Smears, Laughs, and Barnyard Hokum: Early Jazz Trombone and the Problem of Novelty

Abstract

In his 2005 book Pioneers of Jazz, Lawrence Gushee traces the development of the Creole Band, the early touring group that helped disseminate what would eventually become known as jazz outside of New Orleans. For Gushee, the Creole Band was a critical link between the early twentieth-century New Orleans scene and the later recording groups of the post-1917 era. As he recounts in vivid detail, it was largely through the Vaudeville stage, and through an identification as a novelty band, that the group would achieve notoriety. Yet the overall sense from Gushee's study is that the Creole Band represented something different, distinct from Vaudeville or novelty. In short, they became “pioneers of jazz.” This idea is made clear in an epigraph for the introduction, in which Jelly Roll Morton asserts in a 1938 interview that the band “really played jazz, not just novelty and show stuff.”1 Morton's quote is telling, as is Gushee's placement of the passage as the very first words in his text, reinforcing the idea that the Creole Band is squarely within the realm of jazz.Jazz historiography has long been occupied with categorizing the style in relation to and, perhaps more importantly, as distinct from other forms of early twentieth-century popular music. Within this discourse, the identification of artists and works as belonging to the realm of “novelty” is one of the most damning descriptions in the jazz lexicon, associated with minstrelsy, Vaudeville comedy, and other forms that are deemed to be of a fundamentally different nature. An example is seen in this passage from Henry Martin and Keith Waters's textbook Jazz: The First 100 Years. Discussing the Original Dixieland Jass Band (ODJB), they single out the “barnyard effects” used in the 1917 recording of “Livery Stable Blues,” which “made jazz synonymous with novelty or slapstick music.”2 For many popular musicians, however, the lines between jazz and novelty were faint, and in some cases non-existent. Commenting on the pre-1920s recordings of clarinetist Wilbur Sweatman, Tim Brooks notes that this was “the era of jazz as novelty music,” defined by various musical effects including “trombone swoops.”3 Similarly, Todd Decker notes in his study of Fred Astaire and jazz that “[f]rom at least the mid-1910s, the twelve-bar blues found a place in vaudeville, an early venue for jazz as novelty music.”4 For artists such as Astaire, jazz and novelty were two parts of the same whole; while they may not have been completely interchangeable, their close relationship meant that discussions of one invariably involved discussions of the other. Yet sharp distinctions between jazz and novelty have remained a stubborn feature of writing on jazz. As swing gained popularity in the 1930s, its opponents sought to establish a more “authentic” alternative, based in the music of the previous decade; M.I. Franklin notes that “[e]ven in the early 1930s record labels were beginning to reissue the records of the 1920s so that jazz came to be seen as a developing art rather than a novelty music.”5 This strategy was employed to reinforce a similar separation between the categories of “jazz” and “swing” in the run-up to the “critical wars” of the 1940s,6 while later scholars would, ironically, place swing inside the jazz-versus-novelty boundary.Across instrumental forms in the popular music of this era, the trombone represented a particularly notable point of overlap between novelty and jazz styles, especially with respect to the instrument's most characteristic sonic effect: the glissando, or “smear.” Compositions based on the trombone smear by composers like Arthur Pryor, Henry Fillmore, and Mayhew Lake capitalized on this singular ability to evoke humor. The trombone smear seems to have existed simultaneously as a novelty effect and a core element of early jazz performance practice. Following this, we might surmise that, particularly before 1923, jazz was, in essence, novelty music. In the remainder of this essay, we will examine the role of the trombone in early American popular forms, particularly how the work of contemporary composers and trombonists complicates such distinctions; “jazz” and “novelty,” rather than existing as distinct spheres, may be more closely connected than later historiography has allowed.The most extensive research that has been conducted on the use of the trombone glissando, and indeed, on the trombone in general, has been done by Trevor Herbert. His book, appropriately titled The Trombone,7 is the most comprehensive and deeply researched text on the instrument to date. Herbert has also written specifically on the glissando in a 2010 article in the Historical Brass Society Journal. He writes that “[d]espite the obvious ease with which the glissando can be performed on the trombone and indeed the compulsion that new players may feel to experiment with it on their first encounter with the instrument, it appears not to have been used until the nineteenth century.”8 Valve trombones were the instrument of choice for most performers in orchestras and military bands through the nineteenth century.9 Among the first pieces in the orchestral repertoire to employ this technique was Arnold Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande, completed in 1903; the technique was considered so unorthodox that Schoenberg included a great deal of “explanatory detail” for trombonists in the orchestra.10 Even in New Orleans, where the swooping tailgate style would dominate jazz trombone playing through the late 1920s, the earliest strains were played with valves. In his biography of Kid Ory, John McCusker notes that Ory's “purchase of a slide trombone, rather than a valve trombone, is significant,” and that the tailgate style “developed as trombonists shed their valve instruments for slide trombones.”11But the smear would first be popularized in the realm of popular band music, in particular through the efforts of a young trombonist from Missouri who singlehandedly redefined the ways in which the instrument was played and understood. Joining the Sousa band in 1892, within a few years, Arthur Pryor would become known as the most celebrated trombonist of his era; he may also be among the most underappreciated figures in the development of American popular music in the early twentieth century. Known worldwide as “The Paganini of the Trombone,” Pryor's abilities were so uncommon that other trombonists routinely asked to examine his instrument, certain that such performances could not be achieved on a normal slide trombone. Pryor's tenure with Sousa paralleled the band's rise to popularity, which was almost certainly not a coincidence. Along with his virtuoso trombone performances, Pryor was also a composer who was attuned to the shifts in American music, especially popular music, that were occurring at the time. He would stay with Sousa until 1903, leaving to form his own military-style band, an ensemble that frequently recorded for Victor Records in the early part of the decade.Pryor was born in 1870 in St. Joseph, Missouri, which placed him in the middle of “prime rag country.”12 His father was the town's resident bandmaster, and the family occupied an apartment on the second floor of the Lyceum Theater. By his early teens, Pryor had taken up the slide trombone and very quickly developed into a fine player. While most Sousa scholarship focuses on his own march compositions, by the late 1890s ragtime had become a significant part of the “popular” side of his repertoire, and Pryor had a direct role in the adoption of these pieces. It is also clear that Pryor understood the potential of mining Black vernacular themes, as can be seen in two early examples. The first, 1897’s “Orange Blossoms (A Negro Oddity),” opens with a rapid double smear between F and C, while other scoops and slides can be heard throughout the piece. But it was the second such piece, “A Coon Band Contest,” which would lead to the enormous popularity of the trombone smear in American popular culture. It is within the context of these songs, which were at best heavily stereotyped, and at worst explicitly racist (Figure 1), that both “Coon Band Contest” and the adoption of the trombone smear into the military/concert band repertoire must be considered.“Coon Band Contest” displays both the characteristic ragtime influence that dominated popular music of the day and smear effects. During the A and B strains, the trombone lines are fairly conventional, consisting of harmonic accompaniment and simple counterlines, a common feature of many marches. In the trio, however, the trombones play a series of dramatic, rapid glisses, first on C-F-C-F-C (positions 6-1-6-1-6) on the tonic chord, F major, then on C-E-C-E-C (6-2-6-2-6, over a C dominant chord), then on C-F-C-F-C again; the trio concludes with the trombones playing a similar figure on F-C-F-C-F. Notably, Pryor specifies pitches within the glissando (Example 1), and includes a performance note on the effect's execution that reads “very legato and loud” (referenced on the part with an asterisk). Pryor's use of the smear on such a composition points directly to the association of such effects with racially based humor.The association of the trombone smear with Black vernacular practices was not lost on observers at the time, even among audiences outside the United States. In his widely read treatise on orchestration, Charles Marie Widor notes his recent experience with hearing a band in a “public ballroom” in Paris employing the effect. He describes the experience: “as I was passing near a public ballroom, I heard such strange bellowings escaping from the Trombones that I went in and asked the performers, as soon as the dance was over, to show me their music. This is what they had been playing” (Example 2). “Astounding . . . ” he wrote, noting that the glissando was not only “very easy to execute” but appropriate to a “ballet negre.”13It should be apparent that this example, which Widor presumably copied from the score of one of the musicians (from whom he claimed to examine the parts), is taken from “Coon Band Contest,” demonstrating both the popularity of the piece and the seemingly unusual nature of the effect. Well versed in orchestration, Widor still seemed taken aback upon hearing this figure. He gives no indication of exactly when or where he heard it, or who performed it, but presumably it was between 1899 and 1904 (the original publication of the song and treatise, respectively). The most likely opportunity for Widor to hear this piece would have been in 1900, when Sousa's band appeared in Paris as America's musical ambassadors to the Universal Exposition.14 By this point, Sousa had been performing the song regularly, and it was a popular piece in the band's repertoire. Further, there is ample evidence that Sousa performed “coon songs” and similar pieces at the 1900 fair, and it is very likely that “Coon Band Contest” was among them.15 Steven Moore Whiting cites Sousa's tour as a major factor in Paris becoming “rag time wild,”16 while Alex Ross hints that these performances in Europe might have played a role in introducing the glissando to European composers.17 Pryor continued his involvement with trombone novelty pieces throughout the first decade of the twentieth century, although with the exception of recordings such as the Sousa band's 1902 version of Chris Sorenson's “Trombone Sneeze” (with Pryor conducting), the smear was supplanted by technical virtuosity on the trombone as the main “novelty” effect; this can be heard in his composition “Razzazza Mazzazza,” recorded in 1905.18 Ragtime remained an important influence, and it took some time for Pryor to completely abandon links to racialized representations; as late as 1911, he was recording pieces such as George Barnard's “A Cyclone in Darktown” for Victor. Sousa, too, would continue to perform ragtime-based band pieces, including those that drew from other Black popular and vernacular forms. As a result of such works, in terms of both its role and performance, the trombone was being employed in a way that established its unique place in American popular music for the next two decades.If Arthur Pryor was seemingly leaving the trombone smear behind by the beginning of the 1910s, other composers and bandleaders were happy to take up the cause. By this point, the “trombone novelty” had emerged as a fully formed subgenre of popular band music. Numerous examples of this approach can be heard during this period, such as the Victor Military Band's September 1911 recording of Philip Hacker's “Slippery Place Rag.” In the opening bars of the first strain, the trombones live up to the title, interjecting glissandi from C-F (6-1) in the first bar, and from F-A (6-2) in the second, with pronounced half-step smears in the “dogfight” section.19 The following year, a vocal group known as the “American Quartet” made a record for Victor called “That Slippery Slide Trombone,” a Tin Pan Alley song composed by Egbert van Alstyn and Harry Williams. This recording, which also featured the house orchestra from Victor, again employs pronounced smears throughout. More notable is the text itself, with the trombone evolving from mere sonic effect to the entire selling point of a song; not only does one hear the slippery slide trombone, but one hears about it.Another composer who capitalized on the novelty trombone market was Mayhew Lake, who was a constant presence on the popular music scene for many years. Born in 1879, Lake spent his early years around Boston, studying at New England Conservatory and performing with the Boston Symphony as a violinist. By 1910, he began writing pieces for band and orchestra, and within a few years, his pieces were being performed and recorded by leading bands of the day. Most significant to our discussion is “Slidus Trombonus (A Trombone Comedy),” which features a healthy dose of smear-based figures used in comical ways. 1916 saw the recording and release of at least two versions of “Slidus Trombonus” by the Conway Band (with whom Lake collaborated on a number of occasions) for Victor, and by the Sodero Band for Edison Records. Both recordings feature the same basic arrangement, which begins with a dramatic virtuoso passage that recalls Arthur Pryor's trombone showcase pieces such as the “The Blue Bells of Scotland.” The remainder of the work features the trombone in a solo role, combining high-level virtuosity with the comic effect of the smear. The trombonist and band playfully react to one another until the conclusion of the piece, punctuated with a low B-flat. “Slidus Trombonus” remained a popular showpiece among trombonists for many years. And while white composers received the vast majority of publishing and recording opportunities for trombone novelties, there were certainly contributions by African American composers; the best known of these was a series of “smear”-based pieces written and published by Nathaniel C. Davis in the late 1910s, although I am not aware of any recordings of them from this period.While Lake and other composers enjoyed a degree of popular success through their trombone novelty works, no one would embody the trombone smear as much as Henry Fillmore, one of the most popular band composers of the 1910s, rivaling even John Philip Sousa.20 Despite his prolific output of marches,21 it was Fillmore's novelty trombone pieces that established his reputation. It is unclear how Fillmore first came to the idea of the smear, but Paul Bierley advances a few theories. He speculates, for example, that “itinerant Negro musicians who came up the inland waterways from New Orleans” may have been an influence,22 but he provides no evidence to support this claim. A more likely source might have been other composers in the concert-band idiom; Bierley notes that Pryor was using such devices “as early as 1902.”23 Fillmore's first employment of the smear as a novel technique can be traced to his 1908 composition “Miss Trombone.” Beginning with a dramatic down and up glissando from F to middle C that spans nearly the entire length of the slide, “Miss Trombone” announced Fillmore's arrival in the world of the trombone novelty, which would continue over the course of several more pieces. In 1919, Fillmore published what might be regarded as the first jazz trombone method book, Henry Fillmore's Jazz Trombonist (Figure 2). Fillmore's method emphasizes the role of the smear, reclassified as a “jazz” in this context, as the key feature of the new style (Figure 3). As Bierley notes, the smear was, by this point, “quality merchandise,”24 and given its use in the newly popular jazz genre, Fillmore and his publishing house likely sought to take advantage of this growing interest.Unfortunately, as was so often the case in the marketing of popular music in these early years, the selling of such materials was often intertwined with racist language and imagery. Some of Fillmore's rags were promoted by materials that emphasized this idea,25 belonging to a “cullu'd fambly” of works.26 And given the fact that Fillmore's pre-1918 compositions in this “cullu'd fambly” were written over the space of nine years (the first, “Miss Trombone” in 1908, the last “Sally Trombone” in 1917), it is unlikely that Fillmore originally envisioned them as a set of related pieces. The grouping of these pieces, and the use of such marketing strategies, seems to have come later and was similarly an attempt to take advantage of a growing interest in Black vernacular forms, in which the smear was regarded as an important sonic element.27Specific links between these kinds of works and the New Orleans trombone tradition are unclear. Sousa is known to have performed there in the early 1900s. A review of a Sousa performance in the April 7, 1902, edition of the New York Times mentions that Sousa's featured new French Horn player, “Herr Crasz,” was “picked up by Mr. Sousa in New Orleans on his recent Southern tour.”28 This tour likely took place in either late 1901 or early 1902, when Pryor was still active with the band; he is specifically mentioned in the Times piece, referred to as a “popular trombonist,” and is noted as having performed a featured solo called “Love's Enchantment,” which received “several [curtain] calls.”29 Writing about Sousa's “Manhattan Beach,” Wynton Marsalis suggests that there are “connections between the straight military march and New Orleans jazz.”30 Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead makes a similar point, suggesting that an ensemble like Sousa's “bridge[d] high and low culture.”31 Whitehead points to Sousa's influence on the developing New Orleans frontline, “in which cornets played the melody, clarinets (or piccolo) sailed over the top playing arpeggios outlining a tune's harmonies, and harrumphing trombones announced the shift from one chord to the next. And like jazz bands to come, Sousa's [band] had contrasting soloists: plaintive balladeers, and virtuoso cornetists who would end a piece with a solo cadenza rising to triumphant high notes as in an operatic aria. Louis Armstrong would run with that idea.”32 He adds, almost as an afterthought, that “[c]oncert bands also helped point the way by performing the new music of ragtime.”33We should consider the potential influence of novelty trombone band music on trombonists in New Orleans. While specific evidence is scant, it is possible that popular songs like “Orange Blossoms” and “Coon Band Contest” were programmed during Sousa's tours of the area. For Sousa, such ragtime-based works presented another opportunity to capitalize on the newest musical trends, and with Pryor on board, he had a willing and able arranger to help achieve that objective. There is more evidence suggesting that pieces by Henry Fillmore and his contemporaries were known among early twentieth-century trombonists in New Orleans prior to the 1920s. One tantalizing lead comes in an interview with trombonist William “Baba” Ridgley, conducted in New Orleans in 1959 and housed in the oral history collection at the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University. Ridgley recalled playing pieces such as Fillmore's “Slim Trombone,” as well as similar pieces like “Slidin’ Jim—A Trombone Extravaganza,” (1908) by F.H. Losey. Pops Foster also mentions this piece in his autobiography, recounting the shift from valve to slide instruments in New Orleans: “George [Williams] had gone up to Memphis and gotten a job with W.C. Handy's band. He got the slide trombone there and brought it back with him on a visit. Up until then there was nothing but valve trombones. The whole town was excited about them, and the guys started buying them. There were a whole bunch of numbers you could play on them. The minstrel shows started using them a whole lot too. At first the guys who brought slide trombones would bring the valve and slide trombones on jobs. They'd use the slide on numbers like ‘Slidin’ Jim.’ Now you hardly see anything but slide trombones.”34It is unlikely that Pryor, Fillmore, or their contemporaries were, at this point, attuned to the goings on of New Orleans street bands, which remained undocumented in terms of recording. Indeed, Pryor had composed or recorded pieces such as “Coon Band Contest” and “Trombone Sneeze” well before seminal New Orleans players such as Willie Cornish and Kid Ory had picked up the slide trombone.35 This is not to say that the smear originated solely with the military bands and works of Sousa, Pryor, Fillmore, and others; Trevor Herbert speculates that “the technique was probably employed in a more relaxed and improvised way in earlier New Orleans marching bands.”36 But regardless of the specific origins of the smear in jazz and novelty trombone music, it is clear that the instrument and the repertoire enjoyed a symbiotic relationship. They were, in a literal sense, made for each other.Fillmore's “coopting” of jazz in his 1919 method book presents us with an opportunity to examine relationships between jazz and popular novelty music more closely. This topic has posed a challenge for jazz historians, who have often sought ways to separate jazz from its seemingly less artistic forebears. But such relationships are not easily untangled. Take the late 1916 recording made by the popular duo of Arthur Collins and Byron Harlan, a popular act on the minstrel and Vaudeville circuits, who made their mark by performing ethnically and racially themed songs that often involved crude stereotypes. Their 1916 recording of “That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland,” is among the earliest examples of a recording using the term “jazz,” in any of its various spellings. The links to novelty trombone are clear, especially when the duo explains the nature of a “jas band” (transcribed as spoken in dialect): Byron Harlan: “Say, Henry, what is a jas band?”Arthur Collins: “Why, a jas band am essentially different from the generalities of bands.”BH: “In what particularity, Henry?”AC: “Oh, in many ways, Mandy. Now, for instance, uh . . . ”This is immediately followed by an up-and-down long smear on F-B-flat-F (6-1-6). Other effects are provided by the drums, a cornet playing a martial-sounding figure, and a clarinet, which plays a flurry of seemingly random notes. Peter Doggett classifies the piece as “a novelty tune that was surely inspired by the ODJB.”37 He writes, “Besides some embarrassingly racist (to modern ears) minstrel play-by-play, the song talked about ‘that harmony queer’ and ‘mad musicians playing rhythm.’ There were even a few seconds of authentic ‘hot’ jazz playing to emphasize the point. The Collins/Harlan duet can with some merit be claimed as the first commercial record to offer any jazz musicianship, but it clearly had comic rather than pioneering intent.”38 The first instance of “authentic ‘hot’ jazz” occurs during the “minstrel play-by-play” quoted above and includes a smear, underscoring the importance of the trombone to both popular novelty music and the developing jazz style; it simultaneously features “comic” elements and “jazz musicianship.” And it is this simultaneity that has posed a problem in constructing historical accounts of early jazz. It could, by virtue of its title and content, be considered a “jazz” recording. Many of the musical effects, such as those described above, are heard in later recordings more clearly identified as jazz. Yet the piece has rarely been regarded as a jazz work, relegated to the realm of novelty music. A similar work, recorded in 1917 by popular comic vocalist Marion Harris (though composed the previous year by Dave Stamper and Gene Buck), was titled “When I Hear That Jaz Band Play.” At the beginning of the recording, the trombone plays a prominent role, opening with a smear up from F to B-flat (6-1), which reoccurs at several points. Later, Harris references the trombone directly, singing “Hear that trombone, that peculiar moanin’,” as the trombone plays a pair of ascending smears. In a sense, pieces such as these could be seen as a bridge between jazz and novelty music, not clearly in either category, drawing upon both. However, this only works if jazz and novelty are considered as distinct forms that were in need of bridging, rather than two manifestations of a single popular idiom. This is the historiographic problem that future jazz writers would attempt to address with more clear delineations between jazz and novelty.Perhaps no group's reception has been more deeply impacted in such a manner than the Original Dixieland Jass Band, creators of the so-called “first jazz record” in February 1917. Most pertinent to our study is the role in the group of Edward Branford “Eddie” Edwards (1891–1963), the group's trombonist on its early recordings. Despite the group's prominent place in jazz's history, surprisingly little scholarship has been devoted to it. Kurt Dietrich describes Edwards's place among jazz trombonists thusly: “Edwards certainly would have been known to the early jazz public as the jazz trombonist. There is little doubt, however, that Edwards, like the other members of the ODJB, learned his style from others, so was not in fact the first jazz trombonist.”39 This might seem obvious, as all players learn their craft from someone; not even the ODJB's advocates suggest that Edwards alone invented tailgate trombone playing.Edwards remains an elusive figure in early jazz scholarship; his life and career are generally not discussed in great depth in writing on early jazz trombone. Nevertheless, H.O. Brunn's hagiographic account of the group contains much information about Edwards's role in the ODJB. In Brunn's telling, Edwards came to music early, starting violin lessons at the age of ten. Shortly thereafter, Edwards was said to have found a wallet containing fifty dollars, and upon returning the wallet to its owner, he received a ten-dollar reward, which he used to purchase a trombone from the Montgomery Ward catalog.40 The only primary source of information concerning Edwards might be his 1959 interview with Richard Allen, in the collection at the Hogan Archive, where Edwards discusses his early development and professional work in New Orleans. David Sager notes that Edwards was likely very familiar with the mechanics and practices of trombone parts in the popular band music of the day, and indeed, trombonists such as Edwards and his peers very likely built their style on a foundation of such music.41 Edwards worked in these early days with a teacher named Manuel Guerra, himself a trombonist with one of the prominent “Mexican bands,” which were a staple of the New Orleans band scene in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,42 and he also studied from the “Imperial Method,” likely that of R.N. Davis, originally published in 1898. Over the course of the next several years, Edwards freelanced with a number of established New Orleans musicians, among them the legendary drummer “Papa” Jack Laine. By 1914, Edwards was part of the core of musicians around which the ODJB would eventually form.In Early Jazz, Gunther Schuller gives the music produced by the ODJB very little analytical attention; given the importance of the recordings to the history of jazz (a point that Schuller concedes, noting that they hold, “for better or worse, a crucial place in the formative period of jazz”43), and the depth of analysis with which he treats later players, this is striking. Schuller's assessment of the ODJB tends to focus more on the novel “barnyard hokum” elements of the band's output, derived mainly from “Livery Stable Blues.” Few other aspects of the band's performance practice warrant discussion; addressing Edwards, Schuller argues that his style was “comparatively rigid in his melodic and rhythmic ideas,”44 although he is careful to note that his contemporaries were probably not much better. He does acknowledge that Edwards could produce “some fairly snappy counterlines,” pointing to “Clarinet Marmalade” as an example, though he qualifies this by suggesting that such lines occurred “on occasion.”45I want to return to “Livery Stable Blues,” referenced earlier by Martin and Waters, who connect the recording with novelty pieces due to its “brash and energetic barnyard effects.”46 “Livery Stable Blues” may not feel like a “jazz” record by today's standards. It does not “swing” in the classic sense, built on a driving straight eighth-note rhythm, and the slower tempo of the song gives Edwards more opportunities to create intricate, detailed lines. “Livery Stable Blues” begins with a brief (four-bar) introductory section, beginning in the tonic chord of E-flat, moving to a cadence that sets up the first strain. Edwards plays two distinct phrases in this introduction, which serve very different roles. In the first two bars, he plays a descending quarter-note line, moving from B-flat to G over the E-flat chord. In the following phrase, based on a tutti ensemble figure, Edwards plays a descending hal