on.

[Jazz convulsion Playing]

Narrator: For almost 4 years,

Duke Ellington had been playing
his "hot" music

at the Kentucky club
off Times Square.

He had a manager now,

the shrewd, tough-talking
Irving mills,

who in exchange for 55%
of his client's earnings

and half of his
music publishing rights,

was committed to making
Duke Ellington a star.

When mills heard of the opening
at the cotton club,

he arranged
a tryout for Ellington.

He got the job.

It was the turning point
in Ellington's career.

And it was at the cotton club
that his sound,

filled with trumpet growls,

unusual harmonies, and chords
no one had ever heard before,

was given a new and for some,
demeaning name, "jungle music."

But whatever it was called,
the music was hot, exotic,
and sexy.

[East St. Louis toodle-o O
playing]

Giddins: He's playing behind
some pretty racy shows.

And he's providing a music that
supports them, and so the music
itself becomes erotic.

And so the band becomes a kind
of participant with the dancers.

They're just as erotic,
they're just as seamy.

They're just as mysterious
and exciting and curious
as the people on the stage.

Marsalis: Duke Ellington
is like bacchus or dionysus.

He loves things carnal.

That's his domain.

And he's there to let you know
what you need to be doing

and how you need to be doing it,

and at what tempo you need
to be doing it in.

So he's indispensable.

[Doin' the voom voomPlaying]

Narrator: Ellington
worked constantly,

writing song after song
for the revues

that changed every 6 months.

The cotton club proved
a priceless training ground
for him,

setting the composing style
he would follow for the rest
of his life.

Giddins: One of the things
about Ellington is that
he is self-taught.

He is the ultimate autodidact.

He figures it out
as he goes along.

He's not the kind of guy
who learns that you voice
a trumpet section in one, 3, 5,

and then he just goes
and does it that way.

He'll voice
the trumpet section

and throw in a baritone
or a bass clarinet.

He'll cross-arrange
with trombones and saxophones.

He would create dissonances and
different kinds of harmonies,

so that he broke
all the rules and created
a whole new tone palette,

from which jazz composition
would emerge.

Sanders: I think Duke believed

that he had this ability

to convey something special

he believed in his knowledge

of Harmony, which he developed

a harmonic language his own.

He knew the orchestra so well,
the colors of each instrument,

but not just an instrument.

To Duke, a trumpet was not just
a trumpet, it was an individual.

A saxophone was not
just an instrument,
but it was a person.

Giddins: He had a baritone
saxophonist named Harry carney,

who had the most gorgeous sound
on the baritone that has ever
been heard.

So Ellington, he would voice
the baritone out front.

This immediately gave him
an original sound.

Radio announcer:
Hello, everybody, welcome
to our famous cotton club.

I'd like to have the pleasure
of introducing

the greatest living master
of jungle music.

The rip-roaring, Harmony hound,
none other than Duke Ellington.

Let her go...

[Cotton club sto Mplaying]

Narrator: In late 1927,
CBS brought a microphone
into the cotton club,

and Duke Ellington became
the first black bandleader
in america

with a nationwide hook-up.

Collier:
These were not necessarily
late night broadcasts.

Some of these broadcasts
were being done

at 6:00 in the afternoon,
suppertime.

So that Duke was reaching out,

not just to a lot of jazz fans,

but he was reaching out
to middle america,

he was reaching out
to people who sat around

and listened to their radios

while they were having
their suppers.

And very quickly he became
a national name.

Narrator: In 1929,
rko pictures made a short film

built around Ellington
and his music.

What's that?
Something you're
writing?

That's a new number
I'm writing...

Oh, play it for me!

Sure. Hotch!

Come on, let's
round up and play.

Narrator: In an era when
blacks were routinely
portrayed on screen

as servants or savages,
cotton-pickers or clowns,

Duke Ellington was presented
as what he was,

a serious composer.

The film included
his most ambitious work to date:

Black and tan fantasy.

it was an alluring,
blues-oriented piece in 3 parts

that evoked the steamy
atmosphere of the black-and-tan
clubs scattered around Harlem:

The only clubs in which
the races were free to mix
and mingle.

[Black and tan fanta Splaying]

The composition ends

with a reference
to chopin's Funeral march.

a sly reminder that
good times never last.

His compositions may have been
called "jungle music,"

but it was American negro life

that inspired
everything he wrote...

[Harlem flat blu Eplaying]

Black beauty, jubilee stomp,

Saturday night function,
Harlem flat blue S.

When someone asked why his music
was so dissonant,

he said, "dissonance is
OurWay of life in america.

We are something apart,
yet, an integral part."

"I am not playing jazz,"
he told an interviewer.

"I am trying to play the natural
feelings of a people."

Ellington was, in the admiring
parlance of the times,

"a race man."

Sanders: His people
were important to him.

He conveyed the life
of the negro-American
in different dimensions.

And he did it through music.

He captured their feelings,
their moods,

their ups, their downs.

The titles of the songs

showed that Duke was very
conscious of people around him.

From his earliest pieces
like Black and tan fanta Sy,

he was already expressing
a mood of a people,

and their struggles
and their joys

as well as their sorrows.

Jefferson: What he was doing,
was opening up

every kind of tonal,
harmonic, rhythmic possibility

and saying all of these things
are in our culture.

All of these things
are within our means.

The point is, there's no limit.

Race is a set
of possibilities and inventions.

It's not a set of rules
and orders, and only struggles.

Narrator: All of his life,

Duke Ellington stubbornly
refused ever to be categorized.

For him,
the language of music

was the means
of breaking down barriers,

of bringing all people together.

Interviewer: You've
been quoted as saying
that you write

now would you like
to expound on that
a little bit?

Ellington:
Let's see. My people.

Now, which of my people?

I mean, you know,
I'm in several groups,
you know,

I'm in, let's see.

I'm in the group
of the piano players;

I'm in the group
of the listeners;

I'm in the groups
of people who have general
appreciation of music;

I'm in the group of those
who aspire to be dilettantes;

I'm in the group
of those who attempt

to produce something
fit for the plateau;

I'm in the group
of what now?

Oh, yeah, those who
appreciate beaujolais.

[Laughs]

Well, and then of course,
I'm in the--

of course, I've had
such a strong influence

by the music
of thepeople.

Thepeople, that's
the better word,

thepeople, rather
than my people,

because Thepeople
are my people.

[Rose ro Playing]

Shaw:
The thing is you're aiming at
something that cannot be done.

Physically can't be done.

So you're trying to play a horn,

and here's this clumsy series
of keys on a piece of wood,

and you're trying
to manipulate them

with the Reed
and the throat muscles,

and what they call
an embouchure.

And you're trying to make
something happen that never
happened before.

You're tryin' to make a sound
that no one ever got before,

creating an emotion.

You're trying to take
an inarticulate thing

and take notes
and make them come out

in a way that moves you.

If it moves you,
it's gonna move others.

If you know it's right, and you
feel this is something I meant,

but very rarely does it happen.

And when it does, you remember
it for the rest of your life.

What can I say,

it's the most exuberant

experience you can have.

It beats sex.

It beats great food.
It beats anything.

Narrator: Arthur Jacob arshawsky

was born on the lower east side
of Manhattan in 1910,

the only child of immigrant
dressmakers who eventually
separated.

At seven, the family moved
to new haven, Connecticut,

where the boy found himself
an outcast,

tormented by schoolmates
who ridiculed

his "foreign-sounding name"

and called him "sheeny"
and "kike" and "Christ-killer."

Shaw: My father'd left home,

and I didn't like my life
very much.

I didn't like school,
I didn't like anything.

So it was a choice
between getting a machine gun
or an instrument.

Luckily I found an instrument.

[Sug Playing]

Narrator: He visited
a vaudeville theater

and saw a musician in a snappy
white-striped blazer

kneel down on one knee
in the spotlight

and play a dreamy melody
on a shiny gold saxophone.

"That did it," arshawsky said.

Music would be his way
to fame and fortune.

Shaw: I'd heard a guy play,

and he was surrounded
by nice lights and pretty girls,

it was interesting to me.

I thought, "this is the way
I'd like to go."

Narrator: He worked
in a grocery store

to earn money for a saxophone,

practiced so hard the inside
of his lower lip bled,

and formed his own 4-piece band,

which he called
the Peter Pan novelty orchestra.

He earned two dollars
a night playing dances.

Shaw: First came the question
of practicality,

getting a job, making a living.

I was determined that
I would play this instrument,

so I quit school,
and I managed to get flunked.

I worked it out so I got flunked
twice in a row,

two months in a row,
and they threw me out.

And despite
my mother's pleas

with the principal
at hillhouse high in new haven,

they wouldn't have me.

So that meant
I was free to play.

[Cream pufPlaying]

Narrator: Like Benny Goodman,

who would one day
be his great rival,

arshawsky took up the clarinet

and joined a touring dance band
as a full-time professional.

Shaw: I was doing
things you shouldn't do,

but I didn't know who to follow,
I didn't know who to copy.

And until many,
many months later,

after I'd been playing months,
in those days was equivalent
to years,

as I was in a hurry.

And finally I heard bix,
and trumbauer, and I,

there's-that's--
those are the guys.

Being a white guy,
I was subjected to white music,

and I heard bix and trumbauer,
and they were the exemplars.

And they played like they
knew where they were going,

there was a direction
to what they did,

there was a definition,
a kind of discipline
to what they did.

And I thought, "oh, boy,
that's the way to go."

Narrator: Eager to be accepted
by audiences everywhere,

and "ashamed of being a Jew,"
he said,

Arthur Jacob arshawsky
changed his name to Artie Shaw.

Eventually he went to Harlem

to learn from Duke Ellington's
mentor Willie "the lion" Smith,

who gave him the nickname
"snow white."

The disciplined, self-conscious
outsider was finding his voice.

[Mississippi mudPlaying]

Man, voice-over:
One thing we talked about
a lot was the freedom of jazz.

People used to ask bix
to play a chorus

just as he had recorded it.

He couldn't do it.

"It's impossible,"
he told me once.

"I don't feel
the same way twice."

He said, "that's one of the
things I like about jazz, kid.

"I don't know what's going
to happen next.

Do you?"

Jimmy mcpartland

[just an hour of lov Playing]

Narrator: In 1927,
Jean goldkette's orchestra
disbanded,

leaving bix beiderbecke
and his friend Frankie trumbauer

on their own.

Then, they heard
from Paul whiteman,

the leader of the best paid,

most successful band
in the country.

Whiteman was eager
to hire the best hot players

to spice up his sound.

He wanted, but did not
dare hire black musicians,

so he sought out
the best white ones.

Giddins: By 1926, 1927,

jazz became a very powerful
music, and whiteman knew it.

He got the best white musicians
in the world,

bix beiderbecke,
frank trumbauer, Eddie lang,

and Joe venuti were in the band.

So, for two or 3 years,
whiteman,

though never really
a jazz person,

did make some
very good jazz records.

Narrator: Bix loved performing
in the whiteman band

and wrote home to his parents
in Davenport to tell them

that he had gotten a job

with the best-known orchestra
in america.

Sudhalter:
His letters home were,

almost to the end of his life,

full of the kind of subtext,

which is in its truest sense
an entreaty.

Respect me. Approve of me.

Look, I'm playing with

the top band in the country.

I'm making all these records.

We're playing
at fancy dress balls.

Can't you be proud of me
for that?

His mother was, I think,
fairly sympathetic.

His father never yielded.

[Ain't no sweet man worth
The salt of my tearsPlaying]

Narrator:
In the summer of 1928,

the whiteman orchestra
played the Chicago theater.

Sitting in the segregated
balcony, Louis Armstrong,

who years before had inspired
the young beiderbecke,

saw him play on stage
for the first time.

"Those pretty notes
went right through me,"

Armstrong remembered,

and several days that week,

in the early morning hours,
at a south side club,

bix got a chance to play
with the man he most admired.

"We would lock the doors,"
Armstrong recalled,

"and just blow."

"We tried to see how good
we could make the music sound."

But bix beiderbecke
would never get the chance

to record or to play in public
with Louis Armstrong.

Even at the height
of the jazz age,

the music world remained
strictly segregated.

Jefferson: I think, my god,
this poor man!

He should have been playing with
one of the black orchestras.

And I believe it harmed him.

In that way he was
a victim artistically.

Let's leave emotions aside.

Emotionally, he was victim
of many things,

but he was a victim,
artistically, of segregation.

He was not allowed to play with
musicians who were as good as

and in some cases,
better than he.

That's what jazz musicians need.

Marsalis: Bix beiderbecke's
tragedy is an American tragedy.

It's about the white man
who understands how far
our culture is,

and our society is,
from what it should be.

And this music has given him
a glimpse of what is.

This is a man whose hearing
is so deep into the meaning
of this music,

that it broke his heart.

[Waiting at the end
Of the roaPlaying]G

narrator:
On November 30, 1928,

bix beiderbecke checked into
the palace hotel in Cleveland

with the rest
of the Paul whiteman orchestra.

They were to begin
a weeklong run that evening.

Bix was having more and more
trouble controlling his drinking

and the depression that it
seemed only to intensify.

He had been missing concerts,
forgetting his cues,

hiding bottles
beneath the bandstand.

Many years later,
a cornetist using copies of
Paul whiteman's sheet music,

discovered a notation
in someone's hand,

"wake up bix."

Whiteman urged him to go home
to Davenport to recuperate.

But when bix got there,
he discovered in a hall closet

all the records he had proudly
sent home to his parents.

They had never listened to them.

[I'm coming, virgini Playing]

Man, voice-over:
He wasn't being good to himself;

his feet were swollen
and dragged when he walked;

his thoughts were often muddled.

He came to the studio
and sat for hours at the piano.

It hurt me all over--

in my eyes, in my brain,
in my stomach, in my heart,

but I knew nothing
could help him.

I suppose a guy
gets closer to you when
he is hurting himself

and all you can do is watch.

Eddie condon

narrator: Bix quietly checked
himself into a treatment center,

managed to stay sober
for a while,

then fell off the wagon again,

and was never well enough
to rejoin the whiteman band.

By August of 1931,

he was living alone
in a borrowed one-room apartment

in queens, New York.

Sudhalter: He died in the midst
of an attack of d.T.S

in a squalid little apartment
in queens at 9:30 in the evening

with nobody around to help him.

Narrator: Bix beiderbecke
was not yet 29.

"Lots of cats tried to play
like bix," Louis Armstrong
said later.

"Ain't none of them play
like him yet."

Marsalis: Louis Armstrong
has a song called,

mahogany hall stomp,And you
can just hear in this song,

just the dance of it
that goes...

[Mahogany hall stompPlaying]

Giddins: Improvisation,
of course, exists before jazz.

Beethoven was
a celebrated improviser.

Bach's theme and variations
are developed improvisationally,

but you can't document
improvisation,

you can only document
the finished work,

which exists on a score,
which is written.

There's no way of taping
Beethoven's improvisation
and then transcribing it.

But Armstrong and jazz
comes along at the same time as
a technology that can document.

At first there's naturally
a prejudice because it's
a written culture,

we're prejudiced
against an oral culture.

But Armstrong, in those 1926
and 1927 and 1928 performances,

proves, for the first time,

that an improvisation can be
just as coherent, imaginative,

emotionally satisfying,
and durable as a written
piece of music.

Narrator:
Between 1925 and 1928,

Louis Armstrong made
a series of 65 recordings

under his own name.

He was paid $50 a side and
never saw a dime in royalties.

But after they were released,

jazz music would never be
the same again,

and generations of musicians
would study them in wonder
and admiration.

His bands, the hot 5 and hot 7
and savoy ballroom 5

were recording groups only,

mostly made up
of New Orleans musicians

with whom he'd been playing
all his life,

including Johnny dodds,
Johnny St. cyr, and kid ory.

His wife lil
often played the piano.

But these records were something
altogether new.

Giddins: I think the most
important thing that you can say
about the hot 5s and the hot 7s

is that for the first time,
we know that jazz is an art.

What does he bring to this music
that has not previously existed?

First of all, he establishes,
almost single-handedly,

that jazz is going to be
a soloist's art,

not an ensemble music.

Number two, he affirms,
for all time,

that a fundamental basis
for this music is going
to be a blues tonality,

which is going to be
as fundamental to jazz

as the tempered scale
is to western music.

It's the blood,
it's the life of the music.

Third, and most significant,

and I think this is maybe
The Great innovation in
American music.

And it's the most astonishing
to contemplate,

Armstrong invented, what for
lack of a more specific phrase,
we call swing.

He created modern time.

The music that Armstrong
improvised in 1928

excites us today.

And if that's not classical
music, I don't know what is.

[A weather birPlaying]

Narrator:
For more than two years,

Armstrong had been headlining
at a south side Chicago club:

The sunset.

It was a tough place,
run by the mob,

and raided
so often by the police,
one musician remembered,

that he used to run
for the paddy wagon
as soon as it pulled up

in order to get a good seat.

Armstrong's pianist was a young
musician from Pittsburgh,

Earl hines, who was an innovator
in his own right.

He played what came to be called
"trumpet-style" piano,

confidently spinning out
complex, horn-like melodies
with his right hand,

while setting a looser rhythm
with his left.

He and Armstrong were rivals
as well as friends.

Each spurred the other
to greater heights.

Shaw: I went to Chicago,
I made a pilgrimage,

I took a week off and went up
to Chicago, had a little car,

and I found my way
to a place called the savoy.

And I sat on a rug-covered
bandstand and just waited,

and he came on.

And the first thing he played
was West end blu Es.

And I heard this cascade of
notes coming out of a trumpet.

No one had ever
done that before.

And so I was obsessed
with the idea that this
was what you had to do.

Something that was your own,
that had nothing to do with
anybody else,

but I was influenced by him,
not in terms of notes,

but in terms of the idea of
doing what you are, who you are.

Narrator: On June 28, 1928,

Louis Armstrong and Earl hines
went into the studio

and recorded a king Oliver tune,
West end blues.

it would become one
of the best-known recordings

in the history of jazz:

A perfect reflection of
the country in the moments
before the great depression,

and it would once and for all
establish Louis Armstrong

as the first, great solo genius
of the music.

Giddins: When I was 15,
I bought a copy of

Louis Armstrong and Earl hines.

and I put it on, and the first
track was Basin street blues ,

and I was so astounded by that
that I had to take the needle
off the record

and just kind of get my breath.

It took me about 6 months
to get through the whole side
of the record,

you know, memorizing
and learning each track

before I would go on
to the next one.

And there was no doubt in
my mind that Armstrong was,

you know, just the greatest
figure in contemporary music,

and where could he go
beyond that?

And then I turned the album
over after some 6 months,

and the first track is
you hear that cadenza:

Bop, bop, bop, boo,
dop, boo, dop...

West end blues.

marsalis: Trumpet players
all throughout history,

we always played fanfares.

You know, you could
start with the elephant.

The elephant goes...
[Plays]

That's like a fanfare,
"get out of my way.
I'm coming through."

And from that you have
like trumpet calls

that you've heard all the time
on the Saturday movies.

[Plays fanfare]

Little things like that.

And the Beethoven
Lenore overture,

you have a trumpet call like...

So you always hear
the trumpet doing that.

Now, West end bl Uesgoes...

So that's like another
whole concept of a fanfare.

And Armstrong goes
into two different times,

and he uses the same "di di
dipo be do boo boo" arpeggios.

Then he uses all the chromatic
notes, and he used the sound of
the blues.

It's like everything
is in there,

but it's so natural,
it sounds very simple.

But let me tell you,
it's hard to get that d, too.

And when you hear him play this
solo, just the brilliance of it,

but also how natural--
it's just like, ok,

here's West end blue Sfor you.

Giddins: I played West end blues
Once for a music professor,

and I put it on the turntable,
and we played it once,

and he said, "play that again."

We played it again in complete
silence, and he said,

"I think that may be the most
perfect 3 minutes of music
I've ever heard in my life."

[West end bluePlaying]

[Man humming]