Rhythm Clubs, record series, and the everyday connoisseurship of ‘hot rhythm’ records in interwar Britain
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.37806Keywords:
Rhythm Clubs, connoisseurship, record collecting, listening, leisureAbstract
The Rhythm Club movement was a crucial development in British jazz history: it galvanizedan emerging audience of primarily lower-middle-class young men, who dramaticallyreshaped how jazz was understood and consumed. Using contemporary pressclippings, as well as archive material relating to the earliest Rhythm Club meetings, Iexamine how participants developed a unique form of 'everyday connoisseurship' thatmerged ideals of autonomous 'art' culture with a critical vocabulary that was informedby more quotidian elements of musical consumption and leisure activity. My account ofhot rhythm appreciation seeks to nuance existing popular narratives of early jazz recordconsumption that overemphasize enthusiasts' isolation from a putatively authentic jazzperformance culture.
References
Arvidsson, Alf (2009) ‘“Mike” Disc-courses on Hot Jazz: Discursive Strategies in the Writings of Spike Hughes, 1931–33’. Popular Music History 4/3: 251–69. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v4i3.251
Badrock, Arthur (1994) The Parlophone Red Label Popular Series: E5000 to E6428. Cupar: City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society.
Ballard, Eric (1933) ‘[Letter]’. Melody Maker, 24 June: 19. https://doi.org/10.2307/3909079
Ballroom & Band (1934) ‘What the Rhythm Clubs are Doing’. Ballroom & Band, November: 26, 32.
Borneman, Ernest (1947) ‘The Jazz Cult: Intimate Memoirs of an Acolyte’. Harper’s Magazine, February: 141–47.
The Busker (1933a) ‘Hottest Place in Town’. Melody Maker, March: 171.
——(1933b) ‘Fermata’. Melody Maker, 10 June: 10.
Butterfield, Matthew W. (2002) ‘Music Analysis and the Social Life of Jazz Recordings’. Current Musicology 71-73: 324–52.
Butterworth, J. H. (1933) ‘A Decade of Disc History’. Melody Maker, March: 183.
Caskett, J. (1923) ‘List of Selected Records—I’. The Gramophone, April: 8.
Dewey, John (1934) Art as Experience. London: Penguin Books.
Dunmore, Maurice (1936) ‘The Seven Pillars of Jazz’. No. 1 Rhythm Club Programme, 6 January. Concert Programmes Collection, National Jazz Archive, Loughton, Essex.
Eekhof, Hans (1999) Liner notes to The California Ramblers 1925–1928. Timeless CBC 1053, CD.
Elliott, Bill (1935) ‘British Rhythm Club Federation’. Hot News, May: 23.
Field, Norman (2006) ‘Bix Beiderbecke on British Parlophone 78s’. http://www.normanfield.com/parlophone.htm (accessed 10 December 2017).
Frith, Simon (1988) ‘Playing with Real Feeling: Making Sense of Jazz in Britain’. New Formations 4: 7–24.
Gebhardt, Nicholas (2019) ‘Friends and Neighbours: Jazz and Everyday Aesthetics’. In The Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies, ed. Nicholas Gebhardt, Nichole Rustin-Paschal and Tony Whyton, 389–98. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315315805-37
Godbolt, Jim (2010) A History of Jazz in Britain 1919–50. London: Northway Publications.
The Gramophone (1923) ‘New Dance Records’. The Gramophone, June: 40.
Hamilton, Marybeth (2002) ‘The Voice of the Blues’. History Workshop Journal 54: 123–43. https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/54.1.123
Healey, C. T. (1933) ‘[Letter]’. Melody Maker, May: 358.
Hibbs, Leonard (1935) ‘Swing Music: Conversations about Jazz, Part 5’. Brunswick RT 3, 78rpm Disc.
Hobsbawm, Eric (1998) Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz. New York: The New Press.
Holloway, James (1933) ‘Hot Record Circles’. Melody Maker, 3 June: 7.
Hughes, Spike (1933) ‘“Mike’s” Essay Competition Result’. Melody Maker, 21 October: 3.
Kenney, William Howland (1999) Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Krahmer, Carlo (1936) ‘Earl Hines, “King of the Ivories”’. No. 1 Rhythm Club Programme, 20 January. National Jazz Archive.
LeMahieu, D. L. (1982) ‘The Gramophone: Recorded Music and the Cultivated Mind between the Wars’. Technology and Culture 23/3 (July): 372–91. https://doi.org/10.2307/3104484
MacKenzie, Compton (1923) ‘Prologue’. The Gramophone, April: 1.
Martland, Peter (2013) Recording History: The British Record Industry, 1888–1931. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Mathison-Brooks, Percy (1933) ‘Record Circles’. Melody Maker, 29 July: 10.
McKibbin, Ross (1998) Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198206729.001.0001
Melody Maker (1933a) ‘Hot Record Circles Everywhere: The “Melody Maker” No. 1 Rhythm Club’. Melody Maker, 15 July: 11.
——(1933b) ‘Several New Hot Record Circles’. Melody Maker, 12 August: 9.
——(1933c) ‘The Hot Rhythm Club Movement’. Melody Maker, 19 August: 2.
——(1933d) ‘[Rhythm Club News]’. Melody Maker, 11 November: 11.
——(1934) ‘[Rhythm Club News]’. Melody Maker, 17 February: 2.
Miller, Karl Hagstrom (2010) Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392705
Newton, Francis (1960) The Jazz Scene. London: MacGibbon & Kee.
Nott, James (2002) Music for the People: Popular Music and Dance in Interwar Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Parlophone Records (1926) Parlophone Records Complete Catalogue Including All Records Issued up to 30th Sept., 1926. London: Parlophone Company.
–——(1927) Parlophone Records Complete Catalogue Including All Records Issued up to 30th Sept., 1927. London: Parlophone Company.
——(1929) ‘New “Rhythm-Style” Records’. Melody Maker, November: 1072–73.
Parsonage, Catherine (2005) The Evolution of Jazz in Britain, 1880–1935. Aldershot: Ashgate.
——(2007) ‘Fascination and Fear: Early Responses to Jazz in Britain’. In Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe, ed. Neil A. Wynn, 89–105. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Phillips, Frank (2015) ‘Parlophone’s New “Rhythm-Style” Series’. The Discographer Magazine 2/6 (June): 12–22.
Pub History (2019) ‘Bull & Anchor, 92 High Holborn, Holborn’. https://pubwiki.co.uk/LondonPubs/Holborn/BullAnchor.shtml (accessed 3 July 2019).
Rasula, Jed (1995) ‘The Media of Memory: The Seductive Menace of Records in Jazz History’. In Jazz among the Discourses, ed. Krin Gabbard, 134–62. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822397083-007
Rogers, William J. (1923) ‘How to Start a Gramophone Society’. The Gramophone, April: 10–11.
Rye, Howard (1984) ‘Visiting Firemen, No. 9: The Blackbirds and their Orchestras’. Storyville 112 (April–May): 133–47.
Saito, Yuriko (2010) Everyday Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Savage, G. A. R. (1933) ‘[Letter]’. Melody Maker, 1 July: 7.
Suffolk CAMRA (2016) ‘Ipswich Crown & Anchor’. http://www.suffolkcamra.co.uk/pubs/pub/455 (accessed 15 December 2018).
Sutton, Colin (2004) ‘Bradford—Empire Cinema’. Bradford Timeline. http://www.bradfordtimeline.co.uk/empire.htm
Tackley, Catherine (2010) ‘Jazz Recordings as Social Texts’. In Recorded Music: Society, Technology and Performance, ed. Amanda Bayley, 167–86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
–——(2014) ‘Rhythm Clubs: Ideals and Realities’. Paper presented at Rhythm Changes III: Jazz Beyond Borders, Conservatorium von Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 4–7 September.
UK Pub History and Historical Street Directory (2018) ‘Goat, Forty Hill, Enfield’. http://pubshistory.com/Middlesex/Enfield/GoatForty.shtml (accessed 9 November 2018).
Walker, Edward S. (1971) ‘The Visiting Firemen’. Jazz & Blues 1/7: 29.
