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The Jazz emerged in New Orleans around the turn of the century, and it is now heard all over the world. It developed from the music of the Southern Negroes and became one of America's major cultural achievements in the 20th six. Today we will hear George Lewis

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Ragtime Jazz Man, the only remaining group playing in the classic tradition of New Orleans jazz in the George Louis van. We have a link with Discovery with presented by the San Francisco Museum of Art and Station Kpi with your host for Today, Dr Lloyd Luckman

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with your jazz historian. All I really know is the chairs is everywhere, and I know this from the fact that the young people are always listening to records, and I hear terms about swing and pop and progressive and connection with jazz. That's about the extent of

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my knowledge and give me a definition of jazz. Will you know we're not going to start with the definition of jazz. No, you've got to ask that question, and many people say you're never going to find out. It's just one of those things being an art

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form, it's hard to explain, I think maybe look at this map and see if maybe we can't get it from here in New Orleans was the center of the culture of the South. It was here that the Negro musicians came after the Civil War. It was

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from this source that they started spreading their music around the country. For instance, up in ST Louis, Oh, 40 years ago, Ragtime was the big rage, and it was from there that had spread around the world. And then after the first World War, this same group

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of New Orleans musicians, perhaps a little bit of younger ones, came on up to Chicago, and they started a new form of jazz, the Chicago style of jazz, right up to the heart of the country. That's right. And another group of white musicians, actually from New

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Orleans went on into New York City, and they're introduced it in 1917. And since then, of course, we've had a Kansas City style. We have our own San Francisco style. Here there's jazz bands all around the world playing so geographically it's a little easier to explain

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them musically. Jazz, purely American, then and would you give me another distinction or definition? What's the difference between jazz and classical music. Oh, you hit me with two. I don't think we're going to be able to get that across. But you might remember that the jazz

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musician is interpreting. He is composing as he goes along. He is, in essence, the whole orchestra and a symphony orchestra that has just a composer that's playing, and that is that's leading the band. The orchestra. Those instrumentalists there are reading off of the written music, not

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playing from the head so well, I think. I understand. Tell me now. We've been listening to George Lewis organization. Where are they from? And something about them? Well, the Jorge Luis band is distinctive. They've been playing together, many of them for 30 35 years. There they

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they're playing the way that they grew up playing in New Orleans, and they haven't diluted their form to any remarkable degree since then. And therefore it's the only band that is playing in this so called parent or traditional form of jazz. We're here in San Francisco,

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the only ones who share this New Orleans orchestra. Well, right now, of course, yes, they have been in Los Angeles and in New York City. And they also have played in various colleges around the United States. Well, since we have the fellas right near at hand,

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suppose we asked them a couple of questions. George Lewis Lloyd George's pleasure Indeed. He's curious about your music, George. Where did you learn to play? The clarinet? We'll learn down in New Orleans right down at home. There was that For what? You get an instrument given

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to you. Did you start in someone? So I started on a 25 5 19 7. A dime store? Five. That's right. You have any Have any any kind of instruction on that? Any lessons? Learned? No lessons at all. Just picked it up. How about you, kid?

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Howard, your trumpeter and this band you lead the melody. How? How did you pick up that? Well, I'm taking lessons on it. Before that time I played drum, You picked up that beat by the hair and the drugs are quite awhile. That's fine. You know, we're

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gonna want to hear these guys right away. Let's let him go on over. I still need you to Fine. Thank you. Well, tell me, when did they get together? to play jazz bands fill. I mean, they sound like they start up as individual. Well, this band

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is a good example of that. Lloyd. They started up individually, I suppose. But I think he would have heard jazz bands playing 60 years ago in one form or another, maybe a parade band. Or maybe like the singers, for instance, who sang together the spiritual groups

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that were singing well, my thought was that most of the Southern music folk music was off the plantation, that the instrument was the voice, and we have the spirituals. I didn't quite associate that background with the urban background of New Orleans. Well, that is one of

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the major thing you see that went up so early about the sixties or seventies. Spirituals were thought of as the only creative form of the Negro, but I don't think you should really think of it. Think of the blues because under this, the torment and the

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feeling that the Negro people had, they grew up this type of music as slow, very, very sensuous type of music, which was called the Blues or the spiritual one or another. They're about this mood music, the same mood. Come and talk about the same, whether it's

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on a single instrument or whether it's by a whole band playing well. You're going to have that feeling of the blues. Lawrence Barreiro on the banjo, for instance, he learned how to play from his father. As he said, That was about 40 years ago. You noticed

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that Jorge Luis, coming in here on the clarinet, has a melody that isn't a regular pattern. But on the other hand, it's careless love, the one that W. C. Handy wrote down a number of years ago. L. C Pablo shows on base. He got a nickname

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slow drag after he won a dance contest that had that name. Now we've got Joe Watkins in on the drums as this band builds itself up playing the blues. The New Orleans drummer, of course, had to play both in a parade band as well as keeping

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the rhythm of going along during the dancing. You noticed, probably the album Purnell on Piano There here is somewhat more of a rhythm section man and a soloist of his own. Since there weren't any pianos in the marching bands, of course, well, they had to have

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a piano for the dancers. There was a different style and the piano than in the parade band, of course, because they weren't playing together. Now that the trumpeter has come in Kid Howard, the melody has taken off, and he has taken the whole strain of the

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melody of our Jorge Luis improvisers, harmonically below him. Drop out to the melody Exactly now, by the addition of Jim Robinson on the trombone, we've completed Jorge Luis and his New Orleans band, Jim, recorded in the twenties. As a matter of fact, he used to play

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off of the tailgates on the wagons in New Orleans. Love, Oh, love, Oh, careless love, your clutches up desire You made me break a many You Then you're really sad, My heart on fire Well,

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that's careless love. And it was a very beautiful interpretation of the blues, Phil. But somehow rather, in my idea of jazz, I think of ragtime. And does this organization indulge in a little ragged? Oh, yes, definitely. It's a natural thing to bring up now, too, because

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ragtime, as I said, was the next form of this American jazz that came to the people. Why don't we try this? This will be a band version, Of course. Ragtime was on the piano at first, and then the band's took it over. Notice the four beats

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to the bar here rather than the two beats of the March Temple. Well, here in a little, just to listen to this will be Panama Rag. Thank you, I thought that was really jazz. That was really ragtime. Well, is it

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always then that I think of four beats music. When I ask you about jazz again and we'll get into this definition, I'll tell you one sure thing. Never ask a musician whether one kind of beat or another is the only thing they can play to beat

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for beat. It's how they feel and what the occasion permits. For instance, if you're looking on a street in New Orleans and down Basin Street, let's say our South Rampart there's a parade coming. They're certainly not going to have four beats. They may have 68 They

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may have to four. Why don't we try one of these? 24 March is one of the great ones. Bugle Boy March. They call it Phil. This was improvisation. I take it. As you mentioned to me once

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before, I think probably you'd find that not very many of these fellows in this band have seen a score of music and a number a number of years. They don't read music. Well, they don't bother. They've been playing together for a long time. They know where

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everybody else is going to be. They won't step on each other's toes. Well, does this recall the same kind of improvising? Say that the classicist like I can't resist bringing in the classic Mozart? He was reputed to be great improviser. Is that the same thing as

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our, uh, we always are doing here. It might be the same thing, but I don't think the end result is the same. I think Mozart don't. You was probably improvising with the end in sight of probably putting it down on music. Eventually, these men improvised as

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they go along. The end point is the creation of what they're doing right now. For now, Right now, yes. And the idea of writing down the music of the whole commercialization of jazz then is somebody else's notion. Not George Lewis. Is boys well, probably so of

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course. In recent years, some of the progressive forms of jazz have treated it that jazz was a composing sort of thing, and they could compose in their own vein. But the roots of jazz are improvised, their men creating with themselves in a band, or maybe just

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a few of them. On various occasions in New Orleans, you take 1/20 century classicists like Darius Meal didn't in his, uh, a piece, Let's say the end of the world. I think that's the title. Didn't he bring jazz into that? He's brought in Well, Stravinsky has,

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of course, has brought in a lot. George Gershwin made use of the blues theme. They were taking ideas, maybe, like Stephen Foster did with spirituals, wrote them down on paper and then had people sing them. You've lost a little of the flavor, the individuality you see.

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I see it's style again. That's right. Well, now, one other question right this moment hits me, and that's this one here. We've had jazz in March time. As you said, different beats and we've had the ragtime is is the notion of jazz that it's raucous, noisy.

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Oh, no, not at all that probably was perpetuated by the people who didn't know what it was all about and felt the only thing they could do is to play loud and noisy and have foghorns and steamboat whistles in the band create an effect. Washboards and

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well, of course, the washboard could have been used a long time ago as a rhythm as they had a drum set, for instance. But supposing, for instance, you take one of the types of music the spiritual. Many people wouldn't like to hear that done in jazz

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fashion. Really hardly. Yet. They don't realize that it was being improvised long before it was written down, as jazz as jazz and what we call it jazz. Now that's a relatively new term, so long as I don't think of it in this faster beat. Is that

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right? Well, faster, slow. It ain't what you do. It's the way. What you doing? That's what does it. Why don't we see that Jorge Luis band here now and let them do as they do so often in New Orleans, playing for a funeral? Perhaps a large

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brothers died the same group, the same group. Oh yes, that's one of their major jobs in New Orleans. They'll march the body down to the graveyard. A few words will be said, perhaps a song sung and then leaving the body. They're doing the best they can.

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They march up the street in a happier, lighter vein. One of the best of these tunes, I think, is one that I know they're going to do. Well, a spiritual called Just a closer walk with thee. Well, let's listen. Mm, yeah. No. Mm mm.

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Mm hmm. Jazz So close to walk with Jesus, if you please. Mm. Daily walking close with Let it be, Dear Lord. Let it be. Yeah, well,

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that was really a surprise ending, because I've been taken into something of a reverie by the introduction to that beautiful spiritual. And I think I understand very much better now. After this, I'd call it concert. We had up to this moment, and I know that we're

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going to have some more numbers or another number, at least from Georgia and the boys. But while we're, uh, taking a rest here, giving them a chance to catch their breath. I'd like to have you here about some of the concerts that are presented by the

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San Francisco Museum of Art, and our Barbara Gifford is going to tell us about them. The music George Lewis has been playing is good, isn't it? But I imagine you've been wondering why a museum concerns itself with music much less jazz. Well, it is one of

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the seven arts, and the San Francisco Museum is the center for all kinds of art activity. Therefore, music is frequently heard at the museum. In the many concerts given at the museum, all kinds of music is heard from ancient to modern. This ancient Japanese Sammy Sand

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was used this spring in a concert devoted to the Japanese theater in the realm of modern music. The museums This is Jazz series, presented in 1943 did a great deal to establish an audience for jazz in the Bay Area. Let's take a look at some of

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the other types of programs that have been presented by the San Francisco Museum of Art that can be roughly divided into three types. The first group are the soloists who play such instruments as the flu, the violin, the cello and various horns, as well as rarely

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heard instruments such as the harpsichord. Coral groups are also heard at the museum. In the Campion festival this fall, a series of five programs presented songs that were unfamiliar. Some of the songs are old and others were new. One of the most popular musical events at

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the museum is the String Quartet. The world famous Budapest and griller quartet are presented annually at the museum. They play both the classical compositions of Bach and Mozart and also the works of our contemporaries such as Darius Meo and Aaron Copeland. You can see that the

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concert at the museum are varied in scope and interesting so that you won't miss any look in your daily newspapers for announcements or send us a card asking for the museum's calendar of events. The address is the San Francisco Museum of Art Civic Center, San Francisco,

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California Still losing using our last number Closer walk with thee as an example would be right to say that there are two kinds of jazz jazz for listening and jazz for dancing and maybe marching. Uh, no. I wouldn't want to say that because dancing goes along

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with jazz. It may be the mood of the group not to dance to it, for instance. Some of the modern groups just play for a concert as such, and it doesn't really matter what the tune is. For instance, you can take a popular tune of any

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generation if they play it in the right spirit, the right mood. The instruments are improvising within themselves. Everything's fine. That doesn't have to be a jazz classic. Do you remember that tune Ice cream? Very well, about 30 years old now. Well, let's listen to the doors

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Lewis Band playing ice cream and you get an idea of what I mean. Very good. We have certainly enjoyed having filled Elwood and Jorge. Luis is banned here to give us a better idea of what jazz actually is and

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how it's played. I think that I can now understand and appreciate jazz as an important part of our cultural heritage and also understand the role of the New Orleans musician of 40 years ago and to the importance of Jorge Luis is banned as one of the

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living examples of classic jazz. Thanks for being with us. See you next week. Everybody wants discovery. Discovery has been brought to you by station Kpi s and the San Francisco Museum of Art. Next week, Discovery will present S. Hurok, the famous impresario who will tell you

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about his adventures in the dance world.