Easy Classics books are now available with backing tracks

First, a bit of background: Some years ago, I arranged a number of beginning/intermediate-level duets of famous classical themes, for clarinet and alto sax. After trying the pieces with students, I self-published them, adding key-compatible versions for flute, trumpet, and tenor sax, and distributed them to local music stores. One of the store owners suggested that I send them to Mel Bay Publications, and the company decided to publish them, providing a far wider distribution. 

Bill Bay suggested that I add a violin version, as well as piano accompaniments. That was a very good call; the violin version has consistently been the best seller. My mother, Jannette Spitzer, and my sister, Laura Spitzer - both fine pianists and teachers - created piano accompaniments, which were packaged with the instrumental duets. The piano parts are pretty easy, too.

A few years later, I added versions for viola and cello. The books for band instruments are all mutually key-compatible and in friendly keys for those instruments; the violin, viola, and cello books are mutually compatible, but in string-friendly keys.

The books can be used as like-instrument duet, mix-and-match duet, mixed ensemble in two parts, solo with piano accompaniment, or duet with piano accompaniment. Altogether, over the years, the series has sold over 40,000 copies.

A couple of years ago, Laura recorded all of the piano accompaniments, so that they could be posted online as "backing tracks." It took a while for Mel Bay to revise the print version and post the tracks online, but the new books and online tracks are now available. Each accompaniment comes in a "practice" tempo (slower), and a "performance" tempo (more challenging).

I have used the clarinet and sax books with a great many students over the years. I generally use them in their original duet form. I think they make a good curriculum for students who are just past the "first band book" stage.

If you are a teacher, and would like to pick up a copy and/or have students do so, I strongly suggest that you buy it directly from the publisher. Don't get it used, or from Amazon. The instrumental duets are printed on an insert, inside the printed piano accompaniment. Warehouse employees don't understand this, and sometimes have shipped the book without the duet insert.

The books are also available from Mel Bay as eBooks. If you (like me) are increasingly using an iPad for reading music, I recommend a 13-inch iPad Pro. On smaller tablets, musical notes may appear too small. Amazon offers a Kindle version of the Easy Classics books, but most Kindles are just too small to be useful this way.

If you are in the market for a 13-inch iPad Pro, here are some options, new and "renewed." (Full disclosure: If you order anything from Amazon via links on this site, I receive a commission.)

Anyway, I'm quite happy that the recorded accompaniments are finally available. Perhaps a few readers will find these books useful in teaching. Thanks for indulging my self-promotion!

Tunes published in 1929 will be entering public domain in 2025

As of January 1, 2025, U.S. copyright will expire for works published in 1929, including the following songs:

Ain't Misbehavin'
Am I Blue

Black and Blue

Blue Turning Grey Over You

Can't We Be Friends

Deep Night

Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You

Green Eyes (music and Spanish lyrics only)

Honeysuckle Rose

How Am I To Know

I Guess I'll Have To Change My Plan

I May Be Wrong

I've Got A Feeling I'm Falling

Just You, Just Me

Liza

Louise

Mean To Me

More Than You Know

Rockin' Chair

Singin' in the Rain

Star Dust (music already PD, now 1929 lyrics by Mitchell Parish are available)

Tiptoe Through The Tulips

Waiting for a Train (Jimmie Rodgers)

What Is This Thing Called Love

Why Was I Born

With A Song In My Heart

Without A Song

You Do Something To Me

Yours Is My Heart Alone (music and German lyrics only)

2025 is a good year for public domain! We are now moving into years with some higher-quality "Golden Age" jazz standards.

This list includes mostly jazz-oriented and jazz-adjacent songs, and was selected from lists found on Wikipedia and on Jazzstandards.com. Please let me know of any errors.

Further detail on most of these songs is available on Wikipedia.

For more popular, jazz, and classical pieces entering the public domain, see the Wikipedia article 1929 in Music.

United States copyright law is quite restrictive as compared to many other countries. According to the provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (aka "Mickey Mouse Protection Act"), works published or registered before 1978 remain under copyright for 95 years.

With the passage of the 1998 law, the cutoff date for works entering the public domain became 1922, with any works published in 1923 or later remaining under copyright. Beginning in 2019, however, the clock began running again, with each new year bringing one more year of songs and other works into the public domain. Over the next 20 years or so, most "Golden Age" jazz standards will lose copyright protection.

Many other countries have shorter terms of copyright; one common formula is the life of the author plus fifty years (see this table). For example, in Canada you can record pieces written by Wes Montgomery (d. 1968) John Coltrane (d. 1967), Igor Stravinsky (d. 1971), Louis Armstrong (d. 1971). Lee Morgan (d. 1972), or Kenny Dorham (d. 1972).

1n 2024, Mickey Mouse entered the public domain. Below is an excerpt from a previous post on copyright expiration, regarding the Mickey question. Note that in 2025, a more current version of Mickey is now available, with his white gloves.

However, if you are thinking of utilizing Mickey's image in 2024, you should consider that copyright will only expire on images from cartoons released in 1928, such as Steamboat Willie. In those early images, Micky had a somewhat different visage, with a longer, rat-like nose. He did not not yet have his white gloves or red shorts; they came later. If you want to use the white gloves or red shorts, you will have to wait a few more years.

Here's an interesting article on the subject, with an image of Mickey as submitted for copyright in 1929. It looks to me as though Mickey's nose had been altered a little by then, closer to its current look. He has his white gloves, too. The image is in black and white, so I don’t know about the red shorts. 

By the way, Minnie Mouse also appears in the 1928 cartoons, though I don't think she is credited by name.

In addition to copyrighting Mickey, The Walt Disney Company has also registered him as a trademark. US trademarks can be renewed every 10 years, potentially going on forever. Disney has a strong case for Mickey as a trademark, but less so for many of their other characters, who will be falling out of copyright in the next few years. Here is an article from the Western New England Law Review that covers in depth the legal standing of Mickey and other Disney characters.

More links:

2022 NYT article on Mickey copyright

Copyright Law of the United States (Wikipedia)

Review: The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins

I've been reading The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins, edited by Sam V. H. Reese, and can recommend it to anyone, musician or otherwise, who has appreciated Sonny's very significant contributions to jazz. For the insight and enjoyment you will get from this book, it's a real bargain at $16.16 (paperback), or $11.99 (Kindle).

Reese's book presents selections from an archive that the New York Public Library purchased from Sonny in 2017, and that was more recently opened up to researchers. The total amount of material in the archive is immense - the NYPL catalog lists it as 73.43 linear feet (click the link for a complete listing of material in the archive). Included are notebooks that Sonny kept from 1959 to 2010. The NYPL catalog describes the writings:

Rollins's writings offer an extremely rare look into a jazz musician's thought processes regarding his art, personal development, career, and daily life. Mostly written on lined yellow legal pads, they contain reflections on personal and musical growth; his opinion of his and his band members' performances; notes on practice methods, saxophone issues and fingerings; sporadic journal entries; social and political observations; drafts of letters and essays; and drawings and sketches. 

To this list of topics, I could add, from Reese's book:

• Notes for an envisioned sax method book
• Some of Sonny's practice routines
• Harmonic/melodic improvisation techniques and observations
• Self-improvement outside of music: exercise, yoga, diet, vocabulary, learning Japanese, reading lists, self-evaluation
• Deep thoughts on human behaviors
• Music of other cultures
• Social commentary: value of jazz to society; environmental degradation; destructive effects of American capitalism/greed/consumer culture. 
• Dental worries and medical notes
• Favorite music recordings and films

The NYPL catalog lists the notebooks as 3.62 linear feet, in six containers. Reese's book is 176 pages, of which about 150 pages are Rollins' writings. It must have been quite a task to read through the original material and to decide which excerpts to include!

It's not clear to me exactly how Reese decided which material to excerpt for his book. It seems to me that he was thinking of readers who were not necessarily musicians (there are no notated musical examples in the book), and that he tried to provide interesting samples of the many disparate topics listed above. If that was the intent, I'd say he did a nice job.

As a jazz/sax person, I was especially interested in musical detail and sax-specific topics. There is certainly some of that in the book (though nothing in musical notation). However, Sonny's writing is not always clear. In many cases, he was apparently writing for himself, not for future readers. Some of it I could puzzle out, some I could not. For example,

Today, hear for the first time, the theoretical designation of B♯ and the aesthetic realization of it join and yoke as the inner mental hearing of F♯ rejects it as a major 7 of the preceding F♯. Not so with the thinking of E♯!!

Sentences like the one above are pretty much impenetrable, though I’m sure they made sense to Sonny when he wrote them. In some places, explanatory footnotes might have been helpful; Reese could have consulted a saxophonist colleague for annotations, if he is not himself a player.

A few useful items that I gleaned:

• On Sonny's tenor that he called "Betsy," the best-sounding fingering for C was bis Bb plus side C. "Betsy" was probably either a Selmer Mark VI or a Buescher. I checked this out on a number of different horns, and it works great on Mark VI tenors; on other horns not so well.
• He apparently used the side D key for 4th-line D fairly often.
• Some cool ideas for superimposing triads, that I might try out. 
• Sonny's concept of tongue position.
• Consciousness of overtone content in tone production.

If you are interested in a more specifically musical look at material from Sonny's archives, I can suggest an article in the Winter 2023 Journal of Musicology by Benjamin Givan, titled Sonny Rollins’s Musical Thought: Rhetoric, Reticence, and Reality. It’s free, just click the link. This is a scholarly article, aimed at musicians and musicologists.

In Reese's book the selections are in Sonny's own words. In Givan's article you will find more concrete musical detail from the archive, along with Givan's comments, written in scholarly jargon, not necessarily in Sonny's own words.

 

However, I have to mention a caveat regarding this article. Givan presents a lot of musical detail from the archive, but does so as part of making a case for an overarching assertion: that over the years, many jazz musicians have made public statements that have fostered the common misconception that skill in jazz improvisation comes from untutored/natural/intuitive talent. These statements avoid mentioning the technical work that the great players must do, to achieve control of their instruments and facility with musical thinking. To this extent I agree, but Givan goes further. Here is the introduction to his article:

In interviews, jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins has described himself as a “primitive” or intuitive musician. Manuscripts in his personal archive dating from the 1960s indicate that this is not true. During this period, he closely studied several published instrumental primers and handwrote many highly systematic practice exercises using staff notation, along with much technical and introspective prose commentary. In a holistic quest for self-knowledge, he also read a wide variety of literature, including texts on music theory and acoustics, works on human anatomy and the physiology of breathing, and esoteric theories of pitch and color. The contradiction between Rollins’s claims to rely on subconscious knowledge and his extensive private engagement with written, self-analytical modes of musical conceptualization reflects a recurrent tendency among early generations of jazz musicians, noted by pianist and educator Billy Taylor, to publicly deny the actual extent of their own conscious, technical musical knowledge.

Givan seems to believe that artists' "reticence" to publicly mention technical matters has some root in Black culture. He follows his introduction with this quote from Zora Neale Hurston:

What is actually known about us? Very little. Certainly little that we do not wish to tell. Because we do not refuse to answer questions does not mean that we welcome probings. We are a polite people. So we say something, and usually what we say is what is expected of us, rather than the truth. 

In my opinion, the popular misconception of the "natural" jazz genius has a simpler explanation, that does not need to resort to any such characterization of Black culture. Both interviewers and interviewees knew that their readership would not be musical specialists. The interviewers themselves were often non-musicians. They asked questions that were not meant to elicit technical answers. The musicians being interviewed and quoted were likewise directing their answers to the general public, not to a readership of skilled musicians. Modesty may factor in. Another factor might be the writer’s idea of what makes for a good story.

At the same time, it is absolutely correct to say that improvisation involves a basically intuitive approach. It's mystical, in a way. It was no different for Bach and Mozart, who were known to be great improvisers in their time. 

In any case, I think Givan's article would have been just as valuable, or more so, if he had just stuck with presenting and commenting on the musical examples in Sonny's archive.  

Givan's article provides some of the more specific musical information that is missing from Reese's book. In his effort to prove that Sonny really did have a deep concern for technical detail, Givan shows, in musical notation, a number of specific musical patterns that Sonny practiced. Some other interesting musical points covered in this article:

• To what extent Sonny utilized Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns 

• How Sonny conceived of using patterns (not necessarily patterns from Slonimsky) in soloing

• Sonny's investigation of superimposing triadic shapes on other chords

• Sonny’s exploration of how Isaac Newton, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, and Don Cherry each conceived of an equivalence between pitches and colors

• Sonny's work with overtones, growing out of his use of Sigurd Rascher's Top Tones book

Both the Reese book and the Givan article are very much worth your time. But Sonny should have the last word here, right?

My first AI comment?

Fairly often, I receive blog comments that are just advertisements, that have nothing to do with the article that is supposedly being commented on. The sender is just looking for clicks to their product or service. It only takes me one click to delete them. 

Yesterday, I got an interesting one. It's a review of my post on the Origins of Choro Form, about as favorable, glowing, and complimentary as a comment could be. The comment included two links to a relatively new service that is aimed at musical artists.

The style and tone of the writing seemed a little "off" to me, so I ran the text through a few free AI detectors.

First, let me say that the originator of the comment should understand that I won't publish comments that have advertisements, no matter how complimentary the content is, whether AI or human. Apologies if my suspicions are wrong, and the text was actually written by a human. But thanks for the compliments, regardless!

Anyway, here is the very complimentary comment, followed by the results from seven AI detectors:

The exploration of choro's structural origins and its possible correlations with other music forms like ragtime provides a fascinating glimpse into the intricate world of musical evolution and cross-cultural influences. Your article does an excellent job of delving into these complex topics, offering a clear, well-researched perspective that invites both newcomers and seasoned aficionados of choro to think deeper about the genre.

Your methodical approach, starting with questioning a claim and following through with expert verification and further research, enhances the credibility and educational value of your post. The clarification from Jovino Santos Neto about the rondo form's influence in early choro composition, and its syncopation of popular European dances of the time, adds a rich layer of understanding to how choro might have stylistically evolved to incorporate these elements.

Furthermore, the comparison with ragtime and the detailed analysis of structural similarities point to a fascinating parallel development in musical forms that transcended geographic and cultural boundaries. The notion that both choro and ragtime independently mirrored European dance forms yet developed unique identities is intriguing and speaks volumes about the adaptive and transformative power of music.

Your discussion also opens up broader questions about the influence of musical forms on each other, especially in the context of the later influence of jazz on choro. It prompts a reflection on how music continually evolves through both internal innovations and external influences, leading to new musical expressions that retain echoes of their past.

Overall, your article is not only informative but also thought-provoking, encouraging readers to appreciate the depth and complexity of musical genres like choro. It serves as a reminder of the endless possibilities that music holds as a form of cultural expression and historical documentation.

Without mentioning the specific free AI detectors, here are the seven results:

1. "Reads like AI" - flagged the first paragraph in particular.
2. "100% of your text is AI-generated."
3. "18.97% GPT," first paragraph is "most likely generated by AI."
4. "18% AI/GTP generated, human written 81%.
5. "0% likelihood of complete AI content."
6. "100% chance that your text is generated by AI."
7. "78% of text is likely AI generated, 22% human written." Flagged paragraphs 2-5 as likely AI.

As you can see, the results are all over the place. I guess AI detection is not an exact science.

These free detectors seem to be mostly about persuading people to sign up for services that promise to rewrite your text in a way that will fool AI detectors into thinking the author is human. Thank goodness I'm not a professor who has to grade term papers. With in-person music lessons, you can't use AI to fake proficiency, or to mask lack of practice.

Addendum: A few hours after I put up this post, I got another chatbot comment, on a different blog post. This one came with a link to someplace selling nutrition supplements. The soulless style looks awfully familiar. Welcome to the future.

The "Chain of Dominants" Progression adds a captivating layer of tension and resolution to music, keeping listeners engaged and eager for more harmonic surprises.

Tadd Dameron and “Cream Oil Charlie”

I’ve been checking some of Tadd Dameron’s compositions. The definitive biography Dameronia lists “Cream Oil Charlie” as one of them, composed by Tadd in 1946.

If you’re old enough to have been around in the 1950s or 1960s, you’ll remember the “Wildroot Cream-Oil” jingle. Here it is, as sung by Nat Cole:

So Dameron wrote this? Really? That was quite a surprise to me. TV viewers in the 1950s and 1960s were bombarded with this jingle. Reading this attribution reminded of when I learned that “Down by the Station (Early in the Morning)” was composed and copyrighted by Slim Gaillard.

But upon reading more carefully, it turns out that Tadd did not write the famous jingle. The piece that Tadd copyrighted as “Cream Oil Charlie” was a bebop melody played over "Perdido" changes. He wrote it for Woody Herman in 1946, when Wildroot Cream-Oil was a sponsor of Woody’s radio show. Tadd’s tune was never actually used, because Woody changed sponsors. It was later recorded by Babs Gonzales in 1947, with the title “Dob Bla Bli.” Here are two versions - the Babs recording, and a recent one from Paul Combs, the author of Dameronia:

Bars 3-4 of "Do Bla Bli" include the same bop lick as bars 7-8 of Dizzy Gillespie's "Woody'n You." The Dizzy tune was written in 1942; it was either a tribute to Woody Herman, or was commissioned by Woody. Tadd and Dizzy were good friends; it’s probably not a coincidence that Tadd wrote that quote into the song. BTW, a similar lick shows up in Dizzy’s “Groovin’ High.”

According to Combs' book, there are copyright deposits at the Library of Congress for both "Cream Oil Charlie" and "Do Bla Bli"; they apparently differ in the bridge. Gonzales' recording does not use either of the copyrighted bridges, but rather leaves the “I Got Rhythm” bridge open for improvisation (as in some other bop tunes.) 

On the level of extreme trivia, I noticed that the label on the Gonzales record spells the first syllable "Dob," while Combs in his book spells it "Do." I'm guessing that Combs spells it that way because that's how it appears in the copyright.

I don’t know who actually could take credit for the famous Wildroot jingle (if "credit" is the right word), but that melody didn’t take much work. It’s the same melody as “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” which is also the melody of The Eyes of Texas are Upon You.

The Wikipedia entry for I’ve Been Working on the Railroad has some notes about the origins of the song.  It can be traced back to at least 1894. The main melody resembles a melody in Franz Suppe’s “Poet and Peasant Overture” (1846). The part that goes, “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah” is also very close melodically to “Goodnight Ladies” (1847).

As for Slim Gaillard's Down by the Station, the melody is pretty much the same as “Alouette,” as well as “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” According to both Wikipedia and this writeup, the lyrics appeared in a children's magazine in 1931. Slim did, however, register the copyright. Here’s Slim’s 1947 recording. It's cute. I guess the intro is original; not sure if that part was in the copyright.

Tunes published in 1928 will be entering public domain in 2024

 As of January 1, 2024, U.S. copyright will expire for works published in 1928, including the following songs:

Back in Your Own Backyard (Jolson, Rose, Dreyer)

Basin Street Blues (Williams)
The Big Rock Candy Mountain (trad., copyright 1928 by McClintock)
Crazy Rhythm (Caesar, Meyer, Kahn)

Hooray for Captain Spaulding (Kalmar) (Groucho Marx theme song)

How Long, How Long Blues (Carr)

I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby (Fields, McHugh)

I Must Have that Man (Fields, McHugh) 

I Wanna Be Loved By You (Stothart, Ruby, Kalmar) 

I'll Get By (As Long as I Have You) (Ahlert, Turk)

If I Had You (Campbell, Connelly, Shapiro)

It's Tight Like That (Whittaker, Dorsey)

Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love (Porter)

Love Me or Leave Me (Kahn, Donaldson)

Lover, Come Back to Me (Romberg, Hammerstein)

Mack the Knife (Weill, Brecht) (music and original German lyrics are PD in 2024, English translations are still under copyright)

Makin' Whoopee (Kahn, Donaldson)

The Mooche (Ellington, Mills)

Pirate Jenny (Weill, Brecht)

Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise (Romberg, Hammerstein)

Sweet Lorraine (Burwell, Parish)

Sweet Sue, Just You (Young, Harris)

West End Blues (Oliver, Williams)

What Keeps Mankind Alive? (Weill, Brecht)

When You're Smiling (Shay, Fisher, Goodwin)

You Took Advantage of Me (Rodgers, Hart)

This list includes mostly jazz-oriented and jazz-adjacent songs, and was selected from lists found on Wikipedia and on Jazzstandards.com. Some dates were uncertain; in those cases I went by the copyright dates on images of the original sheet music. Please let me know of any errors.

Further detail on most of these songs is available on Wikipedia.

Note that for the Kurt Weill songs from “Threepenny Opera,” English translations were made after 1928, and those lyrics are still under copyright. The music and original German lyrics are PD in 2024.

In classical music, notable pieces entering public domain are Bartok's String Quartet #4, Gershwin's An American in Paris, Ravel's Bolero, and Villa Lobos' Chôros No. 11, Chôros #12, and Quinteto (em forma de chôros).

For more popular, jazz, and classical pieces entering the public domain, see the Wikipedia article 1928 in Music.

United States copyright law is quite restrictive as compared to many other countries. According to the provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (aka "Mickey Mouse Protection Act"), works published or registered before 1978 remain under copyright for 95 years.

With the passage of the 1998 law, the cutoff date for works entering the public domain became 1922, with any works published in 1923 or later remaining under copyright. Beginning in 2019, however, the clock began running again, with each new year bringing one more year of songs and other works into the public domain. Over the next 20 years or so, most "Golden Age" jazz standards will lose copyright protection.

Many other countries have shorter terms of copyright; one common formula is the life of the author plus fifty years (see this table). For example, in Canada you can record pieces written by Wes Montgomery (d. 1968) John Coltrane (d. 1967), Igor Stravinsky (d. 1971), Louis Armstrong (d. 1971). Lee Morgan (d. 1972), or Kenny Dorham (d. 1972).

1n 2024, Mickey Mouse will be entering the public domain. Below is an excerpt from last year's post on copyright expiration, regarding the Mickey question:

However, if you are thinking of utilizing Mickey's image in 2024, you should consider that copyright will only expire on images from cartoons released in 1928, such as Steamboat Willie. In those early images, Micky had a somewhat different visage, with a longer, rat-like nose. He did not not yet have his white gloves or red shorts; they came later. If you want to use the white gloves or red shorts, you will have to wait a few more years.

Here's an interesting article on the subject, with an image of Mickey as submitted for copyright in 1929. It looks to me as though Mickey's nose had been altered a little by then, closer to its current look. He has his white gloves, too. The image is in black and white, so I don’t know about the red shorts. 

By the way, Minnie Mouse also appears in the 1928 cartoons, though I don't think she is credited by name.

In addition to copyrighting Mickey, The Walt Disney Company has also registered him as a trademark. US trademarks can be renewed every 10 years, potentially going on forever. Disney has a strong case for Mickey as a trademark, but less so for many of their other characters, who will be falling out of copyright in the next few years. Here is an article from the Western New England Law Review that covers in depth the legal standing of Mickey and other Disney characters.

More links:

2022 NYT article on Mickey copyright

Copyright Law of the United States (Wikipedia)