Before the Music Had a Name

May 31, 2023

Before the Music Had a Name

When music genres wind up with a name, it's usually because the style became so commercially popular that someone in the media decided to label it with a clever word or phrase. [Photo above of Amos Milburn]

To illustrate my point, let's look at three demarcation points in 20th century music, each 10 years apart: Swing existed years before Benny Goodman's Palomar Ballroom appearance in 1935, bebop was already in the works before Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie made their first Guild records together in 1945, and the roots of rock 'n' roll were in place way before Chuck Berry's records for Chess and Elvis Presley's records for Sun in 1955.

Let's start with swing. Before Goodman began using the Edgar Sampson arrangements for Chick Webb's band in 1935, swing was already flourishing at New York's Savoy Ballroom, clubs in Kansas City and at dance venues in many black neighborhoods in America's cities where major bands toured. [Photo above of Chick Webb]

Here's Benny Carter playing and singing Swing It in 1933...

Here's the Chick Webb band playing Edgar Sampson's arrangement of Stompin' at the Savoy in 1934...

Here's the Webb band playing Edgar Sampson's arrangement of Don't Be That Way in 1934...

And here's Fletcher Henderson's arrangement of Wrappin' It Up for his band in 1934...

Before bebop wound up with a name, the music was already emerging at after-hours clubs and bars in Harlem. [Photo above of Charlie Christian]

Here's guitarist Charlie Christian jamming on Stompin' at the Savoy at Minton's Playhouse in 1941...

Here's Thelonious Monk at Minton's in 1941...

Here's Dizzy Gillespie at Monroe's Uptown House in 1941 playing Kerouac...

And here's Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Pettiford in Room 305 of the Savoy Hotel in Chicago riffing on chord changes to Sweet Georgia Brown in 1943...

Before disc jockey Alan Freed began calling R&B music aimed at teens "rock 'n' roll" in the mid-1950s, the beat, feel and even the term was already percolating in multiple forms as early as the late 1920s. [Photo above of Wynonie Harris]