Music and videos from Jazz class

Greetings students - Here are some of the recordings we listened to and videos we watched in class this week.

This is the pop song we listened to, "Naive Melody" by the Talking Heads. The song is in 4 (it has four beats per measure) as are the overwhelming majority of songs. In the beginning, you can hear very clearly the downbeat (beat one) because the melodic theme is only four beats long (after every four beats they start to play the same thing over again).


This is the big band song we listened to, "The Late Late Show" by Nat "King" Cole. You can very clearly hear the 'swing' in the song, that they emphasize the offbeat (beats two and four) because in the beginning and during the chorus the drummer hits the drum really hard on the second and fourth beat.


Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues"


Louis Armstrong's performance of "Black and Blue" in Ghana


I couldn't find the version of "Saint Louis Blues" that we listened to in class but here is the same piece played by Louis Armstrong.


Billie Holiday's performance of "Strange Fruit"


Here's a video of Billie Holiday performing another song very closely associated with her, and we also listened to in class, "Fine and Mellow". Coleman Hawkins is also on this recording.


Coleman Hawkins playing "Body and Soul"


Miles Davis playing "Jeru"


Miles Davis playing "Walkin'" (this recording from 1967 although the original from 1954)


Clifford Brown playing "Joy Spring" this is a different version from the one we listened to in class. The version we listened to in class has the 32 measures (bars) of the head (AABA), a 32 measure trumpet solo, a 32 measure saxophone solo, and then back to the head (AABA). This version starts with an 8 bar introduction, the AABA theme, has 32 bars of a saxophone solo, 64 bars of a trumpet solo (two "choruses"), 32 bars of a piano solo. Then there's this really cool section called 'trading fours' in which the musicians alternate soloing with the drummer. the trumpet player solos 4 bars, then the drummer solos 4 bars, then the saxophone player 4 bars, drummer 4 bars, trumpet player 4 bars, drummer 4 bars, sax 4 bars, drummer 40 bars, then 8 bars to play the introduction that they played in the begining of the piece, and then back to the head (the theme!). So altogether there are 8 rounds of the 32 bars, plus the 8 bar introduction.


The Beatles "I Will" Which is a pop song in the AABA format.