Like - like, my teacher used to tell me, "Art Blakey used to come to Pittsburgh", he said "Art Blakey, the big dummy, used t'come back to Pittsburgh, told me he heard a five piece band in New York, that sounded like a big band. You know who he was talkin' 'bout, Lee?" I said, "No". He said "He was talkin' 'bout Louis -- Louis Jordan's Tympany Five..."
Well see that was... he was kind of a blues cat that had put lyrics, y'know... like one of his hits when we were kids, I used to like to listen to:
"Moe and Joe had a candy store
Sellin' fortunes behind the door
Buh duh dum duh, th' police ran out
Then J-- then they began to shout...
Run Joe, run as fast as you can
...P-police holding me han' "
-- Louis Jordan - Run Joe
That was about the numbers business.. and the police are comin' to rob him, to get the policies... So the bands got smaller, so it left more room for them to solo and perform, y'know... people started intellectualizing.
Because prior to that, if you were in a big band, basically you might get a four-bar solo, or a eight-bar solo, or if you really had -- was really playin' somethin', y'had sixteen bars and, y'know... on a record and all that kinda stuff -- that was major!
But that fact that... y'know, that just... three- and four- and five-piece bands, like, two horns... that left more room to solo. And see, records couldn't be on the air longer than three minutes... so what they started doing was having a format where you... where you play the melody down, take two choruses on solo -- two instruments -- then take the melody out.
Y'know... and that - that way, you'd get on the air and you had... the radio was playing a lot of jazz back in those days...
