Takin’ It All In Stride: The Story of Jazz for Beginners Like Me: Chapter #7: Carolina Shout by James P. Johnson

Let me begin with a short personal note.

Just yesterday I completed a post about the movie musical Singin’ in the Rain. In that post, I made reference to the art of dance and how much skill is required in order to make it look so effortless and graceful on screen or on stage. In a link at the end of the post, I included a video of dozens of dance scenes from old time movies all set in sync with the modern song “Uptown Funk” by Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson. If you have never watched it, you can do so here. I have watched the video numerous times in the past and have always marveled at the editing and how bang on the lyrics and song beats were to the actions of the dancers on screen. However, when I viewed this video yesterday I saw it differently. Yesterday, I started to recognize some of the people and movies being referenced there. The Nicholas Brothers and Stormy Weather were featured prominently. The same can be said for the Lindyhoppers and the film Hellzapoppin’. I even recognized Bill Robinson dancing with Shirley Temple. I recognized them all because of this series…The Story of Jazz for Beginners Like Me. Watching that “Uptown Funk” mashup reminded me of being a teacher and watching my students suddenly “get” some concept and begin seeing their world with new eyes. The difference is that instead of young children making important connections, it is a 60 year old white dude sitting on a couch in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada in 2024. I just wanted to say for the record how happy I am with all I am learning because of this series. I hope to continue to honour the musical and cultural legacies of all whose names and stories appear in these posts. I can’t wait to see what I will learn next.

This is fun. Now, on with today’s post.

Today we are going to be talking about an important evolutionary leap in music that was taken most famously by a young man named James P. Johnson. Mr. Johnson was a man who grew up in and around New York City at the turn of the century. He was raised in a household that valued religion and as a result, Johnson spent much of his youth surrounded by the glorious sounds of Gospel music. This music inspired within him a love of music in general. In addition to Gospel music, Johnson took to playing the piano and set about learning the musical works of Ragtime legend Scott Joplin. Johnson was said to possess perfect pitch and was able to memorize Joplin’s tunes, including his famous “Maple Leaf Rag”, by sound. As he became more experienced at reproducing Joplin’s Ragtime music on the piano, Johnson acquired greater skills as a pianist that helped him gain the reputation around New York City as a player of note. As all of this was unfolding, Johnson met another young pianist named Willie “The Lion” Smith. The two became best friends and musical partners. As a team, Johnson and Smith set about establishing themselves as accompanists for hire. At the time, in the late 1910s, Johnson and Smith would play Ragtime songs on the piano while female singers sang the lyrics. This is where that evolutionary link took place. Even though Ragtime music played on a piano can sound like a carnival at times, the truth is that this form of music is compositional in nature. That means that songs such as the “Maple Leaf Rag” were composed along the lines of classical music compositions and, as such, it was expected that anyone playing such a song would adhere to the musical structure that the original composer had intended. Well, Johnson and Smith started out faithfully reproducing these Ragtime masterpieces but they soon ran into a problem that sparked a musical innovation that helped give birth to the genre of Jazz. The problem that they ran into was the variations of skill levels and singing styles possessed by the female singers they had been hired to accompany. When an artist performs a solo piece, how they do it matters only to them. They are the only performer involved so however they make the piece work for them is the way that the piece will be performed. However, when you are a member of a duo or ensemble, things change. Each member is part of a team and is responsible for helping to complement, reinforce or challenge each other in such a way that the whole group shines. When Johnson and Smith began accompanying different singers, they found that their syncopated, structured Ragtime playing style didn’t always mesh with the singing style of their singer so, over time, they realized that they might have to adapt or improvise from the original musical structure in order to help the singer to sound her best. Thus, the act of improvisation, which is such a trademark of modern Jazz, began on the pianos of James P. Johnson and Willie “The Lion” Smith.

But there is more. The more that Johnson and Smith began to grow comfortable with improvisation, the more they realized that a new style of playing the piano was called for. Thus, James P. Johnson invented a new way of playing the piano which came to be known as the Stride style. The Stride style of playing the piano is one in which the right and left hands play independent of each other. The right hand is responsible for playing the melody of any given song while the left hand is responsible for maintaining the rhythm. By using such a style of playing, the left hand, in particular, moves over a wide range of keys while the right hand has a much smaller range of motion. It is a virtuosic style of playing that allows a simple piano to sound like a full orchestra, as far as the richness and fullness of the music being produced at any one time.

***NOTE: In order for you to get an understanding of what I am talking about, I want you to take a moment and watch two short videos. In the first video, you will see an animated/computer-generated version of notes of a composition as they come into view as the music plays and how the “hands” of the pianist function with complete independence from each other. The left hand in particular moves all over the place in an almost dizzying fashion. Please watch this first video by clicking here. When that is finished, click here to watch another video in which famed Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson explains Stride style to TV talk show host Dick Cavett. Peterson and Caveat discuss other styles too but, the first 1:30 or so are where they talk about something that Caveat erroneously labels as “Art Tatum’s Stride Style”. Peterson corrects him and then gives an excellent demonstration of Stride playing in real time. Excellent video

Stride style piano playing blows my mind. It takes such concentration and dexterity and yet, when you watch the pros play in this style, they tend to do so with broad smiles on their faces as if it is the easiest and most joyful thing in the world. Once James P. Johnson mastered playing the piano in the Stride style, he recorded a piece of music called “Carolina Shout”. This recording was made into a piano roll, as was common in those days but it was also made into a phonograph record. “Carolina Shout” by James P. Johnson is a tune played in the Stride style and is considered by many to be the first true Jazz recording ever. It also set the gold standard when it came to piano playing, just as the Harlem Renaissance was swinging into high gear. Johnson became a highly sought-after music teacher. One of his most famous students was a man named Fats Waller. Others who were greatly influenced by him were people like Duke Ellington, Count Basie and, in later years, Art Tatum and Thelonious Monk, all of whom would take Johnson’s teachings and popularize the Stride style on a national scale. As it turned out, James P. Johnson, the great innovator, composer, piano player and teacher that he was, saw his name and reputation usurped in popularity by his students who followed in his wake. It was the likes of Fats Waller who made a name for himself playing at rent parties and at clubs like The Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom and who, subsequently, became the public face of the Stride piano style. 

One of the things that made Jazz music so culturally important was that it developed out of other musical genres that told the stories of black culture but it came to life as its own genre during the heart of the Harlem Renaissance. James P. Johnson’s relegation to the back pages of history was not something that was purposefully done. It was just that there was an absolute explosion of important cultural developments during the 1920s/30s for people of colour, particularly in New York City. The birth of Jazz is a large part of that. It is a genre unique to the times in which it came to be. Not surprisingly, those musicians (such as Fats Waller) who helped to popularize certain aspects of Jazz came to be the ones toward whom the spotlight shone the brightest. All hail the Wallers and Calloways and Ellingtons and Armstrongs of the world! They are fully deserving of the historical bouquets that have been handed out over the years. But through it all, somewhere in a studio or a club in Harlem sat an older gentleman, grinning from ear to ear in spite of his relative anonymity, named James P. Johnson. I have no doubt that he was proud of his students for the success they achieved and for the great work they did in helping establish Jazz as a music genre of substance and style and importance. But what of Johnson, himself? Well, it took a while for his contribution to be recognized for what it truly was. As the 1970s began, Ragtime and the early transitional stages of Jazz were re-examined and found worthy of greater praise for the cultural impact both had on American society. As noted in an earlier post that you can read here, Ragtime saw a rebirth when many of Scott Joplin’s most famous compositions were used in the soundtrack for the Academy award-winning movie The Sting. Once Joplin’s career was revived, it was just a short journey to find the work of James P. Johnson and how his Stride piano style acted as the bridge between Ragtime and the birth of Jazz. In 1973, Johnson was posthumously inducted into the U.S. Songwriters Hall of Fame. Before the 1970s were out, he received further awards and inductions into various Jazz-oriented Halls of Fame. In 2020, a full century later, “Carolina Shout” was finally honoured with induction into the Grammy Hall of Fame as being one of the most historically important pieces of music of all time in the U.S. 

Not bad for someone raised in churches whose only early ambition was to make the ladies he accompanied on the piano sound their very best. As we all know and understand, the challenges posed to Johnson and Smith by the different singing styles they encountered while working in nightclubs in New York could have defeated lesser humans. However, both Johnson and Smith accepted the challenge inherent in adapting a successful playing style to suit the needs of the moment and, in doing so, they invented something entirely new and innovative and vibrant. Not only that, they were able to codify that new style in ways that allowed for its dissemination to a new generation of players who would introduce Stride style to the world! I am thankful that James P. Johnson is finally receiving the credit for which he is due. It was his inspirational spark that lit the flame of what ended up becoming Jazz. We are all the better for such creativity and skill. Thanks Mr. Johnson, Mr. Smith and all others who led the way back in the day when Ragtime was as far as the cultural and musical journey had progressed. Your impact is immeasurable. Let all the bouquets be yours now. They are well-earned.               

The link to the official website for James P. Johnson can be found here.

The link to the video for the song “Carolina Shout” by James P. Johnson….the first true Jazz record…can be found here.

The link to the official website for pianist Fats Waller can be found here.

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