Scholarship Made Pretty

I've been working on a fun article recently. Based on a paper I gave at SAM and a few sundry other locations, it takes as its object of study an argument John Cage had in the late 1940s, with the writer Paul Goodman. It's unclear when or where the argument took place, but the subject was the relative merits of Satie and Beethoven. It was sufficiently antagonistic that the two never really spoke again. It seems like a small issue, but it strikes at the heart of lots of important issues in the post-war avant-garde.

Anyways, it's interesting stuff, I promise, but more importantly, it makes a very pretty word cloud via the fascinating web program Wordle, which I discovered thanks to the livejournal pages of a bunch of my friends.


(Sorry for no Gossip Girl liveblogging tonight, I was off at an Eagle Scout awards ceremony for my cousin. Congrats, Eric!)

Shake Those Hips, Lenny

I write from the Library of Congress, where I am spending a rainy afternoon perusing the mammoth Leonard Bernstein collection here. I paged the wrong box of correspondence, so while I wait for the right one I'm idly leafing through random letters. I love working at the LOC--comfortable chairs and free wireless.

One discovery: in 1989, Bobby McFerrin sent Bernstein a James Brown mixtape, with the instructions to "put it on when your hips get stuck." That's a vivid image.

Behold the Cadillacs

I present to you one of the greatest intros in the history of popular music: the Cadillacs' "Gloria," from 1954.



Listen to that reverb manipulation. Isn't it just fabulous? His voice goes from echoing in a church to echoing in your head in one beautiful descent. Glen Gould had nothing on these guys. And in 1953! And then the doo-wopping bass comes in, and as he descends down you have the thrill of recognizing the sonic world of R&B. And then maybe I'm imagining things, but when the groups comes in with that first "woo" in harmony, I hear such pure pleasure at creating such a perfect blend.

The Cadillacs are one of my favorite R&B vocal groups. Everything they touched was, in a word, awesome. They were almost single-handedly the conduit between pre-WWII pop quartets and Motown groups of the 60s, largely thanks to their stage shows. Sure, all of the early doo-woppers had good stage shows, but the Cadillacs introduced spectacular costumes, props, and most importantly, stage choreography courtesy of a legendary tap dancer named Cholly Atkins. Atkins, of course, would later go on to be the in-house choreographer for Motown, but it all began with the Cadillacs.

Gloria is actually a bit of anamoly for them; most of their songs were uptempo dance numbers like "Speedo." "Gloria" was released in the wake of the Orioles "Crying in the Chapel," which created a bit of a vogue for fake religious pop songs--you know, where the singer is just so sweet, and sentimental, and handsome, and when he talks about how much he loves the Lord, you might be forgiven for thinking that he might be talking about you too. And not in some ecstatic hard gospel way, but in a smooth romantic way that fits in nicely with the values of the new black bourgeoisie. Not that this is the argument of a chapter of my diss or anything. See also "Bells of St. Mary."

The best part? The Cadillacs are still going strong, with Earl "Speedo" Carroll singing up a storm and giving interviews to journalists and academics left and right. So use the nifty iTunes link below to buy a copy of "Gloria." I'm sure they don't get a dime of it, but it's the thought that counts.

Auden and the Future

How great is Auden? If this passage from The Age of Anxiety doesn't describe academic life, I don't know what does.

To be young means
To be all on edge, to be held waiting in
A packed lounged for a Personal Call
From Long Distance, for the low voice that
Defines one's future. The fears we know
Are of not knowing. Will nightfall bring us
Some awful order--Keep a hardware store
in a small town...Teach science for life to
Progressive girls--? It is getting late.
Shall we ever be asked for? Are we simply
Not wanted at all?

This poem is part of Auden's book-length "baroque ecologue" from 1947. It won the Pulitzer Prize the next year, and the year after that, Bernstein used it as the (loose) inspiration for his second symphony. And then, two years later, Jerome Robbins choreographed a ballet to it. And then, sixty years later, all these versions became the subject of a chapter in my dissertation.

Speaking of Auden, YouTube comes through once again, to give us the classic Night Mail collaboration between Auden and Benjamin Britten in 1936. Man, I could listen to his voice all day long. One of my formative moments as a musicologist was my junior year in college, when Philip Brett came to my school to give a talk about Auden and Britten. I had just read "Musicality, Essentialism, and the Closet" earlier that year, and it seemed like there was nothing more awesome than being a musicologist. Ah, youth.

We All Have Hard Moments Early in Our Careers

Doris Day in My Dream is Yours (Warner Brothers, 1949).

Little Known Fact

Whoa.

Did you know that Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's godfather is Joe McCarthy?

Tales from the Archives

The new John Cage biography by David Nicholls has been out a few months now. I won't be reviewing it here. I will, however, register one particular disappointment. I bought and devoured this book hoping that Nicholls would finally provide the answer to one of the most vexing questions we face in Cage scholarship. And alas, he did not. John Cage: did he or did he not like flannel pajamas?

...I bought flannel pajamas (1st time in my life) and tried to convince Bunny to get some. He said he hated p.j's and wouldn't hear of it. He stamped his feet and became very militant. You know how he is--last night I wore mine and he thought they were so cute he said he must get some to match. I should know by now, but I never learn.

-Letter from Xenia Cage to a friend, 1941

A Brief History of I-vi-IV-V

I'm late to the game, but just noticed that Roger Bourland had a lovely post a few weeks back about one of my favorite subjects: I-vi-IV-V.

As Roger points out, this chord progression is inescapable. Today most people know it as the "Heart and Soul" changes. With the proper metrical context (6/8) and vocal texture (falsetto lead, "doo-wopping" bass) it screams "fifties," or at least that imaginary "fifties" that involves (white bourgeois) teenagers, poodle skirts, and the Kinsey report. Well, maybe the last one is particular to me.

Incidentally, although this post is not my promised discussion of the AMS Cold War panel, the doo-wop progression is an unusually excellent example of the self-reflexivity of the Fifties that Phil Ford talked about in his presentation. By 1959, the progression had not only been standardized, it was reified as an "fifties oldie", a mere four or five years after it came to prominence!

As most of us who study it know, doo-wop is not actually a "real" genre of music. It consists of four different music scenes. What's complicated is that these music scenes did not exist at the same time, but nevertheless when you are trying to envision what doo-wop "is", you have to hold all four scenes in your head at the same time:

1. R&B vocal groups of the early fifties (e.g. the Orioles, Crows, etc)
2. rock and roll vocal groups of the mid-1950s (e.g. the Chords, Penguins)
3. the late fifties Italian vocal groups (Dion and the Belmonts)
4. The early sixties revivalists (e.g. the Marcels)

Something to keep in mind: the first two are largely black, the second two mostly white (but in complicated ways).

But we're not done yet. Added to these four musical scenes you have several distinct analytical moments. The first is what I mentioned above: 1959, when the first "Oldies" compilation albums were put together, and when Slim's arcade shop in Times Square began selling rare early R&B records. It is this moment when you start to hear reference to "doo-wop" as a genre, rather than just a technique for bass arpeggiation. Another analytical moment comes later in the sixties and early seventies, when you get Sh-Na-Na and Grease. I think this is probably the moment when doo-wop starts to lose its affiliation with African American music, and becomes a representation of a mostly white vision of the fifties. Finally, in the 1990s, Rhino put out its magisterial four disc compilation of doo-wop. Although Rhino's historiography isn't crystal clear, to their credit they do understand the basic four-part history, and arranged the discs thusly. So that's doo-wop: four musical scenes, three analytical moments.

But the next, and bigger questions: where does I-vi-IV (or ii)-V come from?

Roger talks a lot about "Heart and Soul," and that is indeed one of the early examples. But there is one crucial difference between "Heart and Soul" and the progression as used in the early fifties when it first becomes popularized: "Heart and Soul" is at a much faster tempo. By 1953 (The Crows "Gee") and 1954 (Chords "Sh-Boom") you're starting to get uptempo versions of the progression, but the forties and fifties groups almost always kept it at a slow ballad. Think about the Ravens' "Count Every Star" (1950), or the Harp-Tones "Sunday Kind of Love" (1953). And of course, "Earth Angel" is taken at an almost painfully slow tempo.

No, where all these groups got the progression was, as best as I can tell, from the Rogers and Hart standard from 1934 "Blue Moon." Apparently, "the blue moon changes" were an accepted part of the arranging vocabulary in the late forties and fifties. I have no idea why this is true. One thing is that in 1949 Mel Tormé recorded a new version of the song that sold quite well, and a number of other pop musicians followed him in recording versions as well. Since the R&B vocal groups were all inveterate fans of pop standards, it stands to reason they would all be familiar with the song in 1950.

One of my favorite examples of the tangled power of I-vi-IV-V is the Moonglows cover of "Secret Love" from 1954. The original is of course from the fabulous Doris Day musical Calamity Jane. I've given a paper on the subject (comparing it to the Orioles cover released at the same time), so I'll spare you the painful details. But basically what the Moonglows do, at least superficially, is reharmonize "Secret Love" to a doo-wop progression, complete with triplet accompaniments and a soaring falsetto that gently parodies Doris's rather, uh, exuberant, singing style. Go buy a copy on iTunes, it's really quite amazing.

But what's interesting is that they actually don't reharmonize the song at all. The intro at least sounds like a doo-wop song (although the progression is an odd one), but as soon as the verse begins, the accompaniment drops to more or less a single line, allowing Bobby Lester to sing the tune without too much fussing around to get notes to match chords. And when you get to the chorus, they stop trying all together, and a piano just plays the original chords unaltered. There is a power to I-vi-IV-V, a power that draws you into its circular world, but it's not always enough to keep you there.

Now that's half of an hour I should have spent writing my dissertation!

I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night

This morning, the fabulous Mabel was dragging me along on one of our morning walks. She's a year and a half old "Hound Mix" with a lot of energy, and as a dissertating-at-home father, it's my job to exercise the hound. I had a bunch of letters to mail, so we headed towards the post office at 50th and Sansome. It's not the closest to our home here in West Philly, but it's almost always empty, and I love strolling around all the nooks and crannies of my neighborhood.

So we're at 50th and Walnut, almost there, when I see a rowhouse covered in scaffolding. This is somewhat unusual in West Philly, at least past 49th street; you don't see a lot of extensive home renovations going on. I look closer, notice a sign in front, and learn that this unassuming little rowhouse in my neighborhood was the final home of Paul Robeson.



I've long loved Paul Robeson. I was into musicals as a kid, and grew up knowing the story of him re-writing the lyrics to "Ol' Man River," and listening to him sing all sorts of lovely old worker's songs. Being a precocious little leftie, I'd try hard to sing along with him to "Joe Hill," although my baritone was never a match for him. Today I still tend to sing "Joe Hill" at a rather ponderously slow tempo, thanks to that early recording. Robeson seemed just so perfect: an activist, an artist, an athlete, and fiercely committed to his unpopular politics.

That was all before I became a musicologist though, let alone writing a dissertation on music and McCarthyism. I still rather admire the man, but it is a pensive sort of admiration. He didn't end up as much of a presence in my dissertation, but for my chapter on R&B vocal groups, I spent some time going through the NAACP administrative papers kept at the Library of Congress, and being the sort of person who is easily distracted in the archives, I read through the exchange between him and his old friend Walter White, the head of the NAACP in 1949. This was the year when Robeson famously told an audience in Paris that if the United States and the Soviet Union ever went to war, African Americans would never fight. This was at the height of the new post-WWII tensions with the Soviet Union, and his remarks caused a huge furor. The House Un-American Activities Committee convened a special hearing on "Minority Groups", and quizzed a number of prominent African Americans to see if Robeson was right. Jackie Robinson was the star witness, and he and everyone else--including a letter from not-yet-President Eisenhower--declared they would gladly fight for their country, despite inequalities at home.

Ironically, I think Robeson's comments were ultimately good for Walter White's NAACP. Robeson had indeed played into the hands of segregationists who wanted to make an explicit link between civil rights and communism, but in doing so, it gave White the chance to explicitly renounce Robeson, which he did loudly and widely, while also pointing out that the sort of inequalities Robeson was reacting to were a real problem for the United States in its foreign diplomacy: how could it criticize the Soviet Union for its lack of freedom when there was widespread disenfranchisement at home?

What makes me pensive:

1. White and Robeson were old friends, and despite their political differences--the Stalinist and the Liberal--I think White really admired Robeson for standing up to his principles. Just two years later he had written to Robeson's wife Essie:

As a preface let me say that even though Paul and I have not seen eye to eye on some points—political and strategic—during recent years, I have had much more respect for him in that he has spoken out frankly about his views instead of wiggling and wobbling as so many other people do who favor Communism but take to cover when the going gets hot.

I don't envy White's position. Yes, he was trying to play both sides of the issue: although publicly he defended Robeson's right to perform and speak, he privately discouraged local NAACP chapters from inviting him to do so. But that's part of leading an organization. It's not just trying to please everyone, it's also trying to be fair to as many consituitencies as possible, and trying to do what you can to keep things going in difficult times. If White hadn't negotiated McCarthyism as adroitly as he did, would we still have had Brown v. Board of Education in 1954?

2. Anyone involved in left history runs into this, but the period after World War II was such a disheartening moment. Not the persecution at home--that sort of thing makes a good leftie feel pleasantly righteous--but the sinking feeling everyone had that perhaps they were being lead astray by the Soviet Union. It was a hardy bunch who had stayed with the Party through the demise of the popular front, the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, and the beginning of the Cold War. Thousands left the party, either for a determined apoliticism or an unpleasant neo-conservatism. Those few left were the true believers, and believers are a rare thing in our country.

The end of Robeson's life was not the happiest with the ill health, the mysterious suicide attempt, the changing face of the American left. The neighborhood were he died went through some extremely rough times, and he lived to see firsthand what happened to urban African American communities after the civil rights movement; it was happening right outside his window. Today the neighborhood is having something of a "resurgence," at least as measured in terms of property values, and the city of Philadelphia regularly makes various sorts of proclamations of Paul Robeson days, Paul Robeson schools, etc. But it's a hollow sort of remembrance, and the one thing nobody seems to proclaim was his musical abilities, that lovely bass voice. What many remember today was the persecution--the denied passport, and attempted lynching by the American Legion. And so that persecution gets tucked safely away in the past, and Robeson is remembered as a simple, martyred, hero.

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you or me
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead,"
"I never died," says he
"I never died," says he.