Posted on 06/05/2008 6:04:42 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Over here they even speak of “swing music,” when everybody should know that music has nothing, or at least very little, to do with swing. It is rhythm that counts and rhythm in the last analysis is pure American. It was born in the form of jazz in the honky-tonks of New Orleans, grew up on the Mississippi River steamboats and came to maturity in the sawdust and smoke of Chicago beer joints.
Negroes who couldn’t read a word of music were the parents of jazz. Southern sunshine mothered it when it went out into the world. But it went high hat in New York, acquired white ties and tails in Europe and simultaneously became a respected back number in its old haunts. That’s what is in process of happening to swing in Europe. Away from home it becomes pallid and anemic.
Thus far swing has reached only the supper rooms of the great London hotels and a few of the exclusive night clubs and less exclusive “Bottle Clubs,” where, under police surveillance, the club form is strictly adhered to in order that habitués may dance and drink after closing hours. You have a kind of swing in the fashionable hotel ballrooms. But it is almost respectable – and dull.
Why, you could actually recognize “Annie Laurie” or “Loch Lomond” when they “swing it” in those halls of Joy – even when the boys get into the groove. No mob, rendered hysterical by the gymnastics of the saxophone, the suggestive capers of the sliphorn, the steady pulsing of drumbeats, lindyhops its way to the orchestra on its glistening dais in these highly proper resorts or holds down a favorite musician while his drumsticks or the keys of his instrument are riven from him as souvenirs. Nobody shrieks “Give it, cats!” from sheer abandon. There are no stampedes in which weaker women faint in the crush. This is England.
The Englishman dances as one performing a serious duty but without enthusiasm. The Englishwoman is ever conscious that her heir must stay in order. Even the wildest of American tourists become sober in such an atmosphere. London is no place for swing. It needs sultry nights and a certain atmosphere that are lacking here.
There is a somewhat livelier amount of swing in some Paris night clubs (it is slightly warmer there), because all of Europe that is still free – that is, where totalitarianism has not taken a stranglehold – goes American in the Summer tourist rush. This has become a habit and highly profitable. But most of the gayety and all of the abandon that there is Americans supply. French gigolos look alarmed by this novel excursion.
In Germany, which now includes Vienna, there is no swing at all. The Nazis don’t understand it and don’t like it. Why, then even gibe at jazz? Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda says it is immoral and ungermanic – and what he says goes. So if you’re coming to Europe with swing in your mind seek it a Deauville, Le Touquet or Paris by preference. Don’t look for it in Berlin or the Rhineland. What they would say there to the “Big Apple” heaven only knows – they would probably call out the Storm Troops.
Prague and Warsaw are both hospitable to any new form of amusement, but swing has not reached either capital yet. They still dance the old-fashioned fox trot and tango, with occasional relaxation in the Wienerwaltz. That is at present the wildest form of Continental dancing.
Rome is a little stodgy. The Latin temperament has been distinctly kept down by the new spirit of militarism, but it is gradually recovering its resilience and one can only hope for the best. Yet it will probably be a long time – long after America has cast swing into the discard and gone in for something newer – before one may expect to find real alligators, jitterbugs or hepcats truckin’ the king-kong, shagging or doing the jeepers in an Italian ballroom. They do like their dance tunes soppy and have no idea no anything “wacky.”
What we really need over here is Benny Goodman and his boys. Is he actually booked up?
This one has an accompanying publicity photo of Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa mugging with their instruments. The header of the photo? "'ROCK-AND-ROLL' MEN." Can anybody cite an earlier reference to that term?
I think there is one going back to 1928. I’ll check later.
It’s always instructive to pick up old newspapers and examine them...I came upon an amazing collection of NY newspapers from the turn of the century at a yard sale and read articles about what was called “The War on Drugs” in our major cities, with the same earnest rhetoric we’ve all been hearing in our own lifetimes.
It’s always instructive to pick up old newspapers and examine them...I came upon an amazing collection of NY newspapers from the turn of the century at a yard sale and read articles about what was called “The War on Drugs” in our major cities, with the same earnest rhetoric we’ve all been hearing in our own lifetimes.
I doubt they invented the term.
The earliest I’ve found so far is “Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama” by Buddy Jones (Western swing) which is 1939.
So 1938 is earlier.
It seems to me that there were earlier blues songs with the phrase or references to rocking followed by references to rolling.
I can’t locate a song title to put those words together before 1938 right now (but rock roll song titled and blues are bad search terms right now seeing that Bo Diddley played blues and rock and roll and had a song titled after himself).
Later (1940s) the term was in common use. Even Tony Bennett was “sold” as rock and roll early on. The majors just didn’t “get it”.
Later the majors marketed Tom Petty as “new wave”.
Same as it ever was.
Thank you for this important historical research.
From the article:
Nobody shrieks “Give it, cats!” from sheer abandon.
I guess in stateside clubs you heard shrieked it all the time.
A fine first picture posted. The last person I taught to post pictures was Tijeras_Slim and I’ve regretted it ever since.
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