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Hitting That Stride
focus session
STRIDE PIANO STYLE
By Lee Evans
O
n the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz CD No. 1, there
appear two back-to-back versions of Scott Joplin’s “Maple
Leaf Rag”: Joplin’s own fairly strict piano-roll performance,
followed by a much looser treatment of that piece by pianist/
composer/arranger/bandleader Jelly Roll Morton. Joplin’s version
hews fairly closely to the 1899 published score of that seminal
work, but Morton’s deviates wildly. You see, Joplin (1868-1917)
thought of ragtime piano music as but a new and different classical-music genre; while Morton (1890-1941), in typical jazzman’s
thinking, felt that virtually any piece of music could easily serve
as a vehicle for an improvised jazzed-up performance. In fact,
therein lies the basis of an important distinction made between
ragtime and jazz by jazz scholars, who consider ragtime to be a
precursor of jazz rather than jazz itself, because it is essentially a
composed and notated music; while jazz to a great extent is – or
ideally should be – a mostly improvised and therefore most often
un-notated musical genre. This distinction forms the basis of one
of the definitions of jazz stated by Marc Gridley in his excellent
and thorough jazz history textbook Jazz Styles (Prentice Hall), a
required text in my jazz history course at NYC’s Pace University
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The Origin and Musical Characteristics of Stride Piano
According to Mervyn Cooke in his book Jazz (Thames &
Hudson), the next step after ragtime in the historical evolution of jazz piano was 1920’s stride piano, sometimes referred
to as Harlem stride piano, because it was in that New York City
African-American enclave where this musical style was first
created and developed – at so-called rent parties, where pianists competed with one another and attempted to outplay
their competitors. Attendees paid to be present at these socalled “cutting contests,” and that was the way that rent money was raised to help support these impoverished musicians.
The name “stride piano” came from the look of the striding
motion of the pianist’s left hand, with its constant alternation
of bass note on beats one and three and mid-range chord on
beats two and four. While this motion was also seen in ragtime piano music, in stride piano style the tempos were generally considerably faster and tended to feature more notes
and be harmonically more adventurous; while the right hand
was more inventive, improvisatory-sounding and virtuosic
than was heard in ragtime. Additionally, in stride piano style,
one began hearing greater incorporation of occasional “blue
notes” – the lowered 3rd and lowered 7th of the major scale
– as well as the beginnings of “swung rhythm” (long-short,
long-short interpretation of 8th notes), both qualities immeasurably enhancing the genre’s jazz sound. Also, needless to
say, it took a true virtuoso to play stride piano proficiently
and effectively.
Were it not for their fame achieved as composers, George
Gershwin and Eubie Blake undoubtedly would have been
hailed as masters of this idiom. However, the ones most often mentioned as history’s greatest early stride pianists were
James P. Johnson (1894-1955), referred to often as “The Father of Stride Piano,” Willie “The Lion” Smith (1897-1973), and
Thomas “Fats” Waller (1904-1943). It is generally acknowledged that it was due mostly to the work of these three pianistic jazz giants that stride piano style continued to be extremely popular into the 1930s and even the 1940s.
James P. Johnson
According to musicologist David Schiff in his February 16,
1992 New York Times article, “A Pianist With Harlem On His Mind,”
American self-taught stride piano pioneer James P. Johnson was
a prolific “invisible composer” of mostly unknown works including an opera, piano concerto, symphony, sixteen musicals, 200
songs and two tone poems. Johnson’s most well-known songs are
“Charleston” – from his Broadway show Runnin’ Wild (1923) - and
“If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight”, plus his 1921 virtuoso stride piano masterpiece “Carolina Shout”, one of the first jazz
piano solos to have ever been recorded. But perhaps Johnson’s
greatest contribution to music may be that he and Jelly Roll Morton are said to have been the most significant bridge figures from
the ragtime era to jazz.
Johnson’s “Carolina Shout,” “was a standard test piece and rite of
passage for every contemporary pianist,” says a Wikipedia entry on
Johnson. (The word “shout” is a reference to the ring-shout, a celebrative religious dance of early African slaves in the West Indies and
the United States.) The article goes on to quote stride-piano schol-
ar Dick Wellstood as having said that many of the stride pianists of
Johnson’s era of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s were not especially
gifted as improvisers, and thus mostly played their own pre-composed stride pieces with hardly any variation from performance
to performance; whereas Johnson was a master improviser whose
performances of any given work of his varied greatly.
Johnson was a seminal figure in jazz history, as well as a tremendous influence on the piano playing of Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Thelonious Monk, whose piano playing
is frequently described as having been to a great extent an amalgamation of stride piano style and modernism; in other words an
integration of the old and the new.
Homage to Eubie Blake
Mervyn Cooke’s Jazz states that James P. Johnson, who had been
trained in European classical music, was “initially influenced by the
pianist Eubie Blake, whose work typified the more virtuosic Eastern
rag style.” My original piano solo, “Homage To Eubie Blake,” from my
Hal Leonard publication Famous Jazz Piano Styles, was an attempt
to demonstrate and embody stride piano style; and so I now, with
the permission of the publisher, herewith present that work to conclude this article:
Lee Evans, Ed.D. is a professor of
music at NYC’s Pace University. Author of the acclaimed foundation
theory and performance workbook
Crash Course In Chords (Hal Leonard Corporation), his new and most
recent book – scheduled to be published in late August 2014 – for The FJH Music Company is In The
Style Of Lee Evans: New Interpretations of Great Jazz Standards, piano-solo arrangements at the intermediate/upper intermediate levels of 12 great jazz standards, including “September Song,” “Stella By Starlight,” “Polka Dots and Moonbeams,”
“On Green Dolphin Street,” “My Foolish Heart,” and others. For
additional information, visit www.leeevansjazz.com.
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focus session
STRIDE PIANO STYLE
HOMAGE TO EUBIE BLAKE
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