{"id":11680,"date":"2012-09-05T06:48:22","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T10:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=11680"},"modified":"2019-11-05T12:43:08","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T17:43:08","slug":"midweek-music-break-benny-goodman-orchestra-one-oclock-jump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/midweek-music-break-benny-goodman-orchestra-one-oclock-jump\/","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Music Break: Benny Goodman Orchestra, &#8220;One O&#8217;Clock Jump&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/whatdowecare_sheetmusic.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Sheet music: 'What Do We Care If It's 1 O'Clock or 2 or 3 or 4'\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/whatdowecare_sheetmusic.jpg?ssl=1\" alt=\"\" style=\"width: 35%;\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Count Basie wrote this iconic Big Band number in 1937, and played it as his theme song for half a century. Almost every other band of the time recorded its own version; the one presented here made its appearance at the Carnegie Hall debut performance of the Benny Goodman Orchestra, in January, 1938.<\/p>\n<p>Over the course of its six-and-a-half minutes, the performance is apparently structured as a series of solos (we&#8217;ll get back to that <em>apparently<\/em> in a moment), by piano, tenor saxophone, trombone, clarinet, and, well&#8230; something else:<\/p>\nYou might be curious what the &#8220;jump&#8221; in the title refers to. <a title=\"Wikipedia, on jump blues\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jump_blues\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wikipedia<\/a> provides several hints, without fully answering the question:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Jump music &#8212; more properly, jump&nbsp;<em>blues<\/em> &#8212; &#8220;was an extension of the boogie-woogie craze.&#8221; (An example of boogie-woogie music previously covered here was &#8220;Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar&#8221;&#8230; featured, of all things, in&nbsp;<a title=\"Earlier RAMH post: 'Best Not to Wait'\" href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/best-not-to-wait\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a&nbsp;<em>whiskey river Friday<\/em> post<\/a> in 2010.)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Jump accomplishes with three horns and a rhythm section what a big band does with an ensemble of sixteen,&#8221; and<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The tenor saxophone is the most prominent instrument in jump.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In Goodman&#8217;s version, saxophonist Babe Russin does play a central part. Easily the longest solo comes from Goodman&#8217;s clarinet, and Jess Stacy on piano and Harry James on trumpet stake out their own territories with characteristic assertiveness.<\/p>\n<p>But&nbsp;&#8212; and here we get back to that&nbsp;<em>apparently<\/em> mentioned a few paragraphs ago &#8212; the real star of the performance is the rhythm section. You may not even notice it through much of the song, although it&#8217;s always there, pumping the whole thing along. But at around 5:09 it takes the stage almost exclusively, in an astonishing, all but exhausting run of something like thirty* cycles (bars?) of nothin&#8217; but rhythm, the clarinet and other instruments simply twining around in embellishment.<\/p>\n<p>Just for comparison, here&#8217;s one recording by Basie&#8217;s own band. It&#8217;s shorter and faster, but unmistakably the same song:<\/p>\n___________________________<\/p>\n<p>* I&#8217;ve counted them several times, but keep getting swept up in the music and losing my place. Thirty is the number which crops up most often, heh.<\/p>\n<p>P.S. No, the image at the top of this post doesn&#8217;t <em>really<\/em> have anything to do with this song. But I cracked up at the title. The singer pictured at the bottom right is Ruth Etting, who recorded one of the very earliest versions of &#8220;Smoke Gets in Your Eyes&#8221; (as featured at the bottom of <a title=\"Earlier RAMH post: 'What's in a Song: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (1)'\" href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/whats-in-a-song-smoke-gets-in-your-eyes-1\/\">this post<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Count Basie wrote this iconic Big Band number in 1937, and played it as his theme song for half a century. Almost every other band of the time recorded its own version; the one presented here made its appearance at the Carnegie Hall debut performance of the Benny Goodman Orchestra, in January, 1938. Over the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2252,74],"tags":[107,108,2498,2951,3167,3168,3169],"class_list":{"0":"post-11680","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-midweek-music-break","7":"category-music","8":"tag-benny-goodman","9":"tag-carnegie-hall","10":"tag-jazz","11":"tag-blues","12":"tag-count-basie","13":"tag-jump-music","14":"tag-solos","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-32o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11680"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21747,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11680\/revisions\/21747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}