The JAZZ Story

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.