Blue Rhythm Fantasy: Big Band Jazz Arranging in the Swing Era

by John Wriggle

Overview

Behind the iconic jazz orchestras, vocalists, and stage productions of the Swing Era lay the talents of popular music's unsung heroes: the arrangers. John Wriggle takes you behind the scenes of New York City's vibrant entertainment industry of the 1930s and 1940s to uncover the lives and work of jazz arrangers, both black and white, who left an indelible mark on American music and culture.

Blue Rhythm Fantasy traces the extraordinary career of arranger Chappie Willet—a collaborator of Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, and many others—to revisit legendary Swing Era venues and performers from Harlem to Times Square. Wriggle's insightful music analyses of big band arranging techniques explore representations of cultural modernism, discourses on art and commercialism, conceptions of race and cultural identity, music industry marketing strategies, and stage entertainment variety genres.

Drawing on archives, obscure recordings, untapped sources in the African American press, and interviews with participants, Blue Rhythm Fantasy is a long-overdue study of the arranger during this dynamic era of American music history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252040405
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	08/01/2016
Series:	Music in American Life
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

John Wriggle is a musicologist, composer, arranger, and trombonist. He has taught for the City University of New York, Rutgers University, and Boston University.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Business and Politics: The Landscape 15

2 Ace Race Arranger: The Broadway Music Clinic 30

3 Harlem on Broadway: Nightclub and Theater Revues 43

4 Theory and Practice: The Fundamentals 63

5 Episode and Interlude: Broadway Modernism 88

6 Futuristic Ragtime: Style and Identity 104

7 Heavy Stuff: Classics and Concertos 127

8 Give Me Some Skin: Novelty Songs and Ballads 149

9 Jungle Madness: jazz Dance and Exotic Numbers 170

Conclusion 192

Acknowledgments and Credits 199

Appendix: The Music of Chappie Willet 205

List of Abbreviations 219

Notes 221

Bibliography 273

Index 289

Editorial Reviews

Certificate of Merit for Best Historical Research in Recorded Jazz, Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC), 2017.

"Recommended." —Choice


"A fascinating study of an overlooked aspect of the musical world that allows us to view artistic development with a greater understanding of other forces: economic, social, racial, and historical."—ARSC Journal
 

"Wriggle's work is well-researched, well-structured, and gives a great overview of the Swing Era career of Chappie Willet, which is further complemented by a thorough examination of his stylistic 'idiolect.'"—Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music

"Illuminating, and entertaining. . . . This is a book that any lover of jazz, swing or theater music would find accessible and rewarding."—The Arts Fuse

"[T]he authorial tone is far from dry, and his historical analysis is genuinely valuable . . . and the greatest value in this unusual book is allowing to see inside Willet's world and the place he occupied within it and belatedly, perhaps, to pay tribute to his prowess and that of his peers."—Jazzwise

"Blue Rhythm Fantasy is a wonderfully enlightening experience. . . .A splendidly-documented exploration of an artist and his musical world that will both answer and raise many questions. "—Jazz Lives

"Meticulously researched and elegantly written." —Music References Services Quarterly

"Writers have always been quick to heap praise on the soloists, vocalists and composers of the Swing Era but John Wriggle's Blue Rhythm Fantasy finally shines the spotlight on the craftsmen who really made the Swing Era swing: the arrangers. Having done a monumental amount of research, Wriggle invites the reader to listen to the music of the big bands with a fresh set of ears and a fresh amount of appreciation for many of the unsung heroes of that era, most notably the great Chappie Willet. An important book not just for jazz studies but for anyone interested in the entire popular music spectrum of the 1930s and 40s."—Ricky Riccardi, author of What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong's Later Years and Director of Research Collections, Louis Armstrong House Museum

"The unsung artists and business people who were the backbone and lifeblood of the popular music business in NYC in the 1930s and '40s are finally the heroes in this excellent and extremely well-researched book. This exciting new teaching tool brings to the fore those crucial musicians who kept all types of popular entertainment flowing by creatively and professionally combining such diverse job titles as composer, arranger, orchestrator, and copyist."—Benjamin Bierman, author of Listening to Jazz

From the Publisher