
The Gennett Suite
Special | 27m 16sVideo has Closed Captions
The Indiana University student jazz ensemble pays tribute to the Jazz Age.
Indiana University Jacobs School of Music student jazz ensemble plays an original composition that pays tribute to the Jazz Age titans whose legendary early recordings were produced at a little studio called Gennett Records. The performance program The Gennett Suite features music inspired by artists including Louis Armstrong, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, Bix Beiderbecke and Jelly Roll Morton.
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The Gennett Suite is presented by your local public television station.
Presented by WTIU. Distributed nationally by American Public Television.

The Gennett Suite
Special | 27m 16sVideo has Closed Captions
Indiana University Jacobs School of Music student jazz ensemble plays an original composition that pays tribute to the Jazz Age titans whose legendary early recordings were produced at a little studio called Gennett Records. The performance program The Gennett Suite features music inspired by artists including Louis Armstrong, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, Bix Beiderbecke and Jelly Roll Morton.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
How to Watch The Gennett Suite
The Gennett Suite is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
ANNCR: This program is made possible in part by -- IU Credit Union, now offering mobile access to IU Credit Union accounts, helping account holders check balances, transfer funds, and pay bills through their mobile devices.
Available through the IU Credit Union Apps for iPhone and Android.
And by WTIU members -- Clark and Amandaet's just hr and the rhythm section.
One, two -- fourth bar -- three, four.
[BAND REHEARSING] WALLARAB: Just listen to that and then they'll tell you where that last 16th, all right?
Yeah, that middle section will be fine.
Let's pick it up at the second line -- section here.
Let's just start that a little bit... [JAZZ MUSIC] WALLARAB: A one, two, three, one.
When young music students, especially jazz students, are exposed to this music for the first time, they can be very dismissive of it right offhand.
That's why presenting it in a historic context is so important for them, for them to really understand that there is nothing that came before this.
This was a brand-new music that has turned into everything -- from blues to jazz to even rock-and-roll and different things like that.
Then they start to get a sense of the importance of the music.
[JAZZ MUSIC] WALLARAB: It was a brand-new science at the time.
Which in its own way is exciting, and this is one of the things I try to teach my students, is to try and listen through some of the acoustical compromises that are present in those recordings.
If we are able to really put it into context, it was amazingly modern music.
It was amazingly progressive music.
[JAZZ MUSIC] WALLARAB: Okay, let's just do the transition, actually.
Let's jump back to V25.
[BAND REHEARSING] WALLARAB: The students are very much aware of the fact that they are helping to share the story of Gennett Studios, 100 years old, in the 21st century, and that just like the storytelling of the original musicians, that they are part of that legacy of doing that.
[JAZZ MUSIC] WALLARAB: I wanted to tell the story of Louis Armstrong and King Oliver specifically, but generally to the Great Migration, where millions and millions of southern blacks moved north.
And Chicago, being one of the great midwestern cities that attracted this huge mass migration of southern black population.
King Oliver took his band to Chicago to take advantage of this new environment, and then Louis' decision to heed that invitation was really shattering, in a good way, to American music.
Because had Louis Armstrong stayed in New Orleans, he may have not gotten to the Gennett recording studios to record, and who knows the trajectory of his career.
[ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [APPLAUSE] [JAZZ MUSIC] WALLARAB: In the 1920s, there was the blues craze, and so publishers and record labels understood that if you put the word "blues" in the title, people were more likely to buy the sheet music, or more likely to buy the records.
And so there happened to be a number of songs that were recorded at Gennett Records with the word "blues" in the title that aren't the blues.
And so, I took some of those tracks -- two of them, in fact, that were recorded by Bix Beiderbecke, the great cornet player from Davenport, Iowa -- and created the second movement.
[ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [ BAND PERFORMING ] [JAZZ PIANO MUSIC] WALLARAB: And the final movement, "Mr. Jelly Lord," is a tribute to the great "Jelly Roll" Morton who is the first actual jazz composer, the first jazz musician who recognized that all of the rhythms and nuances and brand-new expressive devices that can be found in this brand-new music, that you could actually compose with those.
[BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [BAND PERFORMING] [APPLAUSE] CLOSED CAPTION PRODUCTIONS ccproductions.com 844-335-0911 [JAZZ MUSIC] ANNCR: This program is made possible in part by -- IU Credit Union, now offering mobile access to IU Credit Union accounts, helping account holders check balances, transfer funds, and pay bills through their mobile devices.
Available through the IU Credit Union Apps for iPhone and Android.
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The Gennett Suite is presented by your local public television station.
Presented by WTIU. Distributed nationally by American Public Television.