Early Frank Sinatra and Big Band Music

Early Frank Sinatra and Big Band Music.

This week I intend to cover information on one of the biggest front men of Big Band music, Frank Sinatra and his early carrer.

Frank Sinatra was born December 12, 1915 in Hoboken, NJ. The son of Italian Immigrants he was raised as an only child and was given a decent amount of opportunities as a child. His mother ran a home abortion clinic from her home, which was illegal at the time and was even convicted a couple of times, but it gave Frank’s family a majority of their money. His father was a captain of the Hoboken Fire Department. Frank was thrown out of high school only 47 days after starting due to rowdy conduct and he never finished.  In 1938 Frank Sinatra was arrested for having relations with a married woman which was a crime at the time. He got his early work as a newspaper delivery boy and riveter for a construction company. These are some humble beginnings for a man who was about to become one of the biggest stars of the century.

Frank began to sing on bar tops for tips when he was eight and a teenager began to sing on street corners and small gigs. In 1935 his mother convinced him to join a boys singing group known as The Three Flashes and with the addition of him they became the Hoboken Four. The group won a contest early on and toured the country playing shows and performing on the radio but never really took off. In 1939 after some exposure by Henry James Sinatra caught the attention of Tommy Dorsey and was asked to join his band, this was a major turning point in his career. Frank’s public debut was on January 16, 1940 with Dorsey’s band and that kicked off a 40 song year with a 12 week chart topper “I’ll Never Smile Again”

In 1941 Sinatra was a chart topper and male media icon. He had a large appeal to Bobby Socksers or teenage girls of the time which was at the time a mostly untapped market. 1942 brought with it the infamous rumor of Sinatra getting out of his contract with Dorsey in which Dorsey maintained one-third of the lifetime earnings of Sinatra. The story is that Sinatra had assistance from the mafia to get out of his contract for only a few thousand dollars. This story was also dramatized in the movie The Godfather.  Sinatra saw great success in his early solo career during the 1942-44 musicians strike. His career trended upward until about 1948 when it stalled.

That takes us to about the midpoint of Frank Sinatra’s career. Next week I will cover the latter half of Sinatra’s career and even a brief introduction to the Rat Pack.

Critical Listening

As it was mentioned in this article I will listen to Ill Never Smile Again by Frank Sinatra

http://youtu.be/1V8FM9xgaGQ

AABA

Introduction with chorus in the background – The Pied Pipers

Intro by the band

Slow and melodic with an overall sad feeling

Fade out

Big Band Dance Moves

Big Band Dance Moves

This week in the class we have been covering swing music. The lectures have been extremely inciteful when it comes to studying more about this field. I had no idea just how big swing music was in the United States during its hay day. According to Dr. Cochran everything back then was swing. If you went to the store and bought a record chances were that it was swing. If you kicked on the radio chances were you were listening to swing.There was one major reason that swing had such a huge following during its high times, it was easy to dance to.

Today I plan to cover some of the common dance moves for swing music. I will be getting aid from http://swingdancemoves.net/ as well as Wikipedia, and youtube. First, I will mention up front that I am not an expert on dancing but will use the information at hand to attempt to describe what I have learned correctly. The Lindy Hop is one of the most famous of all big band dance styles and is still danced today. It was developed in the African Ameican society as part of the Harlem Renaissance and is a 8-step move that incorporated the Charleston as well as a strong emphasis on improvisation. Here is a great example of what the lindy hop can be http://youtu.be/mBdAuXr4ssQ this of course is much more elaborate that your average living room dance, but is much more intertaining to watch. The second major type of dancing to swing is the balboa. This was developed in the white communities, emphasizes close partner connection which stemmed from the often overcrowded dance floors of the time. It was a way to cut loose without hitting the people around you. Here is a phenomenal example of Balboa http://youtu.be/6_qwVwuIitg . The third most common style of swing dancing was the shag. It had two forms, colligate and St. Louis which had some minor differences but both emphasized the same major idea. A two step beat, hop skip, slow then a fast rhythm. Here are the winners of the 2004 shag dance competition winners http://youtu.be/xKzrQ1RedxY . After researching the dancing for Big Band music a little more I fell like becoming a jitterbug myself and cutting a rug.

Critical Listening

In the Mood by: Glen Miller

Format: Intro AABAACAADAA outro

We covered this song in class this week but I just had to bring it here to my analysis. I love this song and it can be argued to be the most famous and well known piece of Swing Jazz to come out of the era. Whenever a movie is set in the30’s or 40’s and there is a killer band supposed to be playing in the back this is almost always the song that you hear. It is instantly recognizable, easy to dance to, and just an all around great piece of music. To me this is the Swing version of the Maple Leaf Rag. Tied to an era and played for instant time recognition by the audience.

Big Band is Born

 Big Band is Born

This week  I intend to take a look at what is to be considered as the start of the swing or big band era. During this I will mention some of the starting dates as well as influences and some of the early large artists or groups when it comes to this amazing genre.

According to our book the start of the swing era began in the 1930’s. The major shift in the style of music was from the small ensemble groups to big bands, full or part orchestras with sections. Big band brought along with it some structure to jazz so that members could keep with each other, but the basics and free form of jazz was still maintained. The influences are some of the same as the earlier jazz musicians where classical and folk music are two of the large contributors.

Two events can be directly linked to the birth of the swing era. One is the Great Depression or the crash of the stock market in October of 1929 and the economic down turn that followed over the next decade. Swing benefited from this in one way, it was a distraction to the people who were in hard straights. It was flashy and powerful, bringing a much welcome change of pace into otherwise bleak existence. The Second major historical event which boosted the popularity of swing was World War II. The reason for this was the turn of the country to fight fascism. It was uniquely American music, patriotic to some, and again offered that release from the mundane of factory work and hardship.

Critical Listening

Rudy Valee “You’re Driving Me Crazy” 1930

http://youtu.be/MLJl5gsX56I

Format: Intro aabaacb outro

In this I treated the string interludes as the A section while Rudy singing is the B and C sections.  In C he changes his range to bring a change of pace to the song.  This is a great slow song in which you can almost see the couples waltzing in slow time to this sadly funny ballad.

week two-sctructure

The structure of Big Bands

For this week I have decided to take a look at the typical structure of the average Big Band group. There was a surprisingly little amount of readily available information on this important part of the big band style. As we have learned this semester the layout of the instruments plays a big role in the identity of a piece of music. From what I was able to glen from Wikipedia as well as tid bits from http://airjudden.tripod.com/jazz/styles.html  sections are king when it comes to structuring a big band.  Standard layout for bands is 17 players of five saxophones (two alto, two tenor, one bari), four trumpets, four trombones, and a four rhythm instruments including drums, bass, piano, and guitar. However, the structure of the band is changed depending on many factors; director preference, lack of or presence of excess talent, location restrictions to name a few. Instruments could also be subbed in and out of the band to make up for loss of structure, tuba for upright bass for example. Singers would quite often come out to join in with a band and be out front and center of the group.

Image of the typical structure of a big band

Critical Listening

Tank! By the Seatbelts

http://youtu.be/v-TAxm00jOg

structure: Intro aabaacaad outro

This is a more modern Big Band (swing band) The Seatbelts. Here they are performing live at an anime convention in Japan. The reason they are there is that this song is used in a cult favorite anime show called Cowboy Bebop as the theme song. In it we can hear the screaming trumpets and saxophones taking the power through most of the song. A vocalist comes in at the beginning with the line “I think it’s time to blow this scene. Get everyone and the stuff together. Ok 3, 2, 1 lets jam.” The bass walks the same line throughout the piece and the drums stay rocking throughout the piece in the background. For the C and D portions of the piece we see a saxophone soloist come out and play a very complicated and amazing solo.