Genres

[happyfilmluvguy]

Today we have a range of genres. Big Band, Pop, Jazz, Blues, New Age, Rap, Alternative Rock, Heavy Metal, Screamo, Hip Hop, Classic Rock, etc.

What were the titles of genres during the 20s, 30s, and 40s when orchestra bands were really the only kind of ensemble? Or were they the only kind of ensemble?

I remember in the film Dark Passage with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, when Vincent Parry plays the record in Irene Jansen's apartment, he asks her "I see you like swing music?". She says, "yes but only legitimate swing". Could that have been a genre back then?

 

[LizzieMaine]

From the mid-twenties into the thirties, "jazz" was used as a generic term referring to just about all popular music. "Swing" came into popularity during the mid thirties for a more improvisational sort of popular music -- more what we think of today as falling under the category of "jazz", while "Sweet" became the counterpoint to that, the sort of music played by middlebrow hotel dance orchestras. "Mickey Mouse" bands were ultra-sweet bands with a lot of exaggerated gimmicks in their arrangements as musical trademarks. These sometimes overlapped with "Novelty" bands, which often featured vaudeville-type stage shows along with the music.

There were often blurs between these distinctions: a band like Kay Kyser's, for example, could be a swing band, a sweet band, a mickey-mouse band or a novelty band depending on circumstances. Other bands were more rigidly locked in: Sammy Kaye never swung in his life, regardless of the "Swing and Sway" logo he used on his recordings.

There were also types of popular music that had nothing to do with "jazz/pop." What we call "traditional country music" was generally called "Hillbilly" or "Old Time" music, and there were also "Old Time Ballads," generally the sort of thing sung by heavyset tenors like Henry Burr on the old records in the back of the attic. And there was "Race music", which was the way record companies referred to rural blues and other types of recordings made by African-American performers for sale largely to African-American audiences -- the types of recordings that would lead eventually to R&B.

 

[Fletch]

"Hot Dance" was a term used more or less interchangeably with jazz in the pre-swing era. Nowadays it has a more defined meaning: jazz-flavored but still commercial dance music.

I've heard older musicians refer to "styled music," which usually meant a gimmick oriented sweet band. These had a trademark meant to be instantly identifiable, such as a standard intro or rhythmic device.

Another subgenre of sweet music was the "tenor band." These were most commonly found in hotels and were built around a section of 3 tenor saxes, which carried the melody in a lower, male vocal range. Freddy Martin created the style around 1932 and it was widely imitated.

If you were in the upper midwest, "Old Time" meant squeeze box bands nine times out of ten. German, Czech, Polish or Scandinavian didn't matter much, except for the language sung in.

Finally, Hawaiian music was popular just about everywhere.