To that end, my pet decade, (by which I mean the one I spend the most time exploring, the most care researching and the one I've generally enjoyed the most music from) is the 1920s. It's a labor of love. Many recordings from that era, even of famous songs, have been lost. Delta blues and roots jazz have generally been preserved, given the genres' popularity and followings today. But those forms whose followings have aged more poorly, such as bluegrass and the traditional music imported by immigrants, or whose definitions were fairly nebulous to begin with, such as traditional folk, gospel and country western, have found their key works fading into relative obscurity. For the musical salvager, it makes finding the great pieces trickier than it ought to be.
On top of that, the music itself has, in many instances, aged rather poorly. I don't mind the little pops and scratches on old records. But to someone used to the more clean production quality of anything recorded after the mid 30s, it can be a little jarring. Vocals can have a bit of a tinny quality to them, and it can be difficult to pick out the more subtle instrumental nuances on records that haven't benefited from a remaster.
So if the songs are hard to find and the recording quality sucks, why go through all the trouble? Because in the 20s, modern American music began to develop in earnest.
If you've gotten ahead of me here and scrolled down to the songs, you might notice that most of them are recorded in the very late 1920s. That's because recordings created before 1925 were all phonautographic; which is a really fancy way of saying that to record anything, people held up a big ass cone that captured sound vibration and scribbled them into a cylinder or onto a disk. The indentations could be played back on a needle like any other record.
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| Does't this look practical? |
Then, in 1924, Western Electric's experiments in electronic recording technology finally found success. Electric recording allowed companies to record music directly through microphones and onto disks, rather than just catching as much as they could from the air. The result was recordings with dramatically improved quality. That quality was primitive even by the standards of the recordings made 20 years later. But in spite of that, it was nothing short of a revolution in music distribution. For the first time, recorded songs had real depth, and character rather than sounding flat and tinny. Horns, percussion, banjos and most importantly, the guitar (which on phonautographic recordings, was largely ignored due to its lack of character) finally began to have distinguishing clarity.
By 1925, the music industry dropped the standard practice of simply selling sheet music and began embracing the new medium, and Americans along with them. To put the speed at which this happened in a measurable context, 190,000 records were produced in 1923. Six years later, that number stood at 5 million. Records and their players became cheaper, and records themselves entered the home, allowing Americans to become casual music enthusiast for the first time.
While distribution was important, the impact it had on the music itself is more so. Electric recordings changed a great deal. Pre-1925 era recordings were only of extremely popular, well known pieces of music. Recorded song wasn't a profitable venture otherwise. The new technology, however, made recording artists cheaper, and allowed their works to be sold to a larger audience for a higher profit margin. This meant that previously overlooked, regional music like Mississippi Delta blues, Appellation bluegrass, Country music of the western frontier and more local jazz movements like that of New Orleans suddenly had a market. Once there was money to be made, these national treasures were put to record. And while the industry was still regionalized at that point, it also contributed to the spread of genres that would have otherwise never been heard out of the swampland, plains or mountains.
I try to say this with as little pretension as possible coming from a 25 year old white boy writing in the year 2013, but this music is really exciting to me. Apart from simply respecting its historical value, there's a real thrill I get from hearing the basic, roots versions of the music I obsess about so much today. And on top of that, I genuinely enjoy listening to it.
I'm posting a list here containing ten of my very favorite songs from the 1920s. As usual, each artist is only allowed one slot; a particularly good notion in this case, else Bessie Smith and Blind Willie Johnson would just run away with things.
10. Pass Around the Bottle and We'll All Take a Drink by the Skillet-Lickers - 1927
I love bluegrass. Not necessarily the furious paced, "look what I can do" showmanship than many contemporary banjo pickers feel a need to mass produce; but the more subtle, banjo-washboard-n'-fiddle Appellation gospel that form the genre's backbone. There's a beautiful, earthiness to the complex instrumentals formed on a great gospel record that offers endless, relaxing appeal.
The Skillet-Lickers were an early pioneer group in that fashion. Being the good-ol' Georgia mountain boys that they were, they had all of the sophistication you might expect. Today, the group is perhaps most (in)famous for the "charming" track 'Run Nigger, Run', which is a phenomenal piece of technical bluegrass, in spite of its more horrifying implications. Regardless of their lack of racial enlightenment, the group plays some incredible music. 'Pass Around the Bottle', in particular, is a fun little drinking song that you can just imagine hillbilly's passing around a moonshine jar to.
9. Walk in Jerusalem Just Like John by The Birmingham Jubilee Singers - 1926
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8b9NBA69Pc
It's criminal that Blogger's Youtube uploader won't let me embed this, because it's one of the finest pieces of Southern gospel ever put on record. Still, you can click on that link and go hear it for yourself.
It's well known among my friends that I have a fascination of Southern culture, and their contributions to gospel are among the reasons why. It's a pure, earnest thing born of the somewhat ironic blend of negro spirituals and white Baptist stomp music. Let it be known that church music was the first truly miscegenated element of Southern life.
The song itself follows the traditional Southern gospel formula. The lead in is done by a powerful vocalist, and backed by the "choir" of singers. One of the reasons that traditional gospel records from the era have aged so poorly is that low quality recorders have a hard time creating a sense of harmony. As the recording quality is somewhat primitive, the singers lose their individual contributions and the whole thing just sounds muddy. Here, however, the harmony is very crisp and extraordinarily well synchronized. Every time I listen to this song, I can't help but tap my toe along and jump in singing, which is entirely the point of a spiritual like this. I wish the music I'd grown up with in church had been half so entertaining. I might actually have gone more.
8. The Morning Dew by Michael Coleman - 1927
Celtic music, however, has fared slightly better than its Eastern European counterpart thanks to a revival movement in the latter part of the 20th century. One artist who has gained particular retroactive notoriety is Michael Coleman. Coleman was an Irish fiddler whose music caught traction with American immigrants. The primary focus of his music are reels, or two part Celtic instrumentals in which the music abruptly shifts half way through the piece. The Morning Dew starts off dark and heavy, opening with intense fiddle work that lightens up at 1:37 to become a jaunty, light-hearted dance tune. I confess that while I adore this song, I chose it somewhat arbitrarily. Coleman's work, across the board, is incredible, so picking just one song from him was more or less a hat draw.
7. St James Infirmary Blues by Duke Ellington - 1928
Jazz in the 1920s was still very much in its infancy. The genre, in my opinion, din't truly come into its own until the mid 30s. However, there are a few standout tracks to be found. St. James Infirmary Blues is one of them. An old folk song, "St. James Infirmary Blues" started its life as "The Unfortunate Rake". The tune and lyrics evolved with the times, and in 1928, Louis Armstrong recorded the song and it transformed from it from a classic folk ballad to a jazz standard.
While Armstrong's version is classic, nobody did the song better than Duke Ellington's Cotton Club recording with Irving Mills in 1928. The song plays like a somber funeral march, and Mills vocals bring a more heavy, mournful tone than is found in other renditions. While Armstrong's version has a superior trumpet (the centerpiece instrument in any version), Ellington's ever-present knack for big band arrangements really shines here. A set of banjo chords and a ragtime piano help lend an eerie feel to the track, and the composition comes together as a better sum of its parts that Armstrong's.
As a bonus, Fans of Bioshock Infinite might recognize this as the song that plays in the rooms where those nasty bobble-headed bastards try to attack you. I was thrilled at its inclusion, and recognizing it was one of the many, "Ah! Perfect!" moments that I had with the musical selections for the game.
6. Train Whistle Blues by Jimmy Rodgers - 1928
From the turn of the century to the early 1970s, country western music looked entirely different from its present day incarnation. I won't drudge up my criticisms of where the genre has taken itself again, but the country music of the old school was catchy, lively and actually damn good fun to listen to.
Perhaps the first personification of the sound that would later be popularized by the likes of Hank Williams and the Carter Family was Jimmy Rodgers. Rodgers probably thought of himself more of a traditional yodeler than a country western artist, and some of that unfortunately makes its way into this song. But the rest of the song is an expertly played guitar track that's caught somewhere between the backwater blues music that country started as and the twangy honky-tonk it would eventually turn into. It's a fascinating bridge between worlds, and a damn fun song to listen to.
5. Times is Tight Like That by Bo Carter - 1928
Ragtime music has always been played as much on guitars, banjos and other stringed instruments as it was on piano. However, ragtime's heyday was well before technology could record such instruments with any sort of clarity. As the majority of ragtime was composed sometime between 1890 and 1920, most of what's been preserved exists either as impossibly scratchy, archaic recordings, or reproductions based on the sheet music that was widely circulated at the time. The genre's popularity had waned considerably by 1928, but around that time, its string-driven variants saw something of a brief comeback thanks to the ability to record it properly for the first time.
Guitar and banjo rags, primarily from the southern delta region, are hugely common in terms of 20s recordings. But for my money, "Times is Tight Like That" by little remembered artist Bo Carter stands among the best pieces available. Although its beat is rigid, which is standard fare for ragtime, it's hugely peppy and catchy. The song describes crippling Southern poverty in a way that makes it almost seems fun in that, "Might as well laugh at it" sort of way, and the alternation between the two singers drives home the notion that this isn't an isolated state of being for those living in the region at the time.
4. Ain't Misbehavin by Fats Waller - 1929
"Ain't Misbehavin" is a legendary jazz standard from equally legendary player Fats Waller. Beyond question, his definitive (and superior) version is the re-release he did for the 1943 film Stormy Weather, which can be heard here. However, as this is an entry about 1920s music and not that which it laid the groundwork for, I'll be moving on. Regardless of whatever versions came after it, "Ain't Misbehavin" holds its own as one of the earliest and best examples of honest to goodness jazz on record.
3. When the Levee Breaks by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy - 1927
Listen Here
Bafflingly, this song has been removed from Youtube by Warner Chappell for copyright infringement. This is infuriating for a few reasons. First of all, Warner Chappell is a company that buys up song rights for music that they had fuck all to do with creating, and in an ideal world, they would have exactly that much ownership of it. Secondly, by removing free access to this music, they insure that nobody who doesn't already have an interest in it ever will (especially since this song in particular is such an important gateway to Mississippi Delta blues). And it's not as if they're interested in preserving/promoting this music for future generations or anything. Dozens of other Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy songs are available on Youtube; the only reason they give a shit about this one is that Led Zepplin made it a huge hit, and they want to cash in.
Fuck it. We need new copyright laws.
Whatever.
"When the Levee Breaks" is one of the all time greatest Delta blues recordings. Memphis Minnie's incredible guitar picking is what I always daydream about being able to do with a six string. 'When the Levee Breaks' by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy is not simply one of my favorite 1920s songs, but one of my favorite songs of all time.
2. God Moves on the Water by Blind Willie Johnson - 1927
When music critics and fans alike create lists of the greatest guitarists of all time, the laser-like focus is always on rock and roll. And while most of the greatest guitarists certainly are rockers, I'd match a couple of the classics like Memphis Minnie and Django Reinhardt (who I'll dote on at some point in the future, I have no doubt) against Jimmy Hendrix and Eric Clapton any day.
I bring that up because, other than Senor Reinhardt, Blind Willie Johnson is my favorite guitarist to listen to. Picking just one piece from him is a difficult, but I ultimately went with this one because it showcases what BWJ does best. Several times throughout the song, Johnson transitions seamlessly from slide guitar, to plucking out blues scales at breakneck speed. This combination of styles tends to create very dark, desolate sounding tracks that might explain his lack of notoriety. His gravelly voice might be a turn off to new listeners as well, along with the general obscurity of music this old.
Still, Johnson's body of work (which was, like all Delta artists, relatively small) has gained enough notability to have one thing going for it: it's been remastered. Very, very few artists recorded before 1930 can lay claim to that, and it dramatically improves the quality of his recordings. God bless whoever made that decision.
1. Aggrivating Papa by Bessie Smith - 1924
And so we come to my favorite song of the 1920s. It's also the oldest on the list. And if you've made it all the way to this entry then congratulations! You're almost at the end of an entry that got way, way longer than I ever intended for it to.
Bessie Smith is an amazing singer. And more than simply being an amazing singer, she was a jazz pioneer. Going as far back as 1922, Smith has some of the best jazz tunes in history backing up her performances. She's responsible for so many classics that it's hard to keep track. "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "I'm Wild About that Thing" and "Downhearted Blues" were all among the many classics she helped popularize. And unlike so many artists on this list, Smith has actually gotten the recognition and subsequent digital remastering that she deserves.
"Aggrivatin' Papa" is my favorite, though. It represents the perfect fusion of vocal blues and instrumental jazz that would later dominate the black music scene. It's catchy as hell, too; Smith's sultry drag and the brass supporting her simply swing on this track. I find the story of the song charming as well. "I love you," The song says, "But you're a pain in the ass, and I'll totally kill you if you keep it up". The remastering that this track's undergone has done wonders for it, and it's one of the earliest recordings on which you can really hear jazz coming into its own. But then again, Bessie Smith has always been good for that much.
PS: Thank you for hanging with me on that one. Now that I've gotten that old, dusty stuff out of my system, I can move on to other things. I'm not sure what my next entry will be about. I'd like to write some more Golden entries, whether they're about albums or songs. And now that I have Spotify in my life, listening to new albums is a hell of a lot easier. So expect more album reviews. I may even do more dissections of genres, like this entry. Either way, life is settling down, and I'm getting back into the swing of writing regularly again. I hope that the success I've found here translates into more work on my novel, but I suppose there are only so many miracles one can expect out of life.
As always, thanks for reading. And don't be afraid to drop a comment if you'd like.
