COMPREHENSION PASSAGE: Read the passage and answer the questions that follow. "Shuffle Along depicts a campaign for mayor in mythical Jimtown, somewhere in Dixieland, with the virtuous Harry running against the unethical Steve (who is aided by a corrupt police chief). Their content is set to songs by composer Eubie Blake (1887–1983) and lyricist Noble Sissle (1889–1975); like Miller and Lyles, the two men had been a former vaudeville team. Their jazzy music for Shuffle Along caught the ears of listeners (regardless of race) and helped the show achieve an impressive 504 performances, making it the eleventh-longest run of the entire decade. It also went on to tour for an additional two years. Unusually for the time, it featured an onstage romantic relationship between Black characters, and several of its songs remained popular for generations. In fact, Harry S. Truman used "I'm Just Wild About Harry" as his campaign song in his 1948 run for president. Moreover, in 2016, a show about the creation of Shuffle Along—titled Shuffle Along, Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed—premiered on Broadway, reusing a number of the older show's hit songs."

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow: Broadway Turns the Tables: Before the premiere of Runnin’ Wild, Flournoy Miller could not understand why George White kept saying he did not like “The Charleston.” Multiple times, White brought visitors to rehearsals of the show and disappeared the dance, clearly trying to get Miller and Lyles to cut the number. Only later did Miller learn the truth: White wanted to premiere the dance in one of his revues (featuring white performers), the George White Scandals. White already saw the potential in the piece; moreover, he was alert to the fact that Broadway was primed and ready for a full array of these new jazz-styled tunes. Although white producers initially relied on the expertise of Black musicians for jazz numbers in their shows, white composers began developing greater fluency with jazz characteristics. As the 1920s progressed, Broadway’s musicals were as up-to-date as the producers could make them—and perhaps the greatest musical-comedy triumph of the decade was No, No, Nanette (1925). Saying Yes to No, No, Nanette: Most Broadway shows are based on a property, drawing their plots from a previous story, novel, play, or, in more recent years, a movie. Shuffle Along, for instance, had been based on Miller and Lyles’s old vaudeville skit. In the case of No, No, Nanette, the property was two-fold: after May Edginton published her novel Oh James! in 1914, Frank Mandel (1884–1958) and Emil Nyitray (1882–1922) adapted it as a play titled My Lady Friends, which premiered in 1919. Producer Harry Frazee (1881–1929) felt that the novel and play offered good potential for a musical—but who would compose the music? One of his neighbors, a young composer named Vincent Youmans (1898–1946), was begging to work on the project, but Frazee was not very impressed with Youmans’s previous Broadway work. Frazee changed his mind, however, when Youmans’s mother offered to back the show herself although sources disagree as to whether her investment was $$9,000 or$$ 10,000. Youmans, in turn, gave his mother half of his future royalties. Production and Tryout Struggles: Quite a few people were involved with bringing No, No, Nanette to the stage. One of the playwrights for the 1919 play version, Frank Mandel, partnered with another Broadway veteran, Otto Harbach (1873–1963), to create the book for the musical comedy. Harbach started to write lyrics for the songs as well, but he agreed to bring in Irving Caesar (1895–1996) as a second lyricist because Caesar already had a good working relationship with Youmans. Even with so much expertise, it took quite a while for No, No, Nanette to find its footing. Like most shows aspiring to reach Broadway, No, No, Nanette went on a “tryout” tour through various cities before attempting a New York premiere. Critics were lukewarm in the first two stops, and Frazee began to panic. He took over as director himself, and he told Youmans and Caesar that some new songs were needed immediately. The two decided to use a song they had created just a few weeks earlier—a danceable little number called “Tea for Two.” Accidental Hit: Caesar’s sleepy memory of the melody was that it went “Dee—da—dee, da—dee—da—dee . . . da—dee—da—dum—da—dee—da—dum.” To satisfy his impatient writing partner, Caesar came up with what he thought was a “dummy lyric”—a nonsense poem that had the right rhyme scheme and poetic rhythm to fit the tune. Youmans, however, felt that the “dummy” was perfect, and refused to let Caesar change a word; “Tea for Two” was inserted into No, No, Nanette exactly as it stood. For many listeners to come, the almost idiotic simplicity of the ‘Tea for Two’ lyric is what makes the song soar. All the optimism and light-heartedness of the twenties are captured in that song. Jazzomania and Reception: “Tea for Two” and “I Want to Be Happy” were two of the songs that Youmans and Caesar added to the struggling show, and by the time No, No, Nanette reached Chicago, it was clear that Frazee had a hit on his hands. The musical remained there for nearly a year. The musical’s hit songs spread across the nation and even overseas; they were played unceasingly in other stage productions, on recordings, on the radio, and also by the orchestras that entertained diners in major restaurants. The first recording of “Tea for Two” featured solely a jazz orchestra, and it reached Number 5 on the Billboard charts in January 1925, remaining there for five weeks. That same month, Marion Harris’s vocal version climbed to Number 1—and stayed at Number 1 for eleven weeks. In fact, when No, No, Nanette at last reached Broadway in September 1925, New York critics acted as if they were tired of it. The New York Daily News reported drily: “Boston saw it. Philadelphia saw it. Chicago saw it. London saw it, and Guatemala, Medicine Bend and the Canary Islands have probably seen it as well,” while the writer for the Daily News estimated that he was hearing the music “for the 1,876,934th time last night.” In London, the dance numbers in No, No, Nanette had a jazz flavor that was almost shockingly new to British audiences, with saxophones, muted brass, and energetic tempos described as a “mild nerve storm.” Historian Kurt Gänzl designates No, No, Nanette as “the quintessential American 1920s musical on the world’s stages.”

COMPREHENSION: Read the passage. Broadcaster Ben Bernie One of the targets for song-pluggers was Ben Bernie (born “Bernard Anzelevitz,” 1891–1943), a bandleader who was nicknamed “The Old Maestro.” Raised in a family of twelve, he knew acute poverty as a child; near the end of his life, he remarked, “We were so poor that I still look upon fruit as a luxury.” Bernie started as a violin performer in vaudeville, but was inspired to undertake a conducting career after hearing the jazz-orchestra ensemble led by Paul Whiteman (1890–1967), the director who would be the impetus for George Gershwin to compose Rhapsody in Blue (Listening Example 11). When the Hotel Roosevelt in New York was completed, Bernie’s ensemble was the first orchestra hired to perform in the hotel ballroom, which was open to the public. Although it was meant to be only a short engagement for Bernie, the crowds who danced at the hotel were so enthusiastic that the Hotel Roosevelt hired Bernie’s group exclusively; they played there from 1923 to 1929. Bernie was a fine violinist, but it was his speaking voice that was perhaps his greatest asset when the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) network was looking for an orchestra to feature on its first broadcast. It also helped that Bernie’s group had already been on one of the earliest jazz bands to perform in regional radio programming. Bernie and the Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra connected to NBC’s first nationwide broadcast on November 15, 1926, via remote pickup. The success of the NBC debut, and Bernie’s “easy-going, witty microphone manner,” led to coast-to-coast fame.

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow: Analyst Thomas Hischak notes that “’Sweet Georgia Brown’ (1925) is an early jazz classic that also foreshadows the swing sound to come along a decade later.” The riff-focused melodies, in the manner of Count Basie and Fletcher Henderson, are one pre-swing characteristic. The sectional writing for the saxophones in Chorus 2 also resembles Henderson’s approach in “The Stampede.” Even though “Sweet Georgia Brown” shares characteristics with many other tunes of its day, the song also has its special qualities that make it distinctive. One catchy moment in the introduction was an innovation of Bernie’s interpretation of the song: although the meter is in the typical danceable common-time, the Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra performs a hemiola passage that emphasizes every third beat, as if the time signature had shifted to 3 time. Figure 3–5 illustrates the hemiola effect: the numbers above the staff represent the customary beats in the indicated 4 meter. Underneath the staff, the brackets and numbers show how the repetitive pattern—four eighth notes and a quarter note—seems to produce a contrasting triple-meter pulse. Another novel aspect of “Sweet Georgia Brown” is the fact that the four phrases of the show-tune chorus each modulate to a key that is a perfect fifth lower than the preceding phrase. If you turn to the circle of fifths shown in Figure 1–20 in Section I of this resource guide, you can trace the changing keys by moving counterclockwise around the circle. For instance, if you start with E major, the next key to the left would be A major, followed by D major, and then by G major. This “circle-of-fifths” motion is delightfully unsettling and presents a stimulating challenge to jazz musicians when improvising. Although “Sweet Georgia Brown” is “bright and bouncy music,” it can be difficult to sing accurately—yet, as Hischak notes, “the song has been whistled and hummed by the person on the street for decades.” Listening Guide 8: “Sweet Georgia Brown” (1925) — Ben Bernie and Maceo Pinkard Intro: 0:00 — 4 bars — Homorhythmic ascending pattern; 0:04 — 2 bars — Hemiola rhythm; 0:07 — 2 bars — Homorhythmic scalar ascent. Chorus 1: 0:09 A — 4 bars — Trumpet leads (launching circle-of-fifths motion); 0:13 — 4 bars — Key shifts a perfect fifth lower; riff on first phrase; 0:18 — 4 bars — Key shifts a perfect fifth lower; riff on first phrase; 0:22 — 4 bars — Key shifts a perfect fifth lower; then moves back to tonic; 0:26 A′ — 4 bars — Tonic key; repetition of first phrase with vamp in woodwinds; 0:30 — 4 bars — Key shifts a perfect fifth lower; riff on first phrase; 0:35 c — 4 bars — Return to tonic; “Charleston” rhythm; 0:40 — 4 bars — Riff on first phrase. Chorus 2: 0:44 A — a, b — 15 bars — Saxes in harmony; 1:00 — 1 bar — Muted trumpet starts adding responses; 1:02 A′ — 8 bars — Saxes in harmony with muted trumpet fills; 1:10 — 4 bars — Muted trumpet leads in “Charleston” rhythm; 1:15 — 4 bars — Saxes in harmony; 1:19 — 6 bars — Muted trumpets play contrasting melody over same chords; 1:26 — 2 bars — “Neigh”-like responses in woodwinds; 1:28 A′ — 8 bars — Muted trumpets resume lead. Interlude: 1:37 — 4 bars — Descent, then ascent. Chorus 3: 1:41 A — a, b — 15 bars — Modulation to new key; muted trumpet with woodwind fills; 1:57 — 1 bar — Solo break (woodwind section); 1:59 — 8 bars — Muted trumpets with woodwind fills; 2:08 c — 4 bars — Busy clarinet countermelody during “Charleston” rhythm; 2:12 — 4 bars — Muted trumpet lead. Interlude: 2:16 — 2 bars — Tag-like, ending with cymbal crash. Chorus 5: 2:19 A — a, b — 16 bars — Saxophone solo with rhythm section; 2:36 A′ — 8 bars — Saxophone solo with heterophony; 2:44 c — 4 bars — Saxophone countermelody during “Charleston” rhythm; 2:49 — 4 bars — Trumpet leads in final phrase; 2:53 Coda — 2 bars — Extension of final phrase; cymbal at end.