The Effect of the City on Music - From Gershwin to Joe Jackson

This blog post is a prime example of where my mind goes when I'm off from work for a month with nowhere to go. I was reading the reviews for the movie Resistance about Marcel Marceau's involvement in the French Resistance in WWII, so I went to read about him in Wikipedia. While reading that article I found a reference to Red Skelton, so I followed that link, and while reading that article I saw a reference to David Rose's "Holiday for Strings", which was the theme song for The Red Skelton Show, a TV staple in my house in my childhood. And that set me off on a journey which we will now embark on below.

"Holiday for Strings" by David Rose

The reference to this music in the article on Red Skelton lit a lightbulb in my head because it played a significant role in my childhood. When I was five years old I came down with pneumonia and ended up in the hospital. Apparently I passed out while my father registered me at the front desk, and I stayed out for three days. During that period of unconsciousness I had a dream/hallucination/whatever that has stayed with me my whole life: a vision of two cartoon chipmunks, a boy and a girl (hey, I was five years old; what other symbolic figures did my brain have to work with at that age?), on swings, and the girl chipmunk began moving off, rising into the air, while that very emotional legato section of the music was playing. I had a very strong feeling of longing and loss at the time, and even now when I hear it I get that same feeling. And I still love that piece. Here it is:

"Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" by Richard Rodgers

That got me to thinking about other music from my childhood that had a strong emotional impact on me, and what popped up immediately was Richard Rodgers' "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" from his musical "On Your Toes". We had that recording when I was a kid, and I think it was my mother who really loved the piece. I got to love it, too, and still do. But thinking about it today, it struck me that both these pieces are very much "city" music, and specifically New York City. They reflect the rhythms and sound of a busy city, and in this piece even incorporating car horns and police whistles. 

Hmmmm... Car horns! Now who does that conjure up? But of course - George Gershwin! But first let's listen to Richard Rogers:

"An American in Paris" by George Gershwin

George Gershwin was the ultimate composer of city inspired music. He was a native son of Manhattan and you can feel and even smell the streets of New York in his music. And of course both David Rose and Richard Rodgers show the influence of America's first modern composer of significance in their music. Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and especially his "Concerto in F" are very much New York pieces; in fact the concerto's working title was "New York Concerto". But for me Gershwin's most city-ish piece is "An American in Paris", and even though it's named after the city in France, it still feels very New York to me, full of the bustle and noise and "busyness" of America's city of record. Listen and see if you don't agree:

"West Side Story" by Leonard Bernstein

After Gershwin, no American composer says "New York" more loudly than Leonard Bernstein. And no work of Lenny's shouts "New York" louder than "West Side Story", not only reflecting the rhythms and bustle of the city but also the ethnic diversity as well. Jazz and Latin, Duke Ellington and Tito Puente, with a touch of the Great American Songbook - that's "West Side Story". Here's the prologue to the Broadway stage show:

"Black, Brown and Beige" by Duke Ellington

For me, Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington is as important an influence on American music as George Gershwin. Both were sons of Manhattan and started their music careers writing Jazz-based popular music (Gershwin started out as a "song plugger" in Tin Pan Alley) and went on to expand their musical knowledge and technique to create timeless music that goes beyond definable barriers. And both were outsiders - Gershwin a Jew and son of immigrants, and Ellington an African American and a descendant of slaves. But both rose to dominate the music of their time. 

After establishing himself as a major force in the Jazz-based swing band world, Ellington went on to compose concert music and movie scores. His three "Sacred Music Concerts", his Jazz concerto "The River", "A Drum Is a Woman", "Three Black Kings"... It's a long list. But for me the best of them is his "Black, Brown, and Beige", a musical history of the African American in this new world. Take a listen:

"Loisaida" by Joe Jackson

And finally we come to Joe Jackson. One of the "New Wave" or "Second British Invasion" Pop/Rock musicians, he came to fame in Great Britain for such hits as "Look Sharp" and "Is She Really Going Out with Him" (I love the first line of that one - "Pretty women walking with gorillas down my street..."). In the 1980s he started hanging out in New York, where he started absorbing that New York musical atmosphere that so inspired the previous composers in this article. Three of his albums especially reflect that "city" feel - "Night and Day", "Body and Soul", and "Night and Day II". There's a lot of Gershwin, Ellington, and Bernstein influence in these three albums, even though they stay well within a Pop context. But it's there, and nowhere more evident than in "Loisaida" (the Hispanic name for the Lower East Side, the main Hispanic center in the city). When I first listened to it I immediately thought of "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue", and in further listenings I could hear a little of the Ellington and Gershwin hints in it. This is definitely one of my favorite Joe Jackson tunes.Have a listen:

And there you have it, where my mind goes when it has nowhere else to go. I hope this has been as fun for you as it was for me! 

Photo and text © 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger