In the 1940s, we saw a crossroads where
some musicians were tired of pleasing the crowds and wanted to get
more experimental with music. This gave birth to BeBop. In contrast, we also have a new style once again originating from African-American
communities called Rhythm and Blues. Did you know that "Hound Dog" was originally recorded by an African-American woman
years before Elvis released his version? My name is Vicky O'Neon I'm a drummer and educator. And in this episode we'll explore
the development of music and drumming in the 1940's. When World War Two broke out,
nearly 16 million American men had to leave for war and women were urged
to fill their places in society. This was considered their patriotic duty. Some female musicians were now asked to fill men's roles in big
bands and jazz orchestras.
This led to many female musicians going
abroad to perform for the American soliders. Many entertainment venues closed
as America went into "lights out" mode. One of the few bands playing when the Japanese attacked in 1941 was Ada
Leonard's All-American Girl Orchestra. World War Two gave them their name and they worked hard for the
American military services. They would play two shows per day,
six days per week, and often be drafted to perform
in hospitals on their days off as well. The drummer was Florence "Fagel" Liebman,
who grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She was a self-taught drummer and a jazz
enthusiast who had explored jazz by watching musicians like Duke Ellington,
Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa perform. She describes in Sally Placksin's book "American Women in Jazz",
that her time in the band was at first a really thrilling musical
time because it was all jazz. She also admits that there were
some grueling times on the road.
The famous American drummer
Viola Smith says in an interview that before World War Two, there were
many prejudices against female musicians, but during the war, they finally began to be taken more
seriously, at least to an extent – and people could finally see what girl musicians were capable of when
they were given a chance. In 1942 she wrote an article called
"Give Girl Musicians a Break" in Downbeat magazine, which caused
a lot of controversy. Smith says she was standing up for women
musicians not just as a temporary wartime substitute, but for women to be acknowledged for their skills and capabilities, and become
permanent on the music scene. This opened up a floodgate of letters to the editor and started debates between
readers that would last for months.
One of the answers to Viola's articles were, "I'll tell you right now,
I do not like girl musicians." "Girls should leave this kind of business" "to persons who know what it's
all about and I mean men." Unfortunately, there were also several
women who were against female musicians with comments like,
"I definitely agree that girls do not make" "good swing music. When it
comes to playing good music" "girls, how about leaving it to the boys?" "Our place is listening and dancing" "to music, not sitting in with the band
and blowing our brains out." What would have been your input
into these articles and debates? When the war ended in 1945, most female musicians lost their jobs.
When
the male musicians returned, it was said that the women should return
to their rightful place in the home. Specific gender roles were now strongly imposed in society after the war,
and the uprise of women taking up more space in the music industry
now had a big backlash. Big Bands were becoming less popular due
to economic times and several ballrooms, hotels and nightclubs closed down,
and bands now started to become smaller. So the music industry was changing and there were influences
from new music styles. Another big change for live entertainment
was also the popularization of black and white television, which became
the main form of entertainment. Some musicians felt like they wanted
to take jazz further, an experiment more – rather than playing
music for people to dance to.
Which up until that point had made
jazz music so popular. So a new style emerged in Harlem called "BeBop" which was very much
based on improvisation. The musicians would take famous songs, so-called "standards", and rewrite the melody
to something much more complex and intricate than we had
ever heard in music before. In the 1940s, the term jazz was more associated with bebop,
and it became its own art form where musicians got to push boundaries
of what you can do with jazz music. Let's pop over to my studio
for a little breakdown. So first of all, the set up of the drum
set now developed once again.
Drummers now replace the huge bass drums, which up until this point could
have been up to 30 inches in size, and they were now replaced with smaller ones, around 20 inch bass drums
which we are used to seeing today. And they now also started to use much larger cymbals than the ones
we had seen before. And especially one large cymbal became a really important feature,
which is the ride cymbal. And this is the cymbal that drummers
now started to use to keep time on. So instead of having the low pumping
sound from the bass drum keeping time, we now started to have a higher frequency
that was lighter and washier – and floats on top in terms of frequencies
to keep the time. And I've actually jumped a few decades ahead using my Roland V Drums
to demonstrate all of this, and the reason is because I live
in a residential area and as the music gets louder, I want to be
respectful of my neighbors.
But what's so cool about the Roland
V-Drums and the kit that I have, is that it has amazing built in sounds that can sort
of replicate all these different drum kits through the decades that we're
going to go through. So from now onwards, you will see me on the Roland V Drums.
Because we're now moving away from the pumping four on the floor bass drum,
that actually frees up the bass to now start improvising rhythms
along with the snare.
So using the bass drum this way
was also called "Dropping Bombs". And this allowed drummers to become more
melodic in the rhythms they were playing to accompany more elaborate melodies
played by the horn players. Bebop was, in general,
also a lot faster than previous jazz styles, and the drum kit was now
featured more as a standout instrument. And it was common to hear so-called tradings between drums
and other instruments.
It was mainly men that started to explore this new exciting jazz form,
but there's records of African-American all girl swing band,
darlings of rhythm playing so-called "hot jazz" which is definitely
related to BeBop. There's rumors that Darling's trumpeter
Josephine Boyd jammed with Dizzy Gillespie and played a role in helping
him to invent bebop. Bebop, however,
didn't really appeal to the average person who wanted to go out
dancing at the weekend. So there was an other exciting style
that started to emerge amongst African-American communities called Rhythm
and B lues, which was very danceable. This is where the electric bass and guitar
comes into the picture, which meant that drummers,
for the first time ever could really start to play heavier grooves
which influenced this new style. It's easy to forget today that there was
a time before amplification and the impact that that would have had
on the way drummers were playing right? So let's check out some Rhythm
and Blues in my studio.
So to show you the development into Rhythm and Blues, I'll compare it to the big band
Swing Feel that sounded like this to keep time. one and a two and a three and a four –
for rhythm and blues drummers started to emphasize the whole shuffle
feel instead of the swing feel because they were now able to really
start playing out more. So the difference is,
one y and a two y and a three y and a four y and a instead of
one and a two and a three and a four and a. And the idea of having the backbeat in a song on beat two and four,
which you hear in most styles of music today, didn't really happen on the drums
until 1948. "Good Rocking Tonight" by Wynonie Harris was one of the first songs that had the
backbeat emphasized throughout the song. And this was a direct influence from gospel music where you
would clap on beat two and four. Prior to this, this would have been
difficult to do on the drums because that strong backbeat would basically have
drowned out all the other instruments, but thanks to the electric bass
and guitar, this was now possible.
Good rocking tonight became a huge hit
because people simply loved to dance to it and it would stay in the charts
for over six months. So in the early shuffle, you would also emphasize all
those notes in the snare drum. So it would sound something like this. Later on, we also started to see a heavier backbeat being applied and then
the groove would sound more like this. So you can hear that this is heading towards rock and roll, which we will
talk about more in the next episode.
I'm now going to play along to a little
snippet of "Good Rockin Tonight" Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton was
the first known female blues singer to combine her vocals and songwriting
talent with her drumming skills. She grew up singing in church and taught
to herself to play harmonica and drums, which would become a regular parts
of her onstage performances. She would actively perform the chitlin
circuit, which was considered safe for African-Americans to perform
in the days of segregation. In 1953, she recorded a song you might
have heard of called, "Hound Dog", which went straight to number one
in the Rhythm and Blues charts. Even though it sold more than two million copies, Thornton would only receive
a total of five hundred U.S.
Dollars for it. Elvis Presley, who released his version
just a few years later, would not only receive incredible fame,
but also a fortune from the same record. Historians have noted this is as one
of the most notorious examples of the inequity that existed between
black and white artists at the time. Johnny "Mae" Dunson is another singing drummer who would become
a Chicago blues legend. She started performing on Maxwell Street, the celebrated birthplace
of Chicago blues. Her drumming style was described as "free
bashing" based on her childhood memories beating sticks against her
mother's tin water buckets. In an article in the Chicago Tribune,
she says,"When I first started playing in Chicago in the 1940s,
people said ugly things about women who plays the blues." "They said she must not be
a woman if she plays the drums." Dunson was also a prolific songwriter, writing over 600 blues tunes
in her over 60 year long career.
She also wrote songs for famous artists
like Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed, but never got paid more than 50
dollars and often nothing at all. She continued to drum and sing
the blues until her death in 2007. Rhythm and Blues was initially made for and enjoyed by African-American
communities before it reached an international audience
and absolutely exploded. It was the forerunner to Rock and Roll, which would change the history
of music forever. More on this in the next episode
as we head into the 1950s. Thank you so much for watching! I would love to hear your thoughts, so please drop a comment below,
and also make sure to like and subscribe and watch the previous episodes if you
haven't already done so. I see you again next time!.