Making the Changes: Countermelodies in the Basslines of George “Pops” Foster and Ed “Montudi” Garland

ABSTRACT

This article explores how two early New Orleans bass players, George “Pops” Foster and Ed “Montudi” Garland, used countermelodies to construct their basslines, and how the principles they used to construct their lines were rooted in the voice leading of barbershop harmony. Their note choices are explored in relation to the blues and “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.”

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Vic Hobson is an independent researcher who lectured in music at the University of East Anglia in the UK. He is the author of Creating Jazz Counterpoint: New Orleans, Barbershop Harmony, and the Blues (2014) and Creating the Jazz Solo: Louis Armstrong and Barbershop Harmony (2018). Other recent publications have appeared in American Music and Jazz Perspectives. He is a Trustee for the National Jazz Archive (UK), and is also active as a bassist.

Notes

1 Lynn Abbott, “‘Play That Barber Shop Chord’: A Case for the African-American Origin of Barbershop Harmony,” American Music 10, no. 3 (1992): 289–325.

2 James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, The Books of American Negro Spirituals (New York: Da Capo, 1925, 1926; repr., 1969), 35.

3 Vic Hobson, “Plantation Song: Delius, Barbershop, and the Blues,” American Music 31, no. 3 (2013): 314–39.

4 Frédéric Döhl, “From Harmonic Style to Genre: The Early History (1890s–1940s) of the Uniquely American Musical Term Barbershop,” American Music 32, no. 2 (2014). He argues that barbershop may be of white origin. It is doubtful that he had access to Hobson, “Plantation Song.” This essay showed that barbershop harmonies were sung by African American planation worker in Florida in the 1880s, and had been transcribed in the singing of African American women during the Civil War.

5 George Brunies, “Interview Transcript, June 3, 1958,” in Oral History Files, ed. William Russell (New Orleans, LA: William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University).

6 Vic Hobson, “‘I Figure Singing and Playing Is the Same’: Louis Armstrong and Barbershop Harmony,” Jazz Perspectives 10, no. 1 (2017).

7 Tom Stoddard, Pops Foster: The Autobiography of a New Orleans Jazzman (Berkeley: University of Califormia Press, 1971; repr., San Francisco, CA: Backbeat Books, 2005), xviii.

8 George “Pops” Foster, “Interview Digest, April 21, 1957 (for Life Magazine),” in Oral History Files, ed. Nesuhi Ertegun and Robert Campbell (New Orleans, LA: William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University).

9 Ed “Montudi” Garland, “Interview Transcript, April 20, 1971.”

10 Ed “Montudi” Garland, “Interview April 21, 1957,” in Oral History Files, ed. Nesuhi Ertegun and Robert Campbell (New Orleans, LA: William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University).

11 Wilder Hobson, American Jazz Music (New York: W. W. Norton, 1939), 58.

12 Bill Russell, New Orleans Style (New Orleans, LA: Jazzology Press, 1994), 8–9.

13 Ibid.

14 Louis Armstrong, “Armstrong Heritage T.V. Program, Part 2, August 9, 1960,” in Audio Collection, ed. Robert McCully and Adam Lynch (New Orleans, LA: William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University).

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Sigmund Spaeth, Barber Shop Ballads: A Book of Close Harmony (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1925), 30–1. There were no chord symbols in Spaeth’s arrangement. Chord symbols have been added by the author.

20 Ibid., 31.

21 Barber Shop Ballads and How to Sing Them (New York: Prentice Hall, 1940), 9.

22 Henry O. Osgood, So This Is Jazz (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1926), 57.

23 Arnold Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony (Vienna: Universal Editions, 1911; repr., London: Faber & Faber, 1978), 193.

24 According to Schoenberg diminished chords were often used in classical music to represent “pain, excitement, anger, or some other strong feeling.” They would continue to be used in this capacity by pianists accompanying silent films.

25 Foster, “Interview Digest, April 21, 1957 (for Life Magazine).”

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Stoddard, Pops Foster, xx.

37 Ibid.

38 Foster, “Interview Digest, April 21, 1957 (for Life Magazine).”

39 Sleeve notes, Dan Burley, South Side Shake 1945–1951 (Wolf Records, WJB 008, nd., CD), 26.

40 Dr R.W. Gordon remarked in 1932, “that he knows no song in America today with so many different texts.” Mellinger E. Henry, “Review: Frankie and Johnny by John Huston,” Journal of American Folklore 45, no. 176 (April 1932).

41 John R. David, “Frankie and Johnnie: The Trial of Frankie Baker,” Missouri Folklore Society Journal 6 (1984): 6.

42 Willie Foster, “Interview Digest, January 21, 1959,” in Oral History Files, ed. William Russell and Ralph Collins (New Orleans, LA: William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University).

43 “Frankie and Johnny,” George “Pops” Foster with Art Hodes (New Orleans, LA: AMCD 105, 1968, LP).

44 Spaeth, Barber Shop Ballads: A Book of Close Harmony, 18.

45 In more complex cadences this chord appears with either a major or minor third. Vic Hobson, Creating Jazz Counterpoint: New Orleans, Barbershop Harmony, and the Blues (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014), 93.

46 Example 14, C in Rudi Blesh, Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz (London Cassell, 1949; repr., Fourth edition, enlarged, 1958), Musical Examples 415.

47 Many other blues scales do include the perfect fourth. For example, Winthrop Sargeant, Jazz: Hot and Hybrid (New York: Arrows Editions, 1938; repr., New York: Da Capo,1976), 160.

48 Louis Armstrong, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (London: Peter Davies, 1955; repr., Sedgwick & Jackson, 1957), 34–5; Edward “Kid” Ory, “Interview Transcript, April 20, 1957 (for Life Magazine),” in Oral History Files, ed. Nesuhi Ertegun and Robert Campbell (New Orleans, LA: William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University); Larry Gara, The Baby Dodds Story: As Told to Larry Gara (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1959; repr., 1992), 2; Brunies, “Interview Transcript, June 3, 1958.”

49 Lynn Abbott interview with Dr Laddie Melton, Beaumont, Texas, May 27, 1983; Abbott, “‘Play That Barber Shop Chord,’” 290.

50 Foster, “Interview Digest, April 21, 1957 (for Life Magazine).”

51 Also in the band were Joe Oliver on cornet; Eddie Atkins or Honore Dutrey, trombone; Alphonse Picou on clarinet, and an unidentified drummer. Andy Ridley interview with Louis Keppard, quoted in Andy Ridley, I’m Just A Plain Ordinary Guitar Player … But I’ll Scare the Best of Them: The Autobiography of Louis Keppard, unpublished manuscript, 1985; Abbott, “‘Play That Barber Shop Chord,’” 318; ibid.

52 Garland, “Interview, April 21, 1957.”

53 Ibid.

54 Garland, “Interview Transcript, April 20, 1971.”

55 Garland, “Interview, April 21, 1957.”

56 Ed “Montudi” Garland, “Interview Digest, August 8, 1958,” in Oral History Files, ed. William Russell (New Orleans, LA: William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University).

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 Ed “Montudi” Garland, “Interview April 16, 1957,” in Oral History Files, ed. Nesuhi Ertegun and Robert Campbell (New Orleans, LA: William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University).

61 Garland, “Interview Digest, August 8, 1958”; John McCusker, Creole Trombone: Kid Ory and the Early Years of Jazz (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012), 84.

62 Garland, “Interview Digest, August 8, 1958.”

63 Barney Bigard, With Louis and the Duke: The Autobiograhy of a Jazz Clarinetist, ed. Barry Martyn (London: Macmillan, 1980; repr., 1985), 10–11.

64 Garland, “Interview Digest, August 8, 1958.”

65 Kid Ory’s Creole Jazz Band, “Blues for Jimmy” (Los Angeles, CA: Crescent, CPM 10342A, August 3, 1944).

66 Kid Ory’s Creole Jazz Band, “Blues for Jimmy” recorded live at the Hangover Club, San Francisco, September 1954. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FF75e2FCRY.

67 Floyd Levin, Classic Jazz: A Personal View of the Music and Musicians (Los Angleles: University of California Press, 2000), 59.

68 “Legends of Jazz Blues for Jimmy,” YouTube [online video], January 20, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0gA6DCpF2c.

69 Garland, “Interview Digest, August 8, 1958.”

70 Transposed from Spaeth, Barber Shop Ballads: A Book of Close Harmony, 18. It is convention in barbershop arranging that the lead and tenor voice sing an octave lower than written. Due to the transposition, in cadence 5 and 7 the bass notes of E-flat have been transposed up an octave to conform to the usual range of a bass voice.

71 Barber Shop Ballads and How to Sing Them, 6.

72 Sargeant, Jazz Hot and Hybrid, 147.

73 Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 38.

74 Ibid., 39.

75 Ibid.

76 Gerhard Kubik, Africa and the Blues (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), 105.

77 Ory remembered that when they first played together Garland was “mostly picking” but he “bowed a little bit.” Ory, “Interview Transcript, April 20, 1957.”

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid.

81 Edward “Kid” Ory, Nat Shapiro, and Nat Hentoff, eds., Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: The Story of Jazz by the Men Who Made It (New York: Rinehart, 1955; reprint, Dover, 1966), 28.

82 Ory, “Interview Transcript, April 20, 1957.”

83 Ibid.

84 Ibid.

85 Garland, “Interview Transcript, April 20, 1971.”

86 Foster, “Interview Digest, January 21, 1959.”

87 Early published antecedences of the tune include, “O for a Closer Walk with God” (1878) and “Companionship with Jesus” (1885).

88 Peter C. Muir, Long Lost Blues: Popular Blues in America, 1850–1920 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 76.

89 Sargeant, Jazz: Hot and Hybrid, 155.

90 George “Pops” Foster with Art Hodes, sleeve notes (American Music AMCD-105, 1995, CD). I have altered Martyn’s spelling of “obligato” for consistency.

91 Garland, “Interview Digest, August 8, 1958.”

92 Hobson, “Plantation Song”; Abbott, “‘Play That Barber Shop Chord’”; Dena J. Polacheck Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals : Black Folk Music to the Civil War, Music in American Life (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977).