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The JAZZ Story
An Outline History of Jazz
In the span of less than a century, the remarkable native American
music
called Jazz has risen from obscure folk origins to become this
country's
most significant original art form, loved and played in nearly every
land on
earth.
Today, Jazz flourishes in many styles, from basic blues and ragtime
through New Orleans and Dixieland, swing and mainstream, bebop and
modern to free form and electronic. What is extraordinary is not that
Jazz
has taken so many forms, but that each form has been vital enough to
survive and to retain its own character and special appeal. It takes
only
open ears and an open mind to appreciate all the many and wide-raging
delights jazz has to offer.
THE ROOTS
Jazz developed from folk sources. Its origins are shrouded in
obscurity, but
the slaves brought here from Africa, torn from their own ancestral
culture,
developed it as a new form of communication in song and story.
Black music in America retained much of Africa in its distinctive
rhythmic
elements and also in its tradition of collective improvisation. This
heritage,
blended with the music of the new land, much of it vocal, produced
more
than just a new sound. It generated an entire new mode of musical
expression.
The most famous form of early Afro-American music is the spiritual.
These beautiful and moving religious songs were most often heard by
white audiences in more genteel versions than those performed in rural
black churches. What is known as gospel music today, more accurately
reflects the emotional power and rhythmic drive of early Afro-American
music than a recording of a spiritual by the famous Fisk Jubilee
Singers
from the first decade of this century.
Other early musical forms dating from the slavery years include work
songs, children's songs, and dances, adding up to a remarkable legacy,
especially since musical activity was considerable restricted under
that
system.
BIRTH OF THE BLUES
After the slaves were freed, Afro-American music grew rapidly. The
availability of musical instruments, including military band discards,
and
the new-found mobility gave birth to the basic roots of Jazz: brass
and
dance band music and the blues.
The blues, a seemingly simple form of music that nevertheless lends
itself
to almost infinite variation, has been a significant part of every
Jazz style,
and has also survived in its own right. Today's rock and soul music
would
be impossible without the blues. Simply explained, it is and eight (or
twelve) bar strain with lyrics in which the first stanza is repeated.
It gets its
characteristic "blue" quality from a flattening of the third and
seventh notes
of the tempered scale. In effect, the blues is the secular counterpart
of the
spirituals.
BRASS BANDS AND RAGTIME
By the late 1880's, there were black brass, dance and concert bands in
most southern cities. (At the same time, black music in the north was
generally more European-oriented.) Around this era, ragtime began to
emerge. Though primarily piano music, bands also began to pick it up
and
perform it. Ragtime's golden age was roughly from 1898 to 1908, but
its
total span began earlier and lingered much later. Recently, it has
been
rediscovered. A music of great melodic charm, its rhythms are heavily
syncopated, but it has almost no blues elements. Ragtime and early
Jazz
are closely related, but ragtime certainly was more sedate.
Greatest of the ragtime composers was Scott Joplin (1868-1917). Other
masters of the form include James Scott, Louis Chauvink Eubie Blake
(1883-1983) and Joseph Lamb, a white man who absorbed the idiom
completely.
ENTER JASS
Ragtime, especially in its watered-down popular versions, was
entertainment designed for the middle class and was frowned on by the
musical establishment. The music not yet called Jazz (in its earliest
usage it
was spelled "jass"), came into being during the last decade of the
19th
century, rising out of the black working-class districts of southern
cities.
Like ragtime, it was a music meant for dancing.
The city that has become synonymous with early Jazz is New Orleans.
There is reality as well as myth behind this notion.
New Orleans: Cradle of Jazz
New Orleans played a key role in the birth and growth of Jazz, and the
music's early history has been more thoroughly researched and
documented there than anywhere else. But, while the city may have had
more and better Jazz than any other from about 1895 to 1917, New
Orleans was by no means the only place where the sounds were
incubating. Every southern city with a sizable black population had
music
that must be considered early Jazz. It came out of St. Louis, which
grew to
be the center of ragtime; Memphis, which was the birthplace of W.C.
Handy (1873-1958), the famed composer and collector of blues; Atlanta,
Baltimore, and other such cities.
What was unique to New Orleans at the time was a very open and free
social atmosphere. People of different ethnic and racial backgrounds
could
establish contact, and out of this easy communication came a rich
musical
tradition involving French, Spanish, German, Irish and African
elements. It
was no wonder that this cosmopolitan and lively city was a fertile
breeding
ground for Jazz.
If New Orleans was the birthplace of Jazz in truth as well as in
legend, the
tale that the music was born in its red light district is purest
nonsense. New
Orleans did have legalized prostitution and featured some of the most
elaborate and elegant "sporting houses" in the nation. But the music,
if any,
that was heard in these establishments was made by solo pianists.
Actually, Jazz was first heard in quite different settings. New
Orleans was
noted for its many social and fraternal organizations, most of which
sponsored or hired bands for a variety of occasions -- indoor and
outdoor
dances, picnics, store openings, birthday or anniversary parties. And,
of
course, Jazz was the feature of the famous funeral parades, which
survive
even today. Traditionally, a band assembles in front of the church and
leads a slow procession to the cemetery, playing solemn marches and
mournful hymns. On the way back to town, the pace quickens and fast,
peppy marches and rags replace the dirges. These parades, always great
crowd attractions, were important to the growth of Jazz. It was here
that
trumpeters and clarinetists would display their inventiveness and the
drummers work out the rhythmic patterns that became the foundation for
"swinging" the beat.
The best way to account for the early development of jazz in New Orleans
is to familiarize yourself with the cultural and social history of this
marvelously distinctive regional culture.
One might say that jazz is the Americanization of the New Orleans music
developed by the Creoles, occuring at a time when ragtime, blues,
spirituals, marches, and popular "tin pan alley" music were converging.
Jazz was a style of playing which drew from all of the above and
presented an idiommatic model based on a concept of collective, rather
than solo, improvisation.
Ultimately, New Orleans players such as Louis Armstrong and Sidney
Bechet developed a new approach which emphasized solos, but they both
began their careers working in the collective format, evident in the
early recordings by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1917), Kid Ory's
Sunshine Orchestra (1921), the New Orleans Rhythm Kings (1922, 1923) and
King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (1923).
Armstrong's impact became apparent with the popularity of his Hot Five
and Hot Seven recordings (1925-28), redirecting everyone's imagination
toward inspired solos. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, community connections
such as "jazz funerals" in which brass bands performed at funerals held
by benevolent
associations continued to underline the role of jazz as a part of
everyday life.
Jazz may have been a luxury (entertainment) in New York, Chicago, and
Los Angeles, but in New Orleans it was a necessity--a part of the fabric
of life in the neighborhoods. And it still is.
THE EARLY MUSICIANS - Buddy, Bunk, Freddie and The King
The players in these early bands were mostly artisans (carpenters,
bricklayers, tailors, etc.) or laborers who took time out on weekends
and
holidays to make music along with a little extra cash.
The first famous New Orleans musician, and the archetypal jazzman, was
Buddy Bolden (1877-1931). A barber by trade, he played cornet and
began
to lead a band in the late 1890's. Quite probably, he was the first to
mix
the basic, rough blues with more conventional band music. It was a
significant step in the evolution of Jazz.
Bolden suffered a seizure during a 1907 Mardi Gras parade and spent
the
rest of his life in an institution for the incurably insane. Rumor
that he
made records have never been substantiated, and his music comes from
the recollection of other musicians who heard him when they were
young.
Bunk Johnson (1989- 1949), who played second cornet in one of Bolden's
last bands, contributed greatly to the revival of interest in classic
New
Orleans jazz that took place during the last decade of his life. A
great
storyteller and colorful personality, Johnson is responsible for much
of the
New Orleans legend. But much of what he had to say was more fantasy
than fact.
Many people, including serious fans, believe that the early jazz
musicians
were self-taught geniuses who didn't read music and never took a
formal
lesson. A romantic notion, but entirely untrue. Almost every major
figure
in early jazz had at least a solid grasp of legitimate musical
fundamentals,
and often much more.
Still, they developed wholly original approaches to their instruments.
A
prime example is Joseph (King) Oliver (1885-1938), a cornetist and
bandleader who used all sorts of found objects, including drinking
glasses,
a sand pail, and a rubber bathroom plunger to coax a variety of sounds
from his horn. Freddie Keppard (1889-1933), Oliver's chief rival,
didn't
use mutes, perhaps because he took pride in being the loudest cornet
in
town. Keppard, the first New Orleans great to take the music to the
rest of
the country, played in New York vaudeville with the Original Creole
Orchestra in 1915.
JAZZ COMES NORTH
By the early years of the second decade, the instrumentation of the
typical
Jazz band had become cornet (or trumpet), trombone, clarinet, guitar,
string bass and drums. (Piano rarely made it since most jobs were on
location and pianos were hard to transport.) The banjo and tuba, so
closely
identified now with early Jazz, actually came in a few years later
because
early recording techniques couldn't pick up the softer guitar and
string bass
sounds.
The cornet played the lead, the trombone filled out the bass harmony
part
in a sliding style, and the clarinet embellished between these two
brass
poles. The first real jazz improvisers were the clarinetists, among
them
Sidney Bechet (1897-1959). An accomplished musician before he was 10,
Bechet moved from clarinet to playing mainly soprano saxophone. He was
to become one of the most famous early jazzmen abroad, visiting
England
and France in 1919 and Moscow in 1927.
Most veteran jazz musicians state that their music had no specific
name at
first, other than ragtime or syncopated sounds. The first band to use
the
term Jazz was that of trombonist Tom Brown, a white New Orleanian who
introduced it in Chicago in 1915. The origin of the word is cloudy and
its
initial meaning has been the subject of much debate.
The band that made the word stick was also white and also from New
Orleans, the Original Dixieland Jass Band. This group had a huge
success in New York in 1917-18 and was the first more or less
authentic
Jazz band to make records. Most of its members were graduates of the
bands of Papa Jack Laine (1873-1966), a drummer who organized his
first band in 1888 and is thought to have been the first white Jazz
musician. In any case, there was much musical integration in New
Orleans,
and a number of light skinned Afro-Americans "passed" in white bands.
By 1917, many key Jazz players, white and black, had left New Orleans
and other southern cities to come north. The reason was not the
notorious
1917 closing of the New Orleans red light district, but simple
economics.
The great war in Europe had created an industrial boom, and the
musicians
merely followed in the wake of millions of workers moving north to the
promise of better jobs.
LITTLE LOUIS & THE KING
King Oliver moved to Chicago in 1918. As his replacement in the best
band in his hometown, he recommended an 18-year-old, Louis Armstrong.
Little Louis, as his elders called him, had been born on August 4,
1901, in
poverty that was extreme even for New Orleans' black population. His
earliest musical activity was singing in the streets for pennies with
a boy's
quartet he had organized. Later he sold coal and worked on the levee.
Louis received his first musical instruction at reform school, where
he
spent eighteen months for shooting off an old pistol loaded with
blanks on
the street on New Year's Eve of 1913. He came out with enough musical
savvy to take jobs with various bands in town. The first established
musician to sense the youngster's great talent was King Oliver, who
tutored
Louis and became his idol.
THE CREOLE JAZZ BAND
When Oliver sent for Louis to join him in Chicago, that city had
become
the world's new Jazz center. Even though New York was where the
Original Dixieland Jass Band had scored its big success, followed by
the
spawning of the first dance craze associated with the music, the New
York
bands seemed to take on the vaudeville aspects of the ODJB's style
without grasping the real nature of the music. Theirs was an imitation
Dixieland (of which Ted Lewis was the first and most successful
practitioner), but there were few southern musicians in New York to
lend
the music a New Orleans authenticity.
Chicago, on the other hand, was teeming with New Orleans musicmakers,
and the city's nightlife was booming in the wake of prohibition. By
all
odds, the best band in town was Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, especially
after Louis joined in late 1922. The band represented the final great
flowering of classic New Orleans ensemble style and was also the
harbinger of something new. Aside from the two cornetists, its stars
were
the Dodds Brothers, clarinetists Johnny (1892-1940) and drummer Baby
(1898-1959). Baby Dodds brought a new level of rhythmic subtlety and
drive to jazz drumming. Along with another New Orleans-bred musician,
Zutty Singleton (1897-1975), he introduced the concept of swinging to
the
Jazz drums. But the leading missionary of swinging was,
unquestionably,
Louis Armstrong.
FIRST JAZZ ON RECORDS
The Creole Jazz Band began to record in 1923 and while not the first
black
New Orleans band to make records, it was the best. The records were
quite widely distributed and the band's impact on musicians was great.
Two years earlier, trombonist Kid Ory (1886-1973) and his Sunshine
Orchestra captured the honor of being the first recorded artists in
this
category. However, they recorded for an obscure California company
which soon went out of business and their records were heard by very
few.
Also in 1923, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, a white group active in
Chicago, began to make records. This was a much more sophisticated
group than the old Dixieland Jass Band, and on one of its recording
dates,
it used the great New Orleans pianist-composer Ferdinand (Jelly Roll)
Morton (1890-1941). The same year, Jelly Roll also made his own
initial
records.
JELLY ROLL MORTON
Morton, whose fabulous series of 1938 recordings for the Library of
Congress are a goldmine of information about early Jazz, was a complex
man. Vain, ambitious, and given to exaggeration, he was a pool shark,
hustler and gambler a well as a brilliant pianist and composer. His
greatest
talent, perhaps was for organizing and arranging. The series of
records he
made with his Red Hot Peppers between 1926 and 1928 stands, alongside
Oliver's as the crowning glory of the New Orleans tradition and one of
the
great achievements in Jazz.
LOUIS IN NEW YORK AND BIG BANDS ARE BORN
That tradition, however, was too restricting for a creative genius
like Louis
Armstrong. He left Oliver in late 1924, accepting an offer from New
York's most prestigious black bandleader, Fletcher Henderson
(1897-1952). Henderson's band played at Roseland Ballroom on
Broadway and was the first significant big band in Jazz history.
Evolved from the standard dance band of the era, the first big Jazz
bands
consisted of three trumpets, one trombone, three saxophones (doubling
all
kinds of reed instruments), and rhythm section of piano, banjo, bass
(string
or brass) and drums. These bands played from written scores
(arrangements or "charts"), but allowed freedom of invention for the
featured soloists and often took liberties in departing from the
written
notes.
Though it was the best of the day, Henderson's band lacked rhythmic
smoothness and flexibility when Louis joined up. The flow and grace of
his
short solos on records with the band make them stand out like diamonds
in
a tin setting.
The elements of Louis' style, already then in perfect balance,
included a
sound that was the most musical and appealing yet heard from a
trumpet; a
gift for melodic invention that was as logical as it was new and
startling,
and a rhythmic poise (jazzmen called it "time") that made other
players
sound stiff and clumsy in comparison.
His impact on musicians was tremendous. Nevertheless, Henderson didn't
feature him regularly, perhaps because he felt that the white dancers
for
whom his band performed were not ready for Louis' innovations. During
his year with the band, however, Louis caused a transformation in its
style
and, eventually, in the whole big band field. Henderson's chief
arranger,
Don Redman, (1900-1964) grasped what Louis was doing and got some of
it on paper. After working with Louis, tenor saxophonist Coleman
Hawkins (1904-1969) developed a style for his instrument that became
the
guidepost for the next decade.
While in New York, Louis also made records with Sidney Bechet, and
with Bessie Smith (1894-1937), the greatest of all blues singers. In
1925,
he returned to Chicago and began to make records under his own name
with a small group, the Hot Five. Included were his wife Lil Hardin
Armstrong (1899-1971) on piano, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, and guitarist
Johnny St. Cyr. The records, first to feature Louis extensively,
became a
sensation among musicians, first all over the United States and later
all
over the world. The dissemination of jazz, and in a very real sense
its
whole development, would have been impossible without the phonograph.
KING LOUIS
The Hot Five was strictly a recording band. For everyday work, Louis
played in a variety of situations, including theater pit bands. He
continued
to grow and develop, and in 1927 switched from cornet to the more
brilliant trumpet. He had occasionally featured his unique gravel
voiced
singing, but only as a novelty. Its popular potential became apparent
in
1929, when, back in New York, he starred in a musical show in which he
introduced the famous Ain't Misbehavin' singing as well as playing the
great tune written by pianist Thomas (Fats) Waller (1904-1943),
himself
one of the greatest instrumentalists-singers-showmen in Jazz.
It was during his last year in Chicago while working with another
pianist,
Earl (Fatha) Hines (1903-1983), that Louis reached his first artistic
peak.
Hines was the first real peer to work with Louis. Inspired by him, he
was
in turn able to inspire. Some of the true masterpieces of Jazz, among
them
West End Blues and the duet Weatherbird, resulted from the
Armstrong-Hines union.
THE JAZZ AGE
Louis Armstrong dominated the musical landscape of the 20's and, in
fact,
shaped the Jazz language of the decade to come as well. But the Jazz
of
the Jazz Age was more often than not just peppy dance music made by
young men playing their banjos and saxophones who had little
understanding of (or interest in) what the blues and/or Louis
Armstrong
were about. Still, a surprising amount of music produced by this
dance-happy period contained genuine Jazz elements.
PAUL WHITEMAN - King of Jazz?
The most popular bandleader of the decade was Paul Whiteman
(1890-1967), who ironically became known as the King of Jazz, although
his first successful bands played no Jazz at all and his later ones
precious
little. These later bands, however, did play superb dance music,
expertly
scored and performed by the best white musicians the extravagant
Whiteman paychecks could attract. From 1926 on, Whiteman gave
occasional solo spots to such Jazz-influenced players as cornetist Red
Nichols, violinist Joe Venuti, guitarist Eddie Lang (1904-1933), and
the
Dorsey Brothers' trombonist-trumpeter Tommy (1905-1956) and
clarinetist-saxophonist Jimmy (1904-1957), all of whom later became
bandleaders in their own right.
In 1927, Whiteman took over the key personnel of Jean Goldkette's
Jazz-oriented band, which included a young cornetist and sometime
pianist
and composer of rare talent, Bix Beiderbecke (1903-1931). Bix's very
lyrical, personal music and early death combined to make him the first
(and most durable) jazz legend. His romanticized life story became the
inspiration for a novel and a film, neither of them close to the
truth.
Bix's closest personal and musical friend during the most creative
period of
his life was saxophonist Frank Trumbauer (1901-1956). Fondly known as
Bix and Tram, the team enhanced many an otherwise dull Whiteman
record with their brilliant interplay or their individual efforts.
THE BEIDERBECKE LEGACY
Bix's bittersweet lyricism influenced many aspiring jazzmen, among
them
the so-called Austin High Gang, made up of gifted Chicago youngsters
only a few of whom ever actually attended Austin High School. Among
them were such later sparkplugs of the Swing Era as drummers Gene
Krupa (1909-1973) and Dave Tough (1908-1948); clarinetist Frank
Teschemacher (1905-1932); saxophonist Bud Freeman (1906-1991);
pianists Joe Sullivan (1906-1971) and Jess Stacy (b. 1904); and
guitarist-entrepreneur Eddie Condon (1905-1973). Their contemporaries
and occasional
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