Bud, Not Buddy | Jazz & the 1930s

A fifth grade teacher in Hilliard, Ohio, reads Bud, Not Buddy with her class every year.  Due to jazz references in the text, she called the Jazz Arts Group to explore the explanation of the references and find ways for the students to better connect to the content of the book.  Jazz in Schools provided knowledge about jazz in the 1930s: big bands, musicians, and day to day life for the musicians.  In the end, the students filmed a documentary and held Movie Night to premier their work.

The jazz musicians in this story were in Flint, Michigan.  Our very own Jim Masters had family members who were jazz musicians in Flint in the last 1930s.  It was a natural fit to place Jim in the classroom with the students to explain a jazz musician’s life on the road, share music printed in that era, and to play tunes made famous during that tune.

When Judy Shafer visited the classroom, she linked trains with jazz and big band music.  Bud, Not Buddy uses imagery by the author.  How does a composer use imagery?  What are the tools of a composer?  How do you make music sound like a train?

Movie Night

Each student researched a person, place or topic from the 1930s, wrote the report, recorded a sound track, selected appropriate photos and made a video for movie night.  The gym became the theatre and parents, friends and hot popcorn all helped to support the evening of learning.

The wide spectrum of research topics provided loads of information about that era, including:

Mhatma Gandi, Benny Goodman, Babe Ruth, Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Rich, Walt Disney, Jesse Owens, The Three Stooges, The War of the Worlds, Joe Louis, Louis Armstrong, Amelia Earhart, Shirley Temple, Billie Holiday, Herbert Hoover, Monopoly, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, the Empire State Building, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ma Rainey, Joe DiMaggio, Albert Einstein, Popeye, John Gillespie, Robert Johnson, The Wizard of Oz, Shirley Temple, Glenn Miller, Amelia Earhart, Herbert Hoover, Paul Robeson, George Gershwin, The Hindenburg Disaster