Word: jam
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Bobby Hackett and a four-piece Negro band will also perform at the benefit, in an impromptu jam session...
...term "jam session" has become a household word recently, and as such has been kicked around quite improperly, to such an extent, in fact, that many people have a completely wrong idea of what a jam session really is. The popular conception, of course, has come out of Hollywood, the birthplace of so many other cultural miscarriages. Therefore, you too, will know where to lay the blame if you think a jam session is something bordering on a Bacchanalian orgy, complete with Goldwyn girls, Martha Raye and her face, and Artie Shaw tooting on his instrument. That's all very...
...define the term. If you want to be fancy and throw in references to "collective improvisation rhythmically integrated," you're a better man than I am. However, I think it's safe to say that at a jam session you're liable to hear a much finer brand of jazz music than you would anywhere else. In the first place, the whole thing is completely informal. A few musicians get together and do their best to play what they think is good jazz music. And they generally have the right idea, often inspired by no end of liquid refreshment. Then...
...Fort Ontario, in Oswego, N. Y. There the 369th anti-aircraft regiment, a Negro National Guard unit from Harlem, is having a year's training. The men of the 369th get more from their band than most regiments do. Almost every night they hear a jam session, almost hot enough to melt the icicles on the recreation barracks. The band's leaders are Sergeant Reuben B. Reeves and Private Otis Johnson-onetime trumpeters in Cab Galloway's and Don Redman's orchestras...
...early 1900s, when Northern popular musicians played only potted-palm tunes, big, black, Alabama-born Jim Europe held Negro jam sessions in a cafe in West 53rd Street. White folks dropped in, hired so many of Europe's friends to play "gigs" - single party dates - that Jim opened a booking office. He formed a Clef Club of Negro jazzmen, gave a concert in Carnegie Hall in 1911. He (at the piano) and his boys played for Vernon and Irene Castle. Once he excited the Castles' curiosity by playing Memphis Blues too slow for their brisk one-step. That...