Right. Paul (Albert System) had some choice words recently for the whole "jazz-is-art-not-pop-and-you-will-sit-and-pay-attention" attitude that got started in the '50s.Campus Five wrote:...most jazz post 1950 wasn't really designed for dancing at all.
This is really interesting, actually. Intuitively it seems like conscientious live bands would have been aware of song lengths when playing for dancers, although I can certainly see where they wouldn't have felt the need to keep songs short when playing for other occasions. Did any of them care to make that distinction?I'm just hazarding a guess that the phenomenon of DJ-ed swing dances and bands catering specifically to dancers on CD (like by putting BPM's on the album, etc.) is probably fairly recent, and would only be since neo-swing.
More importantly, I was just pointing out the flawed part of your whole approach. Very little has ever been designed for Dj-ing at swing dances, let alone designed for dancing (at least consciously). Catering so specifcally to dancers happened only in the original era and now. Although they definitely didn't go as far as we do today - Basie or Goodman never consciously though about keeping live song lengths short for dancers (except maybe to raise revunes for house taxi dancers), or played all Lindy-able music. There was always a mix of real swing, and pop tunes, balads etc (of course some bands had less swing than others.) Chick Webb as house band at the Savoy had genuine interaction with dancers, and Basie named a tune after Shorty George, but most bands were more like Shaw who resented dancers after a time.
The dance was created to fit the music. There was very little music that was created to fit the dance.
As far as recorded music goes, it's really hard to tell given that the LP wasn't mass-marketed until 1948. But it's hard to imagine that record companies weren't recording bands with at least some idea that the resulting 78 might get played at a record hop or in a juke joint, or that people would buy them intent on dancing in their living rooms. Granted, the whole idea of a dance deejay (two turntables and what have you) didn't get started until 1943 (thanks to Jimmy Savile, according to wikipedia),
and certainly nobody was putting BPMs on the sleeves for that purpose. So it's an interesting question, and I'm still not sold on the idea that records were never produced for dancing. As a musician, I'm sure you can provide more detail as to why you think so.