Swing and the big bands were best known from the late 1930s through World War II, when tire and gasoline shortages curtailed road trips. It became highly polished dance music. [1]
After the war, Black musicians revived the earlier, small-group improvisational styles. Only, instead of serving apprenticeships in local bands, musicians went to college where they learned the rules of contemporary composition and heard recordings by all their predecessors. Over time they called their music bebop, cool, hard bop, and post bop with distinctions made by connoisseurs based on melodic contours, harmonics and rhythms.
For all its sophistication, musicians still worked within the framework established by early jazzmen. John Wesley Work said then:
"the leader ‘stomped off’ the tempo (gave it by tapping his foot), and the ensemble played a refrain maintaining some faithfulness to the melody. Then each soloist was given a refrain for his individual expression. The background of these solos was generally provided by the piano player, sometimes a spur-of-the-moment idea of an idle side man. The ‘solo’ continued as long as the leader wished to let people dance. In conclusion came the ‘out’ chorus, in which the entire band played ecstatic excursions of music within the harmonic framework of the composition." [2]
Terell Stafford’s 2003 recording of "Kumbaya" conformed to this pattern. Only, instead of him stepping the rhythm, he let Derrick Hodge set the tempo in an opening string-bass solo. The cymbals joined him, then the piano played chords.
Stafford played the "Kumbaya" melody through twice on trumpet, before starting his solo improvisation. The only changes he made to the standard tune were in the descents in the second and fourth lines. He repeated the last line like The Seekers had done, but as a variant.
His solo lasted a minute, then Steve Wilson played the saxophone for nearly two minutes. Throughout the solos and renditions of the "Kumbaya" tune, Mulgrew Miller’s piano was the only constant sound. The cymbals were played softly; the drums and bass only were heard as accents.
Stafford played the melody through one more time, before the piano took a solo turn for Work’s out chorus. The piece ended with Mulgrew Miller changing from chords to soft arpeggios accompanied by Dana Hall on the drums.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Soloists: Mulgrew Miller, piano; Terell Stafford, trumpet; [3] Steve Wilson, soprano saxophone [4]
Rhythm Accompaniment: Derrick Hodge, string bass; Dana Hall, drums [5]
Credits
Traditional [6]
Arrangement: Stephen Scott [7]
Copyright (c) MaxJazz [8]
Music Publisher: Universal Polygram (ASCAP) [9]
Music Publisher: Songwriters Guild of America (ASCAP) [10]
Notes on Lyrics
There were none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate to slow
Basic Structure: concatenation of solos over a piano continuum with the beat set by a string bass and cymbals.
Notes on Performance
Location: Systems Two Studios, Brooklyn, New York.
"Stafford slinks across Stephen Scott’s wonderful arrangement of ‘Kumbaya’ and Steve Wilson’s brilliant soprano pushes the whole band toward a rapturous ending. It’s definitely the album’s winner, and as a closer it leaves the listener exalted." [11]
Notes on Performers
The six men involved with "Kumbaya," the five musicians and the arranger, represented the changes in Black life that occurred after World War II when bop emerged. Only two were born in the south: Miller in Greenwood, Mississippi, [12] and Wilson in Hampton, Virginia. [13] Only one, Hodge, spent most of his childhood in one of the first targets of freedman migration, Philadelphia. [14] The others either lived in the suburbs of New York (Scott in Queens) [15] or moved from cities to the suburbs: Stafford’s family moved from Miami to Chicago, before settling in Silver Spring, Maryland; [16] Hall’s went from Brooklyn to Philadelphia to Voorhees Township, New Jersey. [17]
They all had at least some college education: Miller went to Memphis State, while Scott studied at Juilliard. Wilson graduated from Virginia Commonwealth and Hodge from Temple. Stafford earned a masters’ degree from Rutgers and Hall is working on a PhD at the University of Chicago in ethnomusicology.
After the demise of the big bands, and the development of bop that spurned popular music, the careers of most musicians have been a series of short-term jobs working as sidemen in other performers’ groups, with opportunities to gather their own groups for solo recording sessions like Stafford’s.
University music departments have become the primary source for steady employment for the most creative or best known. Wilson is on the staff of Julliard, Stafford of Temple, and Hall of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Before he died in 2013, Miller was Director of Jazz Studies at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey.
Availability
CD: New Beginnings. MaxJazz MXJ 402. 2003. Recorded January 2003, Brooklyn, New York. Released 17 June 2003. [18]
Reissue: New Beginnings. MaxJazz MP3. 25 January 2016.
YouTube: uploaded by The Orchard Enterprises on 26 January 2016.
End Notes
The websites listed for the individual artists were the sources for all the biographical information.
1. Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Style Sheet. "The Swing Era." Jazz in America website.
2. John Wesley Work. "Jazz." 440-444 in Harvard Dictionary of Music. Edited by Willi Apel. Cambridge: Belnap Press, 1969 edition. 441.
3. "Terell Stafford - New Beginnings." Discogs website.
4. "Terell Stafford: New Beginnings." All Music website.
5. Discogs.
6. All Music.
7. All Music.
8. Discogs.
9. YouTube posting.
10. YouTube posting.
11. David Jeffries. Review of New Beginnings. All Music.
12. Wikipedia. "Mulgrew Miller."
13. "The Sideman Becomes the Star." Steve Wilson Music website.
14. E. E. Bradman. "Derrick Hodge: Riding High with Maxwell, Robert Glasper and a New Solo Album." Bass Player website. 8 December 2016.
15. Wikipedia. "Stephen Scott (Jazz Pianist)."
16. "Terell Stafford." Terell Stafford website.
17. Wikipedia. "Dana Hall (Musician)."
18. All Music.
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