Something Rhymes with Purple - Pizzicato

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Join us on a rhythmic journey through the history of one of the most iconic genres of music... JAZZ! Susie and Gyles dive deep into the origins and evolution of the term that defines a genre full of creativity, spontaneity, and soul. We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our email address here: [e-mail] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com  Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:  Pelagic: Concerning the seas. Galumptious: Tiptop; first rate. Pursive: Short-winded. Gyles' poem this week was 'To Dream In Jazz' To Dream in Jazz, Is to become Jazz, Close your eyes and listen, Go to where Jazz becomes life When your eyes reopen, You'll become Jazz, Your words will sing the blues. A Sony Music Entertainment production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Bacardi, its trade dress and the bat device are trademarks of Bacardi and Company Limited. Rum 40% alcohol by volume. Hello, Giles here. And knowing that we have a family audience and the Purple people often include some very young people, just to say that today's episode does include some language that some people may find uncomfortable or offensive. Hello and welcome to this week's Something Rhymes with Purple. Thank you so much to all new listeners.

And we seem to be getting emails from people who have both listened to the entire show right from the very start, which is quite the feat, and to people who are just joining us now. So a really big welcome to everybody. And a thanks from me and from Giles, who is sitting there patiently

nibbling on some lunch, I think. Anyway, on the way home, I switched on the radio and I knew that we were planning to talk about jazz, which is our topic today. And I turned on to a jazz station on the radio and reacquainted myself with jazz because it's been a very long time since I actually, I confess, have really listened to it. Are you a jazz aficionado? I used to be when I was, well, not an aficionado, but I enjoyed jazz when I was a schoolboy because I had friends, I went to boarding school.

And so that's when, and it's a long time ago, we're talking about the 1960s. That's when I discovered, you know, Coltrane. So my jazz knowledge is very dated, but I hope you're going to begin by telling us the origin of the very word jazz. Oh, gosh. Well, this is one of the most, well, not inexplicable etymologies in English, but sort of slightly fiendish.

Around 1912, you start to get references in English, as recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary to jazz being used for energy, excitement and pep, you know, pep and vigour and a little bit of restlessness with it as well and excitability. And actually, in its earliest records, it was used in context relating to baseball. And it described a really deceptively difficult and fast throw. And in fact, there is a reference not to bas ball, which is one of the cricketing terms that has recently gone into the dictionary, bas ball. Have we done cricket as one of our themes? We ought to. We ought to.

Anyway, forget bas ball. This was jazz ball that's recorded in 1912 in the LA Times. Henderson cut the outside corner with a fast curve also for one strike. Benny calls this his jazz ball. And that is how it stayed for just a little while because quite soon thereafter, it began to take on all sorts of extended senses, all in slang. So it could mean excessive talk, talk again that idea of excitability as well as kind of nonsense or gibberish then in um college student circles you would find jazz meaning talk or gas or again that sort of idle chatter yeah um and then um you start oh by the way

that explains when we talk about all that jazz all that jazz was kind of like and all that sort of thing all that stuff um it doesn't refer to the music and that's recorded from around the 1950s um but this is amazing yeah from 1915 so not long after that idea of pep and and vigor you get uses of jazz for the music originating, especially in ragtime and blues, in especially the southern US, performed by ensemble and, you know, the jazz that we begin to know today. And I know there are so many distinctive subgenres of it, but that's when you begin to get the musical sense. As to where it comes from, well, it also seems to be linked to jism. Okay, so apologies for this, because I know what jism means now. It's kind of slang for semen,

essentially, isn't it? But in its earliest senses, and we're talking 19th century here, it meant vitality as well as virility. So it was that same idea of energy, of power, of force. And so we think that jazz is linked to that earlier meaning, earlier message, if you like. I got jism. Doesn't mean anything offensive. It just means vitality. Well, in the 19th century, that would have been jism. Yeah. Well, I'm a 19th century person. So don't be offended if I come into the room saying, I got plenty of jism to offer. Having said that, and it's worth saying that the American Dialect Society named jazz the word of the 20th century, which is amazing.

In an interview quite early on, a musician, Ubi Blake, recollected the slang senses of the term. And he says, when Broadway picked it up, they called it J-A-Z-Z. It wasn't called that. It was spelt J-A-Z-Z. It wasn't called that. It was spelt J-A-S-S. That was dirty. And if you knew what it was, you wouldn't say it in front of ladies. So I think there was that sort of sense of development probably quite early on. Very good.

So if I think of playing jazz, I think of going to a jam session. Yes. Before we talk about jamming yes did you i think my introduction to jazz and i am the first to say i'm absolutely no expert at all on it um but was ronnie scott's because i live quite close to ronnie scott's and i did have many a lovely evening there and i think it was um this is probably sacrilege to say this but it was as much the vibe of the place as as the music everything about it was just of course wonderful it felt ever so slightly louche dark energetic again but also quite sort of mellow it had very very distinctive feel to it i i've been there a few times. Did you used to go there? This is when you lived in Soho. Yes.

Yes, I wasn't too far away. So I was quite lucky. But it is a very special place, Rodney Scott. Anyway, sorry, jamming. Jam. A jam session. Yes. Now, jam obviously has lots and lots of different meanings.

And a lot of those senses come from the idea of being sort of forced or crushed together. That's why we eat jam on our toast, because the fruit has been sort of squashed and pulped. And it's the idea of being in a very packed place. And in the 19th century, the crush that jam conveyed could be a busy party as well, a social gathering, a crowd. And it's a Chicago newspaper in the 1850s that says, party succeeds to party from a quiet little social to the pretending and fashionable jam where wheeling about and turning about is the order of the evening. And then by the 1930s, it begins to be applied to swing or other popular music and so by extension a party with music so you could get into a jam attending a jam because

they were um you know extremely busy and and the idea may come from a jam-packed gathering but also with the added sense of maybe something sweet and in jazz a jam was a kind of short uh it's a kind of free improvised passage isn't it um usually performed by the whole band i think and that dates back to the 1930s and that's where we get jam session from and you know it was it encouraged dancing and so jamming was also dancing in a really kind of carefree manner. And the Calloway Boogie, which is a jazz piece in the 1940s, has the line, I woke up with the blues the other day, the cat started jamming and they blew away. And of course, Bob Marley so famously sang about jamming till the jam is through. So yeah, so it's had many a meaning, jam, but I think the musical sense, I love the idea that it's

something sweet as well as something really busy and again, energetic. What about scat? Is that a type of jazz or is that, I feel people are scatting? Well, tell me, you can explain. So scat singing is vocal improvisation really, and quite hard to make out what the singers are saying. And I think the name may come from that, you know from that you know that kind of thing that it's not actually ever not sort of enunciated properly but it's not it's it's kind of you know it's it's rhythmic noises if you like rather than actual anything with kind of real linguistic clarity so I think that's I think that's where scat comes from and you've got polyphony as well haven't you in jazz which is two or more independent melodies,

which simply means many sounds, so kind of multiple voices. Polyphony is not a word exclusively associated with jazz, is it? Absolutely not, no. It is, yeah, it can be used in many different ways. And it's just all the idea of, you know, many different melodies, different voices um different instruments well done give me some more jazz words well there's ragtime i think ragtime was just just it conjures up so many different um mental images and incidentally do you remember that word which i think if i if i listened to um some miles davies or for a while i I really loved Dizzy Gillespie. He was my sort of background music of choice for quite a long time. The word for a kind of a memory that is evoked through

a stab of music, or even a smell of a particular perfume or any kind of smell is astound, S-T-O-U-N-D. There is a word for that. Anyway, ragtime emerged in the late 19th century and probably comes from the fact that the rhythm is quite ragged, is quite syncopated. Now, that interests me because I'd have thought ragtime was the same sort of thing as you got in the jazz age, which I associate with the 1920s. But ragtime, you say, is the 1880s, 1890s? Yeah, that's when you begin to hear um the term um and actually i've just just looked up syncopated which is that when you kind of flip beats or accents in music so strong beats become weak and that kind of thing which is why the music is ragged but it's interesting because syncopate comes from a latin word syncopare meaning to swoon. And so that kind of idea of temporarily losing consciousness

led to that idea of kind of weakening sounds coming in and out, you know, strengthening and weakening, which is gorgeous. I didn't know that before. Very good. Any more? Well, I mean, I think those who are, you know, listening to us will be shouting many more jazz terms as they listen. Well, one of them might be, forgive me for interrupting, you know, listening to us will be shouting many more jazz terms as they listen. Well, one of them might be, forgive me for interrupting, in England, there's lots of restaurants called Pizza Express, and their founder was very interested in jazz. And I think in some of the original Pizza Expresses that still exist, there's one in Soho, there may be one in Chelsea. I used to listen to that one in Dean Street, the Pizza Express in Dean Street.

They do jazz. In the basement, they have really good jazz. I hope they still do. I loved that place. That made me think of the word pizzicato. I don't know. Does that have anything to do with pizzas? Oh, nothing to do with pizza.

So pizza comes from the Italian for pie, a P-I-E, as simple as that. And pizzicato, I think it's kind of quite onomatopoeic, but it's the idea of plucking plucking the string because in jazz and bluegrass and things the player's not usually holding a bow for the jazz violin or whatever and and sort of uses two or three fingers to pluck the string so I think it's it comes from that idea of sort of you know literally plucking pinching stinging almost and yeah and that's where that

one comes from. But you've just reminded me of many happy days in the basement of Pizza Express in Dean Street. Just clear up one thing about the jazz age. Now you've told us that jazz didn't start with the music, which I had assumed it had, but was more the kind of craziness, wildness. Is the jazz age not related to the music, but related to the topsy-turvy nature of the 1920s, when anything goes, and then there was the Great Crash. Where does the jazz age come in? Yeah, so that, as you say, 20s and 30s. And it was, I mean, the US was the birthplace of jazz, New Orleans, particularly, jazz was huge. So you're right, jazz age is about

a kind of wider cultural change and popular culture really kind of expanding. And I like to think there is a lot of that earlier original meaning of jazz in there, that kind of energy that really percolated through a lot of the US. And it's used often in conjunction with the roaring 20s as well and youth culture and everything else expanding. So the one word that I will always cite in relation to jazz, in particular this age, even from the 1940s and Charlie Parker, etc., is cool. Because that was when cool as an adjective of approval really had its heyday um even though we think it originated earlier in um one of the earliest records is from a public school at the end of the 19th century where it was used as a deliberate antonym of hot so obviously someone who was cool was quite sort

of had a lot of son fois and a lot of charisma and style because they were very sort of, they played it very, very kind of low key. But that sense of being hip and hip and hip cat and all that, those also really came into being during the jazz age and were really popularised by those. So a hip cat was a really stylish or fashionable person, especially in jazz. And hep was an old fashioned term for hip. And hip as in being really aware of something, very informed or being very fashionable. We don't know where that comes from. Again, really popularised during the jazz age, but we're not quite sure what that hip is.

How old is the idea of a cat, though? You're a cool cat. You're a hip cat. Where does the feline enter the scene? Well, so in obviously Shakespeare's time and before then actually from the 13th century, cat was a term of contempt and particularly used for women, women who were considered to be shrews or harridans, you know, spiteful and backbiting. In the 15th century, I'm reading here, it could mean a prostitute or sex worker. And then 1922, I mean, centuries later, an expert in or one expertly appreciative of jazz. And it's first recorded there in Louis Armstrong's interview with the melody maker. It

says all the cats were there. So it's nice that it flipped from something that was used with contempt. And this is what slang does, isn't it? It flips bad to good to actually, you know, convey people who were, you know, really stylish and fashionable. Well, you're very cool. You're wicked, in fact. You're amazing. You're sick. Thank you for all that jazz, Susie. Well, thank you. I'm going to keep listening. And I really actually would love our listeners to write in with some of the terms that they've often, you know, that they associate with jazz

and that they might have puzzled over because I really feel like we've only scratched the surface. I'm now remembering the different nicknames that some of them, you know, you mentioned Louis Armstrong, who was called Satchmo because he had a satchel-shaped mouth. I think I'm right in thinking that. And Charlie Parker was known as Bird, wasn't he? Yes, I think so. Not your why. Yeah, I think you're right.

I'm just trying to find Satchmo, not in the dictionary, understandably, because it's a proper term. But it's a really, really interesting sphere that I feel really just on the edge of. And, you know, it's not my world, but it's a fascinating world. And vocabulary-wise, as I say, I would love some questions from our viewers. Maybe we can pick those up in the correspondence. Particularly, maybe listeners. Listeners, not viewers. Well, no, but people, they imagine us in their minds, aren't they? But listeners in New Orleans, I do remember when I went to New Orleans,

listening to some wonderful jazz and not being quite sure what the etiquette was, because there were other people in the bar where we were who were chatting happily to one another while the music was being played. And I thought, well, they're playing this music quite seriously. Should we be talking? At Ronnie Scott's, you don't talk while you listen to the jazz, do you? Some people do. I think some people do. Yeah, I, like you, I actually don't know the rules, but I suspect that it wasn't frowned upon at Ronnie Scott's. I mean,

certainly if it was loud, but it was just that real vibe of, as I say, of energy, true to the etymology of it. So, yeah, well, all advice welcome on that front. And I need to go back. And of course, vibe, I mentioned, is a contraction of vibration. Yes, absolutely. Good. Good vibes, good vibrations. That's to the Beach Boys. Maintain the wordy vibe with us. We'll take a quick break and then it's time for your correspondence. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away? You can use your travel credit.

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Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. This is Something Rhymes with Purple, and we've had somebody writing to us from outside Chicago, Illinois, not from New Orleans, but at least from that side of the pond, from where we are, and it's Kayla. What's she got to say? Kayla actually sent in a voice note, which we love. Dear Susie and Giles, I'm a proud Purple person, and I love listening every week. I also enjoy sharing little tidbits I learn with my students at the church and school I work in. Recently, I went to an organ concert performed by my co-worker.

I was fascinated watching the different stops that were used in each piece of music. Which brings me to my question, the phrase, pulling out all the stops. I'm assuming that this comes from organ playing, but how did it make its way into our general lexicon? And why are they called stops in the first place? Thanks. Kayla from outside Chicago, Illinois. A brilliant question there, Susie. Put out all the stops, give us the answer. Yes, it is. It's a bit like bells and whistles, which kind of refer to the, you know, the fairground organs where you had all sorts of kind of little musical gimmicks. Pulling out all the stops, not gimmicky at all. And as Kayla says, all about organs. And these are the stop knobs on a pipe organ. And they are used to regulate the instrument's sound

by selecting which sets of pipes are active at a given time. And I imagine they can stop airflow or they can produce airflow because each pipe plays a note and the organ's pipes are arranged in what are called ranks so they're sets according to the the type of sound so an organ can have any number of ranks might have 100 might have a dozen and in most cases each rank or each set will have a pipe for each note of the keyboard. So the stop knobs control which ranks will have airflow and that's which ranks will sound. And then you've got a pedal that plays all of the pipes for that note, if you see what I mean. So you kind of pull out or push in some of these stops or stoppers.

And I say, I think they stop airflow, hence the name. But also we have stoppers, don't we, on lots of different things, which are essentially knobs. And some of these organ stops have the most wonderful names, don't they? There's a poem by John Betjeman that begins about, well, it refers to the vox humana, and different names of the different organ stops. I can only remember the vox humana. So, maybe we should explore one day the names of the different organ stops. Perhaps that's too niche. Well, we are quite niche.

Let's face it. We also have a voice note from our second correspondent, Ed. Dear Giles and Susie, I was listening the other day to a loosely cricket-based podcast during which one of the contributors described a batsman's style as swashbuckling. It's a brilliantly evocative word, conjuring as it does colourful images of pirates and highwaymen, but I've no idea what a swash actually is, how to buckle it, or why it's so associated with adventure and daring do. And for that matter, where on earth does daring do come from great work with the podcast by the way my four-year-old daughter theodora and i try and

learn a new word together every day and i've looked to suzy for much inspiration scurry funge and hufflepuffs are two of her favorites so far go well and thanks from ed oh that's wonderful lovely letter lovely letter and they make my day those kind of things so thank you ed well uh let's go straight to the swash um so to swash uh was in the well kind of early 1500s i suppose um to noise. To make noise is like a clashing sword and it is almost entirely onomatopoeic. So that means obviously it was created because of its sound, a swash, a little bit like swish, except there's real clamour in there. And a buckle or a buckler was actually a small round shield. So a swashbuckler was somebody who made a noise by striking their sword on their opponent's shield. So it was somebody who was kind of constantly striking out and making a noise.

And from there, we get the extended meaning of a swaggering ruffian or a flamboyant adventurer, and now very often associated with pirates, obviously, and buccaneers, et cetera, and adventurers, as Ed says. So that's the swashbuckle. They literally did have a buckle and they were swashing it. As for daring do, that actually was used by Chaucer and it meant daring to do. So D-E-R-R-I-N-g is simply riff on daring in the normal sense and it was actually misprinted because Chaucer spells it slightly differently and then it was misprinted a bit later on

as daring do and that was again misinterpreted to mean chivalry and was popularized in that way by Sir Walter Scott so it's had it's been the kind of victim of a whole load of misunderstandings. But it just still ended up meaning heroic courage. So it's not too far away from where Chaucer started it. But in terms of its spelling and its form, it's been through quite a lot of error, shall we say, over the times. Geoffrey Chaucer, most famous for The Canterbury Tales. He's a long time ago, isn't he? We're talking 1400s, aren't we? Yeah, we haven't actually done anything on Chaucer. And my pronunciation, I wish I could

read you Chaucer. Oh, we had a teacher at my school, there was a teacher called Mr. Gardner, who could read Chaucerian English, that Middle English, I think it is, so beautifully. I mean, he made you understand what it was all about, just the way he read it. Do you know what? Do you think, I think, for some of our episodes, it would be lovely to have on an expert read to us

in, say, Shakespearean English or Chaucerian English. Shall we have a word with our lovely producer, Naya, and see if we can organise that. Because I think I certainly would absolutely love to listen to Chaucer as it would make it. Sadly, Mr Gardner is no longer with us. No, but we can get somebody. Now, give us your trio of interesting words. Maybe some of them do date back to Chaucer's day.

Well, yeah, some of them are quite old. I'm thinking that Theodora, Ed's Theodora might quite like the first one, which is Galumptious. And Galumptious is spelled G-A-L-U-M-P-T-I-O-U-S. You won't find it in every dictionary, but it simply means tip top. Something which is really, really good is Galumptious.

So jazz music can be galumptious. Not to be confused with Lewis Carroll's Galumph, which he invented as a portmanteau of galloping triumphantly, which has slightly changed into something much more plodding these days. But galumptious means something slightly different. So that's the first one. Now, if you were a jazz saxophonist and you were struggling, maybe you'd had a very heavy night the night before,

you might find yourself being a bit persive, P-U-R-S-I-V-E, meaning short-winded. And I think it can apply to lots and lots of different contexts, but short-winded, a bit devoid of breath, persive. And finally, pelagic is quite a nice one. How do you spell that? P-E-L-A-G-I-C. And it simply means relating to the open sea. It goes back to the Greek pelagikos, of the sea. pelagicos, of the sea. And you might find birds inhabiting the open sea and then returning to the shore to breed, but they are pelagics. They belong to the oceans.

Very good. Three wonderful words. They are nice ones. And I know you've got a wonderful poem for us too. Well, I've got a short poem. First of all, because we're going to talk about jazz, I went to the king of the Harlem movement in terms of poetry, the great American poet Langston Hughes, and who wrote a number of poems with both a jazz theme and were almost jazz-like poems because of their rhythm. But then while I was sort of digging around, I came across this rather charming poem by Patricia Caragon. I don't know her work, but the poem's called To Dream in Jazz. And I thought, actually, this is quite evocative of what jazz can do for you.

So this may take you back to Ronnie Scott's I Don't Know. Ah, lovely. It goes like this. To dream in jazz is to become jazz. Close your eyes and listen. Go to where jazz becomes life. When your eyes reopen, you'll become jazz. Your words will sing the blues. That's gorgeous. I'm going to throw in one more word that that poem has reminded me of, and we may have mentioned it when I was talking about emotions when we're talking about the language of emotions and it's tarab and tarab is gorgeous

because it is the intensely spiritual response to music and it is just a sort of deep soul felt response to music and it can often be collective So it's one shared by the player and the audience, Taleb. And we just do not have anything really near it in English. But I think we need to, that kind of, that, you know, inexplicable response to music that is incredibly hard to articulate. Wonderful. Well, look, we must all have some jazz in our lives and I must get some more jazz into mine. Thank you for being with me again, Susie. You really are the best.

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