Transcriptions of Early Recorded Jazz

Abstract

TRANSCRIPTIONS OF EARLY RECORDED JAZZ Sam Morgan's Jazz Band. Complete Recorded Works Transcription. Edited by John J. Joyce Jr., Bruce Boyd Raeburn, and Anthony M. Cummings. (Recent Researches American Music, 73.) (Music of the United States of America, 24.) Middleton, WI: Published for the American Musicological Society by A-R Editions, 2012. [Foreword, p. vii; pref. and acknowledgments, p. ix-xiii; Orleans Jazz Styles of the 1920s: Sam Morgan's Jazz Band, by Bruce Boyd Raeburn, p. xv-xxxiv; apparatus, p. xxxv-li; score, p. 5-255; crit. notes, p. 256; bibliog., p. 257-60. ISBN 978-0-89579-724-7. $160.00.]In April and October 1927 Sam Morgan's Jazz Band recorded eight tracks New Orleans. These were the band's only record- ings. Even jazz circles, Sam Morgan is not a household name, like Louis Armstrong or Sidney Bechet or Jelly Roll Morton. But for those who love jazz, the two Morgan ses- sions are highly regarded as rare and cru- cial representations of how African American jazz continued New Orleans after these more famous players left.This transcription of the complete recorded works of Sam Morgan's Jazz Band is a model of how the musicological tradi- tion of scholarly critical editions might be applied to jazz. In the 1970s, scholars in- volved the emerging intersection of mu- sicology and jazz were hopeful that eventu- ally there would be many such volumes functioning as parallels to editions of Western art music, whether complete works, anthologies of study scores, or criti- cal analyses of particular works. The hope- ful thinking was wishful thinking. As Anthony Cummings notes his preface, the Morgan volume constitutes a major addition to a very small body of such publi- cations: James Dapogny's edition of the complete piano works of Jelly Roll Morton ( Jelly Roll Morton, The Collected Piano Mu- sic, ed. James Dapogny [Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press; New York: G. Schirmer, 1982]); Joscelyn Godwin's edi- tion of the Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines duo Weatherbird from 1928 (Schirmer Scores: Repertory of Western Music, ed. Joscelyn Godwin [New York: Schirmer Books, 1975], 414-22); three Duke Elling- ton pieces the Smithsonian Jazz Master- works series edited by Gunther Schuller (Daybreak Express: 1933, Jazz Masterworks Editions, 1 [Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1993], Take the A Train, Jazz Masterworks Editions, 2 [Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1993], and Sepia Panorama: 1940, Jazz Masterworks Editions, 3 [Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1995]); and Jeffrey Taylor's edi- tion of selected piano solos by Hines (Earl Fatha Hines, Selected Piano S olos, 1928- 1941, Recent Researches American Music, 56; and Music of the United States of America, 15 [Middleton, WI: Published for the American Musicological Society by A-R Editions, 2006]).This story, however, has another compo- nent, of which Cummings is perhaps un- aware: the Essentially Ellington and Essential Jazz Editions projects. As director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wynton Marsalis conceived and executed the Essentially Ellington project. Since 1995 he has over- seen the distribution to American high schools of free copies of more than one hundred big-band transcriptions, with new transcriptions coming out at the rate of about six per year. Most of these transcrip- tions are the work of David Berger, who had been transcribing for decades before Marsalis came up with his plan for dissemi- nating Duke Ellington's music to America. The Essentially Ellington Web site proudly announces that by 2010 the institution had distributed more than 90,000 copies to roughly 4,500 schools (see http://jalc.org /learn/teachers-students/essentially- ellington/about-the-program, accessed 20 November 2013). The repertory derives mainly from the recordings of Duke Ellington, but in 2008, Jazz at Lincoln Center began including non-Ellington repertoire. . . . While the music of Duke Ellington will always be central to EE, the program now explores other important big band arrangers and composers as well-one each year. …