This paper is divided into two broad sections. The first section traces the life and career of John Graas through an examination of the contents of the John Graas Memorabilia and Memorial Library, which contains photo albums, newspaper clippings, records and tapes, approximately one hundred original compositions, and personal correspondence between the author and people who knew and worked with Graas.The second section is an examination and discussion of Graas's original compositions. This discussion traces Graas's compositional development and growth as an acknowledged jazz composer through the melodic analysis of selected original compositions.Findings1. John Graas was a classically-schooled horn player who studied with Max Pottag and Wilhelm Valkanier, and performed with the Indianapolis and Cleveland orchestras.2. He was best known for being the first horn player to achieve prominence in the jazz field. Graas acquired his jazz skills first as a performer with Thornhill, Beneke, and Kenton, and later as a composition student of Lennie Tristano, Shorty Rogers and Dr. Wesley LaViolette. 3. Numbering over one-hundred compositions, Graas’ works range from standard to innovative works for various-sized ensembles, including works for solo horn, solo piano, a television score, and his Jazz Symphony #1, written for full symphony orchestra and nine-piece jazz ensemble.Conclusions1. Graas was acknowledged as the first horn player to achieve prominence in the field of jazz, as recognized by such top, jazz polls as Down Beat, Metronome, and Playboy, from 1955 to 1961.2. His early improvisations helped to open the jazz field to future jazz hornists: Watkins, Amram, Ruff, Varner.3. Graas showed true pioneer spirit by working hard to expand limits placed on the horn by classical tradition, in order to reach a new and different standard of performance. / School of Music

Park "Pepper" Adams, III (1930-1986) is one of the most influential baritone saxophonists in the history of modern jazz. In addition to his time feel, his timbre, and other conceptual techniques, a great deal of Adams's improvisational style and vocabulary can be illustrated by his use of three motivic devices. These three motivic devices are: (1) his utilization of the sixth degree of the major scale as an important melodic pitch; (2) his use of a paraphrased portion of the melody of the popular song "Cry Me a River;" and (3) his use of the half-whole octatonic scale when the rhythm section sounds a dominant chord. This dissertation traces the way in which Adams applies these three motivic devices through four of his original compositions, "Enchilada Baby," "Bossallegro," "Lovers of Their Time," and "Rue Serpente." All four of these compositions were recorded by Adams on his 1980 album, The Master. In addition to the motivic analysis, a biography of Adams is included. Complete transcriptions by the author of Adams's improvised solos on the four compositions are included in the appendices.

Thirteen original transcriptions and subsequent analysis of improvised solos performed by Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen. The transcriptions are analyzed in three categories: harmonic vocabulary, technical devices, and motivic use. Pervasive harmonic and melodic themes are presented and compared with phrases from improvisers such as Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker, as well as compositions by J.S. Bach and Johannes Brahms. Observations from the transcriptions regarding performance practice and techniques unique to Pedersen as well as the influence of the physical characteristics of the double bass are discussed. Pedersen's use of motivic development within a single solo is analyzed.

The purpose of this study was to identify characteristics of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker's improvisational style, both instrumental and vocal, during the early period of his career (1952-1959). Baker's early years were divided into six periods, based on major milestones: The Charlie Parker Groups (1952-1953), The Gerry Mulligan Quartet and Tentette (1952-1953), The Chet Baker Quartets (1953-1956), The European Groups (1955-1956), Quartets, Quintets, and Sextets (1956-1957), and The Riverside Recordings (1958-1959). Improvised lines and chord changes from fifteen solos were transcribed and analyzed by the researcher; melodies of standard songs were transcribed and compared with the original version. The number of solos selected from each period was based on the length of time Baker spent with each particular group and the number of albums recorded. The solos were analyzed in terms of rhythmic interpretation of melodies, intervals utilized, use of nonharmonic tones, use of jazz cliches, embellishment of the melodic line, use of melodic and rhythmic patterns, range, tone quality, articulation, vibrato, and vocal scat syllables. As a result of this analysis, the researcher was able to draw conclusions concerning Baker's improvisational style during the period of the study. / School of Music

Audio files not uploaded onto institutional repository due to copyright restrictions: Hayes, T. & Clark, T. The New York sessions. / Tubby (Edward Brian) Hayes; prodigious self taught multi-instrumentalist and virtuoso tenor saxophone player has been proclaimed by some to be the best saxophonist that Britain has ever produced: "Indisputably the most accomplished and characterful British jazzman of his generation." His career, although cut short (he died undergoing treatment for a heart condition in June 1973, aged 38) was perpetually intense, incredibly prolific, and non-stop from his debut at the age of fifteen until his premature death. Hayes was proficient on many instruments; all saxophones, clarinet, flute, violin and vibraphone as well as being an accomplished bandleader and arranger. However it was his virtuoso tenor saxophone playing that found him acclaim. Although well known in his time and widely renowned for his ability, Hayes until recently has been little studied. It is only in the last few years that many critics and students of jazz have attempted to gain an understanding of Hayes' improvisational concept, which has been both praised as genius and criticised as directionless: Tubby Hayes has often been lionized as the greatest saxophonist Britain ever produced. He is a fascinating but problematical player. Having put together a big, rumbustious tone and a delivery that features sixteenth notes spilling impetuously out of the horn, Hayes often left a solo full of brilliant loose ends and ingenious runs that led nowhere in particular... However, Hayes, his legacy, and his inimitable style of tenor saxophone playing would truly leave their mark on the British Jazz community for generations to come. Dave Gelly summed up Hayes by saying that Tubby "played Cockney tenor - garrulous, pugnacious, never at a loss for a word and completely unstoppable."

Thesis (M.A.)--Acadia University, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-124). Also available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

There has been insufficient academic research on the music of the Eastern Cape in general and Port Elizabeth and New Brighton in particular. This study, as part of the International Library of African Music (ILAM)lRed Location Museum Music History Project (ILAMIRLMHP) - an oral history intervention to save the music history of New Brighton from extinction through research and documentation of the memories of veteran musicians - is focused on jazz vocalists. The primary objective of my study is to investigate, critically analyze, interpret and document the career experiences of six New Brighton jazz vocalists in the context of performing in the Port Elizabeth music industry during the apartheid and the post-apartheid eras. The secondary objectives are to stimulate research interests in music students and ethnomusicologists to pursue research on the music of Port Elizabeth and the Eastern Cape and to inspire and motivate the vocalists to continue making music with renewed zeal. A qualitative research paradigm informed the field research necessary for this study. The fieldwork paved the way for an eclectic framework of analysis grounded in Pierre Bourdieu's notions of habitus, field and capital, examining the impact of the context on the vocalists' habitus which influenced how they viewed and interpreted their past and current experiences in the performance field. Data obtained through extensive interviewing of New Brighton's contemporary female vocalists and their male counterparts revealed that they have no opportunity to make commercial recordings. The musicians have to migrate to Johannesburg to have successful music careers, although personality politics, greed and lack of professionalism also work against the musicians' success. The data shows that New Brighton musicians, both male and female, do not have enough performance opportunities and there are fewer chances to tour now than there were from the 1960s through the 1980s. As in the apartheid era, female vocalists are still discriminated against in terms of pay, and men discriminate in how they pay other male musicians. Analysis of the vocalists' jazz compositions revealed that their song lyrics depict a bona fide urban African culture and reflect the emotional needs of the society in which they live.

MAAS / Department of Music.

In Rhythm Changes: Jazz Rhythm in the African American Novel, I demonstrate how novelists from the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement adapted jazz rhythm into literary form. In the prologue to Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison famously defines invisibility as a state of being “never quite on the beat.” Ellison frames the novel as a kind of translation of the “invisible” rhythm the narrator hears in Louis Armstrong, a syncopated rhythm rooted in Black aesthetic and cultural forms. “Could this compulsion to put invisibility down in black and white be thus an urge to make music of invisibility?” Ellison was not alone in this project. The writers I study all exemplify what Duke Ellington calls a “tone parallel”—the concept that literary form could reproduce or “parallel” the particularities of musical form. However, these writers find literary strategies to transcend parallelism, such that the lines between medium begin to touch. Considering devices that cut across music and literature—anaphora, antiphonal dialogue, polysyndeton, parataxis—I argue that novelists, not just poets, respond formally to the rhythmic concepts they hear on the bandstand, synthesizing these innovations with a broader literary tradition. Rudolph Fisher’s novel The Conjure-Man Dies brings the complex rhythmic sensibility of Louis Armstrong to detective fiction; Ann Petry’s The Street channels the rhythmic phrasing of Ethel Waters in a “novel of social criticism”; Ellison’s epic unfinished second novel follows the paratactic rhythm of the preacher and jazz trombonist; and Amiri Baraka’s The System of Dante’s Hell projects the rhythm of Sonny Rollins and Cecil Taylor onto Charles Olson’s “Projective Verse.” By finding the literary in the musical and vice versa, these novelist-experimenters move beyond Pater’s credo that all art aspires to the condition of music.

In this paper, I explore the early musical language of McCoy Tyner. Today, Tyner is recognized mostly for his use of quartal harmony and pentatonic scales despite having made recordings in his early career that reflect a more mainstream approach. In an effort to expand how Tyner is represented, I argue that Tyner's early style was characterized by a graceful balance of tradition and innovation, a masterful blend of bebop syntax with pentatonic melodies and quartal harmonies. The recordings that I analyze and discuss are: "Effendi," "Cousin Mary," and "Newport Romp." I transcribed and analyzed selected portions of these recordings in order to better understand his early musical language as a soloist from 1962 to 1963. A portion of this paper is focused on the early reception of Tyner, which acknowledged him as an accomplished mainstream player with a firm grasp of the jazz tradition. Ultimately, my analysis shows that Tyner's early style was a balance of tradition and innovation, incorporating bebop syntax, pentatonic melodies, and quartal harmonies.